Its a draft memoir. This is the first time its been made public. Narrator and evidence of how hightech spies accessed the terrorists communications but still didnt stop the attack. What role did the program play in stopping headley . None. Narrator tonight frontline and Propublica Investigate an american terrorist. Frontline is made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. Thank you. And by the corporation for public broadcasting. Major support for frontline is provided by the john d. And catherine t. Macarthur foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. More information is available at macfound. Org. Additional support is provided by the Park Foundation dedicated to heightening Public Awareness of critical issues. The ford foundation, working with visionaries on the front lines of social change worldwide. At fordfoundation. Org. The wyncote foundation. And by the frontline journalism fund, with major support from jon and Jo Ann Hagler. And Additional Support from Millicent Bell through the millicent and eugene bell foundation. Corporate funding for frontline is provided by. Whether its discovering an aspirin a day can prevent heart attacks worldwide, or creating cells that regenerate new heart muscle, our goal is developing treatments that save lives. Brigham and womens hospital. Sebastian rotella it was july 2009. A man from america had come here to copenhagen on business. But first, some sightseeing. First of all, he rents a bike, an ordinary bicycle. And he has his video camera, and he rides with one hand on the handle and holding the video camera, riding around and taking pictures. You know, its such an unusual scene of someone biking along with a camera. This is the famous concert hall built in 1748. Rotella these are his actual recordings as he narrated the images along the way. Rotella he might have been playing the part of a tourist, but his true intent was to case the city and this newspaper. Jyllandsposten. Four years before, it had caused outrage across the muslim world by publishing 12 cartoons of the prophet mohammed. Now, the visitors plan was to launch an armed siege that would bring it down. His name was David Coleman headley. He was an american terrorist. I came to copenhagen two years later, retracing headleys steps on the globespanning journey that had brought him here. Im doing a story here in copenhagen about the David Headley case. He was planning an attack in denmark. Yeah. Rotella im trying to reconstruct his movements and i was wondering if you guys remembered him . Maybe i can get back. Rotella he was ostensibly a businessman. We are back in 2009. Rotella there he is, David Headley, right here. Headley, yeah. Rotella he needed to get access to the newspaper. Id been trying to make contact with someone from Jyllands Posten who had dealt with headley. Rotella hi, this is sebastian, i just got your email, how are you . Rotella good, good. I appreciate your getting back to me, i know youre busy. That would be great at 4 00. Okay, well, im a typical danish blonde, curly hair. Headley was acting very normal. He told me he was a businessman, he was here for business. He wanted to move his business to denmark and wanted to buy space in the newspaper for advertisement. I remember that he exchanged business cards with my colleague. He didnt seem suspicious in any way. We didnt have many walking in from the street wanting to. To buy space in the newspapers like that. Headley was certainly someone who seems to be extremely well prepared. He was using a cover and he went to some lengths to conduct that surveillance, but also in targets surrounding it as a fallback plan. Rotella he cased the area around the newspaper and videotaped nearby restaurants, a hotel, and the french embassy. Rotella he walked into copenhagens main train terminal, his camera recording every moment. It was a very professional way to plan a terrorist attack. He was doing reconnaissance and planning in denmark, and that he was subsequently able to pass over part of the planning to terrorists in pakistan. Rotella headleys reconnaissance of copenhagen was sponsored by a notorious terrorist named Ilyas Kashmiri. At the time, he was reporting to osama bin laden. Headley was working for al qaeda. Rotella its very chilling you know, because headley gathers all this information the videotape, the notes and he meets with one of the most fearsome terrorists in the world, Ilyas Kashmiri. And they have a detailed conversation about how this plot would go down. Three or four attackers with automatic weapons who go in and take hostages, but add a wrinkle, which is the beheading of hostages. Kashmiri says, you shoot the hostages first. It makes it easier to behead them. You behead them, and you throw the heads out the window. It is without doubt the most serious plot that denmark has had. This is a symbolically powerful target. This is it. There is no other more powerful way which all muslims jihadists or nonjihadists will understand. You will be instantaneously the hero of the jihadist world. Rotella but what David Coleman headley didnt know was that just days before, hed been picked up on the radar of western intelligence. On this trip to copenhagen every step he made and every bicycle ride was being monitored. We had a Security Service shadowing him on their own bikes. Rotella soon headley headed for home. Thats when american officials learned of his connection to kashmiri, the al qaeda kingpin. By the time he landed in chicago, they had him under surveillance. Well, certainly the concern is, is there a homeland plot here in the United States . We received the authority to go up on headleys communications realtime. Anybody that came in contact with headley became a target of ours. And thats when it kind of grew into a larger picture of who David Headley really was. Rotella an american terrorist, age 