Wikileaks / Startfor: Osama bin Laden 'was in routine contact with Pakistan's spy agency'
By Damien McElroy, Foreign Affairs Correspondent
7:35PM GMT 27 Feb 2012
The disclosure was contained in e-mails from the private US security firm, Stratfor, which were published by WikiLeaks website on Monday after being obtained by the Anonymous hacking group.
Stratfor provides analysis of world affairs to major corporations, military officials and government agencies and was once likened by an American business magazine to a "shadow CIA".
According to one of the e-mails, the firm was shown the information papers collected from bin Laden's Abbotabad compound after the US special forces attack last May that resulted in his death.
The e-mail, from a Stratfor analyst, suggested that up to 12 officials in Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency knew of the al-Qaeda leader's safe house.
The internal email did not name the Pakistani officials involved but said the US could use the information as a bargaining chip in post raid negotiations with Islamabad.
American officials have always believed it was impossible for the ISI not to have known that Bin Laden was sheltering in a garrison town so close to Islamabad. Pakistan has repeatedly dismissed the charge.
"Mid to senior level ISI and Pak Mil with one retired Pak Mil General that had knowledge of the OBL arrangements and safehouse," the email said of the officers involved. "I get a very clear sense we (US intel) know names and ranks."
WikiLeaks claimed to have 5 million Stratfor emails that it would published in collaboration with media outlets. However only 200 were released in the first lot.
Other e-mails included the suggestion that Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's president, may have less than a year to live after his cancer spread to the colon and bone marrow.
Russian doctors who had been brought in to "clean up the mess" resulting from Cuban treatments for the Venezuelan leader had given a grim prognosis for his recovery, the e-mails said.
Other revelations were statements that Israel had last year carried out a successful covert attack on Iran's secret nuclear facilities.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange accused Stratfor of involvement in wide range of legally or morally questionable research activities for private corporations.
"On the surface it presents as if it's a media organisation providing a private subscription intelligence newsletter," the activist, who is awaiting extradition to Sweden on rape charges said in London. "But underneath it is running paid informants networks."
Mr Assange also promised 5,000 emails would reveal private details of individuals who had worked or given information to the organisation.
Stratfor rejected claims that there was anything improper in the way it handled information gathered.
"Stratfor has worked to build good sources in many countries around the world, as any publisher of global geopolitical analysis would do," the company said. "We have done so in a straightforward manner and we are committed to meeting the highest standards of professional conduct.
"Having had our property stolen, we will not be victimized twice by submitting to questioning about them," the statement said.
The Texas-based subscription-based publisher providing political, economic and military analysis to help customers reduce risk.
The emails were orginally hacked last year by the network Anonymous.
We promised you those mails and now they'll finally be delivered. Five million (that's 5,000,000) emails at your pleasure," said the Anonymous account.
"There's a treasure trove of nasty details in those emails. We think there's something for everyone."
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