The Mind of a Terrorist Read online

  The cold, dry air hung over the rugs while those around him knelt and took part in the morning prayer at the mosque. Farther off there was a small hospital, a market, farmers’ fields, a Qur’an school, and a large main building, all heavily protected behind barbed wire and military guards. On the walls, slogans like INDIA IS AN IMPERIALIST POWER! were painted in large letters.

  It was seven years before the attack in Mumbai. Headley was in his early forties, and this was his first stay in what Western intelligence agencies undoubtedly would describe as a training camp for terrorists.

  Here, near the city Muridke, about fifteen miles from the big metropolis of Lahore, he felt an extraordinary sense of safety, despite how bitter the cold winter nights could be and despite the talk all around him being about anything but peace. His pulse was slow, his inner voice calm. The days were long, and even the food tasted better.

  He had found what he was looking for.

  The area with the Qur’an school and the hospital was controlled by Lashkar-e-Taiba, or simply Lashkar in everyday conversation. It was only a month since the group had been declared a terrorist organization by Pakistan’s prime minister.

  For Headley, Lashkar was a part of a greater Muslim fight for freedom.

  It had been less than half a year since the United States was struck by the terrorist attack on September 11 and soon after took control of Kabul in Afghanistan, in an attempt to capture al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and punish the Taliban for failing to extradite him.

  “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists,” as the American president Bush had said.

  The war had incited radical Muslims from all over the world to travel to specific locations in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen to report for battle. They had no desire to be “with” the US.

  Headley was far from the first American to come to the Lashkar headquarters, Markaz-e-Taiba, but his tall stature and relatively light skin made him an unusual sight among the many Pakistanis in the camp. People knew very well who the tall man was.

  In three weeks he was to complete suffa, so-called basic training in Salafism, a fundamentalist movement within Islam. Three weeks of studies, prayer, and lectures in the belief that the perfect version of Islam existed in Muhammad’s day, some 1,400 years ago. All developments since that time had been in the wrong direction, explained the imams. All efforts to modernize Islam must be shut down.

  In his childhood, Headley had read the Qur’an from beginning to end several times, but there were holes in his knowledge. Holes in his understanding, not in his faith.

  He was ready to join Lashkar. The Qur’an was the only truth, and a truth that could not be altered, adjusted, or criticized. Either you were a Muslim, with everything that entails—amputation as the penalty for theft, decapitation of murderers, and stoning for adultery.

  “I don’t see how anyone can remain a Muslim and challenge it,” as Headley said.

  Or you were a coward, a heretic, worthless, a lost cause, a useless body, simply waiting to die. No middle ground, thought Headley. There was no room for that when all those American troops were right around the corner in Afghanistan.

  It really wasn’t all that complicated.

  Half a year later, in August 2002, he completed another course—aama, they called it—a short ways outside the city of Muzaffarabad, where in addition to Qur’an study there was basic weapons training. Students fired rifles and handguns.

  Headley performed well. He passed.

  For a time, he could set his Qur’an back on the shelf but certainly not put it away entirely. Headley was driven out to the mountains near Muzaffarabad and taught how to survive in the winter. When March 2003 rolled around, Headley learned to fire the AK-47 and various handguns. He threw grenades and was taught how to attack—vehicles, for example. He passed that course, called khassa, as well.

  Headley’s stays in the various training camps typically lasted from a few weeks to three months. At one point, he was lodged in an apartment with seventeen or eighteen other aspiring terrorists to receive training in the surveillance of potential targets. Other times it was physical training, meant to ensure that the men had both the strength and the will necessary for a long-duration assault.

  While Headley was in training camps, the election campaign for India’s prime minster was attacked in the city of Srinagar. Not without pride, Headley noted that suicide bombers from these very same training camps that he was attending were behind the attack.

  Perhaps that would be him some day? Inshallah—if God willed it.

  Alongside his training, Headley maintained an everyday life in his father’s house in Lahore. He took pains to make sure that he didn’t mix the two together. But the everyday faded into indifference when he stayed in the mountains with his friends from Lashkar. They understood the world, thought Headley. If only he could be like them.

