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March 8, 2023 45 mins

EXILE Content Studio proudly presents its latest investigative series, Shoot the Messenger: Espionage, Murder, & Pegasus Spyware (subscribe here). In this series we’ll do a deep dive on the news stories that warrant a reexamination, and in season 1, we’ll focus on the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the sophisticated spyware known as Pegasus, found on the phones of many of his inner circle. We all use our phones daily, as almost an extension of ourselves - but what happens when our phones are no longer safe?

In 2018, Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi entered the Saudi consulate in Turkey and was never seen again. Weeks later, the Turkish intelligence released secret tapes of Khashoggi’s last moments before being brutally murdered, causing an international uproar. It has been four years since Khashoggi’s murder, and what we now know is that the first weapon used against Khashoggi was digital and it’s called Pegasus - a kind of software that can be used to hijack your phone; a military-grade, spyware software.


A new biweekly serialized podcast, every season Exile Content Studio investigates one international new story. You may have heard the headlines — this is the deep dive. The first season examines the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and his inner circle that has had the world’s most sophisticated military-grade spyware confirmed on their phones. It’s called Pegasus. How did this spyware come to be, how does it work, and how vulnerable are you?


Shoot the Messenger is hosted by Rose Reid and Nando Vila and is a production of Exile Content Studio.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, Therefore from the South listeners, I'm Nando Vila. We're
taking over the feed to share a pretty wild story
with you. It's called Shoot the Messenger, Espionage, murder and
Pegasus Spyware. I've been working on this project for over
two years. Shoot the Messenger is a new bi weekly
serialized podcast from Exile Content. Season one is all about

(00:23):
Pegasus spyware. Pegasus is the world's most sophisticated spyware to date.
It can give full access to your phone. That means everything,
your texts, emails, phone calls, camera, microphone everything. How did
this spyware come to be? We'll investigate how it works,
who makes it, and the industry booming around it. In

(00:47):
episode one, which you're about to hear, will start with
the murder of journalist Jamal Kashogi and uncover how Pegasus
was found on the phones of many in his inner circle.
Here is Shoot the Messenger. Dubai is known for luxury,

(01:07):
high end shopping and a bump in nightlife. The heat
and the United Arab Emirates can be oppressive, but in
springtime Dubai can be pleasant. You can expect sunshine with
clear skies, balmy but not too hot. It was a

(01:29):
night like this on April twenty first, twenty eighteen, when Hanan,
a latter, landed in her hometown of Dubai after twenty
two years as a flight attendant with Emirates Airlines. The
routine had long turned to muscle memory. On this Saturday night,
Hanan had just finished a long flight from Toronto. Her
shift was over and she was tired and ready to

(01:50):
go home. Hanan would have been wearing the standard Emerani uniform,
a fitted cream colored blazer with red piping with the
signature red pillbox hat. And this is where I like
to imagine Hanan and red pumps clacking along in the
manner which is distinctive to crew and pilots no matter
how often you fly, pulling a black roll away behind her,

(02:13):
always black, and maybe she had one of those squarish
tote bags strapped on top of her roll away. Hanan
had deboarded a plane, exited the gate area, and walked
through immigration at Dubai's International Airport thousands of times, but
this time something was different. And this immigration people they

(02:37):
know me by name. He normally took my passport to
speak to me about my filite, but in this case,
he said, Hannah, within the site, the system is down
and I feel there is something chrome. Hanan rushed into
a nearby bathroom and locked herself in a stall. She
called the person she always called once she landed at home,

(02:58):
her sister, and I told this in my sister. There's
somethingle and go on. Hanan had a terrible feeling that
the Emaradi men hanging around immigration had something to do
with her fiance. Her fiance was a journalist known for
speaking out on human rights, and in the UAE, loudly
defending human rights could get you detained or even jailed.

(03:22):
Hanan's fiance had already told her he worried about the
way his work would impact her life. He gave me
the engagement drink and who when he got a rink
in my hand, he said, Hannan and his skit, I
might be a curse in new life. I might create
a problem for you. Hanan wasn't involved in politics, She

(03:44):
hadn't had any run ins with the police, But sitting
in that bathroom stall in the Dubai airport, her fiance's
words echoed in her head. I remember this wound. I
was very scared. She gathered herself and left the stall.
When Hanan walked out of the bathroom, she was quickly
flanked by Amaradi intelligence officers. One of the member told me,

(04:10):
woke was us quietly in the behavior? Chef, I realized
you just have to comply with Jim. Hanan was unhandcuffed, blindfolded,
put in a car, and taken to an interrogation cell.
I cannot express to you what is my feeling gives
this time the band in my stomach from the panic.

