For Sale: The White House – How Two Gulf Princes and a Debt-Ridden Son-in-Law Turned U.S. Foreign Policy Into a Real Estate Deal
The Book Princes And Thieves: Jared Kushner And Mohammed Bin Zayed‘s Secret Plot To Remake The Middle East Did Not Come To Add A New Chapter To The Library Of Books That Dealt With The Turbulent Administration Of Donald Trump, But Came To Change The Entire Angle Of View. While Most Of The Books Published About This Era Were Busy Documenting The Internal Chaos And The Conflict Between The Wings Of The White House, Matthew Cole, One Of The Most Prominent Investigative Journalists At The Intercept Magazine Formerly And Owner Of A Long Record In Covering Intelligence And The War On Terror, Chose To Look At The Story From The Other Side Of The Gulf. His Thesis Is Simple In Appearance And Shocking In Its Details: A Group Of Young Ambitious Princes In Abu Dhabi And Riyadh Found In Trump’s Arrival To Power A Historic Opportunity To Reengineer American Foreign Policy, And Found In Jared Kushner, The President’s Young Son-In-Law, Inexperienced, And Burdened With Family Debts, The Ideal Golden Gateway For That Penetration.
The Title Itself Is Intentionally Precise. The Princes Are Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, The Actual Strongman In The Emirates At That Time, And Mohammed Bin Salman, The Saudi Crown Prince Rising With Rocket Speed. As For The Thieves, They Are Not A Literary Metaphor, But A Real Network Of Middlemen And Fraudsters And Mercenaries Of Influence Who Made Selling Access To American Power An Organized Profession. At The Heart Of This Network Stands George Nader, The Mysterious Lebanese-American Advisor With A Dark Past And Complex Relationships, And Erik Prince Founder Of Blackwater, And Elliott Broidy The Formerly Convicted Republican Fundraiser, And The Lebanese Businessman Joel Zamel Specialized In Information Wars. These Are Not Just Secondary Characters, But They Are The Infrastructure On Which The Two Princes Built Their Project.
Cole Begins His Book From Where The Reader Does Not Expect, Not From The Palaces Of Abu Dhabi Or Riyadh, But From A Forest In Present-Day Belarus. There, In The Midst Of The Holocaust, Joseph Berkowitz And Rae Kushner, Jared’s Paternal Grandparents, Survived The Nazis First Then The Soviet Army, Fleeing To A Camp For Jewish Resisters In The Forest, Before Ending Up In A Refugee Camp In Italy Then In New York In 1949 With No Money And No Language. This Foundational Trauma, As Cole Documents Through Archival Interviews With Grandmother Rae, Was Not Just A Family Memory, But Became A Doctrine. Rae Said In An Interview In 1982: “Our Youth Was Lost… We Came Broken, We Were Not Normal People”. This Permanent Sense Of Existential Danger And That Israel Is The Last Guarantee For Survival, Was Transferred Entirely To The Second Generation, To Charlie Kushner.
And Charlie Kushner Is The Psychological And Financial Key To Understanding Jared. Cole Paints Him Not Just As A Real Estate Businessman, But As A Tragic Character Obsessed With Becoming “The Most Powerful Jew In America” As He Told Close Associates. He Built An Empire Of 22 Thousand Rental Apartments, Donated Millions To Religious Schools In The Occupied West Bank, And Paid 125 Thousand Dollars To Bill Clinton To Give A Speech At His Company Headquarters, And More Than Three Times That To Benjamin Netanyahu. But Behind This Shiny Facade Charlie Was Running For A Full Decade A Systematic Family Fraud Operation, Transferring The Revenues Of The Family Companies To A Fake Foundation He Managed, Then Donating It In His Name And Getting A Tax Deduction, Transferring More Than Six Million Dollars In This Way, And Funding Political Donations Worth 3.1 Million Dollars From It.
The Collapse Was Stunning And Vulgar At The Same Time. When His Brother Murray Discovered The Manipulation And Filed A Civil Lawsuit, Charlie Did Not Resort To Lawyers, But To Sexual Revenge. He Paid 25 Thousand Dollars To A Retired Police Officer To Lure His Sister’s Husband To The Gloomy Red Bull Motor Inn On Highway 22 In New Jersey, And Secretly Record Him Having Sex With A Prostitute He Hired. And When The First Plan Failed, He Resorted To His Permanent Mistress Susanna, A Escort From Eastern Europe Who Was Known As Jon Hess, And Paid Her 10 Thousand Dollars To Carry Out The Mission. The Video Was Filmed, And Charlie And His Wife And Her Brother Watched It Together In The Company Office. This Incident Which Led To His Arrest In 2004 By The Young Federal Prosecutor At The Time Chris Christie, And He Was Sentenced To Two Years In Prison Of Which He Served 14 Months In A Federal Prison In Alabama, Is What Made Jared Kushner The Politician. Every Weekend The Young Son Would Cut The Road With His Mother To Visit His Father Six Hours In Prison. There, As Cole Conveys, A Deep Conviction Was Formed In Him That The Judicial System And The Political Institution Can Be Tools Of Personal Revenge, And That Family Loyalty Is Above The Law, And That The Media Can Be Bought And The Narrative Reshaped.
