The CIA’s assessment, in which officials have said they have high confidence, is [based on] multiple sources of intelligence, including a phone call that the prince’s brother Khalid bin Salman, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, had with Khashoggi, according to the people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the intelligence. Khalid told Khashoggi, a contributing columnist to The Washington Post, that he should go to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to retrieve the documents and gave him assurances that it would be safe to do so.
It is not clear if Khalid knew that Khashoggi would be killed, but he made the call at his brother’s direction, according to the people familiar with the call, which was intercepted by U.S. intelligence....
The CIA’s conclusion about [the role of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman] was also based on the agency’s assessment of the prince as the country’s de facto ruler who oversees even minor affairs in the kingdom. “The accepted position is that there is no way this happened without him being aware or involved,” said a U.S. official familiar with the CIA’s conclusions....
The CIA sees Mohammed as a “good technocrat,” the U.S. official said, but also as volatile and arrogant, someone who “goes from zero to 60, doesn’t seem to understand that there are some things you can’t do.” CIA analysts believe he has a firm grip on power and is not in danger of losing his status as heir to the throne despite the Khashoggi scandal. “The general agreement is that he is likely to survive,” the official said, adding that Mohammed’s role as the future Saudi king is “taken for granted.”...
November 16, 2018
"CIA concludes Saudi crown prince ordered Jamal Khashoggi’s assassination."
WaPo reports.
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45 comments:
Official release or another leak?
"A good technocrat." High praise, from the CIA.
So we have an anonymous CIA officials telling the world that we listen in to phone calls by the Saudi Ambassador to the US?
Supposedly the President of the US determines what classified information gets released to the public, but apparently that doesn't happen. But we are to believe that since the CIA thinks MBS has complete control in his country, then MBS must be who ordered the assassination.
I'm reminded of Brecht's question:
"Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?"
The Crown Prince doesn't treat this as a rhetorical question.
There seems to be a concerted effort to break Saudi Arabia away from the Saudi-Israel-Egypt coalition.
My give a shit meter hasn't moved one way or another.
But I have low confidence in anything our intelligence community says. They missed the collapse of Soviet Union, wrong about Iraq weapons of mass destruction, wrong I. Their assessment of how much the NorKs cheated on the treaties, and way underestimated how far along the path to a nuclear weapons Iran was.
What have they got right?
“The accepted position is that there is no way this happened without him being aware or involved,”
This is the quality of analysis we get for all the billions we spend?
The CIA's reasoning is a non sequitur. The fact that the crown prince's brother told Khashoggi that he would be safe if he went to the consulate doesn't prove, or even tend to prove, that the crown prince ordered Khashoggi's murder.
No it's to break that alliance entirely muellers is pushing on the UAE through camel and hannah.
Wrong in their. . .
So if the Saudis never received a copy of the tape, how could they conclude what happened there.
Gosh! We were just this evening watching a documentary about President Obama ordering the assassination of an American citizen. Many parallels there.
Anybody who would trust CIA nowadays would buy the bridge in New York I am selling.
The Saudis deny the report, and ask for the records being kept in secret by the Turkish government. Meanwhile this is just the latest anonymous source with third hand information being pushed by the WAPO, deep state spies, and the Turks. I believe the guys who are asking for transparency, not the unverified, anonymous leakers colluding with the democrat party media and the Islamic rage boys in Istanbul.
I'm going by the Saudi prosecutors statement, effendi al shaalan (interesting that's a family of Turkish background like khashoggi)
Someone needs to find the leaker and fire them.
Assuming the press isn't just making this up.
I am still trying to figure out which recording the Turks have- the one where Khashoggi was cut up alive, or one where he was strangled the moment he walked into the consulate.
Its most obvious they intended to render him that's why they used such a large entourage,
First of all, it's the same CIA that signed off on an intelligence assessment that Trump only won the last election because of Russian meddling, and back in 2003 erroneously concluded that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. If the CIA sent around a report concluding that my neighbor's dog had chased a cat, I'd want a lot more corroboration.
Bottom line, we need Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman more than we need yet another Post stringer.
The CIA’s assessment, in which officials have said they have high confidence, is [based on] multiple sources of intelligence,
it's deja vu, all over again. But, But, But... We should Believe them, this time!
It's not like ALL THE OTHER THINGS they said they have high confidence on.
I haven't followed this story, but the CIA's opinion on anything is of negative value.
How much did Bezos pay for the CIA? Did Carlos Slim chip in?
When it's a 500 million dollar contract ots the other way around.
Well there I'd this detail they left out:
https://mobile.twitter.com/davereaboi/status/1063600063799283712
Lee Smith, pointed out the whole end game of this operation, last week.
Yeah, let's just believe the Saudi line.
Far better than believing our intelligence agencies. Always believe the Wahabis. They have our best interests at heart.
Seeing as khashoggi was a fan of Hamas and Islamic state as late as 2014. Who do you think they side with, as for many of the figures apprehended by prince Salman were part if the golden chain.
As for Yemen, his uncle was funding the Brits presence there back when the Beatles were still in hamburg.
My trust of the CIA is even lower than that of the Saudi government.
And my trust of 'journalists' is lower still.
Who cares? Putin has killed more journalists. We ain't going to do a thing about it. Are we doing anything about Venezuela?
Well that wraps things up, then. CIA is never wrong.
JFK, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr, and Ngo Dinh Diem were not available to comment on this article...
I was happily reading along until I saw "CIA". How would the CIA know? How often are they right? To cite the CIA is a quick way to lose credibility. For now I am content to leave the Khashoggi kerfuffle languishing in the darkness of the WaPo.
