Our investigators and several experts concluded with high confidence that the Saudis had access to Bezos’ phone, and gained private information. As of today, it is unclear to what degree, if any, AMI was aware of the details.
We did not reach our conclusions lightly. The inquiry included a broad array of resources: investigative interviews with current and former AMI executives and sources, extensive discussions with top Middle East experts in the intelligence community, leading cybersecurity experts who have tracked Saudi spyware, discussions with current and former advisers to President Trump, Saudi whistleblowers, people who personally know the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (also known as MBS), people who work with his close associate Saud al-Qahtani, Saudi dissidents, and other targets of Saudi action, including writer/activist
Iyad el-Baghdadi.
Experts with whom we consulted confirmed
New York Times reports on the Saudi capability to “collect vast amounts of previously inaccessible data from smartphones in the air without leaving a trace—including phone calls, texts, emails”—and confirmed that hacking was a key part of the Saudis’ “
extensive surveillance efforts that ultimately led to the killing of [
Washington Post] journalist Jamal Khashoggi.”
Some Americans will be surprised to learn that the Saudi government has been intent on harming Jeff Bezos since last October, when the
Post began its relentless coverage of Khashoggi’s murder. The Saudi campaign against Bezos has already been reported by
CNN International, Bloomberg,
The Daily Beast, and others.
Saudi Arabia attacks people in many ways, obviously, including through their
elaborate social media program that uses sophisticated technology and paid surrogates to create artificially trending hashtags. To give you an idea of how this program has infected the U.S., the
New York Times reported that the Saudis
even had an operative inside Twitter, which fired the suspect employee, and later advised select activists and others that “your Twitter account is one of a small group of accounts that may have been targeted by state-sponsored actors.”
In October, the Saudi government
unleashed its cyberarmy on Bezos (and later me). Their multi-pronged campaign included public calls for boycotts against Amazon.com and its Saudi subsidiary, Souq.com. Just three examples among thousands:
“We as Saudis will never accept to be attacked by the Washington Post in the morning, only to buy products from Amazon and Souq.com by night! Strange that all three companies are owned by the same Jew who attacks us by day, and sells us products by night!”
“Our weapon is to boycott… because the owner of the newspaper is the same as their owner.”
“We're after you - the Jew, worshipper of money, will go bankrupt by the will of God at the hands of Saudi Arabia... the owner of Amazon and Souq is the owner of the Washington Post is the spiteful Jew who insults us every day.”
Bezos is not Jewish, but you get the point.
We studied the well-documented and close relationship between MBS and AMI chairman, David Pecker. That alliance includes David Pecker
bringing MBS intermediary Kacy Grine to a private White House meeting with President Trump and Jared Kushner. Pecker has also traveled to Saudi Arabia to meet with the Crown Prince. Though we don’t know what was discussed in those private meetings, AMI’s actions afterwards are telling. To coincide with MBS’ March 2018 U.S. tour, AMI created a 100-page, ad-free, glossy magazine called
The New Kingdom. Since MBS wasn’t yet a notorious figure in the West (this was before the murder of Jamal Khashoggi), AMI’s magazine introduced him to Americans as “the most influential Arab leader—transforming the world at 32,” and “improving lives of his people & hopes for peace.”
The Associated Press reported that AMI sent
an advance digital copy of their laudatory magazine to the Saudi Embassy three weeks before printing and distributing 200,000 issues. (Despite AP’s substantial forensic evidence, the kingdom denied it received the magazine’s content in advance. While we’re on denials, the kingdom says Saudi Arabia had nothing to do with the Bezos matter. The kingdom also says MBS had nothing whatsoever to do with the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.)
When AMI publicly insisted that nobody outside of their executives and editors “had any influence on this publication or its content,” I guess they meant other than Kacy Grine, the very same MBS intermediary Pecker had brought to The White House. I say that because AMI soon had to disclose to the Department of Justice National Security Division that their mystery magazine included content written by Grine, and that they also gave him the whole working draft for advance review, and that he suggested changes, and that they implemented his changes, and that he provided better photographs of MBS. With friends like AMI, you don’t need… publicists.
My firm has done many investigations into
Enquirer misconduct, including one that became the subject of a
60 Minutes investigative piece way back in 1990. Before then, tabloids had been seen as almost funny publications, mixing celebrity gossip with space aliens and Elvis sightings. But when the
Enquirer’s on-again-off-again relationship with the truth percolated into politics, it wasn’t so funny anymore.
Though relatively benign at first (“Al Gore’s Diet Is Making Him Stupid”), the Trump/Pecker relationship has metastasized: In effect, the
Enquirer became an enforcement arm of the Trump presidential campaign, and presidency, as the U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York laid out in its case against Michael Cohen, who has pleaded guilty. The U.S. Attorney has done the country a service by levying extensive controls on AMI, David Pecker, and his deputy Dylan Howard, through a
non-prosecution agreement that requires them to commit no other crimes for three years, and requires everyone at AMI to attend annual training on federal election laws. I’m guessing that’s not how they used to spend their time.
The author is Bezos' investigator Gavin de Becker. He is claiming "high confidence" that the Saudis were actively involved in securing Bezos data as part of a scheme to exert influence over the Washington Post.
We did not reach our conclusions lightly. The inquiry included a broad array of resources: investigative interviews with current and former AMI executives and sources, extensive discussions with top Middle East experts in the intelligence community, leading cyber security experts who have tracked Saudi spyware, discussions with current and former advisers to President Trump, Saudi whistleblowers, people who personally know the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (also known as MBS), people who work with his close associate Saud al-Qahtani, Saudi dissidents, and other targets of Saudi action, including writer/activist Iyad el-Baghdadi.
The Enquirer story based on the data
is believed by a previous National Enquirer editor to be an attempt by AMI to "make up" with Trump after
cooperating with the Feds on the Stormy/McDougal hush money payments. Indeed, Trump enthusiastically
tweeted just afteris in dire, existential financial straits, and the CEO (David Pecker) has settled on the Saudis as their ticket back to solvency, including
becoming an overt US-based propaganda arm for the MbS regime.
Mohammed bin Salman detests Bezos' Washington Post in particular, and regards them as US media enemy #1. This status that has only increased since he
ordered the assassination of WaPo contributor Jamal Khashoggi(who was dismembered with a bone saw and his body dissolved in acid).
Previously, the story on how AMI got Bezos data was that it all came from
his mistress' brother. De Becker claims this is still true, but was only one prong of the effort to obtain Bezos' data.
Saudi operatives allegedly murdered Jamal Khashoggi in October, sparking an angry response from many lawmakers in the United States. Some of the agents are US-trained, according to a report in The Washington Post.
Several of the Saudi agents who were involved in the killing of Jamal Khashoggi in Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul last year had received training in the United States, the Washington Postreported Saturday.
Post columnist David Ignatius said US and Saudi sources told him that the training occurred before the killing "as part of ongoing liaison" between the US and Saudi Arabia, but that it has since been halted.
The leader of the team that killed Khashoggi was Maher Mutreb, a colonel in the Saudi intelligence service who comes from a "wealthy and respected Saudi family." Mutreb allegedly received training in the US and developed a "friendly" relationship with Khashoggi while they were both working in London.
Ignatius said other members of the 15-person team allegedly also had US training, without elaborating.