existed in almost total isolation from china. there were millions of refugees in hong kong but no american and there was no trade. it was a listening post but not a very informative one. but the experience that he had their used to be typical of the experience that foreign service officers had. he was assigned to interview visa applicants. he learned rudimentary mandarin chinese and it was a undoubtedly a broadening experience for a graduate of exeter yale to suddenly find themselves interrogating an impoverished and desperate people. and it's an experience which

washington think tanks have these days have and it produces i would think less certitude and more humanity than we see on the part of those who think that they are entitled to make foreign policy in washington. i was not close to john negroponte during that. math. we grew up in the same apartment building and we were very close childhood friends until about the age of 10. we went off in completely different directions. i did not see him for 50 years. i then saw him when my brother saw his mother's obituary in the newspaper. she was in her 80s and she said well he was always a nice boy and i have found at my age i wouldn't have any friends if i hadn't tried to renew old acquaintances.

they have a tendency to die off when you get into your 70's and 80s. i looked him up. he was outside of mcgraw-hill and one thing led to another and there came a time when we were having lunch when he said something that suggested to me that he might not be averse to have them someone write about his career although he hadn't kept a diary and hadn't undertaken to write anything himself. i thought having written an earlier book about diplomats of the 20s and 30s that his life would be a good way of telling a story of american foreign policy during the last 50 years which is what i have tried to do in this book. his sojourn in hong kong as i have said is uneventful. leading foreign-policy issue in hong kong at that time concerned

textile imports. the kennedy administration was not happy with the volume of hong kong textile imports and kennedy complained to prime minister macmillan about it. macmillan's answer was a very good one. he said we used to have the same problem. we sold all the textile machinery to india and india promptly took away our markets and we decided the only thing we could do about a bus to try to educate our population. so they could produce and sell other things which in britain's case was and is invisible exports, banking, insurance, law, accounting, academia, publishing and so on. the british probably still lead the world and most certainly lead us.

but with respect to this hong kong period was merely an interlude. negroponte like most american foreign service officers in the johnson administration was then assigned to serve for a. back in vietnam and he went to language school for nine months and became by most accounts the second best speaker in the foreign service which gives you some idea of how inadequate language training is in the foreign service. he had a gift for languages. he had grown up in a household where french and english were spoken interchangeably but nonetheless his assignment for the first two years in vietnam

was to work with a group presided over by a famous diplomat named philip habib. there was a group of about eight or 10 americans the best known of homeless richard holbrooke whose job was to go about into the vietnamese provinces and make assessments of the political situation in each province. these assessments were essentially the only objective assessments that anyone made at that time. the defense department people were fond of proclaiming that what they were doing was a great success and prosperity was just around the corner. people from the agency for international development devoted themselves to giving away worries, tin roofs and cinder blocks. similarly we are proud of the way they are winning the hearts and minds of the people.

the state department people didn't really have a dog in that fight. they were not delivering programs. they were just observing and what they observed and they were all pretty much in agreement about this, was that there were dramatic differences between the problem -- provinces in south vietnam and the most pronounced differences depended upon the religious composition of the population and how many of the people there had been refugees from the north. ..

to were at best neutral a standard you would recall the demonstrations by the buddhist buddhists's, the people and believing themselves into so forth. so, the recommendations o never thought he was a pessimist in the early part of his stay in vietnam. he then was assigned to observe

the constituent assembly and he thought of the trouble with the constituent assembly was the constitution that had recommended essentially gave all power to the president. and this is aggregated by the policy of the american embassy throughout our involvement in the mom. it was to avoid a situation in which there was a division there were two elections that took place in south vietnam. in the first of these the logical rifles were catholic, and marshall key who was at least a nominal buddhist,

marshall key who you may remember is a rather colorful character who was known to the population as mr. mustache. the embassy rather obviously favored you and the result was that there was an election in which there was a ticket and he accepted the vice presidency so it wasn't much of an election it was a foregone conclusion. the second the same thing took place. there was a possible candidacy of general means and ultimately there was an election in which the army candidate opposed some rather underfinanced vietnamese civilians.

