On 27 August 1980, an attempt was made on the lives of the US Ambassador to Lebanon, Dean and his family. Dean, of Ashkenazi descent, had been authorized to deal with the PLO when American Security Interests were involved, something which disturbed Israel., At Dean's request – he had sought counsel from Walid Khalidi – Arafat and Abu Walid chief commander of the PLO forces in Lebanon, had intervened by traveling to Tehran in November 1979, to secure the release of 13 Americans taken hostage in Iran in 1979. The PLO's decisive role was never publicly acknowledged by the US administration. Dean was known to send cables regularly to Israel and the State Department protesting IAF violations of Lebanese airspace. He had, in the face of Israeli objections, seconded the Lebanese government's movement of two of its battalions to Southern Lebanon, in order to assert Lebanese sovereignty. Dean later provided a detailed eyewitness account of the episode and its aftermath to both the Jimmy Carter Library and Museum and the ADST Foreign Affairs Oral History Project.