And i have kind of kept it privately until just now. fair enough, tom. john, let me ask you about the point that tom made. we have taken for granted until a couple of years ago that presidents had a rule book by which they practice american leadership on the world stage. but to tom s point, in that moment that george bush became president, george h.w. bush became president, it was not a given that east germany would work out or a given what russia s role would be at the time and not a given the role nato was going to play in securing the west. talk to me a little bit about the complexity of that. well, that was an enormously complex time, ari. just to give you an example of that on the issue of germany, i had been in germany about a month before the wall came down in october of 1989 with the then cia director bill webster. and we traveled about and we talked to senior german