Pompeo: U.S. giving Saudis ‘space’
Trump wants Turkey to supply any evidence
ANKARA, Turkey — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo received a firsthand briefing Wednesday on Turkey’s claims that Jamal Khashoggi was killed by Saudi agents, but he did not listen to an audio tape that Turkey says offers a gruesome rendering of the journalist’s last moments alive.
Pompeo’s trip to hear both sides of the Khashoggi case — Saudi denials in Riyadh and Turkish accusations in Ankara — did not appear to offer any deeper clarity into how the Trump administration is dealing with the conflicting accounts from two major allies. But Pompeo suggested any possible U.S. response would weigh its “important relations” with Saudi Arabia — a point made often by President Donald Trump that has raised speculation the United States may be unwilling to jeopardize business and security ties with the kingdom.
Speaking to the Fox Business Network on
Wednesday, Trump again cited counterterrorism cooperation with Saudi Arabia and the kingdom’s contracts with U.S. defense contractors.
“We’ll get down to the bottom of it,” Trump said. “I hope that the (Saudi) king and the crown prince didn’t know about it. That’s the big factor in my eyes, and I hope they haven’t.”
Pompeo told reporters that the United States wants to give the Saudis “space” to come up with their reckonings into what occurred Oct. 2 after Khashoggi entered the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.
State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said Pompeo did not listen to a key piece of Turkey’s evidence: an audio tape that Turkey claims captures Khashoggi’s struggle and death inside the consulate.
Hours after Pompeo left Turkey, however, Trump sent possible mixed signals. He said U.S. officials want to review any audio and video from Turkey relating to Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist and U.S. resident.
“We have asked for (audio and video) if it exists,” Trump told reporters.
He was then asked if he believes Turkey has such material.
“Probably does, possibly does,” Trump replied.
“I’m not giving cover at all,” Trump added, referring to Saudi
Arabia. “They are an ally. We have other good allies in the Middle East.”
On Wednesday, Turkish crimescene investigators searched the home of the Saudi consul general in Istanbul, and a pro-government newspaper published a gruesome account of the journalist’s alleged slaying.
It was the second-such extraordinary search of a site considered under international law to be sovereign Saudi territory after investigators spent hours in the consulate earlier this week.
The account published in the Yeni Safak newspaper alleged that Saudi officials cut off Khashoggi’s fingers and then decapitated him at the consulate as his fiancee waited outside.
The search of the consul’s residence came 15 days after Khashoggi’s disappearance — and after police apparently thought they would be able to conduct the search on Tuesday.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Saudi officials had halted the earlier search, claiming that Consul General Mohammed alOtaibi’s family was still there.
Investigators also re-entered the consulate Wednesday night.
The report by the newspaper Yeni Safak cited what it described as an audio recording of Khashoggi’s slaying. It described the recording as offering evidence that a Saudi team accosted the 60-year-old journalist after he entered the consulate.
Al-Otaibi, who recently returned to Riyadh, could be heard on the tape, telling those allegedly torturing
Khashoggi: “Do this outside; you’re going to get me in trouble,” the newspaper reported.
One of the Saudis reportedly replied: “Shut up if you want to live when you return to (Saudi) Arabia.”
The Trump administration and the Saudi royal family appear to be searching for a mutually agreeable explanation for the death of Khashoggi — one that will avoid implicating Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, among the president’s closest foreign allies, according to analysts and officials in multiple countries.
The analysts and officials said it was inconceivable that such a brazen operation as the one alleged by Turkish officials, involving a team of 15 agents sent to Istanbul, could have been pulled off by a group of “rogue killers,” as Trump speculated this week, moments after a phone call with Saudi Arabia’s King Salman.
In days of private phone calls and Oval Office huddles, Trump repeatedly has reached for reasons to protect the U.S.-Saudi relationship, according to administration officials and presidential advisers.
And he has emphasized that although Khashoggi had been living in Virginia and wrote for The Washington Post, the dissident journalist is a Saudi citizen — the implication being that the disappearance is not necessarily the United States’ problem.