Turki Al-Faisal

Prince Turki al-Faisal spent nearly a quarter century directing Saudi foreign intelligence before becoming an ambassador. Born in Mecca in 1945, he attended the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey and studied at Georgetown University. He became a royal court adviser in 1973 and headed the General Intelligence Directorate from 1977 to 2001. He then represented Saudi Arabia in Britain and Ireland before moving to Washington in 2005. ¹

In Washington, Turki made public outreach a conspicuous part of his work. He chaired the Saudi side of the Strategic Dialogue's working group on exchanges between the two societies. In his January 2007 Landon Lecture, he reported visiting about twenty-five states and attending more than a hundred public events during the previous year. He argued that official cooperation could not endure without rebuilding public trust damaged by the September 11 attacks, and linked student exchanges to that effort. ²

Turki also helped establish the King Faisal Foundation and chaired its Center for Research and Islamic Studies. His later book, The Afghanistan File, published in 2021, presented his account of Saudi intelligence activity from the Soviet invasion through September 2001. It addressed support for the mujahideen, attempts to reconcile Afghan factions, and his unsuccessful negotiations with the Taliban for the surrender of Osama bin Laden. ^{1, 3}