Part Two: 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
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(00:22):
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You can also pre order it in physical or in
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Revolution um or find an indie bookstore in your area
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you'll make me very happy. Welcome back to what is

(00:46):
either Behind the doll Up or doll Up the Bastards,
a podcast that, no matter what name we choose for
it is about tickling. Absolutely this, finally, is that's how
you make us feel at home. Thank you. Do you
think anyone has ever tickled Kissinger? I can't imagine. I
cannot picture it in my head. This is the way
he would laugh. Stop that. I'm going to work my

(01:12):
pants that I just try to imagine him whispering into
the ears of a sexual partner something about the business
I'm about. Then I'm going to know it would be
more like I'm going to end this cannot say burned

(01:40):
corps and that one of us makes it out a lie.
I actually did. While we were taking a break in
between episodes, I had a moment where I actually did
for the first time in my life, I felt a
profound sense of solidarity with Henry Kissinger. My cat is
named Saddam Hussein, and as I was feeding him during
the break, I realized, like Kissinger did at one point,

(02:02):
he's gotten much bigger. Saddam has gotten much larger than
I ever thought he would. You know this is I
did not anticipate this. Yeah, well that's because a lot
to love what you just said. Both make the same mistake.
Oh so uh, let's uh, let's get get right back down.

(02:29):
What is for Kissinger memory Lane, and is what for
everyone else is Nightmare Avenue. Um, because this is the
story about why Vietnam lasted an extra half decade. Um,
good time, We're gonna have a fun one here. So.
One of the many downsides of an intellectual upbringing, like
the one Henry Kissinger experienced, is that he spent a
lot of time surrounded by people you might call political technologists. Now,

(02:54):
this is a term I first heard in Ukraine from
civilians describing Paul Manafort. That's what they called them. Political
That's yeah, yeah, these like hired guns who come in
and help anybody who just happens to like have government money,
like doing literally anything. Right. Um, they're guys like his mentor,
Professor Elliott, and like Harvard economist Thomas Schnelling, who advised

(03:16):
powerful elected leaders, and like they all of the way
in which they think about the mechanisms of government are
very mathematic and inhuman, right, Um, those are the people
that Kissinger patterns him self off of. Now, Schnelling, who
are Shelling? Who we just Thomas Shelling, who's a Harvard
economists we just introduced, was one of Kissinger's other mentors,

(03:37):
um and Shelling. At the same time as he's he's
working at Harvard and mentoring Kissinger is advising the Eisenhower
administration on moral calculus in the early stages of the
Cold War. Shelling argues that calculus, moral calculus, have you
never you never talked about that with anybody. He's not
a com no sorry no, I mean I was terrible

(03:57):
at calculus. I was a world So well, you can't
be moral and no calculus, which is why you know,
like pole pot, I'm going to eventually set all of
my listeners after people who know math. That's that's the
right there. How did we get We're not sure, sir,

(04:18):
No idea, no way in calculable. People keep trying to
tell us, and we just kill him. Adam to the
pile someone at two numbers, but we were unable to
We can't negotiate it. So Shelling is advising the Eisenhower
administration on moral calculus in the Cold War, and Shelling's
argument is that whether you were quote deterring the Russians

(04:40):
or your own children, the proper tactic was to figure
out the right ratio of threat to incentive. Already, Shelling
might be the quickest I've ever described a person and
had it be clear like, well that's a bastard. That's
not okay obviously, So since I have no human feelings,

(05:01):
I have to figure out this and children and yeah,
children in the Soviet government only understand one thing, threats.
Can I have more ice cream dead. Put your hand
in the drawer and find out. Now, I'm gonna tell
you something, Jimmy, you go for that ice cream. I
have a loaded thirty eight on the table table. Now

(05:22):
one of the chambers is empty, Jimmy. So if you
get that ice cream, I just want to go to bed.
I don't like dessert. Just feel like moral calculus is
not the way to go with the ice crea. Maybe
you could just say no if you don't want him
to have dessert. Any dad can say no. I'm learning.

(05:46):
So while Henry was teaching at Harvard, and this is
before he gets me into the last episode of getting
that gig with the Council on Foreign Relations writing about
nuclear policy. In the period before that, when like Shelling
is his mentor, Henry learns a lot from him, and
he walks away from their relation and ship with the
belief that quote bargaining power comes from the capacity to hurt,
to cause quote sheer pain and damage. She means its

(06:08):
fucking Christ where you're just kind of waiting for this
person to step into the vacuum essentially right like you're
waiting for someone to be like, you know, there's actually
a bottom that's under the bottom, like, oh, oh my lord,
it's like this ship Like if that were true, We're
all watching this situation unfold between Russia and Ukraine where
you've got like a lot of people with the ability
to hurt a lot of people on both sides, and

(06:30):
you know what, it doesn't seem like negotiations are going great. Yeah,
not really. Maybe that's not a good basis to proceed
from anything. Yeah, I mean, I just I can't believe that.
It's it's the craziest fucking idea. It's not. It's not.
It's not negotiating. You go into negotiations, you're like, I'm

(06:52):
probably not going to get what I want. We're going
to try and get the best we can. And he's
just like, how much can I fucking hurt you? And
you give me if you spend enough time like I
do around like gun culture people on the right in particular,
there's these folks who like usually have never done anything
like in the military themselves, but they read a bunch
of like books by Navy seals and ship and they'll
say ship, like you should have a plan to kill

(07:13):
everyone in every room you walk into, and like their
frame is that like the world's dangerous. You gotta be ready.
And I think any reasonable person is like, well, you
are someone who should not have a gun. You should
not have a gun. You are out of your entire
damn mind. It's a guy who should never be negotiating,
absolutely not ready to kill someone. Is like, you know what,

(07:34):
don't go into rooms. That's just gonna be your thing.
You know, don't stay in your house. You got a
one room. You know, I could I could tell your throat,
I could reach across the table, tell your throat out
and stab you in the ice with ice picks. I'm
just we're just talking about what he wants cream her
ice cream. Dan. So, Henry gets his gig at the

(07:59):
at the sea a far and so he's the thing
he's he's producing for the Council on Foreign Relations for
his his buddy the Rockefeller. It's supposed to be like
a report on how the US is it like it
should use nuclear weapons, different ways in which they could
approach it. Right. And while he's writing this report, because
it's it's with this thing takes a very very long
process getting this out, he also starts working privately on

(08:20):
a book of his own titled Nuclear Weapons. And foreign policy.
And this book is a version of the stuff he
wants to write, and this thing he's like fighting to get,
yeah kind of. But also it's it's actually very smart
what he does, well, it'll take us a second to
get there. So this book that Kissinger writes, that's his
like own project, criticizes US threats of full nuclear scale

(08:40):
nuclear attack in response to Soviet aggression. Nil Ferguson sums
it up in this way quote with his skill for
simplifying and expressing complex ideas, Kissinger put the issue starkly.
The dilemma of the nuclear period can therefore be defined
as follows. The enormity of modern weapons makes the thought
of ward repugnant, but the refusal to run any risks
would a'm out to giving Soviet rule as a blank check.

(09:02):
Kissinger's conclusions were not original. The study group at the
Council was almost unanimate as Senate's desire to find some
alternative to Eisenhower's stated policy in Many defense intellectuals, most
notably Bernard Brodie and Basil little Heart, had also written
on the subject of limited nuclear war. Kissinger's book demonstrated
his talent as a creative synthesizer of their ideas, drawing

(09:23):
out the implications of their work and arguing that for
America's Cold War diplomacy to have any real substance, the
US had to accept the possibility of the limited use
of nuclear weapons. That Kissinger's own solution of limited nuclear
war was also highly problematic, was less important to many
contemporary observers than that it broke free from the strait
jacket of the Eisenhower administration's policy. So, but where does

(09:45):
he describe, like where you would use it. It's like
it's like a tactical battlefield book. It's like to win
battlefield victories to like in Vietnam, he will briefly flirt,
well not even know all that briefly, but he will
consider using nuclear weapons to cut off access between Vietnam
and China, which isn't like as a as a layman,

(10:07):
you can cut off trains in another way, presumably, right,
I've seen the general with buster kat and you can
throw some bogs on it. There there are these other
things called bombs, just bombs. Yeah, so it really, I mean,
it is kind of just itchy trigger figure and it

(10:27):
is like if you live in the realm of this
sort of dark thinking, how are you not going to start,
you know, thinking of ways that are just even more
vicious brutal. He's basically saying, they need to think we're
a chained mad dog. And if we let the dog
off the leash once and he attacks the postman and

(10:48):
then and then everyone's gonna fucking then you can get
me anymore. Yeah, but then you stop. We've bombed to
pane already, Like everyone gets already of course, oh my god. Yeah,
it's not like it's this theoretical weapon that's never been
used him and it worked pretty well as far as
making people be like, god, damn, they are out of

(11:08):
their minds. Yeah, the ship. Um. But it's also there's
a there's a factor here. A part of me wonders
if he even really believed about this or cared about
whether or not nukes should be used tactically, and if
it was more a matter of this is a big
debate of the day, and if I publicly take the
most contrarian thing intellectuals who don't really care about what works,

(11:32):
but who care about who's thinking creatively, right, Like that's
the thing He's like, Well, it's not about whether or
not his plan would work. It's about we're getting out
of this straight jacket. Eisenhower's put us in and it's like, no,
that's not all that matters. Yeah. Um, you know it's
really funny, just ironic about this is that funny places
like the Heritage Foundation for years have been have been

(11:55):
saying that Putin would use tactical battlefield nukes and that's
why he's unhinged. That's one of the reasons. You imagine,
I would say, anyone who would do that, he's crazy.
Imagine now, and I'll keep him on as an advisor. Yeah. Yeah,

(12:16):
that that's my feeling on nukes. Um, don't shoot them
at people ever bad. Maybe an Independence Day kind of situation.
I'll be honest. When I watch Independence Day, I think, yeah,
I might shoot some new I might at that point
try an grow too. Yeah, but you have Randy Quaid
I do. I do hang out with him a lot. Um.

