Oрinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge KAVANAUGH, with whom Circuit Judge RANDOLPH joins, and with whom Senior Circuit Judge WILLIAMS joins except as to the second sentence of footnote five.
In the early 1990s, members of the Guatemalan army killed rebel fighter Efrain Bamaca-Velasquez during Guatemala’s civil war. Bamaca’s widow, Jennifer Har-bury, sued various U.S. Government officials, claiming they were legally responsible for the physical abuse and death of her husband. The District Court long ago dismissed most of Harbury’s claims. Har-bury now appeals the District Court’s order dismissing her common-law tort claims. We affirm for either of two alternative jurisdictional reasons: (1) Under this Court’s precedents, the case presents a nonjusticiable political question; or (2) the Federal Tort Claims Act applies to Harbury’s claims, and the FTCA bars suits based on injuries that occurred in a foreign country.
I
Jennifer Harbury is a U.S. citizen and the widow of Efrain Bamaca-Velasquez, who was a citizen of Guatemala and a commander of rebel forces in that country’s 35-year civil war. According to Harbury, in the 1990s the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency hired and trained Guatemalan army officers as informants so that the CIA could gather information about the rebel forces. Harbury alleges that the CIA obtained information from the Guatemalan army officers and shared it with the White House and the State Department during the Administrations of President George H.W. Bush and President Clinton. Harbury claims, moreover, that “it was understood ... and/or intended by the CIA that this information would be obtained through torture and similar means.” Second Amended Complaint at 11,
Harbury v. Hayden,
Harbury specifically contends that Ba-maca was captured in March 1992 by Guatemalan army officers affiliated with the CIA. The CIA allegedly reported to the Whitе House and U.S. Government agencies that its Guatemalan counterparts had captured Bamaca “and that they would probably fabricate his combat death in order to be able to maximize their ability to extract information” from him. Id. at 9. At the same time that the Guatemalan army publicly maintained that Bamaca had committed suicide, its officers allegedly “detained, psychologically abused and physically tortured” Bamaca in an attempt to get information from him. Id. According to Harbury, the Guatemalan officers then killed Bamaca.
Hаrbury initially sued and sought damages from many U.S. Government officials *416 in their personal capacities — (i) at the CIA, Directors John M. Deutch, R. James Woolsey, and Robert M. Gates; Deputy Directors David Cohen, John J. Devine, Thomas A. Twetten, John C. Gannon, Douglas J. MacEachin, and John L. Hel-gerson; Latin American Division Chief Terry R. Ward; National Intelligence Officer Brian Latelle; National Intelligence Council Chiefs Richard N. Cooper, Christine N. Williams, Joseph S. Nye, and Fritz W. Esmarth; Guatemala Station Chiefs Dan Donahue and Frederick A. Brugger; and “unnamed employees” of the CIA; (ii) at the State Department, Secretary of State Wаrren Christopher; U.S. Ambassador to Guatemala Marilyn MacAfee; Assistant Secretary Alexander Watson; Deputy Assistant Secretary Anne Patterson; Guatemala Desk Officer Peg Willingham; and “unnamed employees” of the State Department; and (iii) at the National Security Council, National Security Advisor Anthony Lake; NSC staff member Richard E. Feinberg; and “unnamed employees” of the National Security Council. See id. at 1-2, 5-8.
The District Court previously dismissed most of Harbury’s claims.
See Harbury v. Hayden,
Harbury’s only remaining claims are common-law tort claims against the individual CIA Defendants. Harbury alleges that the individual CIA Defеndants conspired to cause Bamaca’s imprisonment, torture, and execution; negligently supervised their Guatemalan counterparts, re-suiting in Bamaca’s injury and death; and caused emotional distress to Harbury as a result of Bamaca’s injury and death. The District Court dismissed these claims under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1). Harbury now appeals; our review is de novo.
II
To explain the District Court’s decision and Harbury’s appeal, we begin with a brief overview of the Federal Tort Claims Act and the Westfall Act.
The Federal Tort Claims Act is a limited waiver of thе Government’s sovereign immunity. Under the FTCA, plaintiffs may sue the United States in federal court for state-law torts committed by government employees within the scope of their employment. 28 U.S.C. §§ 1346(b), 2671-80. But the FTCA does not create a statutory cause of action against individual government employees.