(04:33):
The intelligence officers demanded she hand over all of her devices,
a laptop and two Android phones, and that she share
her passwords. She was taken to a remote location where
she was questioned overnight and into the morning. Seventeen hours later,
the intelligence officers returned Hanan's devices and took her home.

(04:57):
Hanan wanted to resume the life she had built for herself,
leading a cabin crew across transatlantic flights, traveling and visiting family.
She looked forward to her wedding ceremony in Washington, d C.
Just a couple of months away. But after she was detained,
everything changed. It turns out that while Hanan was being questioned,

(05:18):
the Emadi intelligence officers were executing a much more effective
plan to get information from her. I never had my
normal life back. That's because when Emiadi intelligence officers had
Hanan's phone, they installed a highly sophisticated piece of spywear,
and as Hanan went about her life, the spywear had

(05:39):
unknowingly turned her into an informant, providing a direct window
to the person she cared about. Most fears are growing
over the fate of missing Saudi journalist Jamaka, who vanished
after entering the Saudi Arabian consulate in restaurant. Bold details

(06:01):
are pouring in about the likely death of this Washington
Post columnist, Kagi, and they are just simply horrifying. Jamal Kashogi,
Hanan's newly wet husband, the Saudi journalist who had been
living in Washington, DC in South exile writing op eds
for the Washington Post, was assassinated just months after her detention.

(06:23):
We never thought me, uncle Jaman. They will be extremists
to the level to kill him in this terrible way.
When Kashogi disappeared from the Saudi consulate in twenty eighteen,
it would be weeks before the world learned what occurred
in his final hours. But it's taken years for us
to learn he wasn't just killed, he was systematically hunted

(06:47):
in a way we have never seen before. And what
we now know is that the first weapon used against
Kashogi was digital and it's called Pegasus. Pegasus is probably
the most advanced piece of It is effectively the most
invasive form of surveilance imaginable licenses this software to intelligence
and law enforcement agencies worldwide. Tool can also be deployed

(07:11):
by a government to crush descent. Pecasus is a kind
of software that can be used to hijack your phone.
It's a military grade spying software. It's this magic thing.
It can infect your phone, and once it does, it's
inside of your phone and it's like a little worm
and it can burrow into every piece of equipment in

(07:34):
your phone. This is Dana Priest. She covers national security
for the Washington Post, the same newspaper as Jamal Kashogi.
It can turn the microphone on, it can turn the
camera on. It can go into all of your photos,
all of your emails, even your deleted messages, and scoop

(07:55):
them up and take them somewhere twenty four seven and
you'll never know it you'll never know it. Pegasus implicates
several countries and multiple government agencies and unites unlikely allies.
It's part of a massive and mostly unregulated, multibillion dollar
global industry. Battlefields aren't physical anymore. They aren't far away

(08:19):
across oceans or borders. They're in our pocket. And the
threats that journalists face as they seek out and reveal
uncomfortable truths are threats that we are all vulnerable to,
no matter where we live, who we know, and what
we do. Jamaica Shogi's assassination reveals that journalists are the

(08:39):
canaries in the coal mine these days. You don't have
to be a high profile journalist, or a dissident or
a famous truthteller to get swept up. If you've ever
had a phone, if you've ever had a secret, you're
at risk. Two. I'm Nando Vila and I'm Rose Reed

(09:00):
and this is Shoot the Messenger, a new investigative reporting
podcast from Exile Content Studio. Every season, we investigate one
international news story you may have heard the headlines. This
is the deep dive. Nando and I started the series
with one question, what is the biggest threat to journalists today?

(09:22):
We put up a bulletin board and stuck a pen
for every journalist who was threatened or assassinated or if
they had a family member who was threatened or assassinated
directly because of their work in the last five years.
And we found one link that kept coming up again
and again, from Mexico to DC to the United Arab
Emirates Pegasus. How did this spyware come to be? How

(09:46):
does it work? And how vulnerable are you? Over the
course of ten episodes, we're doing a special partnership with
the Committee to Protect Journalists on espionage, murder and Pegasus
spyware in the hell could have happened in there? Which
he's together what happened? Almost like a who done it?
Given one instance of an attack, can we trace that

(10:09):
to other instances in other countries as well? Regardings are
spying and the bagattist, we did not know they did
drag him through me because they am the closest to
unto him. They started with me. Episode one Jamaica Shogi,
a story told in three parts his life, death and betrayal.

