Nixon was an awful president in many ways including in some of his foreign-policy choices. But he left no doubt that foreign policy and America's leadership in the world outside its borders was of paramount importance to him.

As this body of knowledge has evolved a much more critical job for researchers and scientists has evolved into explaining and educating policy makers and the public to the risks of global warming and the possible consequences of action or of no action.

Surely if knowledge is valuable it can never be good policy in a country far wealthier than Tuscany to allow a genius like Mr. Dalton's to be employed in the drudgery of elementary instruction.

A serious problem in America is the gap between academe and the mass media which is our culture. Professors of humanities with all their leftist fantasies have little direct knowledge of American life and no impact whatever on public policy.

We had periodic crises in this country when the technical intelligence didn't support the policy. We had the bomber gap the missile gap.

The resistance of policy-makers to intelligence is not just founded on an ideological presupposition. They distrust intelligence sources and intelligence officials because they don't understand what the real problems are.

In my professional work with the Agency by the late '70s I had come to question the value of a great deal of what we were doing in terms of the intelligence agency's impact on American policy.

You want to keep intelligence separate from policy.

But the same intelligence compels Germany to practise the same policy.

Affairs of state tend to drive most presidents toward the center on both foreign and domestic policy no matter where on the political spectrum they begin and especially so in the areas of intelligence and law enforcement.