WASHINGTON — Four Saudis who participated in the 2018 killing of the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi received paramilitary training in the United States the previous year under a contract approved by the State Department, according to documents and people familiar with the arrangement.
The instruction occurred as the secret unit responsible for Mr. Khashoggi’s killing was beginning an extensive campaign of kidnapping, detention and torture of Saudi citizens ordered by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, to crush dissent inside the kingdom.
The training was provided by the Arkansas-based security company Tier 1 Group, which is owned by the private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management. The company says the training — including “safe marksmanship” and “countering an attack” — was defensive in nature and devised to better protect Saudi leaders. One person familiar with the training said it also included work in surveillance and close-quarters battle.
There is no evidence that the American officials who approved the training or Tier 1 Group executives knew that the Saudis were involved in the crackdown inside Saudi Arabia. But the fact that the government approved high-level military training for operatives who went on to carry out the grisly killing of a journalist shows how intensely intertwined the United States has become with an autocratic nation even as its agents committed horrific human rights abuses.
It also underscores the perils of military partnerships with repressive governments and demonstrates how little oversight exists for those forces after they return home.
Such issues are likely to continue as American private military contractors increasingly look to foreign clients to shore up their business as the United States scales back overseas deployments after two decades of war.
The State Department initially granted a license for the paramilitary training of the Saudi Royal Guard to Tier 1 Group starting in 2014, during the Obama administration. The training continued during at least the first year of former President Donald J. Trump’s term.
Louis Bremer, a senior executive of Cerberus, Tier 1 Group’s parent company, confirmed his company’s role in the training last year in written answers to questions from lawmakers as part of his nomination for a top Pentagon job during the Trump administration.
The administration does not appear to have sent the document to Congress before withdrawing Mr. Bremer’s nomination; lawmakers never received answers to their questions.
In the document, which Mr. Bremer provided to The New York Times, he said that four members of the Khashoggi kill team had received Tier 1 Group training in 2017, and two of them had participated in a previous iteration of the training, which went from October 2014 until January 2015.
“The training provided was unrelated to their subsequent heinous acts,” Mr. Bremer said in his responses.
He said that a March 2019 review by Tier 1 Group “uncovered no wrongdoing by the company and confirmed that the established curriculum training was unrelated to the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.”
Louis Bremer, an executive at Tier 1 Group’s parent company, was chosen for a top Pentagon post during the Trump administration, but his nomination was withdrawn amid questions about the training of Saudis.Credit…Rod Lamkey/Sipa
Mr. Bremer said that the State Department, “in collaboration with other U.S. departments and agencies,” is responsible for vetting the foreign forces trained on U.S. soil. “All foreign personnel trained by T1G are cleared by the U.S. government for entry into the United States before commencement of training.”
In a statement, Mr. Bremer said that the training was “protective in nature” and that the company conducted no further training of Saudis after December 2017.
“T1G management, the board and I stand firmly with the U.S. government, the American people and the international community in condemning the horrific murder of Jamal Khashoggi,” he said.
A 2019 column by David Ignatius of The Washington Post first reported that members of the Khashoggi kill team had received training in the United States. He wrote that the C.I.A. had “cautioned other government agencies” that some special-operations training may have been conducted by Tier 1 Group under a State Department license.
The issue was central to Mr. Bremer’s contentious confirmation hearing and the written questions from senators, asking him what role, if any, Tier 1 Group had in training Saudis who had participated in the Khashoggi operation.
A State Department spokesman declined to confirm whether it awarded licenses to Tier 1 Group for the Saudi training.
“This administration insists on responsible use of U.S. origin defense equipment and training by our allies and partners, and considers appropriate responses if violations occur,” said the spokesman, Ned Price. “Saudi Arabia faces significant threats to its territory, and we are committed to working together to help Riyadh strengthen its defenses.”
A spokesman for the Saudi Embassy in Washington did not comment.
