In Saudi Arabia, for example, 15 retired U.S. generals and admirals have worked as paid consultants for the Defense Ministry since 2016. The ministry is led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom's de facto ruler, who U.S. intelligence agencies say approved the 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post contributing columnist, as part of a brutal crackdown on dissent.

Saudi Arabia's paid advisers have included retired Marine Gen. James L. Jones, a national security adviser to President Barack Obama, and retired Army Gen. Keith Alexander, who led the National Security Agency under Obama and President George W. Bush, according to documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

Others who have worked as consultants for the Saudis since Khashoggi's murder include a retired four-star Air Force general and a former commanding general of U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

Most retired U.S. personnel have worked as civilian contractors for Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and other Persian Gulf monarchies, playing a critical, though largely invisible, role in upgrading their militaries.

All the while, the gulf countries' security forces have continued to commit human rights abuses at home and beyond their borders. With shared intelligence, aerial refueling and other support from the U.S. government and contractors, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have intervened in Yemen's civil war to disastrous effect, triggering a global humanitarian crisis and killing thousands of civilians, according to United Nations investigators.

Foreign governments have long advanced their interests in Washington by paying Americans as lobbyists, lawyers, political consultants, think tank analysts, and public relations advisers. But the hiring of retired U.S. military personnel for their expertise and political clout has accelerated over the past decade as oil-rich gulf monarchies have splurged on defense spending and strengthened their security partnerships with the Pentagon.

Congress permits retired troops as well as reservists to work for foreign governments if they first obtain approval from their branch of the armed forces and the State Department. But the U.S. government has fought to keep the hirings secret. For years, it withheld virtually all information about the practice, including which countries employ the most retired U.S. service members and how much money is at stake.

To shed light on the matter, The Post sued the Army, the Air Force, the Navy, the Marine Corps and the State Department in federal court under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). After a two-year legal battle, The Post obtained more than 4,000 pages of documents, including case files for about 450 retired soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines.

The Post submitted its first FOIA requests for the documents in May 2020. After getting little or no response from the military services and the State Department, The Post filed a lawsuit in federal court in April 2021.

The documents show that foreign governments pay handsomely for U.S. military talent, with salary and benefit packages reaching six and, sometimes, seven figures — far more than what most American service members earn while on active duty. At the top of the scale, active four-star generals earn $203,698 a year in basic pay.

In comparison, the government of Australia has given consulting deals worth more than $10 million to several former senior U.S. Navy officials. A consulting firm owned by six retired Pentagon officials and military officers negotiated a $23.6 million contract with Qatar, a Persian Gulf sheikhdom that hosts a major U.S. air base, though the proposal later fell through. In Azerbaijan, a retired U.S. Air Force general was offered a consulting gig at a rate of $5,000 a day.

Records show that retired generals and admirals command the most money, but former enlisted personnel can also collect hefty foreign paychecks on top of their U.S. military pensions.

Saudi Arabia hired a former Navy SEAL to work as a special operations adviser for $258,000 a year. The UAE gave annual compensation packages worth more than $200,000 to helicopter pilots and $120,000 to aircraft mechanics. In Indonesia, a government-owned mining firm employed a retired U.S. Marine master sergeant as a transportation consultant at a rate of $500 a day, plus living expenses.

Many U.S. generals and admirals have profited from connections built during wartime by later working for Middle Eastern countries where they were once stationed. Records show that a few American officers even negotiated jobs with foreign governments while they were still on active duty.

Military officials redacted the pay packages for retired generals and admirals and the names of lower-ranking personnel. In legal motions, U.S. officials argued that releasing the information would violate former service members' privacy and could subject them to "embarrassment and harassment" and "unfairly harm their public reputation."

The Post identified some of the names and redacted details through reporting. It has continued to sue the armed forces and the State Department to obtain the rest of the information.

In September, U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta ruled largely in favor of The Post and ordered the government to release the pay packages and other withheld material.

In his order, Mehta called the government's privacy arguments "unconvincing." In particular, he added, "the public has a right to know if high-ranking military leaders are taking advantage of their stations — or might be perceived to be doing so — to create employment opportunities with foreign governments in retirement."

An attorney for the Justice Department said it was considering an appeal of the judge's decision.

The Project On Government Oversight (POGO), a nonprofit watchdog group based in Washington, filed a similar public-records lawsuit against the State Department to learn more about how former U.S. service members are selling their military expertise to foreign powers. POGO shared the documents it received from the State Department with The Post.

Brandon Brockmyer, POGO's director of investigations and research, said retired senior military officers often testify before Congress and appear on television to debate national security but rarely divulge whether they are on a foreign government's payroll.

"The public is working on the assumption that their sole loyalty is to the United States," he said. "The public has the right to know whether and how a foreign power has access to their expertise."

Under federal law, retired U.S. military personnel — generally defined as those who served at least 20 years in uniform and are entitled to a pension — are restricted from receiving anything of value from foreign governments that could compromise their sworn allegiance to the United States.

The prohibition stems from the foreign emoluments clause of the Constitution, which forbids federal officeholders to accept gifts, jobs or titles "from any King, Prince, or foreign State" without the consent of Congress. The law applies to military retirees because they can be recalled to active duty at any time. In 1977, Congress delegated the authority to approve veterans' foreign work to the Pentagon and State Department.

Those approvals are necessary before the retirees can accept any compensation, even travel expenses, from a foreign government or state-owned company. Retirees may work only as civilians, not as uniformed personnel.

Those seeking authorization for foreign work must also pass a background check and counterintelligence review. The State Department and the armed forces have wide latitude to deny any application they think "would adversely affect the foreign relations of the United States." But The Post investigation found that approval is almost automatic. Of the more than 500 requests submitted since 2015, about 95 percent were granted.

The armed forces rely on retired military personnel to self-report their intent to work for foreign governments. Many veterans don't bother. The Post identified scores of retirees on LinkedIn who say they have taken military contracting jobs in the Persian Gulf, but for whom there is no record of federal approval.