  The men were fearless, and they neither hesitated nor doubted. At a seminar with the highest-ranking leaders of Lashkar in Abbottabad, one of the leaders spoke of an Indian man who had initially cooperated with Lashkar—a cause for celebration. Later, though, the man reported the group’s activities to the Indian authorities. On a screen, the participants now watched a computer animation of the Indian man’s murder, which was carried out by Lashkar soldiers. There was no mercy for traitors.

  In the evening, they watched martyr videos and hailed those who were slain in the fight for Islam.

  Lashkar had hung posters that showed the American Capitol building on fire, with the text: YESTERDAY WE SAW RUSSIA DISINTEGRATE, THEN INDIA, NEXT WE’LL SEE AMERICA AND ISRAEL BURNING.

  Over their evening meal, they shared stories. One had a brother who had died honorably in the battle for Kashmir. Another, Abu Anas, had personally met Osama bin Laden in 1987 in Afghanistan. Others said they had heard bin Laden speak in a Lashkar camp in Pakistan in August 2001—right before the attack on the United States. One was the brother of Abu Aiman, who took part in the massacre at Chittisinghpura in India, in March 2000, right before then-president Bill Clinton visited the country.

  And they spoke of martyrs who now bathed in a sea of happiness, peace, and virgins.

  The men came from all around the world—from Serbia, from England, from cities large and small throughout Pakistan. This confirmed to Headley that they were on the one true path to righteousness.

  He was pleased.

  * * *

  In the Lashkar camps, one would occasionally see a rather odd man walking with quick steps. A man with a large beard, a pistol of Russian manufacture on his hip, and often two bodyguards at his sides.

  This was Sajid Mir. He was responsible for the military training of the Western Muslims who came to Lashkar to enlist for battle. He sized them up, sent them off to the relevant training courses, and then decided where the men would end up.

  The only known photograph of Sajir Mir shows him with a well-groomed, short beard, combed-back hair, a tight white shirt, and a sharp red tie. But the five-foot-eight-inch-tall man was by no means an office drone.

  Already at the age of eighteen, Sajid Mir had completed his military training in Lashkar. After running the local office in Lahore, Mir was charged with managing foreign operations. And now, in his late twenties, he had fought his way up the ranks to a position as one of the most powerful men in the group. This was a remarkable achievement, especially in light of the fact that he had never actually participated in a battle.

  Sajid Mir used cover names like Ibrahim and Abraham, Layman, Khalid, Uncle Bill, and Abu Bara, and he occasionally gave last names like Majeed, Majiid, and Majid.

  His favorite alias, though, was Wasi, after one of the Lashkar leaders’ sons who had been killed in battle in Kashmir.

  Sajid Mir apparently also had numerous passports—among them one with a Christian first name and the last name Masih. He used this one for trips to, among other places, Syria, Dubai, Qatar, and Canada in order to raise funds for the terrorism campaign.

 
For many years, Sajid Mir was something of a ghost for several Western intelligence agencies, who would have been all too happy to get their hands on him. But in Pakistan, he was safe and by all accounts protected by the military and the controversial Pakistani intelligence agency ISI, or Inter-Services Intelligence. One factor contributing to his safety in Pakistan was that Sajid Mir stood by the principle that under no circumstances was Lashkar to attack targets inside Pakistan, but only in India and other places outside the country’s borders, where deemed necessary. Perhaps it also helped that Sajid Mir’s wife belonged to the family of a high-ranking religious leader with connections to the Pakistani military.

  Sajid Mir was excited about Headley, nearly twice his age, whom he met for the first time in one of Lashkar’s so-called safe houses in Muzaffarabad. Not only was this man an American citizen, which was a divine gift in and of itself, but he had been born in the US and had Washington, DC, listed as his place of birth on his passport. As an American, he could travel to any country Lashkar needed to get into, and nobody would ever question his citizenship. Headley’s passport was worth its weight in gold, Mir concluded excitedly.

