Project DREAD: White House veterans helped Gulf monarchy build secret surveillance unit

In the years after 9/11, former U.S. counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke warned Congress that the country needed more expansive spying powers to prevent another catastrophe. Five years after leaving government, he shopped the same idea to an enthusiastic partner: an Arab monarchy with deep pockets.

In 2008, Clarke went to work as a consultant guiding the United Arab Emirates as it created a cyber surveillance capability that would utilize top American intelligence contractors to help monitor threats against the tiny nation.

The secret unit Clarke helped create had an ominous acronym: #DREAD, short for #Development #Research #Exploitation and #Analysis #Department. In the years that followed, the #UAE unit expanded its hunt far beyond suspected extremists to include a #Saudi women’s rights activist, diplomats at the United Nations and personnel at #FIFA, the world soccer body. By 2012, the program would be known among its #American operatives by a codename: #Project #Raven.

Reuters reports this year revealed how a group of former National Security Agency operatives and other elite American intelligence veterans helped the UAE spy on a wide range of targets through the previously undisclosed program — from terrorists to human rights activists, journalists and dissidents.

Now, an examination of the origins of DREAD, reported here for the first time, shows how a pair of former senior White House leaders, working with ex-#NSA #spies and #Beltway contractors, played pivotal roles in building a program whose actions are now under scrutiny by federal authorities.

To chart the UAE spying mission’s evolution, #Reuters examined more than 10,000 DREAD program documents and interviewed more than a dozen contractors, intelligence operatives and former government insiders with direct knowledge of the program. The documents Reuters reviewed span nearly a decade of the DREAD program, starting in 2008, and include internal memos describing the project’s logistics, operational plans and targets.

Clarke was the first in a string of former White House and U.S. defense executives who arrived in the UAE after 9/11 to build the spying unit. Utilizing his close relationship to the country’s rulers, forged through decades of experience as a senior U.S. decision-maker, Clarke won numerous security consulting contracts in the UAE. One of them was to help build the secret spying unit in an unused airport facility in Abu Dhabi.

👉🏼 Read more:
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-raven-whitehouse/

📡@cRyPtHoN_INFOSEC_DE
📡@cRyPtHoN_INFOSEC_EN
📡@BlackBox_Archiv

Jeff Bezos, owner of Amazon and the richest man in the world, received a whatsApp message on his mobile phone from the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohamed bin Salman.

Bezos didn't know it yet, but his cell phone had just been hacked.
From now on, all his personal information was hacked.

theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/21/revealed-the-saudi-heir-and-the-alleged-plot-to-undermine-jeff-bezos

#bezos #whatsapp #saudi #arabia #hacking

A Saudi Prince's Attempt to Silence Critics on Twitter

An ongoing investigation reveals how Mohammed bin Salman's team allegedly infiltrated the platform—and got away with it.

In 2014, Mohammed bin Salman’s uncle, King Abdullah, was nearing death. For more than 60 years, the Saudi crown had been passed from one son of the kingdom’s founder to the next, the heir being determined by a combination of seniority and consensus of the surviving brothers. Mohammed’s father, Crown Prince Salman, was set to inherit the throne upon Abdullah’s death. But anonymous Twitter users were spreading claims that Salman had dementia, and that presented a problem for Mohammed: If the rumors became accepted as fact by Saudis and foreigners, Salman’s brothers might feel pressure to elevate one of his rivals, cutting the Salman clan off from its claim to the throne and dashing Mohammed’s hopes of one day inheriting the crown.

https://www.wired.com/story/mohammed-bin-salman-twitter-investigation

#Arab #Saudi #twitter

This is their plan for us, if we allow it to happen
#Saudi #Arabia

Proof #USA government knows since 2014 that #Saudi #Arabia and #Qatar #finance #ISIS

https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/55380

📷Aftermath of a #Saudi-led air strike on Yemen’s capital Sanaa, 18 January 2022.

Gross violations of international law. Missiles raining down on houses. Kleptocrats laundering their ill-gotten gains through #London and buying political influence. Aggressive, powerful states attacking a poorer neighbour; backing separatist rebels; illegally occupying its land; dropping cluster bombs and conducting crippling cyber-attacks. Sound familiar?

This is what Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have been doing to Yemen since 2015. It’s a conflict that has continued during Putin’s offensive in Ukraine, but with a fraction of the media scrutiny.

Unlike with #Russia, there have been no recent calls for financial or even sporting sanctions on Gulf regimes from prominent British commentators or politicians. With the war in #Yemen worsening once again – as Declassified’s new film shows below – the silence of Britain’s political class becomes ever louder.

Yemen: the war the world forgot https://declassifieduk.org/yemen-the-war-the-world-forgot/

#WarCrimes #UAE #UK

AHMED.ALI (@AHMEDQALI4): "Bill #Clinton is interested in making #Russia #democratic, and he and all other #US gov aren’t interested in making underdeveloped and barbaric countries like #Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states feel at least democratic! Awesome 😅 https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/04/bill-clinton-nato-expansion-ukraine/629499/" | Nitter | PussTheCat.org – https://nitter.pussthecat.org/AHMEDQALI4/status/1512543803445501959#m

I Tried to Put Russia on Another Path
My policy was to work for the best, while expanding #NATO to prepare for the worst.
By Bill Clinton

#NatoExpansion #Otan

BlackRock names Aramco boss to board

The world's top asset manager BlackRock (BLK.N) has named Amin Nasser, the chief of the world's largest oil company Saudi Aramco, as an independent director.

Nasser joined Saudi Arabia's state oil giant as a petroleum engineer in 1982, and decades later in 2019 led Aramco's initial public offering.

