Richard Haass, former State Department official and head of the Council on Foreign Relations, may have put it best when he suggested that what we need here is a dial, not a switch.

CNN: Should CIA be targeting terrorists?

It's not in Washington's Foggy Bottom neighborhood, where the gray monolith of the State Department gazes out onto the Potomac, or in the trendy salons of Georgetown or the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City.

CNN: Senator No

In December of that year, the National Intelligence Council - then under the leadership of another product of the State Department, Thomas Fingar - produced an NIE that declared "with high confidence" that the Iranian mullahs had halted their nuclear weapons program in 2003.

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Garbage in, garbage out