Bizarre, Criminal law, International, Society

Saudi Prince: “The CIA Is Not Necessarily The Highest Standard of Veracity”

It may be the single least self-aware statement of the year.  Prince Turki al-Faisal has insisted that the CIA assessment that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi can be dismissed because “the CIA is not necessarily the highest standard of veracity or accuracy in assessing situations.”  This is coming from a government that has issued a series of bold-faced lies about its murdering of the journalist from claiming that Khashoggi was actually alive to blaming him for a brawl in the consulate to now insisting that a group of men (including those closely tied to the Crown Prince) carried out the murder without his knowledge.  Of course, even President Trump cannot decide if he will believe his own intelligence officials or the Crown Prince.  Trump said continued to say that it is not clear that the Crown Prince ordered the killing despite incriminating tapes and overwhelming evidence to the contrary — as well as leading Republicans saying that continued denials are unbelievable and embarrassing for the country.

Prince Turki al-Faisal, a former ambassador to the United States, said “The CIA is not necessarily the highest standard of veracity or accuracy in assessing situations. The examples of that are multitude.” He cited the Iraq war based on CIA assessments that “led to a full-scale war with thousands being killed.”  He added “I don’t see why the CIA is not on trial in the United States. This is my answer to their assessment of who is guilty and who is not and who did what in the consulate in Istanbul.”

Hmmm, it may be because there is not a tape of murderers confirming with the Crown Prince that they had just carried out his recorded order to silence a Washington Post journalist.

The latest reports disclosed the existence of a  “smoking gun phone call” of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman with an alleged instruction to “silence Jamal Khashoggi as soon as possible.”  Moreover, there is a recording referencing the Crown Prince by the murderers as well as an intercept of a team member calling an aide to Prince Mohammed and saying “tell your boss” that the mission was accomplished. Intercepts also show that Prince Mohammed was trying to find ways to lure Mr. Khashoggi back to Saudi Arabia.  It also ignores the detailed plans involving the Crown Prince’s close aide and a large team of men sent from Saudi Arabia, including a body double for Khashoggi.

What followed the murder was a series of planned lies, including sticking with the original plan of claiming that Khashoggi was shown leaving the consulate.  The Saudis however failed to use Khashoggi’s shoes after having the man don the dead man’s clothes.

The Saudis are now planning to execute the team in an effort to protect the Crown Prince.  However, it is the CIA that lacks veracity.

The question is whether President Trump will continue to deny the obvious as the Saudis attack our own intelligence services as unreliable.

48 thoughts on “Saudi Prince: “The CIA Is Not Necessarily The Highest Standard of Veracity””

  1. Edward Snowden tweet:

    https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1066814279876337664

    ‏
    “Verified account

    @Snowden

    Haaretz confirms reports by @Citizenlab showing Saudi Arabia’s purge of regime opponents was fueled by the #NSO group, an out of control Israeli hacking company. Before Khashoggi’s murder, three of his contacts were targeted by SA using NSO’s burglary kit.

    2:01 PM – 25 Nov 2018”

    https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-israeli-company-negotiated-to-sell-advanced-cybertech-to-the-saudis-1.6680618

    “In the following months the Saudis continued their hunt for regime opponents living abroad, which raised international attention only when the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul came to light in October.

    It has recently been claimed that NSO helped the Saudi regime surveil its opponents. According to an article in Forbes magazine and reports from Citizen Lab, a Canadian academic think tank focusing on technology and human rights, among the surveillance targets were the satirist Ghanem Almasrir and human rights activist Yahya Asiri, who live in London, and Omar Abdulaziz, who lives in exile in Canada.

    These three men were in contact with Khashoggi. Last month, Edward Snowden, who uncovered the classified surveillance program of the U.S. National Security Agency, claimed that Pegasus had been used by the Saudi authorities to surveil Khashoggi.

    “They are the worst of the worst,” Snowden said of NSO, whose people he accused of aiding and abetting human rights violations.

    NSO’s founders and chief executives are Omri Lavie and Shalev Hulio. The company is registered in Cyprus but its development headquarters is in Herzliya. In 2014 the company was sold to private equity firm Francisco Partners based on a valuation of $250 million.

    Francisco Partners did not respond to Haaretz’s request for comment.

    In May, Verint Systems offered to buy NSO for $1 billion, but the offer was rejected. The company is awash in cash. Earlier this month all its employees went on vacation in Phuket, Thailand. Netta Barzilai, Lior Suchard, the Ma Kashur Trio and the band Infected Mushroom were also flown there to entertain them.”