If a plaintiff files a state-law tort suit against an individual government employee, a companion statute — the Westfall Act — provides that the Attorney General may certify that the employee was acting within the scope of employment “at the time of the incident out of which the claim arose.” 28 U.S.C. § 2679(d)(1). Upon the Attorney General’s certification, the tort suit automatically converts to an FTCA “action against the United States” in federal court; the Government becomes the sole party defendant; and the FTCA’s requirements, exceptions, and defenses apply to the suit. Id. 1
*417 In many cases, the Attorney General’s certification begins and ends the scope-of-employment analysis. The Government takes over as the sole party defendant, and the suit proceeds under the FTCA. From the plaintiffs perspective, this can produce a net positive: Although the plaintiff must now litigate against the Federal Government, the original defendant — a potentially judgment-proof federal employee — has been replaced by the seemingly bottomless U.S. Treasury.
Plaintiffs do not always view certification so charitably, however. As mentioned earlier, the FTCA is a
limited,
waiver of sovereign immunity. The Act contains several exceptions — for example, it does not apply to claims for lost mail, suits in admirality, claims arising out of the military’s combatant activities during wartime, claims based on discretionary functions, or claims, that arise in foreign countries, among other exceptions.
See
28 U.S.C. § 2680. When one of the FTCA’s exceptions applies — that is, when the Government has
not
waived its sovereign immunity — the Attorney General’s scope-of-employment certification has the effect of converting the state-law tort suit into an FTCA case over which the federal courts lack subject-matter jurisdiction. In other words, the combination of the scope-of-employment determination and the FTCA’s exceptions may absolutely bar a plaintiffs case.
See United States v. Smith,
In such cases, to try to preserve their lawsuits, plaintiffs often contest the Attorney General’s scope-of-employment certification. Plaintiffs typically argue that the individual government employee defendants did
not
act within the scope of their employment and that the suits should therefore continue as state-law tort suits against the government officials in their personal capacities. Once a plaintiff advances this argument, courts consider the scope-of-employment issue essentially de novo based on the state law of the place where the employment relationship exists. If the court agrees with the Attorney General, the suit becomes an action against the United States that is governed by the FTCA. But if the court disagrees with the Attorney General’s determination, the state-law tort suit may proceed against the defendant government employee in his or her personal capacity.
See Gutierrez de Martinez v. Lamagno,
Harbury’s case followed this procedural course. Among other claims, Harbury brought common-law tort claims against the individual CIA Defendants. In March 2000, Attorney General Reno certified that the individual CIA Defendants had acted within the scope of their employment. The Attorney General’s certification removed the individual CIA Defendants from the tort action, substituted the United States as the sole party defendant, and rendered all of Harbury’s tort claims subject to the FTCA and its exceptions, including the foreign-country exception.
Harbury then challenged the Attorney General’s certification, arguing based on D.C. law that the individual CIA Defendants did not act within the scope of their employment. The District Court disagreed: It ruled that the FTCA applied to all of Harbury’s tort claims and held that it lacked subject-matter jurisdiction because the claims fell within the FTCA’s exception for claims “arising in a foreign country.” 28 U.S.C. § 2680(k);
see also Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain,
On appeal, Harbury argues that the individual CIA Defendants did not act within the scope of their employment under D.C. law because “acts of torture can never fall within the scope of employment.” Harbury Br. at 14. According to Harbury, Attorney General Reno and the District Court erred in certifying the аcts as within the individual CIA Defendants’ scope of employment, the FTCA therefore does not apply, and Harbury can maintain tort claims against the individual CIA Defendants in their personal capacities. To the extent the scope-of-employment certification was proper and Harbury’s claims are converted into FTCA claims against the United States, Harbury separately argues that at least some of the claimed injuries, such as her emotional distress, occurred in the United States, and that the FTCA’s foreign-country exception therefore does not bar those claims against the Government. 2
Ill
Pointing to recent cases from this Circuit, the Government contends that all of Harbury’s claims pose “political questions” that the federal courts may not consider.
The political question doctrine is an important tenet of separation of powers and judicial restraint. But the doctrine is notorious for its imprecision, and the Supreme Court has relied on it only occasionally. As Judge Bork explained a generation ago, “That the contours of the doctrine are murky and unsettled is shown by the lаck of consensus about its meaning among the members of the Supreme Court and among scholars.”
