CZM Rewind: Kissinger Parts 4-6

Henry Kissinger is dead! If you're wondering why people are so happy about this, listen to our six hour series on the life and crimes of one of the 20th century's greatest war criminals. (Ft. Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds from The Dollop)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Al Zone Media.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Hey everyone, Robert Evans here. It's the end of the year.
A couple of big, heavy hitter holidays coming in a row,
and we have them off both with the company and
as a team. So since there's not a new Bastard's
episode this week, and also since Henry Kissinger just died,
we figured this would be a nice time to rerun
the original six Henry Kissinger episodes. These are great, I

(00:27):
think are a useful introduction if you, or perhaps your
friends and family don't know why a lot of people
are happy that Henry's no longer in the world. I
want to thank again the doll up guys, Dave Anthony
and Gareth Reynolds for being wonderful guests for this. I
checked in with them before we did this, just to
see if they had anything to plug. Dave Anthony has

(00:49):
an album out that you can find. It's a hot
Head by Dave Anthony. You can go to Dave Anthony
dot bandcamp dot com. I probably don't need a spell
Dave Anthony for you, right, but enough one. And then
we've got Gareth Reynolds, who is going to be touring
quote all over the place in February and March of

(01:09):
twenty twenty four. They have too many links to promote
as one. But if you go to Gareth Reynolds dot
com that's g A R E T h R E
y n O l d s dot com you can
find their schedule for live shows. Gareth is wonderful. Check
those out too. Anyway, nothing else to say.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
Here are the episodes.

Speaker 3 (01:33):
Man, Yeah, yeah, yeah, oh how how we all?

Speaker 2 (01:40):
This is behind the doll up bastards, up bastards. This
is those those doll up bastards. So, I don't know,
what do you guys think? Out of all of the
characters y'all have covered, who do you think Kissinger gets
along with best?

Speaker 1 (01:55):
Oh? My god, better? I mean that's a tough one.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
That Judging the Bear, I mean, judge the Bear.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
He definitely gets along with. There's definitely guys like, uh.

Speaker 4 (02:11):
You know, the guys who did the filibustering Walker and
those guys who just love to just take over other countries.

Speaker 1 (02:21):
Yeah, kill many people. There's not we've never experienced this
level of casualty. Yeah we haven't. This is I mean,
you know, like there are evil, it's it's the spray
of your evil that is so remarkable about this. The
ability to have your finger on this button with this

(02:44):
level of darkness is uh, I don't know, it's a
little you know, I wouldn't say it's you know again,
I mean, we've covered evil motherfuckers, but I don't think
they've been able to scattershot in the way that you know, kissingers.
It's a rare talent at a rare time, on a
rare team.

Speaker 5 (03:04):
I would put uh Jan Peter zun Cohen, who was
the East the Dutch colony guy, the East India Dutch
coin all right, he.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
Did a lot of killing.

Speaker 4 (03:21):
Yeah, he definitely had the same sort of attitude, very
casual about.

Speaker 1 (03:26):
Yeah, there's been a lot of people. Yeah, the the
killing because we're white Americans, yeah, or just white people
just you know, for for Land has been it's a theme.
And Jackson I would put up there with.

Speaker 2 (03:41):
Yeah, Jackson, he's he's he's at that level of like
monstrous national leader who believes in a fucked up thing,
like in terms of his death well Andrew Jackson in
his in his white supremacy Hitler and his Hitler stuff,
you know, mao, and some of the weird things he
believed about crop rotation, or like whatnot. He's at that

(04:02):
level of like death toll, but he doesn't believe in anything,
Like he's not trying to do a thing. He's not like,
it's not like attempting some addition or society. There's guess yeah, I.

Speaker 4 (04:13):
Guess that's the weirdest part of him because yes, this
sort of death count usually comes out of ideology.

Speaker 2 (04:21):
Yes, that's exactly what I was trying to get at.

Speaker 1 (04:23):
Yeah, imagine if his childhood affected him, what he would do. Yeah,
that might have an impactor. I imagine if that had
actually impacted him in any way.

Speaker 2 (04:31):
Yeah, and it Yeah, that's the that's the it's so
fucked up that like it's fucking Craig again. We keep
getting back to like Walter from the Big Lebowski logic.
But like, at least those other war criminals had an
etho scene.

Speaker 1 (04:46):
Yeah, yeah, you could negotiate or talk down or at
least there would be like an angle.

Speaker 2 (04:55):
At least like, oh, you are a you are a person,
like not to morally compare him negatively to Hitler, because
for the record, folks, Hitler's worse, you know than basically Yeah,
but there's at least you can grasp onto a level
of understanding with Hitler because it's like, well, I believe

(05:15):
in things, and I even believe in things that like,
I think it would be okay to like use violence
in order to because of those things that I believe.
I think there are situations that justify violence, and those
are based on things that I believe about morality. And
Hitler had things that he believed about morality that he
felt justified violent violence. And so you can grapple at

(05:35):
least with what must have been going on in the
man's head when he did some of the terrible things
he did. I cannot get into the head of a
man who is willing to do this to keep a gig, right, Yeah,
it's for a gig. Yeah, it's for a gig that
he didn't even need. He didn't even need this job.

Speaker 4 (05:50):
Now he's he's almost as bad as doctor phil Yeah.

Speaker 2 (05:54):
Oh, I mean, yes, that's a little bit hyperbolic, Dave,
I don't think.

Speaker 1 (05:58):
I don't think that's hyperable, uh.

Speaker 2 (06:01):
Doctor Phillian levels of evil.

Speaker 1 (06:04):
It's also just the the dumb the idea that sixty
minutes like was like take the keys hank, have the
keys hank. There you go. Yeah, nobody. Yeah, just the
run annual normalization.

Speaker 2 (06:16):
It's like, now, yeah, when it comes to the folks
who will defend Henry Kissinger or even call him a
great statesman, and those folks do exist. I have read
some of their books. When you get to those people,
there are generally a couple of achievements that they will trumpet.
Is like, well, you have to give him, you know
these things, right, and they sound impressive on paper. In
nineteen seventy three, he and North Vietnam's Lee Tho won

(06:40):
the Nobel Peace Prize for their work in the negotiations
that became the Paris Peace Accords. Right, winning a Nobel
Prize for stopping the Vietnam War impressive sounding on paper
if you don't think about the fact that he extended
the Vietnam War.

Speaker 1 (06:52):
I help to you know, right, was a part of that.

Speaker 2 (06:56):
He did negotiate the first Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty and
Antillistic Missile Treaty with the Soviet Union.

Speaker 1 (07:01):
Those are good things. But yeah, but he Yeah, the
whole thing is he loved It would be like, it's
like congratulating Sully Sullenberger if he threw the geese into them,
if he had been breeding geese and that exactly he
was making bang noises to scare into the plane the

(07:22):
hud set. Yeah, and they're like, what an amazing achievement.

Speaker 2 (07:25):
Yeah, and yeah, it's one of those things like, yeah,
he he got and part of like the arms reductions
that he secured with the Soviet Union are less impressive
than they sound. I was just talking in the last
episode about that documentary Command and Control, and one of
the points it makes is that like these Atlas two
missiles which nearly killed half of the people on the

(07:46):
East Coast through radioactive fallout, were obsolete and not effective
and recognized as not being useful, but they were kept
in the arsenal not because we needed them, but because
we were going to have a treaty with the Soviets
soon and we wanted to have something we could give
up that wouldn't actually cost us Anya, my god, like that,
like it's that kind of shit, Like that's all of
the booking.

Speaker 1 (08:06):
Yeah, he fucking fuel rods basically, Yeah, yeah, may garbage.

Speaker 2 (08:11):
Yeah, and he does this, he helps negotiate reductions in
nuclear arms after pushing the missile gap myth for the
JFKA administration, right, He did help pass an international convention
against biological weapons, which is cool if you don't think
too much about the defolians that he ordered spread out
across Southeast Asia.

Speaker 1 (08:29):
Jesus, we need to stop people like Kendrick kissing. We
have to stop. I must be stopped. It is the
only way to appease me.

Speaker 2 (08:38):
He had a role in the Helsinki Final Act Article ten,
which committed nations on both sides of the Cold War
to quote respect human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the
freedom of conscience, religion, or belief for all without distinction
to races.

Speaker 1 (08:51):
Yeah. Uh huh.

Speaker 4 (08:53):
He's literally the guy who's in a room and he's like,
we should kill everyone, and then he walks out and
comes back in another door and goes.

Speaker 1 (09:00):
Killing is bad, the killing must stop. It's like deal
with me. O. J was like, I'm gonna find the
real killer. Yes, yes, we gotta find this guy. He's
yet out there.

Speaker 2 (09:11):
Henry Kissinger doesn't go to DC anymore because he might
run into the man who ordered the carpet bombing of Lao.
We are all trying to find a guy who did this.

Speaker 1 (09:26):
We're not going to leave till we find out which
son of a bitch is behind this.

Speaker 2 (09:30):
Now there is, however, one huge titanic achievement that even
the most hardened critics have to give Kissinger. He restored
diplomatic relations between the United States and China. Now this
is a huge deal, no matter how you slice it.
For a brief primer, China had them a big old
civil war between the communists who won and the nationalists
who we backed, who we were called like, you know, democrats, republicans,

(09:52):
whatever like called democratic forces. They had you know them
a dictator, as it always is. He was a dude
named Chang Kai Shek, and yeah, wins. In nineteen forty nine,
Shang Kai Shek and his forces take all the gold
they can carry, and they flee to Taiwan. And for
the next thirty years, the United States refuses to acknowledge
the legitimacy of the Chinese state and deal with it directly,
in one of the most unhinged decisions in the history

(10:14):
of US foreign policy, decades of presidents pretend Taiwan is
the real China. Like Taiwan has a permanent seat on
the UN Security Council, that is China's seat, but Taiwan
is you can look on.

Speaker 1 (10:28):
A map an bitting, it's smaller.

Speaker 2 (10:33):
It is somewhat smaller than actual China.

Speaker 1 (10:37):
That's what we're doing. It's like what we're doing with Venezuela.

Speaker 2 (10:40):
No yah, yeah, it's like yeah, wreck, like that guy
is the president nor yeah.

Speaker 1 (10:45):
Yeah, right yeah.

Speaker 2 (10:47):
And it's one of those things like you don't have
to be a fan of Mao to recognize this as stupid,
Like Mao is in the head of a government that
is this basically a whole continent, and you're just pretending
he's not, and that's nuts.

Speaker 1 (11:00):
Has no land.

Speaker 2 (11:01):
Yeah, it's craziness, it's stupid. Yeah. And in fairness again,
because we're about to talk about like Kissinger had nothing
to do with this, right, Kissinger is not why we
refuse to recognize the existence of the Chinese government. This
is a dumb thing that when he comes into power,
he and Nixon are both very astutely recognized as a
dumb thing, and they don't want this to continue, and
it is It is hard to overstate how dangerous this

(11:24):
state of affairs is. For one reason, after Stalindize in
nineteen fifty three, relations between the USSR and mouse China
steadily decline in nineteen sixty four, the year China conducts
their first successful nuclear tests, diplomatic relations break down between
both communist nations. So now you have three massive empires,
all of whom are armed with nukes, none of whom

(11:46):
are directly talking to each other. Oh, this is a
bad situation, and Kissinger does recognize how dangerous the status
quo is. Now in nineteen sixty nine, China and the
Soviet Union have a series of border skirmish their soldiers
are shooting at each other, Moscow threatens to start dropping nukes,
and for a time the Chinese government conducts its affairs

(12:07):
from underground bunkers. So again, very reasonable that Nixon and
Kissinger are like, well, should probably have some way to
fucking call these people on the goddamn phone, right, Like,
this seems bad. Let's just get a phone. Let's get
a fucking phone. You would think it would be that simple, Dave,
But we're going to talk for about an hour and
ten minutes about how it's not. So. By the time

(12:29):
nineteen seventy one comes around, Nixon and Kissinger were also
both looking for a major diplomatic coup that could distract
from the fact that they hadn't quite managed to end
that whole Vietnam War thing, and it had in fact
made it all very much worse. There's also some rational
self interest in here, you know, whatever else you can
say about them, I don't think either of these men
want to die, and they recognize like, well, this could
cause a nuclear war that ends all life on Earth,
including us. We should probably deal with this.

Speaker 1 (12:51):
Yeah. Yeah, they finally realized that life is actually has
purpose once it's there. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:56):
It's also one of those this is getting a little
off topic, but like people talk about, you will see,
at least on the right people say like, well, you know,
if the nationalists had won the Chinese Civil War, a
lot less people would have died. And it's like, well,
the specific things Mao did that killed a lot of
people wouldn't have been done. But if Chang Kai shek
is in charge of China and like, while China is communist,
they almost get in a nuclear fight with the USSR.

(13:19):
Do you think they're like right wing Chang Kai Shek
led China is less likely to have a nuclear fight with.

Speaker 1 (13:25):
The Soviet.

Speaker 2 (13:27):
Yeah, what is it like if they're not on the
same ideological side. Yeah, people don't talk a lot about
the fact that the USSR and communists China nearly nearly
nuked each other, just while USSR.

Speaker 1 (13:41):
Also and also mal killed landlords.

Speaker 2 (13:44):
So are those people, well, yeah, some of them are
were landlords. It's not the landlords we're complaining about. It's
the you know, the people who didn't have grain. But
that's a story for a completely different set of days.
At this point in time, you've got two countries that
should three country that should all be talking on the
basis that they all individually have the ability to end
all life on earth, and they're not. And Kissinger is like,

(14:07):
you know what, I can get in here. You know,
I can make this work. I can make this work.
And also it'll help us win an election. So it
just so happens that nineteen seventy one is also a
time in which China is willing to sit down with
the United States. Maw wants us help negotiating with the Soviets,
which is very strange and like the does not make Yeah, I.

Speaker 1 (14:29):
Can't talk to these guys. I can't talk to them.
You know, I need someone who else, can't talk.

Speaker 2 (14:34):
To these Nixon, Ye, you love communists, get in here,
you know, it's just the you've got like the way
the Cold War is portrayed from the thousand yard view
to people like watching the propaganda of whatever state, and
then you've got like Mao being like, hey, Nixon, I
need your help to deal with these Soviets. I need

(14:55):
a rational partner, and being like you're drug. You know
who's gonna get me? Since me Richard Millhouse Nixon the
election in seventy two, MAUSEI.

Speaker 1 (15:05):
Dug, it's so crazy, it is. It is weird politics, and.

Speaker 4 (15:11):
This is almost it's almost like there's only there's only
three people in the world.

Speaker 2 (15:15):
Yes, yes, so this is uh you know Nixon.

Speaker 1 (15:21):
Yeah. Once.

Speaker 2 (15:21):
Nixon is very much down to talk with China, but
it is not that simple because since the diplomatic situation
has been done for so very long, there aren't like
US diplomats in China that we can like send a
message through, right like you literally don't have those ties.
So the US does have ways of communicating with the
Chinese government. They're through back channels though, because you can't
admit publicly that you're doing it because Taiwan is your

(15:43):
ally and Taiwan doesn't want to acknowledge that the Chinese
government is legitimate government, very dumb. One of the back
channels is through the leader of Communist Romania, Nikolai Chichesku
and the other great guy, Oh, Nikolaia is not the
bad guy of this story.

Speaker 1 (16:00):
Weesco is your hero. Things are not Shad not your hero.

Speaker 2 (16:04):
But let's call them a benign force in the specific
in se when is your straight man.

Speaker 1 (16:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (16:09):
The other is through the military dictator of Pakistan, General
Agha Mohammad ya Ya Khan. Now we should probably talk
a little bit of history here. In nineteen forty seven,
the British gave up ruling over the Indian subcontinent finally.
As a rule, whenever colonial powers leave their former possessions,
they attempted to set up states based on their pre
existing alliances and racial biases. This is why we have,

(16:31):
for example, the entire modern map of the Middle East.
In this case of the Indian Subcontinent, what had once
been a colony was split into India and Pakistan. India
is obviously Hindu majority, in Pakistan is a Muslim majority nation. Now,
if you know your English colonialists, you know they're not
very good at maps. So the BRIT's divvying up the
sub continent decide that Pakistan should include two huge chunks

(16:53):
of land separated by more than one thousand miles of India.
West Pakistan is the Pakistan we know and love today, right,
classic Pakistan, like the Yeah, East Pakistan is like the
new Coke of Pakistan, except for now it's Bangladesh, right,
But at the time Bangladesh is East Pakistan. And there's
just like a whole fuckload to India in between the two,

(17:14):
which is there's like a line that Pakistani people will
say at the time that like East and West Pakistan
are only united by religion, the English language, and Pakistan Airlines,
and by far, Pakistan Airlines is the strongest of the three.

Speaker 1 (17:32):
Cool England once again, I mean just playing guy, Yeah, really, yeah,
what do you say? We put a blindfold on and
they're trying to pin the taan on this junkie.

Speaker 2 (17:41):
And the fact that Indian partition, that England partitions India
at all, is a humanitarian crisis on an incomprehensible scale.
As many as two million people died, often as the
result of horrific racial or religious violence.

Speaker 1 (17:53):
And Henry Kissing just hearing that, like, hold on, I'm
getting hard. I can do better. That's nothing, baby, beat
those rookie numbers a week where do I send congratulations called.

Speaker 2 (18:06):
Ten to twenty millionaire displaced. But even though East and
West Pakistan are supposed to be united by faith, there's
like massive ethnic divides, right, Like they're not. The fact
that they're all ostensibly Muslim does not mean anything, because
like they're completely different parts of the world with completely
different chunks of history.

Speaker 1 (18:21):
Right, And at least America learns this lesson. Yes, thankfully
we get this right.

Speaker 2 (18:26):
You know, by the time we get into Pakistan, we're
done with the stupid stuff. We're faking a vaccine drive
in order to steal people's blood. That's right, they're good guys. Hey, yeah,
they're good guys.

Speaker 1 (18:37):
Are back. I know how to fix this. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (18:43):
So yeah, here's the Smithsonian magazine kind of laying out
the relationship between East and West Pakistan. By the time
Kissinger and Nixon take office, with most of the ruling
elite having immigrated westward from India, West Pakistan was chosen
as the nation's political center. Between nineteen forty seven and
nineteen seventy, East pakist Stan had only twenty five percent
of the country's industrial investments and thirty percent of its imports,

(19:04):
despite producing fifty nine percent of the country's exports. West
Pakistani elites saw their Eastern countrymen as culturally and ethnically inferior,
and an attempt to make Urdu the national language less
than ten percent of the population of East Pakistan had
a working knowledge of Urdu was seen as further proof
that East Pakistan's interests would be ignored by the government.
Making matters worse. The powerful, powerful Bolas cyclone hit East

(19:25):
Bangladesh in November of nineteen seventy, killing three hundred thousand people.
Despite having more resources at their disposal, West Pakistan offered
a sluggish response to the disaster. As French journalist Paul
Dreyfus said of the situation, over the years, West Pakistan
behaved like a poorly raised, egotistical guest, devouring the best
dishes and leaving nothing but scraps and leftovers for East Pakistan. Well,

(19:47):
it's not cool, it's not great, it's not great. And
Pakistan's military is what's in charge, right, It's a military dictatorship.
They run everything and they are hyper focused on India,
who is their primary geopolitical rival. In nineteen sixty five,
Pakistan attempts to invade Kashmir, sparking a vicious conflict. And
I'm not giving you the whole detail of the conflict

(20:08):
between India and Pakistan. Please don't take this as me
throwing all of the blame on one side or the other.
This is just like the bearest Cliff's notes, because we
have a lot to cover in this episode, and the US,
it's worth noting, had been selling arms to both countries
in nineteen six Yeah, I.

Speaker 1 (20:22):
Know, America, Yes, strange. Come on, Sosh, our history is
so different.

Speaker 2 (20:31):
Lbj's administration was forced by public outcry as a result
of this, to issue an arms embargo on both nations.
Pakistan saw the embargo was unfairly harming them, and as
a result, there was bad blood among the high command
towards the Democratic Johnson administration. By the time Kissinger and
Nixon are in the White House, the president of Pakistan
is again this guy ya Ya Khan. We'll just call

(20:52):
him Yayah because it's fun to say, Yes, Yaya, I
thought to say. He took power in March of nineteen
sixty nine by forcing out another general and institute martial law.
Kissinger Runs once wrote of him, yah Ya is tough,
direct and with a good sense of humor. He talks
in a very clipped way. Is a splendid product of
Sandhurst and affects a sort of social naivete, but is
probably much more complicated than this.

Speaker 1 (21:14):
Now.

Speaker 2 (21:14):
Sandhurst is like the British Royal Military Academy. It's like
a broadly speaking British West Point. Yahya affected an English air.
He carried like a swagger stick. He dresses like he's
a British officer. He acts like he's a British officer.

Speaker 1 (21:27):
Right.

Speaker 2 (21:28):
He is also a raging alcoholic. One Akistani politician noted
he starts with Kognak for breakfast and continues drinking throughout
the day night, often finding him in a sodden state.

Speaker 1 (21:39):
Nice Soak. He's always.

Speaker 2 (21:45):
Just a drunk dude who always carries a stick for
hitting horses.

Speaker 1 (21:50):
It's very Yeah, I mean Church will drink a fuck
tod too, right, I mean yes, absolutely. It is one
thing about JFK.

Speaker 2 (22:01):
Was on meth for a decent chunk of his early presidency.

Speaker 1 (22:05):
Oh wow, so great.

Speaker 2 (22:07):
It's we're like when we point out that a guy
like Yahya is drunk. It is not to contrast him
with Western leaders. Why don't you just some kind of
fart drunk I think, I think what's his name, the
guy who came after Nixon but not right after Carter
probably pretty sober in the White House.

Speaker 1 (22:25):
Yeah, but his brother was making his brother, Billy was like,
I'll tell you what I'll drink from German.

Speaker 2 (22:31):
No problem, Oh, Billy, Billy Carter should have been the
president that we would have gotten some shit done.

Speaker 1 (22:39):
Honestly, I'm fine with that. I'm fine with that different trajectory.
Let's see what heck cow bad, fuck it, fuck it,
let's dance.

Speaker 2 (22:49):
In nineteen seventy, Yahya decides to hold an election which
is meant to be more for show than anything else. Right,
it's this thing you do because he's Pakistan is definitely
India is a neutral country. They're not on the side
of this you need or the US and the stupid
Cold War thing. They're very intelligently like, what does it
benefit us to pick one side?

Speaker 1 (23:05):
Like fuck that stuff.

Speaker 2 (23:07):
But they also because India's got much more of a
socialist especially early on, is much more of a socialist government,
there's a lot of distrust from them. In the United States,
and Pakistan really leans on that to be buddy buddy
with the United States more and one of the ways
as part of like his attempts to get closer and
closer to the US because he wants arms like everybody

(23:27):
who gets buddy buddy with the US. Yah Yah decides
to hold an election because we love seeing people have elections.

Speaker 1 (23:33):
We don't really care how they go, but we like
seeing them.

Speaker 2 (23:36):
You know, it's sport. It's sport. Yeah, So he's allowed.
He has this election and his plan is to like
basically rig it so that you know, it doesn't mean anything,
It doesn't take any power away from the military. But yeah,
Yah is not good at anything. This is an important
thing to know. He's really bad at everythig he does.

Speaker 1 (23:54):
That breakfast Kanyac had anything to do with.

Speaker 2 (23:56):
This probably might have been a good question. So this
election gets out of his hands immediately. East Pakistan is
much larger than West Pakistan, and while West Pakistan's votes
are split between parties like there's a bunch of different
conflicting political parties, nearly everyone in East Pakistan gets in
line behind the same party, the Awami League. They're big

(24:17):
thing is they want autonomy from West Pakistan, you know,
and they're very angry at like the fact that they're
getting fucked over by the West. So the West, which
is doing the fucking over, has a bunch of minor
shit they're wabbling over. The East is just united behind
let's stop getting fucked over. And as a result, they
get a shitload of people elected in this massive block
and they come to it's enough that they will completely

(24:39):
dominate elector like the Parliament of Pakistan because of like
how well this election goes for them. Yeah yah does
not like this, and rather than allowing the newly elected
assembly to sit, he cancels their first meeting and declares
martial law. Nice, yeah, ryot's follow The leader of the
Owami League, a guy named Sheik Mujhbur Rahman I, apologize
for what is surely a mispronoiation, declared a civil disobedience movement.

(25:03):
It was into this volatile situation that Henry Kissinger stepped
in the spring of nineteen seventy one. Oh good now,
He and Nixon had pretty good relations with West Pakistan's government,
which is at this point, you know, just ya ya.
They were loath to trust India since it was non aligned.
Nixon also was very racist and hated the fact that
India's democracy was popular among Americans while the country re

(25:23):
maintained close ties with the USSR. He once told ya
ya quote, there is a psychosis in this country about India. Now,
A big part of Nixon's hatred of India is that
it's led by a woman in dearra Gandhi. Oh yeah,
we'll be talking more about that in a second. Yaya,
on the other hand, is one of the few people
on planet Earth that Richard Nixon comes to consider as

(25:44):
a friend. One of Nixon's one of Kissingers. Yeah, they're
both trunk assholes.

Speaker 1 (25:50):
They don't remember the friendship, but god was it important
to too.

Speaker 2 (25:54):
One of Kissinger's aides later said of the situation. They
liked him. He was a soldier, he had stye, He
was kind of a jaunty guy. Uh this this aide.
Hodgkinson admits that Yaya was not very smart, but says
that for Nixon and Kissinger, he was a man's man.
He wasn't some woman running a country.

Speaker 1 (26:10):
Right. It sounds like they're talking about how people talk
about Yelson. Yeah, right, he's a man's man.

Speaker 2 (26:16):
As he sees the Secret Service is tracking him down
drunk in the middle of DC.

Speaker 1 (26:21):
Yeah. Yeah, Yeltsin, who like was passed out on the plane.
I forget he was supposed to meet and he passed
out on the plane and they were like, Boris, Boris,
and He's.

Speaker 2 (26:30):
Like, no, notes, Boris. I Look if if if we
had kept every world leader after that point to the
standards of drunkenness that Yeltsin set, we wouldn't be having
this war right now, I'll tell you that much.

Speaker 1 (26:43):
Now.

Speaker 2 (26:44):
We might have had other wars well.

Speaker 1 (26:47):
In the middle of the night too, and he'd be like,
drop the nuke, you know, and they'd be like, buddy.
Like the next day he'd be like, I don't remember
what I said. They're like, thank god.

Speaker 2 (26:58):
Yeah, we need to institute a mandatory drink minimum for
all elected leaders in this.

Speaker 1 (27:03):
Country, George Bush, sobriety did not help.

Speaker 2 (27:06):
If you can't force term limits, you can force liver cancer.

Speaker 1 (27:10):
Yes, can We can brute force our way into getting
him out office after a year or two. Hey, do
you know who else can force liver cancer? Oh?

Speaker 2 (27:19):
Well, we are sponsored by stolich Naya vodka, which is
now illegal in several states for reasons difficult to exclude
it about.

Speaker 1 (27:31):
It's remarkable. Yeah, it's just how we so dumb? It's
we're so dumb.

Speaker 2 (27:37):
It's amazing that in this like deeply ugly and complicated
situation where large numbers of people are suffering, Americans recognize
that the right thing to do is destroy bottles of vodka.
Not amazingly, the country is involved in the conflict there.
They're taking Finnish vodka and just throwing it into the streets.

(28:02):
Great country. Here's some other ads.

Speaker 1 (28:09):
Ah, we're back man man ads.

Speaker 2 (28:14):
So this is not a Nixon mini series, but in
order to talk about the friendship, the deep and abiding
love that the two men had, there is an incredible
paragraph from the book The Blood Telegram by Gary Bass
that I'm going to read now. Despite all his global FaceTime,
Nixon was a solitary, awkward, reclusive man. Kissinger who could
not bring himself to say that he was fond of
the president once famously asked, can you imagine what this

(28:37):
man would have been had somebody loved him?

Speaker 1 (28:40):
Oh? My god, that's kind of Kissinger.

Speaker 2 (28:48):
That's the saddest thing I can imagine, being like, nobody
really loved.

Speaker 1 (28:53):
If only someone had loved this man, can you imagine?

Speaker 2 (29:00):
Nixon's only true friend was Babe Riboso, a Florida banker.
He said, it doesn't come natural to me to be
a buddy buddy boy.

Speaker 1 (29:08):
Even H. R.

Speaker 2 (29:09):
Haldeman, the White House Chief of staff, worried that the
Boss was too much in his own head and once
tried to find the President a friend, tracking down an
oil man whom Nixon had reportedly liked in his Los
Angeles days, and him in a bogus White House gian.

Speaker 1 (29:22):
Okay, listen, listen, listen. The movie needs to be written.
It's like driving Miss Daisy, but with a body count. Yeah,
I love you, I love you man with war crimes. Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 2 (29:41):
So I'm James franco Is someone in this movie.

Speaker 4 (29:44):
So I'm gonna I'm gonna work in the White House,
but I can't act like I'm there to meet him,
even though.

Speaker 1 (29:51):
That's my whole thing is That's right.

Speaker 4 (29:53):
Yeah, So I'm just gonna so so what so I
have to like try to get.

Speaker 1 (29:57):
In, just drink with him, Just drink with him and
eat pineapple and whatever he wants to do, just do it.

Speaker 2 (30:02):
He's gonna want he's gonna want to put weird things
in pineapple. He's gonna get really drunken, cry on your shoulder.
He's gonna bomb several Southeast Asians.

Speaker 1 (30:09):
Are you guys talking about?

Speaker 6 (30:10):
Sorry, buddy, Okay, who's.

Speaker 1 (30:17):
Your face?

Speaker 7 (30:18):
My name is Bobby and I uh sorry, my my
pineapple and uh and for lunch, I have pineapple and
cottage cheese every day and it's it's uh, it just
got out of my.

Speaker 2 (30:30):
Best is absolutely the best lunch you listen to.

Speaker 4 (30:34):
That's all I yeah, in between in between just guzzling vodka.

Speaker 1 (30:39):
That's generally what I have on my own cand of
camera somewhere. You guys fucking around what he's talking about?
I mean, just my heart is I feel them. I
need to lay down. I'm sorry.

Speaker 4 (30:48):
Oh God, you're great. You're my favorite president. And I
want to thank you for killing so many people.

Speaker 2 (30:55):
If you're hr haled them in right, how do you
recognize that you are trying to make he dates for
a man. It's bombing illegally multiple nations and not go
democracy and all politics as a sham. I must go
down in flames to take everyone out around me, because
that is the only justice that can be achieved.

Speaker 1 (31:14):
Is like Nixon belongs in the bubble that the Good
Witch and the Wizard of Oz lives in. Yeah, like
he's on that level of It's like at some point
you have to wake up and be like, Okay, look,
these guys are bombing the shit out of countries, and
my goal is to find the president a buddy.

Speaker 2 (31:31):
Yeah, yeah, I have to get him a friend.

Speaker 1 (31:33):
I'm looking.

Speaker 2 (31:33):
I'm trying to get him a friend. He might do
something crazy if he doesn't have any god a crazy
I just it's great.

Speaker 1 (31:49):
It's just it's just like you have a president who
doesn't have a friend. Like, that's really tough. The president
doesn't have a friend.

Speaker 2 (31:55):
And that's a big part of why when it comes
to deciding who should be the US Internet to talk with,
maw Yah Yah wins out over Chichesku because Nixon likes Yeah. Yeah,
you know, that's that's that's a big part of it.
Not the whole reason, but that's a big part of it.

Speaker 4 (32:09):
Now, and again, let's just let's remind every but was great,
So I can't.

Speaker 1 (32:13):
Believe that flawless flawless man. Also, by the way, great death.
If we are going to talk about it, pretty good.
I'll get punishing death a lot more.