Therefore The First Step After Charlie’s Release From Prison In 2006 Was Not Building More Apartments, But Buying A Newspaper. Charlie Wrote A Check For Ten Million Dollars And Bought For His 25-Year-Old Son The New York Observer Newspaper. The Plan Put By A Famous New York Public Relations Advisor Was Clear And Consisted Of Three Stages: First, Transforming Jared Into A New And Acceptable Face For The Tainted Kushner Empire, Second, Buying An Iconic Property In Manhattan Proving That The Family Has Returned To The Elite, And Third, Using The New Journalistic Platform To Defend The Family And Attack Its Opponents, On Top Of Them Chris Christie. And Thus Came The Catastrophic Deal Of 666 Fifth Avenue In 2007, When Jared Paid 1.8 Billion Dollars, A Record At That Time, For A Dilapidated Tower That Needed Hundreds Of Millions For Renovation, At The Peak Of The Real Estate Bubble Before The Financial Collapse. This Deal Which Became A Burden Its Debts Of 1.2 Billion Dollars Due In 2019, Is The Time Bomb That The Gulf Princes Would Later Understand Well.
Matthew Cole Does Not Write A Biography Of Jared Kushner, But Uses This Background As An Intelligence Profile For A Recruitable Target. A Young Man Who Grew Up In A Family That Sees The World As A Permanent Existential Threat, Exposed To The Trauma Of Prison And Public Humiliation Of His Father By The State, Lacks Any Experience In Foreign Policy Or Government, But He Has Absolute Access To The President Of The United States, And Burdened With Huge Real Estate Debts He Needs Someone To Save Him From, And Deeply Believes That One Big Deal Can Erase All Previous Shame. These Are The Specifications That Mohammed Bin Zayed Was Looking For Exactly, And He Is The Man Who Spent Two Decades Building The Emirates As A Small But Lethal Intelligence And Military Power, And Searching For An Heir To His Influence In Washington After He Felt That The Obama Administration Abandoned Him.
Mohammed Bin Zayed Was Not A Man Who Lets History Pass In Front Of Him. When Financial Markets Collapsed In 2008 Then Tahrir Squares Exploded In Tunisia And Cairo In 2011, The Strongman In Abu Dhabi Read The Two Events As One Warning. He Realized That Oil Alone Does Not Protect Thrones, And That The United States Which He Considered The Last Umbrella Might Hesitate, As The Obama Administration Hesitated In Supporting Hosni Mubarak. From That Moment A New Doctrine Was Born: A Small State With Huge Wealth Must Own An Army In Which Its Sons Do Not Die, And Influence That Does Not Need The Approval Of The American State Department.
Here Erik Prince Entered The Scene. Prince, The Former Officer In The Elite Navy SEAL And Heir To The Fortune Of The Auto Parts Industry In Michigan, And Founder Of Blackwater Company Which Became Synonymous With American Private War In Iraq, Was Also Searching For A New Birth After His Reputation Was Destroyed By The Nisour Square Massacre In Baghdad. Matthew Cole Documents In Detail How Bin Zayed Received Him In 2010 Not As A Contractor, But As A Strategic Ally. The Vision Was Shocking Even By Gulf Standards: Building A Commando Battalion Of 800 Foreign Fighters, Not Including A Single Emirati. Bin Zayed Told His Officers Clearly That He Does Not Trust Muslims To Kill Other Muslims, And That He Wants Non-Muslims Specifically. Half A Billion Dollars Is The Value Of The Initial Contract. Within Months Prince Imported Dozens Of Former Colombian Soldiers Who Fought The Guerrilla War Against FARC, And Trainers From South Africa, Most Of Them From Commando Units In The Apartheid Era, And Americans And Canadians. Their Declared Mission To Protect Vital Installations, From Oil Fields To The Nuclear Reactor Under Construction, And Their Undeclared Mission To Protect The Al Nahyan Family Itself If The Inside Revolts.
