Khashoggi Disappearance

[seemslikeadream]

Read the transcript of the audio recordings of the horrifying conversations between the 15-man Saudi hit squad and their victim, journalist Jamal Khashoggi — Sound of an autopsy saw dismembering his body can be heard, it lasted 30 minutes

Saudi hit squad’s gruesome conversations during Khashoggi's murder revealed
ABDURRAHMAN ŞİMŞEK - NAZİF KARAMAN
ISTANBUL
Published 09.09.2019 14:49
Updated 10.09.2019 15:12
In this file photo taken on Oct. 5, 2018, a protester holds a picture of missing journalist Jamal Khashoggi during a demonstration in front of the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul. (AFP Photo)
In this file photo taken on Oct. 5, 2018, a protester holds a picture of missing journalist Jamal Khashoggi during a demonstration in front of the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul. (AFP Photo)
Audio recordings of the horrifying conversations between the 15-man Saudi hit squad and their victim, journalist Jamal Khashoggi, has been revealed to the public for the first time by the Turkish daily Sabah.

The conversations recorded prior to and during the Oct. 2, 2018 murder of the dissident journalist at the kingdom's Istanbul consulate were obtained by Turkey's National Intelligence Organization (MIT) right after the gruesome incident, and were shared with related Turkish authorities carrying out an investigation into the incident, as well as with international officials and institutions.

One of the recordings of the conversations between Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, the number two man of the hit squad, and Dr. Salah Muhammed Al-Tubaigy, the head of Forensic Evidence at the Saudi General Security Department who was in charge of dismembering Khashoggi's body, are stamped 1:02 p.m., just 12 minutes before Khashoggi arrived at the consulate building to complete marriage procedures.

Saudi hit squad’s gruesome conversations during Khashoggi's murder revealedMutreb is seen at the entrance of the Saudi Consulate General located in Istanbul's Beşiktaş district.

The conversation between the two, who are among the five suspects facing death penalty in Saudi Arabia over the murder, is as follows:

Mutreb: Is it possible to put the body in a bag?

Al-Tubaigy: No. Too heavy, very tall too. Actually, I've always worked on cadavers. I know how to cut very well. I have never worked on a warm body though, but I'll also manage that easily. I normally put on my earphones and listen to music when I cut cadavers. In the meantime, I sip on my coffee and smoke. After I dismember it, you will wrap the parts into plastic bags, put them in suitcases and take them out (of the building).

Al-Tubaigy is also heard saying: "My superior at the Forensic Evidence does not know what I'm doing. There is no one to protect me," in efforts to ask for protection in the vertical hierarchy going right up to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for the responsibility of dismembering Khashoggi's body.

Saudi hit squad’s gruesome conversations during Khashoggi's murder revealedThe photo on the left shows al-Tubaigy waiting at a passport control desk in Istanbul's Atatürk Airport upon arrival.

At the end of the conversation, Mutreb asks whether the "animal to be sacrificed" has arrived. At 1:14 p.m., an unidentified member of the hit squad says "[he] is here."

Khashoggi enters the Saudi consulate

According to the released recordings, Khashoggi is greeted by a familiar face or someone he knows, gauging from his reaction. He is told that the Consul General Mohammad al-Otaibi is also present in the building. First, he is politely invited into the consul's office on the second floor. When he starts to get suspicious, he is pulled by the arm. He then says;"Let me go, what do you think you're doing?"

As soon as Khashoggi enters the room, Mutreb says: "Please sit. We have to take you back [to Riyadh]. There is an order from Interpol. Interpol demanded you be returned. We are here to take you." To which Khashoggi responds: "There are no lawsuits against me. My fiancée is waiting outside for me."

During these conversations, another unidentified hit squad member, probably portraying the "bad cop" during the interrogation, repeatedly tells Khashoggi to "cut it short."

At 1:22 p.m. Mutreb asks Khashoggi whether he has any mobile phones on him. Khashoggi responds with "I have two mobile phones." Mutreb asks "which brand" and Khashoggi says "iPhone."

Following these conversations in the last 10 minutes leading up to Khashoggi's death, the dialogue goes:

Mutreb: Leave a message for your son.

Khashoggi: What should I tell my son?

Mutreb: You will write a message, let's rehearse; show it to us.

Khashoggi: What should I say, 'see you soon'?

Unidentified hit squad member: Cut it short.

Mutreb: You will write something like 'I'm in Istanbul. Don't worry if you cannot reach me.'

Khashoggi: I shouldn't say kidnapped.

Unidentified hit squad member: Take your jacket off.

Khashoggi: How can such a thing take place at a consulate? I'm not writing anything.

Unidentified hit squad member: Cut it short.

Khashoggi: I'm not writing anything.

Mutreb: Write it, Mr. Jamal. Hurry up. Help us so we can help you, because in the end we will take you back to Saudi Arabia and if you don't help us you know what will happen eventually.

Khashoggi: There is a towel here. Will you have me drugged?

Al-Tubaigy: We will put you to sleep.

After he was drugged, Khashoggi says "do not keep my mouth closed" before losing his consciousness.

"I have asthma. Do not do it, you will suffocate me." These were Khashoggi's last words.

His killers had already put on a plastic bag over his head, and he would eventually be suffocated to death. Scuffling and struggling then dominate the recordings, with occasional questions and directives from the hit squad heard in between.

"Is he asleep?" "He's raising his head," "keep pushing," "push it well."

Before Khashoggi gives his final breath, scuffling and suffocation sounds continue for a while. Then the postmortem phase begins, which includes sounds of dismembering Khashoggi's body.

At exactly 1:39 p.m., the sound of an autopsy saw is heard. This savage procedure lasts half an hour.

According to the book "Diplomatic Atrocity: The dark secrets of the Khashoggi murder," penned by Sabah writers Abdurrahman Şimşek, Nazif Karaman and Ferhat Ünlü, Khashoggi's body was dismembered by al-Tubaigy and taken out of the building in five suitcases. The whereabouts of Khashoggi's body remains unknown.

Khashoggi was killed and dismembered by a group of Saudi operatives in the country's consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2, 2018. Initially denying and later downplaying the incident as an accidental killing in a fistfight, Riyadh finally admitted almost three weeks after the disappearance that Khashoggi was murdered in a premeditated fashion but denied any involvement of the royal family.

The incident was blamed on lower-level officials, including five who are now facing the death penalty over their involvement. A Saudi public prosecutor said in late March that they would seek the death penalty for five suspects among the 21 involved in the case. Ankara has said the statement is not satisfactory and demanded genuine cooperation from Riyadh.

Khashoggi's body has not been recovered and the kingdom has remained silent on its whereabouts. The U.N. human rights expert who conducted an independent probe into the murder of Khashoggi, Agnes Callamard, said in a report last month that the state of Saudi Arabia was responsible for the murder. The report also found "credible evidence" that linked Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to the killing of Khashoggi. The rapporteur noted she had received no cooperation from Riyadh and minimal help from the U.S.

Records of premeditated murder revealed

The recordings, which took place before the murder between Sept. 28 and Oct. 2, 2018, reveal in detail the plans and preparations made between the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul and the Riyadh administration.

On Sept. 28, when Khashoggi came to the Saudi Consulate for papers to marry his fiancee Hatice Cengiz, Ahmed Abdullah al-Muzaini, who worked as Saudi Arabia's intelligence station chief at the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul, informed Riyadh with an emergency code that Khashoggi had arrived at the consulate. Khashoggi's return to the consulate on Oct. 2 was also informed to Riyadh.

On the same day at 7:08 p.m., Saudi Consul Otaibi held a phone call with an official from the office of Saud al-Qahtani, a close aide of Crown Prince Mohammed.

During the conversation, the murder of Khashoggi was called "a private matter" and "a top-secret mission." The official told the Saudi consul that "the head of state security called me. They have a mission. They want one of your officials from your delegation to deal with a private matter. They want someone from your protocol… for a private, top-secret mission. He can even get permission if necessary."

These statements are proof that the murder of Khashoggi was not done without the consent of the Saudi crown prince.

At 8 p.m., Muzaini received a phone call from Saudi Consul Otaibi, who told him that "there will be a special training course in Riyadh."

"I got a call from Riyadh. They asked me to find an officer who previously worked in the protocol. But, this is top secret… there will be training… almost for five days. This is top secret. I want a reliable, nationalist intelligence officer."

During the rest of the conversation, the two discussed flight alternatives from Istanbul to Riyadh. Muzaini asked if the training would begin the day before or not, to which the Saudi consul replied to him saying, "Yes, they say it will."

One day before the murder, on Oct. 1, 2018 at 9:48 p.m., a conversation between two unidentified Saudi officials went as follows: "A commission from Saudi Arabia will come tomorrow, there is something they will do at the consulate in my office," one said.

The other asked if "it" will happen on the first floor to which he got a reply saying, "No, right next to my office. It will last for two to three days, and they have no personnel in charge of the office above."

"Ok, I will be at the consulate at 8 a.m.," the other said. "The name of the man who will come to the consulate is Mr. Maha, [a nickname] and they will pass through permission from the head of the commission."
http://sabahdai.ly/biio7g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkJmnqOJpcE
Audio transcripts of Jamal Khashoggi's murder revealed

The Turkish Daily Sabah newspaper has released transcripts of audio recordings of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the Saudi hit squad that killed him inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last year.
The recordings, obtained by Turkey's national intelligence and made public by the newspaper on Monday, detailed the conversations between the Saudi writer and members of the 15-man hit squad moments before his assassination on October 2, 2018.
Khashoggi, a Washington Post contributor who was living in the United States, had gone to his country's consulate to collect documents for his planned wedding before he was killed and his body dismembered.
When he entered the consulate, Khashoggi was greeted by a familiar face before being pulled by the arm into the consul-general's office on the second floor, according to the Daily Sabah.
Al Jazeera's Jamal Elshayyal reports.

Jamal Khashoggi 'murder recording transcript' is published
A demonstrator holds a poster with a picture of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi outside the Saudi Arabia consulate in Istanbul,Reuters
The newspaper says Jamal Khashoggi (pictured on sign) told his killers not to cover his mouth
A Turkish newspaper has published new details of a recording which reportedly captured the final moments of murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The prominent government critic was killed in Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul last October.

The pro-government Sabah newspaper says the transcript is from a recording taken inside and later obtained by Turkish intelligence.

It includes information such as the journalist's alleged last words.

Khashoggi wrote a column for the Washington Post newspaper and was based in the US before his disappearance.

