KARACHI: Former spy chief of Pakistan General Hamid Gul was reportedly a member of the US intelligence firm Stratfor, it emerged on Wednesday.

A report published in the Indian daily Times of India says that approximately five million emails of the Texas-based think tank were revealed by WikiLeaks.

“Whereas seemingly large numbers of Stratfor’s subscribers and clients work in the US military and intelligence agencies, Stratfor gave complimentary membership to General Hamid Gul, the controversial former head of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), who, according to US diplomatic cables, planned an IED attack on international forces in Afghanistan in 2006,” the report said.

The former ISI chief, who served from 1987 to 1989, remains a controversial figure in the local and international media.

According to TOI, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange accused Stratfor of running a network of paid informants, monitoring activist groups on behalf of major multinationals and making investments based on its secret intelligence.

Stratfor, meanwhile, rejected claims that there was anything improper in the way it handled its informants.

WikiLeaks alleges that Stratfor fronts as an intelligence publisher, but is in fact a private intelligence agency. Its clients reportedly include Dow Chemical, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and United States government agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security, the Marines and the Defence Intelligence Agency.