(12:37):
That's my main plan. Things go wrong, Randy getting the plane.
He lives in my basement. That actually tracks from the
Instagram videos I've been saying. So. Kissinger's book was published
in nineteen fifty seven, and it almost immediately sold seventeen

(12:59):
thousand copies, which is a lot for a wonky book
on nuclear warfare. It is on the New York Times
bestseller list for fourteen weeks. Jesus Christ, Yeah it's not great. Now,
He's timing is perfect. He puts this book out right
as the Soviets make two big advances in Hungary, there's
like a revolution that they kind of crush, and then

(13:19):
in the Suez where like brings the British and the
franch like sucking around in the Suez Canal and the
Soviets are like stop or we'll do something bad, and
NATO like backs the funk off. Right, So the Soviets
have like two big kind of foreign policy wins in
this period, and Americans can't look at this as like, well,
you know, maybe the fucking NATO shouldn't have been sucking

(13:40):
around the Suez, and yeah that ship in Hungary's sucked up,
but like maybe we can't do anything about it. They're like,
we should listen to the guy who says, what if
we nuked them? You know? Yeah, that's that's where people go, right, Um,
they don't. They they're they're Americans. They don't take the
rational route. Now they hate us for our nuclear freedom. Yeah,
they listened to the critiest person in the room about this.

(14:02):
There's a lot of things that you could say about
both what happened in Hungary and the Suez Crisis that
are not Why don't we use nukes more often? By
God kissing your knows his audience, you know, um Kissinger
writes this book, and The New York Times in their
review of it, right, for the first time since President
Eisenhower took office, officials at the highest government levels are
just playing interest in the theory of the little or

(14:24):
limited war. The theory of massive retaliation is re examined.
I love that those are that those go together, those
are the options. Yeah, and then it's like the little
war war is the nuclear war, Like it's the baby
war for us. Yeah, hit me out, hear me out,
baby nukes, slim tiny nukes. It's it's like if someone's like, look,

(14:46):
we got to decide if one of which of these
is going to be legal, Sarah nerve gas bombs for
civilians or or chlorine gas bombs for civilians. One type
of poison gas bomb has to be legal. Like we
all we have to have access. Everyone has to be
able to have one kind of poison gas is crazy.
What if nobody has those? God, that's not you know,

(15:08):
that's not where things go here. Um. So President Eisenhower
is given a summary of of Kissinger's book, because you know,
he's a president. They don't they don't read books. He gets, yeah,
he gets a cliff notes and he recommends it to
his Secretary of State John Foster Dullas, who we have
talked about quite a lot of God, yeah, I mean
who like if if he's the rational mind, us is

(15:32):
being like this dude seems a little out of his
big problem. That's yeah, that's not great because John Foster
Dulas fucking monatic. So the vice president at this point
is a little dude you might have heard of called
Richard Millhouse Nixon. He gets photographed with a coff copy
of Henry Kissinger's book, which is not great. I mean

(15:55):
it's actually great for shats just not writing a screenplay.
This is great. Really, this is like season one of
The Nixon Show, and you just like see him with
Kissinger's book, right right, yeah, yeah, good television, you know.
So the book is successful enough that it provokes Rockefeller,
who gotten him the job at the CFR, to rush

(16:15):
out the report that Nixon had been or that Kissinger
had been making um and yeah, yeah, the report from
the CFR concludes, the willingness to engage in nuclear war
when necessary is part of the price of our freedom. Wow,
I mean the price of our freedom is pretty good price,
isn't it? It's expensive? Man? How can we how can

(16:39):
we live if we're not dead? Yeah? How can we
live without nuclear fallout? It's it's and it's amazing that
it like it all like if it was part of
his plan or not. Like you said, the timing is
just pretty remarkable to release this book and then it
actually shifts the way that they view this To me, yeah,
you know, it's actually he's got a really good point
in his best selling book of about how nukes are cool.

(17:03):
I am. I am excited for Ben Shapiro's book on
the same subject to lead to the annihilation of Yeah,
I'm gonna live underground. So that's a good idea. So
this report is a weird like weirdly popular. Like again,
this is a report from the Center or the from
the CFR, from the Council on Foreign Relations, which is

(17:25):
like not you don't expect that to go viral, right,
you know read this pamphlet. Have you read this on
this link study by the CFR. I mean, American never
lets you down when you're like, oh, that won't happen,
that won't happen, that won't go. It does. Yeah. So
Rockefeller actually goes on the Today Show to talk about

(17:48):
this report the CFR, like with Kissingers, I know, it's
it's amazing Macaroni castrole. So next, so he gives people
on the Today Show an address where they can write
for a copy of this report. They get forty requests
the first day and the next Hell's Post Office is overwhelmed.

(18:14):
The media, the US media called this report quote the
answer to Sputnik, which is like, hey, the Russian sent
in sent an unarmed ball into space to further exploration.
We should we this book about how everyone should be
nuking everyone. It's the answer to that. We're thinking that
this report on nuclear weapons will actually show the Russians

(18:34):
thout and not go to space. Yeah, that's space. If
you get rid of Russia, they can't go to space.
Do you understand? Yeah? And it is it's worth noting
because I think, like in our popular history, the answer
to Sputnik is the Apollo missions and it's framed beauty,
which you know did eventually happen. But no, the first
answer to Sputnik was a report about how we should
be nuking each other more often. They put a ball

(18:57):
in the orbit, So we should we should blow up.
We should be ready to drop thirteen nuclear warheads on
Berlin at a second's notice. That's what I showed him.
So this makes Henry kissing You're famous? Um, he is
all over the part. This is his? Is this? We've
become famous like some guy. Some guys watched the Today's

(19:19):
Show and he buys the book so we can tell
everybody at the Elk Club that we need to use nukes.
Someone give this accountant a soccer ball. Some people get
famous because their dad is one of O. J. Simpson's lawyers.
Some people get famous because they write a book about
how nuclear warfare is not that bad. You know, it's
just in fame. It's a crapshoot. Absolutely fuck. I mean,

(19:44):
imagine being an anti nuke person at this point, You're
just like, wait, what is what is going on? Read?
Have you read the report? It's so good. We're gonna
show him if what they should not be going to space. Yeah,
next time they put a satellite up, we're gonna kill
everyone in Paraguay. What we need to there is a
radiated country. So on July fourteenth, ninety eight, Mike Wallace

(20:07):
gives Henry Kissinger his first big break into the public sphere.
So it's happening, It really is. It really is just
fucking disgusting because I look, there's all the time on
our show where I'm like, it is the same ship.
But again, it's just media using its platform irresponsibly to

(20:27):
normalize things that are fucking batship. Yeah, it's great, like
sixty minutes having a whole segment on the Havanna fucking
sound Come on, Dave, you know that's real. I suffered
from that for two years. Those crickets. Oh man, I
I will say, like, the stupidest joke that I laugh

(20:49):
at every time is, yeah, I got Havanna syndrome. Having
another beer never doesn't get a chuckle out of me.
But we've we've done, We've had sixty it's come on,
six minutes. Did the the Satanic Scare ship? Well, yes,
they were big gamble and like they just run with
ideas that are crazy there, I mean because for for

(21:13):
people who are at the level Mike Wallace is, the
definition of journalist is not afflict the comfortable and comfort
the afflicted. It's be a giant ship head, right, a
huge ship head. Oh man. So Mike Wallace introduces Henry Kissinger,
the guy whose one achievement is a book about how
nukes are cool. By saying this, in the field of

(21:36):
foreign policy and military affairs, Dr Kissinger, You're acknowledged to
be one of the most penetrating minds in the country.
He's penetrating. Yes, penetrating like an Atlas missile penetrates the
cloud cover above a city full of women and children. Yeah. Wow. Now,
during the interview, Kissinger expressed that quote a capitalist society,

(21:57):
or what is more interesting to me, a free society,
is a more revolutionary phenomenon the nineteenth century socialism. I
think we should go on the spiritual offensive. Yeah, the
spiritual spiritual with a nuclear extension with nukes. So he's connecting.
He's connecting nineteenth century socialists, member capitalism, current day capitalism,

(22:22):
and nukes. Those are the options. Yeah, and Mike Wallace
just empty headed least goes like I really love your property. Yeah,
just smiles. And behind his eyes as a dial tone.
Oh my god. So this earns him finally the job
at Harvard that he'd coveted. This is why they give him.

(22:44):
Shut shut up. It's like whenever simple, I can't, I
cannot get over how fucking evil Harvard is. It's so good.
It is monstrous from it's the beast. It is a
horrific some of us with their uh anti Harvard action.

(23:12):
So he gets his Harvard job and he keeps writing.
In nineteen sixty what's he doing at Harvard. He's like
teaching some ship you know, kissing your stuff type classes. Yeah,
talking about Spangler a lot. Yeahs. Nukes are awesome too.
Nukes are awesome. Freedom is requires an absence of morality,
teaching kids good stuff, you know, teaching kids good things.

(23:37):
So in nineteen sixty one he publishes a book titled
The Necessity of Choice, which is his manifesto on how
the United States should approach foreign policy in the nineteen sixties.
It is not an optimistic piece of writing. Quote, the
United States cannot afford another decline like the one which
has characterized the past decade and a half, fifteen years
of more of a deterioration of our position in the
world such as we have experienced since World War Two,

(23:59):
would find us reduced to fortress America in a world
in which we had become largely irrelevant. Our margin of
survival has narrowed dangerously. What in the fund is he
talking about America losing influence? No, this is like the
height of American power, obviously to anyone who's not. But
but Kissinger is, he knows this is bullshit. He is
part of a group of people who are pushing if

(24:20):
you guys heard the term missile gap. No, in the
the early stages of the Kennedy administration, there is suddenly
this huge and this is both like in conversations that
people are having in d C and in like the media.
There's this constant talk of a missile gap, this idea
that these Soviets have outpaced us in missile development and
in the number of missiles they have, And there's talking
about like there's bomber gaps, there's tank gaps. There's talk

(24:41):
about like these gaps between this idea that is totally bullshit,
Like not that the Soviets have not made a lot
of weapons, so the Union makes plenty of weapons, but
the United there is no point in the Cold War
in which the United States is like out fucking gunned
to any degree that like has could be anyone reasonable
could call a missile gap. It just does not happen.

