The NPR Politics Podcast - A Saudi Journalist Disappears in Turkey And Sets Off A Diplomatic Crisis

Episode Date: October 16, 2018

Jamal Khashoggi, a prominent Saudi journalist and critic of Saudi policy, walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey two weeks ago and disappeared. President Trump has weighed in and dispatched Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Saudi Arabia to meet with members of the royal court. This episode: political reporter Asma Khalid, White House reporter Ayesha Rascoe, and national security editor Phil Ewing. Email the show at [e-mail]. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, we're supporters of Michigan Radio, visiting NPR headquarters. This podcast was recorded at 2.10 p.m. on Tuesday, October 16th. Things may have changed by the time you hear it. Okay, here's the show. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. A Saudi journalist went missing, and now his disappearance is turning into a diplomatic crisis. We're here to explain what happened and why it matters. I'm Asma Khalid, political reporter.

I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I cover the White House. And I'm Phil Ewing, national security editor. All right, let's start at the beginning of this story. Jamal Khashoggi is a prominent Saudi journalist. He's been living in self-imposed exile in Virginia. And two weeks ago to this date, he walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, and then he disappeared. So, Phil, start by telling us just a bit more about who Jamal Khashoggi actually is. So Khashoggi has been called a dissident. He's a commentator. He's a

writer. He was part of The Washington Post's writers group that solicits opinions from people about international matters around the world. Khashoggi is a Saudi. He from outside of Saudi who don't like the authoritarian strain that he's shown and even though the crown prince has been a modernizer in some ways there's still a lot of criticism from people like this Jamal Khashoggi. And so what happened to him? Well Khashoggi went in this embassy because he anticipated marrying a Turkish woman he was in Istanbul in Turkey and he apparently needed some kind of diplomatic document from the Saudi consulate in order to go through with it. He went inside, and in fact, they were texting with each other, from what we understand, at the time he went in the door. And according to reports, he never saw or at least responded to those text messages. No one knows what happened to him. No one's seen him since then. And his fate has been the subject of this

big, deepening international crisis between the United States, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. This disappearance actually happened two weeks ago. And we should point out, you know, this story has been bubbling up. But it really kind of took off, I would say, in the American press very recently with some comments that President Trump made. He's begun to weigh in on all this. Ayesha, why don't you catch us up to speed with what he has said? So President Trump, he started off by just saying he was concerned about the story. He didn't like what he was hearing, but nobody knows what happened.

So that was kind of his first statements. And then White House officials started talking to officials in Saudi Arabia. And President Trump, he actually talked to King Salman recently. And this is what he had to say. The king firmly denied any knowledge of it. He didn't really know. Maybe I don't want to get into his mind, but it sounded to me like maybe these could have been rogue killers. Who knows? We're going to try getting to the bottom of it very soon. But his was a flat denial. I mean, Phil, this really reminds me a lot of what we've seen from President Trump when

there is a particular personality that he likes, as we've seen with Putin in Russia. He is very accepting of their denials, despite what other alternative evidence there may be out there. That's right. President Xi Jinping, President Vladimir Putin, authoritarian leaders around the world. The president admires he tends to take their side. But let me pick up on something we heard the president say in that clip. He called them rogue killers. lot of reports that actually he's been killed. And the way the story is moving now, as we're recording this podcast, there have been these trial balloons from the Saudi regime and the American press, basically that say the Saudis are testing out a cover story to say we wanted to interrogate him, but he died during the interrogation, even though they haven't actually even made that explanation yet. So we don't have any official accounting right now whatsoever of what happened to him. This idea of them being rogue killers and who weren't acting on the authorization of

the crown prince or the king of Saudi Arabia could be this opening for President Trump to say, look, we can still keep dealing with Saudi Arabia. Maybe we can be tough, but we don't have to be that tough because this was some random act. Now, obviously, this happened in the Saudi consulate. So the idea that these are rogue killers who were able to get in, that's where people would raise questions. This is a jam for the United States. Saudi Arabia is this authoritarian monarchy. It's a theocracy. It's a huge sponsor of violence around the Middle East. It was connected with the 9-11 attacks that took place in 2001 against the United States. But the president

