President Biden’s administration released an intelligence report indicating that Mohammed bin Salman knew about the killing of the Washington Post journalist
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President Joe Biden’s administration on Friday released a U.S. intelligence report that said Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved an operation to caption or kill Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.
“Since 2017, the Crown Prince has had absolute control of the Kingdom’s security and intelligence organizations, making it highly unlikely that Saudi officials would have carried out an operation of this nature without the Crown Prince’s authorization,” the report concluded.
NBC News and Reuters confirmed the report’s existence on Wednesday.
Back in September 2020, journalist Bob Woodward said then-president Donald Trump told him he “saved” the crown prince in the aftermath of the Khashoggi’s killing.
“I saved his ass,” Woodward recounted Trump saying while reporting for his book “Rage.” “I was able to get Congress to leave him alone. I was able to get them to stop.”
Shortly after Khashoggi was killed and dismembered at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in October of 2018, the CIA concluded the crown prince himself ordered the assassination.
While the conclusion is not entirely new, its public confirmation, as NBC News points out, marks a noteworthy moment in the relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia, and especially between Biden and Saudi leaders. Trump’s relationship was markedly different: Last year, he was criticized for calling the crown prince his “friend” exactly 18 months after the brutal murder.
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