But Bin Zayed’s Genius In Using Mercenaries Was Also His Weakness, Because Erik Prince Does Not Know The Meaning Of Secrecy. Cole Narrates How Prince, While His Team Was Building The Secret Camp In The Abu Dhabi Desert, Brought A Film Crew To Document His Operations In Somalia. For In Parallel With The Emirates Contract, Prince Had Concluded Another Secret Deal With Abu Dhabi To Establish A Naval Force To Fight Somali Pirates Who Were Threatening Navigation Lines Through The Gulf Of Aden, Especially After The Hijacking Incident Of Captain Richard Phillips Which Obama Ordered SEAL Team 6 To Free Him. The Emirates And Prince Violated An International Arms Export Ban, Smuggled Military Equipment And Helicopters And Mercenaries From South Africa Disguised As Humanitarian Aid. The Result Was Not Reducing Piracy But Transforming It Into A Mini Civil War, Where Helicopters Piloted By White South Africans Bombed Somali Villages And Killed Civilians, And The United Nations Accused The Force Called Puntland Maritime Police Force Of Having Become A Private Militia For A Separatist Warlord In The Puntland Region, And That It Is A Tool Of Internal Repression With Foreign Funding. One Of The Former Black CIA Officers Who Participated In The Training Quoted His South African Colleague Saying Bluntly: “I Am Here Only To Kill The Skinnies”, In A Racist Reference To Somalis.
The Biggest Scandal Was Financial. Prince’s American Colleagues Revealed That The Man Was Inflating Bills And Using Shell Companies He Secretly Owned To Siphon Millions From The Emirati Contract Fund, And That Government Money Was Laundered Through An Emirati Charity To Finance The Somalia Project. When The New York Times Published The First Investigation About The Secret Battalion, An Emirati General Summoned Prince And Told Him That His Services Were No Longer Required. The First Experiment Ended In Failure, But It Taught Bin Zayed A Pivotal Lesson: The Good Mercenary Is The One Who Can Be Disposed Of, But The Mercenary Network Itself Is Indispensable.
For This Reason, When Donald Trump Won In November 2016, Bin Zayed Was The First To Understand That Old Washington Had Died. He No Longer Needed To Convince The State Department Or The Pentagon, But A Single Man To Open The Door Of Trump Tower For Him. That Man Was George Nader. Cole Presents One Of The Darkest And Most Exciting Portraits In The Book For Nader. Lebanese Origin, American Nationality, Speaks English With A Heavy Accent, Claimed For Decades That He Is An Unofficial Advisor To American Administrations In The Middle East, Friend Of Both Shimon Peres And Mohammed Bin Zayed, And In Reality He Was A Professional Fraudster Carrying In His Record Previous Convictions Of Child Exploitation, Facts That Few People In Abu Dhabi And Washington Knew, But Made Him Ideal For Dirty Missions Because He Has Nothing To Lose.
Nader Had Built His Relationship With Bin Zayed Since The Nineties, And Became His Secret Advisor For Washington Affairs. And In The 2016 Elections, Nader Found Himself Owning What No One Else Owns: A Close Relationship With Steve Bannon, Trump’s Chief Strategist, And A Relationship With Joel Zamel, The Israeli Intelligence Man Who Owns Companies For Influencing Elections Through Social Media. Nader Arranged A Meeting In Trump Tower In December 2016 Attended By Bin Zayed Personally, Violating Protocol, And Jared Kushner And Steve Bannon And The Upcoming National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. That Was A Declaration: Abu Dhabi Wants To Be The Mediator.
The Climax Of This Play Was In The Island Of Seychelles, In January 2017, Days Before Trump’s Inauguration. On A Villa Terrace Overlooking The Indian Ocean, Bin Zayed Held What He Called A War Council. On The Table Was Erik Prince, Returning From Exile Thanks To His Relationship With Bannon And His Sister Betsy DeVos Whom Trump Nominated As Secretary Of Education, And George Nader, And Kirill Dmitriev, The Russian Banker Harvard Graduate Who Runs The Russian Sovereign Wealth Fund Of Ten Billion Dollars And Close To Putin. Cole Describes The Scene With Cinematic Accuracy. Bin Zayed Tells His Team That The Emirates Is Indebted To Prince Because He Saved It Seven Years Ago From Pirates, In A Generous Narrative Hiding The Truth That Prince Was Expelled For Incompetence. Then Prince Presents His New Idea, The Most Crazy: A Global Mercenary Army Of Four Thousand Western Fighters, With Emirati Funding, And Implicit American Support, That Can Be Deployed In Libya To Support General Khalifa Haftar To Seize Tripoli, Then Re-Export The Model To Somalia And Syria And Iraq To Confront Iran’s Proxies Like Hezbollah And The Houthis. Prince Was Comparing His Project To The Dutch East India Company And The Knights Templar, Imagining A New Colonialism In The Twenty-First Century Led By A Commercial Company Owning An Army.
Then Came The Crucial Question From Bin Zayed, The Question That Reveals The Core Of The Whole Book: “Do You Think Trump Will Support This?”. Bin Zayed Did Not Want Mercenaries Only, But Wanted To Know Can American Foreign Policy Itself Be Rented. Is The Trump Administration Serious When It Says It Wants Arabs To Bear The Burden Of Extinguishing The Fires Of The Middle East? Prince Answered Confidently That He Puts Bannon In His Pocket, And That The New Administration Will Support A Mercenary Battalion To Put An End To Chaos. In That Moment, Bin Zayed Was Testing Prince As A Tool Of Influence, Exactly As He Had Tested Nader Before.
