THE GOOD DOCTOR? The Case of Henry Kissinger

Guests:

• John O'Sullivan

  John O'Sullivan is the editor-at-large of National Review and author of The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister: Three Who Changed the World.

Transcript:

Peter Robinson: Today on Uncommon Knowledge, be held personally liable for the conduct of national policy? The case of Henry Kissinger.

Announcer: Funding for this program is provided by the John M. Olin Foundation and the Starr Foundation.

[Music]

Peter Robinson: Welcome to Uncommon Knowledge. I'm Peter Robinson. Our show today, the career of Henry Kissinger. Many have suggested parallels between the career of Henry Kissinger and that of a nineteenth century European diplomat of whom Kissinger himself has written admiringly, the Austrian, Prince Klemens Von Metternich. Like Kissinger, Metternich was a proponent of "Real Politique," balance of power diplomacy. A principal architect of the Congress of Vienna, Metternich helped establish a peace in Europe that lasted nearly one hundred years. Recently, others have suggested parallels with a different European figure, this man, Slobodan Milosevic, now on trial at the Hague for war crimes and crimes against humanity. So what about the career of Henry Kissinger?

One of our two guests today Christopher Hitchens, who writes for The Nation and Vanity Fair, is the author of a book entitled The Trial of Henry Kissinger. He believes Henry Kissinger is criminal. Our second guest, John O'Sullivan, editor in chief of United Press International, believes the very suggestion that Henry Kissinger, winner on a Nobel Peace Prize, is criminal is itself, well, very nearly criminal.

Title: The Good Doctor?

Peter Robinson: Between 1969 and 1977, Henry Kissinger served as National Security Advisor to President Nixon and Security of State to Presidents Nixon and Ford. The--he was the principal architect of Détente, the Soviet Union, the opening to China, and disengagement from Vietnam, and for negotiating the final cease fire in Vietnam. He shared the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize. Christopher Hitchens on Henry Kissinger: quote, "The single greatest achievement has been to get almost everybody to call him Doctor," close quote. Christopher, would you care to explain yourself?

Christopher Hitchens: Well actually it's you who owes an explanation for reciting his own version of his resume just now. For example, what cease fire?

Peter Robinson: This is what pops up in the--in the encyclopedia Britannica.

Christopher Hitchens:I know, that's what you--that's what you get. But in 1973, what cease fire in Vietnam? What peace in Vietnam? The Nobel--the Nobel committee makes a mistake. That can happen to anybody. Le Duc Tho, the Vietnamese negotiator, was also--refused to accept it, quite properly. There was no peace. To say that Kissinger organized disengagement from Vietnam is the precise adverse of the truth. He was the man with Richard Nixon who hoped to prolong and expand the war. Prolong it by several years and to expand it into Cambodia and Laos. It's a--it's simply not true. Détente with the Soviet Union was a policy pursued by a whole number of regimes and a number of a Presidents and Secretaries of States and Defense. I don't think Henry Kissinger deserves any great credit for it.

The opening to China, which was a covert action run by Nixon and Kissinger to draw attention away from the fiasco of Vietnam, was not an opening at all. It was an aperture through which they themselves squeezed. Why it had to be done in secret is something that's never been explained to me. And it was mediated by the Dictator of Pakistan, General Yahya Khan, who at the time was engaged in a campaign of genocide in Bangladesh, which in return the United States disgraced itself, in the person of Henry Kissinger, by supporting. So really…

Peter Robinson: Not a single accomplishment.

Christopher Hitchens:Wh--What you have just read out is a--is a cadaverous account with all the blood let out of it.

Peter Robinson: John.

John O'Sullivan: Obviously, since I'm here I'm going to be happy to discuss some of the specific points and charges against Doctor Kissinger. But, I absolutely think it offensive and absurd to discuss Henry Kissinger in the context of his being a war criminal. I think that is an absurdity. Partly for the reasons you gave, which by the way contrary to what Christopher says, they're all are perfectly good reasons and historically valid. He got the Nobel Prize, as you said. He secondly, did arrange the opening to China. There's no doubt about that. He did negotiate an end--an end to the Vietnam War. And he did s--it is very well to say that he--he--you can't have one side negotiating it without the other. It--it was the North Vietnamese who basically delayed for those four years. And it, incidentally, it was they who eventually destroyed the agreement in 1975. So, it--it seems to me arguable to--let's discuss American policy on Chile, on--on Indochina, on these other questions, but let us begin, let me--me begin my saying at the outset, I think it absurd to conc--to even discuss Henry Kissinger in the context of his being charged with war crimes.

