Editorials on Khashoggi

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INSIDE THE WASHINGTON POST, ANGER AND FEAR AND A DEMAND FOR THE TRUTH ABOUT JAMAL KHASHOGGI
BY JOE POMPEO
OCTOBER 17, 2018 12:29 PM

... the Post finds itself at the center of a dizzyingly complex international crisis that it is both covering and mourning in real time. Khashoggi, who walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2 and hasn’t been seen since, has been a contributor since last September, writing for the Post’s Global Opinions section, which was created in 2016 as part of the ongoing Bezos revival. Khashoggi’s likely death marks the second major international incident involving a Post journalist since 2015, when Tehran bureau chief Jason Rezaian was convicted and imprisoned by the Iranian government in a sham espionage trial. Rezaian, who was released in January 2016, also now writes for Global Opinions and knew Khashoggi, and he has been speaking about his colleague in press interviews.

Khashoggi, as a contributing columnist who had only been writing for a year, didn’t have extensive ties or relationships throughout the newsroom, which operates separately from the opinion side. But his fate—the gruesome reports of what happened to him, the international implications, and what it means for a free press—has subsequently set the Post into a frenzy. Staffers told me that the newsroom feels like it is pursuing an important and difficult story about one of its own. “That’s definitely been an animating force,” one person involved in the coverage said. “People are concerned because he’s our colleague, but we’re also just very focused on figuring out what the real story is.” A substantial team of reporters and editors scattered between Washington and Istanbul has been working voraciously to advance the story—including a quadruple-bylined piece connecting a member of M.B.S.’s entourage to Khashoggi’s suspected murder.

Within the newsroom, colleagues regularly see the journalists assigned to the sprawling story huddling around one reporter’s desk or another, or assembled in some breakout room. The Istanbul crew has been working around the clock given the time difference. The video team pulled an all-nighter last week producing a segment about key surveillance footage that the Post obtained, purporting to show a chain of events leading up to Khashoggi’s disappearance. “Even people who aren’t involved in the coverage are all talking about it,” a Post journalist told me. “How’s the administration gonna respond? What does this mean for our other overseas journalists? It’s definitely the driving thing—the primary narrative that everyone is driving at right now.” This person said the only other story where he’d seen that “level of intensity” in recent times was the early days of the Russia probe, when it seemed like the Post and The New York Times were dropping bombshell scoops almost every single night, setting an ominous tone for the dawn of the Trump presidency ...

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/10/inside-the-washington-post-anger-and-fear-and-a-demand-for-the-truth-about-jamal-khashoggi

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1. A journalist disappears

According to the New York Times, Washington Post and other international outlets, the Saudi government was readying on Monday to announce Khashoggi had been accidentally killed during an interrogation inside the consulate. As of press time, that announcement had not been forthcoming. On Tuesday, the Turkish government announced the findings of a search of the building: surfaces that had recently been painted over. On Wednesday, they named fiur suspects, all with ties to the Saudi regime.

All this transpired after our president tweeted on Monday morning: “Just spoke to the king of Saudi Arabia who denies any knowledge…,” and told White House reporters that “t sounded to me like maybe these could have been rogue killers.”

The president of Saudi Arabia, by the way, is that guy standing next to Trump in the photo where they all have their hands on that glowing orb.

Journalists have their own way of reacting when one of their own befalls tragedy in pursuit of a story: We double down ...

https://triad-city-beat.com/jamal-khashoggi-disappears/

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2. The man at the center of an international crisis

By Pete Vernon, CJR
OCTOBER 18, 2018

... The Post’s Thursday op-ed page features an illustration of a smiling Khashoggi above his final column, received the day after he went missing in Istanbul. In the piece, Khashoggi notes the lack of free expression across the Arab world and argues for an independent international forum for Arab voices and stories. “The Arab world was ripe with hope during the spring of 2011,” Khashoggi wrote, lamenting that grand expectations “were quickly shattered; these societies either fell back to the old status quo or faced even harsher conditions than before.” Asked by CNN’s Anderson Cooper about the decision to publish Khashoggi’s column, his editor Karen Attiah said, “We wanted to bring it back to his words. To his ideas. To his thoughts, and who he was as a person.”