Absent the so called smoking gun, it is unlikely that definitive proof (of the kind for example that could be defended in court), is not going to be forthcoming. Intelligence analysis requires a great deal of either circumstantial evidence or essentially making an educated guess. So, for example, MBS has already proven a highly authoritarian ruler who permits very limited criticism of his policy. Much of his so called purge was more about consolidating power and eliminating potential rivals. The "anti-corruption" PR campaign surrounding was to sell it to credulous western audiences. And the Khashoggi case comes on the heels of much less prominent cases. Several Saudi princes living in Europe have disappeared, and the Saudis have rendered people from foreign countries, including a comedian from Jordan, and his wife from the UAE, where she was attending graduate school. The latter was a prominent women's rights activist in Saudi Arabia, and had been one of the primary forces towards lifting the driving ban.
The reason this case has gained prominence is because Khashoggi was living as a resident of the US at the time and had been writing for a major US publication. Ironically, for all of Trump's framing of the middle east as a problem created by Obama that he now needs to clean up, his policies vis-à-vis Saudi Arabia have been little more than a doubling down of Obama-era policies (e.g. arms sales and support for the war on Yemen). And despite his backing from several corners of the commentariat, MBS' two most prominent characteristics have been his impulsiveness and his incompetence. The Yemen War was a launched with the expectation that it would be a quick and decisive victory that would end with the reinstatement of who Saudi Arabia/UAE believed was the rightful ruler of Yemen. That initial goal has been abandoned, and the coalition has found itself nearly four years later bogged down in Yemen at a tremendous cost to the regime and with it no closer to achieving its objectives (in many ways it's actually further away than when the war began).
JFK, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr, and Ngo Dinh Diem were not available to comment on this article...
Nor was Salvador Allende.
Surely we can add this to Mueller’s mandate,.
J Farmer,
What's the alternative to MBS? Jimmy Carter showed us the foolishness of abandoning the devil you know (the Shah) in favor of the one you don't know (Khomeni).
J Farmer,
Does the prospect of taking Ergodan's side in anything at all not give you pause?
@Jeff:
What's the alternative to MBS? Jimmy Carter showed us the foolishness of abandoning the devil you know (the Shah) in favor of the one you don't know (Khomeni).
I don't think that is an apt analogy, because the Saudi monarchy is not facing anything like the protests and civil disobedience that the Shah faced in the late 1970s. Also, I have never advocated (and certainly don't believe the US government should advocate) for an "alternative to MBS." That is a false choice. China and Russia maintain normal diplomatic and economic relations with all of the major powers in the region (i.e. Turkey, Egypt, Israel, Iran, and the Gulf Arab states). There is nothing preventing us from having such an arrangement. I think cancelling the arms sales arrangements and withdrawing support for the Yemen War are wise policies, and arguments for them long predated the Khashoggi affair. Saudi foreign policy in the region has contributed most acutely to the empowering of radical salafi groups like the Al Nusra Front and Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
Does the prospect of taking Ergodan's side in anything at all not give you pause?
Not much, no. Being on the side of the truth is what mattered. As it turns out, leaks from Turkish intelligence sources (the main source for the reporting) back in early October turned out to be correct. Khashoggi was indeed murdered in the Turkish consulate by a group of Saudi operatives. If Erdodan has scored a PR victory because of the case, it is not his fault for attempting to capitalize on it. It is the Saudis fault for handing him such a case on a silver platter.
Not much, no. Being on the side of the truth is what mattered. As it turns out, leaks from Turkish intelligence sources (the main source for the reporting) back in early October turned out to be correct. Khashoggi was indeed murdered in the Turkish consulate by a group of Saudi operatives. If Erdodan has scored a PR victory because of the case, it is not his fault for attempting to capitalize on it. It is the Saudis fault for handing him such a case on a silver platter.
Exactly so, Farmer. The old 'good guys' vs. 'bad guys' trap is what gets us into foreign conflicts. IMO, there is no foreign leader we can totally trust. The best we can hope for is that we can trust our own leadership. And that's usually in question.
Sure Salman ordered it. But the CIA is confirming the hit as part of the swamp war. The establishment wants Russia to play the role of America's enemy, so that the very real threat posed by China can be ignored.
And why enable China? Both for short-term economic gain, and because the establishment has the same cultural death wish that Europe's elites have.
Sure Salman ordered it. But the CIA is confirming the hit as part of the swamp war. The establishment wants Russia to play the role of America's enemy, so that the very real threat posed by China can be ignored.
And why enable China? Both for short-term economic gain, and because the establishment has the same cultural death wish that Europe's elites have.
And because China owns over $1,165 billion of our national debt?
Did the CIA express an opinion on whether or not Khashoggi was sent in there on a Muslim Brotherhood suicide mission? Because it seems like it. After all, he was bin Laden's best friend. The Saudis regarded him as a terrorist, just like Obama and American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki.
The Post is of course the voice of the Deep State. Why were they employing a bin Ladenist, anyway? Other friends of bin Laden tried to level Washington, DC., to include the Washington Post itself. It was in all the papers, remember?
Just this week, the Post gave Khashoggi's op-ed spot to a Yemeni warlord who has murdered dozens of journalists. It's almost as if the Post cares more about helping Iran & Co. than anything else.
ps: Does the CIA have an opinion on Seth?
ps: As it turns out, that report is not true. Our government says it has not reached a conclusion. The Post quotes "people familiar with the matter" and "a US official familiar".
In other words, this is just more Agit-Prop. In fact, it's Agit-Prop about Agit-Prop.
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