Christopher Hitchens: Well we haven't gotten to that yet to a matter of fact…

Peter Robinson: Let's turn to the first of Christopher's charges against Kissinger regarding Indochina.

Title: The French Connection

Peter Robinson: Prior to the 1968 elections, Kissinger secretly helped the Nixon campaign quote, quoting you "to sabotage the Paris negotiations in Vietnam." Can you give us a one or two sentence elaboration?

Christopher Hitchens: Certainly.

Peter Robinson: Go ahead.

Christopher Hitchens: As we now know from the memoirs of many of the participants and also from the FBI's surveillance records, because the Nixon campaign was bugged by President Johnson while engaged in doing this. Mr. Nixon and his Campaign Manager, John Mitchell, later Attorney General, later jailbird, went to the South Vietnamese military leadership during the course of the Paris peace negotiations. This is when the settlement to the world was being negotiated by the U.S. Government in 1968.

Peter Robinson: '68.

Christopher Hitchens: …the year it should have happened, and said to the South Vietnamese, if you will pull out of these talks and if you'll do it in such a way that will give us an advantage in the election, in other words, if you'll pull out on election eve, it was an election year as well, you'll get a better deal from incoming United States Republican administration. They had to do this secretly because what they were doing was illegal, as well as disgraceful. Henry Kissinger's role in this was as, so to speak, the third or fourth man. He was attached to the negotiations themselves.

Peter Robinson: He was in Paris.

Christopher Hitchens:And was able to supply Mr. Nixon with perfect knowledge in advance of the United States Government's negotiating position. So with those two back channels, he was well able both to undermine the election and the peace negotiations. I--which I describe in my book as the single wickedness act in American history.

John O'Sullivan: This--this is fantasy.

Christopher Hitchens: As a result, Mr.--Mr. Kissinger who met Mr. Nixon only once prior to this and not alone, was asked by him on the second meeting to become his first appointment and his National Security Advisor.

John O'Sullivan: This is fantasy on several grounds. First of all, the proposals in Christopher is discussing, the bombing calls and so on, were as we know from the memoirs of Dobrynin, the Soviet Ambassador, designed to try to get Hubert Humphrey elected. They were a last minute election stunt. Secondly…

Peter Robinson: By Johnson?

John O'Sullivan: By Johnson.

Christopher Hitchens: By the administra--I'll just point out, by the elected government of the United States.

John O'Sullivan: By--by--by the--by the candidates--by--by the party of the candidate for presidency in--in that month. So, if you were in a different mood, Christopher would be arguing that had Humphrey won the election, it should have cancelled on the grounds of fraud. Now…

Christopher Hitchens: Well I can't (inaudible)…

John O'Sullivan: Second--secondly--secondly, the talks did not stop in '68 and resume again in '72. They went on immediately after the election before Nixon was inaugurated. And they carried on for s--four years. They were not concluded, not because of resistance by few or anyone else, but because the North Vietnamese themselves would not come to reasonable terms. Nor, by the way, in my view did they ever really come to reasonable terms. Since the terms in which they, peace, in quotes, was achieved in 1972 was one in which a sovereign power had to accept bases of another territory, namely North Vietnam, on its soil. So effectively these th--these talks were not abandoned and then taking up four years later. They carried on for four years. And it's the North Vietnamese who bear the responsibility for the deaths in those years.

Peter Robinson: To the involvement of Kissinger in the talks and as a--what did you--the third or fourth man as you said. The Economist magazine says that in--in his 1998 book, I am giving you a double authority here, The Economist on William Bundy. William Bundy, Assistant Secretary of State under Johnson, who writes a 1998 book called The Tangled Web. Bundy, no friend to Henry Kissinger by any means, examines the evidence in great detail. And The Economist magazine finds "Mr. Bundy concluded that Mr. Kissinger had never passed along that inside information," close quote.

