According to Al Jazeera, papers found in the headquarters of the former intelligence agency of Libya indicate that during the 2011 Libyan civil war David Welch met officials of Muammar Gaddafi's regime on 2 August 2011, at the Four Seasons Hotel in Cairo a few blocks from the US embassy. Welch reputedly advised the Gaddafi regime on how to win the "propaganda war" by passing information on potential connections between anti-Gaddafi forces and terrorist organisations such as Al Qaeda to the American government via the intelligence agencies of other countries such as Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco. According to it he also recommended that the regime refers to the Syrian situation to expose what he viewed as a double standard in American foreign policy relating to the Arab Spring. He also criticised Qatar's role in the intervention, calling it a cynical effort to distract from the unrest in nearby Bahrain.