Thread by @hxhassan

I‘m finding big problems with this story reported in @washingtonpost. See next tweets on why the *Saudi report* is a travesty pushed by gov.

“Pensacola shooting: Gunman may have embraced radical ideology years before arriving in U.S., Saudi report says”

washingtonpost.com/national-secur…

First things first, the Saudi “internal” report was not based on a background check conducted by the Saudi government. It’s wholly based on his Twitter account, and the Saudis mai characterized the findings to shift blame. This could have been compiled by the embassy intern.

The content presented in the Saudi report is *identical* to talking points pushed by a state-organized Twitter campaign *immediately* after news about the attacker was reported.

I recognized the content because I was following those tweets at the time. See for yourself:

Continued.. in these tweets, the often anonymous accounts name the same clerics named in the report, and frame the issue in the same way the report framed it. It’s really a written version of the Twitter campaign. Most organized by the hashtag #مجرم_فلوريدا_لا_يمثلنا

Another pattern: even outside the hashtag, tweeted focused on this narrative began around the same time, on the same day of the attack. These are the oldest I saw.

A sample of the tweets in screenshots.

The content+narrative are the same as those presented in the article, based on how the Saudis presumably presented facts to the USG. A state-organized Twitter campaign was simply compiled into a “report”.

In the next tweets, let’s try to deconstruct what’s being said.

The state-organized Twitter campaign promptly shifted blame to clerics it deemed extremists. The narrative: Saudi Arabia doesn’t have a local extremism problem, all of them are foreign (Kuwait, Jordan, Muslim Brotherhood etc). We jailed the type & don’t have a Wahhabism problem!

They went through his tweets & determined he was “radicalized” many years ago when he started retweeting certain clerics.

Here is why the details in the Saudi report check many advantages for the crown prince and those in charge of the online campaign, likely close to him:

Al-Shamrani’s radicalization began at least in 2015 (read: 2 years before Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman took over) by radical clerics (read: Islamists whom MBS is fighting) & the assailant used a generic tribal name we couldn’t detect (read: allow us to access & hack Twitter).

This episode perfectly captures how the Saudis and other authoritarian governments play this game. They're getting good at it. They shift blame from unquestionable government failures (to detect bad actors even within their government institutions) to their political rivals.

This is a persistent problem in stories related to counter-terrorism, which I highlighted it last week

https://twitter.com/hxhassan/status/1201542799327453185

This is just a concrete example of how this is working. An essential part of being an expert is to identify these games, and not just parrot propaganda.

To clarify — I’m mainly criticizing the Saudi report, rather than the WP reporting. It’s just incomplete, and analysts should not just accept the narrative without connecting the dots.

There are cases where the reporting is the problem, like when a reporter knows full well the sources are compromised or linked to these regimes (sometimes that reporter is even being affiliated to that source in some way.) That’s problematic & respectable media shouldn’t allow it

Kudos to @washingtonpost for being responsive to constructive criticism — the article has since been amended to provide a counter-narrative:

washingtonpost.com/national-secur…

“The official declined to share conclusions from the analysis about aspects of the shooter’s life other than his Twitter feed.” washingtonpost.com/national-secur…

*sigh*

“Pensacola Shooter May Have Been Radicalized Years Ago, Says Saudi Report” thedailybeast.com/pensacola-nava… via @thedailybeast