Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
U.S. report implicates Saudi royal
WASHINGTON — Saudi Arabia’s crown prince likely approved the killing of U.S.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, according to a newly declassified U.S. intelligence report released Friday that instantly increased pressure on the Biden administration to hold the kingdom accountable for a slaying that drew worldwide anger.
The intelligence findings were long known to many U.S. officials and, even as they remained classified, had been reported with varying degrees of precision. The release of the report 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 Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Yet even as the Biden administration released the findings, it appeared determined to preserve the Saudi relationship by avoiding direct punishment of the prince himself despite demands from some congressional Democrats and Khashoggi allies for significant and targeted sanctions.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken defended the approach.
“What we’ve done by the actions we’ve taken is not to rupture the relationship but to recalibrate it to be more in line with our interests and our values,” he said. “I think that we have to understand as well that this is bigger than any one person.”
The conclusion that the prince approved an operation to kill or capture Khashoggi was based on his decision-making role inside the kingdom; the involvement of a key adviser and members of his protective detail; and his past support for violently silencing dissidents abroad, according to the report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Though intelligence officials stopped short of saying the prince ordered the October 2018 killing, the four-page document described him as having “absolute control” over the kingdom’s intelligence organizations and said it would have been highly unlikely for an operation like the killing to have been carried out without his approval.
Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Ministry responded by saying the kingdom “categorically rejects the offensive and incorrect assessment in the report pertaining to the kingdom’s leadership.”
Shortly after the findings were released, the State Department announced a new policy, called the “Khashoggi Ban,” that will allow the U.S. to deny visas to people who harm, threaten or spy on journalists on behalf of a foreign government. It also said it would impose visa restrictions on 76 Saudis who have engaged or threatened dissidents overseas.
The State Department declined to comment on who would be affected, citing the confidentiality of visa records. But a person familiar with the matter said the prince was not targeted. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
The Treasury Department also announced sanctions against a former Saudi intelligence official, Ahmad Hassan Mohammed al Asiri, who U.S. officials say was the operation’s ringleader.
Democrats in Congress praised the administration for releasing the report, but urged it to take more aggressive actions, including against the prince.
Rep. Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, urged the Biden administration to consider punishing the prince.
“The President should not meet with the Crown Prince, or talk with him, and the Administration should consider sanctions on assets in the Saudi Public Investment Fund he controls that have any link to the crime,” Schiff said in a statement.
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., called for consequences for the prince — such as sanctions — as well as for the Saudi kingdom as a whole.
Rights activists said the lack of any punitive measures would signal impunity for the prince and other autocrats.
Without sanctions, “it’s a joke,” said Tawwakol Karman, a Nobel Peace Price winner from neighboring Yemen and friend of Khashoggi’s.
Yet the report’s disclosure was the first time U.S. intelligence agencies had made their 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.
KEY ALLIANCE
While Biden had pledged as a candidate to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” over the killing, he appeared to take a milder tone during a call Thursday with the King Salman of Saudi Arabia.
A White House summary of the conversation made no mention of the killing and said instead that the men had discussed the countries’ long-standing partnership. The kingdom’s state-run Saudi Press Agency similarly did not mention Khashoggi’s killing in its report about the call, focusing on regional issues like Iran and the war in Yemen.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki has told reporters that the administration intends to “recalibrate” the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia. Biden previously ordered an end to U.S. support for the Saudi-led bombing campaign in Yemen and said he would stop the sale of offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia but has given few details of his plans.
Though the Biden administration’s relationship with Riyadh is likely to be more adversarial than that of former President Donald Trump’s, the reality is that Riyadh’s oil reserves and status as a counterbalance to Iran in the Middle East have long made it a strategic — if difficult — ally.
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., who leads the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the
United States 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,” War- ner said.
The release of the report was long in coming.
In 2019, Congress passed a measure requiring the executive branch to give law- makers an unclassified report about Khashoggi’s death and the intelligence agencies’ conclusions. The Trump administration never complied. But during the confirmation hearing last month for Avril Haines to become director of national intelligence, Wyden asked whether she would turn over the unclassified report.
“I absolutely will follow the law,” Haines replied.
CIA CONCLUSIONS
Much of the evidence the CIA used to draw that conclusion remains classified, but the report does outline who carried out the killing, describe what Crown Prince Mohammed knew about the operation and lay out how the CIA concluded that he ordered it and bears responsibility for Khashoggi’s death.
It reiterated the CIA’s conclusion from the fall of 2018 that Mohammed ordered the killing of Khashoggi, a journalist and legal permanent resident of Virginia who was critical of the Saudi government.
The prince 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.
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 a hit team that had flown to Turkey on Oct. 2, 2018, after Saudi officials lured Khashoggi, who was seeking paperwork to marry his Turkish fiancee, into the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul.
A Turkish bug planted at the consulate reportedly captured the sound of a forensic saw, operated by a Saudi colonel who was also a forensics expert, dismembering Khashoggi’s body within an hour of his entering the building. The whereabouts of his remains remain unknown.
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 Crown Prince Mohammed’s approval.
The report said that seven members Mohammed’s elite protective detail, called the Rapid Intervention Force, were part of the 15-man hit team that killed Khashoggi.
The prince, an ambitious 35-year-old who has rapidly consolidated power since his father became king in 2015, said in 2019 that he took “full responsibility” for the killing since it happened on his watch but denied ordering it. Saudi officials have said Khashoggi’s killing was the work of rogue Saudi security and intelligence officials. Saudi Arabian courts last year announced that they had sentenced eight Saudi citizens to prison in Khashoggi’s killing. They were not identified.
The conclusion that the prince approved an operation to kill or capture Khashoggi was based on his decision-making role inside the kingdom; the involvement of a key adviser and members of his protective detail; and his past support for violently silencing dissidents abroad, according to the report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.