General Intelligence Presidency

The General Intelligence Presidency (Arabic: Ri'asat al-Istikhbarat al-'Amma, also rendered General Intelligence Directorate, Istikhbarat Al Amah and Al-Mukhabarat Al-A'amah) is the foreign intelligence service of Saudi Arabia, headquartered in Riyadh. English-language sources also call it Saudi intelligence, the General Intelligence Directorate or the General Intelligence agency.¹

Establishment

The Saudi government encyclopedia dates the Presidency to 1956 and an order of King Saud, who directed that it be organized with defined responsibilities and set up branches in the western region (the Jeddah office) and the Eastern Province (the Dhahran office). It records nine presidents since the founding, including two sons and three grandsons of King Abdulaziz, the longest term lasting about twenty-four years and the shortest about eleven months.¹ Arab News wrote in 2001 that the agency was established in the mid-1960s, with Kamal Adham its first director.² Joseph Kechichian wrote in Gulf News that Riyadh created its first intelligence-gathering service during the Arab Cold War, which pitted royalists against Nasserists, and that the General Intelligence Directorate was created under King Faisal, who entrusted it to Adham, the younger half-brother of Queen Iffat.³

The Presidency reports to the king. Kechichian wrote that Adham acted as liaison between the Directorate, which reported to the king, and Western intelligence services, and that his most successful connections were with his Egyptian counterparts, which allowed him to fashion the 1967 Faisal-Nasser reconciliation.³

Kamal Adham and the CIA liaison

Kechichian wrote that Faisal appointed Adham, born in Istanbul in 1929 and educated at Victoria College in Cairo and at Cambridge, as the first and only ethnic non-Arab chief of Saudi intelligence, a post he held until 1979, when King Khalid replaced him with Turki al-Faisal.³ The Senate Foreign Relations Committee report on the Bank of Credit and Commerce International described Adham as the "past" Saudi intelligence liaison to the United States, and A. R. (Abdul Raouf) Khalil as the "then-current" one when Financial General Bankshares (later First American Bank) was acquired. It wrote that Adham and Khalil were "two successive heads of Saudi intelligence" who were also nominees for BCCI, and that the CIA, asked by the Federal Reserve whether it held derogatory information on the buyers, did not tell the Federal Reserve that both men were foreign intelligence liaisons of the United States.⁴⁵ The committee called Adham "the CIA's former principal contact in the Arab Middle East" and "former Saudi intelligence chief".⁵ Arab News, reporting the 2001 change of director, wrote that Nawwaf was the third director since the agency was established in the mid-1960s, after Adham and Turki al-Faisal.²

The grouping known as the Safari Club (1976 to 1981), organized by the head of France's SDECE, Alexandre de Marenches, counted the Saudi directorate among its member services, represented by Adham and later by Turki al-Faisal.⁶

Turki al-Faisal, 1977 to 2001

Simon Henderson of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy wrote that Prince Turki al-Faisal, a son of King Faisal, began as deputy director at the age of 23 and was promoted to the top job nine years later, in 1977, and that for a quarter-century he was the main contact for liaison with the CIA and the British Secret Intelligence Service.⁷ Since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, Henderson wrote, Turki also held the "Afghanistan file" and acted as the kingdom's main point of contact with the CIA-backed mujahedeen, with Osama bin Laden and others, and later with the warring factions and the Taliban.⁷ Gulf News gives 1979 as the year Turki replaced Adham; Arab News and the Washington Institute give 1977.²³⁷

On August 31, 2001, the Saudi Press Agency announced a royal decree appointing Prince Nawwaf bin Abdulaziz Al Saud director of intelligence, replacing Turki, who "was relieved of the post at his request."² Henderson wrote that the announcement said Turki had resigned "at his own request" and that he was sacked for reasons that were not known, and set out the dynastic and Taliban-related theories then circulating after the September 11 attacks.⁷

Succession, 2001 to 2015

King Fahd's decree of January 26, 2005 relieved Nawwaf "based on his request" and appointed him an adviser of ministerial rank; he had had surgery in 2002 after a brain haemorrhage, and the decree named no successor.⁸ On October 22, 2005, after a nine-month gap, King Abdullah issued a royal decree naming Prince Muqrin bin Abdulaziz Al Saud head of the General Intelligence Presidency.⁹

