Trump, CIA differ on Khashoggi
President is skeptical despite the agency’s findings that the Saudi prince ordered killing.
WASHINGTON — President Trump said Saturday he would speak with the CIA about its finding that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The Washington Post first reported Friday that the CIA had assessed with high confidence that the prince ordered the killing, based on multiple sources of intelligence.
“We haven’t been briefed yet. The CIA will be speaking to me today,” Trump told reporters on the South Lawn of the White House before leaving to survey damage from wildfires in California.
But the president has already been shown evidence of the prince’s alleged involvement in the killing, and privately he remains skeptical, Trump aides said. He has also looked for ways to avoid pinning the blame on Mohammed, the aides said.
Trump’s most recent comments are at odds with the findings of the CIA and senior intelligence officials.
Gina Haspel, the CIA director, and John Bolton, Trump’s national security advisor, have briefed the president on the intelligence community’s findings, with Haspel offering the various pieces of evidence that show lieutenants of the crown prince were directly involved, according to people familiar with the matter.
In conversations with his intelligence and national security advisors, the president has seized on the question of whether evidence shows that the prince “ordered” Khashoggi’s death, asserting that his advisors haven’t offered him definitive proof. He has also asked CIA and State Department officials where Khashoggi’s body is and has grown frustrated that the journalist’s remains haven’t been found.
Khashoggi, a Saudi national, was a contributing columnist to the Washington Post.
Referring to the crown prince, Trump told reporters Saturday, “As of this moment, we were told that he did not play a role; we’re going to have to find out what they say.” He didn’t specify who had said the prince had played no role.
The CIA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
But within the White House, there has been little doubt that the prince was behind the killing.
“This is a situation where everyone basically knows what happened,” said one advisor who talks to Trump often. This person said Trump has repeatedly criticized how the prince has handled the situation and has said it is clear the Saudis are hiding facts.
The Saudis have offered multiple and contradictory explanations for what happened to Khashoggi since he entered the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, on Oct. 2 to obtain documents for his upcoming marriage.
Once inside, Khashoggi was set upon by a team of Saudi agents who had flown to Istanbul to kill him, according to U.S. and European intelligence assessments. The team is believed to have dismembered and disposed of Khashoggi’s body.
The CIA analyzed audio recordings from inside the consulate, provided by the Turkish government, and intercepted phone calls, according to people familiar with the matter. One of those calls was placed by a member of the hit team from inside the consulate to a senior aide to the prince, informing him the killing had taken place, according to people familiar with the call.
The Saudi government has insisted that the prince knew nothing of the operation, which it has blamed on rogue actors who went beyond their authority in a mission meant to bring Khashoggi back to Saudi Arabia. Khashoggi had written critically of the prince’s policies and was living in Virginia out of concern for his safety in his native country.
“The claims in this purported assessment are false,” Fatimah Baeshen, a spokeswoman for the Saudi Embassy in Washington, said of the CIA findings. “We have and continue to hear various theories without seeing the primary basis for these speculations.”
The Saudi public prosecutor acknowledged that a team of Saudi agents had killed Khashoggi, but he claimed that they had been sent with the intent to bring him back to Saudi Arabia. The prosecutor has brought charges against 11 people he characterized as part of a rogue operation, and he said he would seek the death penalty for five of those involved.