They already stated that this was not the reason for the delay,an over ambitious deadline was why they said they did not make it, they thought they could complete the project in the time aloted for september 30th, also when the code was stolen morale of the HL dev team plummeted to an all time low and thus work over the crimbo season was very slow.
maybe they paid the theft?
I doubt it, because the hackers got the open source of the game, it will now be easier for them to crack it and make cheats/trainers when the real game comes out.. so obviously valve had to spend some time implementing measures to stop them.. unless its all a big conspiracy
Delay HL2 for >9 months just for that? Riiiiiight. It's not a conspiracy, they just decided to blame the leak instead of saying "we fucked up."
See above^^^, btw yes the code did have alot of the game, many levels from the game, including the crane picking up the crates and squishing combine from this years E3 but it was mainly put together in a very unstable form by russian coders.