  2. WHAT IF PRINCE CHARLES WAS IMPLICATED IN MURDER..??

    Let us consider a fictitious premise:

    ‘A British journalist, critical of the monarchy, goes to the British consulate’s office in Frankfurt Germany for the purpose of arranging personal documents. There he is murdered and dismembered by a hit team that includes top aides to Prince Charles. German police have monitored the entire situation. They promptly present evidence that overwhelmingly implicates Prince Charles. But an American president fears that any prosecution (or condemnation) of Prince Charles imperils U.S. interests. So the president simply dismisses all evidence and tells the media to move on’.

    If such a situation occurred, Queen Elizabeth would have no choice but to suspend the line of succession until Prince Charles stood trial. And even then the House of Windsor would face its gravest threat ever in terms of survival. What’s more, no American president, aside from Donald Trump, would dare doubt the case before trial. It would look like he’s siding with a murderer! Yet Trump has done exactly that with regards to the Saudi Crown Prince.

    The Saudi case illustrates, quite perfectly, why monarchies have largely disappeared from world politics. Historically royals were often implicated in crimes. And when that happened, civil upheaval usually followed. The royals lost their legitimacy which created openings for contenders to the throne. Cycles of violence like that were common at one time. The world has generally moved beyond that but the Saudis are frozen in time.

    1. Parliament can amend the rules of succession, not the Queen
      see the Succession to the Crown act of 2013

      helps your case if the premises are at least somewhat correct and above, they are not

  3. Prince Turki al-Faisal is merely sending a false hare. He refused to answer the question and instead misdirected to our intelligence community.

    MBS did not mean to silence him with rose candy.

    The bottom line appears to be that this murder did not meet the threshold for the US to jeopardize its alliance with the Kingdom, or even issue a stinging rebuke. Which is one more sucky thing to throw on the pile of US/Middle East relations.

    Apropos of the discussion of 10,000 illegal aliens in the migrant caravan claiming asylum when they really just want better economics. Saudi journalists really can claim asylum based on the legitimate fear of persecution due to political opinion or social group.

  4. bold-faced lies? don’t know what that is. Bald-face I think is what you’re intending

  5. Does leading Republicans refer to the last of the fast disappearing old guard of Republicans In Name only?

    Trump is protecting his real base while he both converts the right wing of the left into ex-GOP and exposing them for what they are and converts the GOP into the Constitutional Republic Party who also support the unaffiliated self governing citizens and their Constitutional Centrist stance.

    You may remember those two groups from 2016. The latter took 40% the largest share and included ICDs and other Never Clinton anti Socialist pro constitution Democrats.

    That latter group now is in their own power position and able to form their own party with enough to caucus where and with whom they want, to knock the Democrats into minority status again in the House of Representatives and to become a huge vote magnet under ICD or a name of their own choosing. Enough to become The second party

    People forget all to easily we did not hire President Trump to go along get along with the socialist left wing extremists but to destroy them.

    Now they are in a real mess. They HAVE to deliver but do not have the votes to deliver and so fall back on no platform except higher taxes, tax cut cancellation, this years tax cut cancelled, destroy the economy, take credit for that which they did not do, reject responsibility for that which they did do. and let’s not forget their usual ultimate answer… more wars and porn,

    We used to say the only good communist is a dead communist. Now we can say the only good socialist is one who had emigrated. Might’s well they already rejected their US citizenship.

    Watch for Ocasio taking the oath of office for the ultimate demonstration of political perfidy

  6. I agree, they don’t have a record of telling the truth. They did help create false evidence to start the war w/Iraq and the head of the agency should be in jail for war crimes including torture. It is foolish to believe anything the CIA says unless they provide evidence for what they say.

    It is usually ludicrous to believe anyone in the Saudi govt. but on the point of Iraq, he has the evidence and it is the evidence which should be believed.

    It is disgraceful that Trump and many Americans are ready to trade out other people’s lives for “jobs” and war profiteering. I don’t know when the US decided it would only make money by arming the world and killing everyone in sight. We lost any sense of having something of value to add to this world. Now it’s our “legacy” to offer up horrific pain and suffering to the world. We used to innovate, now we just send our poor to attack other nation’s poor people on behalf of the richest people on earth. That’s depraved.

    Don’t ever believe anything the CIA says. They are professional liars. This is equally true of the Saudi govt. But evidence doesn’t lie. That’s what should be examined in a court of law. If there were justice, we wouldn’t be listening to liars. We’d be in court presenting evidence.

    1. Jill – back in the 1980s I bought a used paperback titled The War Merchants which was about how the United States was the largest arms trader in the world. When we sell new jets to someone, we take their old ones in trade. Those are sold to someone else and we take their old equipment to sell to someone else, etc. We have been in the arms business for a long time. Who do you think supplied all those tanks in WWII?

