New Delhi, Aug. 16 -- Sheikh Hasina did not plan to leave Bangladesh. On August 5, 2024, with protest crowds bearing down on her official residence and army commanders withdrawing their protection without explanation, she had perhaps forty-five minutes to determine the rest of her life. She chose a helicopter to New Delhi. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party, whose acting chairman Tarique Rahman had spent years directing $3.75 million in Washington lobbying fees from his exile in a London suburb, began celebrating within hours. What they were celebrating, the documents now show, had been years in the making, in offices far from Dhaka.

Foreign Agents Registration Act filings held at the US Department of Justice, grant records the National En...