Part Six: Kissinger

Robert is joined again by Gareth Reynolds & Dave Anthony (The Dollop) for the sixth and final part of our epic six part series on Henry Kissinger.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi everybody. Robert Evans here and my novel After the
Revolution is available for pre order now from a k
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(00:22):
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You can also pre order it in physical or in
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So please google a k press after the Revolution um
or find an indie bookstore in your area and pre
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me very happy. So this is episode six. You know,

(00:46):
we're what eight hours into talking about Mr Kissinger. Yeah,
really meet me from eight hours ago, buddy. It's like
when Bill and Ted meet each other halfway through and
they don't another journey they're about to go upon. Yeah, buddy,
le up. So the things the thing that Kissinger gets
the most credit for that we haven't mentioned. We we've
talked about a bunch of the things that he gets

(01:07):
credit for is bringing peace to the Middle East. Um,
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 decade's long cycle
of wars between Israel and the Arab nations around it. Now,
to call that bringing peace would be ignoring a tremendous
amount of ongoing violence against the Palestinian people. But Kissinger

(01:29):
did help ensure Like you know, there 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. The
gist of it is that on October sixth, nineteen seventy three,
on Yam kapoor Um, Egypt and Syria launched a coordinated
assault on Israel that for a time threatened the state's

(01:49):
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 had idea. UM.
It was also because Kissinger was kind of buried in
Vietnam stuff right. But by October of seventy three, negotiations
with Hannoi had been concluded, US forces had stepped back

(02:12):
from an active role, and Kissinger had been awarded a
Nobel Peace Prize with his Vietnamese counterpart Le Ducto. Absolutely now,
I can't. There's no counter argument. Absolutely no, he he
nailed it. Um, I mean now, Nobel Peace Prize. It
really doesn't. I mean, they must hit sometimes. I'm just
familiar with a lot of the nose, though it seems

(02:32):
mostly to be misss in my experience. When he got that,
that's called the no. Yeah. And you know who felt
that way, Gareth Lee Ducto, who was also awarded the
Noble Peace Prize with Kissinger. I don't want mine. I
don't want mine. Yeah. He literally was like, no, I'm
not going to take it. The war isn't over yet.

(02:53):
Like all he's done. All we've done is negotiate the
US no longer murdering people on the scale they had been,
and he's in charge of it. Yeah. And its specifically,
he was angry because right before the armistice was signed,
in order to like try and force Hannoi to agree
on some points, Kissing Your orchestrated a massive nighttime bombing
campaign on Christmas of Hanoi. Um, they didn't bomb on

(03:16):
Christmas Day, just the day before, in a bunch of
the days after. But it gets called the Christmas bombing.
We're worried we'll hit center. Jolly blood on my hands.
So Lee Docto was like, I don't I'm not going
to take an award for peace with this guy. Suck him.

(03:36):
So Kissing Your accepted it alone. Oh my god, he's
such a cool dude. He's such a cool dude. More
credit for me. I can't believe I'm the only one
who go out that this year. I must be really
good at this stuff. So yeah, he's like the con
wet Kanye of the Nobel Peace Price. Right right right, Sorry,

(04:02):
you did great, But Kissinger had the best water of
all time, of all time. It would have been really
funny if Henry Kissinger had like shoved Taylor Swift off stage.
You have the great, great piece, but come on talking
about the baby. So by October of seventy three, Kissinger

(04:22):
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 he would do stuff like
try to halt arms shipments there, like during the Okimpor War.

(04:44):
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, because I don't
want I'm trying to negotiate with UM, with Syria and Egypt,

(05:04):
and if they see US military aircraft landing in UM
Jerusalem to give the Israeli's weapons, that's gonna funk up
my negotiations. So like, he's actually really unpopular with a
lot of folks in Israel because he does stuff like this.
UM And in fact, Kissingers and obviously like every US
negotiator in this conflict, Kissinger is more on israel side
than anyone, but he's it's probably fair to say he's

(05:26):
less on Israel side than any other negotiator we ever
put in there, which is like some weird It sounds
like he's the most progressive because I mean, like obviously
we had we could give a funk. You know, he's
not a Zionist. For one thing. He doesn't have like
there's not a you know, he's Jewish, but he's not
really that. Like there there is some amount of, like
as a Holocaust survivor. He believes strongly that, like you know,

(05:48):
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,
but he like still moment of principles. The fact that
there's like any of that at all is weird. Yeah,
I mean like he probably had like a little Nixon
on his shoulder, who was like, I know, you're just
gonna be a jew about them, and he was like, no,

(06:09):
I will not not devil Nixon. It's weird how plugged
in you are to how Nixon reacts to everything exactly. Yeah,
oh man, So Kissinger's best relationship in the Middle East
wound up being with anwar Sadat the president of Egypt.

(06:31):
The two like we're legitimately good buddies. They would kiss
each other on the cheek like they liked each other.
They found the one. Yeah. Meanwhile, Kissinger and Gold of
My Ear, which was the leader of Israel, had a
really contentious relationship. Um. At the end of the day,
Kissinger again would always side with Israel on existential issues,

(06:52):
but he wound up giving them a lot more ship
than you might expect. Now. The fact that the US
eventually sends in arms turns the war around for Israel,
which allows them 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

(07:15):
while he was trying to negotiate a ceasefire. Um. 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 peace and it be seen as
Henry Kissinger brought peace to the Middle East, 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 forgetting about the people of Kissinger. Yes, exactly, the

(07:38):
real chosen people. So when Israeli forces surround the Egyptian
Third Army and encircle it, violating a ceasefire, Kissinger is
livid um 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 organs like as
we talked about in our China episode, and this like

(07:59):
three way to a messy thing that he deals with
China and the Soviet Union. Um, he wants what's called
a balance of power. That's his whole thing. He's he
gets a he's 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 of power, and he
wants a balance of power in the Middle East between

(08:19):
Israel and her neighbors too. And he's lived about in
part that they violated the ceasefire. But he's 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 but he is like broadly on the

(08:43):
right side of this um. Yeah. Over the course of
several chaotic days, he makes numerous trips between each of
the belligerent nations in 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 that guy, yeah,

(09:05):
when he's so when he's dealing with Hafes asad Or
and Sadat, 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 at a meeting quote, if it were not for
the accident of my birth, I would be anti Semitic.
Oh my god. On another occasion, he says, quote, and

(09:37):
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. Jesus Christ,
he fucking said that. Holy sh it, man, we are
just we are just such fucking assholes. I'm on fire,

(09:58):
I'm just now is so good down he kills at
the clubs in Damascus, And yeah, he is actually like
really popular with not all because there are other we
have quotes from other like people who are like particularly
other Egyptian military leaders under Sadat who are like well,

(10:20):
Sadat's fallen forward. He's obviously just saying whatever he thinks
will make us like him like he doesn't. Clearly he
can't believe this ship. He's just trying to like. There
are people who see through it, but he he's able
to trick The folks who matter, which is in this
case are Sadat and and hafez Um. 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

(10:42):
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 there's a war, um. But
even when he's on the right side of things, his
ego plays a massive and often toxic role in how
everything shakes out. See, well, 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

(11:03):
big milestones in the Watergate case hit, Like when when
Nixon is like ordering the cover up and ship and
doing the things that will get him impeached, Kissinger is
always away, Like he's like very studiously as soon as
the story breaks, like I need to be overseas as
much as fucking possible. So is it possible. He's competently
trying to negotiate Middle East piece because he's trying to

(11:24):
save his own ass and does Yeah, that is literally
what's going on. Because he's he's not a dumb man.
He sees that Nixon is fucked, and he doesn't like
when I can't just be doing nothing. Yeah, and why
don't I actually try to make this work? I guess
I'm in another trouble domestically. Yeah, 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

(11:45):
part of it is like, well if if the last
thing everyone remembers about Henry while Nixon is going down
is that he ended war in the Middle East. I'm
gonna keep being Secretary of State. You know. There's a
friend of mine who had this theory when he was
like he said, when it might even be a bit
I don't remember. When he's in like a ride share,
he won't talk, and then the last two minutes he'll

(12:05):
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 and be like, 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 leave on
a high note. So the last thing he's going to
try to do is actually decent after a bunch of bullshit. Yeah,
when I when I enter a party, I set off

(12:27):
an I e ed 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 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.
That is how Henrica Securr handle everything. So yeah, now again,

(12:48):
but here here's the thing. The fact that like this
is all existential for Henry right, ending the war in
in between Israel and in her neighbors is like he
knows he has to do this or he's not going
to keep his gig um. So not only is he
trying to 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

(13:10):
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. I'd like, I can see
that list. So this becomes a problem when while this
is all going on, this Egyptian and Israeli general, you've
got this massive encircled Egyptian army, the Egyptian general in
charge of that in the Israeli general like meet each

(13:32):
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 where
these guys are like, I think we can work something out,
Like we don't need to be doing this anymore. Shoot

(13:52):
the bit, kill them quick. So Henry is enraged when
he hears this happening, and he's still and he starts again.
All these people who, like in any other situation, neither
like in Israeli general or in Egyptian general in the
nineteen seventies, not guys you would expect to be the

(14:13):
voices of reason, but because his kissingers in the story. Yeah,
so he starts maneuvering to make these guys shut the
funk up. Um. He sends a letter to the Israeli
ambassador asking what does Yarev? Yarev's the Israeli general selling here,
tell him to stop. Suppose Yahrev comes out a great
hero on disengagement, what do you discuss on December eighteenth,

(14:36):
which is the next round of negotiations. I mean, he's
such yeah, I mean, it's just what a heinous asshole.
I mean, I feel like he could still tell the
credit towards him, but he's like, I love my fingerprint,
sole 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

(14:59):
think maybe it would have and good if like an
Israeli general and an Egyptian general had like brought peace
to the conflict, and like maybe that had been part
of the military legacy in the area. Might have been nice.
I don't know. We're staring down the battle of a
tragedy right now not recognized as the one so Kissinger

(15:21):
A biography continues the story quote at Kissinger's behest, both
Sadat and my year reigned in their generals at the
kilometer one on 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 were to be made, they
should be made by him. Then it's recalled. He was
very upset when he found out that things were actually

(15:43):
being settled by the general's 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 I might with the weakness is understating, yes, I'm
in an air strike. Can we can we kill both generals?
And if we're going to find no generals, these guys

(16:04):
are getting a long way too well. And I didn't
I wasn't there. Listen, Dick, I know the Watergate stuff
has you, but can we invade both countries? Come? So
to his sort of credit though, the piece that Henry
helped negotiate into the Yom Kipper War would prove to

(16:26):
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 Year, because like Sadak
still can't talk directly to Israel. There's a whole like
diplomatic thing going on. But he tells 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

(16:49):
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 it into this series of like constant wars um.
So yeah, what an amazing risk to take the to
be like you guys, stop, We'll do my version. We
gotta do it my way, Yeah, the Franks then of

(17:11):
Middle East peace negotiations. That is kind of the reputation
he gets because obviously this plays incredibly well for Americans,
and so Nick's Kissinger is seen as still this like
massive hero, even while this is a big part of
why he's so popular, even as the rest of the
Edmund goes down in flames. Now, this inaugurates a period
of what comes to be known as shuttle diplomacy. That's

(17:33):
a term you'll hear associated with Kissinger all the time,
and it's him 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. Um
Henry actually kind of grew addicted to throwing himself in
the middle of international crises and flying NonStop between capitals

(17:54):
to do these negotiations. It was this and the popularity
he earned from being seen as a peacemaker that arranteed
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

(18:16):
and the continent until the sixties. You know, that's just
there's so many to ruin. Yeah, yeah, this is like
him learning Spanish. He just never found the time. Anyone.
I'm a little older than I get the times I
can ruin. So um. Yeah. The the US footprint in

(18:39):
Africa started up when the c I in like the
early sixties. I think when the CIA murdered or allowed
other people to murder. It's a little unclear. Patrice Lamumba,
the left wing democratically elected leader of the Congo. The
US backed a right wing general. Well even calling like
right and left are less useful terms of this, but
we back a general called Joseph Mubutu, who proceeded to
spend the next couple decades robbing the country blind. It

(19:02):
seems like a pattern. Yeah, it happened. It's it's weird
that it keeps happening all the time. UM. While there
was other U S factory in Africa throughout the sixties
and early seventies, it stated 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 Intelligence,

(19:25):
not because any particularly good 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

(19:48):
be doing? All the should we have like a CIA,
like should we maybe? And there are like the CIA
gets like the there's a reforming of the CIA that
occurs in this period. You can, yeah, you a question
the degree to which it mattered. M Yeah, it may
have made them less good at doing the bad things
that they did, um, but not for lack of trying

(20:09):
hard to imagine it's the reform in the CIA is
the difference between overthrowing salvador I end and those like
us guys pissing themselves in Venezuela after getting like arrested
by fishermen. Um. For Henry Kissinger, though, the Year of
Intelligence was a year where he spent trying to reorient

(20:32):
the United States towards a new anti communist conflict. His
target this time was the nation of Angola. Now, 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

(20:54):
a better place to be than directly bordering South Africa
in this period. In nineteen sixty one, the people there
are 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

(21:14):
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 um who's
like him already 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

(21:36):
several elected communist leaders. So Portugal has like elected communist deputies.
Now Henry Kissinger flips the funk out at this. He
is certain the country will fall to Soviet influence. Interestingly,
like this datent he's worked at with the Soviets. 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 sweet sphere

(21:57):
of influence in Western Europe and the So it's kind
of hold to that here because they don't get involved
in Portugal. They don't like try to make push things
further in their direction. Henry is like convinced they're going
to and is absolutely wrong because paranoia from Nixon. He
was like, well, yeah, yeah, um, Portugal eventually elects other people.
Like again, the government stays fairly left wing by his standards,

(22:20):
but like it does not as you might notice it
does not join the Iron curtain, you know, right, It's yeah,
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. No, it's just almost at this point he's

(22:41):
hunt around so long that you're kind of just like,
I guess he must know. I mean you want to
know about He's probably like he like he must know something.
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
Hendry's like is gonna lead to they're gonna go full
communeist and it's going to be you know, no, maybe

(23:02):
if I had stated in power there just wouldn't have
been a dictator and things would have been fine, and
they would have had a lot less problems than they
see 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 everyone, We're like the Midas of genocides. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

(23:26):
So the biggest international result of the coup is that
the new Portuguese government had no stomach for colonies, right. Uh.
They negotiate a treaty with the three largest militant groups
in Angola in seventy five. These were the f n
l A, the mp l A, and UNITA. Um. The
non acronym names of all these groups are in French.
I am I'm not I'm not even gonna try absolute. Um.

(23:53):
What you need to know is that the mp l
A were Marxists, right, Um, kind of Marxists. They were
formed at least the chanization had been formed by members
of angles intelligencia who were Marxist, and Marxism had like
a big influence on the m p l A. Unfortunately,
like yeah meanwhile, like kind of so that's one faction.
The fn l A and UNITA are are generally described

(24:16):
as being right wing groups. But this is one of
those things where like grafting Western political terms onto the
civil war and Angola does not work great. Um. All
of these groups, even the ostensibly Marxist m p l A,
are very tribal in origin, and by that I mean
like they are based on specific tribal grievances and tribal
like like arguments, right, that are going on in the region.

(24:36):
Um 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. Made. Yeah. Um For an example of
how useless a strict ideological lens is here, UNITA was
initially very left wing and its messaging attacking the United
States as quote the notorious agents of imperialism. Unitis fighters

(24:59):
were literally really trained by North Korean soldiers, but by
the end of the civil war in Angola, they had
been receiving arms from the Reagan administration for years, brokered
via their paid representative, Paul Manifort. So that's the kind
of war this is where like United starts off being
like we're gonna end American imperialism, and by the end
they're like, Paul Manafort, get us weapons. If you're get

(25:22):
next to this manifest character, it's a good time. 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, I feel like fifty years old. Yeah, um, yeah,
I mean and by the end it is fair to

(25:43):
say that, like by the end of the Civil war,
United's like leader Jonah Sambi is calling himself an anti communist,
that's his messaging, but he's less about anti communism. And
again they're specific local grievances he has with the m
p l A, and like that's more why they're fighting
than that he like believes strongly in anti communism. He
just knows that's how you get weapons. Okay, that's right.

(26:04):
He speaking the language, right, Yeah, and when North Korea
is training his guys, he's not into jua, you know,
He's like he wants to train his guys. Yeah. Right now.
The fn l A 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 Sevimbi before sevenby formed United. I know,

(26:24):
this is a very complicated conflict. I'm sorry. Um. 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, ZI Year,
the A f L C I O, and the Ford
Foundation or at least aid of some sort. So it

(26:45):
gets like the sides here are just fucking baffling, Like
the tender Swindler. There's working every side. Yeah, China, the
C I A and the A f L C I
O shaking hands over backing. Yeah, it's like big brother,
what you guys here too? We Foundation, Wow. The m

(27:17):
p l A, 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 in 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, but it's worth noting, like

(27:39):
how substantial Cuban aid is to the m p l A.
Cuba starts sending soldiers to Angola in November of seventy five,
and by they had more than fifty five thousand soldiers
in the country, 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. Yeah. Yeah, it's
it's a bit of a jaunt, yeah uh. And that's

(28:00):
also a long involvement. You know, they're in there more
than a decade um. There's a lot of commitment here,
so as is generally Cuban. Now, 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

(28:21):
keep Soviet power at bay on a continent where they
were starting to do some business themselves. So China and
the US work together to support the fn l A
and UNITA. This is exactly the sort of thing Kissinger
had been going for when he pushed to connect the
U S diplomatically to China. I want to quote now
from a write up by Maria Gouda of Wilford Laurier University. Quote.

(28:41):
This was part of Kissinger's grand strategy of triangular diplomacy.
Triangular 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

(29:03):
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 angles of orbit
knows that, like, no, that's not really what's going on.

(29:25):
Like everyone is, like everyone is in here, and it
is certainly not like about what kind of political ship
individual parties believe. Um, yeah, the side. You can't graph
these easily under like a Western axis. But as Isaacson writes,
Angla became quote a vivid example of Kissinger's tendency to
see complex local struggles in an East West context. In

(29:47):
all respect to Kissinger, wrote Jonathan Quitney in his study
of the Angolan 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.
I mean, what a guy. Yeah, it's like, I mean

(30:08):
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.
I mean, he's just he's just so emboldened. Yeah, he's emboldened.
He just like he's so arrogant that he's like, well,

(30:30):
I don't do me a favorite. Could some of you
wear red shirts and some of you wear blue kind
of time, let's do shirt skins. Huh. Yeah. I don't
need to, like Henry Kissinger, don't need to like understand
the actual dimensions of why these sides are fighting. I
can just assume that it graphs onto every other conflict
I've ever cared about. Knowledge is weakers. Yeah, and this

(30:50):
is like, He's not the only American to be arrogant
in this specific way about a conflict in Africa, but
the last he's the last one. He would be the
last thing last since then so c i A. Funding
for UNITA in the f n l A was initially
quite low, but Kissinger pushed for an escalation, and soon
the agency had poured twenty two million dollars in covert

(31:12):
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 to come back.
And yeah, baby, yeah, yeah, everybody cares what. Everyone's plugged in.

(31:32):
You're gonna love my new stuff. The problem with Vietnam
is that it was too distant from American concerns. And
that's it. That's the problem now. He yeah, So he
believes that, like Angola is going to be our fucking
comeback tour. It's the equivalent of I don't know one
one of the times Elton John did a did a

(31:53):
did a farewell tour. I got yeah something something like that.
He's not his night. Yeah, there's a lot of similarities
between Henry Kissinger and Elton John's musical Yeah Bumming Jets. Yeah. Actually,
tiny dancer that song is about is about Henry Kissinger.
He is a tiny dancwer. Um he's he is. He

(32:15):
is a little guy. 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 with some teeth. You know,
he's just like seated a bunch to the fucking in
these negotiations with Vietnam. The big piece of mind to
Hendry Kissinger, Yeah, he is, like everyone is going to

(32:36):
see Vietnam as an l for me. So so yeah,
you could kind of see his attitude in Angola as
like the powerful sociopath version of buying a sports car
to impress like twenty year olds, like when you're you know,
an old man. Yeah right, he's his midlife for a crisis.
And the people around Kissinger are a lot less bullish

(32:58):
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 Yeah, they're just like, we
don't want any part of this right now. Wow, you
guys are really negative, you guys. It's ala. Where is
the wind? Gotta be a fucking hole in one baby.

(33:23):
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,
it will be a sign of weakness. He played on

(33:43):
stereotypes of Africa as mysterious and wild, claiming it is
an area where no one can be sure of its judgments.
Next Guda rights 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 Engolden civil
war would play out, kissing, You're pushed forward the idea

(34:04):
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 f and l
A and united to repeat to prevent the dominance of
the Soviet backed m p l A. This view wholly
disregards the idea that the Angolan Civil War was indeed
that a civil war. Kissinger was positioning Angola in a
wider east first his West context. Oh my kids, you

(34:26):
got biggie, You've got Tupac. I mean, only the United
States can want to be and 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 gotta get that. Really throw our dicks in
this one. Come on, guys, let's get moving. It could
be crazy. And this is one where like the US

(34:47):
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 and based on his urgings, the
CIA comes up with a plan called I a feature Um.
It was a covert par paramilitary operation in which US
military advisors and special forces would be sent to Angola

(35:09):
in a manner basically identical to how US involvement in
Vietnam started. Kissingers literally like, let's do that again, baby,
Let's see it goes pretty good? Will we do it? This?
This is how I get to bomb Namibia. That's my
vision board is dreams of flattening the Congo. I woke up,

(35:31):
I thought that I had done this. Now despite the
fact that the CIA did come up with this plan
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.

(35:52):
So Kobe is like pretty rattled by how Vietnam ended
um and also by the fact that there's all these
congressional inquiries into like the c A doing a bunch
of other terrible ship right there actively being investigated right now.
So this isn't Koby being a good guy. This is
Kobe being like, I don't want to drive when I've
got you know, ship in the car basically right like
I'm holding right now, you know what. Honestly, any other time,

(36:13):
I'm just fucking angle a crazy, like I'm just sucking
going nuts. But it's just not the right time. We
got it right right now. Yeah, he's the guy who's like,
he's like kiss it just 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. He keeps going. He's gonna let it write

(36:35):
on black one more time many times hit me. So
the forty Committee, which again kissing your heads, approves I
a feature, but William Kolby is like, okay, but I'm
going to insist we actually go to Congress to have
the funds appropriated. That's branch those guys, what oh my god.

(36:59):
Versions So while Kissinger argues for his covert operators, South
Africa sends troops in to support the fn l A
and Unita, who it again originally been trained by North Korea.
So there's fin l A troops who received training from
both South Africa and North Korea. This is just a
very weird war. So China has the reaction we're all

(37:21):
having and it's like, you know what, this is too
messy for me. I don't even need this right now,
Like I got other ship going on. And they kind
of bounced from the situation. Okay. The Soviets and the Cubans, though,
extend more aid to the m p l A, who
win the war handily and installed themselves in the capital
Luwanda by the end of nineteen seventy five. So a

(37:41):
few weeks after this, the CIA holds an inter Agency
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 they're Kissingers like, no, we
gotta get some guys in there. No one else wants this, right,
they're all everyone else is like, this seems like way

(38:02):
more of a hassle. Come on, let's keep going shots. Yeah,
the CIA is already puking from how much they've had
to drink in Vietnam. Come on, I brought absence. Let's go,

(38:23):
so Kissinger or so, yeah, they have this meeting, um
and like, so Kissinger has a meeting with h one
of the 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.
So like basically Kissinger now yeah. So basically they present

(38:44):
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 of these CIA guys have to
sit down and decide like what does Henrykissinger grunting mean?
But this guy was really good at deciphering what Henry

(39:05):
grunts mean. Well, gentlemen, it was a pretty long grunt,
which is never good. It's a sid grunt, which for
Henry means he's a little agitated. I'm gonna quote about
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

(39:26):
grunt or a negative grunt? Moka, He paused, it was
just a grunt, he explained, like mp, I mean, it
didn't go up or down. Stockwell, the agent 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. Malka. He provided his imitation of the grunt,
once again emphasizing its flatness. Someone else at the other

(39:49):
end of the table tried it. There were a few
experiments contrasting positive grunts with the voice rising than a
negative one with the voice falling. Different people attempted it. Well,
asked the CIA officer who was cheering the meeting, do
we proceed with the advisors Malka. He scowled and puffed
on his pipe. We better not, he finally said, trying
to decipher his boss's mind. Because since you're just decided

(40:11):
not to send Americans into the SIGNI there were a
lot of nods. The request for advisors was shelved. It
was an amazing way to run a war, Malka, he
said years later as he recalled the incident. Oh. Yeah,
by the way, this is they accidentally wrote a home
improvement script at the end of this This is actually
where the show came from. Tom and Taylor. It was

(40:33):
it was like no, no, I was like, okay, I
like that. That sounds a little more positive. It's just like,
what a moment for the United States, all these fucking
spooks with blood on their hands being like, well, it's
like or like you know, because you do, at least