(10:37):
Jamal was a great man as a journalist and as
a husband. Hanana latter first met Jamalka Shogi at a
conference in two thousand and nine. Jamal is a kind
of person we can say is not in the right
or left. He's in the medal in his opinion and
his vision because he's very open minded. Any bad grounds

(11:00):
can sit down with Jamal, any race, any adulugi and
do you have a different view from him, but you
will walk away with a smile. Nana Kashogi captain touch
and they are friends for almost a decade before their
romance began. I met Jama first time with two thousand
nine in Dubai where I grown up and I remember

(11:22):
very well. We had a conversation over two hours. He
was talking about the Middle East politics and forum policy
of US toward the Middle East, and we realize we
are like a twin and we continue. And I always
used to give him a feedback in any article, any

(11:43):
bubblish opinion. I used to give him a feedback and
he was always waiting for me, calling me up discussing
with le Koshogi spent most of his career as a
writer and editor for Almadina, one of the oldest and
biggest newspapers in Saudi Arabia. Koshogi had grown up among
a social elite and considered himself a moderate, but over

(12:03):
time he developed a reputation in the Middle East for
speaking truth to power. Speaking out cost him several jobs.
He respired from Almadina for publishing pieces that were critical
of the Saudi regime, supporting women's rights to drive, or
blowing the whistle on corruption among the religious police. Kashogi

(12:24):
then worked for Saudi ambassadors and diplomats, living between Washington,
d C. And Saudi Arabia. This way he was able
to maintain his elite social status in the kingdom, and
then in twenty eleven, the Arab spring erupted across the
Middle East. It's the first Arab revolution of the twenty
first st three or it will be profiles that people

(12:46):
were fearless, but that they were joyous. Mbarak deposed. Egypt's
eighteen day revolution defies all expectations. Protesters across Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria,
and Bahrain used social media to nize the masses and
take to the streets. In turn, many leaders in the
region began to heavily surveil social media in order to

(13:07):
curtail public discourse and dissent. A new industry developed to
keep up with government's demand to surveil the press was
a major target. The Committee to Protect Journalists has reported
that at the end of twenty twenty two, more than
three hundred and sixty journalists, which is a twenty percent
increase over twenty twenty one around the world are currently imprisoned,

(13:30):
either charged with crimes against the state like treason, or
their paper of record charged with libel, or even a
personal matter exposed if illegal in their country, like committing adultery.
Journalism such a critical component at the outset of the
Arab Spring has become one of its long term casual.
For the very first time, a lot of the main

(13:52):
television channels in Egypt are directly owned by the Egyptian military.
This is new. You only need to target a handful
of journalists before the rest of them are in line.
Enjoying the episode, make sure to subscribe to Shoot the
Messenger Espionage, Murder and Pegasus spyware. You can find exiles

(14:13):
Shoot the Messenger anywhere you get your podcasts. Okay, let's
get back to the episode. Following the Arab Spring in
twenty eleven, authorities across North Africa and the Middle East
increased online censorship and took over broadcast networks and media companies.
Revolution did not come to Saudi Arabia, but in twenty fifteen,

(14:36):
Saudi Arabia got a new leader. Now, at thirty one,
an astonishing rise to power appears complete. They call him MBS.
He's young, popular and promising more change than this country's
ever seen. The Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, commonly referred
to as MBS, initially spoke of reforms. He allowed women

(14:58):
to drive and attend sporting events. But while MBS endorsed
some social reform, he crushed any type of political reform
or opposition. Here is a clip of Jamalka Shogi commenting
on the new leadership, taken from an interview he did
with Global News. I have fixed freelings about that. I'm

(15:19):
very much supportive for his reform, but his social reforms.
But in the same time I immediately say he doesn't
need to disintimidation. Muhammad bin Samon took the new social
media playbook to a new level in Saudi Arabia. He
worked closely with authorities to watch, target and silence any opposition,

(15:40):
either discrediting opponents and complex media campaigns or arresting them
and sometimes their family members as well. Kashoki's friends advised
him to be careful. It was sae to me, but
it is not that I time to shave mbs and
his media is are singled out independent journalists. After Koshogi

(16:04):
openly questioned the Saudi regimes support for the newly elected
American President Donald Trump on Twitter, authorities told Koshogi to
stay offline in two thousand and sixteen because he staid
a negative opinion about electing President Donald Trump. The Saudi
authority did most like he speaking frankly and ask him

