Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo sharply criticizes murdered Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in his new book, questioning his journalism credentials and lambasting what he calls the media’s sympathetic coverage of his brutal killing in Saudi Arabia.

“He didn’t deserve to die, but we need to be clear about who he was — and too many in the media were not,” Pompeo wrote in “Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love.” NBC News obtained a copy of the book in advance of its Jan. 24 release.  

Pompeo, a potential 2024 presidential candidate, mocked the media’s portrayal of Khashoggi as “a Saudi Arabian Bob Woodward who was martyred for bravely criticizing the Saudi royal family through his opinion articles in the Washington Post.” 

Pompeo, who also served as CIA director in the Trump administration, described Khashoggi as an “activist,” claiming that he was a journalist only “to the extent that I, and many other public figures are journalists. We sometimes get our writing published, but we also do other things.”