After That, Bin Zayed Asked Nader To Arrange A Meeting Between Prince And Dmitriev. The Declared Goal From Abu Dhabi Side Was Noble: Improving Relations Between Washington And Moscow To End The War In Syria, Through Convincing Russia To Withdraw Its Military Support And Reduce Its Support For Iran, In Exchange For Lifting American Sanctions On Russia, Sanctions That Prevented Emirati Investments Worth Billions Of Dollars In Dmitriev’s Fund From Making Profits. Prince Sat With The Russian Banker In The Resort Bar And Talked For More Than An Hour, But He Did Not Talk About Trump And Russia, But About Libya And Haftar And How He Can Coordinate With The Kremlin So That His Mercenary Forces Do Not Collide With Russian Forces There. Dmitriev, The Seasoned Banker, Was Frustrated. He Told Nader Later That He Came To Meet Someone From The Coming White House Who Has A Direct Line With The President-Elect, And Found A Man Talking About A Small Dictator In Eastern Libya.
Bin Zayed Returned To Abu Dhabi On His Boeing 777 Aircraft, With Prince And Nader. And Despite Failure In Convincing The Russians, Bin Zayed Rewarded Prince Again, Granted Him An Emirati Diplomatic Passport And Returned Him To The Fold. And A High-Level Emirati Security Official Commented On The Decision With A Sentence Summarizing The Philosophy Of The Whole Book, And It Is The Sentence That Cole Chose To Be The Key To Understanding The Relationship Between Princes And Thieves: “Erik Is A Thief, But He Is Our Thief”.
In This Scene In Seychelles Matthew Cole Writes. And He Does Not Write About One Conspiracy, But About A Market. A Market In Which Influence Consists Of Three Elements: A Prince Who Owns Money And Regional Ambition, And A Dirty Middleman Who Owns Access And Owns No Reputation To Fear For, And A New American Politician Who Owns Power But Lacks Experience And Money. Abu Dhabi Had Mastered This Game Years Ago, But It Needed A Bigger And More Reckless Partner, A Partner Who Was None Other Than The Kingdom Of Saudi Arabia And Mohammed Bin Salman.
If Abu Dhabi Is The Engineer, Then Riyadh Was The Bomb. This Is The Transition That Matthew Cole Makes In The Middle Of His Book, From The Calculated Caution Of Mohammed Bin Zayed To The Reckless Rush Of Mohammed Bin Salman. At A Time When Bin Zayed Was Building Battalions Of Colombian Mercenaries And Buying Journalists And Research Centers In Washington With The Patience Of Pearl Farmers, There Was In Riyadh A Young Man In His Thirties Deciding That He Can Shorten A Hundred Years Of Diplomacy With One Deal And One Tweet.
Cole Returns To 2015 To Paint A Picture Of The Moment Of Mohammed Bin Salman’s Rise. King Salman Had Not Completed His First Year On The Throne, And Was Suffering From Early Dementia, And His Son Mohammed Who Was Appointed Minister Of Defense At Twenty-Nine, With No Military Experience, Suddenly Found Himself Running A Real War In Yemen. Operation Decisive Storm For Bin Salman Was More Than Just A Military Intervention, It Was A Birth Announcement. He Wanted To Tell The World And The Royal Family Inside That He Is Not Just A Spoiled Son, But He Is A New Saddam Hussein But In A More Modern Version, A Man Who Can Decide. But The War Quickly Faltered. Within Weeks, The Lightning Air Campaign Turned Into A Quagmire That Drained The Treasury And Killed Thousands Of Civilians, And Created The First Crack Between Him And The American Administration In The Obama Era Which Began To Criticize Publicly The Humanitarian Catastrophe.
Here Mohammed Bin Zayed Found His Opportunity. Bin Zayed Was Not Just An Ally Of Saudi Arabia, But Was The Spiritual Father And Political Mentor Of Bin Salman. An Emirati Source Close To Bin Zayed Says To Cole Textually: “Mohammed Bin Zayed Saw In Mohammed Bin Salman Himself When He Was Young, But In A More Wild And Less Disciplined Version”. Bin Zayed Began To Present The Young Saudi In Washington As A Legitimate Heir To The Region, As A Reformist Man Who Loves Technology And Hates The Muslim Brotherhood, While In Reality He Was Training Him On The Idea That Washington Can Be Bought If You Know The Right Door.
