It still isn’t clear what exactly happened to Jamal Khashoggi, or who is responsible. The Turkish government insists that he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, where Saudi government operatives murdered him. The Saudis deny this. There is no doubt that they could have done it, and that the Saudi government is capable of that kind of targeted assassination; however, when the only source is the Turkish government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, there is cause for hesitation to accept the narrative. Likewise, the clamor of far-Left Democrat Senators for Trump to punish the Saudis has the feel of their patented staged indignation and self-righteousness. The Saudis may have murdered Khashoggi. They may not have. It is impossible to tell at this point.
“Beware of Media Sourcing for Jamal Khashoggi ‘Scoops,'” by Patrick Poole, PJ Media, October 12, 2018:
There are still more questions than answers surrounding the disappearance of sometime Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi after visiting the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last week. And the whole affair has become a tug-of-war between Middle East interests and an ongoing conflict between Saudi Arabia and other powers in the region, including Turkey and Qatar.
In the absence of verifiable facts, the American media are floating all kinds of leaks from Turkish sources. As I noted just last month, American media continue to gravitate towards the Erdogan regime, even as Turkey remains the largest jailer of journalists in the world, creating several layers of irony in the Khashoggi saga.
But in the past 24 hours we now have a glimpse of exactly who is feeding the establishment media reporting on the Khashoggi matter — including at least one source who was tied to a joint Libyan intelligence and al-Qaeda plot to assassinate the Saudi crown prince.
Earlier today, Yahoo News published an article quoting an associate close to Khashoggi. The source conveniently said that President Trump’s criticism of the media is directly tied to the alleged decision by the Saudi Crown Prince to have Khashoggi murdered.
The source for this article and the allegation is Khaled Saffuri:
A close friend of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi tells @Isikoff and me that Saudi Crown Prince MBS may have felt emboldened by Trump’s anti-media rhetoric. “Trump hates journalists and he would not react if we kill one journalist,” says Khaled Saffuri. https://t.co/Q207QgVXFC
— Daniel Klaidman (@dklaidman) October 12, 2018
Saffuri also appears as a named source in a Daily Beast article from earlier this week on Khashoggi’s alleged pro-democracy efforts.
It would be helpful to explain to our readers just who Mr. Saffuri is.
Khaled Saffuri is the protege of al-Qaeda fundraiser Abdurahman Alamoudi, who is currently serving a 17-year sentence in federal prison for his role as bagman for the Libyan/Al-Qaeda assassination plot.
Remarkably, Saffuri’s ties to terror financing were reported on shortly after the 9/11 attacks by none other than Michael Isikoff — one of the authors of today’s Yahoo News article. Yet Saffuri’s background is never mentioned.
Saffuri got his start in Washington, D.C. as Alamoudi’s deputy and chief lobbyist of the American Muslim Council.
For his book, Infiltration, reporter Paul Sperry uncovered a 1996 lobbying disclosure showing Saffuri’s position with Alamoudi’s AMC:
As I noted here at PJ Media two years ago, one of the most important events that Alamoudi and Saffuri were responsible for was the first White House Iftar dinner that they arranged in 1996 for then-First Lady Hillary Clinton.
In 1998, Saffuri established a new organization, the Islamic Institute. Among those providing the start-up money for his new venture was his longtime mentor, Alamoudi:
Cooperation between the two didn’t end with Saffuri’s new organization, nor was Alamoudi the only problematic element for Saffuri’s operation.
As Franklin Foer reported at The New Republic in November 2001, one of the first events held by Saffuri’s Islamic Institute was funded by Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs:
Eager to improve relations with the United States, Qatar worked with Norquist and Saffuri to help portray itself as a liberal outpost in the Islamic world. In April, Saffuri sponsored the “First Annual Conference on Free Trade and Democracy” in the Qatari capital of Doha, for which the Islamic Institute received over $150,000 in payments from the Qatar Embassy’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs Account. (Saffuri says these were reimbursements for the travel expenses of congressional delegates.)
A lobbyist at Norquist’s firm, Janus-Merritt, has solicited pro-Qatari op-eds from at least one conservative pundit. When the emir of Qatar came to Washington, Saffuri hosted a Capitol Hill luncheon in his honor.
Saffuri’s Islamic Institute was also the co-sponsor of an October 28, 2000, rally in Lafayette Park across from the White House when Alamoudi gave an impassioned speech expressing his support for Hamas and Hezbollah, two U.S.-designated terrorist organizations…
Read the rest here.