"There is no criminal penalty for violating the law. Enforcement is almost nonexistent."

The Defense Department can withhold retirement pay from those who ignore the rules. But the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, which administers military payrolls, has docked the pensions of "fewer than five" people, according to Steve Burghardt, an agency spokesman. He declined to identify the individuals, specify the time frame or provide other details, citing privacy concerns.

Documents show that one case involved retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, 63, who briefly served as national security adviser to President Donald Trump. An investigation by the Defense Department's inspector general found that Flynn collected $449,807 from Russian and Turkish interests in 2015, one year after he retired from the Army, but failed to clear his work with U.S. officials.

Flynn's unauthorized work for foreign governments came to light after he was photographed sitting next to Russian President Vladimir Putin at a 2015 gala in Moscow celebrating the 10th anniversary of Russia Today, or RT, a propaganda arm of the Kremlin. RT paid Flynn $38,557 to travel to Moscow and speak at the event.

Flynn's ties to Russian officials led to his downfall. In 2017, he pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador to the United States. Trump pardoned him three years later.

The inspector general opened an investigation into Flynn's work for foreign governments in 2017, but the case took five years to resolve. In May, the Army ordered him to forfeit the $38,557 that he received from the Moscow trip. But Army officials decided, without explanation, not to penalize him for the remaining $411,250 he collected from Russia and Turkey.

Flynn acknowledged the financial penalty in a television interview in May, but suggested it was politically motivated.

Flynn's work for Russia helped prompt Congress to pass legislation in 2019 and 2020 requiring the Pentagon to submit annual reports to lawmakers about retired generals and admirals who work for foreign powers. Since then, the Pentagon has complied, but its reports include only a few lines of information and do not name the generals and admirals.

Of the 500 cases reported to the armed forces and State Department since 2015, only one involved Russia. In that instance, a retired Air Force colonel sought — and received — permission in March 2020 to take a $300,000 job as an executive with a satellite-launch company based in the United States but majority-owned by the Russian government.

The satellite company is International Launch Services Inc., majority-owned by the Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center in Moscow. The retired Air Force colonel sought approval to become the firm's senior vice president and general counsel.

The documents released in response to The Post's lawsuits include no other instances of retired military personnel seeking to work for nations the U.S. government categorizes as "foreign adversaries," such as China, North Korea, Iran, Cuba or Venezuela.

"Almost two-thirds of the jobs taken by U.S. veterans have been in the Middle East and North Africa, where governments pay top dollar for American military expertise honed by two decades of war and counterterrorism operations in the Arab world."

Documents show that 25 retirees from the Air Force, Army, Navy, and Marine Corps were granted permission to take jobs in Saudi Arabia. Most were high-ranking officers who received job offers to serve as consultants to the Saudi Defense Ministry.

Since 2015, the ministry has been ruled by Prince Mohammed, whose leadership has upended the status quo in the Middle East.

Two months after Mohammed became defense minister at age 29, Saudi Arabia led a coalition of regional forces — with intelligence, refueling, and logistical support from the United States — that intervened militarily in Yemen's civil war. The move further destabilized the kingdom's much poorer neighbor, and an estimated 375,000 people have died in the fighting or of hunger.

In June 2017, Mohammed amassed even more power when his father, 82-year-old King Salman, shook up the Saudi line of succession and named him crown prince, or heir apparent. Mohammed quickly seized control of the kingdom's institutions and sidelined potential competitors to the throne, arresting more than 200 princes and other prominent Saudis.

He also cracked down on dissenters outside the kingdom.

In October 2018, a team of Saudi assassins flew from Riyadh to Istanbul to silence Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi-born journalist who had criticized the crown prince in opinion columns in The Post. According to a Turkish government investigation, Khashoggi was lured into the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, where the hit squad killed him and dismembered his corpse with a bone saw.

Saudi officials first denied any knowledge of what happened to Khashoggi. Later, they admitted that Saudi agents were responsible and blamed them for carrying out a "rogue operation" without the crown prince's knowledge. But U.S. intelligence agencies concluded Mohammed had ordered the killing and noted that seven hit squad members served on his security detail.

A prominent beneficiary of Mohammed's reign has been 78-year-old James L. Jones, the retired general who served as Obama's national security adviser and had been commandant of the Marine Corps. Jones owns two Virginia-based consulting firms — Ironhand Security LLC and Jones Group International LLC — that have held contracts to advise the Saudi Defense Ministry.

Jones applied for authorization to work for the Saudis in November 2016 and received U.S. approval four months later, documents show. In an interview, Jones said he was approached by Adel al-Jubeir, Saudi Arabia's foreign minister, who asked him to meet with Mohammed during the prince's visit to the United States that year to discuss the possibility of consulting for the Defense Ministry.

“The crown prince said that he was concerned about the amount of money Saudi Arabia was spending on military hardware and equipment, as opposed to capabilities,” Jones said. “[He] was wondering if there was something that we could do to help them transform their Ministry of Defense and the armed forces into something that would be more useful and less expensive.”

Saudi Arabia spends more on its military than any non-nuclear power globally. In 2021, its defense budget exceeded $50 billion — roughly the same as Britain's, a country with nuclear arms.

Jones said he agreed to conduct an organizational assessment of the Saudi armed forces for Prince Mohammed starting in 2017, but only after checking with officials at the White House, State Department, and Defense Department and obtaining their support. "Had that not been the case, I would not have done it," he added.

Jones assembled a team of about a dozen former senior Pentagon officials to carry out the project, including William S. Cohen, who served as secretary of defense in the Clinton administration. A spokesman for Cohen said he worked on the team for about a year.

Documents show that four retired generals obtained U.S. permission in 2017 to work with Jones' team in Riyadh: Charles Wald, a four-star Air Force general; Michael Barbero, a three-star Army general; Arnold Punaro, a two-star Marine general; and John Doucette, a one-star Air Force general.

Barbero and Doucette did not respond to requests for comment. Punaro, 76, a longtime Pentagon adviser and former congressional staffer, said he worked for Jones as a consultant from April 2017 to April 2018, traveling to Riyadh every month or two.

