Donald P. Gregg in 1951 began a career of more than 30 years with the Central Intelligence Agency. That service included several overseas postings, including a tour in South Vietnam during the war. In 1979 Gregg was detailed by the CIA to the National Security Council staff, where his responsibilities included Asian affairs and intelligence matters. Following the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, the new Administration requested that Gregg remain at the NSC. Until 1982, Gregg headed the NSC's Intelligence Directorate. In August 1982, he resigned from the CIA and accepted the position of national security adviser to Vice President George Bush, holding that position until the end of the Reagan Administration. In early 1989, President Bush nominated Gregg to be U.S. ambassador to the Republic of South Korea. Gregg was confirmed by the Senate for this position on September 12, 1989, and served as ambassador until 1993.

During the Vietnam War, Gregg supervised CIA officer Felix Rodriguez and they kept in contact following the war. Gregg introduced Rodriguez to Vice President Bush in January 1985, and Rodriguez met with the Vice President again in Washington, D.C., in May 1986. He also met Vice President Bush briefly in Miami on May 20, 1986. As a teenager, Rodriguez had participated in the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba and remained, following that debacle, an ardent anti-communist.

In 1985 and 1986, Rodriguez worked out of the Ilopango air base in El Salvador, where he assisted the Salvadoran Air Force in anti-guerrilla counterinsurgency tactics. In late 1985 and during 1986, Rodriguez - whose alias was ``Max Gomez'' - became increasingly involved in the contra-resupply effort that was based at Ilopango at that time. Because of Rodriguez's close association with General Juan Bustillo, who headed the Salvadoran Air Force, Rodriguez was vital to Lt. Col. Oliver L. North's contra-resupply operation by coordinating flights based at Ilopango.

Following the shootdown of the contra-resupply aircraft carrying American Eugene Hasenfus on October 5, 1986, Rodriguez became a center of public and congressional attention. Because of Rodriguez's close friendship with Gregg and his three personal meetings with Vice President Bush, questions arose whether the contra-resupply operation was being directed by Gregg through Rodriguez. Questions also arose about when the Vice President's office became aware of Rodriguez's and North's active participation in the contra-resupply operation at Ilopango.

Both Gregg and his deputy, Col. Samuel J. Watson III, were investigated for possible false testimony regarding their denial of knowledge of Rodriguez's involvement in North's contra-resupply operation. OIC obtained Watson's immunized testimony in an effort to further its investigation. Despite unresolved conflicts between documentary evidence and the testimony of the principal witnesses, OIC determined that it could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt a criminal case against Gregg.

When Gregg assumed his position as assistant to the Vice President for national security affairs in August 1982, he consciously disassociated himself from former colleagues with whom he had worked during his CIA career. The exception to that rule was Felix Rodriguez. Gregg testified: " I have made it a conscious decision really not to reach back into that part of my life to bring other people forward. Felix is the only exception I have made to that.'' Gregg lost track of Rodriguez for a period of time after Vietnam and did not see him until the early 1980s, when Rodriguez came to Washington sporadically and talked with Gregg about old times. Gregg was not certain what Rodriguez was doing at that time, and he did not inquire; however, they remained friends."

You (Gregg) told the Iran-Contra committee that you and Bush never discussed the Contras, had no expertise on the issue, no responsibility for it, and the details of Watergate-sized scandal involving NSC staff and the Edwin Wilson gang was not Vice Presidential. Your testimony on that point is demonstrably false. There are at least six memos from Don Gregg to George Bush regarding detailed Contra issues.

In college, I was a member of a secret society. I worked at the White House for Vice President George Bush, who, in addition to being a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission, is also a member of that same secret society. My father, another member of the secret society, founded National Review magazine. The lawyer who drew up the documents incorporating NR was William Casey, who would go on to become director of the CIA under Ronald Reagan. Before he became a magazine editor, my father worked for the CIA. His immediate boss was E. Howard Hunt, who went on to Watergate fame, along with his colleague, G. Gordon Liddy. I later hired Liddy to write a column on security for the magazine that I edit. The magazine is owned by Steve Forbes, past and future presidential candidate. Forbes Inc.'s chairman is Caspar Weinberger, who worked for Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. At the White House, I worked closely with Donald P. Gregg, Bush's national security adviser. Don had had a very distinguished career at the CIA for over 30 years. In Vietnam, his comrade-in-arms was Felix Rodriguez, the CIA officer who helped track down Che Guevara in Bolivia. You remember Felix. Iran-Contra? The Senate and The Washington Post, egged on by the Christic Institute and assorted people with the last name of Cockburn, tried very hard to nail Don for, among other things, helping to orchestrate the famous 1980 October Surprise - traveling in secret to Paris with George Bush to persuade the Iranians not to release the American hostages until after Reagan had been elected. Call up Christopher Hitchens at The Nation; he'll fill you in on all the details, though he's rather busy these days establishing Mother Teresa's villainy. Anyway, Don survived and became ambassador to South Korea, where previously he had been CIA station chief. I married his daughter. She worked for the CIA, too. She - well, I don't have time to get into all that. I have to review this book for you called Conspiracy: How the Paranoid Style Flourishes and Where It Comes From. It's a fine, important, even invaluable book. The author is Daniel Pipes. Come to think of it, I knew his father, Richard Pipes, the eminent Russian scholar. We sort of worked together at the White House. He was Reagan's top Soviet adviser. I also worked at the White House with C. Boyden Gray. Mention the name of his father, Gordon Gray, to any serious UFOlogist and they will coo and stroke their chins and tell you that Gordon Gray was a member of the shadowy, ultra-secret group called Majestic-12 that ran the first flying-saucer cover up. Are you getting the picture? Don't you think I know the fix is in? Quick, close those curtains, I hear a black helicopter!

My last Congressional testimony, given before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, took place on February 4, 2003. I concluded that testimony by stating that the two things the Bush administration was willing to say to North Korea; "we are not going to attack you, but we won't negotiate with you; "only left the North Koreans with a stronger incentive to continue working on their nuclear weapons programs. As hard bargainers, they clearly recognized that the more powerful their nuclear programs became, the less likely that a pre-emptive U.S. attack on their scattered facilities would be launched, and the more they could demand in return for eventually closing the programs down.

Until late last week, that was the essential pattern of events that had taken place over the past 30 months, with North Korea, having further developed their nuclear programs, announcing on February 10, 2005, that it had become a nuclear power, and refusing to return to the stalled six-party talks process. Suddenly, on July 9th, the North Koreans announced that they would return to the talks, which are now slated to resume during the week of July 25th.