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Tahawwur Rana Terror Trial: Headley Duped the DEA

By Jeralyn, Section Terror Trials
Posted on Wed May 25, 2011 at 09:15:03 PM EST
Tags: David Coleman Headley, Tahawwur Hussein Rana, Pakistan ISI (all tags)
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The Chicago terror trial of Tahawwur Hussein Rana continued today with more testimony from former DEA informant and admitted Mumbai attack planner David Coleman Headley, aka Daood Gilani.

The Court ordered the Government's Santiago proffer unsealed today, on motion of the Chicago Tribune. Here it is skip to page 18 where the facts begin.

Via Colin Freeze, Globe and Mail reporter who's live-tweeting the trial, Headley testified he worked for the DEA for two years after becoming involved with LeT. The DEA first sent him to Pakistan in 1999. (They sent him again in December, 2001.) He said he stopped working for the DEA in 2002. He also attended his first LeT training camp in Feb. 2002. Here's a timeline, and here are the docket entries from his last heroin case. (It wasn't his first bust or the first time he worked his way down to a low sentence by cooperating with the DEA.) [More...]

As if there's not enough egg to go on the face of the DEA, there's also some for the FBI. After receiving a report he was sympathetic to Jihad in 2002, he explained it by saying he was a U.S. spy. They dropped the investigation.

The main question is why did the DEA sign up a heroin addict with two strikes to work for them in Pakistan? Why didn't they send a handler with him? Why didn't they keep tabs on him? How did they not realize he had switched sides or was playing both sides? They didn't have a clue until the British told them.

Back to the present: So was the mysterious Major Iqbal really a Pakistani intelligence officer? Headley testified he drove a military jeep and they at a compound affiliated with Khyber Rifles in 2006. He said the ISI provided him with training at a safehouse in a residential area of Lahore.

All of our coverage of the case is accessible here.

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    Tahawwur Rana Terror Trial: Headley Duped the DEA | 1 comment (1 topical)

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    Many thanks... (none / 0) (#1)
    by kdog on Thu May 26, 2011 at 10:11:50 AM EST
    for your excellent coverage of this most interesting and telling case.

    If not for information sources like Talkleft and the foreign press, we'd never hear about this brand of DEA shady.  If it weren't a government agency, giving them money or assistance would be a felony.

    Tahawwur Rana Terror Trial: Headley Duped the DEA | 1 comment (1 topical)

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