Meanwhile, the Saudis’ gamble that the international community would not much miss a single journalist has gone bust amid a deluge of coverage that has been driven by the slow drip of information from Turkish and American officials. Reporting by the Post, The New York Times, and other outlets has unearthed mounting evidence that suggests the Saudi crown prince at least knew of plans to harm Khashoggi and may have been directly involved in the operation that resulted in his murder. Yet President Trump appears eager to avoid any conclusions that would damage the US–Saudi relationship. The Post’s Shane Harris reported Wednesday night that “the Trump administration and the Saudi royal family are searching for a mutually agreeable explanation for the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi—one that will avoid implicating Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is among the president’s closest foreign allies.”

Trump’s willingness to float the “rogue killers” theory, as well as his insistence that the kingdom’s leaders are being judged “guilty until proven innocent” has focused renewed attention on his penchant for excusing the actions of authoritarian leaders. The president “has had harsher words in the last week or so for Stormy Daniels, Senator Elizabeth Warren, and Taylor Swift, than he has had for the Saudis responsible for the likely butcher and slaughter of a Washington Post columnist,” CNN’s Jake Tapper said on the air Wednesday.

As the details of Khashoggi’s murder trickle out and the global implications reverberate, one conclusion seems clear: MBS, a rising star on the international stage, is now tarnished. “If there is any lesson to be learned from this terrible affair,” writes The New Yorker’s Dexter Filkins, “it’s how blind so much of official Washington and the American press were to MBS’s true nature” ...

https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/khashoggi-washington-post.php

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3. U.S. can't let Saudis get away with murder

The relationship between the United States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has long been dictated by the terms of realpolitik. With both oil and power on its mind, Washington had cozied up to the Saudi government, ignoring the regime’s reputation for brutality and corruption. But with the recent disappearance and likely murder of Saudi journalist and Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi, it is ardently to be hoped that the relationship is finally destined for change.

The true realism needed is the admission that the Saudi government is murderous. Few countries have been guilty of human rights violations as egregious as those committed by Saudi Arabia. There are no jury trials in the kingdom. Prisoners often face abusive treatment or even torture. Public beheadings, crucifixions and stonings are all commonplace, for crimes including homosexuality, adultery, and apostasy.

In spite of this, the U.S. government has maintained a consistent relationship with the Saudis for more than 70 years, choosing to overlook the kingdom’s more controversial behaviors in order to maintain a powerful ally in the Middle East. Every president this century — George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump — has sought to maintain a cushy relationship with the Saudis. Just follow the money ...

https://www.toledoblade.com/opinion/editorials/2018/10/18/united-states-saudi-arabia-jamal-khashoggi-donald-trump/stories/20181018020?abnpageversion=evoke

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4. Is a Saudi arms deal worth our credibility on human rights?

... President Donald Trump told “60 Minutes” on Sunday that, if reports of Khashoggi’s murder at the hands of Saudi authorities are true, there would be “something really terrible and disgusting about that.” He went on to say, “We’re going to get to the bottom of it, and there will be severe punishment.”

But on Monday, after dispatching Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Saudi Arabia and “other places if necessary,” Trump said that he had spoken to Saudi King Salman, who “firmly denied any knowledge” of Khashoggi’s disappearance.

Remarkably, the president then seemed to offer an alternative scenario that did not involve a direct order from the aging Saudi king or, more importantly, from Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of the country whom Khashoggi had strongly criticized in his writing for using an ongoing “anti-corruption” campaign as cover to imprison or disappear political opponents, journalists, and human rights activists within the Saudi kingdom ...

Even more remarkable, Trump seemed to be parroting what may soon be the official Saudi line. CNN has reported that two sources have confirmed that Khashoggi’s death “was the result of an interrogation (at the Saudi consulate) that went wrong, one that was intended to lead to his abduction from Turkey” ...

http://www.burlingtoncountytimes.com/opinion/20181018/editorial-is-saudi-arms-deal-worth-our-credibility-on-human-rights

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5. We must always denounce countries that silence their critics

... It is becoming clear that Mr. Khashoggi, a Saudi national and regime critic living in the United States, was murdered and dismembered by a Saudi hit squad in the country’s Istanbul consulate earlier this month while trying to secure the paperwork to marry his Turkish fiancée.