(25:02):
It feels like we're still responding to that today. To
be liked, you do first biolog shot, yea, and yeah,
it's it's it's this, it's it's this. It's not I
would say unhinged, but it's very reasonable because the the
argument comes primarily out of the Defense Department and the
growing defense industry, who it's great for them if everyone
thinks there's a missile gap, like of course, yeah, you

(25:23):
gotta build a lot more weapons. We'll sell them to you.
I thought it's the place you can get Khaki's on
your rockets. But you have a missile Thank you, thank you,
welcome and we'll be right back. You know what. Yes,
actually this is time for an ad break. So you know,
if you're looking for a way to dress up your
r n I n X knife missile before firing written

(25:45):
into some guys, car um, check out the missile gap.
We are back. So it's bullshit. The idea of the
missile gap and kids, and you're is smart enough to
know this. But he is one of the major proponents.
He's not one of the there's other guys who are

(26:05):
more influential pushing it, like actually within the halls of power, right,
because he's not super within the halls of power yet,
but he is. He's all over TV and ship like
he's a guy that you call now like once you
get in the rolodex of media people, you stay there.
You know, he's the new guy guy, a positive new guy.
There's people that you got the negative new guy and
the positive guys. And he's the guy who says we

(26:25):
don't have enough. You know the thing, We've ever not
had enough of nuclear weapons. Um. He is a big
part of why we have so many fucking nukes, um,
and why the Russians have so many nukes because once
the US, like, once you start this like we have
to build a lot more nukes, they're gonna build even
more nukes and like then you're gonna get to build
any more nukes because you can say they built so
many more nukes, we don't have enough nukes now, and
then you wind up with twelve thousand of them in

(26:47):
the world. I have a name for that, I can
I've come of the right now, nuclear arms race. That's cool,
and that's that's a neat one. Um, we finally a
term for it. We should nuke him. I mean that
would just be like the one thing. I would just
nuke him, Crockett handheld miss whatever we can do. What

(27:09):
about just a little a little tiny nuke that we
shoot into him and it explodes, But it's just a
little guy, just enough to take out Kissinger, just a
Kissinger clear weapon. Yeah, but he would just ingest And
I am now more Now I'm bigger and more upset.
It is. It is amazing to think about how seriously

(27:30):
this guy gets treated by everyone immediately, and how much
influence he's allowed to have on an incredibly dangerous thing.
And this is the same guy who got tricked by Tharainos,
the same by the fake blood lady and the turtleneck.
It's really amazing. Yeah, it's so funny. It's so funny.

(27:55):
So uh, Kissinger is not again, he doesn't come up
with the idea of the missile gap, but he's like
a very influential voice in pushing this idea. Right, He's
a he's a part of this Um, So he doesn't
get there's if we could out honestly do a whole
episode on like why there's so many fucking nukes that
this would be a part of. But he is, he's
a factor in this massive arms build up. Um. And
he also starts, uh. But but he's also like he's

(28:19):
he's just doing this for careerism reasons because it gets
him in good with people who are in power. And
part of how you know that is that Kennedy not
a guy I'll give a lot of credit to. But
one of the things Kennedy says is that like, limited
nuclear war is insane, Like fuck you, Henry Kissinger. Um.
He doesn't say that, but he it. It gets made
clear the connections that Kissinger has in the in the

(28:40):
Kennedy administration make it clear that like, JFK does not
buy your attitudes on limited nuclear war, And so he
stops talking about that to get he wants to become part.
He doesn't believe in ship, but he wants to be
in the JFK administration, right, So he stops pushing this
thing that makes him famous and saying other ship because
he'll get it'll get him close to power. And that's

(29:00):
all Henry Kisinger really cares about. So I wonder if
like the Today Show is calling up and he's like, yeah,
I'm not really doing nukes anymore. No, he comes on. Yeah,
the quote I'm gonna uote actually from Nil Ferguson. Here
he explains like what he starts doing on the Today
Showy Kissinger now advocated a convention alarms build up, since
the dividing line between conventional and nuclear weapons is more

(29:22):
familiar and therefore easier to maintain. He continued to insist
that the United States developed smaller nuclear weapons, but he
moved his own position to where he thought Kennedy's was.
In effect, the necessity of choice was something of a
job application, and Kissinger hoped Kennedy would make an offer.
So like, again, so doesn't really I mean, it's it's
just Marjorie Taylor Green. I mean it is the same

(29:43):
ship essentially, and it's like, you know, the sensationalism that
gets you the headlines and then once you're fit and
it's any it's really any form of our our pop
culture entertainment. Now, just get your name in the fucking
headlines and then define who you are, and then you
can like figure out what you actually and can actually
believe or how you're going to ride that to power,

(30:04):
but just make a bang. It's the it is, it's
it is like the political equivalent of a comedian like
saying a racial slur and then listening to the audience
to determine whether or not they're joking. Like that's like,
that's what he's doing. He's it's yeah, yeah, I mean
show up to a club, take your dick out, and
then write your hour. Yeah it's called it's Luis k backwards. Yeah,

(30:28):
it's the it's the Casey. I'm not going to figure
out what the it's Casey still. So this he does
not get exactly what he wants, but he gets part
of what he wants. His buddy, uh Nelson Rockefeller is
able to give him a part time consulting gig for
the National Security Advisor. So it's not but it's not

(30:50):
everything he wants. But he is now he's he has
like he's cracked his way, you know, like you you
start your way in and and it's unless you really
funk up. And by funk up, I mean don't get
a lot of people killed. You'll just get closer and
closer to power because that's how our system works. Um.
So you know, Kissinger is is obviously very conservative. Rockefeller

(31:11):
is not. Again, he's part of the Kennedy administration. This
is what I don't understand. Yeah, well, I we'll talk.
We're actually we're gonna talk shitload about that over the
next couple of episodes because this is like a consistent,
weird thing about him. Um. But like one of the
things Kissinger does is he oils Rockefeller with effusive claims
that Kennedy's inaugural a speech, which Rockefeller had helped with,
was so good he quote might become a registered Democrat, right, Like,

(31:35):
that's the kind of shit he says that, Like, I'm
almost a Democrat now because how good jfk speech was
so good. He doesn't believe in ship, Like he just
can't over emphasize that. Other than that, Henry Kissinger should
be very close to power. He believes strongly in that. Um,
and he believes in that as much as anyone's ever
believed in the Bible. Right. Um. He does not believe

(31:57):
in ideas at possible. I saw that Maryland did and
a sort of testament the present day. Would you like
to see where they called me Kissinger. Oh, I'm not

(32:18):
standing over this event. And look at what they're doing
to my sports club. See that's the fan art I
would him just like trying to fuck JFK with every
bit of charm in his German body. Oh dude, nobody
told me subway go over event. Look at this, you're
going to see everything goes my nuke. So JFK is

(32:44):
eventually assassinated by Bernard Montgomery Saints and l b J
takes over. Oh yeah, I mean history is is a
I got to read this banquet. I've got a pamphlet
for you myself. That's my length. So lb J is
the president now and and and lb J is like
between l G M j K. It's like a decade.

(33:05):
You know that the Democrats are in power, and lb
J is very good at exercising power, right, Um, And
he's also not super into Henry Kissinger. Um, he's not
against Henry Kissinger either, But Henry kind of is kept
in this weird like he's on the margins of power
during this period of time, right, which is yeah, well

(33:28):
not really because well he's there's no breath, there's there's
no good to hear. Um. While he's kind of on
the not you know, on the margins. He's able to
build connections with his many Republican lawmakers in their rights
as he does with Democrats, right, Like, that's what he's
doing while he's doing these like part time gigs with
the NSC and stuff, is he's he's making friends with

(33:50):
everybody he can. There is nobody's just he is just
a supreme networker. There is so much. When I was
a kid in speech and debate, one of the other
kids in the debate team with me was obsessed with Kissinger,
like read his books and stuff. Thought he would And
this was this thing that I heard too from like
family mers and stuff that like, well he was you know,

(34:10):
he wasn't always right, but it was he was doing
the hardest job anyone's ever had, and he was just
this really genius man and you can't really argue with him.
If you read about what he was saying, it's like, no,
he didn't believe in ship. He was he was a
genius at making people like him and that allowed him
to terrible things. Yeah, um, which I guess, like anyone

(34:31):
who's really dangerous in politics is that's as a version
of that guy right, like like that's that's all of them. Um.
But he's he's an interesting kind of that guy and
as a result, probably the most toxic kind of that
guy we've ever had in the United States. Um, which
is saying something bad, Why don't um? But yeah, so yeah,

(34:57):
he makes all these connections. Um. He cutivates him, and
he keeps his name in the news. Right, that's a
big part of why he's able to do what it is. Later,
he keeps going on TV, keeps being on the radio,
he keeps being quoted and like cited and interviewed by
journalists for articles. Henry makes it known that like, if
you're a journalist, I'm easy to reach. I will give you,
always give you a quote. You can always reach Henry
Kissinger for like a line or two on this thing,

(35:18):
you know, um, which is very smart of him. It's
it's very dumb and shameful and uh horrible for the journalists.
But like, God that they've learned. God, that doesn't happen anymore. Now.
I turned to the New York Times story published today
that described Nazis assaulting a book club as men with

(35:39):
a swastika flag. Someone pointed out, well, the the article
calls them Nazis. It's just all of the social media
they describe them that way. And I was like, oh,
I can't explain to you why I feel worse about that,
but I do. Yeah, it was not just it was
not just the dumb error. It was calcular. Yeah, moral calculus.

(36:01):
It's yeah, moral calculus, right, good good ship. Um. So
the professor cultivates connections, Yeah, he gets and he also
he goes to Vietnam at one point, and he makes
connections with a bunch of people in Vietnam who are
able to talk to not just the South but the
North Vietnamese government. Like that's the thing he consciously does
is like I want to be able to like be
able to take the temperature of like guys, which is
not like I would say, actually, like the most reasonable

(36:23):
thing he does. If you think you're going to be
in power, like, yeah, it's good, you probably want to
be able to talk to those guys. Even though we're
fighting with him. That's not an unreasonable thing. He will
use it badly. Who's he's doing that on the part
of it just himself? Yeah, well he he is working.
He has a gig with a guy he's like an
advisor to the National Security Council, and he's a known academic.
You know, he's probably being like, you know, I'm I'm
an academic. I'm trying to understand the dimensions of this

(36:45):
and like I want to talk to everybody. I'm a
very fair minded man. I don't let ideology get in
the way. YadA YadA, YadA um. Like one of the
things about Henry Kissinger too, like he's as good he
can he's he's fucking his buddies with maw, Like he's
great at talking with people who are communists and stuff.
As long as you like Henry Kissinger and what he's selling,
he'll sell it to anybody. You know, it's so crazy,

(37:08):
it's wild that like he must have eyes that just
start spinning and hit, Like you just have to get
close to notice that he's got hypnotic eyes. You're like,
he isn't so bad now that I'm you know, let's
think about Vietnam for a second, Right, if you're going
to war in Vietnam, Gareth, Right, if you decide, Gareth Reynolds,

(37:29):
I'm going to go to war in Vietnam, how long
do you think it would take you to realize that
was a bad idea. It would be I mean, I
Gareth Reynolds, it would be instantaneous, quickly, very quickly. I mean, David,
can I okay, can I just can I ask the question?
Which side am I fighting on? The not Vietnamese side? Okay?
Then really quick? Yeah, really quick. I feel like you could.

