Trump sending Pompeo 'immediately' to meet Saudi king over missing journalist
Source: Washington Post
Middle East
Trump sending Pompeo 'immediately' to meet Saudi king over missing journalist
By Kareem Fahim, John Wagner and Souad Mekhennet
October 15 at 10:33 AM
ISTANBUL -- President Trump said Monday that he is sending Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to meet with Saudi King Salman amid the mounting international backlash over missing Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
The kingdom has come under intense scrutiny over the disappearance of Khashoggi, who Turkish investigators believe was killed and dismembered inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
Speaking to reporters, Trump said he had just spoken around 20 minutes with the Saudi king, who firmly denied any involvement in Khashoggi's disappearance. "I don't want to get into his mind, but it sounded to me like maybe these could have been rogue killers," Trump added. ... "Who knows? We're going to try getting to the bottom of it very soon, but his was a flat denial," he said.
Trump said Pompeo would be departing Washington "literally within an hour or so" and has license to travel wherever necessary, including Turkey, to investigate what happened. Trump first announced Pompeo's trip in a tweet in which he said Saudi Arabia is "working closely with Turkey to find answer."
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Kareem Fahim is the Istanbul bureau chief and a Middle East correspondent for The Washington Post. He previously spent 11 years at the New York Times, covering the Arab world as a Cairo-based correspondent, among other assignments. Kareem also worked as a reporter at the Village Voice. Follow https://twitter.com/kfahim
John Wagner is a national reporter who leads The Post's new breaking political news team. He previously covered the Trump White House. During the 2016 presidential election, he focused on the Democratic campaigns of Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Martin O'Malley. He also chronicled Maryland government for more than a decade. Follow https://twitter.com/WPJohnWagner
Souad Mekhennet is a correspondent on the national security desk. She is the author of "I Was Told to Come Alone: My Journey Behind the Lines of Jihad," and she has reported on terrorism for the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune and NPR. Follow https://twitter.com/intent/smekhennet
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/saudis-to-allow-turkish-investigators-to-search-consulate/2018/10/15/4f1fd074-d000-11e8-a4db-184311d27129_story.html
I don't know if this differs enough from his earlier comments about SA this morning. I didn't see anything else in LBN that suggested that Pompeo's departure was imminent. If this thought does appear in an earlier thread, I'll self-delete this.
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