(40:53):
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 gather and and is intelligent and is a body
that is actually you know, processing information that potentially you
don't have access to, and instead they're just sitting around

(41:14):
a fucking table going like do the grunt again, Jim, Yeah,
it real again. It reveals And this is I think
where a lot of folks on the left kind of
mix up viewing the CIA is like hyper competent, and
it's where a lot of people everywhere up viewing Kissinger
is hyper competent. Like no, they have a lot of
power and they use it badly. But like at the

(41:36):
end of the day, Kissinger doesn't have the balls to
like say yes or no on something, 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 if it means yes or no.
And there's no like it's so unchecked. I mean there,
you there, and it's it's still is that it? But

(41:57):
it's just there's nobody there to be like, hey, this
is fucking nuts. Yeah. Instead they're like, do the grunt again,
try to grown again, yes or nod? Dan have the
best grunt? Dan, do it again, because I want to
play it slow for everyone. Bro. It's while I think
it's Sad's ambivalent. Having known Henry for a little while,

(42:20):
he's pissed. So the CIA's request for another twenty eight
million in funding, and the discussion of sending an advisors
was again leaked to see Moore Hirsh. Congress cut off
all aid. He 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 United helped the group stay alive.

(42:41):
The Golden Civil War did not officially end until two
thousand 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 Manafort is
much more on this, Like he is the guy maniforts,
the guy who brings Savimbi to you see and gets
Reagan to send a funk load of weapons over to

(43:03):
like really escalate things. Thank god for Reagan. Yeah, thank
god for Reagan. But it is amazing that this fucking
goes on into two thousand two. Crazy, Yeah, what a legacy,
What a legacy. So I have teased y'all that Kissinger
has a Rhodesia connection. Um, And yet again, the funniest

(43:25):
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.
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 eight percent of them are white,
but they hold effectively a hundred percent of the political power.
This obviously is not something a lot of the black

(43:47):
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 in an ugly insurgent war between the Rhodesian government,
which by the way, is an international pariah right there,
like atually not supposed to exist basically, um so no
one can legally sell them arms. So everything has to
get like smuggled through South Africa, and the soldier of

(44:09):
Fortune magazine winds up sending a bunch of fighters over
William F. Buckley Jr. Or William F. Buckley raises money
for them. YadA YadA, YadA. Very nasty war. We've talked
about it in other episodes. 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

(44:33):
apartheid state, and there's a bunch of arms embargoes um.
And in fact, pretty much everyone hates Rhodesia except for
South Africa and the US right wing, who see the
Rhodies as anti communist crusaders. 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

(44:54):
his right wing base too much. You know, this is
like a really messy situation for him. Yeah. So policy
towards Rhodesia in the Nixon years. Um, there's a plan
Nixon approved to 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,

(45:14):
but Nixon calls US plans like the US stance towards
Rhodesia quote the tar Baby option on the podcast. Oh
my god, at least there's no stream of white supremacy
through American This was the one time it's like I

(45:38):
can't believe the guy fucking recorded himself for like, this
is not just recorded himself. This isn't just like Nixon
saying a slur in a conversation with his buds. This
is an official US government policy. Yeah, we write this
out places someone it down. I was like, okay, I'll
hand it in if you're share Mr President's pretty demand.

(46:00):
This is this is not just towards Rhodesia. This is
towards all of like South Africa, to these like white
minority governments in Africa and the premises that quote, the
whites are here to stay and the only way that
constructive change can come is through them. So it's so
and it really hasn't changed that much. We just have
fancier titles. Yeah, we're we we don't put the slurs

(46:22):
right in the title. Yeah, we don't reguard the president
and we don't put the slurs in the title. 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 government's right because yeah, it's really

(46:42):
really tech. We've just changed it to tech essentially. Yeah,
we would maintain the document declared public opposition to racial repression,
but relax political isolation and economic restrictions on the white states.
I mean, it's fucking crazy, Like, you know, the problem
here is that people don't like the eight percent white

(47:05):
people that run the entire fucking place. It's one of
those we continue, and we'll always have debates over like
sanctions and like when they're good and bad ideas. But
the argument here is that, like, we can't sanction South
Africa and Rhodesia because it will 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

(47:26):
improve economic outcomes for black people. And perhaps that's fucking insane. Um,
it's a little more nuanced than that, by not by
a lot, not much, not much. To his credit. When
Nixon is out and Ford is in, Kissinger kills the
racial slur option, and he authors a new plan, one

(47:46):
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, he's like, our plan,
like under Ford, we want to bring an end to
the government in Rhodesia, like government the right way. It's
like unbelievable. Yes, Ronald Reagan of the Populist you can't

(48:12):
disenfranchise seven percent of Rhodesia. Have you seen the color
of their goddamn skin. That is essentially what Ronald Reagan
says um if he denounces Kissinger's plan is undercutting the
possibility of a quote, just an orderly settlement, and argues
that it will provoke a massacre of white people. Boy,
I mean, you want to have a head popping moment.
Try to find a good guy in a Reagan Kissinger debate.

(48:35):
It is. It is an amazing fight. It's just like, yeah,
I hate everyone involved in this. 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 like you guys are a good cop, bad copy,
and you're working for the same outcome. Look, Henry, I'm
not sure why I think you're wrong in this, but

(48:57):
you must be. The other guy's got to be wrong too, though,
So I don't really know what to do here. Don't
trust Reagan and hate him, but kissing your you're the
worst person on the planet. So I call a bit
of a pickle. Yeah, this is a doozy of an issue.
I've got to go in the other room and do
some grunning. Yeah, so he Yeah, what's happening here is

(49:22):
that Kissinger is trying to wrench US government policy in
Africa away from supporting explicitly racist regimes in Africa, and
he's trying to get into a country club or something.
There's gotta be some angle of I mean, obviously, the
same reason he does anything right. He wants to be
seen as being the guy who negotiates right into these

(49:42):
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 him re Kissinger when
I have a shot that being in power still, and
maybe if I if I get rid of this bad
government Rhodesia. People will be like, enri que, let's give
him a gig. You know. He accidently stumbles into yes,

(50:05):
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. It's not we're lining up
Henry's personal interests with a prudent solution. And happened that
at Eclipse is very rare. Yeah, it's he's like a
guy who like stops a home invader from murdering a family.

(50:29):
But but but it's later found out that it's because
he was hitting on a fifteen year old girl, like
he was trying to flirt with their daughters and stuff like.
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 felt Yeah, exactly. Yeah,

(50:50):
it is. It is hard to find the moral lesson
to take out of it. Um. So yeah, obviously the
Reagan right loses their minds over what Kissinger's doing here.
Pat Buchanan, a former Nixon speech writes in a column quote,
it is too early to determine if Secretary of State
Henry Kissinger's safari through Black Africa did greater damage to

(51:13):
US policy interests or to President Ford's hopes in the
remaining primaries. I mean again, I like it, just it
needs to stop. Where like this this never ending? What
does it due to your reelection chances? Ship? And it's
like that we were so conditioned to that being how
we operate and do everything, as opposed to actually just

(51:33):
trying to do the thing that does long term good.
And what would you do the thing that is long
term good? Is 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 foregone conclusion now that everything is viewed through the
prism of what is it due to the poll numbers?
Can I just say take off your masks? Yeah. So

(51:58):
Kissinger did not achieve a tremendous amount in Rhodesia while
he was Secretary of State. He got ian 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
remain in control of the military and police. This was

(52:20):
a lie. The black people in Rhody, like like the
black moderates in Rhodesia, had never agreed to this. He's
just lying the Smith to get him to agree to
this um and the whole 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 fun or exactly. Yeah, the story of

(52:41):
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. Mr Smith has said he agrees to the
five point plan he made in public because he had
received assurances from Mr Kissinger that the black leaders had
accepted the whole package, including Mr Smith's edition on white

(53:01):
menace on the white ministers. In his view, either the
blacks have renegged or Mr Kissinger misled him. The Blacks,
such as President Julius Neurere 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. Mr

(53:23):
Kissinger and his aids have been evasive. On October, Mr
Kissinger said on television that I think everybody is telling
the truth. What an incredible guy. Wow, the baddest. That
is the best bullshit statement ever ending. I believe. I'm

(53:47):
not sure everyone's lying. It's awesome. I think everyone who
is the bad guy in Rhodesia nobody ever you need
a bad guy. In the end, the talks collapsed. The
war continued on for two more years until the Rhodesian

