i was the russia person. i then went to the national security council to do the russia portfolio in 2009. we never spoke to ambassador kislyak once during that period. i got to know him pretty well when i worked in the white house. that was my job. the very fact that they were meeting with him already raises my eyebrows, let alone the content which you have just been talking about the last few minutes. >> you're saying the timeline, even in a normal environment, of using the transition period to sort of rush to meet with the russian ambassador and in this case also a banker strikes you as odd? >> very odd. i want to really underscore how extraordinary this is. we had one phone call between president-elect obama and president medvedev, a congratulatory call, and that was it. medvedev came to the country, a whole bunch of russians came for a g20 summit, and we chose deliberately not to meet with them because of the principle of one president at a time. >> right.