The best way of learning to be an independent sovereign state is to be an independent sovereign state.

It is always good to explore the stuff you don't agree with to try and understand a different lifestyle or foreign worldview. I like to be challenged in that way and always end up learning something I didn't know.

Germany must be a country which generates political ideas and leadership which is capable of compromise which is sovereign and yet knows that it needs its partners on both sides of the Atlantic.

So I think that our foreign policy the president's strong and principled leadership when it comes to the war against terror and foreign policy is going to be an asset.

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.

The most important thing I learned as a foreign correspondent in about 80 countries is that it takes a very shallow knowledge of history to think that there are solutions to most problems.

Foreign Ministry guys don't become agents. Party officials the Foreign Ministry nerds tend not to volunteer to Western intelligence agencies.

Another factor is the decision made in 1976 to sharply divide the FBI and the foreign intelligence agencies. The FBI would collect within the United States the foreign intelligence agencies would collect overseas.

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.

You can't get closer to the heart of national sovereignty than national security and intelligence services.