Pompeo listened to an alleged recording of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi: Source
PHOTO: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo walks out of the West Wing before talking to journalists following a meeting with President Donald Trump at the White House, Oct. 18, 2018 in Washington.Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
WATCH Trump on whether Jamal Khashoggi is dead: 'certainly looks that way'
Secretary of State has heard an alleged audio recording of Washington Post columnist inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, according to a senior Turkish official.
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Speaking exclusively and on condition of anonymity to ABC News, the official claimed the recording was played in meetings in on Wednesday, and that Pompeo was given a transcript of the recordings.
Separately, ABC News has also learned that Turkish officials believe that Khashoggi was killed inside the Saudi consulate following a struggle that lasted eight minutes and that they believe he died of strangulation.
The White House referred questions to the State Department which denied Pompeo had heard the recording and had not seen a transcript.
"Secretary Pompeo has neither heard a tape nor has he seen a transcript related to Jamal Khashoggi’s disappearance," said State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert
Yesterday, on his way back from Istanbul, Pompeo was asked if he had heard the audio.
"I don’t have anything to say about that," he said.
President Trump has been publicly asking to hear the recording. Pompeo met with the president at the White House on Thursday morning to brief him on his visit to Turkey and Saudi Arabia, where he met with Saudi King Salman and Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman.
PHOTO: In this Dec. 15, 2014 file photo, Jamal Khashoggi, then general manager of a new Arabic news channel speaks during a press conference, in Manama, Bahrain.Hasan Jamali/AP, FILE
In this Dec. 15, 2014 file photo, Jamal Khashoggi, then general manager of a new Arabic news channel speaks during a press conference, in Manama, Bahrain.more +
It is unknown whether Pompeo shared the transcript with the president, but soon after the meeting the president changed his tune.
While earlier in the week the president questioned whether the audio recording existed and cautioned against blaming Saudi Arabia for Khashoggi’s disappearance, on Thursday afternoon his administration abruptly canceled a visit to Saudi Arabia by Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin to attend a large investment conference hosted by the Crown Prince, whom Turkish officials have reportedly claimed was behind Khashoggi's killing.
Later in the day, Trump that "it certainly looks like" Khashoggi was dead.
"It certainly looks that way to me, it's very sad," Trump told reporters before boarding Air Force One to attend a political rally in Montana.
The president said the consequences for Saudi Arabia, if they are ultimately deemed culpable, "will have to be very severe. It's bad, bad stuff."
For now, the president said the United States is waiting for the results of several investigations but will then make a "very strong statement."
PHOTO: President Donald Trump waves off further questions as he heads to board Air Force One after talking to reporters about journalist Jamal Khashoggis disappearance while departing for travel to Montana from Joint Base Andrews, Md., Oct. 18, 2018.Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
President Donald Trump waves off further questions as he heads to board Air Force One after talking to reporters about journalist Jamal Khashoggi's disappearance while departing for travel to Montana from Joint Base Andrews, Md., Oct. 18, 2018.more +
On Thursday, after his meeting at the White House, Pompeo said that he told the president that the Saudis should have "a few more days" to finish their investigation into Khashoggi’s disappearance.
But Pompeo also stressed the "long strategic relationship" that the U.S. has with Saudi Arabia, and described the country as an "important counter-terrorism supporter."
Reports have been circulating for days that the Turkish government has audio recordings of Khashoggi being interrogated and murdered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
Turkish officials have openly claimed that Khashoggi was killed in the consulate, and that a group of 15 Saudi men flew to Istanbul around the time of Khashoggi’s disappearance.
The Saudi government has having anything to do with the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi.
A close friend of Khashoggi, Turan Kislakci, that Turkish government and security officials had told him that Khashoggi was dead.
PHOTO: A Turkish forensic officer arrives at the Saudi consulate to conduct a new search over the disappearance and alleged slaying of Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi, in Istanbul, early Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018.Emrah Gurel/AP
A Turkish forensic officer arrives at the Saudi consulate to conduct a new search over the disappearance and alleged slaying of Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi, in Istanbul, early Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018.more +
"They said, 'We have audio on this. We know all the details about what transpired,'" said Kislakci. "They said, 'We were able to access this the first day, and we have various other evidence on this.'"
Kislakci claimed that the tapes reveal that after Khashoggi went into the Saudi embassy, he was given documents to sign. Khashoggi refused, and was killed.
"I still want to wish and hope that he is alive and so on," Kislakci said. "Unfortunately, this kind of news which related with his killing in a barbaric way is coming out."
Khashoggi, who had been living in the U.S., went missing more than two weeks ago after he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2. He was visiting the consulate to file paperwork for his upcoming wedding, and his fiancee waited for him in a car outside the consulate.
