WASHINGTON – Lawmakers were furious Wednesday about CIA Director Gina Haspel's absence from a contentious, closed-door briefing on the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi – and the session seemed to increase support in Congress for legislation rebuking Saudi Arabia for its role in his death.

That was the opposite of the intended effect, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis warning lawmakers against congressional action during the hour-long classified briefing. But their pitch fell flat, and it even seemed to alienate some lawmakers who were hoping to be convinced that the Trump administration would forcefully punish Saudi Arabia for its role in Khashoggi's death, so Congress would not have to act.

"It was unpersuasive," said Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., who added that "nobody was happy that (Haspel) wasn’t there."

Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., accused the Trump administration of engaging in a "cover-up" by refusing to allow Haspel to participate in the session.

"Not having Gina Haspel, the CIA director, at this briefing is a cover-up to a critical question that the members of the Senate have as to the murder of Jamal Khashoggi," he told reporters. "It's outrageous that the Senate can be stonewalled from hearing from the CIA director."

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Flake and Menendez were among those who said they would now vote in favor of a proposal to force the Trump administration to withdraw U.S. military support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen – a conflict that has become increasingly controversial in the wake of Khashoggi’s murder inside a Saudi Consulate in Turkey last month.

Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he, too, was now "very likely" to vote in favor of at least taking up the Yemen measure, so lawmakers could debate and amend it. He said that did not mean he would support final passage.

"I think 80 percent of the people left the (briefing) this morning not feeling like an appropriate response has been forthcoming," Corker said. He predicted that the Senate debate "will be the wild west," with free-flowing amendments on a foreign policy flashpoint.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the Democrat's No. 2 leader, agreed, saying the Senate had "never tried this before" and would be heading into uncharted waters. Durbin also said Pompeo and Mattis told senators the White House made the decision not to allow Haspel to attend the briefing.

In a statement, the CIA's press secretary, Timothy Barrett, said the agency had "already briefed the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and congressional leadership on the totality of the compartmented, classified intelligence and will continue to provide updates on this important matter to policymakers and Congress. The notion that anyone told Director Haspel not to attend today's briefing is false.”

CIA conclusions

Senators wanted to hear directly from Haspel because the CIA has reportedly concluded that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered Khashoggi’s murder. The Saudi government has denied that, and President Donald Trump has cast doubt on the CIA conclusions.

Menendez said he believes the White House barred the CIA chief from attending the briefing “because Gina Haspel, if all the accounts are true, would have said with a high degree of confidence that in fact the crown prince of Saudi Arabia was involved in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a United States permanent resident and a journalist.”

Pompeo refused to answer reporters’ questions about why Haspel did not attend the briefing. Asked about the CIA’s reported conclusion that the crown prince was involved in Khashoggi’s killing, Pompeo said there was no direct link tying him to the incident.

“I do believe I’ve read every piece of intelligence,” he said. “There is no direct reporting connecting the crown prince to the order to murder of Jamal Khashoggi.”

The briefing by Pompeo and Mattis was supposed to focus more on Yemen than Khashoggi.

Pompeo warned lawmakers against ending U.S. support for the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, where the U.S. is providing logistical assistance, munitions, and intelligence to the Saudi-led coalition against the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels.

"Abandoning Yemen would do immense damage to U.S. national security interests and those of our Middle Eastern allies and partners," the secretary of state told lawmakers, according to excerpts released by the State Department Wednesday morning.

Pompeo argued that efforts to end the conflict are "gaining steam." He noted that the Houthis and the Republic of Yemen's government have committed to attending talks in Sweden in December, led by U.N. Special Envoy Martin Griffiths.

Pompeo also argued that if the United States was not involved in Yemen, the conflict "would be a hell of a lot worse."

"The Saudi-led coalition would not have the benefit of our advice and training on targeting, so more civilians would die," Pompeo said in his prepared remarks. "All we would achieve from an American drawdown is a stronger Iran and a reinvigorated ISIS and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Try defending that outcome back home."

Hard sell

But many senators said they were not swayed by those arguments. And Pompeo may not have helped matters by penning a surprisingly antagonistic op-ed, published Wednesday morning in the Wall Street Journal, in which he accused lawmakers of "caterwauling" about Saudi Arabia's human-rights record and ignoring the kingdom's pivotal role in sidelining Iran.

"The Trump administration’s effort to rebuild the U.S.-Saudi Arabia partnership isn’t popular in the salons of Washington, where politicians of both parties have long used the kingdom’s human-rights record to call for the alliance’s downgrading," Pompeo wrote.

"The October murder of Saudi national Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey has heightened the Capitol Hill caterwauling and media pile-on," he said. "But degrading U.S.-Saudi ties would be a grave mistake for the national security of the U.S. and its allies."

Pompeo also accused the Trump administration's critics in Congress of being soft on Iran – an assertion that did not go over well with Democrats or Republicans.

“Is it any coincidence that the people using the Khashoggi murder as a cudgel against President Trump’s Saudi Arabia policy are the same people who supported Barack Obama’s rapprochement with Iran — a regime that has killed thousands worldwide, including hundreds of Americans, and brutalizes its own people?" Pompeo wrote.

"Where was this echo chamber, where were these avatars of human rights, when Mr. Obama gave the mullahs pallets of cash to carry out their work as the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism?"

Corker said he had a “little conversation” with Pompeo on Wednesday morning about the op-ed. “I talked to him this morning about that being less than artful," he said, declining to elaborate.

Contributing: Hasan Dudar

More:Senate to vote on U.S. military role in Yemen amid anger over Saudi-led war, Khashoggi murder