(37:50):
I feel like you could. You could take Vietnam. David
not going to see They're not going to see it coming.
I would certainly be the guy who they'd be like,
we broke him. We broken before, We've shouted at him,
and I'm sorry. I didn't mean to show up with
pants that were already pissed in. I know I know
one thing about me, and that's if things got really
really chaotic and bad that I I kind of thrive

(38:12):
in that embarkment. Yeah, Dave, you'd be like, Dave, we
don't have time to eat their brains and be like,
shut up, I'm figuring out what they know. It's like
Doctor Manhattan ending the Vietnam War. Both sides surrendered to
Dave in the mid sixties, which is fairly early on

(38:32):
considering how late the Vietnam War goes. It is clear
to people, especially a lot of people protesting in the
United States that like ship, this ain't going great, right,
Like it's not hard for people. There are people who
buy into the US propaganda, but like people who are
actually privy to information on the war are aware that
it is not going well, Kissinger still decides we should
escalate things. And I'm gonna quote again from Kissinger's Shadow

(38:54):
by Greg Grandon. Upon returning from his first visit to
South Vietnam in late nineteen sixty five, Kissinger threw himself
often do a campaign to build public support for ongoing intervention.
In early December, he joined a hundred and eighty nine
other scholars from Harvard, Yale, and fifteen other New England
universities in an open letter expressing confidence that Johnson's policies
would help quote people of South Vietnam determine their own destiny.

(39:15):
A Vietcam victory will spell disasters, said the letter. Then
later that month, he led a Harvard team against a
group of Oxford opponents of the war, and a debate
held in Great Britain and broadcast nationally in the United
States on CBS. Kissinger passionately defended the bombing of northern Vietnam,
insisting that it was not a violation of international law.
He invoked the analogy of World War Two, saying Washington's

(39:38):
actions in Indo China were as righteous and justified as
they were in Nazi Germany. Bob Schroom, who went on
to become a Democratic political consultant, was on Kissinger's team
and says that when he today watches a recording of
the debate, he is quote amazed by two things. How
long we how young we look, even Kissinger, and how
wrong we were. So first of you don't feel bad enough.

(39:59):
I don't know how bad you feel about this. It's
not enough. Your first reactionly be like, god, we were kids,
were young, we were young. There's like some Vietnam's dude
next to him thinking about like bombs raining down on
the jungle. And we had kissing Jerry. Oh my god

(40:19):
is jewls. Yeah, he's only got one jowl at that time.
That's before he got the eight Our hair looked so stupid?
Am I right? Am I? Right? Where did your legs go?
By the way, before Henry kissing your looked like weird science.
After things go wrong, it's amazing, like and it's it's

(40:40):
there's a lot in that paragraph both like, of course,
when the debate starts to build, like should we escalate
this nightmarish war, the first thing, one of the first
things that happens is that a bunch of fucking New
England universities decided to have a debate about right, that's
the right wrest Let everyone here, let's have the best
arguments of both sides about whether or not the experience. Yeah, like,

(41:04):
first off, fuck everyone involved in this, even the people
arguing against the war a little bit like just don't
do that's is bad? Yeah, um less so certainly, I
don't know, I don't know. Maybe like it made sense
virgins debating which position is the best to fucking yea,

(41:24):
what the hell? Why is this instead of the debate
like hey, why are we there? Like really why why
that's we're not we're not debating that debate and it
is again it's like and you can see just about
how comprehensively wrong these people are that like number one,

(41:46):
this idea that this will help the people of South
Vietnam determine their own destimony, which is Vietnamese government was
a dictatorship the entire time the war was going on.
It's not any more democratic in any meaningful sense than
than the Northern Vietnam. And also like a v Cong
victory will spell disasters. Like there's plenty of things to
criticize the Vietnamese government for, but like broadly on an
international level, it's fine. A country seems seems to be

(42:08):
doing all right, like better than a lot of places.
It's fine. Yeah, did a pretty good job at COVID,
like you know it did. It didn't seem like a disaster.
Maybe if we hadn't killed five million people, um, things
would be even better. It seems like it couldn't hurt um.
Yeahs Again, they're wrong about everything, Like Kissinger in this period,

(42:33):
everything that he said, like that's he has, this reputation
is such an intellectual titan, and he's like so constantly
fucking wrong. But there's always like yeah, it's the same
as today, all of these people that are constantly fucking wrong.
Just yeah, keep on getting position media and they're always
fucking wrong. And there's this ship like people will will

(42:54):
bring up like well, but there's this nuclear arms treaty
he helped make, and there's this like peace deal he
negotiated in the Middle East, and like all of these things, Yeah,
but that was like two percent of the ship that
he did, and it was largely because other people that
he wanted to stay in good with. We're pushing for
that kind of ship too. Like Henry Kissinger, whenever he
has expressed an idea that is his legitimate idea is

(43:16):
like really really disastrously wrong. Yeah, amazing, Yeah, nobody cares. Yeah,
nobody cares. He's gonna get to invest in Thereino still
supposed to being the one victory, the one victory weekend.
That's why we should pardon her. Yeah. Yeah, look, you
stole a lot of money, but you made Henry Kissinger

(43:38):
look gonna release you to come up with another scheme
to take more money from this bag of ship. You
don't get to make a company anymore. But we're gonna
have cameras fall leaving you think Frank Show. Yeah, have
you seen Punked? They're talking, but it's just every week Kissinger.
You gotta put on mustaches and like fake wigs, and

(44:00):
you just gonna try to find telling me this is
a way for me to get a longer spine. I mean,
a little money popcorn has zero calories. What I'm here.
But you know what's awesome about that story is that
she's a younger female kissinger. Yeah, yeah, how to percent,
She's like blood kissing everyone. Everyone's super into her, and

(44:22):
she was just saying whatever people wanted to hear, and like, yeah,
it's amazing because there's there's the the good grifters and
the evil ones. We just finished our four partner on
the Czar and talked about the fact that, like before resputing,
there was another spiritualist grifter who pretended to talk to
like ghosts and stuff named Philippe, who like got a
bunch of money for them, tricked the Czarina into thinking

(44:42):
she was pregnant, and then bounced with a bunch of
their money. And the last thing he did before he
left was like, I'm gonna come back in another form
as another spiritual he should trust whatever I said. Very funny,
took all the money and ran, and when he died,
it was found out that he had been paying for
the more egages and rentals of like fifty two impoverished families,

(45:03):
like the perfect guy for like the opposite of kissing ship. Yeah,
just taking money from the Czar to help pour people out.
What a dude be great if he showed up again, right, yeah. Yeah,
let's put that guy in front of Kissinger, Let's see
what he can do. So in private, Kissinger admitted already

(45:25):
while he is doing all this, while he's a part
of this big debate, you know, while he's taking the
side that we should escalate, in private, in his conversations,
he admits to his friends that Vietnam is an unwinnable
disaster of a war. Oh my fucking god. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
He defended it in public though, because there was at
least a fifty percent chance the Democrats were going to
stay in power after the next election, and he he

(45:47):
didn't want to give up on a chance of having
a job. You know, I think it a lot of times,
you just you do. I guess he's a little different
because he's such a shape shifter, but you know there,
I think it's just the way he are. You are, like,
they can't just be that base evil yeah, but he yeah, yeah,
it's something. It's something I was thinking about climate change,

(46:09):
is that people can't represence on the fact that there
might be a significant portion of rich people in control
who actually want everybody to die. Yeah yeah, or at
least don't care, because what really matters is like maintaining
their level of relative power, and it's just like, what
are they going to do? Call themselves out? Yeah, it's cool,

(46:31):
so obviously, And it's one of those things. I don't
actually know that he really believed that Vietnam was a disaster,
because he may have been lying to his friends when
he said because he wants to keep like he wants
to keep a bridge to the other side open, you know,
like it's impossible to say because he's fucking Henry Kissinger.
Is it possible there's two Kissingers? Yes, Okay, what if
there's six? They ever touched Cambodia will be oh, yeah,

(46:53):
you know what. So the fact that Kissinger in private
be like, yeah, at Nam, what a funk up, and
in public would be like, let me bin Shapiro about Vietnam,
that really piste off a lot of his friends, including
the political scientist Hans morgan Thou. Kissinger head admitted to
morgan Thou that the war was unwinnable, unwinnable, even while

(47:14):
he continued to go on in the media and advocate
expanded saturation bombing. Morgan Thou found this deeply disappointing, but
Henry was increasingly tailoring his public statements to the ear
of a man who was already a fan of his work,
Richard Millhouse, Nixon, can we get like, yeah, sound effects,

(47:35):
lightning whips across the stream in a screen house, which
will do a whole Nixon episode one of these days.
A lot of our Kissinger series will also be about Nixon,
because you can't unwrap the two men. You know, A yeah,
they're one of them is Richard Nixon. So by the

(47:59):
end of nineteen sixty eight, as the presidential race between
Vice President Hubert Humphrey and former Vice President Richard Nixon
heats up, Kissinger's profile had raised enough that he was
seen as the front runner for a serious foreign policy
job in either potential administration. Either yeah, he's got a gig,
no matter what. Maybe it's just he's the raytheon of people.

