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---
---
category: "Diplomacy"
tags:
- Event
- Diplomacy
category: "Diplomacy"
summary: "The Camp David Accords were the September 1978 framework agreements produced by thirteen days of secret negotiations between Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, facilitated by U.S. President Jimmy Carter at the presidential retreat in Maryland."
- CampDavidAccords
- EgyptIsraelPeaceTreaty
- JimmyCarter
- AnwarSadat
- MenachemBegin
- SinaiPeninsula
- MultinationalForceAndObservers
- USForeignAid
- CIA
alias:
- Camp David Accords
- Camp David summit
- Camp David
- Camp David Agreements
- Camp David Peace Treaty
- Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty
- Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty
summary: "Two framework agreements signed September 17, 1978 after thirteen days at Camp David between Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin with Jimmy Carter mediating, followed by the 1979 Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty and its U.S. aid commitments."
start: 1978-09-05
end: 1978-09-17
location: "Camp David, Maryland"
location: "Camp David, Maryland; Washington, D.C."
relations:
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Jimmy Carter]]"
reverse: true
start: 1978-09-05
end: 1978-09-17
role: "mediator and witness to the signed frameworks"
fn: 1
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Anwar Sadat]]"
reverse: true
start: 1978-09-05
end: 1978-09-17
role: "president of Egypt and signatory"
fn: 1
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Menachem Begin]]"
reverse: true
start: 1978-09-05
end: 1978-09-17
role: "prime minister of Israel and signatory"
fn: 1
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Cyrus Vance]]"
reverse: true
start: 1978-09-05
end: 1978-09-17
role: "U.S. secretary of state, head of the delegation's expert group"
fn: 9
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Moshe Dayan]]"
reverse: true
start: 1978-09-16
end: 1978-09-17
role: "Israeli foreign minister"
fn: 11
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Ezer Weizman]]"
reverse: true
start: 1978-09-17
end: 1978-09-17
role: "Israeli defense minister"
fn: 11
created: 2026-05-14
updated: 2026-05-17
updated: 2026-10-01
---
The Camp David Accords were the product of secret negotiations held September 5-17, 1978, between Egyptian President [[Anwar Sadat]] and Israeli Prime Minister [[Menachem Begin]], brokered by U.S. President [[Jimmy Carter]] at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland. The thirteen-day summit ended with two framework agreements signed on September 17, 1978: "A Framework for Peace in the [[Middle East]]" and "A Framework for the Conclusion of a Peace Treaty Between Egypt and Israel."[^1]
The Camp David Accords are two framework agreements, "A Framework for Peace in the [[Middle East]]" and "A Framework for the Conclusion of a Peace Treaty Between Egypt and Israel," signed at the [[White House]] on September 17, 1978 by Egyptian President [[Anwar Sadat]] and Israeli Prime Minister [[Menachem Begin]], with U.S. President [[Jimmy Carter]] signing as witness, after thirteen days of negotiation at Camp David, Maryland, that began on September 5.[^1] The second framework led to the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty, signed on March 26, 1979.[^2] The [[State Department]] historian describes the later talks on Palestinian autonomy that followed the treaty as "ultimately inconclusive."[^3] The Nobel Peace Prize for 1978 was awarded jointly to Sadat and Begin "for jointly having negotiated peace between Egypt and Israel in 1978."[^4] After the 1979 treaty most Arab countries ostracized Egypt and expelled it from the [[Arab League]], and the [[Palestine Liberation Organization]] rejected the accords. The 1993 [[Oslo Accords]] between Israel and the PLO provided for a transitional period, an elected self-governing Palestinian authority and negotiations on final status.[^5]
The first framework established principles for Palestinian autonomy in the West Bank and Gaza and committed Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and Palestinian representatives to negotiate an agreement within five years. That broader framework produced no subsequent treaty. The second led directly to the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty, signed on March 26, 1979 - the first peace agreement between Israel and any of its Arab neighbors.[^1]
### Preparations and the Intelligence Briefing
Sadat and Begin shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1978 for the agreements. Sadat's willingness to negotiate was deeply controversial within the Arab world; Egypt was expelled from the Arab League following the 1979 treaty and not readmitted until 1989. Sadat was assassinated in October 1981 by Egyptian Islamic Jihad militants who opposed normalization with Israel.[^2]
Carter decided on July 30, 1978 to call a summit, after talks at Leeds Castle earlier that month had been inconclusive; the White House announced the meeting on August 8.[^2][^3] On August 21, [[Director of Central Intelligence]] [[Stansfield Turner]] sent [[Zbigniew Brzezinski]] a [[Central Intelligence Agency]] report, described as a raw report not finally evaluated, on Sadat's expectations for the summit. According to the report, Sadat hoped for two achievements: a publicly announced agreement on principles based on [[United Nations Security Council Resolution 242]] together with an agreement on the Palestinian question based on the Aswan Formula Carter had announced in January 1978, and a precisely written secret agreement on a framework for a settlement, to be signed by Sadat and Begin and witnessed by Carter. The report stated that Sadat wanted Carter's witnessing signature to prevent either party from later misinterpreting the understanding, and that Sadat had "lost the trust and confidence" he had in Begin. The copy printed in the State Department's documentary series carries a handwritten notation, "Outside the System. Bill Quandt," referring to the [[National Security Council]] staff member [[William B. Quandt]].[^6]
The Camp David negotiations had significant intelligence dimensions. [[Kamal Adham]], former director of Saudi intelligence, served as a back-channel intermediary facilitating Saudi acceptance of the framework. Some American intelligence officials suspected that Carter's decision to provide [[Israel]] with KH-11 reconnaissance satellite imagery constituted a reward for Begin's flexibility at the summit.[^3]
On August 26, 1978 Ambassador [[Hermann Eilts]] met Sadat and Vice President [[Hosni Mubarak]] at Ismailia. In the course of that meeting, as Eilts recorded it, Sadat said that the Israelis, who took nineteen days to defeat the Egyptians in October 1973, "would not have been able to do so if the U.S. satellite photography had not been furnished to the Israelis," and that the photography had revealed his 25th Division preparing to cross the Canal.[^7]
The Accords were frequently cited as a model for subsequent Arab-Israeli diplomacy, including the Oslo process of the 1990s.
During the same month Carter, visiting the CIA, interrupted a briefing to ask how the agency could help before the summit, saying that he wanted to be "steeped in the personalities of Begin and Sadat." Three CIA components were tasked: the Office of Regional and Political Analysis with political profiles, the Office of Central Reference with biographic profiles, and the Center for the Analysis of Personality and Political Behavior, which updated studies of Sadat and Begin first produced in 1977. The Center's updated profile of Begin "called attention to the increasing trend of oppositionism and rigidity in his personality"; its updated profile of Sadat was entitled "Sadat's Nobel Prize Complex" and "stressed his increasing preoccupation with his role in history and the leverage this could provide in negotiations." A third paper addressed the contrasting intellectual styles of the two men. The Center's founder, [[Jerrold Post]], wrote in the agency's journal *Studies in Intelligence* in 1979 that Carter afterwards told the agency: "After spending 13 days with the two principals, I wouldn't change a word." Carter's own diary entry for September 4 records that he spent the day before the summit studying "psychological assessments of Begin and Sadat."[^8]
### The Summit Record
The U.S. delegation worked in two groups. The political group consisted of Carter, Brzezinski, Secretary of State [[Cyrus Vance]], press secretary [[Jody Powell]], adviser [[Hamilton Jordan]] and, occasionally, Vice President [[Walter Mondale]] and Secretary of Defense [[Harold Brown]]. The expert group, directed by Vance, consisted of Assistant Secretary of State [[Harold H. Saunders]], Ambassador-at-Large [[Alfred L. Atherton Jr.]], Eilts, Ambassador [[Samuel W. Lewis]] and Quandt.[^9]
The State Department's historians reported that, according to members of the U.S. delegation, no written memoranda of conversation were kept of Carter's discussions with Begin and Sadat, and that none of the delegation's internal discussions have been found. Carter kept his own notes and held debriefings with his staff. The unedited version of Carter's diary is held privately by the Carter Center, and the department's request for access to it was denied. Brown and Brzezinski gave historians access to significant portions of their papers at the [[Library of Congress]], both of which were closed to the public when the volume was published in 2014; Brzezinski denied access to his personal journals.[^10]
The State Department's milestones history states that U.S. experts produced a draft treaty text that served as the basis of negotiation and was revised numerous times, and that the trilateral format became impossible to sustain, after which Carter and Vance met the Egyptian and Israeli delegations individually for twelve days.[^3] Carter wrote in a note dated September 20 that on the night of September 16 he, Vance, Begin, Foreign Minister [[Moshe Dayan]] and the Israeli legal adviser [[Aharon Barak]] agreed the wording on new settlements in the [[West Bank]] and Gaza: "After the signing of this framework and during the negotiations, no new Israeli settlements will be established in this area. The issue of future Israeli settlements will be decided and agreed among the negotiating parties." On September 17 Barak brought Carter a text from Begin that differed from it, and Carter told him it was unsatisfactory.[^11]
### The Frameworks and the Side Letters
The first framework, citing Resolution 242 "in all its parts," provided that Egypt, Israel, Jordan and representatives of the Palestinian people would negotiate on the West Bank and Gaza in three stages: transitional arrangements for a period not exceeding five years under an elected self-governing authority, negotiations on final status beginning no later than the third year of that period, and an Israel-Jordan peace treaty by the end of it. The second framework set a three-month goal for an Egypt-Israel treaty, full Egyptian sovereignty to the international border, Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai within two to three years of signing, civilian use of the airfields near [[Al-Arish]], Rafah, Ras en-Naqb and Sharm el-Sheikh, and limits on forces in zones on both sides of the border.[^12]
Nine letters accompanied the frameworks: Begin's undertaking to submit the Sinai settlements question to the [[Knesset]]; Sadat's letters on the Sinai settlements, on Jerusalem, and on Egypt's readiness to "assume the Arab role" for the West Bank and Gaza provisions; Begin's letter on Jerusalem; Carter's letters of transmittal and acknowledgment, including his acknowledgment that Begin understood "Palestinians" to mean "Palestinian Arabs" and "West Bank" to mean "Judea and Samaria." A tenth letter, from Secretary of Defense Brown to Israeli Defense Minister [[Ezer Weizman]], agreed on September 28, committed the [[United States]] to consult with Israel on assistance for relocating the Israeli airbases at Eitam and Etzion in the Sinai to the Negev. Egyptian Foreign Minister [[Muhammad Ibrahim Kamel]] resigned after the signing ceremony, and [[Boutros Boutros-Ghali]] replaced him on an interim basis. The Knesset approved the agreements on September 28 by 84 to 19, and Commerce and Industry Minister [[Yigael Hurvitz]] resigned in protest.[^12]
### The Saudi Channel
The documentary series records [[Kamal Adham]], adviser to the Saudi royal family and chief of the Saudi intelligence secretariat, at several points around the summit. Vance's August 11, 1977 report to Carter and Brzezinski from the aircraft carrying him, on his stop in Amman to see [[King Hussein]], records that "Adham also said there had been some progress on acceptance of Resolution 242 by the PLO."[^13] After the summit, Saunders held meetings with Adham, [[Prince Turki bin Faisal]] and others in [[Jidda]] on October 18 and 19, 1978; on October 20 he told Begin that he had spoken with Crown Prince [[Fahd bin Abdulaziz]], Prince Saud, Adham and Turki, and that "I had found the task of selling the CDA difficult."[^14]
A February 16, 1980 telegram from the U.S. Embassy in Jidda reported that Fahd had asked the ambassador to tell Carter that Saudi restraint toward Egyptian press attacks on the royal family was wearing out. The ambassador commented that Saudi replies would probably include revelations that Mrs. Sadat "was involved with the Arab arms industry" ("It was rumored that she held a ten percent interest therein"), that Fahd had referred to information furnished by Ashraf Marwan, "the now deposed head of Arab arms," and that the "Saudi principal in this venture was Kamal Adham, now out of favor here."[^15]
### Treaty Negotiations and the Aid Commitments
Negotiation of the treaty began at Blair House in October 1978, reached a deadlock that Vance's visits could not break, and was concluded after Carter travelled to Israel and Egypt in March 1979.[^10] The financing of the commitments to both governments is documented in a series of March 1979 memoranda. On March 14 Brown reported to Carter that in discussions with Egyptian Minister of Defense Kamal Ali and Weizman he had described, for Egypt, United States financing of $1.0 to $1.5 billion over three years, and for Israel, $2.0 to $2.5 billion over three years in addition to the existing annual $1.785 billion, including help relocating the Sinai airbases, subject to congressional approval.[^16] On March 19 Quandt reported that Brown and Weizman had agreed on $3 billion over three years, of which $800 million would be cash grants and the remainder foreign military sales credits on ten years' grace and twenty years' repayment.[^17] On March 20 Quandt wrote that the United States was committed to sell equipment and services worth $4.5 billion to Israel and Egypt, that if present terms were maintained "the U.S. Treasury will be hit for only $1.1 billion of that amount," and that "the total of resources (goods and services) which we will transfer to Egypt and Israel over the next three years will be almost $13 billion, of which over $3.5 billion will be financed directly by the U.S. taxpayer."[^18] On March 21 Brzezinski wrote Carter that the Egyptian proposal was "extremely lopsided in Israel's favor" and recommended credits for the full $1.5 billion; Carter approved that option.[^19] Brown's letter to Ali of March 23 pledged a recommendation to Congress of $1.5 billion in military equipment and services over three years, with up to $500 million annually in credits at current interest rates, and attached a list that included twelve improved HAWK batteries, 800 M113 armored personnel carriers and four destroyers.[^20]
At a meeting with Carter on March 26, 1979, the day of the signing, Begin asked that the $800 million grant and $2.2 billion loan ratio of the Israeli package be changed to 50-50 "as a personal gift to his wife." The record states that Carter said he could not offer any encouragement. In the same meeting Carter asked whether Sadat had agreed to return the oil sector in seven months in return for an uninterrupted flow to Israel, and Begin confirmed it.[^21] A draft Memorandum of Agreement between the United States and Israel, annotated by Carter, with a final version dated March 26, provided that the United States "will provide support it deems appropriate" for Israeli responses to treaty violations and "will oppose and, if necessary, vote against any action or resolution in the [[United Nations]] which in its judgement adversely affects the Treaty of Peace."[^22]
The Congressional Research Service reports that since 1946 the United States has provided Egypt more than $90 billion in bilateral aid, with military and economic assistance increasing significantly after the 1979 treaty, and that the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2026 provides Egypt $1.5 billion in total aid. It reports that Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign assistance since [[World War II]], with $174 billion in bilateral assistance and missile defense funding.[^23]
### The Treaty Text, Sinai Observation and the Multinational Force
The Treaty of Peace, signed on March 26, 1979 with Carter as witness, provided in Article IV and Annex I that the parties would request United Nations forces and observers and would not request their withdrawal unless the Security Council approved with the affirmative votes of the five permanent members. Its appendix to Annex I requested that the United States continue airborne surveillance flights over the limited-forces zones "in accordance with previous agreements," and that the United States-operated Sinai Field Mission continue until Israel completed its withdrawal from the area east of the Giddi and Mitla Passes. The agreed minutes to Annex III provided for normal commercial sales of Egyptian oil to Israel, with Israel entitled to bid for Egyptian oil not needed for domestic consumption.[^24]
The Multinational Force and Observers history states that on May 18, 1981 the President of the Security Council announced that the United Nations would not provide the force, that Egypt, Israel and the United States then negotiated a Protocol establishing an organization outside the United Nations, signed August 3, 1981, and that the organization is funded in equal parts by Egypt, Israel and the United States. It also states that in 1979, after the mandate of the United Nations Emergency Force II expired, the existing U.S. Sinai Field Mission took on certain of the treaty's verification functions.[^25] [[Public Law 97-132]], signed on December 29, 1981, authorized U.S. participation; under 22 U.S.C. 3423 the United States share could not exceed 60 percent of the budget for establishment and initial operation through September 30, 1982 and 33 and one third percent of annual operating expenses afterwards.[^26]
### The KH-11 Agreement
[[Seymour Hersh]] wrote in 1991 that in March 1979 Carter decided to give Israel access to [[KH-11]] satellite photographs covering troop movements or other threatening activities up to one hundred miles inside Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and Jordan, that the decision disrupted the satellite's scheduling and left some American intelligence agencies with less access, and that "some American intelligence officials" suspected it was a reward for Begin's conduct at Camp David. Hersh also wrote that the Israelis regarded the agreement as inevitable because of what they saw as the CIA's failure to anticipate Soviet pressure on Afghanistan and the upheavals in Iran, and not because of the success of Camp David. Hersh attributed the account of the unpopularity of the decision to a former official of the [[National Security Agency]].[^27]
### Footnotes
[^1]: "Camp David Accords," *Encyclopaedia Britannica.* https://www.britannica.com/event/Camp-David-Accords
[^2]: "Anwar Sadat," Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_Sadat
[^3]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy.* Random House, 1991. Chapter 1.