Speaker 2 (32:23):
I'll go so far to say most of the people
we name in these episodes could have handled a chou Chescu.

Speaker 1 (32:28):
Yeah. Absolutely, we have been a bad way for him
to go out.

Speaker 2 (32:33):
So when it comes time to decide, yeah, so anyway
they go with Yai Yat. Now by nineteen seventy one, again,
spring of seventy one is when all of this political
stuff with East Pakistan's coming to head, these protests are happening.
You know, things are on the brink there of kind
of like a civil conflict. Kissinger has been the center
of US policy for three years at this point, right,
US foreign policy, and folks in d C. By seventy

(32:54):
one are amazed at the degree to which he has
centralized power. His junior Southeast Asia Aid sam Hoskin recalled,
the power was there, he was gathering it up. You
felt like you were at the political center of the universe,
he and the president. That was where the decisions were made.

Speaker 1 (33:09):
What sounds like a democracy to me, baby. And you
know what, instead of getting away from that, let's just
replicate it forever.

Speaker 2 (33:18):
Yeah, let's just do versions of this forever, but with
people who are well not. Yeah, let's just do versions
of this forever. I'm not even going to try to
quantify it.

Speaker 1 (33:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (33:28):
At age forty eight, Kissinger was new enough to power
that he was noted at the time as being extremely
jealous of anyone who might be seen as a rival.
He focused obsessively on pleasing Nixon. Henry himself had no
particular biases against India or Indian politicians, at least not
compared to Nixon, but when he saw how racist his
boss was, he knuckled down and found his inner bigot.
He was successful enough that Nixon said of him, Henry

(33:50):
is my least pathological pro India lover around here.

Speaker 1 (33:54):
God, good work, Henry. You did it, buddy, You won.
He won the worst thing.

Speaker 2 (34:01):
In late nineteen seventy, Kissinger and ya Ya began to
make plans for a broker's secret meeting between the United
States and China as a thank you for his help.
In October of nineteen seventy, yah Yah got to visit
the White House in person, where Nixon agreed to sell
weapons to his country again. Now this is illegal because
there's an arms embargo which does not get lifted. But

(34:22):
they decide we'll just do it. It'll be a limited
violation of the I believe that there was a loophole
for the FFS.

Speaker 1 (34:30):
Yeah, he got drunk with me.

Speaker 2 (34:34):
Born in Kanya. Quote from the Blood Telegram. Yah Yah
got a reward for his efforts in late in late
October nineteen seventy when he met Nixon in the Oval
Office at the White House and their last meeting before
the crisis erupted. Nixon began to sell weapons to ya
Ya again. And what was officially built is a one
time exception to the US arms embargo imposed on both

(34:55):
India and Pakistan in nineteen sixty five. It was the
kind of exception that demolishes the that embargo had already
been eroding under Johnson. But now Yaya secured a moderately
big haul, a harbinger of much larger ones likely to come.
The promised weapons included six F one to oh four
fighter planes, seven B fifty seven bombers, and three hundred
armored personnel carriers. You want to guess what's going to

(35:15):
be done with the weapons we send him?

Speaker 1 (35:17):
Nothing?

Speaker 2 (35:18):
Yep, that's right. Episode's done. All right, we all had fun.
In March of nineteen seventy one, mushibur who is the
he's like the guy the East Pakistani political leader, right,
who runs this party that wins the elections. He meets
with ya Ya and Dhaka, which is the capital of

(35:39):
East Pakistan, in an attempt to reach an agreement over
the elections. Ya Ya had just decided to ignore.

Speaker 1 (35:44):
At first, like an agreement was already electorally with the voters.

Speaker 2 (35:50):
Yeah, So at first Yaya's like, hey, we settled things great,
And then the very next day he has Mushiburg arrested
and sends sixty thousand soldiers into East Pakistan. Now, actually,
I say sins in. These guys had been slowly infiltrating
the country for weeks by air because you have to
like fly him in, right, they can't just like drive
anywhere because there's India in between the two. They embarked

(36:11):
on an operation called Searchlight. And I'm going to quote
now from an article in The New Yorker. Firing squads
spread out across East Pakistan, sometimes assisted by local collaborators
from his Lomist groups that had been humiliated in the elections.
In the countryside where the armed resistance was strongest, the
Pakistanian military burned and strafed villages, killing thousands and turning
many more into refugees. Hindus, who composed more than ten

(36:33):
percent of the population were targeted. Their unmuslimness ascertained by
a quick inspection underneath their clothing. Tens of thousands of
women were raped in a campaign of terror. Bengali's also
murdered and raped Urdu speaking Muslims, whom they suspected of
being Fifth columnists for West Pakistan. Archer Blood, the US
consul general in Dhaka, among others, reported the slaughter of
professors and students at Dhaka University, an attempt to silence

(36:55):
the intellectual class who had eloquently articulated Bengali grievances. So
Archer Blood is in the Blood Telegram really goes into
detail about this guy. One of the very few cases
of a powerful state department or of a state department
official with some power who's like a genuinely good person.
Blood works all over for the state.

Speaker 1 (37:15):
Evil name.

Speaker 2 (37:16):
He does have the worst like Kissinger things.

Speaker 1 (37:20):
Yeah, so that's like you should shoot fire arrows.

Speaker 2 (37:23):
He has opportunities to be and like what are considered
more prestigious postings, including Greece, but he doesn't want to
be in Greece because it's a CIA backed dictatorship at
this point, and Bengal, you know, what becomes Bangladesh is
like he feels like I can do something there.

Speaker 1 (37:39):
Right.

Speaker 2 (37:39):
It's this place that has a lot of like legitimate problems,
but also there's this like burgeoning democratic movement and people
are like taking and he's renown in the area for
like being incredibly social with Bengali's you know, like his
kids make friends with local children who live around. They
invite them into their home and have slumber parties. Like
he's just like a like a nice person, right, and
they're not going to run.

Speaker 1 (38:00):
Yeah, who wants that? Guy?

Speaker 2 (38:02):
Blood sends a telegram to Nixon and Kissinger. You know, Dave,
when we tweeted about this, you asked, will there be blood?
And I said there was going to be a blood telegram.
This is what that is. In the Blood Telegram, Archer
Blood attacks the Nixon administration for their deafening silence towards
the violence in Bangladesh and moral bankruptcy in the face

(38:23):
of what he termed a genocide. And this gets signed
by every diplomatic official who's in who's in Dhaka. This
enrages Nixon, and Kissinger soothed his boss by saying that
Consolan Daka doesn't have the strongest nerves, basically like, oh,
he's just he's just getting scared by a little massacre
of all of the students and professors at the university.

Speaker 1 (38:43):
This guy, huh ca't.

Speaker 4 (38:45):
I cannot believe his last name is Bloodine.

Speaker 2 (38:50):
Really would work better for my last name.

Speaker 1 (38:52):
You know why My last name is about kissing and
he has blood. He is kissing guy kissing, I'm bloody
the use, Kissinger added.

Speaker 2 (39:03):
And this is him now talking about what yah Ya
is doing in East Pakistan. Quote the use of power
against seeming odds pays off. He's very impressed by the
fact that that yah Yah gains control of East Pakistan
with just a few thousand soldiers. You know, he's really impressed.
So there's a bunch of people get angry. You know,
one of the big people who's most vociferous in the

(39:25):
US government against what's happening in East Pakistan is Ted Kennedy.
He is like a really like like takes this on
as like a banner crusade. So you know, once again,
people get very angry at the administration for what's going on.
Nixon tells Kissinger, quote the people who bitch about Vietnam
bitch about it because we intervened in what they say

(39:45):
is a civil war. Now some of the same bastards
want us to intervene here both civil wars. Is being like,
see how inconsistent they are.

Speaker 1 (39:53):
Yeah, you know, what do you want, Henry Hood?

Speaker 2 (39:59):
Do you think selling arms to one side and a
civil war might be intervening?

Speaker 1 (40:03):
Yeah? Is that? Is it impossible? We're not going to
do that. We're not going to do that.

Speaker 2 (40:09):
Oh ya ya needs how many more missiles?

Speaker 1 (40:10):
Absolutely?

Speaker 2 (40:13):
So, Kissinger writes up a policy paper in which he
urges the US to quote make a serious effort to
help Yaya end the war he'd started. And again, this
isn't even really a civil war. East Pakistan isn't like
mobilizing a vast army to fight for their independence. They
like voted and then soldiers to kill them all civil

(40:35):
It does like there start to be gorillas, and like
the Indian government starts sending weapons into like the gorilla
fighters in East Pakistan, but like the massacres start first.

Speaker 1 (40:46):
Well and again I mean like to what you're saying there,
He held an election. I mean, this would be like
if David Cameron just yeah, he had tanks the day
after Brexit.

Speaker 2 (40:56):
Yeah yeah, yeah, Oh god, that's.

Speaker 1 (40:59):
Not what I would have.

Speaker 2 (41:00):
I meant marginally better. I guess Britain somehow colonizes the EU.

Speaker 1 (41:06):
Oh my god, Britain finally colonizes itself. I say that
you are well, we already bloody work for you now
you do, No, we already did with British. You will
work for the British now. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (41:19):
And because of their Sandtrist educations, Gareth, your same fake
accent can work for ya ya.

Speaker 1 (41:25):
Lovely DESI Yeah, yeah, so cognac on the mind. I think.

Speaker 2 (41:33):
Nixon responds to Kissinger's policy paper with a handwritten note
that he adds to the paper saying, don't squeeze.

Speaker 1 (41:40):
Ya ya at this time?

Speaker 2 (41:42):
Do you want advice? Under normal circumstances?

Speaker 1 (41:49):
In May?

Speaker 2 (41:49):
In May Indian and this is you know, India. There's
a degree of legitimate concern among Indian people for like
the humanitarian crisis. There's also politically there's tons of refugees, right,
and so there's also this like very blunt political like, well,
we can't let this be happening. Because refugees are a
political problem for us. Right, there's states. You know, nations
don't make decisions ever because it's the right thing or

(42:11):
the wrong thing to do. But India is broadly speaking
on the right side of this one. I think that's
fair to say so, because they're watching what's happening. India
starts massing troops on the border of East Pakistan in
order to potentially intervene, but they don't do anything yet.
Nixon tells Kissinger to cut off economic aid to India
if they intervene in this genocide, and Kissinger responds, quote,

(42:34):
the last thing we can afford to do and now
is to have the Pakistani government overthrown, given the other
things that we are doing. This is a clear reference
to their plans.

Speaker 1 (42:42):
To meet with China.

Speaker 2 (42:43):
Right, these very directly saying the reason we can't let
anything happen to Yaya's government, even though they're carrying out
a genocide, is because we need him to get to China.

Speaker 1 (42:53):
Now.

Speaker 2 (42:54):
Kissinger follows this up with a soop to Nixon's racism,
calling Indians quote the most aggressive goddamn people are around there.

Speaker 1 (43:03):
Again. I mean, it's obviously like the projection is obviously insane.

Speaker 2 (43:07):
Nixon responds by telling Kissinger that what India needs is
a mass famine.

Speaker 1 (43:12):
Kissinger notes.

Speaker 2 (43:16):
Kissinger does not disagree, and he follows up by saying
India has no right to invade another country. Quote, no
matter what Pakistan does in its territory.

Speaker 1 (43:24):
You know, Okay, I'm gonna take a five. You guys
can keep going. I'm gonna take a five. You guys
keep going. Now, that's fine. I'm gonna go outside, guy through
a wall.

Speaker 2 (43:32):
Real concerned about national sovereignty.

Speaker 1 (43:34):
Can you imagine someone doing something like that.

Speaker 2 (43:37):
Yeah, we can discuss, given the history of the United
States as a whole, who gets to fairly complain about
violations of national sovereignty? But definitely not Henry Kissinger. Yeah, yes,
certainly not this guy. Right, It's like the fucking dudes
from the Bush administration yelling at like what Russia is

(43:57):
doing in Ukraine, not that the Russian actions in Ukraine.
It is like, no, not you, not you.

Speaker 1 (44:03):
Yeah, there's a lot of people we don't want to
hear from that.

Speaker 2 (44:06):
You're absolutely not, crystal, So Kissinger assures his boss. Besides,
the killing has stopped, so it's fine. It had not
as a head said it is not.

Speaker 1 (44:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (44:20):
In April of nineteen seventy one, which is, by the way,
the you know Archer Blood, the State Department official who
does everything possible to get the US to act, Kissinger
and Nixon fire him immediately. Got to get that guy
out of there, right, Yeah, out of there.

Speaker 1 (44:35):
He's terrible. He doesn't know what he's talking about. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (44:38):
Now, in April of nineteen seventy one, the same month
as the Blood telegram, and Nixon receives his official invitation
from the Chinese, from the Chinese government, and it's again
it's a secret invitation, right, you know, everything's because they
don't know that it's going to like where you can't
just have Nixon go to China first. You have to
send someone ahead of time to handle early negotiations. Wheel like,
it's a it's a whole process.

Speaker 1 (44:59):
It's a preacher it. Yeah, it's a pret China.

Speaker 2 (45:01):
You gotta yeah, you gotta lube up your China before
you get that dick. Yeah, before you get that dick
in there. Actually, yeah, that's right.

Speaker 1 (45:12):
So I come.

Speaker 2 (45:14):
Nixon gleeful tells Kissinger to go. Kissinger is the lube
in this situation. He tells Kissinger to go in secretly
and handle these early negotiations. He claims that this visit
to China they're planning will be quote a great watershed
in history, perhaps clearly the greatest since World War Two.
And that's what Nixon says. Kissinger, being a kiss ass,
responds by saying, no, no, it'll be the greatest since

(45:36):
the Civil War.

Speaker 1 (45:36):
I mean, my god, I'm the idea that you're following
that up with no no better. Two. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (45:46):
So July came and Kissinger set off for Southeast Ashan
what was built as a diplomatic tour of the region
but obviously is in reality a secret diplomatic mission code
named oh Boy, Oh No, Operation Marco Polo.

Speaker 1 (45:59):
Oh fucks. I mean, at least just get a better
marketing person.

Speaker 4 (46:09):
It's like Nixon Nixon, listen to me, Marco fresh water Marco.

Speaker 2 (46:19):
So, Nixon visits India and then he flies to West
Pakistan and shortly after landing he's drinking.

Speaker 1 (46:26):
Yeah, fakes the stomach bugre tend to get his stomach pumped. No, no, no.
So he's like, you tell everybody I'm shitting, Yeah, tell
everyone I'm pooping. You've got a extry tell him, I'm
on the toilet shitting my brains out, so he cancels.

Speaker 2 (46:42):
Kissinger cancels a couple of days of planned meetings, and
then while he's supposed to be sick, he boards in
secret a special plane and flies from Islamabad to Beijing.
Now I'm gonna quote from a write up in The
Daily Star, which was an Indian newspaper, that summarizes what
happens next. During Kissinger's China visit, both sides discussed a
variety of issues. Kissinger found Zowen Lai, who had studied
in France and Germany from nineteen twenty to nineteen twenty three,

(47:04):
to be a very articulate person who could converse even
in German Kissinger's mother tongue with ease. Both leaders agreed
on recognizing Communist China as the only China and allotting
a permanent seat in the UN Security Council to Beijing
instead of Taiwan. The situation in the Indian subcontinent was
discussed in detail, on which they had similar views, with
both expressing their on wavering support to Pakistan. Zau briefed

(47:25):
Kissinger about the Indo Chinese border skirmishes and Brave and
blamed India for provacations. Both leaders had complete convergence of
views on Yahya's stand on the Bangladesh issue. Kissinger flew
back to Paris and reached Washington on July thirteenth. So, okay, good,
I mean again, like, yes, they should be talking.

Speaker 1 (47:44):
Yes, this is fine.

Speaker 2 (47:45):
Yes, if you're going to have a security council, Beijing
should probably sit on it rather than fucking Taiwan.

Speaker 1 (47:51):
Also, it's just a shame that it needs to come
from mainly alcoholics. Yes, in order to make the right decisions,
it needs to come on the back of genocides and blackouts.

Speaker 2 (48:05):
Yeah, And like I feel like probably if the Nixon
administration had had just like announced publicly through like the
global media, we were wrong the United States and our
policy towards Taiwan, and we want to recognize China and
establish relationships with them and put them on the U.
If they just like said that and like a news thing,
probably China would have been like, oh, okay, this all

(48:27):
kind of happened. But that also would have looked weak
by the standards of like politics, right, it would have
looked like begging. And so they're not going to do that.
They're going to do this instead because it looks all strong.

Speaker 4 (48:38):
Yeah for the base, who you know, just wanted Vietnamese
and can't buddy people to be fucking massacred so they'd
feel better, Like, yeah, it's the base, we're talking about.

Speaker 1 (48:49):
Base on a blood and they fired him.

Speaker 2 (48:52):
So when he got back to DC and sat down
with his boss, Kissinger excitedly relayed the story of the
Cloak and Dagger exercise week. He's very excited that he
got to deal with James Bond, he tells Kissinger, or
a Kissinger tells Nixon. Quote, yeah, yeah, hasn't had such
fun since the last Hindu massacre.

Speaker 8 (49:11):
Oh, in the there needs you need to just like
bring in another I mean, Blood would have been a
good person, but there just needs to be a regular person.

Speaker 1 (49:22):
Like, hey, I'm sorry, we can't talk like that. You
guys keeping really comfy with this language. It's really not okay. Yeah,
nobody says that.

Speaker 2 (49:30):
Goddam, there has to be like some motherfucker cleaning up
Nixon's like puke in the corner.

Speaker 1 (49:36):
Well, yeah, just a janitor who just like quietly shakes
his head every time. Yeah to camera, Yeah, yeah, they've
got a gym in there. Yeah, so that the bartender,
the knowing bartender. Just imagine that coming out of your mouth.

Speaker 2 (49:51):
Yeah, you're you can't. It's not a joke when you
say that, while there's a genocide going on here hasn't genocide.
So that says a lot of just you celebrating a
guy killing people.

Speaker 1 (50:03):
You realize how cool you got to be to them. Look,
I don't have a friend, but if I did so.

Speaker 2 (50:10):
On July fifteenth, nineteen seventy one, Richard Nixon addressed the
United States and told everyone that Henry Kissinger had just
conducted a secret mission which had concluded with an agreement
for Nixon to travel to Beijing and negotiate. By this point,
hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshi civilians were dead and more
than a million had been made refugees. India was edging
closer and closer to war over the whole matter, and

(50:30):
it was the considered opinion of the defense establishment that
they would win fairly easily. India had started arming the
Bengali guerilla fighters at this point, and during one meeting
on the matter, Nixon described Indians as quote a slippery,
treacherous people who would like nothing better than to use
this tragedy to destroy Pakistan.

Speaker 1 (50:47):
Oh for fucks, I mean you can't even talk about it.
I mean it's like you can't evensation anymore. Yeah, it's
just insane, not sense.

Speaker 9 (50:56):
Yeah, yeah, it's just so crazy.

Speaker 1 (51:00):
This you know, this is imperialism, colonialist language. It's just
never faded. No, No, there's just always guys in power.
They've been talking like this is the fucking fifteen hundreds.
It's never stopped.

Speaker 2 (51:12):
It's the I mean, this guy's not you couldn't really
call him in power, but it's that fucking journalist for
whoever talking about like Ukraine and like this is the
first war between civilizations, Like what the fuck?

Speaker 1 (51:22):
Dude, Like, you know, it's quite different to see people
who are white and European do it. That feels quite different.
And the way he's carefully that journalists you're talking about
the way he's carefully picking his language, and he's like,
you're like, wait, this is your.

Speaker 2 (51:34):
Thoughtful version, this is your delicate statement. He cut the
slurs out.

Speaker 3 (51:42):
You know.

Speaker 1 (51:42):
Yeah, he was like, gotta be carefully, I'm gonna say
some dirty words.

Speaker 2 (51:45):
Because Nixon and they absolutely say some slurs.

Speaker 1 (51:49):
Yeah, oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (51:51):
So the outcry domestically and internationally reaches a fever pitch
at this point, kind of late summer in nineteen seventy one,
and in August, the escalating crisis is India to sign
a formal treaty of friendship with the Soviet Union. Anti
communists Nixon included, considered this a disaster and as good
as an end to India's neutrality, but condemning ya Ya
or stopping the sale of US weapons to a country

(52:13):
committing genocide, was not considered an option. Yahya had to
be kept in power until the China trip was conclusively
locked down. I'm going to quote it from the Blood Telegram.
After a while after Kissinger returned from Beijing, he said,
we cannot turn on Pakistan, and I think it would
have disastrous consequences with China that after they gave us
an airport, we massacre them. In this case, for Kissinger,

(52:36):
massacre meant putting pressure on a government, not the actual massacres.

Speaker 1 (52:41):
I mean it, They've done so many massacres that massacres
aren't massacres anymore.

Speaker 2 (52:47):
Yeah, this is the only thing Henry Kissinger ever described
as a massacre, as people mean to Nixon's drunk genocide.

Speaker 1 (52:55):
But ye, Nixon, Meanwhile, I was committing a genocide. That's good.

Speaker 2 (53:03):
That's good that you know what, Somebody make a Nixon
themed gin cocktail the genocide.

Speaker 1 (53:08):
It should be red in color pineapple deaf harries a
little bit of a little bit of your own puke
from the first stimp.

Speaker 10 (53:21):
So.

Speaker 2 (53:22):
Also in August, George Harrison and Rabbi Shankar organized a
benefit concert in New York supporting relief efforts in Bangladesh.
Nixon brushed this off to Kissinger, saying, quote, Biafras stirred
up a few Catholics, But you know, I think Biafraus
stirred people up more than Pakistan, because Pakistan they're just
a bunch of goddamn brown Muslims.

Speaker 1 (53:40):
For shake fucking christ. Ah. Yeah, we need to bomb
the Beatles. Yeah, the Beatles, right, the only one we
could cape his ringo. He seems like we could maybe
shift him.

Speaker 2 (53:53):
Yeah, we're bad again.

Speaker 1 (54:01):
I mean, it's like you, you would expect and again,
I mean, or at least in my head, at some point,
you would expect someone to just be like, guys, what
the fuckuck? And even if it didn't. Even if it
didn't really change anything, it would at least change the
casual language and races. Is just kind of tossed around,

(54:22):
or someone would be like, Hey, you shouldn't be recording
all this.

Speaker 2 (54:26):
Yeah, yeah, boy, you shouldn't be recording all this.

Speaker 1 (54:28):
Dick. Hey, I'm gonna that's all. I'm gonna stop on this.

Speaker 2 (54:32):
Yeah, I'm noted the Nixon administration Nixon did.

Speaker 6 (54:37):
Nixon was like, I think we got a mall and
it might be drunk me. I think the block outrads
recording us. We did a final war on night Nixon.

Speaker 2 (54:45):
On October twenty fifth, nineteen seventy one, the People's Republic
of China was admitted to the u WIN as a
permanent member of the Security Council. Again, there's seed to
have been occupied for Taiwan by years. Taiwan gets like
let out very unceremoniously, China gets put in place. The
People's Republic of China. A representative celebrates with a vocal
attack on quote American imperialists and their running dogs. But

(55:05):
nobody took this seriously. It was generally referred to as
firing by empty cannons. You know you're China you gotta
get you gotta you gotta throw out your attack on
the US. But like, you know, everybody's getting along at
this moment. By November again, when we just talked about
the guy who built that giant mountain sized cannon for Saddam,
Like not long after this, the CIA is like illegally

(55:26):
helping that arms designer subvert international treaties to sell cannons
to China because China's you know, not on good terms
with the uss R. It's all just like brinksmanship, political
fuck rations that doesn't.

Speaker 1 (55:37):
Match up with some of the history in this country.
That's strange.

Speaker 2 (55:42):
So yeah, this By November of nineteen seventy one, more
than ten million people had been made refugees by the
violence in Bangladesh. Jeffrey Davis a doctor who was brought
into the country by the U win later to perform
late term abortions on rape victims. Again, this is like,
so part of what happens is the system mass rape
by Pakistani soldiers of Bangladeshi women. The UN brings a

(56:07):
doctor in afterwards to like perform these abortions on these
rape victims. The estimate before this doctor comes in is
that between two hundred and four hundred thousand Bengali women
had been raped, and Jeffrey Davis says, oh, it's way
more than that. God, Oh my god, it's much more
than that. The CIA estimates two hundred thousand civilians are
murdered in this period. Given where the US stands on

(56:29):
this issue, you might not want to trust the CIA's numbers.

Speaker 1 (56:32):
Now.

Speaker 2 (56:32):
The Soviet newspaper Pravda estimates some three million dead, which
is also likely not entirely accurate, but is probably closer
than the CIA's numbers. Credible low estimates of the death
toll are over half a million. It is very likely
that between one and two million Bengalis were murdered. One
and a half million is often what you will hear,
probably pretty fair, although any kind of exact count is

(56:55):
obviously impossible. But this is a jit aside on a
Titanic scale.

Speaker 1 (56:58):
You know.

Speaker 2 (56:59):
In December, West Pakistan declared war on India. Remember yeah, yeah,
is not good at things, So.

Speaker 1 (57:07):
I mean, I mean he's again breakfast kanyak will do
he's a crazy shit So their man declares war again.
Yah yah declares war. That's right, many fun Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (57:22):
Nixon and kissing your blame this on in Deira Gandhi.

Speaker 1 (57:25):
Oh, this is why I kind of a woman in India.
It's going to be attacked.

Speaker 2 (57:31):
Nixon tells Henry that it makes your heart sick to
see Pakistan be done so by the Indians.

Speaker 1 (57:36):
And after we have to go, after we've warned the bitch.
Oh sorry, I cut you off. Yeah, and after we
have warned the bitch, I mean again, It's like you're
not in a tavern. This is the fucking White House.

Speaker 4 (57:52):
Should we put that in a fresh an official press statement.

Speaker 1 (57:59):
Let's talk about the in the morning. Oh, let's call
her a whore. Then, let's just.

Speaker 2 (58:03):
Yah Yah proved to be as bad at war as
he was good at being friends with Dick Nixon. The
Indian military kurb stomps Pakistan. I cannot exaggerate the degree
to which these guys get their asses handed to them.
Within a week, it is clear that not only is
West Pakistan going to lose the war, but Pakistan might
not survive as a country as a result of how

(58:23):
badly they're being beaten. Right, yeah, yeah, not good at anything.
I want to quote now from a ride up by
an Indian veteran of them, Oh, he's very good at drinking.
He's really pretty good at drinking. Yes, what do you
mean yet?

Speaker 1 (58:40):
I'm sorry, knockout.

Speaker 2 (58:46):
So I want to quote now from a write up
by an Indian veteran of the conflict for Indye TV,
which is another Indian uh news periodical, on December eighth.
This Pakistani defenses in East Pakistan were falling before the
onslaught of the Joint Command of the Indian Army and
Bangali Dashi Mukti Bahini liberation warriors. Richard Nixon and Henry
Kissinger were busy plotting ways to change the tide of
war or arrest it. Henry Kissinger, in a meeting with

(59:08):
Richard Nixon and Attorney General Newton Mitchell, now to classified,
said he has got a message for you to you
from the Shah of Iran which says he can send
ammunition to a beleaguered Pakistan. He is doing it now.

Speaker 1 (59:21):
What is good? I mean? I know we can help
us here. The Shah of Iran the level of war
to stop war.

Speaker 4 (59:30):
Yeah, so another piece of ship we can bring in
on this.

Speaker 2 (59:35):
The brilliant diplomat also revealed that Iran will send fighter
planes to protect Jordan from Israel, while Jordan will send
jets to Pakistan for the war effort against.

Speaker 1 (59:43):
India's Honestly, what is like It's how like an NFL
trade works. Yeah, how could you have thought this would work?
I mean, it's a it's a drunk game of risk. Yeah, yeah,
yeah it is. He's just wasted playing risk. The US
National Security Advisor also expressed fear that India would attack

(01:00:05):
West Pakistan in a major way after winning the war
in the East. The Indian plan is now clear, this
is Kissinger. They're going to move their forces from East
Pakistan to the west. They will then smash the Pakistan
landforces and air forces, annex the Pakistan occupied part of Kashmir,
and then call it off Warrant Henry Kissinger. When this
has happened, the centrifugal forces in West Pakistan would be liberated,
but Lukastan and the Northwest Frontier will celebrate. West Pakistan

(01:00:28):
would become a sort of intricate Afghanistan. So this is
Aghanistan that's Henry's concern. So he insists this is enough
of a disaster that the US has to send the
Seventh Fleet into the Bay of Bengal in order to
scare India. The seventh is headed by the USS Enterprise
and is widely considered to be the most powerful naval
force on Earth. This prompts the Russians to send a

(01:00:49):
fleet in as well, and the world gets to live
through another period of are we going to have a
nuclear war? Kissinger, because he's real good at calming people down,
encourages China to intervene against India and, in Nixon's words, quote,
scare those goddamn Indians to death. China's like, do you
maybe we should go back to the Taiwan thing? That
actually seemed to be it's gonna be a little seemed

(01:01:11):
to be pretty good. Actually that was working a little better,
I think for you guys. Now you're in hell. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:01:21):
In the end, Kissinger's plan failed. India does not take
his bait, and in late December, Pakistan surrenders to India
East Pakistan because its own independent nation Bangladesh.

Speaker 1 (01:01:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:01:31):
Yah is forced out of office and placed under house arrest,
where he suffers a stroke.

Speaker 1 (01:01:35):
So that's jeez, I'm gonna not you for coming back.
But it's comeback, knyac kid. Oh you mean I can't leave?
It'll be fine.

Speaker 2 (01:01:48):
So Kissinger claims, this whole state of affairs, how this
all resolves, is a victory for the Nixon administration.

Speaker 1 (01:01:54):
Of course I announced.

Speaker 2 (01:01:56):
He announces this by saying, congratulations, mister President, you saved
West Pakistan.

Speaker 1 (01:02:02):
What time was it last night? You saved West pack Amazing?
I mean it was a hero I mean two months
congratulations being said. Amazing.

Speaker 2 (01:02:19):
Now, two months after the end of the war, Nixon
makes his big visit to China. The media eats it up,
and suddenly Nixon's re election campaign has something to hang
their hats on, beyond claims that peace in Vietnam is
going to happen one of these days. The taunt with
the Soviets. This announced soon after, right, they do like
they're good thing. Obviously it's good. Like this happens, good
things result from it. During a conversation later that year,

(01:02:40):
Becassinger tells his boss, no one has yet understood what
we did in India Pakistan and how we saved the
China option, which we need for the bloody Russians. Why
should we give a damn about Bangladesh.

Speaker 1 (01:02:51):
Well, there you go. That says that says it all right. Yeah,
nobody's congratulating us. On how good of a job we did. Yeah, well,
I mean in their opinion and their track record of
foreign policy, it's all about egg breaking, Yeah, you know,
for whatever version of omelet they insist they're serving.

Speaker 2 (01:03:10):
Yeah, and it's like, yeah, man, I agree us. You know,
Mawen fucking Kissing or Mawen Nixon should have sat down
and talked like all of these conversations shouldn't happened to
talk with Russia.

Speaker 1 (01:03:22):
Good.

Speaker 2 (01:03:23):
Feel like you didn't need to back a genocide to
make that happen, you know, like that wasn't a necessary ingredient.

Speaker 4 (01:03:29):
It's it's easy to look back on a genocide and
go was this right or wrong?

Speaker 1 (01:03:34):
But when you're in the middle of a genocide, you're like,
this seems pretty okay. I'm getting I'm getting a which
genocider you are? How else can I talk to people?

Speaker 2 (01:03:44):
I'm having kognac with ya ya before flying the chat.

Speaker 1 (01:03:47):
Keep in mind, I'm good here. I'm pretty much blackout
drunk for all. This pretty good for a guy who
can't walk on a straight line.