(16:24):
to sit down at home not to write anything. Most
to Abeer almost under house arristic. In the summer of
twenty seventeen, Jama Kashogi decided it was time to leave
his home country of Saudi Arabia. Whatever ner space I
had was getting nerwer, so I just decided to leave

(16:46):
before it is du it. I'm sixty years old and
I want to enjoy life, and they want to be
three to speak for my country. Koshogi continued his reporting,
but he never considered himself a dissident. Jammal did not
leave to criticize, only just for a siko criticize Jammal

(17:06):
was op domestic about future of his country. He loved
his country, but he loved to be identified as in
Saogia and Arabs. Kashogi went to DC and began writing
op eds for The Washington Post. Kashogi put more than
six thousand miles between himself and the Crown Prince and
thought he would start a new chapter, one where he

(17:27):
could be free to speak his mind. Hanan allowed her
remembers the day Kashogi arrived in the United States. I
was in London in this day operating my flies. Immediately
I called to him, so shaken him. I was so happy,
and I did tell him something and I believe in it.

(17:48):
I said, make use of your freedom. Speak up, and
Kashogi did speak up. He used his new platform in
the United States to comment on his home country and
Middle Eastern politics, and his first columns for The Washington Post,
Kashogi wrote, quote Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince is acting like Putin,

(18:09):
and quote Saudi Arabia wasn't always this repressive. Now it's unbearable.
As Jamalka Shogi worked in exile, his fan base grew
to over a million followers on Twitter. Saudi has an
extremely active Twitter base. There's data showing that more than
seventy percent of Saudi's are Twitter users. Even an ocean

(18:31):
away from Saudi Arabia, Jamaka Shogi still knew he had
to be cautious. He avoided going to Saudi embassies and
would tell his fellow exiled friends to avoid them too,
But he wasn't scared. As Hanan would describe, he was
trying to be carefully, but he wasn't scared for his life.
He never come back home and the woods that changed

(18:53):
fifty chin in the door I used to do before
we go to sleep. Kashogi got comfortable with his new
life in exile, but he was homesick. He wanted to
build a more permanent home and turned to Istanbul Turkey,
a mix between East and West, closer to his home country,
but what Kashogi considered a safe enough distance. We agree.

(19:14):
You have to buy a flesh in the Istanbul, to
get a passport and to get a shelter from the
Turkish authority. Moving a Turkey this is where things got
a little more complicated. Well, Jamal's personal life was more
complex than we knew before he died. He had two

(19:36):
relationships one was a longer relationship and he was married,
and that was Hanan. And the second relationship that we
knew more about was his recent fiance Hadija in Turkey,
so the two women did not know each other. During

(19:58):
a trip to Istanbul, a friend entered Koshogi to a
Turkish scholar, Hatisha Sindez around the same time Kashogi married
Hanan in a religious Muslim ceremony and Washington d c
he began dating Hatija and Istanbul and Hanan didn't know
about Hadija, and Atisha didn't know about Hanan, and most people, honestly,

(20:21):
even his good friends, did not know about Hanan. We're
not here to focus on Kashogi's romantic endeavors. He's not
here to explain himself to us or to the women
in his life. But it's important to know because to
understand how Koshogi died, we need to unpack the logistical
details around the engagement to Turkish scholar Hatijha Sinez because

(20:45):
to get legally married in Turkey, Kashogi needed paperwork, and
to get that paperwork, Kashoki had to go to the
Saudi consulate in Istanbul. On Friday, September twenty eighth, twenty eighteen,

(21:08):
Jamal Koshogi didn't make an appointment to visit the Saudi consulate.
He just walked in and to koshogi surprise, he was
greeted warmly. After years of experiencing harassment and intimidation from
the government, which had ultimately forced him to live in exile,
Kashogi found himself being offered tea by the Saudi officials

(21:29):
in Istanbul. They told him to come back Tuesday, October
two to get the final paperwork. In the last five
days Kashogi was alive. He lived like a freeman. He
traveled to London for a conference, made plans for the future.
He was emailing his editors at the Washington Post, bloodsapping
with friends across the world, texting with Hanan, and arranging

(21:49):
logistics with Hatiche back in Istanbul the morning of Tuesday,
October second, twenty eighteen, Koshogi met Hatija at an empty
apart mint in Istanbul, one that would be their new home.
CCTV captured the couple holding hands on their walk to
the Saudi Consulate. They went together to the point stult