[^1]: U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977-1980, Volume IX, Arab-Israeli Dispute, August 1978-December 1980, ed. Alexander R. Wieland (Washington: Government Printing Office), Document 51, Editorial Note, pp. 193-195 (signing ceremony in the East Room, September 17, 1978; frameworks signed). Text of the frameworks: "Camp David Accords; September 17, 1978," Avalon Project, Yale Law School. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1977-80v09 ; https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/campdav.asp
[^2]: U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian, "Camp David Accords and the Arab-Israeli Peace Process," Milestones 1977-1980 (retired page). https://history.state.gov/milestones/1977-1980/camp-david
[^3]: U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977-1980, Volume IX, Preface, pp. VII-X (describing the post-treaty autonomy talks as "(ultimately inconclusive)"; the Leeds Castle talks; the August 8, 1978 acceptances). https://static.history.state.gov/frus/frus1977-80v09/pdf/frus1977-80v09.pdf ; milestones page cited at note 2 (July 30 decision; draft treaty text; trilateral format).
[^4]: "The Nobel Peace Prize 1978," NobelPrize.org. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1978/summary/
[^5]: Jimmy Carter, "Camp David Accords," *Encyclopaedia Britannica*, sections "A framework for peace" (entry updated September 10, 2026). https://www.britannica.com/event/Camp-David-Accords
[^6]: Memorandum from Director of Central Intelligence Turner to the President's Assistant for National Security Affairs (Brzezinski), August 21, 1978, with attached CIA report, "Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat's Perceptions of the Camp David Summit as of 18 August 1978," Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977-1980, Volume IX, Document 14, pp. 37-38 (Carter Library, National Security Affairs, Staff Material, Middle East, Subject File, Box 9). https://static.history.state.gov/frus/frus1977-80v09/pdf/frus1977-80v09.pdf
[^7]: Memorandum of conversation, Ismailia, August 26, 1978, "Meeting with President Sadat re Camp David," Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977-1980, Volume IX, Document 16, pp. 44-45. https://static.history.state.gov/frus/frus1977-80v09/pdf/frus1977-80v09.pdf
[^8]: Jerrold Post, "Personality Profiles in Support of the Camp David Summit," *Studies in Intelligence* 23, no. 2 (Summer 1979), pp. 1-5 (CIA Reading Room, CIA-RDP80-00630A000100070001-2, approved for release March 5, 2008; text read in the Internet Archive mirror). https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp80-00630a000100070001-2 ; Editorial Note, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977-1980, Volume IX, Document 26, pp. 78-79 (quoting Carter, White House Diary, p. 216).
[^9]: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977-1980, Volume IX, Document 26, Editorial Note, p. 79 (quoting Vance, Hard Choices, pp. 218-219). https://static.history.state.gov/frus/frus1977-80v09/pdf/frus1977-80v09.pdf
[^10]: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977-1980, Volume IX, Preface, pp. VIII-X; Document 26, Editorial Note, pp. 79-80 ("No memoranda of conversation or official records of the substance of these conversations ... have been found"). https://static.history.state.gov/frus/frus1977-80v09/pdf/frus1977-80v09.pdf
[^11]: "Note Prepared by President Carter," undated (signed September 20, 1978), "Settlements in West Bank and Gaza," Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977-1980, Volume IX, Document 50, pp. 192-193 (Carter Library, Brzezinski Material, Country File, Box 53). https://static.history.state.gov/frus/frus1977-80v09/pdf/frus1977-80v09.pdf
[^12]: "Camp David Accords; September 17, 1978," Avalon Project (texts of both frameworks); Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977-1980, Volume IX, Document 51, Editorial Note, pp. 193-195 (list of nine letters, the September 28 Brown-Weizman letter, the Kamel resignation, the 84 to 19 Knesset vote, the Hurvitz resignation), and Document 50, p. 192 n. 2 (September 16 meeting with Begin, Dayan and Barak). https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/campdav.asp
[^13]: Telegram Secto 8152 from Secretary of State Vance to the Department of State, August 11, 1977, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977-1980, Volume VIII, Arab-Israeli Dispute, January 1977-August 1978, Document 88, pp. 467-468. https://static.history.state.gov/frus/frus1977-80v08/pdf/frus1977-80v08.pdf
[^14]: Telegram 7455 from the Embassy in Saudi Arabia, October 18, 1978, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977-1980, Volume IX, Document 86, n. 4 (Saunders's meetings of October 18 and 19 with Kamel, Adham and Turki and with Saud, Turki, Adham and others); Telegram 2886 from the Consulate General in Jerusalem, October 21, 1978, "October 20 Meeting With Prime Minister Begin," Document 91, para. 5. https://static.history.state.gov/frus/frus1977-80v09/pdf/frus1977-80v09.pdf
[^15]: Telegram 1078 from the Embassy in Saudi Arabia to the Department of State, February 16, 1980, "Fahd Threatens Retaliation for Renewed Egyptian Media Attacks," Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977-1980, Volume IX, Document 336, pp. 1088-1090, paras. 5 and 9 (Carter Library, Brzezinski Material, Country File, Box 68). https://static.history.state.gov/frus/frus1977-80v09/pdf/frus1977-80v09.pdf
[^16]: Memorandum from Secretary of Defense Brown to President Carter, March 14, 1979, "Supply of Arms to Egypt and Israel in Connection with the Peace Treaty," Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977-1980, Volume IX, Document 206, pp. 729-730. https://static.history.state.gov/frus/frus1977-80v09/pdf/frus1977-80v09.pdf
[^17]: Memorandum from William B. Quandt to Brzezinski, March 19, 1979, "U.S.-Israeli Agreement on Military Issues," Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977-1980, Volume IX, Document 223, p. 781. https://static.history.state.gov/frus/frus1977-80v09/pdf/frus1977-80v09.pdf
[^18]: Memorandum from William B. Quandt to Brzezinski, March 20, 1979, "U.S.-Egyptian Military Assistance Agreement," Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977-1980, Volume IX, Document 220, pp. 777-778. https://static.history.state.gov/frus/frus1977-80v09/pdf/frus1977-80v09.pdf
[^19]: Memorandum from Brzezinski to President Carter, March 21, 1979, "Credits for Egypt," Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977-1980, Volume IX, Document 222, pp. 780-781 (n. 3: "Carter approved this option and initialed 'J.'"). https://static.history.state.gov/frus/frus1977-80v09/pdf/frus1977-80v09.pdf
[^20]: Telegram 72667 from the Department of State to the Embassy in Egypt, March 23, 1979, "Brown-Ali Letter," Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977-1980, Volume IX, Document 224, pp. 783-784. https://static.history.state.gov/frus/frus1977-80v09/pdf/frus1977-80v09.pdf
[^21]: Memorandum of conversation, Washington, March 26, 1979, 11:08 to 11:50 a.m. (President, Vance, Brzezinski; Begin, Dayan), Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977-1980, Volume IX, Document 229, p. 793 (Carter Library, National Security Affairs, Staff Material, Office, Outside the System File, Box 66). https://static.history.state.gov/frus/frus1977-80v09/pdf/frus1977-80v09.pdf
[^22]: Draft Memorandum of Agreement between the Governments of the United States of America and the State of Israel, undated, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977-1980, Volume IX, Document 226, pp. 786-788 (Carter annotation "My suggestions. JC."; final version dated March 26, 1979 printed in Dayan, Breakthrough, pp. 356-357). https://static.history.state.gov/frus/frus1977-80v09/pdf/frus1977-80v09.pdf
[^23]: Jeremy M. Sharp, *Egypt: Background and U.S. Relations*, Congressional Research Service report RL33003, updated February 25, 2026; Jeremy M. Sharp, *U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel: Overview and Developments since October 7, 2023*, CRS report RL33222, updated May 28, 2025. https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/RL33003.html ; https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/RL33222.html
[^24]: "Treaty of Peace Between Israel and Egypt, March 26, 1979," Articles IV and V, Annex I (Article VI; Appendix, Article VII), and the agreed minutes to Annex III, Avalon Project, Yale Law School (United Nations Treaty Series vol. 1136, no. 17813). https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/isregypt.asp
[^25]: Multinational Force and Observers, "Origins," including "Pre-Treaty: July '79" and "1979 to 1981." https://www.mfo.org/origins
[^26]: Multinational Force and Observers Participation Resolution, Public Law 97-132, 95 Stat. 1693 (December 29, 1981), text of S.J. Res. 100, 97th Cong. https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/97/sjres100/text ; 22 U.S.C. 3423, "United States contributions to costs." https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/22/3423
[^27]: Seymour M. Hersh, *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy* (New York: Random House, 1991), chapter 1, "A Secret Agreement," pp. 3-7 (text read in the Internet Archive scan, item Sampson_Option). https://archive.org/details/Sampson_Option

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---
category: "Diplomacy"
tags:
- Event
- Diplomacy
- OsloAccords
- OsloChannel
- Fafo
- Norway
- PalestineLiberationOrganization
- PalestinianAuthority
- InternationalPeaceInstitute
- JeffreyEpstein
alias:
- Oslo Accords
- Oslo Accord
- Oslo I
- Oslo II
- Oslo process
- Oslo channel
- Oslo Peace Process
- Declaration of Principles
- Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements
- Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement
summary: "Israel and the PLO exchanged recognition and signed a Declaration of Principles on September 13, 1993 after secret talks in Norway run through Fafo, followed by the 1995 Interim Agreement and Norwegian inquiries."
start: 1993-09-13
end: 1995-09-28
location: "Oslo, Norway; Washington, D.C."
relations:
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Terje Rød-Larsen]]"
reverse: true
role: "director of Fafo and Norwegian facilitator of the Oslo channel"
fn: 2
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Mona Juul]]"
reverse: true
role: "head of the Norwegian foreign ministry's Middle East office and facilitator"
fn: 2
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Jan Egeland]]"
reverse: true
role: "Norwegian state secretary and facilitator"
fn: 2
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Johan Jørgen Holst]]"
reverse: true
role: "Norwegian foreign minister"
fn: 2
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Mahmoud Abbas]]"
reverse: true
start: 1993-09-13
end: 1993-09-13
role: "signatory for the PLO"
fn: 3
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Shimon Peres]]"
reverse: true
start: 1993-09-13
end: 1993-09-13
role: "signatory for Israel"
fn: 3
created: 2026-10-01
updated: 2026-10-01
---
The Oslo Accords are two agreements between [[Israel]] and the [[Palestine Liberation Organization]]. The first, the Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements, was signed at the [[White House]] on September 13, 1993; the second, the Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, was signed in Washington on September 28, 1995. The negotiations that produced the first were held in secret in [[Norway]] through a channel run by the director of the Norwegian research institute [[Fafo]], [[Terje Rød-Larsen]], and by [[Mona Juul]] of the Norwegian foreign ministry.[^1][^2][^3]
### The Fafo Survey and the Norwegian Foreign Ministry
Fafo's Palestinian project began as a living-conditions survey. In his preface to the survey report, dated Oslo, May 1993, Rød-Larsen wrote that its history went back five years to Cairo, where he lived in 1989, and that the chairman of the Palestinian Red Crescent, Dr. Fathi Arafat, and the director of the Palestinian hospital in Cairo, Dr. Khalid Shbaeb, had suggested that Fafo conduct a socioeconomic study of the occupied territories. He wrote that the Norwegian foreign ministry "fully concurred," that the then deputy minister [[Knut Vollebæk]] and the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation ([[NORAD]]) provided financial support to design the project and run a pilot survey, that in 1990 funding for the full project was assured from the foreign ministry, "who would foot most of the bill," and that the [[Ford Foundation]] later supplied additional funding to cover local costs. He wrote that he had urged, "with the consent of both Palestinian and Israeli leaders," that the survey be strongly policy oriented, and thanked Deputy Minister [[Jan Egeland]], who "enthusiastically accompanied us on visits in the field." Fieldwork was carried out in June, July and August 1992. The report, Fafo report 151, *Palestinian Society in Gaza, West Bank and Arab Jerusalem*, was authored by [[Marianne Heiberg]], Geir Ovensen and others, and the project was led by Heiberg.[^4]
The introduction to the report observed that the Norwegian government, which funded the survey, provided millions of dollars each year in humanitarian and development assistance to Palestinian society.[^4] The Norwegian encyclopedia *Store norske leksikon* states that Rød-Larsen established Fafo in 1982 as the Trade Union Movement's Center for Research, Evaluation and Documentation and led it until 1993, and that during the Oslo process the institute's survey served as a platform for contacts between Israelis and Palestinians that Rød-Larsen used in the secret negotiations.[^2]
### The Channel and the Signing
The [[State Department]]'s historical office states that U.S. officials were briefed on secret negotiations that the Israelis and Palestinians began in Oslo in December 1992 but made little effort to become involved in them, and that the administration of President [[Bill Clinton]] "played a limited role in bringing the Oslo Accord into being."[^5] According to *Store norske leksikon*, the Norwegian figures in the channel were State Secretary Jan Egeland, Mona Juul, Rød-Larsen, and the foreign ministers [[Thorvald Stoltenberg]] and [[Johan Jørgen Holst]]; Juul headed the ministry's [[Middle East]] office. The same source states that the agreement was first signed in secret in Oslo on August 20, 1993, at Parkveien 45, with Holst at the table, [[Uri Savir]] leading the Israeli side and [[Ahmed Qurei]] the Palestinian side, and that the final wording of the letters of mutual recognition was agreed shortly before the public ceremony. It was signed on September 13 by [[Mahmoud Abbas]] for the PLO and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres for Israel, in the presence of [[Yasser Arafat]], Prime Minister [[Yitzhak Rabin]] and Clinton.[^2][^3] The 1995 agreement recites the letters of September 9, 1993 exchanged between the Prime Minister of Israel and the Chairman of the PLO.[^6]
### The Declaration of Principles
The Declaration provided for direct elections to a Palestinian Council for the [[West Bank]] and [[Gaza Strip]] no later than nine months after it entered into force, a five-year transitional period beginning with Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and the [[Jericho]] area, and permanent status negotiations to begin no later than the third year of the interim period, covering "Jerusalem, refugees, settlements, security arrangements, border, relations and cooperation with their neighbors." It established an Israeli-Palestinian Economic Cooperation Committee, treated the multilateral working groups as an instrument for a "[[Marshall Plan]]" for the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and was to enter into force one month after signing.[^1]
### The Donor Conference, the Holst Fund and the United Nations Special Coordinator
On October 1, 1993, more than forty donor countries and institutions met at the Washington Conference to Support Middle East Peace, hosted by the [[United States]], and pledged about $2.4 billion to be disbursed over the five-year transitional period. The Ad Hoc Liaison Committee for assistance to the Palestinians was established in the context of that conference, and Norway chairs it. In June 1994 Secretary-General [[Boutros Boutros-Ghali]] appointed Rød-Larsen [[United Nations]] Special Coordinator in the Occupied Territories; [[Chinmaya Gharekhan]] succeeded him in February 1997.[^7]
A July 1996 report of the Office of the Special Coordinator on donor-funded activities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip contains a table of pledges and payments to the Holst Fund, which the report names with the European Union as one of two major examples of support for recurrent costs of the [[Palestinian Authority]], and which it separately credits with funding 25 million dollars of public sector emergency employment projects. The table lists total pledges from, among others, Norway (17.75 million dollars), Kuwait (21 million), Japan (11.5 million) and Israel (10.5 million). The [[World Bank]] and the European Union are thanked in the report for clarifying the figures.[^8]
### The Interim Agreement of 1995
The Interim Agreement was signed in Washington on September 28, 1995 by the Government of Israel and the PLO and witnessed by the United States, the Russian Federation, Egypt, Jordan, Norway and the European Union.[^9] It defined Area A (populated areas, with the Council assuming internal security and public order), Area B (populated areas and listed hamlets) and Area C (the remainder of the West Bank, to be transferred gradually except for permanent status issues). Annex I limited the Palestinian Police to 30,000 in all branches in the interim period, up to 12,000 in the West Bank and up to 18,000 in the Gaza Strip, with the numbers changeable by agreement, and listed Norway among the countries whose observer delegations would be present at the Palestinian elections.[^6] *Store norske leksikon* states that the elections were held in 1996, that the Likud victory that year and the outbreak of the Second Intifada in 2000 are each regarded by some as the end of the Oslo process, and that the 1994 Hebron massacre was an instance of militant opposition to the agreement.[^2]
### Norwegian Foreign Ministry Grants to the International Peace Institute
Rød-Larsen was president of the [[International Peace Institute]] (IPI) in New York from January 2005 to October 2020.[^10] The Office of the Auditor General of Norway ([[Riksrevisjonen]]) investigated the foreign ministry's grants to the institute for 2007 to 2012. According to the report as summarized in the Storting's control committee recommendation (Innst. 167 S, 2021 to 2022), the ministry paid 130.6 million kroner to IPI and its predecessor from 1997 to 2018 and none after 2018; the ministry and IPI concluded two three-year framework agreements in the period under review, at 11 million kroner a year for 2007 to 2009 and 8 million kroner a year for 2010 to 2012. The auditor general concluded that there were considerable weaknesses in the ministry's case handling, control and follow-up, that the ministry had not followed up missing project plans, budgets, reports and accounts from IPI, and that it was open to criticism for failing to ensure that conflict-of-interest assessments were carried out. The auditor general obtained no further information from IPI.[^10]
The committee recommendation quotes the report on the ministry's legal department's assessment of April 13, 2012, which considered the possible disqualification of the then director general (ekspedisjonssjef) Geir O. Pedersen, the then director general Mona Juul, Foreign Minister [[Jonas Gahr Støre]] and the political leadership in matters concerning IPI. A Progress Party member of the committee, quoting the report, stated that about 47.1 million kroner was processed and paid to IPI during Pedersen's term, that Rød-Larsen communicated directly with Pedersen on several occasions, and that Pedersen was a member of IPI's International Advisory Council. The report quotes the legal department as stating that Juul and her department should neither prepare nor decide matters concerning IPI, her spouse being its head. On April 17, 2012 Pedersen's section advised Støre to support the establishment of IPI as an international organization; Støre declared himself not disqualified, according to the report, on the ground that "he knew Rød-Larsen solely through sporadic contact in a work context, that they were not friends, and that they had never met privately or at each other's homes." The same member added that Rød-Larsen had been planning minister in the government of [[Thorbjørn Jagland]] and that his ties to the labour movement and the [[Norwegian Labour Party]] were well known, and proposed that the Storting ask the government to consider whether foreign ministry employees had breached criminal provisions; the Progress Party and the Red Party also proposed that the Storting ask the auditor general to audit the grants for 2012 to 2018. The committee recommendation is dated February 15, 2022.[^10]
### The Epstein Donations and the 2020 Reviews
The 2017 Form 990 of IPI reports total revenue of 8,704,582 dollars, of which 6,003,286 dollars was government grants, and lists Rød-Larsen as president, 35 hours a week, with reportable compensation from the organization of 517,980 dollars and other compensation of 37,624 dollars.[^11]
The IPI board accepted Rød-Larsen's resignation on October 29, 2020 and at the same meeting decided to commission the accounting firm KPMG. The board stated that its concerns included donations Rød-Larsen accepted from Epstein-affiliated foundations, "a short-term loan from Epstein to Mr. Rød-Larsen personally," and whether IPI was involved in other transactions; it stated that on December 4, 2019 it had directed that an amount equal to all Epstein-related donations be given to programs for victims of human trafficking and sexual assault.[^12] The probity review states that the board first became aware of the donations in late 2019.[^13] KPMG's report of December 18, 2020 analyzed IPI's records from January 2010 to October 2020 against a list of 56 entities affiliated with [[Jeffrey Epstein]] and identified five donations totaling 650,000 dollars:
- October 11, 2011: [[Jeffrey Epstein VI Foundation|Enhanced Education]], 125,000 dollars, ledger description "Enhanced Education funding for WK Rick Hooper fellowship."