Christopher Hitchens: Very strangely, Mr. Nixon should give a different account of it in his memoirs. He said he was in constant receipt of high grade information from Henry Kissinger. I don't know how Mr. Bundy would know better than Mr. Nixon, who was informing Mr. Nixon. Now--now listen, I have to--I can't leave John's…

Peter Robinson: Go ahead, go ahead, go ahead. No, go ahead.

Christopher Hitchens: I don't, I--I--I don't particularly care what they then said the ambassador made of the negotiating positions. And I'm surprised that John takes them as the authority. But let us suppose, I have no reason to doubt it, that Mr. Johnson and Mr. Humphrey proposed to get electoral advantage from conducting these negotiations from Vietnam. That's their right. They were the elected government of the United States. They had a mandate for those--for those negotiations. And indeed they were mandated by public opinion by Congress and by the whole foreign policy establishment to wind down the war as far as possible. The subversion by the Nixon, Agnew, and Mitchell forces aided by Henry Kissinger of the election and of the negotiations cannot possible be compared. It's--it's outrageous to compare them to…

Peter Robinson: Well, but does it matter…

Christopher Hitchens: …be open by an elected government, however flawed.

Peter Robinson: On to Christopher's next charge. This one regarding Laos and Cambodia.

Title: Apocalypse Now and Then

Peter Robinson: In prosecuting the war as National Security Advisor and then as Security of State, Kissinger was guilty of, again I quote you--your words "treating two whole countries, Laos and Cambodia, as if they were disposable hamlets," close quote.

Christopher Hitchens: There is a reason, I think, why Henry Kissinger while ordering, organizing, and supervising a campaign of bombing of civilian targets and other targets in--in Cambodia have decided that it would be, should we say, more prudent not to inform Congress. As far as I know, that's unprecedented, by the way, in American History. As Secretary of State and National Security Advisor rather, running a war in a foreign country which Congress doesn't know about. Why--why would he want to keep it secret? Why would he want to run it illegally in other words? Because it was.

John O'Sullivan: As a matter of fact, in both Laos and Cambodia…

Christopher Hitchens: I see that I am not going to be able to--actually I think that if I can ask the question that's enough.

Peter Robinson: Go ahead.

John O'Sullivan: In Laos and Cambodia, the people who invaded the country first were the North Vietnamese. They were the people who violated the neutrality of those countries. They ran a campaign through them and using them. Secretly, the Cambodians wanted American intervention. It was asked for privately by Sihanouk. And the actions taken by the American government were, in my view, perfectly legal. Not only legal, but they would of--it would have been absurd to try to wage a war while allowing your enemy to operate from bases in the third neutral country, which you could take no action against. And, although obviously every aspect of the conduct of the out-and-out(?) War became an object of controversy in the United States. I nonetheless think that the government was entirely justified in bombing not the innocent Cambodians, although obviously in any war, some innocent people are killed, but the supply lines and the bases of enemy forces. And I cannot see how anyone can reasonably object to that. The guilt lies on the North Vietnamese.

Christopher Hitchens: That is wholly false. But I'll still propose a compromise. Because we are not having a debate about the morality of the Vietnam War….

Peter Robinson: What about Henry Kissinger's actions?

Christopher Hitchens: It is latent. And anyone can tell that John and I, true of then and true of now, John actually opposed positions. However, what he's just said is completely misleading. For example, Prince Sihanouk, then and later, a puppet of the Khmer Rouge, may not give permission to an American politician to violate the United States Constitution, or international law. It may be true that Sihanouk would welcome the intervention. It's quite beside the point.

Peter Robinson: Now to Christopher's final and gravest charge against Kissinger for his role in Vietnam.

Title: Good Mourning, Vietnam

Peter Robinson: Because of interfering with the 68' peace talks, you write that, quote, "Kissinger had to know that every casualty in Indochina, that includes more than twenty thousand Americans and tens of--tens of thousands of Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians, Kissinger had to know that every casualty in Indochina after 1968 was avoidable," close quote.

