Part Three: Kissinger

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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 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
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(00:22):
signed copy of the book, which I think is pretty cool.
You can also pre order it in physical or in
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are sold. So please google 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. Ah, I don't how how

(00:49):
do I, Sophie? How do I introduce Part three of
the Kissinger series? You just did it. Gareth and David
are right here, they're waiting for something good, and I
just I'm just I'm fucking up, Sophie. I mean, yeah,
but you you accidentally introduced the podcast which is behind
the basket, behind the dollops, dollop the bastard up the

(01:10):
bastards hybrid podcast, and like all hybrids, it is incapable
of procreating, but better at getting up steep mountain passes.
It's getting a little goat. Now we can multiply by
cell division, but not through sexual Yeah. Yeah we've tried. Yeah,

(01:31):
we have, we have. We're in that processed. So since
we last recorded a podcast, war has broken out and
I was just thinking, mister in Europe, God three days. Yeah,
but we like ended it and then it was like,
oh wow, it's happening, and now it feels like it's
been two months since. Then had a brief conversation what

(01:51):
do you think is going to happen? And then immediately
checked our phones to be like, oh, okay, so they're
showing all over the plate. Oh so y'all, are are
we ready to learn about Henry Kissinger and a little
country you might have heard of called Cambodia and also
a separate country you might have called Lao, and also Vietnam.

(02:13):
Still so that energy, let's go, let's do it. Yeah.
So on February fourteen, Valentine's Day, nineteen sixty five, President
Lyndon B. Johnson approved Operation Rolling Thunder. This was a
long term campaign of aerial bombing against North Vietnam. It's
primary aims were to help them arout with the South
Vietnamese and the Psigon government, to persuade North Vietnam to

(02:36):
stop supporting the Vietcong, and to destroy the North Vietnamese
transportation infrastructure and industrial base so as to stop them
from sending men and equipment south. It did not succeed
as a spoiler. None of this, None of this works.
Like it's just amazing that, like you have all this firepower,
you have all these planes, and really you're talking about

(02:57):
destroying like railroads and shipping and like underground tunnels too.
This is the hoche Man trail, you know. I mean
it's not what we're talking about, the Hotimon trail, and
they we're never going to do that. No, this is
like a lesson that no one ever learns in warfare.
Because you can also point to like the saturation bombing
of Germany, which had a minimal effect on German industrial production.

(03:19):
You can talk about like what's happening right now in Ukraine,
which is not succeeded in its strategic games. You could
talk about a number of wars the US has been involved,
and you can talk about like World War One where
the British would drop a million shells in a couple
of hours on a chunk of trench line and then
I'll get killed by machine gun fire because the shells
didn't do enough. Like military leaders always have this idea

(03:39):
that we can just bomb our problems away and it
just never really works. Yeah, no, it doesn't. It's yeah,
you know what it does. It It terrifies the civilian population.
It sure does, yes, um, And it helps the Pentagon
a lot. I think it does help the Pentagon. It
makes money for people, so I guess to that extent
it succeeds in its goal. And Operation Thunder did make
some people a lot of money. Um. It continued for

(04:02):
three straight years until November of nineteen sixty eight. During
this period, Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps planes through
more than three hundred thousand attack sorties, which dropped more
than eight hundred and sixty four thousand tons of bombs.
For reference, the United States dropped half a million tons
of bombs in the Pacific theater during all of World
War Two. Um. Yeah, it is hard to exaggerate the

(04:22):
extent to which we bombed the ship out of North
Vietnam to no notable effect. According to our trustworthy friends
at the CIA, the raids did five hundred million dollars
in damage, killed twenty one people, and injured more than
thirty thousand more. The CIA says that sevent of all
casualties were people involved in military operations. US government estimates,
not by the CIA, however, estimate at least thirty thousand

(04:45):
civilian fatalities. Other estimates placed the civilian death toll much higher,
at close to two hundred thousand civilians um. Probably fair
to say north of a hundred thousand, you know, um
a lot, a lot of folks. Um. By the time
Kissing Your and Nixon took office, it was clear that
Rolling Thunder had failed miserably. This was due in part
to the existence of the Ho Chiman Trail in nineteen

(05:07):
fifty nine. This is before US soldiers had officially entered
the country. The trail had been created under order by
the Laodong, which is the Communist Party of Vietnam, to
aid them in what was at that point a building
conflict with South Vietnam. At the start, it led across
just the demilitarized zone into Cassan and South Vietnam. Porters
would carry boxes of ammunition and rifles on their body,

(05:27):
which they would then hand to insurgents in the south.
Over time, the trail was expanded to a vast underground
transit network, more than twelve thousand miles in size, capable
of moving more than ten thousand troops and thousands of
trucks per year. As the fighting escalated, the trail veered
into Lao, where the government was engaged fighting its own
insurgency and unable to stop the transit of weapons. The
Ho Chiman Trail allowed North Vietnam to smuggle equipment south

(05:50):
and to evade the U. S. Naval blockade that sought
to choke it out. Today, even Defense Department sources recognized
it as one of the greatest logistical successes of twentieth
century warfare. It works pretty good. It's amazing to think
of the number of bombs you're talking about, and then
they made a tunnel. Yeah, yeah, really good haul. But

(06:15):
it's like chop out. It's not just it's not just
a tunnel, it's it's it's in a jungle. Like we're
talking about, very difficult sort of environment to make a tunnel.
It's not that like, it's incredible what they did. Yeah,
So lbj's administration sent planes into allow to bomb the
trail and to escort Lautian planes while they bombed the trail.

(06:38):
When US airmen were killed or captured over law, their
families were told they'd gone down in Southeast Asia to
allow LBJ to claim he'd abided by his nineteen sixty
four election promise to avoid a wider war. Cambodia was
bombed as well, but during lbj's administration, Loo was considered
a more important target. They thought more stuff was getting
into Vietnam through law. This changed in nineteen when the

(06:59):
Tet offense made it clear that North Vietnam had gotten
very good at running troops in and out of Cambodia.
Johnson hadn't been willing to escalate the bombing campaign against
a neutral country, though, especially since again, there was this
big election going on and he was kind of having
his vice president run on the promise that, like, we're
really going to end this thing. So you know, lb J,
when he's trying to tease North Vietnam with a bombing halt,

(07:20):
isn't gonna just start laying into Cambodia in the spring
of nineteen sixty nine, after you know, Kissinger and Nixon
took office, they approved the expanded use of US special
forces in Lao, along with a campaign of sustained air strikes.
This was called Operations Steal Tiger. All of these So,
I mean the stupidest names. Yeah, we, I mean we

(07:43):
the marketing that we have gone for in this country
for so long has been so absurd. Steal Tiger. Well,
I mean they're just taking Y and T album names
at this point. Yeah. Uh, if only they'd gone with
like Prince Operate and Purple Rain. But it's like the
defoliant that gives everyone cancer. Um, so it's I should

(08:08):
note here that all secret operations carried out by any
US forces anywhere in the world during the Nixon administration
were approved personally by Henry Kissinger. Henry was the chairman
of something called the forty comm Hell sorry, this was
a semi secret body that had been set up to
provide management and oversight to c i A covert operations.

(08:31):
The committee was made up of members of the National
Security Council. They concerned themselves regularly with the question of
how to stop weapons from flowing into Vietnam By this point,
trails ran through parts of Law and Cambodia, but also
from the Vietnam Chinese border, so Kissinger is ahead of this.
Committee considers a number of ways to stop weapons from
getting into New or from getting into and with Vietnam,
including the use of thermonuclear weapons to annihilate the railways

(08:54):
between North Vietnam and China out of its entire damn my,
and to be fair, is nuts enough that even Kissinger
is like, no, that's a little too far. He also
considered bombing the dikes that kept North Vietnam's irrigation system
from flooding all of its fields. Both of these would

(09:16):
have been war crimes on a Titanic scale. Um. Thankfully,
Kissinger declined to do either in favor of a completely
different set of war crimes. So that's good, that's nice. Yeah,
let's do a different thing. He decides which war crimes
to commit, like we decide like jeans or sweatpants in
the morning, you know, I mean, I think that would
go really well with what we're doing now. That a

(09:36):
really tie the whole thing together. Yeah, that's quite a life.
So immediately after taking office, Henry helps his new boss
put together a menu of bombardment targets in Cambodia. This
is literally called Operation Menu. Now, yeahs before up to

(10:00):
tip your bomba deer, get the sample that was. That's
what I don't know. I actually don't recall off the
top of my head which bombing operation McCain was involved in.
But there's a good there's a good tip joke to
be made there. Somebody will figure it out. Um, people
doing post Yeah, we'll figure it out. Different or parts

