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Uh-Oh spaghetti-o's :blush:

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CIA concludes Saudi crown prince ordered Jamal Khashoggi’s assassination

The CIA has concluded that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul last month, contradicting the Saudi government’s claims that he was not involved in the killing, according to people familiar with the matter.

The CIA’s assessment, in which officials have said they have high confidence, is the most definitive to date linking Mohammed to the operation and complicates the Trump administration’s efforts to preserve its relationship with a close ally. A team of 15 Saudi agents flew to Istanbul on government aircraft in October and killed Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate, where he had come to pick up documents that he needed for his planned marriage to a Turkish woman.

In reaching its conclusions, the CIA examined multiple sources of intelligence, including a phone call that the prince’s brother Khalid bin Salman, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, had with Khashoggi, according to the people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the intelligence. Khalid told Khashoggi, a contributing columnist to The Washington Post, that he should go to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to retrieve the documents and gave him assurances that it would be safe to do so.

It is not clear if Khalid knew that Khashoggi would be killed, but he made the call at his brother’s direction, according to the people familiar with the call, which was intercepted by U.S. intelligence.

Fatimah Baeshen, a spokeswoman for the Saudi Embassy in Washington, said the ambassador and Khashoggi never discussed “anything related to going to Turkey.” She added that the claims in the CIA’s “purported assessment are false. We have and continue to hear various theories without seeing the primary basis for these speculations.”

The CIA’s conclusion about Mohammed’s role was also based on the agency’s assessment of the prince as the country’s de facto ruler who oversees even minor affairs in the kingdom. “The accepted position is that there is no way this happened without him being aware or involved,” said a U.S. official familiar with the CIA’s conclusions.

The CIA sees Mohammed as a “good technocrat,” the U.S. official said, but also as volatile and arrogant, someone who “goes from zero to 60, doesn’t seem to understand that there are some things you can’t do.”

CIA analysts believe he has a firm grip on power and is not in danger of losing his status as heir to the throne despite the Khashoggi scandal. “The general agreement is that he is likely to survive,” the official said, adding that Mohammed’s role as the future Saudi king is “taken for granted.”

A spokesman for the CIA declined to comment.

Over the past several weeks, the Saudis have offered multiple, contradictory explanations for what happened at the consulate. This week, the Saudi public prosecutor blamed the operation on a rogue band of operatives who were sent to Istanbul to return Khashoggi to Saudi Arabia, in an operation that veered off course when the journalist “was forcibly restrained and injected with a large amount of a drug resulting in an overdose that led to his death,” according to a report by the prosecutor.

The prosecutor announced charges against 11 alleged participants and said he would seek the death penalty against five of them.

The assassination of Khashoggi, a prominent critic of Mohammed’s policies, has sparked a foreign policy crisis for the White House and raised questions about the administration’s reliance on Saudi Arabia as a key ally in the Middle East and bulwark against Iran.

President Trump has resisted pinning the blame for the killing on Mohammed, who enjoys a close relationship with Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser. Privately, aides said, Trump has been shown evidence of the prince’s involvement but remains skeptical that Mohammed ordered the killing.

The president has also asked CIA and State Department officials where Khashoggi’s body is and has grown frustrated that they have not been able to provide an answer. The CIA does not know the location of Khashoggi’s remains, according to the people familiar with the agency’s assessment.

Among the intelligence assembled by the CIA is an audio recording from a listening device that the Turks placed inside the Saudi consulate, according to the people familiar with the matter. The Turks gave the CIA a copy of that audio, and the agency’s director, Gina Haspel, has listened to it.

The audio shows that Khashoggi was killed within moments of entering the consulate, according to officials in multiple countries who have listened to it or been briefed on its contents. Khashoggi died in the office of the Saudi consul general, who can be heard expressing his displeasure that Khashoggi’s body now needed to be disposed of and the facility cleaned of any evidence, according to people familiar with the audio recording.

The CIA also examined a call placed from inside the consulate after the killing by an alleged member of the Saudi hit team, Maher Mutreb, a security official who has often been seen at the crown prince’s side and who was photographed entering and leaving the consulate on the day of the killing.

