Headley has plead not guilty to the charges, but his lawyers claim he is cooperating with the FBI. Indian officials claim they also will charge Headley and have expressed an interest in extraditing him.

The Mumbai terror attacks rank as one of the most sophisticated operations ever run by a terrorist organization. It involved ten men who arrived by sea, worked in teams, and hit at least ten targets nearly simultaneously. Leaders of the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba kept in constant contact with the attackers from Pakistan, directing them who to kill and giving them words of encouragement. When the last of the attackers was killed at the Taj Mahal Palace hotel three days after the carnage began, over 173 people were dead and another 308 wounded.

This gruesome act of terror was clearly well-planned. At least some of that planning was done by Chicago resident David Headley.

David Headley was born Daood Gilani in Washington, D.C., to a Pakistani father and an American mother. When the young Daood's parents divorced he moved to Pakistan with his father and attended an elite military academy. His mother eventually gained legal custody and he moved to Philadelphia where he bounced around in a number of low-level jobs. Apparently not satisfied with a life of poverty, he became involved in a scheme to smuggle heroin from Pakistan. This landed him in jail for 15 months after a 1998 conviction. Published reports claim that the short sentence was due to his cooperation with the Drug Enforcement Administration (he is said to have become an informant)...