wants to preserve a relationship between himself and his administration and the United States and Saudi as much as he can. So both sides are trying to find space to maneuver here where they can get to a point and say, well, at least the regime or the king or the crown prince, they didn't order this violence if that's what took place against Khashoggi. These people in Istanbul who are responsible for it, they were acting on their own. Again, the Saudis haven't actually aired that explanation yet. So we'll just have to see what they finally do say, if they say anything, and then how it flies in Washington and on the world scene. You know, no doubt this is a really horrific story about a journalist who has disappeared.

And, you know, there are a lot of questions that still remain unanswered. But it's also this broader geopolitical story about the relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia. The U.S. and Saudi Arabia have lots of money wrapped up in weapons and arms deals. And President Trump was asked specifically if he would retaliate against the Saudis by renegotiating pulling any of these trade agreements. And this is how he responded. When we take away $110 billion of purchases from our country, that hurts our workers. That hurts our factories. That hurts all of our companies. You know, you're talking about 500,000 jobs. billion figure that the president talked about. That's not a single year's worth of purchases. And it's also not just from the Trump administration. This is the cumulative value

of all the programs from the past till now that the U.S. and American companies are making and selling to Saudi. But there is some question about the jobs and how many jobs are created by, as you said, this is money spread out over a long period of time and that all of these contracts are creating thousands of jobs. Some of them are just creating a few hundred. Is that correct? That's right. They're also very localized. So, for example, the Saudis are buying a number of fighter aircraft built by Boeing outside of St. Louis. Now, if you're bending metal at the F-15 factory out by the St. Louis airport, you're really paying attention to this story because if the United States stops that deal, or if the Saudis stop buying those airplanes, that's going to be money taken away from your paycheck.

But from a broader perspective, in terms of the economic impact across the United States, it's much more diffuse. That's the way defense contracting works a lot of times. There's very specific places that benefit a great deal. But overall, the economic picture of the United States might not be affected that much if, in fact, there were some kind of restrictions that come out of this. One thing that the president keeps saying is that if we don't sail to Saudi Arabia, that they'll go to China and Russia. How easy is it for them to switch? They probably couldn't do it in the short term. But over the long term, this is a geopolitical consideration that the United States takes. This is something that happened with Egypt back in the 1970s. The Egyptians were in the Soviet sphere back in the old days, and then it was a very concerted effort by the United

States to bring them into the Western sphere and have them fly American F-16s as opposed to Soviet MiGs, for example, or buy American tanks as opposed to Soviet tanks. And when you do that, you not only make money for the United States by having these companies produce those things, you build diplomatic relationships like the ones the United States has with a lot of these regimes around the world, not just the Egyptians, but also the Israelis, the Saudis, the Emiratis, the Kuwaitis, etc. Do you get something of value by building those relationships diplomatically, geopolitically? The conclusion the United States has reached is, yes, you do, even though these regimes also can be oppressive. They can use them against their own people. They can commit horrible acts of violence

in the way, for example, the Saudis are in Yemen, where they're fighting a war against Iranian-backed rebels there. But at the end of the day, the president, Congress concludes it's worth doing. And let's not forget that in addition to these arms deals, President Trump has his own personal connections to Saudi Arabia. We'll talk about those and whether they raise questions about a conflict of interest after the break. Support for NPR politics and the following message come from Rocket Mortgage by Quicken Loans. Introducing their all-new RateShield approval. If you're in the market to buy a home, Quicken Loans will lock your rate for up to 90 days while you shop.