(10:20):
of Operation Menu had code names. Different targets had code
names like breakfast, lunch sack. What I mean, it is
one thing to be like so sadistic and it's just
another thing to tie it into do a lot to
try brunch yea, yeah, we're going back to brunch finally

(10:43):
under watch the next Um. So yeah, it's nice that
slaughter can be fun, like you can find fun. Yeah,
it's the kind of love what you do, Dave. Otherwise
you're just gonna feel like work, you know. So before
they began this series of bombings, the Joint Chiefs of

(11:06):
Staff they warned the White House quote some Cambodian casualties
would be sustained in the operation. The surprise effective ASTA
could tend to increase casualties. So they're like the fact
that we're not warning anyone and that we're keeping this
a secret means more civilians will die. Like heads up,
so you know what you're doing. This is this is
what's going to happen. Um. Now. As they approached the

(11:27):
question of bombing Cambodia A, Kissinger and Nixon had a choice.
They could either tell Congress or they could hide what
they were doing and use the presidential power over the
Armed services to appropriate funds from other places in order
to carry out the bombing in secret. Nixon had been
elected with Kissinger's help in part due to the LBJ
administration's failure to in the war. He didn't want to
go in the nineteen seventy two reelection campaign, having to

(11:48):
defend the fact that he expanded it. Henry Kissinger worked
with Colonel's Alexander Haig and Race Sitton to figure out
a way for the president to direct bombing operations in
a private manner. And I'm gonna quote from Kissinger's shadow,
Greg Grandon, sitting based on recommendations he received from General
Creighton Abrams, the commander of military operations in Vietnam, would
work up a number of targets in Cambodia to be struck.

(12:10):
Then he would bring them to Kissinger and hag in
the White House for approval. Kissinger was very hands on
revising some of Sitton's work. I don't know what he
was using as his reason for varying them. Sitting later
recalled strike here in this area. Kissinger would tell him
or strike there in that area. Once Kissinger was satisfied
with the proposed target, Sitting would back channel the coordinates
to Saigon, and from there a career would pass them

(12:30):
on to the appropriate radar stations, where an officer would
make a last minute switch. The B fifty two would
be diverted from its cover target in South Vietnam into Cambodia,
where it would drop its bomb load on the real target.
When the run was complete, the officer in charge of
the deception would burn whatever documents, maps, computer print outs,
radar reports, messages, and so on that might reveal the
actual flight. Then he would write up false post strike

(12:51):
paperwork indicating that the South Vietnam sortee was flown as planned.
It's so much work. Yeah, reminds me of when I
used this skip school that like the lengths I would
go to to get away with cutting class and like that.
The point would be made always to me, like if
you put this focus towards studying, you'd probably you'd spend
less time and it would be more effective. But instead

(13:14):
you just waste so much. Instead of just stopping you
you do all this gymnastics just to continue the thing
that is the problem, that makes the problem compound. Yeah,
it's they really are are going through a lot of
work to illegally bomb a neutral country look like they're
not bombing, Yeah, to look like they're not Um, it's gaslighting,

(13:35):
you know, this is this, that's what. That's what. This
is kissing you you know, we're finally going to get
him canceled. This is gonna be what man, it would be.
Imagine we're going to do to kissing on Hannibal Burst
did to Cosby. Oh man, come on, come on. Uh.

(13:58):
So you know, obviously this is very illegal. Um, there's
a lot and there's a lot of parts of it
that are illegal. For example, the military has a chain
of command, and Sitton was bypassing his bosses in the
Department of Defense because he's just a colonel, right, like
colonels don't get to that's not there, Like you're not
at that level, right, So he is he is bypassing
the normal chain of command in order to directly orchestrate

(14:22):
an a legal bombing campaign with the White House and
kind of cutting out a chunk of the Pentagon sitting
knew at the time that it was weird to cut
his commanding officers out and report directly to Henry Kissinger.
He later recalled, I kind of felt I was way
out on a limb and skating on some pretty thin
ice with all my trips to the West basement of
the White House where he's meeting with Yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah,

(14:42):
I'm going to a secret basement. Yeah, and to talk
about bombing, like maybe maybe this isn't how it's supposed
to be done. Seemed like a democracy. I feel like
we shouldn't be doing things like this in a basement.
You've come to secret democracy basement. Yeah. The people voted

(15:04):
for this basement knock. So I know, as you I
noted here that they kind of cut out a large
chunk of like the military command apparatus to do this,
which doesn't mean that those guys were against what they
were doing, and in fact, all of sitton superiors knew
what he was doing. They just didn't want to be
involved because again, it was a crime, you know. So
they so they're like they're down with the cut out

(15:27):
because they're just like, yeah, you do it, and I
don't want my name on this ship crazy, but go
with it for sure. Yeah, yeah we love it. But yeah,
they didn't know about the bombing Cambodia the same way.
I have never known a pot dealer, right, So Sitton
would regularly like, I don't know. I'm not going to

(15:47):
say this is to his credit, but he was like
this is weird, and he would go He did on
a couple of occasions go to his superiors and was
like are you okay with this? And his exact phrase
what they responded was just do just what you're doing.
When you get a call to go to the White House,
go because you don't really have a choice, which is great.
Oh my god, it's it's it's straight out of the

(16:08):
show Snowfall, Like it's just like this ship just happens
all the time. Yeah, this is what happened with Iran Contra.
It was the same fucking ship, you know. Yeah, it's
all crimes and It's worth noting that like the United
States is going to war with a neutral country in secret,
under the personal direction of a guy who several months
ago had been a Harvard professor, like Kissinger is not

(16:28):
even a year distant from being a fucking teacher and
this and now he is orchestrating a secret war in Cambodia.
And like, I love the I love the beginning thing
where you said, there's like a guy whose job it
is to pick targets, and he's picking targets and nick
and kissing, just taking them apps and going no, I
like here, like just totally random. He doesn't have any

(16:50):
fucking idea what he's doing. He's just like that it
looks like it should go away. He has not even
begun to micromanage this, this war crime, Dave. So, the
purpose of this illegal bombing campaign was not just to
stop the movement of Vietnamese troops and material. It also paid.
It also played a role in advancing what Nixon called

(17:10):
his Madman theory. Now, the President had shared this with
close confidence prior to the nineteen six election. He told
his future chief of staff that, in order to negotiate
an into the war with favorable terms he felt he
had to make the North Vietnamese quote, believe I've reached
a point where I might do anything to stop the war.
We'll just slip the word to them that, for God's sake,
you know, Nixon is obsessed about communists. We can't restrain

(17:33):
him when he's angry and he has his hand on
the nuclear button. And ho Chi Men himself will be
in Paris in two days begging for peace, which is
like the idea. Someone's like, so you want us to
try to convey that you're crazy? Okay, that seems um
and I think it's coming across her. Honestly, I think
that's already it's baked into this whole thing a little bit.
It's also very funny that, like they are trying to

(17:54):
scare ho Chi Men, who at this point is fighting
his second winning war against a major world power with
like a very very small number of people, you know,
like North North Vietnam not a big country compared to
say the French Imperial Forces or the United States. He's
not a kind of You're not going to scare ho

(18:14):
Chi Men, right, He's not. He's not a guy who
gets spooked. It's over. It's just absolutely not happening at
this point. Yeah, Now, Kissinger either believed in his boss's
plan or understood that he had to play along. Greg
Grandon argues that Nixon's Madman theory was actually just an
extension of the foreign policy arguments that Kissinger himself had
been making for years. Quote. Toughness after all, was a

(18:36):
late motif that run through much ran through much of
his state craft, the idea that war and diplomacy are inseparable,
and that to be effective, diplomats need to be able
to punish and persuade an equal, unrestricted measure. In fact,
the Madman theory was an extension of Kissinger's philosophy of
the deed that power wasn't power unless one was willing
to use it, that the purpose of action was to
neutralize the inertia of an action. I mean it like

(19:00):
it's not I mean, it's not a double down. It's
like you've it's eighteen double downs. But at some point
you just I I, at least in my lifetime, had
a moment where I did believe that there were there
were people who were who would like point out the
crazy shit. And the more you learn, the more you go, No,

(19:20):
there's just there's not They are just all like it's
like a bunch of junkies figuring out how to get
more junk. Yeah, I mean, it's just like it's just
how do you get through the day. It's not long
term anything. Yep. You know, there's a degree to which
And this is like one of the things that's most
frustrating about this part of how this always gets justified
is there's legitimate logic in that, Yeah, Hitler gobbled up

(19:43):
a bunch of little chunks of Western Europe and nobody
stopped him, and they should have, like something should have
been done, like when he decided to take Czechoslovakia. You know,
we're during the Angelustre's certainly, you know, like there, and
they take this logic of like, yeah, if you have
this like massive military his nation gobbling up its neighbors,
you can't just necessarily do nothing. And they applied that

(20:05):
to like, well, okay, we've got a bomb Cambodia because
some dudes are hiking through it with guns on their back,
like Chamberlain. Nonsense escalation. Chamberlain also is always in play
there too, because it's like everyone's like, you don't want
to be a Chamberlain. Yeah, we're appeasing North Vietnam if
we don't drop more bombs, and we're dropped in all
of World War two on Cambodia, Cambodia. It's this nonsense

(20:28):
escalation of of of logic, of historical logic. That's like
like someday Nixon's just going to look in the mirror
and be like, sometimes I think I'm I'm just fighting
a war inside of myself. They're actually there are some
quotes from Kissinger that aren't all that far off here.

(20:52):
We're back. So the first bombing mission in this operation
was launched on March eighteenth, nineteen sixty nine. Kissinger was
in conversation at the time when he was interrupted with
a note telling him that the bombing run had been
a success. He smiled and then sent the information on
to the President. Nixon's chief of staff later recalled historic day.
Kissinger really excited. He came in beaming with the report. Now,

(21:16):
it was noted by people who were around the White
House that Nick's that Kissinger seemed to enjoy. Quote playing
the bomba deer, taking great pains to direct the destruction,
saymour seymour Hirsch wrote that quote When the military men
presented a proposed bombing list, Kissinger would redesign the missions,
shifting a dozen planes, perhaps from one area to another,
and altering the timing of the bombing runs. And it does. Yeah,

(21:38):
I guess no fucking expertise in this area, absolutely none.
He's a fucking nerd who reads books, like you don't
know anything about what to bomb Henry. It's like me
showing up at a hospital and being like, all right,
give me this surgical schedule. I need to start to
work in these surgeries and getting him in order, like, yeah,
it's fucking crazy, it is. I mean, this is a

(22:02):
there's a human impulse here. We're seeing in Ukraine where
all these like random people are being like, here's how
you disable the tank, and it's like, you've never disabled
to tank. You don't know what the funk you're talking about. Like,
you're not gonna like throwing paint on it isn't going
to stop it. You're going to get people killed. If
anyone's stupid enough to listen to you, shut up. It's
just like Kissinger is actually in a power to really
do that. And there's this I don't know what it is.

(22:24):
I don't know what it is that makes some people
certain that like they know how to prosecute an entire
war based on their experience reading a lot of books
at a school, and there's and there's. It doesn't sound
like there's anybody who's going like, no, that doesn't make anything.
Is this out of its mind? Yeah? Yeah, So so
it's just like it is. It's just people being like, okay, sure,
because there's a lot Obviously, the the unrestricted drone warfare

(22:47):
that that escalated during the Obama administration and continued at
and even higher pace under Trump is indefensible morally, but
also the way that it tended to work was like
you would get, you know, these guys with the administration,
whichever one it was, would say like these are the
things we are we are going to target with drones,
and then the military would bring them like, well, here
are the different options for strikes that we have, and

(23:08):
they would like pick which one to do. Kissinger is
literally taking the maps from them, erasing their plans and
like writing in his own um, which is like it's
someone in the huddle with an actually like with coach
k he's drawing a plan a whiteboard and then a
fan just scribbles it out and like rubs it all
down with his arm, and then he's like, instead, I

(23:28):
don't do it all run out the court at the
same time, and then we pass the ball a bunch
tonight to do it. That makes someone head the bat
into the it's it's not I think, Yeah, I'm just
upset because I bought forty gallons of paint because you
were going to try to knock out a couple of
tanks and now the whole fucking thing shot. Like, yeah,

(23:51):
there are some things paint is good at when it
comes to conflict. There were some very funny moments in
one of the big shud fights we had up in Portland,
where kids filled the fire extinguisher with paint and like
ruined thousands of dollars in tactical gear. That was that
was good. Look. It's not to say that amateurs never
have good ideas, but they were not amateurs at that point. Though.

(24:15):
Those kids have been finding those proud boys for a minute.
So Kissinger's extraordinary degree of control over the situation was
possible because he had literally reformed the entire national security
apparatus around himself. Nixon wanted a buffer from his own
Secretary of State, which prided Henry with the opportunity to
take as much power and centralize it around the National
Security Advisor. And he could do this as long as

(24:37):
he kept Nixon happy. Under Kissinger, the National Security Council,
which he headed, became the center of US foreign policy.
A massive bureaucracy fed piles of information embassy kales, cables,
intelligence reports, et cetera, straight to Henry Kissinger. He decided,
he's again, Henry is where all of the information from
this vast apparatus that the US has to gather information

(24:57):
right the eyes and ears of the president, you know,
all the things that are supposed to provide the president
with information. All of that comes directly to Henry, and
he decides what to give the president. And he was
a teacher, and he was a year before. He was
a guy who's primary claim to fame before this was
we need more nukes. We don't have enough fucking nukes,
and also we should use them whenever. Um it's I

(25:21):
was just watching there's a great documentary called Commanded Control
that's about a nuclear disaster in the U s and
nineteen eighty that nearly killed half of the people on
the East coast that enough folks don't know about. A
guy accidentally dropped a bolt and it ignited part of
a nuclear missile and it nearly killed everyone in the
Eastern seaboard. Yeah, it was. It was a big old
It was a bigger fuffle um. And this guy's there's

(25:44):
a scrow fell in the thing. That's nuts about it.
But one of the things that pointed out I think
we have Sophie can google this for me. I think
we have about six thousand nuclear weapons right now, which
is way too many. But as a result we have Yeah,
we have the Russia as on six thousand, we have
around so that's too much. Both countries have too many nukes.

(26:06):
I think we can all I'm not signed enough on that.
As a result, in part of Kissingers, we have a
missile gap and we need to build more. By this
point in the mid sixties, there are thirty two thousand
nuclear weapons in the United States. That's even an a
side because it's like a Kardashian with shoes. Yeah. I
feel my thing has always been every every person who

(26:30):
owns property should be allowed to have a nuke, your
own nuke. Look, I think you can all agree. You
know what you know what, there wouldn't be if everyone
had a nuke. Dave, no knock raids by the cops.
That's true. You're not gonna have any of that ship
they busted down doors. Yeah, guys, fine, real different situation

(26:56):
are the cops if everybody's got a nuke, other problems, though,
there would would be some other problems. So um anyway,
Kissinger is the the Kissinger is effectively turned himself into
the eyes and ears of the United States military appetatis.
He decides what. You can argue, he's one of the

(27:18):
two or three most powerful people who's ever lived at
this point. An argument could be made um So Marvin
and Bernard Colb, who were both diplomats at this point,
describe what Henry builds here as Henry's wonderful machine. Quote Kissinger,
I know Mr mcgoim's nuclear emporium. Since Kissinger controlled the system,

(27:42):
he controlled the decision making process. Everyone reports to Kissinger
and only Kissinger reports to the president. This set up
allowed Henry to micromanaged bombing campaigns, over order, covert arms deals,
and engage in secret diplomacy at will. He was not
merely executing the president's orders. He himself was free to
make national policy as long as Nixon was happy with him.
From Kissinger's shadow quote, Kissinger, according to Marvin and Bernard

(28:05):
called kalb knew almost instinctively that he would be able
to control the bureaucracy and thus help reorder American diplomacy,
only to the degree that he became indistinguishable from the
President and his policies. Rogers at State was opposed to
the idea of escalating the war into Cambodia. Layered at
the Pentagon was for it, but thought it needed to
be done above board, legally and publicly through the normal
chain of command. This gave Kissinger an opening, letting him

(28:28):
stake out in a plus ultra position. He wanted to bomb,
he wanted to bomb in a way that inflicted the
most pain, and he wanted to bomb an absolute secrecy,
completely off the books. As a result, every war crime
committed by the United States during the Nction administration, every
bad thing U S forces do, particularly under the under
the ages of special operations at least right has to

(28:50):
be considered one of Henry Kissinger's crimes, because it is
his job to personally sign off on all of them
um and he is Mike. He is not just a
rubber stamper. He is he is actively pushing for things.
So we are going into very specific detail about one
specific crime. If you find a bad thing that the US,
that US, the CIA or special forces did from nineteen

(29:12):
nineteen seventy three, Henry Kissinger gave that the old thumbs up.
So again we have to leave out a lot. It
doesn't even sound like it's I mean, it's like ego based. Yeah,
it's it's not even I mean, there's there's there's so
little actual and it just shows you, like what happens
when you're in a bubble. But I mean, I just