- May 8, 2017: [[Gratitude America]], 150,000 dollars, "Reimbursement of tickets to the Oslo Play."
- June 12, 2017: Gratitude America, 125,000 dollars.
- November 1, 2017: Gratitude America, 100,000 dollars, "Contribution from Gatitude America, LTD Oslo Play."
- April 5, 2019: Gratitude America, 150,000 dollars, "Contribution from Gratitude America."
KPMG also found a reimbursement of 14,158.88 dollars from Enhanced Education in 2014 for the flight of [[Larry Summers]]; no payments by IPI to Epstein or his entities; no payments related to the loan between Epstein and Rød-Larsen; and a 100,000 dollar honorarium wired on February 28, 2014 to LHSummers Economic Consulting for the Mongolian Advisory Board, funded by the Government of Mongolia, on wire instructions sent to Rød-Larsen by an assistant to Epstein.[^14]
A separate probity review of December 21, 2020 by IPI's treasurer, the attorney Clifford Perlman, found that Rød-Larsen did not violate the wording of IPI's 2013 conflict of interest policy but should have informed the board and should not have taken the loan, found no evidence that Epstein derived personal benefit from IPI, and described the 2017 special performance of the play *Oslo*, which dramatized Rød-Larsen's role in the accords, as a fundraising event underwritten by one of Epstein's foundations. The review stated that Epstein attended the performance, had no control over the invitation list, and that his name did not appear in association with it.[^13] IPI's statement of December 22, 2020 put the donations at about 0.9 percent of IPI's revenue over the period.[^12]
### Epstein Library Records
The [[Department of Justice]] [[Epstein Files|Epstein Library]] contains a Gratitude America, Ltd check no. 315 on [[Deutsche Bank]] Trust Company Americas, dated November 1, 2017, payable to International Peace Institute, Inc. for 100,000 dollars with the line "Attn: Terje Rod Larsen." The same document contains an email of November 1, 2017, 7:25 a.m., from the account displayed as "Jeffrey E." to [[Richard Kahn]] reading "send IPI 100 k . to terje attention."; an email of June 12, 2017 reading "Rich please send 125 k to ipi"; Kahn's message of the same day "Confirming 125k is in addition to 150k sent in may"; and a forwarded May 8, 2017 exchange in which Kahn asked Rød-Larsen whether a check to IPI at 777 United Nations Plaza should be mailed or delivered, and Rød-Larsen replied "That is great - thank you!"[^15] Another document is an email of May 12, 2015 from [[Brad Wechsler]] to the Epstein account, replying to a message "ipi donation?", stating that "A wire transfer for 750k was processed today and IPI shld have by later today or tomorrow." The email does not name the sending entity, and KPMG's schedule of five Epstein-related donations lists none in 2015.[^16] A May 6, 2014 email from IPI's senior accountant, addressed to "Ms. Groff", states that IPI wired the honorarium to LHSummers Economic Consulting for the Mongolian Advisory Board on February 28, 2014 and asks for Summers's W-9.[^17]
### The Økokrim Investigation
On February 9, 2026 the Norwegian economic crime authority [[Økokrim]] announced an investigation in which Juul was named a suspect in aggravated corruption in connection with her positions in the foreign ministry and Rød-Larsen a suspect in complicity. Økokrim's chief [[Pål Lønseth]] said the investigation would be extensive and long-running. Juul's lawyer [[Thomas Skjelbred]] said she did not recognize herself in the charge, and Rød-Larsen's lawyer [[John Christian Elden]] said his client was surprised by it. Økokrim had opened an investigation of Jagland on February 5.[^18] The newspaper *VG* reported on February 27, 2026 that Jagland, Juul and Rød-Larsen were all being investigated for aggravated corruption or complicity as a result of gifts and services received from Epstein, and on March 4, 2026 that the foreign ministry had suspected seven years earlier that Rød-Larsen had given visa help to women on Epstein's behalf and that Økokrim was now investigating the matter.[^19]
On September 26, 2026 NRK published an account of the 335-square-metre Frogner apartment at Drammensveien 42 in Oslo. According to NRK, the shipowner [[Morits Skaugen]] bought the apartment in 2011 for 12.6 million kroner, leased it to Juul and Rød-Larsen from June 1, 2011 at 500,000 kroner a year, and granted a five-year option to buy it for 13 million kroner for a premium of 3.5 million kroner, which Skaugen said Rød-Larsen paid. NRK reported that Skaugen mortgaged the apartment to SEB for 12.5 million kroner in 2013 and to DNB for 25 million kroner in December 2015, and that on March 31, 2018 Skaugen emailed Epstein that the option had lapsed and the bank's assessed market value was 18 million kroner. NRK published an email attributed to Epstein dated April 4, 2018, addressed to a lawyer for Rød-Larsen, reading "closing the rope slowly he is coming to paris to meet. the more he puts in writing the better. DO not reach out to him yet," and reported that Skaugen met Epstein in Paris on April 6, 2018. Skaugen told *VG* that he felt pressure from Epstein in Paris and told NRK that he disputes its account and that no bank suffered a loss. NRK reported that the couple took title on June 25, 2018 for 14 million kroner, and quoted an email from Skaugen to Epstein describing the price as "Half price." NRK quoted Økokrim's first state attorney Marianne Bender: "We want to find out whether Epstein, through the purchase of the apartment, contributed any transfer of wealth or other transfer to the suspected couple." Elden told NRK that "there is no funny business with this apartment sale," that the couple reject the charge and that he saw no criminal matter in it, and that Rød-Larsen did not know of any contact between Epstein and Skaugen. NRK also reported that its analysis of the released Epstein files found 5,684 emails and text messages between Epstein and Rød-Larsen, the first from 2010.[^20]
### The Oslo Papers
Nettavisen reported on September 29, 2026 that Økokrim found documents relating to the Oslo process in the cellar storage room of Juul and Rød-Larsen's home during the February search, seized one box, and that the foreign ministry and the National Archives of Norway were given access to the storage room in mid-March and collected five further boxes. The foreign ministry told the newspaper that material directly linked to the Oslo process would be made public at the National Archives, and Elden said the ministry was working with the defense on publication of the material Rød-Larsen transferred to the archives, both through Økokrim and directly from his cellar. The newspaper reported that the documents are not part of Økokrim's investigation and that the Storting's control and constitution committee, chaired by Per-Willy Amundsen, was holding hearings on September 30 and October 1, 2026 with current and former foreign and development ministers, including Støre and [[Espen Barth Eide]].[^21]
### Footnotes
[^1]: "Israel-Palestine Liberation Organization Agreement: 1993" (Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements), Articles I to XVII, Avalon Project, Yale Law School. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/isrplo.asp
[^2]: "Oslo-avtalen," *Store norske leksikon* (secret signing August 20, 1993; signatories; criticism; 1996 elections); "Terje Rød-Larsen," *Store norske leksikon* (Fafo 1982 to 1993; role in the Norwegian channel; Juul headed the ministry's Middle East office). https://snl.no/Oslo-avtalen ; https://snl.no/Terje_R%C3%B8d-Larsen
[^3]: "Oslo-avtalen," *Store norske leksikon*, section "Oslo 1" and caption to the photograph of the secret signing at Parkveien 45. https://snl.no/Oslo-avtalen
[^4]: Terje Rød Larsen, Preface (Oslo, May 1993), pp. 6 to 10, and Marianne Heiberg, Introduction, in Marianne Heiberg and Geir Ovensen, *Palestinian Society in Gaza, West Bank and Arab Jerusalem: A Survey of Living Conditions*, Fafo report 151 (Oslo: Fafo, 1993). https://www.fafo.no/media/com_netsukii/151.pdf
[^5]: U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian, "The Oslo Accords and the Arab-Israeli Peace Process," Milestones 1993-2000 (retired page). https://history.state.gov/milestones/1993-2000/oslo
[^6]: Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, Washington, D.C., September 28, 1995, preamble, Article XI, Annex I Article I and the police strength provision, and Annex II election observer provisions (English text published by the Economic Cooperation Foundation, Tel Aviv). https://content.ecf.org.il/files/M00261_TheIsraeli-PalestinianInterimAgreement-EnglishText.pdf
[^7]: Office of the United Nations Special Coordinator in the Occupied Territories, "UNSCO at a Glance: A Profile," United Nations Information System on the Question of Palestine. https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-208256/
[^8]: UNSCO, "Partners in Peace: LACC for Development Assistance in the West Bank and Gaza Strip," July 1996, section on public finance, "Pledges and Payments to the Holst Fund." https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-209393/
[^9]: Letters of December 1995 from the permanent representatives of Israel and the Palestinian observer, and from the United States and the Russian Federation, transmitting the Interim Agreement, United Nations document A/51/889 and S/1997/357, May 5, 1997. https://unispal.un.org/pdfs/D91C90A304F06EA4052564E60048C213.pdf
[^10]: Innstilling fra kontroll- og konstitusjonskomiteen om Riksrevisjonens undersøkelse av Utenriksdepartementets tildeling av tilskudd til International Peace Institute (IPI), Innst. 167 S (2021-2022), February 15, 2022, source document Dokument 3:12 (2020-2021), sections 1.1 to 1.4 and the committee's statements. https://www.stortinget.no/no/Saker-og-publikasjoner/Publikasjoner/Innstillinger/Stortinget/2021-2022/inns-202122-167s/?all=true
[^11]: International Peace Institute Inc., IRS Form 990 for the tax year 2017 (EIN 03-0213226), Part VII, Part VIII and summary, IRS e-file object 201833129349302893, published in IRS Form 990 series XML download file download990xml_2018_6. https://apps.irs.gov/pub/epostcard/990/xml/2018/download990xml_2018_6.zip
[^12]: International Peace Institute, "Release of KPMG Forensic Review and IPI Probity Review," statement of December 22, 2020. https://www.ipinst.org/2020/12/kpmg-forensic-probity-review
[^13]: Clifford Perlman, "Probity Review as requested by the Chair of the Board of Directors, International Peace Institute," December 21, 2020, items 1 and 2. https://www.ipinst.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/ProbityReviewDec2020.pdf
[^14]: KPMG LLP, "International Peace Institute: KPMG Forensic Review," December 18, 2020, Executive Summary, Summary Observations and Appendix A. https://www.ipinst.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IPI-KPMG-Forensic-Review-12-18-2020.pdf
[^15]: Gratitude America, Ltd check no. 315 (November 1, 2017) with emails of November 1, June 12 and May 8, 2017, EFTA00802975 to EFTA00802979, DOJ Epstein Library, Data Set 9. https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%209/EFTA00802975.pdf
[^16]: Email, Brad Wechsler to Jeffrey E., May 12, 2015, 16:13 UTC, EFTA00662431, DOJ Epstein Library, Data Set 9. https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%209/EFTA00662431.pdf
[^17]: Email, Susan Waugh (International Peace Institute) to Ms. Groff, "Larry Summers's W9," May 6, 2014, EFTA00369962, DOJ Epstein Library, Data Set 9. https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%209/EFTA00369962.pdf
[^18]: "Økokrim åpner etterforsking av Mona Juul og Terje Rød-Larsen," *NRK*, February 9, 2026 (updated February 12, 2026). https://www.nrk.no/norge/okokrim-apner-etterforsking-av-mona-juul-og-terje-rod-larsen-1.17761823
[^19]: "Dette er Epstein-siktelsene Økokrim ville holde hemmelig," *VG*, February 27, 2026; "Etterforsker visumbistand: 'Skriv ut dette anbefalingsbrevet,'" *VG*, March 4, 2026 (standfirst only; article behind a subscription wall). https://www.vg.no/nyheter/i/vree75/dette-er-epstein-siktelsene-oekokrim-ville-holde-hemmelig ; https://www.vg.no/nyheter/i/GxMwwl/epstein-saken-oekokrim-etterforsker-visumbistand
[^20]: "Leiligheten til korrupsjonssiktede Mona Juul og Terje Rød-Larsen får politiet til å klø seg i hodet," *NRK*, September 26, 2026, by Bjørn Olav Nordahl and others. https://www.nrk.no/dokumentar/xl/okokrim-etterforsker-epsteins-overforinger-til-rod-larsen-1.18001797
[^21]: Thomas Paust, "UD vil frigjøre dokumenter funnet i Rød-Larsens kjeller," *Nettavisen*, September 29, 2026. https://www.nettavisen.no/epstein-horingen/okokrim/terje-rod-larsen/ud-vil-frigjore-flere-oslo-dokumenter-funnet-i-kjellerboden-til-mona-juul-og-terje-rod-larsen/s/80-95-117074

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---
category: "Major Conflict"
tags:
- Event
- GulfWar
- Iraq
- Kuwait
- DesertStorm
- CommodityCreditCorporation
- BNLScandal
- HillAndKnowlton
- CitizensForAFreeKuwait
- Nayirah
- GulfWarIllness
- Khamisiyah
- DualUseExports
- Section401
alias:
- Gulf War
- Persian Gulf War
- 1991 Gulf War
- First Gulf War
- Operation Desert Storm
- Operation Desert Shield
- Gulf War of 1991
- Desert Storm
- Desert Shield
- Persian Gulf Conflict
summary: "The 1990 to 1991 war in which a United States-led coalition expelled Iraq from Kuwait, after years of credits and exports to Baghdad, with Kuwaiti-paid publicity beforehand and veterans' illnesses afterward."
