Pompeo-Mattis briefing on Yemen to Senate bombs

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis urged senators at a closed-door briefing today to stay the course on US support for the Saudi-led military coalition fighting in Yemen. But the Donald Trump administration’s refusal to send CIA Director Gina Haspel to brief senators on the intelligence community's assessment of the role of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, coupled with Pompeo’s urging of business as usual with the Saudis in a poorly received Wall Street Journal op-ed overnight, appeared to backfire. Several senators emerged from the briefing saying they planned to vote for legislation that would curtail US involvement in the war.

It’s “outrageous” and a “cover-up” that the White House refused to send Haspel to join the briefing, ranking Senate Foreign Relations Committee Democrat Bob Menendez told journalists as he emerged from the briefing. "Tells me volumes about what's really going on here.”

"We also have a crown prince that's out of control, a blockade in Qatar, the arrest of a prime minister in Lebanon, the killing of a journalist,” Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., the outgoing chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told journalists after the briefing. “Whether there is a smoking gun, I don't think there is anybody in the room that doesn't believe he was responsible for it.”

Though Pompeo and Mattis both called for an immediate Yemen cease-fire by all parties to the conflict on Oct. 30, and the State Department reiterated that call last week, they argued in remarks prepared for today’s briefing that the United States should in essence help Saudi Arabia keep the military pressure on Yemen’s Houthi rebels ahead of efforts to bring the parties to the table at UN talks next month.