On July 19, 2012, the Saudi Press Agency reported that King Abdullah had relieved Muqrin and named him a ministerial-level adviser and special envoy, appointing Prince Bandar bin Sultan Al Saud, who kept his post as secretary general of the National Security Council.¹⁰ On April 15, 2014, a royal decree exempted Bandar "from his position at his own request" and replaced him with his deputy, Youssef bin Ali Al Idrissi.¹¹ Kechichian wrote that Idrissi was a non-royal, in a post usually reserved for a royal, and that Bandar's partial release was primarily for health reasons.¹² AFP reported diplomats' statements that Bandar had been sidelined in the Saudi effort to support Syrian rebels and that the file had passed to Interior Minister Mohammed bin Nayef.¹¹

On June 30, 2014, the Saudi Press Agency reported a decree naming Prince Khalid bin Bandar Al Saud, the governor of Riyadh who had been made deputy defence minister six weeks earlier and relieved of that post two days before, chief of general intelligence.¹³ On January 29, 2015, a week after the accession of King Salman, the agency reported a royal order relieving Khalid bin Bandar and appointing Gen. Khalid bin Ali Al Humaidan with cabinet rank.¹⁴ On August 7, 2026, Arab News reported Humaidan, described as Saudi Arabia's intelligence chief, in Baghdad for talks with the Iraqi prime minister on security coordination and intelligence sharing.¹⁵

Khashoggi and the 2018 restructuring

Jamal Khashoggi was killed inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018. On October 20, 2018, the Saudi Press Agency reported royal decrees removing the deputy head of the Presidency, Ahmed Al-Asiri, and Saud Al-Qahtani from his advisory role at the Royal Court. Arab News named three other intelligence officials dismissed that day: Mohammad bin Saleh Al-Rumaih, Abdullah bin Khalifa Al-Shaya and Rashad bin Hamed Al-Muhamadi. The same decrees ordered a ministerial committee headed by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to restructure the General Intelligence agency and issue its results within a month; its members included the interior and foreign ministers and the heads of General Intelligence and State Security.¹⁶ On October 23, 2018, the Council of Ministers, as reported by the Saudi Press Agency, described the royal directives as reflecting a determination "not only to hold those involved to account but also to take corrective measures."¹⁷

In December 2018, the Saudi Press Agency reported that the committee had decided that separate departments for strategy and development, for legal affairs, and for performance evaluation and internal review be established within the Presidency.¹⁸

Turkish sources said that 15 Saudi intelligence operatives flew to Istanbul on two private jets hours before the killing; the Saudi government attributed the death to a group of rogue operatives.¹⁹ On November 15, 2018, the United States Department of the Treasury designated Qahtani, Maher Mutreb, the consul general and 14 other members of what it called an operations team under the Global Magnitsky authorities.²⁰ A declassified assessment of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence dated February 11, 2021 stated that the Crown Prince had had "absolute control of the Kingdom's security and intelligence organizations" since 2017.²¹

Rapid Intervention Force

The ODNI assessment wrote that the team that arrived in Istanbul on October 2, 2018 included seven members of the Crown Prince's personal protective detail, the Rapid Intervention Force, which it described as a subset of the Saudi Royal Guard that "answers only to him," and officials of the Center for Studies and Media Affairs at the Royal Court, led by Qahtani.²¹ On February 26, 2021, Office of Foreign Assets Control added the Rapid Intervention Force (also listed as the Saudi Rapid Intervention Group and "Tiger Squad"; organization established date 2015; linked to Qahtani) and Asiri to its Specially Designated Nationals list; the Treasury action title described Asiri as the former deputy head of the General Intelligence Presidency.²²

Personnel

Prince Bader bin Saud bin Mohammed Al Saud, later a Ministry of Interior brigadier general, was posted to the Saudi General Intelligence agency to join its special operations section after service with the Riyadh provincial police, before he moved to the General Directorate of Public Security. The posting is undated.²³ On October 13, 2026, Scott Stedman wrote on X that Khalid bin Bader Al Saud "appears to be the son of Brigadier General Prince Bader bin Saud bin Mohammed Al Saud, who previously served in the special operations section of Saudi Arabia's General Intelligence Agency."²⁴