Mr. Trump weighed installing the head of Cerberus, Stephen A. Feinberg, in a top intelligence post last year, but the appointment was never made. While the Trump administration had appointed Mr. Feinberg to lead the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board in 2018, questions emerged about potential conflicts of interest. Cerberus formerly owned the military contractor DynCorp, which among other things provides intelligence advice to the United States and other clients.
It is unclear which members of the Khashoggi kill team participated in the Tier 1 Group training. Seven members of the team belonged to an elite unit charged with protecting Prince Mohammed, according to an American intelligence report about the assassination declassified in February.
The role of operatives from the so-called Rapid Intervention Force in the Khashoggi killing helped bolster the American intelligence case that Prince Mohammed approved the operation.
“Members of the R.I.F. would not have participated” in the killing without his consent, according to the report. The group “exists to defend the crown prince” and “answers only to him,” the document said.
Members of the team that killed Mr. Khashoggi were involved in at least a dozen operations starting in 2017, according to officials who have read classified intelligence reports about the campaign.
Mr. Khashoggi, a columnist for The Post, was killed inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in October 2018, his body dismembered using a bone saw. The assassination brought widespread condemnation on Prince Mohammed, who has publicly denied any knowledge of the operation.
The instruction occurred as the secret unit responsible for Mr. Khashoggi’s killing was beginning a campaign ordered by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to crush dissent inside the kingdom.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York Times
Eight defendants were sentenced to up to two decades in prison last year, but human rights advocates criticized the punishments as aimed at lower-level agents while sparing their leaders.
The C.I.A. concluded that the prince directed the operation, but Mr. Trump said that the evidence was inconclusive and that America’s diplomatic and economic relationship with the kingdom took priority. After President Biden took office and debated the issue with his advisers before the release of the declassified intelligence report, his administration announced sanctions on Saudis involved in the killing, including members of the elite unit who protect Prince Mohammed, but chose not to directly punish the crown prince.
The earlier iteration of the training, which took place during the Obama administration, occurred before Prince Mohammed consolidated power in the kingdom. His predecessor as crown prince, Mohammed bin Nayef, was a close ally of the United States and in particular John O. Brennan, who served as C.I.A. director under President Barack Obama.
Prince bin Nayef was the Saudi counterterrorism chief and collaborated closely with Obama administration officials in working to dismantle Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the terrorist group’s affiliate based in Yemen.
In 2017, Prince bin Salman pushed Prince bin Nayef from power and executed a broader campaign to wrest power from his rivals — including a notorious episode of imprisoning Saudi royals and businessmen at the Ritz-Carlton in Riyadh.
The Trump administration considered him a valuable partner in the Middle East — especially for the administration’s strategy to isolate Iran — and Prince bin Salman developed a close relationship with Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law who served as a senior adviser to Mr. Trump.
Prince Mohammed bin Nayef and President Barack Obama in the White House in 2015. In 2017, Prince bin Nayef was pushed from power and remains under house arrest.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times
Prince bin Salman, the son of King Salman, is the next in line to the Saudi throne. Prince bin Nayef remains under house arrest in the kingdom.
The Tier 1 Group website lists numerous American special operations and intelligence units as clients, along with “specialty units that do not require recognition.” It said it also trains “OGA special operator teams” — one pseudonym for C.I.A. paramilitary units — as well as “international allied forces.”
Under federal rules that restrict foreign sales of American arms and military expertise, Tier 1 Group was required to apply for licenses to train the foreign operatives. Those license applications were examined by State Department officials — who were processing tens of thousands of licenses per year — and approved.
The approval would have allowed members of the Saudi Royal Guard to enter the United States on visas processed by the American Embassy in Riyadh. The path is similar to the one followed by Second Lt. Mohammed Alshamrani, a Royal Saudi Air Force officer who opened fire in 2019 at a naval air station in Pensacola, Fla., where he was receiving military flight training. The attack killed three people and wounded eight.
Tier 1 Group was founded to train U.S. military personnel, taking advantage of an expanded Pentagon budget for military personnel training in basic counterinsurgency skills, according to former American officials familiar with its operations.
