Trump: Full Report on Death of Jamal Khashoggi Due Tuesday
BLACKWELL: The relationship between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia is now being tested after the State Department says they have no final conclusion on who is responsible for the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.</s>PAUL: Which is different from the CIA's assessment that the Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the killing last month. And the president is still skeptical and said the CIA is going to have a full report Tuesday. CNN law enforcement analyst and retired FBI supervisory special agent James Gagliano is with us now. So good to have you here. The senior intelligence official said the CIA assessment was partly from recordings of the crown prince's brother. You start thinking about the evidence that they might have. If that isn't what they determine to be high confidence evidence, what is?</s>JAMES GAGLIANO, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Christi and Victor, we are immersed in the intersection of diplomacy and justice. And this is difficult. I served in Mexico City for the FBI. I understand how diplomacy takes high precedence. We are dealing with the relationship in Saudi Arabia, a country's that's been a friend of ours over in the Middle East. However, to your point, two major intercepts that the CIA is basing this intelligence on. One was the crown prince's brother that you referred to apparently contact he made with Khashoggi earlier, advising him to go to the consulate in Turkey, and second was one of the hit team apparently reaching out to one of the closed confidants or associates of MBS, the crown prince, immediately after the killing. The issue here is could this have been an extra judicial killing? Absolutely. How do we deal with this with a not a U.S. citizen but a U.S. resident? If this occurred in the U.S. embassy or U.S. consulate overseas, we have purview and investigation jurisdiction. In this instance, a little trickier than that.</s>BLACKWELL: OK. Let's talk here about the discrepancy between the CIA and the State Department. The CIA, thus far, in this preliminary report, has determined that Mohammed bin Salman ordered personally the killing of Khashoggi. The State Department says that they had not yet reached a conclusion. Sarah Sanders, the White House press secretary, says the president has confidence in the CIA, but she would refer everyone to the State Department. What do you make of that? And, second, is it possible that we will get to Tuesday and the State Department and the intelligence community will not be in lock step?</s>GAGLIANO: So, the business of intelligence collection and dissemination is a difficult task. It's imperfect. It's an imprecise science and I'll use the example of WMDs in Iraq as a perfect example of this. I don't think it's a good look for the president when he gets out in front of the intelligence community and suggests that it's premature, we don't have the facts in. Of course, he has more information at hand than I do. I think we need to wait on this. The State Department's piece of this is because Khashoggi was here on a O visa, which is the genius visa, somebody can bring something to the United States, a doctor or something like that. How we handle this going forward it's going to be difficult. We do billions of dollars worth of deals with the Saudis for arms. We use their space at times, you know, for military operations in coordination and intelligence gathering and a tricky situation going forward. The CIA is the intelligence collector here and if that is their assessment and I know part of their assessment is based on Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy. So, the crown prince is the legislative branch and the executive branch and the judicial branch in this. It's going to be difficult and complex situation.</s>PAUL: So, Gina Haspel, a CIA director and security adviser John Bolton said lieutenants for Mohammed were directly involved in this. How likely is it that his lieutenants were involved and crown prince over here has no idea what is going on?</s>GAGLIANO: Unlikely. I mean, does it pass the smell test? With my understanding how things work in Saudi Arabia, no, that doesn't pass the smell test. The CIA is basing a big part of their assessment on the fact that in that country, people, generally speaking, like these lieutenants that were dispatched to Istanbul would not have operated, you know, on their own. They would absolutely have taken a direction to do something like that. The intercepts, the signal intercepts where they got the call that came back saying, tell the boss, they are also doing back. They're looking at that as circumstantial evidence. Again, right now, we are in kind in a position where sanctions are probably are our only options right now.</s>BLACKWELL: So one of the more delicate and sensitive elements of this entire saga has been Khashoggi's remains and what happened to his body. I want you to listen to the Turkish defense minister here and what he said was possible in this case.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hold on. You're saying at Turkish airports you understand it I could have been there with my daughter coming into Turkey with a tourist and a Saudi death squad was carrying body parts of Jamal Khashoggi through that airport in diplomatic bags?