Memoir excerpt linking family oil ventures in Saudi‑Kuwaiti neutral zone to alleged perks and legal pressure

Korean war, and was now exempt. I was a shavetail second lieutenant, thanks to the ROTC program at USF, in the quartermaster branch at Fort Lee, Virginia. My eyesight was never good enough for the combat branches. Ike, who was then president, had started in the quartermaster too. My military career was not so glorious. Somehow | finished the six months at Fort Lee and seven and half years of inactive duty following, obligating me to one weekend per month at military posts near home, without being promoted even to first lieutenant. By policy, I should have been promoted or busted to the ranks. I later learned that my school chum Manuel Teles, who worked at Fort Presidio in San Francisco, had somehow fixed the record. Thank God for old friends. My weekends of saluting were postponed when Paul and | went back to work for my father in 1958. My father then lived in the Ritz Hotel in Paris. He liked ordinary two- room suites. The sitting room was his office. His filing system was a steamer trunk. Our job was to sit and listen as he met with executives or art people or old friends. He would usually take us along to lunch and dinner, and wangle us along when he had been invited out. He was the world’s most attentive father whenever we were with him, at least, if focused elsewhere when we weren't. Paul went on to learn refining and marketing in Italy, after those few weeks in Paris, while I went to the oilfields my father had just found and developed in the Neutral Zone between Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Paul soon learned Italian, became general manager within two years, and ran things well. 1 learned only a little Arabic, but also became manager in 1959, and soon blundered my way into two weeks’ house arrest. I had got crossways with the local emir, Mohammed bin Nasr, nota bad guy, about perks and privileges he and his staff expected Getty Oil to pay for. The case against me was rigged. One of our junior staff drivers, a Kuwaiti | think, had accidentally rammed and damaged a pipeline. He had fled the country to avoid jail. Jails there were no fun. His supervisor, Jim Kinnell, was warned that he (Jim) was accountable under Saudi law, and would be sent to jail instead. Jim came to me. | realized what was brewing. Laws are flexible, and Jim would have got off with a Chapter 1: Recollections 1/06/16 2 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_010918