      1. What I was told is that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, but for how long is a question. So when we armed rebels, which included Bin Ladin, to fight the Soviet expansion in Afghanistan, we did not give them the most up to date weapons. That was because there was the likelihood that it was a temporary alliance, which indeed it was. These are the difficult decisions we make every year. We are supposed to position ourselves geopolitically for the long game. During the Cold War, the Soviets were trying to prop up a socialist country and prevent it from turning capitalist. That could have far reaching effects on a generally unstable region. It was also during a time when the oil embargo was a recent memory, one that our government did not wish to repeat. Allowing Soviet expansion into the Middle East would have been a vulnerability in the Cold War. But there are no great actors in Afghanistan. No White Hats, but rather shades of grey.

        We make similar choices across the globe. The Butterfly Effect controls geopolitics, as well.

  7. OK, sooo the United States has executed journalists, too! Someone on another website made me aware of Julius Streicher, who never killed a single Jew, yet was executed at Nuremberg in 1946. I guess Free Speech did not apply to him.

    Which, I am kewl with hanging him, but thought it should be pointed out.

    Squeeky Fromm
    Girl Reporter

  8. This is coming from a government that has issued a series of bold-faced lies about its murdering of the journalist from claiming that Khashoggi was actually alive to blaming him for a brawl in the consulate to now insisting that a group of men (including those closely tied to the Crown Prince) carried out the murder without his knowledge.

    Isn’t this the same thing as “pleading in the alternative”???

    Squeeky Fromm
    Girl Reporter

  9. I’ll quote that venerable resource of truthfulness regarding assessments of matters of international consequence:

    “What difference, at this point, does it make?”

    This is a dispute between Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Why should the United States be a part of it? He was not a United States citizen, nor was he a green card holder. His only connections to the United States were the fact that he was issued a work visa, and he wrote a column in the Washington Post. Those two items lead me to believe he was a CIA asset. But he was not a United States citizen, so why should the United States still be involved in this issue?

    1. His nationality is irrelevant. The real point is he was a journalist murdered because he wrote articles that displeased the Prince and he was brutually murdered. That used to be something the US cared about whether that journalist was and American citizen or not. Sadly our president no longer cares about these things and the Saudis buy his condos!

      1. Justice Holmes:
        We care. The question is do we care enough to dissolve a strategic partnership and thereby cede influence of the ME (and the oil fields) to Iran who has declared themselves our existential threat?

        1. Whereas Saudi funding of jihadists is a real threat, Iran is not. You run scared like all good conservatives.

      2. Saudi jackals murder many people ever day in theatre of war or their own desert wastes. If they do it in Turkey that’s Turkey’s business not ours. Khasoggi was not an American. America is not the world cop to protect self declared foreign journalists not Russia nor Turkey nor anywhere but here.

  10. “Prince Turki al-Faisal, a former ambassador to the United States, said “The CIA is not necessarily the highest standard of veracity or accuracy in assessing situations. The examples of that are multitude.” He cited the Iraq war based on CIA assessments that “led to a full-scale war with thousands being killed.” He added “I don’t see why the CIA is not on trial in the United States. This is my answer to their assessment of who is guilty and who is not and who did what in the consulate in Istanbul.”

    Hmmm, it may be because there is not a tape of murderers confirming with the Crown Prince that they had just carried out his recorded order to silence a Washington Post journalist.”
    ********************
    I don’t know what this means. Is it sarcasm? Smug derision? I haven’t heard the tape in question and there is plenty of reason to think no one outside of the intelligence community has heard it either. Even assuming that it says every single thing asserted here, is Turki al-Faisal incorrect in his assessment of CIA blunders leading us directly into war with Iraq? WMDs, “Curveball” and Yellow Cake were all lies or liars and our CIA bought them hook, line and sinker and then swore to them. Are we to unquestionably believe the Agency that let hero Colin Powell make a fool of himself on the World’s stage? There were plenty of tapes of that debacle. Here’s one with Tim Russert and Powell where the General says CIA agents in the briefing room repeatedly lied to his face. Why aren’t they on trial, indeed?
    https://youtu.be/2ZTLmOoPzjs
    So it seems al-Faisal, Trump and the hero of Desert Storm all share a lot in common when it comes to trusting the CIA. Why doesn’t JT share that skepticism? And why the smugness directed to those who do?

    1. If neither the President, the public, nor foreign leaders trust anything the CIA says or does, why are US taxpayers paying trillions of $$ for the CIA and the 16 other “security” agencies to spy on everyone??????