#Saudi #KSA #Oil #BlackRock

THREAD: This is harrowing.
#Saudi #Arabia wanted the names of 6000 anonymous Arab Spring dissidents from #Twitter. At first, #MBS tried to get their names using EDRs - requests under emergency circumstances. When that proved cumbersome, KSA basically bought Twitter. 

They did so by threatening to pull twitter out of their market (biggest in the Middle East) and by offering to invest in heavily in Twitter. They also positioned two spies inside Twitter who helped funnel the personal information on dissidents out of Twitter to KSA. 

In 2011, they invested $300M. In 2022, MBS bought that investment for $1.5B, worth $1.9B later that year, making KSA (The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) the biggest shareholder of Twitter behind Elon Musk.

The two KSA spies inside Twitter INFORMED Twitter that the personally identifying information they were gathering was for the Saudi Government. One received money and gifts from the KSA in exchange for the user data including $300K and a nice job after he fled the US.

Not only that, but the KSA oversaw a digital army of hundreds of Twitter users who hunted for dissident voices, and Twitter KNEW because the FBI confronted Twitter about it in 2015.

Then, within 48 hours of the FBI visit to Twitter, the social media company acknowledged they had "found" the leak to the FBI - proving they knew. The next day, the spy fled the US.

Six months later, Jack Dorsey met with MBS to discuss how they could work together to "train and qualify" Saudi groups on Twitter to do the very same work the two spy employees had done. And just 8 months prior to that meeting, KSA doubled its investment in Twitter.

Once KSA had recruited Twitter, it plotted to kidnap, disappear, and murder multiple dissident voices including the plaintiff's brother, and Jamal Khashoggi. The transnational criminal enterprise of threats to anonymous Twitter dissidents continues to this day.

I recommend you read this lawsuit to understand WHY the KSA and MBS own the second largest chunk of Twitter behind Elon Musk. How involved is Musk? I keep thinking of the photos from the World Cup with Kushner and MBS. What's Kushner's involvement? He just got $2B from MBS.

Here's the link to the suit.

https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:us:d204dd50-60eb-493a-b7d7-bc2c3c54641f

PS: If my account gets tanked for this thread, you can find me on Post (link in Twitter bio) and Threads at MuellerSheWrote, and at @allisongill and @dailybeanspod here on Twitter.
@ScottMonty @7Veritas4 Here are the exhibits. i'll add to the thread.

https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:us:4e84a8d4-76b3-48f9-b97d-8ed84a89f5e6
PPS: here are the exhibits

https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:us:4e84a8d4-76b3-48f9-b97d-8ed84a89f5e6
PPPS: I should add this thread outlines the allegations in the law suit.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1698827051556618679.html

It is shameful to mention such a matter amidst the mass killing of unarmed civilians, but it is necessary to clarify what is happening:

The #massacres, executions, and barbaric killings carried out by the terrorist militia #HTS Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham have been accompanied by widespread looting and theft. I am not merely reporting news, I am speaking from firsthand experience. My relatives in #Baniyas, including engineers and doctors, have had their cars, money, and belongings stolen, and they were beaten and humiliated simply because they are Alawites. We thank God that their fate was not like that of other families.

But how do these so-called “Islamic mujahideen” and their supporters justify theft according to their so-called #Sharia? Theft, by all moral, religious, and legal standards, is a crime. Yet, they justify it under their ideology as “spoils” from their “conquest” of #Alawite villages, whom they consider “infidels.”

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we are in the 21st century, yet #Syria today is ruled by a mindset of invasions and plunder against a minority deemed “outside God’s law.” According to their interpretations, it is permissible to kill them, murder their children, steal from them, and enslave their women.

In the face of the West’s deafening silence and the inaction of human rights organizations regarding this jihadist regime that is committing documented #genocide and war crimes against unarmed civilians of all ages, we say: You will reap what you sow.

This jihadist regime continues to attract foreign extremists from all over the world, trains and graduates a new battalion every 20 days, and receives funding from #Qatar and #Saudi_Arabia, along with logistical and intelligence support from #Turkey. Why?

Are European nations truly this naïve? What benefit does the Qatari regime gain from funding this group and polishing its image by paying for its leaders to attend conferences or shake hands with the heads of international organizations?
Has the #Assad regime not already fallen? Have Iranian forces not withdrawn from Syria?

You are facing the largest terrorist organization operating at a state level, with the resources and capabilities of a state, backed by some of the world’s most prominent supporters of extremist Islamist movements (Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey). Their future plans will extend far beyond the region.

European countries have naturalized and settled tens of thousands of “Syrian Muslim” sleeper cells, most of whom share the same ideology and applaud this group’s attacks against the #Alawites.

Your sacrifice of the Alawites today will have consequences in the future.

🇵🇸The Abraham Shield: Israel’s New Blueprint for Regional Control After Gaza | DDgeopolitics

As the latest #Gaza #ceasefire teeters into effect and Trump pushes for #Saudi-Israeli #normalization, Israel’s security establishment has unveiled its next regional blueprint: the Abraham Shield Plan.
Framed as a utopian vision for Middle East stability, the plan is being sold as a solution to #hostages, #Hamas, #Hezbollah, and #Iran all at once. Behind the think-tank language of “stability” and “security,” though, lies a familiar reality: a militarized, #US-backed strategy to consolidate Israeli control across Gaza, southern #Lebanon, #Syria, and the broader region.

Launched by a new Israeli lobbying group called the Coalition for Regional Security, the #AbrahamShield lays out a multi-front containment architecture. It blends old tools—airstrikes, blockades, occupation—with new ones: #technocratic governance models, digital #surveillance, economic isolation, and transactional diplomacy with Arab states

#Palestine