“My own take is that the Saudis were really caught off guard with the reaction from the international community,” says Colin Clarke, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s Institute for Politics and Strategy. “They’ve done so many things before that would likely be considered more severe.”

No one yet knows who sent improvised bombs to current and former Democratic Party leaders, CNN, George Soros, and now Robert De Niro. But counterterrorism professionals are warning—tentatively—that the incendiary rhetoric from President Trump is conducive to political violence.

Other former officials said the demotion of Mohammed bin Nayef was an ominous sign. “Letting Mohammed bin Salman push out Mohammed bin Nayef is the original sin of this relationship,” said Ali Soufan, a former FBI official who has written extensively about counterterrorism in the Middle East

Why would someone want Saudi Arabian Jamal Khashoggi dead? The former FBI agent Ali Soufan says that the journalist posed a threat to the House of Saud

“I do not recall anything like this happening in the past,” says Jeffrey Ringel, director at the intelligence consultancy The Soufan Group, who spent 21 years as a national security specialist at the FBI

Some American teenagers dream of a glamorous career in the FBI, a chance to shoot guns and catch criminals, but the idea had not occurred to Ali Soufan. At least, not until The X Files. “Mulder and Scully were going round the world looking for aliens,”