Sid and Hillary’s Personal Spy Network, ServerGate

Posted on January 10, 2016January 10, 2016 by Denise Simon

There are only a handful of results of the FBI investigation into Hillary. 1. The DoJ’s Loretta Lynch will give Hillary as pass if there is a criminal referral. 2. Barack Obama will give Hillary full protection under ‘Executive Privilege’ under the excuse of national security. 3. There will be a full blown revolt by the whole intelligence community. 4. Leaks will come out forcing a criminal referral of Hillary Clinton and we could see a Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren ticket.

Hillary’s EmailGate Goes Nuclear

Does the latest release of Hillary’s State Department emails include highly classified U.S. intelligence?

Schlinder: Back in October I told you that Hillary Clinton’s email troubles were anything but over, and that the scandal over her misuse of communications while she was Secretary of State was sure to get worse. Sure enough, EmailGate continues to be a thorn in the side of Hillary’s presidential campaign and may have just entered a new, potentially explosive phase with grave ramifications, both political and legal.

The latest court-ordered dump of her email, just placed online by the State Department, brings more troubles for Team Hillary. This release of over 3,000 pages includes 66 “Unclassified” messages that the State Department subsequently determined actually were classified; however, all but one of those 66 were deemed Confidential, the lowest classification level, while one was found to be Secret, bringing the total of Secret messages discovered so far to seven. In all, 1,340 Hillary emails at State have been reassessed as classified.

There are gems here. It’s hard to miss the irony of Hillary expressing surprise about a State Department staffer using personal email for work, which the Secretary of State noted in her own personal email. More consequential was Hillary’s ordering a staffer to send classified talking points for a coming meeting via a non-secure fax machine, stripped of their classification markings. This appears to be a clear violation of Federal law and the sort of thing that is a career-ender, or worse, for normals. The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee termed that July 2011 incident “disturbing,” and so it is to anyone acquainted with U.S. Government laws and regulations regarding the handling of classified material.

Part 1

But the biggest problem may be in a just-released email that has gotten little attention here, but plenty on the other side of the world. An email to Hillary from a close Clinton confidant late on June 8, 2011 about Sudan turns out to have explosive material in it. This message includes a detailed intelligence report from Sid Blumenthal, Hillary’s close friend, confidant, and factotum, who regularly supplied her with information from his private intelligence service. His usual source was Tyler Drumheller, a former CIA senior official and veteran spy-gadfly, who conveniently died just before EmailGate became a serious problem for Hillary’s campaign.

Part 2

However, the uncredited June 8 memo, which Mr. Blumenthal labeled as “Confidential” – his personal classification system, apparently – but which the State Department has labeled Unclassified, doesn’t appear to be from Drumheller, whose assessments were written just like CIA intelligence reports. This is not.

Part 3

Remarkably, the report emailed to Hillary by “sbwhoeop,” which was Mr. Blumenthal’s email handle, explains how Sudan’s government devised a clandestine plan, in coordination with two rebel generals, to secure control of oil reserves in the disputed region of Abyei. This is juicy, front-page stuff, straight out of an action movie, about a region of Africa that’s of high interest to the American and many other governments, and the report is astonishingly detailed.

Part 4

Its information comes from a high-ranking source with direct access to Sudan’s top military and intelligence officials, and Mr. Blumenthal’s write-up repeatedly states the sources – there turn out to be more than one – are well-placed and credible, with excellent access. It’s the usual spytalk boilerplate when you want the reader to understand this is golden information, not just gossip or rumors circulating on the street, what professionals dismiss as “RUMINT.” Needless to add, this is generating a lot of talk in Sudan, where the media is asking about this shady affair – and how Sid Blumenthal, who’s not exactly an old Africa hand, knew all about it.

Part 5

But the most interesting part is that the report describes a conversation “in confidence” that happened on the evening of June 7, just one day before Mr. Blumenthal sent the report to Secretary Clinton. It beggars the imagination to think that Sid’s private intelligence operation, which was just a handful of people, had operators who were well placed in Sudan, with top-level spy access, able to get this secret information, place it in a decently written assessment with proper espionage verbiage, and pass it all back to Washington, DC, inside 24 hours. That would be a feat even for the CIA, which has stations and officers all over Africa.

