Shortly before our appointment with Condoleezza Rice, Henry Kissinger was spotted slipping into the state department building. As the chief architect of American foreign policy in the late 1960s and 1970s Mr Kissinger remains an icon of the "realist" school of diplomacy so pilloried by Ms Rice's current and erstwhile neo-conservative colleagues in the Bush administration. A brilliant - if cynical - operator who was able to further US interests from positions of apparent weakness, particularly after humiliation in Vietnam, Mr Kissinger meets the current secretary of state regularly, according to an aide.

There may be lessons to learn in the present day from this experience as America faces a similarly disastrous war in Iraq and, as a result, a dramatically weakened position abroad.