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- The CIA has reportedly concluded with high confidence that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman personally ordered the killing of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi last month, directly contradicting Riyadh’s denials that the crown prince was involved.
- President Donald Trump was briefed on the agency’s findings Saturday.
- The development raises a critical question for Trump: will he accept his own intelligence agency’s assessment or Saudi Arabia’s?
- Trump previously sided with Russia over the US intelligence community, and if he did the same with Saudi Arabia, there would be one key difference.
- “The CIA concluded with high confidence that [Crown Prince Mohammed] ordered the assassination of a US resident,” said one Middle East expert. “While [Vladimir] Putin stands behind many of his critics’ assassinations, no intelligence agency, let alone the CIA, has publicly stated he ordered the killings himself.”
The White House is in a bind following the CIA’s reported assessment that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the kingdom’s consulate in Turkey last month.
The crown prince was widely believed to have played a key role in carrying out the Khashoggi killing even before the CIA came back with its findings. The Saudi government denies the allegation, and so far, President Donald Trump has mostly accepted its narrative.See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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See Also:
- Turkey reportedly has a second audio tape of a Saudi hit team discussing details of Jamal Khashoggi’s murder, bolstering the CIA’s claims
- Here’s everything we know about the troubling disappearance and death of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi
- Turkey says any US attempt to ‘barter’ cleric Gulen to hush the Khashoggi investigation wouldn’t work
