In the wealthy industrialized nations, effective drug therapies against AIDS became available - AZT as early as 1987, then combinations of antiretroviral agents in 1996. The new drugs offered hope that fatal complications might be staved off and AIDS rendered a chronic condition.

Throughout the early and mid-1990s, the Clinton administration debated the merits of paying for AIDS testing and counseling of vulnerable populations overseas.

Early in 1986, the World Health Organization in Geneva still regarded AIDS as an ailment of the promiscuous few.

The first reports of AIDS closely followed the inauguration of President Ronald Reagan, whose 'family values' agenda and alliance with Christian conservatives associated AIDS with deviance and sin.

There's a long history of private-company cooperation with the NSA that dates back to at least the 1970s.

Ecuador has never stated flatly that it would give asylum to Edward Snowden.

No one ought to be under any illusion that Cheney privately thinks himself a failure.

The funny thing is that Dick Cheney has done more than anybody in the White House for quite a long time to throw up roadblocks against future historians.

I don't think Cheney started off in 2000 with a burning desire to become vice-president. I think the prospect gradually became more appealing, and he goosed the process.

Cheney was among the best secretaries of defence the country has ever had. He was a very effective White House chief of staff. He did not make many enemies, and he had the ability to persuade people with that soft tone and very reasonable style of his. He's always been exceptionally good as the right-hand man.

The surveillance of ordinary people is far greater than I would have imagined and far greater than the American public has been able to debate.

Snowden has been very sparing about discussing his early life or his personal life.

Daniel Ellsberg showed tremendous courage back in the '70s.

Snowden has yet to tell me anything that was a fact that I have been able to rebut or that anybody in the U.S. government I have talked to has been able to rebut.

I doubt there's any government in the world that guides itself primarily by strategy or conceptual documents or worldview. Anybody who has the reins of power has to look at practical limitations and tradeoffs - the fact that you can focus at most on one or two things at a time, that resources are limited.

Clinton saw himself much more as the steward of alliances and of consensus that moved in the right direction. He didn't see himself as someone who could change the overall thrust, I think, of global policy.

Doctrines don't govern policy. They provide a conceptual framework by which policymakers approach their decisions. But there is no such thing as a doctrine that controls policy in every way.

All Americans are dependent for their energy on the Arabian peninsula.

Palestinians have had to live for a long time with the fact that Israelis had power over them in their everyday lives.

In general, states do not count on pledges of 'no more war' from their neighbors. Israel's army never counted on it from Egypt, for example.

Why does it appear that interested readers so often attribute flaws to 'the press' rather than taking particular issue with particular reports?

I'm a journalist and author. I make my living by finding things out and writing about them.

I have no evidence of any relationship between IRS and NSA.

Holding our own government to account for the use of its power is, in my view, the highest mission of a U.S. news organization.