(48:25):
So as time goes on, though, he increasingly leans towards Nixon,
which surprises his friends, whom he had told, quote, Richard
Nixon is the most dangerous of all the men running
to have his president. But I want him to give
me a gig. I need jobs. So he was heartbroken

(48:47):
when his friend Rockefeller lost to Nixon, and he commented,
Now the Republican Party is a disaster, and Nixon is
not fit to be president. Oh my god, and over
and oh this is what they said about this. Okay, yeah,
it's always the same calculus. This is true. But Kissinger

(49:09):
didn't let his complete contempt for Nixon stop him from
trying to get a job with the man. To explain why,
here's the New Yorker. It took Kissinger's close contemporary, the
political theorist Sheldon Wolan, another son of Jewish emigres who
fought in the War and studied at Harvard with William
Yandel Elliott, to fully dissect Kissinger's careerist instincts. On the surface,
Woland r observed Kissinger would have appeared a mismatch for

(49:30):
the anti elitist Nixon, but the pairing was perfect. Nixon
needed someone who could elevate his opportunism to a higher
plane of purpose and make him feel like a great
figure in the drama of history. As Wolan wrote, what
could have been more comforting to that barn and inarticulate
soul than to hear the authoritative voice of doctor Kissinger,
who spoke so often and knowingly about the meaning of history.

(49:53):
I mean, it's just an empty sack and an evil sack,
the evil sacs, Like I can feel you yelled. Somebody's
trying to throw me off. Somebody's gonna load me with something.
He's not gonna do it. Put all that black piled on.

(50:17):
Oh boy, Gareth, he doesn't call him Hank, but we'll
get to that later. It's a lot worse than that, Garrett. Alright,
So in nineteen sixty eight, the Johnson administration was carrying
out an extensive series of negotiations between South and North
Vietnam and an attempt to secure an into the war.

(50:40):
Lb J wants credit for his legacy, right, I'm not
going to give LBJ credit for like caring about human
death and suffering, because he's also a monster. Not trying
to make him seem good by comparison, But he sees
ending the war both as a way to like, I
want to go out on a good note, and also
this is gonna if he could, if he could even
secure a significance like ceasefire, that would help Humphrey get reelected. Right,

(51:02):
because nobody's in the US is very pro the Vietnam War.
Uh within the majority of most voters are very anti it. So,
so that's kind of the play that that LBJ is making.
He wants to in the war in order to help
Humphrey win. Over the course of the election year, his
Secretary of State, National Security Advisor, and his Secretary of Defense,
Clark Gifford, became aware that something was amiss. Some of

(51:23):
the moves that the South Vietnamese government made which threatened
the negotiations seemed bizarre. They would like take these wild
changes where it's like, suddenly South Vietnam is not willing
to negotiate, Like what the funk? We had like worked
all this out. Why are you guys pulling out at
the last minute with Vietnam? Noam's willing to come to
the table. In the trial of Henry Kissinger, Christopher Hitchens writes,
quote from his seat in the Pentagon, Clifford, who's again

(51:44):
the Secretary of Defense, had actually been able to read
the intelligence transcripts that picked up and recorded what he
terms a secret personal channel between President Thu and Saigon.
In the Nixon campaign, the chief interlocutor at the American
end was John Mitchell, then Nixon's Camp Haine manager and
subsequently Attorney General. He was actively assisted by Madame Anna Chanal,

(52:05):
known to all as the Dragon Lady, A fierce veteran
of the Taiwan Lobby and all purpose right wing and triguer,
she was a social and political force in the Washington
of her day. So lbj's administration, this is suspicious as fuck.
Let's bug the Nixon campaign, right, which is not illegal obviously,
like you have it is an act of fucking treason

(52:26):
to try an extend a war by sabotage negotiations. This
is one of the very few cases we're like, yeah,
you should wire tap those people, you should tap you
should tap the funk out of those phones. Um. But
it's also this is they don't want this to get
lb J doesn't want this ship to get out at all. Um.
This would be number one hanging crime. You get executed
for doing this kind of ship like on paper at least, right, um.

(52:47):
And So lbj's administration, while they're wire tapping Nixon and
getting evidence about like this would increasingly becomes clear as
a conspiracy, keeps fucking quiet about it because they're worried
that revealing this would create a crisis of con fidence
in the American government. Fucking fucking liberals. Liberals, this is
how how many fucking times bustole two elections? This is

(53:12):
what they did. This is what they fucking did. It's
really it really is. I mean it's just it's I
mean the eye that is so fucking crazy to put
the clubhouse, Yeah, I mean above it. It is. It
is like the one time wherefore president had had his

(53:33):
political opponents hanged, it would be like, yeah, that's what
you should have done, and you have to that one
session of hangings really would have gone a long way
with this country would be in so much a better
position if they'd hung Nixon and several other people were
about to talk about it would also give a Nixon
good posture. Finally, yeah, finally I knew about that Nixon

(53:55):
had done. I did not know that that they knew.
I didn't know they knew at the time. Like that
fucking insane the liberal mind. I always think about this
story about when the junta took over in Chile before
Pinochet got into power, and they asked all the they said,

(54:16):
we want to have interviews with people, and the liberals
so believed in government that they went and lined up
for the secret police interviews because they're like well, this
is what we do. And they're like, no, they're taking
your names down to possibly kill you. But they lined
up because they're like, well, this is we don't want
to mess up the system, like we're supposed to get

(54:37):
interviewed by the government, like it's a hunta like it
just the mindset of just this is how our constitution works,
and this is what we're supposed to do. And you're like, no,
it's literally not working. The thing isn't working. This is
a great This is one of the best examples ever
of yet. And this is the germ of truth in

(54:58):
Kissinger's whole ideology that conflict is that if you are
in a conflict with someone who was willing to throw
down and you aren't, they're going to win, right, Like
that is a truth of history, right, It's a truth
of fighting fascists. Right. It's not enough to say, like
punching them isn't the entirety of it. But if you're
not willing to throw down, they will win, right um.
And that is a thing that has often taken exactly

(55:19):
the wrong way at the geopolitical level. But like you
see in this that like lb J was not willing
to throw down and Nixon was, and everything we're going
to talk about in the rest of this series happens
as a result. And it's like lb J loved throwing down.
But yes, it's amazing that he does. I think that's
the craziest thing is that, Like that was the fucking

(55:41):
big dick. I'm gonna take a ship and you're gonna
listen to me guy, like he gave no fox and
threw down with everybody. You know what I think it is, Dave.
I think for all of his many, many, many flaws
and evil acts committed, I think lb J believed in
things and Nixon and kissing you down. He wouldn't throw down,
but he would throw two ads. Yeah I would, because

(56:05):
you know, lb J was famous for whipping his dick,
which he called jumbo, out at all times. He wants
piste on a Secret Service agent at a party because
he couldn't get to the bathroom easily enough. Yeah, all
of our sponsors are the same, and that their dicks
are called jumbo and they do piss on the Secret Service.
Every one of our sponsors pisses on the Secret Service.

(56:27):
That's a promise. So we're back, ah boy, good times.
So South Vietnam pulls out of the negotiations, right. I
think they're happening in Paris, uh, And I'm being I
haven't really gotten into the tail about what happened up
to this point because those details are very obscure to

(56:48):
the American people. What is publicly possible, like known, is
that North Vietnam and South Vietnam are supposed to come
to the table, have this big negotiation to try to
come to like some way in which the war can
come to an end, and South Vietnam, after a bunch
of like throwing a bunch of like wrenches in the process,
finally just backs out entirely, right, and so the negotiations
don't happen, and the war continues. That's what everybody sees,

(57:11):
you know, if you're just like a dude paying attention
on the news, that's what you're aware of happening here.
Um lb j's administration knows something sketchy is going on
between Nixon and the South Vietnamese government, but even for them,
they don't know precisely what happened. Here's what happened. As
part of the negotiations, lb J offered the North Vietnamese
a bombing halt. Now you can see why this is
very enticing for Hanoi, right, because being bombed is not pleasant,

(57:32):
and the US was doing a lot of it. Um,
so this is like what lb J is like, Hey,
I will fucking stop bombing Vietnam if you guys will
come to the table and talk about stuff. And the
North Vietnamese government not being made entirely of soulless cockroaches
is like, well, okay, Like that's a pretty good offer. Actually,
we were bombings. Are we actually chopped John McCain. Yeah,

(57:52):
we did drop John McCain, and you guys might have
caught him. You can keep him for a while. Um,
he'll come back into the picture. It'll be a big problem.
He'll also, weirdly enough, be the least objectionable Republican elected
leader for a long time. So that's our future hero. Yeah.
He and Jesse the Body Venschera will be the only

(58:15):
conservative voices against torture. So heads up. It is amazing
watching that old clip of Jesse Ventura on the view
being the most reasonable American in fucking early two thousands
next to Gilbert Godfried at least. Um, it's actually so yeah,

(58:41):
this is very enticing offer for Hannoy that the bombing cessation,
and it's good enough if like, if you won't bom
us anymore, Yeah, maybe we can concede on some stuff
if you're not murdering people in mass like, yeah, of
course we'll negotiate with that. Nixon cannot let this happen.
This would be a disaster. But Vietnam not getting bombed,
he sees, is like the worst case scenario, even though
he is campaigning on ending the war. By the way,

(59:02):
that's promise, I'm going to get us out of there.
But yeah, on my watch, that happens before what am
I campaigning on? So Nixon uses his back channel to
the South Vietnamese government to get them to torpedo their
end of the negotiations because the government of South Vietnam
is frightened obviously that the US is going to stop
bombing North Vietnam. Um, So if you're following along, something
should be obvious at this point. Since the Johnson administration

(59:23):
was negotiating secretly with North Vietnam, there should have been
no way for the government and Saigon to know that
lb J had proposed a bombing halt. But obviously Saigon knew,
which means there was a secret informant within the Johnson
administration passing information to the Nixon administration and sharing a
lot of top secret data with Saigon. Um. So the
big question is who possibly be so deep into both camps?