One of the company’s founders, Steve Reichert, a former Marine, was working as an instructor for the security contractor then known as Blackwater when he met Mr. Feinberg. With Mr. Feinberg’s backing, Mr. Reichert set up Tier 1 Group, according to Mr. Reichert’s 2020 account of the company’s founding and former intelligence officials familiar with the efforts.
But as U.S. military training budgets began to shrink, the company, like other private security firms, began searching for new clients. By 2014, it was beginning to train foreign military units, including Saudis.
Decisions about granting licenses to American firms to train foreign nationals are usually made after getting input from numerous government agencies, said R. Clarke Cooper, the assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs during the Trump administration. The Pentagon and intelligence agencies often play a role, he said.
“These things don’t just come out of the ether,” he said.
Mr. Cooper said he could not recall any discussion about the Tier 1 Group training of Saudis, even after Mr. Khashoggi’s killing. He said there were intense deliberations inside the Trump administration about how to respond to the killing after the government concluded that Prince Mohammed most likely approved it.
In the end, he said, administration officials did not want to squander America’s relationship with the kingdom — and the strategy of isolating Iran — khashoggi
“No government is going to flush a significant bilateral relationship over this murder, no matter how horrific it was,” he said.
Adam Goldman contributed reporting.
Correction:
An earlier version of this article referred imprecisely to Louis Bremer’s nomination for a Pentagon position. Mr. Bremer’s nomination never received a Senate vote and expired at the end of President Donald J. Trump’s term; it was not withdrawn. The error was repeated in a photo caption.
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the Joe Rogan experience morality talk
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to me about morality or talk about why
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we can’t talk about certain things well
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while we’re what you were saying before
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about being a competitor the United
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States is competitive obviously and when
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you’re playing the ultimate game which
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is war you have to be very careful about
00:20
what you reveal and what you don’t
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reveal and this is where the
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conversation about surprise kill vanish
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comes in because the CIA using these
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covert operations to assassinate people
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and whether or not that should be
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allowed or not allowed whether it’s good
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or bad whether it’s necessary whether
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it’s like if you want people to be safe
00:41
over here there’s certain people you got
00:43
to take out and sometimes you just can’t
00:45
follow the rules and why why are we not
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supposed to know about that should we
00:50
know about that the way the story
00:51
started for me I’m at my house in 2009 a
00:54
source is you know calls me up he says
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I’m on my way back from the Middle East
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gonna pop by the house and say hi he
01:01
brings me a challenge coin that says
01:03
Kabul Afghanistan State Department I’m
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thinking okay he is not a diplomat I
01:08
mean he’s weapons trained at the time my
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boys were young there are lots of GI
01:14
Joes in the garden and they had little
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weapons right and the source is showing
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them about the weapons and they’re like
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so into it cuz they know he’s military
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trained and then he says if it’s okay
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with your mom and dad I’ll show you some
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weapons the boys are like please so he
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sets up this sniper rifle in the living
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room and I live up in the hills and you
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can look across the canyon through this
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scope he set up and I can see the veins
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on a leaf
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across the canyon and I thought okay so
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now I know what he was doing in Kabul
01:45
Afghanistan he’s taking out al Qaeda
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with this mm-hmm
01:49
there’s another case on the ground that
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he never opens and when the boys go off
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I say to him what’s in that and he said
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he opens it up and inside there’s a
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knife and it’s serrated and I said
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what’s that for
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immediately realizing you know my
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naivete and he says to me sometimes a
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job requires quiet so why that became
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interesting
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to me was because of my own thoughts and
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perceptions about what he had told me in
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other words I could I could deal with
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him with a sniper rifle
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I could me like okay that’s what he does
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but the knife gave me pause I was like
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is he slitting someone’s throat is it in
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the ribs and I thought why is it that I