start: 1990-08-02
end: 1991-02-28
location: "Kuwait, Iraq and Saudi Arabia"
relations:
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Saddam Hussein]]"
reverse: true
start: 1990-08-02
end: 1991-02-28
role: "president of Iraq whose forces invaded Kuwait"
fn: 1
- type: participant_in
with: "[[George H.W. Bush]]"
reverse: true
start: 1990-08-02
end: 1991-02-28
role: "President of the United States; American troop commitment of more than 500,000"
fn: 6
- type: participant_in
with: "[[April Glaspie]]"
reverse: true
start: 1990-07-25
end: 1990-07-25
role: "United States ambassador to Iraq; meeting with Saddam Hussein"
fn: 16
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Tariq Aziz]]"
reverse: true
start: 1990-07-25
end: 1990-07-25
role: "Iraqi foreign minister present at the meeting with Glaspie"
fn: 16
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Hill and Knowlton]]"
reverse: true
role: "public relations firm of Citizens for a Free Kuwait"
fn: 28
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Citizens for a Free Kuwait]]"
reverse: true
role: "Kuwaiti-funded publicity organization"
fn: 28
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Lauri Fitz-Pegado]]"
reverse: true
role: "Hill & Knowlton Washington office, Kuwait account"
fn: 35
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Tom Lantos]]"
reverse: true
start: 1990-10-10
end: 1990-10-10
role: "co-chairman of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus hearing at which Nayirah testified"
fn: 29
- type: participant_in
with: "[[John Edward Porter]]"
reverse: true
start: 1990-10-10
end: 1990-10-10
role: "co-chairman of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus hearing at which Nayirah testified"
fn: 29
- type: funded
with: "[[Saudi Arabia]]"
reverse: true
start: 1990
end: 1991
role: "contributed 16,854 million dollars in cash and in kind toward American incremental costs"
fn: 39
- type: funded
with: "[[Kuwait]]"
reverse: true
start: 1990
end: 1991
role: "contributed 16,059 million dollars toward American incremental costs"
fn: 39
- type: funded
with: "[[Japan]]"
reverse: true
start: 1990
end: 1991
role: "contributed 10,012 million dollars toward American incremental costs"
fn: 39
- type: funded
with: "[[Germany]]"
reverse: true
start: 1990
end: 1991
role: "contributed 6,455 million dollars toward American incremental costs"
fn: 39
- type: funded
with: "[[United Arab Emirates]]"
reverse: true
start: 1990
end: 1991
role: "contributed 3,870 million dollars in cash and 218 million in kind toward American incremental costs"
fn: 39
- type: investigated
with: "[[Senate Banking Committee]]"
reverse: true
start: 1993-08
end: 1994-10-07
role: "chaired by Donald Riegle; hearing of May 25, 1994 on dual-use exports and veterans' illnesses"
fn: 44
- type: investigated
with: "[[Presidential Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses]]"
reverse: true
start: 1995-05
role: "final report of December 1996 on veterans' illnesses and Khamisiyah"
fn: 45
- type: investigated
with: "[[Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses]]"
reverse: true
role: "report of November 2008 on Gulf War illness"
fn: 46
- type: investigated
with: "[[Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation]]"
reverse: true
start: 1994-02-10
end: 1994-02-10
role: "nomination hearing at which the Kuwaiti publicity campaign was examined"
fn: 35
created: 2026-10-01
updated: 2026-10-01
---
The Gulf War followed the invasion of [[Kuwait]] by [[Iraq]] on August 2, 1990, when three divisions of the [[Republican Guard Forces Command]] crossed the Kuwaiti frontier at 0100 local time and a special operations force attacked Kuwait City by helicopter at 0130.[^1] The [[United Nations Security Council]] adopted [[United Nations Security Council Resolution 660|Resolution 660]] the same day.[^2] On November 29, 1990 it adopted [[United Nations Security Council Resolution 678|Resolution 678]], which authorized member states cooperating with the Kuwaiti government, if Iraq had not complied by January 15, 1991, "to use all necessary means" to uphold Resolution 660 and the later resolutions.[^3] Coalition air attacks began on January 17, 1991, the ground offensive on February 24, and offensive operations ended at 0800 on February 28.[^4] The [[Department of Defense]] counted 613 American battle casualties, among them 146 killed in action (35 by fire from friendly forces) and 467 wounded (72 by friendly fire).[^5] More than 500,000 American troops took part, with more than 200,000 troops from other countries.[^2][^6]
### Iraqi Debts and the Border Dispute
[[Saddam Hussein]]'s government financed its war with [[Iran]] largely through loans; its Arab neighbors had lent it more than 37 billion dollars, and its 1990 military budget was 12.9 billion dollars. On July 17, 1990 Saddam Hussein accused Kuwait and the [[United Arab Emirates]] of exceeding oil production quotas. A meeting arranged by [[Hosni Mubarak]] and [[Fahd of Saudi Arabia|King Fahd]] at [[Jiddah]] on August 1 ended when the Iraqi representative, [[Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri|Izzat Ibrahim]], walked out, citing Kuwaiti reluctance to discuss the islands of Warbah and Bubiyan or to forgive Iraq's debt. Kuwaiti forces had gone on full alert after the July 17 speech and reduced the alert to 25 percent a week later.[^1]
### American Credits and Exports before the Invasion
In 1988 the [[United States Senate]] passed chemical warfare legislation aimed at Iraq. Iraq cancelled consultations on its fiscal 1989 agricultural credit guarantees, and the sanctions were removed from the bill, which passed in late December 1988, "because of agricultural and foreign policy considerations."[^7] In 1990 bills to restrict assistance to Iraq were introduced in both houses: S. 2480, which would have barred credits and guarantees unless the President certified that Iraq had opened its nuclear, chemical and biological sites to inspection; H.R. 4585, which passed the [[United States House of Representatives|House]] but not the Senate; and H.R. 4918, S. 2779 and S. 2787, none of which passed. The Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the administration opposed congressionally imposed sanctions for four reasons, among them that other nations would not join an embargo and that the administration's policy was to avoid using agricultural trade to pursue foreign policy goals. The Foreign Agricultural Service's revised risk procedure recommended limiting fiscal 1991 guarantees to 200 million dollars, conditioned on resolution of the BNL investigation.[^7]
The [[Commodity Credit Corporation Iraq Program|guarantees]] came from the [[Commodity Credit Corporation]] of the [[United States Department of Agriculture|Department of Agriculture]]. They had begun in fiscal 1983 at 401.9 million dollars, reached a high of about 1.1 billion dollars in each of fiscal 1988 and 1989, and totaled about 4.5 billion dollars through fiscal 1989, with 500 million dollars more approved for fiscal 1990. The department's own risk analyses for fiscal 1989 and 1990 rated Iraq a high-risk market. The [[Government Accountability Office|General Accounting Office]] wrote that "it also appears that foreign policy played at least as large a role in determining Iraq's GSM program levels as did market development potential, according to conversations we had with FAS and State Department officials."[^8][^9]
[[National Security Directive 26]], issued by President [[George H.W. Bush]] and dated October 2, 1989, stated that "Normal relations between the United States and Iraq would serve our longer-term interests and promote stability in both the Gulf and the Middle East," that the government "should propose economic and political incentives for Iraq to moderate its behavior and to increase our influence with Iraq," and that any illegal use of chemical or biological weapons "will lead to economic and political sanctions." It also stated that the government "should pursue, and seek to facilitate, opportunities for U.S. firms to participate in the reconstruction of the Iraqi economy, particularly in the energy area, where they do not conflict with our non-proliferation and other significant objectives," and that, "as a means of developing access to and influence with the Iraqi defense establishment," it should consider sales of non-lethal military assistance case by case. The directive instructed the [[Director of Central Intelligence]] to increase collection on early warning indicators in the Gulf.[^10]
Loans from the [[Atlanta]] branch of [[Banca Nazionale del Lavoro]] were among those guaranteed. The Northern District of Georgia United States Attorney's office was notified in August 1989 that the branch had kept a second set of books and made unauthorized and unreported loans to Iraq, and the Agriculture Department's inspector general joined the investigation in September 1989, when it learned that about 750 million dollars of the loans were guaranteed by the Commodity Credit Corporation. Agriculture offered half of the 1 billion dollars Iraq requested for fiscal 1990, "with the remainder dependent on the results of the ongoing Justice investigation." The first 500 million dollars was exhausted, and Iraq asked for more in February 1990.[^8] The General Accounting Office concluded that "the U.S. desire to build a strategic and agricultural trade relationship with Iraq outweighed the apparent financial risks involved and discounted evidence of Iraq's human rights violations."[^8]
The [[Central Intelligence Agency]] Directorate of Intelligence circulated a memorandum on November 6, 1989 titled "Iraq-Italy: Repercussions of the BNL-Atlanta Scandal." It stated that the branch had extended 3.2 billion dollars in 2,500 unauthorized letters of credit between February 1988 and July 1989, disbursing 1.85 billion dollars, including at least 800 million dollars guaranteed by the Commodity Credit Corporation, at an average commission of 0.2 percent. It cited British press reports that Iraq had used at least 600 million dollars of the credits to buy military and dual-use technology through front companies, described a procurement network in which "In 1987 TMG gained control of Matrix-Churchill, Ltd.," and stated: "We believe Iraqi intelligence is directly involved in the activities of many holding companies funnelling technology to Iraq." On the effect on American relations the memorandum said that the strain "will probably be short-lived, particularly if [[Baghdad]] believes additional US credits will be forthcoming after the dust of the investigation settles."[^11] [[Matrix Churchill]] is the subject of the British prosecution and the [[Scott Inquiry]] recorded at [[Arms-to-Iraq]].
Between the search of the branch on August 4, 1989 and the return of the indictment on February 28, 1991, the day offensive operations ended, the United States Attorney's office, a task force, the Justice Department and the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]] investigated more than 5.5 billion dollars in loans and letters of credit made largely to benefit entities controlled by the Iraqi government.[^12] The branch manager, [[Christopher Drogoul]], was the defendant. [[Joseph D. Whitley]] became acting United States Attorney on June 1, 1990 and recused himself from the case the same day; his former law firm had at one time represented Matrix-Churchill.[^13] The independent counsel [[Frederick Lacey]], whose report is printed in the [[House Banking Committee]]'s 1993 hearing record, wrote of [[Brent Scowcroft]] and [[Lawrence Eagleburger]], who had been officers of [[Kissinger Associates]] when Banca Nazionale del Lavoro was its client: "It is clear that, while at Kissinger Associates, Scowcroft and Eagleburger came into contact with BNL management. I have seen nothing, however, to suggest that they knew of BNL-Atlanta's wrongful loans to Iraq or influenced the prosecution of this matter."[^13] In written answers to the committee Drogoul wrote that [[Wafai Dajani]] had told him that [[Henry A. Kissinger]] "was the architect of these loans as they related to U.S. foreign policy," and: "As to the United States, I concluded that they must have been aware of our activities."[^14] The prosecution and the committee's investigation under [[Henry B. Gonzalez]] are recorded at [[BNL Scandal]].
