CIA chief to brief lawmakers on Khashoggi murder

Chair of US Senate foreign relations committee says Gina Haspel will meet with ‘small group’ of legislators to discuss killing of Saudi journalist

By AFP 4 December 2018, 4:00 am

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File: Gina Haspel testifies before the Senate Intelligence Committee on her nomination to be the next CIA director in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC on May 9, 2018. (AFP Photo/Mandel Ngan)

WASHINGTON — CIA director Gina Haspel has agreed to brief a “small group” of US lawmakers about the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the chair of the Senate foreign relations committee said Monday.

The briefing will take place on Tuesday at 11:00 am Eastern Time, Senator Bob Corker told journalists, after the Central Intelligence Agency failed to take part when US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis spoke to senators on the issue last week.

The spy agency has concluded with “medium-to-high confidence” that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman “probably ordered” the October 2 assassination of Khashoggi by a team of Saudis in the country’s consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The veteran journalist was a strong critic of Prince Mohammed and had been resident in the United States, where he wrote about politics in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East for The Washington Post.

In this image made from a March 2018 video provided by Metafora Production, Jamal Khashoggi speaks during an interview at an undisclosed location. (Metafora Production via AP)

The Journal, the Post, and The New York Times have all reported that the CIA has evidence Prince Mohammed exchanged 11 messages with his close aide Saud al-Qahtani, who allegedly oversaw the murder, just before and after it took place.

The Times reported Monday that Haspel was furious over the leak of the CIA’s conclusions, which increased pressure on the White House to take strong actions against the Middle East powerhouse.

With relations with Riyadh already fraught, US President Donald Trump has declined to accept the conclusion that the powerful heir to the Saudi throne approved the murder, saying there is no direct evidence of it.

“It could very well be that the crown prince had knowledge of this tragic event — maybe he did and maybe he didn’t!” Trump said in a statement on November 20.