Khashoggi worked as an opinion columnist at The Washington Post newspaper, and has written critically of the Saudi government and its crown prince, Mohammad Bin Salman. Khashoggi warned of renewed efforts to silence the free press in the Middle East, and his final column, published on Wednesday, was titled “."
https://abcnews.go.com/International/po ... d=58595725
Why the Saudis despised Jamal Khashoggi
By Tony Badran and Michael Doran
Why the Saudis despised Jamal Khashoggi
With the likelihood growing that the Saudi government was behind the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, pressure has built for severe, swift action. As President Trump awaits more answers and contemplates a response, it’s worth considering who Khashoggi actually was, what he stood for and why the regime might have wanted him dead.
This is not to suggest that the killing of Khashoggi is justified. It is, however, meant to observe that characterizations of him in the media are not fully accurate. He’s depicted as a “reformer,” a “democracy advocate” and a “journalist.” Yet these are half-truths that obscure the political role Khashoggi played.
Before anything else, he was a regime insider. He was a close associate of senior members of the royal family who were eclipsed by the new crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.
Khashoggi was not merely a pen for hire. He represented a particular political perspective. An Islamist, his views on major issues consistently tracked with those of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Last September, for example, he lamented the crown prince’s new policy.
“Saudi Arabia,” Khashoggi said, “is the mother and father of political Islam.” But the Saudi government was forsaking this tradition. “Today,” the kingdom has turned against its very nature and is “fighting political Islam.” As a consequence, its “compass is lost.”
A Turkophile, Khashoggi hoped instead that the new crown prince would follow in the footsteps of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who supports the Muslim Brotherhood across the Arab world. Khashoggi envisioned a grand alliance between Riyadh and Ankara.
“Saudi Arabia must return to fully supporting the Syrian revolution and to ally with the Turks,” he said. Like Erdogan, Khashoggi was hostile to the Sisi regime in Egypt and opposed Mohammed bin Salman’s rapprochement with Israel.
This perspective also translated into a sympathetic attitude toward Qatar, which aligns regionally with Turkey and the Muslim Brotherhood. To MBS, however, Qatar has a sinister profile. When he broke off relations with the Qataris last year, he accused them of sponsoring members of the Saudi Islamist opposition, weaponizing media outlets against the kingdom and even plotting assassinations.
In the eyes of the young crown prince, Khashoggi symbolized the three-prong threat to his rule: the Muslim Brothers, the Turkish-Qatari axis and disaffected princes. When Khashoggi moved to America, Salman added a fourth prong: the element of the American elite that sought to downgrade Saudi Arabia’s friendship in US foreign policy.
Khashoggi found an influential perch at The Washington Post, from which he launched attacks on the crown prince. One of his recent columns, for example, calls for the end of the war in Yemen, which he portrays as an abject failure. He presents the Saudi government as an indiscriminate killer of fellow Muslims and blames the failure of peace talks on its obstinacy and incompetence.
These arguments hit the crown prince where it hurts most: They implicitly attack his Islamic legitimacy, essentially placing him in the same category as slaughterers of Muslims, such as the Syrian and Russian leaders, Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin.
In presenting himself to his American friends, Khashoggi fashioned himself less the Islamist and more the democratic reformer. He made a tactical alliance with former Obama officials who seek to depict Trump’s pro-Saudi and anti-Iranian policy as a disaster.
Trump, in this view, is the enabler of a young, impetuous crown prince. Conflicts such as Yemen result from Saudi recklessness rather than Iranian expansionism.
Far from erasing this picture from the US media, Khashoggi’s disappearance has strengthened it. Given the opposition of former Obama officials to Trump’s strategy, they have an interest in stoking outrage at Khashoggi’s death. Their goal is to harness it in order to resurrect Obama’s outreach to Tehran.
Ironically, containing Iran is a goal that would make perfect sense to Khashoggi. In advocating a rapprochement between Riyadh and the Turkish-Qatari axis, he stressed the need for the Sunni powers to band together to thwart Tehran.
This is an aspect of his thought that he downplayed when making common cause with his American allies. It is the aspect, however, which President Trump would do well to remember most.
Tony Badran is research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Michael Doran is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.
https://nypost.com/2018/10/18/why-the-s ... khashoggi/
U.S. intel officials: Inconceivable Saudi prince had no link to Khashoggi death
Image: Jamal Khashoggi
WASHINGTON — U.S. intelligence agencies investigating the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi believe it's inconceivable that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had no connection to his death, but still have no "smoking gun" evidence that he ordered Khashoggi killed, multiple government officials tell NBC News.
Although President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo remain tight-lipped about what they know, Trump finally acknowledged Thursday that Khashoggi is likely dead. Behind the scenes, U.S. spy agencies are trying to determine whether the killing was pre-planned or resulted from either an interrogation that went awry or a botched operation to bring him to Saudi Arabia, officials say — and how directly Crown Prince Mohammed was involved.
