Nueces County Sheriff

Mansour Arbabsiar is seen in a 2001 booking photo after he was charged for check fraud.

Updated at 2:30 p.m. ET: A Texas man pleaded guilty Wednesday to plotting to assassinate Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States, acknowledging he agreed to hire what he thought was a drug dealer in Mexico last year for $1.5 million to carry out the attack with explosives at a Washington, D.C., restaurant.

Manssor Arbabsiar, 58, entered the plea to two conspiracy charges and a murder-for-hire count in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Judge John F. Keenan repeatedly asked Arbabsiar whether he intended to kill the ambassador. Arbabsiar, a U.S. citizen who holds an Iranian passport, said he did.

"I take responsibility for my actions," Arbabsiar said.

Arbabsiar also admitted he agreed to help transfer more than $100,000 through a New York bank to help further the plot. 

When Arbabsiar's arrest was announced last year, President Barack Obama's administration accused the Iranian government of being behind the planned assassination of Ambassador Adel al Jubeir in Washington.

The press attache at Iran's mission to the United Nations then called the accusation "baseless."

"Mr. Arbabsiar’s plea today confirms what our investigation had already uncovered: that he plotted to murder the Saudi Ambassador with members of Iran’s elite Qods Force," said FBI Acting Assistant Director Mary Galligan. "The FBI remains ever vigilant toward acts of terror both here and abroad."

Authorities say Arbabsiar earlier admitted his role in a $1.5 million plot to kill the ambassador at a restaurant by setting off explosives. 

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Sentencing is scheduled Jan. 23. Arbabsiar faces up to 25 years in prison. A trial had been scheduled for January.

Arbabsiar, who lived in Corpus Christi, Texas, for more than a decade, said he went to Mexico last year to meet a man named Junior, "who turned out to be an FBI agent." He said that he and others had agreed to arrange the kidnapping of ambassador Al-Jubeir, but Junior said it would be easier to kill the ambassador.

Arbabsiar has been held without bail since he was arrested Sept. 29, 2011 at John F. Kennedy International Airport. He was brought into court Wednesday in handcuffs. He spoke English and did not use a translator, despite saying he understood only about half of what he read in English. Bearded and bespectacled, he smiled several times during the proceeding, including in the direction of courtroom artists who were seated in the jury box when he entered court.

Defense lawyers say Arbabsiar suffers from bipolar disorder.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Edward Kim said that if the government had proceeded to trial, it would have presented a jury with secretly recorded conversations between Arbabsiar and a confidential source, along with Arbabsiar's extensive post-arrest statement to authorities and emails and financial records.

Authorities have said they secretly recorded conversations between Arbabsiar and an informant with the Drug Enforcement Administration after Arbabsiar approached the informant in Mexico and asked his knowledge of explosives for a plot to blow up the Saudi embassy in Washington. They said Arbabsiar later offered $1.5 million for the death of the ambassador.

A second person, Gholam Shakuri, was charged in the plot but remains at large in Iran.

The Justice Department said Shakuri is an Iran-based member of Iran’s Qods Force, which is a special operations unit of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that is said to sponsor and promote terrorist activities abroad.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara stated: “As was originally charged, and as Arbabsiar has now admitted, he was the extended murderous hand of his co-conspirators, officials of the Iranian military based in Iran, who plotted to kill the Saudi Ambassador in the United States and were willing to kill as many bystanders as necessary to do so. Arbabsiar traveled to and from the United States, Mexico and Iran and was in telephone contact with his Iranian confederates while he brokered an audacious plot. The audacity of the plot should not cause doubt, but rather vigilance regarding others like Arbabsiar, who are enlisted as the violent emissaries of plotting foreign officials. This office will continue to pursue the co-conspirators in this plot and others in Iran or elsewhere who try to export murder. Thanks to the great work of the FBI, DEA and the prosecutors in this office, Mr. Arbabsiar must now answer for his conduct.”

Pete Williams is NBC News' justice correspondent. Jonathan Dienst is WNBC's chief investigative correspondent. Shimon Prokupecz is a WNBC investigative producer.    

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U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens in an undated photo.

The outpouring of support in the wake of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens' death has prompted his family in the San Francisco Bay Area, and elsewhere, to establish a fund to support innovative "people-to-people" ideas that further peace in the Middle East.

Stevens' brother, Tom Stevens, 46, an assistant U.S. Attorney in San Francisco, told NBC Bay Area on Friday that his family has established the J. Christopher Stevens Fund to award individuals and organizations who have good ideas on how to promote tolerance and peace in the Middle East.

"We just had this overwhelming response," Tom Stevens said. "We have received emails, texts, letters, flowers, you name it. And then Chris' Facebook page, it just went worldwide. We just wanted to put all these wishes to good use and see them carried out."

Chris Stevens, 52, was killed, along with three other embassy workers on Sept. 11 in Benghazi, Libya, a country where he was the United States ambassador. The White House has deemed the killing a terrorist attack, although the specific perpetrators and motives have not clearly been spelled out.