"We did real, serious, detailed work," Punaro said, adding that the group briefed U.S. officials on their progress. He declined to say how much he was paid, citing a confidentiality clause in his contract with Ironhand Security.

Wald, 74, spent 35 years in the Air Force, including as deputy commander of U.S. forces in Europe and as a forward air controller and F-16 pilot who flew in combat in Vietnam and Bosnia. He headed Jones Group International's business in the Middle East until last year. In an interview, he said it was important to help the Saudis improve their military, so the United States didn't have to act as their primary protector. "It's time for the U.S. not to be doing all the defense of the Middle East," he said.

Wald received approval from the State Department to work for the Saudis and Ironhand Security in March 2017. He later became Jones Group Middle East president, overseeing the firm's regional operations. He left the company in September 2021.

Though the U.S. military has refused to disclose the compensation packages earned by retired generals, other public records show that the Saudis pay their consultants generously. Four lower-ranking retired officers working for Jones — two Marine colonels, an Army colonel, and a Navy captain — earned salaries ranging from $200,000 to $300,000 to advise the Saudi Defense Ministry. Military officials redacted those officers' identities, asserting that the public had no right to the information.

One Marine colonel earned a monthly salary of $25,000 as an Ironhand Security project manager, reviewing "internal military modernization reports" for the Saudi Defense Ministry.

Documents show that Jones' companies continue to advise the Saudis on reorganizing their military command structure so that the armed forces can operate jointly instead of as separate fiefdoms. Traditionally, the primary mission of the Saudi military and security services has been to guarantee the protection and survival of the al-Saud family, with different princes controlling different branches as competing power centers.

Officials with the Saudi Embassy in Washington did not respond to requests for an interview.

Because of Saudi Arabia's vast oil deposits, U.S. presidents since Franklin D. Roosevelt have pledged to help defend the kingdom militarily. Saudi Arabia buys more U.S. weapons than any other country by far. More than 200 active-duty American troops are stationed in Saudi Arabia as trainers and advisers.

But Washington has long struggled to reconcile its robust security partnership with Saudi Arabia and the kingdom's troubling record on human rights.

The U.S.-Saudi security partnership came under severe strain after Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks — 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals — and again over the war in Yemen and after Khashoggi's assassination. During his 2020 presidential campaign, Joe Biden promised to make Saudi Arabia "pay the price and make them, in fact, the pariah they are."

Yet, less than two years later, President Biden traveled to Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, and exchanged a fist bump with Prince Mohammed to reaffirm the relationship. During their meeting at the Al Salam Royal Palace, the two leaders addressed various issues, including oil production and human rights.

Since then, the relationship has again hit the skids. On Oct. 5, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and other members of the OPEC Plus cartel announced they would slash oil production to raise prices. The decision infuriated the Biden administration. It accused the Saudis of siding with Moscow, whose oil is under Western sanctions because of the war in Ukraine. Biden warned that the Saudi government will face "consequences" but didn't say how.

Another high-profile senior officer who has done business with Saudi Arabia is Keith Alexander, 70. He served as director of the National Security Agency and the first head of the U.S. Cyber Command.

In July 2018, Alexander's consulting firm, IronNet Cybersecurity, signed a partnership agreement with the Saudis to develop a new institution: the Prince Mohammed bin Salman College of Cyber Security. The college billed itself as the kingdom's first training program for cyberwarfare and was established under the direction of Saud al-Qahtani, an influential aide to the crown prince.

The Saudi Press Agency publicly announced IronNet's partnership with the college in July 2018.

Qahtani also oversaw a computer hacking and surveillance network that targeted the crown prince's critics and enemies worldwide, including Khashoggi. U.S. officials have accused him of managing the plot against the Post contributor. In November 2018, the Treasury Department imposed sanctions on Qahtani, declaring that he "was part of the planning and execution of the operation that led to the killing."

Yet two months later, during the Trump administration, the State Department approved Alexander's request to help develop the cyberwarfare college and serve on its board of advisers, documents show. U.S. officials redacted details on how much money Alexander stood to earn.

Alexander, the founder, chief executive, and chairman of IronNet declined to comment. Bridget Bell, a spokeswoman for IronNet, said that the firm's contract with the Saudis "focused on the development of the college's educational efforts" and that the arrangement lasted until 2020.

Alexander was originally supposed to serve on the college's board of advisers but never attended any meetings "nor worked directly on the company's contract," Bell said. She added that Alexander and IronNet did not "have any interaction" with Qahtani.

Alexander has also served as a cybersecurity consultant to other foreign governments. Since 2017, he has sought U.S. approval for four separate deals advising Singapore and Japanese governments.

Many U.S. companies ceased doing business with Saudi Arabia weeks after Khashoggi's murder, including lobbyists and public relations firms representing the kingdom in Washington. At the time, a spokesperson for Jones told the Daily Beast that the retired Marine general was "disturbed" and "horrified" by Khashoggi's death and downplayed his firms' work in Riyadh, saying one contract with the Saudis had recently ended and a second was scheduled to expire soon.

Jones' firms not only remained in Saudi Arabia but also expanded their partnership with the Defense Ministry after Khashoggi's slaying.

In his interview with The Post, Jones said he was "very shocked and surprised at what happened" to Khashoggi. But he said Jones Group International applied for and accepted more work from the Saudi Defense Ministry in 2019 because "we received encouragement" from the Trump administration to do so. He said his companies now hold four Saudi contracts and employ 53 Americans in Riyadh. Of those, eight are retired generals and admirals, and 32 are lower-ranking military retirees.

"Nobody ever came to us and said, 'Hey, we think you ought to pull out,'" Jones added. "I don't know what the alternative would have been if we had pulled away. I was worried that [the Saudis] might drift off to other relationships with the Chinese and the Russians, and I didn't think that would be very good."

But Wald, the retired four-star Air Force general, said he and other Jones Group consultants debated whether to stop working with the Saudis after Khashoggi's assassination. "We discussed that almost every day," he recalled. "We asked ourselves, are we turning a blind eye toward immortality? Or supporting a legitimate government?" In the end, they decided to stay.

