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.

We worked to develop our own operations to advance U.S. counterterrorism objectives by penetrating terrorist safe havens and collecting intelligence that would inform policy and enable our own operations.

I am sure that in Canada the people appreciate this principle and the general intelligence which prevails over that country is such that I am sure there is no danger of a reactionary policy ever finding a response in the hearts of any considerable number of our people.

Here's the teaching point if you're teaching kids about intelligence and policy: Intelligence does not absolve policymakers of responsibility to ask tough questions and it doesn't absolve them of having curiosity about the consequences of their actions.

And I argued with that intelligence estimate and I think it is a responsibility of policymakers to use their best judgment on the basis of the intelligence they've received.

Policymakers have to make judgments based on the best intelligence they get.

I was an intelligence officer not a policy-maker.

When I resigned I put the U.S. Government on notice that I'm going to stick to policy issues that I have no intention of going out and blowing the cover off of the intelligence operations that those are truly sensitive and they should not be exposed.

Intelligence is playing a more important role in policymaker decisions than I think I've ever seen in my time in Congress or before.

Well I've been reading a lot about the fifty years since the Second World War about Western foreign policy and all that. I try not to let it get to me but sometimes I just think that there's no hope.

I told the President I told Rahm Emanuel and others in the administration that I thought the policy they took to try to bring about negotiations is counter-productive because when you give the Palestinians hope that the United States will do its negotiating for them they are not going to sit down and talk.

We need to have a pro-growth policy put in place that offers people hope and offers the opportunity for businesses to expand and for them to have confidence in what the world is going to look like for the next two or three or four years with respect to economic policy.

I hope I'm wrong but I am afraid that Iraq is going to turn out to be the greatest disaster in American foreign policy - worse than Vietnam not in the number who died but in terms of its unintended consequences and its reverberation throughout the region.

A handful of works in history have had a direct impact on social policy: one or two works of Dickens some of Zola 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' and in modern drama Larry Kramer's 'The Normal Heart.'

American policy seems to be wed to a perpetual state of war. Why? History shows that the world will always be in flux or turmoil with different peoples competing for visibility and power. The U.S. cannot fix the fate of every nation.

I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president - with the possible exceptions of Johnson FDR and Lincoln - just in terms of what we've gotten done in modern history. But you know but when it comes to the economy we've got a lot more work to do. And we're gonna keep on at it.

As we get closer to the end of this Congress we should be addressing the urgent needs of the American people - the war in Iraq affordable health care a sensible energy policy quality education for our children retirement security and a sound and fair fiscal policy.