### July 25, 1990
A Central Intelligence Agency combined message titled "Middle East Area Brief for 25 July 1990" carried an item headed "Iraq-Kuwait: Is Baghdad Bluffing." It stated: "KUWAIT BELIEVES IRAQ IS ONLY BLUFFING. THE KUWAITIS PROBABLY ARE MISTAKEN," and, of Iraq: "IRAQ PROBABLY IS NOT BLUFFING; TO ACCEPT LESS THAN SATISFACTION OF ITS DEMANDS FOR REDUCED OIL PRODUCTION AND CASH IN THE FORM OF AN ARAB RECONSTRUCTION FUND WOULD BE A HUMILIATING RETREAT." The brief placed Republican Guard artillery and rocket launchers near the Kuwaiti border and judged that Saddam Hussein "ALMOST CERTAINLY FEARS THAT BROADER MILITARY ACTION WOULD BRING THE US INTO THE FRAY."[^15]
At noon the same day Saddam Hussein received the American ambassador, [[April Glaspie]], with the foreign minister [[Tariq Aziz]], the head of his office, two note-takers and an interpreter present. Her cable to the [[United States Secretary of State]], logged at 12:46 and classified secret, described his manner as "cordial, reasonable and even warm" over two hours. It recorded Saddam Hussein as saying, with the President and Secretary [[James A. Baker III|Baker]] emphatically excluded, that "some circles" in the American government, including the CIA and the [[State Department]], were not friendly toward Iraq, and listing among his evidence that they "worked to ensure no help would go to Iraq (read EXIM and CCC)." He gave Iraq's debts as 40 billion dollars and remarked that nothing was left for Iraq to buy in the United States except wheat, "and no doubt that will soon be declared a dual-use item." Glaspie asked about the units of the Republican Guard sent to the border and what Iraq's intentions were. Saddam Hussein left the room to take a call from Mubarak and returned to say that the Kuwaiti crown prince would come to Baghdad on July 28, 29 or 30 and that "nothing will happen" until the meeting. The cable's note on the border question records Glaspie as saying that she had served in Kuwait twenty years earlier and that "then, as now, we took no position on these Arab affairs"; its summary states that the ambassador "made clear that we can never excuse settlement of disputes by other than peaceful means."[^16]
An Iraqi record of the meeting, translated from Arabic by [[ABC News]] and supplied to *[[The New York Times]]*, was published on September 23, 1990; the State Department declined to comment on its accuracy. It quotes Glaspie as saying: "we have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait."[^17] Glaspie told the [[Senate Foreign Relations Committee]] on March 20, 1991 that Saddam Hussein had lied to her, that the transcript had been selectively edited, and that "we did not realize he was stupid"; committee chairman [[Claiborne Pell]] said that by the time of the meeting Saddam Hussein "had clearly made up his mind to go into Kuwait."[^18]
[[Edward Gnehm]], then the ambassador-designate to Kuwait, said in a 2014 oral history that his own confirmation hearing before the Senate subcommittee on the Middle East was held on the same afternoon, July 25, and that the chairman, [[Daniel Patrick Moynihan]], the only senator present, remarked that "We should just divide Kuwait, give half to the Iraqis and half to the Saudis."[^19]
### Authorization of Force
[[National Security Directive 54]], dated January 15, 1991, cited H.J. Res. 77 as authority for military action against Iraq, listed among its aims to "destroy Iraq's chemical, biological, and nuclear capabilities," directed that the United States discourage [[Israel]] from taking part, recognized the territorial integrity of Iraq, and made it "an explicit objective" to replace the Iraqi leadership if Iraq used chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, supported terrorist acts, or destroyed Kuwait's oil fields.[^20] When the first Iraqi Scud missiles fell on Israeli cities after the war began, according to the Defense Department's report, the Israeli leadership decided not to take military action; the report also states that a Scud strike on a barracks in February inflicted more American casualties than any other single engagement.[^21] The House passed H.Con.Res. 41, condemning the Iraqi attack against Israel, on January 23, 1991 by 416 to 0.[^22]
On January 3, 1991 Senator [[Ernest Hollings]] of South Carolina told the Senate that "The Kuwaiti Government's idea of resistance is to hire a top-dollar public relations firm, [[Hill and Knowlton]], to sell the American public on liberating Kuwait."[^23] On January 4 he said that "The Kuwaitis' PR crowd has been putting stories on the news about rape and about infants being yanked out of incubators by Iraqi soldiers; which I do not doubt is true."[^24] The Senate passed [[Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution|S.J.Res. 2]] on January 12 by 52 to 47; Hollings voted no.[^25] The House passed H.J.Res. 77 the same day by 250 to 183, with [[Tom Lantos]] and [[John Edward Porter]] voting yes and Gonzalez voting no.[^26] H.J.Res. 77 became [[Public Law 102-1]] on January 14, 1991.[^27]
### Citizens for a Free Kuwait and Hill and Knowlton
[[Middle East Watch]] reported in February 1992 that within weeks of the invasion [[Citizens for a Free Kuwait]] was established in [[Washington, D.C.|Washington]], that it drew almost all of its funds from the Kuwaiti government, and that it hired Hill & Knowlton, which according to press reports was paid 5.6 million dollars between August and December 1990 and assigned 75 employees to the account. About 95 percent of the group's funds came from the Kuwaiti government, according to its disclosure documents filed with the [[United States Department of Justice]]. The firm's staff on the account included [[Craig Fuller]], who had been chief of staff to George H.W. Bush when he was vice president, and [[Robert K. Gray]], whose firm [[Gray & Company]] had merged with Hill & Knowlton in 1986.[^28]
On October 10, 1990 the [[Congressional Human Rights Caucus]], chaired by Lantos and Porter, heard a fifteen-year-old witness identified only as [[Nayirah]]. She said: "While I was there, I saw the Iraqi soldiers coming into the hospital with guns, and go into the room where 15 babies were in incubators. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators and left the babies on the cold floor to die."[^29] On November 27 a witness presented to the Security Council as Dr. Issah Ibrahim, and identified by Middle East Watch as Dr. [[Ibrahim Bahbahani]], said: "Under my supervision, 120 newborn babies were buried the second week of the invasion. I myself buried 40 newborn babies that had been taken from their incubators." Two days later the Council adopted Resolution 678. Middle East Watch reported that both appearances were organized on the Kuwaiti side by Hill & Knowlton and that Nayirah was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States, [[Saud al-Nasser al-Sabah]]; Hill & Knowlton had said that she worked at the hospital under an assumed name. It reported that Bahbahani was an orthodontist who told it on November 30, 1990 that he had direct knowledge of forty babies, not 120, and who told ABC News on March 18, 1991: "I buried around thirty."[^29]
[[Amnesty International]] published a report on December 19, 1990 that quoted a Red Crescent doctor saying that 312 babies had died after being taken out of incubators.[^30] Several senators repeated the incubator account in the debate on the war resolution. On January 10 Senator [[Orrin Hatch]] said that "Even ailing infants have been left to die as their incubators were carted away by Saddam Hussein and his people."[^31] On January 11 Senator [[Christopher Bond]] said that Iraqi soldiers "have taken newborn infants and thrown them out of incubators"; Senator [[John McCain]] read the Amnesty passage including the figure of 312 and said "I wish that every American would take the opportunity of reading Amnesty International's report"; Senator [[John Breaux]] said that "In hospital maternity wards Kuwaiti infants were taken from their incubators and left to die. The incubators were sent back to Baghdad"; and Senator [[Frank Murkowski]] listed among the practices described by Amnesty "denying incubators to hundreds of premature babies."[^32] Bond, McCain, Breaux, Hatch and Murkowski voted for S.J.Res. 2.[^25]
Middle East Watch visited Kuwait from March 12 to 31, 1991, interviewed hospital staff, and examined hospital and cemetery records. It found that the al-Rigga cemetery recorded 30 infants buried on August 24, 1990, of whom 19 had died between June 27 and August 1, before the invasion; that the Maternity Hospital's incubators were all accounted for, close to eighty in its two main neonatal wards; and that the hospital director denied that babies had been thrown out of incubators. It concluded that it had "found no basis to the allegation that Iraqi troops took babies from incubators in Kuwaiti hospitals, causing them to die." Amnesty International had in April 1991 stated that it "found no reliable evidence" of the claim. Middle East Watch also found that a claim by Citizens for a Free Kuwait that a labor leader had died in detention after torture was false; he had died of cancer in hospital. As of February 1992 the Kuwaiti government and Hill & Knowlton maintained that the incidents occurred on a large scale; the Kuwaiti ambassador had said in a Canadian television interview that the incubators seen in hospitals after liberation were replacements shipped to Kuwait, and the American embassy in Kuwait had supported the account in a cable of February 4, 1992.[^33]
The [[Foreign Agents Registration Act]] registrant list shows Citizens for a Free Kuwait as registration number 4551, at 4301 Connecticut Avenue, Northwest, Washington, registered on May 17, 1991, seventy-eight days after offensive operations ended, and terminated on March 19, 1992. The registrant list for Hill and Knowlton Strategies shows registration number 3301, dated November 10, 1981.[^34]
The [[Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation]] examined the episode on February 10, 1994 at the hearing on the nomination of [[Lauri Fitz-Pegado]], who had worked in the Washington office of Hill & Knowlton, to be Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Director General of the United States and Foreign Commercial Service. Fitz-Pegado testified that Hill & Knowlton represented Citizens for a Free Kuwait for five months before the war, that the witness did not give her last name because of fear of reprisals against her family, that her identity "was revealed to the committee," as she said Lantos, the co-chairman, had stated on the floor of the Congress, that she "had no reason whatsoever to question the veracity" of the testimony, and that she had met the doctor who testified at the [[United Nations]] a few days beforehand and had relied on information the firm could not check in an occupied country. Senator [[Byron Dorgan]] stated that the [[Kroll Associates|Kroll]] Report, which he believed was paid for by the Kuwaiti government, found that the witness had been at the hospital for a brief visit but was not a volunteer and saw no dead babies removed; Fitz-Pegado answered that her understanding was that the report said the witness was in Kuwait, was a volunteer at the hospital, and witnessed the incident. Dorgan said he would have been skeptical had he known the witness was the ambassador's daughter.[^35]
The writer [[John R. MacArthur]], author of *Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War*, testified at the same hearing against the nomination. He stated that Citizens for a Free Kuwait filed no Foreign Agents Registration Act form "until well after the gulf war," that nearly 11 million dollars in fees paid to the firm came from the Kuwaiti government against about 17,000 dollars raised in the United States, that Hill & Knowlton's House lobbyist [[Gary Hymel]] and others including Fitz-Pegado arranged the caucus hearing, that Fitz-Pegado coached the witness, that Lantos's [[Congressional Human Rights Foundation]] occupied rent-free space in the firm's Washington headquarters, and that the firm's damage control after his January 6, 1992 article in *The New York Times* was managed by [[Frank Mankiewicz]]. He stated that six senators cited the incubator story in support of the war resolution.[^36] The Senate confirmed Fitz-Pegado on June 16, 1994 by 69 to 30; Dorgan and [[Lauch Faircloth]] voted no, McCain and [[Donald W. Riegle Jr.|Riegle]] yes.[^37]
### Costs and Foreign Contributions
Section 401 of [[Public Law 102-25]] required reports on American costs and foreign contributions. In early September 1990 President Bush sent two missions abroad, one led by the Secretary of the Treasury (to the [[United Kingdom]], [[France]], [[South Korea]] and [[Japan]]) and one by the Secretary of State, James Baker (to [[Saudi Arabia]], the Kuwaiti government in exile, the United Arab Emirates, [[Egypt]], Brussels, [[Italy]] and [[Germany]]). In late September, in the fiscal 1991 continuing resolution, Congress expanded the Secretary of Defense's authority to accept contributions and established the [[Defense Cooperation Account]] to receive them.[^38] The Defense Department estimated American incremental costs at 61 billion dollars and reported that coalition countries had committed almost 54 billion dollars, about two-thirds from Gulf states and the rest largely from Japan and Germany, of which almost 53 billion dollars had arrived by March 11, 1992, more than 47 billion in cash.[^6]
The twentieth report, sent on October 15, 1992 by the Office of Management and Budget director [[Richard Darman]] to Vice President [[Dan Quayle]] and Speaker [[Tom Foley]], gave the final figures: 53,749 million dollars received (48,090 million in cash and 5,659 million in kind) against 53,951 million committed. By country, receipts were Saudi Arabia 16,854 million, Kuwait 16,059 million, the United Arab Emirates 3,870 million in cash and 218 million in kind, Japan 10,012 million, Germany 6,455 million and South Korea 251 million. The Defense Department's attached preliminary estimate put costs reported through August 31, 1992 at 56.8 billion dollars and, with potential additional exposure of 4.2 billion, at 61.1 billion. A footnote records that Germany made available more than 200 million dollars' worth of ammunition that the United States chose not to accept because the war had ended.[^39] In the Defense Department's April 1992 account, receipts as of March 11, 1992 were 16,003 million dollars from Saudi Arabia, 16,058 million from Kuwait and 52,893 million in all, and Japan provided almost 500 million dollars of in-kind equipment, of which more than 80 percent "were made in the United States or provided by US suppliers."[^40]
The General Accounting Office table of the Commodity Credit Corporation's contingent liability on Iraqi guarantees, dated November 1990, totals 2,008,599,986 dollars, scheduled by year from 154 million dollars in fiscal 1990 and 930 million in fiscal 1991 to 622 million in 1992 and 288 million in 1993.[^41]
### Chemical and Biological Exports and Veterans' Illnesses
The [[Senate Banking Committee|Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs]], chaired by Donald W. Riegle Jr., held a hearing on May 25, 1994 on dual-use exports to Iraq and their possible bearing on illnesses among American veterans. Riegle, who had voted against S.J.Res. 2 on January 12, 1991, stated that [[UN Special Commission|UNSCOM]] inspectors had found and destroyed 28 Scud warheads containing sarin, which a Defense Department official said had been obtained from the former [[Soviet Union]], and that a Defense Department medical official told his staff on September 7, 1993 that the question of chemical and biological exposure had not been explored because it was the position of "military intelligence" that such exposures never occurred, and that on November 10, 1993 the Pentagon acknowledged that Czech units had detected chemical agents in the theater but concluded that the detections were unrelated to veterans' health problems.[^42] Deputy Secretary of Defense [[John Deutch]] said on May 6, 1994, according to the committee report, that the United States had "no biological detection capability deployed with any forces, anywhere."[^43]
Committee staff compiled a list of biological materials shipped to Iraq from the [[American Type Culture Collection]] of Rockville, Maryland, under [[Department of Commerce|Commerce Department]] export licenses. They included 24 cultures, among them *Bacillus anthracis*, *Clostridium botulinum* types A and E, and *Francisella tularensis*, sent to the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education on May 2, 1986; 11 cultures, including four *Bacillus anthracis* strains and *Clostridium botulinum* type A, sent to the Ministry of Trade on September 29, 1988; and *E. coli* and cloned human genetic material sent to the [[Iraq Atomic Energy Commission]] in 1987, 1988 and 1989. A [[Centers for Disease Control and Prevention|Centers for Disease Control]] listing for the period from October 1, 1984 added shipments including botulinum toxoid to an address in Baghdad in March and April 1986. Committee staff stated that records before 1985 were unavailable from the supplier and that the exported materials were not attenuated, and that inspections by UNSCOM found evidence of Iraqi research on pathogen enhancement involving anthrax, botulinum, *Clostridium perfringens*, brucella, tularemia and tetanus organisms.[^43] According to the committee's third staff report, dated October 7, 1994, a committee hearing on October 27, 1992 had revealed that the United States exported chemical, biological, nuclear and missile-system equipment to Iraq that was converted to military use.[^44]
The [[Presidential Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses]], created in May 1995, held 18 public meetings between August 1995 and November 1996. Its final report found that "current scientific evidence does not support a causal link" between veterans' symptoms and exposures to pesticides, chemical warfare agents, biological warfare agents, vaccines, pyridostigmine bromide, infectious diseases, depleted uranium, oil-well fires and smoke, or petroleum products, and described stress as "likely to be an important contributing factor." It also found that the Defense Department's investigations of possible chemical and biological exposures were "superficial." Since 1991 the department's public position had been that there was no use or presence of chemical weapons in the theater, and a [[Defense Science Board]] task force concluded in June 1994 that there was "no evidence" of exposures in Kuwait or Saudi Arabia. On March 4, 1991 American personnel destroyed munitions containing 8.5 metric tons of sarin and cyclosarin in Bunker 73 at [[Khamisiyah]] and on March 10 destroyed rockets at a pit there. The committee concluded: "The evidence of CW agent release at Khamisiyah is overwhelming." The units within 25 kilometers included the 37th and 307th Engineer Battalions, the 60th and 146th Explosive Ordnance Detachments, the 450th Civil Affairs Battalion and components of the 82nd Airborne Division. The Central Intelligence Agency began its review of intelligence on chemical and biological agents in March 1995; the Defense Department's [[Persian Gulf Illnesses Investigation Team]] conducted no interviews with possible eyewitnesses to Khamisiyah until June 1996, after UNSCOM confirmed in May 1996 its initial reports of chemical agents there.[^45]
The [[Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses]], chaired by [[James H. Binns]], reported in November 2008 that Gulf War illness "affects at least one fourth of the 697,000 U.S. veterans who served" and that use of pyridostigmine bromide pills and pesticides during deployment were causally associated with it.[^46]
### Footnotes
[^1]: Department of Defense, *Conduct of the Persian Gulf War: Final Report to Congress*, pursuant to Title V of the Persian Gulf Conflict Supplemental Authorization and Personnel Benefits Act of 1991 (Public Law 102-25), April 1992, chapter I, "The Invasion of Kuwait," pp. 1-5. https://archive.org/details/ConductofthePersianGulfWarFinalReporttoCongress
[^2]: Department of Defense, *Conduct of the Persian Gulf War: Final Report to Congress*, pursuant to Title V of the Persian Gulf Conflict Supplemental Authorization and Personnel Benefits Act of 1991 (Public Law 102-25), April 1992, Overview, pp. 23-24 (coalition forces; United Nations Security Council Resolution 660, August 2, 1990). https://archive.org/details/ConductofthePersianGulfWarFinalReporttoCongress
[^3]: Middle East Watch, "Kuwait's 'Stolen' Incubators: The Widespread Repercussions of a Murky Incident," vol. 4, no. 1, February 6, 1992, p. 5 and n. 14 (text of paragraph 2 of United Nations Security Council Resolution 678, November 29, 1990). https://www.hrw.org/reports/pdfs/k/kuwait/kuwait922.pdf
[^4]: Department of Defense, *Conduct of the Persian Gulf War: Final Report to Congress*, pursuant to Title V of the Persian Gulf Conflict Supplemental Authorization and Personnel Benefits Act of 1991 (Public Law 102-25), April 1992, chapter VI, "The Air Campaign," and chapter VIII, "The Ground Campaign" (G-Day, February 24, 1991; offensive operations ended at 0800 on February 28). https://archive.org/details/ConductofthePersianGulfWarFinalReporttoCongress
[^5]: Department of Defense, *Conduct of the Persian Gulf War: Final Report to Congress*, pursuant to Title V of the Persian Gulf Conflict Supplemental Authorization and Personnel Benefits Act of 1991 (Public Law 102-25), April 1992, Appendix M, "Fire from Friendly Forces," introduction. https://archive.org/details/ConductofthePersianGulfWarFinalReporttoCongress
[^6]: Department of Defense, *Conduct of the Persian Gulf War: Final Report to Congress*, pursuant to Title V of the Persian Gulf Conflict Supplemental Authorization and Personnel Benefits Act of 1991 (Public Law 102-25), April 1992, Appendix P, "Responsibility Sharing," pp. P-1 to P-3. https://archive.org/details/ConductofthePersianGulfWarFinalReporttoCongress
[^7]: General Accounting Office, *International Trade: Iraq's Participation in U.S. Agricultural Export Programs*, GAO/NSIAD-91-76, November 14, 1990, appendix I, "Chronology of U.S.-Iraqi Agricultural Trade Relations and Foreign Policy, 1983-1990." http://web.archive.org/web/20260628093619/https://www.gao.gov/assets/nsiad-91-76.pdf
[^8]: General Accounting Office, *International Trade: Iraq's Participation in U.S. Agricultural Export Programs*, GAO/NSIAD-91-76, November 14, 1990, pp. 1-3 (letter and results in brief). http://web.archive.org/web/20260628093619/https://www.gao.gov/assets/nsiad-91-76.pdf
[^9]: General Accounting Office, *International Trade: Iraq's Participation in U.S. Agricultural Export Programs*, GAO/NSIAD-91-76, November 14, 1990, appendix II, "Evolution of Iraq's Participation in the GSM Program," table II.1. http://web.archive.org/web/20260628093619/https://www.gao.gov/assets/nsiad-91-76.pdf
[^10]: George H.W. Bush, National Security Directive 26, "U.S. Policy Toward the Persian Gulf," October 2, 1989, pp. 1-3 (sections "Force Levels" and "Arms Sales"). https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/nsd/nsd26.pdf (Wayback Machine capture of June 14, 2021: http://web.archive.org/web/20210614161833/https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/nsd/nsd26.pdf).