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Join me on NPR's Ask Me Another as we challenge contestants and celebrities to nerdy word games, music parodies, and ponderful trivia. Find us every week on the NPR One app and wherever you listen to podcasts. And we're back. Let's talk about President Trump's personal and financial interests in Saudi Arabia. Let's remember, in fact, that his first international trip in office was to Saudi Arabia. And that seemed like a relatively unusual step. Ayesha, why did he do that? Reportedly, Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and White House advisor, pushed him to go to Saudi Arabia first. Normally, U.S. presidents visit a very close ally like Canada first. They don't go to Saudi Arabia. Part of that is Kushner looked at Saudi Arabia as a country that he would be working with for the Middle East peace deal, which was what he was tasked with.

One of his many jobs that he was given at the beginning of the Trump administration. And I think they also wanted to show that this is going to be a different kind of president. And he's going to be willing to go and talk to these countries. And remember, when he went to Saudi Arabia, President Trump still talks about this. They celebrated him so much. There was the orb. He talks. I remember the orb. To this day, he talks about that and how he was treated in Saudi Arabia. It clearly made an impression. And in addition to that, though, there are these personal connections, it seems right between Jared Kushner and specifically Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has been sort of heralded in some parts, we should say, of the West as this possible reformer in Saudi Arabia. It seems like Jared Kushner and the prince have struck up a personal relationship that I am a little unclear about whether that's exactly happening through official channels or if this is just a sense of I like you, you like

me. So we know that they've officially met in person five times. There is some disagreement over whether they're having more informal conversations. The White House maintains that any conversations that they have, either the White House knows about ahead of time or Kushner briefs them afterwards. But clearly they have formed this bond. And this is the way Jared Kushner and really President Trump as well. This is the way they work. They build relationships. They base things on chemistry and personal bonds with these world leaders. And so Kushner has worked at building this relationship with the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. These are also two new regimes, if you want to think about it in that way.

The Saudi king, King Salman, has only been the king since the beginning of 2015. The crown prince, very young historically, but he's only been the crown prince for even less time. You have a new government in Riyadh. You have a new government in Washington. They're kind of coming to power at the same time. They're trying to make these deals, and they've decided that it's a very profitable relationship to have. It also continues a longstanding trend by Trump of breaking with whatever the practices were of his predecessor. President Obama spurned the Saudis. He tried to turn the United States focus in the Middle East away from Saudi and toward Iran and other powers. And the current president has made a program of turning that back and continually focusing on this relationship with Saudi to the exclusion

of the Iranians. Phil, the other question I have is about personal financial relationships that President Trump or even the Trump Organization may have in Saudi Arabia or with Saudis. Do we have any guidance on that? Well, the president said on Twitter today that he has no financial interests in Saudi Arabia. He said that about other places, Russia most famously. The question that hasn't been answered satisfactorily is what kind of interests Saudi or Saudi citizens may have in him. He said before he was elected that he sold a lot of condo properties to Saudis. There are public records that suggest that Saudis stay at Trump hotels in Washington and New York and Chicago. And this predates his job as president. Correct.

Correct. So whatever of it happened after he was president, the staying at the hotels is happening after he was president. Right. So one of the issues that reformers and critics have pointed out about Trump since he's been in office is that his personal finances and the conduct of the Trump organization are opaque. And if he doesn't own a Trump tower in Riyadh, which we don't believe is the case, there may still be some business relationships taking place other than those that we know about. Does that make this all murkier in terms of understanding how the president will respond? And I guess we already are seeing some conflicting responses from the president in these first few initial days. It clouds things. And so that is the argument that people will make about these kind of real

estate, big family businesses, because we don't know exactly who's investing in them and who's buying what properties. Then when decisions are being made in foreign policy, there is a question of are they making this decision because it's in the interest of the United States or are they making this decision because it's in their business interest? And is this something that the Saudis are able to hold over? President Trump and Jared Kushner saying, well, we will pull our money. And so that is something that we don't know. But that is a cloud that happens because you just don't have access to those documents. You don't have access to those records. We do know that today, Tuesday, the

