Sec. 801. Limitation on availability of funds until submission of required report on murder of Jamal Khashoggi

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Congress finds the following: There is a strong bipartisan conviction, shared widely throughout the legislative and executive branches of the United States Government and elsewhere, that ensuring full accountability for the brutal murder on October 2, 2018, of Jamal Khashoggi, a former Washington Post columnist and resident of the United States, is in the public interest and also the national interest of the United States. Section 5714 of the Damon Paul Nelson and Matthew Young Pollard Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Years 2018, 2019, and 2020 (division E of Public Law 116–92 ; 133 Stat. 2173) required the Director of National Intelligence to submit to Congress a written report in unclassified form that includes identification of those who carried out, participated in, ordered, or were otherwise complicit in or responsible for the death of Jamal Khashoggi. .

Section 1277 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020 ( Public Law 116–92 ; 133 Stat. 1701) likewise obligated the Director to submit to the Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence of the House of Representatives and the Committee on Foreign Relations and the Select Committee on Intelligence of the Senate a written report on the assessment of the intelligence community regarding Mr. Khashoggi’s brutal murder. Such section 1277 specifically called, among other things, for a determination and presentation of evidence with respect to the advance knowledge and role of any current or former official of the Government of Saudi Arabia or any current or former senior Saudi political figure over the directing, ordering, or tampering of evidence in relation to Mr.

Khashoggi’s murder. Such section 1277 also required the Director to submit a list of foreign persons whom the Director has high confidence were responsible for, complicit in, or otherwise knowingly and materially assisted the murder, or impeded its impartial investigation, or who ordered or otherwise directed an act or acts contributing to or causing the murder. Contrary to the unambiguous and lawful command of Congress under such sections 5714 and 1277, the Director did not produce any unclassified report as required by either such section, and instead, on February 20, 2020, the Director submitted to such committees a classified report, which the Director referred to as an annex .

The evident belief of the Director that no unclassified information can be produced in accordance with the directives of Congress is dubious, in light of the extensive body of credible, unclassified reporting available regarding the murder of Mr. Khashoggi, and the roles and culpability of officials at the highest levels of the Government of Saudi Arabia. It is the sense of Congress that the Director of National Intelligence should reasonably have been able to produce an unclassified report pursuant to section 5714 of the Damon Paul Nelson and Matthew Young Pollard Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Years 2018, 2019, and 2020 and section 1277 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020 that did not alter or obscure, in any way, the intelligence community’s core determinations, its presentation of evidence, or identification of relevant persons, as required, without putting sources and methods at risk.

None of the funds authorized to be appropriated by this Act or otherwise made available for fiscal year 2021 for any element of the intelligence community may be obligated or expended for the purposes described in paragraph

(2)until the date on which the Director of National Intelligence makes public the covered annex pursuant to subsection (d). The purposes described in this paragraph are any engagement or interaction of any kind with the General Intelligence Presidency of the Government of Saudi Arabia, or any other intelligence or security service of the Government of Saudi Arabia, including with respect to supporting, partnering, assisting, or otherwise cooperating, directly or indirectly with the General Intelligence Presidency or such services. The limitation in paragraph

(1)shall not apply to sharing information with or receiving from the Government of Saudi Arabia regarding— a threat of death or serious bodily harm to any person; or law enforcement activities, including with respect to cooperation between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Government of Saudi Arabia. Not later than 90 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Director, acting through the National Intelligence Council, shall complete a declassification review of the covered annex. The declassification review under paragraph

(1)shall— be conducted in accordance with section 1.7 of Executive Order No. 13526 (75 Fed. Reg. 707; relating to classified national security information) with respect to requiring that in no case shall information be classified, continue to be maintained as classified, or fail to be declassified in order to— conceal violations of law; prevent embarrassment to a person, organization, or agency; or prevent or delay the release of information that does not require protecting in the interest of the national security; evaluate and take into consideration the full body of credible, open-source reporting available to the intelligence community regarding the murder of Jamal Khashoggi; and make public as much information contained in the covered annex as possible. Following the declassification review of the covered annex under subsection (c), the Director shall make public on the internet website of the Director the covered annex. If the declassification review determines that any information in the covered annex should remain classified, the Director may redact such information in a manner that— prevents public release of information only to the extent necessary to protect specific, identified harms to the national security of the United States; and does not alter or obscure the determinations of, presentation of evidence by, or identification of relevant persons by, the intelligence community with respect to the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. Not later than 15 days before the date on which the Director makes the covered annex public under paragraph (1), the Director shall submit to the congressional intelligence committees a report on the redactions made by the Director under such paragraph, including, for each such redaction, an explanation of how the redacted information would harm the national security of the United States despite the robust body of available open-source reporting on the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. The report under paragraph

(2)shall be in unclassified form to the extent practicable, but may include a classified annex. In this section, the term covered annex means the report regarding the murder of Jamal Khashoggi submitted on February 20, 2020, by the Director of National Intelligence to the Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence of the House of Representatives and the Committee on Foreign Relations and the Select Committee on Intelligence of the Senate.

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