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am willing to accept sort of the
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clinical nature of of a sniper rifle but
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I can’t I’m uncomfortable with that
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close-up hand-to-hand killing and that
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led me to surprise kill vanish because
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that was the motto of the precursor
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agency of the CIA it was called the OSS
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the Office of Strategic Services their
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motto was surprise kill vanish because
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they would jump out of aircraft land
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work with their French partners and kill
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Nazis with a you know a knife to the
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throat and I thought okay that’s
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considered okay because they were Nazis
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right but we can’t we’re not supposed to
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do that anymore
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in this world we live in why and I spent
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the whole this whole book researching
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and reporting is about that sort of
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conundrum if you will that moral puzzle
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you know why do we why do we
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differentiate you know and who are they
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willing to do that to where do they draw
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that line like I’m sure you’re aware of
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the story of Jamal khashoggi the
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journalist who was assassinated by
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someone some group of people and that
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they entered into the Turkish embassy
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and they whacked him and chopped him up
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and carried him out in boxes and it’s an
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international it was a huge incident
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right this supposedly was ordered by who
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was it supposed to order by the head of
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Saudi Arabia yeah MBS Mohammed bin
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Salman I mean that’s the idea is that
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their head of state wanted him killed
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because he was a threat because he was a
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reporter because he’s writing some
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things yeah and that they this is how
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they did it yeah I mean and there’s
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that’s a great question because what
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yours
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like okay so but we all think of that as
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reprehensible right right right
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why you know cuz cuz he’s a journalist
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on our side he’s delivering information
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to people but the government of Saudi
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Arabia disagree they like that
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information is our information he’s a
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threat by releasing it yes he’s a threat
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to our livelihood yes yeah and who
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decides who’s a threat I mean a lot of
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this book is about who’s on the kill
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list right I mean there is an actual
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killers they’re always husband and the
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euphemisms involved I mean I write
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history as I said so Eisenhower called
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his assassination program health
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alteration I mean literally in the
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declassified documents the Solaris
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health all three she had a health
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alteration committee whoa Kennedy had an 05:14 executive action committee that’s also
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cleaner all right
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guess what Reagan’s was called super
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Wonder Boy power up close pre-emptive 05:27 neutralization preemptive neutralization
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Wow why do they keep switching the names
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for it they’re burying the information
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right and they keep switching around the
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they switch around who has authority to
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you know say yes let’s go ahead and put
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this guy on the kill list I mean that
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was fascinating I mean I interviewed a
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guy named John Rizzo who was a
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decades-long CIA attorney I was stunned
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that he was willing to talk to me and he
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explained to me how a presidential
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finding also called a memorandum of
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notification works that gives the
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president the authority to put an
