State Dept. Is Quietly Approving Former Servicemembers’ Work for Foreign Interests
Some Context
In October 2022, the Project On Government Oversight, in partnership with The Washington Post, published an investigation on the State Department’s approval for former military officials to go on to work on behalf of foreign interests.POGO had obtained these waivers through the Freedom of Information Act, which raised troubling questions: If former high-ranking military officials could go on to work for foreign interests, could they be counted on to provide advice in the best interest of the United States?
My Role
I took the lead on formatting this data to be visualized and determining how to present and package this information. I built these visualizations using Flourish, a data visualization software.There were some significant data issues I worked with the team to adjust in order for these to render as-expected. Much of this data had originally been input by-hand, and so many fields needed merging (e.g., “U.S. Public Health Service” vs. “USPHS” vs. “Public Health Service”), rectifying for differences in spelling, and corrected, such as for extraneous spaces (e.g., “Australian Government” vs. “Australian Government ”, which would create two categories.)
We examined 517 ethics waivers, issued by the State Department, for former military officials to work on behalf of foreign interests.
I created this initial series as a way for the reader to “see” these 517 records. On hover, the user could also browse dimensions of these waivers - for example, their rank and what country this servicemember would be approved to work for.
These waivers authorized former members of the military to be paid to work on behalf of over 50 countries.
The next visualization — one of the main thrusts of the piece —focused on showing which foreign interests were capitalizing on hiring former servicemembers. This visualization showed how the vast majority were concentrated in the Middle East, specifically the United Arab Emirates.
Reformatting the data to work on this map was a small challenge. Flourish needed a specific format for the countries to match up correctly, so this took some reformatting of the underlying data in Excel.
Reformatting the data to work on this map was a small challenge. Flourish needed a specific format for the countries to match up correctly, so this took some reformatting of the underlying data in Excel.
Over half of the waivers were granted to work on behalf of the United Arab Emirates — and of those, most were to work for just one state-owned defense conglomerate.
In the course of combing through this data, I also helped to uncover the finding that many waivers were to work for one state-owned conglomerate, EDGE Group.
Originally, this investigation listed three separate UAE companies as dominating the waiver program: AMMROC, Global Aerospace Logistics, and Knowledge Point. However, in the course of looking for those companies’ logos, I noticed their branding was extremely consistent, and raised the question with the investigation’s authors if it was possible they were part of the same company.
As it turns out, they were subsidiaries of the conglomerate EDGE Group — which made our findings even more troubling.
Originally, this investigation listed three separate UAE companies as dominating the waiver program: AMMROC, Global Aerospace Logistics, and Knowledge Point. However, in the course of looking for those companies’ logos, I noticed their branding was extremely consistent, and raised the question with the investigation’s authors if it was possible they were part of the same company.
As it turns out, they were subsidiaries of the conglomerate EDGE Group — which made our findings even more troubling.