He was last seen entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on 2 October 2018 to obtain papers he needed to marry his Turkish fiancée.

What happened to Jamal Khashoggi?
The journalist who vanished into a consulate
Khashoggi, MH17 and the problem of impunity
His mysterious death piled scrutiny on Saudi Arabia, which released conflicting information regarding his disappearance in the aftermath.

Saudi authorities have since blamed a "rogue" operation for his murder and put 11 men on trial.

What does the newspaper say?

The Sabah has consistently made international headlines by carrying details - including some that have been disputed - about the journalist's mysterious death.

The newspaper published two new reports this week into Khashoggi's death at the hands of a group they label a "hit squad".


Jamal Khashoggi: What we know about the journalist's disappearance and death
Their latest report details information from the alleged recording.

It includes details such as a forensic expert, part of a team sent from Saudi Arabia, allegedly referring to the journalist as an "animal to be sacrificed" prior to his arrival.

The Sabah report says Khashoggi, once inside the consulate, became suspicious and was told he had to return to Riyadh because of an Interpol order.

The journalist allegedly refused to comply with the group's requests, which included texting his son, and was then drugged, according to the newspaper.

He reportedly then told his killers, in his last words, to not keep his mouth closed because of his asthma, but then lost consciousness.

Khashoggi was suffocated with a bag put over his head, the Sabah reports, with the sounds of a scuffle allegedly picked up by the recording.

The newspaper also alleges the tape captured his alleged dismemberment at the hands of the forensic expert.

Reports of the existence of audio recordings from Khashoggi's death have been around since last year.

Turkish officials have publicly confirmed their existence and say they have shared them with international governments but is unclear how the newspaper apparently obtained them.

Almost a year on from his death, Khashoggi's body has not been recovered, despite international pressure.

Earlier this year, a UN expert on extrajudicial killings called for an independent and impartial investigation into his death.

Special rapporteur Agnes Callamard described the journalist's death as a "deliberate, premeditated execution" and alleges "the state of Saudi Arabia is responsible" and should be investigated.

The Saudi government rejected her report and has consistently denied those responsible for the death were acting on official orders.


Agnes Callamard decries murder trial in Saudi Arabia
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-49657908

[Grizzly]

Weird is it not, that...

Bezo's fishwrap...

Khashoggi children have received houses in Saudi Arabia and monthly payments as compensation for killing of father
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/khashoggi-children-have-received-houses-in-saudi-arabia-and-monthly-payments-as-compensation-for-killing-of-father/2019/04/01/c279ca3e-5485-11e9-8ef3-fbd41a2ce4d5_story.html?noredirect=on

By Greg Miller
April 1

The children of slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi have received million-dollar houses in the kingdom and monthly five-figure payments as compensation for the killing of their father, according to current and former Saudi officials as well as people close to the family.

Khashoggi’s two sons and two daughters may also receive much larger payouts — possibly tens of millions of dollars apiece — as part of “blood money” negotiations that are expected to ensue when the trials of Khashoggi’s accused killers are completed in the coming months, according to the officials and others who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive talks.

The previously undisclosed payments are part of an effort by Saudi Arabia to reach a long-term arrangement with Khashoggi family members, aimed in part at ensuring that they continue to show restraint in their public statements about the killing of their father by Saudi operatives in Istanbul six months ago, the officials said.

The Khashoggi siblings have refrained from any harsh criticism of the kingdom, even as their father’s death provoked global outrage and widespread condemnation of the heir to the Saudi throne, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

[Crown prince is ‘chief of the tribe’ in a cowed House of Saud]

The delivery of homes and monthly payments of $10,000 or more to each sibling were approved late last year by King Salman as part of what one former official described as an acknowledgment that “a big injustice has been done” and an attempt “to make a wrong right.”
But the royal family is also relying on its wealth to help contain the ongoing fallout from the killing and dismemberment of the prominent Saudi journalist and Washington Post contributing columnist who was targeted for articles that were often critical of the government.

A Saudi official described the payments as consistent with the country’s long-standing practice of providing financial support to victims of violent crime or even natural disasters and rejected the suggestion that the Khashoggi family would be obligated to remain silent. “Such support is part of our custom and culture,” the official said. “It is not attached to anything else.”

As part of their preliminary settlement, the Khashoggi children were each given houses in Jiddah worth as much as $4 million apiece. The properties are part of a shared compound in which Salah Khashoggi, the eldest son, occupies the main structure.

A banker in Jiddah, Salah is the only Khashoggi sibling who intends to continue living in Saudi Arabia, according to people close to the family. The others reside in the United States and are expected to sell their new Saudi properties.

Salah, who has been responsible for financial discussions with Saudi authorities, declined to comment on the matter when reached by phone Monday. His desire to remain in Jiddah with his family has contributed to the siblings’ deference to the authorities and caution in their public statements over the past six months.

[Jamal Khashoggi’s final months as an exile in the long shadow of Saudi Arabia]

In October, the Saudi government released photos of Salah shaking hands with Mohammed, an image that was meant to show the crown prince offering condolences but was widely seen as an indication of the coercive power the royal family was exerting on Jamal Khashoggi’s children.

The writer’s two daughters, Noha Khashoggi and Razan Jamal Khashoggi, published an essay in The Washington Post last year in which they described their father’s hopes for changes in Saudi Arabia but emphasized that he was “no dissident” and did not accuse the crown prince or other Saudi officials of being culpable in his death.

Noha did not respond to a request for comment, and Razan could not be reached.

The monthly schedule of payments and prospect of eventual multimillion-dollar settlements would appear to give the Khashoggis a long-term financial incentive to remain quiet even as human rights organizations and critics of Saudi Arabia continue to demand accountability from the kingdom.

Washington Post publisher Fred Ryan said in an op-ed Monday, six months after Jamal Khashoggi’s death, that the Saudis “have adopted a strategy of evasion” that has “scapegoated expendable officials, seeking to quell international furor by staging a sham trial.”

Khashoggi’s second son, Abdullah, declined to comment when reached Monday. William Taylor, a Washington lawyer who has represented the family, also refused to discuss any compensation the family has received.

The negotiations with the family have been led by the outgoing Saudi ambassador to the United States, Khalid bin Salman, brother of the crown prince.

The CIA concluded with “medium to high confidence” that Mohammed had ordered Khashoggi’s killing, but President Trump has refused to accept that verdict about a close ally, saying, “Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t.”

Saudi officials have strenuously denied that Mohammed was involved, describing the slaying as a rogue operation carried out by a team that intended to subdue Khashoggi and take him back to Riyadh but killed him after a struggle at the consulate in Istanbul. Khashoggi had gone to the diplomatic facility to collect paperwork needed to remarry.

U.S. intelligence agencies, relying in part on eavesdropping equipment placed in the Saudi Consulate by the Turkish government, have concluded that Khashoggi was strangled or smothered.

Saudi officials have yet to explain what happened to Khashoggi’s body. His killers are believed to have dismembered and disposed of it. Officials who have heard audio of the operation said that one of the Saudi operatives — who has a background in forensic crime-scene work — can be heard warning other operatives to play loud music to mask the sound of an electric device.

Saudi authorities have announced investigations of 21 people in connection with Khashoggi’s killing, including Saud al-Qahtani, an enforcer for the crown prince suspected by some of orchestrating the operation against Khashoggi.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for five operatives who traveled from
Riyadh to Istanbul and were in the consulate when Khashoggi was killed. They include Maher Mutreb, a former colonel in the Saudi intelligence service who knew Khashoggi when both worked in London at the Saudi Embassy.

If the men are convicted and sentenced to death, the Saudi system of justice could allow the Khashoggi family members to grant their father’s killers clemency as part of a “blood money” arrangement in which they might then be entitled to tens of millions of dollars.

It is unclear whether Khashoggi’s children would be required to forgive or absolve the killers to collect the payments.

Former Saudi officials and experts said that the royal court and government have incentives to seek such an agreement and avoid a situation in which only low-level operatives are executed for their role in a plot that was developed and orchestrated from high levels of government.

The issue of how far to go in protecting their father’s legacy has been a source of tension among the Khashoggi siblings, according to people close to the family. The daughters have at times pushed to be more outspoken about their father’s life and the kingdom’s ruthlessness, while the brothers have focused on maximizing the amount of money the family will collect.

At one point in the weeks after their father’s death, Abdullah Khashoggi told advisers working with the family that he wanted to punish the royal court by going after one of the crown prince’s prized possessions. “I want the da Vinci,” he said, referring to a painting by the Renaissance master that the crown prince paid $450 million for in 2017.

[seemslikeadream]

Global Opinions | Jamal Khashoggi
A missing voice, a growing chorus

Let the world hear Khashoggi’s last words in Arabic

(Brian Stauffer for The Washington Post)
By Karen Attiah
SEPTEMBER 29, 2019

Almost every time I finished editing a piece that Jamal Khashoggi had written for The Post’s Global Opinions section, he would inevitably ask me the same question.

“Great, that’s done. Do you want me to translate this to Arabic?”

In the year since his senseless and brutal murder, amid the pain, grief and anger, I find myself reflecting quite a bit about translation, cultural understanding and knowledge. If there was anything Jamal was passionate about — almost desperate for — it was to be heard, read and understood first and foremost by Saudis, and ultimately by readers across the Arab world.


Fred Ryan: Why we won’t forget the horror of Khashoggi’s murder

David Ignatius: What happened on the way to his final seconds?

Hatice Cengiz: My quest for justice for my fiance continues

A few weeks ago, Turkish intelligence officials released more details of Jamal’s last words to the newspaper the Daily Sabah: “Do not keep my mouth closed,” he said to his killers, according to a transcript published in English and Turkish. “I have asthma, do not do it. You’ll suffocate me.”

To those of us who knew Jamal, the year-long slow-drip release of details has been agonizing. I would console myself thinking that the calculated release of information would help lead to justice. Now, the latest releases feel more like morbid attempts to titillate the public and score political points, rather than honest pursuits of accountability. But there is one release that would honor Jamal’s connection to his mother tongue and serve the cause of justice.


Turkish authorities should release the audio of Jamal’s last words in Arabic. Jamal’s fellow Saudis should hear his accent, inflections and distinct Saudi-ness — and they should also hear the voices and tone of Jamal’s killers. I can’t help but think Jamal would have wanted his wish to be heard in Arabic to be honored to the end, so we could hear his unaltered and unedited final plea. Even in death, Jamal deserves to be heard, and his friends, family and countrymen deserve to have the chance to know the truth.

