Original subtitles

I used to visit all the very gay places, though come what may places,

where one relaxes on the axis of the wheel of life to

get the feel of life.

I had a deep respect for Henry Kissinger.

His knowledge, his background, and his philosophic outlook.

I thought he was intelligent, charming, and just a good companion.

I like Henry.

I respect him.

I think he has been a major force in our lives.

Dr. Kissinger is perhaps one of the major scholars in America and the world

today in this area.

He was a fascinating mixture of power and strategy.

It wasn't just that power made you a celebrity. It's sometimes that just

creating yourself as a celebrity gave you more power.

Everyone has a New York dream.

Thank you so much for visiting our plant, Dr. Kissinger.

It was fun.

Well, I'll let you know if your glasses turn up.

I think Kissinger is clearly an extraordinarily brilliant man.

But he did have, I think, this fatal flaw of preferring to act without public

scrutiny.

In Harper's Magazine this month, there's an article called The Case Against

Henry Kissinger, The Making of a War Criminal.

Explain, Christopher.

I think he's a war criminal.

I think he's a liar.

I think he's responsible for kidnapping, for murder.

My own view is that if we held Henry Kissinger, to the standards we have

to hold other leaders, other policymakers, and the standards to which

policymakers in Germany and in Japan after World War II. Yes, Kissinger ought

be the subject of an international tribunal, ought to be the subject of a

process in the United States and elsewhere.

What are we to make of these accusations?

Henry Kissinger is the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize and the most famous

American diplomat in history.

Yet, armed with recent evidence, his critics claim that some of his past

amounted to crimes against humanity.

In a new climate of international justice, a re -examination of

career may be in order.

The important thing before people die or go...

like Pinochet, is to punish them, to provide retribution for the

victims, the sense that they haven't or their relatives haven't died in vain,

and to provide a deterrent to make dictators, tyrants, cruel

people, be they generals or national security advisers, now...

think that if they take the wrong course and abuse their power they may be held

to and may be punished at some time in the future

well

if i asked myself why i began my investigation into henry kissinger it

back as far as when um i realized that he

was a frightened man, because I became aware that he was personally frightened

by the consequences of the arrest of General Pinochet.

When the news of that hit, he instantly thought, could I be next?

Good evening. The former dictator of Chile, General Augusto Pinochet, has

arrested by police in London.

The 82 -year -old general is being held at the request of the authorities in

Spain, who accused him of the murder of Spanish citizens when he was in power.

In 1998, the front page of the New York Times announced that in cooperation with

the case against General Pinochet, the U .S. government would release classified

documents revealing American involvement in killings and torture in Chile.

Kissinger may have received the news with some concern, as suggested by a

call with his publisher, Michael Korda.

It's Mr. Korda for Dr. Kissinger.

Henry, hi, how are you?

No, no, I wasn't calling out of impatience. I was calling only to say

you're getting all the publicity you would want of the New York Times, but

the kind that you'd want.

I also think it's very, very dubious for the administration to simply say, yes,

they'll release these papers.

This is a Spanish judge appealing to an English court about a Chilean head of

state.

Yeah, but also Spain has no rational jurisdiction over events in Chile

so that it makes absolutely no sense.

The day the British police, an arm of state power, go out

to the house of Augusto Pinochet and declare him under house arrest is a

for an idea about the protection of the right of all peoples.

Michael Tiger is a renowned litigator with a special interest in human rights

and universal standards of justice.

So that's our basis.

Now the next question is, well, who are we going to sue? Tiger thinks that Henry

Kissinger may have reason to be concerned about the new precedents set

events surrounding the Pinochet arrest in London.

You know, here's this magistrate that everybody thought he's a good friend of

Maggie Thatcher and he's just going to toss the case out, right?

Well, he writes one law for one world. That's what he wrote in his judgment.

For me, I'll tell you something. The most dramatic moment of the hearing

Pinochet was the testimony of the Scotland Yard officer.

On Saturday, I was handed a warrant, and I went to a house.

At 11 .30, I was shown in. And I went in, and I turned right.

I then went into a room, and I saw a man that I recognized as the prisoner.

Prisoner? Isn't that a great room? The prisoner. And I walked up to him, and he

stood. And I said... Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, I arrest you, sir, for the

of conspiracy and torture.

And I tell you, I thought, busted.

Busted.

Well,

I never like to miss a chance to confront Henry Kissinger, and I don't

many. Because when he knows I'm coming, or when he knows I'm going to be in the

area, up till now he has cancelled. That's four times now this year.

What I yearn for is the chance for some quality time with him.

He refused to answer any questions when the Harper's articles were being

written. But I do want to confront him and to make him realise that we're not

going to stop asking.

In early 2001, author Christopher Hitchens published The Trial of Henry

Kissinger.

First released is two articles in Harper's Magazine.

The book accuses the former Secretary of State of war crimes and crimes against

humanity and asks for a formal legal inquiry.

The statement Henry Kissinger is a war criminal is a statement I've been making

for many years.

It's now not a piece of rhetoric, not a metaphor. It's a job description.

Across the U .S., Hitchens' improbable crusade attracted interest. With a pen

for a lance, he was tilting at the windmill of Kissinger's reputation.

Christopher Hitchens, as you no doubt know, is out with a new book called The

Trial of Henry A. Kissinger.

It is very rough on you. It is a book devoted to criticism of you.

I'm not going to deal with Christopher Hitchens. He's a man who's attacked

Mother Teresa, Jackie Kennedy. He said the Holocaust never existed.

And I'm not going to do him the favor of getting into a debate with him. I can't

have it said that I'm an anti -Semite or a Nazi sympathizer. That, I'm sorry, is

too much. It crosses my line.

And Dr. Kissinger by now will have heard, I think, from my lawyers, that

cease and desist from saying what he knows to be false.

I haven't read his book.

I frankly was so disgusted by his magazine piece.

Look at this guy's background.

Sewer pipe sucker.

He sucks the sewer pipe.

I was not concerned that Kissinger would sue Harper's Magazine because then he,

Kissinger, would have to go to some form of legal disclosure. I mean, if you

accuse the magazine or you accuse Hitchens of libel, then that allows our

lawyers to ask questions and subpoena documents.

try to establish the truth of the matter, and that is not something I

Kissinger would welcome.

Kissinger's admirers point to his impact as a global strategist. During the Cold

War era, he saw international diplomacy as a grand game of finding the right

balance between opposing superpowers.

I think that Kissinger's greatest accomplishment was a triangular

which he was able to balance China off against the Soviet Union and have

retain a role in the world after Vietnam, when it would have been natural

to retreat.

Kissinger's critics charge that his worldview blinded him to the human cost

the Cold War.

