Chapter THREE
Drug Bust
June 13, 1986.
I hadn’t been at work in the McDonnell Douglas Services office in Riyadh for more than five minutes when I received the phone call from King Khalid Air Base at Khamis Mushayt, the southwest main operating base for MDS in the Kingdom. The Human Resources Manager of Khamis Mushayt had been informed by two employees returning from their vacations that an American had been arrested at the King Khaled International Airport in Riyadh the night before.
That was all the information they had. All they knew for sure was that he was an American on his initial entry into the Kingdom, and that he had been removed from the Immigration and Customs area of the Riyadh airport the previous night after their flight arrived from Bangkok, Thailand They didn’t know the man’s name but believed he was a McDonnell Douglas Services employee working for one of our subsidiary companies, Pratt & Whitney Support Services (PWSS).
On their initial trip into the Kingdom, most new employees of McDonnell Douglas Services and its subsidiaries enter from the United States through a European city such as London, Paris or Frankfurt. They take an overnighter to adjust to the nine-hour ahead time change. But entry from a European city was not a requirement, and this employee had decided to come in through the Far East instead.
I thanked the Human Resources Manager and told him I would appreciate any additional information he could get from any source, including the individual’s name, passport number, where he was coming from, his flight number, and so on. The Human Resources Manager promised he would get back to me.
I called Harvey Kiser, Manager of PWSS-Riyadh headquarters operations in the Kingdom and asked him if he had any missing employees. Harvey said he would check it out and let me know. I walked over to the Director of Human Resources and informed him that we probably had an employee in jail.
Before J could say anything else he started grilling me ͞What? Who? Where? When? Why? J explained that J had only been informed a few moments before by the Human Resources manager of Khamis Mushayt and had already contacted Harvey Kiser and asked for his assistance. I was told to get right on it, follow through and let him know what I was doing. The Director of Human Resources considered his life’s most important duty was to micromanage all of the people who worked for him.
Our previous Manager of Government Relations had recently been terminated and not-so-politely asked to leave the Kingdom within 72 hours by the Peace Sun Project Officer. I was effectively in charge, pendi