Speaker 2 (01:03:55):
Yeah, it's anyway, that's how Henry Kissinger made peace between
the nuclear powers.

Speaker 4 (01:04:02):
Well on that one, I mean, it is the most chaotic, insane,
fucking nonsense.

Speaker 1 (01:04:11):
It's just crazy. No, I really it is on a
level where I mean, it's it's it's been hard to
process the whole time, but now it's like it's normalized
and you're seeing the version when they're sort of there,
the training wheels have been taken off, how much they

(01:04:32):
are actually doing and getting away with in way like again,
I mean, just to have an adult in the room,
but I mean they fire, you fire the adult, obviously,
but it is on. It is I mean, it just
is absolutely fucking preposterous that this is not well known

(01:04:52):
about or even if it even if it is well known,
how the fuck Kissinger keeps showing up over and o
over again. Oh yeah, with all these people that people
that people are sycophants for in our in our politics. No,
I can never I.

Speaker 4 (01:05:08):
Can never get over the fact that Hillary Clinton was
campaigning with him.

Speaker 1 (01:05:12):
Yeah, and that people are like, oh, look who's back shady.

Speaker 2 (01:05:16):
One of the things that's so this doesn't really like
mark on like the moral list of things that he
did wrong. But I just find it so shameful that like, again,
you have all of these other people, like all of
the folks we've talked about, like yeah, yeah, like Nixon
who do horrible things in her but are like also
getting to like exercising power and like the big men
and like you know, the the dudes that the like,

(01:05:39):
I don't know, they're not like sycophants, whereas Henry is
just sort of like sucking up to everyone around him
in order to further war crimes. Which again, yeah, it
doesn't isn't. It doesn't rate discussing on a moral level
compared to everything else. It just is like that's the.

Speaker 1 (01:05:54):
Guy he is. Yeah, he's just like a power guy.
He is. He's just like he is not I mean.
And also, and I don't mean to keep beating this drum,
but they're drunk.

Speaker 2 (01:06:06):
Yeah, well I don't think Kissinger is, but Nixon for
that's what I mean.

Speaker 1 (01:06:08):
Yeah, and yeah, yah is yeah, yeah, yeah is a
Nixon is a Kissinger is not. And he's still like, ah,
that's pretty good idea. Yeah, you know it to be
like it would be like if you're around like like
you're in a car ride to Florida with three drunk
guys and they're just like, hey, well what did we
drink last night? The one guys like I have a drink,
but let's go to Florida.

Speaker 2 (01:06:26):
Yeah, God, it's man and the blatant racism.

Speaker 1 (01:06:33):
As far as like who you're willing to sacrifice, I mean,
you know as usual kiss country where Yeah, you just
you really do not give a fuck.

Speaker 4 (01:06:41):
They really just literally do not care about anybody who's
not They just don't care.

Speaker 1 (01:06:46):
Why why would they? I mean, if you're them, there's
no referee in this game, So foul as much as
you want, I'm just.

Speaker 4 (01:06:53):
Fucking to fucking you know, grow up with the Nazis
right there and watch the Holocaust and then.

Speaker 1 (01:07:01):
Dave to be able to child his childhood. He didn't
was not affected by this child, that's true. Sorry, no
impact on going back to that, but that that again,
we've we've sort of knocked that domino down. That did
not happen, like it never occurred. It didn't happen, clearly, Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:07:16):
You know that's why. Look, that's why he's fine with
what's happening in Bangladesh. He knows it's not going to
affect those kids.

Speaker 1 (01:07:23):
Five those who lived through history are doomed to repeat
it because it was fine. Yeah, because it was fine.
It was fine. Why because I said, so, yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:07:34):
Oh, anyway, I just I just typed in Kissinger's name
in to Google, and the first thing that comes up
is you pile.

Speaker 1 (01:07:42):
Oh god, what did he say?

Speaker 4 (01:07:44):
Fucking we don't to settle the UK christis start at
the end.

Speaker 1 (01:07:50):
I don't even want to know.

Speaker 2 (01:07:52):
Okay, Okay, still nonsense, Like, of course, yes, it would
be great to start at the point where there's not
a war, but that's not really helpful, right yeah, yeah,
thanks buddy.

Speaker 1 (01:08:04):
Yeah, okay, whatever you know. Yeah, he's on the same thing.

Speaker 2 (01:08:07):
Yeah, he's doing kisses like, well, it doesn't matter, like
obviously when you say there's point things like the fucking
nuclear disarmament where like you can find moments in history
where he's right. It doesn't matter if he's right or
wrong about a specific issue, because we see what he
actually does, which is whatever it takes to keep himself
close to power. Like he doesn't believe anything to the

(01:08:29):
extent that he's ever right or a part of something
good like arms reductions. It's because that's the thing that
the people who he's sick of fans to want to do.
And it doesn't matter that he supported the opposite thing
for years, Like because he doesn't care.

Speaker 1 (01:08:41):
Yeah, because it's a parasite just looking for a hub.

Speaker 2 (01:08:43):
Yeah, yeah, that's the thing. Like I don't give him
credit for anything.

Speaker 1 (01:08:48):
Yeah. Well, like it's funny.

Speaker 4 (01:08:49):
It's funny you say that because all these articles about
what he said about Ukraine in twenty fourteen, so people
been going back to like he.

Speaker 1 (01:08:57):
Said, and you're like, yeah, no, that guy's a fucking.

Speaker 2 (01:09:00):
If only he'd thought to start at the end of
the war, if only we'd thought of that, Henry great point,
Henry Solid, We're gonna start, We're.

Speaker 1 (01:09:08):
Gonna start to go fund me to get you bones.

Speaker 2 (01:09:10):
Yeah, oh god, oh lord. If he doesn't die immediately, Obviously,
him dying immediately is my primary hope. But I hope
if he doesn't die immediately, he lasts long enough to
get sucked into one crypto scam. You know, just just
one good cryptocurrency scam. Can we get that?

Speaker 1 (01:09:31):
At least I wanted to start his own crypto called
hank Bank Heck of America. I am noble blockchain. You
could buy a piece of my skin.

Speaker 2 (01:09:45):
Each NFT represents an individual time Richard Nixon vomited into
my lap.

Speaker 1 (01:09:51):
I'm becoming NFT.

Speaker 2 (01:09:52):
Oh god, all right, well again plug anything here, I
mean again, it's getting arder.

Speaker 1 (01:10:02):
All right. We we are the doll Up and you
can go to Dollar podcast dot com for to our information.
We will be all over Australia and America this summer
and and then you can go to my website which
is Gareth Reynolds dot com for stand up data domestically
and in Australia, and go to Parasite dot com, which
is just pictures of a Kissinger.

Speaker 2 (01:10:23):
Yeah, yeah, go to his parasite. Go to his parasite.
I have a novel, just google a k Press after
the Revolution. It's it's for pre order now you can
still get it signed.

Speaker 1 (01:10:35):
Every copy.

Speaker 2 (01:10:36):
I will spit on Henry Kissinger's grave once when he dies,
so you can make me.

Speaker 1 (01:10:45):
Nob's getting woozy. Everybody hurry.

Speaker 2 (01:10:47):
Look like like all politicians, I won't entirely keep my promises.
Some of that spit's going to be pissed, you know,
some of it's going to be pissed.

Speaker 1 (01:10:55):
Here we go, already breaking already breaking it. YEA thought
I knew you. Oh God.

Speaker 2 (01:11:09):
The doll Up Crossover Special event Week three of our
Henry Kissinger series and and the stress is getting to everyone.
David and Gareth fighting viciously.

Speaker 3 (01:11:22):
I'm not.

Speaker 1 (01:11:22):
I mean, I've been quite calm. I just I just
when I'm attacked.

Speaker 2 (01:11:27):
Like Henry Kissinger, I am attempting to maintain a balance
of power between you and the state of Detan.

Speaker 1 (01:11:33):
You get it. You have the answers.

Speaker 2 (01:11:35):
Yes, yes, our podcasts are now bombing Cambodia.

Speaker 1 (01:11:41):
Finally show that I relate to Oh boy, well this
is this is week three?

Speaker 2 (01:11:47):
Can y'all believe we're already in the home stretch of
of this this series?

Speaker 1 (01:11:52):
Is it week three? Yes? Wow? Episodes for three weeks.

Speaker 2 (01:11:58):
I know most podcasts don't make all of the guests
live together, but they do it.

Speaker 1 (01:12:03):
What do they? Yeah, I think with like like the internet.
I'm gonna have to look that up in my dictionary. Yeah. Well,
I've enjoyed our time here. I've really like, I don't
I don't want to leave, so I mean, but yeah,
I mean, I you know, we should. I got to
go back to it as a family.

Speaker 2 (01:12:20):
We could do another couple of episodes on Henry Kissinger,
but you know, just do one a year for the
next like five years.

Speaker 1 (01:12:26):
There we just do. We'll just be like a reunion show. Yeah,
what's Henry Kissinger revival. Yeah, there's probably more chapters. Yeah,
hopefully just dead soon. Hopefully dead is what we'll do.
I don't think that. I don't think that ends it.
Somehow I feel like that's not gonna be enough.

Speaker 2 (01:12:42):
Yeah, we'll be doing the episode about how Henry Kissinger
brings the Army of Hell back through a portal, Yeah,
to somehow fight on both sides of the Ukrainian War.

Speaker 1 (01:12:51):
And the Army of Hell has been misled as to
the rationale. They're like, you said that there was going
to be a lot more slavery. Here, follow me, come
with me. The w mds Henry Kissinger. I should have
studied Kissinger's accent before this totally, But do you have
an ear for accents?

Speaker 2 (01:13:12):
It's all right, this will be so iconic that it
will retroactively become Henry Kissinger's accent, kind of like the
Nazis are now British.

Speaker 1 (01:13:20):
I do one, I do one, just one stranger accent.
I nail one thing. It's really good. Perfect.

Speaker 2 (01:13:30):
Wow, it's like we're there. It's like we're in the
Oval office. I am excited for when what's his name?
The guy who did vice that director? What's his name?
I'm talking about the Cheney, Yes, Adam mckadam. When Adam
McKay does his Kissinger movie in ten more years, he'll
use that accent.

Speaker 1 (01:13:49):
That'd be great. Davi would be on set coaching Christian Bale.
You know you're saying hello, and it's really more.

Speaker 2 (01:13:58):
Like alo Vera, so hear it behind the bastards and
and at the dollop, which behind the bastards is the
kirklan brand version of We like to ask questions that
historians all too often try to ignore it, namely, how
did bad people in history fuck? So? Yeah, we're talking

(01:14:20):
about how Kissinger boned? Are you excited for the state?

Speaker 1 (01:14:24):
No? No, I want to go? Can I leave it?
I think you want to take care of himself?

Speaker 2 (01:14:30):
If you know this is it is important to both
cover the historical crimes of a guy like Kissinger and
and to get some personal color. And since we've spent
four episodes talking about his beliefs and his acts and power,
it's only fair that we now turn our fuckroscopes onto
his sex life.

Speaker 1 (01:14:46):
This episode is going to have bass under it, right, absolutely, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:14:55):
So I think the best way for me to start
this segment is by reading a quote from a September fifteenth,
nineteen seventy one article in the San Francisco Chronicle as
a warning, guys, there is a thirty percent chance this
is going to give one of you a stroke.

Speaker 1 (01:15:08):
No, you mean way, you mean we're gonna be stroking
it our actual stroke.

Speaker 2 (01:15:13):
That that is impossible to say, okay. Quote Henry Kissinger,
sex symbol of the Nixon administration.

Speaker 1 (01:15:21):
Let me bite a stick. I'm just gonna bite a
stick to be safe. I'm I'm just gonna get a
branch in my mouth.

Speaker 2 (01:15:27):
Steps out of his office onto a sun drenched San
Clemente terrace with a cup of black coffee and sits
in a white deck chair with his legs crossed. The man, yeah,
the man who has pressured Moscow drafted state of the
World addresses, advised the President to enter a Cambodia and
pave the road to red China appears as something of

(01:15:48):
an anachronism in his baggy midnight blue cotton trousers, black
tie shoes, bright blue unfitted blazer, blue and white striped
shirt and striped tie.

Speaker 1 (01:15:58):
What you guys home then? So far? I mean, what fuck?
Embedded reporter Lban why I can't I can't imagine combining
the fashion sense with the war crime. It's so good
because they acknowledged the war crimes and they're going talk
about it. It's like Henry could be walking got a

(01:16:20):
catwalk like like you'll see Henry right now in a
tight white pants suit. You can see it suck to him. Henry,
also known for ruining Cambodia in Vietnam, continued to quote.

Speaker 4 (01:16:33):
He comes mass murder's sex machine, kissing your Oh no,
it's an open robe.

Speaker 2 (01:16:42):
On the back wall, you can see some victims of
the aged Orange campaign.

Speaker 9 (01:16:46):
And then in.

Speaker 2 (01:16:46):
Vietnam and on Henry yoursucker, you could notice the outline
of his hog in those I don't know fancy pants brands.
Otherwise I would have finished that, but I'm gonna finish
the quote now, because by god, there's more.

Speaker 1 (01:17:03):
What are you trying to do? Seduce me?

Speaker 2 (01:17:05):
Henry will tease as he notices his visitors hotpants. You
know I like these hotpants very much. Then he'll light
your cigarette, touching your hand as all continentals do, offer
you a cup of coffee, and discuss trivia as readily
as he would a Sino Soviet entaunt. The impeccably tidy
image is perfect for dealing with Alexi Qostan or Chowan
or zowyn Lye, or lecturing at Harvard, But one cannot

(01:17:27):
help wonder if the movie star's mind that the ankle
socks of Washington's greatest swinger are falling down, or that
his wiry chestnut hair, which flashes golded in the intense
white sunlight, is too close crop to run their fingers through,
or that at least ten of his one hundred and
seventy eight pounds protrude over his thin black belt, somehow
shortening his five feet nine inches. But suddenly an electric

(01:17:48):
twinkle will flash through the intense blue of his eyes.
And what it catches, an inkling of that movie star magnetism,
that special quality which causes some people to call him
cuddly kissinger.

Speaker 1 (01:17:57):
No craziest thing that's happened so far? How did that happen? Oh? Man,
it's worse than war crimes.

Speaker 2 (01:18:07):
Yeah, this is, oh my god, a bottom below the
bottom folks.

Speaker 9 (01:18:12):
Can we go back to just murdering hundreds of thousands
of Cambodians?

Speaker 1 (01:18:17):
How did that happen? What in the fuck just went on?
Is this a guy or a lady writing this? We
think it's a late I'm on a certain it's a lady. Yeah,
fuck him. She wants to or the dude wants to? Well,
what he holds your hand when he lights your cigarette?
Why did we have to talk about Kissinger's chest hair? Why? Why? Why? Indeed,

(01:18:38):
why indeed, David? Because can we napalm it?

Speaker 10 (01:18:42):
That?

Speaker 2 (01:18:42):
This is what Nate Palm's for?

Speaker 11 (01:18:44):
Right?

Speaker 1 (01:18:45):
Speaking of palm, a little palmade in that hair of Henry's.

Speaker 2 (01:18:48):
This has convinced me there is a place for the
B fifty two bomber.

Speaker 1 (01:18:53):
In his pants. Boy, that's what Henry calls little Hank.

Speaker 2 (01:19:00):
So fuck bafflingly, almost impossibly, it is not hard to
find articles written at this exact sexual tenor, and unfortunately
would I would love to tell you guys that I'm
sure this was like a satire or a joke, but
the people were weirdly serious about this kind of shit
in nineteen seventy two. And there's no way you're ready
for what comes after this part of the sentence. What

(01:19:23):
In nineteen seventy two, the Playboy Club hosted a poll
of the bunnies and asked them who was quote the
man I would mostly not do that on a date
with Henry Kissinger was number one.

Speaker 1 (01:19:36):
Oh in the fuck, no, no, no.

Speaker 9 (01:19:41):
What a horrible indictment of it, No first indictment of
America that has ever been.

Speaker 1 (01:19:46):
This is the most damning thing you can say about.
It's right on the ground in the Playboy mansion. What
how is that? I can't It's like we're in the
back to the future, Biff Timeline. Well, hold on, the
man who massacres hundreds of thousands knows how to fuck.
That's just an old saying. That is that is an

(01:20:07):
old saying. I want to fuck you like I fucked
the people of Vietnam overl So.

Speaker 2 (01:20:16):
Once the first few articles about Henry Kissinger's you know
sex symbolitude dropped, you know, Kissinger himself started being questioned
by reporters about the phenomenon. His standard reply became one
of his most famous quotes. Power is the ultimate afrodisiac.

Speaker 1 (01:20:35):
I mean like there are there is. I mean people
are attracted to like, yeah, psychos too, like Ted Bundy
had like a fan club, and like you know, like
I mean j like I've been compared to Jeffrey Dahmer
a number of times looks wise, which has always been
a pleasure.

Speaker 2 (01:20:51):
And you're both very handsome young men.

Speaker 1 (01:20:54):
Yes, thank you so much, and both still in the
primes of our youth. Absolutely, it's still it's like you
feel like there is a separation with him and what
it just seems very like a very strange connection.

Speaker 2 (01:21:07):
It's it's baffling. Other than that, Like, here's the sad thing.
We're gonna get to this. It's not just that he's powerful,
and the other thing about him that makes him women
so attracted to him is like bleak in a surprising way.
But but we'll get to that. So famous women loved
being spotted on Kissinger's arm one night he was sighted

(01:21:28):
at the Trader vis in the Los Angeles Hill like
flirting and holding hands with Jill Saint John, who played
the very first Bond girl. What he dated the first
James Bond girl on He needs Yeah, so you'll Saint
John to be honest.

Speaker 1 (01:21:52):
Murder troll, Well, so horrifying part, But who goes from
Bond to murder munchkin?

Speaker 2 (01:22:00):
I mean, Bond is kind of a murder.

Speaker 1 (01:22:02):
Like Yeah, but he's good. He's a good guy. Was
he come on, ra always a good guy.

Speaker 2 (01:22:08):
So while they were out on this date, Jill Saint
John and Kissinger were spotted by Ann Miller. Anne was
a dancer, famous adnswer at the time. She approached Kissinger
and quote in a friendly way. These are the words
of biographer Walter Isaacson criticized him for having fun in
public while our boys in Vietnam are getting their head
shot off. Kissinger responded dourly, Miss Miller, you don't know

(01:22:30):
anything about me. I was miserable in a marriage for
most of my life. I never had any fun. Now
was my chance to enjoy myself. When this administration goes out.
I'm going back to being a professor. But while I'm
in the position i'm in, I'm damnwill going to make
it count.

Speaker 1 (01:22:45):
I mean, really avoiding the the centralization. I mean, at
no point does he acknowledge that that is an unfair
thing he's doing. He's just like, look, come on, even us.
You know, psychopaths need to have some fun. Yeah, and
it's it's I mean, it's nice to hear someone like
approach him and and say something like that too. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:23:07):
And of course she approached him for not doing right
by our gis and as opposed to not doing right
aliens of Cambodian and Vietnamese.

Speaker 1 (01:23:15):
It's a morsel.

Speaker 2 (01:23:16):
It's a morsel out yeah, civilians, but yes, it is
a morsel.

Speaker 1 (01:23:20):
I did something similar to the lead singer of the
count Crows. I went up to him and said that
his band was bad, and they drove me crazy. Your
band's a war crime, you know, da.

Speaker 2 (01:23:32):
If you might have had more of an impact, if
you'd criticized him for playing his music while our boys
in Vietnam are getting their head shut off, you.

Speaker 1 (01:23:39):
Would have had some trouble parsing that out. Sir. Are
you okay? Yes, yeah, I'm been playing your jam bag
while I omer off there dying in the mud, face
down in the mock. God, damn you. I think you
have the wrong person. I know what you did, something

(01:24:01):
about a parking lot that you are edging up on.

Speaker 2 (01:24:07):
My favorite conspiracy theory, which is that the Tonkin golf
incident was engineered by the Counting.

Speaker 1 (01:24:12):
Crows in order to sell out. Several decades later we
know it was.

Speaker 2 (01:24:16):
Yeah, absolutely act that seems proven at this point. So
biographer Walter Isaacson describes Kissinger as having quote the boyish
glee of a senior on prom night in the twinkle
of a middle aged rake. He regularly had quote striking
blonde women come with him into the White House on
lunch dates so he could show them off to his colleagues,

(01:24:37):
telling a coworker on at least one occasion to eat
your heart out. He's very much like bragging to other
dudes about the fact that being Henry Kissinger has turned
him into a sex symbol, as.

Speaker 1 (01:24:48):
He just had a gun and he was like, no, literally,
eat your own heart.

Speaker 2 (01:24:54):
So it was known that Kissinger's notorious temper could be
somewhat offset by tossing young women in front of him.
When his staffers fucked up and had to give him
bad news about a scheduling issue, they'd send the youngest
female secretary they had to go and give him the
news the White House Press Office. He's Diane Sawyer for
this purpose.

Speaker 1 (01:25:11):
Oh my god. Eventually the two started dating. Oh my god.
I mean, Jesus, she should not be allowed to still
be doing news. I mean you need to have your
news license revoked. You do you think he just comes
pure poison. Oh yeah, it's like Sara, It's just like
a gas slowly releases. Yeah, we could harn as.

Speaker 2 (01:25:33):
Henry Kissinger's come to get Europe off of Russian crude.

Speaker 1 (01:25:39):
They're going to drop the Kissinger goo on us.

Speaker 2 (01:25:44):
Diane Sawyer later told New York Magazine, quote, the power
of Henry working a room is still seismic. All of
a sudden, everybody wants to step up their game and
say something he'll find interesting or funny. And you know,
I don't know how much of this is just like
his Now, he's clearly a charismatic man, right, he clearly.

Speaker 1 (01:25:59):
Has It feels like it's it's dinner for schmucks, and
he's like the rooub Like it feels like it's not
just doing as a bit. Everyone's just doing a bit.
Like it's just like it's a congruing with the person
that we I see and hear about that. You're like,
oh my god, if you could get in a room
with Henry Kissinger, just get right next to you will
not leave his side. Yeah, obviously he's sexy. Obviously he's sexy.

(01:26:24):
Who wouldn't want to fuck Henry Kissinger? Of course want to.

Speaker 2 (01:26:29):
Now this is all profoundly upsetting, but it gets Baker
so it's Isaacson, Who's who's probably Kissinger's best biographer. If
Walter Isaacson is correct, the reason all these women liked
hanging around Henry wasn't just that he was powerful and no,
it was not that he had, you know, incredible dick game,
which I'm sorry for saying that in the context of

(01:26:50):
Henry Kissinger.

Speaker 1 (01:26:51):
Thank you, thank you.

Speaker 12 (01:26:52):
I are we just lost, we are we just plunged
in the rankings, say fireball men, Yeah yeah, I'm going
to quote now from Kissinger, a biography by Walter Isaacson.
Kissinger's secret with women was not all that different from
his one with men, whom he wanted to charm. He

(01:27:13):
flattered them, he listened to them, he nodded a lot,
and he made eye contact. But unlike the way he
was with most men, Kissinger was exceedingly patient with women
who wanted to talk. Very few men in the nineteen
seventies actually listened to women. According to Betty Lord, Henry
talked with you, talk to you seriously, and probed for
what you knew or thought. He was someone who could
and would make a Jill Saint John feel intelligent or

(01:27:34):
a Shirley Maclin feel politically savvy, next to Ingmar Bergmann.
He is the most interesting man I have ever met,
said liv Ulman. He is surrounded by a fascinating aura,
a strange field of light, and he catches you in
some kind of invisible net. Over long dinners at public places,
he would listen with sympathy while women talked about themselves,
their lives, their hopes, and even sometimes their slightly wacky

(01:27:54):
New Age philosophies. He would call them on the telephone
late at night and talk for an hour or more
at a time. He was a great friend, especially a
telephone friend, always there when you needed him, said Jill
Saint John. The dirty little secret about Kissinger's relationship with
women was that there was no dirty little secret. He
liked to go out with them, but not home with them.
His fascination with affairs tended to be foreign rather than domestic.

(01:28:16):
Henry's idea of being romantic was to slow down his
car when he dropped you off at a date. Said
howar he may have been. How in fact the most
celibate lecture in Washington. People say, yes, he doesn't do
anything with these girls. His friend Peter Peterson once remarked.

Speaker 1 (01:28:30):
Well, yeah, what is happening is happening. So he's a
little asexual. I don't know if him.

Speaker 2 (01:28:37):
I mean, he definitely had sex, he had relationships, he
had kids, but I think the being seen with women,
the being seen as a sex symbol, wasn't But I
don't think he had a particularly high sex drive. I
don't think he's going out and like fucking his way
through like famous people. I think he likes being seen
in public with beautiful women. And I think beautiful women
number one he's safe, like he's not gonna pressure you

(01:28:57):
for anything, and number two, he'll actually listen to you
like he's it's.

Speaker 1 (01:29:02):
An extremely low bar. I mean, right, there is like
something to that, you know, it's like he's he's doing yeah.
I mean I think that even now with guys like what,
I'll hear like guys talking like yeah, it's like, just
be respectful and it'll probably get you, like I mean,
it at least makes you not an asshole.

Speaker 2 (01:29:21):
I mean, he's he's he's you know what it is.
I think the women in this situation are getting something
out of it, right, Being with Henry Kissinger gets you
in the news, it raises your profile. He's extremely famous
and powerful, and you get taken maybe even more seriously,
you know, as as a woman's who's a journalist who
wants to be seen as kind of intellectual being around

(01:29:42):
Henry Kissinger. He's a very serious public intellectual. It's good
for your career. And also he's just men in power
were so much worse than they even are now that
he was like the best dude in that world you
could hang out.

Speaker 1 (01:29:59):
He's kind of like it's almost like a Batman villain
again in the sense that like he's got he's this
evil piece of shit, but yet he is also able
to hold a conversation and not be a prick, And
you're like, wow, who could pull off such opposing courses A. Yeah,
he treats women like humans. That's exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:30:21):
Yeah, literally that is Yeah, he will look a woman
in the eyes.

Speaker 1 (01:30:27):
Yeah, he is the st John feels smart. The guy
is a magician.

Speaker 2 (01:30:32):
Yeah, he is the only he is the only man
in power in Washington, DC who will like sit down
with a woman and listen to what she has to say.
And as a result, he is the primary sex symbol
of nineteen seventies. Squaka bar so. I mean it's incredible.

Speaker 1 (01:30:49):
It also again is it comes down to what we've
talked about before with him, which is media normalization and
how it is just once you kind of create that bubble,
most people just acqui yes, and then you're just like,
you know, you kind of like Diane Zayer is just like,
oh yeah, well he's people don't throw bricks at him
when he's outside, so he's okay now.

Speaker 2 (01:31:11):
Isaacson's gives an example of a typical relationship. Kissinger's friendship
with Jan Golding, who's a New York socialite he dated
from seventy to seventy one. She was twenty two, he's
like fifty. And Kissinger had been given her name byke
Kissinger had been given her name by Kirk Douglas. Kernie
Douglas is the fucking hook up in this case. My god,

(01:31:33):
So Henry calls her one day without warning and asks
if she wants to come out for dinner. When she
flew down to DC to meet him, she was met
at the airport by one of Kissinger's military aids, who
drove her to a fancy club where he was dining.
The two sat down to eat, and midway through dinner,
Henry got a phone call and stayed away for forty minutes.
When he came back, he apologized and said that the

(01:31:53):
Secretary of State had needed his advice. But whenever he
was present, he paid co close attention to her, and
he asked her her opinion on issues of the day.
She found the overall experience heady. The two dated for
half a year, without any romance ever developing isaacson Wright's quote,
only once did they go back to his apartment, and
when they arrived and aid was their fielding telephone calls.
By Golden's count, the phone rang forty times. You couldn't

(01:32:16):
do anything romantic in that place, even if you were
dying too, she.

Speaker 1 (01:32:19):
Recalled, who's dying. Nobody's dying too. She wants to get
fucked by the old weirdo. Yeah, she's into it. I
must know my cock is horned.

Speaker 2 (01:32:29):
Yeah, yeah, she said. I just don't think Henry was
interested in sex when it came time to perform. Well,
I just think he was too preoccupied for it. He
didn't have time for it. Power for him may have
been the aphrodisiac, but it was also the climax.

Speaker 1 (01:32:43):
Oh my god, I know that's a line right there.
That's what he was doing in the bathroom for forty minutes. Yeah, oh, Henry.

Speaker 2 (01:32:54):
So. On one occasion, Henry was more honest than usual
with one of his female friends, Orianna Fialacci, who's an
Italian author and a former World War Two partisan. She's
actually a pretty fascinating person, he said. Quote when I
speak to Lee Ducto, who is the Vietnamese negotiator for
North Vietnam, I know what I have to do with
Lee Ducto, and when I'm with girls, I know what
I must do with girls. Besides, Lee Ducto doesn't at

(01:33:16):
all agree to negotiate with me because I represent an
example of moral rectitude, This frivolous reputation, it's partially exaggerated,
of course. What counts as to what degree women are
part of my life a central preoccupation, Well they aren't
that at all for me. Women are only a diversion,
a hobby. Nobody spends too much time with his hobbies.

Speaker 1 (01:33:33):
See for a minute there you're sort of thinking, Okay, well,
if he's getting something out of female accompaniment, then in
a way that is I mean, there's something kind of like,
there is something kind of nice about the idea that
a guy is just not like trying to fuck his
way through, you know, beautiful women, like he is just
enjoying the company of women. But then the more you

(01:33:56):
kind of peel back, the more it just does seem
to be a like he's just he's just backwards. He's
a backwards person. Every part of him has just been rearranged.
He's like a mannequin body of guts that fell down
and was put back improperly.

Speaker 2 (01:34:15):
Now the surprise, Kirk Douglas cameo there. Make Key went
on the fact that Henry was also very popular with
the celeb set. During the party thrown for Gloria Steinem
by the talk show host Barbara Hower, causing, you're told
those assembled I am a secret swinger. Now, yes, yeah,
that's the thing he claimed. I like an maybe it's

(01:34:36):
a joke.

Speaker 1 (01:34:38):
Yeah, that means he's like, he's saying he likes to fuck.
But all the evidence we have is that he doesn't.

Speaker 2 (01:34:42):
Like Yeah, again, I think that's him myth making.

Speaker 1 (01:34:45):
I think that's just saying that I like to go
around and touch the jenitos of fucking people.

Speaker 2 (01:34:53):
Yeah, you go to a swingers party in DC and
Henry's just there putting a finger on things.

Speaker 1 (01:34:58):
Is it, okay, both of you at the pinkeetings. I
get nothing out of this. It's fine, don't worry. I'm comeless.

Speaker 2 (01:35:09):
So Kissinger missed the announcement that he'd been nominated for
Secretary of State because he was on a date with
Norwegian Oscar nominee liv Oulman. He took Candice Bergen out
on a date when she was a young star. She
later said that he gave her, quote the sense of
shared secrets, probably the same set he gave every anti
war actress, Like he would act like, oh, I'm really
against the war. I'm inside the administration, like trying to

(01:35:31):
get us out of these things.

Speaker 1 (01:35:32):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:35:32):
It's it's like, yeah, he doesn't. He's yeah, he's a psycho.

Speaker 1 (01:35:36):
Psycho. I mean, it's to say about it's just I
mean that way, he's completely everything we've heard is completely contrary.

Speaker 2 (01:35:41):
He's the fucking devil. Yeah, yeah, it's just psychotic.

Speaker 1 (01:35:46):
But also you have.

