July 31, 2019 • 47 mins
Henry Kissinger has worn many hats over the course of his long life. To some, his geopolitical career is a study in the ruthless, brilliant application of realpolitik. To others, he is a war criminal responsible for massive waves of death in multiple countries across the globe. Join the guys as they delve into the strange, at times disturbing career of Henry Kissinger -- including the Stuff He Doesn't Want You To Know.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Welcome back
(00:24):
to the show. My name is Matt. Noel is not here,
but we'll be returning soon. They call me Ben. We
are joined as always with our super producer Paul mission
controled decade. Most importantly, you are you. You are here,
and that makes this stuff they don't want you to
know this. We've been doing this check in at the
beginning of the show. We hope that you check in
(00:46):
as well when you before you dive into the strange, bizarre,
and sometimes terrifying things we explore here. Yeah. So Matt
good up, combs down, two thumbs up. You just released
a show. Oh yeah I did, Yes, I didn't. I
assisted in the production slash creation of a show called
(01:08):
Noble Blood that is now available. It's number three on
the charts right now on iTunes. Congratulations, Yeah, it's all.
It's Aaron Mackey and Dana Schwartz, It's and Trevor Young. Congratulations. Uh, Paul,
how are you doing out there? Got a thumbs up
thumbs up at a stylish angle from Mission Control. I
want to bring this up before we get too deep
(01:29):
into this. I just finished Mr. Robot season three finally,
and you know, we have a bit of a history
with that show. We did a couple of episodes surrounding
season two. I believe um and have masks we do show.
I have one sitting in my room and when I
watched the show, I always put it on, which is current?
I don't know. Is that too weird? No, that's awesome,
that's great, Okay, cool. I just had to bring that up.
(01:51):
I was just excited that the next one is supposedly
coming out this year. Yes, I had heard, I had heard,
No that they'll still have Robby Malick. I imagine, I
certainly hope. So what we're going to talk about maybe
a sensitive subject to some people who find themselves politically partisan,
right at least in the in the Western sense, And
(02:13):
we want to hear your opinions. So, as always, if
there's something that you want to tell us, and you're
not near a keyboard at the moment, just pause this episode.
We'll wait for you and call us directly. Yes, call
our number. It is one h three three st d
w y t K. What I love about this conversation
with Mr Robot is that we're we're kind of foreshadowing
(02:36):
something that will come into play later, right, yeah, without
fully saying it right right. And there's there's a character
within the univeral they're a couple, but there's one in
particular in the universe of Mr Robot that I find
that maybe you will too, has some similarities to our
guest of honor, our person of interest. There we go,
(03:01):
There we go? Are p o I? Today Mrs Robot
concerns shadowy forces working in secret, conspiring right, the power
behind the throne. And it's often said in fiction and
nonfiction alike that the true power of a nation at
kingdom or an empire isn't usually the face. It's often
(03:22):
not the person on the throne. It's the people behind
that person. The folks you see standing silently behind a king,
a prime minister, or a president as they deliver a
speech they probably did not write. Today's episode is about
one such character, one of the most influential people in
the history of modern US politics, Henry Kissinger. So let's
(03:45):
go to the beginning. Henry Kissinger was born Hinz Alfred
Kissinger on May nineteen twenty three in a place called First, Germany.
He was one of two sons born to Paula Stern
Kissinger and Louis Kissinger. Now, his father was a teacher,
and uh, you know, there was this group of people
(04:07):
that came to power called the Nazis, and when that occurred,
he lost his job in his entire career. You know.
The Nazis. Of course, we're carrying out the orders of
Mr Adolf hitler Um and they, of course began prosecuting
Jewish people throughout Germany and countries all surrounding Germany. And uh,
the Kissingers were in fact Jewish, and their family, Uh,
(04:29):
I guess the larger families saw saw the effects of
this firsthand. Now, of course, Henry was just a little
boy at the time, and he's he seemed to be
a better student, at least to his parents and to
the people around him. He knows, he's a better student
than perhaps an athlete or you know, someone who is
going to pursue some kind of physical career. And you know,
(04:51):
as the the anti Semitism was increasing there in Germany
where they were living, the whole family decided, we have
to get out of here, and in nineteen thirty eight
they ended up going to England, and then not long
after that they ended up going to the United States,
which was a prescient move for any student of history.
The family. Once they reached the U. S they ended
(05:13):
up settling in New York City, which you may remember
from several Salcy commercials. Kissinger completed high school there and
began taking night classes at City College with the intention
of becoming an accountant a c P. A. Oh on
what small things does history hinge? You know what I mean?
It could have gone a very different way. Did you
(05:34):
imagine him as a c P. A We'll see. I
wouldn't hear what you think about that? Yeah, So he
worked his way through college. He went to a factory
during the day and then he would go to class.
During World War Two, he joined the military and served
in Germany. He was working in army intelligence. It is
a bit odd, right because he's from Germany. But he
went to the United States and now he's going back
(05:55):
to Germany to fight for the Americans or with you know,
as an American. Well that that is uh, you know,
it seems counterintuitive, but it happens a lot. So I've
got a couple of friends whose families were originally from
Iran and I live in the US, but because they
(06:16):
spoke Farsie, they got jobs as translators, and yeah, they
ended up, you know, going back to the Middle East.
I'm assuming I believe that they are US based, but
I can't understand just yeah, no, of course, we can't
say anymore. I understand understand that well. And this is
a it's a big deal here. So even even though
(06:39):
he was very young at the time when his family left,
or you know, somewhat young when when the family left Germany,
he still experienced what was occurring in his home country.
And then to leave and then get to go back
and serve in the military for a country that's going
to essentially attempt to liberate the country from which you've lad,
(07:00):
that's a big deal. Oh, the biggest, are you kidding? Yes?
He also it's something you and I mentioned off air
met He also didn't sit idly by during his time
in the service, right, he actually saw combat. Yeah, he
he got to experience the Battle of the Bulge firsthand.
And if you don't know much about that, we won't
(07:21):
go into it, but I would say, look it up. Uh,
it's it was a German offensive that occurred in the West,
and history describes it as quote the deadliest and most
desperate battle of the war in the West and involved
three armies, three German armies that essentially we're we're attacking
over the course of quite a while. And again there's
(07:44):
his historian, his biographer, um Ferguson Nile Ferguson, I believe
it is his name. He describes it as Henry Kissinger
experienced heavy shelling firsthand. And again these are these are
big experiences for a um, a growing person, you know,
someone who's coming into their own having this kind of
(08:05):
thing occurred to him. And that's not all that happened
during the war, right. He also had the stark and terrifying,
heartbreaking revelation that all of his family members that stayed
in Germany were dead. He witnessed the horrors of the Holocaust.
He was present during the liberation of a concentration camp,
(08:26):
and following the war he remained in Europe as an
instructor at a place called the European Command Intelligence School,
also in Germany, and then he returns to the US.
He goes to Harvard and en rolls there and he
graduated in the class of nineteen fifty and he had
a degree in government. Uh. Pretty interesting stuff there, right,
(08:50):
So he's changing course quite a bit from those original
aspirations of becoming an accountant. Um again with these experiences
that are changing him. He U. He continued to study
as a graduate student and ended up earning a master's
degree in nineteen fifty two and then eventually his PhD
in fifty four. And he was also teaching at the
Harvard University. And here's here's an important note. So we
(09:14):
always have to be very careful when attempting to ascribe
personal motives to uh to an individual. And we we
know that something happened, something fundamentally changed his life during
his experiences in World War Two. He became someone with
(09:35):
a mission. We like the historians research have conjectured here
on what what his revelatory moments were, and those are
pretty good guesses. But regardless of what specific instance it
was that was the big change. Post war, he is
(09:55):
no longer interested in accounting, or perhaps if we want
to acts a poetic, he's concerned with a different sort
of accounting. Oh yes, he's concerned with what he sees
as moral accounting, right, preventing, oddly enough, the horrors of
World War Two, fighting for what he and he's alive
(10:17):
today fighting for what he would he is a greater good.
And this brings him to his career in academia. Right. So,
as you mentioned, he earned his PhD in nineteen fifty four.
Between nineteen fifty two and nineteen sixty nine, he directed
the Harvard International Seminar. This was a study organization in
(10:39):
which the advanced students, along with a professor, conduct research
and contribute to discussions. It's sort of a nascent think tank,
which happens a lot in grad schools. And in this
kind of environment and position lets him start making relationships
that he would eventually use later on in his career, right, right,
(11:00):
And and it may surprise some of us to learn
just how much policy here in the United States is
written by professors in academic roles. You know, it starts
with proposals, it starts with research, right and studies, or
it starts with something like ALEC wherein that's that's capital
(11:21):
A capital L, capital E, capital C. It's a process
through which corporations dictate policy for better or worse. I'm
just saying it doesn't. Because a politician is a fan
of something doesn't mean they actually wrote it anymore than
a prime minister president giving a speech means they actually
wrote it. Ultimately, we're going to learn here that power,
(11:43):
many times and in many ways is developed through personal
relationships more than a lot of other ways. Right, absolutely, absolutely,
which is a failure of the human species because it
lessens the impact of meritocracy. But that's a whole other thing.
(12:05):
It's a whole other bag of badgers here. The point
is for this part, this is where Kissinger gets his
taste of being a power behind the throne. He's visited
by tons of international figures that, as you said, Matt,
he'll later deal with in a governmental capacity. He joins
the Council on Foreign Relations, and he publishes something called
Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, and this gets him some
(12:27):
bona fide, some street cred. He is now seen as
a leading expert on international relations and national defense policy.
And then he gets involved with the Rockefellers. Oh yeah,
he has eighteen months of working with this thing called
the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. He actually directed it in nineteen fifties,
(12:48):
six and I it had it had this special Studies project. Okay,
now just listen to this. It's a program developed to
investigate possible domestic and international problems. Okay, I I hear
what you're saying to me. Investigate possible domestic and international problems.
Then in nineteen fifty seven, he became a lecturer at Harvard.
(13:09):
He's um, you know, talking to to the students like
he's changing or or perhaps influencing the way students are thinking.
And eventually he gets promoted to a professor in nineteen
sixty two, and again he's able to teach others some
of the things that he's learning and the ways he's
viewing the world already. Right. And also during this time
(13:32):
he joins other international and domestic organizations and think tanks.
He's at the National Security Council, the Arms Controlled Disarmament Agency,
and the RAND Corporation. While dude, they just kind of
jump in all the things we've mentioned thus far that
he's joining up Council and Foreign Relation Relations, the RAND Corporation.
We've talked about a lot of these, right, Yes, they
(13:54):
are the source of what could plausibly be called a
lot of real conspiracies not theories, so we'll just laundry
list real quick. The rest of the broad strokes of
his career. So he's working full time at Harvard from
sixty two to sixty five, and sixty five he becomes
a consultant to the State Department. He's their Vietnam consultant
(14:16):
from sixty five to nineteen sixty seven. He visits Vietnam
several times. Most of nineteen sixty eight he was working
as a campaign guru for then Governor Nelson Rockefeller, who
was running for the Republican nomination for the presidency against
Richard Nixon yep, yep, against Richie Nicks himself. And despite
(14:40):
the fact that Nixon did defeat Rockefeller, Rockefeller contacted Nixon
was like, hey, we don't know exactly. What they said
was something along the lines of like, hey, good game, bro.
By the way, uh, you know, you had some real
hustle out there. I want to give a shout out
to my boy, h k uh. Put him on the team,
get him off the bench. And that's how Kissinger ended
(15:01):
up heading the National Security Council. Kissinger already had a
plan laid out. He did not like the U s
foreign policy toward the U s s R. The Soviet Union.
He thought that they had been too nice. Essentially, they
have been kid gloves. They had not been consistent, and
as we know, consistency is a huge deal in any
(15:23):
international relationship. So he said, look, let's be honest. The
Soviet Union, they're the big batties. There are main rival
there are main opponents. But you gotta respect him, you
know what I mean, That's what he was. He was
kind of in the same way. He said, look, take
him seriously. It's dangerous to nuclear power. And one of
(15:43):
his big early successes was the institution of de Tompte,
which is easy relationships, easing tensions, saying, look, we both
know the lay of the chessboard here. We're probably never
going to be friends, but we should communicate and we
(16:04):
should do our best not to blow up the world
while we fight with our nuclear weapons. Some would say
that's pretty smart. That's a good way to to look
at things. Let's not blow each other up. We get it,
we know who we are. I can I understand that. Yeah,
And that's that's a very clear cut thing, right, and
(16:26):
it's and it's a powerful thing, even even in a
microcosmic level. Some of us may have had that occur
in our personal lives, yeah, certainly, but it is far
more nuanced than that. Right in order like that, if
that's the ideal, or that's the baseline goal, let's not
blow each other up. We understand who we are underneath
(16:48):
that is just oh wasps, just a swarm of wasps
for some reason. Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely. So. One of
the things he does is the successful agreement on something
called SALT or Strategic Arms Limitations treaty, the Soviet Union
(17:08):
and the US say okay, we're gonna limit the number
of nuclear weapons we have. We're not going to get
rid of them ever, because we both know who we are.
But you know we we promised not to have millions
of them, because that's just egregious. And when they when
they signed this agreement, he was seeing as someone again
(17:30):
working for the greater good, and the greater good being
avoiding nuclear annihilation or a nuclear war. And now you
will hear people argue whether he is a hero or
a villain. He used to speak about once a year
here in Georgia, and I believe he hasn't done that
(17:51):
for a number of years. But you could go visit
him here him speak at different places, and he is
treated very much as an elder statesman, a policy emperor,
you know, a king behind the throne. But regardless of
what you might think of his work, there is no
arguing that he has been anything other than massively successful
in his personal life. Between January and January, he pulled
(18:17):
in an estimated fifty eight million dollars. This makes him,
by far one of the highest paid politicians in the world,
accepting accepting you know, dictators or putin type figures, people
who set that number themselves, essentially by the state or
whatever the state pays them. Right. His estimated net worth
(18:37):
is said to be a hundred and eighty five million,
according to the publication People with Money. Some folks regard
him as a hero. They say he's a man who
helped secure the US position as the hedge them on
as the premier global superpower. Others, however, consider him an
irredeemable villain. Why we'll talk about that right after a
(18:58):
quick word from our sponsor. Here's where he gets crazy.
I get. While opinions on Kissinger may differ over the
course of his career, he has been implicated in numerous
activities that could be called at the very least illegal.
(19:21):
He's also been the subject of numerous conspiracy theories. Let's
just laundry lists some of the illegal actions that he
was directly involved in. Absolutely, Let's jump to nine and
seventy in Cambodia. Now, Henry Kissinger is considered, i guessed,
(19:43):
one of the one of the main architects of the
secret bombing that occurred there in Cambodia. And this, uh,
this bombing itself played a really important role in bringing
about the Khmer rouge that we've discussed before on this show,
certainly on YouTube as well, bringing them about as a
power there in Cambodia, as basically an unintended side effect
(20:04):
of taking out the power that already existed in that country,
attempting to eliminate the communist threat. Yeah, and let's just
go ahead and say this at the top here. Many
times we've seen over the history of the United States
that there is a major enemy that we will identify
an attempt to eliminate, or even if it's just ideological,
(20:27):
and then by militarily or through a coup eliminating that.
There are these unintended consequences that come about because of
the vacuum of power that exists in whatever that place is,
where some group or despotter person will come through and
just grasp that power. And that's what we see happening
in Cambodia. In Yep, at least forty people died as
(20:52):
a result of this, the bombing itself that he was
the architect, right, and he entered into the ceasefire negotiations
with North Vietnam. He was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize
for this, and his critics find that ironic, and reportedly
even Kissinger himself was like, I don't deserve this. Yeah, well,
(21:13):
especially when you think about the kamarusion and what happened
afterwards because because of them, millions of people were slaughtered. Yes, absolutely,
Let's go to October nine. He had this thing called
Madman theory, and mad Man Theory, now with the benefit
of retrospect, is weird and hilarious. It was essentially a
(21:37):
pr branding campaign whereby Kissinger wanted to make leaders of
communist nations think that Richard Nixon was insane. It was like, yeah,
like like larger life kind of crazy person. You don't
know is he going left, is he going right? Is
he launching a nuke. Uh this does it remind you
(21:58):
of something? Maybe? Uh maybe, But in this case it's
an act. So the I mean, in this case it is.
It is a calculated thing, and it was of great benefit.
Two in backdoor diplomatic conversations, because one thing a lot
of diplomats do is they say, look, we're like each other.
(22:20):
We're just we happen to be on different sides of
a conversation, just trying to do the best for the
people we represent. And you know, I get it, Like
I work directly with Nixon and he is nuts, So
I don't know what he's gonna do. I feel like
it's best for us to work this out between us
and quickly before he gets I mean, he might have
a bad day. He's got that football thing that has
(22:42):
the codes in it. It's crazy. So yeah, So it's
kind of like building report like you're you're as a diplomat,
you're sort of distancing yourself from the policy and saying like,
I'm here to help you, buddy. So this is effective.
