Meanwhile, Khoshoggi, had himself gone into soft exile, after being fired from a series of TV and journalism gigs because of his outspoken criticism of the royals, leaving behind a loving, supportive family. According to Souad Mekhennet and Greg Miller of WaPo, "Khashoggi had previously been banned from writing or even tweeting, but fear that worse could be in store had prompted him to seek refuge in the United States." Khoshoggi came from Insider stock; he was the nephew of the high-profile Saudi Arabian arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi (which doesn't get any air time). Khoshoggi got a job at the Post, owned by Jeff Bezos, and was probably a great asset, helping other journos there develop an inside stream into the thinking of the royals. Apparently, according to Mekhennet and Miller, he may also have been an agent provocateur for Saudi regional adversary Qatar, given talking points and subjects to write about.
The Dissident then describes how Abdulaziz's phone was breached by Pegasus, an Israeli-developed eavesdropping tool that can surreptitiously access any mobile phone in the world. But the Saudis were behind it. And, says Abdulaziz, by accessing his phone and computers, they were able to capture all the emails and correspondence of people who had been in touch with him in support of his dissident activities -- including Jamal Khoshoggi. This was a crucial development, says Abdulaziz, as it moved Khashoggi from the tolerable/manageable journalist camp to a posture of dissident, making him a "criminal" enemy of the State. And thus, the title of the movie.
It seems inevitable from this breach that Khosshogi's days are numbered. Again, Abdulaziz tells us the proverbial final nail in his coffin must have come when Khoshoggi started up his own TV program that openly criticized the policies of MBS and his royal regime. The second half of the film transitions to a soft portrait of Hatice Cengiz, Khoshoggi's fiance. She seems the weeping Madonna to Jesus, deeply ululating in grief for the crucifixion of the martyr of freedom. Of course, this is how she is presented. At one point, in the film's transition to hagiography, Cengiz even gets a nice warm hug from a 'distraught' Jeff Bezos who is brought on to give a short speech at a remembrance ceremony.
This transition is, of course, necessary. We need to understand the humanity of the man, and his friends and family, to complete the gravity of his loss -- not only to the cause of freedom, but to the tender hearts of those left behind. Cengiz, is always dignified and brave, although I thought it strange that after Bezos's speech she so warmly embraced him. He was just a rich guy; his words were no more expensive than the fellow who came before, and his sympathy seemed tied to Khoshoggi's employment at WaPo. We are also shown images of a wonderful-looking family Khoshoggi left behind in SA, a tightly-framed set of smiles and warmth. Well, why speak badly of the discombobulated dead.
The Dissident is largely an earnest-seeming straightforward story of how one man, exiled to America, fell in love with its style of freedom, which at its core is a freedom of expression that underlies everything from art to finance, and decided to take the extra step of going from reporting about Saudi political deficits and royal misdeeds to openly calling for change, as his colleagues at home were doing -- and being rounded up for doing so. In short, Khoshoggi's American 'radicalization' (from an SA POV) might have been better delineated.
But there are some bits about the film that struck me as curious -- at least -- such as the use of ex-CIA chief John Brennan being beamed in to, at that time, suggest that there was no way MBS wouldn't have been responsible for the journalist's death. Given that he was CIA bureau chief in SA when 9/11 occurred, you'd have expected his message to be more pointed, rather than just wheeled in for "authority." But Brennan's is a muted presence, he doesn't say much of value, and someone more believable than a serial liar to provide a government would have been preferred.
Similarly, the designated WaPo point-driver was David Ignatius, who has, on more than one occasion, been the stenographer for many Intelligence Community leaks, especially the CIA, with whom he worked over the years to report the Company's foreign exploits, favorably. I even had questions about Omar in the end. I wondered how he got off so scot-free; the Khoshoggi planes that carried the murderers away from Istanbul and later used to, allegedly, go after another target in Canada, weren't going after Abdulaziz (see graph 1). And a little more explanation of how Khoshoggi's family left behind in SA felt about him getting remarried to Cengiz might have been appropriate, an especially unsettling wonderment when the closing credits indicate that his SA family accepted blood money from the royals for his loss.
In a newsletter piece this past February, The Human Rights Foundation, whose stated mission is to fight global authoritarianism, lauded the release of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence's "assessment" that MBS was solely responsible for planning and execution of the Saudi dissident. HRF president Thor Halvorssen said of the assessments conclusion,
MBS has proven that he is unfit to represent the Kingdom on the global stage and we applaud the Biden administration for choosing to engage directly with King Salman. Now the United States and the European Union must urgently place sanctions on MBS himself, along with those within his direct chain-of-command who were involved in the murder.
They clearly expected a more rigid response than they got from the Biden administration, which, like the Trump administration before, chose not to rock the boat of their lucrative partnership, especially at a time when things may light up with Iran, SA's Shia nemesis.
Certainly it's a relationship fraught with problems. In a recent interview I had with Krithika Varagur, a columnist for the Wall Street Journal, and author of The Call: Inside the Global Saudi Religious Project, she discussed the tender US relationship with SA, saying, in part, that they have been crucial partners for a long time, especially in 'controlling the world' by means of oil, but also with in the so-called War on Terror, and in operations to quell the quagmire of Middle East politics, with no sign of that working relationship diminishing any time soon.
But, after noting the contradictions of the theocratic nation, a kind of power-sharing apparatus between the royals who run the day-to-day affairs of government, and ultra-conservative religious sect that goes back centuries, she notes, "had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century," perhaps her most salient point had to do with rise of MBS. She notes,
MBS is likely to become the King in the not too distant future, and unlike his father, who was already old when he ascended to the throne, stands to be in power for a very long time. So unilaterally censuring him, given the prospects of his leadership in the region and our deeply enmeshed interests, remains difficult. Any US President crafting policy towards Saudi Arabia is not starting with a fresh slate; they are inheriting a complex relationship that dates back to FDR.
Plus, we've presumably learned that reactionary responses to Arabian doings always seem to have blowback attached.
So, it's slowly, slowly, for the Americans. For the Saudis, it's probably the same as it ever was. I recall the PBS Frontline documentary, Black Money, a couple of decades back, when the US and Britain were embroiled in a bribery scandal in SA over arms dealings (see Khoshoggi reference above), especially BAE. Prince Bindar bin Sultan was repeatedly asked to explain the massive bribery payments to the Arabs. He responded succinctly, "So what." Bindar's legal counsel was the former FBI director Louis Freeh. Probably a separate Frontline doco could be produced on the doings of Freeh.
Corruption seems built into the relationship between the US and SA. In one shot of The Dissident a helicopter frames the Kingdom Centre, a tower that looks an awful lot like a taser. Of course, America can talk. We should probably have a high-rise shaped like a cop strangling a Black man and which calls out "I can't breathe" every hour. Oh say can you see? But my favorite building from SA is the one they'll call Kingdom Tower being built by the bin Laden family, which looks like an icy middle finger rising up out of the desert. It's to be the tallest building in the world. Some memorial. Isn't that a kick in the face?
(Article changed on Mar 10, 2021 at 1:27 PM EST)
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