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.
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