In fact, the June 8, 2011 Blumenthal report doesn’t read like CIA material at all, in other words human intelligence or HUMINT, but very much like signals intelligence or SIGINT. (For the differences see here). I know what SIGINT reports look like, because I used to write them for the National Security Agency, America’s biggest source of intelligence. SIGINT reports, which I’ve read thousands of, have a very distinct style and flavor to them and Blumenthal’s write-up matches it, right down to the “Source Comments,” which smack very much of NSA reporting and its “house rules.”

But is this an NSA assessment? If so, it would have to be classified at least Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information, a handling caveat that applies to most SIGINT, and quite possibly Top Secret/SCI, the highest normal classification we have. In that case, it was about as far from Unclassified as it’s possible for an email to be.

No surprise, NSA is aflutter this weekend over this strange matter. One Agency official expressed to me “at least 90 percent confidence” that Mr. Blumenthal’s June 8 report was derived from NSA reports, and the Agency ought to be investigating the matter right now.

There are many questions here. How did Sid Blumenthal, who had no position in the U.S. Government in 2011, and hasn’t since Bill Clinton left the White House fifteen years ago, possibly get his hands on such highly classified NSA reporting? Why did he place it an open, non-secure email to Hillary, who after all had plenty of legitimate access, as Secretary of State, to intelligence assessments from all our spy agencies? Moreover, how did the State Department think this was Unclassified and why did it release it to the public?

It’s possible this Blumenthal report did not come from NSA, but perhaps from another, non-American intelligence agency – but whose? If Sid was really able to get top-level intelligence like this for Hillary, using just his shoestring operation, and get it into her hands a day later, with precise information about the high-level conspiracy that was just discussed over in Sudan, the Intelligence Community needs to get him on our payroll stat. He’s a pro at the spy business.

*******

Hillary Clinton was battered with questions by CBS host John Dickerson on Sunday about new revelations from her private email server.

Appearing on Face The Nation, Clinton was asked about ordering an aide to send information through “nonsecure” channels and her hypocritical surprise that another State Department employee was not using a government account at the time.

The Free Beacon reported:

In the June 2011 email exchange, Jake Sullivan, then-Secretary Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, discussed forthcoming “TPs,” appearing to refer to talking points, that Clinton was waiting to receive.

“They say they’ve had issues sending secure fax. They’re working on it,” Sullivan wrote of the forthcoming information in an email dated June 17, 2011.

“If they can’t, turn it into nonpaper [with] no identifying heading and send nonsecure,” Clinton wrote Sullivan in response the same day.

“Aren’t you ordering him to violate the laws on handling classified material there?” Dickerson asked.

“No, not all, and as the State Department said just this week, that did not happen, and it never would have happened, because that’s just not the way I treated classified information,” Clinton said. “Headings are not classification notices, and so, oftentimes, we are trying to get the best information we can, and obviously what I’m asking for is whatever can be transmitted, if it doesn’t come through secure, to be transmitted on the unclassified systems. So, no, there is nothing to that, like so much else has been talked about in the last year.”

Dickerson said the email was “striking” because it suggested she knew how to get around restrictions for sending classified information.

“You’re saying there was never an instance, any other instance, in which you did that?” Dickerson asked.

“No, and it wasn’t sent,” Clinton said. “This is another instance where what is common practice, namely, I need information. I had some points I had to make, and I was waiting for a secure fax that could get me the whole picture, but oftentimes there’s a lot of information that isn’t at all classified, so whatever information can be appropriately transmitted, unclassified, often was. That’s true for every agency in the government and everybody who does business with the government.”

Clinton said the “important point” was she had “great confidence“ she wasn’t in breach of government regulations on classification.

“In fact, as the State Department has said, there was no transmission of any classified information, so it’s another effort by people looking for something to throw against the wall … to see what sticks, but there’s no ‘there’ there,” she said.