Tel-Oren v. Libyan Arab Republic,
The Supreme Court has held that the political question doctrine bars judicial resolution of certain issues textually and exclusively committed by the Constitution to one or both of the other branches of the Federal Government.
Baker v. Carr,
Although those first two factors— textual commitment and lack of judicially manageable standards — are the most important, the Court also considers others: “the impossibility of deciding without an initial policy determination of a kind clear
*419
ly for nonjudicial discretion”; “the impossibility of a court’s undertaking independent resolution without expressing lack of the respect due coordinate branches of government”; “an unusual need for unquestioning adherence to a political decision already made”; and “the potentiality of embarrassment from multifarious pronouncements by various departments on one question.”
Baker,
Although the contours of the political question doctrine may be uncertain, this Court has relied on the doctrine in three recent cases that are indistinguishable from this case and control our decision here.
In
Schneider v. Kissinger,
children of a deceased Chilean general brought tort claims against former U.S. officials.
This Court held that the case presented a nonjusticiable political question.
Id.
at 198. The Court explained that the suit challenged the merits of foreign policy decisions that the Constitution assigns to thе political branches.
Id.
at 195. The Court also found a lack of judicially discoverable and manageable standards regarding “the government’s use of covert operations in conjunction with political turmoil in another country.”
Id.
at 197. Citing
Baker,
the Court stated that it could not entertain the lawsuit without expressing a lack of respect for a coordinate branch of the Government.
Id.
at 197-98,
This Court again applied the political question doctrine in
Gonzalez-Vera v. Kissinger,
As in Schneider, the Gonzalez-Vera Court held that the plaintiffs’ claims posed a nonjusticiable political question. The plaintiffs attempted to distinguish their case from Schneider by arguing that they challenged “specific acts of torture” that occurred after the coup d’etat rather than the “Government’s policy decision to sup *420 port Pinochet’s rise to power.” Id. at 1263 (internal quotation marks omitted). But this Court found that evaluating “the legal validity of those measures would require us to delve into questions of policy textually committed to a coordinate branch of government.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). The Court also rejected the plaintiffs’ attempt to characterize the defendants’ actions as “ultra vires,” noting thаt Kissinger had acted within the authority delegated to him by the President. Id. at 1264.
The third of this Court’s cases that bears directly on the political question analysis is
Bancoult v. McNamara,
This Court concluded that the case presented a nonjusticiable political question because the “specific tactical measures allegedly taken” to depopulate Diego Garcia and build the base were “inextricably intertwined” with foreign policy questions— such as “the decision to establish a military base” and “the underlying strategy of establishing a regional military presence,” neither of which was reviewable. Id. at 436. The Bancoult Court rejected the plaintiffs’ efforts to distinguish between foreign policy and government officials’ implementation of that policy. Id. at 436-37. Even if the individual defendants’ “actions were not in conformance with presidential orders, the actions alleged were still closely enough connected to [their] employment to bring them within the ambit of the political question doctrine.” Id. at 437. The individual defendants acted in pursuit of an authorized goal — establishing a military base — and as “high-level executive officers,” they “inherently possessed a large measure of discretion in carrying out the tasks assigned to them by the President.” Id. at 438. The Court held that “when the political question doctrine bars suit against the United States, this constitutional constraint cannot be circumvented merely by bringing claims against the individuals who committed the acts in question within the scope of their employment.” Id.
Under our recent decisions in
Schneider, Gonzalez-Vera,
and
Bancoult,
the political question doctrine plainly applies to this case. In all three cases, as in Harbury’s case, the Attorney General certified that the defendants had acted within the scope of their employment.
See Schneider,
In sum, we find no remotely plausible basis to distinguish this case from Schneider, Gonzalez-Vera, and Bancoult. Therefore, under our prеcedents, we must dismiss Harbury’s claims based on the political question doctrine.
IV
A recent decision of this Court considered allegations similar to Harbury’s and did not rely on the political question doctrine.
See Rasul v. Myers,
In
Rasul,
former detainees at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, sued a former Secretary of Defense and several military officers in their personal capacities, alleging wrongful detention, physical abuse, and “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.”
In the Rasul litigation, the Government did not argue that the case was nonjusticiable under the political question doctrine. And this Court did not address that doctrine or our decisions in Schneider, Gonzalez-Vera, or Bancoult.
