Tinker, Tailor, Journalist, Spy: Jamal Khashoggi and the Story Not Being Told

On 2 OCT 2018, Washington Post journalist and middle eastern political activist Jamal Khashoggi went missing after entering the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. Some in the course of the last news cycle has alleged this to be a much deeper incident than it appears on the surface; a vanished journalist, murder, international intrigue, a Saudi administration in conflict with Turkey; both jockeying for power in a region bound for widespread war in the coming years. Over a year post-living in exile after being banned from the Kingdom of al Saud, Khashoggi returned to the assumed security of the nation of his familial ancestry while continuing a career of revolutionary praxis through media in the mideast region. Needing a legal certificate of divorce from the Saudi government, Khashoggi felt safe approaching the embassy- in and out, no harm, no foul.

How wrong he was.

Embassies and consulates are nerve centers for declared spooks of a nation. Formal intelligence officers working in a nation must be declared. Journalists, on the other hand, can get placed into positions of unique access and are often conduits for sensitive information. In any country where intelligence operations are being run (and that’s all of them) a nation’s embassy serves as the hot spot for intelligence and in turn, counterintelligence. With Khashoggi, we find an example of split loyalty divided between revolutionary Marxism and a convenient ally found in the politics of revolutionary Islam. Possibly best examining this juxtaposition is his quote from a WaPo piece in late August:

The United States’ aversion to the Muslim Brotherhood, which is more apparent in the current Trump administration, is the root of a predicament across the entire Arab world. The eradication of the Muslim Brotherhood is nothing less than an abolition of democracy and a guarantee that Arabs will continue living under authoritarian and corrupt regimes. In turn, this will mean the continuation of the causes behind revolution, extremism and refugees — all of which have affected the security of Europe and the rest of the world. Terrorism and the refugee crisis have changed the political mood in the West and brought the extreme right to prominence there.

He goes on:

There can be no political reform and democracy in any Arab country without accepting that political Islam is a part of it. A significant number of citizens in any given Arab country will give their vote to Islamic political parties if some form of democracy is allowed. It seems clear then that the only way to prevent political Islam from playing a role in Arab politics is to abolish democracy, which essentially deprives citizens of their basic right to choose their political representatives.

…There are efforts here in Washington, encouraged by some Arab states that do not support freedom and democracy, to persuade Congress to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. If they succeed, the designation will weaken the fragile steps toward democracy and political reform that have already been curbed in the Arab world.

The point made by that last paragraph is critical. “Freedom and Democracy” is a common phrase touted by Marxian-inspired revolutionaries. And Islamist revolutionaries are exactly that. Thriving in the swamp of Washington DC, Khashoggi no doubt not only found himself among willing peers but cheerleaders among the Deep State apparatchik, with those ties neither recent nor random. His tale is one of deep alliances with what we now know of as the Deep State, made of the Marxist-inspired and academia-groomed bureaucracies of the Washington elite. The Muslim Brotherhood to which he refers is the revolutionary party of Egypt, spearheading the so-called “Arab Spring” which plunged the stable nation into chaos and directly endangered the control of the Suez Canal, keeping fuel prices affordable, in the hands of Islamists. Mohammed Morsi, the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, found a quite inviting home in the White House and among the leftist administration of Barack Hussein Obama. Wasting no time eliminating political rivals and religious minorities, most notably Coptic Christians, the Egyptian Army stepped in to remove the leftist cancer that had been installed as a proxy of the Obama administration.

Tracing the roots of the Muslim Brotherhood, the organization gets its guiding philosophy from Sayyid Qutb, a Western-educated Islamic cleric who came to seek strict reformation and removal of Western influence from the Islamic world. It is from Qutb that many early Islamic movements sprang and later ones would thrive; al Qaeda being most notable. And Khashoggi would find himself comfy bedfellows with al Qaeda’s revolutionary leader and fellow Saudi, Osama bin Laden. Traveling to Afghanistan to support bin Laden in the 80s, the New York Times notes:

…the war’s failure to put Afghanistan on sound footing haunted Mr. Khashoggi, as did Bin Laden’s later turn to terrorism.

“He was disappointed that after all that struggle, the Afghans never got together,” said a Saudi friend of Mr. Khashoggi’s who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

Mr. Khashoggi’s trips to Afghanistan and his relationship with Prince Turki al-Faisal, who headed Saudi intelligence, made some of Mr. Khashoggi’s friends suspect he was also spying for the Saudi government.

His connections with not only the Saudi intelligence apparatus but the larger revolutionary movements of the region becomes clear when examined further:

The friendship endured with Jamal Khashoggi following Osama bin Laden to Afghanistan. Khashoggi credited Adel Batterjee, listed at one time as one of “the world’s foremost terrorist financiers” by the Treasury Department, with bringing him to Afghanistan to report on the fighting.

