The tiny Arabian Peninsula nation of Qatar has for years employed a former CIA agent to help spy on soccer officials as part of a cost-intensive effort to secure and keep the FIFA Cup tournament. world 2022, an Associated Press investigation reveals.
This is part of a trend in which former U.S. intelligence operatives will work for foreign governments with questionable human rights records, which worries officials in Washington and prompts some members of Congress to seek a closer examination of an opaque and lucrative market.
The World Cup is the most popular sports tournament on the planet. This is the opportunity for Qatar, one of the richest countries in the world, to gain a showcase on the international scene.
The PA investigation shows that Qatar was looking for an edge to ensure it presented the event by hiring Kevin Chalker, a former CIA agent turned private entrepreneur. His role was to spy on rival nominations and top soccer officials who picked the winning country in 2010. Chalker has also worked for Qatar in the years since selection to keep an eye out for criticism of the country around the world. soccer, the AP found.
The AP’s investigation is based on interviews with former Chalker associates as well as contracts, invoices, emails and a review of business documents.
“Maintain control”
The surveillance job involved asking someone to pose as a photojournalist in order to keep tabs on a rival country’s candidacy and deploy a ” honeypot Facebook, in which someone posed as an attractive woman, to get closer to a target, according to a review of files. Agents working for Chalker and the Sheikh of the Persian Gulf also searched the phone call lists of at least one senior FIFA official ahead of the 2010 vote, according to a file review.
Chalker also pledged he could help the country “maintain its stranglehold” over its large population of foreign workers, according to an internal document from one of Chalker’s companies reviewed by the PA. Qatar – a country of 2.8 million people, including only 300,000 citizens – relies heavily on foreign labor to build the stadiums and other infrastructure needed for the tournament. He was criticized for the way workers were treated and did not provide full details and data on worker deaths.
Qatari government officials did not respond to requests for reaction. FIFA also declined to comment.
Chalker, who opened an office in Doha and had a Qatari government email account, said in a statement provided by a representative that he and his companies would “never engage in illegal surveillance.”
Chalker declined requests for interviews or answers to detailed questions about his work for the Qatari government. He also claimed that some of the documents examined by the PA were forgeries.
Multiple checks
The AP reviewed hundreds of pages of documents from Chalker’s companies, including a 2013 Project Update Report containing several photos of Chalker’s staff meeting with various soccer executives. Multiple sources with authorized access provided documents to the PA. The sources said they were troubled by Chalker’s work for Qatar and requested anonymity because they feared reprisals.
The PA took several steps to verify the authenticity of the documents. This includes confirming the details of various documents from various sources, including former Chalker associates and soccer officials; cross-checking document content with news reports and publicly available business records; reviewing electronic document metadata, or digital history, if applicable, to confirm who created the documents and when. Chalker did not provide the PA with any evidence to support its position that some of the documents in question had been forged.
Chalker worked at the CIA as an operations officer for about five years, according to former associates. Operations officers typically work undercover trying to recruit assets to spy on behalf of the United States. The CIA declined to comment and generally does not speak of its former officers.
The World Cup will be presented in Qatar from November 21 to December 18, 2022.