He has something called Operation Giant Lance Nixon again. Nixon
(23:04):
sends eighteen b fifty two bombers with nuclear warheads to
the border of the Soviet Union the eastern border, and
they're hoping that this madman theory is believable enough that
the Soviet government will panic and say and pressure it's
proxy North Vietnam to accept US peace demands. And could
(23:28):
you say this is a brilliant sign up? Could you
say it's just it's ugly. Uh, it's a bully tactic.
But bully tactics kind of part for the course and
a lot of these things, especially for playing real politic.
And you know, and you're playing with nukes, and you're
playing with nukes, that's the problem. Yeah, And then in
the end, North Vietnam is victorious. And uh, you know,
(23:52):
in the Paris peace accords occur anyway, right, So one,
at least in the case of a note, at least
in the case of giant Lance, thousands and thousands of
people did not die. In nineteen seventy one, he supported
Pakistan as at massacre over a million people during what
(24:12):
was called the Bangladesh Liberation War. He also joked about
the massacre of Bengali Hindus and he sneered at Americans
who quote bleed for the dying Bengali's That's according to
Professor Gary Bass, who was writing in Political magazine about this.
Bass also says that Kissinger's policy was again oriented towards
(24:35):
what he saw as the greater good Pakistan. He might
say as some imperfections, including you know, massacreing millions of people,
but it's also not communist and it's good to have
that chess piece in play to to prevent the spread
of communism. Now, remember he's working closely with Richard Nixon
(24:56):
during a lot of this stuff, and he he ends
up being one of the primary reasons that Nixon begins
wire tapping everybody and recording everybody, and he ends up
being a part of Watergate, or he's involved at least,
but we can leave that for perhaps another episode. Um,
you should just know that he was involved in Watergate
(25:17):
and wire tapping. Yes, yeah, that definitely happened. He also
aided Indonesia under the brutal dictatorship of Sue Harto in
terms of financial aid and military funding. In seventy three,
he overthrew the democratically elected Salvador Allende and Chile, installing
(25:39):
the dictator Augusto Pinochet. Yeah, and remember he didn't do
it with his bare hands like that. But man, that
guy made it happen through you know, I guess engineering
is a good way to put it. Been he he
made it occur with his voice, right, He puppeteered it.
So he also supported Operation Condor. Operation Condor was a
(26:02):
campaign designed to get the secret police of fascist dictators
in South America to work together, supporting coups on non
fascist countries and facilitating drug dealing in the region. Has
a way to provide funds for these kinds of activities.
He was a He was a fan of Pino champ
(26:22):
because he was not a communist, and he was also
a fan of the Junta in Argentina at the time.
We also found, according to documents that were released in
that he signaled in the nineteen seventies to Argentina's right
wing military leaders something along the lines of, Hey, you know,
(26:44):
descent is just a real pill, isn't it. Guys. If
you need to crack down on those commies and those
pinkos and those hippies, well you know, we're we don't
really have a problem with that. We just want you
to know we don't have a problem with it. And
that became implicit support of what is called the Dirty War.
(27:07):
The Dirty War resulted in the deaths of more than
thirty thousand people. And one of the craziest things about
those documents that you mentioned Ben that were released in
is that there are accounts from several people, one of
whom was Robert Hill, who was the ambassador to Argentina,
and it's this conversation that had Kissinger had with a
(27:29):
foreign minister there um named Gazette And Okay, so apparently
this foreign minister was was really afraid that if they
were doing this dirty war, they were going to carry
this stuff out and they were going to continue doing it.
They were afraid that the United States would end up
cracking down on their activities and their government in general
(27:50):
as a way of fighting against these human rights violations
that were occurring. Right, And then Kissinger says to him,
I mean, this is paraphrasing, but you don't you don't
need to worry about that. That's not going to happen. Right.
So it is maybe a little bit hyperbolic, but it
was a breakfast that resulted in the death of thirty people,
(28:13):
but it wasn't really they were going to they were
probably going to make the dirty war happen anyway, Kissinger
in this case knew about it and did not stop
it and gave them sort of an atta boy. Yeah,
and let's go to one more example. In December of nine,
he approved the Indonesian invasion of East two more, resulting
(28:34):
in a hundred thousands to a hundred and eighty deaths
conflict related deaths. And conflict related death could be anything
from starvation or disease related to the horrors of war.
What we're saying is it doesn't have to be an
actual you know, gunshot to the head or death by bombing.
(28:56):
War brings death in many forms. Let's put that in perspective.
So we said a hundred to a hundred eighty thousand
people died in conflict related deaths. Three hundred thousand people
were forced to relocate. Maybe not the biggest number until
you consider the total population of the country at the time. Yeah,
(29:17):
only six two human beings. So that's over half of
the people were relocated. And add on to that the
number of people who died. That's a that's a rough
move there. This tally of massive death that has been
indirectly attributed to Kissinger seems it seems like quite a
(29:40):
tab to add up over time, you know, what I mean.
And again there are a lot of people who would say,
now hold on and we'll get to them after a
word from our sponsor. Now hold on, it's fanta say, hey,
governments are big, and we need to avoid the lazy
(30:03):
fallacy of blame in all these events on a single man.
He might have had his hands tied, he might have
not been aware that this was all happening at all. Right, right,
you know it is true. Um, we we have been
pretty rough on Kissinger already, saying that he engineered all
these things, basically blaming him for all these deaths. Um.
(30:25):
I don't know. Maybe that really isn't all that fair.
I mean, maybe here's the problem, Matt. Experts, including people
who applaud Kissinger's actions, disagree with the idea that he
was unaware of these things. Christopher Hitchens, he was recognized
for a number of other things. He's political, he's uh,
(30:46):
he was in his time a huge proponent of atheism
and so on. Right, that may be one of the
ways he's best known today. Um, quite hilarious in his
digs of other people. Yeah, con tankerous, Yeah, and and
also hated or loved essentially absolutely, he had no chill.
(31:07):
Christ Higins had no chill, one way or the other.
He wrote a book called The Trial of Henry Kissinger,
and in this book he says the degree of micromanagement
revealed in Kissinger's memoirs forbids the idea that anything of
importance took place without his knowledge or permission of nothing.
Is this more true than his own individual involvement in
(31:28):
the bombing of Neutral Cambodia. And then so that's that's
one of the many arguments. In full disclosure. Hitchens is
not a fan of Kissinger. Then it's pretty it's pretty
obvious in the way he writes about him. But even
people who are like, you know, I gotta break a
few eggs, that's how Jill political outlets work. Even there,
(31:48):
they will say that Kissinger did this, It didn't just
happen when he was off on vacation on a Friday.
According to a guy named Greg Grandin, he's a professor
of history at New York Universe. This means that quote
a back of the envelope count would attribute Tree maybe
four million deaths to Kissing his actions, but that number
(32:08):
probably undercounts his victims. Yikes. Yeah, that's a history. A
history professor at New York University saying that you should
probably attribute three or four million deaths to this man.
And this doesn't even touch on the conspiracy theories. Oh no,
my god. Again, when you are a part of all
(32:30):
of these different organizations, when you're essentially the power behind
the government, or at least um you know, if if
it's a Disney movie, he's who are I forget all
the main like Jaffar type characters, but the the counselor
that sits next to the king, that whispers dark things
(32:50):
into the king or queen's ear. I mean, that's essentially
that's that's really whittling it down. But that's a lot
of what he ends up doing, whispering to other people
in power who make the decisions. I think when you're
when you have that position, you are going to be
at least targeted by people who see conspiracies, if not
(33:11):
actually taking part in conspiracies. Absolutely well well said and
well put. So as as you mentioned, this is due
to his membership and these enormously influential bodies. He's a
member of the Bohemian Growth, a member of the Council
on Foreign Relations, a member of the Builderberg Group, a
member of the Aspen Institute, a participant in the Trilateral Commission.
(33:34):
We have episodes on pretty much all of those, except,
I believe, the Aspen Institute. We also need to mention
that the racist and anti Semitic conspiracy theories come into
play here too. They harp on Kissinger due to his
Jewish backgrounds, and then you'll you'll read, you know, the
these sorts of things, saying that he is a key
(33:55):
player in some sort of secretive Jewish cabal. This gets
tied into those allegations of international banking cartels and so on.
