Twenty-five years ago, David Coleman Headley and Tahawwur Rana were young friends, reunited schoolmates who were traveling in Pakistan.
Except Headley had a secret mission — to smuggle heroin out of the tribal areas — and Rana had what Headley thought he needed to succeed: As a medical student in the Pakistani military, Rana carried credentials that reduced the chances that they would be searched if they were stopped.
Rana had no idea about the heroin he trying to smuggle, Headley said.
Rana is on trial on charges he again provided cover for Headley — this time with his allegedly full knowledge — by helping Headley in preparations for the deadly 2008 Mumbai attacks. Rana, who owned a Chicago immigration business, is accused of letting Headley travel as his business representative as cover to scout targets for the terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba.
In his third day on the stand, the U.S. government’s star witness testified that he was trained in espionage by the Pakistani government’s secret intelligence office, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, known as ISI.
Headley pleaded guilty to his role in the plot to avoid a death sentence. Rana’s attorneys have argued that he was duped by Headley.
Headley called Rana a very close friend and explained that’s why he initially refused to tell investigators of Rana’s alleged involvement. He testified that he implicated Rana only after learning that his childhood friend had also been detained in the investigation.
Late in the day, Rana’s attorneys began cross-examining Headley and soon launched into questions about Headley’s history of drug use, drug dealing and drinking. Headley conceded the Rana has lived a much more chaste life.
Headley was asked if his ISI training in Pakistan didn’t teach him how to create fake stories, back them up and, said Charlie Swift, Rana’s lawyer, “most importantly to manipulate people.”
“Yes,” Headley said in the matter-of-fact tone he has used throughout his testimony.
Swift also questioned Headley about a series of emails he exchanged with Rana and two other alleged conspirators in which all four seem to be discussing a plan to infiltrate an Indian organization to gather intelligence. The emails suggested that Rana was aware of the group’s anti-Indian sentiments, but Headley acknowledged that he had not shared all the emails with everyone.
“The only person who knew everything was you,” Swift said. “You did well in the espionage school.”
“Thank you,” Headley responded.
Headley also admitted that while he was training with Lashkar, he was still officially listed as an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration, a status that stemmed from a heroin conviction in the 1990s.
Also on Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber ordered the government to begin unsealing documents in a case that has been shrouded in mystery because of the number of classified documents.
The unsealing was ordered after the Chicago Tribune sought to make the documents public, citing the First Amendment.
While the Mumbai attack has been the focus of the prosecution case, Headley also testified about a grisly plot to storm a newspaper in Copenhagen, Denmark, to shoot and behead staff. The newspaper had been targeted because of cartoons it had published of the Prophet Muhammad that were considered offensive to many in the Muslim world.
In video shot in 2009 during a scouting mission for the attack, Headley captured the tony streets of the city’s fashionable district as couples strolled, cyclists whizzed by and even a queen’s guard marched on its scheduled route.
Later, Headley approached a captain at a nearby barracks to inquire whether the weapons carried by the guard were real. They were, the captain responded, leading Headley to ask why that was necessary.
“He said, ‘You never know,'” Headley told the jury.
