Daood/David Headley…Again

So…the New York Times came out with a news story this morning about David Headley (“U.S. Had Warnings About Plotter of Mumbai Attack”). Not to go into too much detail, but Daood/David Headley is the son of Serrill Headley who owned a couple bars in Philadelphia. I worked in one of them with Daood/David in 1983. He subsequently plotted the devastating terrorist attack on Mumbai in 2008.

Now we learn that two of Daood's three wives ratted him out to the US Embassy, telling the officials that they were sure their husband was plotting a horrendous deed. It is fascinating to find out he was married to all three women at the same time.

The US (as in, the FBI and the CIA) is claiming that they listened to what the women had to say, but thought they were simply women who were pissed off at an errant husband.

We also find out that the DEA says it used Headley as an informant but ceased the association in 2001.

Um…do I have some opinions about all this?

Are pumpkins orange?

Opinion Number 1

It is safe to assume that the DEA NEVER cuts off ties with informants who sell their souls to the DEA in exchange for favors like the DEA making it impossible for toxic governments (Pakistan and India) to do whatever they want and with great creativity to drug-dealing scum.

Opinion Number 2

Although American newspaper accounts are full of info about Daood’s arrests in 1988 and 1997 for drug-trafficking, they never mention that Daood tried to sell drugs in Pakistan in 1983 and his mother had to go to Pakistan and get him out of the jam.

Now I grant you, Serrill Headley could summon up salty tears to sob over her life in general (which version she changed to suit her reason for the histrionics), her disastrous love affairs and her son’s wayward ways. But she told me (yes, in tears) that Daood had been arrested in Pakistan and that she was going over to get him out. I know he went to Pakistan toward the end of 1983 to visit relatives, I know he contacted his mother that he was in jail. And I know she went to Pakistan and he returned to Philadelphia. All of us who worked in the Khyber Pass North bar were amazed she could do it. We conjectured she had friends in high places or spent a fortune on bribes or both.

This had to be in 1983, because I never saw any of the crew again after Daood fired me the day after the Raiders won the Super Bowl in 1984.

Opinion Number 3

What I cannot corroborate, but would bet my bottom dollar on, is: it was in 1983 that Daood started working for the DEA and he never stopped working for the DEA.

And that is why the NYT reported this morning: “An examination of Mr. Headley’s movements in the years before the bombing, based on interviews in Washington, Pakistan, India and Morocco, shows that he had overlapping, even baffling, contacts among seemingly disparate groups — Pakistani intelligence, terrorists, and American drug investigators. Those ties are rekindling concerns that the Mubai bombings represent another communications

breakdown in the fight against terrorism, and are raising the question of whether United States officials were reluctant to dig deeper into Mr. Headley’s movements because he had been an informant for the D.E.A.”

Some things are predictable, if not inevitable. Whenever he’s in trouble, Daood will always cut a deal, with whomever, wherever and do whatever it takes.