NSO Group spent millions on Washington lobbyists to woo US government as it ...

NSO Group spent millions on Washington lobbyists to woo US government as it ...
NSO Group spent millions on Washington lobbyists to woo US government as it ...

Ethics filings and company records show how the Israeli cyberintelligence company NSO Group spent millions of dollars on Washington lobbyists, consultants and lawyers as it tried to sell its Pegasus spyware to the U.S. government.

Its parent companies paid $100,000 to Michael Flynn before he became President Trump's national security adviser; it took on the public relations firm cofounded by Anita Dunn, a senior White House adviser; and it relied on the legal and consulting services of a slew of figures with government experience, according to new reports.

The company's activities have exploded into public view during the past week with revelations from a media coalition, called the Pegasus Project, that its software was used by governments to spy on political opponents and journalists

Now it has emerged in the Washington Post that NSO, its founders or allied companies hired some of Washington's most prominent names as they tried to secure government contracts.

The include former heads of the Homeland Security and Justice departments as well as some of the city's most powerful public-relations and law firms.

Michael Flynn was paid roughly $100,000 by NSO Group's parent company before he joined the Trump administration

Rod Rosenstein worked as an adviser to NSO Group when it was sued by WhatsApp last year

The Israeli cyberintelligence company NSO Group retained some of Washington's most powerful lobbyists, consultants and PR advisers as it touted for business and tried to burnish its image, including President Trump's future National Security Adviser Michael Flynn (left) and his former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein

Tom Ridge, former homeland security secretary

Anita Dunn co-founded P.R. firm SKSD and is now a senior adviser at the White House

Tom Ridge, the first secretary of homeland security, was taken on in 2019 after the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, according to the Washington Post. And NSO Group also hired P.R. firm SKSD, which was includes Anita Dunn, now a

It even launched a separate company, Westridge Technologies, to pursue government contracts, pitching to the Drug Enforcement Agency and other law enforcement agencies - although the newspaper reported the approaches were unsuccessful. 

More successful were its attempts to build a D.C. rolodex filled with influencers.  Some were hired in the aftermath of the Saudi murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi when the company faced a lawsuit accusing it of helping surveil the dissident.

They included Tom Ridge, the first homeland security secretary; Juliette Kayyem, a Department of Homeland Security official under President Obama; and Franc's former ambassador to Washington Gérard Araud.

Kayyem told the newspaper she had worked on ensuring NSO’s spyware 'protected and respected' human rights. The other two did not respond to requests for comment.

It also took on a prominent P.R. firm SKDK. Its cofounder Anita Dunn was communications director in the Obama White House and is now a senior adviser to President Biden.

The Who's Who of government figures runs through at least three administrations.

Obama's homeland security secretary Jeh Johnson was paid by NSO's parent company, OSY, to review its human rights policy.

And Trump's deputy attorney general from 2017 to 2019 Rod Rosenstein, partner at the law firm King and Spalding, was among its advisers last year when NSO was sued by WhatsApp, which accused it of hacing the accounts of 1400 users.

Rosenstein had prosecuted foreign hackers and denounced the murder of Khashoggi as 'lawless,' during his time at the Department of Justice. 

Gérard Araud

Jeh Johnson

Others who did work for NSO Group or its parent company included former French ambassador and prominent Twitter personality Gérard Araud (left) and former Obama Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson

And a Public Financial Disclosure Report, filed when he joined the Trump administration, reportedly showed that NSO's parent company, OSY Technologies, and a previous owner, Fancisco Partners, paid about $100,000 to Flynn, a former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

The form offered no further details about his work.  

The Israeli company said it would investigate its foreign government clients for 'abuses' of its Pegasus spyware after a damning Amnesty International report revealed on Sunday that it had been used to target some 50,000 phones - including those of journalists, public officials and Arab royals.

NSO Group sells Pegasus to government clients with the purported purpose of investigating terrorism and crime. 

The Amnesty International report, along with another by a consortium of global media outlets, claimed that it was actually being used by

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