(22:11):
and it's in a quiet, leafy, very pretty residential area.
This is Carlotta Gaul, the bureau chief of the New
York Times in Istanbul, who reported on the Jama Kashogi case.
He handed her his bones and goes in, and so
she waited outside. It was one fourteen pm when Kashogi

(22:32):
entered the consulate, and then that was the last any
one sort of thing. And then she's hanging around for
hours after until finally it's clear that consults closed and
she asks the god. They say there's no one here.
She asks the police and they say everyone's gone. That's
when she started. And then it calls to people. Her

(22:55):
teacher made many calls that night, including some to journalists,
which is how Carlotta I got the tip that because
Shogi had disappeared from the Saudi consulate. The next day,
I went up the consulate and that's where I ran
into her dj and she was sort of still there,
pacing the sidewalk, and she'd been there all that previous

(23:17):
night and then was outstanding outside the whole the next day,
and I was the first interview she gave him. But
actually when she saw me, she just started to open
up the a Saudi dissidents who wouldn't go near a
Saudi concert or embassy. I knew there were stories of
previous kidnappings. I was thinking he might have been taken

(23:39):
out in the trunk of a car, and I was
imagining he had been taken to an airport, private airport
and already deport you know, renditioned. As the word goes.
What happened to jam A security camera captured the last
time journalist Jamaica Shogi was seen alive. Group of senators

(24:01):
is also written to trigger an investigation. The State Department
says that is premature. Dana Priest remembers the day Jamaka
Shogi went missing. My mind kept flashing back to the
two of us. We were seated around this gigantic empty table,
very beautiful white tent, white tablecloth. That face kept coming

(24:25):
back to me, and I just kept saying, what in
the hell could have happened in there? You know, in
no way could I have imagined what was happening. Yeah. No.
As news of Kashogi's disappearance spread across the world, local
reporters on the scene in Istanbul, including Carlotta Gaul, were

(24:45):
working together to get more information, but none of us
had any idea of what really had happened. We pieced
together what happened, almost like who done it? For one week,
Jamaka Shogi remained unaccounted for. The Saudi government evaded questions
about his disappearance. It was as if he had vanished

(25:06):
into thin air. And then Turkish intelligence released secret tapes.
So we've been able to piece together the last minutes
of Kashogi's life. Be warned, it's quite explicit. Major breaking
news this morning, a jaw dropping exclusive on the murder
of Washington Post journalist Jamaica Shogi. New footage that is

(25:28):
flat out shocking. Lying in white inside was a Saudi
hit squad. The transcript indicates noises as people set upon
Ko Kogi can be heard saying I can't breathe. Kashogi
was then injected with a sedative and suffocated with a
plastic band. Brought with them an autopsy's expert and a

(25:49):
bone saws to put the buddy in a back no
too heavy, very cool. Kashogi was allegedly beheaded and dismembered
Limb by Limb, apparent leader of the team. May at
least three phone calls during the murder to a number
Turkish officials identify it as being in the Saudi Royal court.
The thing is done. It's done. It is possible that

(26:12):
Jamal's body was transported back on one of the planes.
A lot of meat was bought for a barbecue that
took place in the console's garden just after the murder
took place, and that the theory being that Jamal's body
was mixed with this meat and incinerated at a very
high temperature. And it still kind of appalls me that

(26:36):
we were standing there in the street outside this building
where this unbelievable murder had already occurred, you know. And
I still think of that of poor Hardig, to think
that she was just standing there while he was being
hacked to death inside. And I'm sure she's still thinks
about every day. Koshoki's murder caused an international uproar. The

(27:04):
grizzly details came out because Turkish intelligence admitted that they
had been bugging the Saudi consulate. The Turk shared the
tapes with the UN so the world would know what
had happened to Jamal Kashogi. Investigations by both the UN
and the CIA unequivocally linked Koshogi's murder with direct orders

(27:25):
from inside the Saudi Kingdom. We have breaking News This afternoon.
Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mahmed bin Salman, approved the assassination
of Washington Post columns Jamal Khogi in twenty eighteen, the
Report Base. In one of Kashogi's last columns for The
Washington Post, he wrote, what the Arab world needs most
is free expression. It has been four years since Kashogi's murder,

(27:48):
and the link to the Crown Prince is just the
tip of the iceberg. That's after the break or his murder,
there were a number of roundups of Saudis whose numbers
appeared in the phones of people who were around Jamal.

