On Headley,US unwilling to share more info,says Chidambaram

The home minister was speaking at the Idea Exchange programme at The Indian Express.

“That Headley was working for one or more US agencies is not in doubt. The question is how long was he working (for the US agencies) and when did he switch sides and become a double agent? …Question is he was an agent,when did he become a double agent? When did he switch to the ISI side? That’s not clear. And secondly,when was he terminated by the US agencies? This is also not clear,” Chidambaram said.

Chidambaram said Headley’s links with US agencies and his turning a double agent had been taken up with the Americans,“but they are not willing to share information on that”.

Yet,it was true that the US knew more about the 26/11 attacks than it had told India,the minister said. “I think they know more. But they are not going to share everything with us. Because Headley was an agent of one of their agencies for a considerable period of time.”

Chidambaram said he did not think that the US knew in advance that an attack was going to take place. “But even after the attack,they didn’t tell us about Headley for almost a year. It was only in October 2009 that Headley was arrested,” he said.

While the US has not so far acknowledged that Headley worked for its intelligence agencies,an investigation by ProPublica published last week gave a detailed account of his long and complex association with the US Drug Enforcement Agency,which sent him on one or several missions to Pakistan.

ProPublica detailed numerous specific instances of how multiple US agencies,including the FBI,failed to act on warnings given over seven years “that could have stopped his lethal odyssey sooner — and perhaps prevented the Mumbai attack”.

Chidambaram said his “realistic,hard assessment” was that Pakistan was “not likely to make any progress in investigating or prosecuting the real perpetrators of 26/11”.

“Unless a civilian government in Pakistan asserts its authority and puts pressure to counter the pressure of the ISI,I don’t think realistically you can expect progress in the investigation or prosecution of the real perpetrators of 26/11,” he said.

“See,as long as (Headley’s Lashkar handler) Sajid Mir and (Headley’s ISI handler) Major Iqbal and five others (involved in the planning of the attacks) have not even been apprehended,what kind of prosecution is this?”

However,on other matters like cross-LoC trade,visa liberalisation and exchange of prisoners,progress has been made,Chidambaram said.