The Right Door Was Again George Nader, And With Him This Time Elliott Broidy. Broidy Is A Caricature Character If He Were Fiction No One Would Believe Him. Millionaire From Los Angeles Collected Donations For Republicans, Convicted In 2009 Of Bribing Officials Of The New York State Retirement Fund, Then Got A Suspicious Pardon, And Returned To Be One Of The Biggest Fundraisers For Trump In 2016 Where He Collected More Than 160 Million Dollars, And Appointed Vice President Of The Finance Committee Of The Republican Party. Broidy Did Not Understand Anything In The Middle East, But He Understood One Thing: How To Transform Access To The White House Into Arms Contracts. And In March 2017, A Few Weeks After Trump’s Inauguration, Broidy Received An Email From Nader Saying Simply: “Our Friends In The Emirates And Saudi Arabia Want To Help You To Be A Friend To Them”.
What Happened After That Is What Cole Calls “The Largest Unregistered Foreign Influence Campaign In Modern Washington History”. Nader And Broidy Put A Plan Of Three Stages. The First Is Demonizing Qatar. Qatar For The Emirates And Saudi Arabia Was Not Just A Annoying State With Al Jazeera Channel, But Was An Ideological Competitor Supporting The Muslim Brotherhood And Hamas, And Making Deals With Iran, And Building Soft Influence In Washington By Hosting The Al Udeid American Base. Abu Dhabi And Riyadh Decided That Qatar Cannot Be Fixed, But Must Be Broken.
On May 23 2017, The Most Famous Cyber Attack In The Gulf Occurred. An Emirati Intelligence Agency Hacked The Qatari News Agency Website And Published Fabricated Statements Of The Qatari Prince Tamim Bin Hamad Praising Iran And Hezbollah And Israel At The Same Time. Within Hours, Al Arabiya And Sky News Arabia Channels, Funded Saudi And Emirati, Were Republishing The Statements As Absolute Truth. And On June 5, Saudi Arabia And The Emirates And Bahrain And Egypt Announced Cutting Relations And Imposing A Complete Air And Land And Sea Blockade On Qatar. The World Was Stunned, But The Most Stunned Were In The Pentagon And The American State Department, Where No One Had Been Informed.
Why Did They Do It? Cole Answers Through Leaked Documents From Broidy’s Mail Which Qatari Hackers Hacked Later. In One Of The Meetings At Four Seasons Hotel Georgetown, Nader Told Broidy Clearly: “We Want You To Convince Washington That Qatar Is Hamas And The Brotherhood, And That We Are The Ones Fighting Terrorism”. Broidy Signed An Undeclared Contract Worth 2.5 Million Dollars With An Emirati Advisor Close To Tahnoun Bin Zayed, Brother Of Mohammed Bin Zayed And Head Of Intelligence Apparatus, To Finance A Pressure Campaign Against Qatar. Part Of The Money Went To Finance Conferences At The Foundation For Defense Of Democracies, A Conservative Foundation Known For Its Pro- Israel And Anti- Qatar And Iran Positions, And Another Part Went To Buy Opinion Articles In Wall Street Journal And Washington Times Attacking Qatar.
But The Most Important Was What Happened Inside The White House. At The Moment When Secretary Of State Rex Tillerson And Secretary Of Defense James Mattis Were Trying To Calm The Crisis Because Al Udeid Base Is The Largest American Base In The Middle East And Includes 11 Thousand American Soldiers, Jared Kushner Was Sitting In His Office In The West Wing And Telling Trump That The Saudis And Emiratis Are Right. Kushner Was Not Acting Out Of Ideological Motive, But Out Of A Purely Personal And Commercial Motive, And This Is The Point That Cole Connects With Genius.
Just One Month Before The Blockade, In April 2017, Kushner Met With A High-Level Qatari Delegation That Came Asking For Investment In The Stricken 666 Fifth Avenue Tower. Qataris, Through Their Finance Minister Ali Sharif Al Emadi, Offered Indirectly To Save Kushner, But They Refused His Exaggerated Conditions. Kushner Felt Insulted. And After Days, He Received In The White House A Saudi-Emirati Delegation Including Mohammed Bin Salman And Tahnoun Bin Zayed, And It Was Warmer. An American Official Who Attended The Meeting Says To Cole: “Jared Saw Himself As A Third Prince. He Was Not Dealing With Mohammed Bin Zayed And Mohammed Bin Salman As Foreign Leaders, But As Peers For Him, As Sons Of Rich Families That Inherited Empires And Trying To Prove Themselves”.
Therefore When The Blockade Erupted, Trump Initially Sided Publicly With The Blockaders. He Wrote A Tweet On The Morning Of June 6 2017 Saying That His Visit To Riyadh Is Bearing Fruit And That Qatar Had Been Funding Extremism For A Long Time. That Tweet Was The Culmination Of An Influence Operation That Cost Millions Of Dollars, And Implemented By A Man Convicted Of Bribery And A Man Convicted Of Child Assault. The State Department Had To Issue A Contradictory Statement After Hours To Confirm That Qatar Is A Partner In Combating Terrorism.
