Kissinger’s Shadow

by Greg Grandin

  18.  Kissinger, “Force and Diplomacy in the Nuclear Age.”

  19.  Kissinger, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, p. 7.

  20.  Kissinger, “Peace, Legitimacy, and the Equilibrium,” p. 7.

  21.  Kissinger, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, pp. 236; 249.

  22.  Henry Kissinger, Necessity for Choice (1961), p. 15.

  23.  James and Diane Dornan, “The Works of Henry A. Kissinger,” Political Science Reviewer (Fall 1975), p. 99.

  24.  Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Journals: 1952–2000 (2007), p. 84.

  25.  “Reflections on Cuba,” Reporter, November 22, 1962, p. 21.

  26.  “Strains on the Alliance,” Foreign Affairs.

  27.  Ellsberg, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers (2003), p. 229.

  28.  According to Ellsberg, Kissinger by 1967 was expressing, at academic conferences and in private conversations, “a point of view that was well in advance of that of any other mainstream political figure at that point.” Washington’s “only objective” should be to ensure a “decent interval” between US withdrawal from South Vietnam and the country’s complete takeover by troops from the North (Secrets, p. 229). See William Safire, Before the Fall (1975), p. 160, for the quote.

  29.  “Educators Back Vietnam Policy,” New York Times, December 10, 1965.

  30.  “Harvard Debates Oxford on Vietnam,” New York Times, December 22, 1965.

  31.  Robert Shrum, No Excuses (2007), p. 15.

  2: ENDS AND MEANS

     1.  MH, p. 321.

     2.  Isaacson, Kissinger, p. 76.

     3.  For the transcript, see the William Y. Elliott Papers at the Hoover Institution Archives, box 55.

     4.  Halberstam, “The New Establishment.” For the quotation in the footnote, see MH, pp. 13–14.

     5.  The story was first told in detail by Hersh, in The Price of Power, and has been verified by Richard Allen and confirmed, in passing, by Kissinger himself (see citations later in chapter). Walter Isaacson’s biography, Kissinger, supports every detail of Hersh, but suggests that “what Kissinger provided was not serious spying” but a “willingness to pass along tales and tidbits.” This assertion in no way contradicts Hersh’s description of events. See also Ken Hughes, Chasing Shadows: The Nixon Tapes, the Chennault Affair, and the Origins of Watergate (2014), especially n. 7, pp. 175–77, which provides additional evidence that confirms Kissinger’s involvement.

     6.  Marvin Kalb and Bernard Kalb, Kissinger (1973), pp. 15–16.

     7.  Kalb and Kalb, Kissinger, p. 18.

     8.  Isaacson, Kissinger, p. 127.

     9.  Hersh, Price of Power, p. 14.

  10.  “The American Experience in Southeast Asia: Historical Conference,” September 29, 2010; transcript available at: http://www.state.gov/p/eap/rls/rm/2010/09/148410.htm.

  11.  Isaacson, Kissinger, p. 133.

  12.  Isaacson, Kissinger, p. 131.

  13.  Ibid.

  14.  Interview with Richard Allen, Ronald Reagan Oral History Project, Miller Center, University of Virginia, May 28, 2002; available at http://millercenter.org/president/reagan/oralhistory/richard-allen.

  15.  Hersh, Price of Power, p. 21.

  16.  Hughes, Chasing Shadows, p. 46.

  17.  Hughes, Chasing Shadows, p. 47.

  18.  http://whitehousetapes.net/transcript/nixon/525-001; Ken Hughes, “LBJ Thought Nixon Committed Treason,” History News Network, June 15, 2012; and Robert Parry, “The Dark Continuum of Watergate,” June 12, 2012; http://consortiumnews.com/2012/06/12/the-dark-continuum-of-watergate/.

  19.  FRUS: Soviet Union, October 1971–May 1972, vol. 14, doc. 126, p. 446.

  20.  “Henry Kissinger & the Nixon-Chennault-Thieu Cabal of 1968,” H-Diplo Discussion, April 19, 2011; http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=h-diplo&month=1104&week=c&msg=v18g74TLByTCI2MqcwPN%2bQ&user=&pw=.

  21.  Kissinger, A World Restored, p. 326.

  22.  Kissinger, “Reflections on American Diplomacy,” p. 39.

  23.  Kissinger, A World Restored, p. 327.

  24.  In Issacson, Kissinger, p. 132.

  25.  Nixon: The Triumph of a Politician, 1962–1972 (1989), p. 231.

  3: KISSINGER SMILED

     1.  H. R. Haldeman, The Ends of Power (1978), p. 83.

     2.  Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, vol. 6, Vietnam, January 1969–July 1970 (2006), p. 96.