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individual on the kill list that job is
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then given to the CIA’s paramilitary
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army an operator or their assassins
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because the CIA works under a code
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called title 50 of so it makes it legal
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whereas the Defense Department works
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under what’s called title 10 so in other
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words and they can’t their rules of
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engagement are totally different so the 06:33 misnomer is like oh the SEALs killed bin 06:35 Laden well they were seals trained but 06:39 that was a CIA mission
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hmm because Pakistan is a sovereign
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nation and the military can’t kill
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people in countries were not at war with
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so those guys all became essentially CIA operators for the night whoa right and
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if you look at photographs as I have
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seen you’ll notice that they have no
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markings on their outfits so that if the
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job went south it’d be like I don’t know
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who these guys are and if you look back
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at Vietnam photos of the Mac V SOG teams
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which I also write about in surprise
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kill vanish because that’s the precursor
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of that you see no markings right that
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way you can go into you can go behind
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enemy lines you can go into Laos you
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know in the Vietnam War you can go now
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you can go into Pakistan what I learned
reporting this book is we’re in a hundred and thirty four countries doing title 50 operations think about that
government wants that to be kept secret
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so in all those countries they’re doing
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things that don’t fall under the normal
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letter of the law not yes not under the
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rules of engagement of the military but
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the CIA works at the president’s behest
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that that was one thing that really blew
08:01
my mind to report to research to
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understand
08:04
I talked to forty two guys who have
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direct access to this who are in this
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world you know from the knuckle draggers
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on the ground as they call themselves to
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the lawyer at CIA senior intelligence
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staff that’s the equivalent of a general
08:18
at the CIA
08:19
those guys explaining to me Annie this
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is how it works you know and again to
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your question well why why does someone
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get to know that and why does the
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government want why do they allow that
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information out is super interesting and
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I believe that has to do with a certain
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climate we’re in right now about
08:40
military might right in other words what
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the CIA does is called tercio up do it’s
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the third option you’ve got the first
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option is diplomacy second option is war
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so if diplomacy is not working
08:54
and war is unwise you go to the third
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option which is the CIA’s paramilitary
09:01
and they’re in a hundred and how many country 134 do you well if you wonder why the military budgets so big that’s
what it is folks kind of feed those
09:09
folks what work I mean what happened and
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you as a competitor would be fascinated
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by the kind of training they do and what
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they do I mean so many of these
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infiltration techniques are
09:19
mind-boggling you know they’ve got halo
09:22
jumping which you know about right where
09:23
they high altitude low opening so they
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jump out they you know freefall down
09:29
terminal velocity pull the ripcord
09:31
really low so they’re not detected by
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radar and then they meet up with a team
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on the ground and go do what they do
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then they also have hey-ho which is high
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altitude high opening and that way you
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can fly over airspace where we’re
09:45
allowed and float into let’s say a
09:49
country like Iran and land gather your
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team and do what you have to do hmm but
09:56
like so much of what I report I get
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information like that and then I ask a
10:00
million questions like you’ve asking me
10:02
and it’s like can’t talk about that
10:03
that’s classified hmm you don’t you
10:07
you’re a journalist so you’re trying not
10:09
to judge mm-hmm but is it your belief
10:14
that this is a good thing for America
10:18
meaning having a third option
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whoa I mean I write in the book that
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that’s in the prologue after I tell that