Christopher Hitchens: It's a--it's of interest, I think, that until the fall of 1968, Henry Kissinger had taken a rather forward position among the--the dovish intellectuals of the--(?) intellectuals of the time. He had written rather conspicuous articles saying how clear it was to him that the Vietnam War needed to be wound up as swiftly as possible. He had, this might be of interest to Mr. O'Sullivan or it might not be, been quite close to some prominent French Communists who had contact with--with North Vietnam, and was, on Mr. Rockefeller's behalf, opening a back channel with them. It was therefore only because he got as it were a job offer from Richard Nixon as a result of a very sordid peace of back stairs diplomacy, that he changed his line on the war at all. In my view--in my view that slightly thickens the charge against him. Although chalice indifference to human life, a deprave indifference to human life.

Peter Robinson: Your charge is that the Paris peace talks fell apart, in large part, because of Henry Kissinger's dealings. An alternative, in my judgment, more persuasive reading of the history is that the North Vietnamese were in no way ready to--to make the concessions necessary in 1968. And that Kissinger, even if as an academic he went into his job thinking we must wind this down as quickly as we c--can, discovered that is quickly as we can is in fact slow, messy, requires one military action after another through those four years, before the North Vietnamese are finally ready to make concessions in 72'.

John O'Sullivan: Let me support that…

Christopher Hitchens: Let me make distinctions, not concessions. You could, I'm not saying you are, you could be right about that. It would not alter the fact that what the Nixon campaign did in making a--a secret de--a secret deal with a foreign power during negotiations being conducted by the elected government was illegal…

Peter Robinson: …we must make a final point and then we must move onto Chile, or we'll never get there. Go ahead, John.

John O'Sullivan: Something very important happened in--betwe--before the North Vietnamese actually came to terms. And that was the failure of their massive military incursion in the south in 1972. A defailure which was defeated by the combination of South Vietnamese grou--ground troops and American airpower. And it was only when that had happened that the North Vietnamese were really willing to--to talk seriously.

Peter Robinson: A new charge, Kissinger in the 1973 coup against Chilean President Salvadore Allende.

Title: A Watched Plot

Peter Robinson: Christopher, you accused Kissinger not only of complicity, but again of criminal complicity in the 1973 coup in Chile. Television, so I ask you to explain your charges briefly as you can, but go ahead.

Christopher Hitchens: The complicity begins well before the coup. It begins when President Salvadore Allende…

Peter Robinson: 1970 he's elected.

Christopher Hitchens: Well actually I--I get ahead of this by calling him President. He's elected the Chilean Constitution mandates a period of, I think its thirty days, it may be sixty, between the election of the candidate and his confirmation by the Congress and the Supreme Court in that period between him winning the election and being installed, inaugurated, confirmed as the President. It was decided in a meeting in Washington, during this integral period, transition period that the Chilean Army should prevent the--the election from being consummated in this way. The main obstacle to that was the Head of the Chilean Armed Forces. A man named General Rene Schneider, and he, an honorable conservative officer who had taken his oath to the Constitution. It was therefore decided General Schneider should be removed. So Henry Kissinger's first act was to suborder the murder of General Schneider. A--A--A official in--of--a Constitution official in the democratic country with which the United States not at war and had peaceful and open diplomatic relations. He d--he had no authority from Congress to conduct such a vile act. And is subject even now to legal reprisal for it, which I very much hope will fall upon him. That showed from the very beginning in other words that the--the policy was one of negating the results of an election by force and by suborning a--a treason among--mutually among the Chilean Armed Forces.

Peter Robinson: Kissinger himself--Kissinger himself says in his--in his memoirs, Years of Upheaval, that indeed there was the exploration of the option of a coup. That the Nixon Administration he makes no--he is not all apologetic for opposing Allende or for suggesting…

Christopher Hitchens: We don't need his memoirs to confirm that.

Peter Robinson: No, no, let me--Kissinger's sentence. The American part of the coup was called off and the Chilean component went on and was bungled. That's Kissinger. Now, second point,…

Christopher Hitchens: That's a lie. That's a flat out Kissinger lie.

Peter Robinson: …twenty-five years ago--twenty-five years ago, Senator Frank Church, no friend of Henry Kissinger or Richard Nixon, as Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee went into this charging great detail and discovered quote, this is the Intelligence Committee's finding "no evidence of a plan to kill Schneider or that the United States official specifically anticipated that Schneider would be shot." In other words, a sharp political opponent of Nixon and Kissenger confirms that the United States had nothing to do with the death of Schneider.

