Biden's Intelligence Chief Would Release Khashoggi Murder Report

President Joe Biden's nominee for Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines, told a Senate confirmation hearing she would declassify an intelligence report into the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi that former President Donald Trump blocked.

The report's release would let the United States officially blame Saudi Arabia's de factor ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, The Guardian and media reports said.

Khashoggi, a Washington Post journalist and US resident who wrote columns critical of the Saudi crown prince, was murdered by Saudi agents inside the Saudi consulate in Turkey in October 2018.

Trump, who had denied business dealings with the Saudis despite reports to the contrary, had gone easy on the Crown Prince, who is friendly with Trump's son-in-law and former adviser Jared Kushner.

The CIA had already fingered the Crown Prince for the brutal murder and dismemberment of Khashoggi, whose body hasn’t been found, but the Saudi leader denied ordering it while saying he took responsibility for it.

Despite international condemnation, including from human rights groups and United Nations officials, there has been little effect on trade and business dealings with the Saudi government.

Khashoggi’s fiancee Hatice Cengiz and human rights activists had called on Biden to release the classified report into the murder, saying that doing so was the first step toward seeking accountability.

During Haines’ hearing, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) said she would, if confirmed, be able to “immediately” turn the page on the “excessive secrecy” and “lawlessness” of the Trump administration and submit an unclassified report on “who was responsible” for Khashoggi’s murder.

That would be as required under a February 2020 law that the former President stonewalled, with critics saying he was protecting his interest with the Saudis and the Crown Prince.

In December 2019, Congress passed a defense bill that included a provision requiring the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to release within 30 days an unclassified report on the murder of Khashoggi.

Khashoggi was assassinated by a team of Saudi agents at the country’s consulate in Istanbul in October 2018 after going there to get documents to get married. Turkey released audio indicating he was butchered while alive.

The Trump Administration refused to release the full report in defiance of the law, telling lawmakers it would compromise the national intelligence office’s sources and methods and major trade and defense deals.

The bill said the intelligence director had to show evidence about the knowledge or role any current or former Saudi government officials or Saudi political figures may have had in the “directing, ordering, or tampering of evidence” in Khashoggi’s killing.

It also asked the director to outline a list of foreign individuals the director believes with “high confidence” were responsible or complicit in Khashoggi’s murder, knew or assisted in the killing, or impeded the investigation into what took place.

While claiming he wasn't beholden to Saudi Arabia, Trump - before becoming President - booked hotel rooms and meeting spaces, sold an entire floor in one of his buildings to them and got a Saudi billionaire to buy his yacht and New York's Plaza Hotel overlooking Central Park.

"I love the Saudis," Trump said when announcing his presidential run while at the Trump Tower in 2015. "Many are in this building."

"The Saudis are funneling money to him," former federal ethics chief Walter Shaub, advising a watchdog group that sued Trump for alleged foreign government ties to his business said then.

On Dec. 23, 2019, a Saudi Arabian court sentenced five officials to death and three others to 24 years in prison in what critics of the government was staged as a sideshow to protect the Crown Prince and give up sacrificial goats.

Amnesty International's Middle East Research Director Lynn Maalouf stated the verdict was a "whitewash” in a closed trial that was closed to the public and independent monitors. “The verdict fails to address the Saudi authorities’ involvement,” she said.