Interestingly, and not surprisingly, we have encountered some skepticism amongst Government officials and others who had some doubts about the need for or the utility of our principal function: The application of historical experience to the development of current and future national security policy. There were two principal reasons for the skepticism. First, there are a number of people who feel that the tremendous technological advances of our times have totally invalidated any possible relevance of the past experience which is the stuff of history. Secondly, there are those who feel that the competent Government specialist has no need for the services of the historian; he is usually far more conversant with his field of interest than any academic scholar can be; he has his files available for documentation; he knows what facts can be considered relevant, and he will include these in any statement which may be required of “Facts Bearing on the Problem.” As to the first of these doubts, as I shall show, we have clearly demonstrated the relevance of history to current policy issues. For the second, we believe that the dangers of the concept of “every man his own historian” are becoming apparent to many Government officials. The historical background of Government specialists, even in their own area of specialty, is not only spotty, but their recollection of historical experience is limited mostly to those examples which tend to support their own pre-conceived ideas. Furthermore, their own Governmental documentation is often inadequate in most areas other than in classified documents. More and more people are beginning to recognize the ability of the trained historian to bring out _all_ of the pertinent facts, and to weigh their relative value far more objectively than is possible for the average person without historical training. Thus, HERO is convinced of the utility of our primary mission of mining the rich natural resource which we think history is, and also of refining the ore so as to permit history to serve mankind, as philosophers have always said it should. This has never been done before, either here or in any other country, to the best of my knowledge—though, as a historian, I am aware of the danger of using such absolute terms as “never,” or “the first ever.” Rather than going into any generalized explanation of how we go about mining and refining this resource, I think I can demonstrate how we do it—and at the same time give concrete examples of some uses of history—by talking about some of HERO’s past and current work.