Dr. Robert Dickson Crane (born March 26, 1929) was adviser to President of the United States Richard Nixon and was the Deputy Director (for Planning) of the United States National Security Council. He has authored or co-authored more than a dozen books and over 50 professional articles on comparative legal systems, global strategy, and information management. Early life and education Crane was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1945, at the age of 16, he entered Harvard University to study Russian as the first step in becoming an international journalist. In 1948, he became the first American permitted to study at a university in Occupied Germany, having been accepted at the University of Munich. While in Germany, he studied the sociology of religion and prepared a book on totalitarian regimes and on the spiritual dynamics of resistance movements against such regimes. Upon his return to the United States, Dr. Crane got his B.A. from Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, in 1956, summa cum laude, and his J.D. from Harvard Law School, Cambridge, MA. His thesis was titled "The Accommodation of Ethics in International Commercial Arbitration" and was published in the Arbitration Journal, Fall 1959. At Harvard, he also founded the Harvard International Law Journal and acted as the first president of the Harvard International Law Society. Dr. Crane was admitted to the District of Columbia Bar in 1960. Political career In 1962, Crane became one of the four co-founders of the first Washington-based foreign-policy think-tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). In 1966, he left to become Director of Third World Studies at the first professional futures forecasting center, The Hudson Institute, led by Herman Kahn. From the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 until the beginning of Richard Nixon's victorious campaign for the presidency in 1967, Crane was his principal foreign policy adviser, responsible for preparing a "reader's digest" of professional articles for Nixon on the key foreign policy issues. During the campaign, Crane collected his position papers into a book, Inescapable Rendezvous: New Directions for American Foreign Policy, with a foreword by Congressman Gerald Ford, who succeeded Nixon as President. On January 20, 1969, Crane moved into the White House as Deputy Director (for Planning) of the National Security Council, but soon moved to the U.S. Department of State as special assistant to Deputy Secretary Elliot Richardson, responsible for liaison with the National Security Council and