suspicion of sexual assault and false imprisonment. Although his passport had been seized, he surfaced months later in Saudi Arabia, where he posted comments on a social media account about food and the weather.

The following year, the Saudi Consulate put up the $500,000 bail for Waleed Ali Alharthi, a student at Oregon State University who was found to have a cache of child pornography on his computer and was charged with 10 counts of encouraging child sexual abuse. Although the court had confiscated his passport, Alharthi escaped to Mexico City — somehow obtaining a new passport along the way — and investigators believe he flew to Paris on his way back to the kingdom, officials say.

It is generally not possible to leave the United States by plane withoutUS-based FBI agents were angry," he said. They would call the legal attache's office in Riyadh afterward asking: 'How did he get out of the US?' I told them if they'd have notified us beforehand, I could ve possibly filed an affidavit opposing bail because Saudis arrested in the US were often a flight risk.

"There were no complaints we lodged with the Saudis," Danik added. "That just wasn't something that was going to happen."

Saudi Arabia became a critical partner for the CIA and FBI

Although many former US national security officials said they had been aware episodically of fugitives disappearing with suspected help of the Saudi government, the issue never rose anywhere near the level of pressing geopolitical concerns, current and former officials said. Chief among those concerns was