he was then assigned to work at the paris peace conference and he didn't like this much because his view and that of other people on the american side is that as long as the united states was withdrawing troops, which then it was committed to do in the beginning of the johnson administration, the vietnamese had no incentive to negotiate a serious agreement. and negroponte at the job of being an interpreter during the day and writing the long dispatches to washington at night which he found rather exhausting after a couple of years of this he was given a sabbatical and spent nine months at the hoover institution in

stanford has the diplomatic residence. while at the hoover institution he wrote four or five papers that really are the most important and in some respects the only emotions of his personal point of view as to these matters. and here's a sensual view about the vietnam war was that the united states could not possibly succeed because it was fighting a limited war that provided no access to joke that to the north vietnamese government whereas the north vietnamese were fighting an unlimited war in which they could command all the resources for the purpose of taking over the south. what was going on was of course exacerbated by the rather extraordinary analysis of the

situation on the part of the commander general westmoreland who felt the united states as it was a much bigger country could win the war of attrition in his view was they could kill two or three vietnamese and if they did this for long enough when the vietnamese would have to give up of course it worked in reverse but that turning point, the very misunderstood turning point was the tet offensive of the north vietnamese of 1968 when they managed to penetrate the walls of the american embassy and the reaction in this country was that this whole thing was no good and we had to get out and it's hopeless. but what happened an in the non- was different because the vietnamese guerrilla guerrillase

south came out of hiding and were more or less massacred by the americans and south vietnamese. there was no significant presence in the south after the tet offensive. the north vietnamese when they occupied the city massacred several thousand buddhist leaders which did not endear them to the buddhist population in the south and instead of being neutral, then began to support the south vietnamese of the government. and then finally the other major change that took place at the time of the tet offensive is that when westmoreland was replaced by general abrams, westmoreland's philosophy was that the american troops should be in the front lines and the south vietnamese army, which the french had trained wasn't good for anything and which was just used in the rear echelon so no

effort, no serious effort was made during the training of the south vietnamese. and abrams of course undertook and trained at the south vietnamese army and did so quite successfully. the only flaw in what was done this while the endless dead men were trained, the officer corps was appointed in the saigon and not very wisely. later when negroponte was the ambassador to iraq he worked rather hard at getting training for the iraqi generals and this was in part a reflection of his experience in the mom. but any event, what then transpired is the most traumatic episode and negroponte's career

when the new administration came to power, kissinger proposed a bombing campaign which unlike previous campaigns would seriously attack the hanoi yard and include a blockade. much to kissinger's surprise, negroponte would oppose all of the bombing that had previously taken place on the ground but it had no effect except to alienate the south vietnamese and the support of the strategic bombing. on the theory that for the first time the united states was presenting in as an ex- essentil threats to the north vietnamese government. the war at that point ceased to be a guerrilla war and had become a conventional war of the north vietnamese needed supplies from china and the soviet union and what was being done

interactive of supplies. this came to the peace at the time of the so-called christmas bombing and 73. but the christmas bombing had been preceded by nick said's opening to china and his visits first with joe and then later with brezhnev in the soviet union. negroponte was present in connection with both of those visits and was rather shocked when kissinger put on the table what was called the leopardskin plan which would provide for a peace agreement that would allow the north vietnamese to maintain troops in the south. negroponte fought that was absolutely fatal chair and a

chance of survival to the government because instead of having a relatively short frontier of 100 miles or so to defend, they would be presented with a frontier that was a thousand or more miles long. and this was the view that was shared by general sir robert thompson that had been a british commander and who was an adviser to the next thing administration. but the terms on which the world was settled about the north vietnamese to maintain troops in the south. and the terms were quite different from those which had been secure by the french at the end of the french war which resulted in the withdraw of the north vietnamese troops from the south, and they were also quite different from the terms that were secured at the time of the settlement of the korean war in

