Report: Wikileaks Emails From Stratfor Allege Osama Might Not Have Been Buried at Sea

Wikileaks has allegedly released emails showing at least one high-ranking individual at the private, Texas-based, security mega-firm Stratfor believes Osama bin Laden's body might not have been buried at sea. That's according to the outlet Russia Today (RT).

RT has the information:

Stratfor’s vice-president for intelligence, Fred Burton, believes the body was “bound for Dover, [Delaware] on [a] CIA plane” and then “onward to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Bethesda [Maryland],” an email says.

The official version is that the body of Al-Qaeda’s top man, who was killed by a US raid in Pakistan on May 2, 2011, was buried at an undisclosed location at sea in a proper Muslim ceremony.

"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," Burton commented in another email. Eichman was one of the masterminds of the Holocaust by Nazi Germany. He was captured by Mossad agents in Argentina and, tried in Israel, found guilty and executed in 1962. His body was cremated and his ashes were scattered at sea over the Mediterranean.

"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 dont know anyone who claimed he wasnt eicjhman [sic]. No comparison with suddenly burying him at sea without any chance to view him which i doubt happened [sic]," Stratfor CEO George Friedman replied.

Wikileaks has not said for sure how it got the information, but the hacker group Anonymous -- which is sympathetic to Wiki leader Julian Assange -- did break into Stratfor's servers in December. Back then, Wired magazine quoted an unnamed member of Anonymous as saying that the stolen data had been transferred to WikiLeaks, which allegedly acknowledged receiving the transfer using a coded message on Twitter. Anonymous appeared to confirm that account, pointing to the cryptic message "rats for donavon," which WikiLeaks posted on Dec. 30.

But a couple notes of caution. The information included in the latest bin Laden accusation does come from Russia Today, which has long been accused of dabbling in propaganda for the Russian government, and the outlet did not release the entire email exchange. That poses some problems.

Additionally, the emails seem only to be the theory of a select individual (or individuals), not that of the entire organization or that of the U.S. government. That is, if they are even legitimate.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.