The emerging U.S. picture of what transpired in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul comes as the Trump administration says it's giving Saudi Arabia a "few more days" to investigate internally and then reveal the results publicly. Turkish authorities and critics of Saudi Arabia are concerned that Trump is allowing the Saudis to come up with a cover story that will clear Saudi leadership of any responsibility, thus allowing the U.S. to continue its close relationship with Saudi Arabia.
Image: Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi speaks at an event hosted by Middle East Monitor in London
Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi speaks at an event hosted by Middle East Monitor in London Britain, Sept. 29, 2018.Middle East Monitor / Reuters
Turkish authorities claim that a recording of Khashoggi's killing in the consulate proves he was killed within minutes of entering by a 15-member hit team sent from Saudi Arabia, and have leaked details about the purported tape's contents to Turkish media. But three U.S. officials tell NBC News that the Turks have not yet given any tape to the U.S. government to review.
Trump called on Turkey to turn over that audio "if it exists." As of now, neither Trump nor Pompeo have heard the tape, officials said.
In fact, it took Trump more than two weeks after Khashoggi's disappearance to acknowledge the likelihood that he is dead.
"It certainly looks that way to me," Trump said Thursday. "It's very sad."
The question of how much U.S. and other intelligence agencies already know about Khashoggi's killing may help determine whether the explanation the Saudis eventually provide will hold up to scrutiny.
Trump and Pompeo say they're awaiting the results of a joint Saudi-Turkish investigation. Yet U.S. intelligence agencies already have obtained far more information than has been reflected in Trump's comments, officials said, and some of that intelligence will be available to members of Congress who oversee the intelligence community.
If the Saudis offer an explanation — such as that Khashoggi died during a botched interrogation — that is contradicted by U.S. intercepts or other intelligence, the Trump administration would face pressure to dispute it.
In the White House, Trump and his aides have been focused on preventing the debacle from disrupting the U.S.-Saudi relationship, which the Trump administration sees as key to its broader Mideast agenda and its campaign to isolate mutual foe Iran, officials say. Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser who is close to Crown Prince Mohammed, has emphasized that as a close U.S. partner, Saudi Arabia should be treated differently in this situation than if it were a U.S. enemy.
Pompeo, who traveled this week to Riyadh to discuss the situation with Saudi leaders, was stern in his meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed, two U.S. officials familiar with the meeting said. Pompeo emphasized that the U.S. is committed to maintaining its close relationship with Saudi Arabia and working together on Iran but can no longer tolerate domestic messes like the Khashoggi killing, the officials said. In recent months Saudi Arabia and Crown Prince Mohammed have also attracted negative international headlines for crackdowns on women's rights activists and a heavy-handed corruption purge in which princes and members of the business elite were rounded up and jailed in the Riyadh Ritz-Carlton.
Although the U.S. currently lacks definitive proof, officials say there is a strong circumstantial case linking the killing to the crown prince, including published reports in recent days that many members of the Saudi team Turkey has accused of killing the journalist had ties to the prince.
Moreover, experts say, Salman's total control of the Saudi security apparatus makes it almost inconceivable that Khashoggi's death was the result of a "rogue operation."
"It's possible that there was a complete misunderstanding, a partial understanding or that what happened in Istanbul was somehow ordered by him," said Jon Alterman, a former State Department official and Mideast expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "But it's very hard for me to imagine — given what I've heard about the crown prince and how his office works — that people were wildly freelancing."
To gain a fuller picture of what transpired, former intelligence officials say, the National Security Agency, which specializes in eavesdropping and hacking communications, would seek to obtain any evidence as part of the U.S. intelligence collection effort targeting this incident, including stealing audio and video surveillance maintained by private companies or the Turkish or Saudi governments.
Foreign consulates are often the targets of CIA recruiting, former officials say, meaning it is possible the CIA or an American ally such as Britain, Israel or Jordan has a paid informant inside the facility.
The mandate to the NSA would be "give me everything you got," said former Deputy CIA Director John McLaughlin, now an NBC News analyst, who briefed Republican and Democratic presidents. "They are constantly sweeping up stuff and most of it never sees the light of day. They would look back and determine what did we pick up in [in eavesdropping], what do we have in imagery collection that could be relevant."
The NSA would likely have the capability to piece together the movements of the Saudi team through cellphone location data, a former NSA official said.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/mideast/u- ... nk-n921846
More Khashoggi-MBS Links Revealed as Suspected Killer Dies in 'Suspicious Car Accident'
The New York Times also tied Saudi crown prince to the alleged killers, citing that 'American intelligence officials are increasingly convinced that [the crown prince] is culpable in the killing'
Haaretz and The Associated Press Oct 18, 2018 1:34 PM
His Royal Highness Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman and Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner visited with Houston's Habitat for Humanity on Saturday, April 7, 2018, in Houston, TX on the last stop of his U.S. tour
His Royal Highness Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman and Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner visited with Houston's Habitat for Humanity on Saturday, April 7, 2018, in Houston, TX Photo by Paul Ladd/Invision for Aramco Services/AP Images
Latest: Saudi journalist's dismembered body lands at Trump's White House ■ Why the Khashoggi Murder Is a Disaster for Israel
A man who previously traveled with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s entourage to the United States entered the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul just before writer Jamal Khashoggi vanished there, according to images published Thursday by a pro-government Turkish newspaper.
