Report says Saudi ruler OK’D plan to kill journalist
Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved the plan for operatives to assassinate journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, according to a previously classified intelligence report released Friday, a step by the Biden administration to remind the world of the brutal killing and to temper relations with the Saudi government.
Much of the evidence the CIA used to draw that conclusion remains classified, including recordings of Khashoggi’s killing and dismemberment at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul that were obtained by Turkish intelligence. But the report does outline who carried out the killing, describe what Mohammed knew about the operation, and lays out how the CIA concluded that he ordered it and bears responsibility for Khashoggi’s death.
The release of the report also signaled that President Joe Biden, unlike his predecessor, would not set aside the killing of Khashoggi and that his administration intended to attempt to isolate the crown prince, although it will avoid any measures that would threaten ties to the kingdom. Administration officials said their goal was a recalibration, not a rupture, of the relationship.
The report’s disclosure was the first time the U.S. intelligence community had made its conclusions public, and the declassified document is a powerful rebuke of Mohammed, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia and a close ally of the Trump administration, whose continued support of him after Khashoggi’s killing prompt
ed international outrage.
“We assess that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey, to capture or kill Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi,” said the report, issued by Biden’s director of national intelligence, Avril Haines.
The Biden administration also announced penalties against Saudi officials, including a travel ban and freezing of assets of the kingdom’s former intelligence chief and sanctions against members of a paramilitary unit that took part in the assassination. Secretary of State Antony Blinken also announced a “Khashoggi Ban,” allowing his department to impose visa restrictions on people suppressing or harming journalists, activists and dissidents. He said 76 Saudis accused of threatening journalists or dissidents overseas would be initially subject to the ban.
But the administration stopped short of sanctioning Mohammed himself, an attempt to not completely break relations with Saudi Arabia, which remains an important U.S. partner in the Middle East.
The four-page report contained few previously undisclosed major facts. It reiterated the CIA’S conclusion from the fall of 2018 that Mohammed ordered the killing of Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist and legal permanent resident of Virginia who was critical of the Saudi government. The report was written a year ago after Congress, which had been briefed on the underlying findings, passed a law mandating intelligence agencies’ conclusions be declassified and released.
The report omitted the brutal detail of the assassination: that the hit team used a bone saw to dismember the body. It also omitted details about Mohammed’s culpability, such as the assassins’ request that a message be passed to him that their mission was complete or the crown prince’s earlier threats to use a bullet to silence Khashoggi.
Mohammed viewed Khashoggi as a threat and “broadly supported using violent measures if necessary” to suppress his voice, the intelligence report concluded. U.S. intelligence agencies learned that Saudi officials had planned an unspecified operation against Khashoggi, but the report said the United States had not learned when Saudi officials decided to harm him.
No single piece of evidence outlined in the report points to Mohammed’s guilt. Instead, intelligence officials have long said, smaller pieces of evidence, combined with the CIA’S understanding of the prince’s control of the kingdom, led them to a high confidence conclusion of his culpability.
According to the report, Mohammed “fostered an environment” in which his aides feared that any failure to follow his orders could result in their arrest. “This suggests that the aides were unlikely to question Mohammed bin Salman’s orders or undertake sensitive actions without his consent,” the report said.
In addition to outlining Mohammed’s culpability, the report lists 21 others involved in the killing of Khashoggi.
They included members of the hit team, which had flown to Turkey on Oct. 2, 2018, after Saudi officials lured Khashoggi, who was seeking paperwork to marry his Turkish fiancée, into the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul. His body was never found.
The hit team worked for the Saudi Center for Studies and Media Affairs, at the time led by Saud al-qahtani, a close adviser of the crown prince. Qahtani’s official job was the media czar for the Royal Court, and he was once in charge of a campaign to use social media to attack Saudi dissidents online. The report noted that Qahtani had said publicly that he did not make decisions without Mohammed’s approval.
The report said seven members of Mohammed’s elite protective detail, called the Rapid Intervention Force, were part of the 15-man hit team that killed Khashoggi.
Ahead of the report’s release, Biden spoke to Saudi Arabian King Salman. Although the official White House description of the call did not say that the two men discussed the report, other officials said the purpose of the discussion was for Biden to explain why he was releasing the findings and outline the administration’s next steps. The administration has made clear that Biden will speak only to Salman, his counterpart as head of state, and will not speak directly to the crown prince.
It remains to be seen whether the new administration’s attempt to bypass the 35-year-old crown prince and deal only with his 84-year-old and often ailing father will succeed. Senior administration officials said that while Mohammed is not welcome in the U.S., they will not be able to cut off all discussions between him and the administration.
Biden campaigned on a pledge to hold Saudi Arabia to account for human rights abuses. And his administration has already taken a more cautious approach to the Saudi government, limiting arm sales and cutting off any support for the kingdom’s war in Yemen.
Sen. Mark Warner, D-VA., who leads the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the U.S. had previously failed to hold Saudi Arabia accountable. “I’m encouraged to see the new administration taking steps to rectify that by releasing this long-overdue congressionally mandated report into his killing,” Warner said.
Hatice Cengiz, Khashoggi’s fiancée, has sued Mohammed and other Saudi officials in U.S. courts under the Torture Victim Protection Act of 1991.
After Khashoggi’s killing became public, Saudi officials sought to deflect blame from the crown prince. The Saudi government imprisoned eight people in connection with Khashoggi’s death, trying them largely secretively. Although five were originally sentenced to death, after one of Khashoggi’s sons said he and his siblings had forgiven the men who killed their father, a Saudi court reduced the sentences to prison terms.