In his new book, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo takes aim at murdered Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, questioning his journalism credentials and saying the media glossed over who Khashoggi really was, NBC News reports.
“He didn’t deserve to die, but we need to be clear about who he was — and too many in the media were not,” Pompeo wrote in “Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love.”
Pompeo mocked the media’s portrayal of Khashoggi as “a Saudi Arabian Bob Woodward who was martyred for bravely criticizing the Saudi royal family through his opinion articles in the Washington Post.”
He went on to characterize Khashoggi as an “activist” who was no more a journalist than any other public figure who gets words published in major news outlets.
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Khashoggi, who was a harsh critic of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, disappeared Oct. 2, 2018, after he entered the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. An investigation later discovered that he had been suffocated and dismembered.
“And as even the New York Times reported, Khashoggi was cozy with the terrorist-supporting Muslim Brotherhood,” Pompeo wrote, referring to Khashoggi’s public mourning of Osama bin Laden when he was killed by U.S. forces.
But in a statement to NBC News on Monday, Kashoggi’s widow, Hanan Elatr Khashoggi said he was not a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. She also said said that her husband “always condemned” the 9/11 attacks and believed Saudis were “the biggest loser of Sept. 11” because it made them seem like they do not “have a tolerant nation.”