(54:08):
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 very strongly, and he was very unequivocal about
condemning the government of Rhodesia by doing this as the

(54:31):
Secretary of State, Kissinger caused a shift that led to
a significant increase in trust of the US by Black
African nations. Um, you know, yeah, obviously it's one of
his better moves from an ethical standpoint, but an ego
move still, everything is an Obviously, it's a it's a

(54:55):
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. Of course, it's like
I can't help the black people. That's it. You're done. Yeah, yeah,
that that's it for you, kissing. But to be fair,
at worked for me. That's why I did it. We know,
but we know, buddy. But you know what won't fail

(55:21):
to bring peace to Rhodesia. What's that the sponsors of
this podcast, who orchestrated the destruction of the Rhodesian Strategic
Field reserve that that is, we are sponsored entirely bye
by the Rhodesian rebel forces. Um, here's an ad ah,

(55:47):
we're back. Good stuff. Yes, so yeah. On the whole,
Kissinger's last year or so as Secretary of State involved
his least number of war crimes per month, which 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 ship. We needed a breather, right, we

(56:08):
had to take a breather. It took us a few
years to get geared up for Reagan. You know. Yeah,
he's like he's been go ahead, Dave, We've just kidded
so many It's like, no, Like why do we dig up?
We dig them up and kill them again, Like it's
we're out of ammunition. He's like, he's no longer a
starting QB's being traded. He's riding the pine. Yeah, he's

(56:29):
got like he got a wrist injury, you know, he's yeah,
he's on I R for the year. Yeah, so the
last one of his escapades were going to cover them.
His Kissinger's relationship with the Kurds not yeah, baby christ.
The Kurdish people are the largest ethnic group on Earth
without a nation of their own. They make up large

(56:50):
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
Two that like should and promises were in fact made
to the Kurds. Um. One of the issues that comes

(57:12):
up is that it's going to cause like severe economic
difficulties because they would be landlocked. Um. 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
around and exactly, and the Kurds were used on purpose
by basically everyone as buffer zones and proxy fighters in

(57:33):
these conflicts. Now, starting in the Niction administration, the Shot
of Iran had a problem. He was engaged in an
escalating conflict with a new sexy, young dude on the block,
Saddam Hussein of a rat. Now, can I just say
right away, I like both these guys. They seem like
they're both gonna go good places. So the shot acides

(57:57):
he wants to arm. He wants the US to arm
Kurdish fighters in order to give Saddam some trouble in
ease up pressure. Um, the ostensible leader of the Kurdish
people struggle in Iraq at this time as a guy
named Mustapha 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, and he
had repeatedly begged the United States for aid. The US

(58:20):
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 the
nineteen sixty seven war against Israel and are probably a

(58:42):
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 with the friendship is just a great term.
I mean, it is a nice term. When I was
seven at a tree, Yeah, can you sign my broke contract?

(59:05):
It comes with a K forty seven. We are signing
the BFF treaty. So this finally tips things for the
NIXT administration, and Kissinger gives the go ahead for CIA
Director Richard Helms to express American sympathy with the Kurds
and to clare our quote readiness to consider their requests
for exist for assistance. Next from a write up in
Foreign Policy, in early nineteen seventy four, Saddam violated the

(59:28):
terms of the March Accord and unilaterally imposed a watered
down version of autonomy for the Kurds. Barzani responded by
traveling to Iran, where he met with the SHAW and
the CIA 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 memoir Years of Renewal,
Barzani's request triggered a flood of communications among US officials

(59:50):
focused on two questions, 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
c A in particular warned against increasing US assistants, but
Kissinger was dismissive of CIA director William Colby's caution, writing
quote Colby's resistance was as unrealistic as Barzani's enthusiasm. Nixon

(01:00:13):
ultimately decided to increase to increase US assistants 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 refugee assistants. In April of
nineteen seventy four, Kissinger, why why the Soviet weapons? Is
that confuse things you don't want people see in them?

(01:00:35):
With US weapons, that's gonna make it seem like we're
involved in what an amazing move? I mean, it's dope murder. Yeah.
So in April of nineteen seventy four, kiss Kissinger sent
Nixon's orders to the US ambassador in Tehran. This cable

(01:00:56):
was important because it laid out a succinct proclamation of
US interests of VISA VI the Kurds. The objectives, he
wrote were to a give the Kurd's 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 to divide Iraq permanently because an independent Kurdish area
would not be economically viable. And US and Iran have

(01:01:18):
no interest in closing the door on good relations with
Iraq under moderate leadership. But there are are I mean,
I'm not crazy, but there are landlocked countries that stands
a huge amount of oil. Yeah, it's such a crazy
thing that they're saying, like, it's just it's fucking insane

(01:01:38):
what they are doing. 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. Right,

(01:02:00):
This has been ever since. This is what we do
with the curs 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 Shaw and
Saddam made peace, and the SHAW asked the CIA to

(01:02:23):
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
and a golden pearl necklace's wedding gifts just months earlier,

(01:02:43):
Your excellency, the United 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 where,
oh my god, so cool, Like you don't understand that
sometimes I'm also just doing missionary stuff. Yeah. The key

(01:03:07):
is that I don't give a ship as he stands
naked on his rug with just his pearl necklace song
speaking of mission narity. 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

(01:03:27):
he had made a de taunt with the Soviet Union. Right,
that's why there because 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
there a little angry at some of this peace stuff
he's been lacking in. They are specifically they're livid that

(01:03:50):
like part of the Dean means Kissinger was like, we're
not gonna funk with Soviet spheres of influence in Eastern Europe,
and Reagan and his college to like, well, this means
they're just giving up Eastern Europe to communism. You know
right Away's communism exactly, it's fascist communists, I mean, and

(01:04:11):
Kissinger's political instincts and charm we're sufficient to find off
an attempt because there's within the Ford administration, there's an
attempt to get forward to promise to fire him in
a second term, largely because they think it will 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, but this is no, no, no no, not.

(01:04:32):
Kissinger succeeds in doing that with four okay, So I thought, like,
it's like, if you're listening to it at this point,
there's a lot of mixing in the area. You know,
you mix it up. He's just at a cupboard in
the White House. Still, Gerald can't be some Gin also
keep Hank around. So the fact that Henry wins the
fight within the Ford administration means that he becomes like

(01:04:56):
a major marketing term for the Reagan campaign, right, Like
they not stop. In fact, they institute 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. Essentially, that's kind of what
they do, stabbing him in the heart. Yeah it is.
It's amazing, um, And it's amazing. It's a it's a

(01:05:19):
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 suck even more. Yes, um, So,
Ronnie felt the spheres of influence that Kissinger had established
with the Soviet Union were giving up the Eastern like
block to communism. He also attacked Kissinger for negotiating with
Panama's new government because Henry was willing to give the

(01:05:41):
Panama Canal back to the Panamanian people, to the Panama
So and Reagan wrote that thing, but they were so No,
there's no clay, have no claim to that canal. Yeah,
Reagan said in the speech, we built it, we paid
for it, and we're going to keep it. Um. Refer

(01:06:03):
to our two part on the US and Panama. More
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 career's coffin. In the Ford
administration's last days, a dark alliance materialized, and, smelling blood
in the water, they acted to cut Kissinger off from

(01:06:25):
any 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 ru God baby, yeah,
it's like for Kissingers, it's like killing Satan and then

(01:06:47):
three winged demons fly out of him. Yeah, it's so funny.
It is so funny. Um, really funny. Um and in
fact so uh kissing your Kissinger like Rumsfeld, he sees
is almost like a protege. Like Hei and Rumsfeld are
very close, and when Rumsfeld turns against him, Kissinger describes

(01:07:10):
him as quote the rottenest person I've known in government,
which is henry from you, utterly absolutely meaningless from you.
I mean, you're not allowed. Yeah, it's so funny. It's
so funny. So it's not funny for all the people

(01:07:31):
who are going to die, but it's kind of 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. Yeah, you'd be like why, why don't
think you're a good guy. You're like, well, it's really
kind to explained, but they just don't. If you can't
laugh at all the people dying, Are you an American? Yeah? No,

(01:07:51):
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, I pour him in
a glass for me gets mice on it. So Rumsfeld
and Cheney worked within the White House. But I can't
believe I got to hear their name. I know, I know, baby,
I know. While wolf A Witz is part of the

(01:08:12):
CIA's Team B. Now, 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 we 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

(01:08:34):
the early chunk of the Ford administration is like they're
actually not doing great, Like they're like, we we really
don't need to keep buying a shipload of weapons. Like
they're not. They they're not they don't have the kind
of military assets that we've been saying for years. Um,
so we now are getting a shady CIA inside of
shady c I A. Yes, this is like this it's

(01:08:54):
like a Russian nesting doll of the CIA inside the cia'
I A. 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 Beast so
that they could get new appraisals that showed that the

(01:09:15):
Soviet Union was actually increasing their military assets. So basically
what we like what like I mean essentially like what
would eventually happen with a rack where you're like, look,
I'm not liking the uh, I'm like the non distilled information,
give me a bunch of bullshit. 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,

(01:09:38):
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 his
career that he reached the talk with the Soviet Union.
He's on the opposite side of like a missile gap
bullshit myth right man, slepards my face. Yeah, I never

(01:10:02):
thought it could happen to me. Yeah, And then they
came for the Kissingers and there was Kissingers. It's the
same thing as like Dick Cheney speaking out against the
Trump administration, his daughter gets slandered and stuff, and it's
what and it's what It's gonna be in twenty years
when you know Trump is welcomed at the President's funeral
and we're gone. You know, Trump really wasn't that bad.

