Intercepts by GCHQ of internal communications by the kingdom's General Intelligence Directorate revealed orders by a "member of the royal circle" to abduct the troublesome journalist and take him back to Saudi Arabia.
The orders, intelligence sources say, did not emanate directly from de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, and it is not known if he was aware of them.
Though they commanded that Khashoggi should be abducted and taken back to Riyadh, they "left the door open" for other actions should the journalist prove to be troublesome, sources said.
Comment: Is this the British running interference, after-the-fact, to protect MBS? Or, if they did know what was about to happen, are the British culpable in his murder?
Last week Saudi Arabia's Attorney General confirmed that the murder had been premeditated - in contrast to initial official explanations that Khashoggi had been killed after a fight broke out.
Comment: Maybe, in the sense of being 'the straw that broke the camel's back', but Saudi Arabia is already known to have provided ISIS and affiliated terrorists in Syria with chemical weapons. Also, the kingdom's 'big brothers' - the US and UK - use WP and other chemical agents in their wars as a matter of course.
Whatever their reason for sending 15 assassins with bone saws and black bags to butcher Khasoggi, the real bombshell here is that the British were so familiar with the Saudis' plan to 'abduct' Khashoggi that they warned them to not proceed because of the bad press they knew would follow...
Some psychopaths are evidently smarter than others.