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US

Jamal Khashoggi: US intelligence report finds Saudi Crown Prince responsible for approving operation that killed Washiington Post journalist

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“We assess that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman approved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey to capture or kill Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi,” the report’s executive summary states.

“We base this assessment on the Crown Prince’s control of decision-making in the Kingdom, the direct involvement of a key adviser and members of Muhammad bin Salman’s protective detail in the operation, and the Crown Prince’s support for using violent measures to silence dissidents abroad, including Khashoggi,” the report says.

The Biden administration provided the long-awaited declassified intelligence report to Congress ahead of its public release on Friday.

The congressionally mandated release of the report followed a phone call President Joe Biden had with Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud on Thursday. The four-page report, titled “Assessing the Saudi Government’s Role in the Killing of Jamal Khashoggi” is dated February 11 and marked as declassified by Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines on February 25.

With the report’s release — long demanded by Democrats in Congress — Biden may face pressure to take further action against the kingdom or the crown prince himself.

The report notes bin Salman’s “absolute control” of Saudi intelligence and security operations.

“Since 2017, the Crown Prince has had absolute control of the Kingdom’s security and intelligence organizations, making it highly unlikely that Saudi officials would have carried out an operation of this nature without the Crown Prince’s authorization,” the report says.

It says that the 15-person Saudi team that arrived in Istanbul in October 2018 when Khashoggi was killed included members associated with the Saudi Center for Studies and Media Affairs (CSMARC) at the Royal Court, led by a close adviser of bin Salman, as well as “seven members of Muhammad bin Salman’s elite personal protective detail, known as the Rapid Intervention Force.”

A threat to the Kingdom

The report notes that bin Salman viewed Khashoggi as a threat to the Kingdom “and broadly supported using violent measures if necessary, to silence him.”

The intelligence report says that they still do not have visibility on when the Saudis decided to harm the father of five. “Although Saudi officials had pre-planned an unspecified operation against Khashoggi we do not know how far in advance Saudi officials decided to harm him,” it said.

On Thursday, administration officials hinted Biden may also be considering an announcement of some sort of punishment for the Saudis once the report was released.

When asked if the administration would consider sanctions against those found responsible for Khashoggi’s murder, State Department spokesperson Ned Price said Thursday, “I expect that we will be in a position before long to speak to steps to promote accountability going forward for this horrific crime.”

The report also noted that at the time of Khashoggi’s murder, “the crown prince fostered an environment in which aides were afraid that failure to complete assigned tasks might result in him firing or arresting them.”

‘Lawlessness won’t stand’

Democratic lawmakers who pushed for years for President Donald Trump to take a tougher stand on the Khashoggi case offered praise for the report’s release.

“His courageous journalism cost Jamal his life. Yet, for years, the last administration shielded the Saudi regime from any kind of responsibility or scrutiny,” Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, said in a statement. “Today, thanks to President Biden and DNI Haines, America is sending the message that this lawlessness won’t stand.”

Rep. Adam Schiff, the California Democrat who chairs the House Select Committee on Intelligence, said that “the highest levels of the Saudi government, including Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, are culpable in the murder of journalist and American resident Jamal Khashoggi, and there is no escaping that stark truth laid bare.” Schiff also said in a statement that the report “underscores why Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s repeated claims that he was either unknowing or uninvolved in this heinous crime are in no way credible.”

Sen. Mark Warner, a Virgina Democrat and chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said that “for too long, the United States failed to hold Saudi Arabia accountable for the brutal murder of journalist, dissident, and Virginia resident Jamal Khashoggi.”

New Jersey Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, went further, saying Biden had demonstrated his commitment to transparency and compliance with law “by ending Donald Trump’s cover up of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.”

Shortly after Khashoggi’s October 2018 death, the CIA assessed with high confidence that the crown prince had personally ordered the killing.

But during the Trump administration, US intelligence officials never spoke publicly or presented evidence about the murder at Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul, and at the time, Trump staunchly defended the country’s young, de facto ruler, who is often referred to as MBS.

Trump told biographer Bob Woodward of the crown prince, “I saved his ass.” Woodward wrote in his book “Rage” that in January 2020, Trump also boasted that “I was able to get Congress to leave him alone. I was able to get them to stop.”

The crown prince has denied that he ordered Khashoggi’s murder but has said that he bears responsibility.

“This was a heinous crime,” he said in an interview with CBS in 2019. “But I take full responsibility as a leader in Saudi Arabia, especially since it was committed by individuals working for the Saudi government.”

In September 2020, a Saudi court sentenced eight suspects to prison in what the UN investigator called a “parody of justice.”

In June 2019, a United Nations investigator found that it was “inconceivable” the royal heir wasn’t aware of the operation.