The media calls Khashoggi a journalist, but his writings from 80s Afghanistan read as Jihadist propaganda with titles like, “Arab Mujahadeen in Afghanistan II: Exemplifies the Unity of Islamic Ummah”.

And when Osama bin Laden set up Al Qaeda, he called Khashoggi with the details.

After Afghanistan, Jamal Khashoggi went to work as a media adviser for former Saudi intel boss, Prince Turki bin Faisal, alleged to have links to Al Qaeda. Those allegations came from, among others,  Zacarias Moussaoui, the alleged twentieth hijacker.

When the other 19 hijackers perpetrated the attacks of September 11, Khashoggi wrote that the Saudis would not “give in” to American “demands” for “unconditional condemnation” and “total cooperation”.

“Saudis tend to link the ugliness of what happened in New York and Washington with what has happened and continues to happen in Palestine. It is time that the United States comes to understand the effect of its foreign policy and the consequences of that policy,” he declared.

“A Muslim cannot be happy with the suffering of others. Even if this suffering is that of Americans who neglected the suffering of Palestinians for half a century.”

The suspicion of him being a spy was likely true. The espionage of Khashoggi would be one of convenience and serving multiple masters however; living and working for that same revolutionary praxis, diverging only where he saw fit all the while running afoul of the established order of his nationsake. For Saudi Crown Prince bin Salman, his activities had not only grown counterproductive but a direct threat to the Kingdom- once there was a changing of the guard in Washington. As recently as 2016, Khashoggi was criticized for his close ties to both the Saudi intelligence apparatus and that of the Turkish government, with Bahraini media commenting on the issues in Cyprus noting,

Khashoggi seizes every opportunity to confirm his complete support for the Turkish role in the region. He is one of the public opinion makers having close ties with the ruling family in Saudi Arabia, who vigorously worked, through the media, on narrowing the Saudi-Turkish difference following the overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood rule in Egypt, as well as promoting a partnership between the two countries based on leading the Sunni Muslims and supporting “Islamist Jihadists” in Syria. He is almost a frequent visitor of Turkey and his personal Twitter account is full of news about his meetings with Turkish Justice and Development Party officials and statements praising them and their policies in the region.

Post Saudi anti-corruption purge of 2018, Khashoggi likely had too many friends running counter to the intent of the Kingdom and thus became persona non grata. His troubles however surfaced early in the newly-minted regime of bin Salman’s father. After directly criticizing then President-elect Trump, Khashoggi was effectively muzzled before departing the nation in 2017, all the while not diverting from his revolutionary path and defaulting to his Deep State allies in the West and in Turkey. Suspected of being an agent for the failed Saudi ‘Arab Spring’, such a destabilization could not be tolerated.

This begs the question of just who would benefit from chaos in Saudi Arabia. Iran would for one, exploiting the blood feud between Shia and Sunni Islam while simultaneously uniting under one banner of Sharia; a prerequisite goal satisfying Tawhid, or unity under Allah before the Islamic Day of Return. Khashoggi did not share common ancestry nor ideology with the Persians however; he was at home with the restorationist Ottomans of Erdogan and the Turkish government. Vowing he is “he is personally “chasing” the investigation”, Turkish President Erdogan has taken personal issue with a matter among Saudi nationals. Turkey, seeking to expand their sphere of influence away from the Whabbism of the House of al Saud, would benefit most from destabilization of the Saudi Kingdom and thus explains their complicit support of many elements of Barrack Hussein Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Brennan and John Kerry’s failures in regime change.

What is to be assured is that Khashoggi was a man deeply embedded in the global apparatus currently known as the Deep State. His death may be a carnie call to the stay-behinds still actively undermining US policy. Leftist in both origin and ideology, Khashoggi’s role was change in the middle east assured by the hubris of aligned media outlets; a common home for burned spies with too much baggage. He was not protected as he so thought, he was not untouchable, and his story should not be the October surprise that drives a wedge between Trump and an otherwise strong economy through a rise in gas prices. Rogue operation or not, Khashoggi was an agent of the worst actors of the West and perished by the idiotic game he played. He should neither be mourned nor exalted as a martyr- he was nothing more than a pawn to those playing in the affairs of other nations. What is likely however may be a different issue altogether, signaling a larger power struggle throughout the Middle East. Erdogan is on the rise and seeking to expand his influence not only in the middle east but in Europe; he will no doubt use this to his advantage as the Turkish government already has done. Taking into account his strategic point into Europe and the Middle East, uneasy times are following.

Keep your powder dry and seek training. Rough times are ahead both globally and at home.