(28:11):
But I believe the Saudis picked up and in this
case detained for months and months people who were in
contact with some of the people the Jamal's in contact with.
So you're seeing this kind of ripple effect. You know,
Jamal's in the middle, and then there's people who followed
people who followed Jamal. What new evidence has revealed and

(28:36):
what we are piecing together on this series is that
Jamal Kashogi was being tracked more deliberately than anyone ever imagined.
Several of the people that he was in touch with
where surveyed by Pegasus. Pegasus has been linked to human
rights abuses on ethical surveillance. The Pegasus spy where, made
by Israeli company NSO Group, has been used to target journalist, dissidents,

(28:58):
and activists around the world. Pegasus spyware it is the
most sophisticated spyware made to date. It was created by
an Israeli tech company. It's marketed to governments as a
way to target, track and capture criminals and terrorists. But
our investigation shows that many confirmed targets of Pegasus are
not criminals or terrorists. The big question remains, did Jamal

(29:21):
Kashogi have Pegasus on his phone? We may never be
able to answer that question. Kashogi's phones are still with
Turkish authorities more than four years after his death, but
what we can do has examined the lives and the
phones of those closest to him. We all obviously had
an interest in knowing whether Pegasus was used in any

(29:44):
way to surveil, track, and then aid the killers in
murdering Jamal Kashogi. Dana Priest from The Washington Post as
one of dozens of journalists working on the Pegasus project.
A coalition of journalists and activists that uncovers who has
been infected with and surveilled by Pegasus, and together they

(30:06):
found a list of confirmed cases, a list of phone numbers.
Dana Priest was focused on finding out if any of
them were connected to Jamal Kashogi. I drew a big
circle of his friends and tried to get as many
phone numbers that we could, and we found about ten people.
And then a colleague of mine heard the post had

(30:31):
was able to match a number that was in the
database and was known to be associated with him, which
was Hanan, a latter. At that time, Hanan was really
still in the background. Dana Priest learned about Hanana Lotter
three years after the death of Kashogi. How could Hanan's

(30:54):
experiences reveal new information about the plot to murder Jamal Kashogi.
Let's rewind to five months before the murder of Jamaica
Shogi April twenty eighteen. They took me to a horrible
place in the border of Dubai called Alahweir. I didn't
know where I am because they blinded me and they

(31:17):
handcuffed me. It was very high security place. I never
seen it in my life, and they took sample from
my DNA from my mouth. They take a photo for
me from different angel. They take a finger brand and
then they took me to this room for investigation. When

(31:38):
Hannan was taken by UAA government officials, they were looking
for something on Hanan's phone. During her interrogation, till this moment,
I don't know why they taken me. I came to
know why they took me because they have my phone
with them in another room. They have my password and
he sent me a message and they came back to
me and showed me and they said. In the middle

(32:02):
of Hanan's interrogation, she received a text from Jama Kashogi.
The officials saw the text and their questions took a
different turn. They asked about Kashogi's colleagues, his friends, his plans.
They wanted to know what he was working on and
who he was working with. This interrogation continued into the morning.

(32:24):
After seventeen hours, she was given back her devices and
taken home. They booked me on the house arrest. They
have my boss post. They belclisted me and my family.
My entire family could don't to fly and after that
I couldn't know how to communicate with him. Amarati officials.
Detaining a flight attendant in what appears to be a

(32:45):
favorite of the Saudi government is a critical moment. Hanan
understood that this was a bold act, but didn't know
what it all meant for her or for Kashogi. After
she was detained, she did not tell Jamal right away.
She didn't want to tell him on the phone. But
she didn't know who was listening to her, how they

(33:05):
knew where they come and get her, and you know,
so she was so afraid to talk to him and
tell him what had happened. Hanan was under house arrest
for several weeks after she was detained and interrogated by
the Emoradi intelligence and could not meet Jamal Kashogi as
they had planned in Washington, d C. But she didn't
know how to tell him what had happened. Jamal went

(33:26):
to airport washonton DC airport, was waiting for me in
the airport. Suddenly he called me in Dubai. He told him, Hanna,
I'm waiting for you an airport. Where are you? I said, Jamal,
I'm not coming. He said why? I said, so art
Hustni just I told him a Coude to understand what

(33:48):
is my situition. Hanan's code is the name of an
Egyptian actress. Both Hanan and Kashogi shared a love for
Egyptian cinema and are very familiar with the star Suart
Husni you would eat. Swat Hosni is often called the