Secretary of State is in Riyadh and he is meeting with some folks in Saudi Arabia. I don't know that we have a clear sense of what was actually transpiring in these meetings. But Phil, can you explain the significance of this? We do not have a clear sense, no. But the way this went down was on Monday, the president said on Twitter he had spoken with the King, King Salman, to talk about this Khashoggi disappearance and that he was going to send the Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, to Riyadh to talk things over with him in person. Pompeo went to the airport immediately after this tweet went out. He got on his airplane, he flew to Saudi Arabia, and he took some journalists, actually including our colleague, Michelle Kellerman, and he had a meeting or a pool

spray, as we would call it, with the king and the crown prince. They smiled for the cameras. But so far, we haven't seen very meaningful statements from the Americans or the Saudi side about the nature of those discussions that have taken place. The question is, as we've also seen these reports in the press about the Saudis getting ready to figure out how they want to try to explain what happened to Khashoggi, what role Pompeo will play in that? Will he still be there when they offer this explanation? Will he come back to Washington and offer it on their behalf? We don't know that yet, but he's still in Saudi as we're recording. So we're just kind of waiting to see what the next milestone is. I will say, though, it seems like such an unusual move that when you have a country that is accused, even if we do not know yet whether this story is entirely

accurate, of possibly kidnapping, possibly killing one of its own dissidents. It seems like an unusual move to then send your secretary of state to go and discuss it with a person. You would almost assume that there would be a desire to kind of create a distance from everything. It just seemed like a very unusual move. And it was unusual, I think, that they had public pictures and that they were before the cameras smiling with each other when, according to the White House, they don't know what happened. So it's possible that it was the Saudis. So I thought that that decision was notable to make because they could have met and not had cameras. They could have met and not had pictures released.

You can meet without the fanfare. It is hard to not really cynically look at this story and say that, you know, what happened to Jamal Khashoggi isn't necessarily the first time that this has happened. It's not the first time that a dissident has disappeared in Saudi Arabia. The country has had a really long long controversial history of jailing or kidnapping opposition voices. And they've had a really problematic humanitarian record as well. And you mentioned earlier the situation in Yemen. And I guess I'm sitting here wondering that, you know, really, whether we've had a Democratic or Republican president, our country's relationship with Saudi Arabia is one thing that has been extremely resilient over

the years. So why would it change now? Well, one reason is Saudi has the world's largest proven reserves of oil, and it's one of the biggest members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC. It can control the price of oil, which is one of the biggest inputs of American life economically for every man, woman, and child in this country. It just is. The other thing is the Saudis have spent years cultivating the capital before the fact to make this relationship last. So after the so-called 28 pages came out that documented the role Saudi intelligence officers played helping the 9-11 hijackers, it was a little bit awkward and Congress passed a bill letting people sue

Saudi and the Saudis were upset about that. But then both governments tried as hard as they could to smooth that over in the same way they've been trying very hard to smooth over these deaths of women and children in Yemen and other innocents as a part of the Saudi led war there, because the stakes are just too high for a major break between Washington and Riyadh. And depending on what happens with Khashoggi, we could see another installment of that same phenomenon. I think that's exactly right, Phil. When you talk about the energy, how, you know, I covered energy for a long time. So Saudi Arabia was always looked at as the de facto leader of OPEC. And when they make those decisions, they're the ones that really guide that production goals for the entire Middle East, basically. So they have such a huge impact.

And so whatever happens, it does seem unlikely that the U.S. is going to be able to completely break ties with Saudi Arabia. That said, you do have members of Congress like Senator Lindsey Graham, Senator Marco Rubio, who are really upset and saying that they are going to do something about this and they could try to force the president's hand. We know that Congress has not often forced President Trump's hand. And so and it's hard to get anything through Congress. So that may be difficult. But if that doesn't happen by Congress, a lot of this could blow over. All right. Well, we will continue to keep an eye on how this story develops, and we'll be back as soon as there is political news.

Remember, you can subscribe to our weekend newsletter for our best stories and analysis online. Head to npr.org slash politics newsletter. I'm Asma Khalid, political reporter. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I cover the White House. And I'm Phil Ewing, national security editor. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.