[^11]: Central Intelligence Agency, Directorate of Intelligence, "Iraq-Italy: Repercussions of the BNL-Atlanta Scandal," November 6, 1989, printed in House Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs, *Testimony of Former Employees of the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro*, Serial No. 103-95, 103d Cong., 1st sess., hearing of November 9, 1993, pp. 194-199. https://archive.org/details/testimonyofforme1994unit
[^12]: Frederick B. Lacey, "The Banca Nazionale del Lavoro Investigation: Report of the Independent Counsel," part I, printed in House Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs, *Testimony of Former Employees of the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro*, Serial No. 103-95, 103d Cong., 1st sess., hearing of November 9, 1993, pp. 359-360. https://archive.org/details/testimonyofforme1994unit
[^13]: Frederick B. Lacey, "The Banca Nazionale del Lavoro Investigation: Report of the Independent Counsel," part I, printed in House Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs, *Testimony of Former Employees of the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro*, Serial No. 103-95, 103d Cong., 1st sess., hearing of November 9, 1993, pp. 513-514 (sections on Kissinger Associates and on the recusal of Joseph D. Whitley). https://archive.org/details/testimonyofforme1994unit
[^14]: Written answers of Christopher P. Drogoul, answers to questions 4 and 6, printed in House Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs, *Testimony of Former Employees of the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro*, Serial No. 103-95, 103d Cong., 1st sess., hearing of November 9, 1993, pp. 140-143. https://archive.org/details/testimonyofforme1994unit
[^15]: Central Intelligence Agency, "Middle East Area Brief for 25 July 1990," combined message, secret, item 1, "Iraq-Kuwait: Is Baghdad Bluffing," CIA Reading Room document 0000200664 (partly redacted). https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-0000200664
[^16]: American Embassy Baghdad (April Glaspie) to Secretary of State, "Saddam's Message of Friendship to President Bush," cable 90 Baghdad 04237, July 25, 1990, secret, paragraphs 3-5, 6, 23-24, 27-28 and 30. https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/90BAGHDAD4237_a.html
[^17]: "Excerpts From Iraqi Document on Meeting with U.S. Envoy," *The New York Times*, September 23, 1990, p. 19 (text reproduced at https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/glaspie.html).
[^18]: "Saddam Lied, U.S. Envoy Testifies," *Roanoke Times* (Associated Press and *The Baltimore Sun*), March 21, 1991, p. A-1. https://scholar.lib.vt.edu/VA-news/ROA-Times/issues/1991/rt9103/910321/03210377.htm
[^19]: Edward W. Gnehm, oral history interview by Charles Stuart Kennedy, May 2014, Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, excerpted in "A Day of Mixed Messages over Iraq's Invasion of Kuwait," adst.org, May 2017. https://adst.org/2017/05/day-mixed-messages-iraqs-invasion-kuwait/
[^20]: George H.W. Bush, National Security Directive 54, "Responding to Iraqi Aggression in the Gulf," January 15, 1991, top secret, paragraphs 2, 3(c), 7, 9 and 10. https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/nsd/nsd54.pdf (copy at https://web.archive.org/web/2id_/https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/nsd/nsd54.pdf).
[^21]: Department of Defense, *Conduct of the Persian Gulf War: Final Report to Congress*, pursuant to Title V of the Persian Gulf Conflict Supplemental Authorization and Personnel Benefits Act of 1991 (Public Law 102-25), April 1992, Overview (Israeli response to the first Scud attacks), and chapter VI, "The Air Campaign," pp. 122-123. https://archive.org/details/ConductofthePersianGulfWarFinalReporttoCongress
[^22]: U.S. House of Representatives, Roll Call 11, 102d Cong., 1st sess., January 23, 1991, H.Con.Res. 41, condemning the Iraqi attack against Israel, 416 to 0. https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/199111
[^23]: Remarks of Senator Ernest Hollings, January 3, 1991, pp. S11-S13, in *Congressional Record* (bound edition), vol. 137, Senate, January 1991, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-CRECB-1991-pt1/pdf/GPO-CRECB-1991-pt1.pdf.
[^24]: Remarks of Senator Ernest Hollings, January 4, 1991, pp. S310-S313, in *Congressional Record* (bound edition), vol. 137, Senate, January 1991, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-CRECB-1991-pt1/pdf/GPO-CRECB-1991-pt1.pdf.
[^25]: U.S. Senate, Roll Call Vote No. 2, 102d Cong., 1st sess., January 12, 1991, S.J.Res. 2 (Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution), 52 to 47. https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1021/vote_102_1_00002.htm
[^26]: U.S. House of Representatives, Roll Call 9, 102d Cong., 1st sess., January 12, 1991, H.J.Res. 77, 250 to 183. https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/19919
[^27]: Public Law 102-1, 105 Stat. 3, January 14, 1991. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-105/pdf/STATUTE-105-Pg3.pdf
[^28]: Middle East Watch, "Kuwait's 'Stolen' Incubators: The Widespread Repercussions of a Murky Incident," vol. 4, no. 1, February 6, 1992, pp. 4-5 and nn. 9-10 (citing Gary Lee, "Kuwait's Campaign On the PR Front," *The Washington Post*, November 29, 1990, and "Kuwaitis Pay $5.6 Million to Publicity Firm," *The Washington Post*, December 19, 1990). https://www.hrw.org/reports/pdfs/k/kuwait/kuwait922.pdf
[^29]: Middle East Watch, "Kuwait's 'Stolen' Incubators: The Widespread Repercussions of a Murky Incident," vol. 4, no. 1, February 6, 1992, pp. 5-7 and nn. 12-13 (citing "Testimony by Nayirah," Congressional Human Rights Caucus, October 10, 1990, pp. 2-3, and United Nations Security Council, provisional verbatim record, S/PV.2959, November 27, 1990, p. 37). https://www.hrw.org/reports/pdfs/k/kuwait/kuwait922.pdf
[^30]: Middle East Watch, "Kuwait's 'Stolen' Incubators: The Widespread Repercussions of a Murky Incident," vol. 4, no. 1, February 6, 1992, pp. 3 and 6-7, nn. 8 and 15 (citing Amnesty International, *Iraq/Occupied Kuwait: Human Rights Violations Since August 2, 1990*, December 19, 1990, pp. 57-58). https://www.hrw.org/reports/pdfs/k/kuwait/kuwait922.pdf
[^31]: Remarks of Senator Orrin Hatch, January 10, 1991, p. S449, in *Congressional Record* (bound edition), vol. 137, Senate, January 1991, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-CRECB-1991-pt1/pdf/GPO-CRECB-1991-pt1.pdf.
[^32]: Remarks of Senators Christopher Bond (p. S823), John McCain (p. S827), John Breaux (p. S830) and Frank Murkowski (p. S880), January 11, 1991, in *Congressional Record* (bound edition), vol. 137, Senate, January 1991, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-CRECB-1991-pt1/pdf/GPO-CRECB-1991-pt1.pdf.
[^33]: Middle East Watch, "Kuwait's 'Stolen' Incubators: The Widespread Repercussions of a Murky Incident," vol. 4, no. 1, February 6, 1992, pp. 3, 8-9, 14-15 and nn. 20, 34 (citing Amnesty International news release, April 19, 1991). https://www.hrw.org/reports/pdfs/k/kuwait/kuwait922.pdf
[^34]: U.S. Department of Justice, Foreign Agents Registration Act e-file system, registrants lists, Registration No. 4551, Citizens for a Free Kuwait (terminated registrants), and Registration No. 3301, Hill and Knowlton Strategies, LLC (active registrants), retrieved October 1, 2026. https://efile.fara.gov/api/v1/Registrants/json/Terminated and https://efile.fara.gov/api/v1/Registrants/json/Active
[^35]: Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, *Nominations of Ginger Ehn Lew to be General Counsel ... Lauri Fitz-Pegado to be Assistant Secretary and Director-General of the U.S. and Foreign Commercial Service of the Department of Commerce*, S. Hrg. 103-966, 103d Cong., 2d sess., February 10, 1994, pp. 42-46 (testimony of Lauri Fitz-Pegado and questions of Senator Byron Dorgan). https://archive.org/details/nominationsofgin00unit
[^36]: Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, *Nominations of Ginger Ehn Lew to be General Counsel ... Lauri Fitz-Pegado to be Assistant Secretary and Director-General of the U.S. and Foreign Commercial Service of the Department of Commerce*, S. Hrg. 103-966, 103d Cong., 2d sess., February 10, 1994, pp. 46-51 (testimony of John R. MacArthur). https://archive.org/details/nominationsofgin00unit
[^37]: U.S. Senate, Roll Call Vote No. 148, 103d Cong., 2d sess., June 16, 1994, confirmation of Lauri Fitz-Pegado (PN657), 69 to 30. https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1032/vote_103_2_00148.htm
[^38]: Department of Defense, *Conduct of the Persian Gulf War: Final Report to Congress*, pursuant to Title V of the Persian Gulf Conflict Supplemental Authorization and Personnel Benefits Act of 1991 (Public Law 102-25), April 1992, Appendix P, "Responsibility Sharing," pp. P-3 to P-4. https://archive.org/details/ConductofthePersianGulfWarFinalReporttoCongress
[^39]: Office of Management and Budget, Richard Darman, Director, letters of October 15, 1992 to Vice President J. Danforth Quayle and Speaker Thomas S. Foley transmitting the twentieth report, *United States Costs in the Persian Gulf Conflict and Foreign Contributions to Offset Such Costs*, required by section 401 of Public Law 102-25, text, table 13 and attachment. https://archive.org/details/USCostsinthePersianGulfConflictandForeignContributionstooffsetsuchcostsasrequiredbySection401PL10225
[^40]: Department of Defense, *Conduct of the Persian Gulf War: Final Report to Congress*, pursuant to Title V of the Persian Gulf Conflict Supplemental Authorization and Personnel Benefits Act of 1991 (Public Law 102-25), April 1992, Appendix P, "Responsibility Sharing," figure P-1 and pp. P-7 to P-8. https://archive.org/details/ConductofthePersianGulfWarFinalReporttoCongress
[^41]: General Accounting Office, *International Trade: Iraq's Participation in U.S. Agricultural Export Programs*, GAO/NSIAD-91-76, November 14, 1990, appendix IV, table IV.2, "CCC's Contingent Liability Under the GSM-102/103 Programs for Iraq." http://web.archive.org/web/20260628093619/https://www.gao.gov/assets/nsiad-91-76.pdf
[^42]: Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, *United States Dual-Use Exports to Iraq and Their Impact on the Health of the Persian Gulf War Veterans*, S. Hrg. 103-900, 103d Cong., 2d sess., May 25, 1994, pp. 1-6 (opening statement of Chairman Donald W. Riegle Jr.). https://archive.org/details/unitedstatesdual00unit
[^43]: Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, *United States Dual-Use Exports to Iraq and Their Impact on the Health of the Persian Gulf War Veterans*, S. Hrg. 103-900, 103d Cong., 2d sess., May 25, 1994, committee report of May 25, 1994, pp. 34-48 (printed at pp. 262-276 of the hearing print). https://archive.org/details/unitedstatesdual00unit
[^44]: Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, *United States Dual-Use Exports to Iraq and Their Impact on the Health of the Persian Gulf War Veterans*, S. Hrg. 103-900, 103d Cong., 2d sess., May 25, 1994, Committee Staff Report No. 3, "Chemical Warfare Agent Identification, Chemical Injuries, and Other Findings," October 7, 1994, pp. 435-437 of the hearing print. https://archive.org/details/unitedstatesdual00unit
[^45]: Presidential Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses, *Final Report*, December 1996 (web edition, April 1997), Executive Summary and chapter 2 ("Chemical and Biological Weapons"). https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA324720
[^46]: Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses, *Gulf War Illness and the Health of Gulf War Veterans: Scientific Findings and Recommendations*, U.S. Government Printing Office, November 2008, Findings in Brief, p. 1. https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA490518

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---
category: "Modern Incident"
tags:
- Event
- Terrorism
- SeptemberEleventh
- AlQaeda
- SaudiArabia
- JointInquiry
- NineElevenCommission
- OperationEncore
- AbleDanger
- JASTA
- FBI
- CIA
alias:
- September 11 attacks
- September 11
- September 11, 2001
- September 11th attacks
- 9/11
- 9/11 attacks
- 9/11 terrorist attacks
- Sept. 11 attacks
- 11 September 2001
- September 11th
- 9/11 terrorist attack
summary: "Four al-Qaeda hijackings on September 11, 2001 killed 2,973 people; the record includes unshared CIA travel data on two hijackers, Saudi-linked contacts in California, and litigation against Saudi Arabia that reached a 2025 ruling."
