FRONTLINE AND PROPUBLICA INVESTIGATE THE MAN BEHIND THE
2008 TERRORIST ATTACK ON MUMBAI
FRONTLINE Presents
A Perfect Terrorist
Tuesday, November 22, 2011, at 9 P.M. ET on PBS
www.pbs.org/frontline/david-headley
#PerfectTerrorist
On Nov. 26, 2008, television screens around the world flashed with images of terror as 10 gunmen lay siege to the city of Mumbai. The world watched, horrified, as India’s security forces struggled for three days to reclaim the two five-star hotels, a train station and the small Jewish hostel that had been overtaken by the terrorists.
But for one man, an American watching on television from Lahore, Pakistan, the attacks were the culmination of more than two years of precise, calculated planning. He would later tell a Chicago courtroom that when he saw the degree of destruction, “I was pleased.” One hundred sixty-six people were killed.
Now, three years later, FRONTLINE correspondent and ProPublica reporter Sebastian Rotella investigates the Mumbai attack through the experience of one key player: Daood Sayed Gilani, a.k.a. David Coleman Headley, in A Perfect Terrorist, airing Tuesday, Nov. 22, 2011, at 9 P.M. ET on PBS (check local listings).
Headley had been chosen for the mission because his American citizenship and upbringing provided an ideal cover to case Mumbai as he developed a blueprint for the attacks. The son of a father from Pakistan and a mother from Philadelphia’s high society, Headley straddled two worlds as he came to embrace the cause of Islamic radicals.
The film traces Headley’s journey toward terrorism and explores what Pakistani and U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies knew about him and his mission leading up to the killings in Mumbai.
Headley, with a history of drug smuggling, became an informant for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency. He also became an operative for Lashkar-i-Taiba—an Islamic militant group with ties to Pakistan’s intelligence service, the ISI. He was married to three women at once. “Headley’s arc is all about balancing and betraying allegiances, whether women or governments or terrorist groups,” says Rotella.
FRONTLINE probes the U.S. government’s involvement with Headley, beginning with his cooperation with the DEA and continuing after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when U.S. officials were desperate for new intelligence sources. How much did U.S. intelligence officials know of Headley’s relationship with Lashkar and the ISI in Pakistan? Why was nothing done after flags were raised to U.S. officials about his suspicious activities on six separate occasions?
A FRONTLINE Production with Yellow Truck Productions in partnership with ProPublica. The director, producer and writer is Tom Jennings. The correspondent is ProPublica reporter Sebastian Rotella. FRONTLINE is produced by WGBH Boston and is broadcast nationwide on PBS. Funding for FRONTLINE is provided through the support of PBS viewers and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Major funding for FRONTLINE is provided by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and by Reva and David Logan. Additional funding is provided by the Park Foundation and by the FRONTLINE Journalism Fund. FRONTLINE is closed-captioned for deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers by the Media Access Group at WGBH. FRONTLINE is a registered trademark of the WGBH Educational Foundation.
ProPublica is an independent, nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest. In 2010, it became the first online newsroom to win the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting. With the largest news staff in American journalism devoted solely to investigative reporting, ProPublica is supported by philanthropy and provides the articles it produces, free of charge, both through its own website and to leading news organizations selected with an eye toward maximizing the impact of each article. For more information, please visit www.ProPublica.org.
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