Mutreb called Saud al-Qahtani, then one of the top aides to Mohammed, and informed him that the operation had been completed, according to people familiar with the call.

This week, the Treasury Department sanctioned 17 individuals it said were involved in Khashoggi’s death, including Qahtani, Mutreb and the Saudi consul general in Turkey, Mohammad al-Otaibi.

The CIA’s assessment of Mohammed’s role in the assassination also tracks with information developed by foreign governments, according to officials in several European capitals who have concluded that the operation was too brazen to have taken place without Mohammed’s direction.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said his government has shared the audio with Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia.

In addition to calls and audio recordings, CIA analysts also linked some members of the Saudi hit team directly to Mohammed himself. Some of the 15 members have served on his security team and traveled in the United States during visits by senior Saudi officials, including the crown prince, according to passport records reviewed by The Washington Post.

The U.S. had also obtained intelligence before Khashoggi’s death that indicated he might be in danger. But it wasn’t until after he disappeared, on Oct. 2, that U.S. intelligence agencies began searching archives of intercepted communications and discovered material indicating that the Saudi royal family had been seeking to lure Khashoggi back to Riyadh.

Two U.S. officials said there has been no indication that officials were aware of this intelligence in advance of Khashoggi’s disappearance or had missed any chance to warn him.

Khashoggi “was not a person of interest,” before his disappearance, and the fact that he was residing in Virginia meant that he was regarded as a U.S. person and therefore shielded from U.S. intelligence gathering, one of the officials said.

Trump has told senior White House officials that he wants Mohammed to remain in power because Saudi Arabia helps to check Iran, which the administration considers its top security challenge in the Middle East. He has said that he does not want the controversy over Khashoggi’s death to impede oil production by the kingdom.

One lingering question is why Mohammed might have decided to kill Khashoggi, who was not agitating for the crown prince’s removal.

A theory the CIA has developed is that Mohammed believed Khashoggi was a dangerous Islamist who was too sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood, according to people familiar with the assessment. Days after Khashoggi disappeared, Mohammed relayed that view in a phone call with Kushner and John Bolton, the national security adviser, who has long opposed the Brotherhood and seen it as a regional security threat.

Mohammed’s private condemnation of the slain journalist stood in contracts to his government’s public comments, which mourned Khashoggi’s killing as a “terrible mistake” and a “tragedy.”

U.S. officials are unclear on when or whether the Saudi government will follow through with its threatened executions of the individuals blamed for Khashoggi’s killing. “It could happen overnight or take 20 years,” the U.S. official said, adding that the treatment of subordinates could erode Mohammed’s standing going forward.

In killing those who followed his orders, “it’s hard to get the next set [of subordinates] to help,” the official said.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cia-concludes-saudi-crown-prince-ordered-jamal-khashoggis-assassination/2018/11/16/98c89fe6-e9b2-11e8-a939-9469f1166f9d_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.79d40f63046f

Edited by sne
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It's all becoming very intriguing, with Turkey leading the US by the nose in forcing a repudiation of Saudi murders, MBS seemingly at risk at home for being a vicious little shit who didn't care to secure a political base before going all Borgias on friends and acquaintances,  and all sorts of countries realising he's mad as a box of frogs and no-one to do business with.

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4 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

I've been trying to work out which character from Game of Thrones he most reminds me of, but there's a bit of all of them in him. 

He's like whoever owns the Iron Bank of Braavos.

Pretty much owns the world and knows he's untouchable. 

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8 minutes ago, peterms said:

Poor boy doesn't realise you're supposed to express this sentiment more circumspectly, or preferably not at all.

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Replying to @TomthunkitsMind

What is Eric Trump's position in our government?

9 replies .5 retweets 47 likes

 

KP  🇺🇲 🌊‏ @mulesrule Nov 18

Sort of the U.S. Qusay?

1 reply .0 retweets 26 likes

 

From the comments :D

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15 hours ago, peterms said:

Poor boy doesn't realise you're supposed to express this sentiment more circumspectly, or preferably not at all.

