Saudi Arabia's national intelligence service, the General Intelligence Department (GID), grew to substantial size in the 1970s, under the directorship of Prince Turki al-Faisal.
It was described as organizationally modeled after the CIA, with directorates including operations and intelligence, as well as signals intelligence.[1] The general impression is that it does not have a direct action capability of its own, but recruits foreign individuals or groups; Turki was said to have told a CIA colleague "We don't do operations. We don't know how. All we know how to do is write checks."[2]