By Danny Fenster
ticklethewire.com
David Coleman Headley, a lead planner of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, who looked Western and had a U.S. passport, is the focus of a special on Tuesday at 9 p.m. on PBS’s Frontline called “A Perfect Terrorist.”
The son of a Pakistani father and an American mother, Headley was chosen for his non-Muslim, Western look and fluency in English, reports NPR.
Headley was a walking “mix of cultures,” born in Pakistan and raised by his father after his parent’s divorce in elite military training schools, then sent to Philadelphia to live with his mother above a pub when he got into trouble in Pakistan, NPR reported. At the pub in Philly alcohol and music clashed with his conservative upbringing, leading him into more trouble.
“It’s kind of this collision with the West after this upbringing in Pakistan,” says ProPublic reporter Sebastian Rotella, who did the documentary, according to NPR. “As a young man, he slides into drug addiction and drug trafficking.”
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