But as I reflect, I am also reminded that this is not enough. For every Arab revolution started by viral images of traumatized Arab bodies, there are tens of thousands of traumas that elicit nothing more than a collective shrug and shake of the head. Last year, when Turkish intelligence provided audio of Jamal’s killing to U.S. officials, President Trump refused to listen to the tapes. But it was perhaps now-former national security adviser John Bolton who laid it out best why he refused to listen to the audio: He told reporters, “You want me to listen to it? . . . What am I going to learn from — I mean, if they were speaking Korean, I wouldn’t learn any more from it, either.” Former defense secretary Jim Mattis also said he had not listened to the tapes because he could not “understand the language.”

Opinion | Jamal Khashoggi's killing violated U.S. norms. The United States must do more to respond.

In response, Columbia University professor Hamid Dabashi penned a poignant essay, in which he asks, “How does one scream in Arabic?” He wrote that Jamal’s last sounds were not in Arabic or any particular language, but rather “were the primordial cries of a people from one end of the Arab and Muslim world to the next, maligned and brutalised by a sustained history of tyrannical abuse.”

From Syria to Yemen to Egypt, the United States has largely turned a deaf ear to the cries of pain, war and abuses by tyrants. It tunes out the screams of people such as Jamal, and pays more attention to the oppressive background rhythm of money changing hands in exchange for weapons — or lucrative consulting contracts. Indeed, in March, the Trump administration moved to send more than $8 billion worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan.


If Jamal were alive, he might have been heartened by the chorus of Arabic cries coming from the streets of Sudan, and more recently the streets of Cairo. This past spring, brave protesters in Sudan helped oust Omar Hassan al-Bashir. And in recent weeks, the people of Egypt have been demanding the removal of that country’s strongman, Abdel Fatah al-Sissi. These Arabic cries of hope and resistance are a demonstration of the power the people can still wield.

And perhaps enduring justice for Jamal will come on the very day that the Saudi people themselves will scream loudly, for the world to hear, that they deserve better, and that the bargain they have been presented with — complicity with the regime or death — is one they will no longer accept.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... ds-arabic/

Turkey vows to keep investigating Jamal Khashoggi's killing
https://kstp.com/news/turkey-vows-to-ke ... g/5510452/

[seemslikeadream]

More
Zev Shalev Retweeted The Washington Post
The Post Editorial page tribute to Jamal Khashoggi on the anniversary of his murder should spur lawmakers to demand the transcripts of the secret calls between Trump and Mohamed Bin Salman. We all suspect there is much more to these calls than we currently know.
https://twitter.com/ZevShalev/status/11 ... 2566107137

[seemslikeadream]

DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE
Trump’s Treacherous Ties to a Murderous Prince
One year ago, a hit team ambushed Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi and carved him up. Will the Trump administration ever come clean on what it knows about the murder?

Christopher Dickey
World News Editor
Updated 10.01.19 8:53PM ET / Published 10.01.19 5:17PM ET
OPINION
Photo Illustration by Kelly Caminero/The Daily Beast/Getty
Warning: This post mentions violent content

PARIS—The documents have been handed over by the Trump administration ever so slowly. There may be hundreds of thousands to sift through, and at the rate things are going, as a federal judge has pointed out, that could take at least eight years. So far, after more than nine months, only a couple of thousand pages have been culled from the intelligence community, the Defense Department, the Justice Department, and the State Department, released reluctantly under the Freedom of Information Act. And most of those pages are blanked out.

The subject is the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist and columnist for The Washington Post. He was killed and butchered—literally butchered, his head cut off, his joints severed—in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, one year ago on October 2. And ever since, the Saudi government and the Trump administration have insisted that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, known as MBS, was oblivious to the plot. Never mind that it was carried out by a well organized and well resourced hit team composed of people from the prince’s entourage.

We know from multiple reports in the press that the Central Intelligence Agency knew better; that it judged with “medium to high confidence” that MBS personally targeted Khashoggi, whose dissident opinions and influential contacts had made him seem a threat to the Saudi state as MBS wants it ruled, which is to say, with absolute power.

‘PUTIN OF THE DESERT’
The Real Reasons Khashoggi Was ‘Wanted, Dead or Alive’

Christopher Dickey

But it is clear the CIA is not going to part with that damning report any time soon, so I asked Amrit Singh with the George Soros-funded Open Society Justice Initiative, who has spearheaded the fight for the documents, the most important thing to be learned from them thus far.

“What the documents reveal,” she said bluntly, “is that the Trump administration’s cover-up of the murder continues.”

Bleeding the Corpse

Other sources have yielded graphic details of the killing and listed the participants, drawing heavily on recordings the Turkish government made with bugs placed in the consulate.

The most complete and reliable public account so far is the report by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary killings, Agnès Callamard, published last June. But over the weekend, the BBC aired an interview with Baroness Helena Kennedy, who was invited to join Callamard’s team listening to the tapes, and who added some grim nuances.

"The horror of listening to somebody's voice, the fear in someone's voice, and that you're listening to something live. It makes a shiver go through your body,” Kennedy said.

We know from the U.N. report and other leaked details that Khashoggi, who had gone to the consulate to pick up some papers certifying his divorce, realized very quickly he was going to be kidnapped or killed. He struggled. He was suffocated. And then he was dismembered by a Saudi forensic pathologist, Dr. Salah al-Tubaigy.

SUNLIGHT
Exposing Trump’s Khashoggi Coverup

Christopher Dickey

What Kennedy recorded in her notes injects an added bit of horror to an already grotesque scene. The doctor apparently was trying to be nonchalant, half-joking about what was to come, about “the sacrificial animal.”

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The doctor talks about doing autopsies, which are usually on a table. “He says, 'I often play music when I'm cutting cadavers. And sometimes I have a coffee and a cigar at hand,'" Kennedy told the BBC. “You can hear them laughing."

There really was not much doubt about the way the hit team expected things to play out, little question that they’d be taking Khashoggi back to Saudi Arabia alive.

"It's the first time in my life, I will have to cut [up] pieces on the ground," al-Tubaigy said, according to Kennedy’s notes. "Even if you are a butcher you hang the animal up to do so."

But there was no place to bleed out Khashoggi like a slaughtered sheep or camel, so the floor of an office in the consulate had been covered in plastic.

The Litmus Test

In some form, perhaps a bit more sanitized, all this gore must be in the CIA report and other documents currently withheld by the Trump administration. But thanks to leaks from the Turks, the general picture of what happened was available to the press and the public everywhere in the world by the end of October last year.

By mid-November, after changing stories multiple times, the Saudi Public Prosecutor’s Office was announcing officially that 11 suspects in the Khashoggi murder had been indicted and five of them charged with murder, but no names were given except to say that MBS knew nothing about the crime. His foreign minister followed up by denouncing a “vicious” campaign to politicize the assassination.

When CBS interviewed MBS just last week, it didn’t really advance the story. He acknowledged “responsibility” but not guilt, and the trials that were supposed to have begun in January have remained completely opaque.

The UN’s Agnès Callamard summed up the inadequacy of MBS’s recent declarations in a thread on Twitter. “The identity of the killers and planners point to a far closer relationship between them and him than he is prepared to admit,” she wrote Monday. “The operation could not have been implemented with such flagrant confidence, resourcing and then—to this day impunity—without State sanction at the highest level.”

“The identity of the killers and planners point to a far closer relationship between them and [Mohammed bin Salman] than he is prepared to admit.”
— UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary killings, Agnès Callamard
So, no, I didn’t find anything new about the actual murder as I leafed through hundreds of pages of American cables and emails from late 2018. But I did find something else that hadn’t struck me before.

It is a measure of the fear that Mohammed bin Salman imposes not only on his people but on his neighbors that defending his personal innocence in the Khashoggi case quickly became a litmus test for loyalty and friendship on an international level.

Many of the State Department documents obtained by the Open Society Justice Initiative are round-ups of reaction in the Arab world, and what we see is governments, directly or through official media, genuflecting before MBS, the rising son of Saudi Arabia’s fading King Salman.

The government of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who seized power with Saudi backing in 2013, was especially obsequious. The heavily censored press ran coordinated coverage on October 29 “proclaiming the strength and importance of the Egypt-Saudi alliance,” one State Department cable noted before pointing out some of the headlines, “Egypt and Saudi Arabia, part and parcel,” was typical, and then there was this flowery gem: “The rains of Cairo irrigate the date palms of Riyadh.”

Barely three weeks after Khashoggi’s murder, a Future Investment Initiative conference, meant to be a sort of “Davos in the Desert,” was held in Riyadh. MBS, the driving force behind it, was also the guest of honor. Many American and European companies had dropped out because of the murder allegations, and U.S. embassy personnel were not allowed to attend. But those people who did show up seemed frantic to demonstrate their enthusiasm for MBS with standing ovations.

Mohammed bin Rashid, the ruler of Dubai, went one step further, posting what the U.S. embassy cable calls an “impassioned poem” on Twitter: “Do not heed the noisemakers [also translated as ‘screaming voices’], let them make noise,” it concluded. “May you thrive and be safe, and may you win your bets.”

Feelings

A month later, in late November, President Donald Trump was still being asked questions about the slaughter of Jamal Khashoggi, and while he couldn’t compose a poem to obscure the facts, he could weave his responses into a dense, inconclusive fog, as shown in a White House press pool report in the documents handed over by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Asked if failure to penalize Saudi Arabia for the murder sent a message to other countries they could do as they please, Trump rambled on about how great the Saudis are at keeping the price of gas down—so great that he, Donald Trump, is blamed for traffic jams. “Can you believe this one?”

“But very importantly,” Trump said, “they’re investing billions of dollars, they’re buying their equipment from us. And remember this: they don’t have to buy from us. They could buy from Russia, and they could buy from China.”

When the pool reporter said, “The CIA has concluded...,” Trump cut him off. “No, they did not. They did not come to a conclusion. They have feelings, certain ways, but—I have the report.

"They have not concluded. Nobody’s concluded. I don’t know if anyone could conclude that the crown prince did it. But I will say this, whether he did or whether he didn’t, he denies it vehemently. His father denies, the king, vehemently. The CIA doesn’t say they did it. They do point out certain things, and in pointing out those things, you can conclude that maybe he did or maybe he didn’t. But that was another part of the false reporting. Because a lot of you said yesterday that they said he did it. Well they didn’t say that. They said he might’ve done it. That’s a big difference.”

Trump went on about the Saudis “vehemently denying it” then segued to “we have hundreds of thousands of jobs. Do people really want me to give up hundreds of thousands of jobs, and frankly if we went by this standard, we wouldn’t be able to have anybody as an ally. Because look at what happens all over the world… Maybe the world should be held accountable because the world is a vicious place. The world is a very, very vicious place… Till this happened, a lot of people were saying a lot of good things about the crown prince. So he strongly denies it, he denies it. And my policy is very simply: America First, Keep America Great Again. And that’s what I’m doing and we're doing better than anyone thought possible… Have a happy Thanksgiving!”

The short version of all that? Mohammed bin Salman won his bets.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-tr ... ref=scroll

[seemslikeadream]

Opinion: Trump And Pompeo Have Enabled A Saudi Cover-Up Of The Khashoggi Killing
Aaron David Miller Richard Sokolsky

In the weeks following the death of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, President Trump spent more time praising Saudi Arabia as a very important ally than he did reacting to the killing.
Hasan Jamali/AP
Aaron David Miller (@aarondmiller2) is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former State Department Middle East analyst, adviser and negotiator in Republican and Democratic administrations. He is the author most recently of the End of Greatness: Why America Can't Have (and Doesn't Want) Another Great President.

Richard Sokolsky, a nonresident senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, worked in the State Department for six different administrations and was a member of the secretary of state's Office of Policy Planning from 2005 to 2015.


It has been a year since Saudi journalist and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi entered Saudi Arabia's Consulate in Istanbul where he was slain and dismembered. There is still no objective or comprehensive Saudi or American accounting of what occurred, let alone any real accountability.

The Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's admission in a recent CBS interview that he takes "full responsibility," while denying foreknowledge of the killing or that he ordered it, sweeps under the rug the lengths to which the Saudis have gone to obscure the truth about their involvement in the killing and cover-up.

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The Saudi campaign of obfuscation, denial and cover-up would never have gotten off the ground had it not been for the Trump administration's support over the past year. The president and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo not only refused to distance themselves from the crown prince, known by his initials MBS, but also actively worked to relegitimize him. The Saudis killed Khashoggi but Trump acquiesced in the cover-up and worked hard to protect the U.S.-Saudi relationship and soften the crown prince's pariah status. In short, without Trump, the attempted makeover — such as it is — would not have been possible.

The Saudis killed Khashoggi but Trump acquiesced in the cover-up and worked hard to protect the U.S.-Saudi relationship and soften the crown prince's pariah status.
Weak administration response

The administration's weak and feckless response to Khashoggi's killing was foreshadowed a year before it occurred. In May 2017, in an unusual break with precedent, Trump visited Saudi Arabia on his inaugural presidential trip; gave his son-in-law the authority to manage the MBS file, which he did with the utmost secrecy; and made it unmistakably clear that Saudi money, oil, arm purchases and support for the administration's anti-Iranian and pro-Israeli policies would elevate the U.S.-Saudi "special relationship" to a new level.

Predictably, therefore, the administration's reaction to Khashoggi's killing was shaped by a desire to manage the damage and preserve the relationship. In the weeks following Khashoggi's death, Trump spent more time praising Saudi Arabia as a very important ally, especially as a purchaser of U.S. weapons and goods, than he did reacting to the killing. Trump vowed to get to the bottom of the Khashoggi killing but focused more on defending the crown prince, saying this was another example of being "guilty before being proven innocent."

Those pledges to investigate and impose accountability would continue to remain hollow. Over the past year, Trump and Pompeo have neither criticized nor repudiated Saudi actions that have harmed American interests in the Middle East. Two months after Khashoggi's death, the administration, in what Pompeo described as an "initial step," imposed sanctions on 17 Saudi individuals implicated in the killing. But no others have been forthcoming, and the visa restrictions that were imposed are meaningless because none of the sanctioned Saudis would be foolish enough to seek entry into the United States.

What's more, the administration virtually ignored a congressional resolution imposing sanctions on the Saudis for human rights abuses and vetoed another bipartisan resolution that would have ended U.S. military assistance to Saudi Arabia's inhumane military campaign in Yemen.

The Saudis opened a trial in January of 11 men implicated in the killing, but the proceedings have been slow and secretive, leading the United Nations' top human rights expert to declare that "the trial underway in Saudi Arabia will not deliver credible accountability." Despite accusations that the crown prince's key adviser Saud al-Qahtani was involved in the killing, he's still advising MBS, has not stood trial and will likely escape punishment. A year later, there are still no reports of convictions or serious punishment.

Legitimizing Mohammed bin Salman

The Trump administration has not only given the crown prince a pass on the Khashoggi killing, but it has also worked assiduously to remove his pariah status and rehabilitate his global image. Barely two months after the 2018 slaying, Trump was exchanging pleasantries with the crown prince at the Group of 20 summit in Buenos Aires and holding out prospects of spending more time with him. Then this past June, at the G-20 in Osaka, Japan, Trump sang his praises while dodging questions about the killing. "It's an honor to be with the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, a friend of mine, a man who has really done things in the last five years in terms of opening up Saudi Arabia," Trump said.

And you can bet that when Saudi Arabia hosts the G-20, scheduled to be held in its capital of Riyadh in November 2020, the Trump administration will be smiling as its rehab project takes another step in its desired direction.

What the U.S. should have done

Trump has failed to impose any serious costs or constraints on Saudi Arabia for the killing of a U.S. newspaper columnist who resided in Virginia or for the kingdom's aggressive policies, from Yemen to Qatar. In the wake of the Khashoggi killing, the administration should have made it unmistakably clear, both publicly and privately, that it expected a comprehensive and credible accounting and investigation. It should have suspended high-level contacts and arms sales with the kingdom for a period of time. And to make the point, the administration should have supported at least one congressional resolution taking the Saudis to task, in addition to triggering the Magnitsky Act, which would have required a U.S. investigation; a report to Congress; and sanctions if warranted.

Back to business as usual

The dark stain of the crown prince's apparent involvement in Khashoggi's death will not fade easily. But for Trump and Pompeo, it pales before the great expectations they still maintain for the kingdom to confront and contain their common enemy, Iran, as well as support the White House's plan for Middle East peace, defeat jihadists in the region and keep the oil spigot open.

Most of these goals are illusory. Saudi Arabia is a weak, fearful and unreliable ally. The kingdom has introduced significant social and cultural reforms but has imposed new levels of repression and authoritarianism. Its reckless policies toward Yemen and Qatar have expanded, not contracted, opportunities for Iran, while the Saudi military has demonstrated that, even after spending billions to buy America's most sophisticated weapons, it still can't defend itself without American help.

Meanwhile, recent attacks on critical Saudi oil facilities that the U.S. blames on Iran have helped rally more American and international support for the kingdom.

When it comes to the U.S.-Saudi relationship and the kingdom's callous reaction to Khashoggi's killing, the president and his secretary of state have been derelict in their duty: They have not only failed to advance American strategic interests but also undermined America's values in the process.
https://www.npr.org/2019/10/02/76578001 ... ium=social

[seemslikeadream]

One year after Khashoggi’s brutal murder: business as usual?
So far, not a single Saudi official has been found guilty or punished for this crime.

Medea Benjamin
Jamal Khashoggi (AP/Hasan Jamali)
Heinous. Savage. Ghastly. It’s hard to find the words to describe the act of luring journalist Jamal Khashoggi into a Saudi consulate in Istanbul, suffocating him, chopping him up and dissolving his bones. Yet a year later, governments and businesspeople around the world are eager to forgive and forget — or already have.

So far, not a single Saudi official has been found guilty or punished for this crime. The Saudi government has put 11 officials on trial, but these trials, which began in January and drag on behind closed doors, are a mockery of justice. The government is prosecuting lower-level officials but not the top guns who are truly responsible. The defendants have not been named, but it is known that Saud al-Qahtani, a former top aide to Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MbS) and the alleged mastermind of the murder, is not a defendant and the government refuses to say where he is.

And what about the crown prince himself? In a PBS interview that aired on September 25,MbS accepted responsibility for the killing because it happened, he said, “under my watch” — but he denied having prior knowledge. The CIA, however, concluded in November that the prince, who maintains tight control in the kingdom, likely ordered the killing. A report by United Nations Special Rapporteur Agnes Callamard said there was “credible evidence” linking him to the murder and cover-up of what she said was undoubtedly a “state killing.”Still, the trials continue even though they do nothing to indict the person who gave the orders.

When Khashoggi was murdered, the outrage had a major effect on U.S. congressional support for the Saudis, manifested by growing opposition to the U.S. support for the catastrophic Saudi war in Yemen. Several key Republicans turned against MbS, not in response to the humanitarian crisis in Yemen but in response to the public outcry against Khashoggi’s horrific murder. A broad-based coalition of peace, human rights and humanitarian groups was able to convince a majority in both the House and the Senate to cut off support for the Saudi war in Yemen, a necessary step to hold MbS accountable for his complete disregard for human life. Even some of the most hawkish Republicans stepped up in response. Lindsey Graham, for example, called MbS a “wrecking ball” and voted to end support for the war, explaining in a statement, “I changed my mind because I’m pissed. . . . The way the administration had handled… [Khashoggi’s murder] is just not acceptable.” The bills were vetoed by President Trump, but Congress is still trying to force the president’s hand by including an amendment in the must-pass military funding bill (NDAA).

On the heels of Khashoggi’s death, businesses, embarrassed by their Saudi connections, started pulling out of deals. Dozens of companies and notables, from the New York Times to Uber’s CEO to the head of the World Bank, decided to skip the major annual Saudi Future Investment Initiative, also known as “Davos in the Desert.” Talent agent Endeavor returned a $400 million investment from Saudi Arabia. Several think tanks, including the Brookings Institution and the Middle East Institute, announced that they would no longer accept Saudi funding. In the past year, five PR firms — Glover Park Group, BGR Group, Harbour Group, CGCN Group and Gibson, Dunn & Crutche — have severed ties with the kingdom. At the behest of groups including the Human Rights Foundation, singer Nicki Minaj canceled her performance in Saudi Arabia, citing concerns about the treatment of women, the LGBTQ community and freedom of expression. Freedom Forward was successful in getting the New York Public Library to cancel its “Youth Forum” with MbS’s charity, the Misk Foundation.


