The NSA’s New Partner in Spying: Saudi Arabia’s Brutal State Police

[Luminous Animal]

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/07/25/nsas-new-partner-spying-saudi-arabias-brutal-state-police/

The National Security Agency last year significantly expanded its cooperative relationship with the Saudi Ministry of Interior, one of the world’s most repressive and abusive government agencies. An April 2013 top secret memo provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden details the agency’s plans “to provide direct analytic and technical support” to the Saudis on “internal security” matters.

....


The NSA’s formal “Third Party” relationship with the Saudis involves arming the MOI with highly advanced surveillance technology. The NSA “provides technical advice on SIGINT topics such as data exploitation and target development to TAD,” the memo says, “as well as a sensitive source collection capability.”

The Saudi Ministry of Defense also relies on the NSA for help with “signals analysis equipment upgrades, decryption capabilities and advanced training on a wide range of topics.” The document states that while the NSA “is able to respond to many of those requests, some must be denied due to the fact that they place sensitive SIGINT equities at risk.”

Over the past year, the Saudi government has escalated its crackdown on activists, dissidents, and critics of the government. Earlier this month, Saudi human rights lawyer and activist Waleed Abu al-Khair was sentenced to 15 years in prison by a so-called “terrorist court” on charges of undermining the state and insulting the judiciary. In May, a liberal blogger, Raif Badawi, was sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes; in June, human rights activist Mukhlif Shammari was sentenced to five years in prison for writing about the mistreatment of Saudi women.

[Tarheel_Dem]

1. Putin's in real deep, so expect to hear a lot more from "the intercept" about NSA! NSA! NSA!

Transparent as mud, they are.

[Luminous Animal]

11. My cat's breath smells like cat food.

[Luminous Animal]

17. Yay! Slave owning society Saudi Arabia! Yay, the US is giving them the tools to track down and

imprison those who report against and advocate against slavery! LBGT? The US has provided the Saudi government with enhanced tools to track you down. Feminist? The US has provided the Saudi government to track you down.

No place to hide.

[TheKentuckian]

25. So it is Putin running our spook state, how inept and worthless are our clandestine and security age

to allow an unsavory foreign official and former KGB man to take charge.

Oh they didn't and Putin wasn't the discussion.

Is Putin just a distraction from our own affairs? Sometimes it sure seems like he is getting more focus and airplay than makes much sense.
Seems the Europeans should be leading the charge here, they are the one that would be swept up in Vlad's world domination game and they would be in far better position to place effective sanctions but their hair seems way less on fire.

[Pholus]

26. Transparent as mud as opposed to transparent as water...

Let me open "the olde playbook" and look for something....anything....to change the subject.

Hmmmm...."Boxes in the garage"...nope, that one didn't work. Too easy to mock.

How about "It's just metadata"....damn, that's been completely shown to be a lie.

And the "flight plan around the Moscow beltway" schtick didn't work for more than five minutes that one night.

Then there is "You're a Paulite"....rats, no, because it's too easy to get "You're a Cheneyite" reflected back on you.

Ahhhhh, yes. We'll use the "you're all Putin's pawns" ploy.

That one never gets old and DEFINITELY avoids having to discuss how we're just helping out our "business relationships" here....

[Cali_Democrat]

2. So is this Greenwald's grand finale fireworks show that he promised?

US working with oppressive regimes.

This is unheard of.

Keep in mind most of the 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. It would actually be a surprise if this wasn't happening.

[Tarheel_Dem]

3. GG can always be counted on to run interference for Putin. "Russia's bad, but the USA is worse" is,

quite frankly, boring.

[Luminous Animal]

21. Pretty much can count on you to run interference when a Democratic government supports

a slave owning regime and supplies the tools to spy on their human rights activists in order to imprison them.

[Luminous Animal]

12. Really. 13 years later.

[Cali_Democrat]

14. So this is Greenwald's big splash?

This is the fireworks show?

Pretty pathetic if you ask me....

[Luminous Animal]

15. Pretty pathetic that you are supporting slave-owning Saudi Arabia. Pretty pathetic that you

support a government that imprisons human rights activists that exposes slavery. Pretty pathetic that you support a government that supplies enhanced tools to a slave owning society in order to track down and prosecute those who protest slavery.

[Cali_Democrat]

16. Umm....ya...I support slave-owning Saudi Arabia...or something...

you totally got me....

[Luminous Animal]

18. So, are you for or against the NSA providing SA with enhanced tools to track

down their human rights dissidents?

