Answers to Airport Inspector's Questions in August Led to Arrest in '08 Mumbai CaseTerror suspect David Headley was questioned by an airport inspector in August and deceptive answers about his travels abroad helped officials begin to unravel Mr. Headley's alleged double life. The 49-year-old Chicago man was charged this week for helping plot the terror attack in Mumbai a year ago that killed 166 people.
Federal authorities, already suspicious of him, used his return to the U.S. this summer as an opportunity, according to officials. A border inspector asked Mr. Headley about his overseas travel, according to court records and people familiar with the case. Mr. Headley said he was working for a company called First World Immigration Service. First World is a business that allegedly provided Mr. Headley with cover as he traveled to scout terrorist targets for Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group responsible for the November 2008 assault in Mumbai, according to the federal charges.
Agents searched Mr. Headley's luggage and found it "contained no papers or other documents relating to such a business," according to court documents. They also searched tax records and found no record of income paid to Mr. Headley by the company, court records show. U.S. officials said Tuesday the questioning at the airport gave a significant boost to the investigation.
Authorities said little more about the airport interview, including where it happened or why they had become suspicious of Mr. Headley. But court records showed that federal surveillance of Mr. Headley, who is an American, accelerated afterward.
Mr. Headley's case is the most potent example of a U.S. born radical. Law enforcement and terrorism specialists said Lashkar's alleged deployment of Mr. Headley underscored the usefulness of recruits with U.S. passports in terror plots. Mr. Headley traveled to India and Pakistan over nearly two years to videotape targets and brief his co-conspirators in the Mumbai attacks, according to the federal charges.
Westerners have largely played supporting roles in terror activities, but Mr. Headley's ability to travel freely on a U.S. passport to Pakistan, India and Denmark gave him high value, a U.S. law enforcement official said. "It's exactly the way you'd think al Qaeda would want to use operatives," said Evan Kohlmann, who has testified on Lashkar as an expert witness in U.S. and British courts.
Under direction from the Pakistani terror group, Mr. Headley appears to have been a skilled operative leading a carefully cultivated double life. He posed as the representative of the global immigration firm on more than a dozen international missions, including to scout potential attacks in India and Europe. Mr. Headley's cellphone was registered to a dead man, as was his Chicago apartment, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He changed his name from Daood Gilani in 2006 to further his cover, according to the FBI.
Pakistan-based Lashkar has traditionally been focused on the Kashmir region, which Pakistan and India have fought over for decades. But U.S. counterterrorism officials now believe the group's ambitions are global. "There's little question that [Lashkar] would like to extend its reach beyond areas where it has operated in the past," said one U.S. counterterrorism official. "The group has connections to other militants who have shown interest in conducting attacks throughout the region and in the West."
Mr. Headley's alleged role in the Mumbai attack represents a significant expansion of Lashkar's use of Westerners, said Evan Kohlmann, who has testified on the group as an expert witness in U.S. and British courts.
There are pockets of Lashkar supporters in the U.S., including San Diego and Northern Virginia, as well as cities in Florida and in the Northeast, say current and former counterterrorism officials. Two Georgia men were convicted earlier this year of providing material support to Lashkar and plotting terror attacks in the U.S., as well as meeting with members of a Canadian terrorist cell. The men said they sought to work under Lashkar because it was easier to "climb the ladder" to another terrorist group, said Mr. Kohlmann, who assisted law enforcement on the case.
Christopher Paul, a bomb-making expert who pleaded guilty last year to conspiring to bomb U.S. and other targets, discussed attending camps in Pakistan with a senior Lashkar recruiter, and later wrote to a fellow American about the ease of training with the group.
The largest known U.S. case involving Lashkar is the Virginia Jihad cell uncovered in 2003, which included Yong Ki Kwon, who converted to Islam as a student at Virginia Tech. After college, he met Lashkar-trained Virginia Jihad leader Randall Royer, who helped Mr. Kwon gain admission to Lashkar training camps.