If you anticipated that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman - having been backed into a corner by Turkish spooks who had bugged the kingdom's Istanbul consulate - would swiftly seek to blame the death of regime insider-turned-critic Jamal Khashoggi on some unfortunate underling, then congratulations. You were right. Just hours after a spokesman for the regime revealed that the ailing King Salman had ordered an independent investigation into Khashoggi's disappearance - a revelation that was effectively the first hint that the Saudis might soon be forced to admit that they played a role in it after repeatedly insisting on their story that he had left the consulate shortly after he arrived on Oct. 2 - CNN is reporting that the kingdom is planning to announce that Khashoggi's death was "an accident" and that he died during an interrogation at the consulate as Saudi officials had been attempting to rendition him back to Saudi Arabia. BREAKING — 2 sources tell https://twitter.com/clarissaward?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+"://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); and https://twitter.com/TimListerCNN?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+"://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); that the Saudis are preparing a report that will acknowledge Jamal Khashoggi's death was the result of an interrogation that went wrong, one that was intended to lead to his abduction from Turkey. — Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) https://twitter.com/jaketapper/status/1051912600391479298?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+"://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); BREAKING — 2 sources tell https://twitter.com/clarissaward?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+"://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); and https://twitter.com/TimListerCNN?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+"://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); that the Saudis are preparing a report that will acknowledge Jamal Khashoggi's death was the result of an interrogation that went wrong, one that was intended to lead to his abduction from Turkey. — Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) https://twitter.com/jaketapper/status/1051912600391479298?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+"://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); Of course, Trump had warned that there would be "severe consequences" if the Saudi government was found to have ordered Khashoggi's killing - a claim that immediately elicited a threatening response from the kingdom, which hinted that it could "weaponize" oil prices if the US dares to pursue sanctions against it. Pinning the killing on a negligent underling (despite numerous reports that the order had been handed down by MbS himself) is probably the easiest way to defuse what has metastasized over the past week into a full-blown diplomatic crisis. We imagine MbS is also hoping to nip speculation that the Khashoggi incident could lead to him being removed as Crown Prince - though it's never been clear who is even in a position to remove MbS, as the Crown Prince has spent the last two years consolidating power and marginalizing (or eliminating) rivals. And if the leaked details of the killing, details that have reportedly been culled from a clandestine recording made by Turkish intelligence, are, in fact, accurate, then it's difficult to imagine how Khashoggi being dragged out of an interrogation room, murdered and then chopped into pieces could have happened by accident. Saudi stocks slumped on the report: