\u201cTo say that I am skeptical of the new Saudi narrative about Mr. Khashoggi is an understatement,\u201d Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, tweeted shortly after the news broke. Earlier this week, Graham said that he would not deal with the kingdom as long as the crown prince was the de facto power.\u00a0Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, who is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee,\u00a0tweeted<\/a>\u00a0that the \u201cexplanations continue to defy credibility & common sense. Noway should the world wait thirty days for a Saudi whitewash or cover up.\u201d He called for an international investigation to identify all responsible for Khashoggi\u2019s murder\u2014\u201cnot just Crown Prince\u2019s fall guys.\u201d<\/p>\n The Saudi version of Khashoggi\u2019s fate\u2014explained in the clumsy translation tweeted early Saturday\u2014is that unnamed \u201csuspects\u201d traveled to Istanbul following unspecified \u201cindications\u201d about returning Khashoggi to Saudi Arabia. Since going into exile, about the time that M.B.S. was appointed crown prince, Khashoggi had become the most widely published critic of the crown prince though his\u00a0Post<\/em>\u00a0column. As his pieces became more critical, he confided in friends that he feared the crown prince wanted him \u201cout of the picture,\u201d as he told me. He had visited the Saudi consulate only to get papers so that he could prove that he was divorced and could marry his Turkish fianc\u00e9e.<\/p>\n According to the Saudi tweet, the meeting \u201cdid not go as required and escalated negatively, which led to a fight between them and the citizen Jamal Khashoggi, which aggregated [sic] the situation and led to his death,\u201d it said. \u201cMay God rest his soul,\u201d it added. The unnamed perpetrators, it added, then tried to \u201ccover it up.\u201d No kidding.<\/p>\n Khashoggi would have turned sixty last Saturday. He was a tallish man, but a bit paunchy and hardly a match for the fifteen men\u2014basically a hit squad\u2014whom Turkish officials claim were involved in his death. The idea that he would have gotten into a fight so vicious that it would end his life is beyond improbable. And then there\u2019s the question about the intention of the senior Saudi forensic pathologist and the bone saw brought into the consulate, purportedly used to cut off Khashoggi\u2019s fingers and then to dismember the rest of his body.<\/p>\n Representative Adam Schiff, of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said that if Khashoggi had a fight in the consulate, he was only \u201cfighting for his life with people sent to capture or kill him.\u201d Karen Attiah, Khashoggi\u2019s editor at the Post<\/em>, called the Saudi explanation \u201cutter bullshit.\u201d She tweeted, \u201cWhat sort of equal \u2018fight\u2019 would he have had against fifteen other men? And who brings a bone saw to a \u2018discussion\u2019?! The stupidity of the Saudi explanation is mind boggling\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n The monarchy also dismissed five senior officials, most of them closely associated with the crown prince. For several days, reports have suggested that the fall guy in the Khashoggi affair may be General Ahmed al-Asiri, one of the main architects of the Saudi war in Yemen. Al-Asiri was later named to the deputy intelligence post. Saud al-Qahtani, a top adviser to the royal court, particularly the crown prince, was also fired. He had\u00a0reportedly<\/a>\u00a0reached out to Khashoggi earlier this year in order to convince him to voluntarily return to the country, possibly so that the journalist could then be detained. In a curious tweet after the Saudi announcement Saturday, al-Qahtani wrote to his 1.3 million followers that he\u00a0\u201cwill forever be a loyal servant to this country and this nation shall always stand tall\u201d\u2014and that he was indebted to the crown prince and to the king.<\/p>\n The longer the details of Khashoggi\u2019s death remain hidden, the higher the costs to the credibility\u2014and future\u2014of the kingdom, especially its increasingly authoritarian young ruler.<\/p>\n