https://dianawest.substack.com/p/qatar-and-influence-operations-and?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=2175125&post_id=163628450&utm
Before there was Qatar & influence operations, there was Saudi Arabia & influence operations. If it is Qatar is in the headlines for buying politicians, media, universities, and for its terrorist connections, Saudi Arabia was making the same headlines and more (anyone remember 9/11?) a few years ago. Don’t look now, but Saudi’s Alwaleed bin Talal is a constant player. For starters, he was Fox’s No. 2 owner then, and he is Twitter’s No 2 owner today. Meanwhile, according to Forbes, Qatar threw a few hundred million dollars into Elon’s Twitter purchase as well. Who knows?
Maybe, we are all Qataris now.
How did this happen? Some rather important part of it starts with Alwaleed’s buy into the leading American conservative media network, Fox News, over twenty years ago. The Saudi stake would grow to 7 percent, second only to holdings of the Murdoch family. I am posting a syndicated newspaper column I wrote on the subject in 2010. The whole thing bothered me then as it all bothers me, and greatly in this week of Trump’s Arabian Processional, about which I will have more to say. For now, the 2010 column, posted below, will serve as a refresher course — and for me, as well.
I will note that this column and hundreds more are collected in my 2013 book, No Fear.
Should Fox News register with the State Department as a foreign agent — an agent of Saudi Arabia? by Diana West, February 7, 2010
First off, is that a farfetched question? Not when a leading member of the ruling family of the Sharia-totalitarian “kingdom” of Saudi Arabia, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, has made himself the second-largest shareholder of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., Fox News’ parent company.
Just as Steven Emerson believes that American universities using Saudi mega-millions (many from Alwaleed) to set up Islamic studies departments should register as Saudi agents, I believe an American news channel part-owned and part-influenced by the Saudi prince should, too.