Leaked Stratfor emails revive controversy over Bin Laden’s sea burial

A thread of emails published by Wikileaks from security analysis company Stratfor has revived skepticism about whether the body of Osama bin Laden’s was actually buried in the Arabian Sea as the US government claimed or was transported to the United States and cremated there. A US defense official said on May 2, 2011 that the body of Al Qaeda leader was washed in accordance with Islamic custom, placed in a white sheet, then put inside a weighted bag before it was eased into the sea” off the he decks of the American aircraft carrier Carl Vinson. But the secret intelligence emails published by Wikileaks suggest that Bin Laden’s body might have been transported to Dover Air Force Base and “onward to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Bethesda [Maryland]” where he was later cremated. On May 2, 2011 at 5:26 am, Fred Burton, the vice president for intelligence at Stratfor, the private intelligence firm hacked by Anonymous and exposed by WikiLeaks, sent an email saying: “Reportedly, we took the body with us. Thank goodness.” Burton sent another email about 25 minutes later via BlackBerry saying: “Than onward to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Bethesda.” At 6.26 a.m. he wrote: “If body dumped at sea, which I doubt, the touch is very Adolph Eichman like. The Tribe did the same thing with the Nazi’s ashes. We would want to photograph, DNA, fingerprint, etc. His body is a crime scene and I don’t see the FBI nor DOJ letting that happen.” Burton was referring to the capture of Adolf Otto Eichmann German Nazi who fled to Argentina after the World War II and lived there until 1960 when he was captured by Israeli Mossad agents. He was brought to Israel, tried and sentenced to death. After the execution, Eichmann’s body was cremated to avoid anyone building a shrine over his grave. In response to Burton’s email, Stratfor CEO George Friedman wrote at 6:35 a.m.: “Eichmann was seen alive for many months on trial before being sentenced to death and executed. No one wanted a monument to him so they cremated him. But I don’t know anyone who claimed he wasn’t eicjhman. No comparison with suddenly burying him at sea without any chance to view him which I doubt happened.” At 3:11 p.m. Burton sent yet another email with a perplexing email that read: “Down & dirty done, He already sleeps with the fish....” This was a followed by note saying: “It seems to me that by dropping the corpse in the ocean, the body will come back to haunt us....gotta be violating some sort of obscure heathen religious rule that will inflame Islam? I was sleeping thru that class at Langley. “The US Govt needs to make body pics available like the MX’s do, with OBL’s pants pulled down, to shout down the lunatics like Alex Jones and Glenn Beck.” Al-Arabiya