Still, the Saudis have been investing huge sums of money in companies and notables to “rebrand” the kingdom, prompting CODEPINK to launch a full-blown Boycott Saudi Arabia campaign in January. The campaign includes urging entertainers not to perform, asking Vice Media to stop producing promotional/propaganda videos for the Saudis, encouraging Lush Cosmetics to close their Saudi stores, and pushing the G20 nations to reconsider their decision to hold their 2020 meeting in Saudi Arabia. The campaign’s long list of targets shows just how much money Saudi invests in whitewashing its crimes and how overreaching its influence is.

While human rights groups work to hold the private sector accountable, the biggest obstacle to holding Saudi Arabia accountable is the Trump administration’s continued support. Trump has focused on Saudi Arabia’s key role as a purchaser of U.S. weapons and an ally against Iran. In the wake of the September 14 attacks on the kingdom’s oil infrastructure, Trump announced the deployment of 200 troops and Patriot missiles to Saudi Arabia to bolster its defenses against Iran. It is also Trump who vetoed legislation to end military assistance for the Saudi war on Yemen on three different occasions and went so far as to declare a state of emergency to sell $8 billion in weapons to the Saudis while bypassing congressional disapproval.

Trump has not only stood by MbS but also pushed for his rehabilitation on the world stage. With the “Davos in the Desert” Future Investment Initiative taking place against this year, on October 29-31, Jared Kushner is expected to lead a robust U.S. delegation. Big banks and investment firms, including Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, and Citigroup, are once again lining up to attend. It seems the money to be made in the anticipated initial public offering of the world’s wealthiest company, the Saudi oil company Aramco — valued at between $1.5 trillion and $2 trillion — is just too enticing.

Khashoggi himself was critical of the international community’s unwillingness to take substantive steps to hold the Saudi regime accountable. In a column about the need for freedom of speech in the Arab world, he remarked that the repressive actions by Arab governments “no longer carry the consequence of a backlash from the international community. Instead, these actions may trigger condemnation quickly followed by silence.” The sad irony is that in response to his own murder, governments and private interests are proving his point.

One year later, their silence has allowed MbS to tighten his grip on power and increase repression against political rivals and women activists. It has given the green light for governments around the world to sell weapons to the Saudis to destroy Yemen. It allows businesses to rake in billions in petrodollar investments and foreign entertainers to provide a veneer of normalcy and modernity to the kingdom. Far from being held accountable for Khashoggi’s murder, MbS is thriving — thanks to his rehabilitation by an international community that cares more about money than it does human rights.

In times like this, it’s difficult not to ask oneself: Who is more evil — the maniacal Saudi crown prince responsible for Khashoggi’s murder and the murder of tens of thousands of Yemenis, or the mendacious world leaders and businesspeople who continue to embrace what should be a pariah state?
https://www.salon.com/2019/10/10/one-ye ... l_partner/

[seemslikeadream]

Silicon Valley is snubbing Saudi Arabia’s glitzy conference a year after the Khashoggi killing

Saudi money? Yes. Saudi conference? No.

Theodore SchleiferOct 14, 2019, 7:30am EDT
Empty chairs in a ballroom at the Saudi investment conference last year.
The last day of the Saudi conference last year, which was marred by last-minute cancellations.
GIUSEPPE CACACE/AFP/Getty Images
The challenge at last year’s investment conference in Saudi Arabia was convincing Silicon Valley celebrities not to abruptly cancel. The challenge this year is to convince them to show up at all.

The glitzy Riyadh gala marketed as “Davos in the Desert” is trying to recover from the Saudi government’s brutal murder of dissident Jamal Khashoggi one year ago and the excruciating meltdown of the conference that unfolded in its aftermath. Nearly all tech leaders offered last-minute cancellations and mea culpas as details about Khashoggi leaked out.

This year, in a sign of the new strains between Silicon Valley and Saudi Arabia — and of just how sensitive tech leaders are to media crises — tech CEOs and investors are snubbing it altogether.

Tech’s elite may have decided not to jet into Riyadh for the Future Investment Initiative at the end of this month, but they have also made a more fundamental decision to keep taking Saudi money. Saudi Arabia has suffered no real consequences in Silicon Valley from the killing of Khashoggi — beyond the terrible optics of being caught on camera smiling at a luxe conference directly after it.

An early copy of the speaker list for the Saudi conference, dated in mid-July and obtained by Recode, shows almost no US tech names among the 70 people who are confirmed to speak at the conference. While the speaker list shows that major players from Wall Street and investors from other parts of the world are indeed planning to be showcased at the Saudi retreat, the Silicon Valley titans that highlighted the agenda just one year ago are nowhere to be found.

Robert Mogielnicki, an expert on Saudi Arabia at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, said the American snubbing of the conference mattered less than the fact that Silicon Valley companies like SAP and Amazon Web Services continue to expand in Saudi Arabia, legitimizing the kingdom as a global financial player.

“Even if there’s not high-profile representation from some of these firms, that’s a public face for one or two conferences,” he said. “There are multibillion dollar projects still ongoing or in the pipeline.”

But perception does matter in global politics, especially for the Saudis.

“To have a conference built around three tech-focused themes and not to have a substantial presence from the American technology community, and also European tech as well, I think will be problematic,” Mogielnicki said. “It’s a very visible platform to make some symbolic gesture, and ideally you would want some of the global tech titans in the crowd when you’re making that announcement.”

That roster, confirmed by Recode, of no-shows who planned to go last year includes:

Dara Khosrowshahi, the CEO of Uber.
Steve Case, the former head of AOL who is now a prominent venture capitalist.
Andy Rubin, the controversial founder of the Android operating system.
Vinod Khosla, the outspoken and eccentric venture capitalist.
David Bonderman, the co-founder of TPG.
Brad Keywell, the co-founder of Groupon.
The CEOs of several SoftBank portfolio companies, such as Herman Narula, the CEO of Improbable, and Michael Marks, the CEO of Katerra.
Two other prominent Silicon Valley leaders, Sam Altman and Marc Andreessen, didn’t attend last year’s conference but were announced just before the event as advisory board members to Neom, a future built-to-spec city in Saudi Arabia. Both of them are now no longer listed as Neom advisers and neither is attending this year’s conference.
But in keeping with the new hush-hush culture surrounding this year’s event, representatives for other Silicon Valley leaders who originally planned to attend last year wouldn’t answer questions about whether they’d be at the conference: For instance, Arianna Huffington, Travis Kalanick, and Peter Thiel (or their representatives) didn’t return requests for comment.

A spokesperson for the conference said in a statement that its speakers and attendees would come from “some of the world’s leading businesses and investment institutions and most innovative technology companies.”

Some new tech names have surely been added since July; the conference now boasts over 200 planned but unannounced speakers.

But other speakers have dropped out, too. One person from tech who was listed on the July speaker agenda told Recode that he had recently canceled.

“It doesn’t seem that it’s the right place to be. It’s always a balance between the Western world values and local culture which you need to respect. But there has not been too much progress,” this person said, adding that he didn’t believe “that things will improve.”

The Saudis have also advertised some “confirmed speakers” who were not, in reality, confirmed. Kai-Fu Lee, the former head of Google China, is listed on the July program as a confirmed speaker. But a person familiar with his schedule said he has never committed to attending the event, largely because of the drama surrounding the Saudi conference last year, which forced him to pull out.

The other confirmed tech speakers on the July agenda include Jim Breyer, famous for leading one of the first investments in Facebook; and Rajeev Misra, the head of SoftBank’s Vision Fund. Questions abound about the plans of Misra’s boss, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, who is in the process of trying to convince the Saudis to back his second $100 billion Vision Fund. SoftBank officials declined to comment on whether Son would attend the conference.

Most folks who attend the Saudi conference typically have — or seek — some ties to Saudi money. Confirmed speakers include executives from global investment banks vying for business around the IPO of Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s massive state-owned oil company.

Other speakers reflect the reality that while American business may have drawn away from the Saudi government, other countries have flocked to Saudi Arabia in recent years. Only 17 of the 70 confirmed speakers, as of July, hail from the United States; 10 come from India and eight from China. Sources say that Chinese investors in the past year have been especially present in Saudi Arabia, backing Saudi startups and venture firms at a more aggressive pace as the US business community grows skittish.

“There is a recognition on the part of Saudi Arabia — in bringing in tech interests — that it’s going to have to be more of a diversified effort and it’s going to have to bring that in from other sources: from Russia, from Asia,” said Mogielnicki. He says the Saudis now must reckon with the fact that they’re “going to have to generate some interest from some other circles here.”

For some American leaders, the conference — now in its third year — “doesn’t feel as relevant,” as one person put it. Some leaders attended the 2017 and 2018 events out of “curiosity” and a desire to integrate the Saudis into the world of high finance, the person said. Now that has happened. Relationships have been forged. It’s just not worth talking about them.

Keeping it quiet

Those from Silicon Valley who are attending are trying their hardest to keep their visits on the down low. Family offices of American billionaires and millionaires who are trying to increase their exposure in the Middle East are still expected to show up and blend in among the thousands of attendees. So are some lesser-known venture capitalists, even if the senior partners from marquee firms are absent.

Other business leaders are expected to possibly get cute with attendance by not technically showing up at the Future Investment Initiative but by taking meetings around Riyadh in the days before or after the conference runs.

This way they are not listed as a speaker and under the klieg lights of media scrutiny but still get the exposure to other dealmakers. In an age when there is more attention than ever paid to Silicon Valley’s relations with foreign dictatorships, few want to risk the negative PR of being associated with the Saudis.

And with some sensitivity to that reality, the Saudis have taken unusually extensive efforts to shield their event from media scrutiny. The conference’s website doesn’t list any details of this year’s event on its “Partners” or “Programs” tabs, merely saying that the information will be coming “soon.” This is highly unusual, given that the event begins in less than three weeks.

Getting away with murder

Conference or no conference, there is little concrete evidence one year after the killing of Khashoggi that Saudi Arabia has suffered any serious consequences from theoretically outraged, socially minded tech leaders. While some venture capitalists say they are now asked more about their foreign ties, scrutiny of Saudi funding has largely receded.

The SoftBank Vision Fund — which is the Saudis’ principal investment vehicle into American startups — has continued to win deals in Silicon Valley, with portfolio company CEOs in interviews largely avoiding comment on Saudi involvement. Outside of the Vision Fund, Saudi Arabian-based venture capital firms have made at least 26 direct investments into American startups in the last three years, according to data from PitchBook.

In fact, more Saudi spending appears en route. The Saudi’s Public Investment Fund, the country’s $320 billion sovereign wealth fund, said earlier this year that it was planning to open an office in San Francisco as part of its effort to develop closer ties with Silicon Valley. It has not yet done so, though, and there has been no update on the timing of that plan.

