Previous studies using muscimol inactivations in the frontal eye fields (FEF) have shown that saccades generated by recall from working memory are eliminated by these lesions while visually-guided saccades are relatively spared. In the present experiments, we made reversible inactivations in FEF in alert macaque monkeys and examined the effect on saccades in a choice response task. Our task required monkeys to learn arbitrary pairings between colored stimuli and saccade direction. Following inactivations the percentage of choice errors increased as a function of the number of alternative (NA) pairings. In contrast, the percentage of dysmetric saccades (saccades that landed in the correct quadrant but were inaccurate) did not vary with NA. Saccade latency increased post-lesion, but did not increase with NA. We also made simultaneous inactivations in both FEF. The results following bilateral lesions showed approximately twice as many choice errors. We conclude that the FEF are involved in the generation of saccades in choice response tasks. The dramatic effect of NA on choice errors, but the lack of an effect of NA on motor errors or response latency, suggests that two types of processing are interrupted by FEF lesions. The first involves the formation of a saccadic intention vector from associate memory inputs, and the second, the execution of the saccade from the intention vector. The doubling of choice errors following bilateral FEF lesions suggests that the effect of unilateral lesions is not caused a general inhibition of the lesioned side by the intact side.