(29:33):
don't think most people would would be capable of this.
But it's it is. It's just like it's not really
for anything other than he is just feels great being
at the helm of this and it's an extremely powerful position.
It's such a bad idea, like if you proceed like
a moment, get ourselves in the headspace. If someone who
thinks all of this is morally justified, it's a bad

(29:54):
idea because a person can't competently manage all of this
like they would, right, they would be like, look, I
need help. I mean, is we're doing what you came
to do, like a reasonable warlord would be like level headed, yeah, yeah,
I mean yeah. Um. So, when he was signing off

(30:15):
on bombing runs, Kissinger poured over raw intelligence documents, which
included information on exactly, in many cases, down to the
number how many civilians lived in a certain target target area. Um. Now,
sometimes it was a little bit less specific in this.
For example, Areas seven oh four, which had quote sizeable
concentrations of civilians, didn't have an exact number, but was

(30:35):
bombed two and forty seven times on Henry Kissinger's orders.
And since we're going to be talking a lot about bombing,
we should discuss exactly what that meant in this case,
because all bombings are not created equal. The bombings Kissinger
directed were carried out by B fifty two bombers. These
are massive planes. These are like the size of the
big international commercial aircraft roughly right. These are not like
fighter jets and stuff. Um. These fly too high to

(30:58):
be seen from the ground, and they are incapable of
meaningful discrimination between civilian and military targets. This is not
an era in which there's much at all in the
way of precision guided bombing. And that with a B
fifty two you cannot even attempt precision. You are dropping
explosives blindly from like a mile up. I want to
quote now from a write up by Taylor Owen and
Ben Kiernan for Yale. Quote. A single B fifty two

(31:21):
D big belly payload consists of up to one hundred
and eight, two hundred or forty kg bombs, which are
dropped in a target area of approximately five hundred by
fifteen hundred meters. In many cases, Cambodian villages were hit
with dozens of payloads over the course of several hours.
The result was near total destruction. When US officials stated
at the time, we had been told as at everybody

(31:43):
that those carpet bombing attacks by B fifty twos were
totally devastating, that nothing could survive. It's like a sturgeon
with eggs. Yeah, yeah, it is. It is just completely indiscriminate. Yeah,
one Cambodian survivor because people did live. As we've stated,
these are never as good at killing people as the
military likes to claim, which is not to minimize the horror.

(32:04):
It's just like it's also not it doesn't work, um exactly.
I mean. One one Cambodian survivor of US bombing described
it this way. Three f one one ones bombed right
center of my village, killing eleven of my family members.
My father was wounded but survived. At that time. There
was not a single soldier in the village or in
the area around the village. Seven other villages were also killed.

(32:25):
They had to run into a ditch to hide, and
then two bombs fell right into it. Fox, Yeah, it is. Yeah,
you cannot you cannot exaggerate the the extent to which
this is indiscriminate. It's just total madness on top of madness.
I mean, there's no people are rightly furious about, like

(32:48):
bombing in in in Ukrainian cities right now. What the
United States is doing in Cambodia is eliminating grid squares
on a map of all life, Like, yeah, which is
the country. There's nothing to fucking do. Yeah, some are
walking through it, you know, like it's cop logic. Were like, well,
a guy who stole a car was seen in this neighborhood,

(33:10):
so we had to shoot anyone someone we saw in
the window of their house, you know, like it's that
kind of ship um which I guess it makes sense
that cops act the way they do because this has
always been the way people with guns and power act
everywhere through all time. Yeah so that's good. Yeah. Yeah.
So the ostensible purpose of all this carnage which to
put an end to North Vietnam's ability to wage war,

(33:32):
but a huge factor for both Kissinger and Nixon, even
larger than any actual like impact on the war itself,
was to preserve their personal power. Right after the bombing
of Cambodia began, Nixon sent Kissinger to talk with the
Soviet ambassador, a fellow named Dobrynan. In Henry Kissinger in
American Power, Thomas Schwartz writes, quote Kissinger put forward a straightforward,

(33:52):
put forth a straightforward domestic political account for Nixon's motivation
and thinking, noting that Nixon is not seeking a military victory,
but he cannot go down in American history as the
first U S president who have lost the war in
which the US participated. I mean, the honest, like you
think you'd at least lie about no, just the oh

(34:15):
my god, look, it's murdering. Demicide is one thing, Gareth,
but dishonesty, it's just it's disgusting. That's I feel like
a parent. Look someone kissing your drinks with you know
exactly exact mean, I just I would love to see
a version where he just keep up with a parents. Look,

(34:38):
you can't do we just Nixon hates losing. That's what
this is about. We can't take the people. Yeah, it's so.
Between March of nineteen sixty nine and May of nineteen seventy,
more than three thousand, six hundred and thirty raids were
flown across the Campboard Bodian border. Each was approved personally
by Henry Kissinger. The New York Times broke this story
to the American public for the first time in May

(34:58):
of nineteen sixty nine. Um so that's pretty good, right,
Like the New York Times actually is pretty shocking on
this and reveals what has happened. This prompts protests and
international outcry. That's one of the frustrating things about the
New York Times because there's a million things to be
angry at them all the time, and then it's like, oh,
and they also were the first people to reveal this
horrific crime against humanity because these spots where like, well

(35:23):
like it's like a broken clock though it's you know,
every now and then it's like a broken clock. But
when it's right, it's about like the massacre of civilians
on an industrent scale. But also when it's wrong, it's
about the massacre of civilians mixed bag um. So there's

(35:44):
immediately protests in international outcry. Armed students sees a building
at Cornell University, which is very based. Students at Kissinger's
own Harvard engage in a two week strike. Ever, pr
savvy Kissinger agreed to meet with student protesters in order
to prop up his image among liberals. He told them,
if you come back in a year and things haven't changed,
we won't have a morally defensible position. So like, hey,

(36:06):
you know, I know it's all funked up. I've got
to fix this whole messed up It's been going on
for years. You know I'm working on it. If you
come back and behind this figured the problem, there's a
cog in here, give me one year to kill all
the babies. And it also shows how fucking crazy you are. Like,

(36:26):
if you're doing this, you know you'd be like, look,
hide me. I do not want to talk to the
fact that he's like I would meet them. It's like us,
he knows him. I'll just tell him what's up. Black.
We gotta kill him. We gotta kill people for like
a year. Let's let's see how it goes. Give me here,

(36:46):
I'm gonna bomb the ship out of just villages and
ship and kill a bunch of babies and ladies. Have
no idea how. It's just nice, nice to look at
the campus. You guys have changed a couple of things. Huh.
You guys just like you guys are like I heard
something bad. We're just getting started. But a year is

(37:08):
an amazing thing to say, what this it's on this, Look,
this is happening in the year, and we'll revisit. It's like, yeah, no,
not a year. You don't get to revisit this, you
revisit We should revisit where we are in the story
after this break. Yeah, let's revisit the sponsors of the show.

(37:30):
You know who else? You know who else need a
year to keep? Yeah, look, if if if has not
stopped the carpet bombing of Cambodia in a year, then
then you can cancel your subscription. You know, by the way,
talking to that's menus. Those are menu options. Very much like, Yeah,
it's very much like a white house visit with a

(37:51):
hell what do you want to make a case of doe?
Or do you want to do this chickpeace? What do
you want to do it? There's options? You want to
do a flood bread mugga eagles though, we're back. So

(38:12):
there's congressional inquiries about the illegal carpet bombing. What are
they after? They what they smelled? Some smoke? I should
also note seizing Cornell offices with with arms, dope, actually
sitting down with Henry Kissinger to let him talk about
how things aren't really that bad, not dope. Maybe throw
a stapler in his face, you know something, hit him,

(38:35):
really try to hit him. You know, at least give
him a shoe. You know, you've got options from a
fucking baseball team at Harvard had to have been able
to hit him with a fastball. There are people that
if you're around you should Cheney Bush. You get around
certain people, you get close to him, you should fucking
hit them. Hit him. Look, Dick Cheney is basically like

(38:57):
a charging phone. Just unplug him at this point. What
happens whatever is turn on a microwave next to Hi.
Just just have a microwaving an extension cord to put
a popcorn and throw it in his lap. Yeah. Look,
we we we all know. Everybody here knows that eventually
Cheney and and Kissinger shed their human skins to become

(39:20):
one ball of energy. I think Kissinger currently is shedding
his human skin. If you've seen him lately, it looks
like he's halfway through the most crossed. Yeah, but the
two of the merge and then wings pop. Oh yeah,
I get it. So they kind of become like a
like a cerebus or something like that. Yeah, and then
they're one. It's like, let's get out of here. Finally
they got through form and then they they locate in

