Bandar bin Sultan Al Saud

Bandar bin Sultan Al Saud (بندر بن سلطان بن عبد العزيز آل سعود; born 2 March 1949) is a retired Saudi Arabian diplomat, military officer, and government official who served as Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States from 1983 to 2005.

He is a member of the House of Saud.

Bandar was born officially on 2 March 1949 in Taif.

By his own account, and according to Western think tanks, his actual date of birth is later.

He had reportedly altered his birthday (overstated his age) to enter the Royal Saudi Air Force while a teen.

Bandar's parents were Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz and his Ethiopian concubine Khiziran.

Both of Bandar's parents were very young at the time of his birth: his mother Khiziran was just sixteen, and was working as a maid in the palace when she first came in contact with Sultan.

The royal family provided Khiziran with a generous monthly pension after Bandar was born, but told her to take her child and live with her own family.

Bandar thus spent his early years in a non-royal milieu, living with his mother and aunt, and had little contact with his father until he was about eight years old.

By this time, the royal family relented and invited Khiziran to bring Bandar with her and live in the palace with Prince Sultan's widowed mother, Hassa bint Ahmed Al Sudairi.

Bandar graduated from the Royal Air Force College Cranwell in 1968.

He received additional training at Maxwell Air Force Base and the Industrial College of the Armed Forces.

He is a trained pilot and has flown numerous fighter aircraft.

Bandar's military career ended in 1977 after he crash-landed his jet and suffered a severe back injury.

Afterward, he received a master's degree in international public policy at the Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies.

One of his classmates in Cranwell was Bandar bin Faisal, son of King Faisal and his future brother-in-law.

Bandar joined the Royal Saudi Air Force, and rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel.

His diplomatic career began in 1978 when he was appointed the King Khalid's personal envoy.

He successfully lobbied the United States Congress to approve the sale of F-15s to Saudi Arabia.

In the Oval Office, President Carter advised him to win the support of California governor Ronald Reagan.

He did and in exchange helped Carter win the support of South Dakota Democratic Senator James Abourezk for the Panama Canal treaty.

Crown Prince Fahd made Bandar an emissary to Carter and granted him permission to act independently of the Saudi-U.S. ambassador.

In 1982, King Fahd made him the military attache at the Saudi Embassy, a move which could have ended his diplomatic career.

However, in 1983, Fahd appointed Bandar as Saudi Ambassador to the United States.

On 24 October 1983 Bandar was appointed ambassador to the United States by King Fahd.

He replaced Faisal Alhegelan in the post.

During his tenure as ambassador and, before that, the king's personal envoy to Washington, he dealt with five U.S. presidents, ten secretaries of state, eleven national security advisers, sixteen sessions of Congress, and the media.

He had extensive influence in the United States.

At the pinnacle of his career, he served both "as the King's exclusive messenger and the White House's errand boy".

For over three decades, he was the face of the Saudi Arabia lobby.

The U.S. is widely seen as one of Saudi Arabia's most essential allies, but different members of the royal family feel different mixtures of trust and suspicion of the United States.

Therefore, Prince Bandar's intimate relationships with U.S. leaders and policy-makers are considered to be both the source of his power base in the kingdom, as well as the cause of suspicions within the royal family that he is too close to U.S. political figures.

During the Reagan Era, he secured the purchase of AWACs surveillance aircraft despite opposition from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

The $5.5 billion deal was the beginning of a $200 billion deal for the purchase of American weapons for Saudi Arabia, which included a slush fund that the CIA could direct for its off-the-budget projects.

For example, at CIA request, Prince Bandar deposited $10 million in a Vatican bank used to meddle in Italian elections by undermining the Italian Communist Party.

The Al-Yamamah arms deal between Britain and Saudi Arabia included diverting hundreds of millions of British pounds stretching over more than a decade to Prince Bandar through a Saudi Arabian government bank account at Riggs Bank, but some of the money was used to fund secret CIA projects off-the-budget.

According Robert Lacey these payments to Prince Bandar amounted to more than a billion British pounds.

From 2005 to 2015 he served as secretary general of the National Security Council, and was director general of the Saudi Intelligence Agency from 2012 to 2014.

From 2014 to 2015 he was King Abdullah's special envoy.

Khiziran died in Riyadh in October 2019.