[Cali_Democrat]

20. Against.

Any other questions?

[Luminous Animal]

22. And the very fact that you acknowledge this information to make a decision means that you support

Putin.

Got it.

[Cali_Democrat]

23. Yes...I'm a Putin supporter

I have a picture of him with his shirt off hanging over my fireplace. You know, the one where he's riding a bear.

I've been outed.

[Luminous Animal]

24. Glad we cleared that up. Both you and Greenwald are against spying on SA human rights

dissidents so...

POLAND!

Er.... PUTIN!

[Ichingcarpenter]

13. The Saudi royal family

Evidence linking the Saudi royal family to Saudis in South Florida who reportedly had direct contact with the 9/11 hijackers before fleeing the United States just prior to the attacks.

Our report connects some of the dots first laid out by investigative author Anthony Summers and Florida-based journalist Dan Christensen in articles jointly published in the Miami Herald and on the nonprofit news site BrowardBulldog.org.

In early September of this year, Summers and Christensen reported that a secret FBI probe, never shared with Congressional investigators or the presidential 9/11 commission, had uncovered information indicating the possibility of support for the hijackers from previously unknown confederates in the United States during 2001.

Now WhoWhatWhy reveals that those alleged confederates were closely tied to influential members of the Saudi ruling elite.

As reported in the Herald, phone records documented communication, dating back more than a year, that connected a Saudi family then living in a house near Sarasota, Florida, with the alleged plot leader, Mohammed Atta, and his hijack pilots—as well as to eleven of the other hijackers. In addition, records from the guard house at the gated community tied Atta’s vehicle and his accomplice Ziad Jarrah to actual visits to the house. Although requiring further investigation, this information suggests that the house may have functioned as an operational base for the hijackers.

According to interviews and records examined by The Herald, Anoud and Abdulazzi al-Hiijjii and their young twins abruptly departed their home in Sarasota only days before September 11, 2001 and traveled to Arlington, Virginia, where they stayed briefly at another house owned by Anoud’s father, Esam Ghazzawi.

Then, still well before 9/11, the entire group, now including the father, flew to London and on to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The Sarasota house was sold in 2003, as was a penthouse apartment in another DC, suburb, Rosslyn, Virginia. The Ghazzawis do not seem to have set foot again in the United States.

New Revelations

http://www.alternet.org/story/152505/is_the_saudi_royal_family_connected_to_9_11_hijackers

[Pholus]

27. Working with? "Getting to practice on" seems closer.....

So that once the Democrats leave the White House we're one executive order away from Cheney's dream world of keeping an obedient population.

[WillyT]

4. K & R !!!

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

5. A marriage of convenience and a sharing of common goals.

The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants. Albert Camus

[Luminous Animal]

6. Kick.

[Octafish]

7. Like the Safari Club never left.

Bill Casey's friends in Saudi Arabia and other nations floating in petrodollars kept operational wing of CIA going during the housecleanings of the Carter Administration, not that Lee Hamilton and the unreformed would ever notice, seeing how fast "things" move in Washington.

...Apparently both Fahd and Prince Abdullah, at the time commander of the National Guard, travelled to mecca to offer special prayers for Carter's re-election.

Their prayers were in vain as Ronald Reagan swept to power in the 1980 election. As the only Saudi royal to have met Reagan, Bandar was chosen to make first contact with the new President. When the Secretary of State, Alexander Haig Jr, visited Saudi Arabia in April 1981 to drum up support fort the anti-communist crusade, he was told that the Saudis' key concerns were the Palestinian issue and the acquisition of the AWACS system. While discussing the problem of getting the sale past Congress, Haig suggested that 'maybe Prince Bandar could come back and help with Congress.' Fahd agreed. Bandar was now officially the chief Saudi lobby with a royal mandate.

SOURCE: "The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade" by Andrew Feinstein, pp. 49

http://books.google.com/books?id=OpV0VkwQCsIC&pg=PA54&lpg=PA54&dq=prince-bandar+%2B+william-casey&source=bl&ots=iw2Hw1e3YB&sig=V0XVzjXs4mz8UGsd2vWTeadeiWg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=RtnCUpa5DuHhygGyhIHoCw&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=prince-bandar%20%2B%20william-casey&f=false

"Helped" with Congress? Heh heh heh.



Saudi Arabia for Democracy! Yeah.

[Electric Monk]

10. ^

[Luminous Animal]

19. Yep.

[Luminous Animal]

8. Kick.

[WillyT]

9. Kick !!!