(34:08):
Cinderella of Egyptian cinema. In two thousand and one, Swat
Hosni fell from an apartment balcony in London and died.
Many believed she had ties to Egyptian intelligence officials and
that she was pushed from the balcony. Swat Hosni was
Hannan's code word to indicate she didn't trust their line
of communication, and he said so as he understood, He said,

(34:35):
Hannah and I would protect you. They kept changing ways
of communicating in an effort not to get surveiled. They
used all sorts of things at different times. So signal EMU,
what's that? Couple other things they came and went. After
two months on house arrest, Hannan was released and got

(34:57):
her passport back. She was back to work and went
on a trip to the United States to meet Kashogi.
They had plans to get married we got to marriage
in June twenty eighteen. They got married here in Washington
where Jamal had a house an apartment in McLean, Virginia,
and they were married in Islamic ceremony only in part

(35:20):
to protect her and all. They didn't want to have
any record in the civil courts that she even existed
here in the United States. Hanan Kashogi were married at
a mosque, but they decided not to get a civil license,
as Hanan did not have residence in the US at
the time. The summer of twenty eighteen, Hanan tried to
put her detention behind her. She was cautious but not paranoid.

(35:45):
You think they are watching us in a hotel lobby
or in our room, but she didn't move when we
was in our room. Jamal umblug the TV. This is
what is the highest conscience for him about buying or
watching or something. Once I remember he was trying to

(36:07):
understood Ober in my Abu bail in case I'm in
our house in Virginia and his Montzer and they need
to go around for my shopping or something. He tried
to install Uber and he was going to boot his
credit card number. Then he deleted and they said why
deleted German. He said, no, if they get the phone

(36:28):
from you in Dubai, Hannah, they can get get into
my account. Hannan did not know what to do after
Kashogi was murdered, and occasionally Amaradi intelligence officers will come
by and ask questions, and then Jamal's killed and she
has nowhere to go. She's frying for her life. She

(36:52):
can't live in the UAE anymore. So she comes to
the United States to talk to her lawyer, and her
lawyers just just stay here and we'll apply for political asylum.
And so she is literally a forgotten woman. Here's this
woman that has potentially so much evidence to share in

(37:13):
her devices about Jamal's travels and who might have been
tracking them, and who might have been complicit with the Saudis,
and trying to figure out, you know, what his travel
plans were, what his other plans were, what he was
thinking of doing, and nobody had ever contacted her. So
I took her devices to a second group that does

(37:34):
a lot of forensics, Citizen Lab. So we worked with Bill.
I'm Bill Marzak, a senior research fellow at the University
of Toronto's Citizen Lab I study government surveillance, basically trying
to determine which governments are hacking activists, dissidents, civil society,
and trying to defend civil society against this hacking. Bill

(37:56):
Marzac is one of the first people to discover Pegasus.
He would need to look at Hanan's phone. When I've
been approached first to cool from washtun Post. They asking
me to corporate. They exciplan to me, they need my devices.
I did hand it over. Bill has experienced reverse engineering

(38:16):
Pegasus and knew exactly what to look for examining Hanan's phone.
That's pretty much the only thing you can do when
you get a sample of something that might be interesting
spyware is you have to run it yourself and see
what happens. And I was monitoring the phone's Internet traffic,
so I was seeing everything that came into the phone,
that left the phone. When I was monitoring the Internet traffic,
a bunch of weird traffic going to the spiral website

(38:40):
like it was downloading stuff. It was uploading stuff, And
that was sort of the first key that oh wow,
so far as closed, but this connectivity is still happening
and it's sending information back Pegasus can bypass any encryption
because it uses a loophole in a phone software to
be an incognito but active parasite. When Pegasus is on
a phone, bill can see the evidence of it right away.

(39:04):
You can turn on the microphone to snoop in on
conversations happening around the device. You can take pictures through
the webcam. You can get passwords, you can get WhatsApp messages,
you can get signal messages, you can record calls, you
can track GPS, you can do other things with the
phone sensors. It was full access to the phone, and
there was something else they knew from the types of

(39:26):
text messages she'd been sent, which had already been identified
as Pegasus bait, that they had tried to target her
several times. So why did the Amaradi intelligence officers detain
Hanan a ladder and question her overnight. It turns out
they had been trying to trick Hanan into downloading Pegasus herself.