 

There are very revealing comments made by Rumsfeld shortly after 9/11, when after it was first leaked that most of the perpetrators were Saudi, Rumsfeld decided to go on the attack against the leaker who was aiding terrorists or something along those lines. Same as it ever was.

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Well I am truly shocked by this, shocked I tells ya.

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Trump defends Saudi Arabia’s denial about the planning of Khashoggi’s death

President Trump issued an exclamation-mark packed statement Tuesday that defended Saudi Arabia, continued to question the CIA’s conclusion that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was responsible for the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and effectively declared the issue closed.

 “King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman vigorously deny any knowledge of the planning or execution of the murder of Mr. Khashoggi. Our intelligence agencies continue to assess all information, but it could very well be that the Crown Prince had knowledge of this tragic event — maybe he did and maybe he didn’t!” the statement read. 

The statement came after Trump said he would be receiving a full report on the killing in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul last month, and after The Washington Post reported that the CIA had assessed with high confidence that the crown prince ordered Khashoggi’s death.

No intelligence from the CIA was presented in the report, and Trump said the agency was still looking into the issue. 

[Trump’s full statement giving Saudi Arabia a pass for Jamal Khashoggi, annotated]

In the eight-paragraph statement, the president lauded Saudi Arabia’s economic ties with the United States and emphasized the country’s opposition to Iran. He noted that Saudi Arabia considered Khashoggi an “enemy of the state” and a member of the Muslim Brotherhood but insisted that “my decision was in no way based on that.”

He dismissed suggestions that he slash arms deals with Saudi Arabia, saying Russia and China would benefit instead. 

The president seemed to preempt likely criticism from Congress, where a number of pending bills seek to punish Saudi Arabia. Some of Trump’s allies, including Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), have said Mohammed has no credibility and they will not deal with him in the future.

“I understand there are members of Congress who, for political or other reasons, would like to go in a different direction — and they are free to do so. I will consider whatever ideas are presented to me, but only if they are consistent with the absolute security and safety of America,” Trump said. 

Despite the CIA conclusion, he said, “we may never know all the facts surrounding the murder of Mr. Jamal Khashoggi. In any case, our relationship is with the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. They have been a great ally in our very important fight against Iran.”

The United States, he said, “intends to remain a steadfast partner of Saudi Arabia.” 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-defends-saudia-arabias-denial-about-the-planning-of-khashoggis-death/2018/11/20/b64d2cc6-eceb-11e8-9236-bb94154151d2_story.html?utm_term=.9da57322074d

 

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So, in the early days of the post-murder discussion, Trump proposed an excuse that it must have been people acting without authority who killed him.  The Saudis failed to embrace this quickly enough, and their various tales were serially disproved.

Now it seems Pompeo has given them another fallback line, which goes beyond killing some of the team who were ordered to commit the murder, but also fingering an innocent member of the royal family to make it look as though there has been a thorough and no-holds-barred investigation, while still protecting the actual guilty man, their mate MBS.

I believe this goes well beyond the bounds of the usual cynicism and realpolitik, and signals a level of moral depravity we haven't much seen in statecraft since the middle ages, wars excepted.  Machiavelli would have approved.

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Pompeo handed Riyadh a plan to shield MBS from Khashoggi fallout, says source

US secretary of state gave Mohammed bin Salman a roadmap to insulate himself from the scandal, a senior Saudi source tells MEE

Saudi Arabia's king and crown prince are shielding themselves from the Jamal Khashoggi murder scandal by using a roadmap drawn up by the US secretary of state, a senior Saudi source has told Middle East Eye.

Mike Pompeo delivered the plan in person during a meeting with Saudi King Salman and his son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, last month in Riyadh, said the source, who is familiar with Pompeo's talks with the Saudi leaders.

The plan includes an option to pin the Saudi journalist’s murder on an innocent member of the ruling al-Saud family in order to insulate those at the very top, the source told MEE...

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/saudis-using-pompeos-plan-shield-leadership-khashoggi-fallout-says-source-1684431379

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