Wald said Saudi Arabia had made "measurable progress" on reforming its military by the time he stopped working for Jones Group in September 2021. Yet he said he was glad to leave Riyadh. "I certainly don't regret that I'm not there anymore," he added. "The Saudis aren't always easy to work with."

In recent years, Jones Group International has expanded into other foreign markets. In 2019, Jones, Wald, and two retired Army lieutenant generals working for the company — Michael Barbero and Douglas Lute — applied for and obtained U.S. approval to advise the Libyan government on the disarmament and reintegration of militia fighters, documents show.

The U.N.-backed government hired Jones Group in Tripoli at the time. U.S. military officials redacted information on how much Libyan officials paid the retired generals. But a retired Army colonel who applied for federal approval to work for Libya with Jones Group reported that he expected to earn $10,000 a month.

The Army redacted the colonel's name, but he had worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency for four years, overseeing "strategic intelligence products on Libya."

In his application, Wald noted that when he was an Air Force colonel, he planned Operation El Dorado Canyon, the 1986 U.S. airstrikes on Libya that nearly killed then-ruler Moammar Gaddafi. Wald told The Post that the Jones Group worked in Libya for only a few months.

"Libya is a nut case," he said. "Their government is ineffective. Their military is ineffective. … Their military is a ragtag group of militias."

Jones said his company stopped working in Libya at the State Department's request because of the country's political instability. Lute, who served under Jones in the Obama White House as a deputy national security adviser, declined to comment. Barbero, an infantry officer who held senior command positions in Iraq and retired from the Army in 2013, did not respond to requests for an interview.

Officials from the Air Force, Army, Navy, and Marine Corps declined interview requests about their approval processes for foreign employment. But records show they rarely reject a job request.

R. Philip Deavel, a lawyer who oversaw the Air Force program from 2012 to 2016, said in an interview that he denied a small number of applications by retired personnel to work for "Third World countries with a reputation for brutality in conflict." He declined to name the countries.

However, Deavel said he viewed most job opportunities as supportive of U.S. foreign policy. He said the countries involved were almost always friendly to Washington and looking for American expertise to make their militaries more professional. "If you embed with another military as trainers, it may not make that country into Switzerland, but it won't make it worse," he said.

Once the armed forces approve employment requests, the State Department's Bureau of Political-Military Affairs performs a final review. But records produced by the government suggest that the bureau functions as little more than a rubber stamp, authorizing all but five cases since 2015.

State Department officials declined interview requests from The Post to discuss their criteria for approving applications from retired military personnel to work for the Saudis and other foreign governments. But in a written response to questions, the department said it took human rights considerations into account and was "confident" that security cooperation with the Saudis "will serve to elevate respect for human rights."

"The President has made it clear that the rule of law and respect for human rights are front and center in U.S. foreign policy. We will continue decades of U.S. partnership to help strengthen Saudi Arabia's defenses through security cooperation, defense trade, training, and exercises. Still, we are also clear-eyed about the challenges ahead," it said.

The State Department called its high approval rate of foreign-employment requests "reasonable," noting that it only conducted a secondary review of applications already scrutinized by the armed forces.

One of the few cases denied by the State Department concerned a retired Navy commander who landed a $291,000-a-year job with Saudi Arabian Military Industries (SAMI), a state-owned arms supplier, as its director for weapons systems. The Navy approved the request in August 2020. Still, the State Department overruled the decision four months later, concluding that the arrangement would "adversely affect the foreign relations of the United States." No further explanation was given.

The Saudi government founded SAMI in 2017. It is wholly owned by the Public Investment Fund, a $620 billion sovereign wealth fund controlled by Prince Mohammed. SAMI's mission is to help the kingdom create a domestic arms industry and reduce its dependence on the United States and other foreign suppliers.

According to a New York Times report, the Saudi Public Investment Fund also invested $2 billion last year in a private equity firm run by Jared Kushner, Donald Trump's son-in-law.

In August 2020, the Navy gave preliminary approval to another retired officer — Timothy Carter, a former executive with Northrop Grumman — to take a job with SAMI as its executive vice president for weapons and missiles. Carter's annual compensation was even more lucrative: $514,200 in salary and living expenses, plus a yearly bonus worth up to $330,000.

What happened to Carter's application after that is unclear. A Navy spokeswoman said the service has been waiting more than two years for the State Department to make a final determination. The State Department did not respond to questions about the case. Carter did not respond to requests for comment.

Regardless, Carter didn't wait for a green light from U.S. officials before he began working for the Saudis. SAMI announced his hiring on Sept. 4, 2019, almost a full year before he received tentative approval from the Navy. Documents show Navy officials were aware he had already taken the job.

The Navy redacted Carter's name from the documents, but his job title and other details match his online biography at SAMI.

Under federal law, the Defense Department can force retirees to pay back any foreign money they receive before their applications are approved. But there is no evidence the armed forces have ever imposed penalties in such cases.

The Post found that many military retirees take foreign jobs or gifts without notifying the U.S. government. The armed forces and the State Department have no mechanism to identify such cases. Unless rulebreakers come to public attention — as did Flynn — or someone reports them, they have no reason to fear getting in trouble.

Karl Eikenberry, 70, is a retired three-star Army general who commanded U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan and later served as the U.S. ambassador in Kabul. Since 2021, Eikenberry has also described himself as a senior adviser to the Saudi Defense Ministry in multiple online biographies. But there is no record of his seeking clearance for the job from the Army or State Department. He did not respond to messages seeking comments.

By examining LinkedIn profiles and other publicly available sources, The Post identified 20 other retired officers — including four generals and admirals — who reported working for Jones Group International or Ironhand Security as advisers to the Saudi military but for whom there is no record of federal approval.

Among them are Edward Cashman, a retired Navy rear admiral; Sean Jenkins, a retired Army major general; and Cathal O'Connor, a retired Navy rear admiral. All began working for Jones Group in 2021, within weeks of their retirement from the U.S. military.