(01:10:24):
I like the way he said we shouldn't knuke everyone
on Earth as opposed to the next guy who knuked
everyone on Earth. Yeah, I mean yeah, Jill Biden handed
him a piece of peppermint candy. He's not that bad. So,
former CIA analyst Melvin Goodwin later said of Team b quote,
they wanted to toughen up the agency's estimates. Cheney wanted

(01:10:45):
to drive the CIA so far to the right that
it would never say no to the generals. How estimates
and this is the st estimate, like their estimates. Pause
this and listen to our episodes on the Dulless Brothers.
And then we wize that, and he's like, I want
them further right than that. That's not nearly right wing enough.
That is the craziest fucking thing yet, bug a gang bang,

(01:11:10):
being like, I want more orifices, not enough holes here.
I can't expect my deck and enough stuff. So in
December of nineteen seventy six, as the Ford administration prepared
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

(01:11:31):
Pentagon Papers, a nearly perfect negation of the document Daniel
Ellsberg had leaked three years earlier. The scholars and policymakers
who composed the Pentagon Papers represented the kind of men
Kissinger disdained, experts enthralled to facts. In contrast, the members
of Team B were admitted idealogues. It's members, as j.
Peters Scope Scope look notes, saw the Soviet threat not

(01:11:52):
as an empirical problem, but as a matter of faith.
What kind I mean, it just it's a church. It's
it's a church. It's also what's happening here because this
they are against Kissinger. But as Grandon notes, they're using
the kind of logic he right, he's not. He's there

(01:12:15):
with him on all of the murder crazy American ship.
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. That's exactly what's going
on here and in Kissinger's shadow, Grant Grandon continues, quote
previewing what would become known as Dick Cheney's one percent doctrine.
Team BE interpreted threats with the smallest possibility probability of

(01:12:37):
occurring as likely to occur. Absence of proof of Russian
superiority was taken as as proof of superiority. Team be's
failure to find a Soviet non acoustic anti submarine system
was evidence that there could well be one, which makes
sense that of course, I mean it would be U.
There is no evidence that I have got it, and

(01:13:00):
and you know one an Emmy and an Oscar and
a Grammy, so that that's pretty solid evidence that I am. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
absolutely so. In December of nineteen seventy seven, The New
York Times published a front page story on the intelligence
findings of Team B, which provided legitimacy to the bogus

(01:13:21):
and then shared the next decade of defense spending was
geared towards stopping a rising Soviet Titan that did not exist.
You know, thanks nailed on that one. Star Wars. Yeah,
Star Wars proceeds directly, yeah yeah, and it proceeds directly
like Team B is laying the groundwork for Star Wars. Right, So,

(01:13:42):
while these tactics ran directly countered a 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 history, and Anna hescent
Khn writes that they used Kissinger's own philosophy to quote
the little besmirch and tarnish Henry Kissinger had to be

(01:14:05):
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 everything, we everything.
That's that's why when people, you know, you look at
the current situation in in Russia and everyone's like, you
gotta get rid of him, And I'm always like, just

(01:14:27):
but just remember, whenever the US gets what it wants,
it's always worse. Yeah, every time that it can be worse,
Like he can be gone. He's a fucking monster, but
don't be surprised what comes after. It's really fucking bad.
And the idea of not questioning shit, like we're the
country who cried war. At some point you have to

(01:14:49):
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 if you
are forming organizations inside of bullshit, organizations meant to bring
like that. If there's no submarines, it means there are submarines.

(01:15:10):
I mean, it's just kind of like and the fact
that it's still effective, it's constantly effective. It's never it's
never stopped. This is just a continuation, and it's even
like this is a domestic version of what we what
happens everyhere else. We just create more and more worse things. Yeah, internally,
externally it's what we do. Don't worry, We'll make it worse. Yeah,

(01:15:34):
that's that is That is the promise that the United
States makes itself in the world. Don't worry, don't worry.
We can funk this up. More lifeguard waits to throw
on you. Yeah, I mean we fucking created Putin. If
you go back and look at it, like yeah, and
all that ship it looks looking at the at the
bombing of Kevan, going, you know what'll fix this? If
Bangladesh doesn't get COVID nineteen, which is something is going

(01:15:59):
to be like we will at some point solve something.
Just totally on accident. Like, yeah, so when he left
office in nineteen seventy seven, Henry Kissinger would never return
to direct political power. Um, he desperately wants to. He
really wanted to. Then he has always wanted to. Yeah,
that's nice now now I understand two. Yeah, he really

(01:16:24):
wanted it to happen, but he 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. Um, he makes a
ton of money doing this. Ship. Of course, he goes
into consulting like absolutely, consultings job is to get the

(01:16:44):
worst advice yea, and to make people feel good, and
he's great at that now. 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. Um, he waited an unusually
long time to start his business. He avoided for years

(01:17:06):
directly connecting his clients to people he'd worked with in
the State Department. It may be accurate that he is
more ethical in his conduct here than most people. But again,
that's a low ass bar um. Most of his business,
the business he does in this period, can be boiled
down to like, he's helping oil and gas and other
extractive industries. So he's doing stuff. Yeah yeah, yeah, so

(01:17:28):
he's just destroying the world. Well yeah, absolutely, he's a
middleman 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
making connections between people whoever linked. To be fair, he's
pining to be in charge of it again. He is
um probably his most morally questionable moment, And like I

(01:17:49):
guess a conventional sense is that, uh so, like right
after the Tenement Square crackdown, he shows up on Peter
Jennings Show um to argue that, like whatever went on,
the U S should not impose any economic consequences on China.
And this is again not due to a principled stand
against sanctions. It's because Kissinger was working on a massive

(01:18:09):
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
l A Times, in the Washington Post and he advocates
in both magazines not putting any kind of economic like
like doing any economic harm to China over this, which

(01:18:30):
is like 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 um. 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 right is an abhorrent act. But congratulations on turning

(01:18:52):
over Lea Henry. Yeah, yeah, wow, Henry, you've really improved.
You really are less ship. You waited until after the
thing to do something bad. 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 his like accountant expect the value

(01:19:14):
of him as a speaking like well, it's obviously it's
going to decline over a time, hor it just gets bigger.
He just becomes more and more valuable as a public speaker.
Now for some insight into his life, uh, in what
we might call retirement. I found a New York Magazine
article from two thousand six quote he bonds with Oprah
Winfrey over their shared love of dogs. She recommended an

(01:19:37):
artist to paint a portrait of Kissinger's lab, and with
Alex Rodriguez over their shared love of the Yankees. 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 Rena. 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

(01:19:59):
friends of line. They have no utility. I'm going to
try to kill them. Yeah, I will kill them in
some plans to kill them soon. Can we just can
we finally agree that Oprah Winfrey is a fucking monster? Yeah?
I mean right. Oprah buddies with Henry K. Winfrey. Yes,
I meant to Phil. Yes, your oz like she creates.

(01:20:22):
I'm not going to stick everybody dr shit talk, but
the other ones you got me don't forge Grett, don't
forget John of God. Yeah, right, under your Sue Harto tattoo,
Garrett doctor Oz high fiving. Henry Kissinger not to be
this before he got his show. So I liked him early.