Recently released documents reveal episodes in Indochina, Indonesia, and

where Kissinger may have needlessly sacrificed human lives.

to pursue strategic goals.

That this man could operate at such a horrible level and not get exposed for

year after year after year after year, how many people came out against him.

It's an embarrassment to my profession.

I got to tell you, the dark side of Henry Kissinger is very, very dark.

Born in First Germany in 1923, Henry Kissinger was 10 years old when the

came to power.

The son of Jewish academics, he was increasingly alienated from the society

which he lived.

I think Henry Kissinger grew up with that odd mix of ego and insecurity that

comes from being the smartest kid in the class, from really knowing that you're

more awesomely intelligent than anybody else, but also being the guy who'd

gotten beaten up because he was Jewish.

In 1938, the Kissinger family fled to the United States and settled in New

City. Henry Kissinger was 15.

In 1944, just six years after emigrating to America, Kissinger returned to

Germany, this time wearing an American uniform.

Kissinger was in the Counterintelligence Corps and was stationed someplace in

the American occupation zone.

And once or twice, we met.

I mean, we came out of a totalitarian society.

German refugees or Jewish refugees, that was obviously something that weighed on

us. We got out early and we didn't suffer the ultimate consequences of

enemy in a totalitarian society.

When the war ended, Kissinger returned to his hometown, 100 miles south of

Buchenwald. The synagogue where his family worshipped had been burned to the

ground. Thirteen of his relatives had died in the camps.

Consciousness that societies can take a very evil turn.

This separates me from many Americans who...

have never seen it, can't imagine it. I think you can come out of the Holocaust

experience with many different outlooks, but there are two extremes, one of

which is you say never again, and you have a very moralistic foreign policy.

other extreme is a great realpolitik, a realism in foreign policy.

Kissinger, of course, had a mix of both, but he was mainly on the spectrum of

the power politics player.

He believed that in the end what really mattered was power.

After the war, Kissinger was admitted to Harvard.

As an undergraduate and then a graduate student, Kissinger earned renown as a

student of foreign policy.

In his writings, he expressed an interest in Metternich and Otto von

men of power, cunning, and skillful diplomacy.

His grounding was European, not just because he came from Europe, because he

a young man when he left.

But historically, his intellectual interests, the diplomatic age of

Europe, he was fascinated with the art of diplomacy.

And of course, in those days, a lot of diplomacy was secret and some of it even

duplicitous.

Kissinger's flair for international diplomacy brought him to the attention

Nelson Rockefeller, a Republican politician from one of America's

families.

Dr. Kissinger, having finished the Rockefeller report, we have just

too, that the Russians have sent a man 186 miles into the sky and returned him.

Would you care to comment on that?

It seems to me, to support the recommendations of the Rockefeller

indicates that the Russians have rocket engines of very great thrust and

probably of greater thrust than we have at the moment.

In 1957, Henry Kissinger published a book called Nuclear Weapons and Foreign

Policy, in which he argued for a bomb shelter in every house and a doctrine of

limited nuclear war.

In the New York Times, he received an admiring review from Edward Teller, the

father of the hydrogen bomb.

The belief of the Rockefeller Group is that we have to go into production on

bombers at the same time that we build up our missile force.

As Rockefeller campaigned for the Republican presidential nomination of

Kissinger's aspirations moved beyond academia to the seats of political power

Washington.

But at the convention, Rockefeller would lose the nomination to Richard Nixon.

His political ambitions stalled. Kissinger was offered a position in the

campaign. He declined, but he would soon find an unlikely route to power through

the Vietnam War.

No account of the Indochina Wars is complete without the name of Henry

Kissinger. It's one of those occasions where the will to power of an individual

really counts as a historical fact.

By 1968, Kissinger had visited Vietnam three times and had become an advisor to

the Johnson administration.

His impression was that the war was unwinnable, but that a withdrawal of U

forces would damage American credibility.

Accordingly, I shall not see... To devote his full attention to finding

Vietnam, President Johnson decided not to run for re -election in 1968.

Johnson's withdrawal left Vice President Hubert Humphrey to face Richard Nixon.

Nixon promised that if elected, he would bring an honorable and just end to the

war. I would not use atomic weapons in Vietnam.

I would not invade North Vietnam.

And incidentally, I would not invade any of the other countries in the area of

Vietnam.

In Paris, representatives of the Johnson administration were negotiating with

the North Vietnamese in an effort to end the war.

We had been in Paris since May of 68, and we got nowhere.

Because, in retrospect, there was only one issue.

Was the United States going to get out and be defeated?

And nobody was prepared to say, yes, we've lost the war, it's over.

Kissinger was an advisor to the negotiators who were authorized to

with privileged information.

Kissinger was in Paris in September of 1968.

I thought he was intelligent, charming, and just a good companion.

But what Davidson and other members of the Johnson team did not know was that

September 10th, Kissinger had contacted the Nixon campaign by telephone.

We certainly did not know it. Kissinger shared his analysis of what was

happening with them.

and he was probably, by far, the most brilliant mind available to them and the

most sophisticated analyst.

Nixon, as it were, recognizes talent when he sees it. He doesn't like Jews.

He doesn't like intellectuals. But he loves Henry Kissinger, because Kissinger

knows what to do without being told.

Richard Nixon himself says that he admired Kissinger for his ability to

secret information.

Nixon was afraid that a peace accord in Paris might cost him the election.

Kissinger noticed something.

Richard Nixon is prepared to undercut Mr. Johnson and Mr. Humphrey, the

president and vice president, and their negotiations in Paris.

Kissinger had a very conspiratorial and sometimes manipulative character.

He really liked to please various sides. He liked to ingratiate himself.

And in the Paris peace talks, he was willing to talk about the Johnson

camp as well as the Nixon camp.

Kissinger told the Nixon campaign that the Johnson team was close to an

agreement with North Vietnam.

Until the deal was final, the Johnson team wanted to keep the negotiations

secret from South Vietnam.

But Nixon had opened a secret channel of communication with South Vietnamese

President Thieu. The go -between was Anna Shino.

Information, information, information.

And knowing that I travel to Asia quite frequently, messages to South

Vietnam always gone through me.

In late September, Kissinger returned to Harvard.

As the election approached, he kept in contact with both the negotiators in

Paris and with members of the Nixon campaign.

He was getting information from both sides. He probably was giving

to both sides, too.

And I don't blame him. I mean, after all, he was not sure which side was

to win.

Whoever wins, he's going to go to that side.

By the way, Kissinger expected to work for whoever the next president was.

He offered me a job.

to the next administration in September of 1968.

Really? Yes.