Speaker 2 (01:35:46):
To credit like, I don't think Candice Bergen is lying.
I can imagine how you're not privy at that point
in time to any of what we have, right to
any disinformation we have about how much he was planning this,
about what a two faced liar. He was so maybe
you believe. Yeah, this man is so intense intelligent and
is so like emotionally competent. I can't imagine him being
the architect of these war crimes. He must be just

(01:36:08):
it's such a titanic system of evil and he's fighting
alone to bring it down, and like.

Speaker 1 (01:36:12):
It must be why Hillary Clinton still hangs around him.
He's like lose. I had nothing to do with then, Taylor,
don't worry. We'll talk about that. Gareth. Oh good, oh great,
oh god.

Speaker 2 (01:36:23):
So I'm going to quote next from Niall Ferguson's Kissinger
quote for the Press. The story was irresistible. The dowdy
Harvard professor reborn in Hollywood as Kerry Grant with a
German accent. When Marlon Brando pulled out of the New
York premiere of The Godfather, It's executive producer, Robert Evans
unhesitatingly called Kissinger, and Kissinger obligingly flew up despite blizzard

(01:36:44):
conditions and a schedule the next day that began with
an early morning meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff
to discuss the mining of Haiphong Harbor and ended with
a secret flight to Moscow. A reporter asked, doctor Kissinger,
why are you here tonight at the Godfather premiere? Kissinger responded,
I was forced by who? By Bobby Bobby Evans. Did
he make you an offer you couldn't refuse?

Speaker 1 (01:37:04):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:37:05):
As they fought their way through the throng, Evans had
Kissinger on one arm and Ali McGraw on the other.
What I know, right, would you have called that when
we started this shit.

Speaker 1 (01:37:15):
Like you've Kissingers, You've lulled us into this being okay,
because at the beginning absolutely not. But now I mean imagine,
honestly like a war criminal on a rent carpet going like, look,
I didn't want to obviously, I want to stay in
sel Vietnam. But Bobby called Bobby.

Speaker 2 (01:37:37):
Oh man, it's incredible. You know who else attended the
premiere of the Godfather with producer Robert Evans and Ali McGraw.
I can't wait to hear the sponsors of this show,
oh deeply tied in Well, of course they are, right,
Like they're the kind of people who get invited to
hunt children on private islands off the coast of Indonesia.

Speaker 1 (01:38:01):
You know, I've heard it's an archipelago.

Speaker 2 (01:38:04):
I refuse to believe that Hollywood producer Robert Evans did
not hunt children for sport at least once.

Speaker 1 (01:38:10):
There's just no way.

Speaker 2 (01:38:11):
Yeah, those glasses were just scopes, he laughed, like a
man who has hunted the most dangerous game. Anyway, here's ads.
We're back now. In our Cambodia episode I mentioned and

(01:38:32):
by the way, we're done with the sex stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:38:34):
You made it through. Wow, I read my sweatpants, my
sweatpants half ripped. God, please get back to the killer. Well,
don't worry.

Speaker 2 (01:38:46):
In our Cambodia episode, I mentioned that the illegal bombing
of Cambodia was leaked to the New York Times, and
this was a big story, and it prompted Nixon to
suspect that Kissinger's liberal staffers had been the ones who
had done the leaking. And so after this gets leaked,
Kissinger and Nixon work together to orchestrate a wire tapping program. Well,

(01:39:06):
Kissinger initially ran the whole program. He was actually in
charge for only like a day. Nixon decided pretty quickly
that he didn't trust Kissinger after all, namely because Herbert
Hoover expected that Kissinger was the one leaking things. And
this is because Kissinger absolutely was leaking. Now, he was
not leaking the bombing of Cambodia, right, But Kissinger had
his favorite journalists that he'd leaked things to. Some of

(01:39:29):
them were guys he wanted to write a book about him,
you know, and so he wanted them to give him
positive coverage. Some of them were like leaks in order
to hurt other people in the administration.

Speaker 1 (01:39:37):
Because there's just.

Speaker 2 (01:39:37):
Constant it's Nixon's We're not getting into this enough. Nixon's
administration is just like an endless series of power struggles.
Everyone is fucking over everybody else, right, like that that's
the Nixon administration, right, That's incredible. Yeah, it's really quite
quite a tale. So, yeah, Kissinger's absolutely leaking some stuff.
And that said, Nixon is pretty aware of who Kissinger

(01:39:59):
is things too, And as Walter Isaacson writes, the real
reason why he pulled Henry from overseeing the program was
that the two were having one of their periodic feuds.
Nixon actually made the call to pull Kissinger from the
wire tapping program right before he flew to Camp David,
and like stopped returning Kissinger's phone calls for a week.

Speaker 1 (01:40:18):
It's just like thing. It was like, it's like fucking
nineteen year olds fighting. It's dull. I'm not here. Yeah,
they literally had just little TIFFs. You know.

Speaker 2 (01:40:27):
There's so much petty bullshit between Kissinger and Nixon, and
they're very much like if you've ever been in a
codependent relationship, the Kissinger and Nixon will seem extremely familiar
because they'll like be fighting over some stupid bullshit and
then things will get bad and they'll like come together
and be like also collapsing at the same time as

(01:40:49):
they're propping each other up.

Speaker 1 (01:40:50):
It's very funny. I got I mean, millions die. But
I'm sorry that they said that. The well, I've been
waiting for your apology. I can't stay mad at you.
That's how this bomb Cambodia with. Look, we have too
many people to kill to stem out at each other
for this loan, So good over, Harriet Chef.

Speaker 2 (01:41:11):
Despite Kissinger Nixon periodically being angry with him throughout the
duration of the wire tapping program, Henry Kissinger retained the
ability to pretty much wiretap American citizens at command. He
would submit names to the FBI, he would start a
wiretap on that person. When the secret wiretapping program was
leaked in nineteen seventy three and blew up into a
big congressional inquiry. Nixon took the blame, defending Kissinger by

(01:41:34):
saying it was his responsibility not to control the program,
but solely to furnish information to the FBI. So what
they claimed is like Kissinger wasn't ordering wiretaps. He was
giving it the FBI information on people we thought were suspicious,
and they would decide to wiretap, And it's a coincidence
that all he would do was hand them a name
and they would immediately start the wiretap.

Speaker 1 (01:41:53):
Right. It's like he would give the garment to the bloodhound,
but he was exactly person.

Speaker 2 (01:41:58):
He's not hunting the child looking for him on go.

Speaker 1 (01:42:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:42:01):
So it's also though, like this might be the moment
that proves Dick Nixon was actually a better person than
Henry Kissinger because he did like kind of take a
hit for his team, not that he wasn't responsible for
the wire topics.

Speaker 1 (01:42:20):
In the land of no respect, a man with one
outs has on all.

Speaker 2 (01:42:24):
It was like a tiny, tiny dollar, if you will,
of honors from Henry Kissinger. Yeah, and we just never
see that or from from Nixon and we just never
see that from Kissinger. It's kind of like saying that,
like a cheese greater is better to fuck than the
blade of a jigsaw.

Speaker 1 (01:42:41):
But you know, it's something I well know that now
that I think about it. I mean, if someone laid
it on the table again, right, yeah, well, cheese raider,
that's great. This jeez, what do we say, gentlemen, I'm
gonna drop drought. Let's get great.

Speaker 2 (01:42:58):
So here's how the secret wire apping program worked. Kissinger
and another Nixon dude I think it was Haldeman, would
submit names to the FBI, which the FBI viewed as requests, right.
The transcripts of that person's conversations then would all be
sent to Kissinger's death desk. So he got direct transcripts
of every wiretap personally, and he would decide what to
bring to Nixon. He wasn't the only guy he because

(01:43:19):
again Nixon had multiple like people kind of competing through
this program, right right, He's like the head writer. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So.
James Adams, head of the FBI's Intelligence Division, later Total
Biography that he did not think there was quote more
or less wired tapping under Nixon than under previous presidents.
What made things unusual, then, was that the wiretaps Nixon

(01:43:41):
and Kissinger ordered were on NSC staff individuals that were
part of the White House family in Isaacson's words right quote.
In other words, previous wiretaps had mainly been on suspected
spies potentially subversive union leaders in the like a regular
program of wiretapping one's own aids was, according to Thomas Smith,
another top f be I official, unprecedented.

Speaker 1 (01:44:02):
Oh my god, it's amazing, Like that's what's amazing, right,
It's like, well, no, it's not unusual that as for
this many wire taps. It's just normally on people that
you're worried about, like attacking the country, not people who
you've hired. The FBI is like, you.

Speaker 2 (01:44:17):
Know, we're okay with spying on dissidence, but they made
a spy on their friends, and we feel gross about this.

Speaker 1 (01:44:23):
Henry Kissinger's wiretapping Nixon, Yeah, he's getting very caddy. Kissingers,
just as you a wiretap on himself. Up, I love
trust myself. You were joking, but you have accurately predicted
where the story goes. No, what the fuck? This is

(01:44:46):
such a chapter of American Trust Me as far as
I could throw myself. Oh god, I am such a
fucking asshole. Look at what I was saying. Oh my god.

Speaker 2 (01:44:57):
So these wire taps were all considered legal at the time,
although the Supreme Court did later determine that they were illegal.
It was kind of like one of these at the time,
they were legal, and because of how gross they were,
the Supreme Court was like, you know what, No, And
thankfully the US never never wire tapped people again. That's
the end of it. Famously, that's why Edward Snowden is

(01:45:19):
famous for his reveal that no one was ever wire tapped.

Speaker 1 (01:45:22):
Again, that's why we don't know who Edward Snowden is.

Speaker 2 (01:45:25):
Yes, famous private citizen living in Ohio. Edward call a
name out of the air, random guy. So a tremendous
amount has been written on the subject of the wire
tapping in the Nixon administration. I'm not going to go
too into detail on it because as sleazy as it is,
wiretapping your friends doesn't quite measure up to war crimes.

(01:45:48):
Like it's gross, but it's also not that gross. And
because it's super weird. Yeah, it's just like weird. It's
a weird thing about them. There is something I should
read here that reveals something meaningful about him.

Speaker 1 (01:46:00):
He's character. WILLIAMS.

Speaker 2 (01:46:01):
Sapphire was a New York Times op ed columnist and
a Nition speech wise and a Nixon speech writer. He
later said that Kissinger was quote capable of getting a
special thrill out of working most closely with those he's
spied on the most. So like, my Sapphire's attitude is
like he was doing this mainly because he thought it
was like kind of hot to be wire tapping a

(01:46:21):
guy that he was working chasms.

Speaker 1 (01:46:24):
Yeah, finally, it's the power thing. It's the power thing. Yeah,
who knows he's he loves that.

Speaker 9 (01:46:30):
He's like fucking over someone he's just hanging out with
and talking to him.

Speaker 1 (01:46:34):
They don't know he's it's.

Speaker 9 (01:46:35):
Like sliver, It's like, yeah, he gets it's this crazy
thrill out of it. Yeah, he has secrets about them, like,
oh god, it's so fucking weird.

Speaker 1 (01:46:44):
Going to that does.

Speaker 2 (01:46:49):
So he gets like yeah, that quote from Kissinger, power
is the ultimate aphrodisiac. It's usually translated to him being
like that's why women are so into me, right, because
power turns people on. But I think it literally means
that like he kind of gets off on exercising power, right,
like that's his thing.

Speaker 1 (01:47:05):
Oh my god, I can even fuck my friends over. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:47:10):
It is also worth noting that Henry wire tapped himself
once he took off, as he had a secretary. I know,
I know, but it happened. Once he took office. He
had a secretary listening on all of his calls and
take memo notes on his conversations. He also had a
series of what are called dead key extensions added to phones.

(01:47:31):
These are keys that were secretly added to phones in
his office so that his secretaries and aids could like
press them to listen in on calls without other people
knowing and take notes on the calls, Oh Nixon. When
Nixon would call Kissinger drunk, slurring his words, Kissinger would
like wave all of his people like get in there,
get in there, get in here.

Speaker 1 (01:47:48):
Like pick up the phone, pick up the.

Speaker 2 (01:47:49):
Phone, and then he would make faces making fun of
the president while his notes is like aids listened it.

Speaker 1 (01:47:58):
Okay, I mean job, Okay, that's the coolest thing about.
Take a step back and realize that Henry Kissinger is
making fun of the wiretap he's called on himself while
he's talking to the president who's blackout drunk.

Speaker 2 (01:48:18):
It's it's something else. War is not to minimize how
fucked up you know the current administration to the previous
administration was. But by god, America still has not reached
the Nixon peak of craziness.

Speaker 8 (01:48:32):
We've gotten it in like pieces, a little bit company.

Speaker 1 (01:48:37):
I've never had like the full team togethering. Yeah, you can't.

Speaker 2 (01:48:40):
It's it's really hard to compete with Dick Nixon and
Henry Kissinger.

Speaker 1 (01:48:44):
And I mean I talk about ahead of his time.
Oh my god, his stuff age is great. Oh man.

Speaker 2 (01:48:52):
So Kissinger also used the transcripts he made to attack
his coworkers and reinforce his loyalty to the president. When
his colleague said something him that he knew Nixon would hate,
or when someone made a comment agreeing with Kissinger on
an issue, he would pass those notes from his secret
conversations onto the president. So he'd hand the president like
a transcript of a call he'd had with like a
thing underlined that made Kissinger look good.

Speaker 1 (01:49:14):
Oh my god. From Kissinger.

Speaker 2 (01:49:16):
A biography quote, William Safire, who dubbed the transcripts the
Dead Key Scrolls, said he once saw Kissinger altering one
to shore up a point he wanted to make to
the president. He had been chewing out a reporter from
the Christian Science Monitor for writing a story that was
unfavorable to Nixon. And doing so, he also tossed in
occasional complaints about the perfidy of Secretary Rodgers. Since he
was planning to send the transcript to the president, Sapphire

(01:49:39):
said he had taken a draft and edited it, adding
to the fierce loyalty of his own remarks, so he
would like mark it up to make him like be
more of a kiss ass kick to Nixon.

Speaker 1 (01:49:48):
I mean, fu incredible. Nixon's also like hammered. It's like,
how hard do you have to work to convince this guy?
You know what I mean? You hand him a my tie,
Like it's easy. There you go. You're my best friend.
I love you, Henry. I've never had a closer friend
than you, Hank. Look at how much of your bitch
I am.

Speaker 2 (01:50:10):
The existence of these transcripts was revealed by The Washington
Post in nineteen seventy one, but Kissinger insisted they were
just for the President's files. In reality, she used them
for as notes to write his two books that he
published after leaving power. But he was canny enough to
know they had damning information. So when he considered quitting
the Nixon administration in nineteen seventy three, he had them

(01:50:31):
all shipped to a bomb shelter at Nelson Rockefeller self.

Speaker 1 (01:50:34):
I mean, listen, just happened. I never what you just said.

Speaker 2 (01:50:41):
Every third sentence you have to write about these guys.

Speaker 1 (01:50:44):
You know, it's like Magnet Fridge poetry.

Speaker 2 (01:50:49):
Yeah, he illegally hit government files and Nelson Rockefeller's private
bomb shelter.

Speaker 1 (01:50:53):
It's just like it feels like, Rockefeller, may I use
your bomb shelter. I need to put my biography notes there,
of course, of course. And right, that's you know what
I always say, my Bob shelters yours.

Speaker 2 (01:51:08):
These these are short stories, right, yes.

Speaker 1 (01:51:11):
Sure, yeah, whatever you need to tell yourself. I need
I need them say, in case there's a nuclear war.

Speaker 2 (01:51:19):
So obviously this is very illegal. And when Kissinger decided
not to quit the administration, he had a military liaison
Cinda plane to pick them up from Rockefeller's house, and
then he hid them in a bomb shelter under the
White House. Oh, after he left him. No, there's no
rules for these people.

Speaker 1 (01:51:37):
Yeah, they're fucking notes.

Speaker 9 (01:51:39):
They don't need to survive the fucking nuclear holocaust.

Speaker 1 (01:51:42):
How great, though, if a bomb is in coming towards
the White House and they all go there and it's
just stacked with Kissinger papers. Yeah, well this guy was
a real piece of shit. This is awkward going to petish. Yeah,
he's just sitting in the corner. I don't think you
should read those.

Speaker 2 (01:52:01):
So after he left office, Kissinger donated the papers to
the Library of Congress under the restriction that they would
not be made available until he had been dead for
five years.

Speaker 1 (01:52:11):
Well he's been. He's been for five years. We should
tell the raid him now. Who makes that deal.

Speaker 2 (01:52:18):
It's not a great thing, the Library of Congress.

Speaker 1 (01:52:21):
Jesus Christ Fie. By the way, most people, most people
do like the after I die. He wants the five
year buffer, which sounds a little.

Speaker 2 (01:52:32):
He wants time for people to get things out of
the country.

Speaker 1 (01:52:34):
Yeah. Yeah, I want to make sure i'm pure bone. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:52:39):
So, Kissinger was also convinced that Nixon's chief of staff Haldeman,
had Nixon wire tapped and Nixon sorry. Kissinger was also
convinced that Nixon's chief of staff Holdman and Nixon had
wire tapped him, which they absolutely had, so Kissinger was
kind of tapping himself, but Nixon had also wire tapped Kissinger,
and when he passed Haldeman in the hall, Kissinger would say, quote,

(01:53:00):
what do your taps tell you about me? Today?

Speaker 1 (01:53:05):
It's almost remember that what was it? I don't remember
what it was on where Lily Tomlin was the one
ringy dinghy operator who keeps plugging in on it. It's
almost like that with wire taps, where you're just like
every wire is getting plugged across. Nixon's wire tapping Kissinger,
who's wire tapping himself, who's wired tapping Nixon, who's also
wire tapping Halderman, who's wire tapping Kissinger, is also wired
tapping Nixon.

Speaker 2 (01:53:25):
And that's why we know so much about not just
like the crimes they committed, but like what they were
saying in the meetings while they committed the crimes. Yeah,
because unbeknownst to Kissinger and everyone else, Nixon was also
wire tapping himself, like he recorded every conversation that he
had in the Oval office.

Speaker 1 (01:53:42):
Again is the most that that to me is like
the one of the most. I mean, it's why we
know so much, because if you are able to, like
if Trump or I mean, if any of them, I mean,
if you had the Bush tapes, like they would be
fucking incredible. But it's also that Nixon recorded himself that
was like okay, take him and everyone's like, the fuck

(01:54:04):
are you drunk? And he's like, I am, actually, I
am extremely I am so drunk.

Speaker 2 (01:54:09):
My secretary of Defense has a contingency plan and in
case I try to nuke everyone, checkers ever.

Speaker 1 (01:54:15):
Been that drunk? No one has.

Speaker 2 (01:54:20):
So this was a secret until the Watergate scandal was
really feeled at the end of nineteen seventy two. Kissinger
was warned about this that like the Watergate story was
about to break two months ahead of time, and he
was horrified by the implications, namely by the fact by
the things we've already gone over at length that he had,
like he was on tape in these records agreeing and
encouraging with Nixon's bigotry and his copious racial slurs. So, like,

(01:54:44):
Kissinger is not involved in Watergate, so he's like, I'm
not worried about that. I'm worried that everyone's gonna know that.
I was like egging Nixon's bigotry on in order to
kiss his ass.

Speaker 1 (01:54:55):
Yeah, amazing for him to be horrified, like of all
the things he's done, like for this to be like
it's it's always like the weirdest thing, but it's like
for this, for him to be like, this could really
damage my credibility.

Speaker 2 (01:55:12):
When he was asked about this later about like encouraging
Nixon's bigotry, Kissinger explained that the things he'd said to
Nixon were based on quote, the needs of the moment,
rather than to quote stand the test of deferred scrutiny,
which was a nice way of saying, I'm only racist
around racists. In one of the most impressive feats of
mental gymnastics and political history, Kissinger actually argued that his

(01:55:35):
egging Nixon on was meant to protect the American people.
Quote he was so much in need of suckor so
totally alone. Our national security depended so much on his functioning.

Speaker 1 (01:55:46):
Uh, it's called yes and okay, he was Chicago school.
It's called the Implympic pod. I mean again, to be
able to get away with that argument, it just should
start loud.

Speaker 2 (01:56:03):
Now, speaking of Nixon's functioning, it's probably time to talk
a little more about Watergate. As previously covered. In nineteen
seventy one, Nixon and his team, including Kissinger, hired a
goon squad of ex FBI and CIA agents called the Plumbers,
and asked them to investigate the leak of the Pentagon papers.
These guys broke into the office of Daniel Ellsberg, that's

(01:56:23):
the guy who leaked the Pentagon papers. He was a
Department of Defense employee. They break into the office of
his psychiatrist to try and steal records to smear him.
In nineteen seventy two, one of the Plumbers, g Gordon Lyddie,
was transferred to the Committee to re elect the President.
The acronym of this organation organization was literally creep because
satire has never happened even once, Like it's impossible, nope,

(01:56:45):
over over Lyddy's team executed a wide, raging plan to
illegally spy on the Democratic Party, which ended with them
breaking into DNC headquarters in the Watergate Building in DC
and bugging the phones of staffers. They got arrested almost immediately,
like that night they get busted, right, that's like when
this all starts. And so that's what like the fact

(01:57:06):
that this, like the Watergate scandal in public knowledge starts
is like these guys getting arrested doing a break in.
He's a crime reporter named Bob Woodward, and on the
case he was not a political journalist. He was like
a crime beat DC reporter. But he hears about this
break in and he's like, something's fucking going on here,
and he winds up making you know, contacts with a
guy who we later eventually, like decades later, learned was

(01:57:28):
the associate director of the FBI. That's deep throat, you know, famously,
this guy gives him information and the Washington Post under
Woodward and Bernstein, right, he has a partner in it too,
Like they're both doing very good journalism here. They start
dropping articles at the tail end of nineteen seventy two,
and a trial over the break in starts in nineteen
seventy three January, right after Nixon wins reelection, well Woodward

(01:57:50):
and his partner Carl Bernstein were running down leads. They
got in touch with another FBI guy and asked him, Hey,
who kept authorizing all of these wire taps? That FBI guy?
I said, well, Henry Kissinger. In a lot of cases,
it's Kissinger, he's like our main guy calling us. So
Woodward calls Henry Kissinger, who plays dumb at first and

(01:58:11):
then tries to blame Holdeman for the wire tapping. Woodward asked, Okay, well,
is it possible you were the one doing wiretapping Henry,
and Kissinger says, I don't believe it was true.

Speaker 1 (01:58:23):
What.

Speaker 2 (01:58:24):
Yeah, it's such a weasel answer. He's four years old.
Woodward asks is that a denial? And Kissinger response, I
frankly don't remember.

Speaker 10 (01:58:35):
I mean, it's kind of like it's it is kind
of like nice to see the genesis because the I
don't remember things just utilized so much now.

Speaker 1 (01:58:45):
Yeah, it's like it's like one of the first like
where you're just like, I think if I just say
I forgot, I can go the way with this shit. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:58:51):
You can imagine a young Bill Clinton reading this news
story and saying, I'm not.

Speaker 1 (01:58:55):
Sure why, but I think I'm gonna take notes on this.
I remember, but I don't remember how that came to be.
It's also it shows you, like how insulated they were
in their psychotic little dome that once they actually take
their tactics out of the real world, people like, yeah,
that's a crime, and we have you. They're like, yeah, shit,

(01:59:18):
fuck the president's drunk.

Speaker 2 (01:59:23):
So Kissinger admitted after that line of question that he
might have given the FBI the names of some people
who had access to leaked documents and quote, it's quite
possible they construed this as an authorization. So once he
makes this admission to Woodward, Henry starts to get looser
and he talks about how he figured he probably should
take responsibility for the wiretapping, and then he realized almost immediately, like,

(01:59:47):
oh shit, I fucked up. And he asks Bob Woodward,
you aren't quoting me, right, Like, he's like, this isn't
on the record, is it.

Speaker 1 (01:59:54):
That's what it works too, right, you put it on
the record, and then you're like record.

Speaker 2 (01:59:59):
Woodward says, of course, this is on the record.

Speaker 1 (02:00:01):
Like what the fuck?

Speaker 2 (02:00:02):
Like like, I never said this was off the record. Yeah,
Kissinger insisted, well, I was only speaking on background.

Speaker 1 (02:00:09):
Quote.

Speaker 2 (02:00:10):
I've tried to be honest, and now you're going to
penalize me. In five years in Washington, I've never been
trapped into talking like this. If a journalist calls you
and asks you questions. As the Secretary.

Speaker 1 (02:00:22):
Of State, you're calling us bff. Right, you just wanted
to chat, right, I thought, how are you? What times
have you committed bub Yeah, it's it's fascinating.

Speaker 2 (02:00:35):
Yeah, dumb, it's so dumb, dumb, and it shows what
fucking tame little pricks the entirety of the White House
Press Corps were, right, Yeah, because Kissinger thought he could
get away with this and he finally encountered like an
actual journalist for the ones, right, and just like thirty
seconds with Woodward and he's blown wide open and it.

Speaker 1 (02:00:56):
Does not handle it. Yeah, he's just pissing his pay cry.

Speaker 2 (02:01:01):
You know what it is if you've seen those videos
of like those fucking those tai Chi champions who are
like in those videos fighting their students where they're just
like flipping everyone around the room, throwing them and then
like they fight an actual MMA fighter who just like
takes them down in thirteen seconds.

Speaker 1 (02:01:17):
Yeah. Yeah, it's like how Segal fights where yeah, yeah
it's Stephen Judo. Yeah it is.

Speaker 2 (02:01:27):
This is this is the moment for Kissinger. That's like
when when Steven Sagall got choked out by Jean LaBelle
and shot his past. All right, okay, I'm the start
come on this could happen?

Speaker 1 (02:01:40):
Come on, no Well play fake.

Speaker 2 (02:01:42):
Next from Kissinger a biography quote. Woodward wondered what kind
of treatment Kissinger was accustomed to getting from the press.
He consulted Murray Martyr, the kindly soft edged diplomatic reporter
who covered Kissinger for The Post. Well Martin admitted Henry
was regularly allowed to put statements on background after he
had made them.

Speaker 1 (02:02:00):
I mean it really it does. And what's so frustrating
is that it's like, you know, they they've all kind
of learned from the mistakes of this time in ways
where it is it's kind of the same shit. I mean,
everything is kind of a fluff piece. You're allowed to
be in the White House Press Corps if you ask
softball questions, you know, it like this this was like

(02:02:22):
a major fuck up, and they all were like, well,
the lesson we've learned here is don't let good reporters
around you. Yeah, don't let journalists exist.

Speaker 2 (02:02:31):
Yeah, it's one of those there's so much going on here.

Speaker 1 (02:02:37):
It really is. This is like we are peaking.

Speaker 2 (02:02:39):
There are ways in which, like, there are times when
journalism does work that way. Right when I am like
sitting down and talking to like a fucking dissident or
a protester, someone who like might be targeted by the
state or by you know, fucking fascist or whatever and murdered,
and they like say something and then later are like, oh,
you know, can I take that off the record? I'm
worried that's gonna like reveal me. Yeah, of course, like
I'm not gonna lie, but like, yeah, it doesn't. It

(02:03:02):
should never work that way for cabinet level fucking government official, right,
they can't if you agree ahead of time to make
something off the record. Yeah, that that happens. That's like
a thing that occurs. Although I think that's problematic too,
But like they don't get to just take something off
the record retroactively.

Speaker 1 (02:03:19):
That's not how it works.

Speaker 9 (02:03:20):
Yeah, And I mean it's just a care about his access,
so they don't know about the actual story.

Speaker 1 (02:03:25):
They just want to talk to them again.

Speaker 2 (02:03:26):
Yeah, they want to keep getting access.

Speaker 1 (02:03:28):
It is. It's like it needs to be a group
of people need to say that this is all fun,
but instead they're like, oh, what a great cocktail party.

Speaker 2 (02:03:36):
And Woodward, to his credit, there's critiques to make about
Woodward later in his career, but to his credit is like,
I don't give a shit about access. I'm trying to
take down a president, Like I could give a fuck
write this off here, you know. Like so Nixon eventually
took the fall, as we've covered, but the issue was
brought up again in nineteen seventy three when Kissinger went

(02:03:59):
through his confirmation hearings to become Secretary of State. We
don't need to cover the politicking he did to secure
that job, but I should note all the fallout over
wiretapping in the disaster in Cambodia didn't do shit to
reduce Henry's popularity at home. In nineteen seventy two, he
had ranked fourth on the list of most admired Americans.
In nineteen seventy three, he was number one, largely because

(02:04:20):
Harry Trump had died, which is also pretty bleak. Yeah, baby,
we are, I.

Speaker 1 (02:04:29):
Mean, and that's when you're like, we deserve it. I mean,
if you are that incapable of deciphering reality from fiction
to some extent, you want to be taking advantage of Yeah, yeah,
you're the rube who opens the door to the vacuum
cleaner salesman. Yeah, well, okay, yet a shirt on my floor.
I want to see how this thing sucks. You need

(02:04:50):
my social Security number of course. Okay, a new promise,
I get five hundred thousand dollars in the mail. Okay.

Speaker 2 (02:04:57):
So one congressman that proposed a constitution amendment to allow
foreign born citizens to run for president because of like
how much he liked fucking Kissinger. I don't like Henry.
Henry received a figure at Madame Tussaud's wax Museum in London,
which quickly became the star attraction. Miss Universe pageant contestants
voted him quote the greatest person in the world today.

Speaker 1 (02:05:20):
Is it possible that we just put a heart in
the Madame Tusso's figure and melted it and that's what's
walking around now, Yeah, that's we just left it in
the sun for a week.

Speaker 9 (02:05:30):
Like you bring up the media like this is just
so like they just normalize monsters. They act like monsters
are great people. Yeah, and people don't actually hear the
fucking heinous shit that they're doing.

Speaker 1 (02:05:41):
No, and they just hear he's a smart guy. But
it's because that's what matters.

Speaker 2 (02:05:46):
That's he can like quote smart dead people that they
you haven't read, but you know they're smart because their
name sounds vaguely familiar, and so you're like, well, this
guy's read all these smart dudes. He must be a
good guy, because smart people don't do bad thing.

Speaker 1 (02:05:59):
Well, and smart people like go out with reporters, and
you know, you would just be like, look at Frankenstein
at the Playboy mansion. Gosh, he's got those bolts on
his neck and the girls love to twirl them.

Speaker 2 (02:06:11):
So it is perhaps not surprising, even though the Watergate
scandal had built to a fever pitch by seventy three,
that Henry Kissinger was a shoe in to be appointed
as Secretary of State. On the day of his first
Congressional confirmation hearings, someone in the press asked, do you
prefer to be called mister secretary or doctor secretary? He replied,
I do not stand on protocol. If you just called

(02:06:32):
me excellency, it will be okay, oh excuse me, pardon
and again, as a journalist, the proper response to that
is to throw your handheld recorder at his face, like
try to take a chair to.

Speaker 1 (02:06:48):
His nose like they did to Heraldo. You know, right, yeah,
break his face. I'm not talking up on times. If
you can just bow and call me on majesty.

Speaker 2 (02:07:00):
So Kissinger was extremely nervous going into the confirmation hearings
because again, Nixon is being torn apart for Watergate right now,
and he was expecting that he'd be interrogated about all
the shady wiretapping he'd done. But as it turned out,
all he had to do was lie and say he'd
never recommended wiretapping. Everyone decided that was fine, and he
was confirmed by Secretary of State seventy eight votes to

(02:07:21):
seventy seven.

Speaker 1 (02:07:22):
Jeez. And here's the thing.

Speaker 2 (02:07:24):
Even among the people who voted against him, there was
not always strong antipathy. George McGovern voted against confirming him,
but he called Kissinger afterwards to privately endorse him, to
be like, hey, publicly, I got to pretend I don't
like you, but like.

Speaker 1 (02:07:37):
Ooh right, bro, I don't worry. Someday I'll be the
president and I got my eye on you, Henry. Yeah.
I mean, honestly, that might have happened. Yeah, probably so.