1953 and the chinese were required to withdraw from the concrete as part of the peace agreement. so, negroponte was quite disillusioned by the agreement it made clear to kissinger that he didn't agree. he attended the initial link but he refused to go to hanoi for the signing. there were stories that appeared in the american newspapers notably the "washington post" which disclosed his point of view which was also the plaintiff alexander haig who was kissinger's deputy. kissinger did into play and negroponte for these disclosures because they obviously came from haig, but later on about a year later, negroponte gave an interview in "the new york

times" which wasn't published until a year after that until roughly 1974. and that interview was left strong in the relationship between kissinger and negropon negroponte. he didn't want to work for kissinger any longer and he asked for reassignment and he was told to take pop lock in the foreign service pool and he went from being the head of the vietnam desk at the state department at the age of about 34 dealing with the most serious of the foreign-policy problems, and instead found himself the number three man in ecuador where the most serious problems involved conflicts over tuna fishing. while he made a success of his

tenure because he decided that the south american countries that wanted wider fishing limits were wide powers of regulations over the coastal fisheries were basically right. what had happened until this time was the soviet and japanese fishing trawler's came up to the 3-mile limit and essentially sucked up enormous quantities that had a rather bad effect from the conservation viewpoint. and when the coastal countries were allowed to regulate fishing up through 200 miles, which was the ultimate arrangement reached in the sea treaty, the problems presented by the fleet were greatly diminished. after ecuador, however, there was another rather curious episode that revealed the extent

of the differences with kissinger. he had arranged his next assignment would be a deputy to the candidate who was a very prominent republican diplomatic appointee that had been named the ambassador to france and negroponte was to be the special assistant. he learned that kissinger was on his way to washington and he wrote kissinger and said i haven't seen you in several years and i want to talk to you about this terrible deformation the cia is being subjected to in latin america in which all kind of accusations are being made at its nefarious activities by people like victor and a couple other people that had written books at the time and this was a rather naïve thing to say

because at this point, kissinger according to the other accounts was up to his ears in the coup d'état so far from seeing negroponte, kissinger sent word to his then deputy who became secretary of state i don't want to negroponte assigned anywhere i might meet him. and he said well, mr. secretary, there is an agreement with the association theassociation theye that has been assigned. the only way changing the assignment is to abolish the position through which kissinger said well abolish it then, which is what happened and negroponte was again relegated to the service pool and was offered the job of the council general in turkey. the then ambassador to turkey

quite understandably took the view that assigning someone of greek extraction of the massacre in 1922 might not be well received, so instead he was assigned as the consul general of the most intellectually stimulating job for someone whose family had its roots in the greek shipping industry. after his tenure where he got married, he then received a rather minor a sign that during the kissinger era as the assistant secretary. the fishing industry is not a big factor in the american economy. it amounts to about $6 billion a year in the 18 trillion-dollar economy. he negotiated some fishing treaties and wrote a paper that

provided the basis of american policy. the ball all of the sea treaty y has been ratified by everyone except the united states and negroponte strongly urged to ratification by the united states which has been prevented by people who think that our superiority are so overwhelming and will b be so per minute instead we have no need of the treaty when one reflects on what happened to the british naval superiority at the beginning of the second world war when it was technologically mollified by the new capacities of bombers and the wisdom of this appears questionable but at any event, negroponte had this fishery in the law of the sea assignment and then act the end of the

nixon and ford administration he got out of purgatory because his friend george holbrook who had left the government came back as assistant secretary for the far eastern affairs and negroponte at that point became his deputy. and what then transpired is something that is still rather unappreciated in the country and that is the role of some people who had been second and third level service officers in providing for the relief of the chinese refugees. there were approximately 2 million chinese refugees who were able to emigrate in the 70s and 80s and of a foreign

service officers that had served in vietnam and who promoted this immigration were successful in arranging for the setting up of the reception camps in the countries that didn't receive the vietnamese refugees. one in the philippines and one in malaysia and one in thailand. these reception camps were financed by another country that didn't receive refugees. mainly japan and the 2 million refugees that passed through them over the period of ten or 12 years received approximately half by the united states and a half by australia, canada and france which involved a radical change in the immigration policies in australia and canada which previously had been limited to the receipt of white

immigrants. but the reception of the meme vietnamese with almost a political miracle because at that time, this country was very hard even on its veterans of the vietnam, let alone the refugees from vietnam. most public opinion polls showed something like 70% of the population didn't favor the reception of the refugees in large numbers. and it was accomplished politically and largely because the chairman of the relevant house subcommittee the congressmacongressman of brookls strongly in favor of the program. there was no visit for his opponent in the senate and both the ford and carter administrations particularly julia taft who was the secretary for the refugees in the ford administration and later in the reagan administration were supportive of this development.

