Related Articles
In a brand new memoir, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo mocks the worldwide response to the grisly killing of Washington Put up columnist Jamal Khashoggi and dismisses him as an “activist” ― not a journalist.
The media helped unfold “faux outrage” over the incident, Pompeo writes within the ebook, which was printed Tuesday.
Pompeo was serving underneath then-President Donald Trump in October 2018 when Saudi Arabian brokers murdered Khashoggi and dismembered his physique contained in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. The columnist had been a widely known critic of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s rule.
To Pompeo, although, the general public response to Khashoggi’s brazen assassination was extreme.
“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 writes in “Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love,” according to NBC News.
The information media “hammered the story extra hard because Khashoggi was a ‘journalist,’” he says, per the Guardian.
“To be clear, Khashoggi was a journalist to the extent that I and many other public figures are journalists. We sometimes get our writing published, but we also do other things. The media made Khashoggi out to be a Saudi Arabian Bob Woodward who was martyred for bravely criticizing the Saudi royal family through his opinion articles in the Washington Post,” he writes, referring to the well-known Watergate reporter.
Pompeo says the killing ― which he calls “outrageous, unacceptable, horrific and despicable” ― was not “surprising” to him as a result of he had “seen enough of the Middle East to know that this kind of ruthlessness was all too routine in that part of the world.”
He goes on to forged doubt over Khashoggi’s allegiances, citing New York Times reporting about his ties to Islamist group the Muslim Brotherhood and al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden as a younger journalist working within the Center East.
Reached for remark by NBC Information, Khashoggi’s widow, Hanan Elatr Khashoggi, flatly denied that he had been a part of the Muslim Brotherhood.
“I confirm it to you,” she stated.
“Whatever he [Pompeo] mentions about my husband, he doesn’t know my husband. He should be silent and shut up the lies about my husband,” she informed the outlet. She described Khashoggi’s views as considerate and nuanced, and she or he famous that he all the time condemned the Sept. 11 terrorist assaults.
Fred Ryan, the writer and CEO of The Washington Put up, skewered Pompeo for his characterization of the deceased columnist, calling it “shocking and disappointing” to see the ebook “so outrageously misrepresent the life and work” of Khashoggi.
“His only offense was exposing corruption and oppression among those in power—work that good journalists around the world do every day. Jamal dedicated himself to the values of free speech and a free press and held himself to the highest professional standards. For this devotion, he paid the ultimate price,” Ryan stated.
Individually, a book critic for the Post said that studying Pompeo’s tome was “like being locked in a room and forced to listen to 20 hours of [Fox News host] Tucker Carlson reruns at top volume.”
Pompeo responded to Ryan’s criticism in a Tweet Tuesday afternoon:
Amid Khashoggi’s disappearance, Trump sent Pompeo to the Saudi Arabian capital to reaffirm U.S. assist for Crown Prince Mohammed and the nation.
#usanews #usa_news