In the meantime, Sanabil, which is a division of PIF, is likely to open an office on Sand HIll Road, according to a person with knowledge of their plans. Sanabil is also beginning to invest in venture capital firms as a limited partner, according to a second person.

The only consequences that might come are because of the Saudis’ increasingly poor track record. Several investors who are critical of the Saudi footprint in Silicon Valley argued that it would not be a newfound sense of morals that would lead to any rejection of Saudi cash. Instead it would be purely a selfish realization that Saudi and SoftBank money is bad for companies, a point driven home by every new Saudi startup flameout — such as SoftBank-backed WeWork.

In short, as one investor put it, WeWork has hurt the Saudis’ influence much more than Jamal Khashoggi.

“We often get asked where our money comes from, and it’s a competitive advantage for us,” said Ali Partovi, the head of Neo, a VC fund and mentorship program. “Startups are choosy about their investors, and smart startups prefer VCs known for mentorship and connections over losing money and murdering journalists.”
https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/10/14/2 ... e-speakers

Khashoggi fiancée meets with lawmakers seeking 'justice and accountability' for his slaying
Tal Axelrod10/18/19 03:15 PM EDT
The former fiancée of slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi met with lawmakers on Capitol Hill Thursday to lobby Congress to hold those responsible for his killing last year accountable.

“I am here for one reason and one reason only — to bring justice and accountability for Jamal, my beloved who was brutally murdered by Saudi agents. The Trump Administration has failed to take any significant action to hold anyone accountable for this heinous crime, so I am here to ask conscientious members of Congress to ensure accountability and real consequences for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi,” Hatice Cengiz said in a statement released Friday.

Khashoggi, a Saudi-born columnist for The Washington Post who lived in Virginia, was brutally slain and dismembered in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul just over a year ago while trying to get documents for his marriage to Cengiz.

The intelligence community has said it is confident Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered Khashoggi’s killing due to his criticism of the Saudi Royal Court, but President Trump has refrained from directly blaming the prince for the death.

Cengiz has teamed up with Democracy in the Arab World Now (DAWN), a group Khashoggi founded, to promote democracy and to push international leaders to seek justice over the 2018 slaying.

“Our clients, Ms. Cengiz and DAWN have asked us to pursue accountability in all its forms,” said former Ambassador Keith Harper, who the team has hired as its attorney. “We are exploring all options and we are on the Hill today to ask our nation’s lawmakers to hold accountable Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and other Saudi officials who are responsible for this awful crime.”

Cengiz also met with lawmakers shortly after Khashoggi’s murder, but later wrote she is disappointed with inaction from Capitol Hill in the face of a near-unanimous consensus that the crown prince ordered the killing.

“His loss was still fresh in the minds of the Democrats and Republicans I met. Individually, they all expressed their sympathies, spoke to me about how perhaps some progress might be made in the days ahead. Yet I sensed that they also felt embarrassed: No solid action has been taken yet,” she wrote in a June op-ed in The New York Times.

Cengiz Thursday met with Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Reps. Tom Malinowski (D-N.J.) and Karen Bass (D-Calif.).

Saudi Arabia has denied any allegations that the royal court was involved in Khashoggi's death.
https://thehill.com/homenews/media/4664 ... bility-for

[seemslikeadream]

Wikistrat
Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Jan 30, 2019 9:18 am
viewtopic.php?f=33&t=41568

Inside the World of Cambridge Analytica
Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Mar 19, 2018 2:30 pm
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=40900&p=678650&hilit=Cambridge+Analytica.#p678650

Robert J. DeNault
‏

HUGE scoop from @forensicnewsnet. Leaked docs show just weeks before Jamal Khashoggi was murdered, senior officials at a private Israeli intelligence firm internally said they “recruited” him. Employees grew suspicious. Now they’re sounding alarms. THREAD.

11:33 AM - 22 Oct 2019


For starters, Wikistrat is a firm shrouded in mystery. It purports to be an intelligence think tank, but @thedailybeast reports it’s really an intelligence gathering firm.

Its owner, Joel Zamel, operates another Israeli intelligence firm that does social media manipulation. That firm (Psy Group) reportedly pitched the Trump campaign in August, 2016 on social media manipulation to help Trump get elected.

Due to the alleged social media campaign pitch, Robert Mueller and Senate investigators have investigated Zamel, Psy Group and Wikistrat for interference in the 2016 election.

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Shortly before Trump’s inauguration, Zamel also allegedly met with powerful Saudis, including the General who orchestrated Khashoggi’s murder. Both the Saudis and Zamel met with Trump team and offered a back channel to Mohammed bin Salman.


Then, just a few months later in March 2017, Zamel met again with the same Saudi officials, this time in Riyadh.

They allegedly discussed plans for the Saudi government to pay intelligence firms like Zamel’s to assassinate “enemies” of bin Salman.


Which brings us to the explosive documents leaked to @forensicnewsnet. Among them is correspondence between a senior official and employee. The senior official directs the employee to “recruit” journalists from media outlets.

All the outlets had been critical of bin Salman.


The senior official asks that the employee recruit candidates similar to one who had already been recruited by Wikistrat: Jamal Khashoggi. This was 12 weeks before his murder.

The employee tried to figure out what the project was related to, but could never substantiate that the project really existed. It was referred to as “KSA Project.” KSA is a frequently used acronym for “Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”


Just 12 weeks later, Khashoggi traveled to Istanbul, Turkey. He was murdered inside the Saudi consulate. His body was never recovered.

After Khashoggi’s murder made national news, an employee asked the senior official whether this was the same Khashoggi they had “recruited.” The official then denied ever recruiting Khashoggi in the first place, despite the fact that he said as much weeks earlier.

Wikistrat’s revenues in the months following Kashoggi’s murder went up 300%.

The employee told @forensicnewsnet that the senior official had also indirectly suggested to the employee that he/she should recruit Ali Al Ahmad, another Saudi journalist critical of bin Salman.

Al Ahmad, who spoke to @forensicnewsnet, was targeted in 2018 by the same General who allegedly orchestrated Khashoggi’s death. The General tried to coerce Al Ahmad to return to Saudi Arabia. He did not do so out of fear.


What does it mean? Wikistrat’s owner allegedly met with Saudis about assassinating “enemies” of bin Salman. In the weeks before the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, Wikistrat officials discussed having “recruited” him and sought connections to other journalists critical of bin Salman.

The devices of Khashoggi’s associate were also reportedly hacked using Israeli cyber intelligence software.


If Wikistrat, Zamel or Israeli intelligence has connections to the murder of Khashoggi, we need to know about it. Khashoggi was an innocent journalist murdered to send a message to other reporters not to publish negative facts about Saudi Arabia.


Government committees/agencies need to start asking questions about Wikistrat, Psy Group, and Zamel in the open. Enough with the closed-door approach. These groups are associated with a wide variety of suspicious activity, including potentially murder. Get some answers.

https://twitter.com/robertjdenault/stat ... 2943656960

Israeli private intelligence firm claimed recruitment of Khashoggi prior to murder

Wikistrat, a hybrid geopolitical analysis/intelligence gathering company connected to Saudi and Israeli leadership, claimed they “recruited” slain Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi shortly before his murder, and approximately one year after the firm’s owner met with senior advisors to the Saudi government.

Thousands of documents obtained exclusively by Forensic News include correspondences between a senior leader of Wikistrat and a lower-level employee that took place in summer 2018 in which the senior leader wrote that Khashoggi had recently been “recruited” by the firm and encouraged the employee to solicit similar journalists for an unspecified Wikistrat project.

Khashoggi’s “recruitment” by Wikistrat occurred just one year after a small group of businessmen, including Wikistrat owner Joel Zamel, met with senior advisors to the Saudi government. According to the New York Times report, the men allegedly discussed using private intelligence firms to assassinate political enemies of the newly-minted Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammad bin Salman.

While Zamel reportedly declined such offers, messages show his firm Wikistrat later recruited Khashoggi for a confidential project with unclear purposes for an unknown client.

Shortly after Khashoggi’s murder, the same Wikistrat senior leader who said Khashoggi had been “recruited” by the firm weeks earlier explicitly denied the same when pressed by employees.

Wikistrat

Wikistrat was founded in 2009 by Zamel, Daniel Green, and former Israeli military intelligence officer Elad Schaffer. Described as “crowd sourced consultancy”, Wikistrat hires experts who produce reports for clients, often government agencies and major corporations. Analysts run simulations, war game scenarios, and risk-monitoring for a wide variety of international clientele.


Original incorporation documents for Wikistrat in Israel.
Zamel, originally born in Australia, moved to Israel to obtain a Master’s degree in Government at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya. After entering the clandestine market of private intelligence, Zamel founded Wikistrat and another private intelligence firm, Psy Group, both founded in Israel. Psy Group had a convoluted corporate structure which ran through Cyprus and ended up in the British Virgin Islands, obscuring true ownership of the company and creating an air of mystery around its operations.

Psy Group achieved some level of notoriety for being investigated by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Mueller was reportedly probing a plan pitched by the firm which was designed to assist the Trump 2016 presidential campaign with social media manipulation. The plan would allegedly be bankrolled by Saudi and UAE leaders. Zamel and both firms, Wikistrat and Psy Group, have also been the target of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s bipartisan investigation into 2016 election interference.

Khashoggi

Jamal Khashoggi was a Saudi Arabian author and outspoken dissident of Saudi government oppression. In 2017, he relocated to the United States due to increasing fear for his safety. Khashoggi’s concerns proved prescient, as shortly after his departure bin Salman’s government began implementing a severe crackdown on opposition speech and organization. After arriving in the United States, Khashoggi served as a contributor to the Washington Post, writing articles about his home country and the negative impact of bin Salman’s politics.

On October 2, 2018, Khashoggi and his fiancé headed to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, to complete divorce paperwork related to his previous marriage. Khashoggi had attempted to complete the same paperwork inside the Saudi embassy in Washington but was told he had to travel to Turkey in order to obtain the documents.

Khashoggi entered the Saudi consulate while his fiancé waited outside. He was never seen again. CCTV footage from outside the consulate captured the moment the journalist was last publicly seen. Numerous reports from media outlets later confirmed by Western intelligence agencies indicated Khashoggi was murdered inside the consulate. After a struggle, Khashoggi was disposed of in morbid fashion: one Saudi assassin listened to music as he dismembered Khashoggi’s body. His remains have never been found.