  The two became friends. Sometimes they’d share a meal in a secret house Mir had near a golf club by the airport in Lahore; at other times they spoke into the night about the global fight for Islamic justice. Sajid Mir had no doubt that it would take blood, tears, and more blood. Evil must be fought with evil.

  Mir sent Headley to yet another training course, one that Lashkar had (not without irony) dubbed ATT: anti-terrorist training. He learned to free hostages, break into locations filled with heavily-armed soldiers, and handle explosives as well as common handguns—and to handle himself in a good, old-fashioned fistfight, if all else failed.

  In the beginning, the mission was barely more than a loose accumulation of ideas.

  New Delhi, Kolkata, Nagpur, Bangalore, Pune, Hyderabad, Gujarat, or maybe Mumbai? Nobody knew.

  But among Lashkar’s leaders, there was no doubt that an attack on a major Indian city would resonate throughout India, throughout the whole world, even, were it possible. The already irreconcilable relations between Pakistan and India would be further destabilized. And at the same time, revenge on the Indians would be exacted for the many murders of civilians in Kashmir province, which Lashkar’s member constantly referred to as “Indian-occupied Kashmir.” Hate knew no borders.

  Headley had dreamed of being sent to fight in Kashmir, getting the chance to shoot some Indians. That was his personal goal. But he was too old for that, said Lashkar leader Zaki ur-Rehman Lakhvi, who instead asked Sajid Mir to make Headley part of the plans for a large-scale attack in India. Lashkar needed a man who could travel freely in and out of Mumbai over a long period of time with a camera and notebook, and who had a way with people.

  Headley was perfect for the mission.

  It’s still not certain where, exactly, the idea for the attack on Mumbai came from. It is clear, however, that several officers from Pakistan’s intelligence agency helped Lashkar with crucial parts of the plan. The question remains as to whether these officers represented a small, militant faction in the agency, acting on their own initiative—or if the planning was sanctioned by very high-ranking officials and therefore an indication of Pakistan moving toward declaring war on India. For Headley, it didn’t make much difference. He was on board regardless.

  In the spring of 2006, Headley was officially entrusted with the mission. He was to disguise himself as an American on vacation or a business trip in India, so he traveled to America to change his official, very Pakistani name—Daood Gilani—to David Coleman Headley. He got a new passport with his new name.

  When he returned to Pakistan, Sajid Mir gave him some advice: “Prostrate yourself during prayers in a gentle way so you won’t get a mark on your forehead from its coming in contact with the carpet.”

  From now on he would conceal his Muslim background and instead pass himself off as a Jewish or Christian American.

  In the midst of the preparations for his trip to India, Headley happened to run into someone who would turn out to play a crucial role.

  Headley was driven from Lahore to Landi Kotal, west of the large city Peshawar in northern Pakistan, to meet a contact who might be able to help smuggle weapons into India for the mission. Landi Kotal was situated less than three miles from the border with Afghanistan.

  Headley was stopped by the local police. Not because he had done anything wrong, but because everything about him seemed rather suspicious: he looked like a Western European, he spoke fluent English, and his only piece of identification was an American passport. In 2006, that sort of person didn’t simply travel about in Pakistan’s federally administered Tribal Areas.

  Headley was taken into custody and locked in a cell in the headquarters of the paramilitary border guard, Khyber Rifles, behind high walls, barbed wire, and armed guards. A major put the question to him: what the hell was he doing in Landi Kotal?

  Headley told him everything: about the Lashkar training, the plans for an attack in India, and the hope to find an old acquaintance in the city who would be able to help with part of the mission.

  These details didn’t alarm the major.

  Instead, he smiled: “I think you ought to meet my friend.”

  With that, he freed Headley and returned the keys to the car.

  Somewhat surprised, Headley drove back to Lahore, taking with him the phone number of the major’s friend.

  Iqbal was the name of the man whom Headley met a few days later in Lahore. He too was a major, he explained, but in the intelligence agency, ISI, which historically has had close ties with militant groups.