Dickerson wasn’t finished, though, pointing to a 2011 email showing Clinton expressing surprise that another State Department staffer wasn’t using a government account, even while she was flouting rules by using a private email to do business.

That was “what you were doing,” Dickerson said, so “why was that a surprise to you?”

“Well, I emailed two people on their government accounts, because I knew that all of that would be part of the government system, and indeed, the vast majority of all my emails are in the government systems, so that’s how I conducted the business,” she said. “I was very clear about emailing anything having to do with business to people on their government accounts.”

In other words, Clinton did not answer the question about her fairly blatant hypocrisy.

Going Deeper on the Latest Release of Hillary’s Emails

Posted on January 8, 2016January 8, 2016 by Denise Simon

Click here to see a sample email thread on Libya and the internal threat level, note the names, note USAID and further that even a Blackberry was used to participate in the email chain. There is significant reference to the WFP which is was the corrupt World Food Program.

Early August – HRC works to construct a $1.5 billion assets package to be approved by the Security Council and sent to the TNC. That package is working through its last hurdles. We cannot even begin to estimate the real long term cost to the United States over the Libya debacle.

Latest batch of Clinton emails contains 66 more classified messages

FNC: The latest batch of emails released from Hillary Clinton’s personal account from her tenure as secretary of state includes 66 messages deemed classified at some level, the State Department said early Friday.

In one email, Clinton even seemed to coach a top adviser on how to send secure information outside secure channels.

All but one of the 66 messages have been labeled “confidential”, the lowest level of classification. The remaining email has been labeled as “secret.” The total number of classified emails found on Clinton’s personal server has risen to 1,340 with the latest release. Seven of those emails have been labeled “secret.”

In all, the State Department released 1,262 messages in the early hours of Friday, making up almost 2,900 pages of emails. Unlike in previous releases, none of the messages were searchable in the department’s online reading room by subject, sender or recipient.

Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, has repeatedly maintained that she did not send or receive classified material on her personal account. The State Department claims none of the emails now marked classified were labled as such at the time they were sent.

However, one email thread from June 2011 appears to include Clinton telling her top adviser Jake Sullivan to send secure information through insecure means.

In response to Clinton’s request for a set of since-redacted talking points, Sullivan writes, “They say they’ve had issues sending secure fax. They’re working on it.” Clinton responds “If they can’t, turn into nonpaper [with] no identifying heading and send nonsecure.”

Ironically, an email thread from four months earlier shows Clinton saying she was “surprised” that a diplomatic oficer named John Godfrey used a personal email account to send a memo on Libya policy after the fall of Muammar Qaddafi.

Another message includes a condolence email from the father of U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl following the 2012 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi.

The note from Bob Bergdahl, which was forwarded to Clinton by Sullivan, reads in part, “Our Nation is stumbling through a very volatile world. The ‘Crusade’ paradigm will never be forgotten in this part of the world and we force our Diplomats to carry a lot of baggage around while walking on eggshells.”

After seeing the email, Clinton directed her assistant Robert Russo to “pls [sic] prepare [a] response.” Bowe Bergdahl was freed from Taliban capitivity in May 2014 as part of a prisoner swap. He faces a court-martial for desertion in August.

*** The how about getting a name wrong?

FNC: In a scene that could have been taken straight from the HBO show “Veep,” Hillary Clinton blasted her staff after addressing the Tunisian foreign minister by the wrong name in a call two days after the 2012 Benghazi attacks.

The embarrassing exchange was contained in the tranche of emails released by the State Department overnight.

In the initial email, Clinton aide Monica Hanley told Clinton ahead of her call with her Tunisian counterpart that the official’s first name is, “Rasik [raseek].”

But four minutes later, Hanley corrected herself:

“Its Rafik, not Rasik.”

Too late. The damage had already been done.

“That’s too bad since I just used the wrong name. I MUST only be [given] correct information,” Clinton wrote back, five minutes after receiving the update.