start: 2001-09-11
location: "New York, New York; Arlington, Virginia; Shanksville, Pennsylvania"
relations:
- type: investigated
with: "[[Federal Bureau of Investigation]]"
reverse: true
role: "PENTTBOM and Operation Encore investigations"
start: 2001-09-11
fn: 28
- type: investigated
with: "[[Securities and Exchange Commission]]"
reverse: true
role: "pre-attack trading review"
start: 2001-09-12
end: 2002-05-15
fn: 37
- type: investigated
with: "[[9/11 Commission]]"
reverse: true
role: "statutory commission of inquiry"
start: 2002-11-27
fn: 10
- type: investigated
with: "[[Joint Inquiry]]"
reverse: true
role: "joint House and Senate intelligence committee inquiry"
fn: 2
- type: investigated
with: "[[Central Intelligence Agency Office of Inspector General]]"
reverse: true
role: "accountability review of CIA performance before the attacks"
fn: 22
created: 2026-10-01
updated: 2026-10-01
---
The September 11 attacks were four coordinated hijackings of [[United States]] airliners carried out on September 11, 2001, by members of [[al-Qaeda]]. [[American Airlines]] Flight 11 struck the North Tower of the [[World Trade Center]] at 8:46:40, [[United Airlines]] Flight 175 struck the South Tower at 9:03:11, American Airlines Flight 77 struck the [[Pentagon]] at 9:37:46, and United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, at 10:03:11. The [[9/11 Commission]] counted 2,973 deaths, which it described as the largest loss of life from a hostile attack on United States soil.[^1]
### Joint Inquiry
The [[Senate Select Committee on Intelligence]] and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence conducted a joint inquiry in 2002 under Senator [[Bob Graham]] and Representative [[Porter Goss]], with [[Nancy Pelosi]] as ranking minority member of the House committee. On January 29, 2003, the three wrote to [[Director of Central Intelligence]] [[George Tenet]] that the final report had been submitted for declassification review, and recommended a Director of National Intelligence who would not simultaneously direct the [[Central Intelligence Agency]].[^2]
Part Four of the report, headed "Finding, Discussion and Narrative Regarding Certain Sensitive National Security Matters," remained classified until July 15, 2016, when the [[House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence]] under Chairman [[Devin Nunes]] and Ranking Member [[Adam Schiff]] published the 28-page section after the administration of [[Barack Obama]] declassified it with redactions. Nunes stated that the section "does not put forward vetted conclusions, but rather unverified leads that were later fully investigated by the Intelligence Community."[^3]
Finding 20 of Part Four stated that some of the hijackers, while in the United States, were in contact with and received support or assistance from individuals who may be connected to the [[Saudi Arabia|Saudi Government]], and that FBI sources alleged that at least two of those individuals were Saudi intelligence officers. The Joint Inquiry wrote that it had not independently assessed the information, that further investigation could reveal "legitimate, and innocent, explanations," and that it was referring the staff compilation to the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation]] and the CIA.[^4]
The discussion identified [[Omar al-Bayoumi]], who had assisted [[Nawaf al-Hazmi]] and [[Khalid al-Mihdhar]] in San Diego in 2000, as the subject of reports from individuals in the Muslim community, dating to 1999, that he might be a Saudi intelligence officer. The FBI had conducted a counterterrorism investigation of him in 1998 and 1999 and closed it. According to an FBI document quoted in Part Four, he received money from the Saudi Ministry of Defense through a Saudi company whose official told the FBI after the attacks that Bayoumi appeared at the company once and received a monthly salary; his monthly allowances were approximately $465 before the hijackers arrived, rose to over $3,700 in March 2000, fell to approximately $3,200 after December 2000, and continued until he left the United States in August 2001. A school application listed his employer as Dallah Avco, a subsidiary of a company the FBI had linked to [[Osama bin Laden]]. A former case agent testified before the committees that Bayoumi "acted like a Saudi intelligence officer, in my opinion." The same section recorded that the FBI's November 18, 2002 response stated there was "no evidence" to conclude that he was one.[^5]
Part Four also described Osama Bassnan, a close associate of Bayoumi. The FBI had found copies of cashier's checks totaling $74,000, dated February 22, 1999 to May 30, 2002, payable to Bassnan's wife and drawn on the [[Riggs Bank]] account of the wife of Saudi Ambassador [[Bandar bin Sultan]], and a standing order of $2,000 a month on that account since January 1999. The FBI's Executive Assistant Director for Counterterrorism and Counterintelligence, [[Pasquale D'Amuro]], testified on October 9, 2002 that what the money was for was not known. Part Four recorded a later FBI correction that only Bassnan's wife received money directly from Prince Bandar's wife, and that Bayoumi's wife attempted to deposit three of the checks into her own accounts.[^6]
A telephone number in the contact book of [[Abu Zubaydah]], captured in Pakistan in March 2002, was linked through toll records to a number subscribed by ASPCOL Corporation of Aspen, Colorado, which the FBI's Denver Field Office identified as the umbrella corporation managing the Colorado residence of Prince Bandar. The Denver office made no local inquiries, believing that inquiries about ASPCOL would quickly become known to Prince Bandar's employees, and held its investigation in abeyance pending guidance from FBI Headquarters. The Colorado Secretary of State had no record of the corporation. The FBI's November 18, 2002 response stated that CIA traces had revealed no direct links between numbers in Zubaydah's phone book and numbers in the United States.[^7]
Part Four also described a CIA memorandum found in the files of the FBI's San Diego Field Office, which discussed alleged financial connections between the hijackers, Saudi officials and members of the Saudi royal family. The FBI agent who received it placed it in an individual case file and did not forward it to FBI Headquarters, which learned of its contents from the Joint Inquiry.[^8]
The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations minority staff report on Riggs Bank, dated July 14, 2004 and prepared at the request of Senator [[Carl Levin]], records that the bank held more than 150 accounts associated with Saudi Arabia, and that the [[Office of the Comptroller of the Currency]] first learned of concerns about them from press stories beginning November 22, 2002 reporting that an account associated with the Saudi embassy had sent funds that benefited two of the hijackers. The OCC met bank management in December 2002 and began a targeted examination in January 2003, planned to last one month, which continued for more than five months. The report states that it presents no information about the Saudi accounts because the full Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, under Chairman [[Susan Collins]], was conducting its own investigation of them.[^9]
### The commission
Congress and President [[George W. Bush]] created the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States by Public Law 107-306 on November 27, 2002. The Commission's preface records that it reviewed more than 2.5 million pages of documents, interviewed more than 1,200 individuals in ten countries, held 19 days of hearings and took public testimony from 160 witnesses.[^10]
[[George W. Bush|President Bush]] named [[Henry Kissinger]] chairman after dropping his longstanding opposition to an independent inquiry. Former Senator [[George Mitchell]], named vice chairman, announced on December 11, 2002 that he would not serve, citing his unwillingness to sever ties with his law firm and the time the work would take. Kissinger resigned on December 13, 2002. His letter to the President stated that specific conflicts could be resolved by disclosure but that "the controversy would quickly move to the consulting firm I have built and own," and that liquidating [[Kissinger Associates]] could not be accomplished without significantly delaying the Commission's work.[^11]
[[Lee Hamilton]] replaced Mitchell. The final report lists [[Thomas Kean]] as chair and Hamilton as vice chair, five Republican and five Democratic commissioners, and [[Philip Zelikow]] as executive director.[^12] Zelikow had advised [[Condoleezza Rice]] on the transition of the [[National Security Council]] from the Clinton to the Bush administration, and the report's notes state that Rice and Zelikow had been colleagues on the National Security Council staff and coauthors of a 1995 book on German unification, and that as executive director Zelikow recused himself from the Commission's work on that transition.[^13] Commissioner [[Jamie Gorelick]] had been the Deputy Attorney General who oversaw the working group that produced the Justice Department's July 1995 procedures governing information sharing between intelligence and criminal investigators; the notes state that she recused herself from the Commission's work on that subject, and that she, [[Richard Ben-Veniste]] and Commissioner [[James R. Thompson]] recused themselves from the work on aviation security.[^14] The report states that [[Robert Mueller]] became FBI director "just before 9/11."[^15]
The Commission recommended replacing the dual role of the Director of Central Intelligence with a [[Director of National Intelligence|National Intelligence Director]] and creating a National Counterterrorism Center.[^16]
### The Mihdhar and Hazmi trail
The Commission's account of Mihdhar and Hazmi begins at a gathering of Arabs in [[Kuala Lumpur]], Malaysia, in January 2000. The CIA located Mihdhar leaving [[Yemen]] and tracked him to Kuala Lumpur, where he arrived on January 5, 2000. On January 8, surveillance teams reported that three of the Arabs had left for [[Bangkok]], where CIA officers received the information too late to track them. The Counterterrorist Center had briefed CIA leadership, and the information had been passed to the National Security Council staff of National Security Adviser [[Sandy Berger]] and to FBI Director [[Louis Freeh]], although the FBI noted that the CIA had the lead. In early March 2000 Bangkok reported that Hazmi had left on January 15 on a United Airlines flight to [[Los Angeles]], and that Mihdhar had accompanied him. No one outside the Counterterrorist Center was told, and the CIA did not try to register either man with the [[State Department]]'s TIPOFF watchlist, although it had learned that Mihdhar held a United States visa.[^17]
The [[National Security Agency]] had the technical capability to report on communications with suspected terrorist facilities in the [[Middle East]]. The Commission wrote that it did not seek warrants from the [[Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act]] court for communications between persons in the United States and abroad because it regarded that as an FBI role, and because it did not want to be viewed as targeting persons in the United States.[^18]
In January 2001, a joint FBI and CIA source shown surveillance photographs from Kuala Lumpur said he was 90 percent certain that an unidentified man in one was Khallad, the man believed to have directed the 2000 [[USS Cole bombing]], which linked Khallad to Mihdhar. The Commission found no effort by the CIA to renew the search for Mihdhar, and found that the CIA did not tell the FBI. It wrote that Tenet and [[Cofer Black]] had testified before the Joint Inquiry that the FBI had access to this identification from the beginning, and concluded, on a record that included documents unavailable to the officials who drafted that testimony, that this was not the case.[^19]
On May 15, 2001, a CIA officer detailed to the FBI (called "John" in the report) reviewed the old cables and began an exchange with a CIA analyst ("Dave"), but made no effort to learn whether the men were in the United States. On June 11, 2001, an FBI analyst ("Jane") showed Kuala Lumpur photographs to FBI agents in New York investigating the Cole bombing. [[NSA|National Security Agency]] reports she had found carried caveats barring their sharing with criminal investigators without permission from the [[Department of Justice|Justice Department]]'s Office of Intelligence Policy and Review, and she did not pass them on. The CIA analyst at the meeting, who knew that Mihdhar held a visa and that Hazmi had flown to Los Angeles, was not asked and did not volunteer. Mihdhar received a new visa two days later and entered New York on July 4, 2001.[^20]
On July 24, 2001, an FBI analyst detailed to the CIA ("Mary") began reviewing the cables. Hazmi and Mihdhar were added to the TIPOFF watchlist on August 24. The lead for the FBI's New York Field Office was sent on August 28 labeled "Routine." One of the Cole case agents was told by the FBI analyst that the wall between intelligence and criminal investigations barred him from the search, and wrote that "someday someone will die." The Commission concluded that everyone involved was confused about the rules and that the criminal agents could have conducted the search.[^21]
The CIA Inspector General's accountability review, completed in June 2005, found that agency officers did not on a timely basis recommend watchlisting of Hazmi and Mihdhar and did not pass the travel information to the FBI in proper channels, and that "there was no coherent, functioning watchlisting program." It recommended that an Accountability Board of persons who were not agency employees review the performance of, among others, the chiefs of the Counterterrorist Center from 1998 to 2001. It stated that the team found no instance in which an employee violated the law and that none of the errors involved misconduct. The Inspector General recused himself from deliberations on one subject because of a conflict of interest.[^22] Porter Goss, who as House Intelligence Committee chairman had co-led the Joint Inquiry and by 2005 directed the CIA, declined the recommendation in October 2005. On releasing the executive summary on August 21, 2007, Director [[Michael Hayden]] wrote to employees that the declassification "was neither my choice nor my preference," that two Directors of National Intelligence had supported the agency's position against release, and that he had found no reason to revisit Goss's decision.[^23]
The Commission also described a July 2001 memo from an FBI agent in Phoenix about flight schools, which did not reach headquarters managers before the attacks, and the August 2001 detention of [[Zacarias Moussaoui]] in Minnesota. It concluded that the Phoenix memo, had it been acted on, would not by itself have uncovered the plot.[^24]
### Los Angeles and San Diego
Hazmi and Mihdhar arrived in Los Angeles on January 15, 2000. The Commission examined whether [[Fahad al-Thumairy]], an imam at the [[King Fahd Mosque]] in Culver City and an accredited diplomat at the Saudi consulate from 1996 to 2003, had helped them. It recorded that he was reputed to be a strict adherent of Wahhabi doctrine, that the State Department refused him entry on May 6, 2003 on a determination that he might be connected with terrorist activity, and that he denied knowing the hijackers or Bayoumi although witnesses and telephone records showed contact with Bayoumi. It concluded that it had found no evidence that Thumairy provided assistance to the two operatives.[^25]
On February 1, 2000, Bayoumi and a companion met Hazmi and Mihdhar at a halal restaurant on Venice Boulevard in Culver City. The Commission wrote that it did not know whether the encounter occurred by chance or design, that it had seen no credible evidence that Bayoumi believed in violent extremism or knowingly aided extremist groups, and that its investigators found him an unlikely candidate for clandestine involvement. Bayoumi helped the two men find an apartment in [[San Diego]], co-signed the lease and issued a certified check for the deposit, for which they reimbursed him.[^26]
The [[Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General]]'s special report on the FBI's handling of intelligence before the attacks, issued in classified form in July 2004 and released publicly in June 2005, records that the FBI's preliminary inquiry on Bayoumi was closed in June 1999 without conversion to a full investigation, so that the FBI was not investigating him in February 2000. It states that in May 2000 Hazmi and Mihdhar moved as boarders into the home of an asset of the San Diego Field Office whom the report does not name, that Mihdhar stayed until June 10, 2000 and Hazmi until December 10, 2000, that the asset had been opened on May 14, 1994 and had 14 boarders before the attacks, and that the handling agent retired in February 2002 and declined to be interviewed. The asset gave conflicting accounts to the FBI after the attacks of what he had told the agent; the handling agent said the asset gave only the first names Nawaf and Khalid, and the report concludes that the FBI obtained no information on the pair's time in San Diego from the Bayoumi inquiry or from the asset. The report also records the January 2001 identification of Khallad as made with "ninety percent" certainty, in a CIA cable that does not state it was repeated to the FBI legal attache.[^27]
Operation Encore, an FBI New York investigation, grew out of the PENTTBOM investigation of the attacks. FBI records give three start points: a subfile under PENTTBOM opened June 28, 2007, an Encore investigation opened August 28, 2007, and a full investigation initiated October 26, 2007. The stated purpose was to understand how Mihdhar and Hazmi had been able to connect to the Southern California Muslim community.[^28] The full investigation of Thumairy was opened on February 12, 2009. A February 19, 2009 communication states that an earlier Los Angeles full investigation of Thumairy, predicated on his calls with Bayoumi and his possible association with the hijackers, had been closed because he relocated to Saudi Arabia and because "all reasonable and practical intelligence collection methods" were exhausted. A communication of October 27, 2009 restates the closing and adds a third reason, the conclusion of the United States Attorney's Office that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute him. Both communications state that review of the file did not appear to reveal any investigation of Thumairy as a possible "tazkia" contact for the hijackers.[^29] The October 2009 communication opened a full investigation of Musaed al-Jarrah, identified as a former director of the Islamic Affairs Department of the Saudi embassy.[^30]
An FBI electronic communication dated April 4, 2016 summarizes interviews conducted on November 12 and 13, 2015 with a man whose name is redacted and who had a pending citizenship application. The communication states that a person whose name is redacted "was tasked by THUMAIRY to assist HAZMI and MIDHAR while they were in Los Angeles," and that a person whose name is redacted "described the hijackers as 'two very significant people.'" It records that the interviewee, in interviews, admitted showing the hijackers the location of the restaurant but denied being tasked to do so. The same document states that Bayoumi's 2003 statements about meeting the hijackers "are directly contradicted by eyewitness statements," that a companion told the FBI that Bayoumi positioned himself to look out the restaurant's front window and approached the hijackers from a distance at which he could not have heard them speaking, that employees of Dallah Avco described Bayoumi as a "ghost employee," one of about fifty such individuals, and that numbers in Bayoumi's telephone book for a Saudi physician were found on a contact card retrieved in a late May 2003 raid in Medina, Saudi Arabia.[^31]
A communication of July 23, 2021 compiled the FBI's records on the Saudi government, the Saudi embassy and affiliated offices in connection with the attacks, for the use of future case agents. It states that it "should not be considered an intelligence assessment," that it copies original serials with their language retained, and that its writer was not re-investigating, citing a lack of resources and analytical assistance.[^32]
A joint FBI and CIA assessment sent to the Senate intelligence committee by FBI Director Mueller and CIA Director Goss on September 1, 2005 stated that there was "no evidence that either the Saudi Government or members of the Saudi royal family knowingly provided support for the attacks" and "no information to indicate that either Omar al-Bayoumi or Osama Basnan materially supported the hijackers wittingly, were intelligence officers of the Saudi Government or provided material support for the 11 September attacks, contrary to media speculation." The same summary stated that official Saudi entities and associated organizations provided financial and logistical support to individuals in the United States, some associated with terrorism-related activity.[^33]