Khashoggi entering the consulate. Credit: CNN.
American intelligence officials concluded bin Salman himself ordered the assassination, which was carried out by Saudi agents inside the consulate. The purpose of the murder was to silence Khashoggi and intimidate other dissidents.

In the days and weeks that followed Khashoggi’s murder, friends and associates of the journalist claimed he had been working on a secret social media project to push back against Saudi bots and trolls parroting government messaging and defending the bin Salman. Khashoggi wired his associate, Omar Abdulaziz, $5,000 for the project dubbed “electronic bees” in the days before being lured to Turkey.

12 days before his murder, Khashoggi tweeted public support for the bee project, saying “what do you know about bees? They love their home country and defend it with truth and rights.”

“He wrote a lot critically before in newspapers but it was only when we started to organise the opposition [with the Bee movement] that [the regime] got upset,” Abdulaziz told the Independent in 2018. Saudi agents imprisoned many members of Abdulaziz’s family, referring to the bee project as the primary justification for their detention.

Prelude

Wikistrat “recruited” Khashoggi for the confidential project approximately twelve weeks prior to the murder, and one year after founder Joel Zamel attended a meeting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where Saudi leaders allegedly proposed assassinating dissidents. Another attendee of the meeting was Saudi Gen. Ahmed al-Asiri, the individual who is accused of orchestrating Khashoggi’s murder.

According to a Wikistrat employee who asked to remain anonymous to due to fear of retaliation:

“I was tasked by my supervisor to create an experts list of scholars, professionals, and businessmen from the Middle East, either Middle East nationals or expatriates,” “They wanted me to focus on Saudi nationals especially. ”

[The supervisor] said that Wikistrat had already recruited one Saudi for the project, Jamal Khashoggi.”

The senior Wikistrat leader directed the employee to find top Middle East experts related to organizations like the ME Institute, the Middle East Eye, or the Middle East Journal. Each has been critical of bin Salman’s regime.

The senior Wikistrat executive is not being named because one employee feared retribution if information that could lead to their identity became public.

message from a Wikistrat executive saying that the company had recruited Khashoggi.
Recreation of the message sent from a Wikistrat executive to a Wikistrat employee regarding Khashoggi.
The employee told Forensic News that he/she was unable to discern the true purpose of the project. One senior Wikistrat executive, according to internal messages, referred to the Saudi Arabia project as simply, “KSA Project”. “KSA” is an oft-used acronym for “Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”

The message did not explain the reason the journalists were being sought. The resumes of the journalists are inconsistent with the professional backgrounds of Wikistrat’s other analysts, most of whom are academics, former intelligence officials, or foreign relations experts. The murky nature of the project and the lack of any clear answers regarding its existence became extremely concerning to the employee.

Fallout

Days after Khashoggi was murdered, internal Wikistrat communications show the same senior official who told an employee that Khashoggi had been recruited by the firm earlier in the summer explicitly changed course, suddenly denying Khashoggi was ever recruited in the first place. When asked by another employee about Khashoggi’s recruitment, the same senior official responded simply, “No. He was on a list of people we wanted to bring in, but he wasn’t a member of the community.” This surprised the employee and added to his/her concerns.

The senior Wikistrat executive denying just days after Khashoggi's murder that Khashoggi had been recruitedAfter Khashoggi was murdered, other Saudi experts who signed on to help Wikistrat with the confidential project said they never heard from Wikistrat again, despite filling out registration forms in order to work with the firm.

Cynthia Farahat, a Middle East scholar and author, was one of the experts recruited by Wikistrat:

“In August 2018, a Wikistrat recruiter contacted me and asked me to become one of their experts and asked for my resume,” she told Forensic News. “He said that experts, ‘will participate in Wikistrat’s projects involving Saudi Arabian topics and the MENA region in general.’ That’s all I ever heard about this project. I sent Wikistrat my resume and I followed all their instructions, but they never gave me any registration information or contacted me after that.”

Farahat clicked on a link sent by Wikistrat and filled out a registration form as part of the onboarding process, but never heard from them again.

“It is indeed bizarre since they were the ones who asked me to become one of their experts,” she said.

Wikistrat also recruited Raghad Hadidi, an instructor at German Jordanian University, for the KSA Project. She never received any follow-up instructions from Wikistrat either, despite agreeing to work with them as an expert:

“I was just interested in doing something in journalism since I am a lecturer at a university in Jordan and I teach communication and politics and philosophy and business.”

“I never got a task or heard from Wikistrat so I just forgot about it,” she said.

The lack of follow-up action by Wikistrat officials added fuel to the employee’s suspicions about the true intentions of the Saudi Arabia project.

“Usually, we give people their login information after they’ve registered with us,” the employee said. “Typically, we invite people to a [simulation], review their information if they are interested in participating, sometimes we interview them through Skype, and give them their login information after they’re approved. I found it strange that they would approve and register these people but not give them their login information. That isn’t typical.”

Revelation

When asked for comment on this story, an attorney for Joel Zamel, Marc Mukasey, did not comment but directed Forensic News to another attorney. That attorney did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The public relations team at Wikistrat responded to request for comment from Forensic News by confirming key parts of this story, including the fact that the firm had worked with Khashoggi, whom they referred to informally as “Jamal.” That official’s statement is inconsistent with the prior communication regarding Khashoggi’s work, “No. He was on a list of people we wanted to bring in, but he wasn’t a member of the community.” Now, Wikistrat states Khashoggi actually was a member after all.

The Wikistrat PR team told Forensic News via email that their comments were off the record; however, Forensic News agreed to no such terms. This, combined with a legal threat from Wikistrat in the event of the publication of this article, encouraged us to publish the PR team’s statement in full:

As you know the company came under a wave of media scrutiny and speculation over the past year – raising to the level of ridiculous conspiracy theories and absurd allegations. You are already responsible for publishing some of these stories, with an incredibly high proportion of false claims connecting totally unrelated dots.

Wikistrat manages a community of Thousands of subject matter experts, including hundreds on the Middle-East. The company also manages dozens of sub-communities in different countries, industries and topics. Wikistrat has conducted many hundreds of simulations over the years, dealing with many countries across the Middle East.

Specifically, the Saudi community existed within the “Middle East Desk” for years, and was broken down into country-based communities in 2017 as we continue to specialize and broaden our expert communities per desk.

Jamal, similar to many of our analysts, worked with many organizations and media outlets. We mourn his death and were shocked by his horrible murder.

There is no story here. He was not hired “weeks before”, he was one of many analysts within the community for a while. None of these individuals you mentioned were ever in touch with Jamal. We do not discuss details about analysts in such sensitive situations, or their work, for the sake of their safety and their family’s safety.

No, the company does not have – nor has ever had, a working relationship with KSA. All our analysts are contracted for providing opinions, forecasting, open-source reports and collaboratively analyzing complex issues along with other contributors from around the world.

Publishing anything insinuating otherwise, or associating the company in any way with this heinous crime, would be damaging to the company, completely unfounded, and be considered grounds for legal action against you personally and your media outlet.

Our legal counsel will be in touch with you directly in the coming days. We urge you to avoid publishing anything before then.

Origins

Though Wikistrat bills itself as “the world’s first crowdsourced consultancy”, where analysts run simulations and potential wargame outcomes, an investigative report by the Daily Beast in 2018 concluded: “Wikistrat is, for all intents and purposes, an Israeli firm; and that the company’s work was not just limited to analysis. It also engaged in intelligence collection.”

That investigation found that nearly three-quarters of Wikistrat’s clients were foreign governments.


Wikistrat clients. Credit: The Daily Beast
A Wikistrat researcher told Forensic News that he/she witnessed a pattern of deeply disturbing events between 2016-2018, primarily regarding the firm’s work with Russia and Saudi Arabia. The researcher observed random deletion of simulations conducted by analysts, contradictory statements by company leaders, an “extreme” level of secrecy regarding clients, and obfuscation about the true purpose of company projects.


Joel Zamel Wikistrat staff image
Connections to Trump

Wikistrat also has deep links to Trump associates. One of the earliest members of Wikistrat’s advisory council was John Hannah, a Bush administration official who worked on foreign policy issues in Iraq. Hannah later became a Trump Transition team official at the Department of State. Hannah’s associates include George Nader, a Middle Eastern businessman who organized meetings between the Trump team and Zamel, as well as other leaders like Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Nader is currently heading to trial in Virginia facing charges of child pornography.

During his time working with Hannah in 2010, Nader was also hired by Erik Prince, the CEO of the private mercenary firm Blackwater, to help it “generate business deals in Iraq.” Prince, who is the brother of Betsy DeVos, Trump’s Secretary of Education, also tried to set up a secret back channel between the Trump campaign and a Russian banker in the Seychelles in January, 2017. Prince later lied to Congress about his contacts with the Trump campaign and the Russian banker, but has not yet faced formal perjury charges.

Zamel has separate links to other members of Trump’s orbit. Former National Security Advisor and now-convicted felon, Lt. General Michael Flynn, was reportedly approached by Zamel through Flynn’s associate, Bijan Kian, with an invitation for Flynn to join Wikistrat’s advisory council. Kian himself was recently convicted on charges of conspiring to hide foreign lobbying work and illegally acting as a foreign agent, based in part on information uncovered by Robert Mueller. Flynn later pled guilty to lying to a law enforcement officer but avoided charges relating to illegal lobbying he may have done on behalf of the Turkish government.

Recent reporting also suggests that a Trump phone call with bin Salman, which took place in the immediate wake of Khashoggi’s murder, was covered up by White House officials, similarly to the phone call between Trump and the President of Ukraine at the heart of the ongoing impeachment inquiry. Multiple reports indicate that the contents of the call were hidden from officials who would typically see it. CNN reports this conversation was kept ‘very secret’ and that officials took the extraordinary step of not even making a transcript of the call, a decision considered extremely unusual by White House experts. While there is no evidence the contents of the call were related to Wikistrat, the unusual secrecy imposed on the call’s contents raises alarm bells due to the increasingly interconnected web regarding Khashoggi’s murder.

2016 Election

Nader’s extensive history with the Trump family and administration is intertwined with the 2016 election, as well as Zamel’s operations with Psy Group and Wikistrat. Nader first came under the scrutiny of Mueller’s investigators for his role in a Saudi influence campaign meant to curry favor with then-candidate Trump. Nader and Zamel, introduced to one another in the spring of 2016, met again in Russia at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, according to Ronan Farrow and Adam Entous of the New Yorker.