(39:45):
nuke microbiological life on Europa. No one has done yet,
so there's congressional inquiries. Kissinger gets brought before the Senate
where he assures everyone that Kimbodian territories bombed by the

(40:05):
U S we're all quote unpopulated. He knew this was
to lie at the time. We know from briefing documents
Kissinger received that he was warned into tail about such things.
The breakfast bombing target, he was told, was inhabited by
six and forty civilians. Dessert had three hundred and fifty.
Nixon initially, it's just like ice cream. Yeah, you wouldn't

(40:27):
get angry at me for bombing a baskin Robbins, would you.
There's no people there hates cake. It's called the magic shell.
So Nixon eventually initially blamed Kissinger for the leaks that
had revealed the story of the bombing of Cambodia to
the New York Times. Um, and this is because Kissinger
brings in a lot of like liberals, Like a lot

(40:48):
of Kissinger's staff are not Republicans, are not like right
wing guys. They're like Northeastern liberals. Because yeah, and then
this is charming print. They are not. But Nixon is like,
it must have been one of these East Coast liberals
you brought in that leaked at the Times. He right,
So he thinks it's an extension of Kissinger, not Kissinger. No, no, no,

(41:10):
he doesn't Kissinger. That would be someone's really up to something,
somebody's sucking around some But this like brain Woody Allen,
and he's funny, he's good. This is some good context
on how comprehensively shitty a person Kissinger is, how incapable

(41:31):
of real loyalty. He is. Thomas Schwartz writes that in
order to preserve his own position, Kissinger had to throw
large numbers of his team members under the bus quote.
Kissinger called FBI Director J Edgar Hoover and gave him
a list of those staffers in his office with access
to the information, telling Hoover that he would destroy whoever
did this if we can find him, no matter where
he is. Among the first to be wire wire tapped

(41:52):
was Morton Halperin, who had helped devise the NSC system,
Helmett Sonnenfeldt, Kissinger's fellow German Jewish refugee, and even Winston Lore,
the man Kissinger leader called his conscience on peign policy
issues and all. There would be seventeen FBI wire taps
up by the White House, thirteen on government employees including
Kissinger staff, and four on newsmen, among them Kissinger's British

(42:13):
friend who was a reporter for the London Times. It's
a meteoric rock. It's like American idol level sudden impact
as far as because I mean, as you pointed to
he wasn't like this crazy. I mean he was crazy.
But now it's like he's just it's on Royd's the

(42:34):
level that he the level he's gotten to, and the
level of insanity that he's gotten to is really even
for this country historic. Yeah, it's um, it's pretty cool.
And just like it's great he is he's not capable
of even like treating his very loyal friends. Well. Um
so yeah, this would come back to bite Kissinger and

(42:56):
Nixon and the ass in the not too distant future.
But we're gonna take a while to get to that
because there's a lot in between there and now. So
let's return to Cambodia. It is worth noting that Operation
Menu achieved nothing. It was useless in a military sense.
The enemy commanded control facilities they were ostensibly trying to destroy.
We're never taken out. And it was useless from a
negotiating standpoint because North Vietnam did not bulge budge they

(43:21):
post they have teen seventy. Nixon decided to escalate again
by ordering a ground invasion of Cambodia. He announced this
with a typically unhinged speech. And again this is public
because at this point, you know, the New York Times
is revealed things. So we live in an age of anarchy.
We see mindless attacks on all the great institutions which
have been created by free civilizations in the past five

(43:43):
hundred years. That's happening because kids are like protesting incologists. Yeah.
Like yeah, he framed as a test of the nation's
quote will in character. Um. Seriously, he's right. When one
of his staff members Balkman Kissinger staff members balked it
plans to illegally invade Cambodi with ground troops. Troops, Henry

(44:04):
told him, quote, your views represent the cowardice of the
Eastern establishment. This staff member, William Watts, tried to physically
attack Henry Kissinger, who was hid behind his desk. It's
just like if that if he was only able to
just kill him. What imagine if only there'd been a
sharper letter opener on the desk just penned and put

(44:26):
it like a pen through his neck. Yeah. Um, it's
very funny that Kissinger did. It's some point have to
hide behind a desk to stop staff from a strong
bombing everywhere, and that he's hiding under his desk. Relax.
So this staff member Watts resigns right after this, and
when staff member Anthony Lake echoes Watts's concerns. Kissinger, presumably

(44:48):
still hiding behind his desk, calls Lake not manly enough
to do what was necessary, and Lake resigns too. Yeah,
bold words from behind, hiding behind a desk. Yeah, big
tough guy. Four days after Nixon's speech announcing the invasion
of Cambodia, four students were shot dead at Kent State
during a protest over the invasion. Nine more were wounded.

(45:09):
Two weeks later, at Jackson State, police shot into a
crowd of black students protesting the war. Two were killed
and twelve wounded. The invasion prompted some of the first
consequences and only consequences. Kissinger, ever, faced stern rebukes from
fancy academics he respected. A group of them, men who
had often acted as his brain trust and advised him
and other presidential advisors on issues, marched into his office

(45:32):
after the invasion. One of the men, Thomas Shelling, opened
by saying that he supposed he should explain who they were.
Kissinger responded with confusion that I know who you are.
You're all good friends from Harvard. Next from Nil Ferguson's
Kissinger no, said Shelling. We're a group of people who
have completely lost confidence in the ability of the White
House to conduct our foreign policy. And we have come

(45:53):
to tell you so we are no longer at your
disposal as personal advisors. Each of them then proceeded to
rate him, taking five minutes apiece. Now sounds at this
point if it's seen from Rudy when they all hand
in there, yeah, form to get ready to play. That's
it's like that. And this is stories like Rudy if

(46:14):
you have, um, oh god, what's his fucking name, I'm
spacing the West Wing motherfucker Aaron's description of him. If
Aaron Sorkin is writing this, this is like the heroic
moment where like the conscience of like the American ruling
class that comes in. It's like, this is not right, Henry,

(46:35):
and and really that's bullshit, that's not what's happening. And
Ferguson goes on to note that these guys were kind
of foolish it they're all Washington insiders. They have advised
Shelling advised LBJ to massively escalate violence throughout the war
in Vietnam. Ferguson continues, and this is his explanation of
what they were really doing. Quote for these men publicly
breaking with Kissinger with journalists briefed in advance about the

(46:57):
breach was a form of self exculpay, not to say,
an insurance policy. A student radicals back on the Harvard
campus ran riot when new Stat told the Crimson, I
think it's safe to say we're afraid. He did not
specify of what others were more candid, as Shelling put it,
if Cambodia succeeds, it will be a disaster, not just
because my Harvard office may be burned down when I
get home, but it will even be a disaster in

(47:18):
the administration zone terms. So it's amazing it. Fox say, Yeah,
I mean, honestly, that's what this happens on the dollar
p a lot where I'm like, all right, we got
a hero, and then immediately I'm like more villains. God
damn it. I mean to the extent that there's some heroes,
the kids on these campuses who are actually like lighting
buildings on fire and destroying things. They do make Henry

(47:40):
Kissinger and his academic friends afraid and uncomfortable briefly, which
is more than anyone else does. Yeah, and what I
mean this this would kind of be the last time
that that even happens really, right, that like that that
people in the that level of power do feel any
sort of like threat from the regular folk. Yeah, credit
where it's do. They are the only people that I'm

(48:02):
aware of who made Henry Kissinger briefly feel something that
vaguely resembles shame. Yeah, like seriously good work. Um, But
of course you know that doesn't stop anything, obviously. You
know he's got Yeah, he's got he's got many desks. Yeah.
Uh So Cambodia falls into chaos as a result of
the as most places would when bombed on this level. Right,

(48:25):
hard to maintain a state with this level of things exploding. Um.
It is unclear precisely how many people die in Operation Menu,
the subsequent invasion of Cambodia and the bombing campaigns that followed.
The low estimate is fifty thousand. The high estimates are
a hundred and fifty to two hundred thousand. Thirty to
fifty thousand. Lotions die in the bombing campaign, which makes

(48:45):
the sparsely populated nation the most densely bombed place on Earth.
Of these bombs failed to detonate, and in the years
since the bombing, another twenty thousand people have died from
the estimated eighty million bombs left in the soil of
the victims or children. One Aid workers set of the situation.
There are parts of low where there is literally no
free space. There are no areas that have not been bombed.

