What and who else might have Qatar bought in the United States? It is likely that if the answer to that question were fully revealed, it would explain a great deal.
“Qatar Hired Former CIA Agents to Hack Prominent GOP Official, Lawsuit Alleges,” by Adam Kredo, Washington Free Beacon, June 30, 2020:
Qatar hired a team of former CIA and U.S. military intelligence officials to conduct a hack attack on a prominent American political activist after he raised questions about the country’s support for terrorism, according to allegations in a new lawsuit.
Republican financier Elliott Broidy alleges that Qatar enlisted former U.S. intelligence officials to carry out a 2018 cyber espionage operation on his personal and business email servers. That information, Broidy alleges, was later leaked to the media in order to discredit the longtime GOP activist and advance Doha’s interests in America.
The suit reveals allegations that U.S.-based hackers affiliated with the Global Risk Advisors (GRA) consulting group were paid by Qatar to carry out the illicit scheme and similar attacks on prominent critics of Qatar. GRA, an American cyber security consulting group, is composed of former CIA and other military intelligence officials with extensive experience in the cyber espionage realm.
GRA “conspired with [American] public-relations strategists to steal Mr. Broidy’s confidential materials and plant carefully curated excerpts and manipulated materials with the press to cause Plaintiffs maximum damage,” the lawsuit alleges. “GRA was perfectly suited for this work because it employs former National Security Agency, Central Intelligence Agency, and U.S. Armed Forces personnel with extensive offensive hacking expertise.”
The filing marks another salvo in a long-running legal dispute between Broidy and Qatar, which is accused of orchestrating multiple hack attacks on its most prominent U.S. and European critics. In addition to the quarrel with Broidy, Qatar is believed to be behind a series of similar cyber attacks on prominent GOP and Jewish community activists who have pressured the Trump administration to cut ties with Doha. Broidy previously sued several U.S. public-relations companies he accuses of helping Qatar distribute his stolen information.
Qatar has long been suspected of financing the hack on Broidy and other leading critics of Doha’s terror financing network, which includes support for Hamas and other Iranian-backed militia groups. In addition to targeting perceived critics, Qatar allegedly spied on prominent Jewish community members in Washington, D.C., to collect information about their anti-Doha lobbying efforts. Congress is investigating the country over these claims….