10:27
story about the source with a knife I
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say I wanted to know in that exact
10:34
question like is this a good thing and
10:36
my answer at the end after it’s complex
10:40
not to be vague but it is really complex
10:42
is also that well if you’re gonna take
10:48
that pole position you must accept
10:54
rivalry right mm-hmm and also after talk
10:59
do I think it’s a good thing after
11:01
talking to a lot of 20-year old soldiers
11:04
who come back from the war theater miss
11:06
limb with intense PTSD and who
11:12
essentially serve as cannon fodder I
11:14
would say my opinion right for the
11:18
Pentagon that’s the second option or the
11:23
42 guys that I interviewed you know
11:26
they’re like send me they are a
11:28
professional they are Tier one operators
11:31
they’re Green Berets they’re seals their
11:32
Delta they retire they join the CIA yeah
11:36
so they’re like professionals at what
11:37
they do
11:38
and they’re saying I want someone has to
11:40
do this job we’ve been doing this since
11:42
the end of World War two I want to do it
11:44
so do I think it’s better I mean I think
11:49
that that concept speaks to choice right
11:59
because I’m not so sure that the 20 year
12:00
olds know what they’re in for
12:02
and the 40 year olds know what they’re
12:04
in for and are willing to do it so that
12:07
well also the difference between a
12:09
specialized trained individual with a
12:12
very specific task versus someone who is
12:14
sort of following orders and at the
12:16
front of the line yeah right I mean and
12:19
also has a you know a lot of times I
12:22
talk to these young kids who go to war
12:23
and they tell me one of the fascinating
12:27
detail is that they talk about movies
12:30
that they see and whether it’s Saving
12:32
Private Ryan or Black Hawk Down even
12:35
right where the outcome is not
12:37
necessarily great but they talk about
12:40
the romanticization of war and of
12:44
camaraderie and a brotherhood that comes
12:47
from that and then they have their
12:48
experience and some of that does give
12:51
them that sense but not always whereas
12:54
the operators are much more about you
12:58
know getting the job done that’s what I
13:00
was fascinated by I mean these guys are
13:02
really clear they’re their competitors
13:05
they’re like top tier competitors they
13:07
have a job they do it they get it done
13:09
and they ask for the next job so is the
13:13
oversight when it comes to choosing
13:16
whether or not this operation takes
13:18
place or not is it
13:20
do they have moral guidelines do they
13:24
have ethical or moral guidelines where
13:25
they say like this is the president is
13:29
requesting that this person get taken
13:31
out the Chiefs of Staff whoever it is is
13:33
that did they have to make a an ethical
13:37
distinction you mean or they like kill
13:39
him nicely like don’t make it over this
13:41
do they decide like does this make sense
13:43
or like what if the president is like
13:45
Rosie O’Donnell she’s been talking shit
13:47
take her out you know
13:49
well I mean that’s you know that’s a big
13:51
issue but what I try to write in some
13:55
what I try to report in surprise kill
13:57
vanish is the idea that the people we
14:00
take out may be our bad guys right one
14:03
one guy write about his che guevara okay
14:05
because che is often portrayed in the
14:10
press as you know this amazing hero and
14:15
that he and we you know I don’t know if
14:18
you know but he was he was killed by the
14:20
Bolivian Rangers but it was a CIA
14:21
operation and I interview the man in
14:23
charge of that operation in Surprise Cal
14:26
vanished his name was Felix Rodriguez ok
14:28
long-serving CIA paramilitary officer so
14:31
but I also report why the President to
14:36
your question wanted Che Guevara dead
14:40
you know he was really advocating for
14:43
nuclear war and I and I shared it yes I
14:48
mean he spoke publicly about you know if
14:50
if we have to have an atomic war the
14:52
Cuban but paraphrasing the Cuban people
14:54
will be happy to have sacrificed
14:55
themselves that I mean che was also che
14:59
killed anyone who betrayed him he killed
15:01
he writes about it in his Diaries as I
15:04
write in the book right so but on the
15:06
morality question who decides I don’t
15:08
have that answer but I will tell you
15:09
what I did I went with my main source
15:11
Billy hua who he’s a 89 now and he was
15:15
he’s been with the CIA for 60 years
15:18
okay I mean he went and he and I went to
15:23
Cuba for him to do a halo jump with Che
15:27
Guevara son so we were a guest of the
15:30
man whose father was killed by the CIA
15:36
okay and we had this really interesting
15:39
discussion in the cigar club where che
15:43
and Castro you know smoke cigars and
15:46
plotted the downfall of the United
15:48
States and that’s what I try to give
15:52
readers a sense of the long lens of
15:56
history how time changes all things and
16:00
maybe leave with them them with this
16:03
idea which they can come to their own
16:04
conclusions about what you asked me of
16:06
is it right or is it wrong because
16:08
really what you might ask is is it
16:11
necessary mmm right I mean I could
16:15
moralize right wrong but it would just
16:17
be my opinion but when you see I went
16:20
Billy wall and I also try out travel to
16:23
Vietnam because he was supposed to kill
16:25
he was tasked to kill the top commander
16:28
of the North Vietnamese Army a guy named
16:30
general shop and law didn’t kill shop
16:34
and we had this incredibly this terrible
16:36
mission that went awry that I write
16:38
about in the book in the Vietnam War so
16:40
50 years later while and I go to visit
16:43
the son of general giap are sitting
16:46
there in shops home talking about these
16:49
same issues right and my conclusion of
16:52
that again is not is it right or wrong
16:55
but is it necessary I mean we have these
16:58
wars we keep having these wars is it
17:02
necessary yeah what do you think well I
17:07
mean my opinion is that the Defense
17:11
Department is far too concerned with
17:14
vast weapons systems of the future which
17:17
is its mission statement of its science
17:19
department and so you create what some
17:22
at the Pentagon call a self licking ice
17:24
cream cone or the military-industrial
17:26
complex and there’s a lot built into
17:29
that there’s a lot to be said about
17:36
[Applause]
Exclusive: investigation suggests Washington Post owner was targeted five months before murder of Jamal Khashoggi
The Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos had his mobile phone “hacked” in 2018 after receiving a WhatsApp message that had apparently been sent from the personal account of the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, sources have told the Guardian.
The encrypted message from the number used by Mohammed bin Salman is believed to have included a malicious file that infiltrated the phone of the world’s richest man, according to the results of a digital forensic analysis.
