All language subtitles for American.Experience.S37E06.Kissinger.Part.1.1080p.WEB.h264-BAE[EZTVx.to]_track3_[eng]

ANNOUNCER:
The following program
contains content

which may not be suitable
for all audiences.

Viewer discretion is advised.

President-elect Nixon today
named Dr. Henry Kissinger,

the German-born
Harvard professor,

as his White House
policy adviser

on defense and foreign affairs.

ROGER MORRIS:
In 1968,

when Henry Kissinger was named
national security adviser,

he was not at all well-known,

and certainly not as famous
or as celebrated

as he would become.

I enthusiastically accept
this assignment

and I shall serve
the president-elect

with all my energy
and dedication.

SAM HOSKINSON:
There was something about him
that was different,

like the way he talked.

I have tried to avoid labels

like "hard" and "soft."

HOSKINSON:
Here's this Harvard professor,

kind of a nerd, nerdish guy,

that became one of the most
powerful men in the world.

KISSINGER:
I believe that what America does

is of great consequence
to the peace of the world

and to the progress of humanity.

NIALL FERGUSON:
He entered the realm of power

and bestrode it
as a geopolitical colossus.

BEN RHODES:
He had enormous power,

more power
than any unelected official

probably in the history
of this country.

JEREMI SURI:
And the moments
he lashes out most

are the moments
he feels powerless.

We are not talking about
an attack on a neutral country.

BARBARA KEYS:
The secrecy, the lying,
the denial of reality,

those are all Kissingerian.

GREG GRANDIN:
I don't think
that he had much concern

for the human costs
of his actions.

KISSINGER:
The question
about the relationship

of morality to foreign policy

is a very complex one.

RICHARD HAASS:
I don't think he'd deny

that he overlooked
certain human rights.

He would just say, "There
were other factors at stake."

KISSINGER:
Sometimes statesmen
have to choose among evils.

ROHAM ALVANDI:
He wasn't trying to win
a popularity contest.

He was trying
to implement his ideas.

(shouting)
KISSINGER:
I believe we have an obligation

to prevent the totalitarians

from taking over the world
by force.

PETER KORNBLUH:
Yes, he was brilliant.

But in the end,
his legacy is about

the number of people--

and we're talking hundreds
of thousands--

that died because
of the arrogance of his policy.

FERGUSON:
Nobody before or since

has played such an important
role in American foreign policy.

We've had to recognize
it's Henry Kissinger's world.

(phone ringing)

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

(explosions pounding)

♪ ♪

(explosions pounding)

(shouting)

PROGRAM NARRATOR:
Tonight, Henry Kissinger

talks about war and peace

and about his decisions
at the height of his powers.

KISSINGER:
I was brought up
in a totalitarian society,

and therefore
I had perhaps a better sense

for the fragility
of institutions,

and for the potential evil

that can break forth
when restraints disappear.

(people shouting)

FERGUSON:
One has to remember
that Henry Kissinger

was born at a time

when Germany was in a state

of near-revolutionary upheaval.

ALVANDI:
In the 1920s,

the economic crisis
of hyperinflation

that engulfs Weimar Germany,

combined with the sense
of grievance

about the terms imposed
on Germany

after the First World War,

generates the rise

of a very vicious right-wing
fascist movement...

ALL:
Heil!

ALVANDI:
...for whom Jews
are the scapegoats.

And the Kissingers,
like a lot of German Jews,

had no sense of what was going
to come for them in the 1930s.

MAN: Heil!
CROWD (responding):
Heil!

Heil!
Heil!

Heil!
Heil!

(church bells ringing)

♪ ♪

FERGUSON:
Fürth in Bavaria had

a significant Jewish population
in the 1920s.

Heinz Kissinger is born

into one of the Orthodox
families in Fürth,

and grows up in a middle-class
Jewish household.

Heinz had two
distinctive features:

a brilliant mind
and indefatigable energy.

Well, if he got the brilliance
from his father, Louis,

he got that endless energy
from his mother, Paula.

Their Jewishness is serious--

they're Orthodox,
they're kosher--

they see themselves integrated
in German culture.

ANGUS REILLY:
Despite his later reputation,

he's not
a particularly studious child.

His mother complains
that him and Walter

are always running away
from kindergarten.

PAULA KISSINGER: Henry was born
in '23

and Walter was born in '24.

And they were terrible naughty

and hard to handle.

a gregarious, fairly frivolous
young man.

(shouting)

(band playing)

FERGUSON:
But the childhood came
to an abrupt end

with the rise of the Nazis.

(people shouting)

(speaking German):

which had been
very well integrated

into a fairly liberal
and cultured Germany,

suddenly finds itself

the target of the wrath
of the German right.

For people like the Kissingers,
this is a shock.

There is a deep reluctance

to believe the depth
that this depravity can reach.

