White House veterans helped Gulf monarchy build secret surveillance unit
1 / 9FILE PHOTO: Former U.S. counterterrorism coordinator Richard Clarke is sworn in before hearingBy Joel Schectman and Christopher Bing
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.
Story continuesIn an interview in Washington, Clarke said that after recommending that the UAE create a cyber surveillance agency, his company, Good Harbor Consulting, was hired to help the country build it. The idea, Clarke said, was to create a unit capable of tracking terrorists. He said the plan was approved by the U.S. State Department and the National Security Agency, and that Good Harbor followed U.S. law.
One of Clarke’s former Good Harbor partners, Paul Kurtz, said Reuters’ earlier reports showed that the program expanded into dangerous terrain and that the proliferation of cyber skills merits greater U.S. oversight. “I have felt revulsion reading what ultimately happened,” said Kurtz, a former senior director for national security at the White House.
American operatives for DREAD were able to sidestep the few guardrails against foreign espionage work that existed, including restrictions on the hacking of U.S. computer systems. Clarke, a counterterrorism czar to Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, is perhaps best known for offering an unequivocal public apology for Washington’s inability to prevent the 9/11 attacks.
Two years earlier, Clarke had joined his former deputy Roger Cressey at the newly launched Good Harbor Consulting, a security advisory group. Clarke brought one of the most famous names in U.S. national security. In the years after Clarke joined Good Harbor in 2003, MbZ, the de facto ruler of the UAE, granted the company the rare opportunity to help build the country’s homeland security strategy from the ground up. Clarke’s Good Harbor soon won a series of security contracts to help the UAE secure its infrastructure, including work to protect the Gulf state’s seaports, nuclear projects, airports, embassies and petrochemical facilities, according to two people with direct knowledge of the contracts.
Kurtz said his personal involvement was limited to high level consulting, with his knowledge of daily activities “next to none.” For technical expertise on hacking, he said, Good Harbor relied on subcontractors from the American defense company SRA International, managed by an executive named Karl Gumtow.
Beyond offering guidance and support, Good Harbor and SRA did not envision an active role in hacking operations. A spokesman for General Dynamics, the owner of SRA International after multiple business acquisitions, said the original contract with Good Harbor ended in 2010. He declined further comment.
By the end of 2010, Good Harbor stepped back from DREAD, leaving control in the hands of SRA vice president Gumtow, program documents show. He had just started his own Maryland company, CyberPoint. “Our focus was to help them defend their country,” Gumtow said in a phone interview. In 2011, the program moved to the first of a series of secret converted mansions, known as the Villa, and among its American contractors was given the codename Project Raven.
Still, the American team soon occupied almost every key position in the program. American operatives helped locate target accounts, discover their vulnerabilities and cue up cyberattacks. To stay within the bounds of the law, the Americans did not press the button on the ultimate attack, but would often literally stand over the shoulders of the Emiratis who did, 10 former operatives told Reuters.
The ploy was designed to steal damaging information about Qatar’s World Cup bid, which could be leaked to embarrass the UAE’s Gulf rival. Allegations that FIFA officials were bribed by Qatar in exchange for granting its World Cup bid surfaced in media reports in 2014. In a statement, a spokeswoman said FIFA was “not aware” of any hacking incidents related to Qatar’s World Cup bid. A second spokesperson said a FIFA internal investigation did not find that Qatar paid bribes to win the right to host the tournament.
The DREAD agreements did prohibit the program from assisting in hacking operations against Americans or American-owned email servers. Doing so “could subject you to criminal liability under U.S. law, even if the activities were conducted overseas,” warned a CyberPoint legal counsel in a 2011 memo. American operatives also helped target the Gmail and Facebook accounts of Ahmed Ghaith al-Suwaidi, an Emirati economist and member of the Muslim Brotherhood, in 2011. In January 2012, DREAD hackers reported Al-Suwaidi had emailed signed documents putting his wife in charge of his assets in case anything happened to him, DREAD operation documents show.
While DarkMatter took over DREAD, the program was a tightly held secret, with even some company executives unaware of its existence, said six people with direct knowledge of the matter.
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