Some details remain in dispute. It has been reported that the Saudis are prepared to admit Mr. Khashoggi died in a botched interrogation. His body has not been found and likely won’t be.

On the available evidence, though, it now seems likely that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the hit – one of his frequent companions is a suspect – and that it was carried out in the most horrific fashion. Turkish authorities say the assassins tortured the 60-year-old journalist by severing his fingers during questioning, and then took a bone saw to his dead body.

All of this makes President Trump’s response to the affair that much more unacceptable. On Monday, he floated the absurd Saudi theory that “rogue” agents may have killed Mr. Khashoggi. His Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, took chummy photos with the Crown Prince in Riyadh on Tuesday and stressed the importance of the U.S.-Saudi relationship ...

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/editorials/article-globe-editorial-why-we-must-always-denounce-countries-that-silence/

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6. Trump going rogue for Saudis

President Trump’s empathy has a curious habit of making its rare appearances when privileged men are credibly accused of crimes — even if the alleged wrongdoing doesn’t involve dodging taxes or consorting with Russians.

“Here we go again with, you know, you’re guilty until proven innocent,” Trump told the Associated Press this week when asked about Saudi Arabia’s involvement in the suspected assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, a dissident journalist and Virginia resident who was last seen entering the kingdom’s consulate in Turkey. “I don’t like that. We just went through that with Justice Kavanaugh.”

The presumption of innocence generally applies to criminal justice, not extrajudicial killings. But the greater problem is that, as with accusations of sexual assault against Brett Kavanaugh and election sabotage by Vladimir Putin, Trump doesn’t care what the Saudis did — only what they have done and can do for him. His supposed efforts to figure out what happened to the Washington Post contributor have been limited to politely asking those widely suspected of masterminding his murder, the Saudi royals. Having been so shameless as to parrot their “rogue killers” theory to the press following a phone conversation with King Salman on Monday, Trump went on to dispatch Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Riyadh to hear more such tall tales in person ...

https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/editorials/article/Editorial-Trump-going-rogue-for-Saudis-13315879.php

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7. Trump should demand Saudis account for journalist

Twenty-seven journalists have been murdered so far this year just for doing their jobs, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. That number doesn’t even include Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi dissident journalist who hasn’t been seen since he entered the Saudi consulate early this month in Turkey and is presumed dead. Words have consequences, and when President Donald Trump calls journalists “the enemy of the American people,” autocratic governments abroad get the message, feeling no fear of repercussions for cracking down on — or killing — journalists who dare to criticize them.

Khashoggi, a Saudi national who lived in Virginia and wrote commentary for the Washington Post, had broken with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman when the brash Saudi leader arrested not only corrupt princes but intellectuals who dared to question him. Turkish officials claim that a 15-member Saudi squad flew to Turkey, then tortured and killed Khashoggi earlier this month. In solidarity with the journalist, the Post left a blank space where Khashoggi’s column should have appeared in the paper.

That Saudi leaders were so brazen in apparently murdering a journalist shows how international norms have eroded since Trump was elected. Trump, who has courted the crown prince and sought to make him the linchpin of U.S. Mideast policy, has particular leverage to call out the Saudis and demand answers. Yet he made no remarks at all about the disappearance for nearly a week. In his first comment, he said tepidly that “I don’t like hearing about it. Hopefully that will sort itself out” and later even suggested that “rogue” killers might have done it. He has accepted the Saudis’ implausible denials, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was no more demanding after flying to Saudi Arabia for a direct meeting Tuesday. This is from the official readout: “The secretary also thanked the king for his commitment to supporting a thorough, transparent, and timely investigation of Jamal Khashoggi’s disappearance.” The Trump administration’s cavalier attitude is chilling ...

https://www.tampabay.com/opinion/editorials/editorial-trump-should-demand-saudis-account-for-journalist-20181017/

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8. Cartoonists addressing Khashoggi story

https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2018/10/17/how-cartoonists-are-artfully-addressing-jamal-khashoggi-story/?utm_term=.ebe9e4966f47