None of the three responded to requests for comment. Jones said his employees are instructed to "complete all of the requirements that they need to do" before working with the Saudis.

Other generals have moved to Saudi Arabia for employment after they were forced to retire from the U.S. military for misconduct.

Bradley Becker, a retired Army three-star general, was hired by Jones Group International in September 2020 as a project manager in Riyadh. Becker's military career ended in 2019 after the Army relieved him of command for engaging in "an inappropriate relationship with a woman" while he was separated from his wife. Becker did not respond to messages seeking comment. Last year he told Task & Purpose, a news site that covers the military, that he did not commit adultery and was merely communicating with a woman while going through a divorce.

The rules about foreign jobs requiring U.S. government approval are fuzzy and open to interpretation. The armed forces have said authorization is necessary if veterans work directly for a foreign government or foreign officials can exert control over their employment or compensation by a private firm.

Retirees assigned by large U.S. companies — such as Lockheed Martin or General Dynamics — to work with foreign governments are generally exempt. The distinction is that foreign governments cannot hire or fire those individuals and that their employers can reassign them to other jobs if they fall out of favor with their foreign clients.

For example, retired Navy Rear Adm. Steven G. Smith worked in Riyadh from 2017 to 2020 as an adviser to the Defense Ministry under a contract with Booz Allen Hamilton, a major international consulting firm. Smith did not seek approval for the work from the Navy and the State Department. He told The Post he did not need it because he worked directly for Booz Allen "and was not involved in any contract issues with the Saudis."

The military services have at times applied inconsistent standards on what qualifies as foreign control. The Marines, for example, have concluded that retirees who work for U.S. subsidiaries of firms owned by foreign governments do not need U.S. approval. Other services have said they do.

In May 2020, the Army denied an application by a retired officer with a $300,000-a-year job lined up with Jones Group International to serve as a consultant to the Saudi Defense Ministry. It cited disciplinary problems in his military record.

At the same time, the Army said it was "unclear" whether the officer needed U.S. authorization because he was working for Jones Group International, an American company. The Army informed the officer that if the Saudi government had "control over your activities," then he could not take the job.

The Army redacted the name of the officer from the documents. Still, details of his service record match the biography of David Haight, another general who left the U.S. military under a cloud. Haight has demoted three ranks — from major general to lieutenant colonel — and forced to retire in 2016 over a personal misconduct scandal.

An Army investigation determined that Haight, a married Army Ranger who had served as a brigade commander in Afghanistan, embraced a "swinger lifestyle" and carried on an 11-year affair with a female government employee. Adultery is a punishable offense under military law, and Army officials said Haight's sexual escapades put him at risk of blackmail.

USA Today reported extensively on Haight's double life and downfall. Haight's attorney told the paper he deeply regretted the affair but denied it affected his military service. Haight was also a top aide to Adm. Mike Mullen, the former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Haight began work in Riyadh as a consultant to the Saudis in July 2019, eight months before the Army handed down its decision on his application. In a brief phone interview, Haight said he left the job in December 2021. He added that while he worked in an advisory capacity for the Saudi Defense Ministry, his contract was with Jones Group International.

Asked if he had any concerns about the Saudi government's human rights record, Haight said Jones Group "was always very careful that our efforts were consistent with U.S. policy to bring stability to the Middle East" and to professionalize the Saudi military.

The distinction between state-controlled firms and independent ones is often blurry in nondemocratic countries, especially absolute monarchies such as Saudi Arabia, where the royal family dominates commerce and there is little transparency in the business sector.

In February, for example, a brand-new Saudi defense contractor — Scopa Industries Corp. LLC — opened for business with an ambitious agenda.

Describing itself as the kingdom's "preeminent defense company," Scopa said its purpose was "to meet the guidance" of Prince Mohammed by contributing to "the defense revolutionary process" and creating domestic jobs. The firm is owned by the Ajlan family, a conglomerate run by three billionaire brothers. In practice, however, Saudi companies cannot operate in the defense sector without the blessing of the crown prince.

Scopa Industries' website features five American senior advisers: Barbero, retired Navy Vice Adm. Rich Brown, retired Rear Adm. Michael A. Brown, retired Army Col. Dominic Caraccilo and retired Air Force Col. Todd Harmer.

Harmer said in an email that his activities for Scopa Industries "are in full compliance with US laws and regulations," but declined to comment further. The other American advisers to Scopa Industries did not respond to interview requests.

Another Saudi defense contractor, Vinnell Arabia LLC, employs hundreds of Americans to train the Saudi Arabian national guard. Vinnell Arabia is a joint venture of Northrop Grumman, the giant U.S. defense firm headquartered in Falls Church, Va., and Arab Builders for Trading, a Riyadh firm owned by a brother-in-law of the kingdom's late King Abdullah IV.

As of 2015, a Northrop Grumman subsidiary owned 51 percent of Vinnell Arabia, according to court papers the company filed in response to a federal lawsuit in Virginia. But the Riyadh-based firm also submitted a declaration stating that it was subject only to Saudi law and that "no American employer — including Northrop Grumman — exerts any control over Vinnell Arabia."

Documents show that none of Vinnell's American employees have applied for permission from U.S. officials to train Saudi forces since at least 2015. Vinnell Arabia did not respond to a request for comment.

As usual, the message was brief:

Hey kareena this jermaine friend we had raid police reaching out to u j said tell kiki he loves her and he’s sorry didn’t get to see her bday hopefully we will get moved to block so he can make contact with u in in diff room just passing message also if u could notify embassy we need them here thx and take care please do not message will reach out to u

Mateo still hasn’t told her 8-year-old daughter, Kiahuren, or “Kiki,” that Rogers is in prison. Kiki thinks her father is overseas on a “contract he can’t break.” The truth is too mind-boggling. By most measures, Rogers, 41, is a model American — a man who served his country for more than two decades, first in the Army and then as a defense contractor. He has no criminal record in the United States. In fact, his last job in Kuwait — managing the upkeep of military equipment on Camp Arifjan — required him to have a secret security clearance. Among his family, friends, and colleagues, there’s no doubt he’s innocent. They suggest he may be a victim of racial persecution. Most, if not all, of the U.S. citizens currently being detained in Central Prison, are African-American. And each has an eerily similar story to tell.

