A former CIA agent has spied on senior soccer officials for years while working for Qatar, the small Arab country that hosts next year’s soccer World Cup, an Associated Press investigation found.
Qatar seeks to secure the headquarters against rivals such as the United States and Australia when it hired Kevin Chalker, a former CIA agent turned private contractor, to spy on the teams of other candidates and important managers from the world of soccer who would participate in the selection in the 2010, according to the AP investigation.
Chalker also worked for Qatar in the following years to keep track of Qatar’s critics in the soccer world, based on interviews with people who had a relationship with Chalker, as well as contracts, invoices, emails and a review of corporate documents.
The case is part of a trend in which former US intelligence agents go to work for governments with questionable human rights records, which worries authorities in Washington.
“There’s a lot of money from the Persian Gulf going through Washington, DC,” said Rep. Tom Malinowski, a Democrat from New Jersey. “The caliber of temptation there is immense, and it always involves Americans in things that they should not be involved in.”
The World Cup is the most popular sports tournament on the planet. And it offers Qatar, one of the richest countries in the world, the opportunity to make a kind of presentation on the international stage.
The AP investigation shows that Qatar left little to chance. The surveillance work included a person posing as a photojournalist to follow the candidacy of a rival country and set a trap on Facebook, in which someone posed as an attractive woman on the platform to get closer to a target, according to a log analysis. Agents working for Chalker and the Persian Gulf country also searched the phone records of at least one FIFA agent before the 2010 vote, according to the records.
“Project MERCILESS’s greatest achievement to date (…) has come from successful penetration operations against prominent naysayers within the FIFA organization,” Chalker’s company, Global Risk Advisors, said in a 2014 document for describe a project with a minimum budget of $ 387 million over nine years. It was unclear how much its Qatari clients were paid to the company.
Company documents also highlight its efforts to win over Jordanian Prince Ali Bin Al-Hussein, an influential soccer leader who ran unsuccessfully for the FIFA presidency in 2015 and 2016. In a 2013 document, Global Risk Advisors recommended that Qataris give money to a football development organization run by Ali, which "will help build Qatar’s reputation as a benevolent presence in the world of football".
A representative for Ali said the prince “has always had a good direct personal relationship with the rulers of Qatar. I certainly wouldn’t need consultants to help in that relationship. “
The full scope of Chalker’s work for Qatar is unclear, but AP reviewed a number of projects proposed by Global Risks Advisors between 2014 and 2017, including initiatives not directly related to the World Cup.
Among them are “Pickaxe”, which promised to collect “personal and biometric information” from migrant workers in Qatar. A project called “Falconeye” is described as a plan to use drones to monitor ports and borders, as well as “control population centers of migrant workers.”
“By implementing background investigations and a screening program, Qatar will maintain dominance over migrant workers,” said a GRA document.
Another project, “Viper”, promised “access to mobile devices” in person or remotely, which according to Global Risk Advisors would offer “vital information” and improve national security. The use of technology of this kind provided by private companies is well documented in autocratic countries around the world, including in the Persian Gulf.
The private security business has flourished in the last decade in the Persian Gulf, as an information war with state-sponsored cyber attacks took hold that has coincided in time with preparations for the World Cup.
Three former US military and intelligence agents recently admitted to providing hacking services to a UAE company called DarkMatter, in remarks made as part of an agreement with the Justice Department to avoid criminal charges. A 2019 Reuters investigation reported that DarkMatter hacked the cell phones and computers of the Emir of Qatar, his brother and FIFA officials.
Chalker, who opened an office in Doha and had a Qatari government email account, said in a statement provided by a representative that neither he nor his companies would ever “engage in illegal surveillance.”
Former Chalker collaborators said their companies have provided various services to Qatar, in addition to intelligence work. Global Risk Advisors describes itself as “an international strategic consultancy specializing in training for security forces, military and cybersecurity, as well as intelligence advisory services” and its affiliates have obtained small contracts with the FBI for a course on rope handling, as well as consulting tasks for the National Democratic Committee.
Chalker declined requests for interviews or answering detailed questions about his work for the Qatari government. And he said that some of the documents the AP reviewed were forgeries.
The AP reviewed hundreds of pages of documents from Chalker’s companies, including a status report on a 2013 project that included photos of Chalker’s staff meeting with various soccer officials. Several sources with authorized access provided documents to AP. The sources expressed concern about Chalker’s work for Qatar and asked to remain anonymous because they feared retaliation.
The AP took several steps to verify the authenticity of the documents. That included confirming details of various documents with different sources, including people who had relationships with Chalker and soccer officials, checking the content of documents with news from the same era and public corporate records, as well as examining the metadata – the digital story. of the documents – when they were available, to confirm the authorship and creation date of the files.
Chalker did not provide the AP with any evidence to support his claim that the documents in question have been forged.
Qatari government officials did not respond to requests for comment. FIFA also declined to comment.
Many of the documents reviewed by the AP that detail work done by Chalker and his companies for Qatar were also described in a lawsuit filed by Elliott Broidy, who once served as a fundraiser for former US President Donald Trump. Broidy has sued Chalker and accuses him of putting together a major hacking and espionage campaign at the behest of Qatar that includes former Western intelligence agents to monitor FIFA officials. Broidy’s lawyers did not respond to requests for comment. Chalker’s legal team alleges that the lawsuit is baseless.
Chalker worked as a CIA operative for about five years before starting work for Qatar, according to people who had a relationship with him. Operational agents often work incognito and attempt to recruit assets to spy for the benefit of the United States. The CIA declined to comment, and does not often discuss its former agents.
However, the agency sent a letter this year to several former employees warning about the "damaging trend" of foreign governments hiring former intelligence agents "to bolster your espionage capabilities", according to a copy of the letter seen by the AP and first reported by the New York Times.
Congress is working on legislation that would put new reporting requirements on former US intelligence agents working abroad.
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