Selling prestige for profit

Over four years, Ret. Air Force General Charles “Chuck” Wald published a series of op-eds with Reuters, NBC News, The Hill, and Newsweek in which he promoted weapons sales, U.S. security guarantees, and closer military cooperation with Saudi Arabia while simultaneously working as a security consultant for the kingdom’s defense ministry.

Readers were kept in the dark about this potential conflict of interest.

Over 500 retired U.S. military personnel, many of them, like Wald, high-ranking officers, were approved by the State Department to conduct work for foreign governments, according to recently released records obtained as a result of Freedom of Information Act lawsuits by The Washington Post and the Project on Government Oversight, or POGO.

Saudi Arabia, the focus of the Post’s reporting on 15 retired U.S. generals and admirals working as contractors for the kingdom’s defense ministry since 2016, reveals a stark example of how mainstream media outlets provide a platform for foreign policy hawks without disclosing their potential conflicts of interest when publishing op-eds whose arguments appear to benefit their foreign clients.