Gifts of Friendship

FDR Presidential Library Video 314 Gifts of Friendship This film records the first time that King Abdul Aziz Ibn Abdul Rahman Al-Saud left his country. It was to meet with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt at the Great Bitter Lake in the Suez Canal on February 14, 1945. In his book "FDR Meets Ibn Saud", Colonel William Eddy, official interpreter for the meeting, suggests that Roosevelt recognized his meeting with Ibn Saud as "an outstanding success," and assured the United States Congress: "I learned more by talking with Ibn Saud for five minutes than I could have learned in the exchange of two or three dozen letters." Archival footage from the FDR Presidential Library.