Headley's testimony may fray US-Pakistan ties (AP)

CHICAGO – His words were the most highly anticipated in the trial: An admitted American terrorist who could offer up disturbing testimony alleging how Pakistani intelligence and an Islamic militant group orchestrated a deadly 2008 rampage on India's largest city.

Instead, the government's star witness, David Coleman Headley, spent five days recounting often mundane details about how he videotaped hotels in Mumbai and persuaded a longtime friend, Chicago businessman Tahawwur Rana, to help.

Though Headley provided few new details alleging deep involvement in the attacks by the Pakistani intelligence agency, known as the ISI, during his five days on the witness stand in Rana's trial, experts believe the testimony in a Chicago courtroom may still cause a ripple in the delicate U.S.-Pakistan relations mainly because it comes less than a month after Osama bin Laden was killed.

"Rana is on trial, but in many ways the Pakistani army and Pakistani intelligence is on trial," said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA analyst at the Brookings Institution. "It's an order of magnitude difference to have it reported in a courtroom with a jury, a press giving it global coverage with the DOJ (Justice Department) basically vouching for his story."

Headley, who has pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty, testified that he took orders from both the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, and an ISI major as he laid the groundwork in the attacks. Seven have been indicted in the case, including Rana, a militant believed to be an al-Qaida leader, an ISI officer known only as "Major Iqbal," and several Lashkar members. Rana is the only one on trial; the rest were charged in absentia.

Though much of what Headley told jurors was already detailed in a report by Indian authorities last year, experts say his testimony may give more fuel to U.S. lawmakers already suspicious that the Pakistani government may have known or helped hide bin Laden before he was killed May 2 by U.S. forces in a compound outside of Islamabad where he had been living for at least five years.

The White House and State Department have declined to talk about Headley's testimony, but it was mentioned at a Congressional subcommittee hearing last month and U.S. Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., has said it sent a message to Pakistan — which receives billions of dollars in U.S. aid — that it must do a better job at cutting ties with terrorists.

"It clearly has made an impact on some members of Congress who have openly questioned whether Pakistan is an ally or enemy," said Seth Jones, a RAND Corp. political scientist.

The testimony may also reinforce decades old mistrust between Pakistan and India, which has long suspected that the Pakistani government was behind the attacks that killed more than 160 people, including six Americans. The Pakistani government has denied the allegations and intelligence officials haven't commented on the trial.

"For those who were skeptics of Pakistan, this does provide additional ammunition," said Daniel Markey, a Pakistan expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. "But that was not in short supply before."

For the most part, Headley's testimony fleshed out previously reported details — that he took orders from Iqbal and his Lashkar handler, Sajid Mir. Headley said he met with both, at times together, and both directed his surveillance trips to Mumbai. The testimony did reveal that Iqbal wanted to attack the Chabad House, a Jewish community center where gunmen later killed three American rabbis and the wife of a rabbi.

Still, Headley said he didn't know if anyone high up in the ISI had any involvement in planning the attacks, other than possibly Iqbal's colonel, who Headley had never met. That testimony made front page news in Pakistan, where headlines suggested top officials of the ISI, which is a part of Pakistan's military and has a long history of funding jihadi groups like Lashkar, were cleared of involvement.

"In the end though, you can't prove that anybody higher than Major Iqbal? That's the only person you can give evidence on. You can't even identify or find him?" Rana defense attorney Charles Swift asked.

"Yes," Headley said.

Some experts say it's possible that Headley may not have had more information about Iqbal simply because of how most intelligence operations are run.

"Very little is known beyond what that person knows, so in the event that they get caught, they don't know anything else," said Christine Fair, a political scientist at Georgetown University's Center for Peace and Security Studies. "This is sort of standard operation."

Also, intelligence agents in the U.S. would be sure not to release anything in court deemed too sensitive. Headley's initial statement to FBI investigators lasted two weeks, and jurors were only shown a short clip where an agitated Headley demands to know who else has been arrested in the case.

Headley's testimony did reveal that Ilyas Kashmiri, leader of another Pakistani terrorist group called Harakat-ul-Jihad al-Islami who Headley had been working with, wanted to attack Lockheed Martin. Kashmiri, who is also believed by Western intelligence to be al-Qaida's operational chief in Pakistan, had been angry over U.S. drone attacks inside Pakistan and wanted to target the U.S. defense contractor, Headley testified.