if one diplomat has to be given credit, that diplomats would probably be holbrook. but he played an important role in giving testimony. and negroponte's deputy actually the assistant secretary for the refugees later served as the deputy chief of the nation under negroponte in honduras. with the end of the carter administration, negroponte served for a relatively short time as colin powell's deputy of the national security council which meant that powell as well as hague became one of the patrons in his later career and then at the start of the reagan administration, he and barked on the most controversial portion as the ambassador to honduras

and there's been a good deal of misunderstanding about honduras. the government had as the chief of staff of the army at the time, i'm sorry the head of intelligence at the time that negroponte arrived, the kernel who became a favorite of the americans because unlike most of the military who fundamentally couldn't have cared less about the communism or anti-communism, the general had religion on the subject. he had been trained and he had to be ideology can he also was

an evangelical and a disciple of the third mirror in the end very militant. in the last several months of the carter administration, there was a rather dramatic shift in policy all over the world because it began to appear the soviet union was taking a much more aggressive approach to the development in the third world. there had been of course the invasion of afghanistan. there was the assistance to the cuban forces in angola. there were even russian troops in the horn of africa. there was involvement in the congo and the carter administration in its last days

began to push back and engage this. general alvarez in honduras was responsible for the disappearance of several opposition leaders and this took place not during the reagan administration after the arrival, but actually prior to it. there were two cases that went to the human rights core that arose during the carter administration and where it was quite clear that the government wasn't paying much regard to the civil liberties of its opponents. immediately after the arrival as the ambassador, the rebels had been successful in blowing up the power plants that served plunging half the country into darkness for the period of about two week two weeks of people

dying in hospitals and traffic jams and losing their refrigerated meats and so forth and he made himself so fairly popular by a raging for the flying in episode to toot power plants and so forth. but the reaction of the government. you may recall that when a bomb went off in the capital during the later part of the administration and the response was to seek legislation making began licensed possession of explosives a federal offense. when the bomb went off and the criminal code and while negroponte urged it to adopt a more moderate one is reached some of these defenses.

the reaction was to round up everybody that suspected and throw away the key and the number of people that were detained many if not most of whom were alternately killed was not enormous, but it was several hundred people. and this cast a cloud over the ten-year in the terms of many of the critics in the united states. what is rather peculiar about what happened to his reputation is the rebels going on in el salvador at this time totally dwarfed anything that took place in honduras. the american ambassador was a man named dean hayden who was forgotten by history. the united states assisted the government of el salvador that was headed and they turned over

the death squads headed by a man in the ensuing civil war there were 100,000 dead almost all of them on the rebels hide. at one point, the army did a sweep of the countryside and there was a massacre in el salvador at a village called i forget the name of the village but had any event, the ambassador to el salvador was asked to comment and they didn't think that anything on the tour have happened. they were asked to comment across the border something must have happened. elliott abrams who was then the assistant secretary in washington said nothing had happened.

finally he got fed up and got several months later declared publicly 30,000 people in the salvador had been murdered by the worst ally to the government and the speech was cleaned up thabit at the state department after he delivered it, but the effect was the vice president george bush, the elder was sent to el salvador to read the act to the military with some effe effect. but the press that he got. he had two sources when he was sent there was a great great coy in the american government about the wisdom of resistance to the

government in central america and there were basically three planes of view. the ongoing ambassadors say man and a number of other people that this was essentially a civil war being stoked by both sides and it was going to go on and it didn't pose a threat to the united states and it wouldn't come to an end until there was an overarching agreement between the united states and the soviet union. and that is ultimately how the civil war ended in roughly 1989 when baker match and it was agreed that both sides would stop hating the competing factions in central america. there was a second faction that negroponte i think ken be said

