Does Henry Kissinger Have a Conscience?
Henry Kissinger’s involvement in a series of alleged war crimes in Vietnam, Bangladesh, Chile, Cyprus and East Timor.
Kissinger deserves prosecution “for war crimes, for crimes against humanity, and for offenses against common or customary or international law, including conspiracy to commit murder, kidnap, and torture.” He is further called “a stupendous liar with a remarkable memory.”
Charges against Kissinger might stand up in an international court of law following precedents set at Nuremberg and elsewhere. These link Kissinger to war casualties in Vietnam, massacres in Bangladesh and Timor and assassinations in Chile, Cyprus, and Washington, D.C..
Let’s consider some of Kissinger’s achievements during his tenure as Richard Nixon’s top foreign policy–maker. He (1) prolonged the Vietnam War for five pointless years; (2) illegally bombed Cambodia and Laos; (3) goaded Nixon to wiretap staffers and journalists; (4) bore responsibility for three genocides in Cambodia, East Timor, and Bangladesh; (5) urged Nixon to go after Daniel Ellsberg for having released the Pentagon Papers, which set off a chain of events that brought down the Nixon White House; (6) pumped up Pakistan’s ISI, and encouraged it to use political Islam to destabilize Afghanistan; (7) began the U.S.’s arms-for-petrodollars dependency with Saudi Arabia and pre-revolutionary Iran; (8) accelerated needless civil wars in southern Africa that, in the name of supporting white supremacy, left millions dead; (9) supported coups and death squads throughout Latin America; and (10) ingratiated himself with the first-generation neocons, such as Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz, who would take American militarism to its next calamitous level. Read all about it in Kissinger’s Shadow!
A full tally hasn’t been done, but a back-of-the-envelope count would attribute 3, maybe 4 million deaths to Kissinger’s actions, but that number probably undercounts his victims in southern Africa. Pull but one string from the current tangle of today’s multiple foreign policy crises, and odds are it will lead back to something Kissinger did between 1968 and 1977. Over-reliance on Saudi oil? That’s Kissinger. Blowback from the instrumental use of radical Islam to destabilize Soviet allies? Again, Kissinger. An unstable arms race in the Middle East? Check, Kissinger. Sunni-Shia rivalry? Yup, Kissinger. The impasse in Israel-Palestine? Kissinger. Radicalization of Iran? “An act of folly” was how veteran diplomat George Ball described Kissinger’s relationship to the Shah. Militarization of the Persian Gulf? Kissinger, Kissinger, Kissinger.
Key elements of his case:
1. The deliberate mass killing of civilian populations in Indochina.
2. Deliberate collusion in mass murder, and later in assassination, in Bangladesh.
3. The personal suborning and planning of murder, of a senior constitutional officer in a democratic nation — Chile — with which the United States was not at war.
4. Personal involvement in a plan to murder the head of state in the democratic nation of Cyprus.
5. The incitement and enabling of genocide in East Timor
6. Personal involvement in a plan to kidnap and murder a journalist living in Washington, D.C.
Kissinger’s role in the genocide that took place in East Timor is less well-known than the one he enabled in Indochina.
Kissinger’s role in the genocide that took place in East Timor is less well-known than the one he enabled in Indochina. Author Charles Glass wrote about that episode in 2011:
On December 6, 1975, Kissinger and Gerald Ford met President Suharto in Indonesia and promised to increase arms supplies to sustain Indonesian suppression of the former Portuguese colony. Kissinger, quoted verbatim in U.S. Embassy cables of that war council, insisted that American weapons for the Indonesian Army’s invasion could be finessed: “It depends on how we construe it; whether it is in self-defense or is a foreign operation.”
Since no one in East Timor had attacked or intended to attack Indonesia, Suharto could hardly plead self-defense. But Kissinger would make the case for him. All he asked was that Suharto delay the invasion a few hours until he and Ford had left Jakarta. He presumably relied on the American public’s inability to connect the Jakarta conference with the invasion so long as he and Ford were back in Washington when the killing began. As far as the American media went, he was right. The Indonesian Army invaded on the anniversary of a previous day of infamy, December 7, massacring about a third of the population. The press, apart from five Australian journalists whom the Indonesian Army slaughtered, ignored the invasion and subsequent occupation. Well done, Henry.
