Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi was assassinated and dismembered in the Saudi Arabian Consulate in Istanbul five years ago this month. That was an explosive example of “transnational repression” - a national security threat that Washington does too little to combat.

It’s a little-known crime that can be deadly for foreign dissidents who live in America. “When foreign governments stalk, intimidate, or assault people in the United States, it is considered transnational repression (TNR),” says the FBI. Although Khashoggi was killed abroad, he was a Virginia resident, so the United States considers his execution an act of transnational repression.

But the FBI and other agencies are constrained in their fight against this secret foreign intrigue, according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report. Congress is considering legislation to facilitate that fight. Yet federal officials have not used a key legislative tool against the repression and have failed to adequately coordinate with local and state authorities who might not understand it.

While the State Department makes a big deal about human rights abuses abroad, it did not actively seek reporting on transnational repression for its human rights reports before 2021. There is no law that specifically criminalizes transnational repression, although a bill proposed by Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) would do so.

One constraint is Washington’s failures to enforce - or even consider using - Section 6 of the Arms Export Control Act of 1976. It bans weapons transfers to nations the president determines are “engaged in a consistent pattern of acts of intimidation or harassment directed against individuals in the United States.”

But no such determinations have ever been made by the White House. None of the agencies involved in the law’s enforcement has even “performed any work related to implementing the statute,” according to the GAO, and “it is unclear the extent to which the law has ever been considered.” The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

It’s also unclear how big the problem is, because the federal government is “unable to quantify the full extent of the issue,” the GAO said. The FBI lists 17 examples from January 2020 through April 2023.

Although there is no count on the number of transnational repression incidents, “there are strong reasons to expect that TNR is increasing globally,” said Michael Abramowitz, president of Freedom House, a pro-democracy and human rights organization based in Washington. The number of nations practicing it is growing as increasing international migration provides more potential targets. Modern technology allows countries to “surveil and intimidate people across borders far more easily than they used to be able to, and that surveillance particularly makes physical attacks more likely and more effective,” added Abramowitz, a former Post journalist.

Feds consider China, Iran, Russia, Rwanda and Turkey the main culprits. Ironically, “the U.S. has approved tens of billions of dollars in arms transfers to countries that have reportedly engaged in TNR,” the GAO reported, “including some of the largest recipients of those transfers.” That includes Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt. Together they received $66 billion in weapons from Washington from fiscal 2017 through 2021, with Saudi Arabia, whose officials executed Khashoggi, getting more than two-thirds of that. A policy adopted in February says American arms transfers should consider the risk of contributing to transnational repression.

Washington undercut its fight against transnational repression by conducting “extraordinary renditions” or state-sponsored kidnappings against terrorism suspects after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Then, the CIA snatched people in one country and took them to secret prisons in a third nation.

That helped “undermine norms against extraterritorial operations, and established a precedent whereby ‘anti-terrorism’ could be used to justify all manner of human rights violations,” Abramowitz said by email. “Many of the states that engage in TNR now cite U.S. (and Israeli) extraterritorial tactics in combating terrorism as justification for their own campaigns abroad.”

One relatively easy way to combat transnational repression is through better federal coordination and training with other law enforcement authorities. Local and state officials might not understand transnational repression, so they “sometimes treat incidents as ‘ordinary’ crimes because they do not recognize a foreign aspect that could indicate it was an act of TNR,” the GAO wrote.

In addition to Khashoggi’s murder, other examples of transnational repression cited by federal officials include:

-A federal case in Brooklyn against 44 people who “allegedly perpetrated transnational repression schemes targeting U.S. residents whose political views and actions are disfavored” by Beijing. Those charged in April include 40 officers in China’s Ministry of Public Security who allegedly “used fake social media accounts to harass and intimidate” Chinese dissidents, according to the FBI.

-Three alleged would-be assassins were charged in January with money laundering and a murder-for-hire plot against a U.S. citizen of Iranian origin who denounced Tehran’s human rights abuses. The Justice Department said the hit-men trio are members of an Eastern European criminal gang, who were hired to kill, but failed.

-Indictments against 15 security officials with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for attacking protesters outside the Turkish Embassy in Washington in 2017.

-Last year, the Justice Department charged four senior officials from Belarus who, according to Matt Olsen, assistant attorney general for national security, allegedly “conspired to use a false bomb threat to unlawfully divert a passenger flight that was carrying American citizens in order to arrest a prominent Belarusian dissident.”

Congress is considering legislation to fight transnational repression, including the Jamal Khashoggi Protection of Activists and Press Freedom Act of 2023, introduced by Schiff and co-sponsored by Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.). It would codify the Khashoggi Ban, a visa restriction policy announced in 2021 by Secretary of State Antony Blinken. It blocks U.S. entry for people who “directly engaged in serious, extraterritorial counter-dissident activities.” After Khashoggi’s slaying, the State Department did hit 76 accused Saudis with visa prohibitions.

“We need a clear definition of transnational repression. We need to strengthen our code to have swift retribution. We need to up our game in intelligence and surveillance to prevent it from occurring,” Connolly said in an interview.

“It hasn’t received the kind of attention that it needs,” he added. “This is serious.”