(59:46):
But he could feed information the forest. Oh my god,
that's right, baby, absolutely should be executed for treason, my god. Slowly, yeah,
slowly executed. Yeah, it should be that incompetent dude who

(01:00:10):
hung the Nazis at Nuremberg and like kept sucking up
and making it worse. Bring that dude back, all right?
Can I just let me try one more time before
you guys get out. We should have frozen that motherfucker
and carbonite to break out when the nation needed him. Yeah,
that's amazing. How you guys wake ing me up to
kill me? No, we actually we're drunk, and do another

(01:00:31):
hang huge fans, We've got you a handle of gin
here and this is a grey Kissinger. Shut off. Just
do whatever. You just kill him as fast as you can.
That's the all they know. But I took a lot
of notes from him back in the day. He's great,
he's great. Just kill him. I don't think he could

(01:00:52):
die though I will say I don't think that guy
could read so. Obviously, Kissinger is the back channel who
was spreading this information. Now when his own memoirs, Nixon
later admitted to hearing about the proposed bombing halt through
what he termed as a highly unusual channel, Christopher Hitchins continues,

(01:01:14):
it was more unusual even that he than he acknowledged.
Kissinger had until then been a devoted partisan of Nelson Rockefeller,
the matchlessly wealthy prince of liberal Republicanism. His contempt for
the person and policies of Richard Nixon was undisguised. Indeed,
President Johnson's Paris negotiators, led by Avril Harriman, considered Kissinger
to be almost one of themselves. He had made himself

(01:01:34):
helpful as Rockefeller's cheap foreign policy adviser by supplying French
intermediaries with their own contacts in Hanoi. Henry was the
only person outside of the government that we were authorized
to discuss the negotiations with, says Richard Holbrook. We trusted him.
It is not stretching the truth to say that Nick
the Nixon campaign had a secret source within the US
negotiating team. So the likelihood of a bombing halt, wrote,

(01:01:55):
Nixon came as no real surprise to me. He added,
I told Haldeman that Mitchell she stay continuous liaison with Kissinger,
and that we should honor his desire to keep his
role completely confidential. This is all on the open now. Yeah.
He also, I mean Nixon really just never shut the
funk up. I mean he should didn't. He really just
he was like the drunk guy at a party who
would just sort of tell you whatever. Like honestly, he's

(01:02:18):
the guy Donald Trump might put a hand and be like,
hey man, you're saying you say, it's some stuff that
you probably shouldn't right now. I think you might not.
I think you might regret this sticks. But I'm just
saying a lot of stuff you probably shouldn't. And I'm
on Twitter. Yeah that's so. That is just so crazy
and just says it all, you know, and this is

(01:02:38):
and it's gotten worse. I mean, it's just fucking bonkers. Now.
The bombing halt was planned for October twenty three, but
thanks to Kissinger, the Nixon campaign was able to lobby
South Vietnam to increase their demands. Suddenly, at the bargaining table,
which wrecked attempted agreements being made with North Vietnam. This,
you know, there's a process. This happens back and forth
until the bombing halt is completely scuttled and peace negotiations

(01:02:59):
fall apart. Since all this was happening behind closed doors,
Humphrey never got to present the possibility of a bombing
halt to the American people. Nixon avoided having to take
into stance of any kind on the issue because obviously,
as the peace candidate, he couldn't say you shouldn't do
it right. He didn't even want it to come up
at all. Um. The Johnson administration made one final attempt
to push through a bombing halt at the end of October,

(01:03:20):
but the South Vietnamese government, warned by Kissinger via Nixon,
preempted this with a surprise boycott of the peace talks. Now,
while all this is happening, Kissinger is also advising the
Humphrey campaign, and it's so respected there that he was
considered a shoe in for a senior job if they'd
managed to win. There's three of them. Democrats are so
fucking stupid. I know there's three of them. There's three Kissingers,

(01:03:45):
just free walking around. I got my buddy Henry's I'm
gonna give him a good old job. That's our party
you're talking about, Mr. And then I can never get
over the fact that Hilary walked around with him during
the campaign. It's really walking to be fair day. He
fucking is. He's like one of those episodes of Frasier

(01:04:07):
where he's dating two women at the same time and
trying to keep it secret. That's the same rest Jack Trapper. Yeah,
it's very funny, except for all of the millions and millions.
Do you have the numbers on where the deaths were
at in Vietnam where they ended up? Like, yeah, I'll

(01:04:30):
get you that in a minute. Why did I ask? Yeah.
Nixon by also like grows in convinced of Kissinger's value
during this period of time too, and he becomes a
shoe in for a senior job there. He was particularly
impressed by the school with which Kissinger protected his identity
as the leaker from the Humphrey campaign. Nixon later wrote,
one factor that had most convinced me of Kissinger's credibility

(01:04:50):
was the length to which he went to protect his secrecy.
What terrible, I mean, that's just not a good personality train.
It's really not. It's actually not, but doubt is. But
not this guy. This guy is the best double agent.
He's so fucking great. And this guy's an unbelievable ship
bag liar. Yeah, I mean, honestly, it makes sense that

(01:05:15):
like Nixon would be super ended. All. Yeah, wow, this
guy's a real piece of ship. I'm jick Nixon. This
this guy can lie to you. Let me tell you
as a liar. Oh fuck, it's it's fucking amazing. It's bad. Um.

(01:05:37):
Clark Clifford, who would later was again the Secretary Defense
of the time, would later blame the fact that the
war did not end in nineteen sixty eight and the
loss of the Humphrey campaign in that election on the
schoolduggery of the Nixon campaign, which was orchestrated in part
by Henry Kissinger. Quote. The activities of the Nixon team
went far beyond the bounds of justifiable political combat. It
constituted direct interference in the activities of the executive branch

(01:05:59):
in the response abilities of the chief executive, the only
people with authority to get to negotiate on behalf of
the nation. The activities of the Niction campaign constituted a gross,
even potentially illegal interference in the security affairs of the
nation by private individuals, which is the polite political wonk
way of saying it. In the book, Kissinger's shadow, Greg Grandon,
is even more pointed the fact that Kissinger participated in

(01:06:21):
an intrigue that extended the war for five pointless years
seven if you count the fighting between the nineteen seventy
three Paris Piece Accords in the nineteen seventy five Fall
of Saigon is undeniable. Adding to the evidence is Kissinger himself.
He's been caught on tape twice on recordings recently released
admitting he passed on useful information to Nixon. Jesus Christ,

(01:06:41):
my god. It's like killing him isn't enough. He should
be gibbited. I said, so it would. We need to
bring back gibbeting and just hang that motherfucker somewhere in
a in a nice cage box, like, yeah, leave him
out there, leave him out, Let people pelt him with stuffy.
Let's kill him by drawing potatoes at it, right, because

(01:07:02):
he's not that strong anymore and you wanted to last
a whit? Yeah, yeah, Um, So we'll talk a bit
later about how we got caught on tape and why
we know about all of this, because that's a fun story, guys,
and involves a different series of crimes. But Grandon makes
another point that's worth acknowledging here. Well, Kissinger definitely had
inside information from the Johnson campaign, which he passed on.

(01:07:24):
He also didn't have as much information as he pretended
to know when he talked to the Nixon campaign. Quote.
Even with access to Johnson's negotiating instructions, he couldn't have
had exact information about the decisions being made at the
White House. He had to have been winging it, at
least to some degree, guessing at what others knew, imagining
what others would do with that, guests playing the angle,
sussing out the chance, well, giving the appearance of composure

(01:07:47):
and certainty, he was right winging it. Yeah, an absolute
fucking psychopath. Like that's the kind of ship. Like he said,
if you're dating to women, you're trying to figure it
out and get through some stinky situation. But he's doing
this with fucking Vietnam and to presidential campaigns. I don't craziness.

(01:08:11):
The absolute lack of a soul is dounding he is
pure blackness inside. Yeah, Dave, let me push back for
a second. God, wow, yeah, you can't. I mean, it's

(01:08:33):
it's it's hard to even speak to it because it's
like to look, I'll kill five people for a job,
but at some point you have that's regular. Yeah, but
but to to let I mean, to just I don't know,
it's he is he killed, he killed? I mean, how

(01:08:55):
many Vietnamese died after that? Like so many? But we're
talking to uh, you know, wasn't like a million died
in the whole wars more than no, I mean it
is because you also have to include the people who
died in um, Cambodia and and in in Vietnam. We're
we're gonna get into more of this an episode three,
but conservatively an additional couple of million deaths as a

(01:09:19):
result of this, in addition to an additional twenty thousand
US dead. Um, it's kind of hard the death toll
to get precisely like a couple million, like in the
millions aditional dead because to this day, by the way,
because he was just gonna say because he wanted a job,
this was he wanted a gig. He's essentially lying in

(01:09:42):
a job in a view like you would if you
were had no fast food experience and where del Taco
except millions of people are dying. Yeah, it's awesome. Holy
the crazy such a bad person, the crazy that that's
the thing you done here is you've you've you've humanized

(01:10:03):
the situation for me because, like, I can understand that
there's evil people out there and they do stuff like
they want to bomb Camp Cambodio, they want to do
this other stuff. But when you take it to a
level where it's a guy winging it in a meeting,
it takes on a whole different flavor of evil. That

(01:10:24):
is something because now that's something we can all understand.
We've all been a situation where like ah, yeah, this
guy did a thing, and then I did a and
you're just trying to get through a situation we've all
experienced that none of us have experienced given the green
light to you know, dropping bombs and killing people. But
that I get and I feel in my bones of like, well,

(01:10:45):
holy sh it, but you're doing that with millions of
people's lives on the line. It is. It is this
thing where the idea I had always had before I
really got into with that, Like, well he did you know,
he was involved in all of these horrible things that
I knew he was involved in, but like I assumed
it was from a wonky perspective of like he believed
wrongly in the need to fight these wars and that
anything was justified, and so he did these horrible things
because he believed we were in this like civilizational struggle

(01:11:07):
in certain things were necessary in that. And like he
had all of these different kind of very complex moral
beliefs that he wrote dozens of books about explaining why
he did the things. At the end of the day,
no motherfucker wanted a gig. Yeah, And by the way,
it's not like he would have been out of politics,
like not even in his downtime. He was like, you know,
he was gigging. Like it's just like he would have

(01:11:28):
been patiently waiting for another administration, working whatever, like you know,
you know, he didn't don't want to work. He didn't
want to work at Uncle Chuckle Fox. He wanted to
gig at Charlie Goodnights, Like he doesn't want to work
at the Premier Club. He literally like did the like
that's the thing. He didn't just do this for a job.
He did this for like one of the two jobs

(01:11:48):
and the one he kind of didn't want as much. Yeah,
fucking conscionable. Yeah, it's really hard to like, it is hard,
and like it's at it's easier to understand now what
he did. It's hard to like judge him adequately in
mortal terms that are even like comprehensible because it's so
much out it's hard to process. It really is one

(01:12:10):
of those like say what you will about the tenants
of nihilism, dude. At least it's an ethos moments where
it's like I'm thinking about like people like fucking Saddam
or whatever, where it's like, yeah, that was a piece
of ship. There were definitely some things he believed though,
like like there's pieces of ship out like sucking out there,
who like there are things they believe, and Kissinger just

(01:12:32):
believes he should be close to power. Yeah yeah, he's
like all doctrine was Kissinger. He's like, I'm really smart.
I should be in the top game, and yeah, I
just want to be there. It's awesome. Yeah, Like I
like how he thinks his childhood didn't funk with him. Yeah, yeah,
you don't be even better if he if all this

(01:12:53):
was happening and it was just because like he's like,
I know, I can get so many more chicks if
I'm in the White House, because that was the whole
reason for it. He's just like, I just want to
get laid. It is not a non factor. Wait is
he Is he married right now? Or is he single?
Who knows? He's still think he gets married at some point.

