General Intelligence Presidency
Saudi Arabian foreign intelligence agency
The General Intelligence Presidency (GIP) Is a Saudi Arabian intelligence agency.1 It was known as the General Intelligence Department (GID) until the early 2000s.2
Under Prince Turki Al Faisal Al Saud, the GID was a key backer of the Afghan resistance to the Soviet Union. However, it struggled to deal with the resulting blowback when Al Qaeda emerged from the milieu of militant Afghan veterans. During the early years of the War on Terror it faced criticism for over-reliance on elite contacts, weak analysis, and an inability to co-ordinate the wider Saudi intelligence community.3
The GIP underwent a significant re-organisation in 2018 after it was implicated in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.