This analysis found it “highly probable” that the intrusion into the phone was triggered by an infected video file sent from the account of the Saudi heir to Bezos, the owner of the Washington Post.
The two men had been having a seemingly friendly WhatsApp exchange when, on 1 May of that year, the unsolicited file was sent, according to sources who spoke to the Guardian on the condition of anonymity.
Large amounts of data were exfiltrated from Bezos’s phone within hours, according to a person familiar with the matter. The Guardian has no knowledge of what was taken from the phone or how it was used.
The extraordinary revelation that the future king of Saudi Arabia may have had a personal involvement in the targeting of the American founder of Amazon will send shockwaves from Wall Street to Silicon Valley.
It could also undermine efforts by “MBS” – as the crown prince is known – to lure more western investors to Saudi Arabia, where he has vowed to economically transform the kingdom even as he has overseen a crackdown on his critics and rivals.
The disclosure is likely to raise difficult questions for the kingdom about the circumstances around how US tabloid the National Enquirer came to publish intimate details about Bezos’s private life – including text messages – nine months later.
It may also lead to renewed scrutiny about what the crown prince and his inner circle were doing in the months prior to the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post journalist who was killed in October 2018 – five months after the alleged “hack” of the newspaper’s owner.
Mohammed bin Salman. One observer said the alleged targeting of Bezos reflected the ‘personality-based’ environment in which the crown prince operates. Photograph: Bandar Aljaloud/Saudi royal court/EPA
Saudi Arabia has previously denied it targeted Bezos’s phone, and has insisted the murder of Khashoggi was the result of a “rogue operation”. In December, a Saudi court convicted eight people of involvement in the murder after a secret trial that was criticised as a sham by human rights experts.
Digital forensic experts started examining Bezos’s phone following the publication last January by the National Enquirer of intimate details about his private life.
The story, which included his involvement in an extramarital relationship, set off a race by his security team to uncover how the CEO’s private texts were obtained by the supermarket tabloid, which was owned by American Media Inc (AMI).
While AMI insisted it was tipped off about the affair by the estranged brother of Bezos’s girlfriend, the investigation by the billionaire’s own team found with “high confidence” that the Saudis had managed to “access” Bezos’s phone and had “gained private information” about him.
Bezos’s head of security, Gavin de Becker, wrote in the Daily Beast last March he had provided details of his investigation to law enforcement officials, but did not publicly reveal any information on how the Saudis accessed the phone.
The Guardian understands a forensic analysis of Bezos’s phone, and the indications that the “hack” began within an infected file from the crown prince’s account, has been reviewed by Agnès Callamard, the UN special rapporteur who investigates extrajudicial killings. It is understood that it is considered credible enough for investigators to be considering a formal approach to Saudi Arabia to ask for an explanation.
Callamard, whose own investigation into the murder of Khashoggifound “credible evidence” the crown prince and other senior Saudi officials were responsible for the killing, confirmed to the Guardian she was still pursuing “several leads” into the murder, but declined to comment on the alleged Bezos link.
When asked by the Guardian whether she would challenge Saudi Arabia about the new “hacking” allegation, Callamard said she followed all UN protocols that require investigators to alert governments about forthcoming public allegations.
Saudi experts – dissidents and analysts – told the Guardian they believed Bezos was probably targeted because of his ownership of the Post and its coverage of Saudi Arabia. Khashoggi’s critical columns about Mohammed bin Salman and his campaign of repression against activists and intellectuals rankled the crown prince and his inner circle.
Andrew Miller, a Middle East expert who served on the national security council under President Obama, said if Bezos had been targeted by the crown prince, it reflected the “personality-based” environment in which the crown prince operates.
“He probably believed that if he got something on Bezos it could shape coverage of Saudi Arabia in the Post. It is clear that the Saudis have no real boundaries or limits in terms of what they are prepared to do in order to protect and advance MBS, whether it is going after the head of one of the largest companies in the world or a dissident who is on their own.”
The possibility that the head of one of America’s leading companies was targeted by Saudi Arabia could pose a dilemma for the White House.
