A security member of the consulate waits in front of the gate door of the Saudi Arabian consulate on Oct. 17 in Istanbul. Turkish officials have said they have intelligence indicating Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is culpable in Jamal Khashoggi’s alleged killing. | Ozan Kose/AFP/Getty Images Foreign Policy Trump’s professed ignorance on Khashoggi belies world-class intelligence team For some intelligence veterans and foreign policy specialists, it’s a pattern that has become all too familiar — and troubling.

Since journalist Jamal Khashoggi disappeared earlier this month, President Donald Trump has acted like his own world-class spies and hackers don’t exist.

The U.S. intelligence community is reportedly increasingly convinced that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is culpable in Khashoggi’s killing. Publicly, though, Trump has evinced no knowledge of the state of any investigation into the incident.


For some intelligence veterans and foreign policy specialists, it’s a pattern that has become all too familiar — and troubling. Trump started his presidency by publicly quibbling with an intelligence report that strongly concluded Russian President Vladimir Putin personally ordered a massive hacking campaign on the 2016 presidential election. More recently, he dissembled when pressed about reports that his own intelligence agencies believe North Korea is still working on its nuclear program: “Well, nobody really knows,” he said Sunday on “60 Minutes.” “I mean, people are saying that. I’ve actually said that.”

Such proclamations of ignorance on major intelligence-related issues are not unusual for Trump, despite the fact that senior officials insist he is attentive and engaged during his daily intelligence briefing. For many who work in espionage and national security, it’s yet another signal that after nearly two years in office, the commander in chief is still unwilling or unable to trust his own intelligence apparatus.

“It has a chilling effect on the relationship between senior intelligence officials and the administration,” said Shawn Turner, a former spokesman for the director of National Intelligence and White House deputy press secretary during the Obama administration.

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In the case of Khashoggi, the resistance to gleaned details “sends a very clear message” to those within the clandestine community that their work “is not being valued and it’s not being considered as the authoritative account of what happened,” he told POLITICO.

Trump late Thursday finally vaguely addressed the intelligence about Khashoggi in a brief New York Times interview, saying that “unless the miracle of all miracles happens, I would acknowledge that he’s dead.”

He added: “That’s based on everything — intelligence coming from every side.”

But Trump’s extended omission of any reference to America’s attempt to investigate what occurred inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, where Khashoggi was last seen on Oct. 2, is at odds with others in his party.

Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker noted early on that his public comments about Khashoggi were based on intelligence reports he had reviewed. The Tennessee Republican, a frequent Trump critic, said last week that the Turkish government’s assessment that Khashoggi was assassinated was relatively reliable.

Conversely, Trump, days later, railed in an interview about how people were jumping to conclusions about the Saudis role in Khashoggi’s apparent death, saying the U.S. still didn’t know what happened.

“Here we go again with, you know, ‘you’re guilty until proven innocent,’” the president told The Associated Press.

“We have to find out what happened first,” Trump added, citing ongoing investigations by both the Saudis and the Turks.

Since then, Turkish intelligence officials have privately said they have video and audio recordings that help prove a group of Saudis close to the crown prince, commonly known as MBS, helped dismember and behead Khashoggi in retaliation for his public criticism of the royal family. Khashoggi, who wrote for The Washington Post, was living in self-imposed exile in Virginia and went to the consulate in Istanbul to obtain marriage-related documents.

Trump has said he does not know whether such gruesome tapes exist.

“We have asked for it, if it exists,” the president said this week. “Probably does, possibly does.”

On Wednesday, Corker blasted the White House for restricting the flow of intelligence information on Khashoggi to Capitol Hill. The senator said an intelligence briefing scheduled for Tuesday had been canceled amid what he called “a clampdown on any further intelligence updates to senators.”

“It can’t go on that long, they need to come out and share their views of what happened and share with us,” added Corker, who led a bipartisan group of 22 senators requesting the Trump administration launch a bipartisan sanctions inquiry into Khashoggi’s disappearance.

Democrats and several intelligence veterans said Trump’s actions reflect a disturbing long-standing habit: ignoring intelligence reports that are politically inconvenient. While all presidents have made concessions to stay in Saudi Arabia’s good favor, Trump has gone to great lengths to curry favor with the Saudis in order to win billions in arms sales, enlist the country’s help in fighting terrorists in the Middle East and stabilize the energy market as the U.S. tries to cut off Iran’s oil exports.

“While we don’t yet have all the facts, it certainly fits President Trump’s pattern of seizing on what he would like to be true, as opposed to the facts as assessed by our intelligence community,” Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told POLITICO in a statement. “We can disagree on how to best respond to this atrocity, but no good policy can come from denying reality.”

What’s especially baffling to some is that leaders within the clandestine community insist this reality is not being kept from Trump.

“He’s deeply engaged,” then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo said in January when asked to describe the president’s daily intelligence briefings. “We’ll have a rambunctious back-and-forth.”

Sue Gordon, the intelligence community’s second-ranking leader, told POLITICO in August that the “best indication” Trump is listening to the intelligence community is that he meets with officials “regularly.”

“We are in the meetings, we are in the conversations,” she said . “Probably this president has more consistently met with the intelligence community in person than the previous one.”

But Turner, the ex-intelligence community spokesperson, said Trump officials are receiving the briefings passively, based on conversations he’s had with those who still work in the government.

“What they’re finding is that they’re presenting information, often times that information is taken and there are no questions asked, there’s no feedback,” he said. “It’s simply a one-way street with regard to the information going in but never seeing any result.”

The result is growing frustration that Trump’s public rhetoric suggests he is ignoring the behind-the-scenes information he receives, according to Turner, who declined to offer specific examples. Trump also drew the intelligence community’s ire when he pulled the security clearance of former CIA Director John Brennan.

Nate Jones, a counterterrorism chief on President Barack Obama’s National Security Council, called it a “misalignment of missions.”

“On the one hand, you have an objective intelligence community following the facts where they lead and … providing the unvarnished truth to the policymakers,” including the president, said Jones, who co-founded Culper Partners consulting firm after leaving the government. “On the other hand, we have a fact-challenged administration that is finding these facts inconvenient when it comes to their political fortunes and their geopolitical goals.”

In the end, Jones predicted, the Khashoggi situation could drive a bigger wedge between the White House and the intelligence community, especially as other countries leak intelligence findings that belie Trump’s pleas of ignorance.

“The truth is coming out,” Jones warned, “whether they like it or not.”