State Dept Covered up Hillary’s Email Server for Years

Posted on January 7, 2016January 7, 2016 by Denise Simon

State Department covered up Hillary’s private email server for years even though ‘dozens of senior officials’ knew about it, says scathing inspector general report

Critical report from State Department’s own internal watchdog details abuse of Freedom of Information Act while Clinton ran the agency
177 of the 240 FOIA requests lodged for information about Hillary while she was secretary of state are still pending three years after she left office
State told a liberal group it had no information about Hillary’s emails in 2013 even though many senior officials were emailing her on her private server

The U.S. State Department told a watchdog group in 2013 that it didn’t have any information about former secretary Hillary Clinton’s emails, even though ‘dozens of senior officials’ knew she was using a private server for all her electronic communications.
A report released Thursday by the agency’s inspector general – a powerful and impartial internal investigator – described a cavalier culture about transparency inside Clinton’s agency, saying that 177 requests for documents about Clinton are still ‘pending’ nearly three years after she left office.
The Freedom of Information Act requires federal agencies to respond to requests for information within 20 business days.
The botched FOIA request, filed in December 2012 just before Clinton left office, specifically asked whether or not Clinton used an email account other than one hosted at state.gov.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a liberal group, was reacting to news that former Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson had used an alias – ‘Richard Windsor’ – to send and receive emails in a way that couldn’t be tied to her when FOIA requests came in.
In May 2013 the State Department responded to CREW’s request, saying it had ‘no records’ related to what the group asked for.
By then, Clinton had spent four years emailing department employees from her private home-brew account, but had never turned the messages over to the State Department.
That CREW request was filed in December 2012, just before Mrs. Clinton left office, and specifically asked whether Mrs. Clinton used anon-State.gov email account for government business.
‘At the time the request was received, dozens of senior officials throughout the Department, including members of Secretary Clinton’s immediate staff, exchanged emails with the Secretary using the personal accounts she used to conduct official business,’ the Office of Inspector General concluded.
‘OIG found evidence that the Secretary’s then-Chief of Staff was informed of the request at the time it was received and subsequently tasked staff to follow up. However, OIG found no evidence to indicate that any of these senior officials reviewed the search results or approved the response to CREW.’
The employees responsible for searching the State Department’s records, the report says, never ‘searched any email records, even though the request clearly encompassed emails.’
State has received an unprecedented crush of requests for Clinton-related documents – 240 in all, a number bigger than those related to secretaries Madeline Albright, Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice and John Kerry combined.
But the inspector general found that the agency cut the number of people processing those FOIA requests as they poured in.
Clinton’s emails sat on her private server for years until the State Department asked her in 2014 to turn them over. She deleted more than half of the messages, calling them ‘personal’ in nature, before complying.
In the meantime, however, her emails were out of reach when federal employees searched for records that might satisfy FOIA requests.

Sen. Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican, said Thursday in a statement that ‘the FOIA process at the State Department is broken, and has been for several years.’

The agency’s breakdowns in performance, he said, ‘are particularly troubling in light of the report’s revelation that former Secretary Clinton’s exclusive use of a non-government email server was known to senior staff at the department, but unknown to the FOIA office, thus causing the FOIA office to provide false information about the Secretary’s use of email.’

The FOIA law, first enacted in 1966 before the advent of personal computers, ‘neither authorizes nor requires agencies to search for Federal records in personal email accounts maintained on private servers or through commercial providers,’ the inspector general report explained.

State Department employees have ‘no way to independently locate Federal records from such accounts unless employees take steps to preserve official emails in Department recordkeeping systems.’

Current law requires State Department employees to forward work-related personal emails to their official accounts within 20 days of sending or receiving them, so the agency has a record of them.

But Clinton never had a ‘state.gov’ account where her emails could be sent.

A federal judge ultimately ordered the State Department to collect her emails, vet them for classified material, and release them on a monthly schedule.

So far intelligence officials have had to block the release of portions of more than 1,200 emails because they contained classified information.

Qaddafi did NOT have to Go, But….

Posted on January 7, 2016January 7, 2016 by Denise Simon

He did and there was a larger agenda underway between the UK and the USA. He was behaving, he was trying to keep al Qaida out and what is more he was fighting hard against the Muslim Brotherhood knowing it was festering and growing in power to over-take his own rule.

