Pompeo meets with king, crown prince in Saudi Arabia amid Khashoggi disappearance

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Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with Saudi King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh on Tuesday to discuss the disappearance and alleged murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

President Donald Trump sent Pompeo to Saudi Arabia where he is scheduled to dine with the crown prince, the country's putative leader who has pledged to modernize the kingdom while at the same time overseeing a widespread crackdown on dissent.

Pompeo's trip to Riyadh came as Turkish investigators searched the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, removing soil samples and bricks from the grounds, according to a Turkish individual familiar with the investigation. Khashoggi, a longtime Saudi insider who last year left the kingdom and began writing pieces critical of the powerful crown prince for The Washington Post, vanished earlier this month after entering the consulate.

On greeting the secretary of state, the crown prince said: "We are strong and old allies so we face our challenges together — the past, the day of, tomorrow."

Image: Jamal Khashoggi — Jamal Khashoggi on Dec. 15, 2014.Hasan Jamali / AP file

"Absolutely," responded Pompeo.

State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said Pompeo had thanked King Salman for "his commitment to supporting a thorough, transparent and timely investigation of Jamal Khashoggi’s disappearance."

As Pompeo met with Saudi royalty,reports swirled that Saudi Arabia’s government is discussing a plan to admit that Khashoggi was killed after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2.

The Saudis are putting together an explanation that would absolve bin Salman of responsibility by giving him plausible deniability to say he didn’t order the killing and didn’t know about it, two individuals with knowledge of the situation told NBC News on Monday.

One of the two said he was told by those close to the Saudi leadership that the kingdom will claim that rogue operatives killed Khashoggi during an interrogation or a rendition attempt that went horribly awry.

A third individual said the U.S. government still doesn’t know precisely what explanation the Saudis plan to give, but that the Saudis intend to admit "culpability."

The possibility of a Saudi shift in explanation is expected to be discussed directly with Pompeo.

Pompeo's visit to Riyadh came amid mounting international pressure on Saudi Arabia to reveal what it knows about Khashoggi's disappearance.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet called on Saudi Arabia and Turkey on Tuesday to reveal all the information it has on the missing journalist and said that immunity should be lifted on diplomatic premises and officials.

On Sunday, Trump spoke by phone with King Salman. The next day the president tweeted that the king had denied any knowledge of the whereabouts of Khashoggi.

Moments later, he told reporters that it had sounded from the conversation with the king "like maybe these could have been rogue killers — who knows?"

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