Christopher Hitchens: But as you will see in my book in front of me--in front of you, excuse me, the Church committee was lied to by the CIA. And information was withheld from it, which Congressman Maurice Hinchey earlier had disclosed and published and it's all to be read in my pages in the fall of last year. Where it was discovered as it been withheld from the Church Committee that the murderers of General Schneider were paid $50,000 American dollars at 1970 prices, after they had completed the assassination, and were helped to conceal the crime and to dispose of the weapons. Now that--that establishes--that--that--that make those who paid them accomplices.

John O'Sullivan: As Christopher's book establishes--as Christopher's--as quotes in Christopher's own book establishes, this was a plot which Kissinger did not start, but did stop. He stopped it.

Christopher Hitchens:Quite to the contrary.

John O'Sullivan: Now, secondly, the additional, quote, "evidence," unquote, does not have any bearing on whether Kissinger had any involvement. It simply suggests that the CIA rouge elements who commissioned this wanted to shut the guys up. And finally, in this chapter and in several other chapters in the book, when you get to the end, what you get is Christopher saying, "Well the evidence for this has been suppressed by Henry Kissinger or is hidden in the files, or Congress must get subpoena power to insure that these things are brought out." It reminds me of the famous…

Christopher Hitchens: Not in this case.

John O'Sullivan: It reminds me of one of the famous jokes of the Dominican who in a speech sa--was--was told that the evidence for his position did not exist in any of the documents of the early church fathers. And replied, "it doesn't exist in any of the documents which have survived, but there's lots of evidence in the documents which have perished." The evidence for Christopher's case is always in documents which no one can get access too.

Christopher Hitchens: Well I'm sorry, I just said that the Congressman Hinchey report absolutely materializes my point. If you--if you pay…

John O'Sullivan: As…

Christopher Hitchens: …excuse me, if you pay someone to kill somebody else, after the killing has been conducted, as well as having paid them before, you are in law as responsible for their death as if you had pulled the trigger yourself. Henry Kissinger was at all times Chairman of the Forty Committee that overseas all covert actions.

John O'Sullivan: And as such, he stopped the plot.

Christopher Hitches: The plot--the plot was not stopped.

Peter Robinson: New point…

Christopher Hitchens: General Schneider was shot down in the street.

Peter Robinson: The final charge, Kissinger and the annexation of East Timor.

Title: A Day of Living Dangerously

Peter Robinson: You argue that Kissinger encouraged, or at least acquiesced in the 1975 annexation of the former Portuguese Colony of East Timor by Indonesia, you argue that on the 1975…

Christopher Hitchens: I prove it.

Peter Robinson: In the 1975 trip to Indonesia, Kissinger and Ford gave the Indonesians a nod. Alright, and you quote, disapprovingly, from a transcript of the 1995 book event in which Kissinger gets questioned on the subject and answers, this in the longest quotation but it seems to be worth reading. This in Henry Kissinger as quoted by you, "Now I don't want to offend the gentleman who asked the question. We had so many problems to deal with. There was a war going in Angola. We had just been driven out of Vietnam. We were conducting negotiations in the Middle East and Lebanon had blown up. We were on a trip to China. Maybe, regrettably, we weren't even thinking about Timor. The Indonesians told us they were going to occupy the Portuguese colony. To us that did not look like a very significant event because the Indians had occupied the Portuguese colony of Goa ten years earlier. Timor, look at a map, its a little speck of an island in the huge Archipelago," close quote.

Now, that's a little bit of a rambling answer. He was asked this in public, unprepared for it. But it strikes me as a tremendously important point. Kissinger is aware of the backdrop, as your book is not, of the Cold War. During Kissinger's years in office, the United States in engaged in a conflict with the Soviet Union that our friend Bob Conquest has established was responsible for the death of tens of millions of people. And Kissinger, quite rightly, subjugated every other concern of the United States foreign policy to the pursuit, in the end the successful pursuit, of victory in that Cold War.

Christopher Hitchens: I have in my book the State Department document that shows him confirming that he knew in advance and approved of the invasion of Istanbul. That he knew that it broke international law. That he knew it broke American law, because it used American weapons for an aggression and for the subjugation of the civilian population. That he--that he thought--he thought East Timor was important because he thought the struggle over the future of the Portuguese empire was indeed important. So he's perfectly aware of the context. What do you have therefore to prove, and perhaps John will, is the extent to which the massacre of the defenseless people of East Timor by a--by a paramilitary dictatorship, which has since collapsed, helps to bring down the Berlin Wall. Perhaps you'll try that. Not even Henry Kissinger has tried that yet.