(49:07):
And when you are in the villages now, you still
see the evidence of that. You see the bomb craters,
You still see an unbelievable amount of metal and wreckage
in an exploded ordinance just lying around in villages and
it's still injuring and killing people today. What a legacy. Now,
If any of this concerned Niction and Kissinger, I would
like to just throw out there that I do feel
that gardening should be more dangerous. So yes, and nobody's

(49:29):
in disagreed about that, And we have enough bombs in
this country to make gardening a lot more dangerous. Yeah. Beans,
If if there's not a one in three chance digging
up a potato loses you a goddamn arm, you're not
really a gardener. So how are the tomatoes? Ken's dead?

(49:57):
If any of this concerned Nixon and Kissinger, we have
no evidence of it. We know that in nineteen seventy two,
Nixon asked how many did we kill in Lao and
the Press Secretary Ron Ziegler responded with the guests maybe
ten thousand fifteen. Kissinger agreed emotion in the lotion thing,
we killed about ten fifteen. This is how they talk

(50:18):
about the showcase showdown three to five, nine elevens worth
of people. Obviously, Uh, did you get like one bag
of grapes or two? Yeah? I had two bags of grapes.
What's the cover fee to get into that? To get
into that concert? It's like bucks, you know, yeah, except
this is they're they're just complete and total fucking psychopaths,

(50:39):
and they're off by a half at least. You know,
it's hard to get accurate, you know, death tolds here. Uh.
And the bombs were not the only thing left behind
by the campaign that Kissinger orchestrated. Greg Grandon writes defoliation
chemicals did their work just over a two week period
April eighteenth to May second, nineteen sixty nine. US dropped
agent Orange caused significant damage. Andrew Wells, who has long

(51:00):
been involved in relief aid to Southeast Asia rights. Both
the US government and independent inspection teams confirmed that a
hundred and seventy three thousand acres were sprayed seven percent
of Kompong Cham Province, two thousand, seven hundred of them
seriously affected. The rubber plantations totaled approximately one third of
Cambodia's total and represented a loss of twelve percent of
the country's export earnings. Washington agreed to pay over twelve

(51:23):
million in reparations, but Kissinger tried to defer the payment
to fiscal year nineteen seventy two, when the money could
be paid without a specific without a special request that
would have revealed US cross border activity. Every effort Kissinger
road should be made to avoid the necessity for a
special budgetary request to provide funds to pay his claim.
Oh my god, Look, we're gonna, we're gonna. We're gonna

(51:43):
get the money. You're gonna get the money. You're gonna
get the money. Of the money. I just need to
take this thing moved. Yeah, I need to move some
stuff around. Just but you're gonna get it. It's fine.
Let's just keep it on the on the d L,
you know what I mean. Yeah, it's yeah. He service
wasn't calling Trump Agent Orange, by the way. Uh, if
that wasn't his code name, that's a disappointment. That is.

(52:05):
I mean, there's a lot of reasons to be disappointed
in the Secret Service, but that is one of them.
So the loss of life and economic damage caused Cambodia
to spiral into chaos, or at least it was a
factor other stuff's going on. We have a couple episodes
about King Notre Dame Sahannock, who was a real piece
of ship in the king of Cambodia. In this period,
a lot's happening. Um, but unrest by the caused by

(52:26):
the bombings and the economic devastation helped to spark a
right wing coup, which was likely orchestrated with c I
a help and thus with the direct input. You guys
are looking to change things up here. We've got a plan,
We got an idea. Does no matter what happened someone by,
why don't we provide some help? Yeah, exactly. And the coup,
you know, overthrows the king, who then starts backing the

(52:48):
Khmer Rouge. Uh the win. Yeah, their counter revolution against
the right wing coup, and this leads to the establishment
of pulpots camer Rouge government YA. Once the Rouge took
over in nineteen seventy five, Nixon had left office. Kissinger
still though, was still in power. In November of nineteen
seventy five, he told Thailand's foreign minister, you should also

(53:09):
tell the Cambodians that we will be friends with them.
They are murderous thugs, but we won't let that stand
in our way. We are prepared to improve relations with that.
I mean, I mean we get we get kissing you.
I mean my people murderous thugs. I'm all about murderous thugs.
I think we could find common ground. This man wants

(53:29):
to kill a million people. I think that is a
cute start. In nineteen eight, one questioned on this, Kissinger
explained that quote, the Tie and the Chinese did not
want a Vietnamese dominated Indo China. We didn't want the
Vietnamese to dominate. I don't believe we did anything for
Paul Pot, but I suspect we closed our eyes when
some others did sing something for Paul Pots. Of course,

(53:51):
the United States attempted at least to provide direct military
aid to the Khmer Rouge in order to help them
oppose Vietnam, and there's a lot of debate and uncertainty.
It seems that very little, if any actually made it
to the Cammer but this is primarily because of difficulty
getting shipped into Cambodia at this point in time. Um.
But it is fair to say that Kissinger and Nixon's
actions were crucial in creating the circumstances that brought Pole

(54:12):
Pot to power, and once he was in charge in
massacring people, they tacitly supported his government because they thought
it would sty me the Vietnamese. In total, from the
killing that started when the US bombing raids began, to
the people killed by pol Pot's regime to those who
died fighting in the fighting with Vietnam that finally brought
the rouge to an end, one point seven million Cambodians died,
more than a quarter of the population of the country

(54:33):
pre war. It's it's so incredible how their ideology of
just communism bad. They're like, well, communism will kill a
bunch of people, and they're just fucking everything they can
to save people. Well, and it's also like they don't
even really believe communist because the Camaros your communist as hell,

(54:54):
and they're fine with working with them because Vietnam is
the ones who beat them, and so they're angry at Vietnam,
and it's like in Vietnam fights Cambodia, like it's not
there's no these people don't believe in anything. Yeah, there's
not good lessons to take from this, but um no,
it's it's someone should have stabbed Henry Kissingers, that's for sure,

(55:14):
because if that guy stabbed him. Yeah, there's so many
people we should have stabbed. There's so many, but Kissinger's
way up there, and and in this story right, like
we're not Obviously you can't blame all of the deaths
in Cambodia on Kissinger a lot, just like you can't
blame all of the deaths in Vietnam on Kissinger and Nixon,
but like just so many lead to which he's central
to a lot of the worst actions in these wars well,

(55:37):
And so the I I keep thinking about the point
you made in the last episode where it you know,
the idea that l b J, that that he broke
up the l b J plan to sort of end
all of this and just for political reasons made that
not happen, and that just that the avenue that we

(55:58):
are down now is just I mean, it's unconscionable. And
there's there's so much. Also, we also besides just the
straight bombings, we destabilize areas, we change the trajectory. Look
putin is our fucking doing. Yeah, we fucking took out

(56:19):
the government. We we Yelson all that ship that was
a I'm not gonna let you sit here and touch
it on Yelson. He was a very in control of
what he was doing. He definitely knew what was happening.
It wasn't like having a bottle of smear enough in charge.
Nothing that happened. Every everything we get involved with turns
into a funk pie. I mean, it's just we just

(56:39):
create chaos, but we're murder midas. It's this, it's this
thing where we're talking about like how how insane it
is that Kissinger is micromanaging these bombings. Which is not
to say that like the military men who were doing
it before, we're particularly better. And this is the problem
that like we're going to have, you know, with Ukraine
and whatnot to it's just that, well, now we have

(57:01):
all of these people who are supposed to be the
people we call experts, who are now going to be
doing things, and like if you actually look at their resumes,
it is not a wide ranging history of successes, you know,
and it is the same thing with Russia. You could
look at like Russian intervention a bunch of places. It's
a nightmare. The kind of people who are in a
position to make calls when the conflicts get to this

(57:22):
level are always gooules, and they're always bad at anything
but causing devastation. And that's why all of this keeps happening. Um,
because none of these people are any good at it,
and no one gets punished and nobody ever. Yeah, the
fact that Bill Crystal is still saying what anybody should
do anywhere the world. You're like, what the fun is

(57:44):
going on? Who gets to go? Who goes away? Who
goes away? Favorite? I imagine I know somebody who lost
their job at a grocery store because they got arrested
protesting for like protesting against police violence. Um, meanwhile, Bill
Crystals like a guest media show. Yeah, it's it's Bill.

(58:07):
What do you think I mean? Um, Yeah, it's it's frustrating.
Every now and then, far too seldom you get a
story like that billionaire Russian arms dealer who's yacht got
partially sunk. But there's like three of those stories for
every thousand Kissingers um, and they don't ever mean anything
because that guy can afford to fix his fucking yacht.

(58:28):
So when they were they were egging Bezos his boat.
When when he was getting that bridge torn down, Yeah,
you're like, I mean people, yeah, it's like he's gonna
have someone hose it down and that he's fine. Everybody.
You look. Yachts burn. We know burn, that's the thing.