Still, some experts say even if more details had come up, it's hard to believe Headley. He is an admitted drug user with two heroin convictions, has a psychiatric diagnosis of "mixed personality disorder," and admitted to lying to the FBI.

Defense attorneys were quick to pounce on Headley's character, saying their client was duped by his old friend. The men met as teenagers at one of Pakistan's most prestigious military boarding schools.

"How much credence do we give to a lying terrorist?" said Fair.

Rana has pleaded not guilty to giving Headley cover by allowing him to open a branch of his Chicago-based immigration services business while scouting sites in Mumbai and helping with travel arrangements while Headley plotted against the Danish newspaper. The last few witnesses were scheduled to testify on Monday and closing arguments were expected Tuesday in the trial.

What the testimony did provide for the first time was a chance to hear Headley describe his involvement in his own words. Dressed each day in what looked like a track suit, Headley detailed how he posed as a tourist while doing surveillance in Mumbai and Copenhagen. Headley has also pleaded guilty to planning an attack on a Danish newspaper that in 2005 published cartoons of Prophet Muhammad.

He also revealed that he wants to write a book about his experiences so he can make money and expressed some remorse for his actions. In the transcript of a telephone call with his wife, he suggested that the two could travel and do religious work after his release.

"I believe there are a lot of wrong impressions (of Islam) in the media," he told jurors, adding that he believed he would be the ideal candidate for such work "because of what I've done."

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Sophia Tareen can be reached at http://twitter.com/sophiatareen

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Testimony of a Betrayer: A Terrorist Operative in Chicago (Time.com)

David Headley is not on trial in Chicago's Everett McKinley Dirksen federal courthouse. But he is the star of the proceedings, the chief witness against a man who was once his friend. There is nothing ordinary about the case: it kicks off from Headley's confessed and key role as a perpetrator of one horrific terrorist attack - the three-day November 2008 assault on Mumbai - and details his part in planning another incident in Denmark, all in the quest to convict a former boarding school classmate, in part, for abetting Headley's own criminal actions.

For someone so tall and apparently sturdy, Headley, 50, speaks in a surprisingly soft voice, so soft that at several points during his testimony the court clerk and attorneys have asked him to speak up. But the testimony, when it is audible or read out loud from exhibits, is chilling, sending tremors halfway around the world and roiling the already unfriendly relations of nuclear-armed neighbors India and Pakistan. (See photos of the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks.)

Headley says he cased Mumbai for the Army of the Righteous - Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) - the banned Pakistani extremist group accused of plotting the attack on India's financial capital. Under oath, he said that Pakistan's spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), provided financial and military guidance for Lashkar and other militant groups. "I assumed these groups were under the same umbrella," Headley said in court, identifying at least one ISI operative as an overseer of the Mumbai plot.

The original assault plan had focused on Mumbai's central train station, a Jewish community center that Headley believed was an outlet for Israel's secret service, a popular tourist cafe, a movie house, a school, a police station, a hospital and the landmark Taj Mahal Palace and Tower hotel. Lashkar leaders initially did not put Mumbai's upscale Oberoi Trident hotel on its list. But on a whim, Headley decided to take video and photographs of it and the hotel ultimately wound up on a target. Of the 160 people killed in the three-day Mumbai massacre, 32 were staff and guests at the Oberoi.

On his second day of testimony, Headley said that one of his ISI handlers, identified as "Major Iqbal," expressed disappointment that Mumbai's airport was not included among the targets. As for the attack on Mumbai's Jewish community center, Chabad House, the operative allegedly told Headley it "would be revenge" for Israeli actions against Palestinians. (See photos of the 2008 Mumbai attack.)

On the day the Mumbai attacks began, Headley was in Lahore, Pakistan, and received a text message that read: "Turn on the television." As he watched the initial reports, Headley recalls thinking, "I was pleased." By December 2008, he'd returned to the U.S. and said that he detailed to an alleged co-conspirator how the Mumbai attacks transpired, declaring, "We're even with India." That alleged co-plotter was Tahawwur Hussain Rana, 50, the man now on trial in Chicago, who looked blankly into the jury box as his former friend testified against him. In exchange for his cooperation with the U.S. government, Headley, who has confessed to his participation in the Mumbai and Danish plots, will not be extradited to India, Pakistan or Denmark for trial; federal prosecutors will also not seek the death penalty against him when he is sentenced. As for Rana, if he is convicted of conspiring to help Headley and other planners of terrorist attacks in Mumbai and Copenhagen, he could be sentenced to life in prison.

