Chapter SIX
Traffic Accident = Jail Time
After Tom Denhardt the Manager of Government Relations had left the Kingdom at the end of his contract, senior management decided not to fill his position Steve Krause, who had been Tom s administrative assistant, was promoted to Supervisor, and for several months he worked the office and assumed the duties and responsibilities of the Manager s position with me assisting him.
I guess Steve could see the handwriting on the wall that he wasn t going anywhere with McDonnell Douglas Services in the Kingdom, so he put in his ninety-days notice and left for the States. Now senior management had to get someone in as soon as possible to fill the Manager s position On board at that time was a retired full-bird Air Force Colonel who had recently arrived in Kingdom and was working in the Quality Control department of the Maintenance Division here in Riyadh. This Colonel, whose name I will not use in my narrative for reasons that will soon become apparent, seemed like a pretty easy-going individual the first time I met him. He said he just wanted to do his job and get along with everybody. But sometimes first impressions can lead to disaster, and for me and McDonnell Douglas Services, as far as I was concerned, they did.
As soon as the Colonel accepted the Manager s position for Government Relations, my life, and the calm, serene atmosphere of McDonnell Douglas Services relationship with the Peace Sun Project 0ffice and the Royal Saudi Air Force changed, and not for the better.
The Colonel decided that he wanted to run the office as if he were still on active duty in the U.S. Air Force. MDS was, in fact, a civilian contractor for the U.S. Air Force in Saudi Arabia. I had served my three years active Naval Service and remained in the reserves for a total of ten years. I did not want to be back on active duty in the military again, at least not in Saudi Arabia.
The Colonel began his reign by belittling our Palestinian translators, telling them they ͞smelled and needed to start taking daily showers and use deodorant The Colonel knew he couldn t say anything to our Saudi processors, but the Palestinian translators were a different story. He would go into their offices and open windows while they were working in an air-conditioned environment. He would put small bottles of deodorant on their desks as a subtle hint (it never worked; they just threw them in the trash can).
Nothing I did satisfied him. Continuing to conduct Government Relations and Security processing as we had for the previous years was not good enough because we were doing it according to wh