Independent of the president's name?

Right. On October 31st, Henry Kissinger called the Nixon campaign to say that

there had been a breakthrough in the talks.

I've got some important information, said Kissinger. They're breaking out the

champagne in Paris.

Twelve hours later, the announcement was made.

The bombing of North Vietnam would cease and final negotiations would begin.

The prospect of peace gave Humphrey a last -minute surge in the polls.

And then finally, just a few days before the election, we were moving to

substantive negotiations for the first time, and there were great hopes at that

time.

But just three days before the election, President Tu defied Johnson and refused

to join the peace negotiations.

Certainly one reason is the advice they got from Nixon's people. It's clear...

that they were being told to hold out and not go to Paris.

FBI surveillance of the Nixon team's contacts with two confirmed this.

Hold on, he was told.

We're going to win.

Without the participation of South Vietnam, the peace talks collapsed.

Nixon won the popular vote by a margin of less than 1%. And we know further

Mr. Kissinger's opinion of Mr. Nixon was very low.

Why is he suddenly doing this tremendous favor during an election campaign to

someone for whom he has nothing but contempt?

Why? It's in the hope of a political reward.

Dr. Henry Kissinger has agreed to come with the White House staff as the

assistant to the president -elect for national security affairs.

I was sitting in the lobby waiting to get to see the president -elect, and

was this Rockefeller man, as he was described to me.

going in to see him.

And what happened was that Nixon stole the crown

jewel out of his longtime adversary's crown,

and that was Henry Kissinger, the most brilliant man on the Rockefeller staff.

Dr. Kissinger is perhaps one of the major scholars in America and the world

today in this area.

He has never yet had a full -time government assignment.

And he will bring to this responsibility a fresh approach.

I did not know Richard Nixon when he appointed me as his security advisor.

In fact, I had spent three presidential campaigns backing Governor Nelson

Rockefeller against Richard Nixon. So when you read about how carefully I

plotted my way into Nixon's proximity, I want to teach that to your children.

Say, support the opponent of the man for whom you want to work.

Do I think he saw what he did as betrayal of the peace process or the

Johnson to stop the bombing halt?

I really think this guy doesn't see it that way. He saw it as a means to an

which is why he's such a good apparatchik. His end was getting that

I, Richard Billhouse Nixon, do solemnly swear.

Upon taking office, Nixon and Kissinger moved to structure the administration in

a way that would give the new National Security Advisor unprecedented power.

Dr. Kissinger is setting up at the present time a very exciting new

revitalize the National Security Council.

It centralized control, it gave Nixon, you know, and Kissinger.

on foreign policy a tremendous amount of sort of day -to -day control. They can

control the paper movement. They can control a lot of the policy options.

It's true also that Henry Kissinger chaired most of the committees and

subcommittees, and that gave him unusual authority.

For his staff, Kissinger personally selected a team of policy experts drawn

academia.

I liked him very much, and I was happy to follow him. I told him in September.

where thou goest, I goest. He's the most gifted man to work in American foreign

policy in any generation since World War II.

Kissinger also invited Harvard scholar Roger Morris to join the National

Security Council.

Nixon set the general line of American policy.

But Kissinger really is the conductor of the train.

He's the engineer.

He's the policymaker, who most importantly is in liaison with the

the Joint Chiefs of Staff, with the CIA.

He's conducting the diplomacy as well as the military policy.

The major immediate goal of our foreign policy is to bring an end to the war in

Vietnam in a way.

In public, Nixon renewed his campaign pledge to bring an honorable end to the

war. In private, the president shared Kissinger's view that the best peace

be achieved through force.

If Moscow had been convinced that we were going to do everything necessary to

win that war and win it promptly, they would have advised their clients to pull

back. Kissinger's definition of an honorable end or of a decent end to the

think had nothing much to do with honor or with decency.

It had to do with American credibility vis -a -vis the Soviets and in the long

run vis -a -vis the Chinese.

Kissinger was concerned and so was Nixon that the United States not appear weak

or indecisive or vacillating. As Kissinger is supposed to have said, and

don't know if he ever did, that our goal is to have a decent interval between

the withdrawal of American forces and the rape of the first virgin.

They were looking for, remember what the 68 campaign was about, they had a plan.

They were looking for an easy way to get out. The Vietnam War had just undone

the predecessor, President Johnson.

It's hard for you to understand what a huge burden this was on these people.

In order to achieve peace with honor, Nixon and Kissinger wanted to show Hanoi

that the new president would use extreme force to prosecute the war, that he was

capable of anything. It was an idea called the Madman Theory.

Less than a month into Nixon's presidency, he and Kissinger began

attack against North Vietnamese sanctuaries.

in neighboring cambodia the americans started bombing cambodia in 1969 soon

after nixon came into office because they had a problem The problem was that

whole areas of eastern Cambodia, which was in theory a neutral country, not on

the side of the North Vietnamese or the South Vietnamese, whole areas of the

country had been taken over by the North Vietnamese communists, and they were

using them as staging areas and bases for their attacks on the South

armies in South Vietnam and upon the American army in South Vietnam.

Cambodia, Thailand, they were going to overrun the whole peninsula.

This became one of the great myths of the Vietnam War, was that the key to

success was getting rid of the Vietnamese communist bases on the

of the border.

Cambodia's enigmatic Prince Sihanouk had managed to keep his country out of the

Vietnam War.

He hoped to avoid taking sides and so prevent an open violation of Cambodia's

neutrality.

This led to all sorts of problems.

Because taking the war secretly into a neutral country meant you had to destroy

the actual records or to conceal them very effectively, to lie, in fact.

Well, the motivation was for the secrecy because it was illegal.

I mean, that's simple.

Under the U .S. Constitution, bombing Cambodia was an act of war that would

require the approval of the U .S. Congress.

I don't know that Congress would have allowed it. The last thing Congress

then was an expansion of a war.

In February 1969, in a secret meeting on Air Force One, Kissinger and his aide,

Alexander Haig, met with Air Force Colonel Ray Sitton to plan for the

bombing of Cambodia.

What Kissinger wanted done was they had Sitton to find a way to mask the bombing

so nobody would know what's going on, and Sitton did. He found a way.

The initial secret bombing of Cambodia in 1969 was called Operation Menu, and

each of the targets were different, or supposed to be different, North

Vietnamese bases in Cambodia, and they were called after names of meals,

breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack.

Starting with breakfast, Kissinger approved a plan to conceal the Cambodian

bombing missions from military record.

Under this dual reporting system, B -52 pilots... would be pre -assigned targets

in South Vietnam.

In mid -flight, their planes would be rerouted by ground radar stations and

guided to secret targets in Cambodia.