Stevens attended the University of California at Berkeley, and UC Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco.  Most of his family, including his mother and stepfather, live in the Oakland and the East Bay.

He was the first U.S. envoy to be killed in the line of duty since 1979.

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The fund named after Christopher Stevens is officially a partner of the New Venture Fund, a nonprofit public charity in Washington, D.C., and should soon have an advisory board of members who will determine how future donations will be spent, Tom Stevens said.

Tom Stevens encouraged anyone who wants to donate, and anyone who wants to submit an idea for a project, to contact the family on the www.rememberingchrisstevens.com homepage. At this point of its early inception, Tom Stevens said the family is considering a number of proposals, but no grants have been distributed yet.

In general, Tom Stevens said that the board is likely to grant money to established groups whose mission is to help "build bridges" between Americans and people in the Middle East — places where his older brother had worked including Libya, Tunisia, Israel, Syria and Egypt.

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Tom Stevens said projects that will be considered for funding depending on the amount of money raised will "promote religious tolerance, cultural understanding, educational youth exchanges, and other people-to-people programs."

Plans to memorialize Chris Stevens have still to be finalized.

To post a remembrance or photo, or to make a tax-deductible donation to the J. Christopher Stevens Fund, click here.  To send a private message or funding proposal idea, send an email to rememberingchrisstevens@gmail.com.

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The bodies of four Americans killed in an attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, earlier in the week were returned to the United States and honored in a somber ceremony at Joint Base Andrews, Md., on Friday.

President Barack Obama arrived shortly before the transfer ceremony honoring the victims — U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, information management officer Sean Smith and security personnel Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty.

Marines carried flag-draped coffins bearing the remains of the four across the tarmac and placed them before a gathering of family, friends, White House officials and high-level State Department personnel. In total, 800 to 1,000 were in attendance, an Air Force official said.

After a moment of silence and a prayer, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton eulogized each of the victims.

"We owe it to those four men to continue the long, hard work of diplomacy," Clinton said.

"May God bless them, and grant their families peace and solace, and may God continue to bless the United States of America," Clinton said, before making way for comments by Obama.

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The president said the men embodied and lived "the American ideal," embracing what he called "the fundamental American belief that we can leave this world a little better than before."

In honoring the fallen Americans, he also made a case for continued diplomatic and aid commitments to allies in the Middle East.

"Even as voices of suspicion and mistrust seek to divide countries and cultures from one another, the United States of America will never retreat from the world. We will never stop working for the dignity and freedom that every person deserves. ... That's the spirit that sets us apart from other nations. That was their work in Benghazi and this is the work we will carry on."

After the national anthem and a prayer, "America the Beautiful" was played as the caskets were loaded into waiting hearses, which then departed.

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J. Christopher Stevens, the U.S. Ambassador to Libya who was among four Americans killed amid protests in Libya, was a "courageous and exemplary representative of the United States," President Barack Obama said in a statement on Wednesday.

The four -- who also included Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith, a father of two -- "exemplified America's commitment to freedom, justice, and partnership with nations and people around the globe," Obama said.

Born in 1960 in northern California, Stevens had been a diplomat for two decades after previously working as an international trade lawyer in Washington, D.C., according to his biography on the State Department website.

"Chris was committed to advancing America's values and interests, even when that meant putting himself in danger," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Wednesday in a statement posted on the official Facebook page of the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli.

Ben Curtis / AP, file

U.S. envoy Chris Stevens speaks to local media at the Tibesty Hotel in Benghazi, Libya, in this Monday, April 11, 2011 file photo.

"I had the privilege of swearing in Chris for his post in Libya only a few months ago. As the conflict in Libya unfolded, Chris was one of the first Americans on the ground in Benghazi. He risked his own life to lend the Libyan people a helping hand to build the foundation for a new, free nation. He spent every day since helping to finish the work that he started."

Stevens had only just taken up his appointment, arriving in May after having served two previous roles in the country: Special Representative to the Libyan Transitional National Council during the Libyan revolution from March 2011 to November 2011, and Deputy Chief of Mission from 2007 to 2009.

US ambassador, 3 others killed in attacks on Libya mission

He had also previously worked in Jerusalem, Damascus and Riyadh and was a Pearson Fellow with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. From 1983 to 1985 he taught English as a Peace Corps volunteer in Morocco.

A video posted on the U.S. Embassy's official YouTube channel in May showed Stevens introducing himself to the Libyan people and speaking of his excitement at his new role.

He was fluent in Arabic and French, and had earned an undergraduate degree at the University of California at Berkeley in 1982, a J.D. from the University of California's Hastings College of Law in 1989, and an M.S. from the National War College in 2010.

'Smiling, easygoing'
The Washington Post reported that Stevens was "smiling, easygoing and friendly" and "well-known at the State Department and on Capitol Hill."

