Ignatius: Brooding Saudi crown prince scrambles for scapegoat
Inside his royal place in Riyadh, Mohammed bin Salman is said to have alternated between dark brooding and rampaging anger in the days after the death of Jamal Khashoggi, as the crown prince looked for someone to blame for what Turkish officials have said was a grisly murder.
One possible scapegoat, according to several sources, may be Major Gen. Ahmed al-Asiri, deputy chief of Saudi intelligence. Asiri “has made numerous approaches to MBS on taking actions against Khashoggi and others,” said one source who’s familiar with Western intelligence reports.
The U.S. government learned last month that Asiri was planning to create a “tiger team” to conduct covert special operations, I’m told, although the U.S. didn’t know the targets. U.S. intelligence also learned, but only after Khashoggi’s disappearance from the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2, that the crown prince had told his subordinates this summer that he wanted Khashoggi and other Saudi dissidents brought back home.
The swirling reports and recriminations surfaced as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited the kingdom Tuesday and urged King Salman and his son to conduct a “transparent” investigation of the disappearance of Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist. But such efforts will face rising skepticism in the U.S. Congress, epitomized by the blast Tuesday from Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, that MBS “had this guy murdered.”
Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, urged MBS last weekend to organize an investigation that could identify the culprit responsible for Khashoggi’s death, two sources told me. The next day, Trump said he thought “rogue killers” may have been responsible, seemingly telegraphing a fall-guy strategy.
The Khashoggi case isn’t the first time that the palace allegedly attempted to kidnap a critic. After one prominent Saudi criticized aspects of the crown prince’s plan to privatize Saudi Aramco in a meeting abroad with potential foreign investors, a Saudi plane arrived along with an official who allegedly tried to arrest the man as a terrorist. He escaped, but the message was clear: Challenging MBS was risky.
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