[5][6] According to Aaron David Miller, he and Kurtzer wrote short memos for Baker on issues at hand, rather than longer, strategic papers.

According to Miller, Kurtzer left in 1994 because he "felt shut out by" the Special Middle East Envoy, Dennis Ross.

[8] In 2006, he retired from the State Department and the U.S. Foreign Service with the rank of Career-Minister and assumed a chair in Middle East policy studies at the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.

[9] He co-chaired, with Scott Lasensky, the Study Group on Arab-Israeli Peacemaking, a project supported by the United States Institute of Peace.

[11] Kurtzer, James Steinberg, and Dennis Ross were among the principal authors of Barack Obama's address on the Middle East to AIPAC in June 2008, which was viewed as the Democratic nominee's most expansive on international affairs.