As the coordinator of a university lecture series, the author is always on the lookout for good speakers. He thought that he had found one in Stephen Walt, a political scientist at Harvard University and the co-author of an article about the influence of the pro-Israel lobby on U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. In this article, the author…

Just more than twenty years ago, the author had the privilege of directing a National Academy of Sciences panel that issued a report entitled "Scientific Communication and National Security," known informally as the Corson Report, after Dale Corson, the panel's chair and president emeritus of Cornell University. Thus, for him, today's discussions…