     3.  Quoted in Barbara Zanchetta, The Transformation of American International Power in the 1970s (2013), p. 32.

     4.  Kalb and Kalb, Kissinger, especially ch. 5, “Henry’s Wonderful Machine,” is still among the best discussions of the transformation of the NSC under Kissinger and Nixon. See p. 80 for the quotation. Also, Hersh, Price of Power, chapter 2, “A New NSC System,” describes the transformation. Both the Kalbs and Hersh are also still the most useful sources for the bureaucratic infighting and personality conflicts involved in the transformation.

     5.  Safire, Before the Fall, p. 190.

     6.  Kalb and Kalb, Kissinger, p. 91.

     7.  Hersh, Price of Power, p. 87.

     8.  William Shawcross, Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon, and the Destruction of Cambodia (1979), p. 271.

     9.  “Kissinger Tapes Describe Crises, War and Stark Photos of Abuse,” New York Times, May 27, 2004.

  10.  Hersh, Price of Power, p. 63.

  11.  H. R. Haldeman, The Haldeman Diaries (1994), p. 51.

  12.  Hersh, Price of Power, p. 121.

  13.  Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, The Final Days (1976), p. 191.

  14.  Shawcross, Sideshow, p. 29.

  15.  Joan Hoff, Nixon Reconsidered (1995), p. 219.

  16.  Kalb and Kalb, Kissinger, p. 156.

  17.  Diplomacy (1994), p. 704.

  18.  Isaacson, Kissinger, p. 275.

  19.  Schlesinger, Journals, p. 322.

  20.  Melvin Small, The Presidency of Richard Nixon (1999), p. 28.

  21.  Cluster Munitions Monitor 2010, p. 13.

  22.  http://www.japanfocus.org/-Ben-Kiernan/3380.

  23.  See “Bombs over Cambodia,” Walrus (Toronto), October 2006, pp. 62–69, and n. 38 of Kiernan and Owen’s “Roots of U.S. Troubles in Afghanistan: Civilian Bombing Casualties and the Cambodian Precedent,” Asia-Pacific Journal, available at http://www.japanfocus.org/-Ben-Kiernan/3380. See also the maps found on the Web page of Yale University’s Cambodian Genocide Program: http://www.yale.edu/cgp/us.html.

  24.  http://www.voanews.com/content/a-13-2009-02-02-voa34-68796482/411754.html.

  25.  State Department inspectors determined that the defoliation was “caused by a deliberate and direct overflight of the rubber plantations.” Independent investigators, in consultation with US authorities, including Senator Frank Church, suggested that the CIA targeted the plantations in order to destabilize the Sihanouk government. See Wells-Dang, “Agent Orange in Laos and Cambodia: The Documentary Evidence,” in Indochina News (Summer 2002), available here: http://www.ffrd.org/indochina/summer02news.html#ao. See also A. H. Westing, E. W. Pfeiffer, J. Lavorel, and L. Matarasso, “Report on Herbicidal Damage by the United States in Southern Cambodia,” December 31, 1969, in Thomas Whiteside, Defoliation (1970), pp. 117–32; and Arthur H. Westing, “Herbicidal Damage to Cambodia,” in J. B. Neilands et al., Harvest of Death: Chemical Warfare in Vietnam and Cambodia (1972), pp. 177–205.

  26.  E-mail communication, but see his “The US Bombardment of Cambodia, 1969–1973,” Vietnam Generation 1 (Winter 1989): 4–41, for the numbers.

  27.  Quoted in Ellsberg, Secrets, p. 418.

  28.  http://legaciesofwar.org/resources/cluster-bomb-fact-sheet
/; http://www.trust.org/item/20130829191627-4qtnw/?source=search; Jerry Redfern and Karen Coates, Eternal Harvest: The Legacy of American Bombs in Laos (2013).

  29.  Kissinger, “Peace, Legitimacy, and the Equilibrium,” pp. 539–543, for the quotations in this chapter.

  30.  See Rick Perlstein, The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan (2014), pp. 331; 523–24.

  31.  “The American Experience in Southeast Asia: Historical Conference.”

  32.  TelCon, Conversation between Henry Kissinger and Nick Thimmesch, April 9, 1973.

  4: NIXON STYLE

     1.  “Conversation among President Nixon, the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger), and the Assistant to the President (Haldeman), April 17, 1971, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, vol. 32: SALT I, 1969–1972 (2010), p. 447.

