On Monday, President Donald Trump appeared to accept without suspicion the Saudi King's denial that his government had murdered Khashoggi inside its consulate in Turkey, and suggested that "rogue killers" might have done it. I predicted this creative cover story from the Saudi kingdom, but was aghast at Trump's apparent parroting of the comments before the completion of an actual investigation.
The Trump administration has indicated the United States "stands ready" to help Turkish and Saudi authorities investigate the matter, but waiting for a phone call that will never come is not a mark of international leadership.
So far there is no indication the FBI is involved in unearthing the details of an apparent gross human rights violation and assault on press freedom.
That must change.
CNN has reported that the Saudis are planning to change their story and say Khashoggi died during an unauthorized interrogation gone wrong. Such a statement from a regime known for its brutality and secrecy will be quickly dismissed, absent some other form of corroboration. That's where the FBI comes in.
To be clear, there is not a clear legal role here for the FBI to open its own investigation in pursuit of criminal charges. Khashoggi was not an American citizen and he went missing on foreign soil. But the bureau could serve, as it has many times before, as an honest broker to help ensure a credible investigation.
The FBI has agents, analysts and professional staff at foreign embassies around the world who work every day with foreign law enforcement and intelligence counterparts on matters of mutual interest. These personnel are augmented by teams in the United States who frequently deploy overseas to conduct investigations. As Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-California, noted on Friday, the FBI could use these overseas partnerships to try to get to the bottom of Khashoggi's disappearance.
I know from working on global FBI investigations and serving in embassy posts abroad that not every interaction the bureau has with its host-nation partners involves a US prosecution. Frequently, the bureau will offer assistance to foreign officials or inquire about local issues of interest to the larger US government.
I've lost count of the number of times an American ambassador or deputy chief of mission asked me to reach out to an international partner agency to gather information that might help further US diplomacy. In these instances, no formal case needed to be opened, as each foreign FBI office maintains a pending investigative file dedicated to ongoing police cooperation matters.
A major benefit of a more active FBI role is in the approach law enforcement officers take to investigations, different from their State Department colleagues. Diplomacy is often a transactional process that focuses on the zero-sum game. If a diplomat presses a foreign official on X, how might that affect Y? We've already seen this at work with Trump himself, who remarkably prioritized arms sales with the Saudis -- deeming them essential for US jobs -- over exerting pressure to investigate what happened to the missing Washington Post journalist.
In contrast to the machinations of diplomacy and politics, law enforcement officers only care about one thing: What is true? FBI agents and analysts are dogged single-minded seekers of truth who do not let outside factors influence their hunt for facts. They won't care about weapons sales nor other global issues on which the Saudis might be cooperative. They won't avoid asking critical questions for fear of offending a potentially culpable party.
These rigid characteristics would greatly aid State Department efforts to seek answers from a regime not known for transparency. In a profession where America's diplomats often deal in shades of gray, a more robust role by the FBI would help shed white light on an alleged murder of retribution.
Directing the FBI to engage with Saudi and Turkish authorities, rather than passively waiting to be asked for assistance, would also signal to both nations that the President of the United States personally takes this issue very seriously and he expects full cooperation.
If the Saudis are indeed complicit in the alleged murder of Khashoggi, many of my current and former intelligence colleagues doubt they would readily accept investigation by American investigators, and would perceive it as meddling. But forcing their hand and shunning their lack of cooperation would be preferable to the current state of complacency.
Trump's elevation of the FBI in this case would also send a message to the American people and other nations around the world that the United States will not tolerate gross human rights violations, but will instead use every tool in our government's arsenal to shine a light on this important issue. Many international leaders are united in their calls for a serious investigation. Will America lead the way?
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