World Cup host Qatar used ex-CIA officer to spy on FIFA

Ali “has always had a direct good personal contact with Qatar’s authorities,” according to a spokesman for the prince. He wouldn’t need any advisors to help him with that relationship.”

Qatar has a long history of rewarding key figures in FIFA and European soccer with favors and family advantages.

Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, a top European soccer official, was fined heavily for failing to declare two Rolex watches when he returned to Germany from Qatar in 2013 – two years after he said there were “issues about the Qatari World Cup.” And immediately after the 2010 vote, Michel D’Hooghe, the son of a key FIFA official, was offered and accepted a job in Qatar. The employment offer was not linked to Qatar’s gaining hosting rights, according to a FIFA ethics probe, and both Rummenigge and D’Hooghe have denied any misconduct.

In a case involving his usage of a Qatari-owned luxury home on the Italian island of Sardinia, Swiss prosecutors are presently seeking corruption allegations against Jerome Valcke, who served as FIFA’s CEO-like secretary-general from 2007 to 2015.

For numerous years, Valcke, who has denied wrongdoing, oversaw or had involvement into all elements of FIFA’s dealings with Qatar. In GRA documents from 2013, he was labeled as a “possible threat.”

According to the Broidy lawsuit, Valcke was one of several FIFA executives targeted for hacking and surveillance by Chalker. Valcke told the Associated Press that Qatar had “no motive” to single him out, and that he had never felt “any direct threats or pressure” in his relations with the country.

According to emails and other records, the Qataris asked Chalker to submit a proposal for staffing a cybersecurity unit, as well as training to safeguard the royal family, conduct intelligence work, and offer security in other areas, in early 2017.

In August 2017, Chalker signed a master services deal with Qatar, a copy of which was examined by the AP. Chalker’s company might give advising on surveillance, counter-surveillance, and other areas to “intelligence collection entities,” according to the inked agreement.

Chalker-owned shell firms received big deposits in 2017, according to publicly available annual reports and balance sheets filed in Gibraltar, and concluded the year with roughly $46 million in money.

The full nature of his work for Qatar is unknown, but the Associated Press examined a number of initiatives offered by Global Risk Advisors between 2014 and 2017, which included projects not directly tied to the World Cup.

“Pickaxe,” for example, pledged to collect “personal information and biometrics” from migrant workers in Qatar. Drones would be used to conduct surveillance of ports and border activities, as well as “managing migrant worker populations centers,” according to “Falconeye.”

One company paper stated, “By implementing background checks and vetting program, Qatar will maintain dominance of migrant labor.”

Qatar used a large number of foreign laborers to construct stadiums and other infrastructure for the tournament. It has been chastised for how the workers were treated and for failing to disclose complete details and data on worker deaths.

“Viper,” another project, offered on-site or remote “mobile device exploitation,” according to Global Risk Advisors, which would deliver “vital intelligence” and improve national security. The employment of private-sector technology by despotic regimes around the world, particularly the Gulf, is well documented.

Chalker drafted a proposal for “Project Deviant” in July 2017, a month after Qatar’s neighbors severed diplomatic ties and initiated a years-long boycott of the country. It asked Global Risk Advisors to create a comprehensive espionage and hacking training program for Qatar’s Ministry of Interior staff, “based on the elite training done by (Global Risk Advisors) officials from the US military and intelligence organizations.” According to a GRA proposal, Deviant contained a 47-week “field operations tradecraft school” that would cover surveillance, disguises, interrogation tactics, asset recruitment, hand-to-hand combat, and other topics.

According to records, the 26-week “technical operations tradecraft course” promised to teach Qataris with only a basic IT background how to become world-class hackers by providing them with the “necessary knowledge, skills, and techniques to use highly restricted, cutting-edge tools to penetrate target systems and devices, collect and analyze bulk signals data, and track and locate targets to ultra-precise locations.”

Chalker allegedly gave comparable training to Qatar, according to the Broidy lawsuit, despite the fact that retired intelligence officials are normally forbidden from sharing such knowledge with foreign countries.

Specific espionage and hacking tactics taught by the CIA and other US intelligence services are classified, and disclosing them would be illegal. However, there is no blanket prohibition against working for foreign governments, and the distinctions between secret and unclassified procedures are not often evident.

“When it comes to regularly utilized tradecraft, that border can be difficult to define,” said Bobby Chesney, a national security law professor at the University of Texas School of Law.

Ex-US intelligence officials have being sought after by wealthy Gulf countries. In 2018, the Prince Mohammed bin Salman College of Cyber Security, Artificial Intelligence, and Advanced Technologies secured a deal with a private corporation founded by retired Gen. Keith Alexander, who had directed the National Security Agency. The country’s leader, who also happens to be the school’s namesake, has been accused of deploying spyware against critics, journalists, and others. A spokesman at Alexander, Brian Bartlett, said the contract had ended and that the college was now “focused on the advancement of its instructional endeavors and cybersecurity program.”

According to a copy of the letter obtained by the AP and first reported by the New York Times, the CIA sent a letter to former workers earlier this year warning of a “detrimental trend” of foreign governments hiring former intelligence agents “to build up their eavesdropping capabilities.”

Sheetal Patel, the CIA’s associate director for counterintelligence, said, “We ask that you protect yourself and the CIA by safeguarding the classified tradecraft that supports your company.”

Lawmakers in the United States are also paying attention. Former US CIA operatives working abroad are being subjected to new reporting requirements proposed by Congress.

Rep. Tom Malinowski, a Democrat from New Jersey, said it was “absurd” that Qatar and the UAE had former US officials working on the front lines of their information war, and that it’s part of a larger issue about how powerful those wealthy countries are in American politics and governance.

He stated, “There’s a lot of Gulf money moving through Washington D.C.” “There is an enormous amount of temptation there, and it typically entangles Americans in things we shouldn’t be entangled with.”