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Retired NSA director won lucrative consulting deals with Saudis, Japan

Retired NSA director won lucrative consulting deals with Saudis, Japan
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By Craig Whitlock, Nate Jones

Retired Army Gen. Keith Alexander, who led the National Security Agency under Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, secured $2 million in consulting deals with foreign governments after leaving office, including a $700,000 contract to advise Saudi Arabia on cybersecurity after the 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, newly released records show.

Alexander’s consulting firm also won a $1.3 million contract from the government of Japan to provide advice on cyber issues, according to additional documents obtained by The Washington Post as part of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit.

Details of those lucrative contracts are among records disclosed by the Pentagon for the first time about retired generals and admirals who have leveraged their military service over the past decade to obtain work from foreign governments. The disclosures by the Pentagon came in response to The Post’s lawsuit and demands from Congress, which has scheduled a hearing on the issue Wednesday.

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In an investigation last year, The Post found that more than 500 retired U.S. military personnel — including scores of generals and admirals — had accepted employment from foreign governments, mostly as contractors in countries known for human rights abuses and political repression. Under federal law, retired service members must obtain permission before they can accept any compensation from foreign powers, out of concern that the payments could compromise their allegiance to the United States. The U.S. government withheld virtually all information about the foreign jobs until The Post won a two-year legal battle with the Army, the Air Force, the Navy, the Marine Corps and the State Department.

The latest batch of records shows that Alexander, who led the nation’s largest intelligence agency from 2005 to 2014, reported the most foreign compensation of any retired U.S. service member since 2012. The second-highest earner has been retired Navy Vice Adm. William Hilarides, 63, who since 2016 has won naval consulting contracts from the government of Australia worth up to $1.6 million, according to figures released last week by the Australian Department of Defense.

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