(01:20:44):
This was just this was just like aspirational. You know, yeah,
I didn't know. It's a great pal. So Kissinger became
a New York socialite and was reputed to enjoy the
city social scene because quote, Manhattan social life is more
generous than Washington's political life. Wanted to pick where he
wants to go out. I mean, he should have to
get food raised to his sell in a bucket. It's

(01:21:06):
the same thing, is that? What the cook was it?
David Cooke, the one that just died, But it was
the same thing. Everyone just accepted him in those circles
and it's like, yeah, he's a fucking And then Charles
Coke is the one who's like, you know, was like
on a rehabilitation tour for like six months and you
and you know, major news outlets are reporting like, look,
he recognizes they fucked up a lot. It's like he

(01:21:28):
feels bad. He feels bad to give a fuck de
genitalize him. So was regularly and I think probably still
is regularly seen on the arm of Barbara Walters, who
calls him a loyal friend. She was hanging out with
Henry and his wife one night at a dinner party
when kissing You're endured one of his few public shamings.

(01:21:49):
It came courtesy as the real the only real hero
of these episodes, ABC News anchor Peter Jennings, who sees
Kissinger at a restaurant and is fucking in raged and
screams out, how does it feel to be a war criminal? Henry?
Peter Jennings baby, And of course Peter Jennings is gone,

(01:22:10):
so he died. Yeah, kissing You're probably like invaded his lungs. Yeah,
should happen every restaurant, every and to all these people. Yeah,
Jennings is basically the only person at Kissinger's social level
who calls him out. And imagine, and I mean he's
he's a nightly news anchor on a major network. Imagine

(01:22:34):
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 you're
still in spheres of power. But but Dick, like we
were saying about Dick Cheney, Like you know, George w.
Bush should not he should not be in public. He
should not be releasing thoughts on Russian invasion. He certainly

(01:22:55):
shouldn't be picking. Yeah, he shouldn't be, shouldn't he should fingers? No,
his daughter should not be on the fucking Today Show,
like I don't know stronger on. 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

(01:23:16):
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 questioning.
Is the long simmering debate over his connection to Chilean
General Augusto Pinochet's brutal killing of dissidents in the seventies
returned with a vengeance, not least in Christopher Hitchens right
ringing indictment the trial of Henry Kissinger. These developments clearly

(01:23:37):
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 actions, the same
precedent under which German courts hoped to try Donald Rumsfeld.
The question in the question by Peter Jennings, how does
it feel to be a war criminal? Stunned the dinner guests,
who included Time Inc. Editor Henry Grunwald, who also died

(01:23:59):
last year and Yeah, and former ABC chairman Thomas Murphy.
Gruenwald told Jennings the comment was unsuitable. Yeah, 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 And to to his credit, when like Gruenwald

(01:24:22):
is like Peter, that's really unsuitable, Peter's like, I don't
give a ship. He's a fucking criminal. He doesn't say
that exactly, Peter, he says the emotional equivalent of that.
Barbara Walters later said, at the moment, I tried to
change the subject, but it was a very uncomfortable moment
talk about reacted very strongly and hurt Kissinger said nothing, man,

(01:24:44):
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 politicis and the people on the politicians days sort
of be like okay, okay, but the people at the

(01:25:06):
event will be the ones who are like, you know,
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. 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. It is a fucking

(01:25:27):
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 dinner,
a man who has been dead for twenty years, fifteen years.
I mean, when Sarah Huckabee Sanders was out to dinner
and some people yelled at her, I mean you saw
both sides condemning it. Some fucking dude yell at fucking

(01:25:50):
Tucker Carlson from people, and 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 right, because they don't want like that ship
to come back on them. And I'm sure if someone's
gonna point out Peter Jennings did something fucked up, he
must have. He was in media for very eleven. He'd

(01:26:13):
oh right, he did nine eleven. That was Peter Jennings.
He threw those planes right into those towers. I'd forgotten
about that, um, But at the at fucking least he
was there and and didn't mince words, just like your
a war criminal, not 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

(01:26:35):
to say it. Um. In his many decades worth of
declining years, Henley 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
history and named Nil Ferguson, whose 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

(01:26:57):
at the man. But quotes he made about the relationship
with the light of that and this is Ferguson like
writing about how jazz he is to be hanging out
with Henry. I'm in Henry Kissinger's swimming pool talking about
his meetings with mouse dung, thinking I must be dreaming
ship in that pool. I know, fucking hell nile everyone. Now,
obviously I have quoted from this biography because of the

(01:27:19):
details the information Kissinger provides about his early life, it
is not without value. It's probably the most detailed look
at his childhood we have. It also only goes up
to nineteen, which neatly avoids the most controversial moments of
Kissinger's life. Right, that's not great the story. Yeah, that

(01:27:41):
was the end of Henry Kissinger. Blah blah blah. 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 word play. Bob Woodward, who
first interviewed Kissinger in seventy four, wrote, he wants to
control not just what he says, but people's perceptions of

(01:28:01):
what he says, and it's kind of like one long
book review where he is arguing with the reviewer 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 now the most comprehensive
biography of Henry Kissinger and the one if you were looking.
If you're looking for just a book on Kissinger's influence

(01:28:23):
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 book Kissinger. I actually think Isaacson is
too fair to Henry Kissinger. But even so, even though
he clearly like does not wholly condemn the man, I

(01:28:43):
find the book utterly damning. Right like the book condemns him,
even I Isaacson doesn't such a piece of shape. It's
just impossible if you're accurate, and I think is pretty
at Yeah. Now, the best thing I can say about
Isaacson's book Kissinger is that Henry Kissinger himself complained endlessly

(01:29:05):
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. Kissinceer responded, what right does that
young man have to be balanced and down the middle
about me? I mean, wow, just it just shows you.
I mean, like he should never be in the position

(01:29:29):
where he should be pointing out that other people are crazy. No, no,
you don't get to say that, Henry. Yeah. As New
York Magazine notes, Kissinger denies that exchange ever happened. Um,
I believe Henry. I mean, the guy does a lie.
He seems like an honest man. I bet Nixton still
had him wire tapped. And here here's a quote from
that article. It's very funny. I've never read the Isaacson book,

(01:29:53):
he says, then quickly clarifies. I've read a few parts
of the isaacs which I didn't like, but I understand
that there are many parts of the books that are
very positive. I missed those, he says, with a sly smile.
That is so, that is so trumpy. I know it
really is right. I didn't read it. I read parts
one through. Isaacson says, Kissinger wrote him a series of

(01:30:18):
letters contesting numerous passenges. My view, and this is Isaacson,
My view is that if Kissinger reread his own memoirs,
who would be outraged that they did not treat him
favorably enough? Kissinger, who wrote this? You did? That's sort
of a bit I gotta get me. Kissinger claims to

(01:30:39):
be unconcerned about his place in 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 it apparently like

(01:31:00):
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 you know, it's probably didn't push
them into invading Iraq. It's like similar when like the
Queens of the Stone Age have Dave Groll on drums. Yeah, exactly.
He's a player for sure, but he's not writing all

(01:31:22):
the songs. I mean, Josh, he's got. Kissinger is definitely
the Dave Groll of the Bush administration. Um. 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

(01:31:44):
of this comes from two thousand eight, when during a
presidential debate, both John McCain and Barack Obama cited Kissinger
as supporting their positions towards Iran. Both men held opposite
views of what the U. S Should do in regards
to that country. So, Mike, 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,

(01:32:05):
of course that's the right call. Absolutely. Look, look what
the start date to be, just so I can put
it in my good call. Guys, we should invade them
and leave them alone. Yeah. So um yeah. As a
young law student at Yale, Hillary Clinton had taken part
an outrage protests against Kissinger's bombing of Cambodia as Secretary

(01:32:28):
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 That's why
these people like like him and think he's astute. He's not.
I think he does today get kind of like looked
at his this secret power pulling the strings. I think

(01:32:51):
instead he's just like the ultimate kiss ass. He's just like, oh,
you're in power. Nout. Yeah, whatever you want to do
is the is the good thing to do? Absolutely right?
You know. Yeah. I would tell people like if you're
if you're young and you don't understand what it means
to see Hiller Clinton standing there with with Kissinger. It's
no different than in in ten years, if all a

(01:33:12):
sudden your Democrat candidate standings to Cheney, You're like, what
the fun is going on? And I guarantee you that
lost her. A bunch of people didn't vote for because
they saw her standing. Yeah, I guarantee guarantee h and um, 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

(01:33:34):
less than whatever advice he was giving politician Airby, 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 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

