On March 27, 1976—while the civil war was raging in Lebanon—a meeting took place that was perhaps the most famous in the history of the conflict. A closed-door session, lasting eight continuous hours, brought together Syrian President Hafez al-Assad—who had intervened militarily in Lebanon to support right-wing parties against the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)—and Kamal Jumblatt, leader of the National Movement, which was allied with the PLO. The details of that session remained secret; throughout the ensuing years, only a few of its main highlights were ever leaked. On March 16, 1977, the Druze leader was assassinated in close proximity to a Syrian Army checkpoint operating under the banner of the Arab Deterrent Force. On September 30, the Taif Agreement formally marked the end of the civil war; in 1992, a national reconciliation was achieved among all the parties—political and sectarian—that had participated in the conflict, thereby ushering in a new era of coexistence in Lebanon. On December 8, 2024, the Syrian regime fell. Then, in 2025, the assassin who had eliminated Kamal Jumblatt—acting at the behest of the regime of that era—was finally apprehended. Now that the charges have been substantiated, the release of the official minutes of that historic session—documents that would never have surfaced were it not for the regime’s collapse, the storming of government offices, and the exposure of classified archives—appears to be of paramount importance, for they vividly reveal the discord and hostility that overshadowed that highly charged encounter between the two men. The text is rendered in colloquial Arabic—a stylistic choice made to uphold the principles of professionalism and authenticity by publishing the record exactly as it stands—yet the dialogue is lucid, the words are unambiguous, and what remains most glaringly evident is precisely that which remained unspoken...