So why, then, did General Dynamics, Rogers’ employer of nine years, sever ties with him and his family when he got arrested? And why won’t the U.S. government intervene?

Reporters contacted the State Department, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the White House, the Embassy in Kuwait, and five senators in three states in search of answers. Few responded; those who did could not explain why more wasn’t being done to address allegations about Kuwaiti abuse of American detainees, or even say definitively whether U.S. contractors in Kuwait rated the same rights and protections as American service members.

The strategic partnership between the United States and Kuwait is codified in a classified defense pact the two countries signed soon after the end of Desert Storm — an occasion Kuwaitis will celebrate with a national holiday on Feb. 26. Sources who have reviewed the document say that it could hold the key to Rogers’ freedom — which, if true, leaves two equally troubling possibilities: Either the U.S. government is refusing to exercise its authority to liberate its own citizens from the draconian justice system of a major ally, or it’s been outsourcing work to thousands of Americans in a country with a long track record of indefinitely detaining foreign workers for minor or perceived offenses, knowing full well there’s nothing it can do to save them.

“Contractors are worried about getting shot when they go over there,” one former Central Prison inmate, a U.S. Air Force veteran, told Task & Purpose on the condition of anonymity. “What they should really be worried about is going to prison for life.”

Rogers enlisted in the Army in 1994 and was honorably discharged eight years later after an injury left him with metal plates in his back. Like many veterans, he soon transitioned into a career as a defense contractor. In 2006, he began working for General Dynamics at Camp Arifjan, which houses the bulk of the approximately 15,000 American troops stationed in Kuwait. Mateo, an Army veteran herself, also worked on the base, and the two shared an apartment in a town 20 miles south of Kuwait City. She returned to the United States in September 2015. A few weeks later, Kuwaiti police raided the apartment and arrested Rogers.

For a week after the arrest, nobody could tell Mateo why Rogers wasn’t answering his phone. The U.S. embassy in Kuwait had no information, and General Dynamics wouldn’t return her calls and emails. She later learned from one of Rogers’ coworkers that the company had responded to his mysterious absence by simply firing him. A defense contractor who was working on Arifjan at the time told Task & Purpose that word of Rogers’ sudden disappearance spread quickly across the base, but he could recall no effort being made to find him.

“Nobody had contact with the guy, not his job or anything,” the contractor said. “People go missing in Kuwait and never found, so we just assumed the worst.” (In an emailed statement to Task & Purpose, General Dynamics spokesman Doug Stone said, “We do not comment on personal matters involving current or former employees.”)

Mateo found the first clue to Rogers’ whereabouts on the internet, in an Oct. 7, 2015, Kuwaiti Times article.

“Criminal detectives arrested an American expat working at Camp Arifjan with 1,400 envelopes of the drug ‘chemical,’ in addition to [Kuwaiti dinar] 72,000 he made from sales,” the report stated. “He confessed to receiving the drugs by courier at Camp Arifjan. He said he also manufactures the drug at home.”

The report didn’t name the suspect, but it included a photograph of a man in handcuffs with his face obscured. Behind him, there was a large pile of a mossy-green substance resembling marijuana, along with stacks of Kuwaiti dinars. The man was definitely Rogers, but Mateo couldn’t make sense of anything else. It was like something out of a movie.

Several days later, Mateo was in Bahrain. She had decided that neither General Dynamics nor the U.S. State Department intended to track down Rogers, and she’d have to find him herself. Former colleagues in Kuwait were warning her not to come. The authorities, they said, were picking up Americans left and right. They’d almost certainly arrest her because of her relationship to Rogers, too.

But that’s not what ultimately persuaded Mateo to turn around. It was a phone call from a Kuwaiti detective who told her Rogers had been beaten to death.

Three weeks passed before Mateo learned from another contractor that Rogers was alive and being held in Central Prison, a squalid and severely overcrowded jail complex on the outskirts of Kuwait City. The Air Force vet quoted above said he endured so much abuse during the months he spent in Central Prison in 2017 that he no longer has feeling in parts of his right hand and leg. Another former prisoner, a U.S. Army veteran, who asked that we refer to him only as Russell, described the conditions in the prison as “terrible,” adding, “For 11 fucking days, they had me in a small cell with sometimes 70-odd people. One toilet, no soap. They’d just drop off food and bottles of water for everyone to share.”

 

For Mateo, the joy of finding out Rogers was still alive quickly gave way to another nightmare, as it became clear that the Kuwaiti government had no intention of letting him go. The U.S. embassy gave Rogers a list of phone numbers for Kuwaiti lawyers and wished him luck. Some of the numbers didn’t work. Others were answered by people who didn’t practice law. The attorney who ended up taking his case only spoke Arabic.

For a brief moment, there was hope. The lawyer told Mateo through a translator that the 17 items confiscated from Rogers’ apartment had all tested negative for illegal substances. He was so confident that Rogers would be found innocent that he sent one of his assistants to the sentencing hearing in his place. By that point, however, a bag containing 7 grams of cocaine had been entered into the evidence — by a crooked cop, the lawyer would later tell Rogers’ family.

"On Sept. 25, 2016, a judge sentenced Rogers to death by public hanging."

In the weeks and months that followed, Rogers’ family and a handful of supporters inundated State Department officials, politicians, and journalists with desperate appeals for help. They finally got the attention of Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, where Rogers was born, who in October 2016 wrote a letter to then-Secretary of State John Kerry, imploring him to “investigate and demand fair and equitable treatment of Mr. Rogers.” Blumenthal noted “gross violations of due process and fairness in the conviction and sentencing, as well as diplomatic protocol.” Several months later, Rogers’ sentence was reduced to life in prison.