(01:13:13):
But he's also like, you know, well, I don't know.
Actually he's kind of like a bachelor dude. We'll talk
about that later. I'm still working on those episodes. Um,
because there's a whole thing to be said about Kissinger
and women in sex appeal. Um, he gets he was married.
He definitely was married at points, but he's also like
kind of a playboy. Um. I'm gonna go back in

(01:13:33):
time a little bit and talk about some of that later.
He was married, his first his first marriage was nineteen
forty nine to nineteen sixty four, So I don't think
he's and then he's not remarried again until seventy four.
Sounds right. He's married in this little hall. I wonder
why she left him. Yeah, he's the only guy who

(01:13:56):
comes black I haven't written the episode yet, but I
have several page is that people talking about Henry Kissinger's
sex appeal on the news that are real real black
pilling is the kids say not good. So Nixon wins
the sixty eight election. Obviously, he gets inaugurated in nineteen

(01:14:17):
sixty nine. The Vietnam War continues on for half a decade.
Ish uh. This was an almost incalculable humanitarian tragedy as
well as disastrous for the future stability and cohesion of
the United States. But it was dope as hell for
Henry Kissinger, who was appointed. Nixon like to put out
there that my uncle went to Vietnam and it totally
you know, he had to kill a lot of people
and then totally run his life and he watched and stuff.

(01:14:39):
So thank you Richard Nixon, Thank you Richard Nixon. Everybody
who went to Vietnam after sixty eight saya. Thank you
to Richard for Nixon and Kissinger for um. You know,
all of the trauma and the trauma that in some
cases some of you passed on to your family members, um,
and the trauma that has been passed on societally based
on our attitudes words war because of how Vietnam went

(01:15:01):
and the ways in which some people were always looking
for a rematch, and it got us into other you know,
thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Good stuff.
Imagine if like that had been the end of Vietnam,
that like there was actually a president realized, you know,
the foolishness of a conflict, and we went to the
table and like negotiations were made. And I don't think

(01:15:23):
I don't think the first Iraq war happens, the Panama
doesn't happen. You would think that for how long Vietnam
dragged on, that that would have actually been a lesson
to not go into conflicts, you aimless conflict. But I
guess the problem is we're thinking there's people should learn
lessons countries. Well, that war is in any way like

(01:15:46):
a moral decision or like actually comes from a place
of actual you know, uh, savior mentality, anything like that. Yeah,
it's good stuff. Getting disappointment is national secure. The advisor
required a lot more politicking from Kissinger, including spreading rumors
to Nixon before his inauguration that Johnson planned either deposed

(01:16:08):
or killed the president of South Vietnam before he left office.
Kissinger pushed this rumor to the President elect via regular
Bastards pod side character and Rhodesia enthusiast enthusiast William F. Buckley,
Buckley's middleman delight to Nixon translator. Yeah, William F. Buckley,

(01:16:30):
whose son went on to write honestly a pretty fun book. Um.
But we don't need to think too much about that. Um.
Great Aaron eck Art performance in the movie. So Nixon
appreciated Kissinger's hutzpat and connections enough that when he put
him at the head of the National Security Council, he
ordered the professor to reorganize it in order to take

(01:16:50):
foreign policy control away from the State in defense departments.
This means that Nixon gave Kissinger it was very close
to a blank check to take total control of US
foreign policy. Obviously, Nixon wanted this because he was a
paranoid control freak. He did not win any kind of
separation of powers. He certainly did not want to have
a Secretary of State who could do things that Nixon

(01:17:11):
might not be explicitly ordering. But the result of this
was that Kissinger found himself in a position where he
could exercise near absolute power in foreign policy as long
as the President kept liking him. Justice Kissinger had little
love for Nixon. Our buddy Dick Millhouse was not particularly
warm to his new right hand man. Now you had

(01:17:31):
given a couple of um spanky Hank. Yeah, you want
to notice real nickname for jew boy? Oh my god,
she says christ it is Nixon. But it's like, I mean,
I thought we would be jumping off of the name
a little bit. He's just like, what am I gonna
call you? Spanky Hank? No, little drew boy, good lord?

(01:17:55):
And again it says a lot about Henry Kissinger that
he's like, yeah, all right, that's the funny that mans,
not childhood have no effect on me today, not what
So there must have been an element of Nixon then

(01:18:18):
who knew what an ass kissing little bit he was?
Because he's belittling him to his face and he'll stick around.
It's why you get hired for these jobs, because it's
just like it's not you know, and an empty vacuum.
Who is going to be your right hand man is
they'll you know, there's security in that, there's there's secrecy

(01:18:39):
in that he's like a vacuum Gareth, and that he'll
suck Nixon's dick, but he's also like a toilet and
that he'll take Nixon Ship. You know, that's very kissing chair.
He's he's a dick. Yeah, yeah, he's like the total
toilet is pretty effective. But have you ever had a
dick sucking toilet? Come either way, I'm ready for it, baby,

(01:19:05):
Henry kissing her? So be can the title be Henry
Kissinger dick sucking toilet? Speaking speaking of dick sucking toilets,
it is time for a commercial break. That is who
sponsors our podcast, Raytheon's new dick sucking toilet. Well, it

(01:19:30):
is going to fire a missile little bus loaded children.
But that's that's just the Raytheon. You know, we can't
avoid it. We're contractually obligated. Yeah, it's how it works.
So Nixon announced Kissinger's appointment as the National Security Advisor
before he had even picked a Secretary of State, which
is an unprecedented move. He announced Henry as quote and

(01:19:52):
this again in his like public announcement to the country
as quote, a man who is known to all people
who are interested in foreign policy is perhaps one of
the major scholars in America and the world in this area.
And he acknowledged that while Kissinger had never held a
full time government job before, he had Nixon's confidence to
bring in a whole new foreign policy team quote newman

(01:20:12):
to develop new ideas. Now. The conservative media of the
day immediately roared into gear halan Henry Kissinger as an
unprecedented policy genius, the man necessary to get America back
on track after nearly a decade of disastrous war under
Democratic presidents. William F. Buckley wrote, not since Florence Nightingale
has any public figure received such universal acclamation. William F.

(01:20:37):
Buckley ship fantastic. Yeah, it's amazing. But even ostensibly liberal
figures were wooed by Kissinger's court titanic intellect and Henry
Kissinger and American power, Thomas Schwartz, writes. The liberal historian
Arthur Schlessinger Jr. Simply referred to it as the best

(01:20:59):
appoint meant so far. The New York Times columnist Tom
Wicker noted the collective scient of relief that went up
from the liberal Eastern Establishment and the Ivy League fearing
Nixon's cold warrior image, most shared in the sentiment of
Kissinger's Harvard colleague Adam yr Yarmolinsky. Will all sleep a
little better each night. No mean, Kissinger is down there,
you mean, and the toilet getting ready to suck bit.

(01:21:22):
You know. Again, it's exactly what happened with Trump. Yes,
and it's it's like it's the way that I mean again,
it's people's natural reaction is normally kind of there. It's
just the fears are assuaged by people who they consider
to be, you know, the compass, and they're just not.

(01:21:44):
And so when when you're told that there are the
good guys inside the bad camp, it's like, it's just
never fucking true. It is rot from the core. Yeah,
and it is. These liberals are also are also impressed
by him and so comforted by him because they think
he's smart, because he's good at quoting smart dead people. Right.
It is the same thing that happened with Maddie. Maddie Thankfully,

(01:22:04):
it's not nearly as toxic a person as Henry Kissinger.
But like, if you actually look at Mattie's background, one
of the things he did in the Iraq War was
cover up a war crime. Like he's not a not
a man to be like, I mean, and he was.
He was, like he was very popular among people who
served under him, which is part of like why there
was this kind of collective relief. But it's this idea
that he's like the warrior monk, right. They love the

(01:22:25):
idea that like, well, this guy who's president is a maniac,
but this dude reads books that he hired, so that'll
it'll be okay, And you know it's never okay. You
continue to lower the bar more and more. You're obvious,
like the people that you're bringing back are part of
a lower bar. But because the bar is even lower,
it seems and feels a little higher. But it is

(01:22:46):
all just it's just this is exactly what happened with
Colin Powell. Evil We did exactly, Yeah, over it up,
sucking the massacres and fucking Vietnam. That's like when he
started out like terrible human being. But the press did

(01:23:08):
the same. Ship. If you can quote old books and
smile and you're willing to give journalists time, they will
talk about you as being the secret reasonable person within
the war crimes party. You know, like that's all it takes.
It's great. It's just the same thing as if you're
a Nazi who reads books. You can get a time

(01:23:28):
file addressed nicely. Yeah, or you'll get on sixty minutes
or whatever. You know. Um, it's it's don't trust people
who want you to think they're smart. That's never a
good sign smart. It's the same thing. It's the same
thing with like people who want you to believe they're dangerous.
If they want you to believe something specific about them,
they're lying about it. That's how people work. And and

(01:23:50):
if a if a doctor wants to get on the
news to talk about COVID and be famous on the news,
that's actually not a doctor you should listen to. Had
a great guy also, I mean it's you know, it's
from the same publications and the same networks. It the
idea that you continue to listen to these sources about

