India-US: failure in intelligence sharing

ProPublica has a very troubling report that US intelligence had 5 separate warnings about David Headley, a.k.a. Daood Gilani.  David Headley is the Pakistani/American who performed reconnaisance for the Lashkar-e-Taiba for the Mumbai 26/11 (Nov 2008) and other attacks.

The Director of National Intelligence, or DNI, launched a review of the Headley case after ProPublica reported last month [2] that federal investigators in New York City looked into a 2005 tip from Headley's wife about his training with Lashkar and other extremist activities. The New York Times followed with a report [3] that another of his wives, a Moroccan, warned U.S. embassy officials in Pakistan in 2007 that she thought he was a terrorist. Officials said both leads were taken seriously, but the wives' allegations were too general to connect Headley to a terror group or plot.


The review has found four additional warnings, officials say. The newly discovered leads surfaced in 2001, 2002, April 2008 and December 2008 -- a month after Lashkar killed 166 people in Mumbai, six of them Americans. Headley, whose reconnaissance was crucial to the attacks, was not arrested until October 2009.

The tipsters in the newly disclosed cases all warned that Headley was an extremist, and three tied him to training or other terrorist activity in Pakistan. The tipsters included one of his former girlfriends in New York City, the owner of a business frequented by his mother near Philadelphia, and one of his mother's friends in the Philadelphia area. The review also turned up a second, more specific tip from Headley's Moroccan wife when she contacted U.S. officials in Pakistan again, just seven months before the Mumbai attacks, officials say.