  11. Oky1 — Try avoiding floridated water and even toothpaste for at least 6 months. See if that helps.

    2. Oky1 — Seriously, buy bottled spring water. Drinking that may cut down trips to chiropractor.

  12. The certainties we’ve all learned in recent years…..you cannot trust the CIA ‘intelligence’ that’s leaked to certain media….you cannot trust Turkey and its ‘findings’….you cannot trust KSA’s statements on anything…

    all in all, our leaders in media and government are untrustworthy…

  13. I posted this earlier on a different thread.

    I believe the Trump position on the current Saudi govt, the ME is somewhere on the 2nd video.

    If you’re really interested in the topic of the ME, Trump you’ll scroll though it.

    https://www.infowars.com/watch-live-roger-stone-exclusive-statement-on-dr-jerome-corsi-plea-bargain/

    I doubt Prof Turley will have anyone look at it yet, but the deep state can’t hold their current BS narrative together, it’s blowing wide open right in front of our eyes.

    Which reminds me, I was thinking about writing a story about a couple of lawyers chained in a cave, one named Dershowitz & another one in the DC area & they are describing the shadows they see.

    LOL

    1. Oky1 –

      The sun’ll come out
      Tomorrow
      Bet your bottom dollar
      That tomorrow
      There’ll be sun

      Just thinkin’ about
      Tomorrow
      Clears away the cobwebs,
      And the sorrow
      ‘Til there’s none

      When I’m stuck a with day
      That’s gray,
      And lonely,
      I just stick out my chin
      And Grin,
      And Say,
      Oh

      The sun’ll come out
      Tomorrow
      So ya gotta hang on
      ‘Til tomorrow
      Come what may
      Tomorrow, tomorrow
      I love ya tomorrow
      You’re always
      A day
      Away
      When I’m stuck a with day
      That’s gray,
      And lonely,
      I just stick out my chin
      And Grin,

      1. Paul,

        Cool.

        It’s been a very odd last few years. Lots of cleanups on aisle 4.

        This year’s been a special case in itself.

        And to this holiday weekend.

        My chiropractor tells my wife & I, customers: don’t come see him the day after a front rolls through.

        I hurt all day today until the beer finally kicked in a bit ago, but it won’t last long, that’s life so it is,

        Anyway, more interesting to me was people’s moods in recent weeks.

        Like, my daughter won’t hardly talk to us because we like Trumps BS better then the others BS.

        So we have this nationwide election, fraud everywhere, seems most are pissed about this or that & the Thanksgiving. ( Odd it was yes, I enjoyed in spite of everything)

        Ok, we have this big azz full moon, people acting wried because it, also arctic air falls down covering everything around NYC.

        Rounding back to my pain today, it was like 72 or 3 degrees yesterday, front rolls into town over night & 30’s today.

        Look at this map & maybe save it. It shows that front the last few days I’ve been watching it rolled down almost to my front door, Tulsa area, & then rapidly flies off to the north east.

        Odd it seems to me because I feel it leaving in my bones. I find that fun odd. LOL.

        https://www.ventusky.com/

        1. Oky1 – sadly we start to feel our age. Getting old is not for the weak at heart. 😉

          1. We didn’t get here being quitters.

            I did learn in the last year why to pray to God I think. Not for ba@tards like me, there are some real cases of people that are in of help & prayers.

            I know I knew that years ago but chose to hide from it.

    2. we call it the common method of oral instruction in law school socratic method for a reason

  14. Obama droned American citizens but we’re to care about this “journalist” who had ties to Osama bin Laden because… why? I’m fairly certain the Sun will still rise in the morning.

  16. The prince is a disciple of Trump. How could he not be? Trump’s the smartest person in the world, so he says. Trump is smart enough to know that if you lie consistently enough people simply go along and others give up. The strategy is one used by tin pot dictators and we now have it spewing forth from the Oval Office.

    2. Remember not long ago when Mr Trump said he tries to tell the truth whenever he can. I believe that statement. He says whatever pops into his head and hopes that it is true. He has no idea if it’s true or not. He assumes that he is smarter than everyone else and that other people think and speak and lie just like he does. He has no concept of what it is like to recall facts and sort them out from non-facts.

  17. Well, who on here has heard the phone call and an explanation for why Turkey has a copy of it? I agree with the Saudi Prince. The CIA should be on trial.

  18. Ha, ha, ha! The prince who kills people for asking for the right to drove or “insulting the Saud Family says the CIA has less credibity that he does. Ha, ha, bloody (and I do mean bloody) ha!

  19. Prof Turley,

    Interesting Conspiracy Theory you have there, please tell us more proof of your story’s validity.

    LOL;)

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