  He was not immediately recognizable as an intelligence agent. When Headley looked at him, he saw more than anything else a fat man in his thirties with a big head, a deep voice, thick hair, and a mustache. And always dressed in civilian clothes, he later observed.

  Headley gave Iqbal the same story he had told in the jail in Landi Kotal.

  Iqbal listened, interested, and offered to help Headley with the mission. He had a wish of his own, though: Headley was to attempt to infiltrate the circles of well-known or powerful people in India—actors, politicians, or businesspeople—and gather information about them. You never knew how that sort of information might turn out to be useful.

  In contrast to Lashkar’s, the Pakistani intelligence agency’s interest in India was not grounded solely on religious hatred. Iqbal himself wasn’t all that religious. The desire to go to war with India was more about the balance of power between the two countries, which were at loggerheads ever since Pakistan became independent in 1947. It was in Pakistan’s interest to hold India down, said Iqbal.

  In the next phase, Iqbal got Headley into an advanced training program, apparently run by ISI. Headley often went in for several hours of training at a time—up to half a day, sometimes—in a white, two-story house in a residential district of Lahore. For the most part, Iqbal himself was the instructor. At other times, it was one of his subordinates.

  Headley learned to build a cover story, layer by layer. About the small articles of clothing that could increase the chances people would find a cover story believable. A special hat. A chain. A particular tie. Or maybe no tie at all. He learned to fill his stories built of lies with just enough truth to make them meaningful and believable. He learned to surveil targets, to get information about a particular building in a given part of a city. To take safe paths and change clothes while en route, so guards and others wouldn’t realize that he had passed by the same spot three or four times in a day. He learned to hide secret messages in an email address by saving the message as a draft, then giving the email address and password to a coconspirator.

  And Headley learned to manipulate other people.

  “Look for what motivates people and take advantage of it. You can get them to do anything,” said Iqbal.

  And most importantly: “Never trust anybody.”

  Iqbal
also donated $25,000 toward reconnaissance and other expenses in Mumbai. Headley would make good use of the money.

  He visited the house in Lahore at least fifty times in the following period. But he apparently never learned Iqbal’s first name, age, or home address. He never saw Iqbal in uniform, and at no time did Iqbal ever actually prove himself to be an ISI major.

  It was part of the strategy.

  “Need-to-know,” Iqbal often told Headley. Give the most central, important details to those who have a need for them. Say nothing to everyone else. Or lie.

  When Headley was ready to travel to India, he received a ten-digit phone number from Iqbal. The first three digits were 6-4-6, an American area code for Manhattan. But the number was forwarded to Iqbal’s mobile phone in Pakistan.

  “Call this number if you really need to contact me,” said Iqbal.

  Mumbai was humid, flashy, loud, and full of both poor beggars and shrewd businesspeople.

  It was a strange city, Headley thought.

  This was his first trip to the city, and he landed at the airport as planned, without any hitches, one Thursday in September 2006.

  He rented a room on the fifth floor of a property on Bhulabhai Road, a good half hour from the city center by car. The landlord was an older woman, Mrs. Kirplani, and it was nice. He would have all the peace he was looking for.

  At home in Pakistan, Headley dressed himself in loose-fitting religious and traditional clothes, abstained from alcohol, and spoke Punjabi or Urdu. In Mumbai, he wore a tailored Armani suit and bought champagne. He was an American now. With an American passport and a home address somewhere in America. He spoke clear, fluent English, more with a British accent than a Pakistani one.

  When he sat at a hotel bar at two in the morning, he appeared, with his tall, fair-skinned body, to be neither a Pakistani Muslim nor a teetotaler.

  Headley bought a new mobile phone with a new SIM card and began creating his cover story: he was in Mumbai as an immigration consultant, he said. With a false signature under the name of Raymond Joseph Sanders and the $25,000 from Iqbal, he started a business called First World, which was ostensibly to help Indians who had the desire and the skills to work in the United States obtain visas. He opened an office in suites 29 and 31 on the first floor of the AC Market office complex in Mumbai’s business district, employed a local Indian as a secretary, and printed advertisements in local papers.