In Brief

• The Facts:

  US-based Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2 and never came out. Turkish sources claim to have audio and video evidence that Khashoggi was murdered, and Saudi officials deny the claim.

• Reflect On:

  Can we start to see beyond the perceptions being created by players in the geopolitical arena? What will it take for deception to end and truth to reign in our world?

US-based Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a well-known critic of Saudi Arabia and its leadership, went missing in Turkey on October 2. He entered Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul around 1 pm to obtain a document certifying he divorced his ex-wife. He has not been seen since.

The former editor of Saudi newspaper Al Watan fled the kingdom last year fearing for his safety amid a wide-scale crackdown on dissidents. He had become a frequent contributor to The Washington Post and continued to critique Saudi Arabia from the safety of the U.S., often raising concerns about the war in Yemen as well as diplomatic tensions with Qatar.

There is video evidence widely circulating that show Khashoggi entering the consulate in Istanbul. One would think that if it existed, video evidence showing him exiting the building would be just as accessible, but none has been forthcoming.

Claims Of Proof

US and Turkish officials have now been quoted as saying they have proof that Khashoggi was killed inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in what Turkish sources describe as “premeditated murder”.

Sources told Al Jazeera that a delegation of 15 Saudi officials arrived in Turkey the day Khashoggi, 59, disappeared. “The Saudi officials flew into Istanbul on two different flights on Tuesday,” the sources said. There is video that has been put out in the public by Turkish officials piecing together the movement of this Saudi team while in Turkey that traces their involvement.

However, the most damaging evidence has not been released to the public. It allegedly consists of audio and video recordings from inside the embassy that implicate this Saudi team in Khashoggi’s murder. As reported in this Washington Post article,

The recordings show that a Saudi security team detained Khashoggi in the consulate after he walked in Oct. 2 to obtain an official document before his upcoming wedding, then killed him and dismembered his body, the officials said. The audio recording in particular provides some of the most persuasive and gruesome evidence that the Saudi team is responsible for Khashoggi’s death, the officials said.

“The voice recording from inside the embassy lays out what happened to Jamal after he entered,” said one person with knowledge of the recording who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss highly sensitive intelligence. “You can hear his voice and the voices of men speaking Arabic,” this person said. “You can hear how he was interrogated, tortured and then murdered.” A second person briefed on the recording said men could be heard beating Khashoggi.

Why Is The Evidence Not Made Public?

Apparently, Turkish officials are wary of releasing the recordings, fearing they could divulge how the Turks spy on foreign entities in their country, according to those same officials. It’s not clear that U.S. officials have seen the footage or listened to the audio, but Turkish officials have described their contents to their American counterparts.

Saudi officials have denied any involvement in the disappearance of Khashoggi, saying he left the consulate shortly after entering. Again, video evidence of him leaving the consulate should be as easy to obtain as the video of him entering, if this was true. This sentiment was echoed by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan earlier on. Certainly, video of Khashoggi’s fiancee waiting outside the embassy for him, and her testimony that he never came out, doesn’t help matters for the Saudis. This seems to be an iron-clad case.

Could This Be A False Flag?

Bear with me here, because this is just speculation. But I believe it is worth considering.

When I do have conversations with people about Syria or other false flag scenarios, I don’t get much into the hard evidence that makes me believe these chemical weapons attacks are staged events. I talk more about the motivation. I ask the question that if Bashar Al-Assad, President of Syria and commander-in-chief of the Syrian Armed Forces since 2000, seems to be winning the battle against rebels in his country who seek to remove him from power, then what could possibly be his motivation for authorizing chemical weapons attacks against his citizens, which ends up harming and killing innocent children? Surely he realizes this would not only bring the wrath of the international community but also a complete breakdown in the support of his own people?

In the case of Khashoggi, we have to ask about the motivation that Prince Mohammed Bin Salman and the Saudi regime would have in killing the dissident journalist in the fashion they did. Yes, it could certainly be argued that the Saudi regime may have wanted him dead, and certainly Western media has been providing evidence to this effect. However, one has to ask if this powerful regime would ever want to do things in this way, in a way that CLEARLY implicates them directly in the disappearance of Khashoggi, and brings upon them a totality of unwanted scorn and contempt from the international community at large. Why unwanted? There are at least 3 reasons:

Saudi Arabia under Prince Mohammed Bin Salman has at least been trying to present an image of a country in the process of implementing economic and human rights reforms. The idea that Saudi Arabia would go so far out of its way to kill a dissenting voice that was not even in the country tears this new image to shreds.