to have belonged to that basically favored the war as a way of pushing back in the expansionist efforts by the government. not with the view to overthrowing his butt the view to containing it and as the ambassador he opposed the idea of the american military bases in honduras and opposed giving them offensive weapons but he did favor the aid to the contras that were the guerrillas. there was a third more militant faction including a great many people in washington including general kirkpatrick and robert gates was the head of the cia who want to do something very close to direct american military involvement. gates at one point had proposed giving the nicaraguans and

ultimatum and if they didn't comply with it bombing of the air force just obliterated and the air force and blockading purports as a moderate person but in the vietnam or nicaragua a few terribly moderate. there were other people in the administration in washington who had this very highly charged idea about the importance of central america which is ultimately made rise to the iran contra affair. negroponte left honduras before the contra affair blew up and his next assignment was wild in honduras he had been subjected to criticism in the american press release for two batteries and in one good one. the bad reasons were where the

faction and the state department wanted to discredit any effort to buy to support the contra. essentially it was against him and it was a front-page story in "newsweek" magazine by a reporter about portrayed him very early in his tenure as a villain of the darkest and best stuck to him for quite a while. and the nicaraguans not to be done published the magazine in both english and spanish accusing him of everything under the sun. they accused him of supporting the greek colonels even though he didn't arrive until after they had been overthrown they accused him of forming the coup

in equatorial guinea that it dit take place until well after he left. the accused him of sponsoring the phoenix program in vietnam even though he was a political officer who had nothing to do with the military and so on. that'a good deal of all of thisf and then there was the famous episode of the human rights report. human rights reports was a rather new innovation at this time. time. the congress in the wake of the helsinki agreement had required the resident ambassadors of each country to write annual reports on the human rights situation. but mainly as a method of pressuring the government and not as a means of informing the congress. the report that negroponte wrote for nicaragua after his first year was a relatively benign

report largely because he didn't want to end harold -- in peril aid. these reports were new at that time and they were strange to most diplomats because the normal function of a diplomat is to get along with the government to which he is credited and not to write annual published critiques. in other parts of the world of their were more dramatic problems involving the human rights reports. there was a battle between richard holbrook as the assistant secretary for the far east and patricia geary during the carter administration about what the human rights report for china should say. and holbrook took the view that we were attempting to improve our relations with china after a long lapse and that it would be

undiplomatic to write anything terribly offensive about that and the same issues arose in connection with the reports on saudi arabia and russia and the soviet union, now russia. and ultimately, it came to be accepted even by the governments that these reports were peculiar american eccentricity that had to be put up with without taking much offense. at that time that was a good deal less evident. after honduras, negroponte became the assistant secretary for the environment but which he made it considerably successive and they were the protocol. it was the first major international treaty and the two

treaties that were signed in the wake of the chernobyl nuclear accident one relating to international cooperation dealing with the nuclear accidents and another relating to the reporting of them and finally, the first serious concern showed during the reagan administration about the aids crisis that was a joint memorandum written by fre freemn and nick aponte at the time when the reagan administration was in denial about the aids crisis which pointed out that absence but fairly drastic action of the nations of central african would be essentially muted of the middle-age people in the period of about ten years if there wasn't some medical retardation of the epidemic. following his assignment as the

assistant secretary for the environment, and again come at the beginning of the first bush administration, negroponte became the ambassador to mexico and as the ambassador to mexico, he was essentially the promoter and the savior of the nafta agreement and it wasn't an american initiative come it was in initiative of the government in mexico. mexico's economic problem was that it had a probative a small market for consumer goods because they had a relatively small middle-class and therefore unless it could export on the large-scale, its industries would not achieve the economies of scale to be competitive on the international market. so, mexico went looking for markets and the first went to

the common market to the eu and they were told by the president that if the western europeans were going to make trade concessions to anyone at that point in the late '80s, the concessions would be made to the new nations of eastern europe and to russia which is what happened and they had other fish to fry and were not going to be worried very much about latin america. so, he was an economist whose cabinet contained probably more american trained a comments they and any cabinet in the history of the world including any american cabinet. then approached the united states and negroponte supported the idea of the north american free trade agreement an and supported them at a time when the u.s. trade representative's office was opposed to it.