But while the Jewish conspiracy claptrap has been thoroughly and
thankfully debunked, there is bad news here. The bad news
is that banking cartel conspiracies do have sand Some of
them are very very very true, and it is highly
(34:18):
likely that Henry Kissinger ran into something like banking led
conspiracies during his career. I mean he did want to
be an accountant. Oh wow, I didn't even think about that.
I didn't think we would have one that goes into
one that hinges on his accounting paths. I mean, that's
a very good point, man. So he is. He has
(34:41):
been both a participant in genuine conspiracies and subject to
uh speculation on other conspiracy theories. Right, and for a
lot of people, the big question is, at what point
do these policies become war himes, the conspiracies that he
(35:01):
created and enacted. At what point did they go beyond
um being secretive for the purpose of national security and
become something that you should prosecute someone for? And what
really is the difference between those two things? Right? Where
is the line? Where is the line? Does a guy
named Mario del Pero, a professor of international history and
(35:22):
author of the Eccentric Realist Henry Kissinger in the Shaping
of American Foreign Policy? He reacts in a different way.
He throws a little a little cold water on this.
He says, I am afraid that, by the standards some
of his critics have applied to Kissinger, numerous post US
statesmen could be accused of crimes against humanity. And that
(35:44):
applies perhaps to the vast majority of the leaders of
modern great powers. Very good point, right, Like, at some point,
if you're in charge of a country, are you responsible
for every bad thing that country does? Oh? Gosh, it's true.
That's kind of a tough truth. I guess we have
to face a little bit here, right, Absolutely, we have
(36:07):
to face it head on. Let's also let's also continue
just a little bit because del Pero doesn't believe that
Henry Kissinger was very good at his job. To be honest,
he says, he's not some sort of arch manipulator. He
says Kissinger was simplistic, binary even uninformed. During his tenure,
he was dogmatic, he adhered to the zero sum game
(36:30):
of international politics. And then del Pero says, in short,
he wasn't a war criminal. He wasn't a very deep
or sophisticated thinker. He rarely challenged the intellectual vogues or
fads of the time, and once in government, he displayed
a certain intellectual laziness. Wow, that's interesting. It's an interesting take, right,
(36:52):
that's saying, that's saying. Look, the argument here is almost
like if he's a war criminal, everyone else is. And
also the hype's not real. He wasn't that good at
what he did. Yeah, he wasn't as big a part
of any of this. It's I I wonder about the
motivation there, because it's certainly not a view that is
(37:16):
or it's not a view of Kissinger that you see
very often, right again, like we kind of laid it
out at the top there, he's a lot of times
seen as this war criminal or you know, a hero
and just being a lazy government guy that's just sitting
around not doing much, being uninformed. Yeah, you don't hear
(37:37):
that very often. I was thinking about the two thousand
sixteen Democratic debates, just really quick side here. Um it
was when oh, I hope I'm not getting this wrong.
I believe it was Hillary Clinton And at least it
was a discussion between the moderator, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders,
and they were discussing Henry Kissinger, and uh, Hillary Clinton
(38:02):
was a supporter of Kissinger. And at some point it's
brought up that yes, she said, yes, I'll take the
advice essentially, or the counsel of Henry Kissinger. You know,
I believe him to be very informed and you know,
his opinion I value essentially. And then Bernie Sanders said
the opposite, like, no, absolutely, and laid out some of
(38:24):
the war crimes things at least in very very brief ways,
and just said no, I absolutely won't take advice from
this person. And they hadn't a really fairly, fairly brief
but interesting exchange about him on the stage, Uh at
a debate like that, Yeah, Kissinger is seeing as a
(38:46):
tutor of Clinton. Yeah, which I think would surprise some
people who are more on the conservative side, because you know,
you were so politics suffers from that false dichotomy here
in the US, and people would say, Okay, this guy
did a bunch of stuff under the Richard Nixon administration,
(39:11):
So why is he advising? Why is he a counselor
to Hillary Clinton? And this is a point where you know,
you have to ask yourself fingers on a hand, right, Yeah? Well,
and and Hillary Clinton also makes a very rational point here,
which is this, this man has such a wealth of
(39:33):
experience in dealing with foreign powers as well as the
United States as a power. Why would you not listen
to him? Just from an experienced perspective? I mean, that
does seem like a rational point. The question then becomes
one of not just experience, but of accomplishment success or
lack thereof sure and alignment and like like, are you
(39:56):
going to align yourselves with that kind of power? I
guess um if you're running for something like the officer
president anyway, I just wanted to throw that out there
right now. Regardless again of what we may or may
not think about Henry Kissinger's individuals. Judges from Argentina, Chile, France,
and Spain are still seeking his testimony regarding crimes committed
(40:19):
by US client regimes in South America in the nineteen seventies,
those US backed dictatorships we mentioned earlier. When he was
in London in April of two thousand one, British activists
sought his arrest on charges related to the Vietnam War.
Even in the US, he was the subject of a
civil suit, but by the family of chilean military chief
(40:39):
murdered in the seventies as part of the U s
attempt to block the election of Salvadora. In day now,
some people doubtlessly see the criticism of Henry Kissinger as
unfounded or even offensive, and calling someone a war criminal
is a very heavy charge. It's a term that's actually
rarely you today in political discourse because hauling someone a
(41:04):
war criminal automatically implies that they have killed massive amounts
of people through either their direct actions or their policy decisions.
Well yeah, because then it becomes an argument of is
that a war crime? Even though they killed all these people,
is that a war crime? Did they do it in
a way that would constitute that right exactly? And we
(41:25):
have tons of international law on that very subject. However,
it is true that Kissinger simply cannot travel to certain
countries for fear of arrest. And this is also something
in which he is not unique amongst various various former
politicians and bureaucrats. As we record today's episode, Henry Kissinger
(41:49):
is alive. He is seven years old. He will likely
never be prosecuted for his actions. Uh, and some argue
that he should not be, as the US is historically
opposed to any sort of international legal action against serving
or former US politicians. This is where this is where
something called the American Service Members Protection Act of two
(42:10):
thousand two comes into play. It Essentially, it's a law
that might be hilarious or terrifying to some of us
listening outside of the US. It's a law in the
United States that authorizes the use of military force to
liberate any American or citizen of the U S Allied
country being held in the International Criminal Court that's located
(42:32):
in the Hague. This has been called the Hague Invasion clause.
People in Europe, particularly in the Netherlands, obviously hate this idea.
The law provides for the withdrawal of US military assistance
from countries that agree with the i c C Treaty.
It restricts US participation in U N peacekeeping unless the
(42:52):
US is immune from prosecution. So and and there's a
provision that says the President can change his or her
mind on this whenever due to national interest. Wow wow. So, if,
for instance, Paul's dodgy international past catches up with him
and he is he is arrested and taken to the
(43:15):
International Criminal Court, the US has law in the books
that says this country can send an invasion force to
physically rescue him and extricate him from Europe. Well, Paul,
whatever you did, um, you know, I'm sure it's um
a much more three dimensional thing that occurred. There are
(43:36):
reasons behind it, the reasons you did it. But you know,
in the end, we're gonna get your back, buddy. And
that also is a terrible example, because Paul is hero
he is and he is known as a gem domestically
and abroad. But one thing is for sure, Henry Kissinger
(43:59):
did cons fre to do numerous things that were at
the very very least unethical dirty pool. He actively provably
created and participated in a number of conspiracies to advance
what he saw as the greater good for the US
on a global stage. That is true. It's not a theory,
(44:20):
that's not a person's opinion. That is a fact. The
big question is was it all worth it? Mm hmm, Well,
we we're gonna, I guess figure that out in the
next hundred years. Um. Just really looking back at it,
I think and generally when someone passes, I think the
(44:42):
the harsh realities of a person's life can be viewed
I guess more fully at least by by society, by history,
and we can actually talk about it in a way
that we couldn't when they were still living. Um. So
I have a feeling, you know, unfortunate for Henry Kissinger.
Probably pretty soon he won't be with us, and maybe
(45:06):
we'll get a little more light shed on exactly what happened.
Perhaps perhaps perhaps, or it'll go to the grave with him,
maybe or it will go to the grave. We want
to know what you think. Is it true that these
sorts of things occur and do serve a greater good
or is that an oversimplification you know what I mean?
(45:30):
Was Kissinger making the best, if harsh, political decisions for
the time or was he blinded by ideology or something else.
Let us know. You can find us on Facebook, you
can find us on Instagram, you can find us on Twitter.
