Headley probe: Obama shares details with PM

New Delhi: Amid criticism that the US did not convey to India specific information on David Headley, US President Barack Obama shared with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh results of an ongoing probe into why US intelligence agencies failed to connect the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) terrorist to the Mumbai attacks.

During their meeting at the Hyderabad House in New Delhi, Obama broached the topic of Headley, the LeT terrorist who pleaded guilty to plotting the Mumbai attacks, and explained to Singh some details of the probe.

"The President shared some of the results of that review with Prime Minister Singh... what I think we found is the United States had pieces of information that came in about David Headley," US Deputy National Adviser Ben Rhodes told the American media after the meeting.

"They were not the kinds of information we were able to connect, for instance, to the plotting in Mumbai," he said.

Rhodes said the US government had provided general information to India about the attacks before the 26/11 carnage, but that the data was not specific.

The details of the probe by the Director for National Intelligence has not been made public yet and senior White House officials said Obama first wanted to brief Singh on the findings.

Meanwhile, a report in The Washington Post said the probe shows US officials had information building up on Headley's links with militants over seven years, but did not question him or put him on any watch list.

Fifty-year-old Headley had pleaded guilty to plotting the Mumbai attacks under a deal with the US investigators that will allow him to escape death penalty.

There had been wide-spread criticism in India that the US did not share any specific input about Headley's anti-India plans. Union Home Secretary G K Pillai had also said last month that the Home Ministry was "disappointed" that the US did not provide specific information about Headley even though he travelled here freely after the terror strikes.