Mike Pompeo Mocks Sympathetic Media Coverage for Jamal Khashoggi in New Book: No ‘Saudi Arabian Bob Woodward’
AP Photo/John Locher
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo used his new book to frown on the sympathetic media attention Jamal Khashoggi got after he was murdered on Mohammed bin Salman’s orders.
NBC News got an early look at Pompeo’s upcoming memoir Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love. The book has drawn intrigue for Pompeo’s hostility toward his former Trump administration colleagues, and in this new excerpt, he complains of how the media celebrated Khashoggi’s life after the Washington Post columnist and Saudi dissident was killed by the Saudi Crown Prince’s agents.
Pompeo described Khashoggi as an “activist” while scoffing at those who portrayed him as “a Saudi Arabian Bob Woodward who was martyred for bravely criticizing the Saudi royal family.”
“He didn’t deserve to die,” Pompeo wrote, “but we need to be clear about who he was — and too many in the media were not.”
Even though the CIA concluded that Salman was responsible for the murder, former President Donald Trump accepted the prince’s denial of culpability in 2018, and he parroted the Saudi government’s characterization of Khashoggi as an “enemy of the state.” In his book, Pompeo glossed over the nuances of Khashoggi’s life in order to bash him for his ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. He also offered a casual reaction to the gruesomeness of Khashoggi’s murder.
From NBC:
Pompeo also wrote that while Khashoggi’s brutal murder was “ugly,” it wasn’t “surprising” to him because it was the type of behavior he expected from the Middle East.
“I’d seen enough of the Middle East to know that this kind of ruthlessness was all too routine in that part of the world,” he wrote.
NBC also heard from Hanan Elatr Khashoggi, Jamal’s widow, who responded to Pompeo by rebuking his characterization of her husband’s connection to the Muslim Brotherhood. She also pointed out that her husband condemned 9/11 and renounced Osama bin Laden when he turned to violent Islamic extremism.
“Whatever he [Pompeo] mentions about my husband, he doesn’t know my husband. He should be silent and shut up the lies about my husband,” she said. “It is such bad information and the wrong information…This is not acceptable.”