We especially enjoy shouting out Here's where it Gets Crazy,
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(45:52):
the business. We also, by the way, oh someone a
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Happy birthday Cat. Your birthday was. It was a little
while ago, but we we we got around to get
in the shout out there sort of better late than never. Yes,
happy birthday to you Cat. And if you want to
(46:13):
call in, you might get on the show. If you
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comment about this episode or another, you can give us
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(46:35):
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(47:13):
they Don't Want You to Know is a production of
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From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Welcome back
(00:24):
to the show. My name is Matt. Noel is not here,
but we'll be returning soon. They call me Ben. We
are joined as always with our super producer Paul mission
controled decade. Most importantly, you are you. You are here,
and that makes this stuff they don't want you to
know this. We've been doing this check in at the
beginning of the show. We hope that you check in
(00:46):
as well when you before you dive into the strange, bizarre,
and sometimes terrifying things we explore here. Yeah. So Matt
good up, combs down, two thumbs up. You just released
a show. Oh yeah I did, Yes, I didn't. I
assisted in the production slash creation of a show called
(01:08):
Noble Blood that is now available. It's number three on
the charts right now on iTunes. Congratulations, Yeah, it's all.
It's Aaron Mackey and Dana Schwartz, It's and Trevor Young. Congratulations. Uh, Paul,
how are you doing out there? Got a thumbs up
thumbs up at a stylish angle from Mission Control. I
want to bring this up before we get too deep
(01:29):
into this. I just finished Mr. Robot season three finally,
and you know, we have a bit of a history
with that show. We did a couple of episodes surrounding
season two. I believe um and have masks we do show.
I have one sitting in my room and when I
watched the show, I always put it on, which is current?
I don't know. Is that too weird? No, that's awesome,
that's great, Okay, cool. I just had to bring that up.
(01:51):
I was just excited that the next one is supposedly
coming out this year. Yes, I had heard, I had heard,
No that they'll still have Robby Malick. I imagine, I
certainly hope. So what we're going to talk about maybe
a sensitive subject to some people who find themselves politically partisan,
right at least in the in the Western sense, And
(02:13):
we want to hear your opinions. So, as always, if
there's something that you want to tell us, and you're
not near a keyboard at the moment, just pause this episode.
We'll wait for you and call us directly. Yes, call
our number. It is one h three three st d
w y t K. What I love about this conversation
with Mr Robot is that we're we're kind of foreshadowing
(02:36):
something that will come into play later, right, yeah, without
fully saying it right right. And there's there's a character
within the univeral they're a couple, but there's one in
particular in the universe of Mr Robot that I find
that maybe you will too, has some similarities to our
guest of honor, our person of interest. There we go,
(03:01):
There we go? Are p o I? Today Mrs Robot
concerns shadowy forces working in secret, conspiring right, the power
behind the throne. And it's often said in fiction and
nonfiction alike that the true power of a nation at
kingdom or an empire isn't usually the face. It's often
(03:22):
not the person on the throne. It's the people behind
that person. The folks you see standing silently behind a king,
a prime minister, or a president as they deliver a
speech they probably did not write. Today's episode is about
one such character, one of the most influential people in
the history of modern US politics, Henry Kissinger. So let's
(03:45):
go to the beginning. Henry Kissinger was born Hinz Alfred
Kissinger on May nineteen twenty three in a place called First, Germany.
He was one of two sons born to Paula Stern
Kissinger and Louis Kissinger. Now, his father was a teacher,
and uh, you know, there was this group of people
(04:07):
that came to power called the Nazis, and when that occurred,
he lost his job in his entire career. You know.
The Nazis. Of course, we're carrying out the orders of
Mr Adolf hitler Um and they, of course began prosecuting
Jewish people throughout Germany and countries all surrounding Germany. And uh,
the Kissingers were in fact Jewish, and their family, Uh,
(04:29):
I guess the larger families saw saw the effects of
this firsthand. Now, of course, Henry was just a little
boy at the time, and he's he seemed to be
a better student, at least to his parents and to
the people around him. He knows, he's a better student
than perhaps an athlete or you know, someone who is
going to pursue some kind of physical career. And you know,
(04:51):
as the the anti Semitism was increasing there in Germany
where they were living, the whole family decided, we have
to get out of here, and in nineteen thirty eight
they ended up going to England, and then not long
after that they ended up going to the United States,
which was a prescient move for any student of history.
The family. Once they reached the U. S they ended
(05:13):
up settling in New York City, which you may remember
from several Salcy commercials. Kissinger completed high school there and
began taking night classes at City College with the intention
of becoming an accountant a c P. A. Oh on
what small things does history hinge? You know what I mean?
It could have gone a very different way. Did you
(05:34):
imagine him as a c P. A We'll see. I
wouldn't hear what you think about that? Yeah, So he
worked his way through college. He went to a factory
during the day and then he would go to class.
During World War Two, he joined the military and served
in Germany. He was working in army intelligence. It is
a bit odd, right because he's from Germany. But he
went to the United States and now he's going back
(05:55):
to Germany to fight for the Americans or with you know,
as an American. Well that that is uh, you know,
it seems counterintuitive, but it happens a lot. So I've
got a couple of friends whose families were originally from
Iran and I live in the US, but because they
(06:16):
spoke Farsie, they got jobs as translators, and yeah, they
ended up, you know, going back to the Middle East.
I'm assuming I believe that they are US based, but
I can't understand just yeah, no, of course, we can't
say anymore. I understand understand that well. And this is
a it's a big deal here. So even even though
(06:39):
he was very young at the time when his family left,
or you know, somewhat young when when the family left Germany,
he still experienced what was occurring in his home country.
And then to leave and then get to go back
and serve in the military for a country that's going
to essentially attempt to liberate the country from which you've lad,
(07:00):
that's a big deal. Oh, the biggest, are you kidding? Yes?
He also it's something you and I mentioned off air
met He also didn't sit idly by during his time
in the service, right, he actually saw combat. Yeah, he
he got to experience the Battle of the Bulge firsthand.
And if you don't know much about that, we won't
(07:21):
go into it, but I would say, look it up. Uh,
it's it was a German offensive that occurred in the West,
and history describes it as quote the deadliest and most
desperate battle of the war in the West and involved
three armies, three German armies that essentially we're we're attacking
over the course of quite a while. And again there's
(07:44):
his historian, his biographer, um Ferguson Nile Ferguson, I believe
it is his name. He describes it as Henry Kissinger
experienced heavy shelling firsthand. And again these are these are
big experiences for a um, a growing person, you know,
someone who's coming into their own having this kind of
(08:05):
thing occurred to him. And that's not all that happened
during the war, right. He also had the stark and terrifying,
heartbreaking revelation that all of his family members that stayed
in Germany were dead. He witnessed the horrors of the Holocaust.
He was present during the liberation of a concentration camp,
(08:26):
and following the war he remained in Europe as an
instructor at a place called the European Command Intelligence School,
also in Germany, and then he returns to the US.
He goes to Harvard and en rolls there and he
graduated in the class of nineteen fifty and he had
a degree in government. Uh. Pretty interesting stuff there, right,
(08:50):
So he's changing course quite a bit from those original
aspirations of becoming an accountant. Um again with these experiences
that are changing him. He U. He continued to study
as a graduate student and ended up earning a master's
degree in nineteen fifty two and then eventually his PhD
in fifty four. And he was also teaching at the
Harvard University. And here's here's an important note. So we
(09:14):
always have to be very careful when attempting to ascribe
personal motives to uh to an individual. And we we
know that something happened, something fundamentally changed his life during
his experiences in World War Two. He became someone with
(09:35):
a mission. We like the historians research have conjectured here
on what what his revelatory moments were, and those are
pretty good guesses. But regardless of what specific instance it
was that was the big change. Post war, he is
(09:55):
no longer interested in accounting, or perhaps if we want
to acts a poetic, he's concerned with a different sort
of accounting. Oh yes, he's concerned with what he sees
as moral accounting, right, preventing, oddly enough, the horrors of
World War Two, fighting for what he and he's alive
(10:17):
today fighting for what he would he is a greater good.
And this brings him to his career in academia. Right. So,
as you mentioned, he earned his PhD in nineteen fifty four.