But but but…..Obama and Hillary are loyal to the Muslim Brotherhood. Well yes they are and Tony Blair was too until late last year and he finally got the memo and then issued a report on the Muslim Brotherhood. Meanwhile several countries in the Middle East have formally declared the Muslim Brotherhood a terror organization, when during the early 2000’s in the United States with the Holyland Foundation trial, the Muslim Brotherhood was proven to be a terror organization.

Meanwhile, Qaddafi was aiding the U.S. intelligence community and was indeed behaving. Obama, Hillary and Blair all had different missions for Libya post Qaddafi. That did not work out well, and all the predictions of Qaddafi have in fact come to pass.

Fail….

Gaddafi warned Blair his ousting would ‘open door’ to jihadis

Transcripts of 2011 calls reveal Libyan dictator predicted extremists would use his departure to start war in Mediterranean

Guardian: Muammar Gaddafi warned Tony Blair in two fraught phone conversations in 2011 that his removal from the Libyan leadership would open a space for al-Qaida to seize control of the country and even launch an invasion of Europe.

The transcripts of the conversations have been published with Blair’s agreement by the UK foreign affairs select committee, which is conducting an inquiry into the western air campaign that led to the ousting and killing of Gaddafi in October 2011.

In the two calls the former British prime minister pleaded with Gaddafi to stand aside or end the violence. The transcripts reveal the gulf in understanding between Gaddafi and the west over what was occurring in his country and the nature of the threat he was facing.

In the first call, at 11.15am on 25 February 2011, Gaddafi gave a warning in part borne out by future events: “They [jihadis] want to control the Mediterranean and then they will attack Europe.”

In the second call, at 3.25pm the same day, the Libyan leader said: “We are not fighting them, they are attacking us. I want to tell you the truth. It is not a difficult situation at all. The story is simply this: an organisation has laid down sleeping cells in north Africa. Called the al-Qaida organisation in north Africa … The sleeping cells in Libya are similar to dormant cells in America before 9/11.”

Gaddafi added: “I will have to arm the people and get ready for a fight. Libyan people will die, damage will be on the Med, Europe and the whole world. These armed groups are using the situation [in Libya] as a justification – and we shall fight them.”

Three weeks after the calls, a Nato-led coalition that included Britain began bombing raids that led to the overthrow of Gaddafi. He was finally deposed in August and murdered by opponents of his regime in October.

At one point in the conversations Gaddafi urged Blair to go to Libya to see the lack of violence in Tripoli, and held the telephone to a TV screen so Blair could hear people voicing their support for Gaddafi in the streets.

Blair said he had decided to act as an intermediary due to the contact he had with Gaddafi when he was prime minister. Both Washington and London knew of his phone calls to Gaddafi, he said.

During the calls Blair suggested he could engineer a peaceful exit for Gaddafi if he agreed to leave. Referring to him as the leader, Blair also insisted there was no attempt to colonise Libya. Gaddafi said he had to defy colonisation, insisting: “There is nothing here. No fight, no bloodshed. Come see yourself.”

Blair urged Gaddafi to give him a phone number so he could contact him urgently, and beseeched him to “do something that allows the process to start, end the bloodshed, start a new constitution”.

He told Gaddafi that if he made the right statements, ended violence, and lowered the political temperature, it might be possible to get the US and the EU to hold back from interfering.

“If you have a safe place to go, you should go there because this will not end peacefully and there has to be a process of change; that process of change can be managed and we have to find a way of managing it,” Blair said. “The US and the EU are in a tough position right now and I need to take something back to them which ensures this ends peacefully. If people saw the leader stand aside people would be content with that. If this goes on for another day or two days, we will go past that point. I am saying this because I believe it deeply. If we cannot find a way out very quickly, we will be past the point of no return. If this does not happen very fast the people of Libya will make this very destructive.”

Blair ended the call by saying: “ I would like to offer a way out that is peaceful … keep the lines open.”