Speaker 2 (02:07:52):
When he was sworn in on September twenty first, nineteen
seventy three, a family friend presented Kissinger with a copy
of the Old Testament that had been published in Firth
in eighteen oh one for him to be sworn in on.
Kissinger decided instead to use Nixon's copy of the King
James Bible with I just open it.

Speaker 1 (02:08:08):
It's a bottle of bourbon. Oh sorry, it's actually it's
use an Firth one.

Speaker 2 (02:08:15):
So alast for Dick Nixon, seventy four was an even
worse year for him than seventy three had been. In
July of that year, three Southern Democrats on the House
Judiciary Committee announced that they were voting to impeach him.
On August fifth, a transcript of taped conversations between him
and Haldeman was released, which proved his involvement in the
cover up of the Watergate break and proved he'd lied

(02:08:36):
under oath. This was the nail in the coffin. On
August seventh, Bury Goldwater told Nixon he would not survive
an impeachment vote. Nixon had already made the decision to leave.
He met with Jerry Ford, his vice president, and told
him that he was about to be president. He urged
Ford to keep Kissinger on as his secretary of State.
Ben Nixon made his big announcement to the American people

(02:08:57):
next from history dot com. After the speech, kissing your
accompanied Nixon to his living quarters one last time. History
is going to a called that you were a great
president kissing you're assured Nixon. Henry the President said that
will depend on who writes the history.

Speaker 1 (02:09:15):
Can you imagine a wasted Nixon showed Gerald Ford around, like, oh,
this is the vodka.

Speaker 6 (02:09:20):
Put that in your wadies in the morning. This is pineapple,
used to eat those with cottage cheese every day.

Speaker 1 (02:09:27):
Now here's a deck Nixon sacred.

Speaker 2 (02:09:28):
If you pour a little diet coke in the bourbon,
they can't tell you're getting drunk at nine in the morning.

Speaker 1 (02:09:34):
When you're confused. Just not.

Speaker 6 (02:09:37):
When you're throwing up in the toilet and say something
disagreed with you and it's diarrheal.

Speaker 2 (02:09:41):
The Secret Service agents have to let your puke down
their sleeves.

Speaker 1 (02:09:44):
That's what I've been doing. This is the vodka room.
This is the vodka room. And this is the vodka room.

Speaker 6 (02:09:52):
This draw this drawer, here's for letters and things like
steps like that, And this is the drawer you can
puke in. But just bend over and pretend you're looking
for some I'm gonna be honest, I've been shitting in
the fireplace a lot.

Speaker 2 (02:10:04):
It's hard to find the bathroom when you're turned in
the oval.

Speaker 1 (02:10:07):
Look.

Speaker 6 (02:10:07):
Look, if you're worried, just lift this cushion up. This
chair is actually a toilet with wheels such behind the
ask trying to think what else Baser laws, you can
wipe your ass with them.

Speaker 1 (02:10:23):
By the way, this is all being recorded. Everything is wait,
this chest hair is actually a tape recorder.

Speaker 2 (02:10:31):
Kissinger's sorrow over his boss stepping down was sopped somewhat
by the fact that right around the same time, he'd
succeeded in overthrowing an actual democratically elected leader, doctor salvadoran Day. Now, yeah,
we have We're not going to talk about this in
a lot of detail because we have gone into detail

(02:10:51):
on the coup against Diande in both our episodes on
The Dullest Brothers into the School of the Americas. It's
just like, not this is the thing to like cut
out of our Kissinger story because we've covered it a
lot before. But I will give an overview of Kissinger's
involvement for the listeners who maybe aren't familiar.

Speaker 1 (02:11:07):
Robert, Yeah, I know we are all on the same page,
but you're Daris or whatever.

Speaker 2 (02:11:13):
Salvadoriende was a socialist e dude who was elected in
nineteen seventy Like all kind of socialists the US overthrows,
he was not nearly as radical as they pretended he was,
but he was like solidly left wing the US back
to military coup that overthrew him in nineteen seventy three,
i Inde committed suicide and was replaced by General Augusto Pinochet,
who tortured and murdered tens of thousands of people over

(02:11:35):
the next seventeen years. So I'm going to be brief
here and I'm going to read a summary of Kissinger's
role in that kerfuffle from the Transnational Institute. Less than
a week after Nixon received the disappointing news about the
presidential vote, he decided to annul the Chilean vote. A
quote widely attributed to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger explained
to Nixon's morality, I don't see why we need to

(02:11:56):
stand by and watch a country go communist due to
the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too
important for the Chilean voters to be left it aside
for themselves.

Speaker 1 (02:12:05):
I mean, like you are, you need to be like
so far gone to be comfortable speaking in that way.

Speaker 2 (02:12:13):
Yeah, yeah, you you that's ghoulishly evil.

Speaker 1 (02:12:18):
I mean it's just like you could come up with
a version of that that would also probably sound effective,
but to basically be like, look, the people have fucked
up voting. They've they've wrongly voted. Oopsie, poopsie. Let's we can't. Well,
we'll do it for him. We'll figure out, I mean,
we'll take care of this again. United States policy pretty much,
you know, yeah, all the time, and perpetuity.

Speaker 2 (02:12:39):
Yeah, and it's it's it's good.

Speaker 1 (02:12:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:12:43):
And after the bloody coup that that Kissinger and Nixon endorsed,
Kissinger pushed to recognize Pinochet's coup government and offered economic aid.

Speaker 1 (02:12:53):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (02:12:53):
He pressured international lending organizations to lend money to the
new Chilean government. Yeah, he sucks. This is a thing
that he did. You can hear a lot more about it.
And honestly, Kissinger's was involved, but like the Doulas Brothers
were a much bigger part of this specific thing. So
check that out in our Dollst Brothers episode.

Speaker 1 (02:13:10):
All this with Raquel Welch on his arm, Jill Saint
John I love the way you.

Speaker 2 (02:13:18):
Actually the woman he does marry, Nancy McGinnis, who is
also a fairly prominent person, is a huge fan of
the overthrowing of the Chilean government. Henry, his wife is
like more hardcore right wingman.

Speaker 1 (02:13:29):
He has come to bed.

Speaker 2 (02:13:32):
Tell me about how you ignored the will of the
Chilean voters, Henry. Oh, yeah, So I don't know much
about the working relationship Henry had with Jerry Ford, honestly,
Like they didn't spend a lot of time together. We're
not going to delve super deep into it. There were
like too much to talk about. Still, there is one
thing I want to note about his relationship with with

(02:13:54):
kiss with Nixon, Like, for the first several years that
he's working with Nixon, He's desperate to go to Camp David.
Any time the President invites him, He's excited to go.
But then when the Watergate thing is going on and
Nixon feels isolated and alone, Kissinger spends like the whole
Watergate hearing time jetting around the Middle East and stuff
doing diplomacy, and Nixon begs him like.

Speaker 1 (02:14:13):
Do you want to come hang out at Camp David
with me?

Speaker 2 (02:14:15):
And Henry's like, oh, buddy, I'd love to, but you know,
sounds so I just got so much worse.

Speaker 1 (02:14:21):
I'm swamped over here with stuff. You know, it's like
such a wirmund gosh.

Speaker 2 (02:14:27):
It's amazing that there's a moment at this where you're like, oh, man, Dick,
he did you dirty?

Speaker 1 (02:14:32):
Yeah, that's not Yeah, you're such a friend to him,
a little bit of sympathy for n Do you want
to come to summer camp David with me? I can't.
I could really use a friend. I broke my arm.
I can't get any medic budgets or anything this summer.
My mom said, so.

Speaker 2 (02:14:48):
Oh man, it's amazing. So yeah, there's so much to
talk about. I will tell you. I will note that
one of the first things that Henry did as Secretary
of State for President Ford was to deliberately enable another genocide,
which put him just one genocide away from earning a
free coffee at the Pentagon Starbucks.

Speaker 1 (02:15:07):
Oh my gosh, he's close. He's close. He's close.

Speaker 2 (02:15:12):
We're going to talk about that, but you know, we
got to talk about right now products and services that
support this podcast. Finally, he including Starbucks, commit five genocides,
and Starbucks will fund to six if it reduces the
price of coffee.

Speaker 1 (02:15:27):
Bee make sure as a venti. Oh, we're back. So.

Speaker 2 (02:15:36):
In nineteen sixty nine, the US conspired with the Indonesian
dictator Suharto to encourage the illegal annexation of West Papa
through what was called the Act of Free Choice. This
was a shameless propaganda exercise which allowed the United States
to pretend democracy. Rah rah rai, you get the idea.
Behind the scenes support by the US at the u
WIN allowed Suharto to solidify his control on West Papa.

(02:15:57):
This led to four decades of geniside policies which have
killed huge numbers of the Popuin population. Six years later,
Suharto had another fun idea. East Timor was nearby and
near the end of a twenty seven year long process
of being decolonized by Portugal. Having just been ruled pretty
brutally in the name of capital, you'll be surprised to
hear that the East Timorese people were somewhat sympathetic towards socialism.

(02:16:21):
The leftist Friedland Freight Fretilan Fredolin Party began to gain
ground as freedom grew near In nineteen seventy five, it
had a brief civil war with the much smaller right
wing Pro Indonesian Party. This freaked out Portugal, who pulled
their last people out of the country during the fighting.
Seeing the territory abandoned, General Suharto felt he had an opportunity.

(02:16:43):
He and others in the Indonesian military began to complain
to the Americans that East Timor might be used as
a base for dastardly communists to inspire secessionist movements in Indonesia.

Speaker 1 (02:16:54):
Over in it's just like, you know, East Timor seems
like it's going to be really bad. Oh, we gotta
tell them, we gotta get rid of them.

Speaker 2 (02:17:03):
I'm like the side of this. Over in East Timor. Fritlin,
the Socialist de Party recognized the fact that they were
in danger. They had their oh we're in danger moment,
and they declared their independence on November twenty eighth, nineteen
seventy five, so they could ask for help from the
United Nations. Everyone ignored them. Japan, a major investor in Indonesia,
twiddled her thumbs. Australia looked away. This left the United

(02:17:25):
States as the only power that could potentially stop Indonesia
from invading more.

Speaker 1 (02:17:30):
Do we do it?

Speaker 2 (02:17:31):
Yeah, we did it. Everything's good. Now they're doing great.
They're flying cars.

Speaker 1 (02:17:38):
Yeah. How many times do we have to be the heroes? Yeah?
Another job well done for the United States.

Speaker 2 (02:17:47):
On December sixth, nineteen seventy five, on the eve of
the planned invasion, Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger flew to
Jakarta to meet with Suharto. The very next day, Indonesian land,
Air and Naval Force is invaded. The timing is predominant,
predominant enough that people have debated ever since whether or
not Kissinger and Ford gave Suharto the green light here too,
from a rite up in the nation. Kissinger, who does

(02:18:09):
not find room to mention East timor even in the
index of his three volume memoir, has more than once
stated that the invasion came to him as a surprise
and that he barely knew of the existence of the
timeorees question. He was obviously lying, but the breathtaking extent
of his mendacity has only just become fully apparent with
the declassification of a secret State Department telegram. The document,
which has been made public by the National Security Archive

(02:18:31):
at George Washington University, contains a verbatim record of the
conversation among Suharto, Ford, and Kissinger. We want your understanding
if we deem it necessary to take rapid or drastic action,
Suharto opened bluntly, We will understand and will not press
you on the issue. Ford responded, we understand the problem
you have and the intentions you have. Kissinger was even
more emphatic, but had an awareness of the possible spin

(02:18:53):
problems back home. It is important that whatever you do
succeeds quickly, he instructed the despot. We would be able
to influence the reaction if whatever happens happens after we return.
If you have made plans, we will do our best
to keep everyone quiet until the president returns home. Micromanaging
things for Suharto, he added, the president will be back
on Monday at two pm Jakarta time. We understand your

(02:19:15):
problem and they need to move quickly, but I am
only saying it would be better if we're done after
we returned.

Speaker 1 (02:19:20):
Worst case scenario, I'll just say I never said this,
and nobody will ever have a Trenscoo said anything. I
mean to be scheduling it like a yeah, like a
golf day.

Speaker 2 (02:19:30):
Can you crack down on the independence and freedom of
these people and engage in a gena sudtle war like
once we're back, there's.

Speaker 1 (02:19:36):
A lot that went on. Three or like four on
Monday would be great, Tuesday would be unbelievable. Tuesday would
like that's a lot of time. Yeah, I thought it
was a Workout's right. Yeah, there's a lot of US
fuckery in fucking Indonesia. Sorry, I'm not going to hear this, gentlemen.
That's enough of that talk place the greatest country on Earth.

Speaker 2 (02:19:58):
You do have that, and Indonesia and the United States shaking
hands over a burning East timor tattoo over your heart.

Speaker 1 (02:20:05):
Well, I would hate for that that speculation, and please
cut that out, Sophy. Can we make a note that
that should not be included in the episode. It seems
a little incriminating.

Speaker 2 (02:20:16):
So Suharto's troops when they invaded east to More, which
they did, we're equipped with the finest US made weaponry.
Under the Foreign Assistance Act, such material could only be
provided to nations who would use it exclusively for self defense.
When this was brought up to Suharto, and when this
was brought up to Kissinger, and he was asked whether
or not selling arms to Suharto had violated the act,
Kissinger responded, it depends on how we construe it, whether

(02:20:39):
it is in self defense or it is a foreign operation.
Back in DC on December eighteenth and a meeting his
minutes are now to classified, Kissinger admitted that he knew
that he and the United States we're violating the statute
from the nation. And even more sinister note was struck
later in the conversation, when Kissinger asked Suharto if he
expected a long guerrilla war. The dictator replied that there

(02:21:01):
will probably be a small guerrilla war, while making no
promise about its duration. Bear in mind that Kissinger has
already urged speech and dispatch urged speed and dispatch upon Suharto.
Adam Mallik, Indonesia's Prime minister at the time, later conceded
in public that between fifty thousand and eighty thousand Timorary
civilians were killed in the first eighteen months of the occupation.
These civilians were killed with American weapons, which Kissinger contrived

(02:21:24):
to supply over congressional protests, and their murders were covered
up by American diplomacy.

Speaker 1 (02:21:28):
Sough, I mean we did it again. We did it again. Gus.
It really it really is like it's it's like a
like a serial killer who just gets very comfortable with killing,
gets kind of cocky about it, starts leaving clues. But
in this case, there's no cops chasing anyone. There's nobody

(02:21:48):
who's really trying to solve the case. It's like if
the UNI bomber left his name on every package. Yeah,
and that was like, this is okay a return address, yeah.
Kazinski Shack nine.

Speaker 2 (02:22:03):
Roughly three hundred thousand East Timmerise civilians, roughly half the population,
were forced out of their homes and into camps during
the fighting. By nineteen eighty, the death toll was at
least one hundred thousand, and possibly as high as two.

Speaker 1 (02:22:15):
Hundred thirty thousand.

Speaker 2 (02:22:16):
Thomas Meanie, writing in The New Yorker, has tried to
make sense of this all. Kissinger's sign off on the
Indonesian President Suharto's genocidal campaign in East Timor was meant
to signal that America would unquestioningly reward those who had
decimated communists within their reach. In retrospect, the notion that
everything America did would be duly registered and responded to
by its opponents and friends seems like an expression of

(02:22:39):
geopolitical narcissism. At the time, the thirty three year old
Senator Joe Biden accused Kissinger at a Senate hearing of
trying to promulgate a global Monroe doctrine. The Kissinger is
that guide to where repeatedly terrible people will be like, well,
you're in the right here, but only because you're talking
about Henry Kissinger.

Speaker 1 (02:22:58):
Yeah right, yeah, He's like, yeah, it's like.

Speaker 2 (02:23:01):
In the next episode, we're gonna have a moment where
the CIA is a voice of reason to give you
an idea.

Speaker 1 (02:23:06):
Of with six and how many people have to be
the voice of reason. I mean, it just is like
he's like cocky. I mean, it's just they just no
shit's given at this point to have no I mean,
it's not like he's had a soul throughout all of this.
But you would think that once you have a soul
for such a long period of time, you would start

(02:23:27):
to notice the absence of a soul and at least
start to act like you had a soul.

Speaker 2 (02:23:31):
Well, good news, Gareth, nothing like that ever happens. Oh
fucking great.

Speaker 1 (02:23:38):
Yeah we are.

Speaker 2 (02:23:38):
We're gonna have fun in episode six. But you know,
now it's time to just chill out, you know, have
a drink of just a nice sip of the blood
of I don't know, East Timmeri's dissonance, and uh go
watch the Theronose documentary. Yeah, Henry Kissinger get cooked by fucking.

Speaker 1 (02:24:01):
I mean yeah, you need only only like I forget
who said it, but that's true. That's our hero. She's
our hero Niko who was like, hey, yeah you can,
we can do this with your blood at Walgreens because
she got Henry Kissinger involved. And I mean just's he's
not It's not like he's not a genius. There's just

(02:24:22):
not a lot of genius. It takes to just be
awful and indiscriminate. Yeah, he's just like he's networker of
all time.

Speaker 2 (02:24:30):
Yeah, and here's the thing. Episode six, we're going to
talk about his political downfall because he does get his comeuppance,
but it's from people who suck maybe even worse at
least as bad as he does, and so there's no
satisfaction in it.

Speaker 1 (02:24:47):
Like and he's also it's also it's like.

Speaker 2 (02:24:49):
Hitler had gotten assassinated by Hitler two, who had been
like expanded.

Speaker 1 (02:24:54):
And it's also by people who are like they're there
because of him, Like they like he had to walk
so they could.

Speaker 2 (02:25:01):
Yes, yes, exactly, Yes, there's someone needs to paint a
picture of like Henry Kissinger kind of on the bow
of the Titanic holding up Dick Cheney with.

Speaker 1 (02:25:10):
Our arms right red white. Oh that feels nice, that
feels real nice, Henry, you are so you love your form?

Speaker 2 (02:25:18):
Let me paint you Kissinger walked so that Donald Rumps
felt could stagger. Yes, Oh, but that's gonna be part
six till then, Dave what Gareth.

Speaker 1 (02:25:34):
I want to drink? Like Nixon? We uh again, look
at what capitalism gets U.

Speaker 13 (02:25:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:25:44):
We we will be invading the shores of Australia searching
for their WMDs, which we believe in north, South, East
and West. You can go to dolloppodcast dot com and uh,
I'll be also doing stand up over there, and you
can go to Gareth Reynolds dot com for those stand
up dates. And we're also touring America this summer. Sorry,
we're touring the best country on Earth this summer, and

(02:26:06):
you can go to Dollar podcast dot com for all
that information.

Speaker 2 (02:26:09):
Now I should note here y'all that that you guys
have an ongoing, uh an ongoing argument over over whether
or not Gere is an appropriate nickname for you. Gareth,
and I felt like maybe we could bring in a
negotiator to help us, to help us deal with this question.
So I'd like to introduce to the Paul doctor Henry Kissings.

Speaker 1 (02:26:27):
Oh my god, I'm sorry, I said. I think gets great.
I do look like a gooty a little bit.

Speaker 2 (02:26:38):
He's got his nice shorts on.

Speaker 1 (02:26:41):
He's got those nut huggers. You can see the outline.
You can see the whole bread basket looks like a
baby bird than the nest. No, but it comes a python.
When the water starts. They should call me shout once
the bombs hit the soil. I lived babies. I really

(02:27:02):
hope people stop listening, so desperately I stopped listening and
I'm talking.

Speaker 2 (02:27:10):
All right, everybody, all right, We'll see you on Thursday.

Speaker 1 (02:27:19):
So this is episode six.

Speaker 2 (02:27:20):
You know, we're what eight hours into talking about mister Kissinger.

Speaker 1 (02:27:25):
Yeah, we really meet me from eight hours ago. Buddy.
It's like when Bill and Ted meet each other halfway
through and they know another journey they're about to go upon. Yeah, buddy,
backle up.

Speaker 2 (02:27:36):
So the things, the thing that Kissinger gets the most
credit for that we haven't mentioned. We've talked about a
bunch of the things that he gets credit for is
bringing peace to the Middle East. He does get credit
for being that guy. Obviously he did not do that,
but he did play a significant role in stopping what
had been a decades long cycle of wars between Israel
and the Arab nations around it. Now, to call that

(02:27:58):
bringing peace would be ignored ing a tremendous amount of
ongoing violence against the Palestinian people. But Kissinger did help
ensure like you know how, they were all these different
like everyone would invade, YadA, YadA, YadA, there'd be a
bunch of fighting. That doesn't really happen anymore. And Kissinger
is part of why that doesn't happen anymore. Okay, The
gist of it is that on October sixth, nineteen seventy three,
on Yam Kapor, Egypt and Syria launched a coordinated assault

(02:28:22):
on Israel that for a time threatened the state's very existence.
Kissinger had not spent much of his time working on
Mid East related stuff up to this point. This was
partly because Nixon thought having a Jewish man negotiate with
Arab countries would be a bad idea. It was also
because Kissinger was kind of buried in Vietnam stuff.

Speaker 1 (02:28:40):
Right.

Speaker 2 (02:28:40):
But by October of seventy three, negotiations with Hanoi had
been concluded, US forces had stepped back from an active role,
and Kissinger had been awarded a Nobel Peace Prize with
his Vietnamese counterpart Lee duc To.

Speaker 1 (02:28:53):
Yes, absolutely, now, I can't. There's no counter argument. Absolutely no,
he nailed it. I mean, now the Nobel Peace Prize
really doesn't. I mean, they must hit sometimes. I'm just
familiar with a lot of the nose, though.

Speaker 2 (02:29:07):
It seems mostly to be missus in my experience.

Speaker 1 (02:29:10):
When he got that, that's called the no. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:29:15):
And you know who felt that way, Gareth Lee duc Toe,
who was also awarded the Noble Kissinger.

Speaker 1 (02:29:21):
I don't want mine. I don't want mine. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:29:24):
He literally was like, no, I'm not going to take it.
The war isn't over yet. Like all he's done. All
we've done is negotiate the US no longer murdering people
on the scale they had been.

Speaker 1 (02:29:34):
And he's in charge of it.

Speaker 2 (02:29:36):
Yeah, And specifically he was angry because right before the
armistice was signed, in order to try and force Hanoi
to agree on some points, Kissinger orchestrated a massive nighttime
bombing campaign on Christmas of Hanoi. They didn't bomb on
Christmas Day, just the day before and a bunch of
the days after, but it gets called the Christmas bombing.

Speaker 1 (02:29:55):
We'll hit sa jolly blood on my hands.

Speaker 2 (02:30:04):
So Lee Docta was like, I don't. I'm not going
to take it Award for Peace with this guy.

Speaker 1 (02:30:10):
Fuck him.

Speaker 2 (02:30:11):
So Kissinger accepted it alone. Oh my god, he's such
a cool dear. He's such a cool dear. Wow, more
credit for me.

Speaker 1 (02:30:23):
I can't believe I'm the only one who got it
this year. I must be really good at this stuff.

Speaker 2 (02:30:29):
So yeah, he's like the Kanye of the Nobel Peace Price.

Speaker 1 (02:30:33):
Yeah right, right right, Sorry, you did great, But Kissinger
had the best war of all time, of all time.

Speaker 2 (02:30:41):
It would have been really funny if Henry Kissinger had
like shoved Taylor Swift off stage.

Speaker 1 (02:30:47):
You had a great war, you did great with peace,
but come on, you're talking about the kid baby.

Speaker 2 (02:30:54):
So by October of seventy three, Kissinger is free and clear,
and ready to get it on in the Middle East,
and this actually went better than you might think. Weirdly enough,
Henry Kissinger was probably one of the fairest negotiators the
United States ever sent into that conflict. In fact, he
was more or less in constant tension with Israel because

(02:31:15):
he would do stuff like try to halt arms shipments there,
like during the amkipor war. Right Israel's on a backfoot,
They're in real danger of being overrun. They want US
weapons and like US arms and a bunch more F
four Phantom planes, and Nixon agrees to give them to him.
But Kissinger's like, we're not giving them anything until they
can arrange for commercial flights to ship the weapons to them,

(02:31:35):
because I don't want I'm trying to negotiate with Syria
and Egypt, and if they see US military aircraft landing
in Jerusalem to give the Israelis weapons, that's going to
fuck up my negotiations. So like, he's actually really unpopular
with a lot of folks in Israel because he does
stuff like this. And in fact, Kissingers and obviously, like
every US negotiator in this conflict, Kissinger is more on

(02:31:58):
israel side than anyone, but it's probably fair to say
he's less on israel side than any other negotiator we
ever put in there, which is like some weird fascinating.

Speaker 1 (02:32:07):
Yeah, sounds like he's the most progressive because I mean,
like obviously we have we could give a fuck now.
You know, he's not a Zionist. For one thing.

Speaker 2 (02:32:14):
He doesn't have like there's not a you know, he's Jewish,
but he's not really that.

Speaker 1 (02:32:18):
Like there there is some.

Speaker 2 (02:32:19):
Amount of, like as a Holocaust survivor, he believes strongly that,
like you know, Israel needs to exist, so he does
have that going for him. Again, he eventually agrees to
ship them weapons on US planes after it becomes enough
of an issue.

Speaker 1 (02:32:31):
But he like still is that moment of principles. The
fact that there's like any of that at all is weird. Yeah,
he probably had like a little Nixon on his shoulder,
who was like, I know, you're just gonna be a
jew about them. He was like, no, I will not
devil Nixon.

Speaker 2 (02:32:46):
It's weird how plugged in you are to how Nixon
reacts to everything exactly what the president.

Speaker 1 (02:32:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:32:57):
Oh man, So Kissinger's best relationship in the Middle East
wound up being with anwar sadat the president of Egypt.
The two were legitimately good buddies. They would kiss each
other on the cheek like they liked each other. Yeah. Meanwhile,
Kissinger and gold in my Ear, which was the leader

(02:33:19):
of Israel, had a really contentious relationship. At the end
of the day, Kissinger again would always side with Israel
on existential issues, but he wound up giving them a
lot more shit than you might expect.

Speaker 1 (02:33:30):
Now.

Speaker 2 (02:33:30):
The fact that the US eventually sends in arms turns
the war around for Israel, which allows their forces to
deal decisive blows to Egyptian and Syrian militaries. But once
Israel was out of kind of the period of most
risk for them as a state, Kissinger starts to push
back on them even harder. He's particularly enraged at the
fact that they kept attacking while he was trying to

(02:33:51):
negotiate a ceasefire. And again, his main concern here this
is not because he just wants to stop the blood letting.
It's really important to him to negotiate a piece and
it be seen as Henry Kissinger brought peace to the
the least, So he's pissed that they're fucking over his negotiations,
and he cares more about his reputation than he does
about Israeli military success.

Speaker 1 (02:34:09):
I'm forgetting about the people of Kissinger.

Speaker 2 (02:34:11):
Yes, exactly, the real chosen people. So when Israeli forces
surround the Egyptian Third Army and encircle at violating a ceasefire,
Kissinger is livid, and he's particularly angry. We're not getting
as much into this aspect of his beliefs, but his
whole thing in this period, the reason he organ like

(02:34:31):
as we talk about in our China episode, this like
three way diplomacy thing that he deals with China and
the Soviet Union. He wants what's called a balance of power.
That's his whole Thing's he gets a he's a big
cold warrior. Obviously he overthrows a lot of communist governments,
but he's not one of these people who thinks we
can eliminate communism. Instead, he really wants like this balance

(02:34:52):
of power, and he wants a balance of power in
the Middle East between Israel and her neighbors too. And
he's livid about in part that they violated the ceasefire,
but he also worried that like well, if the Israelis
wipe out the Egyptian third Army, that's going to mean
Egypt is humiliated. And if they're humiliated, Sadat can't actually
make peace and there's going to be another war. And
I want to try and stop the next war, which now, yeah,

(02:35:15):
we're so good fruit but he is like broadly on
the right side of this.

Speaker 1 (02:35:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:35:21):
Over the course of several chaotic days, he makes numerous
trips between each of the belligerent nations and this war,
negotiating with their heads of state, and one of his
primary tactics is to mock whoever he'd just been talking
to when he's in front of the next person, so like.

Speaker 1 (02:35:36):
He is that guy, yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:35:40):
When he's so when he's dealing with hafes asad Or
and war, Saddat this means talking shit about the Israelis
and often Jewish people in general to get on their
good side. So when Israel violates that ceasefire, he has
heard to complain in a meeting quote, if it were
not for the accident of my birth, I would be
anti Semitic.

Speaker 1 (02:35:58):
Oh my god. Wow.

Speaker 2 (02:36:07):
On another occasion, he says, quote, and I need to
remind you this is a Holocaust survivor saying this, boy,
any people who have been persecuted for two thousand years
must be doing something wrong.

Speaker 1 (02:36:21):
Oh Jesus Christ, he fucking said that. Wow, Holy shit, man,
are just we are just such fucking assholes. This is
I'm on fine, I'm just lifting right now. This is
so good. Someone writers down, I'm wire tapping myself.

Speaker 2 (02:36:39):
He kills at the clubs in Damascus.

Speaker 1 (02:36:43):
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 2 (02:36:44):
And yeah, he is actually like really popular with a
not all because there are other We have quotes from
other people who are like particularly other Egyptian military leaders
under Saddat, who are like, well, Saddat's fallen for it.
He's obviously just saying whatever he thinks will make us
like him, like he doesn't. Clearly he can't believe this shit.
He's just trying to, Like, there are people who see
through it, but he he's able to trick the folks

(02:37:05):
who matter, which is in this case are Sadat and Hafez. Right,
So all that aside, this period is again broadly speaking,
the one where Kissinger does the most actual good. But
it's worth noting that even when he's on the right
side of things, I think negotiating an end to a
war is generally the right thing to do when they're
the war. But even when he's on the right side

(02:37:27):
of things, his ego plays a massive and often toxic
role in how everything shakes out. See, while all this
is going on, Nixon is barreling towards impeachment, and a
big part of why he's constantly over there, Like while
all of the big milestones in the Watergate case hit,
like when Nixon is like ordering the cover up and
shit and doing the things that will get him impeached,
Kissinger is always away, Like he's like very studiously as

(02:37:50):
soon as the story breaks, like, I need to be
overseas as much as fucking possible.

Speaker 1 (02:37:54):
So is it possible. He's competently trying to negotiate Middle
East piece because he's trying to save his own ass
and doesn't want.

Speaker 2 (02:38:01):
Yeah, that is literally what's going on. Because he's he's
not a dumb man. He sees that Nixon is fucked, so.

Speaker 1 (02:38:07):
He doesn't He's like, well, I can just be doing nothing, yes,
And why don't I actually try to make this work?
I guess I'm gonna trouble domestically.

Speaker 2 (02:38:15):
I mean that's it, Like he wants to because part
of it is he doesn't want to be near Nixon
because Nixon's toxic, and part of it is like, well,
if the last thing everyone remembers about Henry Weill Nixon
is going down is that he ended war in the
Middle East, I'm going to keep being Secretary of State.

Speaker 1 (02:38:28):
You know. There's a friend of mine who had this
theory when he was like he said when he or
it might even be a bit I don't remember. Like
when he's in like a ride share, he won't talk,
and then the last two minutes he'll just take great interest.
So he leaves on a real high note, and so
it's like he's kind of like distant and not really
doing much. And then the last two minutes it'll be like,

(02:38:48):
oh that sounds great, well, good luck with your family.
And then so that's kind of like he's just trying
to leave, like, yeah, leave on a high note. So
the last thing he's going to try to do is
actually decent. After a bunch of bullshit.

Speaker 2 (02:38:59):
Yeah, when I when I enter a party, I set
off an ied at the start of it, so everyone's
really like shaken up, but then at the end I
handle it A six pack of beer, and right, that
means everybody is like, you know, that.