Between nineteen fifty two and nineteen sixty nine, he directed
the Harvard International Seminar. This was a study organization in
(10:39):
which the advanced students, along with a professor, conduct research
and contribute to discussions. It's sort of a nascent think tank,
which happens a lot in grad schools. And in this
kind of environment and position lets him start making relationships
that he would eventually use later on in his career, right, right,
(11:00):
And and it may surprise some of us to learn
just how much policy here in the United States is
written by professors in academic roles. You know, it starts
with proposals, it starts with research, right and studies, or
it starts with something like ALEC wherein that's that's capital
(11:21):
A capital L, capital E, capital C. It's a process
through which corporations dictate policy for better or worse. I'm
just saying it doesn't. Because a politician is a fan
of something doesn't mean they actually wrote it anymore than
a prime minister president giving a speech means they actually
wrote it. Ultimately, we're going to learn here that power,
(11:43):
many times and in many ways is developed through personal
relationships more than a lot of other ways. Right, absolutely, absolutely,
which is a failure of the human species because it
lessens the impact of meritocracy. But that's a whole other thing.
(12:05):
It's a whole other bag of badgers here. The point
is for this part, this is where Kissinger gets his
taste of being a power behind the throne. He's visited
by tons of international figures that, as you said, Matt,
he'll later deal with in a governmental capacity. He joins
the Council on Foreign Relations, and he publishes something called
Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, and this gets him some
(12:27):
bona fide, some street cred. He is now seen as
a leading expert on international relations and national defense policy.
And then he gets involved with the Rockefellers. Oh yeah,
he has eighteen months of working with this thing called
the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. He actually directed it in nineteen fifties,
(12:48):
six and I it had it had this special Studies project. Okay,
now just listen to this. It's a program developed to
investigate possible domestic and international problems. Okay, I I hear
what you're saying to me. Investigate possible domestic and international problems.
Then in nineteen fifty seven, he became a lecturer at Harvard.
(13:09):
He's um, you know, talking to to the students like
he's changing or or perhaps influencing the way students are thinking.
And eventually he gets promoted to a professor in nineteen
sixty two, and again he's able to teach others some
of the things that he's learning and the ways he's
viewing the world already. Right. And also during this time
(13:32):
he joins other international and domestic organizations and think tanks.
He's at the National Security Council, the Arms Controlled Disarmament Agency,
and the RAND Corporation. While dude, they just kind of
jump in all the things we've mentioned thus far that
he's joining up Council and Foreign Relation Relations, the RAND Corporation.
We've talked about a lot of these, right, Yes, they
(13:54):
are the source of what could plausibly be called a
lot of real conspiracies not theories, so we'll just laundry
list real quick. The rest of the broad strokes of
his career. So he's working full time at Harvard from
sixty two to sixty five, and sixty five he becomes
a consultant to the State Department. He's their Vietnam consultant
(14:16):
from sixty five to nineteen sixty seven. He visits Vietnam
several times. Most of nineteen sixty eight he was working
as a campaign guru for then Governor Nelson Rockefeller, who
was running for the Republican nomination for the presidency against
Richard Nixon yep, yep, against Richie Nicks himself. And despite
(14:40):
the fact that Nixon did defeat Rockefeller, Rockefeller contacted Nixon
was like, hey, we don't know exactly. What they said
was something along the lines of like, hey, good game, bro.
By the way, uh, you know, you had some real
hustle out there. I want to give a shout out
to my boy, h k uh. Put him on the team,
get him off the bench. And that's how Kissinger ended
(15:01):
up heading the National Security Council. Kissinger already had a
plan laid out. He did not like the U s
foreign policy toward the U s s R. The Soviet Union.
He thought that they had been too nice. Essentially, they
have been kid gloves. They had not been consistent, and
as we know, consistency is a huge deal in any
(15:23):
international relationship. So he said, look, let's be honest. The
Soviet Union, they're the big batties. There are main rival
there are main opponents. But you gotta respect him, you
know what I mean, That's what he was. He was
kind of in the same way. He said, look, take
him seriously. It's dangerous to nuclear power. And one of
(15:43):
his big early successes was the institution of de Tompte,
which is easy relationships, easing tensions, saying, look, we both
know the lay of the chessboard here. We're probably never
going to be friends, but we should communicate and we
(16:04):
should do our best not to blow up the world
while we fight with our nuclear weapons. Some would say
that's pretty smart. That's a good way to to look
at things. Let's not blow each other up. We get it,
we know who we are. I can I understand that. Yeah,
And that's that's a very clear cut thing, right, and
(16:26):
it's and it's a powerful thing, even even in a
microcosmic level. Some of us may have had that occur
in our personal lives, yeah, certainly, but it is far
more nuanced than that. Right in order like that, if
that's the ideal, or that's the baseline goal, let's not
blow each other up. We understand who we are underneath
(16:48):
that is just oh wasps, just a swarm of wasps
for some reason. Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely. So. One of
the things he does is the successful agreement on something
called SALT or Strategic Arms Limitations treaty, the Soviet Union
(17:08):
and the US say okay, we're gonna limit the number
of nuclear weapons we have. We're not going to get
rid of them ever, because we both know who we are.
But you know we we promised not to have millions
of them, because that's just egregious. And when they when
they signed this agreement, he was seeing as someone again
(17:30):
working for the greater good, and the greater good being
avoiding nuclear annihilation or a nuclear war. And now you
will hear people argue whether he is a hero or
a villain. He used to speak about once a year
here in Georgia, and I believe he hasn't done that
(17:51):
for a number of years. But you could go visit
him here him speak at different places, and he is
treated very much as an elder statesman, a policy emperor,
you know, a king behind the throne. But regardless of
what you might think of his work, there is no
arguing that he has been anything other than massively successful
in his personal life. Between January and January, he pulled
(18:17):
in an estimated fifty eight million dollars. This makes him,
by far one of the highest paid politicians in the world,
accepting accepting you know, dictators or putin type figures, people
who set that number themselves, essentially by the state or
whatever the state pays them. Right. His estimated net worth
(18:37):
is said to be a hundred and eighty five million,
according to the publication People with Money. Some folks regard
him as a hero. They say he's a man who
helped secure the US position as the hedge them on
as the premier global superpower. Others, however, consider him an
irredeemable villain. Why we'll talk about that right after a
(18:58):
quick word from our sponsor. Here's where he gets crazy.
I get. While opinions on Kissinger may differ over the
course of his career, he has been implicated in numerous
activities that could be called at the very least illegal.
(19:21):
He's also been the subject of numerous conspiracy theories. Let's
just laundry lists some of the illegal actions that he
was directly involved in. Absolutely, Let's jump to nine and
seventy in Cambodia. Now, Henry Kissinger is considered, i guessed,
(19:43):
one of the one of the main architects of the
secret bombing that occurred there in Cambodia. And this, uh,
this bombing itself played a really important role in bringing
about the Khmer rouge that we've discussed before on this show,
certainly on YouTube as well, bringing them about as a
power there in Cambodia, as basically an unintended side effect
(20:04):
of taking out the power that already existed in that country,
attempting to eliminate the communist threat. Yeah, and let's just
go ahead and say this at the top here. Many
times we've seen over the history of the United States
that there is a major enemy that we will identify
an attempt to eliminate, or even if it's just ideological,
(20:27):
and then by militarily or through a coup eliminating that.
There are these unintended consequences that come about because of
the vacuum of power that exists in whatever that place is,
where some group or despotter person will come through and
just grasp that power. And that's what we see happening
in Cambodia. In Yep, at least forty people died as
(20:52):
a result of this, the bombing itself that he was
the architect, right, and he entered into the ceasefire negotiations
with North Vietnam. He was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize
for this, and his critics find that ironic, and reportedly
even Kissinger himself was like, I don't deserve this. Yeah, well,
(21:13):
especially when you think about the kamarusion and what happened
afterwards because because of them, millions of people were slaughtered. Yes, absolutely,
Let's go to October nine. He had this thing called
Madman theory, and mad Man Theory, now with the benefit
of retrospect, is weird and hilarious. It was essentially a
(21:37):
pr branding campaign whereby Kissinger wanted to make leaders of
communist nations think that Richard Nixon was insane. It was like, yeah,
like like larger life kind of crazy person. You don't
know is he going left, is he going right? Is
he launching a nuke. Uh this does it remind you
(21:58):
of something? Maybe? Uh maybe, But in this case it's
an act. So the I mean, in this case it is.
It is a calculated thing, and it was of great benefit.
Two in backdoor diplomatic conversations, because one thing a lot
of diplomats do is they say, look, we're like each other.
(22:20):
We're just we happen to be on different sides of
a conversation, just trying to do the best for the
people we represent. And you know, I get it, Like
I work directly with Nixon and he is nuts, So
I don't know what he's gonna do. I feel like
it's best for us to work this out between us
and quickly before he gets I mean, he might have
a bad day. He's got that football thing that has
(22:42):
the codes in it. It's crazy. So yeah, So it's
kind of like building report like you're you're as a diplomat,
you're sort of distancing yourself from the policy and saying like,
I'm here to help you, buddy. So this is effective.