By the time Suharto was overthrown in 1998, Kissinger had gone private — charging vast fees to advise people like Suharto on methods for marketing their crimes. He also kept posing as an elder statesman whose views were sought (and often paid for) by a media that enabled his penchant for self-publicity. He was a patriot whose love of country stopped short of taking part in the 9/11 Commission if it meant disclosing how much the Saudi royal family paid him for his counsel.
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Christopher Hitchens’ Trial of Henry Kissinger: A Review By Mike McGlothlin …
Hitchens presents a rather straightforward argument that establishes two seemingly undeniable propositions: on at least one occasion, Henry K. conspired to commit murder, and that on numerous other occasions, Henry K. was the primary force behind certain acts that could quite plausibly be considered war crimes. The case for Henry K. as murder conspirator is what Hitchens calls a “lay-down” case, i.e., one that stands out for its clear facts and clear law. The murder victim is General Rene Schneider, who was the Commander in Chief of the Chilean Army, whom Hitchens misidentifies as the Chilean “Chief of Staff.”; According to Hitchens (and the 09 September, 1970 minutes of the “40” Committee, the Kissinger chaired secret panel that oversaw U.S. covert operations), the Chilean military had a strong tradition of neutrality in political affairs, a rarity on the South American continent. General Schneider was known as an officer committed to upholding the Chilean constitution and therefore opposed to the rumored incipient coup against newly elected Socialist President Salvador Allende by a right wing would-be junta of current and former Chilean military officers. Using U.S. Government communications cables from the CIA and documents from the State Department, and White House, Hitchens relates the facts of Kissinger’s direct involvement in the direction, planning, financing, and general support by the organs of the U.S. Government in the plot to remove General Schneider.
LA Weekly: WLS Review: Henry: Portrait of a Serial Kissinger
How You Can Do What the Government Won’t: Arrest Henry Kissinger – Manhattan’s Milosevic, The Village Voice, Week of August 15 – 21, 2001
… bring Henry Kissinger to justice for crimes against humanity. Consider, though, what happened to the last people to talk even jokingly about plans for a citizen’s arrest of the real-life model for Dr. Strangelove. … An indictment of Henry Kissinger for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes would include (but not be confined to) the following. …
Henry Kissinger: War Criminal or Old-Fashioned Murderer? – Welcome to the “Henry Kissinger: Unindicted Terrorist” file! …
Incredibly, Henry Kissinger—the man who rivals Pol Pot for the dubious honor of being the person responsible for the death of the largest number of innocent people in South East Asia (and far surpasses Pol Pot in criminality when one factors in Kissinger’s various levels of responsibility for wholesale slaughter and repression in other parts of the world)—still wields significant power in the United States; but his role as eager facilitator of mass murder, totalitarian repression and other atrocities is never discussed in polite society.
Masterminded the murder of as estimated 600,000 peasants in Cambodia (the “Secret bombing”)
Pol Pot And Kissinger On war criminality and impunity by Edward S. Herman
President Ford and Secretary of State Kissinger gave the go ahead to Suharto’s invasion of East Timor and subsequent massive war crimes there, and the same Kissinger, who helped President Nixon engineer and then protect the Pinochet coup and regime of torture and murder, and directed the first phase of the holocaust in Cambodia (1969-75) …
The time was September 11, 1973. The country was Chile. The event was the bloody overthrow of a democratic government. And the criminals were Henry Kissinger, Richard Nixon, The CIA, and Chilean Dictator Augusto Pinochet. Pepsico, ITT, and other large U.S. corporations were also guilty parties in these crimes against the State and against The People of Chile.
TOBY HARNDEN, TELEGRAPH, LONDON: Washington reacted furiously to a request by Chilean judges for Henry Kissinger, the former secretary of state, to answer questions about an American journalist killed during the 1973 coup in Chile. A Bush administration official condemned the Chilean supreme court decision to send questions to Dr Kissinger, saying the move increased unease about the proposed International Criminal Court in The Hague. The administration source said: “It is unjust and ridiculous that a distinguished servant of this country should be harassed by foreign courts in this way. The danger of the ICC is that, one day, US citizens might face arrest abroad and prosecution as a result of such politically motivated antics.” . . . In its ruling, Chile’s supreme court said a list of questions should be sent to the US supreme court with regard to Dr Kissinger’s knowledge of the circumstances surrounding the death of Charles Horman, a journalist arrested by troops loyal to General Augusto Pinochet. His body was identified in a mortuary weeks later . . . The Chilean order came less than two months after French detectives delivered a court summons to Dr Kissinger, who was visiting Paris, asking him to testify about the disappearance of French nationals in Chile . . . In another case, a judge in Argentina has ordered Dr Kissinger to testify in a human-rights trial about a 1970s plan by South American governments to kidnap and kill Left-wing critics. [news/2001/08/01]
The US involvement in coup planning began even before Allende’s election victory, under the code-name FUBELT, with action plans prepared for Kissinger’s consideration. One group of officers working under CIA direction carried out the assassination of General Rene Schneider, a pro-Allende officer, in an unsuccessful attempt to spark a full-scale coup before Allende could take office. Can Henry Kissinger be Extradited?
He serves his consulting firm, Kissinger Associates, serves as a sort of private National Security Adviser and Secretary of State to about 30 major corporations around the world, such as American Express, Freeport-McMoRan Minerals, Chase Manhattan Bank, Volvo … Walter Isaacson on Booknotes
According to the new book Kissinger, by Walter Isaacson, published in 1992 by Simon & Schuster, ASEA Brown Boveri (page 733) had a contract or project arrangement with Henry Kissinger’s money-making consulting firm, Kissinger Associates, in 1990. According to this fascinating book, Kissinger started his consultancy in July 1982 with “$350,000 lent to him by Goldman Sachs and a consortium of three other banks.” Some of the people Kissinger hired to work for him were Brent Scowcroft, former national security adviser, and Lawrence Eagleburger “who was lured aboard as president in June 1984 after serving as undersecretary of state”. Both Snowcroft and Eagleburger left Kissinger Associates in 1989 to join President Bush’s administration. Kent Associates is a subsidiary of Kissinger Associates. On pages 733-734 a list of some of Kissinger’s corporate clients include, aside from ABB: Shearson Lehman Hutton, Atlantic Richfield, Banca Nazionale del Lavora (BNL) “a Rome bank that made illegal loans to Iraq”; Fluor; Hunt Oil; Merck & Co.; Union Carbide. http://www.workonwaste.org/wastenots/wn218.htm
The Iranian: Opinion, Kissinger, Good will – From “The Oil Deal With Iran” by Henry Kissinger, distributed by the Los Angeles Times Syndicate and published in The Washington Post (October 28, 1997).
Chapter 9 – An Abridged History of the United States – . This material rested on illegal wiretaps ordered by Henry Kissinger, and it turned up in John Ehrlichman’s office.
Kissinger, Iraq, BNL
Kissinger was born in Fuerth, Germany, on May 27, 1923, came to the United States in 1938, and was naturalized a United States citizen on June 19, 1943. He speaks French and German.
Kissinger is married to the former Nancy Maginnes and is the father of two children [Elizabeth and David] by a previous marriage. First wife, Ann Fleischer.
Henry and Nancy Kissinger have a house in Kent Connecticut.
On American Express Board of Directors.
The Chairman of Kissinger McLarty Associates is Dr. Henry Kissinger. Washington, D.C.-based Kissinger McLarty Associates is an affiliate of Kissinger Associates, Inc., which is headquartered in New York City. GlobalNet Retains Kissinger McLarty Strategic Consulting Firm … “The firm of Kissinger, McLarty & Richardson epitomizes Washington, D.C. at its worst – sleazy ex-administration officials, feeding off special influence and power and then … – Larry Klayman from Judicial Watch KISSINGER, McLARTY & RICHARDSON
Kissinger Associates, Inc.
350 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10022
(212) 759-7919
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