The Story Did Not End Here. After The Blockade, Mohammed Bin Salman Wanted To Go Further. In October 2017, Jared Kushner Secretly Visited Riyadh, Met Bin Salman Until Four In The Morning, And Exchanged Talk About A Strategy To Confront Iran, And About A Plan To Isolate Hezbollah, And About A List Of Names Of Saudi Princes Whom Bin Salman Considers Traitors. Just Two Weeks Later, The Famous Arrest Campaign Occurred In The Ritz-Carlton Hotel, Where Bin Salman Jailed More Than 300 Princes And Businessmen, Including Alwaleed Bin Talal, And Blackmailed Them With Billions Of Dollars. American Intelligence Reports Leaked Stating That Kushner May Have Passed American Intelligence Information To Bin Salman Helping Him Identify His Targets, Which Kushner Strongly Denied, But Cole Documents How Even The Central Intelligence Agency CIA Began To View Kushner As A Security Risk, And How CIA Officials Refused To Brief Him On Its Daily Secret Report To The President Due To His Financial Relations.
In This Moment, As Cole Writes, The Circle Was Completed. The Young Saudi Prince Who Wanted To Buy International Legitimacy Found In The White House Another Young Man Who Wants To Buy Financial Survival, And Two Mediators Who Want To Buy Immunity From Their Criminal Past. Qatar Was The First Victim, But The Real Victim Was The Idea Of American Foreign Policy As A Policy Based On Long-Term Strategic Interests, Not On A Network Of Personal Debts And Family Grievances.
There Is No Scene That Summarizes The Tragedy Of Jared Kushner In The White House More Than The Scene That Matthew Cole Documents In The Summer Of 2017, When Kushner Entered A Room For A Group Of New Interns In Congress To Explain To Them His Philosophy In Making Peace In The Middle East. He Told Them Smiling With The Confidence Of The Son Who Inherited A Company Worth Billions Of Dollars: “As You Know, Everyone Finds A Problem And Tells You, You Must Understand What They Did Then, And You Must Understand That They Did This. But How Does This Help Us Achieve Peace? Let Us Not Focus On That. We Do Not Want A Lesson In History. We Have Read Enough Books”. Then He Added His Most Famous Sentence Quoted By Aaron David Miller, The Veteran American Negotiator Who Worked With Six Administrations: “Do Not Talk To Me About History, We Are Trying To Do Something New”.
This Sentence Is Not Just Young Arrogance, But It Is The Essence Of The Strategy With Which Kushner Entered The White House. He Was Convinced, As His Father Was Convinced Before, That All The World’s Problems Are Problems Of Badly Negotiated Real Estate Deals, And That The Solution Always Is Finding The Price That Everyone Accepts. In A Speech He Gave At Hofstra University In 2014, Before Entering Politics By Years, He Explained His Theory: “If I Am Trying To Buy A Building And You Know That Someone Wants To Sell It For X But I Want To Buy It For Y, I Have To Find A Place Where Everyone Agrees”. For Him, The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict That Lasted A Hundred Years, And Which Brilliant Diplomats Like Henry Kissinger Whom Kushner Considered Himself His New Jewish Heir Failed To Solve, Was Nothing But A Building Its Price Is A Little High.
But Cole Reveals That This Amazing Naivety Was Intended And Useful For Other Parties. At The Time When Kushner Was Repeating That He Wants To Achieve What No One Has Achieved, He Was Hiding Behind Him A Personal Financial Catastrophe Threatening To Swallow His Entire Family. The 666 Fifth Avenue Tower, The Deal He Concluded In 2007 For 1.8 Billion Dollars When He Was Twenty-Six, Had Turned Into A Black Hole. The Tower Was Losing 14.5 Million Dollars Annually, Its Occupancy Rate Does Not Exceed 70 Percent, And He Had To Pay A Mortgage Worth 1.2 Billion Dollars In February 2019, Without Any Buyer Willing To Pay The Price. All Wall Street Banks That Kushner Knocked, From JP Morgan To Goldman Sachs, Refused To Refinance Him. He Was About To Go Bankrupt Publicly, And It Is The Bankruptcy That Would Have Returned The Scenario Of His Father’s Prison, But This Time In The Headlines Of Financial Newspapers.
This Is The Context In Which We Must Understand His Frequent Visits To The Gulf. In April 2017, And Just One Month Before Qatar’s Blockade, Kushner Received In The White House The Qatari Finance Minister Ali Sharif Al Emadi, The Man Who Runs Qatar Investment Authority Of 300 Billion Dollars. Kushner Directly Asked For A Qatari Investment In His Tower. Al Emadi, According To Cole’s Narrative Based On Testimonies Of Three Qatari And American Officials, Was Ready To Help But He Found Kushner’s Demands Unrealistic And Exaggerated. Qataris Refused. Kushner Felt Personal Insult, And It Is A Feeling He Transferred Directly To Trump.