(58:48):
Yachts burn, and so do Bill Crystals crystal, So I
think it's like, yeah, actually when you burn and he
just turns into a few crystals. So Greg Grand and
author of Kissinger's Shadow, sees the bombing campaign in Cambodia
and Lao is the terminal phase in what he calls
the crack up of America's domestic consensus, which had begun

(59:09):
under Johnson. Kissinger considered conditions in the country at the
time of Kent State to be quote near civil war conditions.
The paranoia Nixon had felt led him to push for
illegal expansions of domestic surveillance, which eventually led to his
ouster from office. The Senate investigation into the Watergate scandal
concluded quote Kent State marked a turning point for Nixon.
The beginning of his downhill slide towards Watergate, Nixon grew

(59:32):
increasingly unhinged, which is a story for another time. Nixon
starting to lose a gang. It is worth noting that
for all of the things happening at this point, Nixon
as as a rule, anytime I quote him and Kissing
Kissinger talking, Nixon is as a rule, drunker than you
have ever been. Like then, you have ever been. I
don't care how how drunk you've gotten, you have never gotten.

(59:53):
Nixon in the White House hammered. So with Kissinger's help,
Nixon cooks up a plan to pursue an arms control
treaty in order to discredit his political rivals. Kissinger agreed
that attacking the left was the right way to distract
from the disaster they'd created in Southeast Asia. He told
his boss, we've got to break the back of this
generation of democratic leaders. Nixon responded in agreement, we've got

(01:00:17):
to destroy the confidence of the people in the American establishment.
Good news on that one, buddy. Yeah, you know what
a rare swish. That is a hole in one for you,
my friend, No nuts, Yeah, yeah. Re election in nineteen

(01:00:38):
seventy two was always going to be dicey for Nixon
and Kissinger. Nixon's plan was the infamous Southern strategy, cultivating
racial resentment in order to turn whites into a reliable
Republican voting block. There's a lot to be said about this. Obviously,
we were just kind of breezing past it. But part
of the strategy, part of his strategy for doing this
to get these Southern whites on his side, was to
continue carpet bombing huge chunks of the East Asia, even

(01:01:00):
though this had no impact on the war's course, and
he knew it. Grant And described the continued bombing as
quote blood tribute paid to the growing power of the
American right, and as yeah, just and I mean it
is like I mean, it's it's what our politics is now,
which is just constantly the optics on how to get reelected.

(01:01:22):
It's just the number crunch on how do you get
reelected by doing things illegally or you know, shifting prior
whatever it is. But yeah, change, yeah, whatever it is.
I mean, you know, like we all know that war
helps poll numbers, so well, some of them do, yeah, right,
But I mean, in the in the short term, it

(01:01:42):
seems like it's it's a short there's a short term
gain to be made, certainly if you're on the right,
for sure, and it it's um. It is worth noting
because I always had this idea, even at past the
point where I stopped believing Henry Kissinger was a hero,
um that he was doing what he was doing in
Southeast Asia because they were like very specific, wonky things

(01:02:05):
he believed about the conduct of the war and how
to win it. He was just like willing to do
these horrible things. But like, no, they know what's not
winning the war. This is for votes. And Kissinger, so
I mean, you're you're basically just saying it is just
a a white supremacist thing. They're killing people of color

(01:02:28):
to make whites in the South happy. That's all we're saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
supremis is the country. But that doesn't fit on a
lawn placard. Yeah, one of those like in this in
this house, we believe in the next administration. We believe
in covering up in order to And so it's worth

(01:02:50):
noting to Kissinger isn't just micromanaging the the actual racist
bombing campaign that they're doing to get votes. He is
also the frontman Nixon sends out who talked to right
wing leaders to to to try and like pump them
up about this. Nixon sent him to talk to Ronald Reagan,
then the governor of California. Kissinger sat down on Nixon's
behalf with Billy Graham, with William F. Buckley, with God.

(01:03:15):
His pattern went like this. The President wanted me to
give you a brief call to tell you that with
all the hysteria on TV and then the news on LAO,
we feel we have set up everything we set out
to do. Destroyed more supplies than in Cambodia last year,
set them back many months. We achieved what we were after. Well,
I tell you, I really I can't wait to go
out there. And rarely that was true. Sarah Hank having

(01:03:36):
having just been doing some research. He is friends with
Frank Sinatra. Frank, we call him on the phone. Yeah
that sounds right, sounds right. Well, I get a nuclear weapon?
Is that possible? Frank Sinatra with a nuke? That's yeah.
There's no people left if that had happened. And Dan
Martin's drink and they did a notice kissing you spent

(01:04:00):
a particularly long time bragging to Ronald Reagan about the
administration's achievements. Quote, we wouldn't have had Cambodia, we wouldn't
have had Lao, and we wouldn't have had an eighty
billion dollar defense budget, you know, without Nixon getting elected.
He also told Reagan, we wouldn't have had m Chetica. Now,
am Chetica is an island off the coast of Alaska
in the early nineteen seventies, the White House wanted to
nuke it for a lot of complicated reasons. This is

(01:04:24):
one thing. I'm actually I was not other islands, but
specifically am Chitka. Yeah, we're like Amshitka. So the White
House wants to nuke this island off the coast of Alaska.
And as you have environmentalists and indigenous people who just
folks whose brain freedom and hate freedom. Here's Greg Granton again.

(01:04:52):
The test had no military or scientific benefit, but was
seen as something of a ritual by the right, fireworks
to celebrate the end of Johnson's presidency when many Hawks,
like Curtis LeMay, felt the United States had fallen behind
on nuclear development. Then, when public opposition to the detonation
began to grow, Nixon had a chance to show conservatives
that he would stand up to liberals. He let me
known that we're the Supreme Court to issue an injunction

(01:05:15):
against the test. He would go forward anyway. The Court
didn't block the test, but haled him and told Kissinger
to play it for politics anyway. Tell Reagan, we're taking
an unmitigated heat in order to keep that thing going.
We need all the support of the right. Later after
the test was conducted, Nixon met with Senator Barry Goldwater
and mocked the fears of environmentalists. The seals are still swimming.
The President said, I'm damn proud of you. Goldwater told him, honestly,

(01:05:39):
I need to get a bucket to Barfen when people
when people think like, oh, we've we've become dumb recently,
We've always been so fucking stupid. It cannot be emphasized enough.
We're just really dumb. I honestly, I I definitely thought
that we've I mean, it is a show cocking level

(01:06:00):
of dumb. It's the fact that it's just this dumb.
It's just been going on an island because because they
wanted fireworks. Yeah, because wanted fireworks, and it's just that
they could tell Reagan it's like his gender reveal fucking
party like right, right, Jesus Christ, it is worth noting

(01:06:23):
for the sake of talking about how dumb we still
are today. Um. Curtis LeMay, who was one of the
people cheering on the bombing of this random island, is
essentially the hero of Malcolm Gladwell's book The Bomber Mafia,
which talks about how cool the bombing apparatus we set
up was and how it helped keep things peaceful and
built the wonderful packs Americana. That's I'm sure these Cambodian

(01:06:46):
civilians we've talked about appreciate it. Well, that's the one
where you need to Once you have ten thousand bombs,
you're an expert. Yeah, Yeah, that's right. That's right. If
you dropped ten thousand bombs, you're an accident bombing. Yeah,
that's that's exacts exactly So in order to be a
well to do it right, you have to do it
wrong for you gotta log the bombs. That's exactly right.