Saudi Arabia has a lot riding on their growing business partnerships and the continued work through the upcoming ‘Davos in the Desert’ conference in Riyadh. British billionaire Richard Branson summed up the impact these murder allegations could have: “I had high hopes for the current government and its leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. What has reportedly happened in Turkey…if proved true, would clearly change the ability of any of us in the West to do business with the Saudi government.”

Saudi Arabia wants to maintain good relations with the US, in order to continue the military protection they have enjoyed for the past several decades. Donald Trump has hinted that this arrangement could be severely impacted if it turns out that Khashoggi was murdered by Saudi Arabia.

Clearly, a plan as elaborate as this one to kill Jamal Khashoggi in an embassy in a foreign country would have required plenty of thought, and surely some of the thought would concern the impact of such a transparent plan on Saudi Arabia’s standing with the rest of the world, an impact, as noted in the previous section, that would be wholly negative for the Saudi Kingdom. That’s the part that doesn’t make sense.

Motivation For The Other Side

And so let’s consider the ‘other’ side of this situation, which I will define here as the Alliance affiliated with the Trump administration intent on taking down the Deep State, as discussed in the recent article ‘Many Insiders Believe Military Tribunals For Deep State Will Happen Any Time Now.‘ If we could be so bold and presumptuous as to believe that this Alliance is as perfectly willing and able to commit false flag operations as the Deep State has done throughout history, the question of motivation starts to take shape.

Having no access to insider information this is broad speculation on my part, but given that Saudi Arabia is considered by many commentators to be one of the few remaining Deep-State controlled nations (along with Israel and a few others), then attempting to negatively impact the status, financial stability and military protection of Saudi Arabia would seem high on the Alliance wish list.

The bullet-proof narrative that has been created here, and the clear, conclusive evidence that is being put out to the public (or withheld, for strategic reasons) seems perfectly designed to cause a significant hit to the reputation of Saudi Arabia in all forums of world opinion.  And Saudi Arabia clearly seems to have been caught off guard, unable to offer much resistance to the evidence other than complete denial of the prevailing narrative.

Could the Alliance have pulled this off in concert with newly-compliant ally Turkey and Khashoggi himself? Sure. Arrangements could have been made with allies planted inside the Saudi Embassy in Turkey to escort Khashoggi back out of the embassy clandestinely, into some witness-protection type arrangement; perhaps his fiancee is not his true fiancee, and participated in this in order for him to have a credible reason to enter the embassy–seeking divorce papers so he could then marry her. The video and audio ‘evidence’ that is being talked about could have been role-played and recorded in advance. Footage of the Saudi nationals flying into Turkey could also have been staged. No part of this kind of plan, which could have been hatched when Khashoggi became a US resident, would have been materially difficult to pull off.

If this was a false flag, Saudi Arabia would certainly know it. But in a way, it wouldn’t matter. There would be no way for Saudi Arabia to change the perception that has been created, and politics is all about perception. The negative image that has been foisted upon Saudi Arabia gives the Alliance and the Trump administration leverage in dealing with Saudi Arabia politically, economically, and militarily. When Donald Trump talks about Saudi Arabia, his calm, slow-playing posture makes him appear to be a man who suddenly has a lot of leverage.

The Takeaway

What I have proposed here is just a theory, but at the very least it is an attempt to discern the hidden motivations behind an event that is playing out in the political arena. The very reason that geopolitical theatre continues to be acted out in front of us, featuring deception, lies, false flags, and so on, is that these tricks have worked for so long to create their desired perception.

Our collective discernment thus becomes very important here. The more we question and investigate stories that don’t quite make sense, and the better we become at seeing through these schemes designed to get us to go along with certain political agendas, the less we will have to deal with it. Eventually, as our consciousness grows, all lies and deception will become transparent to us, and the truth will reign.