Just Two Weeks Later, Kushner Was Receiving Mohammed Bin Salman And Tahnoun Bin Zayed In The White House, And The Meeting Was Much Warmer. Then He Flew Secretly To Riyadh In October 2017, And Stayed Awake With Bin Salman Until Four In The Morning In Al Yamamah Palace. There, As Cole Documents Through Memos Of An American Official Who Attended The Preparations, The Two Talked About A Plan To Confront Iran, And About A List Of Names Of Princes And Saudi Businessmen Whom Bin Salman Considers Corrupt And Traitors. Kushner Did Not Realize, Or Did Not Care, That This List Would Turn After Two Weeks Into The Largest Blackmail Operation In Modern Saudi History, When Bin Salman Jailed 381 Princes And Businessmen In The Ritz-Carlton Hotel, And Hung Them From Their Legs, And Blackmailed Them With An Estimated 100 Billion Dollars. American Intelligence Information Leaked Stating That The Central Intelligence Agency CIA Monitored Kushner Exchanging Information That May Have Helped Bin Salman In Identifying His Targets, Which Made CIA Refuse To Grant Him The Highest Security Clearance Top Secret For More Than A Year, In A Historical Precedent For A President’s Son-In-Law.
In This Poisoned Climate Was Born What Was Called “Deal Of The Century”. Cole Explains How Kushner, In Alliance With Benjamin Netanyahu Who Saw In Him Another Real Estate Partner, Adopted A Strategy Called “From The Outside To The Inside” Or Outside-In. The Idea Is Simple And Dangerous: Instead Of Negotiating With Palestinians, Separate Peace Deals Must Be Concluded With The Emirates And Saudi Arabia And Bahrain And Morocco, And Presented To Israel As Gifts, Then Strangling Palestinians Economically Until They Accept Anything. Kushner Did Not Want The Two-State Solution, But He Wanted Three Goals, As He Told Aaron Miller: First, A Very Good Deal For Israel To The Extent That Netanyahu Cannot Refuse It In Front Of Trump, And Second, Convincing Washington That Its Priority In The Middle East Is Alliance With Arabs Against Iran Not Palestinian Peace, And Third, Exploiting The Financial Weakness Of Palestinians To Impose The Solution On Them. Miller Told Cole Commenting: “It Was Clear Where It Was Heading, It Was About Power. Israel Represents Power, And Palestinians Represent The Weak”.
The Deal Of The Century, In Its Essence, Was An Extension Of The 666 Fifth Avenue Deal. Kushner Was Applying The Same Logic: Ignoring History, Ignoring Feelings, Ignoring Rights, And Focusing On The Price. He Proposed Creating An Investment Fund Worth 50 Billion Dollars, Most Of It From Gulf Money, To Build An Airport In Gaza And A Desalination Plant, In Exchange For Palestinians Giving Up Jerusalem And Right Of Return And Sovereignty. When Palestinians Refused Even To Attend The Bahrain Economic Workshop Which He Organized In June 2019, Kushner Considered That Evidence That They Are Bad Negotiators, Exactly As His Father Considered Murray A Bad Negotiator When He Objected To His Embezzlement Of Family Money.
But The Most Revealing Moment In This Chapter, And It Is The Moment That Cole Chooses As Title For Chapter Ten “Theft Of The Century”, Came In August 2018. After A Year And A Half Of Desperate Search, Kushner Finally Found A Savior: Brookfield Asset Management Canadian Company. Brookfield Signed A 99-Year Lease For Tower 666, Paid In Advance 1.1 Billion Dollars, An Amount That Saved The Kushner Family From Bankruptcy At The Last Moment. It Seemed Like A Financial Miracle, But Cole Reveals What Is Behind The Miracle. A Few Months Before The Deal, Qatar Investment Authority Had Invested 1.8 Billion Dollars In A Fund Affiliated With Brookfield, And Became The Second Largest Shareholder In The Company Itself. In Other Words, Qatari Money That Refused To Save Kushner Directly In The White House, Returned To Save Him Indirectly Through An Intermediate Company, After The Emirates And Saudi Arabia Imposed On Him A Blockade With His Support. Kushner Had Not Triumphed Over The Market, But The Gulf Market Itself Had Decided That His Stay In Debt Is Better Than His Stay Bankrupt, Because The Debtor Can Be Controlled.
Here Cole’s Summary Appears: Jared Kushner Was Not A Spy, And Was Not A Foreign Agent In The Traditional Sense. He Was Worse Than That, He Was A Man Who Believed That American Foreign Policy Is Just An Extension Of His Real Estate Portfolio, And That The Princes Who Smile At Him In Riyadh And Abu Dhabi Are Potential Business Partners, Not Leaders Of Countries Using Him As A Card. And When Congressional Investigators Asked Rex Tillerson About His Feeling When He Learned That Kushner Held A Secret Meeting In Riyadh With Bin Salman And Bin Zayed And Bannon To Plan The Qatar Blockade Without The Knowledge Of The State Department, Tillerson Answered With Rare Anger: “This Angered Me, Because The View Of The State Department Was Never Expressed”. It Was The First Time In More Than Two Hundred Years That A President’s Son-In-Law Runs A Parallel And Secret Foreign Policy Against The Interests Of His Own Ministry.