The WhatsApp message Mateo received two weeks ago is the last she’s heard from Rogers or anyone who can at least verify that he hasn’t been killed or hurt. He ended up in the hospital the last time the prison was raided, and American consular officers haven’t been to visit Rogers in the jail since September. (The U.S. embassy website says officers visit inmates “regularly;” however, in multiple emails to family members of Americans imprisoned in Kuwait, U.S. Embassy officials described the visits as “biannual.”) The two former inmates who spoke to Task & Purpose said that the prison raids are carried out by an ultra-aggressive police unit branded “special forces.” “They just come in and beat everyone’s ass,” said Russell.

On Feb. 5, Mateo read an Arab Times article that reported the prison raid “led to the confiscation of 1,056 mobile phones, recharge cards and 301 grams of narcotic substances.” She immediately emailed the State Department and insisted they move Rogers out of the cell block where he’s currently housed, which she and the Air Force vet say has a reputation for being the hub of a major drug smuggling ring. The U.S. Embassy’s office of American Citizens Services told Mateo that “ultimately, only Kuwaitis have the authority to decide where each inmate resides.” That’s what they always tell her.

“Karina is Jermaine’s girl and she’s been fighting hard for him since day one,” the Air Force veteran said. “She’s been a huge blessing. But the sad fact is most of the Americans in there don’t really have people like that.”

On the evening of Oct. 10, 2015, four days after Rogers got arrested, Tyrone Peterson, a U.S. Army veteran and defense contractor, was playing video games at a coworker’s apartment in Kuwait when five plainclothes cops walked through the door. The police searched the apartment and emerged from one of the bedrooms with a shoebox they said contained marijuana. Peterson’s sister, Tylena Peterson, told Task & Purpose that of the four Americans in the apartment, her brother was the only one who caught charges. Even the guys who lived there were let go.

Peterson completed 11 years in the Army as a fuel tanker and served multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to his sister. He was sentenced to 15 years. His first appeal was denied in October 2016.

In addition to Rogers and Peterson, there are three other Americans whom Mateo says she knows for certain are currently in Central Prison. All five are African-American, as are the two former inmates — Russell and the Air Force vet — who spoke to Task & Purpose. In April 2016, a U.S. Army veteran and defense contractor named Monique Coverson and her partner Larissa Joseph — both African-American, as well — were released from a Kuwaiti prison after serving 11 months behind bars on what turned out to be bogus drug charges.

Mateo said she can recall only one white American being held in Central Prison during the time Rogers has been there — “but just briefly.” Russell said the only non-African-American he ever saw “was Arab.”

Of course, with such a small sampling, it’s impossible to prove the existence of institutional racism in a country 8,000 miles away. But from Russell’s vantage point, it certainly seemed as if Kuwaitis at every level of the criminal justice system shared a very specific idea of what an American criminal looks like. “I brought it up all the time and the police would be like, no, no, no,” he said. “It was fucked up.”

There are also striking parallels between the way the different cases have unfolded. Rogers’ lawyer told his family that the initial batch of evidence taken from his apartment tested negative for narcotics, yet he was convicted of manufacturing and trafficking cocaine. Likewise, a lab determined that the substance authorities claimed to have seized from Coverson and Joseph’s apartment was K2, a legal substance in Kuwait at the time. However, according to a local NBC affiliate in Detroit, where Coverson is from, “by the time went to trial, that one ounce of K2 had become a pound of hash.” Tylena Peterson says her brother was the victim of the same scheme. “Mysteriously, as the months the 1 oz of Marijuana turned into 200g,” she wrote in a Change.org petition started the spring of 2016.

Both Russell and the Air Force vet described similar scenarios: A police search turned up empty-handed, but somehow they were charged with trafficking drugs.

Russell said that after police raided his ninth-floor apartment, a plainclothes cop appeared with a “big ass bag of weed” in his hand. “They told me I threw it out the window and that’s why it was on the first floor,” he said. Surveillance cameras ultimately debunked that accusation, but just getting that footage in front of a judge, Russell said, cost $15,000 — the first of many legal expenses that eventually left him completely broke.

“The maximum time they could hold me was seven months,” he said. “They held me seven months to the day. I went to prison Jan. 28, and they put me on a plane back to the U.S. on Aug. 28.”

Kuwaiti authorities told both Rogers and Russell that they had been watching the men sell drugs for months. The Air Force vet said they told him the same thing, and used that in place of hard evidence to charge him. The stamp on his passport showed that he had not been in Kuwait nearly as long as they claimed they had been surveilling him; that fact was enough to get him out of prison on bail, but not to get him out of the country. So he smuggled himself out.

“There are a lot of Americans over there, guys who have already been forgotten,” he said. “I know one guy who has been stuck in Kuwait for like 9 or 11 years. Stuck like chuck.”

There are other prevailing themes: stories of abusive prison guards, dangerously overcrowded jail cells, bad plumbing, dismissive consular officials, entire savings accounts vanishing into the coffers of ineffectual, non-English-speaking lawyers, and parents going weeks and even months without knowing whether their sons or daughters are dead.

There are also the attendant feelings of helplessness, betrayal, bitterness, and despair. For many, the lack of support from the U.S. government has been extremely disorienting. These are veterans, after all. These are men and women who fought for the rights and freedoms they are now being denied — the same people whom politicians go to great lengths to publicly love and support. Where are they now?

On Feb. 13, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson attended a conference in Kuwait City to discuss efforts to rebuild Iraq following the U.S.-led coalition campaign against ISIS. Rogers was only a few miles away. Tillerson may have even known he was there.

In December, Blumenthal sent Tillerson a letter about Rogers’ predicament, reiterating everything the senator had told the previous secretary of state. “I continue to have serious concerns about the violations of due process and fairness of the conviction and harsh sentencing, as well as the gross disregard of diplomatic protocols by Kuwaiti officials,” Blumenthal wrote.