The returning pilots would report that their bombs had been dropped on South

Vietnam.

Cambodia would never appear in the record.

I think Kissinger is clearly an extraordinarily brilliant man.

brilliant and also manipulative and also very secretive. Under Kissinger's

supervision, the US flew 3 ,600 secret missions over Cambodia in 14 months,

dropping 110 ,000 tons of bombs.

Colonel Sitton recalled that Henry Kissinger was intimately involved in the

direction and timing of the bombing raids.

Real attention to the cruelties of the details, picking targets.

selecting hamlets and villages to be bombed it is an absurdity to say that a

country can occupy a part of another country kill your people and that then

are violating its neutrality when you respond against the foreign troops that

are on that neutral territory it is total hypocrisy one week after the first

bombs had fallen in cambodia rumors of the operation began to surface in the

press

Kissinger contacted the FBI to request that wiretaps be used to find the source

of the leaks.

He wiretapped American journalists with whom he had supposedly friendly and

close relations.

It legitimized me.

There I was, a reporter, writer, commentator for the New York Times, and

everybody felt a little creepy about, you know, here's this Nixon apologist

writing for the Times. But then when it turned out that I was wiretapped...

All of a sudden, I was in a new fraternity. He wiretapped aides and

in the Pentagon.

I was one of the people who was wiretapped while serving under him.

I cannot forgive him for being a party to it or for never apologizing. It was

not one of the things that filled me with wild joy.

On the other hand...

It also seemed a way by which it could be demonstrated that my staff was loyal,

but I'm sure there were a complex of reasons that went into it. To

some, the wiretapping was just a part of a campaign by Kissinger to fortify his

position as Nixon's deputy.

He was endlessly playing off his own staff, one against the other, and

them off against the president.

And there was a lot of jockeying, particularly on Henry's part, for

And Kissinger was determined to accrete as much power as possible to him.

We used to joke that the real hostile foreign powers were not Moscow or

or any of our rivals in the world. The real hostile powers were the rest of the

American government, the Department of State, the White House staff, the CIA,

the Defense Department. Those were Henry's principal adversaries because

were the rivals for power in Washington.

Like a moth to flame, Henry Kissinger was always attracted to his critics.

The best way to get him to return your phone call was to write something

negative. He understood more about my profession than most of us. He always

understood if he could get the three networks and Time and Newsweek, he was

free. What makes a man sexy?

What, you know, what is it? Is it money, the whole thing? And Henry says, power.

It is the ultimate aphrodisiac.

He cultivated the press before anybody even knew it was possible to do.

He realized that in this celebrity -obsessed age, that if you became a

celebrity, it gave you more power.

I was at a party and a young lady came up to me and said, are you a swinger?

And I said, I'm too busy to do any public swinging.

And I don't want you to think that I don't do any swinging, so...

Why don't you just assume I'm a secret swinger?

Henry used his flamboyant personal life to cover up his professional life, and

it gave him a lot of cover. He could go and have meetings. He could do things.

He could take stands. And everybody's concentrating on, ah, Kissinger the

swinger.

Kids would love the thrill of dating starlets, dating beautiful women. These

were not deep romantic attachments.

This wasn't some great sexual desire as much as a sense of fun, a sense of

knowing that he could be in the limelight, that he could be with

people, that he got a thrill from it. And we get to the restaurant.

And Sinatra, who was terribly paranoid, he is saying, oh, everybody says I have

mafia connections.

I don't have mafia connections.

And Henry said, that's too bad, Frank. I need somebody to take care of my

enemies.

Kissinger's enemies in Vietnam continued to haunt him.

While the war dragged on, an official State Department delegation met with the

North Vietnamese in Paris.

But Kissinger was confident he could secure more favorable terms.

He opened a second channel of secret talks with North Vietnamese negotiator

Duc Tho.

And we were told that those negotiations were to be kept secret, not only, of

course, from the public, not only from the media, but also from the rest of the

U .S. government. Neither the Secretary of State nor the Secretary of Defense

were to know anything about it.

And Henry was flying off quite secretly on weekends to meet with Le Duc Tho and

Swan Tree in Paris at a safe house.

This was all very conspiratorial, full of intrigue, which he loved.

He put out the story that he was meeting a girlfriend, Jill St. John or someone

in New York, when in fact he was in Paris negotiating with the North

How do I get out of here?

We thought we weren't having a meeting today, sir. Well, do something

surprising.

It's getting difficult to have a secret rendezvous in Paris. It certainly is.

Will you be meeting again tomorrow, sir?

We expect to, yes.

Kissinger's secret talks made little progress toward peace in Vietnam, but

did expand his power in Washington.

The negotiations that he conducted were a way of exercising his own control,

establishing his own authority in the negotiating process.

As it became apparent that Nixon would turn to Henry for strategy,

he gained in that influence, he gained some more self -confidence and made an

enormous contribution to Nixon's policy.

Nixon and Kissinger's Vietnam strategy was still entangled in Cambodia.

The secret bombing had failed to destroy the sanctuaries. The North Vietnamese

had formed an alliance with Cambodian communists and had moved deeper into the

country.

Prince Sihanouk, the one man capable of uniting the nation, was deposed in a CIA

-supported coup.

The Cambodian coup set off a kind of chain reaction inside the American

government in Richard Nixon and in Henry Kissinger.

Denying CIA support for the coup, Kissinger and Nixon announced U .S.

for the coup leader Lon Nol, who promptly attacked the North Vietnamese.

Vietnam counterattacked and moved even deeper into Cambodia.

They saw that as a challenge, again, to American strength, to the credibility of

American foreign policy.

Nixon decided to invade Cambodia to send a message to North Vietnam.

A few days before the invasion, Nixon had a friend relay a message to

The president wants you to know, Henry, that if this doesn't work, it's your

ass. Kissinger told his staff, our peerless leader has flipped out.

But Kissinger defended and implemented the decision to invade, saying it would

scare North Vietnam.

Nixon would be more emphatic. He said, let's go blow the hell out of them.

I decided to resign, along with Tony Lake and with Bill Watts, our colleague

the NSC staff, because I felt that the Cambodian invasion was a betrayal of the

president's pledge to seek an honorable...

and just peace in Vietnam.

I knew that that peace was within our grasp. I was intimately involved in the

negotiations. I knew that the other side was ready to agree, that we were ready

to agree, and that the Cambodian invasion really destroyed all of that,

devastated it for years to come, and literally cost tens of thousands of

American lives, hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese lives.

On April the 30th, 1970, U .S. forces invaded Cambodia.

Armed forces of South Vietnam attacks are being launched this week to clean

major enemy sanctuaries on the Cambodian -Vietnam border.

