Congress has been outraged over the Administration’s response to the Khashoggi murder, especially Trump’s willingness to give the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, a pass. “I never thought I’d see the day a White House would moonlight as a public relations firm for the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia,” Bob Corker, the Tennessee Republican who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, tweeted recently. On Wednesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary James Mattis went to the Hill to explain U.S. policy on Saudi Arabia—in the context of the Khashoggi murder—and U.S. military support propping up the kingdom’s brutal four-year war in Yemen. Moves to punish Saudi Arabia for the murder by curtailing its war have rapidly gained momentum in recent weeks. Mysteriously missing from the briefing, however, was Haspel. [...]
The C.I.A. later issued a statement denying that Haspel had been blocked from the briefing. “The notion that anyone told Director Haspel not to attend today’s briefing is false,” a spokesman, Timothy Barrett, said. The C.I.A. response kind of fudged the issue. The White House may not have told Haspel not to go, but it also didn’t invite her to accompany Pompeo and Mattis, even though she has, by far, the most firsthand intelligence about the Saudi killing. [...]
Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican, was furious. He vowed not to vote on any key legislation pushed by the White House—including government-funding bills and judicial nominations—until Haspel fully and candidly briefs Congress on the Khashoggi assassination. “I’m not going to blow past this,” he told reporters. “I’m talking about any key vote. Anything that you need me for to get out of town, I ain’t doing it until we hear from the C.I.A.” His threat is real. A government-funding bill is due to be voted on next week; without its passage, the government could be shut down. [...]
But on Wednesday, Pompeo, who was Haspel’s predecessor at the C.I.A., never even mentioned Khashoggi’s name in his opening remarks. He instead digressed from the event that has galvanized Congress to frame Riyadh’s importance in terms of countering Tehran. “Degrading ties with Saudi Arabia would be a grave mistake for U.S. national security,” he said. U.S. military exports help the kingdom deter regional rivals. He even dismissed the impact of U.S. bombs, warplanes, and intelligence on the Saudis’ four-year war in Yemen, which has produced the world’s worst humanitarian crisis in the twenty-first century. “The suffering in Yemen grieves me,” Pompeo said, “but if the United States of America was not involved in Yemen, it would be a hell of a lot worse.”
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