On a quiet August afternoon six years later, over tuna sandwiches and Diet Cokes in the cafeteria of Princeton University's famed Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, retired U.S. ambassador to Egypt, Daniel Kurtzer, described the aftermath of the EgyptAir crash as the most challenging moment of his three years as ambassador in Cairo. This was telling for a man who took up his post amid a cascade of invective aimed at him by the Egyptian press for his adherence to Orthodox Judaism and coincided with the outbreak of the al-Aqsa intifada, which strained Egypt-Israel relations. Kurtzer's Egyptian counterpart, Nabil Fahmy, also identified the crash of flight 990 as the most difficult episode of his tenure in Washington. Almost eleven years later to the day of the crash, sitting in a comfortable chair in his office, now the dean of the American University in Cairo's School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, Fahmy reflected on the grim aftermath of the disaster.

Fahmy, who had arrived in Washington only two weeks before the crash, had not even presented his diplomatic credentials to the Clinton administration when news came of the disaster. He remembered how difficult it was for him because he had no answers for devastated relatives. The ambassador was as helpless as they were to make sense of what happened to flight 990. It did not help that within days of the Newport memorial service, Cairo and Washington began a war of words over EgyptAir 990's fate. Although both Kurtzer and Fahmy were clearly relaying what had been upsetting and difficult personal circumstances, the events surrounding the EgyptAir disaster were a metaphor for U.S.-Egypt relations -- not the crash per se, but the aftermath -- in which two governments were clearly talking past each other. The situation was only made worse by the fact that, despite three decades of partnership and cooperation, the United States had become, unwittingly, a negative factor in Egypt's domestic political struggles.

When Washington and Cairo established strategic ties after the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty, there was a sense of hope and promise.

Through the development of Egypt, the United States would go a long way toward constructing a stable, prosperous, and peaceful region that was unwelcome to communism and the Soviet Union. Peeling off the Egyptians was a palliative for a Washington that had been diminished by the events of the previous decade. It proved in part that, after Watergate, the ignominious withdrawal from Vietnam, the Iranian hostage crisis, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, global power and prestige was not shifting inexorably in favor of Moscow. Moving Egypt into the Western camp was also a boost for the typically (even cliched) American "can-do" spirit. After all, the relationship may have been based on grand strategic considerations, but helping the Egyptians build a successful society would buttress the geopolitics. More than twenty-five years after the fact, former Ambassador Nicholas Veliotes is still excited. Now long retired, dressed in a black leather bomber jacket and jeans, at eighty-two he has not lost his step. Veliotes relishes recounting his experiences in Egypt and at the State Department. Ronald Reagan appointed him to represent the United States in Egypt when the American military and economic assistance program to Cairo was ramping up in 1983. One of the first things Veliotes did after arriving in Cairo was ask the Egyptians what they needed. An old State Department hand who had served in several senior positions in Washington, as well as postings in India, Europe, and the Middle East, Veliotes wanted to make good on Washington's commitments.