On a day when the US National Security Agency chief asserted that the government’s controversial surveillance programmes have helped foil “dozens” of terror plots, a leading investigative journal has sought to puncture the official claims relating to David Coleman Headley, the key plotter of the deadly Mumbai terror attacks in 2008.
Contesting the official assertions, the ProPublica journal said the US government surveillance actually caught up with Headley only after being tipped by British intelligence. “Even that victory came after seven years in which US intelligence failed to stop Headley as he roamed the globe on missions for Islamic terror networks and Pakistan’s spy agency”, said ProPublica, which has been closely tracking the Headley case.
Pooh-poohing the rationale cited for the unprecedented sweep of phone calls and Internet activity, it commented: “Supporters of the sweeping US surveillance effort say it’s needed to build a haystack of information in which to find a needle that will stop a terrorist. In Headley’s case, however, it appears the US was handed the needle first -- and then deployed surveillance that led to the arrest and prosecution of Headley and other plotters.”
NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Senate Intelligence Committee chairperson Dianne Feinstein have all cited in recent days the capture of Headley as a success for the US surveillance programmes that have come in for withering criticism, both at home and abroad. Challenging the contention, ProPublica has argued that “Headley’s case shows an alarming litany of breakdowns in the US counterterror system that allowed him to play a central role in the massacre of 166 people in Mumbai, among them six Americans”.
It points out how the mysterious Pakistani-American Headley, a drug dealer-turned-informant-turned-terrorist, avoided arrest by the US authorities despite half a dozen warnings to federal agents about extremist activities from his family and associates in different locales. If only those leads from human sources had been investigated more aggressively, the US authorities could have prevented the Mumbai attacks with little need for high-tech resources, writes ProPublica’s award-winning investigative journalist Sebatian Rotella.
An unnamed US law enforcement official who worked on the Headley case has been cited by Rotella as saying: “The failure here is the failure to connect systems. Everybody had information in their silos, and they didn’t share across the silos. Headley in my mind is not a successful interdiction of a terrorist. It’s not a great example of how the system should work.”
The NSA chief, who appeared before a Senate panel on Wednesday, maintained that the the surveillance programmes have helped thwart dozens of terrorist attacks, making a pointed reference to the Headley case and that of Afghan-American Najibullah Zazi, who had pleaded guilty to planning suicide attacks in New York. When Senator Patrick leahy asked how many attacks have been thwarted by phone tracking and Internet surveillance, Alexander said: “It’s dozens of terrorist events that these have helped. Both here and abroad, in disrupting, or contributing to the disruption of terrorist attacks.”
Vowing to make public data showing that the phone sweep programme has prevented attacks, he said: “Over the next week, it will be our intent to get those figures out….I want the American people to know we’re being transparent here.’’ “I think what we’re doing to protect American citizens here is the right thing. Our agency takes great pride in protecting this nation and our civil liberties and privacy,’’ Alexander asserted in the face of some hostile questioning by members of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Commenting on whistleblower Edward Snowden’s assertion that by using his NSA access he could “tap into virtually any American’s phone or e-mail”, Alexander termed it a false claim, adding: “I know of no way to do that.”