Saudi Prince Ordered Operation Against Khashoggi

Trump with Mohammed bin Salman.

A standard ploy of dictators is their desire to silence opposition voices through any means, including murder.  Hitler did this, Lenin and Stalin did this, Vladimir is doing this and, so too it appears is crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, a BFF of Donald Trump and Jared Kushner.    Trump, of course, is waging his own war against a free and independent press and at times has incited violence against journalists.  Did Trump directly or indirectly signal to bin Salman that acting against Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi was acceptable?  Some are suggesting such was the case, especially in light of Trump's apparent affinity for dictators.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the latest developments which follow on rumors that Khashoggi was lured to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, murdered, dismembered and smuggled out of Turkey.  Here are highlights:

The crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, ordered an operation to lure Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi back to Saudi Arabia from his home in Virginia and then detain him, according to U.S. intelligence intercepts of Saudi officials discussing the plan.

The intelligence, described by U.S. officials familiar with it, is another piece of evidence implicating the Saudi regime in Khashoggi’s disappearance last week after he entered the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. Turkish officials say that a Saudi security team lay in wait for the journalist and killed him.

Khashoggi was a prominent critic of the Saudi government and Mohammed in particular. Several of Khashoggi’s friends said that over the past four months, senior Saudi officials close to the crown prince had called Khashoggi to offer him protection, and even a high-level job working for the government, if he returned to his home country.

Khashoggi, however, was skeptical of the offers. He told one friend that the Saudi government would never make good on its promises not to harm him.

The intelligence pointing to a plan to detain Khashoggi in Saudi Arabia has fueled speculation by officials and analysts in multiple countries that what transpired at the consulate was a backup plan to capture Khashoggi that may have gone wrong.

A former U.S. intelligence official — who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter — noted that the details of the operation, which involved sending two teams totaling 15 men, in two private aircraft arriving and departing Turkey at different times, bore the hallmarks of a “rendition,” in which someone is extra­legally removed from one country and deposited for interrogation in another.

But Turkish officials have concluded that whatever the intent of the operation, Khashoggi was killed inside the consulate. Investigators have not found his body, but Turkish officials have released video surveillance footage of Khashoggi entering the consulate on the afternoon of Oct. 2. There is no footage that shows him leaving, they said.

The intelligence about Saudi Arabia’s earlier plans to detain Khashoggi have raised questions about whether the Trump administration should have warned the journalist that he might be in danger.

Intelligence agencies have a “duty to warn” people who might be kidnapped, seriously injured or killed, according to a directive signed in 2015. The obligation applies regardless of whether the person is a U.S. citizen. Khashoggi was a U.S. resident.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees the warning process, declined to comment on whether Khashoggi had been contacted.  Administration officials have not commented on the intelligence reports that showed a Saudi plan to lure Khashoggi.

The intelligence poses a political problem for the Trump administration because it implicates Mohammed, who is particularly close to Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser.  On Wednesday, Kushner and national security adviser John Bolton spoke by phone with the crown prince, but White House officials said the Saudis provided little information.

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have reacted harshly to the disappearance. On Wednesday, a bipartisan group of senators asked Trump to impose sanctions on anyone found responsible for Khashoggi’s disappearance, including Saudi leaders.

Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), perhaps the president’s closest ally in the Senate, predicated a “bipartisan tsunami” of action if the Saudis were involved and said that Khashoggi’s death could alter the nature of relations between the two countries.

Kushner’s relationship with Mohammed, known within national security agencies by the initials MBS, has long been the subject of suspicion by some American intelligence officials.  Kushner and Mohammed have had private, one-on-one phone calls that were not always set up through normal channels so the conversations could be memorialized and Kushner could be properly briefed.

As regular readers know, I have a very dim view of Saudi Arabia which I view as anything  but an ally to America.  Indeed, Saudi Arabia is the largest financier of Islamic extremism across the globe.