(39:49):
She had received random texts in the months prior to
her detention, but she never clicked on the links. The
bait to get Hanan to infect her phone. In two
thousand and eight, Tea were things like you have a
package downtown at this address. Click here and tell us
that you want us to send it to you. There

(40:09):
was a message from her sister saying, oh, here's a photo.
Click this to see the photo. And then there was
one saying, you have a bouquet of flowers waiting for you.
Click this and we will get them to you. Then
Dana Priest had to tell her non the truth that
she had spywear on her phone, and that she'd had

(40:31):
it since April twenty eighteen, since the day she had
been detained. When I recall the moment this hadn't I shook,
and I feel like my life was in a screen
affront of them. I'm talking about the people misuse this technology,
that be able who humped my husband and hummed me.

(40:54):
The Amaradi intelligence officials had full access to Hanan's phone
every part of her life for five months before Kashogi
was killed. No matter the steps Hanan had taken, the
codes she had used, or the length she had gone
to protect Koshogi, they could still watch her, and they did.
I was feeling very bad, and I was still feeling

(41:17):
very bad. Hanan is still trying to get Kashogi's devices
from the Turkish authorities. In addition to Hanan Alader, others
close to Jamal Kashogi have also discovered Pegasus on their phones.
Every detail of their digital footprint was surveiled, including Kashogi's
Turkish fiance hat Sengis I blamed myself a lot, and

(41:41):
Kashogi's close friend Omar Abdullah Ziz, a fellow outspoken Saudi
journalist living in exile in Canada. All of their correspondences
were monitored. The hacken of my phone played a major role.
What happened to Jaman that On the next episode of
Shoot the Messenger, we find out how Omar Abduaziz found

(42:05):
out he was being hacked and discovered more than four
hundred of his text messages with Jamaka Shogi were compromised.
We'll go into how this technology works and how Pegasus
was first discovered. On this series, we investigate how Pegasus
spyware came to be, what its capabilities are, and ask

(42:25):
how does it implicate ordinary people. Over the next nine
episodes will follow the thread of Pegasus to understand how
it was intended to be used, how it's abused, and
the impact of its surveillance. Pegasus spyware has been a
boom for the cyber surveillance industry, and it's impacted the
global economy. If you live in the US and have

(42:47):
mutual funds or pension, your money could be supporting the
organization that makes Pegasus spyware. You've heard about Jamaka Shogi,
but there are so many others others who have been
targeted and hacked, blackmailed or humiliated, who have been hunted
and killed. Some of the names you may recognize, like

(43:08):
Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, or Jeff Bezos, the
founder of Amazon, and then there are stories you haven't
heard about. I don't longer felt safe. Do you know
if they got the information that they were looking for.
I don't think they were looking for any information. I
think it was a form of psychological warfare. I would

(43:29):
get a phone call from someone, would never anyone on
the end of the phone. They would try to track
my GPS. It does seem like it's always your favorite
people who are being hacked and followed. We have to
be way more careful even about things like this. How
do I know who you are? It's kind of like
the nuclear era before there were nuclear arms treaties. Are

(43:49):
you saying that you think these texts I'm getting are Pegasus?
Do you think I'm being targeted? Oh? For sure, Valley
don't makes sense. It's on season one of Shoot the Messenger.
Shoot the Messenger is a production of Exile Content Studio.
We are distributed by PRX, Hosted and produced by Me

(44:11):
rose Red with Nando Villa, Sabine Jansen, Nora Kipness, Zak Hirsch,
and Anna Isabel Octavio. Written by Me rose Red, with
story editing by Nando Villa, Danny Sadia, Jen Atschell, zak
Hirsch and Rachel Ward. Production assistants by avro Sespetis, Andrea Zavaios,

(44:32):
Jen Shipman, Stella Emmett and Aaron Reese. Special thanks to
Sonic Union and Gail and Matthew Reid. Sound design and
mixing by Patty Kenyones Daniel Batista. Overseas audio at Exile
Content Studio. Executive producers are myself rose Red with Nando Villa,

(44:53):
Carmen Gradol and Isaac Lee. For more information on the
status of journal US and freedom of the press, visit
the Committee to Protect Journalists at CpG dot org. To
learn more about Exile and our other podcasts and films.
Visit exile content dot com. The next episode is out now.

(45:15):
Subscribe so you can hear every twist and turn of
this ten part series. You can find Exiles, Shoot the Messenger,
Espionage Murder, and Pegasus Spyware anywhere you get your podcasts
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