(01:07:06):
Gre So. Part of what made Kissinger remarkable, though, was
his ability to rope conservatives in line for mass murder
while also charming the entire liberal establishment of the East
Coast Nixon's chief of staff later recalled we knew Henry
as the hawk of hawks in the Oval office. But
in the evenings, a magical transformation took place, touching glasses
at a party with his liberal friends, the belligerent Kissinger

(01:07:28):
would suddenly become a dove, and the press, beguiled by
Henry's charman humor, bought it. They just couldn't believe that
the intellectual, smiling, humorous Henry the k was a hawk
like that bastard Nixon. It really is all about like
if if, if, if Donald Trump had had talked like
an Aron Sorkin character and like quoted books that people

(01:07:48):
don't read but no are smart books, he would have
been the most popular president in a generation. Like well,
and I mean that'll happen. Yeah, one of them will
figure it out. Yeah, it will. And you got to
dial the racism down a little, and you've got to
dial the polite up and then kind of equalize them,
and then you can yeah, and then and then with

(01:08:12):
the right access to the right people in media. Yeah,
you know, I mean we already saw that. I mean
even under Trump, where you've got all these fucking reporters
who had these like bombshells about horrible crimes being committed
that they like didn't release for a year and change
because they got a book deal. Yeah right right, Yeah,
I mean John Bolton was basically just there to write
a book. Yeah, everyone was. The whole administration was. Yeah,

(01:08:34):
they're like fucking navy seals with the books. Yeah. So
Kissinger's reputation was as a brilliant, computer brained policy want
but his success came from his charm. He was able
to win reporters over with a mix of leaks and
effusive praise for their work, something that made them feel
like insiders and thus sympathetic. He had a regular series
of lunches with Arthur Slessinger, a liberal historian, whom he

(01:08:56):
made sure to can confidentially inform quote, I have been
thinking a lot about resignation after the invasion of Cambodia
Slashinger was not privy to the information that prooved Kissinger
had planned the whole thing, so he believed Kissinger when
Henry said that he'd only kept working for Nixon to
prevent more damage to quote institutions of authority. Kissinger would
warn his liberal friends that if he resigned, Spireau agnew

(01:09:18):
would run foreign policy. He was basically threatening, if I'm
not here, the far right's going to be totally in
power and foreign policy. I'm the only one keeping things
from going crazy. It's like Sessions and with trying. I
mean there are multiple people like that, Like the amount
of times when people will be like, oh, mc masters,
you know, these are the good guys inside of that.
You know, I hate this too. As he's drawing on

(01:09:39):
a map where to annihilate. Yeah, yeah, and it works.
It always works. It works, and it works over and
over and over again. As a rule, if their job
is to be a journalist who spends their time face
to face with powerful people, they're bad at their job.
As a rule. Every now and then you get an

(01:09:59):
ext sception. But as a rule, no, it's like when
Chomsky points out to that reporter that he has the
rye he's sitting in that scene. Yeah, you get the
odd people who are willing to like report on the
Pentagon papers or whatever, and like, do you know you
get or the Afghanistan papers Washington Post. Not to not
to downplay the fact that there are people in those
institutions who do do damning reports on on power, but

(01:10:22):
also the level of complicity within the broader media apparatus
means that even when you get a damning report on
for example, the war in Afghanistan, which the Washington Post,
if you've read that, it's utterly damning, didn't do anything,
doesn't matter, doesn't doesn't stop anything. They're very I mean,
you know. And then and the reason why people do
it less and less is because you're attacked. So, I mean,

(01:10:44):
it works. The public attacks discredit you, and then you
are you are what you are, You're no longer you
no longer get access to that information. Yeah, it's great.
So a good example of how Kiss changed his charm.
As a speech he gave it M I T in
January of nineteen seventy one. He started off by meaning
a confidential air and telling the students that Nixon had
not been his quote first choice, but that in time

(01:11:06):
he'd come to see the bombing of Cambodia as the
only quote sensible path towards the Vietnamization. Vietnomization is like
the process of the U. S getting out in South
Vietnam taking over, Right, That's the big buzz word Nixon
and his jury using when one student asked him what
it would take to make him resign from the Nixon administration.
Kissinger said he wouldn't quote unless gas chambers were set
up or some horrendous moral outrage. Wait, wait, what is it?

(01:11:31):
What does that mean? Exactly? He wouldn't get out unless
unless Nixon was setting up gas chambers. I mean, what
the fuck? Like his child his childhood didn't affect him
in any way. Yeah, outrageous, And it's confidence the student.
And it's it's interesting because then the student who asked
this question of Kissinger later realized, like, is there really

(01:11:53):
a difference between forcing people into a gas chamber and
incinerating from them from the sky with a bombing campaign?
I guess not. But at the moment, this doesn't really
occur to him. And at the moment he writes quote,
he had sounded so sincere, so sympathetic, so much one
of us, And right, I'll blame the journalists, like I'm
not gonna blame a student for falling for Henry because
like he's essentially still a child, and Henry Kissinger is

(01:12:16):
the most powerful man in the world. Of course he's
good at walk talking circles around these fucking kids. Um.
The week after that speech, Kissinger and Nixon sent ground
troops into Law after another massive round of aerial bombardment.
This involved seventeen thousand South Vietnamese troops supported by US
air power. It was a catastrophe. Eight thousand South Vietnamese
soldiers were killed or wounded. The United States lost two

(01:12:38):
hundred and fifteen men. Nixon considered it a victory because
it played well with conservatives in the media. And he's drunk,
he is, and he's he is, he just he just
pounded back an entire bottle of vodka, before saying that
when the media savage Law as a pointless blood bag,

(01:13:00):
Kissinger ran to his boss and complained about vicious coverage,
saying if Brittain had pressed like this in World War Two,
they would have quitten forty two. Both Kissinger and Nixon
saw Law as a win because it benefited their domestic
chances of re election. As Nixon told his right hand man,
the main thing, Henry on Lao, I don't care what
happens there. It's a win. See wind See as there's

(01:13:21):
a little gangs three that's Ryan Henry Coppers. Oh. And
as the re election campaign turned forward, Kissinger was about
to help his boss engineer another win and this one. Boy,
how do you think we've seen a body count so far?
Oh my god? What the fuck? But that's still morning.

(01:13:43):
That island sweeps. Yeah yeah, now they're hitting sweeps. And
if you think hundreds of thousands of Cambodian dead plus
eight ing in the deaths of another millionaire, so was bad.
It was just it's really bad. It's a historic crime.
But also Henry Kissinger's just getting started. So you guys

(01:14:04):
want to plug anything my ears death. I remember because
when I did an episode on our podcast about Tim
Leary and there's a lot of the you know, uh Nixon,
law and Order president stuff in there, and how drunk
he was. But also his lunch every day was pineapple

(01:14:28):
circles with cottage cheese in the middle and um, and
so that was his that was his daily drunk lunch.
And then there's the one night where where he's starting
to feel the heat. Well maybe I don't know if
he'll get it into that, but he basically he goes
out hammered with his valet and he goes and talks
to some of the people protesting him, and like one
of the wakes, one of these guys up and he's like,

(01:14:50):
you really think I'm a bad guy, and the guy's
just like the funk is going on? Right? Nixon now cruising. Yeah,
Well we'll um we as you know. Look, it sounds
like the world loves America after hearing some of this stuff.
So we will be going to Australia on a tour. Um.

(01:15:10):
You can go to dollar podcast dot com for those
tour dates. Will be touring America and um, even if
we do badly, we won't bomb as hard as Kissinger Nixon. Yeah,
I mean it would be hard to it would be
level I don't honestly, we still have a lot of bombs.
I don't know if we have enough bombs to bomb
that hard anymore. I don't think so. I honestly think

(01:15:33):
we could pull our pants down and fight with our
penises and still people be like that. That's not that's
I've seen. I've heard of where's bombings. I have seen
a couple of cities leveled by American bombs at this point,
and it's still not as much as fucking Lao got bombed.
It's just yeah, he cannot process it. And well I'm
on the road to go to Gareth Reynolds dot com

(01:15:55):
for tour dates. But it feels it feels wrong to
do that hard promotion. Well, it's great. Will put in
a plug for the concept of death, because as long
as as long as men die, you know, there's all
of these ghouls eventually had to face the end of
of of everything in the same way that that those

(01:16:18):
people in Cambodia did. And one day will come for
Henry Kissinger and he will be frightened and alone and
and left. I feel like he bombed the reaper. I
mean he like he is the level of melting. I
mean he is. He dies. I hope he just I
hope he ships himself and then slowly dies over eight hours. Yes,
it needs to be like that. He needs to be.

(01:16:39):
It needs to be a letting. There's a you know,
the one war criminal in all of history who got
close to what he deserved is Yanhard Hydrich, the architect
of the Holocaust, who stupidly charged a bunch of assassins
and got wounded by a bomb and shot into his
own guts for several days until he died of steps
us over the course of a weekend. Change. That's that's

(01:17:00):
the kind of death and and and not just kissing you.
There's like thirty people we've named in this story. You
deserve that kind of death. There's a lot of folks
pot died old and relatively you know, unpunished. You know
they all, most of them do. That would be great
to hear a judge sentence Kissinger to that, like it
would be due to shifting in your own guts for

(01:17:21):
about a week after a bomb just embows you. That's
that's the right, that's the right punishment for for this
kind of stuff. Um, all right, yeah, yeah, Hi, everybody.
Robert Evans here and my novel After the Revolution is
available for pre order now from a k press dot org. Now,

(01:17:42):
if you go to a k press dot org you
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 real cool. You can also preorder
it in physical or in kindle form from Amazon or

(01:18:04):
pretty much wherever books are sold. So please google a
k press after the Revolution um, or find an indie
bookstore in your area and preorder it. You'll get assigned
a copy, and you'll make me very happy.

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