Saudi Arabia To Blame For Jeff Bezos Nude Photos Hack, Security Chief Says

Gavin de Becker, the renowned security expert whose clients include the FBI and the CIA, claims Saudi Arabia is the source of the intimate photos and texts of Jeff Bezos and his girlfriend now in the possession of the tabloid, the National Enquirer.

De Becker was hired by Bezos to uncover the source of his embarrassing photos and texts with former TV anchor Lauren Sanchez. Bezos has been a client of de Becker’s for the past 22 years.

De Becker said his investigation concludes “with high confidence that the Saudis had access to Bezos’ phone and gained private information,” he wrote in a story published by The Daily Beast. He said he’s turned over the results of his investigation to federal officials.

It seems the motive for this operation by Saudi Arabia and its intelligence agency is revenge for stories critical of the country and its ruler, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, published by The Washington Post, which Bezos owns. Some of those stories were written by the late Jamal Khashoggi, who worked as a Post correspondent.

Khashoggi was murdered on October 2018 inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. His body was reportedly dismembered and has never been found.

“Some Americans will be surprised to learn that the Saudi government has been very intent on harming Jeff Bezos since last October, when the Post began its relentless coverage of Khashoggi’s murder,” wrote de Becker.

Saudi Arabia keeps denying having anything to do with the National Enquirer’s exposé of Bezos.

De Becker said the National Enquirer in January published a special edition that revealed the relationship between Bezos and Sanchez. He said his security firm, Gavin de Becker and Associates, quickly identified Michael Sanchez, the now-estranged brother of Lauren Sanchez, as the source.

De Becker, however, remarked it was quite unusual for AMI, parent company of the National Enquirrer, to feed him clues that could only lead to Michael Sanchez.

“AMI practically pinned a ‘kick me’ sign on Michael Sanchez,” wrote De Becker.

It turns out Michael Sanchez was a red herring meant to cover-up the real source of the information, which was Saudi Arabia’s intelligence service. The question de Becker now had to answer is why AMI worked so hard to identify Michael Sanchez as their sole source for the incriminating information about Bezos.

“My best answer is contained in what happened next: AMI threatened to publish embarrassing photos of Jeff Bezos unless certain conditions were met,” wrote de Becker.

He explained these were photos AMI had witheld and hadn’t published in their first story on the Bezos affair, or any subsequent story. De Becker then spoke about AMI’s extrortion of Bezos, which the latter revealed to the world in an online post that stunned AMI, which now has to defend its actions in court.

He said an eight-page contract that AMI required he and Bezos sign “would have required that I make a public statement, composed by them and then widely disseminated, saying that my investigation had concluded they hadn’t relied upon ‘any form of electronic eavesdropping or hacking in their news-gathering process.”

Oddly, AMI also wanted de Becker to say his investigation had concluded their story about Bezos was not “instigated, dictated or influenced in any manner by external forces, political or otherwise.”

“External forces? Such a strange phrase,” said de Becker.

The contract also stated that if Bezos or de Becker “were ever in our lives to state, suggest or allude to” anything contrary to what AMI wanted said about electronic eavesdropping and hacking, then they could publish the embarrassing photos.”

De Becker said he wrote The Daily Beast story “because it’s exactly what the Enquirer scheme was intended to prevent me from doing. Their contract also contained terms that would have inhibited both me and Bezos from initiating a report to law enforcement.”

De Becker then said things didn’t work out as AMI hoped. Within hours, Bezos wrote an essay describing his reasons for rejecting AMI’s threat. Bezos posted his reply on Medium, including AMI’s actual emails and their descriptions of the private photos.

Bezos then told de Becker to “spend whatever is needed” to learn who’s involved in the scheme, and why they did it.

That investigation is now complete, said de Becker, who wouldn’t disclose details from his investigation. But de Becker said he’s comfortable confirming one key fact: “Our investigators and several experts concluded with high confidence that the Saudis had access to Bezos’ phone, and gained private information.”

It is unclear to what degree, if any, AMI was aware of the details.

De Becker said experts confirm the Saudi capability to “collect vast amounts of previously inaccessible data from smartphones in the air without leaving a trace -- including phone calls, texts, emails. Experts also confirmed hacking was a key part of the Saudi’s “extensive surveillance efforts that ultimately led to the killing of (Washington Post) journalist Jamal Khashoggi.”

De Becker said the Saudi government in October 2018 “unleashed its cyber army on Bezos (and later me). Their multi-pronged campaign included public calls for boycotts against Amazon.com and its Saudi subsidiary, Souq.com. Just three examples among thousands.”

He also said he studied the well-documented and close relationship between Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman and AMI chairman, David Pecker.