Speaker 1 (02:39:11):
Was the guy who dropped the idea. Oh, come on,
he's the six pack guy. In my opinion, that's who
that guy is.

Speaker 2 (02:39:17):
That is how Henry kissing your handles everything. So yeah,
now again. But here's the thing. The fact that like
this is all existential for Henry right, ending the war
in between Israel and her neighbors is like he knows
he has to do this or he's not going to
keep his gig. So not only is he trying to

(02:39:37):
negotiate peace, but he can't let anyone else play a
role in bringing peace to the Middle East, right, because
this is how this is his job interview. And you
know how Henry kissing your treats job. You've seen what
he'll do for a job, interview, Right, He won't do
to get a job.

Speaker 1 (02:39:52):
I'd like to see that.

Speaker 2 (02:39:55):
So this becomes a problem when while this is all
going on, this Egyptian in his race general, You've got
this massive encircled Egyptian army, the Egyptian general in charge
of that in the Israeli general like meet each other
in the field between their armies and like sit down
and start negotiating a ceasefire and figuring out how to
pull like they start like talk like people like it's
one of these weird moments in military history with these

(02:40:17):
guys are like, I think we can work something out,
Like we don't need to be doing this anymore.

Speaker 1 (02:40:21):
Running, God, you guys been quiet? Shut up, shoot a bit,
kill them quick.

Speaker 2 (02:40:30):
So Henry is enraged when he hears this happening, and
he's stick.

Speaker 1 (02:40:38):
And he starts again.

Speaker 2 (02:40:39):
All these people, who, like in any other situation, neither
like an Israeli general or an Egyptian general in the
nineteen seventies, not guys you would expect to be the
voices of reason. But because Kissinger's in the story, yeah,
oh my god. So he starts maneuvering to make these
guys shut the fuck up. He sends a letter to

(02:41:00):
the Israeli ambassador asking what is Jarev Yariv's the Israeli
general selling here? Tell him to stop. Suppose Jaiv comes
out a great hero on disengagement. What do you discuss
on December eighteenth, which is the next round of negotiations.

Speaker 10 (02:41:13):
Well, I mean, god, he's such yeah, I mean, it's
just what a heinous asshole I mean, I feel like
he could still tilt the credit towards him, but he's
like I loved my finger, Prince Solio.

Speaker 2 (02:41:26):
Yes, I don't want to like get too into like
what might have happened, because I'm not an expert on
either Egyptian or Israeli military history. But you have to think,
maybe it would have been good if like an Israeli
general and an Egyptian general had like brought peace to
the conflict, and like maybe that had like been part
of like the military legacy in the area might have
been nice.

Speaker 1 (02:41:44):
I don't know, you realize we're staring down the battle
of a tragedy right now. I'm might not.

Speaker 2 (02:41:51):
Recognized as the one so Kissinger. A biography continues the
story quote a Kissinger's test. Both Saddat and my ear
reigned in their generals at the kilometer one oh one talks.
That's like where this army is encircled the Israeli ambassador.
Although a Kissinger partisan felt that it was largely a
matter of ego, Kissinger's view was that if any concessions

(02:42:12):
were to be made, they should be made by him.
In It's recalled, he was very upset when he found
out that things were actually being settled by the generals
at kilometer one on one. We had to make them stop.
Ego was a weakness of his, but it was also
the source of his greatness, which.

Speaker 1 (02:42:26):
I might quit with a weakness is understating, yes, I
would you call it a strike? Can we can we
kill both generals? And if we're they need to find
the generals. These guys are getting a long way too well.
And I didn't that wasn't there.

Speaker 2 (02:42:42):
Listen, Dick, I know the Watergate stuff has you, but
can we invade both countries?

Speaker 1 (02:42:47):
For sure? Complain camp.

Speaker 2 (02:42:53):
So to his sort of credit, though, the piece that
Henry helped negotiate to end the am Kipper War would
prove to be durable, and it's set up diplomatic relations
between Egypt and Israel for the next time. There's this
very powerful moment when like gold of my ear because
like Sadak still can't talk directly to Israel. There's a
whole like diplomatic thing going on, right. But he tells

(02:43:14):
Kissinger to tell her like I'm taking off my military
uniform and I'm never going to wear it again, basically
like things do, Like this is a really like good move.
In a lot of ways. Obviously that you could say
this also like paves the way for nobody ever coming
to help the Palestinians again, which is worth noting. But
it does bring an into this series of like constant wars.

Speaker 1 (02:43:36):
So, yeah, what an amazing risk to take though to me, Yeah,
you guys stop, We'll do my version. We gotta do
it my way. Yeah, the Frank Sinatra of Middle East
peace negotiations.

Speaker 2 (02:43:49):
That is kind of the reputation he gets because obviously
this plays incredibly well for Americans, and so Ni Kissinger
is seen as still this like massive hero even Wow,
this is a big part of what he's so popular,
even as the rest of the ed Men goes down
into flames. Now, this inaugurates a period of what comes
to be known as Shuttle diplomacy. That's a term you'll
hear associated with Kissinger all the time, and it's him

(02:44:12):
flying all these different countries in the Middle East and
in Africa, him flying from like capital to capital for
weeks on end, doing these negotiations where he's always the
man in the center of things. Henry actually kind of
grew addicted to throwing himself in the middle of international
crises and flying NonStop between capitals to do these negotiations.
It was this, and the popularity he earned from being

(02:44:33):
seen as a peacemaker that guaranteed him to keep his
job in Ford's cabinet. One of the few upsides to
Kissinger's career prior to the seventies is that he hadn't
really fucked with Africa to any appreciable degree. Now this
is not because Henry Kissinger would have an issue with
fucking with Africa, but it is because the US, like,
we didn't have a huge footprint in the continent until
the sixties.

Speaker 1 (02:44:53):
You know, that's just not there's so much, so many
countries to ruin. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:45:01):
Yeah, this is like him learning Spanish. He just never
found the time.

Speaker 1 (02:45:04):
Yeah, I look, anyone, I'm a little older, and I
get the times. I can rule it, my god.

Speaker 2 (02:45:11):
So yeah, the US footprint in Africa started up when
the CI in like the early sixties. I think when
the CIA murdered or allowed other people to murder.

Speaker 1 (02:45:20):
It's a little unclear.

Speaker 2 (02:45:21):
Patries Lamumba, the left wing democratically elected leader of the Congo.
The US backed a right wing general well, even calling
over like right and left or less useful terms in
this but we back a general called Joseph Mbutu who
proceeded to spend the next couple decades robbing the country blind.

Speaker 1 (02:45:37):
It seems like a pattern.

Speaker 2 (02:45:39):
Yeah, it happened. It's weird that it keeps happening all
the time. While there was other US fuckery in Africa
throughout the sixties and early seventies, it stayed a fairly
low EBB until April of nineteen seventy five, when Saigon
fell to North Vietnam now known as just Vietnam. Nineteen
seventy five was known by some in the media as
the Year of an intelligence not because any particularly good

(02:46:02):
decisions were being made, but because Congress was investigating the
presidency over Watergate, and there was this big flood of
public questions about clandestine foreign actions carried out under the
ages of Cold War politics. A lot of the stuff
we were talking about in episodes like two, three, and
four had started to leak by this point, and so
people are like, there's this big national discussion about like
what the what should we be doing? All the should

(02:46:24):
we have like a CIA like should we maybe? And
there are like the CIA gets like there's a reforming
of the CIA that occurs in this area. You can, Yeah,
you can question the degree to which it mattered. Yeah,
it may have made them less good at doing the
bad things that they did, but not for lack of
Try hard to imagine it's the reform in the CIA.

(02:46:48):
Is the difference between overthrowing Salvador I NDE and those
like us guys pissing themselves in Venezuela after getting like
arrested by fishermen. For Henry Kissinger, though, the Year of
Intelligence was a year where he spent trying to reorient
in the United States towards a new anti communist conflict.

(02:47:10):
His target this time was the nation of Angola.

Speaker 1 (02:47:14):
Now.

Speaker 2 (02:47:14):
Angola is a mid sized African nation located on the
southwest coast of the continent, directly under the Congo and
directly above Namibia. It's close enough to South Africa to
get fucked with, but not so close that they can
just send troops right over the border. You know, which
is a better place to be than directly bordering South
Africa in this period. In nineteen sixty one, the people

(02:47:34):
there decided to have themselves a good old fashioned war
of independence, which lasted thirteen years, killed tens of thousands
of people and only ended when a coup overthrew the
dictator of Portugal. Now this coup was, by the way,
very weird. Most sources will describe it as a left
wing coup against the dictator. The reality is a lot
more muddled. The guy who winds up in charge of
Portugal on paper is a monocle wearing general who's like real,

(02:47:59):
I love him, yeah yeah, and he's not really leftist,
but the powers behind him are some very left wing
army officers. They form a new democratic government which includes
several elected communist leaders. So Portugal has like elected communist deputies.

Speaker 1 (02:48:16):
Now okay. Henry Kissinger flips.

Speaker 2 (02:48:18):
The fuck out at this. He is certain the country
will fall to Soviet influence. Interestingly, like this daytant He's
worked at with the Soviet. It's a big part of
it is this idea that like, well, the Soviets have
their sphere of influence in the East, and we have,
like the West has its sphere of influence in Western Europe,
and the Soviets kind of hold to that here because
they don't get involved in Portugal. They don't like try

(02:48:40):
to make push things further in their direction. Henry is
like convinced they're going to and is absolutely wrong.

Speaker 1 (02:48:46):
Because paranoia from Nixon.

Speaker 2 (02:48:48):
He was like, well, yeah, yeah, Portugal eventually elects other people,
like again the government stays fairly left wing by his standards,
but like it does not, as you might notice, it
does not join the Iron Curtain.

Speaker 1 (02:49:00):
Yeah right, it's yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:49:02):
Kissinger is just like, there's we have some quotes from
He's absolutely certain that like they're about to go full Stalinist,
because again he's wrong about most things. Actually, he does
not have a good understanding of like what's going to
happen anywhere.

Speaker 1 (02:49:14):
No, it's just almost at this point he's hung around
so long that you're kind of just like, I guess
he must. I mean you want to know about He's
probably like You're like, he must know something.

Speaker 2 (02:49:24):
You I think it's worth looking at, like what happens,
like Henry's expectations for what's going to happen in Portugal
versus what happens. And then think back to Chile, where
like Henry's like Aundo is going to lead to they're
going to go full communist and it's going to be
you know, no, maybe if had stayed in power there
just wouldn't have been a dictator and things would have
been fine, and and they would have had a lot
less problems than.

Speaker 1 (02:49:44):
They But see the communist version on how many people
die in the communist version, Yeah, probably less. The puppets
that we put in power are not like these amazing
like peacekeepers. It's just it's just like we everyth We're
like the Midas of genocides.

Speaker 2 (02:49:58):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So the biggest international result of the
coup is that the new Portuguese government had no stomach
for colonies. Right, they negotiate a treaty with the three
largest militant groups in Angola in seventy five. These were
the FNLA, the MPLA and UNITA. The non acronym names

(02:50:18):
of all these groups are in French. I am I'm naughty.
I'm not even going to try it, day, Dave, you
can absolutely not. What you need to know is that
the MPLA were Marxists, right, kind of Marxists. They were
formed at least the organization had been formed by members
of Angola's intelligencia who were Marxists, and Marxism had like

(02:50:40):
a big influence on the MPLA. Unfortunately, Like yeah, meanwhile,
like kind of. So that's one faction. The FNLA and
UNITA are generally described as being right wing groups, but
this is one of those things where like grafting Western
political terms onto the civil war in Angola does not
work great. All of these groups, even the ostensibly Marxist MPLA,

(02:51:03):
are very tribal in origin, and by that I mean
like they are based on specific tribal grievances and tribal
like arguments right that are going on in the region,
as opposed to like being clearly like, well we're pro communist,
we're anti communists. Like that's really less of what's going on.
We're getting shirts made.

Speaker 1 (02:51:19):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:51:21):
For an example of how useless a strict ideological it
lens is here, UNITA was initially very left wing in
its messaging, attacking the United States as quote the notorious
agents of imperialism. UNITAS fighters were literally trained by North
Korean soldiers, but by the end of the civil war
in Angola they had been receiving arms from the Reagan

(02:51:41):
administration for years. Broker via their paid representative, Paul manifests,
Oh my god, what that's the kind of where this
is where like United starts off being like we're going
to end American imperialism. And by the end they're like,
Paul Maniford, get us weapons.

Speaker 1 (02:51:55):
If you get next to this Manifold character, he is
a good.

Speaker 2 (02:52:00):
Yeah, just like to show you how weird this is. Technically,
in the Angolan Civil War, Paul Manafort and North Korea
are on the same side.

Speaker 1 (02:52:09):
I feel like fifty years old.

Speaker 2 (02:52:13):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, and by the end, it is
fair to say that, like by the end of the
civil war, UNITA's like leader Jonas Savimbi is calling himself
an anti communist, that's his messaging, but he's less about
anti communism. Then again, there's specific local grievances he has
with the NPLA, and like that's more why they're fighting

(02:52:33):
than that he like believes strongly in anti communism.

Speaker 1 (02:52:36):
Is he just knows that's how you get weapons, right, Okay,
that's right. He's yeah, speaking the language, right, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:52:41):
And when North Korea is training his guys, he's not
into Jucea, you know, he's like wants the dudes to
train his guys.

Speaker 1 (02:52:47):
Yeah. Right now.

Speaker 2 (02:52:48):
The FNLA is led by a guy named and that's
the other usually called a right wing faction, is led
by a guy named Holden Roberto who used to work
with Savimbi before Savimbi formed United.

Speaker 1 (02:52:59):
I know this is a very complicated conflict. I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 (02:53:03):
They're generally described as like right wing, and they did
receive aid from the CIA, so that would like okay, yeah,
definitely right wing getting aid from the CIA. They also
got military aid from China, Romania, India, Algeria, Zaiyir, the
a fl CIO and the Ford Foundation, or at least
aid of some sort. So again, like the sides here
are just fucking baffling.

Speaker 1 (02:53:23):
They're like the tender swindler. They're working every side.

Speaker 2 (02:53:27):
Yeah, China, the CIA and the a fl CIO shaking
hands over backing the f NLA.

Speaker 1 (02:53:34):
Yeah, it's like big brother. Wait you guys here two.

Speaker 2 (02:53:40):
Well, the Ford Foundation, Well, well.

Speaker 1 (02:53:52):
The m p l A.

Speaker 2 (02:53:53):
Which these again are the kind of Marxist guys. And
if you're of the three factions, they are the ones
who most do believe like a political thing that like
we would recognize in terms of like left right sides.
They are partly armed by the Soviet Union, which should
not be surprising, but most of their military aid comes
from Cuba. And we're not really going to get into it,

(02:54:13):
but it's worth noting, like how substantial Cuban aid is
to the MPLA. Cuba starts sending soldiers to Angola in
November of seventy five, and by nineteen eighty eight they
had more than fifty five thousand soldiers in the country. Wow,
And like that's a trick. I don't know if you
guys know this, but Cuba in the West coast of
Africa not super close.

Speaker 1 (02:54:31):
Yeah. Yeah, it's a bit of a jaunt.

Speaker 2 (02:54:34):
Yeah, and that's also a long involvement. You know, they're
in there more than a decade. There's a lot of
commitment here, so as is generally.

Speaker 1 (02:54:42):
Actually Cuba now.

Speaker 2 (02:54:43):
To be a as is generally the case. All of
the communists were not an agreement about Angola. The People's
Republic of China did not particularly care about like a
left wing struggle in Angola. They wanted to keep Soviet
power at bay on a continent where they were starting
to do so business themselves. So China and the US
work together to support the FNLA and UNITA. This is

(02:55:05):
exactly the sort of thing Kissinger had been going for
when he pushed to connect the US diplomatically to China.
I want to quote now from a write up by
Maria Guda of Wilford Laurier University.

Speaker 1 (02:55:16):
Quote.

Speaker 2 (02:55:16):
This was part of Kissinger's grand strategy of triangular diplomacy.
Triangularly diplomacy was essentially the US exploiting the relationship between
communist China and the Soviet Union to create a three
way to taunt between the countries, with the US at
the helm. Kissinger was not pushing for covert operations through
the CIA in order to elevate American standing in China,
because Nixon and Kissinger were orchestrating something larger. This was

(02:55:38):
to use China as a counterweight against the Soviets. Kissinger's
emphasis on triangular diplomacy caused him to view regional conflict
in terms of involvement on the Chinese and the Soviets,
not in terms of a local struggle. So he very
much sees this as a battle ground between different ideologies.
But anyone who knows anything about the Angolis of Orbit
knows that, like, no, that's not really what's going on.

(02:56:00):
Like everyone is like everyone is in here, and it
is certainly not like about what kind of political shit
individual parties believe. Yeah, the site you can't graft these
easily onto like a Western axis. But as Isaacson writes,
Angola became quote a vivid example of Kissinger's tendency to
see complex local struggles in an East West context. In

(02:56:23):
all respect to Kissinger, wrote Jonathan Quitney in his study
of the Angolden War, one really has to question the
sanity of someone who looks at an ancient tribal dispute
over control of distant coffee fields and sees it as
a Soviet threat to the security of the United States.

Speaker 1 (02:56:36):
I mean, what a guy. Yeah, it's like, I mean,
it's also I mean it's it's so again. I mean,
the ego on this fucking dude to be able to
just go into things, massive conflicts, have no clue and
make it that binary and think that he's doing anything.

(02:56:57):
I mean, he's just he's just so embolden.

Speaker 2 (02:57:00):
Yeah, he's in bolden. He just like he's so arrogant
that he's like, well, I don't do me.

Speaker 1 (02:57:05):
A favorite because some of you wear red shirts and
some of you were blue, so they could kind of stuff.
Let's do shirt skins. Huh.

Speaker 2 (02:57:11):
Yeah, I don't need to, like I Henry Kissinger, don't
need to like understand the actual dimensions of why these
sides are fighting. Yeah, I can just assume that it
grafts onto every other conflict I've ever cared about.

Speaker 1 (02:57:23):
Knowledge is weak, yes.

Speaker 2 (02:57:24):
Yeah, And this is like, He's not the only American
to be arrogant in this specific way about a conflict
in Africa.

Speaker 1 (02:57:30):
Right, the last he's the last one. He would be
the last that lost. Since then, so CIA.

Speaker 2 (02:57:37):
Funding for UNITA in the FNLA was initially quite low,
but Kissinger pushed for an escalation, and soon the agency
had poured twenty two million dollars in covert support for
both of these groups. Kissinger felt they were thinking small though.
He believed that after suffering a public defeat in Vietnam,
US foreign policy needed a comeback. And yeah, baby, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 9 (02:58:01):
A better place than al everybody cares.

Speaker 1 (02:58:06):
What, everyone's plugged in. You're gonna love my new stuff.

Speaker 2 (02:58:10):
The problem with Vietnam is that it was too distant
from American concerns.

Speaker 1 (02:58:14):
And that's it. That's the problem now.

Speaker 2 (02:58:19):
He yeah, So he believes that like Angla is going
to be our fucking comeback tour. It's the equivalent of
I don't know one other times Elton John did a
did A did a farewell tour.

Speaker 1 (02:58:29):
I got yeah something like that. He's not his n Yeah, there's.

Speaker 2 (02:58:33):
A lot of similarities between Henry Kissinger and Elton John's
musical Yeah Jets. Yeah, actually, tiny dancer that song is
about uh is about Henry Kissinger.

Speaker 1 (02:58:47):
He is a tiny dancer. He's he is he is
a little guy.

Speaker 2 (02:58:51):
So yeah, Kissinger wants to prove that the United States
is still a global power, and he also wants to
prove that Henry Kissinger has like is still a Secretary
of State some teeth.

Speaker 1 (02:59:00):
You know.

Speaker 2 (02:59:01):
He's just like seeded a bunch to the fucking in
these negotiations with Vietnam.

Speaker 1 (02:59:06):
He's a big peace of mind to hand their Kissinger. Yeah,
he is, like everyone is going to see Vietnam as
an l for me, so I need a wind baby.
So yeah, you.

Speaker 2 (02:59:18):
Could kind of see his attitude and Angola as like
the powerful sociopath version of buying a sports car to
impress like twenty year olds.

Speaker 1 (02:59:26):
Like when you're you know, an old man. Yeah right,
he's his midlife war crisis.

Speaker 2 (02:59:30):
And the people around Kissinger are a lot less bullish
about escalating involvement in Angola. Uh and in fact, this
includes like the fucking CIA, but they had really big
shoes to fill, to be fair, Yeah, yeah, they're just like,
we don't want any part of this right now.

Speaker 1 (02:59:45):
Wow, you guys are really negative.

Speaker 9 (02:59:47):
Yeah, you guys, it's Angola.

Speaker 1 (02:59:50):
It's Angola. Where's the wind?

Speaker 2 (02:59:54):
Gotta be a fucking hole in one baby. In June
of seventy five, Kissinger holds a meeting with President Ford,
the Defense Secretary, the Joint chiefs of Staff, and the
head of the CIA. They discussed the invasion of Angola,
and while most of that meeting is still classified, we
know Kissinger urged what he called a diplomatic offensive quote,
if we appealed to the Soviets to not be active,

(03:00:15):
it will be a sign of weakness. He played on
stereotypes of Africa as mysterious and wild, claiming it is
an area where no one can be sure of its judgments.
Next Guda rites quote revealing his talent for manipulation. Kissinger
used daunting and dramatic language to illustrate the situation in
Angola as he saw it, by giving the impression that
there was no way to tell how the Angolan Civil

(03:00:36):
War would play out. Kissinger pushed forward the idea that
the US had better get involved in Angola through tangible
or covert means before it was too late. The US,
through the CIA, needed to support the FNLA in United
to to prevent the dominance of the Soviet backed MPLA.
This view wholly disregards the idea that the Angolan Civil
War was, indeed that a civil war. Kissinger was positioning

(03:00:57):
Angola in a wider East versus West context.

Speaker 1 (03:01:00):
Oh my good, you've got biggie, you've got tupac he does.
I mean, only the United States can want to be in, Like,
only the United States can be sold on getting involved
in a conflict. Or he's like, we have no clue
what's going on, so we got to get hats, throw
our decks in this one. Come on, guys, let's get moving.
It could be crazy.

Speaker 2 (03:01:20):
This is one where like the US actually doesn't really
want to get involved like this. Kissinger is the one
pulling everyone else in here. He's a marketing wizard. Yeah,
And based on his urgings, the CIA comes up with
a plan called IA Feature. It was a covert parrot
paramilitary operation in which US military advisors and special forces

(03:01:42):
would be sent to Angola in a manner basically identical
to how US involvement in Vietnam started.

Speaker 1 (03:01:48):
It is literally like, let's do that again, baby, let's
see it. It goes pretty good when we do it.

Speaker 2 (03:01:54):
This this is how I get to bomb Namibia. That's
not my vision. He has dreams of flattening the Congo.

Speaker 1 (03:02:06):
I woke up, I thought that I had done that.

Speaker 2 (03:02:08):
Now, despite the fact that the CIA did come up
with this plane at his behest, there's intense resistance within
the agency, a lot of whom think Kissinger has lost
his fucking mind. And thus CIA director William Colby joins
our pantheon of bad guys who seem reasonable because Henry
Kissinger is involved, right, Kobe is like pretty rattled by

(03:02:29):
how Vietnam ended, and also by the fact that there's
all these congressional inquiries into like the CIA doing a
bunch of other terrible shit. Right, They're actively being investigated
right now. So this isn't Kobe being a good guy.
This is Kobe being like, oh, I don't want to
drive when I've got you know, shit in the car,
basic right, like I'm holding right now, you know what.

Speaker 9 (03:02:47):
Honestly, any any other time, I'm just fucking Angol like crazy,
Like I'm just fucking going nuts.

Speaker 1 (03:02:52):
But it's just not the right time. We got a
right right now. Yeah, he's the guy who's like, he's
like kissing is like on a casino floor, and he's
been cheating, and like the securities gathered and they're whispering
and pointing at him. He notices, and he's still playing.

Speaker 2 (03:03:07):
Yeah, he keeps going, He's gonna let it right on
Black one more time.

Speaker 1 (03:03:11):
How many times I have to say hit me?

Speaker 2 (03:03:14):
So the forty Committee, which again Kissinger heads, approves I
a feature, but William Colby is like, okay, but I'm
going to insist we actually go to Congress to have
the funds appropriated for this secret option.

Speaker 1 (03:03:27):
That's branch. Those guys, what are they still you? Oh
my god.

Speaker 2 (03:03:35):
So, while Kissinger argues for his covert operators, South Africa
sends troops in to support the FNLA in United who
would again originally been trained by North Korea. So there's
FNLA troops received training from both South Africa and North Korea.

Speaker 1 (03:03:50):
Jesus, this is just a very weird war.

Speaker 2 (03:03:54):
So China has the reaction we're all having, and it's like,
you know what, this is too messy for me.

Speaker 1 (03:03:59):
I need this right now, Like I got.

Speaker 2 (03:04:01):
Other shit going on, and they kind of bounce from
the situation.

Speaker 1 (03:04:05):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (03:04:06):
The Soviets and the Cubans, though, extend more aid to
the MPLA, who win the war handily and install themselves
in the capital Luanda by the end of nineteen seventy five.
So a few weeks after this, the CIA holds an
Interagency Working Group meeting with Kissinger to discuss how to
ask Congress to send in US advisors and like, at
this point, the war is lost, and there's Kissinger's like, no,

(03:04:29):
we got to get some guys in there. Come on, God,
no one else wants this, right. Everyone else is like
this seems like way more of.

Speaker 1 (03:04:37):
A hassle to the party at like two am. Come on,
let's keep going, let's do shots. What do you mean
the kegs tame.

Speaker 2 (03:04:45):
Yeah, the CIA is already puking from how much they've
had to drink in Vietnam.

Speaker 1 (03:04:50):
Hit. Come on, I brought absinthe let's go.

Speaker 2 (03:04:56):
Who else, so Kissinger or so, Yeah, they have this
meeting and like so Kissinger has a meeting with one
of this like a guy in this with this a
bunch of people, and then like they hold a separate
meeting afterwards with the CIA about what Kissinger had said.

Speaker 1 (03:05:14):
So like, so basically the side meetings Kissinger now.

Speaker 2 (03:05:18):
Yeah, So basically they present Kissinger with a report on
like what would have to be done to send US
advisors into Angola, and Kissinger reads the report and rather
than giving a yes or a no, he grunts and
walks out of his office. So after this, all these
CIA guys have to sit down and decide, like, what
does Henry Kissinger grunting mean?

Speaker 1 (03:05:36):
But was this a yes or no? This guy is
really good at deciphering what Henry grunts mean. Well, gentlemen,
it was a pretty long grun, which is never good.
He it's a side grunt, which for Henry means he's
a little agitated.

Speaker 2 (03:05:49):
I'm going to quote about talk writing about this meeting
Kissinger a biography by Walter Isaacson. Everyone found this rather disconcerting,
especially since Kissinger was heading off for Beijing. Well, someone asked,
was it a positive grunt or a negative grunt? Molkahi paused,
it was just a grunt, he explained, like umph, I
mean it didn't go up or down stockwell, the agent

(03:06:10):
in charge marveled as a group of Somber officials supervising
the nation's only extant war sat around a table trying
to decipher a Kissinger grunt. Molkahi provided his imitation of
the grunt, once again emphasizing its flatness. Someone else at
the other end of the table tried it. There were
a few experiments, contrasting positive grunts with the voice rising,

(03:06:30):
then a negative one with the voice falling. Different people
attempted it well. Asked the CIA officer who was chairing
the meeting, do we proceed with the advisors? Mokahi scowled
and puffed on his pipe. We'd better not, he finally said,
trying to decipher his boss's mind. Kissinger just decided not
to send Americans into the Sinai. There were a lot
of nods. The request for advisors was shelved. It was

(03:06:52):
an amazing way to run a war, Molkahi said years
later as he recalled the incident.

Speaker 1 (03:06:56):
Oh yeah, by the way, this is they accidentally wrote
on Home Improvement script at the end of this this
is actually where the pilot that show came from Legim
to toolman Taylor. It was it was like no, no,
it was like okay, I let that that sounds a
little more positive.

Speaker 2 (03:07:17):
It's just like, what a moment for the United States,
all these fucking spooks with blood on their hands being
like yeah, well like or like you.

Speaker 1 (03:07:26):
Know, I mean, because you do, at least at some
point in your existence, for the most part, you do
believe that when someone is saying the Central Intelligence Agency
that it is really like working on intelligence and and
is intelligent and is a body that is actually, you know,
processing information that potentially you don't have access to, and

(03:07:48):
instead they're just sitting around a fucking table going like
do the grunt again, Jim, Yeah, again.

Speaker 2 (03:07:55):
It reveals And this is I think where a lot
of folks on the left kind of mix up. The
CIA is like hyper competent, and it's where a lot
of people everywhere fuck up if viewing Kissinger is hyper competent, Like, no,
they have a lot of power and they use it badly.
But like at the end of the day, Kissinger doesn't
have the balls to like say yes or no on something,

(03:08:16):
and so he grunts and then all of these fucking
again bloody handed monsters spend an entire meeting like repeating
the grunt and trying to figure out it. It means
yes or no, and there's no like it's so unchecked.

Speaker 1 (03:08:27):
I mean like you there and it's it still is that,
but it's just there's nobody there to be like, hey,
this is fucking nuts. Yeah. Instead they're like, do the
grunt again, to try the grunt again? Yes or no?
Dan have the best grunt, Dann, do it again, because
I want to play it slow for everyone to me

(03:08:50):
bro it's while I think it sounds ambivalent. Having known
Henry for a little while, he's pissed.

Speaker 2 (03:08:56):
So the CIA's request for another twenty eight million in
funding and the discussion of sending in advisors was again
leaked to Seymour Hirsh. Congress cut off all aid. Obviously,
he puts out an article about it. Congress cuts off
aid to Angola. As a result of this, Kissinger does
not get his way, but the CIA money he'd already
funneled into Unit I helped the group stay alive. The

(03:09:16):
Angolan Civil War did not officially end until two thousand
and two. Although again this is one of those things,
this is a really nasty civil war. It lasts a
ridiculous amount of time. Kissinger gets a lot of the blame,
but we should also note that like Paul Maniford is
much more on those.

Speaker 1 (03:09:32):
Like he is the guy.

Speaker 2 (03:09:33):
Manifort's the guy who brings Savimbi to DC and gets
Reagan to send a fuck load of weapons over to
like really escalate things.

Speaker 1 (03:09:41):
Thank god for Reagan.

Speaker 2 (03:09:42):
Yeah, thank god for Reagan. But it is amazing that
this fucking goes on until two thousand and two.

Speaker 1 (03:09:48):
Crazy. Yeah, what a legacy, What a legacy.

Speaker 2 (03:09:53):
So I have teased y'all that Kissinger has a Rhodesia connection,
and yet again, the funniest thing about this is that
it's one of the least fucked up things he's ever
involved in. But the story is kind of funny, so
I'm gonna tell it anyway. Okay, So in Rhodesia, you've
got this country, we're about eight percent of the population
at the height of like white population in Rhodesia, about

(03:10:14):
eight percent of them are white, but they hold effectively
one hundred percent of the political power. This obviously is
not something a lot of the black people living there
like sure for reasons I don't think I need to explain.
So some of them decide to fight back, and there's
a number of rebel groups and soon an ugly insurgent
war between the Rhodesian government, which by the way, is
an international pariah, right, they're like actually not supposed to

(03:10:36):
exist basically, so no one can legally sell them arms.
So everything has to get like smuggled through South Africa,
and the soldier of Fortune magazine winds up sending a
bunch of fighters over.

