When I came to the CIA in the mid-'90s our graduating class of case officers was unbelievably low. Now after years of rebuilding our training programs and putting our best efforts to recruit the most talented men and women we are graduating more clandestine officers than at any time in the history of the Central Intelligence Agency.

My favorite literature to read is fairly dry history. I like the framework and my imagination can do the rest.

I look back into past history the stored experiences or products of the imagination. I look no further forward than the evening.

Someone once said that history has more imagination than all the scenario writers in the Pentagon and we have a lot of scenario writers here. No one ever wrote a scenario for commercial airliners crashing into the World Trade Center.

I surrendered to a world of my imagination reenacting all those wonderful tales my father would read aloud to me. I became a very active reader especially history and Shakespeare.

There is humor in the specter of the worst disaster in our nation's history. All I have to do is sweep away the debris of shock to find it.

Throughout history great leaders have known the power of humor.

If I had been elected president in 1948 history would be vastly different. I believe we would have stemmed the growth of Big Government which had begun with the New Deal and culminated with the Great Society.

For most of our history Americans enjoyed both liberty and security from foreign threats.

There is nothing glorious about what our ancestors call history. It is simply a succession of mistakes intolerances and violations.