} Sa'ad Pasha Khair was the leading

Jordan Jordan, officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, is a country in the Southern Levant region of West Asia. Jordan is bordered by Syria to the north, Iraq to the east, Saudi Arabia to the south, and Israel and the occupied Palestinian ter ...

ian

Intelligence Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. It can be described as t ...

and Security official from 2000 till 2005 and one of only four who held the rank of

Field Marshal Field marshal (or field-marshal, abbreviated as FM) is the most senior military rank, senior to the general officer ranks. Usually, it is the highest rank in an army (in countries without the rank of Generalissimo), and as such, few persons a ...

in Jordanian history apart from the Kings of Jordan.

Background

Sa'ad was born to an influential family in

Amman Amman ( , ; , ) is the capital and the largest city of Jordan, and the country's economic, political, and cultural center. With a population of four million as of 2021, Amman is Jordan's primate city and is the largest city in the Levant ...

in 1956. His grandfather Saeed Pasha was the Mayor of Amman between 1920 and 1925, and his paternal Aunt was married to and was the favorited wife of Mithqal Pasha Al-Fayez. His father Basheer was the Governor of Amman in 1951-1952. Sa'ad passed away in Vienna in December of 2009 from a heart attack.

Career

Between 2000 and 2005, Sa'ad Khair was the head of the newly formed Jordanian National Security Agency, King Abdullah II of Jordan, '' Our Last Best Chance'',

New York, New York New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on New York Harbor, one of the world's largest natural harb ...

Viking Press Viking Press (formally Viking Penguin, also listed as Viking Books) is an American publishing company owned by Penguin Random House. It was founded in New York City on March 1, 1925, by Harold K. Guinzburg and George S. Oppenheimer and then acqu ...

, 2011, p. 221 otherwise known as General Intelligence Directorate, and was a key U.S. ally in the War on Terror. He participated in the CIA

extraordinary rendition Extraordinary rendition is a euphemism, euphemistically-named policy of state-sponsored abduction in a foreign jurisdiction and transfer to a third state. The best-known use of extraordinary rendition is in a United States-led program during th ...

of people suspected by the US government of being terrorists. Khair's work during this period is considered instrumental and extraordinary by the intelligence community generally and the CIA specifically. Head of the CIA at the time

George Tenet George John Tenet (born January 5, 1953) is an American intelligence official and academic who served as the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) for the United States Central Intelligence Agency, as well as a Distinguished Professor in the Pr ...

described Khair as a "superstar" in global intelligence for his role. Another CIA operative who worked closely with Khair said that he (Khair) "set the standard for how we do it". King Abdullah II mentioned in his book that Khair was the one who discovered and stopped an Iraqi plot to poison the water supply in Zarqa and nearby locations which would have killed thousands of innocent Jordanians.

Suisse secrets

During the Suisse secrets investigation it became known that he had one

Credit Suisse Credit Suisse Group AG (, ) was a global Investment banking, investment bank and financial services firm founded and based in Switzerland. According to UBS, eventually Credit Suisse was to be fully integrated into UBS. While the integration ...

account of more than 28 million Swiss francs, even though he qualified as a politically exposed person. His brother and wife held accounts of 13 and 6 million francs, respectively.

In popular culture

The character ‘Hani Salaam’ in the Sir Ridley Scott film '' Body of Lies'' is said to have been largely inspired by the six-year tenure of Sa’ad Khair as the GID chief. David Ignatius, author of the novel on which the film is based, has written about his encounter with Khair and modelling the character after him. Both the story and the film feature incidents directly inspired by Saad Khair’s experiences as the spy chief, as the author says, the part where Hani Salaam meets with a

jihadist Jihadism is a neologism for modern, armed militant Political aspects of Islam, Islamic movements that seek to Islamic state, establish states based on Islamic principles. In a narrower sense, it refers to the belief that armed confrontation ...

making him talk with his mother on phone and the fearsome spy headquarters’ being called the ‘fingernail factory’ are among a few. The first incident, in real life, took place in an '

Eastern European Eastern Europe is a subregion of the European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural and socio-economic connotations. Its eastern boundary is marked by the Ural Mountains, and ...

city where Khair with his team tracked down an undercover jihadist in an apartment and made him talk with his mother on phone in an attempt to force him emotionally in ' changing side' to the Jordanian government. ‘Hani Salaam’ was portrayed by

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. * British national identity, the characteristics of British people and culture ...

actor

Mark Strong Mark Strong (born Marco Giuseppe Salussolia; 5 August 1963) is a British actor best known for his film roles such as Prince Septimus in '' Stardust'' (2007), Archibald in '' RocknRolla'' (2008), Lord Henry Blackwood in ''Sherlock Holmes'' (200 ...

, whose performance in the film got particular critical acclaim because of its notable suavity and illusiveness, which according to the original author reflected the personality of Sa’ad Khair.

References

External links