Commenting on the exchanges on Thursday, the foreign select committee chair, Crispin Blunt, said: “The transcripts supplied by Mr Blair provide a new insight into the private views of Colonel Gaddafi as his dictatorship began to crumble around him. The failure to follow Mr Blair’s calls to ‘keep the lines open’ and for these early conversations to initiate any peaceful compromise continue to reverberate.

“The committee will want to consider whether Gaddafi’s prophetic warning of the rise of extremist militant groups following the collapse of the regime was wrongly ignored because of Gaddafi’s otherwise delusional take on international affairs. The evidence that the committee has taken so far in this inquiry suggests that western policymakers were rather less perceptive than Gaddafi about the risks of intervention for both the Libyan people and the western interests.”

In one of the deadliest attacks since the fall of Gaddafi, dozens of people were killed on Thursday in an apparent suicide bombing at a police training centre in the Libyan town of Zliten.

Saudis and the DC Powerbrokers, Millions $$

Posted on January 7, 2016January 7, 2016 by Denise Simon

Ah, you have a call holding on line 5, insider information incoming for the next committee meeting or the next paragraph of legislation to be tucked into that bill.

Oh interesting mail here, so buy this stock at this strike price, hold it for 9 days and bail.

Hey Nancy, are you going to the Piper party in Georgetown, great see you there lots to discuss over martinis.

Harry, new nugget coming from K Street, make sure you say this on the Senate floor.

Podesta Group = John and Tony Podesta (John Podesta is Hillary’s campaign architect)

DLA Piper = Law Firm found in 30 countries and was a large contributor the re-election of Barack Obama and is the 5th largest donor to Hillary’s current presidential campaign

Targeted Victory = A digital strategy firm whose founder Zac Moffatt was the director for Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign

Qorvis/MSL Group = A DC based Public Relations/Crisis Management organization that was hired by the FDA, Palestinian American Chamber of Commerce and even Yemen

Pillsbury Winthrop = Law firm that concentrates on mergers and acquisition for corporations and Middle East interests including Abu Dhabi and did sizeable work for arguing habeas corpus rights for Gitmo detainees

Hogan Lovells = Law firm with global offices with concentration in media, litigation and First Amendment law. Oldest law firm in DC, origins in the UK with early cases on treasury issues

Now you may begin to understand connections, donors, cocktail parties and who else is taking up the time daily of those in Congress. Now comes Saudi Arabia:

Washington’s Multi-Million-Dollar Saudi PR Machine

Public image isn’t something one can always control, but Saudi Arabia is spending millions of dollars on Washington lobbyists and PR firms to improve the Kingdom’s reputation in the West. The execution of Shiite leader Sheik Nimr Baqr al-Nimr, followed by an attack on the Saudi embassy in Tehran and the Kingdom’s severing of diplomatic relations with Iran, would seem to offer few upsides for the Saudi government. Riyadh’s behavior comes across as a desperate Hail-Mary pass to isolate Iran at the expense of regional efforts to negotiate a de-escalation of the Syrian civil war and defeat the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.

Jim Lobe pointed out that Washington’s neoconservatives have jumped to Riyadh’s defense, apparently subscribing to the philosophy that “the enemy of my Iranian enemy is my friend.” But, as The New York Times editorial board wrote on Monday, “The execution of the popular Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr and 46 other prisoners on Saturday was about the worst way Saudi Arabia could have started what promises to be a grim and tumultuous year in the kingdom and across the Middle East.”

The Times may be stating the obvious, but Saudi Arabia pays millions of dollars per year to American public relations firms to paint the Kingdom in the most positive light. These firms have their work cut out for them. Indeed, that PR machine is doing all it can to spin the Saudis’ execution of a political dissident and blatant effort to fan sectarian tensions as somehow the fault of anyone but Saudi Arabia.

Defending the Kingdom

Fahad Nazer, a non-resident fellow at the Saudi- and UAE-funded Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, was quoted in Politico defending the executions, saying, “The primary message appears to be aimed at Saudi Arabia’s own militants, regardless of their sect.” And the Times published a quote from Saudi commentator Salman al-Ansari, who “accused Sheikh Nimr, who was in his mid-50s, of organizing a ‘terrorist network’ in Shiite areas in eastern Saudi Arabia and compared him to a Qaeda ideologue who sanctioned the killing of security forces.” The Podesta Group, a public relations firm hired by the Saudi government, provided Ansari.