He has something called Operation Giant Lance Nixon again. Nixon
(23:04):
sends eighteen b fifty two bombers with nuclear warheads to
the border of the Soviet Union the eastern border, and
they're hoping that this madman theory is believable enough that
the Soviet government will panic and say and pressure it's
proxy North Vietnam to accept US peace demands. And could
(23:28):
you say this is a brilliant sign up? Could you
say it's just it's ugly. Uh, it's a bully tactic.
But bully tactics kind of part for the course and
a lot of these things, especially for playing real politic.
And you know, and you're playing with nukes, and you're
playing with nukes, that's the problem. Yeah, And then in
the end, North Vietnam is victorious. And uh, you know,
(23:52):
in the Paris peace accords occur anyway, right, So one,
at least in the case of a note, at least
in the case of giant Lance, thousands and thousands of
people did not die. In nineteen seventy one, he supported
Pakistan as at massacre over a million people during what
(24:12):
was called the Bangladesh Liberation War. He also joked about
the massacre of Bengali Hindus and he sneered at Americans
who quote bleed for the dying Bengali's That's according to
Professor Gary Bass, who was writing in Political magazine about this.
Bass also says that Kissinger's policy was again oriented towards
(24:35):
what he saw as the greater good Pakistan. He might
say as some imperfections, including you know, massacreing millions of people,
but it's also not communist and it's good to have
that chess piece in play to to prevent the spread
of communism. Now, remember he's working closely with Richard Nixon
(24:56):
during a lot of this stuff, and he he ends
up being one of the primary reasons that Nixon begins
wire tapping everybody and recording everybody, and he ends up
being a part of Watergate, or he's involved at least,
but we can leave that for perhaps another episode. Um,
you should just know that he was involved in Watergate
(25:17):
and wire tapping. Yes, yeah, that definitely happened. He also
aided Indonesia under the brutal dictatorship of Sue Harto in
terms of financial aid and military funding. In seventy three,
he overthrew the democratically elected Salvador Allende and Chile, installing
(25:39):
the dictator Augusto Pinochet. Yeah, and remember he didn't do
it with his bare hands like that. But man, that
guy made it happen through you know, I guess engineering
is a good way to put it. Been he he
made it occur with his voice, right, He puppeteered it.
So he also supported Operation Condor. Operation Condor was a
(26:02):
campaign designed to get the secret police of fascist dictators
in South America to work together, supporting coups on non
fascist countries and facilitating drug dealing in the region. Has
a way to provide funds for these kinds of activities.
He was a He was a fan of Pino champ
(26:22):
because he was not a communist, and he was also
a fan of the Junta in Argentina at the time.
We also found, according to documents that were released in
that he signaled in the nineteen seventies to Argentina's right
wing military leaders something along the lines of, Hey, you know,
(26:44):
descent is just a real pill, isn't it. Guys. If
you need to crack down on those commies and those
pinkos and those hippies, well you know, we're we don't
really have a problem with that. We just want you
to know we don't have a problem with it. And
that became implicit support of what is called the Dirty War.
(27:07):
The Dirty War resulted in the deaths of more than
thirty thousand people. And one of the craziest things about
those documents that you mentioned Ben that were released in
is that there are accounts from several people, one of
whom was Robert Hill, who was the ambassador to Argentina,
and it's this conversation that had Kissinger had with a
(27:29):
foreign minister there um named Gazette And Okay, so apparently
this foreign minister was was really afraid that if they
were doing this dirty war, they were going to carry
this stuff out and they were going to continue doing it.
They were afraid that the United States would end up
cracking down on their activities and their government in general
(27:50):
as a way of fighting against these human rights violations
that were occurring. Right, And then Kissinger says to him,
I mean, this is paraphrasing, but you don't you don't
need to worry about that. That's not going to happen. Right.
So it is maybe a little bit hyperbolic, but it
was a breakfast that resulted in the death of thirty people,
(28:13):
but it wasn't really they were going to they were
probably going to make the dirty war happen anyway, Kissinger
in this case knew about it and did not stop
it and gave them sort of an atta boy. Yeah,
and let's go to one more example. In December of nine,
he approved the Indonesian invasion of East two more, resulting
(28:34):
in a hundred thousands to a hundred and eighty deaths
conflict related deaths. And conflict related death could be anything
from starvation or disease related to the horrors of war.
What we're saying is it doesn't have to be an
actual you know, gunshot to the head or death by bombing.
(28:56):
War brings death in many forms. Let's put that in perspective.
So we said a hundred to a hundred eighty thousand
people died in conflict related deaths. Three hundred thousand people
were forced to relocate. Maybe not the biggest number until
you consider the total population of the country at the time. Yeah,
(29:17):
only six two human beings. So that's over half of
the people were relocated. And add on to that the
number of people who died. That's a that's a rough
move there. This tally of massive death that has been
indirectly attributed to Kissinger seems it seems like quite a
(29:40):
tab to add up over time, you know, what I mean.
And again there are a lot of people who would say,
now hold on and we'll get to them after a
word from our sponsor. Now hold on, it's fanta say, hey,
governments are big, and we need to avoid the lazy
(30:03):
fallacy of blame in all these events on a single man.
He might have had his hands tied, he might have
not been aware that this was all happening at all. Right, right,
you know it is true. Um, we we have been
pretty rough on Kissinger already, saying that he engineered all
these things, basically blaming him for all these deaths. Um.
(30:25):
I don't know. Maybe that really isn't all that fair.
I mean, maybe here's the problem, Matt. Experts, including people
who applaud Kissinger's actions, disagree with the idea that he
was unaware of these things. Christopher Hitchens, he was recognized
for a number of other things. He's political, he's uh,
(30:46):
he was in his time a huge proponent of atheism
and so on. Right, that may be one of the
ways he's best known today. Um, quite hilarious in his
digs of other people. Yeah, con tankerous, Yeah, and and
also hated or loved essentially absolutely, he had no chill.
(31:07):
Christ Higins had no chill, one way or the other.
He wrote a book called The Trial of Henry Kissinger,
and in this book he says the degree of micromanagement
revealed in Kissinger's memoirs forbids the idea that anything of
importance took place without his knowledge or permission of nothing.
Is this more true than his own individual involvement in
(31:28):
the bombing of Neutral Cambodia. And then so that's that's
one of the many arguments. In full disclosure. Hitchens is
not a fan of Kissinger. Then it's pretty it's pretty
obvious in the way he writes about him. But even
people who are like, you know, I gotta break a
few eggs, that's how Jill political outlets work. Even there,
(31:48):
they will say that Kissinger did this, It didn't just
happen when he was off on vacation on a Friday.
According to a guy named Greg Grandin, he's a professor
of history at New York Universe. This means that quote
a back of the envelope count would attribute Tree maybe
four million deaths to Kissing his actions, but that number
(32:08):
probably undercounts his victims. Yikes. Yeah, that's a history. A
history professor at New York University saying that you should
probably attribute three or four million deaths to this man.
And this doesn't even touch on the conspiracy theories. Oh no,
my god. Again, when you are a part of all
(32:30):
of these different organizations, when you're essentially the power behind
the government, or at least um you know, if if
it's a Disney movie, he's who are I forget all
the main like Jaffar type characters, but the the counselor
that sits next to the king, that whispers dark things
(32:50):
into the king or queen's ear. I mean, that's essentially
that's that's really whittling it down. But that's a lot
of what he ends up doing, whispering to other people
in power who make the decisions. I think when you're
when you have that position, you are going to be
at least targeted by people who see conspiracies, if not
(33:11):
actually taking part in conspiracies. Absolutely well well said and
well put. So as as you mentioned, this is due
to his membership and these enormously influential bodies. He's a
member of the Bohemian Growth, a member of the Council
on Foreign Relations, a member of the Builderberg Group, a
member of the Aspen Institute, a participant in the Trilateral Commission.
(33:34):
We have episodes on pretty much all of those, except,
I believe, the Aspen Institute. We also need to mention
that the racist and anti Semitic conspiracy theories come into
play here too. They harp on Kissinger due to his
Jewish backgrounds, and then you'll you'll read, you know, the
these sorts of things, saying that he is a key
(33:55):
player in some sort of secretive Jewish cabal. This gets
tied into those allegations of international banking cartels and so on.
But while the Jewish conspiracy claptrap has been thoroughly and
thankfully debunked, there is bad news here. The bad news
is that banking cartel conspiracies do have sand Some of
them are very very very true, and it is highly
(34:18):
likely that Henry Kissinger ran into something like banking led
conspiracies during his career. I mean he did want to
be an accountant. Oh wow, I didn't even think about that.
