Lashkar-e-Toiba secret agent David Coleman Headley aliasDawood Gilani, in his facilitation of the Mumbai terror attacks, took immenserisk, when he conducted the surveillance “ and avoided detections even thoughhe spent quite some time in India.
Austin-based Stratfor, which is often referred to as TheShadow CIA, said that even people who have conducted thousands upon thousandsof hours of surveillance would have a hard time creating cover for action andstatus that would justify that much surveillance activity ” especially when theperson who conducts the surveillance is a foreigner and working alone.
“The only rational explanation for why Headley was notnoticed while conducting his surveillance is that nobody was looking,” saysStratfor.
While Headley is a US citizen and changed his name in orderto “camouflage his heritage and religious affiliation”, he conducted aninordinate amount of surveillance activity by himself.
Conducting a surveillance operation with only one person isamong the most difficult ” and risky ” activities that any surveillanceoperative can be tasked to perform. Any time a person conducts surveillance heor she is vulnerable to detection. That vulnerability is mitigated somewhat ifthe surveillance is conducted by a team of individuals and the team members cantake turns exposing them to potential counter surveillance. Doing a solosurveillance operation means that the surveillance operative is forced to showhis face time and again to anyone watching.
Furthermore, activities such as taking photographs andmaking video recordings are far riskier than simply observing a target.