So, how much money is in it for the PR professionals who are burning the midnight oil to put a positive spin on Saudi Arabia’s decision to start the year with a mass execution of 47 prisoners? Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) filings submitted by Saudi government contractors in Washington reveal an expensive PR operation.

Firms listed as “active foreign principals for Saudi Arabia” on the FARA website include: DLA Piper, Targeted Victory, Qorvis/MSLGroup, Pillsbury Winthrop, Hogan Lovells, and the Podesta Group. Qorvis/MSLGroup appears to the biggest recipient of Saudi money. Their FARA filings reveal what appears to be a $240,000 per month retainer with the Kingdom for services described as:

Drafted and/or distributed news releases, weekly newsletters, fact sheets and/or speeches to promote Saudi Arabia, its commitment towards counterterrorism, peace in the Middle East, and other issues pertinent to the Kingdom.

Qorvis/MSLGroup also reports it “created a Twitter account for a senior Saudi official,” and “managed a website on Operation Renewal of Hope,” Saudi Arabia’s 10-month-old military intervention in Yemen. Moreover, it farms out $55,000 per month of work from the Saudi account to Targeted Victory, LLC, a digital consulting firm.

The Podesta Group received $200,000 from the “The Center for Studies and Media Affairs at the Saudi Royal Court” for approximately one month of “public relations services” from August to September. The Podesta Group, cited in the Times as working for the Saudi government, is listed as an “active” foreign agent for Saudi Arabia on the FARA website, suggesting that the contract is ongoing.

For services that include advising the Saudi government on “media reports and related public affairs developments” and undertaking “specific advocacy assignments with regard to litigation, legislative, regulatory, public policy or public affairs matters, and/or in other activities,” Hogan Lovells receives $60,000 per month in fees.

DLA Piper receives a fee of $50,000 per month for services including “[contacting] Members of Congress, congressional staff and Executive Branch officials in connection with strengthening the ability of the United States and Saudi Arabia to advance mutual national security interests.”

Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP collects a fee of $15,000 per month for “legal and non-legal services to Saudi Arabia in conjunction with information gather on U.S. Middle East policy.”

Assuming that these contracts are ongoing, as the FARA site indicates, and the Targeted Victory LLC fees were already included in the Qorvis/MSLGroup fees, Saudi Arabia is spending $565,000 per month for its lobbying operations in Washington, not including expenses. That’s $6.78 million per year in fees for PR, lobbying, and legal representation in the U.S. capitol.

Who Else Benefits?

Saudi Arabia is certainly a prize catch for K Street firms looking for hefty monthly retainers from foreign clients. But the U.S. military-industrial complex rakes in the biggest profits from the country currently fanning the flames of sectarian conflict in the Middle East.

Saudi Arabia is looking to complete a $1.29 billion purchase of U.S. weapons, in part to replenish bombs and missiles used in Yemen. Reuters reports that a $11.25 billion purchase of Lockheed Martin warships is also expected to move forward, according to “military and industry sources.” The Congressional Research Service reports that Saudi Arabia topped the list of arms transfer recipients among developing nations from 2007 to 2014 with $86 billion in agreements, giving US defense contractors ample incentive to lend their own lobbying and PR firepower to the Kingdom’s efforts to manage public opinion.

“The tangled and volatile realities of the Middle East do not give the United States or the European Union the luxury of choosing or rejecting allies on moral criteria,” the Times editorial concluded, but that “cannot mean condoning actions that blatantly fan sectarian hatreds, undermine efforts at stabilizing the region and crudely violate human rights.”

Saudi Arabia’s extensive contracts with Washington’s biggest PR firms—and the additional PR help it gets from U.S. defense contractors—are designed to make those actions somehow palatable inside the Beltway. But in the end they will only make the White House’s efforts to navigate the Sunni-Shia divide all the more difficult.