The Commission wrote that it had found no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded al-Qaeda, a conclusion it said did not exclude diversion of funds by charities with significant Saudi government sponsorship. A note states that it found no evidence that Princess Haifa al Faisal provided funds to the conspiracy directly or indirectly.[^34]
### Departure of Saudi nationals
The Commission addressed three questions about Saudi nationals who left the United States after the attacks. It found no evidence of any flight before national airspace reopened on the morning of September 13, 2001, and no evidence of political intervention, and reported that [[Richard Clarke]] had asked the FBI's [[Dale Watson]] to check whether the FBI had objections. [[White House]] Chief of Staff [[Andrew Card]] recalled being told of the Saudi request but said he did not ask anyone to act. The Commission believed that the FBI conducted a satisfactory screening of Saudi nationals who left on charter flights.[^35]
### Securities trading
On September 19, 2001, Acting Director of Enforcement [[Stephen Cutler]] of the [[Securities and Exchange Commission]] stated that the Commission had received reports that those associated with the terrorist activities "may have sought to exploit our securities markets to profit from those activities," that it had "drawn no conclusions," and that speculation about what it had concluded "has absolutely no foundation in fact."[^36]
The Division of Enforcement began its review on September 12, 2001, for the period from August 20 to September 11. Its information memorandum ENF 02-13 of May 15, 2002, addressed to the Commission, states that staff examined over 9.5 million securities transactions, reviewed trading in securities and derivatives of 103 companies in six industry groups across seven markets and in 32 exchange-traded funds and broad indices, that more than 40 staff worked on it, that the information was made available to the Justice Department and the Treasury, and that the staff briefed members of the Senate Banking Committee staff and the National Security Council staff. The memorandum states that the staff did not develop any evidence that those with advance knowledge traded on it and that every unusual trade noticed was consistent with a legitimate strategy. The [[National Security Archive]] obtained the memorandum, in redacted form, in 2010 after six years of requests; the SEC's general counsel wrote to it on April 6, 2010 agreeing to disclose it.[^37]
The 9/11 Commission's report reached the same conclusion and in a note described the surge in put options on the parent of United Airlines on September 6 and of American Airlines on September 10: a single United States institutional investor with no ties to al-Qaeda bought 95 percent of the United put options on September 6 as part of a strategy that included buying 115,000 American shares on September 10, and the American trading was traced to an options newsletter faxed to subscribers on September 9.[^38]
### Able Danger
On September 21, 2005 the [[Senate Judiciary Committee]] under Chairman [[Arlen Specter]] held a hearing on Able Danger, a Defense Department counterterrorism data-analysis program. Representative [[Curt Weldon]] testified that Captain Philpott "identified absolutely Mohammed Atta as a part of the Brooklyn cell" in January and February 2000, that an official had been ordered to destroy up to 2.5 terabytes of Able Danger data, and that an FBI employee had arranged three meetings with the FBI Washington Field Office in September 2000 that Defense Department officials cancelled at the last minute.[^39] Attorney [[Mark Zaid]] testified that Able Danger never identified Atta in the United States and that a chart listing Atta under "Brooklyn, New York" prompted concern among Army lawyers about compiling data on United States persons.[^40]
A letter from former Commissioner [[Slade Gorton]] entered in the hearing record stated that the notes of Commission staff of a meeting with Lieutenant Colonel [[Anthony Shaffer]] made no mention of Atta, that the White House lawyer present agreed, and that the [[Department of Defense]] had provided all relevant Able Danger documents to the Commission. The letter stated that the Department of Defense said Shaffer worked on the program for a total of 27 days and lost his security clearance in March 2004.[^41]
The Department of Defense Inspector General report of September 18, 2006 concluded that Able Danger team members did not identify Atta or any other hijacker before the attacks. It found that the chart witnesses remembered was a May 1999 Orion Scientific chart of 53 terrorists, including a Brooklyn cell, which did not include Atta, that four witnesses who recalled seeing Atta on a chart gave recollections that were not accurate, and that witnesses in a position to know denied that Able Danger members were barred from meeting the FBI.[^42]
### Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act
Families of victims and others sued Saudi Arabia and other defendants in the multidistrict litigation *In re Terrorist Attacks on September 11, 2001*, 03-md-1570, in the Southern District of New York before Judge [[George B. Daniels]]. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia first moved to dismiss in 2004 on grounds of sovereign immunity. On September 29, 2015, Daniels granted a motion to dismiss on that ground.[^43]
On September 21, 2016, the Senate voted 71 to 27 to table a motion to discharge S.J.Res. 39, a resolution disapproving a proposed sale of M1A1/A2 Abrams tank structures and other defense equipment to Saudi Arabia.[^44] On September 20, 2016, the law firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck had written to Saudi Foreign Minister [[Adel al-Jubeir]] accepting an engagement as "policy counsel for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in connection with the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA)," at $100,000 a month "until JASTA becomes law or until March 31, 2017, whichever is later." The firm registered under the [[Foreign Agents Registration Act]] on September 22, 2016, describing its activity as communicating "with Members of Congress and members of the executive branch regarding" JASTA and its passage into law.[^45] Squire Patton Boggs registered on September 20, 2016 for the Center for Studies and Media Affairs at the Saudi Royal Court, to provide "legal and strategic policy advice and advocacy on foreign policy and related issues," and reported receiving $400,000 from that principal on April 1, 2017.[^46] The FARA bulk registry lists foreign principal registrations for Saudi Arabian principals in September 2016 by Squire Patton Boggs, S.G.R. LLC Government Relations and Lobbying and FGS Global on September 20, Brownstein on September 22, King & Spalding on September 26, and the Podesta Group on September 30.[^47]
On September 28, 2016, the Senate voted 97 to 1 to override the President's veto of S. 2040, the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act. [[Harry Reid]] voted no; [[Tim Kaine]] and [[Bernie Sanders]] did not vote.[^48] The act, Public Law 114-222, created an exception to foreign sovereign immunity for physical injury or death in the United States caused by an act of international terrorism and a tortious act of a foreign state or its officials, employees or agents acting within the scope of their office, employment or agency.[^49]
The Second Circuit vacated the 2015 decision on request of the parties. In 2018 Daniels held that plaintiffs' allegations of direct liability were insufficient but that vicarious liability was reasonably articulated, and ordered limited jurisdictional discovery on whether Thumairy, Bayoumi and their agents acted at the direction of more senior Saudi officials in assisting Hazmi and Mihdhar. Magistrate Judge [[Sarah Netburn]] supervised the discovery. Saudi Arabia filed its renewed motion on October 6, 2023, and Daniels heard argument on July 31, 2024.[^50]
On August 28, 2025, Daniels denied the motion. His decision records that Bayoumi worked for Saudi Arabia's civil aviation agency from 1977 and was sent to San Diego in 1994, paid through Dallah Avco, with the title of senior data processing technician and without performing that work; that plaintiffs contend he was a cooptee of Saudi intelligence and that he testified he never was a Saudi intelligence officer; that Thumairy held diplomatic status from 1996 to 2003 and that from 1999 to 2001 a bank account he had opened received significant funds from Prince Abdulaziz, a senior Saudi cabinet member, which Thumairy said were used for charitable donations and mosque expenses; that Thumairy testified he did not recall meeting Hazmi or Mihdhar and never gave instructions to assist them; and that a mosque congregant testified that no one, including Thumairy, told him to help the hijackers. It records that Akram Alzamari told the FBI that the congregant had said Thumairy asked him to look after two "significant" people, and that Alzamari testified in 2020 that the FBI's notes of that statement were erroneous.[^51]
The decision records that Bayoumi made at least 93 calls to the Saudi Embassy between January 19 and March 24, 2000, 30 of them to its Islamic Affairs Department; that from March to April 2000 his monthly compensation from Dallah Avco more than doubled, with the personnel form giving "promotion" as the reason; that he filmed a one-hour video of [[Washington, D.C.]] in June 1999 including the Capitol; and that a notepad seized from his home in the [[United Kingdom]] in September 2001 contained a sketch of an airplane with notes on height and distance, which he testified was an equation he had memorized. It records that the hijackers rented a room in Lemon Grove from Abdussattar Shaikh, an FBI informant since 1994 whom the Justice Department Inspector General's report described as given a $100,000 payment in July 2003, and that Shaikh told the FBI he believed Bayoumi was an agent of the Saudi government. It records that after the attacks Saudi Arabia's Foreign Ministry told Thumairy not to return to the United States, that Jarrah wrote on November 9, 2001 that Thumairy was not a suspect and asked that he return to work, that the King and the Foreign Ministry approved his return on November 28, 2001, and that the State Department revoked his visa on March 21, 2003.[^52]
The decision states that plaintiffs had provided "reasonable evidence as to the roles played by Bayoumi, Thumairy, and KSA," that Saudi Arabia's explanations were "either self-contradictory or not strong enough" to overcome the inference that it had employed them to assist the hijackers, and that many facts, including whether the February 2000 meetings were planned, were disputed and would be resolved at trial. It concludes: "Plaintiffs' claims will proceed to decision on their merits."[^53]
### Footnotes
[^1]: National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, *The 9/11 Commission Report* (Government Printing Office, 2004), pp. 7, 8, 10, 14, 30, 311. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-911REPORT/pdf/GPO-911REPORT.pdf
[^2]: Graham, Porter [Goss] and Pelosi to George J. Tenet, letter of January 29, 2003, preceding Part Four of the Joint Inquiry report, "Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001," December 2002, in "28 Redacted Pages of Part Four of the Joint Inquiry," Internet Archive, item declasspart4_201904, pp. 1-4 of the letter. https://archive.org/details/declasspart4_201904
[^3]: House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, "Intel Committee publishes declassified '28 pages,'" press release, July 15, 2016. https://intelligence.house.gov/2016/07/15/intel-committee-publishes-declassified-28-pages/
[^4]: Joint Inquiry, Part Four, Finding 20 and Discussion (printed pp. 416-420; page numbers read from OCR), "28 Redacted Pages of Part Four," Internet Archive item declasspart4_201904. https://archive.org/details/declasspart4_201904
[^5]: Joint Inquiry, Part Four, section "Omar al-Bayoumi and Osama Bassnan" (printed pp. 420-428), same item; testimony of the former San Diego case agent and the FBI's November 18, 2002 response as quoted there.
[^6]: Joint Inquiry, Part Four, discussion of Osama Bassnan, including the testimony of Pasquale D'Amuro on October 9, 2002 and the footnote on the FBI's correction, same item.
[^7]: Joint Inquiry, Part Four, section "Phone Numbers Linking Abu Zubaida to a Company in the United States and a Saudi Diplomat in Washington" (printed pp. 428-429), same item.
[^8]: Joint Inquiry, Part Four, discussion of the CIA memorandum found in the San Diego Field Office files (printed pp. 418-420), same item.
[^9]: United States Senate, Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Minority Staff, *Money Laundering and Foreign Corruption: Enforcement and Effectiveness of the PATRIOT Act, Case Study Involving Riggs Bank*, S. Hrg. 108-633, July 14, 2004, note 2 and the section on the 2003 Saudi targeted examination. https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/imo/media/doc/REPORT-Money%20Laundering%20&%20Foreign%20Corruption%20(July%202004).pdf
[^10]: *The 9/11 Commission Report*, Preface, pp. xv-xvi.
[^11]: "Kissinger resigns as head of 9/11 commission," CNN.com, December 13, 2002. https://www.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/12/13/kissinger.resigns/
[^12]: *The 9/11 Commission Report*, "Commission Members" and "Commission Staff" lists, front matter.
[^13]: *The 9/11 Commission Report*, p. 199 and note 165 (p. 509).
[^14]: *The 9/11 Commission Report*, p. 79 and note 33 (p. 473); note on aviation security (p. 475).
[^15]: *The 9/11 Commission Report*, p. 210.
[^16]: *The 9/11 Commission Report*, pp. 410-414.
[^17]: *The 9/11 Commission Report*, pp. 181-182.
[^18]: *The 9/11 Commission Report*, pp. 87-88.
[^19]: *The 9/11 Commission Report*, pp. 266-267.
[^20]: *The 9/11 Commission Report*, pp. 267-269.
[^21]: *The 9/11 Commission Report*, pp. 270-271.
[^22]: Central Intelligence Agency, Office of Inspector General, "OIG Report on CIA Accountability With Respect to the 9/11 Attacks," Executive Summary, June 2005, released August 2007, pp. xii-xvi and note 1, CIA Reading Room document 0001499482. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-0001499482
[^23]: Michael V. Hayden, statement to employees on the release of the 9/11 IG report executive summary, August 21, 2007. https://irp.fas.org/news/2007/08/cia082107.html
[^24]: *The 9/11 Commission Report*, pp. 272-274.
[^25]: *The 9/11 Commission Report*, pp. 216-217.
[^26]: *The 9/11 Commission Report*, pp. 217-219.
[^27]: Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, *A Review of the FBI's Handling of Intelligence Information Prior to the September 11 Attacks*, Special Report, November 2004 (public release June 2005), chapter 5, "Two September 11 Hijackers: Khalid Al-Mihdhar and Nawaf Al-Hazmi." https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/archive/special/0506/chapter5.htm
[^28]: FBI New York, electronic communication "Operation Encore" and related communications, Bates EO14040-000556 to -000557 (February 19, 2009) and EO14040-000715 to -000719 (December 4, 2007); FBI electronic communication, "ENCORE Investigation Update, Review and Analysis: Interview" (April 4, 2016), p. 2, "Full Investigation Initiated: 10/26/2007." FBI Vault, 9/11 material released under Executive Order 14040. https://vault.fbi.gov/9-11-attacks-investigation-and-related-materials/9-11-material-released-in-response-to-executive-order-14040
[^29]: FBI New York, electronic communications of February 19, 2009 (EO14040-000556 to -000558) and October 27, 2009 (EO14040-000569 and following), FBI Vault, documents responsive to Executive Order 14040, section 2(b)(i), part 02 of 02. https://vault.fbi.gov/9-11-attacks-investigation-and-related-materials/9-11-material-released-in-response-to-executive-order-14040/documents-responsive-to-executive-order-14040-section-2-b-i-part-02-of-02/view
[^30]: Same, communication of October 27, 2009 (EO14040-000569).
[^31]: FBI New York, electronic communication of April 4, 2016, "ENCORE Investigation Update, Review and Analysis: Interview [redacted] (NOV 2015)," pp. 2-10, FBI Vault. https://vault.fbi.gov/9-11-attacks-investigation-and-related-materials/9-11-material-released-in-response-to-executive-order-14040/april-4-2016-electronic-communication-part-01-of-01/view
[^32]: FBI electronic communication of July 23, 2021, "Connections to the Attacks of September 11, 2001," Bates EO14040-003479-UPDATED to -003482-UPDATED, FBI Vault, documents responsive to Executive Order 14040, release update part 02. https://vault.fbi.gov/9-11-attacks-investigation-and-related-materials/9-11-material-released-in-response-to-executive-order-14040/documents-responsive-to-executive-order-14040-release-update-part-02/view
[^33]: Robert S. Mueller III and Porter J. Goss to Pat Roberts, letter of September 1, 2005, with Executive Summary of the joint FBI-CIA report on the extent of Saudi government support for terrorism, Central Intelligence Agency. https://www.cia.gov/static/02ca03957729ccbd47d46405577cf604/Executive-Summary-of-Joint-FBI-CIA-Report-on-Extent-of_Saudi-Government-Support-for-Terrorism.pdf
[^34]: *The 9/11 Commission Report*, p. 171 and note 122 (p. 498).
[^35]: *The 9/11 Commission Report*, p. 329.
[^36]: Securities and Exchange Commission, "Statement by Acting Director of Enforcement Stephen Cutler," press release 2001-96, September 19, 2001. https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2001-96-statement-acting-director-enforcement-stephen-cutler
[^37]: SEC Division of Enforcement, "Pre-September 11, 2001 Trading Review," Information Memorandum ENF 02-13, File No. HO-9325, May 15, 2002, pp. 1-2, obtained by the National Security Archive; Nate Jones, "Document Friday: 'Terrorist-Insider-Trading?'," Unredacted (National Security Archive blog), April 30, 2010. https://unredacted.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/9-11-sec-report.pdf
[^38]: *The 9/11 Commission Report*, p. 172 and note 130 (p. 499).
[^39]: Statement of Representative Curt Weldon, *Able Danger and Intelligence Information Sharing*, hearing before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 109th Cong., S. Hrg. 109-311 (September 21, 2005), pp. 6-13. https://archive.org/details/gov.gpo.fdsys.CHRG-109shrg25409
[^40]: Testimony of Mark S. Zaid, S. Hrg. 109-311, p. 31.
[^41]: Slade Gorton to Senators Specter and Leahy, letter of September 20, 2005, S. Hrg. 109-311, pp. 57-58.
[^42]: Department of Defense Office of Inspector General, *Alleged Misconduct by Senior DoD Officials Concerning the Able Danger Program and Lieutenant Colonel Anthony A. Shaffer, U.S. Army Reserve*, September 18, 2006, p. 3 and Figure 1. https://documents2.theblackvault.com/documents/dia/FOIA-0238-2016.pdf
[^43]: *In re Terrorist Attacks on September 11, 2001*, No. 03-md-1570 (GBD)(SN) (S.D.N.Y.), Memorandum Decision and Order of August 28, 2025, ECF No. 11182, pp. 1-2 (citing 134 F. Supp. 3d 774 (S.D.N.Y. 2015)). https://assets.alm.com/56/48/0c58055d436488d8aaee80d07ca1/03-md-01570-11182-2.pdf
[^44]: United States Senate, roll call vote 114th Congress, 2nd Session, vote 145 (September 21, 2016), motion to table the motion to discharge S.J.Res. 39. https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1142/vote_114_2_00145.htm
[^45]: Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, LLP, registration statement exhibits A and B, FARA registration no. 5870, received September 22, 2016, with fee agreement letter of September 20, 2016 to H.E. Adel Al-Jubeir. https://efile.fara.gov/docs/5870-Exhibit-AB-20160922-4.pdf
[^46]: Squire Patton Boggs (US) LLP, exhibits A and B, FARA registration no. 2165, received September 20, 2016, https://efile.fara.gov/docs/2165-Exhibit-AB-20160920-67.pdf; supplemental statement for January 1 to June 30, 2017, received August 1, 2017, https://efile.fara.gov/docs/2165-Supplemental-Statement-20170801-26.pdf
[^47]: Department of Justice, FARA bulk data file "FARA_All_ForeignPrincipals," foreign principal registration dates for registrants 2165, 6379, 5666, 5870, 6307 and 5926, accessed October 1, 2026. https://efile.fara.gov/bulk/zip/FARA_All_ForeignPrincipals.csv.zip
[^48]: United States Senate, roll call vote 114th Congress, 2nd Session, vote 148 (September 28, 2016), "Shall the Bill S. 2040 Pass, the Objections of the President of the United States to the Contrary Notwithstanding?" https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1142/vote_114_2_00148.htm
[^49]: Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, Pub. L. No. 114-222, 130 Stat. 852 (September 28, 2016), codified at 28 U.S.C. section 1605B. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-114publ222/html/PLAW-114publ222.htm
[^50]: ECF No. 11182, pp. 2-4.
[^51]: ECF No. 11182, pp. 10-13.
[^52]: ECF No. 11182, pp. 14-15, 23-24, 27-29.
[^53]: ECF No. 11182, pp. 43-45.