The
Rasul
Court instead considered the detainees’ challenge to the Attorney General’s scope-of-employment certification. Applying D.C. law, the Court held that the defendants’ alleged conduct fell within the scope of their employment because the alleged wrongful acts were “tied exclusively to the plaintiffs’ detention in a military prison and to the interrogations conducted
*422
therein.”
Under D.C. law as applied in
Rasul,
the individual CIA Defendants in this case similarly acted within the scope of their employment. Their jobs involved hiring and managing informants, conducting covert operations, and gathering intelligence.
See
50 U.S.C. §§ 403-4(b), 403-4a(d). In performing those responsibilities, they allegedly gathered information related to а decades-long civil war in Guatemala and worked with individuals in Guatemala who abused and killed Har-bury’s husband. Under D.C. law, those actions were incidental to their authorized conduct: The actions were “foreseeable” as a “direct outgrowth” of their responsibility to gather intelligence and were “undertaken on the [Government’s] behalf.”
Rasul,
Because the alleged actions of the individual CIA Defendants were within the scope of their employment, Harbury’s claims against the individual CIA Defendants are properly converted into claims against the Government under the FTCA. But Harbury’s FTCA claims against the Government fall squаrely within the
*423
FTCA’s exception for claims “arising in a foreign country.” 28 U.S.C. § 2680(k). In particular, Harbury’s claims on behalf of her husband’s estate arise in Guatemala because he suffered the alleged injuries there.
See Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain,
In sum, even apart from the political question doctrine, we lack subject-matter jurisdiction to consider Harbury’s tort claims because the FTCA applies and the claims fall within that statute’s foreign-country exception. 5
* * *
We affirm the District Court’s judgment dismissing Harbury’s suit.
So ordered.
Notes
. If the Attorney General does not certify that the defendant employee was acting within the scope of employment, the defendant may petition the court to make such a finding. If the court so finds, then the case becomes a federal-court FTCA case against the Government, just as if the Attorney General had filed a certification. 28 U.S.C. § 2679(d)(3)-(4). If the court finds that the government employee was not acting within the scope of employment, then the state-law tort suit may proceed against the government employee in his or her personal capacity.
. Unlike under the FTCA and the Westfall Act, no scope-of-employment certification process is available for
Bivens
claims against individual federal officials. But aliens such as Bama-ca who were injured outside the United States typically cannot bring such constitutional claims.
See United States
v.
Verdugo-Urqui-dez,
. In ail three cases, as in Harbury’s case, the Attorney General certified that the government officials had acted within the scope of their foreign policy or national security employment. In tort cases arising in the national security or foreign policy context — such as
Schneider, Gonzalez-Vera,
and
Bancoult
— the political question doctrine counsels strongly against judicial second-guessing of the Attorney General's certification for much the same reason that courts are cautious about entertaining the merits of the tort claims: Doing so would require courts to intrude deeply into the foreign policy and national security deci-sionmaking process of the Executive Branch.
See Christopher v. Harbury,
. At first blush, D.C. scope-of-employment law might seem counterintuitive. How could committing physical abuse, for example, be within the scope of an individual's employment? The explanation is straightforward: Many states and D.C. apply the scope-of-employment test very expansively, in part because doing so usually allows an injured tort plaintiff a chance to recovеr from a deep-pocket employer rather than a judgment-proof employee. See Restatement (Third) of Agency § 2.04 cmt. b (2006) (“Respondeat superior ... reflects the likelihood that an employer will be more likely to satisfy a judgment.”). The scope-of-employment test often is akin to asking whether the defendant merely was on duty or on the job when committing the alleged tort. Because of the broad scope-of-employment standard in many states and D.C., and because the FTCA and the Westfall Act incorporate the relevant state's test, tоrt claims against federal government employees often proceed against the Government itself under the FTCA rather than against the individual employees under state law.
. Harbury also argues that count 28 of her complaint raised a claim against the individual CIA Defendants under the Torture Victim Protection Act. As the District Court held, however, count 28 asserted only a common-law international tort claim that, like Har-bury’s other tort claims, was converted into an FTCA claim against the United States by the Attorney General’s proper scope-of-emplоyment certification.
See Harbury v. Hayden,
Apart from those defects, to state a TVPA claim, Harbury would still have to clear the hurdle of showing that the individual CIA Defendants — who are of course
American
officials — acted "under actual or apparent authority, or color of law, of any foreign nation.” 28 U.S.C. § 1350 note;
see also Arar v. Ashcroft,