     2.  Dale Van Atta, With Honor: Melvin Laird in War, Peace, and Politics (2008), p. 157.

     3.  Gerald S. Strober and Deborah Hart Strober, Nixon: An Oral History of His Presidency (1994), p. 172.

     4.  Strober and Strober, Nixon, p. 173.

     5.  Robert Dallek, Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power (2007), p. 262.

     6.  Miller Center, University of Virginia, Presidential Recordings Program, Conversation between Nixon, Kissinger, and Haldeman on Wednesday, November 17, 1971; available at http://whitehousetapes.net/transcript/nixon/620-008.

     7.  Miller Center, University of Virginia, Presidential Recordings Program, Conversation between Nixon and Goldwater, November 10, 1971; available at http://whitehousetapes.net/transcript/nixon/014-017.

     8.  Colin Dueck, Hard Line: The Repubican Party and U.S. Foreign Policy since World War II (2010), p. 160.

     9.  Haldeman, The Ends of Power, p. 94.

  10.  Derek Shearer, “An Evening With Henry Kissinger,” Nation, March 8, 1971.

  11.  Schlesinger, Journals, p. 325.

  12.  Kalb and Kalb, Kissinger, p. 97.

  13.  MH, p. 102.

  14.  “Douglas Brinkley and Luke A. Nichter, “Nixon Unbound,” Vanity Fair, August 2014.

  15.  Shearer, “An Evening With Henry Kissinger.”

  16.  Jonathan Schell, The Time of Illusion (1976), p. 115.

  17.  Isaacson, Kissinger, p. 279.

  18.  Haldeman Diaries, p. 244.

  19.  Dallek, Nixon and Kissinger, p. 261.

  20.  Fredrik Logevall and Andrew Preston, eds., Nixon in the World (2008), p. 11.

  21.  John Day Tully, Matthew Masur, and Brad Austin, Understanding and Teaching the Vietnam War (2013), p. 89.

  22.  Haldeman Diaries, p. 500.

  23.  Larry Berman, No Peace, No Honor: Nixon, Kissinger, and Betrayal in Vietnam (2001), p. 123.

  24.  Haldeman Diaries, p. 435.

  25.  Kissinger, Ending the Vietnam War, p. 254.

  26.  Berman, No Peace, p. 129.

  27.  “The American Experience in Southeast Asia: Historical Conference.”

  28.  Berman, No Peace, p. 127.

  29.  Van Loi Lưu, Anh Vu Nguyen, Le Duc Tho-Kissinger Negotiations in Paris (1996), p. 230.

  30.  David Halberstam, Letter to the Editor, New York Magazine, February 17, 1975.

  31.  Schlesinger, Journals, p. 362.

  32.  Ken Hughes, “The Paris ‘Peace’ Accords Were a Deadly Deception,” January 31, 2013, History News Network; available at http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/150424.

  33.  “The Cambodian Issue: President or King,” Washington Post, March 30, 1973.

  34.  Berman, No Peace, pp. 8, 9, 258, for this and the following quotations.

  5: ANTI-KISSINGER

     1.  Hersh, Price of Power, p. 127.

     2.  For the “McNamara revolution,” see James E. Hewes Jr., From Root to McNamara: Army Organization and Administration, Washington: Center of Military History (1975). Stephen Talbot, “The Day Henry Kissinger Cried,” Salon, December 5, 2002, tells of his encounter with Kissinger and Kissinger’s mocking reaction to McNamara discussed in the footnote; available at http://www.salon.com/2002/12/05/kissinger_3.

     3.  For Sitton’s opinions of McNamara’s system, see his oral history, cited above.

     4.  For the Wheeler, Knight, and Abrams quotations, see U.S. Congress, Senate Committee on Armed Services, Bombing in Cambodia: Hearings, Ninety-Third Congress, 1973, pp. 15; 132–133; and 343.

     5.  Spengler, DW, p. 29.

     6.  For an example, see Brooks Adams, The Law of Civilization and Decay (1895). For analysis, see John Patrick Diggins, The Promise of Pragmatism: Modernism and the Crisis of Knowledge and Authority (1994); Arthur Herman, The Idea of Decline in Western History (1997); Jackson Lears, No Place of Grace: Anti-Modernism and the Transformation of American Culture, 1880–1920 (1981).

     7.  For two influential Ellsberg essays from the 1950s, see “Theory of the Reluctant Duelist,” American Economic Review (1956), and “Risk, Ambiguity, and the Savage Axioms,” Quarterly Journal of Economics (1961).