Rana first met Headley at a Pakistani military boarding school. At that time, Headley was called Daood Sayed Gilani, a transplant to Pakistan from his birthplace in Washington D.C., his father a Pakistani diplomat and his mother the daughter of a prominent American football player. It was the first of his many identities, which would shift through the years as he chose to collaborate with shadowy figures of his American and Pakistani existences.

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After his parents divorced, Headley was brought back to Pakistan by his father. At 17, he moved back to the U.S. to live with his mother in Philadelphia, apparently above a bar she owned called the Khyber Pass. Not much is known about Headley's early 20s in the U.S. but by the time he was 27 he would be arrested on his first drug charge - which would lead to the first time he cooperated with authorities to get a lesser sentence. He was 37 when he was arrested for smuggling heroin into the U.S. from Pakistan. Again, he chose to cooperate with the U.S. in exchange for a lenience, becoming a paid informant working in Pakistan for the federal government. At the same time, he may have begun his association with Lashkar-e-Toiba in Pakistan. In fact, during altercations with the women he lived with in the U.S., law enforcement officials were told by the "wives" that Headley had terrorist ties. But even after 9/11, this apparently did not raise alarms in the U.S.

It was about 2006, that Headley officially dropped the name Daood Gilani and reconnected with Rana. As Rana's chief lawyer, Charlie Swift, would portray it, the rekindled friendship was a case of "the bad boy and the good boy" - with his client being the latter. Indeed, Rana's life had been one of striving and enterprise. Trained as a military doctor, he served with coalition forces in Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf war against Saddam Hussein. He later chose to move to Canada where he became a citizen before finding his way to Chicago's large, prosperous South Asian community. Unable to get relicensed to practice medicine in the U.S., he became the business partner of an American and opened First World Immigration Service, an outfit which helped scientists, doctors and other professionals navigate through the U.S. immigration process. Tall, lean, professorial and pious, Rana would buy a farm in Kinsman, Illinois, about 80 miles southwest of Chicago, to grow and slaughter goats for halal markets across the Midwest. (Read "Alleged Chicago Jihadi: Key Role in the Mumbai Attacks?")

For Headley, Rana was a practical connection: his immigration business would provide cover for him to conduct surveillance trips into South Asia and other parts of the world. Headley testified that Rana "could be convinced to help us out." For Pakistan, India has always been the primal enemy, with the chief battleground the disputed region of Kashmir. The two countries have gone to war a number of times, with the Pakistani military coming off the worse for the most part. It is easy to believe that Headley and Rana, former classmates at a military academy, would have bonded over Pakistan's quest for Kashmir - cemented by the militant piety that Headley had been inculcated with by the LeT. Indeed, Headley testified that, apart from a focus on Kashmir, one of the goals of LeT was to wage jihad in retaliation against India's failure to protect its Muslim minority from violence.

Headley testified that he told Rana of nearly every aspect of his weeks-long combat training camps in Pakistan with the LeT, including why he changed his name - "Nobody would be able to tell I'm a Muslim or Pakistani." He said he played on Rana's guilt for having abandoned Pakistan's military and moving to Canada and the U.S. in order to win him over to waging the LeT's vision of jihad. Headley testified that Rana once believed that a military jihad could only truly be declared by a head of state, not a religious figure or any ordinary Muslim. Headley said he dismissed that belief and convinced Rana that jihad was a religious duty.

David Headley's declarations have so far taken center stage in this trial. They are explosive, but hardly unexpected. Indians do not need to be convinced that Pakistan was behind the Mumbai massacre. The Pakistani government, for its part, has consistently denied Headley's testimony, much of which has been familiar since he started cooperating with the U.S. after his arrest in October 2009. In the struggle between the two enemy nations, David Headley embodies certain truisms that either country would be loath to give up - and now appear to have the imprimatur of sworn testimony in a U.S. court of law.

But the legal procedures in Chicago, in the end, will not be about Headley but about the guilt or innocence of Tahawwur Hussain Rana. And if defense lawyers play it right, a jury may not need much help to puncture the claims of a prosecution star witness who has been willing to collaborate again and again with anyone willing to offer him an escape clause - in this specific instance, betraying a friend that he set up as an accomplice. Charlie Swift, Rana's chief defense attorney, knows there's one thing he must ultimately prove: "Rana was totally unaware of what he was getting into."

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