In a series of emails released by Wikileaks yesterday from the Stratfor dump, Fred Burton, Stratfor's Vice President of Counterterrorism and Corporate Security, claims that sources told him that bin Laden's body was taken to Dover, Delaware and then to Bethesda, Maryland (Armed Forces Institute of Pathology).
Kevin Gosztola reported this in his daily liveblog:
9:04 AM EST The emails show Fred Burton was given updates after Osama bin Laden was killed until his body allegedly arrived in Dover, Delaware.
Vice President of Intelligence Fred Burton wrote in an email, “Body is Dover bound, should be here by now.” This came after he wrote in another email:
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.
On May 5, 2011, he reported the body is “airborne to CONUS.” CONUS is a Defense Department term for the contiguous United States. He even shared the exact location where the body was going saying that same day it was going “onward to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Bethesda.” Bethesda is in Maryland just outside of Washington, DC.
Though it was not really secret information, Burton’s source in the FBI told him there was a likelihood of “retaliation attacks in CONUS.”
Also, Burton shared this perspective on why photos needed to be made public:
Although I don’t really give a rats ass, it seems to methat 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.
Here is what
Greg Mitchell (also liveblogging) had to say about it:
10:30 Not sure what to make of new emails showing that Statfor's now famous Fred Burton believed bin Laden's body NOT dumped at sea but transported to Maryland. He's pretty certain of it--but still hearsay. Here's his first email. Probably not much more to it.
Here are the relevant emails from three sections of Wikileaks dump, with links:
[alpha] Body
Email-ID 1102694
Date 2011-05-02 05:41:24
From burton@stratfor.com
To alpha@stratfor.com
List-Name alpha@stratfor.com
Airborne to CONUS
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T
http://wikileaks.org/...
[alpha] OBL
Email-ID 1094322
Date 2011-05-02 05:26:15
From burton@stratfor.com
To alpha@stratfor.com
List-Name alpha@stratfor.com
Reportedly, we took the body with us. Thank goodness.
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T
http://wikileaks.org/...
[alpha] Killed by Ground Branch
Email-ID 1094301
Date 2011-05-02 05:12:09
From burton@stratfor.com
To alpha@stratfor.com
List-Name alpha@stratfor.com
CIA
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T
[alpha] OBL
Email-ID 1092275
Date 2011-05-02 05:33:15
From burton@stratfor.com
To alpha@stratfor.com
List-Name alpha@stratfor.com
We told the Pakis after we killed him. But, will praise GOP publicly. All spin and bullshit.
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T
FBI (more) on Body
Email-ID 1666377
Date 2011-05-02 15:11:03
From burton@stratfor.com
To secure@stratfor.com
Down & dirty done, He already sleeps with the fish....
** Fred's Note: Although I don't really give a rats ass, 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.
http://wikileaks.org/...
[alpha] Body bound for Dover, DE on CIA plane
Email-ID 1102718
Date 2011-05-02 05:51:12
From burton@stratfor.com
To alpha@stratfor.com
List-Name alpha@stratfor.com
Than onward to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Bethesda.
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T
http://wikileaks.org/...
Re: OBL's corpse
Email-ID 1097638
Date 2011-05-02 13:36:41
From burton@stratfor.com
To analysts@stratfor.com, friedman@att.blackberry.net
List-Name analysts@stratfor.com
Body is Dover bound, should be here by now.
On 5/2/2011 6:35 AM, George Friedman wrote:
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. No comparison
with suddenly burying him at sea without any chance to view him which i
doubt happened.
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Fred Burton
Sender: analysts-bounces@stratfor.com
Date: Mon, 2 May 2011 06:26:07 -0500 (CDT)
To:
ReplyTo: Analyst List
Subject: OBL's corpse
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.
http://wikileaks.org/...
The official story about bin Laden's body was:
Osama Bin Laden: What happened to his body?
Religious rites were carried out on the deck of a US aircraft carrier, the USS Carl Vinson. The body, shrouded in a white sheet and placed in a weighted bag, was then positioned on a flat board, tipped up, and eased into the Arabian Sea.
This occurred at 0600GMT, approximately 12 hours after the firefight during which Osama Bin Laden was shot in the head.
[ ... ]
The body was then flown to Afghanistan and Bin Laden's identity was confirmed. Officials say a DNA sample was taken that matched that of several other family members. Some sources say facial recognition technology was also used.
From Afghanistan, the body was, it appears, flown to the USS Carl Vinson.
So clearly, there is a pretty big difference between the official story and the story in Fred Burton's email. That's about all we can surmise from this whole thing at this point.
The official story came from officials so it should have some high level of credibility.
The Stratfor story allegedly came from emails from Fred Burton, a counterrorism expert who has a lot of experience and presumably some level of credibility too, assuming that these emails were written by him and his sources were credible.
Fred Burton:
Fred Burton is Stratfor's vice president for intelligence,12 and is considered "one of the world's foremost experts on security, terrorists and terrorist organizations."34
Burton was a special agent with the U.S. Diplomatic Security Service.
Burton was also appointed by Washington to assist in the investigation of the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. He is the former deputy chief of the counterterrorism division of the U.S. State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service. Mr. Burton also investigated the killing of Rabbi Meir Kahane; the al Qaeda New York City bombing plots before the September 11 attacks; and the Libyan-backed terrorist attacks against diplomats in Sana'a and Khartoum. He was involved in the arrest of Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993.
Burton is the author of a memoir, Ghost: Confessions of a Counterterrorism Agent, published by Random House in 2008,3 and Chasing Shadows: A Special Agent's Lifelong Hunt to Bring a Cold War Assassin to Justice, published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2011.4
Burton was appointed to the Texas Border Security Council on September 11, 2007 by Governor Rick Perry.[5]
In August 2009 he was hired as the Texas Department of Public Safety's Assistant Director for Intelligence and Counter-Terrorism but left after 2 months to pursue his writing and speaking career.
I'm not sure what to think.