49, living in an immigrant neighborhood on chicagos north side with his wife and four children. Over the next three months, they investigated tapping his phone, monitoring his movements digging into his background. They learned that headley was planning a trip to pakistan and then denmark. It was cold and raining chicago, and we drove out to Ohare Airport to make the arrest. We had complete surveillance coverage of him while he was driving to ohare, and i had surveillance coverage on foot in ohare. Once he arrived, he went to the ticket counter. We let him get through security, and then we approach him. I looked at him and said, are you mr. David headley . And he was a bit surprised and he said, why, yes, i am. My partner uttered the words you are under arrest. So i mean i dont know, but i want some. I mean, it doesnt matter what i want, but im saying id like some busts to happen. You know, i dont want to keep on. I mean, i know you have plenty of evidence against me, but. Rotella he immediately began to bargain, giving up details about his denmark terror plot. But there was more. He confessed to another attack this one bigger and deadly. The largest impact was when he initially confessed to the interrogators that he had an active role in the mumbai plot. So many innocent people lost their lives because of this individual that i had just handcuffed. Just hours ago, terrorists launched a brazen attack. The indian city of mumbai is in chaos following a series of terrorist attacks. Mumbais been hit, and hit hard. Rotella mumbai, ten months earlier, had been the scene of a horrific threeday terrorist siege. explosion you heard a big blast right now inside the taj hotel. Rotella the world had watched as an icon of india was set ablaze and civilians indians and westerners were methodically gunned down. They wanted anyone with british or american passports. I could see someone lifting up a gun like that and firing. The attackers were well armed and well prepared to launch what some here are calling indias 9 11. Rotella 166 people were killed. Headley had played a key role in planning the attack. You have any plans to get after these guys, or. . No plans yet. Rotella now, facing a possible death sentence, he bargained. There are some things we cant share with you as well. Rotella confessing hed worked for pakistani intelligence and islamic terror groups, headley became a witness for u. S. Prosecutors. He was convicted and disappeared into a maximum security prison almost forgotten. For several years, i had investigated headleys story reporting for propublica and frontline. A secret Surveillance Program is collecting the telephone records of every single one of us. A 29yearold man who says he is the one who exposed. Rotella that was behind me when suddenly in 2013, news broke. Hes Edward Snowden. He worked for the National Security agency. Hes a traitor who seriously endangered u. S. National security, or a hero defending privacy . The public needs to decide whether these programs and policies are right or wrong, and im willing. Rotella the snowden revelations incited a debate over privacy and how invasive the government should be. But the nsa said its Surveillance Programs, like the mass collection of phone records and email, helped stop terror attacks. In order to find the needle we needed the haystack. There is no other way that we know of to connect the dots. Rotella in the debate between privacy and security. Secret programs approved by a secret court based on secret interpretations of the law. Rotella . The nsas defenders rushed forward an example. David headley. David headley. One of those involved perpetrators of the mumbai bombing in india, David Headley. Headley was working on a plot to bomb a danish Newspaper Office that had published the cartoon depictions of the prophet mohammed. Rotella i was surprised when David Coleman headley was identified as a Success Story in the war on terror. My reporting up to that point had shown a broad intelligence failure, an american terrorist who had operated for years without being caught. To quote the Deputy Attorney general in justification for this program, if youre looking for the needle in the haystack you have to have the entire haystack to look through. Rotella now the nsa was saying he was proof that their newly revealed electronic Surveillance Systems worked. Soon after snowdens revelations, our team got access to his leaked documents, revealing startling new details about the work of spy agencies in the mumbai case. Together with my own investigation of headley it raised questions why wasnt headley stopped sooner . And could western intelligence have prevented the attacks on mumbai . It meant i was back on the trail of David Coleman headley, trying to understand what the nsa might have known. I had started in chicago where headley lived with his pakistani wife and four children on the north side near an old friend, a man named tahawwur rana. Rotella mrs. Rana, how are you . You could tell me what do you know about how they met . Headley and rana became close in the 1970s growing up outside of islamabad. This is dave. Rotella David Coleman headley. Mmhmm. Rotella the ranas considered headley family. He was very, very nice. He called me sister and he said, youre my sister. And that was a really good thing. Rotella for years, the ranas had been operating an Immigration Company. It specialized in getting foreign professionals u. S. Worker visas. Rotella was your husband working here then . My husband, he particularly doesnt have any desk. Rotella headley used the business as a front while he was plotting the attacks in mumbai and denmark. Rotella did David Coleman headley ever come to this office . Yes, but he was not working in this office. He was working in a Mumbai Office. Rotella in mumbai . Yes. Rotella after his arrest headley gave up his friend testifying