The long-delayed Senate Intelligence Committee hearing provided Lake his first chance to testify on his own behalf since early December when President Clinton nominated him to be the nation's top spy.
Lake addressed questions about whether he would be forthcoming with Congress and said glitches in the management of his personal stock portfolio were inadvertent. He also pledged to give Clinton unbiased intelligence analysis, even on policies he helped craft over the past four years as national security adviser.
"The intelligence community must supply the president with the best, unvarnished information," Lake said. "We must have an intelligence process of absolute integrity."
Addressing concerns about CIA morale following spy scandals and failed economic intelligence operations, Lake said, "I will challenge our analysts and operations people to tackle hard problems and take on new challenges, even at greater risk of controversy. And I will see that they are rewarded, even if they fail, provided they acted skillfully and properly."
"They were shockers," Acheson wrote later of the British messages. He quickly passed the word to the White House, and within three weeks President Truman responded to the crisis.
Tomorrow marks the 50th anniversary of his proclamation of the Truman Doctrine, a speech to Congress that pledged U.S. support for Greece, Turkey and other nations threatened by communism.
It was a decision that fully engaged the United States in a face-off with the Soviet bloc, and changed the course of history.
"It was the opening shot in the Cold War," said Truman biographer Alonzo Hamby, the beginning of what President Kennedy would later call "a long twilight struggle" that would continue until the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The history of the relationship is dotted with "painful past experiences," leading to the establishment of formal procedures for contacts, presidential spokesperson Mike McCurry said.
Tensions were raw yesterday from the quarrel between the White House and FBI after Clinton complained he was not told about the agency's suspicions that China was trying to influence U.S. congressional elections.