</s>AKAR: Possibly.</s>BLACKWELL: That's because diplomats' bags aren't search through security. Is that plausible?</s>GAGLIANO: It is plausible and correct in that instance. Things can come in and out of a country. Remember, in Istanbul, at the Saudi consulate, that is Saudi Arabian soil. So, it's not subject to inspection by the Turks or anybody else. The only way that the FBI in this instance could get involved is if there is a request from Turkey or Saudi Arabia. That's what makes it so damn complex and difficult to deal with.</s>BLACKWELL: Yes.</s>PAUL: All right. Good heavens. James Gagliano, thank you so much.</s>BLACKWELL: Thank you.</s>GAGLIANO: Thanks for having me.</s>PAUL: Always appreciate your expertise.</s>GAGLIANO: Thanks for having me.</s>PAUL: So, CNN political commentator Errol Louis is with us now as well. Errol, you've been listening to this. What do you say to -- well, let's listen to President Trump here first of all, because what we have been talking about here is they are trying to balance the economics between these two countries with this brutal murder that we are hearing about. Here is what the president said.</s>TRUMP: You know we have a great ally in Saudi Arabia. They give us a lot of jobs. They give us a lot of business, a lot of economic development. They are -- they have been a truly spectacular ally in terms of jobs and economic development, and I also take that -- you know, I'm president. I have to take a lot of things into consideration.</s>PAUL: So, yes, economically, it's important. Militarily, it can be important as James was just talking about, but also saying this was a brutal murder, a man was murdered. He was dismembered. How does the U.S. deal with that? Are sanctions the only option as James was talking about?</s>ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, there are a number of different options and all very difficult. As much as I try not to ever do this, I would, for a moment, try and translate some of what I think the president was trying to say there, which is that for this president, as for all presidents, there are no easy choices when it comes to this sort of thing. Foreign policy and diplomacy is not a feel-good exercise. It's not about moral posturing. There are a lot of really, really tough considerations. One of the other ones, by the way, it's not about arm sales and economic relationships, 10,000 people have died in Yemen and putting pressure on the Saudis or engaging them to try to bring that to some kind of a conclusion before this disaster continues, this humanitarian starvation disaster that's going on in the region. That's something else that the president has to try to do and you have to balance all of these considerations against one man's life. It's a really, really tough business. This is the business that he signed up for and there aren't going any good universally satisfactory choices that come out of this.</s>PAUL: Yes, very good point. I want to switch gears here very quickly here, because last week, North Korea, we know, tested this high advanced weaponry and negotiations talks, Vice President Mike Pence made a concession on a key U.S. demand for denuclearization. I want to listen to what want vice president said.</s>PENCE: What President Trump believes is that there is an opportunity here for peace and denuclearization on the Korean peninsula. And he believes that what was signed in Singapore with Chairman Kim represents a starting point for us to achieve the full, irreversible denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.</s>PAUL: And he said, I can assure you we're not going to be distracted or we're not going to be deterred either. He said the president believes another summit could help. Do you think another summit could help?</s>LOUIS: Well, you know, there are problems with that summit. I mean, despite what the vice president said there about complete irreversible d denuclearization of the peninsula, what we are finding at the staff level they can't set the framework for a new summit because at the staff level, they can't get a list from North Korea of where the nuclear sites are. You know, that's kind of a really basic sort of a step and it really just shows that they are still at stalemate. The notion that you try and blow through all of that stuff at a summit, well, I think we have established just in the ambiguities that have emerged since Singapore, that that's not necessarily the right way to do it. It's really once the folks down at the lower levels get some kind of trust, some kind of understanding, some kind of factual basis on which to strike a deal, the summit makes sense. But, you know, if it's just about kind of a public relations exercise that could work frankly for both the North Koreans and for the White House, then, yes, a bit of an empty exercise and maybe it's just Singapore 2.</s>PAUL: All righty. Yes, and it was just six months ago. Errol Louis, thank you so much. Good to see you.</s>LOUIS: You too. Thanks.</s>BLACKWELL: Up next, we are in Florida. And as the new deadline for hand-counted ballots approaches, hope seems to be dwindling for Senator Bill Nelson's campaign.