The Sabah newspaper’s report showed the man also later outside the Saudi consul general’s home, checking out of a Turkish hotel as a large suitcase stood by his side, and leaving Turkey on October 2.
The report came as Turkish crime-scene investigators finished an overnight search of both the consul general’s residence and a second search of the consulate itself amid Ankara’s fears that Saudi authorities had Khashoggi killed and dismembered inside the diplomatic mission in Istanbul.
Saudi Arabia, which initially called the allegations “baseless,” has not responded to repeated requests for comment from The Associated Press over recent days, including on Thursday.
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The Sabah report showed the man walking past police barricades at the consulate at 9:55 A.M. with several men trailing behind him. Khashoggi arrived at the consulate several hours later at 1:14 P.M., then disappeared while his fiancée waited outside for him.
The New York Times also tied the crown prince, known as MBS, to the alleged killers, citing that "American intelligence officials are increasingly convinced that [the crown prince] is culpable in the killing."
CNN reported Tuesday that Khashoggi's killing in Istanbul was organized by a high-ranking officer with the General Intelligence Presidency, Saudi Arabia's main intelligence service, three sources close to the investigation told CNN late on Tuesday.
CNN added that "one of those sources described the officer as close to the inner circle of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman," who oversees much of Saudi Arabia security and intelligence services.
What we know so far about the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi
A report Wednesday by the pro-government newspaper Yeni Safak, citing what it described as an audio recording of Khashoggi’s slaying, said a Saudi team immediately accosted the 60-year-old journalist after he entered the consulate, cutting off his fingers and later decapitating him.
The same Turkish newspaper reported on October 18 that one of the suspects involved in the disappearance of Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi died in a “suspicious car accident” in Riyadh.
The paper named Mashal Saad al-Bostani, a 31-year-old lieutenant of the Saudi Royal Air Forces.
Fifteen-man Saudi team
Previously leaked surveillance footage showed consular vehicles moving from the consulate to the consul general’s official residence, some 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) away, a little under two hours after Khashoggi walked inside. The Sabah newspaper showed an image of the man at 4:53 P.M. at the consul’s home, then at 5:15 p.m. checking out of a hotel. He later cleared airport security at 5:58 P.M.
Security services in Turkey have used pro-government media to leak details of Khashoggi’s case, adding to the pressure on the kingdom.
The AP could not immediately verify the man’s identity, though he’s one of the individuals previously identified by Turkish authorities as being involved in the 15-man Saudi team that targeted Khashoggi.
Images shot by the Houston Chronicle and later distributed by the AP show the same man was in Prince Mohammed’s entourage when he visited a Houston subdivision in April to see rebuilding efforts after Hurricane Harvey. The same man wore lapel pins, including one of the flags of Saudi Arabia and America intertwined, that other bodyguards accompanying Prince Mohammed wore on the trip.
The three-week trip across the U.S. saw Prince Mohammed meet with business leaders and celebrities, including Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, who now owns the Post.
The searches and the leaks in Turkish media have ensured the world’s attention remains focused on what happened to Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist who went into a self-imposed exile in the United States over the rise of Prince Mohammed. It also put further strains on the relationship between the kingdom, the world’s largest oil exporter, and its main security guarantor, the U.S., as tensions with Iran and elsewhere in the Middle East remain high.
Flying back home after a visit to both Saudi Arabia and Turkey, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo remained positive Wednesday about an ongoing Saudi probe into Khashoggi’s disappearance, but he stressed that answers are needed.
“Sooner’s better than later for everyone,” Pompeo said.
U.S. President Donald Trump, who initially came out hard on the Saudis over the disappearance but since has backed off, said Wednesday that the U.S. wanted Turkey to turn over any audio or video recording it had of Khashoggi’s alleged killing “if it exists.”
On Thursday, the Post published what it described as Khashoggi’s last column in honor of the missing journalist.
In it, Khashoggi pointed to the muted international response to ongoing abuses against journalists by governments in the Middle East.
“As a result, Arab governments have been given free rein to continue silencing the media at an increasing rate,” Khashoggi wrote. He added: “The Arab world is facing its own version of an Iron Curtain, imposed not by external actors but through domestic forces vying for power.”
https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-new ... -1.6572086
So let's see the corpse.