His efforts to improve relations between the U.S. and Libya were underlined at one of his most recent public appearances. At a reception in Tripoli on August 26, he announced that the issuing of U.S. visas to Libyans would resume the following morning, according to a report in The Tripoli Post.

"The reopening of our consular section will create new opportunities for deepening the ties between our two countries," the newspaper quoted him as saying. "Relationships between governments are important, but relationships between people are the real foundation of mutual understanding," Stevens said.

A statement from Frank Wu, Chancellor and Dean of the University of California's Hastings College of the Law, issued to NBC Bay Area station KNTV, said: "The Ambassador was performing the highest role that a lawyer is called upon to perform: public service. He and I communicated when he was appointed Ambassador. He had been looking forward to sharing his experiences with students when he returned. This is a tragedy. We mourn this loss."

U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Select Committee on Intelligence, also issued a statement, saying: "I had the chance of meeting Ambassador Chris Stevens during his confirmation process and again when I visited Libya last year. He was an exemplary diplomat and his embassy staff could not have been more helpful and knowledgeable during my visit. My prayers are with the families and loved ones of these courageous diplomats who were working to help the Libyan people rise from the ashes of Gaddafi's rule."

Lara Friedman, director of policy and government relations at Israeli-American charity, Americans for Peace Now, who described herself as a friend of Stevens, posted on Twitter that his death was "incomprehensible, tragic."

The BBC reported that, in diplomatic cables leaked by the WikiLeaks site in 2010, Stevens had once described Col. Moammar Gadhafi as "notoriously mercurial" and wrote that he could be an "engaging and charming interlocutor."

Sean Smith was a husband and a father of two, who joined the State Department ten years ago, Clinton's statement said. "Like Chris, Sean was one of our best. Prior to arriving in Benghazi, he served in Baghdad, Pretoria, Montreal, and most recently The Hague," it said.

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Husain Haqqani, shown at a memorial service for Pakistan's Minister for Minorities Shahbaz Bhatti in Washington on March 9.

Husain Haqqani, Pakistan's ambassador to the U.S., has resigned amid controversy surrounding a memo he allegedly drafted shortly after U.S. forces killed Osama bin Laden in May.

The memo requested U.S. intervention to prevent a military coup and protect the civilian government in exchange for granting the U.S. heavy influence on matters of national security in Pakistan. 

Dubbed “Memogate,” the affair has dominated headlines in Pakistan for weeks before apparently claiming its first victim on Tuesday.

A statement issued by Pakistan's Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani's office said Haqqani has been asked "to submit his resignation so that the investigation can be carried out properly." 

Haqqani flew back to Islamabad this weekend to explain his involvement – if any -- in the scandal to President Asif Ali Zardari, Prime Minister Gilani and military and intelligence officials, tweeting on Nov.  19th that he was "Heading back to the motherland."  He reportedly offered his resignation then, but it was not accepted at the time. 

"Memogate" is centered on a memo that Pakistani-American businessman Mansoor Ijaz says he delivered to then-chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, at the behest of Ambassador Haqqani in the days immediately following the U.S. raid that killed bin Laden in Pakistan. The memo, which is unsigned, states that there had been “a significant deterioration in Pakistan’s political atmosphere” and indicated that the civilian government feared that factions within the military were planning a coup.

Read the full memo 

Retired U.S. Gen. Jim Jones, President Barack Obama’s former national security adviser, has confirmed that the memo was delivered to Mullen.

The existence of the memo was revealed in an October op-ed by Ijaz for the Financial Times. Ijaz told NBC News he typed the memo as dictated by Haqqani, and only revealed its existence in the article to lend credibility to the policy case he was making. Haqqani has denied any involvement in requesting or drafting the memo. But opposition leaders in Pakistan pounced, equating the memo to "treason" and demanding that heads roll.

Members of the Pakistani press have been digging into the scandal for the last few weeks, including publishing Blackberry messages allegedly exchanged by Haqqani and Ijaz as the memo was being drafted, and afterward.  

U.S. officials tell NBC News they are watching with "great interest" how this is being handled by the Pakistani government, but say they are not involved in the investigation.

Haqqani, who has been described as a "seasoned political operator," is well-liked within U.S. government circles, and enjoys a strong reputation for managing to remain effective in a treacherous political climate. He remains in Islamabad at this writing.

In Tuesday’s statement, Gilani ordered an investigation to be "carried out fairly, objectively and without bias."

“As a result of controversy generated by  the alleged memo, which had been drafted, formulated and further  admitted to have been received by Authority in USA, it has become  necessary in the national interest to formally arrive at the actual and  true facts,” the statement said. 

Haqqani turned back to his Twitter account following the announcement of his resignation, writing, "I have much to contribute to building a new Pakistan free of bigotry & intolerance. Will focus energies on that."

Fakhar Rehman of NBC News contributed to this report from Islamabad.