As news of the invasion spread, the U .S. domestic reaction was explosive.

Nearly 500 American universities shut down, and on the morning of May 4th,

National Guardsmen opened fire on 15 students at Kent State University.

killing four.

As Nixon promised publicly to remove forces from Cambodia, Kissinger reviewed

plan to increase the pressure on North Vietnam to surrender.

Henry Kissinger began in the fall of 1969 in September to plan a savage,

brutal blow against North Vietnam.

These were his words. He said to us as a planning group, I can't believe that a

fourth -rate power like North Vietnam does not have a breaking point.

For 11 days in December of 1972, in what became known as the Christmas bombing,

129 B -52 bombers dropped 40 ,000 tons of bombs on Hanoi and

Haiphong, hitting a hospital and other urban centers.

What many did not know was that Kissinger had struck a peace accord with

Vietnam two months before.

But South Vietnam's President Thieu, the man who had undermined the 68 peace

talks, would not accept the deal without proof that the Americans would enforce

it. The Christmas bombing had much more to do with the South Vietnamese than

with the North. It was a gesture to the Thieu regime. It was a way of saying the

United States is willing to make this one great last brutal blow against the

North. They bombed the North Vietnamese simply to persuade the South Vietnamese

that they meant it.

It was a demonstration bombing. It was a public relations mass murder from the

sky.

The bombing did appease the South, and Kissinger persuaded the North Vietnamese

to make a few cosmetic concessions. In January 1973, Kissinger signed a peace

accord with North Vietnamese negotiator Le Duc Tho. The terms of peace were

almost identical to the terms the Johnson administration had nearly

before the election.

of 1968.

Half the names on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial are enthused for dates after

January 1969.

There is enough marble in Washington to put all the names on one wall.

We wouldn't dare.

try and put up a wall that had the names of all the Vietnamese who died in that

period.

When I shall receive the award, together with my old colleague

in the search for peace in Vietnam, Sidley Docteau. In 1973, Kissinger

and Le Docteau were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace.

It symbolized the end of the anguish.

and the suffering.

But to his embarrassment, Kissinger was unaware that Les Docteaux would not

attend the ceremony in Oslo.

The Vietnamese counterpart with whom he shared it, Mr. Les Docteaux, refused to

accept the prize on the perfectly excellent pragmatic grounds that there

peace in Vietnam to celebrate, so there shouldn't be a prize for it. I thought

it was a terrible travesty that he should be awarded a peace prize when, in

fact, he was a war maker, not a war ender.

Dr. Kissinger, what would you say was the high point of your tenure as

of State?

Well, I would say in 1973, when I won the Nobel Peace

Prize for ending the Vietnam War.

And the low point?

I'd say 1975, when the Vietnam War ended.

Once the Paris Peace Accords were signed in December of 72,

That ended the American direct involvement in Vietnam.

But to preserve peace with honor, Nixon and Kissinger decided to defend the anti

-communist regime in Cambodia.

It was to be a secret mission, airstrikes against communist forces

the American embassy in Phnom Penh.

It made free the American Air Force.

They could not bomb in Laos, they could not bomb in Vietnam, so that began the

incredible bombing of Cambodia.

And this is when...

The number of bombs dropped equaled the amount of bombs dropped on Japan during

World War II.

Elizabeth Becker covered the war in Cambodia from 1972 to 1974.

We would be able to hear the conversation between the pilot, the

in the air, and the American embassy, which was illegally directing the

airstrikes. We couldn't understand why there were so many civilian casualties

this war. Why were they hitting all these civilians and villages?

It was every nightmare of how you fight a war.

From 1969 to 1973, more than 500 ,000 Cambodians died.

By 1974, the bombing had disrupted the nation's agricultural system and a

ensued. Over 2 million refugees... poured into overcrowded cities.

American policy in those years towards Cambodia helped create the conditions,

perhaps the only conditions, in which the Khmer Rouge came to power.

The Khmer Rouge drew strength from the chaos of the country.

When they seized power in 1975, they forced populations of entire cities back

the countryside.

Then they began a policy of exterminating their enemies in execution

that came to be known... as killing fields.

By 1979, another three million Cambodians had lost their lives.

No one knew what the Khmer Rouge were going to do. It's quite wrong to blame

United States for the murderousness of the Khmer Rouge. That's a disgracefully

dishonest thing to try to do.

But the carelessness with which the United States treated Cambodia as a

to Vietnam did lead to disaster to Cambodia.

Congress authorized money for bombs in South Vietnam, and they went into

Cambodia. There's a criminal act for you, you know, lying.

And therefore, I think anybody who died in Cambodia, you could argue criminally

that they were guilty of murder one. People did. Nobody authorized them to

Cambodia. There was no American war in Cambodia before President Nixon and

Dr. Kissinger.

That is totally incorrect.

I think we inherited a tragedy.

We attempted to and succeeded in extricating America with honor from this

tragedy. Oh, we inherited it. No, you did not inherit it. You created, you

the designers of the Cambodian policy.

Crimes against humanity are crimes that comprise genocide or torture

or mass murder committed on a widespread and systematic basis.

against innocent civilian populations.

You're talking about war crimes, for example. When World War II started and

Germany first bombed London, everyone was horrified.

Bombing cities?

That was criminal behavior. You bombed troops. You didn't bomb innocent

civilians. By the time the war was over, we had virtually wiped

out Dresden.

for example, in one of the most horrible bombing raids ever.

And Tokyo, we virtually burned to the ground.

So, was that criminal?

Perhaps.

In July 1973, the detection of Nixon's taping system would lead to the

of the Watergate cover -up, the indictment of key members of the White

staff... and the end of the Nixon presidency.

The lies that had to be told by the administration over Cambodia led

to the employment of the plumbers, which was the secret White House team

employed to stop leaks, which led to Watergate, which led to the fall of

So in a way, the bombing of Cambodia was the first step in the chain that led to

the fall of Nixon.

Nixon resigned rather than face impeachment.

One of the original articles of impeachment addressed the concealment of

Cambodian bombing from Congress.

When the impeachment was dropped, so was the investigation into the secret

bombing.

The new president, Gerald Ford, retained Henry Kissinger as his Secretary of

State and pardoned Richard Nixon.

Nixon managed to cop a shameful plea, accept a pardon. His attorney general,

former campaign manager, John Mitchell, is put in an orange jumpsuit and sent

down the river. No attorney general's ever been to jail before.

But there are more members of the Nixon group, all of them bound to each other

by criminal understanding.

There's only one of them left, of the people who were involved in the foreign

domestic crimes of that era.

We're delighted to have such a large turnout tonight for what I know will be

informative and perhaps provocative evening with our guest, Dr.

Henry Kissinger.

I would like to point out that for a while I was both National Security

and Secretary of State.

And the reason I mention that is because never before...

and never since have relations between the White House and the State Department

been as harmonious as they were in those days.

Kissinger has written three best -selling books about his life, but in

of his government papers to the Library of Congress, he has not allowed anyone

else to access them until five years after his death.

Was the deed of the paper the right thing to do?

Did it further our understanding of how they operated, you know, I mean, by

putting those papers away? No, of course not. It simply was an act of a man who

did not dare to have in his lifetime the real paper and the real documents of

his administration become known.

As Secretary of State under Ford, Henry Kissinger still saw conflicts between

superpowers extend to the smallest corners of the world.

In East Timor, a small island in the Indonesian archipelago, Henry Kissinger

a communist threat to the global balance of power.

The Indonesian dictatorship thought it would be better if Indonesia occupied

annexed the people and territory of East Timor.

So they evolved a plan whereby they took the land and they subjected the people

to a campaign of genocide.

But what isn't as widely known as it could be or should be is that on the day

they took that decision, Henry Kissinger was sitting in the room with the

Indonesian general staff.

Good evening from Jakarta, Indonesia, the latest stop on President Ford's

tour. On December 5, 1975, President Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger arrived

to meet with Indonesian President Soeharto.

The President's Day in Indonesia will be taken up mostly by ceremony.

Ford and Kissinger wanted to strengthen diplomatic ties with Indonesia, a non

-communist ally between Australia and Vietnam that controlled crucial sea

There's more to this trip than China politics and security for Southeast

Indonesia is a major oil producer and coal reserves have been discovered on

islands. Reasons enough for the United States to want to maintain good

relations.

along with President Ford, with President Suharto, and I was present at

meeting. Many have interpreted that meeting as Dr.

Kissinger's giving a green light to the subsequent Indonesian invasion of Timor.

East Timor was seeking its independence from Portugal.

Kissinger had long been aware of the growing popularity in East Timor.

of a left -wing independence movement called Fretilin.

The Indonesian military throughout this period was concerned that there not be a

separate independent entity developed on one half of one of their islands with

strong Chinese communist influence.

When Dr. Kissinger came, I think the decision had already been made by the

Indonesians that the efforts to...

Negotiate with the Portuguese had not come to fruition, and therefore they

needed to take direct military action.

But any military action would involve U .S. weapons, which had been sold solely

for self -defense.

On December 6, as Ford and Kissinger concluded their visit, preparations were

underway for an invasion.

Why, they ask, are the Indonesians invading us?

Why, they ask, if the Indonesians believe that Fretilin is communist, do

not send a delegation to Dili to find out?

Why, they ask, are the Australians not helping us?

When the Japanese invaded, they did help us.

Why, they ask, are the Portuguese not helping us? We're still a Portuguese

colony. Who, they ask, will pay for the terrible damage to our homes?

One day after this report, Greg Shackleton was killed in East Timor.

What we saw was the massacre of thousands of people as a result of

the constant attack of the Indonesian army from the air, from the sea and

land attack.

A lot of people are being killed, I repeat, in this seminar.

With no cameras to witness the invasion, a radio transmission from the Red Cross

is the only live record.

of the horror of the event.

What I saw was that my own government was very much

involved in what was going on in East Timor.

We were providing most of the weaponry, helicopters, logistical support, food,

uniforms, ammunition, all the expendables that the Indonesians needed

this war.

100 % certain that Suharto was explicitly given the green light to do

he did.

The invasion, execution, destruction of the land, and resulting famine cost the

lives of over 100 ,000 Timorese.

In interviews... Kissinger has long denied that he discussed the invasion in

meeting with Suharto.

We were told at the airport as we left Jakarta

that either that day or the next day they intended to take East Timor.

Well, I don't want to take issue with the accuracy of Dr.

Kissinger's memoirs, but it was mentioned in the meeting with Suharto.

As I recall, Soeharto was quite candid, said that after

several months of trying to resolve this through negotiation, the Indonesians

felt they had to take direct action.

One week after this interview, the transcript of the meeting with Soeharto

released.

Soeharto, I would like to speak to you, Mr. President, about another problem,

Timor. We want your understanding if we deem it necessary to take rapid or

drastic action. Ford.

We will understand and will not press you on this issue. We understand the

problem you have and the intentions you have.

Kissinger. You appreciate that the use of U .S.-made arms could create

It depends on how we construe it, whether it is in self -defense or is a

operation. It is important that whatever you do succeeds quickly.

We would be able to influence the reaction in America if whatever happens,

happens after we return.

And the U .S. government knew exactly what was happening in those first days

the invasion, December 7th, 8th, 9th. Thousands of Timorese were killed.

Reports of people being herded into school buildings by Indonesian soldiers,

with the buildings set on fire, and anyone trying to get out being shot,

the people being burned alive.

people being herded into fields and machine -gunned, people being hunted

the mountains, so anyone out there was in what amounted to a free -fire zone.

The Indonesians did not handle it very well from the standpoint of the global

community.

But again, our leverage was limited and...

It was seen in 1975, 76, in the light

of the post -Vietnam era, as a very important country to us.

And it happened in a year when Southeast Asia went into China, had collapsed.

So it wasn't a question of approval, it was a question of not being able to do

anything about it. Knowing full well how many people were killed.

They were so concerned at the U .S. State Department that they cabled Henry

Kissinger twice, saying that the U .S. Congress would cut off military aid and

the bilateral weapons sales to Indonesia because clearly Indonesia was using

these weapons for offensive purposes.

And it would be hard to make a case that Indonesia was threatened by an invasion

from East Timor. So while Kissinger's in the air flying home, the State

Department has to issue these statements.

It's a matter of law, and they have to say Congress may indeed cut off aid as a

result of this, as a legal matter.

When he returns from his trip to Indonesia to the State Department, he

back to a bureaucratic row at his office.

Kissinger is furious.

Kissinger, I want to raise a little bit of hell about the department's conduct

in my absence.

Take this cable on East Timor. It will leak, and it will go to Congress too,

then we will have hearings on it.

and it will come out that Kissinger overruled his pristine bureaucrats and

violated the law.

The Arms Export Control Act and the Foreign Assistance Act passed by

that limit the ways in which American weaponry can be used, and they confine

these uses to external self -defense.

Kissinger, and we can't construe a communist government in the middle of

Indonesia as self -defense?

Lee, well, Kissinger, then you're saying that arms can't be used for defense.

No, they can be used for the defense of Indonesia.

Kissinger, I know what the law is, but how can it be in the U .S. national

interest for us to kick the Indonesians in the teeth?

The meeting concluded with a discussion about how to mislead Congress about arms

sales, which did continue after a brief hiatus.

In a later meeting, one of Kissinger's aides confirmed that normal relations

with Indonesia had resumed. Not very willingly, said Kissinger.

Illegally. and beautifully today henry kissinger is a successful businessman

he runs a firm called kissinger associates in which he uses his

experience to help businesses around the world but while kissinger may profit

from past connections he is also haunted by them last year kissinger was

enjoying a trip to paris when a french judge served him with a subpoena to

answer questions about u .s involvement in chile 30 years ago.

At issue was Operation Condor, a campaign of murder and torture conducted

regime of Augusto Pinochet.

The arrest of Augusto Pinochet in London in October of 1998 directly led to

pressure on the Clinton administration to declassify hundreds of thousands of

documents. Secret documents from the CIA, from the State Department and

elsewhere, blacked out as they are. These documents are really rather

extraordinary. There's a paper trail right up to Kissinger's office that help

revisit this history and understand our efforts to overthrow covertly a

democratically elected government in Chile.

I really think Chile was probably the basis and the most corrupt of all the

actions because it had nothing to do with national security.

Copper is used all over the world.

But the largest known reserve of copper ore is in South America, in the Republic

of Chile.

In the 1960s, Chile was fertile soil for American corporate interests, including

IT &T, which controlled the copper industry, and Pepsi -Cola.

Early in 1970, Pepsi and IT &T were concerned about political developments

Chile.

As the country's democratic presidential elections approached, A left -wing

candidate named Salvador Allende was gaining popular support.

His ties to Fidel Castro were of particular concern.

He was the spokesman for Castro everywhere.

As part of his electoral platform, he had said he would not accept American

He had invaded against American capitalism, described the United States

really being a democracy, but the Soviet Union was a democracy.

Allende promised to nationalize Chile's copper industry, a direct threat to IT

&T and concern to other U .S. corporations.

I directed that an approach be made to both the State Department and Mr.

Kissinger's office to tell them that we had grave concern over the outlook for

IT &T's investment.

As IT &T called on Kissinger to take action against Allende, Pepsi president

Donald Kendall echoed the same concern to an old friend, Richard Nixon.

If he does it right in Chile, he can ensure a good flow of campaign money in

and 72.

He's got a lot of big money people that want him to do something about Chile. So

Chile became the most important national security item they had.

What brought about the changes in Chile were the facts that it was being

communized by LND.

On September 4, Allende won a plurality of the vote.

It appeared certain that his victory would be confirmed by the Chilean

The election in Chile has been won, but the president has not been confirmed,

the new president, Salvador Allende. Chile has, like the United States, a

transition period of about 60 days.

The CIA declared that Chile under Allende would not be a threat to the

States, but Nixon found the prospect of an Allende presidency unacceptable.

As advisor to Richard Nixon, Kissinger followed Machiavelli's rule of

flattering, adulating, and serving the powerful to be a success.

In a September meeting, Kissinger shared his views on Chile's democratic

election. I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go

due to the irresponsibility of its people.

On September 15, Nixon met in the Oval Office with Kissinger and Richard Helms,

director of the CIA.

Helms' handwritten notes reveal a plan to prevent Allende from coming to power.

Not concerned risks involved.

No involvement of the embassy.

Ten million available, more if necessary.

An internal CIA memo dated September 16 outlines the official but secret policy

implemented by the CIA under the supervision of Henry Kissinger.

Kissinger asked Helms to report directly to him on the details of coup

operations.

Concealed from the Departments of State and Defense, as well as the U .S.

Embassy in Chile, this plan for covert action became known as Track Two.

Of course that was a broad policy.

I make no excuses for that. It should have been.

Another Marxist regime in the hemisphere?

No. In a meeting with Haig and others, Kissinger emphasized that drastic action

was called for.

Kissinger really became a general manager of this covert operation

the President of the United States. He ignored the advice of his own staff that

a coup was not possible.

I decided to start sending these increasingly worrying

alarms to

Kissinger, that anything that might be tried would be an utter failure.

The Chilean military was not going to engage in anything.

Allende was certainly going to be elected.

Nothing could stop it. Kissinger swept aside these objections and pressed the

CIA to go forward to foment a military coup.

But the third cable was the one that really excited Kissinger because it said

unequivocally that if... Any adventure were undertaken, it would boomerang

against the United States and personally against the president.

Worse than the Bay of Pigs.

That was the cable that got me a summons home right away because they thought I

had stumbled on their plot.

So I flew to Washington.

President greeted me.

He then launched into a denunciation of Allende. He kept hitting his hand like

that. He was going to smash Allende economically.

Kept referring to him as that bastard, that SOB. He was going to smash him.

With the inauguration approaching, word of possible covert action against

Allende reached General René Schneider, head of the Chilean military.

Schneider announced he would uphold Allende's confirmation by the Chilean

Congress. He was unaware that men from within his own ranks were being

by the CIA.

The senior military officer, General René Schneider, is thought of as the

principal obstacle to a military coup because he believes the Chilean armed

forces take their oath only to the Constitution.

In Santiago, the CIA helped design a plan to kidnap Schneider. They thought

would provoke the military into declaring martial law, suspending the

The CIA's Santiago station chief cabled Washington.

General Schneider is the main barrier to all plans for the military to take

over. Washington cabled back, constant pressure from the White House, more

important than ever to remove him.

It's therefore decided Schneider must go.

And for this task... Men of proven record of criminal violence are

They're given sophisticated assassination weaponry through the

diplomatic bag.

A track to CIA communique confirms this. The cable reports that plans against

Schneider were moving along, requesting 8 to 10 tear gas grenades, three .45

caliber machine guns with 500 rounds ammo each.

And they're given large financial inducement.

The money was gathered in...

In late September, Weimert, then US military attache, had been secretly

assigned to work directly with the CIA in Santiago.

An avid equestrian, Weimert's love of horses had made him a close associate of

officers in the Chilean military, an ideal go -between.

The CIA station gave Weimert a war chest of cash to pay out to anti -AND groups.

I couldn't put it in my office safe.

You know, it was done in long rubber bands, 250 ,000.

And I put it in my riding boots, and no one else moved the boots but me.

And that was the best place to keep it.

On October the 15th, Kissinger received word that track two coup plotters had

made a failed attempt to kidnap General Schneider.

In a meeting with the CIA, he expressed his concern that plans for a coup at

this time cannot succeed.

In his memoirs, Kissinger would later write that he had turned off track two

this meeting.

But the very next day, the CIA sent a cable to Chile.

It is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup.

it is imperative that these actions be implemented clandestinely and securely

that the United States government and American hand be well hidden.

If you're Henry Kissinger, everybody knows what you want.

Does he know that they know what he wants? Sure.

Does he know what they're going to do or how they're going to do it? Are you

kidding?

Anybody that would tell him what's going to happen is never going to do a

briefing again.

Do you really think somebody would take a piece of paper into the White House

and say a consequence of this may be a death of somebody?

Do you really think so? No.

Immediate Santiago.

Submachine guns and ammo being sent by regular courier leaving Washington 0700

hours 19 October.

Do arrive Santiago late evening 20 October or early morning 21 October.

Preferred use regular courier to avoid bringing undue attention to operations.

Mi padre salió de aquí tipo 8 de la mañana en un auto que iba solamente con

chofer.

Llegaron a la esquina de... Iban llegando a la esquina de Martínez Zamora

Américo Vespucio y el auto ahí fue rodeado por otros y se le impidió el

De un jeep que queda al otro costado sale gente, rompen el vidrio con un

When they moved the stop sign that morning, and the chauffeur

didn't pay that much attention to it. I mean, for a driver, he went the same way

all the time. And then here one morning, he goes to go there, and it's blocked

off. And it's over here, and then he stopped the car, and they shot him.

Was it American mischief? You know, that was investigated ad nauseam by an

opposition senator, Church.

And if you read the Church hearings, it's all there.

And nobody was indicted. Nobody was charged with

illegal acts.

Mr.

Kissinger.

His presence here should not be interpreted as meaning that he himself

involved in any plot to

assassinate any foreign figure.

In the church committee, the CIA testified that Kissinger had been kept

informed of the Snyder situation every step of the way, even after October

Kissinger maintained that he turned off all coup plotting on October 15th.

For Kissinger to be correct, this would go down in history as one of the

greatest misunderstandings between the White House and the CIA.

But when you read the documents, Kissinger was very clear. He said, let

pressure on every Allende. A weak spot in sight now and into the future until

such time as new marching orders are given.

The CIA walked away from its meeting with Henry Kissinger, believing it had

mandated to continue.

trying to foment a coup in Chile.

On October 19th, according to the CIA, Kissinger's aide, Alexander Haig, was

briefed by the CIA on continuing coup attempts.

One can only presume that Alexander Haig, whose duty it was to report to

Kissinger on this type of information, fully briefed Kissinger on what the CIA

told him.

According to the CIA, on October 20th, five days after Kissinger claimed he had

turned off track two, he demanded an update on the Schneider situation.

There was no policy since to assassinate

any foreign official.

Kissinger said there was no plot I am familiar with. I was not involved.

You are.

He lied.

As far as we were concerned in the White House, this thing ended on October

15th. Then I think around October 23rd or so, I don't remember the exact date,

they kidnapped Schneider and then the private killed him.

It may be impossible to know precisely what happened, yet it is hard to

understand how, on October 19th, the CIA could have shipped unmarked guns to

Chile without authorization.

He knew Schneider was certainly going to get killed, but not by us.

You see, therefore it's okay.

That's the way it works.

Not assassination and not murder.

The hearing was very clear about that. It was accidental in terms of the United

States.

But isn't kidnapping a crime?

Kidnapping depends on what your objectives are. I'm not going to justify

These were not my policies.

If you were found standing over a dead man in the street with a smoking gun in

your hands and the police come and you say, well, I'm sorry, but I was only

trying to kidnap him, this in court does you no good at all.

A murder committed in the course of a kidnap, any action committed in the

of a kidnap, aggravates the offence.

The Chilean police investigation did not find any evidence to support a

kidnapping. After the murder, the CIA commended the Chilean station for doing

excellent job. A CIA internal inquiry revealed that $35 ,000 was paid to one

the killers after the killing.

Perhaps only a legal inquiry will reveal the truth.

If you could develop a scenario, if you could develop a factual basis to

find that Henry Kissinger was complicit, then you could sue him in the courts of

the United States. You might face some statute of limitations problems, which

you'd have to try to overcome by saying that the duplicity with which Henry

Kissinger has dealt with these issues, saying one thing for the official record

and another thing in private and hitherto unreleased records, there'd be

ground on which to say that the statute of limitations was told by that kind of

concealment.

After Snyder's death, Allende was elected.

But the efforts of Kissinger and Nixon to overthrow Allende would ultimately

succeed.

In 1973, military forces launched a coup in Santiago, killing Allende.

Augusto Pinochet would assume power and begin a reign of terror that would last

17 years.

The date was September 11th.

28 years later to the day, the Washington Post announced the lawsuit

against Henry Kissinger by René Schneider Jr.

to the death of his father.

The news would be overshadowed by the events of later that morning.

I'm sure they would want your observations

on what you see here.

On the one hand, it's a testimony to what evil can do in the world.

But what the mayor and his associates have done here shows... the resilience

the power of the human spirit.

As the former Secretary of State surveyed the wreckage, the campaign had

begun to see that those responsible for the loss of innocent life be captured

and brought to justice.

I don't think you could have it metaphorically more perfect than that.

for those who will use force against civilians or against democracy for short

-term or fanatical aims of their own.

is now a haunt in which the whole world takes part.

And there can't be any exceptions.

Whether or not Kissinger is guilty of crimes against humanity, his case raises

issues about the accountability of public figures, the way the past haunts

present, and the movement for universal justice.

All revolutions are impossible till they happen. Then they become inevitable.

Well, one of the things that's happened is that this movement has acquired an

air of inevitability.

139 nations have become signatories to the International Criminal Court, a

global judiciary with the power to try individuals for crimes against humanity.

I think the idea of Kissinger as a war criminal is a very dangerous idea. As

you know, America has not signed... up the International Criminal Tribunal for

fear of that. In his latest book, An International Affair, Henry Kissinger

argues strongly against what he calls the pitfalls of universal jurisdiction.

It's a facet of American exceptionalism to think that international

law is a very fine thing for other countries, that international law

to everyone except...

The average person thinks that morality can be

applied as directly to the conduct of states to each other as it can

to human relations.

That is not always the case because sometimes statesmen have to choose among

evils. I do think that somewhere down deep he knows.

what he was doing. He knows it was, again, a lot of first principles, which

why so much is masked and hidden and there's so much distrust.

It's a very, very bad way to go through your life.

Whatever he did, whatever he accomplished, I'm not sure it's worth it

had to live a lot more years.

He's been out of power for a long time, you know, 25 years now.

In his own way, the reason I don't worry about war crimes or anything else, he's

got his own sentence. He's got to live with himself.