Eli Lake, Columnist

Congress Won’t Buy the Latest Saudi Story on Khashoggi

But senators do have a way to punish those responsible for this death.

October 21, 2018 at 12:00 PM UTC

Updated on

October 21, 2018 at 12:34 PM UTC

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering national security and foreign policy. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI.

A fraught alliance.
Photographer: MANDEL NGAN/AFP

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If there were any remaining doubts about the culpability of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, they were removed Friday evening.

That’s when the Saudi government finally acknowledged the grim truth that Khashoggi was dead — and then proceeded to give a ridiculous explanation of how a 59-year-old man of letters died in a fist fight. Fred Ryan, the publisher of the Washington Post, where Khashoggi was a columnist, summed up most of the civilized world’s reaction. “This is not an explanation,” he said. “It is a cover-up.”