There Was No Scene That Summarizes Matthew Cole’s Entire Book More Than The Scene That Happened On The Second Of October 2018, Inside The Saudi Consulate In Istanbul. Jamal Khashoggi, The Writer In Washington Post And The Quiet Opponent Of Mohammed Bin Salman, Entered Searching For A Paper Proving His Divorce To Be Able To Marry. He Did Not Exit. A Saudi Assassination Team Of Fifteen Men Cut Him With A Bone Saw, And Put His Body In Bags. That Was The Moment When The Bubble Of Illusion That Mohammed Bin Salman Sold To Jared Kushner And To The World Exploded, And He Is The Young Open-Minded Reformer Who Loves Technology Companies And Listens To Daft Punk Music And Drives A Lamborghini Car.
But The Most Important In Cole’s Narrative Is Not The Crime Itself, But The Reaction Of The White House To It. In The Weeks Following The Assassination, While The Central Intelligence Agency CIA Concluded In A Secret Report That The Saudi Crown Prince Is The One Who Ordered The Operation With High Confidence, And While The Whole World Was Demanding Punishing Riyadh, Jared Kushner Was The One Running The Operations Room To Defend Bin Salman. Cole Documents How Kushner, Based On Direct Advice From Mohammed Bin Zayed Who Called Him Saying That Abandoning Bin Salman Would Be A Disaster For The Anti-Iran Alliance, Convinced Trump To Issue A Presidential Statement Saying “Maybe He Did It And Maybe He Did Not”, And It Is A Statement Part Of Which Kushner Himself Wrote. And How After Just One Month Of The Crime, Kushner Flew Again To Riyadh, Shook Bin Salman’s Hand In Front Of Cameras, And Exchanged Jokes, In A Clear Message To The Saudi Royal Family That America Is Still With Him.
Why Did Kushner Do That? Cole Answers That The Answer Is Not Ideological, But Financial And Psychological. In That Moment, The 666 Fifth Avenue Tower Had Just Been Saved Through The Suspicious Brookfield Deal Funded By Qatari Money Indirectly, And Kushner Was Preparing To Launch His New Investment Company Affinity Partners After Leaving The White House, The Company That Will Later Collect Two Billion Dollars From The Public Investment Fund Saudi Led By Bin Salman Himself, Although The Investment Committee In The Fund Recommended Rejecting The Deal Due To Kushner’s Lack Of Experience And High Risks, But Bin Salman Overrode The Committee And Ordered Payment. The Relationship Was No Longer A Political Influence Relationship, But A Mutual Debt Relationship. Kushner Saved Bin Salman Politically After Khashoggi, And Bin Salman Saved Kushner Financially After 666.
The Strengths Of The Book Are Three. First, That It Restores Consideration To The Forgotten Victim In All This Story: The Idea Of American Sovereignty. When The White House Allows A Man Like George Nader, Who Was Known To The FBI With His Criminal Record, To Attend Meetings In The Oval Office, And When It Allows Jared Kushner To Keep A Temporary Security Clearance For More Than A Year Despite His Huge Debts And His Financial Relations With Foreign Governments, Then The Problem Is Not In The Foreigners Who Try To Influence, But In The System That Allows Them. Second, That The Book Reveals How Yemen War And Qatar Blockade And Deal Of The Century Were Not American Strategic Decisions, But Were Side Products Of Real Estate Deals And Personal Debts And Mutual Blackmail. American Foreign Policy Was No Longer Made In The National Security Council, But In A Law Firm In New York Managing The Bankruptcy Of A Tower.
Third, That Cole Writes And He Does Not Portray Bin Zayed And Bin Salman As Caricature Villains, But As Pragmatic Leaders Who Learned From The Americans Themselves How To Play The Game. For Bin Zayed Who Invested In Research Centers Like The Middle East Institute And Foundation For Defense Of Democracies, Was Imitating What Israel And Saudi Arabia Had Been Doing For Decades, But He Did It More Efficiently And Rudely. And Bin Salman Who Used Twitter And Public Relations Companies To Whitewash His Image, Was Imitating What Trump Himself Was Doing.
On The Last Page Of The Book, Cole Quotes A High-Level American Official Who Worked With Kushner Saying: “We Did Not Realize That We Were Dealing With The Kushner Family As A Commercial Family, And Not As Part Of The American Government”. This Sentence Is The Summary Of Investigations And Books That Were Published About Trump Administration. Everyone Thought That Danger Comes From Russian Or Chinese Interference, While The Real Danger Came From A Glass Tower Drowning In Debts In Fifth Avenue In Manhattan, And From Two Young Men Who Believe That The World Can Be Bought If You Find The Right Price.