the trade representative's office was opposed to it because it was trying to promote another set of multilateral agreements like the kennedy round and the dove hawk round and so forth. these agreements hadn't come about largely because of the resistance of agricultural countries to them. he promoted the free trade agreement, and the free trade agreement in spite of its name is not a free trade agreement in the 19th century case because the essence of the preferential free trade agreement is that the nations that are not party conference and external tariff. so these bilateral agreements may or may not promote the ultimate in efficiency. one effect of the nafta agreement was to put obstacles in the way of the chinese imports that otherwise wouldn't

have existed. but the principal effect of the nafta agreement was to promote american agricultural exports to mexico and to promote mexican manufacturing of things like automobile parks that were exported to the united states. the effect of the agreement were much more dramatic than they otherwise would have been because of the doctrinaire nature of the government. the agreement gave mexico ten or 15 years to dismantle its tariffs on the american corn and soybeans. but the government on its own dismantle the bene sensually at one stroke which drove hundreds of thousands at least of the mexicans off the land summoned to the large cities in south mexico where they went in the industry to everyone's benefit. but many of them fled northward.

the women intended to stop at the border and go to work in the plant making textiles. the men kept going and took jobs as illegal immigrants in the american construction agriculture and restaurant industries. and a good many of them in the drug trade. while this was going on there was the fight in congress over the ratification of the agreement and everything else was subordinated to the task of getting the agreement ratified, so it was a sensually american policy at that time to play down the severity of the growing drug problem probably to the subsequent sorrow. but the agreement was ultimately ratified. it has been an important agreement for mexico. it's certainly drawn the two countries closer together and

the political influence hasn't only been one way because there isn't much doubt that the protest of the latin american presidents against american drug policies embodied in the report of the latin american commission on drugs and democracy has probably had more than a little to do with the movement in this country towards the deregulation of marijuana. the nafta agreement for better or worse as negroponte's signature achievement because the decision was to go ahead and a small meeting involving bush, baker and negroponte and not more than one or two other people and it was fought through over the ensuing period of two or three years and it was then followed by a series of bilateral agreements with other countries including central american countries, south korea

that have been quite important. passing for mexico and negroponte then was assigned to the philippines in the clinton administration and then japan on all. neither of these assignments were easy ones because he was being asked to do the impossible namely secure the agreement of the two governments to the maintenance of the american military bases at the time when the two governments were glad to be rid of the vestiges of colonialism. but after his assignment in the philippines he left the state government and work debate going to work at mcgraw-hill the only assignment clinton administration offered was the ambassador to greece which he did not want and he came back

into government of course with the coming of the second bush administration where he was made the ambassador to the un. he was a sensually alone among the officials of the bush administration voicing the opposition to the involvement in the iraq war before the final decision had been made. powell's opposition to the war had been widely leaked but he didn't say anything publicly. negroponte did. he gave an interview to a reporter for the "washington post" in which he said that if it were up to him for nationbuilding would be no part of the united nations program and his experience suggested that it wasn't very easy. but of course that viewpoint was disregarded. he was successful and it was an achievement getting the

unanimous resolution of the united nations authorizing ordering of the iraq east to permit inspections and he would have favored the resolution brought forward he would have favored giving the iraq he is moreastmore time but the folks n washington had planned an invasion and didn't want the troops sitting around during the summer was a poor excuse and we all know what happened. negroponte while at the un had two other significant events. one was the adoption by the un of the resolution governing the intervention in iraq which recognized the right to tell the troops to withdraw which

ultimately is what happened. and the second accomplishment was the adoption of the resolution that was adopted by the security council which was the first endorsement by the un of a two state solution in palestine. negroponte then volunteered and inherited a disastrous situation where wdisaster situationwhere e iraqi military and there was a state of anarchy and he presided over the elections which were unfortunate in many ways because they had been organized by the ambassador to use proportional representation rather than the single member constituencies which is virtually a guaranteed way of producing

parliamentarians who were extremists. but in any event, he made the best of the elections on the theory that once and i iraqi political class had been created that there were at least personalities who would be in the position to negotiate the competing interests. he also abandoned any notion that we would be able to produce a swift economic recovery in iraq. the first priority was dealing with the security problems. and in training and i iraqi army which was trained, and i find it hard to believe that it was in a state of total collapse but it's represented as being in it seems to me that the shiites are likely to be able to successfully resist the sudanese at some point. but any event, division o the ve future of iraq is that it wasn't going to be easy. in the dc told the bush