Both Saudi Arabia and AMI have denied that the kingdom was involved in the publication of the Bezos story.
A lawyer for Bezos who was contacted by the Guardian said: “I have no comment on this except to say that Mr Bezos is cooperating with investigations.”
The Guardian asked the Saudi embassy in Washington about the claims. It did not immediately return a request for comment.
Have you got new information about this story? You can message Guardian investigations using Signal or WhatsApp: +447584640566. For the most secure communications, use SecureDrop. You can also email: stephanie.kirchgaessner@theguardian.com.
And a story that — if true — could be deadly for Jared Kushner
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. The Magnificent Seven. Seven Samurai. The Seven Year Itch. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Hollywood loves stories and film titles with seven in them. So how about Seven Whistleblowers? It has a nice ring to it. Because a source tells Cockburn that House Democrats trying to impeach Donald Trump have no less than seven intelligence whistleblowers willing to give evidence, or who have already given evidence, about President Trump’s dealings with foreign governments.
Some we know about already. There’s the original whistleblower, the CIA officer at the White House who first reported Trump’s call to the Ukrainian president. Republicans are now pushing to ‘unmask’ him, though his name is already all over the internet. He is, supposedly, a 33-year-old graduate of Yale, a registered Democrat who had worked for both Joe Biden and John Brennan. These facts, so helpful to the White House, are in a ‘dossier’ circulated on Capitol Hill by the president’s allies. A second Ukraine whistleblower has come forward. We know this because the lawyer for the first whistleblower, Mark Zaid, told ABC News that he was representing a second. In fact, Zaid’s co-counsel said that they were representing ‘multiple’ whistleblowers. Two? More than two? Seven?
Cockburn wondered if one of the whistleblowers could possibly be Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the senior Ukraine expert on the National Security Council, who came to the US from Ukraine — to Little Odessa in Brooklyn — as a child aged three. He arrived to give evidence to the House Intelligence Committee wearing his dark blue Army dress uniform and military ribbons. He said that the White House transcript of the call between Trump and Ukraine’s president had important gaps — and that his attempts to include ‘crucial words and phrases’ had been rebuffed. ‘I am a patriot and it is my sacred duty and honor to advance and defend our country irrespective of party or politics.’
Or perhaps Tim Morrison, the NSC’s director for European and Russian Affairs, who was one of the small group to have listened to the call. He told the committee that Trump’s ambassador to the EU, Gordon Sondland, had said Ukraine wouldn’t get US arms unless it investigated Biden. But the British Daily Mail has pointed out that both officials testified under subpoena and so — Lord Rothermere’s organ states, correctly — neither is legally a whistleblower.
However many Ukraine whistleblowers there may or may not be, Cockburn’s source says that at least one of the (purported) seven has nothing to do with Ukraine at all. Instead, it’s claimed that this whistleblower reported a call between Trump and the Saudi ruler, Mohammed bin Salman. He or she is said to have had ‘concerns’ about what was said on the call about the president’s son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner. Kushner himself is known to have a very close relationship with MBS. Cockburn has previously written that Kushner may have been what Cosmo would call an ‘oversharer’ when it came to MBS. Unfortunately, it’s claimed that what he was sharing was American secrets: information Kushner had requested from the CIA would (allegedly) be echoed back in US intercepts of calls between members of the Saudi royal family. One source said this was why Kushner lost his intelligence clearances for a while.
According to Cockburn’s source about the seven whistleblowers, there’s more. It is that Kushner (allegedly) gave the green light to MBS to arrest the dissident journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, who was later murdered and dismembered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. A second source tells Cockburn that this is true and adds a crucial twist to the story. This source claims that Turkish intelligence obtained an intercept of the call between Kushner and MBS. And President Erdogan used it to get Trump to roll over and pull American troops out of northern Syria before the Turks invaded. A White House official has told the Daily Mail that this story is ‘false nonsense’. However, Cockburn hears that investigators for the House Intelligence Committee are looking into it. Who knows whether any of this is true…but Adam Schiff certainly seems to be smiling a lot these days.
