Did Pakistani Intelligence Help U.S. in Finding Bin Laden?

An American spy novelist is disputing the details of the raid that took down the world's "Most Wanted" terrorist leader Osama bin Laden.

RJ Hillhouse, who runs the blog www.thespywhobilledme.com, writes that sources in the intelligence community told her that bin Laden was killed because a Pakistani intelligence (ISI) official informed the U.S. authorities about the al Qaeda leader's whereabouts.

This would contradict widely published reports that a four-year CIA surveillance of Laden's courier led to the intel that made the famous Navy SEAL Team Six raid possible.

"Forget the cover story of waterboarding-leads-to-courier-leads-to bin Laden," writes Hillhouse in her blog.

The ISI informant allegedly passed on information leading to Laden in exchange of a roughly $25 million reward offered by the State Department's Rewards for Justice program, states Hillhouse's blog. He also wished to secure the U.S. citizenship for his family.

The State Department said it would not comment on Hillhouse's blog, the Daily Mail reported.

The blog, which describes Hillhouse as an expert on national security outsourcing, posted other conflicting details about Operation Neptune's Spear.

The informant told the U.S. officials that the Saudi's were paying off Pakistan and the ISI to shelter Laden in the Abottabad compound, writes Hillhouse. Hillhouse claims that his information led to the intelligence gathering that brought the CIA to Abottobad, Pakistan, where bin Laden had been living.

Published reports say that Pakistani authorities were unaware of the mission.

However, Hillhouse claims that the Pakistani military as well as the ISI knew about the operation and even cooperated with the U.S., after the CIA offered to pay them double what the Saudi's were paying to keep bin Laden.

"The cooperation was why there were no troops in Abottabad," posted Hillhouse on her blog. "They were all pulled out. It had always seemed very farfetched to me that a helicopter could crash and later destroyed in an area with such high military concentration without the Pakistanis noticing."

Hillhouse has taught at the University of Michigan and was a professor of political science at the University of Hawaii. During her student days, she claims to have engaged in the black market between East and West, running Cuban rum, smuggling jewels from the Soviet Union and laundering East Bloc currencies. Her blog states that foreign governments had tried to recruit her as a spy but failed.

TheSpyWhoBilledMe was featured in The New York Times Week in Review after the head of the private military corporation Blackwater USA granted her an exclusive interview.

Read Hillhouse's blog about the raid here.