something that it didn't want to hear in roughly 2004, namely that the united states would have to stay for at least another five years for the situation to stabilize and that is in effect what happened and how successful what he did was remains to be seen. but to the extent there is any chance of a positive outcome it's due to the fact that there is and i iraqi parliament that there are somewhat trained security forces. following iraq, he was given another almost impossible job and i'm drawing to a close now. as the director of national intelligence bears something paradoxical about that appointment because he did not think just as he thought that the intervention wasn't a terribly good idea, he didn't think the creation of the directorate of the intelligence

was a terribly good idea. he thought the same thing could have been done through the informal coordination among the three or four leading agencies and the creation of the dni and the creation of the department of homeland security was the work not of the bush administration but the democrats who didn't want to be seen as being soft on terrorism and we still live with the consequences of that and of those particular decisions. as the director he was heavily involved in an intelligence estimate of iran which forecasts quite accurate three that iran wasn't going to develop a nuclear capability before the end of the second bush administration. and this was very unpopular with a number of people in washington including vice president cheney but it proved to be entirely accurate. he left as the directorate of

intelligence under circumstances that haven't been fully explained but his main interest as the director of intelligence was advising the president who he felt needed advice at that point. he and gates and condoleezza rice supplanted the influence of people like donald rumsfeld and paul wolfowitz during the last two years of the second bush administration. but one consequence of his devoting himself to giving advice was that he had less time to get to management and he was criticized for this. whether his replacement was due to the advice that he gave for the need for more management was unclear about any event he accepted the deputy secretary of state where his achievements were a sensually first he

pressed hard for elections in pakistan which ultimately were won by the civilian parties which had the effect of delegitimizing the more extreme islamists and even though they were immediately followed by the assassination of benazir bhutto and the second achievement was the deepening of relations with china. there were several dozen working groups established that had previously existed at the joint meetings of all kinds of american and chinese officials that were a sensually his accomplishment and that of the secretary of the treasury paulson who was very interested also in deepening the relationships with china and at the close of his tenure, at the close of the second bush administration he almost certainly would have been secretary of state had condoleezza rice apparently according to the memoir offered to resign in his favor and was

told by the white house that the bush administration wouldn't do it so she remained until the end of the administration. so she has retired -- he has retired. he does consulting work for the associates and teaches one day a week at yale. i didn't think his career is over. it's hard to sa say but it does exemplify the influence a relatively clear-sighted diplomats can have on a variety of events, and the book as it was said earlier was called the last american diplomat can be ordered from all sorts of sources in the paperback edition costs $24 if anyone wants to order it. i'm glad to take any questions. i've gone on for too long, but 50 years is a long career and abbreviating it into 50 minutes isn't easy.

sticking to. if you have a question to ask we have about five minutes remaining. if you could come up to the microphone. >> and good evening. good presentation. i have a question if the ambassador negroponte is still offered once a week what advice would he give to the future students that are involved in starting the international relations? it's such a complex huge experience of 50 years. what would he say? he could say anything about what would be his best advice? >> i don't want to put words in his mouth and i tried to be careful about that because all questions i think that he would advise them to take courses in economic geography and in history rather than the national relations theory. that's the sense that i would have.

i think he also doesn't hold to the view that we are the hyperpower. he has a sense of history and of the rise and fall of nations and of the limitations on american power. and when he was ambassador to the un, he at least in my view came closer than anyone else that has been there to realizing the original design of the un as seen by roosevelt, namely churchill and stalin also. as a concert of the great covers and not as a parliamen parliamee world but as a means whereby the five permanent members could adjust conflicts at least conflicts not involving themselves. and that is a vision that has not prevailed but he was on very

good terms with the british and french ambassadors and the chinese and also russians and if it had been left to the green stock they wouldn't have had an iraq war i'm quite sure of that. >> any other questions? >> two questions. how old is he now? >> is almost exactly my age, 75 or 76. >> ati talion? >> no, he's greek. his family has an interesting background. they were natives of the island which was the scene of