The Ridiculous Nature of Saudi Intelligence:
What the Saudi Cables Released by WikiLeaks Say and Don’t Say
WikiLeaks released the first batch of the so-called “Saudi
cables” on June 19, 2015. By June 22, a total of 61,214 of the documents
were released online. More than half a million of these cables are in
the hands of WikiLeaks.
The documents are believed to have been hacked from the Saudi Foreign
Ministry in May 2015 by a group calling itself the Yemen Cyber Army as
retaliation to the House of Saud’s war against Yemen. The Yemen Cyber
Army probably is not Yemeni and almost certainly is an outward show for
another actor wishing to either penalize Riyadh or even possibly
manipulate it.
In the Arab World there is great interest about the documents. The Lebanese newspaper Al-Akbar
has also partnered itself with WikiLeaks to release the so-called Saudi
cables, as it has with previous leaks. The Saudi cables, however, do
not tell the world and Wikileaks readers anything new about Saudi
Arabia.
The Buying Influence of Riyadh’s Petro-Dollar
The House of Saud has characteristically tried to buy influence. It
wrongly believes that loyalty can be bought. Call them subsidies,
grants, bursaries, or business contracts: they are all forms of bribery.