Speaker 1 (03:10:46):
William F.

Speaker 2 (03:10:47):
Buckley Junior or William F. Buckley raises money for them.

Speaker 1 (03:10:50):
YadA YadA, YadA. Very nasty war.

Speaker 2 (03:10:51):
We've talked about it in other episodes, the go fundme,
Yeah it is. It is a go fund me war.
So by the time Kissinger is in office, the white
minority government of Rhodesia has spent years locked into the
losing side of a grinding insurgent campaign. The international community
widely condemns Rhodesia as an apartheid state, and there's a
bunch of arms embargoes, and in fact, pretty much everyone

(03:11:13):
hates Rhodesia except for South Africa and the US right
wing who see the rhodes as anti communist crusaders. Sure,
Kissinger was locked into an awkward position here. He wanted
to negotiate an end to the fighting and an end
to the white supremacist government of Rhodesia, but he also
doesn't want to piss off his right wing base too much.

Speaker 1 (03:11:30):
You know, this is like a really messy situation.

Speaker 2 (03:11:33):
Yeah, so policy towards Rhodesia in the Nixon years. There's
a plan Nixon approved through South Africa in nineteen sixty
nine that is like US policy in Rhodesia for nearly
a decade, and it is literally called I am sorry
for saying this, but Nixon calls US plans like the
US stance towards Rhodesia, quote the tar Baby option.

Speaker 1 (03:11:56):
Oh okay, got dust on the podcast.

Speaker 9 (03:12:02):
Oh my god, there's no stream of white supremacy through American.

Speaker 2 (03:12:09):
Now, this was the one time it's like I can't
believe the guy fucking recorded himself for like, this is.

Speaker 1 (03:12:18):
Not just recorded himself.

Speaker 2 (03:12:20):
This isn't just like Nixon saying a slur in a
conversation with his buddy.

Speaker 1 (03:12:24):
This is official US government. Yeah, yeah, we write this
out places like Okay, I'll hand it in if you're sure,
mister president. It's pretty good to me. And this is
this is not just towards Rhodesia.

Speaker 2 (03:12:37):
This is towards all of like South Africa, to these
like white minority governments in Africa. And the premise is
that quote, the whites are here to stay and the
only way that constructive change can come is through them.

Speaker 1 (03:12:48):
So it's so and it really hasn't changed that much.
We just have fancier titles. Yeah, we don't put the
slurs right in the title. Yeah. No, we don't regard
the press it and we don't put the slurs in
the title.

Speaker 2 (03:13:02):
So the policy is sold to American liberals and moderates
by basically saying the only way to liberate Black Africans
is to improve their economic outcomes through trade, and that
means dealing with the white governments.

Speaker 1 (03:13:14):
Right, just yeah, I mean it tech. We've just changed
it to tech essentially.

Speaker 2 (03:13:21):
Yeah, we would maintain the document declared public opposition to
racial repression, but relax political isolation and economic restrictions on
the white states.

Speaker 1 (03:13:31):
I mean, it's fucking crazy, Like, you know, the problem
here is that people don't like the eight percent white
people that run the entire fucking place.

Speaker 2 (03:13:42):
It's one of those we continue and we'll always have
debates over like sanctions and like when they're good.

Speaker 1 (03:13:47):
And bad ideas.

Speaker 2 (03:13:48):
Yeah, but the argument here is that, like, we can't
sanction South Africa in Rhodesia because it'll hurt black people.
And the degree to which that's a lie is that, like, well,
you're saying we have to start selling them fucking weapons
so that they can oppress black people in order to
improve economic.

Speaker 1 (03:14:01):
Outcomes for black people.

Speaker 2 (03:14:03):
And perhaps that's fucking insane. Yeah, it's a little more
nuanced than that, by not by a lot.

Speaker 1 (03:14:11):
So much, not much.

Speaker 2 (03:14:13):
Yeah, to his credit, when Nixon is out and Ford
is in, Kissinger kills the racial slur option and he
authors a new plan, one that is a lot better
and that is actually focused on spirited opposition to white
minority rule in Rhodesia. Kissinger gives a big speech in
Lusaka that immediately enrages the right wing of the Republican Party. Basically,

(03:14:33):
he's like, our plant, like under Ford, we want to
bring an end to the government in Rhodesia, like his.

Speaker 1 (03:14:39):
Government can unbelievable.

Speaker 2 (03:14:42):
Yes, Ronald Reagan, Ronald seven percent of the populace. You
can't disenfranchise seven percent of Rhodesia.

Speaker 1 (03:14:49):
Have you seen the color of their goddamn skin.

Speaker 2 (03:14:52):
That is essentially what Ronald Reagan says. He denounces Kissinger's
plan is undercutting the possibility of a quote just an
order release settlement and argues that it will provoke a
massacre of white people.

Speaker 1 (03:15:04):
Boy, So, I mean, you want to have a head
popping moment. Try to find a good guy in a
Reagan Kissinger debate. It is. It is an amazing fight.

Speaker 2 (03:15:14):
It's just like, well, yeah, I hate everyone involved in this.

Speaker 1 (03:15:18):
We should pay more attention to the white people. I
think we need to be careful. I feel like you're
both conning me into something. I mean, you guys are
a good cop, bad coping, and you're working for the
same outcome.

Speaker 2 (03:15:29):
Look, Henry, I'm not one hundred percent sure why I
think you're wrong in this, but you must be.

Speaker 1 (03:15:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:15:33):
The other guy's got to be wrong too, though, So
I don't really know what.

Speaker 1 (03:15:36):
To do here. Don't trust Reagan and hate him. But Kissinger,
you're the worst person on the planet. So i'd call
a bit of a nickel.

Speaker 2 (03:15:46):
Yeah, this is a doozy of an issue.

Speaker 1 (03:15:49):
I'm gonna need to go on the other room and
do some grunning.

Speaker 2 (03:15:52):
Yeah, so he yeah, what's happening here is that Kissinger
is trying to wrench US government policy in Africa away
from supporting explicitly racist regimes in Africa and Reagan.

Speaker 1 (03:16:07):
He's trying to get like into a country club or something.
There's got to be some a well, I.

Speaker 2 (03:16:12):
Mean, obviously for the same reason he does anything right.
He wants to be seen as being the guy who
negotiates right into these big issues, and he's trying to
I think he recognizes by this point that like, well,
Republicans aren't going to stay in power forever, but I,
Henry Kissinger want to have a shot at being in
power still, and maybe if I, if I get rid
of this bad government Rhodesia, people will be like Henri

(03:16:34):
que let's give him a gig. You know.

Speaker 13 (03:16:37):
He accidentally stumbles into yes, the proper outcome because personally
he wants to end it, and so he sees the
way to end it is actually the way that's good.

Speaker 1 (03:16:52):
We're lining up Henry's personal interests with a prudent solution,
and happened that eclipse is very rare.

Speaker 2 (03:16:59):
Yeah, it's he's like a guy who like stops a
home invader from murdering a family, but it's later found
out that it's because he was hitting on a fifteen
year old girl, like he was trying to.

Speaker 1 (03:17:10):
Flirt with their daughter and stuff like it. It's like
that sort of situation where it's like, well, good, I guess,
like he stops a robbery because he was peeping through
a window that he fell through.

Speaker 2 (03:17:22):
Yeah, exactly, yeah, it is. It is hard to find
the moral lesson to take out of this here. So yeah,
obviously the Reagan wright loses their minds over what Kissinger's
doing here. Pat Buchanan, a former Nixon spear, writes in
a column quote, it is too early to determine if

(03:17:43):
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's safari through Black Africa did
greater damage to US policy interests or to President Ford's
hopes in the remaining primaries.

Speaker 1 (03:17:53):
I mean again, I like he just it needs to stop.
Where like this this never ending? What is a duty?
A real election chance? As shit, It's like we are
so conditioned to that being how we operate and do everything,
as opposed to actually just trying to do the thing
that does long term good.

Speaker 2 (03:18:12):
And why would you do the thing that is long
term good?

Speaker 1 (03:18:16):
Exactly? You're right, you're right. I mean, it's true, but
it's I don't know, it's just it's a foregun conclusion.
Now that everything is viewed through the prism of what
does it do to the poll numbers? Can I just
say take off your masks? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (03:18:31):
Right, So, Kishinger did not achieve a tremendous amount in
Rhodesia while he was Secretary of State. He got Ian Smith,
who's the leader of Rhodesia, to agree to a two
year turnover from minority rule to an actual democracy. But
the way he did this was by assuring Smith that
black moderates had agreed that during the turnover, whites would

(03:18:52):
remain in control of the military and police.

Speaker 1 (03:18:54):
This was a lie.

Speaker 2 (03:18:55):
The black people in Rudie, like the black moderates in Rhodesia,
had never agree to this.

Speaker 1 (03:19:00):
He's just lying the Smith to get him to agree
to this. And on the whole, like anytime there's like
a two year deal that you're like, that's just your
way of like letting it sort of settle so that
you can pushing you the fuckery exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:19:15):
The story of the negotiations is classic Kissinger. He's telling
everyone what they want to hear. And then kind of
weaseling his way into getting people to sign things that
make him look good. This right up from the New
York Times sums it up well. Mister Smith has said
he agrees to the five point plan he made in
public because he had received assurances from mister Kissinger that
the black leaders had accepted the whole package, including mister
Smith's addition on white on the white ministers. In his view,

(03:19:38):
either the Blacks have renegged or mister Kissinger misled him.
The Blacks, such as President Julius Nurere of Tanzania, insists
that they did not give their approval to the details
of the five point plan, only to the general thrust
of majority rule in two years, leaving it to Britain
to work out details later with black and white Rhodesians.
They say they would have rejected the proposal for white ministers.
Mister Kissinger and his aides have been evasive. On October

(03:20:00):
twenty fourth, mister Kissinger said on television that I think
everybody is telling the truth.

Speaker 1 (03:20:06):
Wow. What an incredible guy.

Speaker 9 (03:20:14):
Wow, the baddest. That is the best bullshit statement I've.

Speaker 1 (03:20:19):
Ever It's out. I believe, I'm not sure. I don't
everyone lying, it's awesome.

Speaker 2 (03:20:27):
I think everyone who is the bad guy in Rhodesia nobody, nobody.

Speaker 1 (03:20:33):
I think everyone's cool. You need a bad guy.

Speaker 2 (03:20:39):
In the end, the talks collapsed. The war continued on
for two more years until the Rhodesian Strategic Fuel Reserve
was blown up by insurgents and the government was forced
to the table. Kissinger and his supporters would later claim
that the eventual piece was negotiated on the terms laid
out during Kissinger's negotiations. That's kind of questionable. It's probably
it is fair to say that that by coming in

(03:21:01):
very strongly, and he was very unequivocal about condemning the
government of Rhodesia. By doing this as the Secretary of State,
Kissinger caused a shift that led to a significant increase
in trust of the US by black African nations. You know, yeah,
obviously it's one of his better moves from an ethical standpoint,

(03:21:23):
but it's an ego move still. Everything is an ego movement,
and obviously it's a it's a sign of how much
more fucked up things become that doing this broadly good
thing causes the beginning of the end of his career
in politics.

Speaker 1 (03:21:39):
Of course, it's like, we're gonna can't help you can't
help the black people. That's it. You're done.

Speaker 2 (03:21:44):
Yeah, yeah, that's it for you, kissing. But to be fair,
it worked for me. That's why I did it. We
know her, but we know buddy. But you know what
won't fail to.

Speaker 1 (03:21:57):
Bring peace to Rhodesia. What's that?

Speaker 2 (03:22:00):
The sponsors of this podcast orchestrated the destruction of the
Rhodesian Strategic Fueld Reserve. That is, we are sponsored entirely
bye by the Rhodesian rebel forces. Here's an ad ah,

(03:22:22):
we're back. Good stuff. Yes, yes, so yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:22:28):
On the whole.

Speaker 2 (03:22:29):
Kissinger's last year or so as Secretary of State involved
his least number of war crimes per month, which might
point to personal growth, but probably points to the fact
that he and Nixon had just exhausted the US government's
ability to do shady shit. We needed a breather, right,
We had to take a breather. It took us a
few years to get geared up. For Reagan, you know,
he's like he's been go ahead.

Speaker 1 (03:22:50):
David, We've just kidded so many there's like no, like
we dig them up and kill them again. Like it's hard,
We're out of ammunition. He's like, he's not are starting QB.
He's being traded. He's riding the pine.

Speaker 2 (03:23:03):
Yeah, he's got like I got a wrist injury, you know.

Speaker 1 (03:23:06):
He's yeah, he's on IR for the year.

Speaker 2 (03:23:08):
Yeah, So the last one of his escapades we're going
to cover. Then his Kissinger's relationship with the Kurds, not munk.

Speaker 1 (03:23:17):
Ye baby, Jesus fucking Christ.

Speaker 2 (03:23:20):
The Kurdish people are the largest ethnic group on Earth
without a nation of their own. They make up large
chunks of southern Turkey, southern Iran, northern Iraq, in northeast Syria. Now,
if you look at this kind of broad Kurdistan region
on a map, you'll notice a couple of things. For one,
it's all landlocked, which means if if you were and
there was a lot of talk when like colonial powers
left started to leave the Middle East after World War

(03:23:41):
Two that like.

Speaker 1 (03:23:42):
Should and promises were in fact made to the Kurds.

Speaker 2 (03:23:46):
One of the issues that comes up is that it's
going to cause like severe economic difficulties because they would
be landlocked. You'll also note that their territories all tend
to exist in chunks of states that have wound up
fighting each other repeatedly over the last half century or so. Right,
Turkey and Syria, Iran and exactly and the Kurds were
used on purpose by basically everyone as buffer zones and

(03:24:07):
proxy fighters in these conflicts. Now, starting in the Nition administration,
the Shah of Iran had a problem. He was engaged
in an escalating conflict with a new sexy, young dude
on the block, Saddam Hussein of Iraq.

Speaker 1 (03:24:21):
Now, can I just say right away, I like both
these guys. They seem like they're both gonna go good places.

Speaker 2 (03:24:30):
So the Shad asides he wants to arm. He wants
the US to arm Kurdish fighters in order to give
Saddam some trouble and ease up pressure. The ostensible leader
of the Kurdish people struggle in Iraq at this time
is a guy named Mustafa Barzani. Now, Mustafa had been
leading his people in battle against the Iraqi State prior
to Saddam taking power for like a decade at this point,

(03:24:51):
and he had repeatedly begged the United States for aid.
The US traditionally did not like Barzani because he had
spent a decade exiled in the Soviet Union and had
some socialist e tendencies, but the Israelis and the Shah
had experienced great luck in using the Kurds to keep Saddam,
who taken power pretty recently, off of their back. Kurdish
rebels tied up eighty percent of the Iraqi military during

(03:25:14):
the nineteen sixty seven war against Israel and are probably
a big part of the reason why Iraq did not
join in that war. In April of nineteen seventy two,
Saddam signed a treaty of friendship with the Soviet Union.
This finally tipped things for the next dam Friendship is
just a great term.

Speaker 1 (03:25:29):
I mean, it is a nice term.

Speaker 2 (03:25:31):
Good.

Speaker 1 (03:25:32):
It's like a bro my BFF when I was seven
at a tree house. Yeah, can you sign my broke
on tract? Yeah, I'm bros. It comes with AK forty seven.
So we are signing the BFF treaty.

Speaker 2 (03:25:44):
So this finally tips things for the Nixon administration, and
Kissinger gives the go ahead for CIA Director Richard Helms
to express American sympathy with the Kurds and to clear
our quote readiness to consider their requests for assistance. Next
from a write up, in Foreign Paul. In early nineteen
seventy four, Saddam violated the terms of the March Accurt
and unilaterally imposed a watered down version of autonomy for

(03:26:07):
the Kurds. Barzani responded by traveling to Iran, where he
met with the SHAW and the CIA's station chief to
request US backing for a plan to set up an
Arab Kurdish government that would claim to be the sole
legitimate government of Iraq. As Kissinger wrote in his nineteen
ninety nine memoire Years of Renewal, Barzani's request triggered a
flood of communications among US officials focused on two questions,

(03:26:27):
whether the United States would support a unilateral declaration of
autonomy and what level of support the United States was
willing to give the Kurds. The CIA in particular warned
against increasing US assistance, but Kissinger was dismissive of CIA
Director William Colby's caution, writing Kolby's resistance was as unrealistic
as Barzani's enthusiasm. Nixon ultimately decided to INCREASEIA to increase

(03:26:51):
US assistance to the Kurds, including the provision of nine
hundred thousand pounds of Soviet made weapons that the CIA
had stockpiled, and a one million dollar lump sum of
refuge assistance. In April of nineteen seventy four, Kissinger saying.

Speaker 1 (03:27:04):
Why why the Soviet weapons? Is that to confuse things?

Speaker 2 (03:27:09):
You don't want people seeing them with US weapons. That's
going to make it seem like we're involved.

Speaker 1 (03:27:12):
In what amazing? What an amazing move. I mean, it's
dope to commit a murder. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:27:25):
So in April of nineteen seventy four, Kissinger sent Nixon's
orders to the US ambassador in Tehran. This cable was
important because it laid out a succinct proclamation of US
interests visa vi the Kurds. The objectives he wrote were
to a give the Kurds capacity to maintain a reasonable
base for negotiating recognition of rights by Baghdad government. B
To keep present Iraqi government tied down, but see not

(03:27:46):
to divide Iraq permanently, because an independent Kurdish area would
not be economically viable, and US and Iran have no
interest in closing the door on good relations with Iraq
under moderate leadership.

Speaker 9 (03:27:59):
There art are I mean, I'm not creat but there
are landlocked countries that Yeah, Economics Bible.

Speaker 1 (03:28:05):
And Kurtis stands a huge amount of oil.

Speaker 9 (03:28:08):
Yeah, it's such a crazy thing that they're saying, like,
it's just it's fucking insane what they.

Speaker 2 (03:28:14):
Are doing and what Kissinger is establishing and writing. Here
is US policy towards Kurdish people for more than half
a century. And the idea comes down to, we will
provide them with aid and weapons when they fight our enemies,
but only to such an extent that they achieve minor
tactical successes, never enough to allow them permanent autonomy, because
that's going to upset the balance of power.

Speaker 1 (03:28:34):
Right, right, this has been ever since.

Speaker 2 (03:28:36):
This is what we do with the Kurds, right, And
Kissinger is the guy who lays it out first. Now,
Mustapha Barzani made the terrible mistake of believing that the
US actually supported his people's independence. For three years, the
Kurds battled Saddam, sustaining thousands of casualties. But then in
nineteen seventy five, the Shah and Saddam made peace, and

(03:28:56):
the SHAW asked the CIA to cut off all aid
to the Kurds as part of a deal with Iraq.
The weapons Kurdish fighters had relied upon suddenly dried up.
Barzani's fighters were massacred. Thousands fled to Iran but were
turned away by the Shaw. Desperate Mustafa cabled Kissinger, whom
he had gratefully sent three rugs in a golden pearl
necklace's wedding gifts just months earlier. Your excellency, the United

(03:29:19):
States has a moral and political responsibility to our people.
Kissinger never replied. Later that year, the House Intelligence Committee
asked him to justify this betrayal. He responded, covert actions
should not be confused with missionary work.

Speaker 1 (03:29:32):
Oh my god, what's so cool? Like you don't understand
that sometimes I'm also just doing missionary stuff. Hmm. Yeah.
The key is that I don't give a shit.

Speaker 4 (03:29:44):
As he stands naked on his rug with just his
pearl necklace an.

Speaker 2 (03:29:48):
Speaking of missionary So in the nineteen seventy six presidential elections,
Ronald Reagan attempted to primary Gerald Ford from the right.
The Reagan campaign targeted Kissinger heavily, not for his numerous
war crimes, but because of the fact that he had
made it a taunt with the Soviet Union. Right, that's
why they're a because.

Speaker 1 (03:30:06):
It's amazing to be like, you know what, the rights
actually got a point. He committed war crimes in Vietnam.
I mean, you're talking about a guy who's killed millions
of innocent people. No, that's actually not that said, we're
at the peace stuff. We're pissing angry some of this
peace stuff he's been lacking in.

Speaker 2 (03:30:23):
They are specifically they're livid that like part of the
detent means Kissinger was like, we're not going to fuck
with Soviet spheres of influence in Eastern Europe. And Reagan
and his colleagues are like, well, this means they're just
giving up Eastern Europe to communism, you know.

Speaker 1 (03:30:39):
Right, always communism, exactly fascist communists. I mean yeah, got it.

Speaker 2 (03:30:46):
And Kissinger's political instincts and charm we're sufficient to fend
off an attempt because there's within the Ford administration, there
is an attempt to get Ford to promise to fire
him in a second term, largely because they think it'll
help him win the primary against Reagan. And Nixon beats
everyone here. He manages to get forward to be like, no,
I would never fire Henry Kissinger.

Speaker 1 (03:31:05):
But this.

Speaker 2 (03:31:07):
No, no, no, not Nixon. Kissinger succeeds in doing that
with four.

Speaker 1 (03:31:10):
Okay, I thought, like I was like, if you're listening,
there's a lot of nixident are you know you mix
it up. He's just at a cupboard in the White House. Still, Gerald,
get me some Gin also keep Hank around.

Speaker 2 (03:31:24):
So the fact that Henry wins the fight within the
Ford administration means that he becomes like a major marketing
term for the Reagan campaign, right, like they do not stop.
In fact, they instituted a plank in the Republican Party
that year that's basically the anti Kissinger plank that says, like,
you will never accept that like communist states should exist anywhere.

Speaker 1 (03:31:45):
Essentially, that's kind of what they do. Okay, stabbing him
in the heart.

Speaker 2 (03:31:49):
Yeah it is. It's amazing, and it's amazing. It's a
it's a mark of like how much he fucked things
up that you can't even feel good about his downfall
because he's replaced by people who just sucking. More So,
Ronnie felt the spheres of influence that Kissinger had established
with the Soviet Union were yeah, giving up the Eastern

(03:32:10):
like block to communism. He also attacked Kissinger for negotiating
with Panama's new government because Henry was willing to give
the Panama Canal back to the Panamanian people.

Speaker 1 (03:32:22):
Canal. Ye, so, and Reagan wrote that thing. But they
were so fucking bad. There's no clay, have no claim
to that canal. Yeah, Reagan said in a speech.

Speaker 2 (03:32:34):
We built it, we paid for it, and were going.

Speaker 1 (03:32:36):
To keep it.

Speaker 2 (03:32:38):
Refer to our two parter on the US and Panama
or on that one. So Reagan's primary attempt failed, but
by struggling against the rising far right, Kissinger had hammered
the final nail into his political careers coffin. In the
Ford administration's last days, a dark alliance materialized, and, smelling
blood in the water, they acted to cut Kissinger off

(03:33:00):
many future career in Republican politics. The three main members
of this alliance were Paul Wolfowitz from the CIA, Vice
President Dick Cheney, and Secretary of Defense Donald Bright.

Speaker 1 (03:33:15):
Baby. Yeah, like there's four Kissingers. It's like killing Satan
and then three winged demons fly out of him. Yeah,
it's so funny.

Speaker 2 (03:33:27):
It is so funny, good, really funny and in fact
so uh Kissinger. His Kissinger like Rumsfeld, he sees is
almost like a protege. Like he and Rumsfeld are very close,
and when Rumsfeld turns against him, Kissinger describes him as
quote the rottenest person I've known in government, which is

(03:33:50):
Henry from you, utterly meaning honestly, absolutely meaning that's from you.

Speaker 1 (03:33:55):
I mean, you're not a Yeah, it's so funny. It's
so funny.

Speaker 2 (03:34:03):
So it's not funny for all the people who are
going to die, but it's kind it's funny in like
an existential sense, like if you're if you're an alien
looking at all, this like a TV show, it's pretty funny.

Speaker 1 (03:34:14):
Yeah, you'd be like, why don't they got a good guy.
You're like, well, it's really yeah, explained, but they just don't.
If you can't laugh at all the people dying? Are
you an American? Yeah? No, the answer was no. By
the way, the first time that Nixon heard that Kissinger
was working with the guy named Rumsfeld, he was like, well,
pour him in a glass for me, get some mice

(03:34:34):
on it.

Speaker 2 (03:34:39):
So Rumsfeld and Cheney worked within the White House.

Speaker 1 (03:34:41):
God, I can't believe I got to hear their name.
I know, I know, baby, I know well.

Speaker 2 (03:34:46):
Wolf of Witz is part of the CIA's Team B.

Speaker 1 (03:34:50):
Now.

Speaker 2 (03:34:50):
Team B is an intelligence review board set up by
Gerald Ford as a sop to the far right the
Reagan Conservatives, who he's again trying to win over and
get behind him so can win election against Carter. The
Reagan Conservatives were certain the agency had been the CIA,
I mean, had been under reporting Soviet military power because
the Soviet military and like the early chunk of the

(03:35:10):
Ford administration is like they're actually not doing great, Like
they're like, we we really don't need to keep buying
a shitload of weapons.

Speaker 1 (03:35:17):
Like they're not.

Speaker 2 (03:35:18):
They're not they don't have the kind of military assets
that we've been saying for years.

Speaker 1 (03:35:23):
So they now are getting a shady CIA inside of
well shady CIA.

Speaker 2 (03:35:28):
Yes, this is like this it's like a Russian nesting
doll of the CIA inside the CIA.

Speaker 1 (03:35:34):
CIA.

Speaker 2 (03:35:38):
So the Reagan Conservatives were certain that the CIA had
been under reporting Soviet military power, and Team B like
was basically Ford gave them Team B so that they
could get new appraisals that showed that the Soviet Union
was actually increasing their military assets.

Speaker 1 (03:35:53):
So basically what we like what like I mean essentially
like what would eventually happen with a RAQ where you're like, look,
I'm not liking the uh I'm like the non distilled information,
give me a bunch of bullshit.

Speaker 2 (03:36:06):
That's exactly what's happening. And one of the things that's
fascinating here is that in essence, this is a return
of missile gap logic, right, which Kissinger helped get off
the ground, but now because he supports the state tent policy,
and that's like his big claim to like fame within
you know, his career, that he reached the top with
the Soviet Union. He's on the opposite side of like

(03:36:28):
a missile gap bullshit myth right, Oh man, this.

Speaker 1 (03:36:30):
Is the levers leopards, leopards, ain't my face?

Speaker 2 (03:36:34):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (03:36:37):
That every thought could happen to me. Yeah, And then
they came for the Kissingers, and there was Kissingers that
to speak.

Speaker 2 (03:36:43):
For me, it's the same thing as like Dick Cheney
speaking out against the Trump administration and why his daughter
gets slandered, and.

Speaker 1 (03:36:51):
It's and it's what it's gonna be in twenty years,
when you know, Trump is welcome to a president's funeral
and we're gone. You know, Trump really wasn't that bad.

Speaker 2 (03:36:59):
I like away he said we shouldn't nuke everyone on Earth,
as opposed to the next guy who nuked everyone on Earth.

Speaker 1 (03:37:05):
Yeah, I mean yeah, Jill Biden handed him a piece
of peppermint candy. He's not that bad.

Speaker 2 (03:37:12):
So, Former CIA analyst Melvin Goodwin later said of Team
B quote, they wanted to tough en up the agency's estimates.
Cheney wanted to drive the CIA so far to the
right that it would never say no to the generals.

Speaker 1 (03:37:25):
Not how estimates again, this is the estimate, Like they're estimates.

Speaker 2 (03:37:30):
Pause this and listen to our episodes on the Dulles Brothers.
And then realized that Cheney's like, I want them further
right than that.

Speaker 1 (03:37:38):
That's not nearly right wing enough. That is the craziest
fucking thing yet. Bug fuss. Yeah, wanted a gang bang,
being like I want more orifices, not enough holes here.
I can't expec my deck and enough stuff.

Speaker 2 (03:37:53):
So in December of nineteen seventy six, as the Ford
administration pre prepared to hand over power to Jimmy Carter,
the CIA finished and released a fifty five page report.
Greg Grandon describes this as quote the rights answer to
the Pentagon Papers, a nearly perfect negation of the document
Daniel Elsberg had leaked three years earlier. The scholars and
policymakers who composed the Pentagon Papers represented the kind of

(03:38:15):
men Kissinger disdained, experts enthralled to facts. In contrast, the
members of Team B were admitted ideologues. It's members, as J.
Peters Scoblic notes, saw the Soviet threat not as an
empirical problem, but as a matter of faith.

Speaker 1 (03:38:31):
Oh what kind I mean? You just it's a church.
It's a war church. It's also what's happening here because
they are against Kissinger. But as Grandon notes, they're using
the kind of logic he used, right, Yes.

Speaker 9 (03:38:47):
Yeah, he's there with him on all of the murder
crazy American ship.

Speaker 1 (03:38:54):
But they're like, he's just not racist. I mean, they're
basically like, we got to get rid of Kissinger so
we can worship his tactics properly.

Speaker 2 (03:39:00):
That's exactly what's going on here, and in Kissinger's shadow.
Grandon continues quote previewing what would become known as Dick
Cheney's one percent doctrine. Team B interpreted threats with the
smallest posi probability of occurring as likely to occur. Absence
of proof of Russian superiority was taken as proof of superiority.
Teamb's failure to find a Soviet non acoustic anti submarine

(03:39:23):
system was evidence that there could well be one that someone.

Speaker 1 (03:39:27):
Which makes sense, of course, I mean it would be Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:39:32):
There is no evidence that I have e got it,
and you know one an Emmy and an Oscar and
a grammyator, so that that's pretty solid evidence that I
am back. Yeah, you have all of that. Yeah, absolutely so.
In December of nineteen seventy seven, The New York Times
published a front page story on the intelligence findings of

(03:39:52):
Team B, which provided legitimacy to the bogus s might
and ensured the next decade of defense spending was geared
towards stopping a zing Soviet titan that did not exist.

Speaker 1 (03:40:02):
You God, thanks nailed it on that one. Star Wars
on top of that, which.

Speaker 2 (03:40:08):
Is well, yeah, Star Wars proceeds directly creation.

Speaker 1 (03:40:10):
Yeah, yeah, and.

Speaker 2 (03:40:12):
It proceeds directly like TEMB is laying the groundwork for
Star Wars.

Speaker 1 (03:40:16):
Right.

Speaker 2 (03:40:17):
So, while these tactics ran directly counter to Kissinger's current positions,
they rested directly on what Grandon calls his philosophy of history.
Henry had been an advocate on the value of intuition
and assessing threats and guiding responses. Historian Anna Hessen Khan
writes that they used Kissinger's own philosophy to quote, belittle, besmirch,
and tarnish Henry Kissinger.

Speaker 1 (03:40:40):
Had to be a tough spot for Kissinger, where he
was like, it's a shame that I've been vilified, but
goddamn do I love the way they did it, so
me everything everything.

Speaker 9 (03:40:53):
That's that's why when people, you know, you look at
the current situation in Russia and and everyone's like, we
got to get rid of them, And I'm always like,
just but just remember, whenever the US gets what it wants,
it's always worse. Yeah, some time that it can be worse,
Like he can be gone. He's a fucking monster, but
don't be surprised. Yeah it comes after is really fucking bad.

Speaker 1 (03:41:17):
And the idea of not questioning shit like we're the
country who cried war. At some point you have to
be like, look, sorry, everybody, you're really gonna need to
step up with a lot of evidence because you you
constantly just fucking invention. I mean, if you have if
you are forming organizations inside of bullshit, organizations meant to

(03:41:40):
bring like that if there's no submarines, it means there
are submarines. I mean, it's just kind of like I
and the fact that it's still effective. It's constantly effective.
It's never it's never stopped.

Speaker 9 (03:41:53):
This is just a continuation, and it's even like this
is a domestic version of what we what happens ross,
we just create more and more worse things.

