This seminar session will explore both United States and Jordanian decision-making in the run up to the June 1967 Arab-Israeli war. It will consider in particular the claim made by the former CIA station chief in Amman, Jack O’Connell, that he passed a specific warning about the Israeli plan of attack to King Hussein of Jordan. In his recent book, King’s Counsel, O’Connell presented new evidence about the so-called U.S. ‘green light’ to Israel.

Nigel J. Ashton is Professor and Chair of the International History Department at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is the author of King Hussein of Jordan: A Political Life (2008); Kennedy, Macmillan and the Cold War: The Irony of Interdependence (2002); and Eisenhower, Macmillan and the Problem of Nasser: Anglo-American Relations and Arab Nationalism, 1955-59 (1996).