Farrow and Entous write: “According to a representative for Nader, Zamel told Nader that he was trying to raise money for a social-media campaign in support of Trump; he thought that Nader’s Gulf contacts might be interested in contributing financially.“

What followed was a Trump Tower meeting which ended up being investigated by Mueller. The meeting occurred on August 3rd, 2016 and was initiated by Erik Prince, at that point acting as an informal adviser to the Trump team. Nader represented the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia; Donald Trump, Jr. and Stephen Miller represented the Trump campaign. Zamel pitched the parties on Psy Group’s social media manipulation strategies.

According to the New York Times report, Nader conveyed to Trump Jr. that both the UAE and Saudi Arabia “were eager to help his father win election as President.”

Trump, Jr. is said to have welcomed the operation, according to the New York Times. Nader eventually paid Zamel $2 million sometime after the election, but before the inauguration of Trump. There are conflicting reports regarding the reasons for the payment.

Zamel’s representatives insisted that it was compensation for a presentation delivered to Nader about Psy Group’s potential capabilities. However, both representatives of Nader’s and former Psy Group employees have implied that the operation to help the Trump campaign may have been carried out, according to the New Yorker.

“[A]ccording to the Nader representative, shortly after the election Zamel bragged to Nader that he had conducted a secret campaign that had been influential in Trump’s victory,” the New Yorker wrote. Per Nader’s recollection, Zamel showed him reports detailing the social media work that Psy Group did on behalf of the Trump campaign. Zamel denies this (his representative said the reports were hypothetical); however, after the election, Psy Group’s CEO Royi Burstein began giving presentations to potential clients in Washington, D.C. based on information similar to the reports Nader saw.

At the presentations, “Burstien pointed out that Russian operatives had been caught meddling in the U.S.,” states the New Yorker piece. “Psy-Group, he told clients, was ‘more careful.'” The Wall Street Journal in 2018 obtained a copy of the presentation prepared by Psy Group:

It has also been reported that, while Zamel pitched the Trump Campaign during that August 2016 meeting, Nader separately offered the campaign a back channel to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, likely via General Asiri.

Cambridge Analytica

Psy Group also signed a contract with Cambridge Analytica, a company implicated in the 2018 Facebook data scandal which did heavily scrutinized data analytics work for the Trump campaign.

Cambridge Analytica reportedly signed a business agreement with Psy Group that “outlines a partnership whereby the two firms could cooperate on a case-by-case basis to provide intelligence and social-media services,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

While the agreement was signed in December 2016, after Trump’s election, it was allegedly designed in part to steer lucrative government contracts to the two firms. There’s no indication the partnership resulted in any deliverables.

However, there are indications that the investigation into the relationship between Cambridge Analytica, Psy Group and Zamel may still be active.

On the day the Mueller report was released, including its twelve redacted criminal referrals, Christopher Wylie, a Cambridge Analytica whistleblower who was interviewed by Mueller and Congress, tweeted simply, “(redacted)”.


Christopher Wylie
✔
@chrisinsilico
(redacted)

366
1:58 PM - Apr 18, 2019
Twitter Ads info and privacy

68 people are talking about this

Wikistrat and Saudi Arabia

Zamel’s connections to the Saudi government are voluminous and serious. In November, 2018, the New York Times published an explosive article asserting that Saudis close to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman discussed killing enemies of the Saudi government one year before Khashoggi’s death.

In the piece, the Times reported that “[t]op Saudi intelligence officials close to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman asked a small group of businessmen last year about using private companies” to assassinate Iranian enemies of the Kingdom.

The small group of businessmen consisted of Zamel, Prince, and Nader.

Both [Nader] and Mr. Zamel believed that Hillary Clinton’s anticipated victory in the 2016 election meant a continuation of the Iran nuclear deal signed by President Barack Obama — and little appetite in Washington for a concerted campaign to cripple the Iranian economy. So, they decided to pitch the plan to Saudi and Emirati officials, even submitting a proposal to General Assiri during a meeting in Belgium.

Their discussions, more than a year before the killing of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, indicate that top Saudi officials have considered assassinations since the beginning of Prince Mohammed’s ascent.

During these series of meetings, all held in Riyadh and Belgium, Nader and Zamel also pitched a $2 billion plan to General Asiri, and others, to use intelligence firms to sabotage the Iranian economy and eliminate threats to bin Salman’s nascent consolidation of power.

Prior to these meetings, in January 2017, bin Salman reportedly dispatched General Asiri to New York to meet with Michael Flynn, Nader, and Zamel, who hoped to pitch a plan to “undercut” the Iranian regime. It’s unclear if any plans went through or when Zamel last communicated with Asiri.

Asiri has now admitted he ordered an operation to “convince Mr. Khashoggi to return to Saudi Arabia,” though he denies planning the use of any force against Khashoggi. Asiri is currently on trial in Saudi Arabia, charged with murder.

Financial Structure

Though Wikistrat purports to be based out of Washington, DC, one former employee told the Daily Beast that business operations were handled out of Tel Aviv. Business records analyzed by Forensic News confirm that the same Tel Aviv address was listed for each of the three main executives at the company, Zamel, Schaffer, and Green.




Records filed by branches of Wikistrat in Virginia, Texas, and New York City, show all three executives listed an address that corresponds to a nondescript building used by many other companies as a registered address.

Corporate Structure

Other exclusively obtained documents from the Australian government show that Gary Zamel, Joel Zamel’s father, has acted as a Director and Secretary of that Wikistrat branch since its inception in 2009.



Gary Zamel is a serial entrepreneur, who has amassed millions, mainly in the sector of coal mining.

Among his current ventures is CommChain, a blockchain based commodity trading platform.

Recently, Gary Zamel has done business with Ronald Lauder, one of President Trump’s longest friends, who, while Trump’s mental fitness for office was being hotly debated, issued a statement saying, in part, “[t]he President I have seen is a man of incredible insight and intelligence.”

Trump even tapped Lauder as somewhat of an unofficial liasion in an attempt to negotiate peace between the Israelis and Palestinians.

Lauder and Nader have a working relationship as well, dating back to the late 1990s, when they worked together to improve Syrian-Israeli relations.

In 2005, Gary Zamel and his wife purchased a mansion on the coast of Australia for over $20,000,000 from Lachlan Murdoch, who is now Executive Chairman and CEO of Fox Corporation.

Financial History

Wikistrat saw a large injection of revenue in 2019 that has been deemed suspicious by at least one employee along with other financial experts.

“The real question is,” one Wikistrat analyst remarked to Forensic News, “where did this money come from? Wikistrat nearly collapsed last year, but they’ve since rebuilt all of their operations. They’ve got a new website, and their activity has drastically increased since last year.”

Employees expressed similar sentiments in the aforementioned Daily Beast report:

“It was never clear to me how much Joel [Zamel] was actually paying out of pocket to subsidize the company vs. what was brought in,” another former employee said. “Clients paid decently but not enough to sustain the company. So Joel was either substantially funding the company or we were getting money from somewhere else. That naturally leads you to focus on non-U.S. sources of income.

Financial statements published by the Daily Beast and independently verified by Forensic News show that Wikistrat took a loss of $773,000 in 2016. By January 2017, all operations appear to have ceased: Wikistrat’s website stopped posting any simulations or analyses. Forensic News exclusive look at the internal Wikistrat portal show, that as of July, their last full simulation was completed in December 2016.



By the 2nd quarter of 2019, everything changed. According to the business database ZoomInfo, Wikistrat’s revenue jumped over 300%, to $102,000,000. Wikistrat’s website was redesigned, and after a year of total inactivity, the company began posting analyses, interviews, and other content.

The massive influx of cash during this period remains unexplained.



Methodology

Forensic News was unable to print the original correspondence between the Wikistrat executive and the employee because the employee feared for his/her safety. Like many other Wikistrat employees with whom we spoke, this source noted the company’s connections to Israeli and Saudi intelligence and was genuinely fearful of retaliation.

In order to stay consistent with our mission at Forensic News, we have been permitted to show multiple documents that confirm our inside access to Wikistrat.


Inside the “Expert Community” portal of Wikistrat
Conclusion

Wikistrat also deleted at least one simulation after Joel Zamel was featured in a series of news articles in 2018. The simulation was sandwiched in between a series of Russia-focused simulations, but the simulation itself, titled, “Evolution and Effect of Emerging Technologies”, did not pertain exclusively to Russia.

One Wikistrat analyst familiar with that particular simulation, said that it initially seemed benign, but after Zamel’s name was disseminated in major media reports about Psy Group, the simulation was deleted. “[I]t seemed strange that they took the sim off the site when they did,” the analyst said.



Pre mid-2018

Post mid-2018

Another simulation which was first reported by the Daily Beast, and can now be confirmed by Forensic News, is entitled, “The Rise of the Cyber Mercenary.”

Among the 23 threads in the simulation include topics called “Cyber Mercenaries compromise US elections” and “Using cyber-mercenaries to disseminate false information on social networks”.

One of the threads concluded with an analyst issuing a warning:

“I think that it is important that we recognize that these “cyber-trolls” are trained controversialists: they openly engage in public controversy. People are drawn to the excitement of controversy and these cyber-trolls are experts in sensationalizing a political issue. The objective of cyber-trolls is not to convince explicitly, but rather subconsciously, by inserting a seed of doubt that leads to confusion and encourages fact-skepticism. They are not afraid to use provocative and confrontational language, as it is to their advantage if it leads to an emotional rise in the reader because the reader is then more likely to engage in debate, which in-turn, creates mare buzz and attracts a greater audience, increasing the potential number of people exposed to this misinformation campaign.”
https://forensicnews.net/2019/10/22/isr ... to-murder/

[FourthBase]

This and China kidnapping the head of Interpol (which, if anything, is an even bigger, more dangerous development) are the two stories that have me most worried on the short term.

Something terrible is going down. Also, 2 days ago I had a terrifying dream in which a large first-world city, near water, suffered a horrific, explosive event, either nuke or asteroid. I've been flashing on "Baltimore" (as some of you old-timers with excellent memories might remember me mentioning a few times) ever since 9/11, which I also foresaw, in "print" (online, really, at my former Daily Dirt blog), the day before 9/11.

This is not a bad joke. I don't claim to be a psychic, but I DO get the occasional psychic flash (mostly having to do with family). On the rare occasion that I get a strong one, maybe 3 or 4 times per decade, it proves correct. I take no pride or pleasure in this.

Anyone else here having odd dreams?

YOPJerky

That's a creepy dream. (Apt.)

Any other details?