CIA Holds ‘Smoking Gun’ Phone Call of Saudi Crown Prince on Khashoggi – Reports
[ Editor’s Note: Turkey has been playing a waiting game on the MSB investigation along with what is described in Intel circles as the Chinese water torture treatment.
Instead of revealing all of your cards early in the investigation, going for the knock out blow, you give your adversary lots of time to deny, and then “drip” leaks showing those denials to be false.
It also gives you time to get new intercepts regarding the cover up, which would not be possible if the targets were not guilty as it would not be needed. There have been reports that Pompeo flew to SA to coordinate the cover up, a bad move on his part if true. If MSB goes down he might want some company, like Pompeo, and Gina Haskel, and maybe even Trump.
The story below shows the initiation of exposing the cover up. VT is aware of how the intercepts were done because it was a mechanism that has been used for some time, nothing new, and only a few contractors do such work. They survive by being useful to everybody, well…almost everybody.
Congressional hearings will be where the heavy work on exposing this is done, if it is really followed through on. At the end of the day even Turkey might roll over if it gets something it really wants bad, like a ton of money, or Gulen turned over, of both… Jim W. Dean ]
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– First published … November 22, 2018 –
Riyadh has vehemently denied that the royal family, including Crown Prince bin Salman, has been involved in Khashoggi’s murder. A total of 21 people have been detained on suspicion of ordering and carrying out the murder; five of them face the death penalty.
The CIA has obtained a phone call recording of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordering his brother to ‘silence Jamal Khashoggi as soon as possible’, Hürriyet Daily News reported on Thursday.
According to a Hürriyet columnist, CIA Director Gina Haspel indicated during a trip to Ankara in October that the purported recording features a conversation between MBS and his brother Khalid bin Salman, the Saudi ambassador to the United States. The brothers were allegedly discussing the ‘discomfort’ stemming from Khashoggi’s public criticism of Riyadh’s policies.
While Turkish media leaked the information about the alleged tape, the CIA reportedly concluded that it was Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman who ordered Khashoggi’s killing. The CIA’s findings prompted John Brennan, the agency’s former director, to call for the US Congress to declassify the intelligence.
On Wednesday, US State Secretary Mike Pompeo said that Donald Trump was ‘happy to consider’ proposals regarding sanctions against Riyadh. The US President himself said Tuesday that the CIA did not have any definitive answer on whether the crown prince had been aware of the prepared killing of the journalist.
The scandal surrounding Khashoggi’s murder, which has drawn plenty of criticism from the international community, has reportedly prompted the royal family to seek replacing bin Salman, who is currently first in the line of succession. Riyadh rushed to dispel the rumours, however, with Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir calling the reports ‘outrageous’ and ‘totally unacceptable’.
Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist and Washington Post contributor, was killed in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on October 2. The Saudi Prosecutor’s Office said that he was dismembered after being restrained and heavily drugged.
Riyadh insists that Khashoggi’s murder was a “rogue operation” and announced that it had arrested 21 suspects, including senior military officials, and charged 11 of them. Five suspects are facing the death penalty if they are found guilty.
Jim W. Dean is VT Editor Emeritus. He was an active editor on VT from 2010-2022. He was involved in operations, development, and writing, plus an active schedule of TV and radio interviews. He now writes and posts periodically for VT.
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Erdogan has wanted an Islamic state, and he seems to have broken the glass ceiling which keeps the military over the government. The coup failed at an interesting time, and was lacking in the advantage of the knowledge of time. Was it the Turkish military ? Gulen ? The US ? All three ? or more ,…
Some people like strong leaders, and we have to wonder if they are suffering from the same delusions as people who have been beaten into submission and fall into Stockholm syndrome,.or are they acculturated in such a fashion that they are suited for it . Power is what most autocrats want. They themselves do not know why. Generally it is baseless fear, and overcompensation for being torn from the breast early.
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