that rana was his accomplice. At trial, rana denied it, but he was convicted and sent to prison. So many innocent people they are killed in this mumbai attack. David headley is insane. Thats it. I can say only this thing. No person with a brain can do these things. Hes insane. Rotella David Coleman headley is not his given name. He was born daood gilani in washington, d. C. , in 1960. His father was a wellknown pakistani broadcaster, his mother, serrill headley, a daughter of philadelphia high society. The family moved to pakistan early in the boys life. One neighbor was this man, chand bhai, who says hes known gilani since that time. Rotella but soon the parents divorced, the clash of american and pakistani culture at the heart of the breakup. His father remarried his mother returned to america forced to leave her son. Daood grew up in private military schools, where duty to flag and country was instilled. Every morning at the habib public school, hundreds of boys line up to pay tribute to the flag. Rotella he says he was a student here when pakistan suffered a humiliating defeat in a war with india. Stray bombs fell on the school killing two people. Rotella at home, daood didnt get along with his stepmother, and at age 17 he sought the help of his true mother, serrill headley. She brought him back to the u. S. , to philadelphia, where she owned this bar, the khyber pass. Here, daood met American Culture headon. Thanks in part to his mother. Hello, everybody, and welcome to the khyber pass pub at 2nd and chestnut streets. We are live tonight. Rotella she was a fixture in the philadelphia social scene, a local character known for her bar. The khyber pass pub is ten years old. Rotella . And her colorful past. The current and what you might call a very special owner. She is a Delaware Valley native, but ten years ago, her story read like a mideastern spy novel. Rotella a past she happily advertised life in pakistan, false charges of espionage, her life under threat, and escape through the bars namesake. When her 17yearold son arrived from pakistan, it only added to the bars mystique. There, they called him the prince, but a prince who had a dark side. Daood gilani, age 23, handsome selfassured, and within two years of these images being taken, a heroin addict and a budding drug smuggler. Its hard to pinpoint exactly when gilani stepped onto the path that eventually led to the mumbai attacks. Headley has now moved overseas to philadelphia, but hes visiting pakistan and apparently already has this drug habit. So he goes up to the tribal areas with rana, his best friend, because rana has a military id, unbeknownst to rana that he is going up there to get drugs. So he uses him essentially as cover, and they make it back but a couple days after he returns, he gets arrested in a hotel with a woman, and theres some kind of incident that causes a commotion and draws the attention of the authorities and headley gets arrested for drug possession. But somehow, gilani got away with it. Then in 1988, he got caught in transit by u. S. Drug agents. Two kilos of pakistani heroin tucked into the false bottom of his suitcase. On the spot, he agreed to cooperate with the dea, the Drug Enforcement administration. One partner got ten years. The other got eight. Gilani only got four. He just turns around immediately and betrays everybody when its convenient for him. Basically, its survival for himself. Rotella gilani did his time. He moved to new york. But three years later, he was arrested again for drug smuggling. Its a turning point in his life, and he writes about it in a document i was given. This is the first time its been made public a draft memoir his life in his own words. During his second stint in prison, giliani writes that he rediscovered the seeds of islam sown in him by his father. He says he wanted to leave behind his unrighteous ways. And to make amends, he would try to work with the Drug Enforcement administration as an informant. More importantly, he wanted to get out of jail. Rotella pleasure. Likewise. Rotella he hired a lawyer to negotiate terms. I remember him being highly intelligent, understood what his situation was, had a clear idea of what he wanted to do. Rotella which was . What he wanted was to cooperate with the government, which he had done previously. Rotella he cooperated. His job was to set up his sources in pakistan. The dea sent him there one time. That happens because there was a lot of suspicion that maybe he was simply trying to set people up. But if he had the ability to physically travel all the way to pakistan and show his face that that would allay concerns. Rotella but he says he went more than once, without their knowledge. On one trip, gilani made contact with lashkar e taiba a militant Islamic Group affiliated with this mosque in lahore. Its mission spoke to gilani, to his pakistani identity and his hatred of india. Lashkar was dedicated to the fight with india over the disputed territory of kashmir. Lashkar is known for its technical and military sophistication and its ties to pakistans Intelligence Agency the isi. Gilani writes that on another trip, he met lashkars leader, hafiz saeed, and was moved by his militant call to action. One second spent in jihad, he said, is superior to 100 years spent in worship and prayer. Gilani was hooked. He decides to actually join lashkar e taiba while hes still a source for the dea. Rotella when he wasnt in pakistan, daood gilani lived here, on manhattans upper west side, near a video store he owned. Gilanis life was in flux. He was married to a woman in pakistan and seeing women in america. But hed given up drugs and was immersing himself in radical islam. And then. The day that changed everything and everyone, including daood gilani. The next day, his dea handlers called him. They needed more than just a drug informant. Now they wanted to