As a candidate, Biden said Khashoggi was murdered “on the order of the crown prince” and that the country should be treated like “the pariah that they are.”

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US

US Capitol attack: Former police chief to say intelligence didn’t point to a riot on January 6

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“The breach of the United States Capitol was not the result of poor planning or failure to contain a demonstration gone wrong,” Sund says in written testimony submitted for the hearing.

Sund will testify alongside other law enforcement leaders Tuesday where Americans could hear for the first time why intelligence and operations failed dramatically on January 6 from the very people whose choices contributed to the crisis — information that will likely help shape the search for new leaders and possibly a new security management structure on Capitol Hill.

The Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs and Senate Rules committees are holding an open hearing during which they will grill Sund, former House Sergeant at Arms Paul Irving, former Senate Sergeant at Arms Michael Stenger, and acting Metropolitan Police Chief Robert Contee about how such a catastrophic failure occurred, and how to prevent it in the future.

Irving will testify that intelligence assessments before the January 6 attack incorrectly concluded that there was only a “remote” to “improbable” chance of a civil disturbance that day, according to prepared testimony.

“The intelligence was not that there would be a coordinated assault on the Capitol, nor was that contemplated in any of the inter-agency discussions that I attended in the days before the attack,” Irving will say.

Contee has already spoken before lawmakers in a closed-door hearing, but the testimonies of Irving, Stenger, and Sund could be monumental. All three played critical roles in deciding how to prepare for the rally on January 6, and yet, Americans have heard hardly anything from any of them.

Sund has spoken sporadically. His loudest statement to date arrived in a letter he sent to congressional leadership detailing the decision-making process leading up to January 6 and his response once the rally turned violent.

According to Sund’s letter at the time, he asked Irving and Stenger, who together with the Capitol Architect form the board that oversees the police department, to request the National Guard before the event.

Irving said he “was concerned about the ‘optics’ and didn’t feel the intelligence supported it,” Sund wrote. The sergeant for the Senate, Stenger, suggested asking the Guard to be ready in case Sund needed them.

Search for new Capitol Police chief

Thursday, acting USCP Chief Yogananda Pittman is scheduled to testify in an open hearing in front of the House Appropriations Committee. That will also mark the first time Pittman takes questions publicly. She previously appeared in a closed-door hearing in which she apologized to lawmakers.

Her new testimony comes as officials are starting the search for a new USCP chief.

A congressional source told CNN that Congress is moving forward with hiring an outside entity to begin the search.

Several other committees working together have already received briefings and documents from intelligence agencies as part of the numerous probes.

The House Intelligence, Homeland Security, Oversight and Judiciary committees’ joint review prompted an initial production of documents last week from FBI, DHS and NCTC, a congressional source told CNN. Additionally, they have received several briefings from the three agencies.

The source said so far the documents have mostly been finished intelligence products that the committee could already access.

This story has been updated with testimony from Tuesday’s hearing.

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Science

Video Game-Playing Pigs Stretch Our Concepts of Animal Intelligence

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A Yorkshire pig operating a joystick to move a dot on the screen.
Photo: Eston Martz / Pennsylvania State University

The four pigs came to win. If they played the game well, they got delicious dog food (they used to get M&Ms, but the humans decided those were too sugary). Time and again, when prompted by researchers to complete a video game task—guiding a cursor with a joystick, a sort of rudimentary Pong—they did so with impressive skill.

Researchers began putting pigs on computerized tasks in the late 1990s, and though the results got occasional press coverage over the years, no peer-reviewed research on the experiments has been published until today, with a paper in the journal Frontiers in Psychology. The scientists found that despite dextrous and visual constraints on the animals, pigs were able to both understand and achieve goals in simple computer games.

“What they were able to do is perform well above chance at hitting these targets,” said Candace Croney, director of Purdue University’s Center for Animal Welfare Science and lead author of the paper, in a phone call. “And well enough above chance that it’s very clear they had some conceptual understanding of what they were being asked to do.”

The published research is the long-awaited fruit of some 20 years of labor that began when Croney was at Purdue University, working with the prolific pig researcher Stanley Curtis. The project followed the efforts of two Yorkshire pigs, Hamlet and Omelet, and two Panepinto micro pigs, Ebony and Ivory, as they attempted to move a cursor to a lit area on the computer screen.

Croney with “Omelet” the pig.
Photo: Eston Martz / Pennsylvania State University

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“They beg to play video games,” Curtis told the AP in 1997. “They beg to be the first ones out of their pens, then they trot up the ramp to play.”

It was an uphill battle for the swine. The joysticks were outfitted for trials with primates, so the hoofed pigs had to use their snouts and mouths to get the job done. All four pigs were found to be farsighted, so the screens had to be placed at an optimal distance for the pigs to see the targets. There were additional limitations on the Yorkshire pigs. Bred to grow fast, the heavier pigs couldn’t stay on their feet for too long.