Speaker 1 (03:42:03):
Yeah, internally, externally it's what we do.

Speaker 2 (03:42:06):
Don't worry, We'll make it worse. Yeah, that is, that
is the promise that the United States makes itself.

Speaker 1 (03:42:12):
In the world. Don't worry, don't worry. We can fuck
this up more. Yeah, lifeguard he waits to throw on you.

Speaker 9 (03:42:18):
Yeah, I mean we fucking created Putin. If you go
back and look at it like we were behind all
that shit.

Speaker 2 (03:42:23):
Yeah, it's looks looking at the at the bombing of
Kiev and going, you know, what'll fix this? If Bangladesh
doesn't get COVID nineteen it's.

Speaker 1 (03:42:31):
Right, which it's somethin is gonna be what like we
will at some point solve something, just totally on accident.
Like Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:42:41):
So when he left office in nineteen seventy seven, Henry
Kissinger would never return to direct political power. He desperately
wants to, really wanted to.

Speaker 1 (03:42:52):
Like then he has always wanted to.

Speaker 13 (03:42:54):
Yeah, that's nice, man, now I understand twenty sixteen.

Speaker 2 (03:42:58):
Yeah, he really wanted it to happen, but he'd never
quite made it pulled it off. He eventually started a
consulting firm, which he would rapidly grow into an eight
to ten million dollar a year business for himself.

Speaker 1 (03:43:10):
Christ, he makes a ton of money doing this shit.

Speaker 9 (03:43:14):
Of course, he goes into consulting like, oh, absolute consultant's
job is to get the worst advice yea, and to.

Speaker 1 (03:43:21):
Make people feel good, and he's great at that. I'm
a shit oracle.

Speaker 2 (03:43:25):
H Walter Isaacson, author of the biography Kissinger, claims that
Henry was actually much more ethical in this period of
his life than most former government officials who start consulting businesses.
He waited an unusually long time to start his business.
He avoided for years directly connecting his clients to people
he'd worked with in the State Department.

Speaker 1 (03:43:45):
Like a low bar.

Speaker 2 (03:43:46):
It may be accurate that he is more ethical in
his conduct here than most people, but.

Speaker 1 (03:43:51):
Again that's a low ass bar. Yeah. Most of his business, the.

Speaker 2 (03:43:55):
Business he does in this period can be boiled down
to like, he's helping oil and gas and other extractive industries.

Speaker 1 (03:44:00):
So he's like doing nanthropical stuff. Yeah, yeah, so he's
just destroying the world.

Speaker 2 (03:44:05):
Well yeah, absolutely, he's a middle man for the people
destroying the world. Let's let's let's be clear about you know,
he's he's he's making he's he's making connections between people whoever.

Speaker 1 (03:44:16):
Linda, he's pining to be in charge of it. Again.

Speaker 2 (03:44:19):
He is probably his most morally questionable moment in like,
I guess a conventional sense is that, uh so, like
right after the Tianeman Square crackdown, he shows up on
Peter Jenning's show to argue that, like whatever went on,
the US should not impost any economic consequences on China.

(03:44:39):
And this is again not due to a principled stand
against sanctions. It's because Kissinger was working on a massive
business deal that involved the Chinese government in several large corporations.
And here's the thing, He's he's working as a journalist
at that point. He is a regular columnist for the
La Times and the Washington Post, and he advocates in
both magaz means not putting any kind of economic like

(03:45:03):
like doing any economic harm to China over this, which
is like an ethical issue as a journalist because again
he does not disclose that he has any of these
business relationships, and it causes a minor uproar. It's one
of those things where it's like, yeah, that's unethical behavior.
But also in Kissinger terms, like not even on the
fucking radar.

Speaker 1 (03:45:23):
Right from most people. This is an a boring act.
But congratulations on turning over a new leave, Henry.

Speaker 2 (03:45:28):
Yeah yeah, wow, Henry, you've really improved.

Speaker 1 (03:45:31):
You really are less shit.

Speaker 2 (03:45:32):
You waited until after the thing to do something bad.

Speaker 1 (03:45:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:45:35):
So, in his post power years, he became even more
of an international celebrity. He's actually surprised when he's when
he starts doing this job, he's raking, racking up huge
amounts of money as like a public speaker, and he
and his like accountant expect the value of him as
a speaking like, well, it's obviously it's going to decline over time,
it just gets bigger. He just becomes more of more

(03:45:56):
valuable as a public speaker. Now or some insight into
his life in what we might call retirement, I found
a New York Magazine article from two thousand and six quote.
He bonds with Oprah Winfrey over their shared love of dogs.
She recommended an artist to paint a portrait of Kissinger's lap,
and with Alex Rodriguez over their shared love of the Yankees.

(03:46:17):
He and a rod had lunch at the Four Seasons.
Last year, he and his wife of thirty two years,
Nancy McGinnis, spent every Christmas with close friends Oscar and
Annette de la Renta in the Dominican Republic. Asked about
the nature of that friendship, given the unlikely connection between
a former statesman and a fashion mogul, Kissinger says, they
are dear friends of mine. They have no utility.

Speaker 1 (03:46:36):
I'm going to try to kill them. Yeah, I will
kill them. Plans to kill them soon. Can we just
can we finally agree that Oprah Winfrey is a fucking monster? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (03:46:48):
I mean right to Oprah buddies with Henry K. Winfrey.

Speaker 9 (03:46:51):
Yes, I mean you have to fill Yester Oz like
she creates.

Speaker 1 (03:46:57):
I'm not going to chick her out ready, doctor ozhit talk,
but the other ones you got me. Don't forgett don't
forget John of God.

Speaker 2 (03:47:05):
Yeah, right under your Suharto tattoo. Gareth doctor Oz high
fiving Henry Kissinger.

Speaker 1 (03:47:13):
Madam is this before he got his show? So I
liked him early. This was just this was just like aspirational,
you know, yeah, I don't know. It's a great pal.

Speaker 2 (03:47:24):
So Kissinger became a New York socialite and was reputed
to enjoy the city's social scene because quote, Manhattan social
life is more generous than Washington's political life.

Speaker 1 (03:47:33):
He should not to pick where he wants to go out.
I mean he should have to get food raised to
his selling a bucket.

Speaker 9 (03:47:41):
It's the same thing as that. What the Cooke was
a David Coke, the one that just died, But it
was the same thing. Everyone just accepted him in those
fucking circles and it's like, yeah, he's a fucking.

Speaker 1 (03:47:50):
And then Charles Coke is the one who's like, you know,
was like on a rehabilitation tour for like six months. Yeah,
and you know, major news outlets are report like, look,
he recognizes they fucked up a little. It's like he
feels bad. He feels bad. I give a fuck, Yeah,
degenitalize him.

Speaker 2 (03:48:08):
So it was regularly and I think probably still is
regularly seen on the arm of Barbara Walters, who calls
him a loyal friend. In fact, she was hanging out
with Henry and his wife one night at a dinner
party when Kissinger endured one of his few public shamings.
It came courtesy as the real the only real hero
of these episodes, ABC News anchor Peter Jennings, who sees

(03:48:32):
Kissinger at a restaurant and is fucking enraged and screams out,
how does it feel to be a war criminal?

Speaker 1 (03:48:39):
Henry Peter Jennings baby, And of course Peter Jennings is gone,
So yeah he dies. Yeah, Chrissinger probably like invaded his lungs.

Speaker 9 (03:48:51):
Yeah, happened every restaur every to all these people.

Speaker 2 (03:48:57):
Yeah, Jennings is basically the only person at Kissinger's level
who calls him out.

Speaker 1 (03:49:03):
And imagine, I mean he's He's a nightly news anchor
on a major network. Imagine if you had that sort
of vitriol pointed at some of these people that we
have in present day who are again not only allowed
to walk around but are still in sphears of power.
But but Dick, like we were saying about Dick Cheney, like,
you know, George W. Bush should not he should not

(03:49:24):
be in public. He should not be releasing thoughts on
Russian invasion. No, he certainly shouldn't be fucking packing. Yeah,
he shouldn't be shouldn't he shouldn't have fingers. No, his
daughter should not be on the fucking Today Show. Like,
I don't know. I like Strawberry and my Margarita.

Speaker 2 (03:49:44):
So I want to continue the story because I'm not
telling with the story of Peter Jennings like calling Kissinger
out at a restaurant. And to finish that tale, I'm
gonna quote from the New York magazine again. The subject
of Kissinger's past sins was very much in the air
at the time. Judges in both France and Spain were
seeking Kissinger for questionings. The long simmering debate over his
connection to Chilean General Augusto Pinochet's brutal killing of dissidence

(03:50:04):
in the seventies returned with a vengeance, not least in
Christopher Hitchen's right, ringing indictment the trial of Henry Kissinger.
These developments clearly rattled Kissinger, who had preemptively written a
lengthy article for Foreign Affairs decrying the dangerous legal precedent
of using universal jurisdiction to try state actors for past action,
the same precedent under which German courts hoped to try
Donald Rumsfeld. The question in the question by Peter Jennings,

(03:50:28):
how does it feel to be a war criminal? Stunned
the dinner guests, who included Time Inc. Editor Henry Grunwald,
who also died last year and Yeah, and former ABC
chairman Thomas Murphy. Grunwald told Jennings the comment was unsuitable.

Speaker 1 (03:50:42):
Yeah, what unsuitable thing to say.

Speaker 9 (03:50:45):
Was as unsuitable as fucking bombing Cambodia. Like Jesus fucking Christ,
this is the manners. They care about manners. They don't
care about all the fucking bodies.

Speaker 2 (03:50:55):
And to his credit, when like Grunwald is like Peter,
that's really unsuitable, Peter's.

Speaker 1 (03:50:59):
Like, I don't give a shit.

Speaker 2 (03:51:01):
You have to say that exactly, Peter, she says the
emotional equivalent of that, it's such a bummer. Barbara Walters
later said of the moment, I tried to change the subject,
but it was a very uncomfortable moment Nett talk about
reacted very strongly and hurt Kissinger said, nothing, man.

Speaker 1 (03:51:19):
It really is like you know it. You see this
a lot when like protesters will go into events and
they will you know, they'll have a message, they'll have signs,
they'll have something orchestrated set up, and not only will
the politician and the people on the politician's dais sort
of be like okay, okay, but the people at the

(03:51:41):
event will be the ones who are like, you know,
I like a congressional here, this isn't the time or place.
This isn't the time. It's like, there's no time or
fucking place. Where's the what what do you fucking expect?
That's all we have at this point is that's the
only thing you can really do is try to make
them hate living in the world they're ruining.

Speaker 2 (03:52:00):
Yeah, it is a fucking mark of how fucked up
any kind of accountability to the political classes in our
society that the most consequence Henry Kissinger ever faces is
Peter Jennings yelling at him.

Speaker 1 (03:52:13):
Once at dinner, a man who's been dead for twenty years,
fifteen years. I mean, when Sarah Huckeby Sanders was out
to dinner and some people yelled at her. I mean
you saw both sides, Oh yeah, condemning it.

Speaker 2 (03:52:23):
Some fucking dudes yell at fucking Tucker Carlson from his
lawn terror.

Speaker 1 (03:52:28):
There are there are Republicans and Democrats who always condemn
that sort of stuff. And it's not because people believe
in public decorum. It's because they don't want it to
show up on their fucking doorsteps, right.

Speaker 2 (03:52:38):
Right, because yeah, they don't want like that shit to
come back on them. Yes, I'm sure if someone's going
to point out Peter Jennings did something fucked up, he
must have. He was immediately even he oh right, he
did nine to eleven. That was Peter Jennings. He threw
those planes right into those towers. I'd forgotten about that, Gary.

Speaker 11 (03:52:53):
Yeah, but at fucking least he was there and didn't
mince words, just like you're a war criminal, not.

Speaker 2 (03:53:03):
Like how does it feel to be here where American
boys are dying? But like, no, no, you did war crimes,
Henry Kissinger, Fuck you, someone has to say it. In
his many decades worth of declining years, Henry has focused
his remaining powers in an attempt to secure his legacy.
In two thousand and three, he opened up his White
House archives to a British historian named Niall Ferguson, whose

(03:53:24):
book also just titled Kissinger. I've cited a few times
in these episodes. Ferguson claimed his biography would quote provide
a warts and all look at the man, but quotes
he made about the relationship put the light of that.
And this is Ferguson like writing about how jazzed he
is to be hanging out with Henry. I'm in Henry
Kissinger's swimming pool talking about his meetings with MAUSEI dung,
thinking I must be dreaming shit in that pool. I know,

(03:53:48):
fucking hell Nile everyone. Now, obviously I have quoted from
this biography because of the details the information Kissinger provides
about his early life, it is not without value. It's
probably the most tailed look at his childhood we have.
It also only goes up to nineteen sixty eight, which
neatly avoids the most controversial moments of Kissinger's life.

Speaker 1 (03:54:07):
Right, yeah, that's not great, even journal Yeah, and now
we end the story.

Speaker 2 (03:54:14):
Yeah, yeah, that was the end of Henry Kissinger.

Speaker 1 (03:54:17):
Yeah, blah blah blah.

Speaker 2 (03:54:19):
Even when journalists and historians that Henry hasn't authorized specifically
interview him, they are likely to find themselves enraptured or
at least tripped up by his clever wordplay. Bob Woodward,
who first interviewed Kissinger in seventy four, wrote, he wants
to control not just what he says, but people's perceptions
of what he says. And it's kind of like one
long book review where he is arguing with the reviewer

(03:54:41):
of his book, or his life or his policy. Seymour
Hirsch was more blunt in nineteen eighty three when he wrote,
he lies like most people breathe.

Speaker 1 (03:54:49):
Wow. Now, oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:54:51):
The most comprehensive biography of Henry Kissinger And if you
were looking, If you're looking for just a book on
Kissinger's influence in Like the US and how toxic it was,
I recommend Kissinger's Shadow by Grandon. If you want an
actual biography of Kissinger's whole life and time and power,
I recommend Walter Isaacson's nineteen ninety two book Kissinger. I
actually think Isaacson is too fair to Henry Kissinger.

Speaker 1 (03:55:13):
But even so, even though he.

Speaker 2 (03:55:15):
Clearly like does not wholly condemn the man, I find
the book utterly damning. Right like, the book condemns him,
even if Isaacson doesn't entirely try such a piece of shaite.
It's just impossible. Not if you're accurate, and I think
is pretty active.

Speaker 1 (03:55:31):
You lay out the facts, that's it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:55:33):
Now, the best thing I can say about Isaacson's book, Kissinger,
is that Henry Kissinger himself complained endlessly about it. He
wind to Isaacson's boss, Henry Grunwald, who defended Isaacson and
said he felt the book was balanced and down the middle.
Kissinger responded, what right does that young man have to
be balanced and down the middle about me?

Speaker 1 (03:55:54):
Ugh? I mean, wow, wow, it just shows I mean, yeah,
like he should never be in the position where he
should be pointing out that other people are crazy.

Speaker 2 (03:56:07):
No, no, fucking like you don't get to say that, Henry.

Speaker 1 (03:56:10):
Yeah no.

Speaker 2 (03:56:11):
As New York Magazine notes, Kissinger denies that exchange ever happened.

Speaker 1 (03:56:17):
Oh I believe Henry. I mean, the guy doesn't lie.
He seems like an honest man. I bet Nixon still
had him wire tapped.

Speaker 2 (03:56:23):
And here's a quote from that article that's very funny.
I've never read the Isaacson book, he says, then quickly clarifies,
I've read a few parts of the Isaacson book, which
I didn't like, but I understand that there are many
parts of the book that are very positive. I missed those,
he says, with a sly smile.

Speaker 1 (03:56:39):
That is so. That is so trumpy. I know it
really is right. Yeah, I didn't read it. I read
parts one through five.

Speaker 2 (03:56:49):
Yeah, Isaacson says Kissinger wrote him a series of letters
contesting numerous passages. My view, and this is Isaacson. My
view is that if Kissinger reread his own memoir, who
would be outraged that they did not treat him favorably enough?

Speaker 1 (03:57:03):
Kissing who wrote this? You did? Oh? Oh the fuck?
That's son of a bitch. I gotta get me.

Speaker 2 (03:57:13):
Kissinger claims to be unconcerned about his place and history.
I cannot defect my legacy, he says. And what does
he think his legacy is. I have no view, he says.
I can't control it by what I say. I tell him,
I don't believe him. You're not in your eighties yet,
he replies. Now a lot has been made about Kissinger's
purported role in like the Invasion of Iraq. He did,

(03:57:34):
apparently like urge Bush and Cheney to go through with it.
I think crediting him with specifically with having an impact
on that is not realistic because this is Bush and Cheney.
By the time they talked to Kissinger about this, they
had made up their fuck you know, it's probably didn't
push them into invading Iraqs.

Speaker 1 (03:57:50):
It's like similar when like the Queens of the Stone
Age have Dave Grohl on drums. Yeah, yeah, exactly. He's
a player for sure, but he's not writing all the songs.
I mean, Josh, yeah, he's got this. Kissinger's definitely the
Dave Groll of the the Bush administration. Yeah right, great job.

Speaker 2 (03:58:06):
And I think that rather than like actually being a
meaningful role in arranging consent for the invasion of Iraq,
I think Kissinger was doing here what he always did.
He was sucking up to powerful people to tell them
by telling them what they wanted to hear. And the
best example of this comes from two thousand and eight, when,
during a presidential debate, both John McCain and Barack Obama
cited Kissinger as supporting their positions towards Iran. Both men

(03:58:29):
held opposite views of what the US should do in
regards to that country. So I might like, you might
expect like, and I don't think either of them is lying.
I think they're both because I think Kissinger just would
be like, yeah, of course that's the right call.

Speaker 1 (03:58:41):
Absolutely, Yeah, Look what the start date to be, just
so I can put it in my cale.

Speaker 2 (03:58:46):
Yeah, good call, guys, that's great.

Speaker 1 (03:58:51):
We should invade them and leave them alone. Yeah. So yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:58:56):
As a young law student at Yale, Hillary Clinton had
taken part in outraged protests against Kissinger's bombing of Cambodia.
As Secretary of State, she praised the astute observations he
shared with her, and wrote in a review of one
of his books, Kissinger is a friend. And again the
astute observations are Kissinger saying whatever she wanted to do
was the right thing to do, right, Like, that's that's what.

(03:59:17):
That's why these people like him and think he's astute.

Speaker 1 (03:59:20):
He's not.

Speaker 2 (03:59:21):
I think he does today get kind of like looked
at as this secret power pulling the strings.

Speaker 1 (03:59:25):
I think instead he's just like the ultimate kiss ass.

Speaker 2 (03:59:28):
He's just like, oh, you're in power now, Yeah, whatever
you want to do is the good thing to do,
absolutely right, you know.

Speaker 1 (03:59:34):
Yeah, one hundred percent.

Speaker 9 (03:59:35):
I always I would tell people like, if you're if
you're young and you don't understand what it means to
see a Hillar Clinton standing there with Kissinger. It's no
different than in ten years of all of sudden your
Democrat candidate's standings to Cheney. Yeah, you're like, what the fuck.

Speaker 1 (03:59:52):
Is going on? And I guarantee you that lost her.

Speaker 9 (03:59:55):
A bunch of people didn't vote for her because they
saw her staying next to Kissinger.

Speaker 1 (03:59:58):
Yeah, I guarantee you. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:00:01):
And yeah, I think though, when you're trying to talk
about like his actual influence and like the fucked up
things that have been happening in the last couple of decades,
it's less in whatever advice he was giving politician airb
And it's more in the way he shaped the way
the US government functions. In terms of foreign policy. He
centralized power and set the precedent of allowing the executive

(04:00:23):
branch to execute military actions without consent of anyone outside
the White House. And obviously there were like things that
were done to restrict the power of the executive branch
from doing that, but then those things were all undone
after the like right, like this it's this kind of.

Speaker 1 (04:00:35):
Tuggo war thing.

Speaker 2 (04:00:36):
But Kissinger, even though he did not set obviously the
policy after nine to eleven that that expanded the executive
government's ability to do military shit abroad. He did set
the present of like how you would actually centralize power
in that way within the executive and he made up
he set a lot of ideological and philosophical trends that

(04:00:57):
are still shaping the way the US government functions and
regards to foreign policy today. Sure, and if you're looking
for perhaps the most direct and succinct explanation for how
Kissinger influenced the world of modern American politics, you can
find it in this quote he himself wrote in nineteen
sixty three. There are two kinds of realists, those who
manipulate facts and those who create them. The West requires

(04:01:20):
nothing so much as men able to create their own reality.

Speaker 1 (04:01:23):
Wow wow, what fuck wow to not to not be
able to define realists and your two definite your two
tier definition of realism is absolutely deliciable.

Speaker 2 (04:01:35):
Yeah, for neither of your definitions of realists to involve
people who care.

Speaker 1 (04:01:39):
About material reality. Yeah, you're saying the first one, I
was like, oh, and the second one's going to be realists.
It's like no, no, no, no, no, either one is realists. No,
So that's Henry Kissinger it's so unbelievable and to what
like you know, he really he his legacy, like you're
sort of saying, is not just directly connected to the

(04:02:02):
things he's connected to, because there was no prosecution for
what Nixon did, no, and there's no prosecution for what
Reagan did, and there's no prosecution because we never prosecute
and we never actually hold any of these people accountable.
You know, you do see the seeds of that flourish now,

(04:02:25):
like you can invade. I mean, we're at the point
where most people don't even know we've invaded countries we've invaded,
Like at least with Vietnam, people had access to seeing
it and being disgusted by it. And then under Bush
it was like, well, we're not going to show the
coffins returning. And you see, I mean it's not just Republicans.

(04:02:46):
You see it under democratic presidents too. It just is
kind of more egregious at times under Republican presidents. But
you know, it's it's every president gets more powerful, does more,
and it does kind of boil down to they're going
to be evil journalists and media need to recognize what

(04:03:07):
their fucking jobs are. If you're in some of these jobs,
like it's it should not be a popularity contest for
access only. There should be you should be beholden to
doing good and making these people held accountable. Because it's
so relevant in what you're talking about with Kissinger that

(04:03:28):
they just let the access to him because he became
a popular figure, completely blind them as to what was
actually going on.

Speaker 9 (04:03:37):
Well, it's actually worse than not punishing them. Remember when
when Obama was elected, everyone was like, these guys have
to be.

Speaker 1 (04:03:45):
Tried for war crimes.

Speaker 9 (04:03:46):
Yeah, and he said, we got to move on, and
you know that we're talking about torture and war crimes
and everything else. But it went, it went further than
that because they gave Bush like the Medal of Freedom.
I mean there's a picture of fucking Biden hanging on
his chest.

Speaker 1 (04:04:03):
And they also they also honored this guy named Henry Kissinger.

Speaker 9 (04:04:09):
They did honored him. So it's beyond not doing anything.

Speaker 1 (04:04:14):
Yeah, well, it's just it's not even just him, I mean,
it's just it's systemic. It's just and you know what,
if you are if you are one of these people,
if you are a fucking anchor at CNN, like if
you're Jim Acosta. Think of how fucking popular you would
be if you did just start using your access to
just be like Peter Jennings, Like here we are craving

(04:04:38):
this fucking figure. But they would be immediately fired. I mean,
but he would never talk, but they would be. But
you would also, I mean, having even a moment of
that would carry your career. Like if we had that
Peter Jennings shit now, it would go so viral and
people would talk about that person endlessly that I mean.

(04:05:01):
It's like it's like when you know, when billionaires started
competing over being philanthropists. You know, you at some point
you're so far in the other direction that you're not
that far off from just doing the thing that you're
supposed to do. Is going to be such a radical move.

(04:05:23):
It's this it's very frustrating.

Speaker 2 (04:05:24):
Like right now you have all of these big media
figures like moving their shows to Ukraine to be able
to film shelling in the distance. Like obviously, to be
a journalist covering combat up close, covering war crimes up
close requires a lot of physical courage. Those like Sky
News reporters who got fucking shot and shit, the Daily
Beast reporters got fucking shot that. But like being like

(04:05:46):
less your holt, like having your show filmed with like
shelling in the distance. They have massive security teams, they
have massive resources invested into making sure they are in
as little danger as they can possibly be, and more
than anything, they are out there in doing it for
the fucking clout. Because that is easy to like, feels
like I'm brave. What's actually brave is Peter Jennings yelling

(04:06:10):
at Henry Kissinger at a fucking dinner party full of
powerful people and making sure that for just a second
he has a moment of accountability. And if one of
them was willing to do fucking that to any of
these goals, I would have a lot more respect than
I would have them filming shelling in Key from a
mile and a half away.

Speaker 9 (04:06:24):
Yeah, look, there was Wolf Blitzer who during the First
Gulf War put on a helmet and was in Saudi
Arabia where scud missles were flying and saying how in
danger he was. At the same time, there were journalists,
American journalists in the fucking bag that hotel being being
shot at and rocketed by American troops, and those guys

(04:06:48):
didn't work anymore, and wolf Blitzer got his own TV
show on CNN.

Speaker 1 (04:06:53):
Or Brian Williams when he talked to when he was
like the way that he embellish his story about like
getting off of a helicopter and taking RPG fire, Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:07:06):
I mean I don't know we could use another Jennings
or too, at least in this regard.

Speaker 1 (04:07:10):
Yeah, I mean it's it's hard because it's like, what
would you I mean what would like You're like, we want,
like we want a politician for the people, and it's like,
I like that's like that's what you wish for, but
you're like, the step first is to just have these
people vilified for the things they should be vilified for.

Speaker 2 (04:07:28):
Yeah, it would be nice if there was a journalist.
That's the end of the stay.

Speaker 1 (04:07:38):
Well, honestly, like this was, I mean just fucking incredible
and just such a ridiculous He's a pretty bad one, right,
I don't think I don't think there's a worse America.
The worst he is. He. I know that there was
talk of like into the countries, of like trying him

(04:07:58):
outside of you know, not having him there. Yeah.

Speaker 9 (04:08:02):
Yeah, but can he travel anywhere he wants or is restricted?

Speaker 1 (04:08:07):
He can't.

Speaker 2 (04:08:07):
I'm not aware of. I mean there may be like
one place.

Speaker 1 (04:08:10):
He also now like he's become like this watery figure.
So he's kind of like the T one thousand where
if you just get close to him, he turns into
silver goo and just can go through a drain or something. Yeah,
you can't put a handcuff around a pile of watery goo.

Speaker 2 (04:08:23):
I mean he's he is a big part. Like he
argues vociferously for why like Rumpsfeld shouldn't be able to
be charged and I think Germany it is and he's
doing it like selfishly again then shock, then it would
put Kissinger in danger, right, like he's not giving it
enough loyalty to Rummy, who he probably.

Speaker 1 (04:08:39):
Hates at this point.

Speaker 2 (04:08:40):
Although I don't know that Kissinger can take things personally actually,
so maybe like I don't.

Speaker 1 (04:08:44):
Know, he he's like the Bill Walsh coaching Tree of
War criminals. Yeah, I don't know what that means. Well,
Bill Walsh like coached the forty nine ers and invented
the West Coast offense and you just see the ripple
effect through the NFL for generations in decades. Yeah, changed football,
It just changed everything. And it's like that's what he did.
He just was the guy who's like, you know, I

(04:09:06):
came up with a new offense, and it's like everyone's
just reading off of that playbook and tweaking it. Yeah,
said reference Robert Robert. Football is when uh.

Speaker 2 (04:09:18):
Ok the title of this episode. I love that guy,
Gareth said, of the football, but the politics.

Speaker 1 (04:09:28):
I liked the two yeahs, the precedgure. I don't know
who that guy is. Noah, Hey, who is that? Yeah.
It's like it's like in basketball when Phil Jackson made
the triangle offense.

Speaker 2 (04:09:43):
That's somebody triangle diplomacy. It's like the triangle thing.

Speaker 1 (04:09:46):
Yes, absolutely, yeah, yeah, like all right, I'll right, A trag.

Speaker 2 (04:09:51):
An offense is the opposite of defense, right, Yes, what
everyone said, that's what everyone says. In my opinion, it
definitely is you know.

Speaker 1 (04:09:58):
The team with the most points when well, for sure
that's going to be critical.

Speaker 2 (04:10:02):
Yeah, absolutely, And you know when the overtime gets a
first down, that's really that's that's probably.

Speaker 1 (04:10:08):
I'd finish it. You've nailed it already, absolutely, three pointer,
absolutely point touchdown for Robert. Let's go glove trotters. Well, honestly,
thank you for allowing us to enter your dojo and
mess around for a little while. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (04:10:26):
Thank you is the right thank you, bro, I thank
you for listening to me read thirty one thousand words about.

Speaker 9 (04:10:38):
Because we talked about it and I was like, I
can't do it because it's not one episode, it's so
any episode.

Speaker 2 (04:10:43):
Yeah, this is like the minimum I think responsibly cover
Henry Kissinger. Like, we could have done another couple episodes.

Speaker 1 (04:10:51):
Hey, let's do it it, Gareth, Yes, just rip a couple.

Speaker 2 (04:10:58):
Yeah, we'll get a couple of photos of him hanging
out with Jill Saint John, joke about his hog.

Speaker 1 (04:11:04):
Yeah, let's take it on the road. We can get
another forty minutes of content out of that. Honestly, we
could just keep redoing partons of this on the road
for a year and a half.

Speaker 2 (04:11:14):
The develop and Behind the Bastards present three guys going
through shots of Henry Kissinger at fancy parties and talking
about the shape of his dick under his pants.

Speaker 1 (04:11:23):
Honestly, honestly, it should work.

Speaker 2 (04:11:26):
Looks like he was having a chubb day today. What
do you think, Dave.

Speaker 1 (04:11:31):
At the walnuts on the table, I'm the only one
I'm focused on. Look at those tennis shorts.

Speaker 2 (04:11:37):
This is how we make our millions.

Speaker 1 (04:11:42):
Well, genuinely, thank you.

Speaker 9 (04:11:44):
I'm generally super scared having watched how Colin Powell was treated.

Speaker 1 (04:11:50):
Oh yes, when he died. Beast scared. People are going
to react to Yeaher's death. Yeah, you're going to watch
liberals be like he was fucking awesome and you're just
like everything about him was bad. Yeah, yeah, w it'll
be fun. Any pluggables at the end here, sure? Yeah, listen. Well,
first of all, we've got the Kissinger. We should do

(04:12:12):
Kissinger live, and we should use the kiss font and
we should also wear like the kiss makeup and we
should just do Kissinger. Yeah. We will be in Australia
and America. Best country on Earth will be in Australia
in the middle of April to May. You can go
to dollapodcast dot com for all that information. We're all
over the place. And then I am doing stand up

(04:12:33):
in Australia and also over the summer, so you can
go to Gareth Reynolds dot com for all that information
and you can follow us on social media's with our
I'm at Reynolds, Gareth Dave's at Dave Underscore Anthony on Instagram.
I'm at Reynolds Gareth on Twitter, Dave's at Dave Anthony
on Twitter and who all right, thank you for having

(04:12:56):
us again. Mother.

Speaker 2 (04:12:58):
Yeah, everyone go pray for Henry Kissinger's painful demise. Yeah,
let's have let's all hope that Tim tim Allen takes
him out somehow smuggles coke into a party Kissinger's at
and it just blows out the old man's heart.

Speaker 1 (04:13:19):
Or he just starts doing war improvement with Kissinger. Yah,
his character. Yeah, Kissinger would be the you know, the
the owl. He's the owl, right right?

Speaker 2 (04:13:30):
Oh, you got a bomb Cambodia, Tim, all right, there's
a good.

Speaker 1 (04:13:37):
That's a note. Dingo Behind the Bastards is a production
of cool Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media,
visit our website cool zonemedia dot com, or check us
out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts.