REPORT
THE CASE AGAINST HENRY KISSINGER
The making of a war crimina By Christopher Hitchens
THE 1968 ELECTION In the same way, Kissinger's orchestration of INDOCHINA • CHILE political and military and diplomatic cover for apartheid in South Africa presents us with a It will become clear, and may as well be morally repulsive record and includes the ap stated at the outset, that this is written by palling consequences of the destabilization of a political opponent of Henry Kissinger. Angola. Again, though, one is looking at a sor Nonetheless, I have found myself contin did periodofColdWar and imperial history, and ually amazed at how much hos an exercise of irresponsible pow- tile and discreditable material I have felt compelled to omit. I . ganized crime.Additionally,one am concerned only with those must take into account the in Kissingerian offenses that ' Ml Jer,stitutionalrather than naturean ofepisode this policy,of or might or should form the basis |H which might in outline have of a legal prosecution: for war B[ been followed underanyadmin crimes, for crimes against hu- • V istration, national security ad manity, and for offenses against S viser, or secretary of state. common or customary or inter- Similar reservations can be national law, including con- 401 held about Kissinger's chairman spiracy to commit murder, kid- ^ shipof the PresidentialCommis sion on Central America in the Thus, 1mighthave mentioned early 1980s, whichwas staffed by Kissinger's recruitment and be- '-EL Oliver North and which white trayal of the Iraqi Kurds, who washed death-squad activity on werefalsely encouraged byhim to the isthmus. Or about the polit take up arms against Saddam ical protection provided by Hussein in 1972-75, and who southSOUTH VIETNAMESE'AMfSE Kissinger,while in office,for the were then abandoned to exter- napalkNAPALM VICTIM,\M, 1967 Pahlavi dynasty in Iran and its mination on their hillsides when machinery of torture and repres SaddamHusseinmadea diplomaticdealwith the sion.The list, it issobering to say, could be pro Shah of Iran, and who weredeliberatelylied to as tracted very much further. But it will not do to well as abandoned. The conclusior^ of the report blamethe wholeexorbitantcrueltyand cynicism by Congressman Otis Pike still make shocking ofdecades on one man.(Occasionally one gets an reading and reveal on Kissinger's part a callous in intriguing glimpse, aswhen Kissinger urges Pres difference to human life and human rights. But ident Ford not to receive the inconvenient they fall into the categoryofdepravedrealpolitik Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, all the while posing as and do not seem to have violated any known law. Communism's most daring and principledfoe.)
Christopher Hitchens, formerly Washington editor o/Harper's Magazine, u the author ofbooks on the Cyprus crisis, Kurdistan, Palestine, andthe Anglo-American relationship. He is a regular columnist for Vanity Fair and The Nation.
Photograph © 1967/ P.J.Grifliths/ Magnum Photos, Inc. REPORT 33 ^ No, IKave confined myself to the identifiable lonely impunity isrank; it smells to heaven. If it crimes that can and should be placed on a prop isallowed to persist then we shall shamefully vin er bill of indictment, whether the actions taken dicate the ancient philosopher Anacharsis, who were in line with general "policy" or not. These maintained that lawswere like cobwebs—strong include, in this installment, the deliberate mass enough to detain only the weakand too weak to killing of civilian populations in Indochina and hold the strong. In the name of innumerable vic the personal suborning and planning of murder tims known and unknown, it is time for justice to of a senior constitutional officer in a take a hand. democratic nation—Chile—with which the United States was not at war. In a second in REGARDING HENRY stallment we will see that this criminal habit of mind extends to Bangladesh, Cyprus, East Ti On December 2, 1998, Michael Korda mor, and even to Washington, D.C. wasbeing interviewed on camera in his Some of these allegations can be constructed office at Simon &. Schuster. As one of only prima facie, since Mr. Kissinger—in what the reigning magnates of New York may also amount to a deliberate and premedi publishing, he had edited and "produced" the tated obstruction of justice—has caused large work of authors as various as Tennessee Williams, tranches of evidence to be withheld or possibly Richard Nixon, Joan Crawford, and Joe Bonan- destroyed. We now,however,enter upon the age no. On this particular day, he wastalking about when the defense of "sovereign immunity" for the life and thoughts of Cher, whose portrait state crimes has been held to be void. As I demon adorned the wall behind him. And then the tele strate below, Kissingerhas understood this deci phone rang and there wasa message to call "Dr." sive change even ifmany of his critics have not. Henry Kissinger^ soon as possible. A polymath The House of Lords' ruling in London, on the in like Korda knows—what with the exigencies of ternational relevance of General Augusto publishing in these vertiginous days—how to Pinochet's crimes, added to the splendid activism switch in an instant between Cher and high of the Spanish magistracy and the verdicts of the statecraft. The camera kept running, and record International Tribunal at The Hague, has de ed the following scene for a tape that I possess: stroyed the shield that immunized crimes com Asking his secretary to get the number (759- mitted under the justification of raison d'etat. 7919—the digitsof Kissinger Associates),Korda There isnow no reason why a warrant for the tri- quipsdryly, to general laughter in the office, that it "should be 1-800-CAMBODIA ... 1-800- BOMB-CAMBODIA." After a pause of nicely calibrated duration (no senior editor likes to be IN POLITICS ARE NOW IN put on hold while he's receivingcompany, espe cially media company) it's "Henry—Hi, how are HIS OWN LONELY IMPUNITY IS RAnS you?.. .You're getting all the publicity youcould want in the NewYork Times but not the kinH you al of Kissinger may not be issued in any one of a want... I also think it's very, verydubiousfor the number of jurisdictions and no reason why he administration to simplysay yes, they'll release may not be compelled to answer it. Indeed, as I these papers... no... no, absolutely... no... no write, there are a number of jurisdictions where .. .well, hmmm, yeah. We did it until quite re the law is at long last beginning to catch up with cently, frankly, and he did prevail . . . Well, I the evidence. And we have before us in any case don't think there's any question about that, as un the Nuremberg precedent, by which the United comfortable as it may be... Henry, this is total States solemnly undertook to be bound. lyoutrageous...yeah.. .alsothe jurisdiction. This A failure to proceed will constitute a double or isa Spanish judge appealing to an English court triple offenseto justice. First, it will violate the about a Chilean head of state. So it's, it... Also, essentialand now uncontested principle that not Spain has no rational jurisdiction over events in even the most powerful are above the law. Sec Chile anyway, so that makesabsolutelyno sense ond, it will suggest that prosecutions for war ... Well, that's probably true ... If you would. I crimesand crimesagainst humanity are reserved think that would be byfar and away the best... for losers, or for minor despots in relatively neg Right, yeah, no, 1 think it's exactly what you ligible countries. This in turn will lead to the should do, and I don't think it should be long, and paltry politicization ofwhatcould havebeena no I think it should end with your father's letter. I ble process and to the justifiable suspicionofdou think it's a very important document... Yes, but ble standards. I think the letter is wonderful, and central to the Manyifnot mostofKissinger's partners in pol entire book. Can you let me read the Lebanon itics, from Greece to Chile to Argentina to In chapter over the weekend?" At this point the donesia,are now in jail or awaitingtrial. His own conversation ends, with some jocular observa-
34 HARPER'S MAGAZINE / FEBRUARY 2001 tions byKordaabout his upcomingcolonoscopy: case against General Pinochet, Clinton Adminis HENRY KISSINGER, "a totally repulsiveprocedure." tration officials said they believed the benefits of 1973 Bymeans of the same tiny internal camera,or opennessin human rightscasesoutweighedthe risks itsforensic equivalent,one coulddeducenot a lit to national security in this case. But the decision tle about the worldof Henry Kissinger from this could open "a can of worms,"in the wordsof a for mer Central Intelligence Agency officialstationed microcosmic exchange. The first and most im in Chile, exposingthe depth of the knowledge that portant isthis:Sitting in hisoffice at Kissinger As the United States had about crimescharged against sociates, with its tentacles of business and con the Pinochet Govemment sultancystretching from Belgrade to Beijing, and While some European govemment officialshave cushioned by innumerable other directorships supported bringing the former dictator to court. and boards, he still shudders when he hears of the United States officials have stayed largelysilent, re arrest ofa dictator. Syncopated the conversation flectingskepticismabout the Spanishcourt's power, with Korda maybe,but it's clear that the keyword doubts about intemational tribunals aimed at former is "jurisdiction." What had the New York Times foreign rulers, and worries over the implications for American leaders who might someday also beacciised in been reporting that fine morning?On December foreign countries, lltalics added.] 2,1998, itsfront pagecarriedthe following report President Richard M. Nixon and Henry A. from Tim Weiner, the paper's national-security Kissinger, whoservedas his national securityadvi correspondent in Washington. Under the head sor and Secretaryof State, supported a right-wing line "U.S. Will Release Files on Crimes Under coup in Chile in the early 1970s, previously declas Pinochet," he wrote; sified documents show. But many of the actioris of the United States dur Treading into a political and diplomatic con- ing the 1973 coup, and much of what American fixjntation it tried to avoid, the United States decided leaders and intelligence services did in liaison with today to declassify some secret documents on the the Pinochet Govemment after it seizedpower, re . killingsand torture committed during the dictator main underthe sealof nationalsecurity. The secret ship of Augusto Pinochet in Chile.... files on the Pinochet regime are held bythe C.I.A., The decision to release such documents is the the Defense Intelligence Agency, the State Depart first signthat the United States willcooperatein the ment,the Pentagon, theNational Security Council,
Photograph© Ellidge/ Sipa Press REPORT 35 the National Archives, the Presidential librariesof ingtcm Post. Hisfirst volume ofmemoirs was in part Gerald R. Ford and Jimmy Carter, and other Gov written, and also edited, by Harold Evans, who ernmentagencies. According to Justice Department with Tina Brown is among the many hosts and records, thesefiles contain a historyofhumanrights hostesses who solicit Kissinger's company, or per abuses and international terrorism: hapsone should say society, for their NewYork • In 1975State Departmentdiplomatsin Chile protested the Pinochet regime's record of killing soirees. At different times, he has been a consul and torture,filing dissents to Americanforeign pol tant to ABC News and CBS; his most successful icywiththeir superiors in Washington. diplomacy, indeed, has probably been conducted • The C.I.A. has files on assassinations by the with the media (and his singlegreatest achieve regime and the Chilean secret police. The intelli ment has been to get almost everybody to call gence agency also hasrecords on Chile's attempts him "Doctor").Fawned on byTed Koppel, sought to establish an international right-wing covert- out by corporations and despots with "image" action squad. problems or"failures ofcommunication," andgiv en respectful attention bypresidential candidates and those whose task it is to "mold" their global vision,this man wants for little in the pathetic uni verse that the "self-esteem" industry exists to serve. Of whom else would Norman Podhoretz write, in a bended-knee encomium to the second volume ofKissinger's memoire. Years ofUpheaval:
What wehave here iswriting ofthe veryhighestor der. It iswritingthat isequally at easein portraiture and abstract analysis;that can shape a narrative as skillfiilly as it can paint a scene; that can achieve marvelsof compressionwhile moving at an expan sive and leisurely pace. It is writing that can shift without strain or falsity of tone from the gravitas befitting a bookaboutgreathistorical eventsto the humorand ironydictated byan unfailing sense of human proportion. mr' A critic who can suck like that, as was once dry bj lysaid by oneofmy moral tutors, neednever dine alone. Nor need his subject. Except that, every THE SIGNING OF TH£ • The Ford Library contains many of Mr. now and then, the recipient (and donor) of so PARIS PEACE ACCORD, Kissinger's secretfiles on Chile, whichhavenever much sycophancy feels a tremor of anxiety. He 1973 beenmade public. Througha secretary, Mr.Kissinger declineda requestforan interviewtoday. leaves the well-fumished table and scurries to the bathroom. Is it perhaps another disclosure on a One mustcredit Kissinger with grasping what newly released Nixontape?Somestray news from somany other people did not: thatifthe Pinochet Indonesia portending the fall or imprisonment of precedent became established, then he himself another patron (and perhaps the escape of an was in somedanger. The United States believes awkward document or two)? The arrest or in that it alone pursues andindicts war criminals and dictment ofa tortureror assassin; the expiryofthe "international terrorists"; nothing in its politi statute of secrecy for some obscure cabinet pa cal or journalistic culture yet allows for the pers in a faraway country? Anyone of these can thought that it might beharboring andshelter instantly spoilhisday. As we seefirom the Korda ing such a senior one. Yet the thought had very tape, Kissinger cannot open the morningpaper obliquely surfaced inWeiner's story, andKissinger with the assurance of tranquillity. Because he was a worried man when he called his editor that knows what others can only suspect, or guessat. day todiscuss theconcluding volume ofhismem Andhe isa prisoner oftheknowledge, as, tosome oirs (eventually published underthe unbearably extent, are we. dull and self-regarding title Years of RcTiewal), Notice the likable way in which Michael Kor which was still in progress. da demonstrates his broad-mindedness with the "Harboring and sheltering," though, are un Cambodia jest.Everybody "knows," afterall, that derstatements for the lavishness of Henry Kissinger inflicted terror and misery and mass Kissinger's circumstances. His advice is sought, death on that country, and great injury to the at $30,000 an appearance, by audiences of busi United States Constitution at the same time. nessmen and academics and policymakers. His (Everybody also "knows" that other vulnerable turgid newspaper column issyndicated by the Los nations can lay claim to the same melancholy Angeles Times andappears asfor afield as theWash- and hatefiil distinction as Cambodia, with incre-
36 HARPER'S MAGAZINE/ FEBRUARY 2001 Photograph © Bettmann/ CORBIS mentalor"collateral" damage to Americandemoc cause four years later the Nixon Administration racy keeping pace.) Yet the pudgy man standing tried to conclude the war on the same terms that in black tie at the Vogue party is not, surely, the had been on offer in Paris. The reason for the dead man who ordered and sanctioned the destruction silence that still surrounds the question is that in of civilian populations, the assassination of in those intervening years some 20,000 Americans convenient politicians, the kidnapping and dis and an uncalculated number of Vietnamese, Cam- appearance ofsoldiersand journalistsand clerics whogot in his way. Oh, but he is. He'sexactlythe same man. And that may be among the most nau IHE TUDGY MAN AT THE VOGU-E seating reflections of all. Kissinger is not invited PA'RTY jis NOT,; surely;:the and feted because of his exquisite manners or his DESTROYED CiyiLlAN P mordant wit (his manners are in any case rather gross, and his wit consistsofa quiver ofborrowed and secondhand darts). No, he is sought after be bodians, and Laotians lost their lives. Lost them, cause his presence supplies a frisson, the authen that is to say, even more pointlessly than had tic touch ofraw and unapologeticpower. There's those slain up to that point. The impact of those a slight guiltynervousness on the edgeof Korda's four years on Indochinese society, and on Amer gag aboutthe indescribable sufferings ofIndochina. ican democracy, is beyond computation. The And I've noticed, time and again, standing at the chief beneficiary of the covert action, and of the back of the audience during Kissinger speeches, subsequent slaughter, was Henry Kissinger. that laughterof the nervous, uneasy kind isthe sort I can already hear the guardians of consensus, of laughter he likes to provoke. In exacting this scraping their blunted quills to dismiss this as a tribute, he flaunts not the "aphrodisiac" of pow "conspiracy theory." 1 happily accept the chal er (another of his plagiarized bons mots) but its lenge. Let us take, first, the Diaries of that pornography. renowned conspirator (and theorist of conspira cy) H. R. Haldeman, published in May 1994.1
DRESS REHEARSAL: choose to start with them for two reasons. First, THE SECRET OF '68 because on the logical inference of "evidence against interest" it is improbable that Mr. Halde ^ • ^here exists, within the political class of man wouldsupplyevidence of his knowledge of I Washington, D.C., an open secret that is a crime, unless he was (posthumously) telling I too momentous and too awful to tell. the truth. Second, because it is possible to trace M Although it is well known to academic back each of his entries to its origin in other doc historians, senior reporters, former Cabinet mem umented sources. bers, and ex-diplomats, it has never been sum In January 1973, the Nixon-Kissinger Ad marized all at one time in any one place. The ministration—for which Haldeman took the min reason for this is, on first viewing, paradoxical. utes—washeavily engaged on two fronts. In Paris The open secret is in the possession of both ma again, Henry Kissinger was striving to negotiate jor political parties, and it directly implicatesthe "peace with honor" in Vietnam. In Washington, past statecraft of at least three former presiden D.C., the web of evidence against the Water cies. Thus, its full disclosure would be in the in gate burglarsand buggerswas beginning to tight terest of no particular faction. Its truth is there en. On January 8, 1973, Haldeman records: fore the guarantee of its obscurity; it lies like Poe's"purloined letter" across the very aisle that John Dean called to rep>ort on the Watergate trials, signifies bipartisanship. saysthat ifwe can prove in any wayby hard evidence Here is the secret in plain words. In the fall of that our Icampaignl plane was bugged in '68, he thinks that we could use that as a basisto saywe're 1968, Richard Nixon and some ofhis emissaries going to force Congress to go back and investigate and underlings set out to sabotage the Paris peace '68 as well as '72, and thus cum them off. negotiations on Vietnam. The means they chose were simple: they privately assured the South Three dayslater, on January 11,1973, Halde Vietnamese military rulersthat an incoming Re man hears from Nixon ("the P," as the Di^TTes call publican regime would offer them a better deal him): than would a Democratic one. In this way, they undercut both the talks themselves and the elec On the Watergate question, he wanted me to talk to lAttomey GeneralJohnj Mitchelland have him toralstrategy ofVice President HubertHumphrey. find outfrom [Deke] DeLoach lofthe FBIl ifthe guy The tactic "worked," in that the South Viet who did the buggingon us in 1968 isstill at the FBI, namese junta withdrew from the talks on the eve and then [FBI acting director PatricklGray should of the election, thereby destroyingthe peace ini nail him with a liedetector and get it settled, which tiative on which the Democrats had based their would giveus the evidenceweneed. He alsothinks campaign. In another way, it did not "work,"be I ought to move with George Christian [President
REPORT 37 Johnson's former press secretary, thenworking with about.Hence the secondthoughts("wasn'tsuch Democrats forNixon], get LBJ to use his influence a good idea..Inhisexcellent introduction to to turn off the Hill investigation with Califano, The HaUeman Diaries, Nixon's biographer Pro Hubert, and so on. Later in the day, he decided fessor Stephen Ambrose characterizes the 1973 ap that wasn'tsuch a goodidea,and told me not to do proach to Lyndon Johnson as"prospective black it, which I fortunatelyhadn't done. mail," designed to exert backstairs pressure to On the same day, Haldeman reports Henry close down a congressional inquiry. But he also Kissinger calling excitedly from Paris, saying "he'll suggests that Johnson, himself no pushover, had dothe signing in Paris ratherthanHanoi, which some blackmail ammunition of his own. As Pro isthekey thing." Hespeaks also ofgetting South fessor Ambrose phrases it, the Diaries hadbeenvet Vietnam's President TTiieu to "go along." On the ted by the National Security Council, and the following day: bracketed deletion cited above is"the only place in the bookwhere an example isgivenof a dele The P also gotbackon the Watergate thing today, tion by the NSC duringthe Carter Administra making the point that I should talk to Connally tion." "Eight days later Nixon was inaugurated aboutthe Johnsonbugging process to gethis judg for his second term," Ambrose relays. "Ten days ment as to how to handle it. He wonders if we laterJohnson died ofaheartattack. WhatJohn shouldn't justhave Andreas goinandscare Hubert. son had on Nixon I suppose we'll neverknow." Theproblem ingoing at LBJ is how he'dreact, and The professor's conclusion here isarguably too we need to find out from IDeke]De Loach who did it, and then run a liedetector on him. I talked to tentative. There is a well-understood principle Mitchell on the phone on thissubject and he said known as "Mutual Assured Destruction," where De Loach had told him he was up to date on the by bothsides possess more than enough materi thing because he had a call from Texas. A Stiir re al with which to annihilate the other. The answer porter was making an inquiry inthelastweek orso, to the question of what the Johnson Adminis andLBJ gotvery hotand called Deke and said tohim tration "had" on Nixon is a relatively easy one. that ifthe Nixonpeople aregoing toplay withthis, It was given in a book entitled Counsel to the that he would release[deleted materid—nadorml se President, published in 1991. Itsauthor was Clark curity], saying that oursidewas asking that certain Clifford, the quintessential blue-chip Washing things bedone. By ourside, I assume he means the ton insider, who was assisted in the writing by Nixoncampaign organization. De Loach tookthis as a direct threat fromJohnson As he recalls it, Richard Holbrooke, the former assistant secretary bugging was requested ontheplanes, but was tumed ofstate and current ambassador to the United Na tions. In 1968, Clark Clifford was secretary of defense and Richard Holbrooke was a member of There had to be an.informant the American negotiating team at the Vietnam peace talks in Paris. INSIDE JOHNSON'.S CAMP. tHAT From his seat in the Pentagon, Clifford had INFORMANT WAS HENRY KISSINGER been able to read the intelligencetranscriptsthat picked up and recorded what he termsa "secret down, and all theydid was checkthe phone calls, personal channel" between President Thieu in and put a tap on the Dragon Lady IMrs. Anna Saigon and the Nixon campaign. The chiefin Chennault]. terlocutor at the Americanend was John Mitchell, thenNixon's campaign manager andsubsequently Tliis bureaucratic prose may be hard to read, attorney general (andsubsequently Prisoner Num but it needs no cipher to decode itself. Under ber 24171-157 in the Maxwell Air Force Base intense pressure about the bugging of the Wa prison camp). Hewas actively assisted by Madame tergate building, Nixon instructed his chief of Anna Chennault, known to all as the "Dragon staff, Haldeman,and his FBI contact, DekeDe- Lady." A fierce veteran oftheTaiwan lobby, and Loach,to unmaskthe bugging to whichhis own all-purpose right-wing intriguer, shewas a social campaign had been subjected in 1968. He also andpolitical force in the Washington ofherday soundedout former presidentJohnson, through and wouldrate her own biography. former senior Democrats like Texas governor Clifford describes a private meeting atwhich he, John Connally, togauge what his reaction to the President Johnson, Secretary ofStateDeanRusk, disclosure might be. The aim was to show that andNationalSecurity Adviser WaltRostow were "everybody doesit." (By another bipartisan para present. Hawkish to a man,theykeptVicePres dox,inWashington the slogan "theyall do it" is identHumphrey outofthe loop. But,hawkish as used asa slogan forthe defense rathertlian,asone they were, theywere appalled at the evidence of mighthope, for the prosecution.) Nixon'streachery. They nonetheless decided not However, a problem presents itself at once: to go public with what they knew. Clifford says how to reveal the 1968 bugging without at the that this was because the disclosure would have ru sametime revealing what that bugging had been ined the Paris talks altogether. He could have
38 HARPER'S MAGAZINE/ FEBRUARY 2001 added diat it would have created a crisis ofcon Vietnam. This most useful advance intelligence, fidence in American institutions. There are some Nixon tells us, came "through a highly unusual things chat the voters can't be trusted to know. channel." It was more unusual evea than he ac And even though the bugging had been legal, it knowledged. Kissingerhad until then been a de might not have looked like fair play. (The Logan voted partisan ofNelson Rockefeller, the match Act flatly prohibits any American fromconduct lessly wealthy prince of liberal Republicanism. ing private diplomacy with a foreignpower.) His contempt for the person and the policies of In the event, Thieu pulled out of the ne gotiations anyway, ruining them just three days before the election. Clifford is in no doubt of the advice on which he did so:
The activities of the Nixon team went far be yondthe boundsofjustifiable politicalcombat. It constituted direct interference in the activ ities of the executive branch and the respon sibilities of the Chief Executive, the onlypeople with authority to negotiate on behalf of the nation. The activities of the Nixon campaign constituted a gross, even potentially illegal,in terference in the security affairsof the nation by private individuals.
Perhaps aware ofthe slightfeebleness ofhis lawyerly prose, and perhaps a little ashamed of keeping the secret for his memoirs rather than sharing it with the electorate, Clifford adds in a footnote:
It should be remembered that the public was considerably more innocent in such matters in the daysbefore the Watergate hearings and the 1975 Senate investigation of the CIA. Richard Nixon wasundisguised. Indeed, President FUNERAL, SOUTH Johnson's Paris negotiators, led by Averell Har- VIETNAM, 1972 Perhapsthe public wasindeedmore innocent, riman, considered Kissingerto be almost one of if only becauseof the insider reticence of white- themselves. He had made himselfhelpfiil,as Rock shoe lawyers like Clifford, who thought there efeller's chief foreign-policyadviser, by supplying weresomethings too profaneto be made known. French intermediaries with their own contacts in He claims now that he was in favor eitherofcon Hanoi. "Henry wasthe only person outside of the fronting Nixon privately with the information government we were authorized to discuss the and forcing him to desist, or else of making it negotiations with," Richard Holbrooke told Wal public. Perhaps this was indeed his view. ter Isaacson."We trusted him. It isnot stretching the truth to say that the Nixon campaign had a A more wised-up age of investigative re secret source within the U.S. negotiating team." porting has brought us several updates So the likelihood of a bombing halt, wrote on this appalling episode. And so has Nixon,"cameasno realsurprise to me."He added: the very guarded memoir of Richard "1 told Haldeman that Mitchell should continue Nixon himself. More than one "back channel" as liaison with Kissingerand that we should hon was required for the Republican destabilization or his desire to keep his role completely confi of the Paris peace talks. There had to be secret dential." It is impossiblethat Nixon wasunaware communications between Nixon and the South of his campaign manager's parallel role in col Vietnamese, as we have seen. But there also had luding with a foreign power. Thus began what to be an informant inside the incumbent admin was effectively a domestic covert operation, di istration's camp, a source of hints and tips and rected simultaneously at thwarting the talks and earlywarnings of official intentions. That infor embarrassing the Hubert Humphrey campaign. mant was Henry Kissinger. In his own account, Later in the month, on September 26 to be RN; T/ieMemoirs o/Ric/wrd Nixon, the disgraced precise, and as recorded byNixon in his memoirs, elder statesman cells us that, in mid-September "Kissinger called again. He said that he had just 1968, he received private word ofaplannedbomb returnedfrom Paris, wherehe had pickedup word ing halt. In other words, the Johnson Adminis that something bigwasafoot regardingVietnam. tration would,for the sakeof die negotiacions, con He advised that if I had anything to say about sidersuspending itsaerialbombardmentofNorth Vietnam during the following week, 1 should
Photograph © 1972 / Ian Berry/ Magnum Photos, Inc. REPORT 39 avoid any new ideas or proposals." On the same strategy were knit together. As far back as July, day, Nixondeclined a challenge from Humphrey Nixon had met quietly in New York with the for a direct debate. On October 12,Kissingeronce South Vietnamese ambassador, Bui Diem. The again made contact, suggesting that a bombing contact had been arranged by Anna Chennault. halt might be announced assoonas October 23. Bugging ofthe SouthVietnamese offices inWash And50 {"t might have been. Except that forsome rea ington, and surveillance of the "Dragon Lady," son, every time the North Vietnamese sidecame showed how the ratchet operated. An intercept closer to agreement, the South Vietnamese in ed cable from Diem to President Thieu on the creased their own demands. We now know why fateful dayofOctober 23 had him saying: "Many and how that was, and how the two halves ofthe Republican friends have contacted me and en-
I,n thesepages, Ivefound it essential to allude'; wouidp'ri^er an ex«xutive session?, j frequently to the '40 Gommittce,".the £erai--':' COLBY: The chairman—all right, Mr. Chair^ clandestine bcxly of' which"Heriry-,Kissinger'\, -man—Dr. Kissinger is the chainiian, as the- wasthe'clVairnianibetween 1969. and 19.76. .assistant to the president for national secun- .: ty affairs.' . ' • •. One does riot need'^to picaire sbrriegiaiit, octapUst,-' likelorganizatipnat:th'e ceriterofa webofcpnspirt Kissinger hdd this pdMtipn ex offtdo, in other acy^ however, •ic-.fe iinport&c ib::ktiow',d'iat ftert' ^ words. His colleaguesat the time were Air Force; was' a committee':t:luiC 'maintamcd ultinvitC'Supeir-Jlr General George-Brpwiii chairiinan of the Joint vi-;ion over'ynited Statesr
40 HARPER'S MAGAZINE/ FEBRUARY 2001 gouraged usto standfirm. They were alarmed by Democrats who were playing politics with the press reports to the effect that you had already issue. On October 25, in New York, he used his softened your position." The wiretapping in tried-and-tested tactic of circulating an innuen structions went to one Cartha DeLoach, known do while purporting to disown it. OfLBJ'sParis as "Deke" to his associates, who was J. Edgar diplomacy he said, "I am also told that this spurt Hoover's FBI liaison officer to the White House. of activity is a cynical, last-minute attempt by We met him, you may recall, in H. R. Halde- President Johnson to salvage the candidacy of man's Diaries. Mr. Humphrey. This I do not believe." In 1999 the author Anthony Summerswasfi Kissinger himself showed a similar ability to nallyable to gain access to the closedFBI file of play both ends against the middle. In the late intercepts ofthe Nixoncampaign, whichhe pub summer of 1968, on Martha's Vineyard^ he had lished in his 2000book.TheArrogance ofPower: offered Nelson Rockefeller's files on Nixon to The SecretWorldof Richard Nixon. He was also ProfessorSamuel Huntington, a close adviser to able to interview Arma Chennault. These two Hubert Humphrey. But when Huntington's col breakthroughs fiimished him with what isvulgarly league and friend Zbigniew Brzezinski tried to termed a "smokinggun"on the 1968conspiracy. get him to makegoodon the offer, Kissinger be Bythe end of October 1968,John Mitchell had came shy. "I've hated Nixon for years," he told become so nervous about official surveillance Brzezinski, but the time wasn't quite ripe for the that he ceasedtakingcalk fromChennault. And handover.Indeed,it wasa veryclose-run election, President Johnson, in a conference call to the turning in the end on the difference of a few threecandidates, Nbcon, Humphrey, and Wallace hundred thousand votes, and many hardened ob (allegedly to briefthemon the bombing halt),had servers believe that the final difference was made stronglyimpliedthat he knew about the covert when Johnson ordered a bombing halt on Octo efforts to stymie his Vietnam diplomacy. This ber 31 and the SouthVietnamese made him look callcreatednear-panic in Nixon'sinnercircleand like a foolbyboycottingthe peace talkstwo days caused Mitchell to telephone Chennault at the later. Had things gone the other way, of course, Sheraton Park Hotel. He then asked her to call Kissinger wasa near-certainty for a senior job in him back on a more secure line. "Anna," he told a Humphrey administration. her, "I'm speaking on behalf of Mr. Nixon. It's With slight differences of emphasis, the larg very important that our Vietnamesefi-iends un er piecesof this storyappearin Haldeman'swork derstand our Republican position, and I hope as cited and in Clifford's memoir. They are also youmade that clearto them.... Doyouthink they partially rehearsed in President Johnson's auto reallyhave decided not to go to Paris?" biography, The Vantage Point, and in a long re The reproduced FBI originaldocumentshows flection on Indochina by William Bundy (one what happenednext. On November2,1968, the of the architects ofthe war) entitled rather trite agent reported: lyTheTangled Web. Senior members of the press corps, among them Jules Witcover in his histo MRS. ANNA CHENNAULT CONTACTED VIETNAMESE ry of 1968, Seymour Hersh in his study of AMBASSADOR, BUI DIEM,AND ADVISEDHIM THAT SHE HAD RECEIVED A MESSAGE FROM HER BOSS (NOTFUR Kissinger, and Walter Isaacson, editor of Time THER IDENTIFIED), WHICH HER BOSS WANTED HER TO magazine, in his admiringbut critical biography, GIVE PERSONALLY TO THE AMBASSADOR. SHE SAID have produced almost congruent accounts of the THAT THE MESSAGE WAS THAT THE AMBASSADOR IS same abysmal episode. The only mention of it TO"HOLD ON,WE ARE GONNA WIN" AND THAT HER that iscompletely and utterlyfalse, byany liter BOSS ALSO SAID "HOLD ON, HE UNDERSTANDS Aa aryor historicalstandard,appearsin the memoirs OF IT." SHE REPEATEDTHAT THIS IS THE ONLY MES of Heruy Kissinger himself. He writes just this: SAGE. "HE SAID PLEASE TELL YOUR BOSS TO HOLD ON." SHEADVISED THAT HER BOSS HADJUSTCALLED Several Nixon emissaries—some self-appointed— FROM NEW MEXICO. telephoned me forcounsel.1took the position that I wouldanswerspecific questionson foreignpolicy, Nixon'srunningmate,SpiroAgnew, had been but that I wouldnot offergeneraladvice or volun campaigning in Albuquerque, NewMexico, that teersuggestions. This was the sameresponse 1made day, andsubsequent intelligence analysis revealed to inquiries fromthe Humphrey staff. . that he and another member of his staff (the one principally concerned withVietnam) had indeed This contradictseven the self-serving memoir been in touch with the Chermault camp. ofthe man who,havingwon the 1968electionby The beauty of having Kissinger leaking from theseunderhanded means, madeas his very first afy one sideand Arma Chermault andJohn Mitchell pointment HenryKissinger asnationalsecurity ad conductinga privateforeign policyon the other viser. One might not want to arbitrate a men was this: It enabled Nixon to avoid being drawn dacity competition between the two men, but into the argument over a bombinghalt. And it when he made this choice Richard Nixon had further enabled him to suggest that it was the only once, briefly and awkwardly, met Henry
REPORT 41 Kissinger in person.He clearly formed his estimate corpses;the officialand unofficiallying about the of the man's abilities from more persuasive expe cost; the heavy and pompous pseudo-indigna rience than that. "One factor that had most con tion when unwelcome questions were asked. vinced me of Kissinger's credibility,"wrote Nixon Kissinger'sglobal career started as it meant to go later in his own delicious prose, "was the length on. It debauched the American republic and to which he went to protect his secrecy." American democracy, and it levied a hideous toll ofcasualties on weaker and more vulnerable hat ghastly secret isnow out. In the Jan- I uary 1969 issue of the Establishment I house organ Foreign A^flirs, publisheda THE CRIME OF WAR, M few days after his appointment as Nixon's AND BOMBING FOR VOTES right-hand man, there appeared Henry Kissinger's own evaluation of the Vietnam negotiations. On ven while compelled to concentrate on every point of substance,he agreedwith the line J brute realities, one must never lose sight taken in Paris by the Johnson-Humphrey nego 1 /of that element of the surreal that sur- tiators. One has to pause for an instant to com rounds Henry Kissinger. Paying a visit to prehendthe enormityofthis.Kissinger had helped Vietnam in the middle 1960s, when many tech elect a man who had surreptitiously promised the nocratic opportunists were still convinced that South Vietnamese junta a better deal than they the warwasworth fightingand could be won, the would get from the Democrats. The Saigon au- youngHenry reserved judgmenton the first point but developed considerable private doubts on the second. He had gone so far as to involve himself with an initiative that extended to direct per sonal contact with Hanoi. He became friendly with two Frenchmen who had a direct line to the : Wi.EiS-f Communist leadership in North Vietnam's cap ital. Raymond Aubrac, a French civil servant who was a friend ofHo Chi Minh, and Herbert Mar- covich, a French microbiologist, began a series of trips to North Vietnam. On their return, they briefedKissinger in Paris. He in his turn parlayed their information into high-level conversations in Washington, relaying the actual or potential ne gotiating positions of Pham Van Dong and oth er Communist statesmen to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. {In the result, the relentless bombing of the North made any "bridge-building" impracticable. In particular, the now forgotten American destruction of the Paul Doumer Bridge outraged the Vietnamese side.) This weightless mid-position, which ultimately helped enable his double act in 1968, allowed Kissinger to ventriloquizeGovernor Rockefeller thorities then acted, as Bundy ruefully confirms, and to propose,by indirect means,a fiature detente as if they did indeed have a deal. This meant, in with America's chief rivals. In his first major ad the words of a later Nixon slogan, "Four More dress as a candidate for the Republican nomina Years." But four more yearsof an unwinnable and tion in 1968, Rockefeller spoke ringingly of how undeclared and murderous war, which was to "in a subtle triangle with Communist China and spreadbefore it burnedout, and wasto end on the the Soviet Union, we can ultimately improve same terms and conditions as had been on the our relations with each—as we test the will for table in the fall of 1968. peace of both." [Italics added.] This was what it took to promote Henry Tliis foreshadowing of a later Kissinger strat Kissinger. To promote him froma mediocreand egymight appearat first reading to illustrate pre opportunistic academic to an international po science. But Governor Rockefeller had no more tentate. The signature qualities were there from reason than Vice President Humphrey to sup the inaugural moment: the sycophancy and the pose that his ambitious staffer would defect to duplicity;the powerworship and the absence of the Nixon camp, risking and postponing this scruple;the empty trading ofold non-friends for same detente in order later to take credit for a de new non-friends. And the distinctive effects were based simulacrum of it. also present: the uncounted and expendable Morally speaking, Kissinger treated the concept
42 HARPER'S MAGAZINE / FEBRUARY 2001 Map by Mike Reagan of superpower rapprochement in the same wayas the agreement of which the "halt" might have he treated the concept of a negotiated settle formeda part. In the new context, however, this ment in Vietnam: assomething contingent on his withdrawal could be interpretedasa signof weak own needs. There was a time to feign support of ness, or even as a "light at the end of tlie tunnel." it and a time to denounce it as weak-minded and The historical record of the Indochina war is treacherous. And there was a time to take cred voluminous, and the resulting controversy no it for it. Some ofthose who "followed orders" in less so.Tliis does not, however, prevent the fol Indochina may lay a claim to that notoriously lowing of a consistent thread. Once the war had weak defense. Some who even issued the orders beenunnaturally andundemocratically prolonged,: may now tell us that they were acting sincerely more exorbitant methods were required to fight at the time. But Kissingercannot avail himself of it and more fantastic excuses had to be fabricat this alibi. He always knew what he wasdoing, and ed to justify it. Let us take four connected cases he embarked upon a second round of protracted in which the civilian population wasdeliberate warfarehaving knowinglyhelped to destroy an al lyexposedto indiscriminate lethal force, in which ternative that he alwaysunderstood waspossible. the customary laws of war and neutrality were This increases the gravity of the charge against violated, and in which conscious lies had to be him. It alsoprepares usforhis improvised and ret told in order to conceal these facts and others. rospective defense against that charge: that his im mense depredations eventually led to "peace." When he announced that "peace is at hand" in |\\'H^: GON.yiN&Ea|^ OF October 1972, he made a boastful and false claim pREDlBlLITY: "THE IBNGTH^ TO WtilOm that could have been made in 1968. And when he claimedcredit forsubsequentsuperpower con tacts, he wasannouncing the result of a secret and corrupt diplomacy that had originally been pro The first such case isan exampleof what Viet posed as an open and democratic one. In the nam might have been spared had not the 1968 meantime, he had illegally eavesdropped and Paris peace talks been sabotaged. In December shadowedAmerican citizensand publicservants 1968,during the "transition" periodbetween the whose misgivings about the war, and about un Johnson and Nixon administrations, the United constitutional authority, were mild compared States military command turned to what Gener with those of Messieurs Aubrac and Marcovich. al Creighton Abrams termed "total war" against In establishing what lawyers call the mens rea, we the "infrastructure" of the Vietcong/National Lib cEin saythat in Kissinger'scase he wasfully aware eration Front insurgency. The chief exhibit in of, and isentirely accountable for,his own actions. this campaign was a six-month clearance of the province of Kien Hoa. The code name for the W "ypon taking office at Richard Nixon's sweep was Operation "Speedy Express." I side in the winter of 1969, it was It might, in some realm of theory, be remote I Kissinger's task tobeplus royaliste que le lyconceivablethat such tactics could be justified roi in two respects.He had to confect a under the international laws and charters gov rationale of "credibility" for punitive action in an erning the sovereign rights of self-defense. But no already devastated Vietnamese theater, and he nation capable of deploying the overwhelming had to second his principal's wish that he form and annihilating force described below would be part of a "wall"between the Nixon White House likely to find itselfon the defensive.And it would and the Department of State. The term "two be least ofall likelyto find itselfon the defensive track" was later to become commonplace. on itsown soil. So the Nixon-KissingerAdmin Kissinger's position on both tracks, of promiscu istration was not, except in one unusual sense, ous violence abroad and flagrant illegality at fightingfor survival. The unusualsense in which home, was decided from the start. He does not itssurvival ivas at stake isset out, yet again,in the seem to have lacked relish for either commit stark posthumous testimony of H. R. Haldeman. ment; one hopes faintly that this was not the From his roost at Nixon's side he describes a, first twinge of the "aphrodisiac." Kissingerian moment on December 15, 1970: President Johnson's "bombing halt" had not Klissingerl camein and the discussion covered some lasted long byany standard, even if one remem of the general thinking about Vietnam and the P's bers that its original conciliatory purpose had bigpeaceplan fornext year,which K later told me been sordidly undercut. Averell Harriman, who he doesnot favor. He thinks diat anypulloutnext had been LBJ's chief negotiator in Paris, later year would be a serious mistake because the adverse testified to Congress that the North Vietnamese reaction to it could set in well before the '72 elec tions. Hefavors, instead, a continued winding down had withdrawn90 percent of their forces fromthe and then a pullout right at the fall of'72 so that if northern two provinces of South Vietnam, in any bad results followthey will be too late to affect October and November 1968, in accordance with the election.
REPORT 43 One could hardly wishfor it to be more plain er, Cambodian gunboats detained an American lyput than that. (Andput,furthermore, byone merchant vesselnamed the Mayagufz. The ship ofNixon's chiefpartisans withno wish to discredit was stopped in international waters claimed by the re-election.) But in point of fact, Kissinger Cambodia and then taken to the Cambodian is himselfadmits to almost as much in Kisown first land of Koh Tang. In spite of reports that the volume of memoirs, The WhiteHouse Years. The crew had been released, Kissinger pressed for an context isa meeting with General de Gaulle, in immediate face-saving and "credibility"-enhanc- which the old warrior demanded to know by ingstrike. Hepersuaded President Gerald Ford, the whatright the NixonAdministration subjected untried and undistinguished successor to his de Indochina to devastating bombardment. In his posed former boss, to send in the Marines and own account, Kissinger replies that "a sudden the Air Force. Out of a Marine force of 110, 18 withdrawal mightgiveusa credibility problem." werekilled and 50 werewounded.Twenty-three (When asked "where?" Kissinger hazily proposed Air Force men died in a crash. The United States the Middle East.) It isimportant to bear in mind used a 15,000-ton bomb on the island, the most that the future flatterer of Brezhnev and Mao powerfiil nonnucleardevice that it possessed. No was in no real position to claim that he made body has the figures for Cambodian deaths. The war in Indochina to thwart either. He certainly casualties were pointless, because the ship'scom did not dare trysuch a callow excuse on Charles panyofthe Mayaguez were nowhere on KohTang, havingbeen released some hours earlier. A sub sequentcongressional inquiry foundthat Kissinger Pe were NOT MEANT; TO' KNOW could have known of this by listening to Cam bodian broadcasting or by paying attention to a tHE U.S. WAS IN^VIETNAM.AS; EARL"! third-party governmentthat had been negotiat inga dealforthe restitution of the crew and the ship.It was not as ifanyCambodians doubted, by de Gaulle. And indeed, the proponent of secret that month of 1975, the willingness of the U.S. deals with China was in no very strong position governmentto employ deadly force. to claim that he wascombating Stalinism in gen In Washington, D.C., there is a famous and eral. No, it all came down to "credibility"and to hallowed memorial to the American dead ofthe the saving offace. It isknown that 20,763 Amer Vietnam War. Known as the "Vietnam Veterans ican, 109,230 South Vietnamese, and 496,260 Memorial," it bears a name that is slightly mis North Vietnamese servicemen lost their lives in leading. I was presentforthe extremely affecting Indochina between the day that Nixon and moment of its dedication in 1982 and noticed Kissinger took office and the day in 1973 that that the list of nearly60,000names is incised in theywithdrew American forces andaccepted the the wall not by alphabet but by date. The first logic of 1968. Must the families ofthesevictims few names appear in 1959 and the last few in confront the fact that the chief "faces" at risk 1975.The more historicallyminded visitorscan were those of Nixon and Kissinger? sometimesbe heard to saythat they didn't know Thus the colloquially titled "Christmasbomb the United States wasengaged in Vietnam as ear ing" ofNorthVietnam, continued after that elec lyor aslate as that. Nor was the publicsupposed tion had been won, must be counted as a war to know. The first names are of the covert oper crimebyanystandard. The bombing was not con atives, sent in byColonelEdward Lansdale with ducted for anything that could be described as outcongressional approval tosupport French colo "military reasons" but for twofold politicalones. nialism. The last names are of those thrown away The first of thesewasdomestic: a showofstrength in the Mayaguez fiasco. It tookHenryKissinger to to extremistsin Congressand a meansof putting ensure that a warofatrocity, whicli he hadhelped the Democratic Partyon the defensive. The sec to prolong, shouldend asfurtively and ignomin- ond was to persuade South Vietnamese leaders iously as it had begun. such as President Thieu—whose intransigence had been encouraged by Kissinger in the first A SAMPLE OF CASES: place—that their objections to American with KISSINGER'S WAR CRIMES drawal were too nervous. This, again, was the IN INDOCHINA mortgage on the initialsecret payment of 1968. When the unpreventable collapse occurred in Some statements are too blunt for everyday, Cambodia and Vietnam, in April and May 1975, consensual discourse. In national "debate," the cost wasinfinitelyhigher than it wouldhave it is the smoother pebbles that are cus been seven years previously. These locust years tomarily gathered from thestream andused endedastheyhad begun—with a display ofbrava asprojectiles. They leave less ofascar, evenwhen do and deceit. On May 12,1975, in the immedi they hit. Occasionally, however, a single hard- ate aftermathof the KhmerRouge seizure ofpow edged remark will inflict a deep andjagged wound,
44 HARPER'S MAGAZINE/FEBRUARY 2001 .a gash so uglythat it must be cauterized at once. General Taylor'sbook wasbeingwritten while In January 1971 there was a considered state many of the most reprehensible events of the In ment fromGeneralTelfordTaylor,who had been dochina war were still taking place, or still to • chief U.S. prosecutingcounselat the Nuremberg come. He was unaware of the intensity and ex trials. Reviewing the legal and moral basis of tent of, for example, the bombing of Laos and those hearings, and also tlie Tokyo trialsofJapan Cambodia. Enough wasknown about the conduct ese war criminals and the Manila trial of Emper of the war, however, and about the existing ma or Hirohito's chiefmilitarist, General Yamashita trix of legal and criminal responsibility, for him Tomoyuki, Taylor said chat if the standard of to arrive at some indisputable conclusions. The Nuremberg and Manila were applied evenly, and •.
-Am.
defense, he said, that those arraigned did not really knowwhat they weredoing;in otlier words, first of these concerned the particular obligation former imperial that they had achieved the foulest results but of the United States to be awareof, and to respect, from the highest and most innocent motives. the Nuremberg principles: ZIZ'I'naTfofce The notion of Indochina as some Heart of Dark Military courts and commissions havecustomarily som8;nc, 1968 ness "quagmire" of ignorantarmies has beensed rendered their judgments stark and unsupported by ulously propagated, then and since, in order to opinionsgivingthe reasons fortheir decisions. The make such a euphemism appear plausible. Tay Nurembergand Tokyo judgments, in contrast, were lor had no patience with such a view. American all based on extensive opinions detailing the evi military and intelligence and economic and po dence and analyzingthe factual and legal issues, in litical teams had been in Vietnam, he wrote, for the fashion of appellate tribunals generally. Need much too long to attribute anything they did lessto say they werenot of uniform quality, and of ten reflected the logical shortcomings ofcompromise, "to lack of information." It might have been pos the marksof which commonly mar the opinions of sible for soldiers and diplomats to pose as inno multi-member tribunals. But the process was pro- cents until the middle of the 1960s, but after fessional in a wayseldomachieved in militarycourts, that time, and especially after the My Lai mas and the records and judgmentsin these trialspro sacre of March 16,1968, when serving veterans vided a much-needed foundation for a corpus of reportedmajoratrocitiesto their superiorofficers, judge-made international penal law.The results of nobody couldreasonably claimto have been un the trials commended themselves to the newly informed, and of those who could, the least be formed United Nations, and on Dec. 11, 1946, the General Assembly adopted a resolution affirming lievable would be those who—far from the con "the principlesofinternational lawrecognized bythe fusion of battle—read and discussed and approved Charter of the NurembergTribunal and the judg the panoptic reportsof the warthat weredeliv ment of the Tribunal." ered to Washington. However history mayultimately assess the wisdom •
Photograph © 1968/ Marc Riboud / Magnum Photos, Inc. or urwvisdom of the warcrimestrials,one thing is in- judgment,the occasionforcriminalconduct would disputable: At their concUision, the United States not have arisen. Tlie Germans in occupied Europe Government stood legally, politically and morally made gross errorsofjudgmentwhich no doubt cre committed to the principlesenunciated in the char ated the conditions in which the slaughter of the in ters and judgmentsof the tribunals.The-President habitants of Klissura [a Greek village annihilated of the United States, on die recommendations of the during the Occupation] occurred, but that did not Departments ofState, War and Justice, approved the make the killingsany the lesscriminal. war crimes programs.Thirty or more American judges, drawn from the appellate benches of the Referring this question to the chain of com states from Massachusetts to Oregon, and Min mand in the field, General Taylor noted further nesota to Georgia, conducted the later Nuremberg that the senior officer corps had been trials and wrote the opinions. General Douglas MacArthur, under authority of the FarEasternCom more or lessconstantly in Vietnam, and splendid mission, established the Tokyo tribunal and con ly equipped with helicopters and other aircraft, firmedthe sentences it imposed, and it wasunderhis which gave them a degree of mobility unprece authority asthe highest American military officer in dented in earlier wars, and consequently endowed them with everyopportunity to keep the courseof the fighting and its consequences underclose and constant observation. Communications were gen erally rapidand efficient, sothat the flow of infor mation and orders wasunimpeded. These circumstances are in sharp contrast to those that confronted General Yamashita in 1944 and 1945, withhis troops reeling backin disarray be fore the oncomingAmerican militarypowerhouse. Forfailure to control his forcesso as to prevent the atrocities they committed. Brig. Gens. Egbert F. Bullene and Morris Handwerk and Maj. Gens, james A. Lester, Leo Donovan and Russel B. Reynolds foundhim guilty ofviolating the laws ofwarand sen tenced him to death by hanging. NordidGeneral Taylor omitdie crucial linkbe tweenthe military commandand itspolitical su pervision; again a much closer and more imme diate relationship in the American-Vietnamese instancethan in theJapanese-Filipino one, asthe
RICHARD NIXON AND the Far East that the Yamashita and other such pro regular contact between, say, GeneralCreighton HENRY KISSINGER ceedingswereheld. Tlie United States delegation Abrams and Henry Kissinger makes clear: WITH ALEXANDER to the United Nations presented the resolution by HAIC AT CAMP DAVID, which the General Assembly endorsed the Nurem How much the President and his close advisers in 1972 bergprinciples. the White House, Pentagon and Foggy Bottom Thus the integrity of the nation is staked on knew about the volume and cause of civilian casu those principles, and today the question ishowthey alties in Vietnam, and the physical devastation of apply to our conduct of the war in Vietnam, and the countryside, is speculative. Something was whether the United States Government isprepared known, for the late John McNaughton (then As to face the consequences of their application. sistant Secretary of Defense) returned from the White House one day in 1967 with the message Facing andcogitating theseconsequences him tliat "We seem to be proceeding on the assump self, GeneralTaylortook issue with another Unit tion that the way to eradicatethe Vietcongisto de ed States officer,Colonel William Corson, who stroyall the villagestructures, defoliateall the jun gles, and then cover the entire surface of South had written that Vietnam with asphalt." "[rjegardless ofthe outcome of... the My Laicourts- This wasnoticed (byTownsend Hoopes,a po martial andotherlegal actions, iliepointremains diat Americanjudgmentas to the effective prosecution litical antagonist ofGeneral Taylor's) beforethat of the war was faulty from beginning to end and metaphor had been extended into twonew coun that the atrocities,allegedor otherwise, are a result tries, Laos and Cambodia, without a declaration ofa failure ofjudgment,not criminal behavior." of war, a notification to Congress, or a warning to civilians to evacuate. But Taylor anticipated To this Taylorresponded: the Kissinger casein manyways whenhe recalled the trial of the Japanese statesman Koki Hirota, Colonel Corson overlooks, 1 fear, that negligent homicideisgenerallya crimeof bad judgmentrather who servedbriefly as PrimeMinisterand forsever than evil intent. Perhaps he is right in the strictly al years as Foreign Ministerbetween 1933 and May, causal sense that if there had been no failure of 1938, after which he held no office whatever. The
46 HARPER'S MAGAZINE/FEBRUARY 2001 Photograph © AFP / CORBIS so-called "rape of Nanking" byJapaneseforces oc urged the expansion of the war into two neutral curred during the winter of 1937-38, when Hirota countries—violating international law—while wasForeignMinister. Upon receivingearlyreports persistingin a breathtakingly high level of attri of the atrocities, he demanded and received assur tion in Vietnam itself. ances from the War Ministry that they would be stopped. But they continued, and the Tokyo tri bunal found Hirota guiltybecause he was"derelict P'^rom ahuge menu of possible examples, I in his duty in not insistingbeforethe Cabinet that i have chosencases that involveKissinger immediate action be taken to put an end to the 1 directly and in which I have myself been atrocities," and "was content to rely on assurances able to interview surviving witnesses. The which he knew were not being implemented." On first, asforeshadowed above, isOperation "Speedy this basis, coupled with his conviction on the ag Express": gressive war charge, Hirota was sentenced to be Myfriend and colleagueKevin Buckley, then hanged. a much admired correspondent and Saigon bureau chief for Neu;s«;ee/c, became interested in the Melvin Laird, as secretary of defense during "patification" campaign that bore this breezy the firstNixon Administration, wasqueasyenough code name. Designed in the closing days of the about the earlybombings of Cambodia, and du Johnson-Humphrey Administration, it wasput in bious enoughaboutthe legality orprudence ofthe to full effect in the first six months of 1969, when intervention, to send a memo to the Joint Chiefs Henry Kissinger had assumed much authority ofStaff,asking, "Are stepsbeingtaken, on a con over the conduct of the war. The objective was tinuingbasis, to minimize the riskofstrikingCam the American disciplining,on behalf of the Thieu bodian peopleand structures? Ifso, what are the government, of the turbulent Mekong Delta steps? Are we reasonably suresuch steps are ef province of Kien Hoa. fective?" No evidence has surfaced that Henry On January 22, 1968, Robert McNamara had Kissinger, as national security adviser or secre told the Senate that "no regular North Viet tary of state, ever sought even such modest as namese units" weredeployed in the Delta, and no surances. Indeed, there is much evidence of his de military intelligence documents have surfaced to ceiving Congress as to the true extent to which such assurances as were offeredwere deliberately false. Others involved—such as Robert McNa- kiS^m'dER HAD mara; McGeorge Bundy,national securityadvis KVERY VGASU ALTY. W;-INDOCHI>3 A ^ er to both Kennedy and Johnson; and William Colby—have sinceoffered varieties ofapology or l\EX£R 1968-WAS AVPIDABLE "1 I iii'i li iniiriniiiniTinnlTfr Infm ii i •iiln'ili' iiiiiiimiiiiiiiiiiiii liini iIiiihihiiiiiiiiiiiimi——iihiim—w—— contrition or at least explanation. Henry Kissinger, never.GeneralTaylordescribed the practiceofair undermine his claim,so that the cleansingof the strikes against hamlets suspectedof "harboring" area cannot be understood as part of the general Vietnamese guerrillas as "flagrant violations of argument about resisting Hanoi's unsleepingwill the Geneva Convention on Civilian Protection, to conquest. The announcedpurpose of the Ninth whichprohibits 'collective penalties,' and 'reprisals Division's sweep, indeed, was to redeem many against protected persons,' andequally inviolation thousands ofvillagers frompoliticalcontrol bythe of the Rulesof Land Warfare." He waswriting be National Liberation Front (NLF), or "Vietcong" fore this atrocious precedenthad been extended (VC). As Buckley found, and as his magazine, to reprisal raids that treated two whole coun h^ewsweek, partially disclosed at the rather late tries—Laos and Cambodia—as if they were dis date of June 19,1972, posable hamlets. All the evidence I gathered pointed to a clear For Henry Kissinger, no great believer in the conclusion: a staggering number of noncombatant boastful claims of the war makers in the first civilians—perhaps asmanyas5,CXXI accordingto one place, aspecial degree ofresponsibility attaches. official—were killed by U.S. firepower to "pacify" Not only did he have good reason to know that Kien Hoa. The death toll there made the My Lai field commanders were exaggerating successes massacrelook trifling by comparison and claiming all deadbodies asenemysoldiers— The Ninth Division put all it had into the oper a commonplace piece of knowledge after the ation. Eightthousandinfantrymenscouredthe heav springof 1968—buthe alsoknew that the issue ilypopulatedcountryside, but contact with the elu of the warhad been settled politicallyand diplo sive enemy was rare. Thus, in its pursuit of pacification, the divisionreliedheavilyon its50ar matically,for all intents and purposes, beforehe tillery pieces, 50helicopters (manyarmedwithrock becamenational securityadviser. Thus he had to etsand mini-guns) and the deadly support lentbythe know that every additional casualty, on either Air Force. There were 3,381 tactical air strikes by side, was not justa death but an avoidable death. fighter bombers during"Speedy Express."... With this knowledge, and with a strong senseof "Death isour businessand businessis good,"was the domestic and personal political profit, he the sloganpaintedon one helicopterunit's quarters
REPORT 47 during theoperation. Andsoit was. Cumulative sca- those who opposed the war but by those who * tisticsfor "Speedy Express" show that 10,899"en wereconductingit. Asone Americanofficial put emy" were killed. In the month of March alone, it to Buckley, "over 3,CXX) enemy troopswerekilled.. .which isthe largest monthly total for anyAmericanudivision in "The actions of the Ninth Division in inflicting the Vietnam War," said the division's official civilian casualties were worse [than My Lai]. The magazine. When asked to account for the enor sum total of what the 9th did wasoverwhelming. In mous body counts, a division seniorofficer explained sum,the horror wasworse than My Lai.But with the that helicopter gun crews often caught unarmed 9th, the civilian casualties came in dribbles and "enemy"in open fields.... werepiecedout overa longtime.And mostofthem There isoverwhelming evidence that virtuallyall were inflicted from the air and at night. Also, they the Viet Cong were well armed. Simple civilians were sanctioned by the command's insistence on were,of course, not armed. And the enormous dis high body-counts The result was an inevitable crepancy between the body count (11,000) and the outcome of the unit's command policy." number of captured weapons [748] is hard to ex- The earlier sweep that had mopped up My PhE CTARGE of knowingly. KILLIN'ffl Lai—during Operation "Wheeler Wallawa"— had also at the time counted all corpsesas those CIVILIANS LEADS STiAIGHT TO Th| ofenemysoldiers, includingthe civilianpopula )OCK AT.NUREMBERG OR THE HAGU|i tion of the village, whowerecasually included in . .• - .'.T. ,. ' •*' ** the mind-bending overall total of 10,000. Confronted with this evidence, Buckley and plain—except bytheconclusion that many victims Shimkin abandoned a lazy and customary usage were unarmed innocent civilians.... The people whostilllive in pacified KienHoaall and replaced it, in a cable to Neu/suieek head have vivid recollections of the devastation that quarters in New York, with a more telling and American firepower brought to their livesin early scrupulous one. The problem was not "indis 1969. Virtuallyeveryperson to whom I spokehad criminateuseof firepower" but "charges of quite sufferedin some way."There were 5,000 people in discriminziting use—as a matter of policy in pop our village before 1969, but there were none in ulated areas." Even the former allegation is a 1970,"one villageelder told me. "The Americarxs gross violation of the Geneva Convention; the destroyed every house with artillery-, air strikes, or second charge leads straight to the dock in byburning themdown withcigarette lighters. About Nuremberg or The Hague. 100 people were killed by bombing, others were wounded and others became refugees. Many were Since General Creighton Abrams publicly childrenkilled byconcussion firom the bombs which praised the Ninth Division for itswork, anddrew their small bodies could not withstand, even if they attention wherever and whenever he could to werehiding underground." the tremendous success of Operation "Speedy Other officials, including the villagepolicechief, Express," wecan be sure that the political lead corroborated the man's testimony. I could not, of ership in Washington was not unaware. Indeed, course,reach everyvillage.But in each of the many the degree of micromanagement revealed in places where Iwent, thetestimony was thesame: 100 Kissinger's memoirs quite forbids the idea that killed here, 200 killed there. anything of importance took place without his knowledge or permission. Other notes by Buckley and his friendand col Of nothing is this more true than his own in laborator Alex Shimkin {a worker for Interna dividual involvement in the bombing and inva tional VoluntaryServices whowas laterkilledin sion of neutral Cambodia and Laos. Obsessed the war) discoveredthe sameevidence in hospi with the idea that Vietnamese intransigence tal statistics. In March 1969, the hospital at Ben could be traced to allies or resources external to Tre reported 343 patients injured by "friendly" Vietnam itself, or could be overcome by tactics fire and 25 by"the enemy," an astonishing statis of mass destruction, Kissinger at one point con tic for a government facility to recordin a guer templated using thermonuclear weapons to oblit rilla war inwhich suspected membership in theVi- erate the pass throughwhichran the railway link etcong could mean death. And Buckley's own from North Vietnam to China, and at another citation forhis magazine—of "perhapsasmany as stage considered bombing the dikes that pre 5,000"deathsamongcivilians in this one sweep— vented North Vietnam's irrigation system from is an almost deliberate understatement of what he flooding the country. Neither of these measures was toldbya United States official, whoactually (reported respectively in Tad Szulc's history of said that "at least5,000" of the dead "were what Nixon-era diplomacy. The Illusion ofPeace, and we refer to as non-combatants"—a not too ex byKissinger's former aideRoger Morris) was tak acting distinction, as we havealready seen, andas en, which removes some potential war crimes was bythen well understood. [Italics mine.] from our bill of indictment but which also gives Well understood, that is to say, not just by an indication of the regnant mentality. There
48 HARPER'SMAGAZINE/FEBRUARY 2001 remained Cambodia and Laos, which supposed Chiefe ofStaffand sent to the Defense Department lyconcealedor protected North Vietnamesesup and the White House stated plainly that "some ply lines. Cambodian casualties would be sustained in the operation" and that "the surprise effect of attack As in the cases postulated by General could tend to increase casualties."The target dis TelfordTaylor, there isthe crime ofag' trict for "Breakfast" (Base Area 353) was inhab gressive warand then there isthe ques ited, explained the memo, by about 1,640 Cam tion of war crimes. In the postwar peri bodian civilians; "Lunch" (Base Area 609), by od, or the period governed by the U.N. Charter 198 of them; "Snack" (Base Area 351), by 383; and itsrelatedand incorporatedconventions, the "Dinner" (Base Area 352), by 770; and "Dessert" United States under Democratic and Republican (BaseArea 350), byabout 120Cambodian peas administrations had denied even its closest allies ants. These oddly exact figures are enough in the right to invadecountries that allegedly gave themselves to demonstrate that Kissinger must shelter to their antagonists.Most famously, Pres have been lyingwhen he later told the Senate For ident Eisenhower exerted economic and diplo eign Relations Committee that areas of Cambo maticpressure at a high level to bringan end to dia selected for bombingwere"unpopulated." the invasion of Egypt by Britain, France, and Is As a result of the expanded and intensified rael inOctober 1956. (Tiie British thought Egypt bombing campaigns, it has been officially esti ian president Gamal Abdel Nasser should not mated that as many as 350,000 civilians in Laos control "their" Suez Canal, the French believed Nasser to be the inspiration and source of their troublesin Algeria,and the Israelisclaimed that he playedthe same role in fomenting their diffi culties with the Palestinians. The United States * 'mMi maintained that even if these propaganda fan tasies weretrue, they wouldnot retrospectively le galize an invasionof Egypt.) Duringthe Algerian war of independence, the United States had also repudiated France's claimedright to attack a town in neighboring Tunisia that succored Algerian guerrillas, and in 1964, at the United Nations, Ambassador Adlai Stevenson had condemned the United Kingdom for attacking a town in Yemen that allegedly provided a rear guard for rebelsoperating in its then colony of Aden. All this lawand precedent wasto be thrown to the windswhen Nixon and Kissinger decided to aggrandize the notion of"hot pursuit"across the borders ofLaos and Cambodia. As William Shaw- crossreported in his 1979 book, Swles/iou', even before the actual territorial invasion ofCambo dia, for example, and very soon after the acces and 600,000 in Cambodia lost their lives. (These TAKING COVER FROM sion of Nixon and Kissinger to power, a program are not the highestestimates.) Figures for refugees HEAVY FIGHTING, of heavy bombardment of the country was pre are several multiples of that. In addition, the 1966 pared and executed in secret. One might with widespread use of toxic chemical defoliants cre some revulsion call it a "menu" of bombardment, ated a massive health crisis that naturally fell since the code names for the raids were "Break most heavily on children, nursing mothers, the fast," "Lunch," "Snack," "Dinner," and "Dessert." aged, and the already infirm. That crisis persists The raids were flown by B-52 bombers, which, it to this day. isimportantto note, fly at an altitudetoo high to Although this appallingwar,and its appalling be observedfrom the ground and carry immense consequences, can and should be taken as a tonnagesofhigh explosive; they giveno warning moral and political crisis for American institu ofapproachand are incapable of accuracy or dis tions, for at least five United States presidents, crimination. BetweenMarch 1969and May 1970, and for American society, there is little difficul 3,630 such raids were flown across the Cambodian ty in identifying individual responsibility dur frontier. The bombing campaign began as it was ing this, its most atrocious and indiscriminate to go on—with full knowledge of its effect on stage. Richard Nixon, as commander in chief, civilians and flagrant deceit by Mr. Kissinger in bearsultimate responsibility and only narrowly this precise respect. escaped a congressional move to include his To wit, a memorandum prepared by the Joint crimes and deceptions in Indochina in the
Photograph© AP / Wide World Photos articles of impeachment, the promulgation of that he, together with Haldeman, Alexander which eventuallycompelled his resignation. But Haig, and Colonel Ray Sitton, evolved "both a his deputyand closestadviser, Henry Kissinger, military and a diplomatic schedule" forthe secret was sometimes forced, and sometimes forced bombing ofCambodia. On boardAir ForceOne, himself, into a position of virtual co-presidency which was on the tarmac at Brussels airport on where Indochina was concerned. February 24, 1969, he writes, "weworked out the For example, in the preparations for the inva guidelines forbombing of the enemy'ssanctuar sion of Cambodia in 1970, Kissinger was caught ies." A few weeks later, Haldeman's Diaries for between the views of his staff—several ofwhom March 17 record: resigned inprotest when the invasion began—and Historicday. Klissinger]'s "Operation Breakfast" hisneed to please hispresident. His president lis finallycame offat 2:00 PM our time. tened more to his two criminal associates—^John Klissinger] really excited, aswas Plresidentl. Mitchell and Bebe Rebozo—than he did to his secretaries of state and defense, William Rogers The next day's entry: and Melvin Laird, both of whom were highly Klissingerj's "OperationBreakf^t" a greatsuccess. skeptical about widening the war. On one espe He came beamingin with report, veryproductive. cially charming occasion, Nixon telephoned Kissinger, while drunk, to discuss the invasion It onlygot better. On April 22, 1970,Halde plans. He then put man reports that Nixon, followingKissingerin to a National SecurityCouncil meeting on Cam bodia, "turned back to me with a big smile and said, 'K[issinger]'s really having fun today, he's playing Bismarck.'" TTie above is an insult to the Iron Chancellor. When Kissinger wasfinally exposed in Congress and the press forconducting unauthorized bomb ings, he weakly pleaded that the raids were not all that secret, really, because PrinceSihanoukof Cambodia had known ofthem. He had to be re minded that a foreign princelingcannot giveper mission to an American bureaucrat to violate the United States Constitution. Nor, for that matter, can he give permission to an American bureaucrat to slaughter large numbers ofhis"own" civilians. It's difficultto imagine Bismarckcow eringbehindsucha contemptible excuse. (Prince Sihanouk, it isworth remembering, later became an abject puppetof the KhmerRouge.) Colonel Sitton, the reigning expert on B-52 tactics at the Joint Chiefs of Staff, began to no ticetliat by late 1969hisown office wasbeingreg ularly overruled in the matter of selecting tar gets. "Not only was Henry carefully screening General William dfie raids,"saidSitton, "he wasreading the raw in
MENTALLY AND Westmoreland, actually lobbied for that inva telligence" and fiddling with the mission pat PHYSICALLY HANDI sion to goahead. terns and bombing runs. In other departments CAPPED CHILD OF A somewhat harder picture is presented by of Washington insiderdom, it was also noticed AN AGENT ORANGE that Kissinger was becoming a Stakhanovite com- VICTIM, 1998 former chiefof staff H. R. Haldeman in his Diaries. On December 22, 1970, he records: mitteeman. Aside from the crucial 40 Commit tee,which planned andoversaw allforeign covert Her^came upwiththeneedto meetwiththe Pto actions, he chaired the Washington Special Ac day with AlHaigandthen tomorrow withLaird and tion Group (WSAG), whichdealt with breaking Moorer because he has to use the P to force Laird crises; the Verification Panel, concerned with and the military to go ahead with the P's plans, which they won't carryout without direct orders. armscontrol;the Vietnam SpecialStudiesGroup, which oversaw the day-to-day conduct of the In his White House Years, Kissinger claimsthat war; and the Defense Program Review Commit he usurped the customary chain of command tee, whichsupervised the budgetof the Defense whereby commanders in the field receive, or be Department. lieve that theyreceive, theirorders from the pres It istherefore impossible forhim to claimthat ident and then the secretary ofdefense. He boasts he was unaware ofthe consequences of the bomb-
50 HARPER'S MAGAZINE/ FEBRUARY 2001 Photograph® 1998/P. j. Gtiffiihs/Magnum PhotcM, Inc. .ings ofCambodia and Laos; he knewmoreabout was able to make a dramatic appearance on Capi them, and in more intimate detail, than any oth tol Hill on April 22, 1971, at a hearing held by er individual. Nor washe imprisoned in a culture Senator Edward Kennedy's subcommittee on ofobedience that gavehim no alternative, or no refugees. His antagonist was the State Depart rival arguments. Several senior members of his ment's envoy, William Sullivan, a former am own staff,most notably Anthony Lake and Roger bassador to Laos. Branfman accused him in front Morris,resignedover the invasion ofCambodia, of the cameras of helping to conceal evidence and more than two hundred State Department that Laotian society was being mutilated by fe employees signeda protest addressed to Secretary rocious aerial bombardment. of State William Rogers. Indeed, both Rogers Partly as a consequence, Congressman Pete and Secretary of DefenseMelvin Laird were op McCloskey of California paid a visit to Laos and posed to the secret bombing policy,as Kissinger himselfrecords with somedisgust in his memoirs. Congress also was opposed to an extension of I. 1 HE PRESIDENT WANTS YOU TO the bombing (once it had agreed to become in iKNOW.IF\fH13 pOfeN'T ?X^O^ formed of it), but even after the Nixon-Kissinger Administration had undertaken on Capitol Hill Ut's •YOUR;ASS,; •BEBE REBOZO not to intensify the raids, there wasa 21 percent increase of the bombing of Cambodia in the acquired a copy of an internal U.S. Embassy months of July and August 1973.The Air Force study of the bombing. He also prevailed on the mapsof the targetedareasshow them to be, or to U.S. Air Force to furnish him with aerial pho have been, densely populated. tographs of the dramatic damage. Ambassador Colonel Sitton does recall, it must be admit Sullivan was so disturbed by these pictures, some ted, that Kissinger requested the bombing avoid of them taken in areas known to him, that his first civilian casualties. His explicit motive in mak reaction was to establish to his own satisfaction ing this request was to avoid or forestall com that the raids had occurred after he left his post plaintsfrom the government of PrinceSihanouk. in Vientiane. (He was later to leam that, for his But this does no more in itselfthan demonstrate pains, his own telephone was being tapped at that Kissinger was aware of the possibility of Henry Kissinger's instigation, one of the many civilian deaths. If he knew enough to know of such violations of American law that were to their likelihood, and was director of the policy eventuate in the Watergate tapping-and-bur- that inflicted them, and neither enforced any glary scandal, a scandal that Kissinger was fur- actualprecautions nor reprimanded anyviolators, tliermore to plead—in an astounding outburst of then the case against him is legallyand morally vanity, deceit, and self-deceit—as his own alibi complete. for collusion in the 1974 Cyprus crisis.) Having done what he could to bring the Lao As early as die fall of 1970, an independent tian nightmare to the attention of those whose investigator named FredBranfman,who constitutional job it wasto supervisesuch ques spoke Lao and knew the country as a tions, Branfman went back to Thailand and from civilian volunteer,had gone to Bangkok there to Phnom Penh, capital of Cambodia. Hav and interviewedJerome Brown,a former target ing gained access to a pilot's radio, he tape- ing officer for the United States Embassy in the recorded the conversations between pilots on LaotiancapitalofVientiane.The man had retired bombing missions over the Cambodian interior. from the Air Force because ofhis disillusionment On no occasion did they run any checks de at the futility of the bombing and his consterna signed to reassure themselves and others that tion at the damagedone to civilians and society. they were not bombing civilian targets. It had The speed and height of the planes, he said, been definitely asserted,by named U.S. govern meant that targets werevirtually indistinguishable ment spokesmen, that such checks were run. from the air. Pilots often chose villagesas targets, Branfman handed the tapes to Sydney Schan because they could be more readily identified berg, whose New YorkTimesreport on them was than alleged Pathet Lao guerrillashiding in the printed just before the Senate met to prohibit fur jungle. Branfman, whom I interviewed in San ther blitzing of Cambodia (the very resolution Francisco in the summer of 2000, went on to that was flouted by Kissinger the following provide this and other information to Henry month). Kamm and Sydney Schanberg of the New York From there Branfman went back to Thailand Times, to Ted Koppelof ABC, and to many oth and traveled north to Nakhorn Phanom, the ers. Under pressure from the United States Em new headquarters of the U.S. Seventh Air bassy, the Laotianauthoritieshad Branfman de Force. Here, a warroom code-named Blue Chip ported back to the United States, which was served as the command and control center of probably, from their point ofview, a mistake. He the bombing campaign. Branfman was able to
REPORT 51 pose asa new recruit just upfrom Saigon andul' derstood by him; wereconcealed fromCongress, timately gained access to the war room itself. the press, and the public byhim;and were, when Consoles and maps and screens plotted the questioned, the subject of political and bureau progress of the bombardment. In conversation cratic vendettas ordered by him. They were also with the "bombingofficer" on duty," he asked if partly the outcome of a secretive and illegal pilots ever made contact before dropping their process in Washington, unknown even to most enormous loads of ordnance. Oh, yes, he was aS' Cabinet members, ofwhichHenryKissinger stood sured, theydid. Were they worried about hitting to be, and became, a prime beneficiary. the innocent? Oh, no—merelyconcerned about On that closing point one may once again the whereabouts of CIA "ground teams" infil cite H. R. Haldeman, who had no further rea trated into the area. Branfman's report on this, son to lie and who had, by the time of his writ which was carried by Jack Anderson's syndi ing, paid for his crimes by serving a sentence in cated column, was uncontroverted by any offi prison. Haldeman describes the momentin Hori- cial denial. da when Kissinger was enraged by a New York Timesstory telling some part of the truth about One reason that the American command Indochina: in Southeast Asia finally ceased em Henry telephonedJ. Edgar Hoover in Washing ploying the crude and horrific tally of ton from Key Biscayne on the May morning the "body count" was that, as in the rela Timesstory appeared. tively small butspecific case ofOperation "Speedy According to Hoover's memoof the call, Hen Express" cited above, the figures began to look ry said the story used "secret information which ominous when they werecounted up.Sometimes, was extraordinarily damaging." Henry went on to totals of "enemy" dead would turn out, when tell Hoover that he "wondered whether I could computed, to besuspiciously larger than the num make a major effort to find out where that came ber of claimed "enemy" in the field. Yet the war from... and to put whateverresources 1need to find out who did this. I told him I would take care of this would somehowdrag on, with new quantitative right away." goals being setandenforced. Thus, according to Henry was no fool, of course. He telephoned the Pentagon, the following are the casualtyfig Hoover a few hours later to remind him that the in ures between the first Lyndon Johnson bombing vestigation behandleddiscreetly "sono stories will get out." Hoover must have smiled, but said all right. And byfive o'clockhe was backon the tele Kissinger oEFHANDEDLY bESGRmFli phone to Henrywiththe reportthat the Times re CHILE AS-"A DAGGER POINTElf porter "mayhave gotten some of his information from the Southeast Asian desk of the Department AT THE HEART OF ANTARCTIC.^,| of Defense's Public Affairs Office." More specifi cally, Hooversuggested the source couldbe a man named Mort Halperin (a Kissinger staffer)and an halt in March 1968 and February 26, 1972: other man who worked in the Systems Analysis Americans: 31,205 Agency.... Accordingto Hoover's memo, Kissinger South Vietnamese regulars: 86,101 "hoped I would follow it upasfaraswecan take it "Enemy": 475,609 and they will destroy whoever did this if we can The U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Refugees find him, no matter where he is." estimated that in the samefour-year period,rather The last line of that memo gives an accurate re more than 3 million civilians were killed, in flection of Henry's rage,as I remember it. jured, or rendered homeless. Nevertheless, Nixonwas one hundred percentbe In the samefour-year period,the United States hind the wiretaps. And I was,too. dropped almost 4,500,000 tons of high explo And so the program started, inspiredbyHenry's rage but ordered byNixon,whosoonbroadened it siveon Indochina. (The Pentagon'sestimated to even further to include newsmen. Eventually, sev tal for the amount dropped in the entire Second enteen peoplewerewiretapped bythe FBI including World War is 2,044,000.) This total does not seven on Kissinger's NSC staff and three on the includemassivesprayings ofchemical defoliants White House staff. and pesticides. It is unclear how we count the murder or ab And thus, the birth of the "plumbers" and of duction of 35,708 Vietnamese civilians by the the assault on American law and democracy that CIA's counterguerrilla "Phoenix program" during they inaugurated. Commenting on the lamen the first two and a half years of the Nixon- tableend ofthisprocess, Haldeman wrote that he Kissinger Administration. There may be some still believed that ex-president Nixon (who was "overlap." There isalso some overlap with the ac then still alive) shouldagreeto the releaseof the tionsofprevious administrations in all cases. But remaining tapes. But: the truly exorbitant death tolls all occurred on This timemyview isapparently not sharedbythe Henry Kissinger's watch; were known and un man who was one reason for the original decision
52 HARPER'S MAGAZINE/FEBRUARY 2001 to start the taping process. Henry Kissinger is de anathema to the extreme right in Chile, to cer termined to stop the tapes from reaching the tain powerfulcorporations (notably ITT, Pepsi- public Cola, and the Chase Manhattan Bank) that did Nixon made the point that Kissingerwasreally business in Chile and the United States, and to the one who had the most to losefromthe tapes be comingpublic.Henryapparentlyfelt that the tapes the CIA. wouldexpose a lot of things he had said that would This loathing quickly communicated itself to be very disadvantageous to him publicly. President Nixon. He waspersonallybeholden to Nixon said that in making the deal for custody Donald Kendall, the president of Pepsi-Cola, of his Presidential papers, which wasoriginally an who had given him his first international ac nounced after his pardon but then was shot down count when, as a failedpolitician, he had joined byCongress, that it was Henrywhocalled himand a Wall Street law firm. A series of Washington insisted on Nixon's right to destroy the tapes.That meetings,within eleven daysof Allende's electoral was, of course, the thing that destroyed the deal. victory, essentially settled the fate of Chilean democracy. After discussions with Kendall, with A society that has been "plumbed" has the right to demand that its plumbersbe compelled to makesome restitution by wayof full disclosure. The litigation to put the Nixon tapes in the pub lic trust is only partially complete; no truthful accountof the Vietnamyears willbe available un til Kissinger's part in what we already know has been made fully transparent. Until that time, Kissinger's role in the viola tion ofAmerican law at the close ofthe Vietnam War makes the perfect counterpart to the 1968 covertaction that helpedhim to power in the first \ "A place. The two parentheses enclose a series of premeditated war crimesthat still have powerto stun the imagination.
CHILE (PART I): InSTATESMANafamous expressionASofHITMANhis contempt for democracy, Kissinger once observedthat he sawno reason why a certain country should be allowed to "go Communist due to the ir responsibility of its own people." The country concerned was Chile, which at the time of this remark had a justified reputation as the most highly evolved pluralistic democracy in the David Rockefeller of Chase Manhattan, and with Soutliem Hemisphereof the Americas. The plu CIA director RichardHelms, Kissinger went with ralism translated, in the years of the Cold War, Helms to the Oval Office. Helms's notes of the into an electorate that voted about one-third meeting show that Nixon wastedlittle breath in conservative, one-third socialist and Commu making his wishes known. Allende was not to nist, and one-third Christian Democratic and assume office. "Not concerned risks involved. No centrist. This had made it relatively easy to keep involvement of embassy. $10,000,000 available, the Marxist element from having its turn in gov more if necessary. Full-time job—best men we ernment, and ever since 1962 the CIA had—as have.... Make the economy scream. 48 hours for it had in Italy and other comparable nations— plan of action." largely contented itself with funding the reli Declassified documents show that Kissinger— ableelements. In September1970, however, the who had previously neither known nor cared left's candidate actually gained a slight plurali about Chile, describingit offhandedly as "a dag ty of 36.2 percent in the presidential elections. ger pointed at the heart of Antarctica"—took se Divisions on the right, and the adherence of riously thischanceto impress his boss. A group was somesmallerradicaland Christian parties to the set up in Langley,Virginia, with the express pur left, made it a moral certainty that the Chilean poseof running a "twotrack"policy forChile, one Congress would, afterthe traditionalsixty-day in the ostensible diplomatic one and the other— terregnum, confirm Dr. SalvadorAllende as the unknown to the State Department or the U.S. am next president. Butthe verynameofAllendewas bassador to Chile, Edward Korry—a strategy of
Map by Mike Reagan destabilization, kidnapping,and assassination de firmly told Helms and Karamessines to press on signed to provoke a military coup. in any case. There were long-and short-termobstacles to Here one must pause for a recapitulation. An the.incubation of such an intervention, espe unelected official in the United States is meeting cially in the briefinterval available before Allende with others, without the knowledge or autho tookhisoath ofoffice. The long-term obstacle was rizationofCongress, to plan the kidnappingofa the tradition of military abstention from politics constitutionally minded senior officerin a dem in Chile, a tradition that marked off the country' ocratic country with which the United States is from its neighbors.Such a militaryculture wasnot not at war and with which it maintains cordial to be degradedovernight. The short-term obsta diplomaticrelations. The minutesof the meetings cle lay in the personof one man: General Rene may have an official look to them (though they Schneider. As chief of the Chilean Army, he were hidden from the light of day for long wasadamantly opposedto any militarymeddling enough), but what we are reviewingis a "hit," a in the electoral process. Accordingly, it was de piece of state-supported terrorism. cided at a meeting on September 18, 1970, that General Schneider had to go. Ambassador Edward Korry has testified The plan, well documented bySeymour Hersh that he told his embassy staff to have and others, was to have him kidnapped by ex nothing to do with a groupstyling itself tremist officers, in such a wayas to make it appear Patria y Libertad, a quasi-fascist group that leftist andpro-Allende elements were behind intent on defying the electionresults. He sent two the plot. TTie resultingconfusion, it was hoped, cables to Washington warning his superiors to would panic the Chilean Congress into denying have nothing to do with them either. He was Allende the presidency. A sum of$50,000 was of unaware that his own military attaches had been feredaround the Chilean capital, Santiago,forany toldto contact the group and to keepthe factfrom officer or officers enterprising enough to take on him. And when the outgoingpresident ofChile, the Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei, announced that he was opposed to any American interven tion and would vote to confirm the legally elect ed Allende, it was precisely to this gang that Kissinger turned. On September 15, 1970, Kissinger was told of an extremistright-wing of ficer named General Roberto Viaux, who had ties to Patria y Libertad and who was willing to accept the secret American commission to re move General Schneider from the chessboard. The term"kidnap" wasstillbeingemployed at this point and isoftenemployed still.Kissinger's "track two" group, however, authorized the supply of machine guns as well as tear-gas grenades to Viaux's associates and never seem to have asked what they would do with the general once they had kidnapped him. Let the documents tell the story.A CIA cable to Kissinger's "tracktwo"group fromSantiagodat ed October 18,1970, reads (with the names still blacked out for "security" purposes and cover identities writtenin byhand, in mysquare brack ets, by the ever-thoughtful redaction service) as follows: 1,IStation cooptee]MET CLANDESTlNaY EVENING 17 OCT WITH [two Chilean Armed Forces officers] WHO TOLD HIM THEIR PLANS WERE MOVING ALONG SALVADOR ALLENDE, this task. Richard Helms and his director ofcovert BETTER THAN HAD THOUGHT POSSIBLE. THEY ASKED 1971 operations,Thomas Karamessines, told Kissinger THAT BY EVENING 18OCT [cooptee] ARRANGE FUR that they were not optimistic. Military circles NISH THEM WITH EIGHT TO TEN TEAR GAS GRENADES. were hesitant and divided, or else loyal to Gen WITHIN 48 HOURS THEY NEED THREE 45 CALIBRE MA CHINE GUNS ("GREASE GUNS") WITH 500 ROUNDS eral Schneider and the Chilean constitution. As AMMO EACH. lOne officer] COMMENTED HAS THREE Helms put it in a later account of the conversa MACHINE GUNS HIMSHJ BUT CA'N BE IDENTIHED BY SE tion: "We tried to make clear to Kissinger how RIAL NUMBERS AS HAVING BEEN ISSUED TO HIM THERE small the possibility of success was." Kissinger FORE UNABLE USE THEM.
54 HARPER'S MAGAZINE/FEBRUARY 2001 Photograph by RaymondDepardon/ LiaisonAgency Inc. 2. [Officers] SAID THEY HAVE TO MOVE BECAUSE BE TRACED TO HIM. CAN WE DEVELOP RATIONALE ON THEY BELIEVE THEY NOW UNDER SUSPICION AND BE WHY GUNS MUST BE STERILE? Wia CONTINUE MAKE ING WATCHED BY ALLENDE SUPPORTERS. [One officer] EFFORT PROVIDE THEM BUT FIND OUR CREDULITY WAS LATE TO MEETING HAVING TAKEN EVASIVE AC STRETCHED BY NAVY [officer] LEADING HIS TROOPS TION TO SHAKE POSSIBLE SURVEILLANCE BY ONE OR WITH STERILEGUNS? WHAT IS SPECIAL PURPOSE FOR WO TAXI CABS WITH DUAL ANTENNAS WHICH HE BE THESE GUNS? WE WILL TRY SEND THEM WHETHER YOU LIEVED BEING USED BY OPPOSITION AGAINST HIM. CAN PROVIDE EXPLANATION OR NOT. 3. [Cooptee] ASKED IF (officers] HAD AIR FORCE CONTACTS. THEY ANSWERED THEY DID NOT BUT The full beauty of this cable trafific cannot be WOULD WELCOME ONE. [Cooptee] SEPARATELY HAS appreciated without a reading of an earlier mes SINCE TRIED CONTACT [a Chilean Air Force Gener sage, dated October 16. (It must be borne in al] AND WILL KEEP TKYING UNTIL ESTABLISHED. WILL mind that the Chilean Congress was to meet to URGE [Air ForceGeneral] MEET WITH [other two of confirm Allende as president on the twenty- ficers] ASAP. [Cooptee] COMMENTED TO STATION fourth ofthat month.) THAT [Air ForceGeneral] HAS NOT TRIED CONTACT HIM SINCE REF A TALK. 1. [codename Tricktum] POLICY, OBJECTIVES AND 4. [Cooptee] COMMENT: CANNOT TELL WHO IS ACTIONS WERE REVIEWED ATHIGH USG [UnitedStates LEADER OF THIS MOVEMENT BUT STRONGLY SUSPECTS Government] LEVEL AFTERNOON 15 OCTOBER. CON- IT IS ADMIRAL [Deleted]. IT WOULD APPEAR FROM [his contacts'] ACTIONS AND ALLEGED ALLENDE SUS PICIONS ABOUT THEM THAT UNLESS THEY ACT NOW )mAT WE,AKB KEVIEWlNGi--.^ THEY ARE LOST. TRYING GET MORE INFO FROM THE EVENING 18 OCT ABOUT SUPPORT THEY BELIEVE THEY A^PIECE OF STATE- HAVE. i^'PORTED TERRORISM 5. STATION PLANS GIVE SIX TEAR GAS GRENADES (arriving noon 18 OCT BY SPECIAL COURIER) TO [cooptee] FOR DELIVERY TO [Armed Forces officer] IN CLUSIONS, WHICH ARE TO BE YOUR OPERATIONAL STEAD OF HAVING [Fa[se Flagofficer] DELIVER THEM GUIDE, FOaOW: TO VL\UX GROUP. OUR REASONING IS THAT [cooptee] 2. IT IS FIRM AND CONTINUING POUCY THAT AL DEALING WITH ACTIVE DUTY OFRCERS. ALSO [False LENDE BE OVERTHROWN BY A COUP. IT WOULD BE Flagofficer] LEAVING EVENING 18OCT AND Wia NOT MUCH PREFERABLE TO HAVE THIS TRANSPIRE PRIOR TO BE REPLACED BUT [cooptee] WILL STAY HERE. HENCE 24 OCTOBER BUT EFFORTS IN THIS REGARD WIU CON IMPORTANT THAT [cOOptee] CREDIBILITY WITH TINUE VIGOROUSLY BEYOND THIS DATE. WE ARE TO [Armed Forcesofficers] BE STRENGTHENED BY PROMPT CONTINUE TO GENERATE MAXIMUM PRESSURE TO DELIVERY WHAT THEY REQUESTING. REQUEST HEAD WARD THIS END UTILIZING EVERY APPROPRIATE RE QUARTERS AGREEMENT BY 1500 HOURS LOCAL TIME 18 SOURCE. IT JS IKtPERATfVE THAT THESE ACTIONS BE IM OCT ON DEQSION DEUVERY OF TEAR GAS TO [cooptee] PLEMENTED CLANDESTINELY AND SECURELY SO THAT VICE [FalseFlag officer]. THE USG AND AMERICAN HAND BE WELL HIDDEN. 6. REQUEST PROMPT SHIPMENT THREE STERILE 45 WHILE THIS IMPOSES ON US A HIGH DEGREE OF SE CALIBRE MACHINE GUNS AND AMMO PER PARA 1 LECTIVITY IN MAKING MIUTARY CONTACTS AND DIC ABOVE, BY SPECIAL COURIER IF NECESSARY. PLEASE TATES THAT THESE CONTACTS BE MADE IN THE MOST CONHRM BY 2000 HOURS LOCAL TIME 18 OCT THAT SECURE MANNER IT DEHNITELY DOES NOT PRECLUDE THIS CAN BE DONE SO [cooptee] MAY INFORM [his CONTACTS SUCH AS REPORTED IN SANTIAGO 544 contacts] ACCORDINGLY. WHICH WAS A MASTERFUL PIECE OFWORK. [Italics added.] The reply, which isheaded IMMEDIATE SANTI 3. AFTER THE MOST CAREFUL CONSIDERATION IT AGO (eyes only [deleted]), is dated October 18 WAS DETERMINED THAT A VIAUX COUP ATTEMPT and reads as follows: CARRIED OUT BY HIM ALONE WITH THE FORCES NOW AT HIS DISPOSAL WOULD FAIL. THUS, IT WOULD BE SUB-MACHINE GUNS AND AMMO BEING SENT BY COUNTERPRODUCTIVE TO OUR [track two] OBJEC REGULAR [deleted] COURIER LEAVING WASHINGTON TIVES. ITWAS DECIDED THAT [CIA] GET A MESSAGE 0700 HOURS 19 OCTOBER DUE ARRIVE SANTIAGO LATE TO VIAUX WARNING HIM AGAINST PRECIPITATE AC EVENING 20 OCTOBER OR EARLY MORNING 21 OCTO TION. IN ESSENCE OUR MESSAGE IS TO STATE, "WE BER. PREFERRED USE REGULAR [deleted] COURIER TO HAVE REVIEWEDYOUR PLANS, AND BASED ON YOUR IN AVOID BRINGING UNDUE ATTENTION TO OP. FORMATION AND OURS, WE COME TO THE CONCLU SION THAT YOUR PLANS FOR A COUP AT THIS TIME A companion message, also addressed to "SAN CANNOT SUCCEED. FAILING, THEY MAY REDUCEYOUR TIAGO 562," went like this: CAPABILTTIES FOR THE FLTTURE. PRESERVE YOUR ASSETS. WE WILL STAY IN TOUCH. THE TIME WILL COME WHEN 1.DEPENDING HOW [cooptee] CONVERSATION GOES YOU TOGETHER WITH ALL YOUR OTHER FRIENDS CAN EVENING 18 OCTOBER YOU MAY WISH SUBMIT INTEL DO SOMETHING. YOU WILL CONTINUE TO HAVE OUR REPORT [deleted] SO WE can decide whether SUPPORT." YOUAREREQUESTED TO DELIVER THEMES SHOULD BE DISSEMED. SAGE TO VIAUX ESSENTIAUY AS NOTED ABOVE. OUR 2. NEW SUBJECT: IF [cooptee] PLANS LEAD COUP, OR OBJECTIVES ARE AS FOLLOWS: (A) TO ADVISEHIM OF BE ACTIVELY AND PUBLICLY INVOLVED, WE PUZZLED OUR OPINION AND DISCX3URAGE HIM FROM ACTING WHY IT SHOULD BOTHER HIM IF MACHINE GUNS CAN ALONE; (B) CONTINUE TO ENCOURAGE HIMTO AMHJFY
REPORT 55 HISPLANNING; (C) ENCOURAGE HIMTO JOIN FORCES mustgeta message to Viaux warning him against any WITH OTHER COUP PLANNERS SO THAT THEY MAY precipitate action. In essence our message was to ACT IN CONCERT EITHER BEFORE OR AFTER 24 OC state: "We have reviewed your plans, and based on TOBER. (N.B. SIX GAS MASKS AND SIX CS CANNIS- yourinformationand ours,wecome to the conclu TERS [sic]ARE BEING CARRIED TO SANTIAGO BY SPE sion that your plans for a coup at diis time cannot CIAL [deleted] COURIER ETD Washington 1100 succeed. Failing, they mayreduceyourcapabilities HOURS 16 OCTOBER.) for the future. Preserve your assets. We will stay in 4. THERE IS GREAT AND CONTINUING INTEREST IN touch. The time will come when you with all your THE ACTIVITIESOF TIRADO, CANALES, VALENZUELA ET other friends can do something. You will continue AL. AND WE WISH THEM MAXIMUM GOOD FORTUNE. to have our support." 5. THE ABOVE IS YOUR OPERATING GUIDANCE. NO 6. After the decision to de-fuse the Viaux coup OTHER POLICY GUIDANCE YOU MAY RECEIVE FROM plot, at least temporarily, Dr. Kissinger instructed [indecipherable: State] OR ITS MAXIMUM EXPONENT Mr.Karamessines to preserve Agency assets in Chile, IN SANTIAGO, ON HIS RETURN, ARE TO SWAY YOU workingclandestinely and securely to maintain the FROM YOUR COURSE. capability forAgency operations againstAllendein 6. PLEASE REVIEW ALL YOUR PRESENT AND POSSI the future. [Italiciadded.] BLY NEW ACTIVITIES TO INCLUM PROPAGANDA, BLACK 7.Dr.Kissinger discussed hisdesire that theword OPERATIONS. SURFACING OF INTELLIGENCE OR DIS of our encouragement to the Chilean military in INFORMATION,PERSONAL CONTACTS, OR ANYTHING recent weeks be kept as secret as possible. Mr. Karamessines stated emphatically that we had been doing everything possible in this connection, includingthe use of false flag officers, car meetings V. -A- ,, 1 r~ - .£-<• and everyconceivableprecaution. Butwe and oth YOUR TPEET,'"''r'WAS "OnV ers had done a greatdeal of talking recentlywith a TRYING TO KIDNAP HIM number of persons. Forexample,Ambassador Ker ry'swide-ranging discussions with numerouspeople urginga coup"cannot be put back into the ix)ttle." ELSEYOUR IMAGINATION CAN CONJURE WHICH WILL [Three IiTies of deleticm foUow.] (Dr. Kissinger re PERMIT YOU TO PRESS FORWARD OUR [deleted] OB questedthat copyof the menage be sent to him on JECTIVE IN A SECUREMANNER. 16 October.) 8. The meeting concluded on Dr. Kissinger's Fina[ly, it isessential to readthe White House note that the Agencyshouldcontinue keepingdie "memorandum of CXDNVERSATION," dated Octo pressure on everyAllendeweakspot in sight—now, ber 15, 1970, to which the above cable directly after the 24th of October, after 5 November, and in refers and of wliich it is a more honest summary. to the future until such time as new marching orders Present for the "HIGH USG LEVEL" meeting were, are given. Mr.Karamessines stated that the Agency as noted in the heading, "Dr. Kissinger, Mr. would comply. Karamessines, Gen. Haig." The first paragraph of their deliberations has been entirely blacked So "track two" contained two tracks of its own. out, with not so much as a scribble in the margin "Track two/one" was the group of ultras led by from the redaction service. (Given what has since General Roberto Viaux and his sidekick, Captain been admitted, this sixteen-line deletion must Arturo Marshal. Tliese men had tried to bring off be well worth reading.) Picking up at paragraph a coup in 1969 against the Christian Democrats; two, we find: they had been cashiered and were disliked even by conservatives in the officer corps. "Track 2. Then Mr. Karamessines provided a run-down two/two" was a more ostensibly "respectable" fac on Viaux, the Canales meeting with Tirade, the latter's new position (after Porta was relieved of tion headed byGeneral Camilo Valemuela, the command "for health reasons") and, in some de chief of the garrison in the capital city, whose tail,the general situation in Chile fi-om the couppos name occurs in the cables above and whose iden sibility viewpoint. tity isconcealed bysome of the deletions. Sev 3. A certain amount of information was available eral of the CIA operatives in Chile felt that Vi to us concerning Viaux's alleged support tluough- aux was too much of a madman to be trusted. out the Chilean military. We had assessed Viaux's And AmbassadorKorry's repeated admonitions claimscarefully, basingour analysis on good intel also had their effect. As shown in the October 15 ligence from a numberof sources. Our conclusion memo cited above, Kissinger and Karamessines was clear: Viaux did not have more than one chance developed last-minute second thoughts about in twenty—perhaps less—to launch a successful Viaux, who as late as October 13 had been giv coup. en $20,000 in cash from the CIA station and 4.The unfortunaterepercussions, in Chile and in ternationally, of an unsuccessful coup were dis promised a life-insurance policy of $250,000. cussed.Dr. Kissinger ticked offhis list of these neg This offerwas authorized directly from the White ativepossibilities. Hisitems were remarkably similar House. With only days to go, however, before to the ones Mr. Karamessines had prepared. Allende was inaugurated, and with Nixon re 5. It wasdecidedbythose presentthat the Agency peating that "it was absolutely essentialthat the
56 HARPER'S MAGAZINE/FEBRUARY 2001 election of Mr. Allende to the presidency be the fact, in kidnapping and murder. And this thwarted," the pressure on the Valenzuelagroup sorry euphemism has even found a refuge in the became intense. As a direct consequence, espe written record. The Senate intelligence com ciallyafterthe warmwords ofencouragementhe mittee, in its investigation of the matter, con had received,General Roberto Viaux felt himself cluded that since the machine guns supplied to undersomeobligationto deliverand to disprove Valenzuela had not been actuallyemployed in the those who had doubted him. killing, and since General Viaux had Iseen offi On the evening of October 19, 1970, the cially discouragedby the CIA a few days before Valenzuela group, aided bysomeofViaux's gang, the murder, there was therefore "no evidence of andequipped withthe tear-gas grenades delivered a plan to kill Schneider or that United States bythe CIA, attemptedto grabGeneralSchnei officials specifically anticipated that Schneider der as he left an official dinner. The attempt would be shot during the abduction." foiledbecauseSchneider left in a private car and Walter Isaacson, in his biography of Kissinger, not the expected official one. TTie failure pro takes at face value a memo from Kissinger to duced an extremely significant cable firom CIA Nixon after his meeting on October 15 with headquarters in Washingtonto the localstation, Karamessines, in whichhe reportsto the president asking forurgentaction because "HEADQUARTERS about the Viaux plot, sayingthat he had "turned MUST RESPOND DURING MORNING 20 OCTOBER TO it off." He also takes at face value the claim that QUERIES FROM HIGH LEVELS." Payments of$50,000 Viaux's successful hit was essentially unautho each to Valenzuela and his chief associate were rized. These excuses and apologies are as logi then authorized on condition that they make an cally feeble as they are morally contemptible.' other attempt. On the evening of October 20 Henry Kissinger bears direct responsibility for they did. But again there wasonly failure to re the Schneider murder, as the following points port. On October 22 the "sterile"machine guns demonstrate: mentioned above were handed to Valenzuela's 1) Bruce MacMaster, one of the "False Flag" group for yet another try. Later that same day. agents mentioned in the cable traffic above, a General Roberto Viaux's gang finally murdered career CIA man carrying a forged Colombian General Ren6 Schneider. passport and claiming to represent American business interests in Chile, has told ofhis efforts According to the later verdict of the to get "hush money" to jailed members of the Chilean military courts, this atrocity Viaux group, after the assassination and before partook of elements of both tracks of they could implicate the agency. "track two." In other words, Valenzuela 2) Colonel Paul M. Wimert, a military attache was not himselfon the scene, but the assassina in Santiagoand chiefCIA liaisonwith the Valen tion squad, led by Viaux, contained men who zuela faction, has testified that after the Schnei had participated in the preceding two attempts. der killinghe hastilyretrieved the two payments Viaux was convicted on charges of kidnapping of$50,000that had been paid to Valenzuelaand and of conspiring to cause a coup. Valenzuela his partner, and also the diree "sterile"machine was convicted of the charge of conspiracy to guns.He then drove rapidlyto the Chilean sea causea coup. So any subsequentattempt to dis sidetownofVinadel Marand hurledthe gunsin tinguish the two plots from each other, except in to the ocean. His accomplice in this action, CIA point of degree, is an attempt to confect a dis station chiefHenry Heclaher, had assured Wash tinction without a difference. ingtononlydays before that either ViauxorValen It scarcely matters whether Schneider was zuela would be able to eliminate Schneider and slain because of a kidnapping scheme that went thereby triggera coup. awry(he wassaidby the assassins to have had the 3) Look again at the White House/Kissinger temerity to resist) or whether his assassination memoof October 15 and at the doggedly literal wasthe objective in the firstplace.The Chilean wayit isretransmittedto Chile, In no senseof the military police report, as it happens, describesa term doesit "turn off" Viaux. If anything, it in straightforward murder. Under the law of every cites him—a well-known and boastful fanatic— law-bound country(including the United States), to redoublehis efforts. "Preserveyourassets. We a crimecommitted in the pursuitof a kidnapping willstay in touch. The time willcome wheriyou istherebyaggravated, not mitigated.Youmaynot with all your other friends can do something. say, with a corpse at your feet, "I wasonly trying Youwill continue to have our support."This is to kidnap him." At least, you may not say so if not exactlythe language of standinghim down. you hope to plead extenuating circumstances. The remainderofthe cablespeaks plainlyofthe Yet a version of "extenuating circumstances" intention to "DISCOURAGE HIM FROM ACTING hasbecome the paper-thincoverstorywith which ALONE," to "CONTINUE TO ENCOURAGE HIM TO Kissinger has since protected himself from the AMPLIFY HIS PLANNING," and to "ENCOURAGE HIM charge of being an accomplice, before and after TO JOIN FORCES WITH OTHER COUP PLANNERS SO
REPORT 57 THAT THEY MAY ACT IN CONCERT EITHER BEFORE iristance, a micro-style, involving an obsessive, al OR AFTER 24OCTOBER." (Italics added.) The last mostfussy nwiipulationofsmaller forces. The two three stipulations are an entirely accurate, not to practices areactually quitecongruent, and there say prescient, description of" what Viaux actual isan obvious relation between the gross and com ly did. prehensiveviolence of the first case and the in 4) Consult again the cable received by Henry timate and personalcrueltyof the second. Hecksher on October 20, referring to anxious In Indochina, the megalo-scale ofmass murder queries "from high levels" aboutthe first of the alsorequired much individual fawning, the tire failed attacks on Schneider. Thomas Kara- less flattering of numerous secret committees, messines, when questionedby the Senate intel and the smilingbetrayal ofseveralassociates. In ligence committee about the same phrase in a Chile, the micro-scale of surreptitious assassina similar cable sent to another CIA agent in San tion was paradoxically conceived with a certain tiago, testified ofhiscertainty thatthe term "high grandeur, the objectivebeingthe destabilization levels" referred directly to Kissinger. In allprevious of an entire government and, ultimately, the communications from Washington, as a glance teaching ofa sharp pedagogical lesson to a whole above will show, that had indeed been the case. subcontinent. This on itsown isenough to demolishKissinger's In the March issue of Harper's Magazine, we claim to have "turned off' "track two" (and its in shallagain encounterthesetwocontrasting but terior tracks) on October 15. symrhetrical tropes. In Chile,the destruction of 5) Ambassador Edward Korry later made the an economy, a president, and a constitutionisfol obvious point that Kissinger was attempting to lowed by the knowing extension of the "death build a paper alibi in the event of a failure by squad" system across the Southern Americas. the Viaux group: "Hisinterestwas not in Chile Vendetta, in other words—against Schneider but in who was goingto be blamedfor what. He and Allende—evolves into realpolitik. In wanted me to be the one who took the heat. Bangladesh, it iscalmly decided that the lives of Henry didn't wantto beassociated withafailure, millions ofBengalis areexpendable: they are the and he was settingup a record to blamethe State priceof a glorifying photo-op in Beijing, the re Department. He brought me in to the President turning ofa favor to a military dictator, and pay because he wanted me to say what I had to say ment foran oldpersonal resentmentbyKissinger's about Viaux; he wanted me to be the soft man." boss. Since the victim cannot be forgiven, this The concept of"deniability" was not as well grudge is later pursued to the thresholdof assas understood in Washingtonin 1970as it hassince sination and beyond. In Cyprus,a fancied slight become. But it is clear that Henry Kissinger or two from an elected but inconvenient leader wanted twothings simultaneously: He wanted the is enough to set the machinery of designated removal of General Schneider, by any means murder and wider geopolitical "destabilization" and employing any proxy. (No instruction from clanking again:out ofa perceivedaffront to pow Washington to leave Schneider unharmed was er evolvesa bitter war and a continuing tragedy. evergiven; deadly weapons were sent bydiplo In East Timor, an uncountable hill of corpsesris maticpouch,and menofviolence were careful essothat a covert and illegal handshake between lyselected to receive them.) And he wantedto Henry Kissinger and a bizarre despotmaybe hon be out of the picture in case such an attempt ored.While in Washington, D.C.,a lone reporter might fail, or be uncovered. Tliese are the nor catches and offends the world's coldest eye and mal motives of anyone who solicits or suborns nearly losesboth liberty and lifeas a consequence. murder. Kissinger, however, needed the crime Finally—and as the most squalid illustration veryslightly more than he needed, or was able of the obscene connection between the vastly to design, the deniability. Without waiting forhis lethal and the merely paltry—wediscover Hen manyhiddenpapers to bereleased or subpoenaed, ry Kissinger profitingexplicitly as a private man we can say with safety that he is prima facie fromthe crimes he committedasa publicone.The guilty ofdirectcollusion in the murder ofa con stale image of the "revolving door"isinadequate stitutional officer in a democratic and peaceful to depict thegreatmill andgrindstone ofinfluence, country. as it generatesmisery and homicide in one comer and personalgain in another. Now that both cor ners can be illuminated, it has become both pos sibleand necessary to sumup the legal caseagainst Two well-marked and separate but consistent this person, a case that unsurprisingly consistsof styles may be noticed in Kissinger's successive, gross violations ofbroadinternationallaws and de sanguinary encounters with Indochina and Chile; liberate, cumulative, identifiable breaches of local in the first instance, a megalo-style, replete with and national ones. overblownoperatic effects on his part and grand, This is, in both declensions—and in both sens terrifying consequences forothers;in the second es—an American responsibility. •
58 HARPER'S MAGAZINE/FEBRUARY 2001