“While there may have been some physical limitations to how well the pigs could see the screen or manipulate the joystick, they clearly understood the connection between their own behavior, the joystick, and what was happening on the screen,” Lori Marino, a neuroscientist unaffiliated with the current paper, said in an email. Marino, who directs the Whale Sanctuary Project, has long studied mammalian cognition, intelligence, and self-awareness, including in pigs. “It really is a testament to their cognitive flexibility and ingenuity that they were able to find ways to manipulate the joystick despite the fact that the test setup was often difficult for them to engage with physically.”

“What makes these findings even more important is that the pigs in this study displayed self-agency,” Marino added, “which is the ability to recognize that one’s’ own actions make a difference.”

The pigs were taught a number of commands to make their lives, as well as those of the researchers, easier. They learned directions similar to what you’d teach a dog—to sit, to come, to wait away from their pens when they needed cleaning—as well as to fetch their toys when the work of playing video games was over.

“Ebony” working the joystick with their snout.
Photo: Candace Croney

“At a certain point, they were getting really good at getting their toys and not so good at cleaning up after themselves,” Croney said. “I was becoming pretty much a pig daycare worker, going around and sorting them out. So then we started teaching them to put things back.”

When the research had concluded, the Yorkshire pigs were adopted by the owners of a bed and breakfast, where they lived out their lives on the farm. Ebony and Ivory eventually retired to a children’s zoo. Croney said that even years after the experiments, she went to visit Hamlet, who heard her voice and “came galloping” across the pasture to say hello.

Swine may not have the dextrous fingers of a primate or the doleful look of a puppy dog, but, cognitively, they are firmly in competition. Winston Churchill once said that “Dogs look up to you, cats look down on you. Give me a pig! He looks you in the eye and treats you as an equal.” It’s well past time we give pigs the respect they’re due.

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US

Biden says Trump should no longer receive classified intelligence briefings

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When asked in an interview with “CBS Evening News” anchor Norah O’Donnell if he thought Trump should receive an intelligence briefing if he requested one, Biden said, “I think not.”

“I’d rather not speculate out loud,” Biden said when asked what he fears could happen if Trump continued to receive the briefings. “I just think that there is no need for him to have the — the intelligence briefings. What value is giving him an intelligence briefing? What impact does he have at all, other than the fact he might slip and say something?”

Former presidents traditionally have been allowed to request and receive the same intelligence briefings that their successors have.

A senior administration official previously told CNN that Trump has not submitted any requests at this point. There are many ways intelligence can be presented, the official said, something the intelligence community would formulate should any request come in.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki told CNN on Thursday that “the intelligence community supports requests for intelligence briefings by former presidents and will review any incoming requests, as they always have.”
Trump was not known to fully or regularly read the President’s Daily Brief, the highly classified summary of the nation’s secrets, when he was in office. He was instead orally briefed two or three times a week by his intelligence officials, CNN has reported.

Former Trump Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence Sue Gordon wrote in a Washington Post op-ed following the insurrection at the US Capitol last month that Trump “might be unusually vulnerable to bad actors with ill intent” once he’s out of office.

Gordon, an intelligence veteran of more than 30 years, also said in 2019 that one of Trump’s most common responses to intelligence briefings was to doubt what he’s being told.

In the clip of the interview that aired Friday, Biden declined to say if he’d vote to convict Trump in next week’s impeachment trial if he were a senator.

“Look, I ran like hell to defeat him because I thought he was unfit to be president,” Biden said. “I’ve watched what everybody else watched, what happened when that — that crew invaded the United States Congress. But I’m not in the Senate now. I’ll let the Senate make that decision.”

In remarks following the January insurrection, Biden told reporters, “I’ve been saying for now, well, over a year, (Trump’s) not fit to serve. He’s one of the most incompetent presidents in the history of the United States of America.”

Last week, Biden told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins he thought the impeachment trial “has to happen.”

The House of Representatives impeached Trump last month on a charge of inciting the insurrection at the Capitol that left five people dead.

In a pretrial brief filed Tuesday, the House impeachment managers accused Trump of being “singularly responsible” for the deadly riots, saying the former President’s actions spreading false conspiracy theories that the election was stolen incited his supporters to attack the Capitol and try to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power by stopping Congress from certifying the election.

The House impeachment managers on Thursday requested Trump testify at his upcoming Senate impeachment trial, but his legal team quickly rejected the invitation.

This story has been updated with additional information.

CNN’s Kevin Liptak, Jim Acosta, Jeremy Herb and Manu Raju contributed to this report.

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