What is a prime cover for an intelligence operative?
Oh yeah, “Journalist.”
There were lots of articles on this here when it happened. My conclusion: An operative for an opposing faction was taken out clumsily, from the standpoint of Western optics. It’s the Middle East, it is how they do things. Erdogan has done much worse (since this went down in Turkey) yet somehow he is still in NATO.
Someone back then had the balls to do some research on this guy. He was NOT a US citizen, he was involved with arms dealing, was basically planting pro-Qatari govt slant pieces in the media ( whether he even wrote them was questionable)...and yeah, a guy in that world would have plenty of “contacts”
Whoever he crossed was mighty pizzed. Whoever he was serving is mighty vengeful against MBS and the Saudis.