(01:33:55):
doing that, but then those things were all undone after
the like right like if this, if this kind of
tuggle war thing. Um. But Kissinger, even though he did
not set obviously the policy after nine eleven that that
expanded the executive government's ability to to do military ship abroad,
he did set the present of like how you would
actually centralize power in that way within the executive and

(01:34:17):
he made up he set a lot of ideological and
philosophical trends that are still shaping the way the US
government functions in regards to foreign policy today. 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

(01:34:37):
in nineteen sixty three. There are two kinds of realists,
those who manipulate facts and those who create them. The
West requires nothing so much as men able to create
their own reality. Wow. Wow, wow to not to not
be able to define realists and you're two to definite
tear two tier definition of realism is absolutely deliverable. Yeah,

(01:35:00):
for neither of your definitions of realists to involve people
who care about material reality. Yeah, what did you say
in the first one? I was like, Oh, the second
one is gonna be realists. It's like no, no, no, no,
No other one is realists. No. So that's Henry Kissinger.
It's it's so unbelievable. And to what you like, you know,
he really he his legacy, like you're sort of saying,

(01:35:25):
is not just directly connected to the things he's connected
to because there was no um prosecution for what Nixon did,
and there's no prosecution for 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

(01:35:47):
the seeds of that flourish now 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,

(01:36:07):
we're not going to show the coffins returning, And you said,
I mean, it's not just Republicans. You see it under
democratic presidents to it just as 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.

(01:36:27):
Journalists and media need to recognize what they're 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
and making these people held accountable. Because it's so relevant

(01:36:51):
in what you're talking about with Kissinger that they just
let the access to him because he became a popular figure,
completely blind i'd them as to what was actually going on. Well,
it's actually worse than not punishing them. Remember when when
Obama was elected, everyone was like, these guys have to
be tried for war crimes, and he said, we got

(01:37:12):
to move on. And you know that we're talking about
torture in 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. And they also they
also honored this guy named Henry Kissinger did honored him.

(01:37:36):
So it's beyond not doing anything. Well, it's not even
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, 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

(01:37:59):
Peter Jennings likes here, we are craving this fucking figure.
But they would be immediately fired. I mean 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 ship now, it would go

(01:38:21):
so viral and people would talk about that person endlessly.
That I mean, 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

(01:38:43):
thing that is you're supposed to do is going to
be such a radical move. It's this, it's very frustrating.
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, and obviously to be
a journalist in combat up close, covering war crimes up
close requires a lot of physical courage. Those like Sky

(01:39:05):
News reporters who got fucking shot and Ship the Daily
Beast reporters got shot that but like being like Lester Holt,
like having your show filmed with like shelling in the distance.
They have massive security teams, they have massive resources invested
in making sure they are in as little danger as
they can possibly be, and more than anything, they are

(01:39:26):
out there and doing it for the fucking cloud. Because
that that is easy to like feels like I'm brave.
What's actually brave is Peter Jennings yelling 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 and Key from a mile and a

(01:39:48):
half away. Yeah. Look, there there was Wolf Blitzer who
during the First Gulf War put on a helmet and
was in Saudi Arabia where st those were flying, and
it's saying how 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,

(01:40:12):
and those guys didn't work anymore. And will Blitzer got
his own TV show on seeing it. Or Brian Williams
when he talked to when he was like the way
that he embellished his his story about like getting off
of a helicopter and taking RPG fire. Yeah yeah, yeah,
I mean I don't know, we could use another Jennings

(01:40:34):
or two at least in this regard. 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 like
the step first is to just have these people vilified
for the things they should be vilified for. Yeah, it
would be nice if there was a journalist. That's the

(01:40:57):
end of the state. Well, honestly, like this was, I
mean just fucking incredible and just such a ridiculous stick.
He's a pretty bad one, right, I don't think I
don't think he is. He I know that there was

(01:41:19):
talk of like into the countries, of like trying him
outside of you know, not having him there. Yeah, but
can he travel anywhere he wants or is he he
restricted he can't I'm not aware of. I mean there
may be. Like 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,

(01:41:41):
he turns into silver goo and just can go through
a drain or something. You can't put a handcuff around
a pile of watery goo. I mean, he's he's a
big part. Like he 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. He
would put his and Jerry danger right like I'm giving

(01:42:02):
it enough loyalty to Rummy, who he probably hates at
this point. Although I don't know that Kissinger can take
things personally actually, so maybe, like I don't know, he's
almost he's like the Bill Walsh coaching Tree of War Criminals. Yeah,
I don't know what that means. Well, Bill Walsh like
coach the forty Niners and invented the West Coast offense
and you just see the ripple effect through the NFL

(01:42:22):
for generations and decades changed football. It just changed everything.
And it's like that's what he did. He just was
the guy who was like, you know, I came up
with a new offense, and it's like everyone's just reading
off of that playbook and tweaking it. Yeah. That guy
you said robber football is when uh okay the title

(01:42:47):
of this episode like that guy, Garrett said of the football,
but the politics. I liked the two yeahs that preceded
your I don't know who that guy? Yeah, hey, who
is that? Yeah? It's like it's like in basketball when
Phil Jackson made the offense triangle diplomacy, it's like the

(01:43:10):
triangle thing. Yes, absolutely, yeah, yeah, alright, alright, ale an
offense is the opposite of defense, right, what everyone said,
That's what everyone said. In my opinion, it definitely is.
You know, the team with the most points wins, well,
for sure that's going to be critical. Yeah. Absolutely. And
you know when the overtime gets the first down, that's

(01:43:31):
really that's that's causing finishing. You've nailed it already. Absolutely,
three pointer a touchdown for Robert. Let's go Globetrotters. Well, honestly,
thank you for allowing us to enter your dojo and
mess around for a little while. I don't know if
thank you was the right thank you. I thank you

(01:43:56):
for listening to me read one thousand words about Hinry Kissing,
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. Yeah, this is like the minimum I think
you can responsibly cover Henry Kissinger. Like we could have
done another couple episodes. Hey, let's do it it, Garett, Yes,

(01:44:21):
let's just rip a couple. Yeah, we'll get a couple
of photos of him hanging out with Jill st John
joke about his hog. 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 parts of this on the
road for a year and a half. The Doll Up
and Behind the Bastards present three guys going through shots

(01:44:43):
of Henry Kissinger at fancy parties and talking about the
shape of his dick under his pants. Honestly, honestly, should work.
Looks like he was having a chubb day to day.
What do you think, Dave all nuts on the table.
That the only one I'm focused on. Look at those
tennis shorts. This is how we make our millions. Well, genuinely,

(01:45:08):
thank you. I am generally super scared having having watched
how Colin Powell was treated. Yes, when he died, people
are going to react to death. Yeah, you're gonna watch
liberals be like he was fucking awesome and you're just
like everything about him was bad. Yeah, yeah, w it'll

(01:45:28):
be fun. Any plug doubles at the end here, sure? Yeah? Listen. Well,
first of all, we've got the Kissinger. We should do
Kissinger live, and we should use the kiss font and
we should also wear like the kiss makeup and we
should just do kissing. Um yeah we uh. We will
be in Australia and America. Best country on Earth will

(01:45:50):
be in Australia in the middle of April to May.
You can go to Dollar podcast dot com for all
that information. Were all over the place and then I
am doing stand up in Australia and I'll so 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

(01:46:13):
on Twitter, Dave's at Dave Anthony on Twitter, and um
whoo who all right, thank you for having us again, motherfucker. Yeah,
everyone go pray for Henry Kissinger's painful tomise. Yeah, let's

(01:46:33):
have Let's all hope that Tim tim Allen takes him
out somehow. He smuggled he smuggles coke into a party
Kissinger's at and it just blows out the old man's
art or he just starts doing war improvement with kissing
James's character. Yeah, Kissinger would be the you know, the
the owl. He's the owl, right right, right right? No,

(01:46:55):
you got a bomb Cambodiat Tim all right, and there's
a good that's the note thing. Hi, everybody, Robert Evans
here and my novel After the Revolution is available for
pre order now from a k press dot org. Now,
if you go to a k press dot org, you

(01:47:15):
can find After the Revolution. Just google a k press
dot org After the Revolution you'll find a list of
participating indie bookstores selling my book. And if you pre
order now from either these independent bookstores or from a
K Press, you'll get a custom signed copy of the book,
which I think is pretty cool. You can also preorder
it in physical or in kindle a form from Amazon
or pretty much wherever books are sold. So please google

(01:47:39):
a k press after the Revolution um or find an
indie bookstore in your area and pre order it. You'll
get assigned a copy and you'll make me very happy.