#4 Rumors of David Headley, rogue CIA asset
David Headley was convicted on heroin smuggling charges in 1998, and the available evidence overwhelmingly suggests that the following year he did undercover surveillance work in Pakistan for the DEA in exchange for a reduced sentence. During his time in Pakistan in 1999, his surveillance target was reportedly a drug gang based in Afghanistan/Pakistan. This has given rise to speculation among Indian officials that Headley's work for the US government may have gone beyond the DEA. The speculation holds that DEA may have passed Headley on to the CIA, given his experience in Pakistan, and the CIA in turn used Hadley to infiltrate Lashkar-e-Taiba. These rumors do not contend that the Mumbai attacks were thus a CIA operation; rather, they suggest that Headley had "gone rogue" by 2006 and thrown his lot in with LeT completely. Gerald Posner has a piece in the Daily Beast that does a good job of showing the factual backdrop that fueled this speculation.
I should say at the outset that the rumors are by no means completely outlandish, but I do not think they're correct. I spoke with a senior US intelligence official today who works on Afghanistan/Pakistan, and told me unequivocally that Headley was never a CIA asset.
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