John O'Sullivan: The--the point you made is a perfectly fair one, Peter. Namely that there were lots of other things happening at the time. This happened--this was--this suddenly landed on his desk. They learned about it in fact as they were leaving a meeting with…

Peter Robinson: They are Kissinger and Ford.

John O'Sullivan: …Kissinger and Ford. But it's perfectly--from your own book the context is clear. There are--I don't want to go into the complications…

Peter Robinson: We don't have time, I'm afraid.

John O'Sullivan: But--but the point is, from your own book, it's clear that Kissinger learned about it late--very late in the day. Secondly, the--the Goa point is important because Goas absorption by India was accepted. And Kissinger had no reason, although he was in fact wrong here, to think that the same thing would not be true of East Timor. It would be accepted. It was a post-colonial bit of mopping of, which, the Indonesians would carry through quickly. And there was not particular reason to object to it. And thirdly, the Indonesians were important allies of the United States at a time when, as you say, the United States was engaged in a worldwide struggle.

Peter Robinson: John O'Sullivan writes that although he rejects the findings of your book, quote, "Hitchens deserves the thanks of all sensible people," close quote. Presumably, including even Henry Kissinger. Why so John?

John O'Sullivan: Christopher's book is a left wing attempt to reverse many of the arguments that the left and right had in the Cold War, under the form of an indictment for war crimes. Now, this gives us a warning exactly of what may well happen if we go too far too fast and in too unconsidered a way down the road of establishing international war crimes tribunals. They will not be--they will be politics disguised as justice. They will not be genuine evenhanded justice. They will be--Pinochet will be arrested, Kissinger will be harried, but what action will be taken against Gorbichev for example? Although Gorbichev was in charge of the Soviet Union at a time when Soviets troops killed people in the Baltics and in Georgia. There will be no such action.

Peter Robinson: We are very nearly out of time. The United States has signed, but not yet ratified, a treaty that would create an international criminal court. You would suggest that Christopher's book about Mr. Kissinger, Dr. Kissinger, may have the salutary effect of preventing us from ratifying that treaty.

John O'Sullivan: Well I would like--I do not want that treaty ratified until we find ways of making international courts accountable to some kind of Democratic control. They're not at the moment. They are in effect, lawless in that sense.

Peter Robinson: Clare Lewis used to say that history had time to give each large figure one sentence. Abraham Lincoln preserved the union. A quarter of a century from now, what one sentence will history give to Henry Kissinger?

Christopher Hitchens: I don't--I don't think it can be compressed into a sentence. But he--he was a one man international rolling crime wave. And he's proved in American law how--how far it is--a single citizen can be above the law and still be a cultural icon.

Peter Robinson: John?

John O'Sullivan: It will say that Kissinger, who did not preside over the collapse of the Soviet Empire as was said of Pitt, who did not see the end of the Napoleonic Wars, that he was the pilot that weathered the storm. He was the man who kept the west going at a time, when internally, it was wriven by great strife. And by people like Christopher, who were undermining it, and at a time when…

Christopher Hitchens: Alright then. I've got to say this. He's the man who told Gerald Ford to keep Alexander Soltzin out of the White House. He's the man--he's the man who public--he's the man who publicly defended the Chinese Communist Parties right to massacre its own students in the main square of Beijing. A power worshiper. An unscrupulous seeker after power for himself, and a worshiper of those who wielded unscrupulous power for whatever ideological reason.

Peter Robinson: Would you care to mend your sentence?

Christopher Hitchens: A--a man without principles in--in--in the worship of power.

John O'Sullivan: We're freer and better off than we would have been had he not been at that key post at that key time.

Peter Robinson: John O'Sullivan and Christopher Hitchens, thank you very much.

Peter Robinson: According to Christopher Hitchens, a rolling one-man international crime wave. But, according to John O'Sullivan, the pilot who weathered the storm. Trial or no trial, history will render a verdict. I'm Peter Robinson, thanks for joining us.