Their relationship dissolved in 1970 when Lake resigned in protest of the Nixon administration's decision to expand the Vietnam war to Cambodia. Lake later sued Kissinger for wire-tapping his home phone after he left his post.

Lake left Washington to pursue a Ph.D at Princeton University. But he couldn't stay entirely off the front lines. He served as an adviser to former Sen. Edmund Muskie (D-Me.) during his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1972.

Lake received his doctorate in 1974 and then returned to D.C. to work on Jimmy Carter's 1976 presidential campaign. After Carter won, Lake was named director of policy planning at the State Department, a post that has been held by several other Obama insiders, including new White House counsel Gregory B. Craig and James Steinberg.

When Carter lost re-election to President Reagan, Lake moved to Massachusetts to teach at Mount Holyoke College. He remained there until joining President Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign. After the election, Clinton selected Lake as his national security adviser.

During his first several months in that job, Lake and the other foreign policy staffers struggled to address the slew of issues they were facing: a Bosnian crisis, politically motivated murders in Haiti, a failed mission in Somalia and genocide in Rwanda. The Clinton administration was accused of being caught flat-footed in their responses to many early problems, but Lake had some victories as well.

Clinton nominated Lake as CIA director in 1997, but the choice was held up by Clinton's congressional opponents, who criticized Lake for failing to adequately curtail Clinton's foreign fundraising efforts and for suggesting that Alger Hiss might not have been a Soviet Union spy.

The political attacks exhausted Lake, who withdrew his name from consideration in March 1997, despite Clinton's strenuous objections. In a letter announcing his decision, Lake wrote: "I have gone through the past three months and more with patience and, I hope, dignity. But I have lost the former and could lose the latter as this political circus continues indefinitely."

From 1998 through 2000, Lake served as a White House special envoy. He negotiated the Algiers Agreement, which ended the Eritrean-Ethiopian War.

He began teaching at Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service in 1997.

Lake first met President Barack Obama in 2002, when he was considering a run for the U.S. Senate. The two men hit it off and spoke on the phone about policy from time to time.

Lake encouraged Obama to run for president and in December 2006, Obama asked him to serve as head of his foreign policy team along with former Clinton assistant Secretary of State Susan E. Rice. In that position, he coordinated Obama's 300- person international relations advisery committee. He also provided Obama with decades of Middle East expertise.

Furthermore, Lake focused on burnishing Obama's credentials on Israel, bringing Jewish thinkers like Dennis Ross to the campaign. Lake travelled to Europe with Obama in July 2008, and was in charge of coordinating the president's visit with French leaders.

In December 2008, Lake and several other prominent leaders started Global Zero, an organization dedicated to eliminating nuclear weapons. The group, which already has over 100 members, will host a conference in 2010.

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