Jihad Jane and Deadly Headley: A couple of conspirators

His health insurance and early retirement probably aren't as good, but terrorist David Headley's continuing education benefits are much better than the federal agents who pursued him.

Headley, 49, is the Chicago man who pleaded guilty to a dozen counts of murder, maiming and mayhem last week. When he was arrested last October by the FBI boarding a plane bound for Pakistan, Headley was accused in a loosely constructed plot against that Danish newspaper that had the gall to publish an anti-Islamic cartoon.

By the time he faced a federal judge to plead guilty last week, Headley had been implicated in the horrendous attack on Mumbai, India more than a year ago, when 164 people died in a three-day siege, including six American visitors.

In the plea agreement Headley struck with U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, he admitted to undergoing rigorous terrorist training by Pakistan's al-Qaida outpost known as LeT. That acronym is short for Lashkar e Tayyiba.

Both organizations are interested in the same things: killing non-Muslims and destroying the trappings of Western life. Infidels beware!

To get ready for his assignment from LeT leaders, Headley attended at least five training camps between 2002 and 2005, according to federal counterterrorism investigators.

His continuing education began with a three-week training "on the merits of waging jihad" or holy war, states the plea agreement. That was followed by courses that taught him weapon skills, close combat tactics, how to use grenades, counter-surveillance and survival skills. Headley's final semester was three months long.

Most cops are lucky to get an afternoon to practice for their firearm requalifying.

But then again, they expect to come home after an assignment.

That was not to be the case for the terrorists who pulled off the Mumbai attack. "The team would be fighting to the death and would not attempt to escape following the attacks," state federal prosecutors in Headley's plea agreement.

The tall, muscular Headley looks more like a former college linebacker than a Pakistani terrorist whose birth name was Daood Gilani. Put him in a lime green Tommy Bahama shirt and he'd fit right in at your next cookout sipping a margarita.

He looks American, talks American and is American. But he has anti-American blood. Those are contradictions that made Headley so attractive to LeT and al-Qaida.

Think of Headley as a mirror image of Colleen LaRose, the Philadelphia woman who is in custody for plotting similar attacks.

Although he doesn't have a fancy nickname such as the one she gave herself - "Jihad Jane" - and no one from the Justice Department has publicly said as much, the two American jihadists were operating on parallel tracks and are remarkably similar.

Both are in their late 40s, both have roots in the Philadelphia-area, both are said to have wanted to kill the same Danish cartoonist, both were dealing with the same religious fanatics and the feds were on their tails at the same time last year.

Further, just as Headley initially pleaded not guilty even though he was cooperating with federal prosecutors in Chicago at the time, Jihad Jane last week entered a not guilty plea while she is said to be cooperating.

You can expect her to cut a plea deal with Pennsylvania prosecutors as well.

In Headley's case, for someone who just a few months ago was eager to see the Copenhagen newspaper editors' heads chopped off and thrown out the window, a guilty plea came quick and easy. And it involved prosecutors giving up the death penalty for Headley and extradition to India in exchange for his cooperation and testimony.

Some media in India suspect that the deal brokered with U.S. Attorney Fitzgerald resulted from some long-ago information Headley handed over in a federal drug case or two.

That doesn't seem to be an even trade to me. But with the 2008 attack in India having left such scars and so many dead, it is easy to see why they prefer to see Headley's cranium on a platter in Mumbai.

I'm no Jack Bauer, but as any fan of TV's "24" knows, the real bad guys always have ulterior motives. What seems to be isn't always the way it is.

Either these two Americans, Headley and Jihad Jane, know when to fold 'em and are trying to save their own hides from the lethal needle, or something else is at play and the clock is still running.

• Chuck Goudie, whose column appears each Monday, is the chief investigative reporter at ABC 7 News in Chicago. The views in this column are his own and not those of WLS-TV. He can be reached by e-mail at chuckgoudie@gmail.com and followed at twitter.com/ChuckGoudie.