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So much nonsense and misinformation. You obviously don't have a clue how our foreign policy is formulated and implemented. The idea that the State Department is a rogue institution is patent nonsense.

I am willing to defer to you on many issues with respect to the Department of State because of your career there but I am not willing to abandon common sense and say that the Department of State has not been undermining Republican presidents for at least a generation and probably going back to Eisenhower. Do you disagree with that? That is my definition of a rogue agency.

The Department of State has been far worse than the CIA and elements within the CIA recently has leaked flagrantly to undermine the Iraqi war and engineered the entire Valerie Plane matter to undermine George Bush. That is my definition of a rogue agency.

How many times did Ronald Reagan have to rewrite the phrase, "tear down that wall" in the teeth of opposition from the State Department?

Do you have any specific examples? I served in the State Department during the period 1972 to 2000.

How many times did Ronald Reagan have to rewrite the phrase, "tear down that wall" in the teeth of opposition from the State Department?

I was in Berlin at the time and am very familiar with what happened. Presidential foreign policy speeches are vetted with all foreign affairs agencies, including the State Department. Reagan's Berlin Wall speech was vetted within the State Department including with our Minister and Deputy Commandant in Berlin at the time, John Kornblum who was probably the most knowledgeable diplomat on German affairs. He is one of the people in the State Department who believed that "tear down this wall" was not too confrontational to the Soviets and the East Germans. But others within the State Department felt otherwise. Such conflicts exist with all significant Presidential speeches. Each word is scrutinized and bureaucratic battles fought over them. John's views prevailed. He supported the reunification of Germany and not accepting the status quo.

Kornblum described the complex diplomacy which preceded President Reagan's speech at the Brandenburg Gate in an article as "Reagan's Brandenburg Concerto" (in allusion to the complex work of the Brandenburg concertos by Bach), which appeared in the May/June, 2007 issue of The American Interest and was reprinted in the German newspaper Die Welt on June 12, 2007. In the article, he describes how the decision to hold the speech directly at the most dramatic point on the Berlin Wall was planned for nearly a year in advance by US diplomats in Germany and Washington as a counterweight to the growing sentiment within Germany for an arrangement with the new, liberal Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Many began to hope that in return for legal acceptance of the sovereignty of East Germany, the West could obtain the inclusion of West Berlin into West Germany and a gradual opening of the wall. Any such deal with Gorbachev would have undermined hopes for reunification of Germany and the liberation of Eastern Europe. Reagan's dramatic call for Gorbachev to "tear down this wall," was not an isolated event, but was conceived as the logical focal point for the detailed American initiative to remind both East and West that the United States was not willing to accept an undemocratic status quo in the center of Europe. The speech highlighted a number of proposals to accelerate democratic change by making the wall more porous, and thus helping Gorbachev to open it. Kornblum describes the many political pressures exerted in Germany and Washington as this concept was being implemented and concludes with an analysis of the meaning of the speech 20 years later.