Khashoggi: CIA intercepts point to prince
The CIA has evidence that Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince, communicated repeatedly with a key aide around the time that a team believed to have been under the aide’s command assassinated Jamal Khashoggi, according to former officials familiar with the intelligence.
The adviser, Saud al-Qahtani, topped the list of Saudis who were targeted by US sanctions last month over their suspected involvement in Khashoggi’s killing. US intelligence agencies have evidence that Crown Prince Mohammed and al-Qahtani had 11 exchanges that roughly coincided with the hit team’s advance into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, where Khashoggi was murdered.
The exchanges are a key piece of information that helped solidify the CIA’s assessment that the crown prince ordered the killing of Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist and Virginia resident who had been critical of the Saudi government.
“This is the smoking gun, or at least the smoking phone call,” said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA official now at the Brookings Institution. “There is only one thing they could possibly be talking about. This shows that the crown prince was witting of premeditated murder.”
The existence of the intercepts was first reported by The Wall Street Journal, which reviewed a highly classified document on the CIA assessment of Khashoggi’s killing. The leak of the secret report, according to officials, infuriated Gina Haspel, the CIA director. It has also intensified calls by members of Congress to have Haspel go to Capitol Hill to brief them.
Al-Qahtani has been one of Crown Prince Mohammed’s closest advisers. When the head of the hit team, Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, was recorded by Turkish intelligence saying “tell your boss” that the team had carried out the mission, he was believed by US intelligence agencies to have been communicating with al-Qahtani.
People briefed on the intelligence said they believed that the 11 exchanges between Crown Prince Mohammed and al-Qahtani could have been the time when the aide shared the news.
Current and former officials insisted that while the communications are suggestive and reinforce the intelligence agency’s conclusions about the culpability of the crown prince, they are not the kind of definitive, direct evidence President Donald Trump has suggested would be needed to convince him that Crown Prince Mohammed ordered the killing.
Such evidence, the current and former officials said, is rarely collected, and the CIA and other agencies often make their conclusions based on imperfect information.