I didn't think we would have one that goes into
one that hinges on his accounting paths. I mean, that's
a very good point, man. So he is. He has
(34:41):
been both a participant in genuine conspiracies and subject to
uh speculation on other conspiracy theories. Right, and for a
lot of people, the big question is, at what point
do these policies become war himes, the conspiracies that he
(35:01):
created and enacted. At what point did they go beyond
um being secretive for the purpose of national security and
become something that you should prosecute someone for? And what
really is the difference between those two things? Right? Where
is the line? Where is the line? Does a guy
named Mario del Pero, a professor of international history and
(35:22):
author of the Eccentric Realist Henry Kissinger in the Shaping
of American Foreign Policy? He reacts in a different way.
He throws a little a little cold water on this.
He says, I am afraid that, by the standards some
of his critics have applied to Kissinger, numerous post US
statesmen could be accused of crimes against humanity. And that
(35:44):
applies perhaps to the vast majority of the leaders of
modern great powers. Very good point, right, Like, at some point,
if you're in charge of a country, are you responsible
for every bad thing that country does? Oh? Gosh, it's true.
That's kind of a tough truth. I guess we have
to face a little bit here, right, Absolutely, we have
(36:07):
to face it head on. Let's also let's also continue
just a little bit because del Pero doesn't believe that
Henry Kissinger was very good at his job. To be honest,
he says, he's not some sort of arch manipulator. He
says Kissinger was simplistic, binary even uninformed. During his tenure,
he was dogmatic, he adhered to the zero sum game
(36:30):
of international politics. And then del Pero says, in short,
he wasn't a war criminal. He wasn't a very deep
or sophisticated thinker. He rarely challenged the intellectual vogues or
fads of the time, and once in government, he displayed
a certain intellectual laziness. Wow, that's interesting. It's an interesting take, right,
(36:52):
that's saying, that's saying. Look, the argument here is almost
like if he's a war criminal, everyone else is. And
also the hype's not real. He wasn't that good at
what he did. Yeah, he wasn't as big a part
of any of this. It's I I wonder about the
motivation there, because it's certainly not a view that is
(37:16):
or it's not a view of Kissinger that you see
very often, right again, like we kind of laid it
out at the top there, he's a lot of times
seen as this war criminal or you know, a hero
and just being a lazy government guy that's just sitting
around not doing much, being uninformed. Yeah, you don't hear
(37:37):
that very often. I was thinking about the two thousand
sixteen Democratic debates, just really quick side here. Um it
was when oh, I hope I'm not getting this wrong.
I believe it was Hillary Clinton And at least it
was a discussion between the moderator, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders,
and they were discussing Henry Kissinger, and uh, Hillary Clinton
(38:02):
was a supporter of Kissinger. And at some point it's
brought up that yes, she said, yes, I'll take the
advice essentially, or the counsel of Henry Kissinger. You know,
I believe him to be very informed and you know,
his opinion I value essentially. And then Bernie Sanders said
the opposite, like, no, absolutely, and laid out some of
(38:24):
the war crimes things at least in very very brief ways,
and just said no, I absolutely won't take advice from
this person. And they hadn't a really fairly, fairly brief
but interesting exchange about him on the stage, Uh at
a debate like that, Yeah, Kissinger is seeing as a
(38:46):
tutor of Clinton. Yeah, which I think would surprise some
people who are more on the conservative side, because you know,
you were so politics suffers from that false dichotomy here
in the US, and people would say, Okay, this guy
did a bunch of stuff under the Richard Nixon administration,
(39:11):
So why is he advising? Why is he a counselor
to Hillary Clinton? And this is a point where you know,
you have to ask yourself fingers on a hand, right, Yeah? Well,
and and Hillary Clinton also makes a very rational point here,
which is this, this man has such a wealth of
(39:33):
experience in dealing with foreign powers as well as the
United States as a power. Why would you not listen
to him? Just from an experienced perspective? I mean, that
does seem like a rational point. The question then becomes
one of not just experience, but of accomplishment success or
lack thereof sure and alignment and like like, are you
(39:56):
going to align yourselves with that kind of power? I
guess um if you're running for something like the officer
president anyway, I just wanted to throw that out there
right now. Regardless again of what we may or may
not think about Henry Kissinger's individuals. Judges from Argentina, Chile, France,
and Spain are still seeking his testimony regarding crimes committed
(40:19):
by US client regimes in South America in the nineteen seventies,
those US backed dictatorships we mentioned earlier. When he was
in London in April of two thousand one, British activists
sought his arrest on charges related to the Vietnam War.
Even in the US, he was the subject of a
civil suit, but by the family of chilean military chief
(40:39):
murdered in the seventies as part of the U s
attempt to block the election of Salvadora. In day now,
some people doubtlessly see the criticism of Henry Kissinger as
unfounded or even offensive, and calling someone a war criminal
is a very heavy charge. It's a term that's actually
rarely you today in political discourse because hauling someone a
(41:04):
war criminal automatically implies that they have killed massive amounts
of people through either their direct actions or their policy decisions.
Well yeah, because then it becomes an argument of is
that a war crime? Even though they killed all these people,
is that a war crime? Did they do it in
a way that would constitute that right exactly? And we
(41:25):
have tons of international law on that very subject. However,
it is true that Kissinger simply cannot travel to certain
countries for fear of arrest. And this is also something
in which he is not unique amongst various various former
politicians and bureaucrats. As we record today's episode, Henry Kissinger
(41:49):
is alive. He is seven years old. He will likely
never be prosecuted for his actions. Uh, and some argue
that he should not be, as the US is historically
opposed to any sort of international legal action against serving
or former US politicians. This is where this is where
something called the American Service Members Protection Act of two
(42:10):
thousand two comes into play. It Essentially, it's a law
that might be hilarious or terrifying to some of us
listening outside of the US. It's a law in the
United States that authorizes the use of military force to
liberate any American or citizen of the U S Allied
country being held in the International Criminal Court that's located
(42:32):
in the Hague. This has been called the Hague Invasion clause.
People in Europe, particularly in the Netherlands, obviously hate this idea.
The law provides for the withdrawal of US military assistance
from countries that agree with the i c C Treaty.
It restricts US participation in U N peacekeeping unless the
(42:52):
US is immune from prosecution. So and and there's a
provision that says the President can change his or her
mind on this whenever due to national interest. Wow wow. So, if,
for instance, Paul's dodgy international past catches up with him
and he is he is arrested and taken to the
(43:15):
International Criminal Court, the US has law in the books
that says this country can send an invasion force to
physically rescue him and extricate him from Europe. Well, Paul,
whatever you did, um, you know, I'm sure it's um
a much more three dimensional thing that occurred. There are
(43:36):
reasons behind it, the reasons you did it. But you know,
in the end, we're gonna get your back, buddy. And
that also is a terrible example, because Paul is hero
he is and he is known as a gem domestically
and abroad. But one thing is for sure, Henry Kissinger
(43:59):
did cons fre to do numerous things that were at
the very very least unethical dirty pool. He actively provably
created and participated in a number of conspiracies to advance
what he saw as the greater good for the US
on a global stage. That is true. It's not a theory,
(44:20):
that's not a person's opinion. That is a fact. The
big question is was it all worth it? Mm hmm, Well,
we we're gonna, I guess figure that out in the
next hundred years. Um. Just really looking back at it,
I think and generally when someone passes, I think the
(44:42):
the harsh realities of a person's life can be viewed
I guess more fully at least by by society, by history,
and we can actually talk about it in a way
that we couldn't when they were still living. Um. So
I have a feeling, you know, unfortunate for Henry Kissinger.
Probably pretty soon he won't be with us, and maybe
(45:06):
we'll get a little more light shed on exactly what happened.
Perhaps perhaps perhaps, or it'll go to the grave with him,
maybe or it will go to the grave. We want
to know what you think. Is it true that these
sorts of things occur and do serve a greater good
or is that an oversimplification you know what I mean?
(45:30):
Was Kissinger making the best, if harsh, political decisions for
the time or was he blinded by ideology or something else.
Let us know. You can find us on Facebook, you
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(45:52):
the business. We also, by the way, oh someone a
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Happy birthday Cat. Your birthday was. It was a little
while ago, but we we we got around to get
in the shout out there sort of better late than never. Yes,
happy birthday to you Cat. And if you want to
(46:13):
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(46:35):
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(47:13):
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