The State Department replied nine days later: “The U.S. Embassy in Kuwait continues to monitor Mr. Rogers’ case and has raised it with the government of Kuwait at the highest levels.” That response was similar to the one Task & Purpose received from a State Department official when if asked if Tillerson had discussed Rogers’ case with Kuwaiti officials: “We received Senator Blumenthal’s letter. The Embassy, including the Ambassador, has raised his cause with the Government.”

The big question remains: If the United States wanted to get Rogers and the other American defense contractors out of Central Prison, could it?

The answer may be buried in a 1991 classified document called the Defense Cooperation Agreement (DCA), a pact that outlines the conditions of the strategic alliance between the United States and Kuwait. The DCA contains a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), which “provides that U.S. forces in Kuwait be subject to the U.S. rather than Kuwaiti law,” according to a recent Congressional Research Service report. What is not known — at least to the public — is whether the SOFA extends to American civilian personnel contracted to support U.S. military operations in Kuwait. But multiple sources who’ve reviewed the agreement told Task & Purpose that there’s enough flexibility in the way it’s worded to cover contractors if the United States so desired. If that is indeed the case, it’s either a lack of U.S. incentive or aptitude — or both — that is standing between the Americans incarcerated in Kuwait and a chance to prove their innocence in an American court of law.

Task & Purpose contacted both the U.S. State Department and the Office of the Secretary of Defense but received little clarity. “Questions of the Status of Forces Agreement are best addressed to DoD,” a Department of State official said in an email on Feb. 14. Half an hour later, a representative of the Office of the Secretary of Defense replied to the same query: “I encourage you to get in touch with the US Department of State, which provides consular services to US citizens abroad and can answer your questions about the status of forces agreements.” The Pentagon representative added, “I’m not sure why the Department of State would refer you to us about a diplomatic agreement.”

Ultimately, the Office of the Secretary of Defense won the game of bureaucratic hot-potato, and the State Department offered a formal response. “Generally speaking, Status of Forces Agreements define the legal status of U.S. Department of Defense personnel, activities, and property in the territory of another nation,” the official informed us. “While we decline to comment on specific provisions in individual SOFAs negotiated with partner nations we can confirm that the Department of State continues to provide consular services to Mr. Rogers.”

The two former inmates and Mateo say that those “consular services” amount to little more than half-hearted gestures of support. “I saw the Embassy three times after my arrest,” recalled Russell. “They show up and ask you all these questions and act concerned, and honestly, man, I didn’t see them do one thing.”

The Air Force vet was blunter. “The U.S. Embassy was shit,” he said. “When I got out on bail by myself, I called them and said I needed to get out of the country. They told me that the embassy is not a restaurant and they don’t have a laundry list of services to offer us. So I started doing what I needed to do.”

Reporters tried to contact the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait repeatedly by phone and email but were unable to reach anyone. When we emailed the country officer who had been providing Tylena Peterson with sporadic updates about her brother as recently as May 2017, we received an automated response that the email address could not be found.

Laurence Pope, a 31-year veteran of the Foreign Service and a former U.S. ambassador to Chad, suggested the frustrations of the inmates and their families are not unjustified.

“The State Department and the Embassy in Kuwait, if only visiting biannually, are not living up to the definition of ‘regularly’ in their own rules and regulations,” Pope told Task & Purpose. “It’s also surprising that [Rogers] hasn’t been given a lawyer who can speak English and can communicate with his family. I think that’s quite wrong, and an indication that the embassy is not providing adequate support to him and his family. He’s effectively being denied legal representation.”

The city of Killeen in central Texas has been Mateo’s home base since the Army assigned her to Fort Hood more than a decade ago. It was her last duty station before she left the service in 2010, after two deployments to Iraq — the first during the 2003 invasion. As a contractor, she does the same logistical work she did in the Army, and she still rotates through the usual war zones. Even her stateside gigs can feel like deployments, including the one she has now. Every other Friday, she makes the two-and-a-half-hour drive from San Antonio to Killeen, where Kiki lives with her aunt. By Monday afternoon, Mateo is back at Boeing, clocking in for the second shift. She works 12 days on, two off.

The national security world is more or less a closed ecosystem. Defense corporations depend on the armed forces to feed them a constant supply of trained and able-bodied veterans like Mateo — people who possess not only the specific job skills the industry requires but also the tolerance for long hours and a willingness to work in dangerous places. And the military increasingly relies on defense contractors to do the things that service members used to do. At the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, contractors outnumbered troops in both theaters. According to one report, more than 2,000 contractors were killed in those conflicts between 2001–and 2010, accounting for 25% of all U.S. fatalities during that period. But contractor deaths are rarely mentioned in the news.

That’s intentional. The lack of public outcry suggests that the system is working how it’s supposed to. There’s no telling how many American defense contractors are currently being detained in Kuwait or the dozens of other countries where they support U.S. military operations. By outsourcing the War on Terror, the U.S. government has managed to push it far beyond the view of ordinary Americans; officials can safely turn a blind eye to Rogers’ predicament without risking a peep out of the talking heads on CNN or Fox News. If Rogers, Peterson, or the other Americans in Central Prison were still soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines, the U.S. response would likely be much more forceful.

“Americans don’t get too fussed over wounded or dead contractors, unlike Marines,” said Sean McFate, a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council and author of The Modern Mercenary, who worked for years as a private military contractor. “They’re disposable people. So they get kicked to the curb. This is the price…of outsourcing.”

The two former Central Prison inmates who spoke to Task & Purpose say their experiences in Kuwait left them feeling like men devoid of allies. They are paranoid, and understandably so. The Air Force vet made three attempts to flee Kuwait after posting bail. The first time, he hired someone to smuggle him across the Persian Gulf on a private boat, but the waters were too heavily patrolled. Next, he bought a used YZ250 Yamaha dirt bike and tried driving through the Arabian Desert — “There’s a checkpoint every 7 miles, so that’s as far as I could go.” He wouldn’t say how he finally made it out, except that it involved a brief but tense layover in Germany and “growing out my beard, disguises, and all that.”

“Nobody gave a shit, bro. Nobody,” he said. “I literally had to outsmart an entire country by myself.”

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