(01:24:10):
what is right and what is wrong just because they
have fancy terms like senior policy advice. It's like it's
all fucking it's it's days of our lives. It's their actors.
These are tele prompters. Yeah, and they don't know any
more than you about anything that matters. As a general rule.
Every now and then you get but like even like
within agencies that are heavily like medical oriented, like the CDC,

(01:24:32):
where you would expect them to have a lot of
specialized knowledge. It doesn't necessarily mean they're going to do
a good job. Much times comfortably lied about Iraq. Yeah,
it's it's not great. So during the transition from the
Johnson to Nixon administration, US Military Command began to act
under what General Creighton Abrams described as a total war

(01:24:54):
mindset against the infrastructure of the Vietcong insurgency. This began
with a six month operation and to clear the Meet
Kong Delta code named Operations Speedy Express. This would prove
to be the first major military operation that both Nixon
and Kissinger oversaw, and it was a titanic blood bath.
There is a good article on this operation in the
Nation and the title of the article is A my

(01:25:16):
Lie a month, Oh my God. Yeah, so it's it's
all god. Now, the Myli massacre had occurred in nineteen
sixty eight, before Nixon or Kissinger were in power. You
know that ain't on them, uh, and seymour Hurst didn't
like break the story until sixty nine, which is the
year that they come to power. And this slaughter of
five hundred civilians by US troops was horrific enough, but

(01:25:37):
within a few months of taking power, speedy express had
exceeded it many times. Quote from the Nation, an inkling
that something terrible had taken place in the Meet Kong
Delta appeared in a most unlikely source, a formerly confidential
September nineteen sixty nine senior officer debriefing report by none
other than the commander of the Ninth Division, then Major
General Julian Ewell, who came to be known inside the

(01:25:57):
military as the Butcher of the Delta because of his
single minded fixation on body count. In reports, copies of
which were sent to Westmoreland's office and to other high
ranking officials, you will candidly noted that while the Ninth
Division stressed the discriminate and selective use of firepower, in
some areas of the Delta, where this emphasis wasn't applied
or wasn't feasible, the countryside looked like the Verdun battle fields,

(01:26:18):
the site of a notoriously bloody World War One battle.
That December, a document produced by the National Liberation Front
sharpened the picture. It reported that between December first, nineteen
sixty eight and April first, nineteen sixty nine, primarily in
the Delta provinces of Kanhua and Din twong, the ninth
Division launched an express rate and mopped up many areas,
slaughtering three thousand people, mostly old folks, women and children,

(01:26:40):
and destroying thousands of houses, hundreds of hectares of fields
and orchards. But like most in Left reports of civilian atrocities,
this one was almost certainly dismissed as propaganda by US officials.
A United Press International report that same months and month
in which US advisors charged the Vision with having driven
up the body count by killing civilians with helicopter gunships
in artillery was all so largely ignored. And it's because

(01:27:03):
they're saying they're soldiers, that they're shooting from a distance,
and then they just have like Colin pal justified it
by saying, well, they're they're providing food for the enemy,
so there's no difference. Yeah. By the time Speedy Express
comes to an end, US forces had killed more than
ten thousand people. The vast majority of these were claimed
to have been insurgent fighters, but extensive mop up after

(01:27:26):
operations after the fact found less than eight hundred weapons
on all these bodies they share. That is fucking crazy. Yeah,
I mean, like we can't even frame them competentity now.
And you also remember you're taking guys that you drafted. Yeah, yeah, right,
yeah right, you know to do this. Yeah, I mean,

(01:27:49):
like you said with your uncle, I mean it it is,
it's like the generational ripple through that and the lifetime
you know what what it does? It really? I mean yeah,
just it's pretty beyond who dies, who doesn't live again? Yeah, yeah, exactly,
and what you know, what do people take back with them? Um? Now,

(01:28:09):
it is fair and necessary to note that this began
in the December before Nixon and Kissinger took office. This
is not entirely on them. Some of the blame for
this ghost on the LBJ administration as well, obviously, but
it continued under them. This paragraph, written by Christopher Hitchens,
gives you some idea of the savagery of what occurred
in the early days of the Nixon administration's control of
the Vietnam War. The people who still live in pacified

(01:28:29):
Kinhoa all have vivid recollections of the devastation that American
firepower brought to their lives in early nineteen sixty nine.
Virtually every person to whom I spoke had suffered in
some way. There were five thousand people in our village
before nineteen sixty nine, but there were none in nineteen
seventy one. Village elder told me the Americans destroyed every
house with artillery airstrikes or by burning them down with
cigarette lighters. About a hundred people were killed by bombing,

(01:28:52):
others were wounded, and others became refugees. Many were children
killed by concussion from the bombs, which their small bodies
could not withstand, even if they were hiding underground. So
Nixon's plan at the beginning, you know, when his people
had derailed the peace negotiations in sixty eight, was that
he would win election and then make peace with with Vietnam. Right,

(01:29:12):
then he's going to do the thing that he promised
to do. But it swiftly became clear that peace was
a messy prospect. One of the things he's worried about
is that, like, well, if we withdraw them with Vietnam,
the Saigon government's probably going to fall, right because there
we're just barely propping up this shitty dictatorship. Um, and
that'll be it will make me look weak, right, And
so I can't do it because it will make me

(01:29:33):
look weak if um, Yeah, and then I won't win
re election in nineteen seventy two, and that's unacceptable. I
mean that and that and that. I mean obviously keeps
going over and over like it's you get into office
and then you're like, well what about re election instead
of going like the best direction for it is one
of the few things I'll give Biden some credit for

(01:29:55):
because he had the same calculus with Afghanistan. A lot
of criticisms to make about the poet from Afghanistan, but
he did not make the same decision Nixon and Kissinger did.
He did fucking get out. Yeah, I would like to
be I have a much more darker outlook on that,
and I mean it's yeah, it's he knew that Ukraine

(01:30:15):
was was kicking off because that's been kicking off since
um he actually two thousands one election, but you know
it was Zelinski was largely for peace until all of
a sudden Biden got elected and then he flipped and
I was like, I want today to all this ship. So, uh,
you know, if you can pull out of Afghanistan, if
you know there's another area cooking up, I mean negative, yeah, yeah,

(01:30:37):
it's probably too complicated to want to get into here. Um,
because that's a whole another several it's worth of stories.
It's a ship hole of just unbelievable garbage all over
the place. Yeah. So withdrawing from Vietnam and Saigon is
going to fall, with the government's gonna fall, and that
will be bad in the seventy two elections, and it
might push Kissinger and Nixon out of power. Neither of

(01:30:59):
them can accept this. And this description of a meeting
from December nineteen seventy by H. R. Haldeman shows Kissinger's
role in pulling back from peace. Kissinger came in and
the discussion covered some of the general thinking about Vietnam
and the president's big peace plan for the next year,
with Kissinger later which Kissinger later told me he does
not favor. He thinks that any pullout from next year
would be a serious mistake because the adverse reaction to

(01:31:20):
it could set in well before the seventy two elections.
He favors instead of continued winding down and then a
pull out right at the fall of seventy two, so
that if any bad results follow, they will be too
late to effect the election. Yeah, And it's you know,
that's what our wars always are they're all about Yeah,
they're all about elections. They fucking always are. It's you know,

(01:31:44):
I mean there. Yeah, this led to Republicans thinking that,
you know, they had to get war back on track
at some point. Yeah, but you know it's always it's
it's never it never works like it's it's just such
a crazy idea. And you also, like people are watching
bodybags go home, like no one's happy about anything that's

(01:32:05):
going on. No, and it um this they just kind
of I mean this part of why it keeps going
is um this kind of craven knowledge that like, well,
the worst thing that could happen is we don't get reelected. Yeah.
At no point is he thinking about any of the
human beings involved, even any of the American human beings involved.
It's just like, well, we can't be losing reelection. You know,

(01:32:27):
imagine if Kissinger was damaged from his childhood, how bad
things would get bad. It's like, you know, actually, when
we talk about the story of like American presidents making
craven political decisions, one of the reasons FDR did not
approve more effort being taken to evacuate Jewish refugees from Germany,
as he did not want to be seen as pro

(01:32:49):
Jewess the socialist policies and stuff that we're going through.
He knew that that could hurt him. There were a
number of other reasons, but like, yeah, they're like they
did not that is like there is there were things
that were done that led to the US government saving
fewer Jewish people from the Holocaust that we're done for
craven political reasons by the FDR administration. Let me hear
this Kaiser pitch again. It actually big hat, I learned

(01:33:13):
the hat. This hat you've ever seen big, very spiky
now loves his mom's hands. But god, So the fun
thing about this episode is that everything we're going to
talk about in part three is even worse because in
part three we're going to talk about fucking Cambodia. UM.

(01:33:37):
So you guys want to plug anything after my ears
three hours? Yeah, I'm going to be I'm going to
be in a toilet trying to get clean. You can
go to the Dollar go to Dollar podcast dot com
for tour information and my website ads dot com. I'm

(01:34:01):
on tour, but not like tours of duty, just like
stand up and podcast tours. UM with the aim of
I don't want to talk like that anymore, Dave, Dave,
shut your mouth and you can just listen to you
just fucking murdered the whole fucking face. Like you left

(01:34:25):
unexploded ordinance in the crowd they tripped over. Should have
been over fifteen minutes earlier. And like with unexploded ordinance
in law of the people who loved your jokes, after
the said ended, we're children no more. There'll be no
more relating. There'll be no more correlating. Yeah, anyway, that's

(01:34:48):
part two. You've got two more weeks of Henry kissing
your ahead of you folks, to strap in gets a
lot uglier. But also we'll be talking about his sex life.
So you know, I was going to say something to
look forward too, but like not, Yeah, yeah, come back
next week for more of the dick sucking toilet Henry
kissing Jerre look a pretty good title. So if he's

(01:35:13):
not happy with no, so, if he's not on board,
I don't love it. But you know, all right, 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

(01:35:33):
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 pre
order it in physical or in kindle a form from
Amazon or pretty much wherever books are sold. So please

(01:35:53):
google a k press after the revolution um or find
an indie bookstore in your area and pre order it.
You'll get as signed a copy, and you'll make me
very happy.

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