     8.  MH, p. 36.

     9.  Ellsberg, Secrets, p. 237. Hersh, Price of Power, and Kalb and Kalb, Kissinger, also discuss these surveys.

  10.  Kissinger, White House Years, p. 39.

  11.  Henry Kissinger, “Domestic Structure and Foreign Policy,” Daedalus (Spring 1966).

  12.  Ellsberg, Secrets, p. 347.

  13.  Michael A. Genovese, The Watergate Crisis (1999), p. 9.

  14.  Barbara Keys, “Henry Kissinger: The Emotional Statesman,” Diplomatic History 35 (2011): 587–609.

  15.  Isaacson, Kissinger, p. 328.

  16.  Also, Nixon and Haldeman never stopped reminding Kissinger that he was Jewish and that “spies” tended to be Jewish (as they speculated Ellsberg might be). Scholars have suggested that Kissinger felt pressure to prove his loyalty. Nixon: “All right. I want a look at any sensitive areas around where Jews are involved.… The Jews are all through the government, and we have got to get in those areas. We’ve got to get a man in charge who is not Jewish to control the Jewish.” Later, the Pentagon Papers episode led Nixon to appreciate the loyalty of African Americans: “But the Negroes, have you ever noticed? There are damn few Negro spies.”

  17.  Presidential Recordings Project, Miller Center, University of Virginia, Nixon Conversation, June 17, 1971, 525-001; available at http://millercenter.org/presidentialrecordings/rmn-525-001.

  18.  “Haldeman Talks,” Newsweek, February 27, 1978.

  19.  Ellsberg, Secrets, p. 328–29.

  20.  Tim Weiner, Enemies: A History of the FBI (2013), p. 282.

  21.  Isaacson, Kissinger, p. 768.

  22.  Isaacson, Kissinger, pp. 580–81.

  6: THE OPPOSITE OF UNITY

     1.  Kissinger, “Peace, Legitimacy, and the Equilibrium,” p. 542.

     2.  US Department of State, Office of the Historian, Memorandum from the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger) to President Ford, May 12, 1975, document 280; available at: https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v10/d280.

     3.  Kissinger, Years of Upheaval, p. 46.

     4.  For what follows, US Department of State, Office of the Historian, “Memorandum of a Conversation,” Peking, November 12, 1973, including Mao Tse-tung, and Henry Kissinger, among others, document 58; available at: https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v18/d58.

     5.  This New Yorker essay was introduced into the Senate record during its hearings to confirm Kissinger as Secretary of State. See Hearings before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate … (1973), pp. 306–7.

     6.  John Lewis Gaddis, We Now
Know: Rethinking Cold War History (1997), p. 187.

     7.  The late Philip L. Geyelin, a longtime Kissinger observer at the Washington Post, wrote that after eight years in power, Henry Kissinger “had very little to show for his grand designs. No administration in memory had left for its successors such a backlog of unfinished foreign business: SALT II, the Middle East, the Panama Canal treaty, the Greek-Turkish conflict over Cyprus, the hardest half of the ‘opening’ to China, an Atlantic Alliance languishing for lack of American attention, a sleeping giant of an international energy crisis” (The Atlantic Monthly, February 1980).

     8.  US Department of State, Office of the Historian, FRUS, no. 358, Telegram from State to Embassy in Philippines, December 2, 1976; available at https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76ve12/d358.

     9.  For Ford and Kissinger’s green-lighting the invasion, see the analysis and declassified documents, from which the quotations are drawn, at the National Security Archive, “East Timor Revisited: Ford, Kissinger and the Indonesian Invasion, 1975–1976”; available at http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB62/.

  10.  Gary Bass has written the definitive account of this episode, his 2013 The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide.

  11.  Thomas Borstelmann, The Cold War and the Color Line (2009), p. 228.

  12.  For the “tar baby” policy, see Walton, Rosser, and Stevenson, African Policy of Secretary of State Kissinger; Anthony Lake, The Tar Baby Option: American Policy toward Southern Rhodesia (1973); Ryan Irwin, Gordian Knot: Apartheid and the Unmaking of the Liberal World Order (2012).

  13.  Piero Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, Africa, 1959–1976 (2003), p. 353.

  14.  See also Shannon Rae Butler, “Into the Storm: American Covert Involvement in the Angolan Civil War, 1974–1975,” PhD diss., Department of History, University of Arizona, 2008.

  15.  Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions, p. 355.

  16.  The National Security Archive makes available many of the Angola documents at http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB67/.