The Khashoggi Disappearance/Death Saga On Tuesday, 2 October 2018, while most people and media here in the US were focused on the Kavanaugh hearings, Jamal Khashoggi had evidently entered the Saudi Consulate in Turkey. And hasn't been seen since. It took a few more weeks before this incident began to build steam in the contract media outlets here in the US. And when it did, it centered around the relationship of young Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) and President Trump, and President Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner. The media stories seemed designed to put pressure on the Trump administration regarding it's relationship with the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (Mbs). It was this intense focus from certain media outlets and intelligence commentators that raised a red flag for me. This is when I decided to take a closer look into who this man was, Jamal Khashoggi. In the contract media accounts, Jamal Khashoggi was a journalist who fought for freedom of expression. He has being consistently portrayed as a good person, a hero almost. However, when I looked a bit deeper into his history, it became apparent that this is not necessarily the case. Or at least, the media version of Jamal Khashoggi left out a good bit about him. Yes, Khashoggi was a journalist. However, he was much more than than a mere journalist. Khashoggi was a Saudi citizen, with ties to the royal family, but not in the royal family. It is generally accepted by everyone that has spoken of and written about him that he was loyal to the Saudi regime. And yet, he was also called a dissident. This is incongruent. I think a better way to phrase his stance is that he sided with the Muslim Brotherhood. And the Saudi government considers the Muslim Brotherhood to be an enemy. His supposed criticism of the Saudi regime was not so much criticism of the regime as it was attempts to persuade Saudi Muslims to opt for the Muslim Brotherhood option of Islam reform which stood in direct opposition to the Mohammed bin Salman's way of trying to bring reform. (I'd like to add here a personal note, this is the language each was using, "reform", however, to my Western woman mind's point of view, neither looks like genuine reform to me. It's still very oppressive by my standard of living.) Jamal Khashoggi's family has interesting connections. His uncle just so happens to be the notorious billionaire arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi. I discovered this bit of information from this youtube video with George Webb where he is tracking the history of a particular Evergreen Aviation, Inc plane that Webb has called the Khashoggi plane, and has related this Khashoggi plane with Club K, (often calling it Club Khashoggi as mnemonic device). Club K is the weapons operation of large weapons in containers. It turns out that Jamal Khashoggi had at least four interesting relationships worth noting: His uncle Adnan Khashoggi As a young man, reporting on the Afghanistan/Soviet war, Jamal became friends with Osama bin Laden One of his benefactors and mentor was Turki bin Faisal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. The second of his princely benefactors was Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz al Saud. I'll explore more about these relationships in other parts of this blog series. For now I want to share this interesting analysis conversation with ex-Turkish Ambassador from India, MK Bhadrahumar. It's interesting to me to see how people from other parts of the world are considering this incident. He points out that the Turkish leaks went to the American Press, noting that it is well known that the Washington Post is essentially a CIA asset. He also pointed out what I had noticed that made me want to take a closer look at the Khashoggi incident; that Khashoggi's CIA mentors have taken a personal interest in his disappearance/death and this is why we are seeing some of these people make some of the comments they are making. (For example, John Brennan)