THOMAS SCHWARTZ:
Kissinger remembered
that when he and his brother

would take their bicycles
to go visit their grandfather,

he would see the signs saying
"Jews are not wanted here."

And Kissinger
commented later

about how everything
seemed changed.

KISSINGER:
I was prohibited
to go to German schools.

All the German people with whom
my parents associated

(speaking German):

KISSINGER:
A policy of segregation
for Jewish people was created,

and my father lost his job.

MAN: Sieg!
CROWD: Heil!

MAN: Sieg!
CROWD: Heil!

MAN: Sieg!
CROWD: Heil!

REILLY:
Because Louis is an employee
of the German state,

he is sacked,

and it, it devastates him.

He got so much fulfillment

out of his job as a teacher,

and then suddenly he was bereft,
he was lost,

and he withdraws in on himself,

and Kissinger feels distanced
from his father.

KISSINGER:
My father was a teacher
and not a practical man.

And he was sort of paralyzed

in the face of the evil
the Nazis represented.

ALVANDI: I can't imagine
how destabilizing

and terrifying it must have been
for Kissinger to see

that world around him that he so
admired turning against him,

that a society that was

seemingly so civilized,
so refined

could descend
into this kind of madness.

REILLY:
There is a sense of a lost world

that he'll never be able
to return to.

His childhood featured
that profound loss of innocence,

of joy and prosperity

and, and ease.

KISSINGER:
That was a wrench in my life
that had a deep impact on me.

It was the possibility

that what had given you security

could disintegrate.

(speaking German)

(crowd responds)

(band playing, people singing)

KISSINGER:
My mother was extremely
practical,

and she decided
that they should leave Germany.

My father didn't object.

PAULA KISSINGER: I was mainly
afraid for the children.

You saw that they were
so isolated.

They take a couple of trunks

with a few precious
personal items,

and then they have
to leave everything behind.

FERGUSON:
The Kissingers left
in the nick of time,

just weeks
before the huge pogrom

that we know as Kristallnacht,
the Night of Broken Glass.

(glass shattering,
flames crackling)

REILLY:
Mobs across Germany
torch Jewish homes,

they attack Jewish people
in the streets,

they destroy synagogues.

(people shouting,
objects shifting)

And in Fürth, they drag
as many Jews as they can

to the town center.

And they have to stand there
and watch

as the synagogue burns
to the ground.

(flames crackling)

♪ ♪

ALVANDI:
The Kissingers are not
spared the Holocaust in Germany.

Kissinger loses 13 members
of his family in the Holocaust,

and I think for Kissinger,
it generated a deep pessimism

about the idea that norms and
rules are going to protect you.

Really, at the end of the day,
the only thing

that's going to protect you
is power.

(bell ringing, gulls squawking)

KISSINGER:
There was this cousin of mine
who brought us here,

and when we arrived by boat,

as we came down the gangplank,

he said,
"Your name now is Henry."

REILLY:
The Kissingers settle
in Washington Heights,

which has a large community
of German Jews.

It's known as Frankfurt on
the Hudson, or the Fourth Reich.

And they try and build a life

that, to an extent,
mirrors the one they've left.

KISSINGER:
They didn't have any money.

My brother and I slept
in the living room.

We had no privacy.

But I did not feel
that I was suffering.

The challenge, of course,
was to arrive

in the United States
in the Depression.

That was why Henry Kissinger
had to get a job.

(car horns honking)

♪ ♪

DAVID KISSINGER:
He worked in a shaving brush
factory.

He went to night school.

He didn't have the opportunity
to have a lot of fun,

but he also

seems to have felt
an enormous sense of relief

because he didn't have
to cross the street

to get away from kids
who would beat him up.

He starts to study

and he immerses himself

in the very vital life

of New York City
in the late 1930s.

DAVID KISSINGER:
I think he fell in love
with New York

very quickly.

He fell in love with baseball.

(crowd cheering)

And he fell in love
with my mother.

My mother's name
is Anneliese Cohen.

They very quickly
started dating,

and it became a very sweet,
dedicated relationship.

They had been
through the same kind of trauma,

but they shared a desire

to turn the disaster
that they had experienced

into a life of meaning.

But I think it was the Army
that truly gave him

the confidence that he could
be a true American.

(explosions roaring)

REPORTER:
The attack was carried out

by Jap torpedo planes
together with dive bombers.

REILLY:
Kissinger is at a football game,

and he comes out and sees

the newspaper boy

with the headline saying
"Pearl Harbor Attacked."

And he, he doesn't have any idea
where Pearl Harbor is.

NEWSCASTER:
Immediate response
from the youth of America.

Army, Navy, and Marine
recruiting stations

close to overflowing.

FERGUSON:
Most teenagers pretty quickly

figured out that they might not
be interested in war,

but war was likely going to be
interested in them.

FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT:
The second number

which has just been drawn
is 192.

SINGERS:
♪ This is the Army,
Mr. Green ♪

FERGUSON:
The U.S. Army was not

a tremendously discerning
institution

in the early phase
of World War II.

It took its young men
from wherever it could

and from wherever
they'd come from.

♪ ♪

REILLY:
He's drafted in 1943

and he's sent to a rifle company

in the 84th Infantry Division,
the Railsplitters.

♪ ♪

FERGUSON:
Initially, the young
Henry Kissinger found himself

in this extraordinary
melting pot

of young men in training camps
that were spartan,

to put it mildly.

KISSINGER:
I thought it was
a tremendous experience,

not every minute of which
I enjoyed,

but I now think

it was one of the most important
experiences of my life.

I had never met any really
native-born Americans,

and these people
from the Midwest

were very tolerant and friendly,

and I got to know America as
a result of serving in the Army.

♪ ♪

FILM NARRATOR:
These are the men who served
in the 84th Infantry Division,

a division
that distinguished itself

in a series of critical
engagements during World War II.

REILLY: Kissinger lands in
France

five months after D-Day,

in November 1944,

and someone clearly recognizes

his linguistic talents,

and he's put into
the counterintelligence part

of the 84th Infantry Division.

FERGUSON:
It's not long after D-Day

that Kissinger finds himself

in one of the great battles
of the war in Europe,

the Battle of the Bulge.

(firing)

The fighting was hard.

The Germans put up
stiff resistance.

The casualties were high.

(firing)

REILLY:
The 84th is trapped
in a Belgian town,

Marche-en-Famenne.

(explosion pounds)

And Kissinger works
in the courthouse

with the general and other staff

monitoring everything

and helping to organize
the defense of the town.

It was especially dangerous
for Kissinger,

because as a German Jew
by birth,

he risked execution
if he were captured.

(explosion roars)

After the Battle of the Bulge,

the 84th Infantry Division heads
towards the city of Hanover,

where they come across
Ahlem concentration camp,

and it is a horrendous place.

♪ ♪

FILM NARRATOR:
Out of a thousand Polish men
brought here

ten months prior to April 1945,

only 200 remained.

Prisoners who could walk
were removed

before American troops
entered Hanover.

The others were left
to starve and die.

REILLY:
Horrified, they radio
to the headquarters,

which is where Kissinger is,
and he drives up.

And they come into this camp,

and Kissinger is just staggered
by it.

FILM NARRATOR:
When questioned,

most of these men
could not remember

when they'd last eaten
a decent meal.

Many had been beaten
and tortured so long,

their minds had failed.

DAVID KISSINGER:
My father described
his experience

liberating
the Ahlem concentration camp

as something that words
could not entirely communicate.

KISSINGER (dramatized): As our
Jeep traveled down the street,

skeletons in striped suits
lined the road.

Cloth seemed to fall
from the bodies.

The heads were held up
by a stick

that once might have been
a throat.

Poles hang from the sides
where arms should be.

I see my friend enter
one of the huts

and come out with tears
in his eyes.

"Don't go in there.

We had to kick them to tell
the dead from the living."

REILLY:
To him, it always was

the most horrendous thing
that he'd ever seen.

FILM NARRATOR:
The victims relate
the atrocity story

and photographs are made
for further documentation

of the horrors committed
at the Hanover camp.

REILLY:
The power of knowing

that it could have been him
in that camp.

That stays with Henry Kissinger.

FILM NARRATOR:
The deaths continue

even after liberation
of the camp.

Some were too far gone
when the Americans took over.

DAVID KISSINGER:
It was an illustration for him
that strength was

an unavoidable facet
of resisting evil.

That the attempt to deal
with evil through compromise...

...sometimes was not enough.

(typewriter keys clacking)

REILLY:
After the war,
Kissinger writes to the mother

of an old friend of his
from Fürth

who had survived
a concentration camp,

and he writes to warn her of

what her son will now be like.

KISSINGER (dramatized):
I feel it necessary
to write to you.

I think a completely
erroneous picture

exists in the United States

of the former inmates
of the concentration camps.

REILLY:
Kissinger writes,
"He has not only suffered,

"but he has lived
an anarchic world

"in which it's survival
of the fittest,

"in which there is no order,

"there is no structure

or sense of society."

KISSINGER (dramatized):
Concentration camps were
not only mills of death,

they were also testing grounds.

REILLY:
It's a warning
that morality has its limits,

and that this was about power
and strength and survival,

above all else.

KISSINGER (dramatized):
The intellectuals,
the idealists,

the men of high morals
had no chance.

It was a necessity
to follow through

with a singleness of purpose,

inconceivable to you sheltered
people in the States.

(typewriter carriage slides)

(film reel clicking)

FILM NARRATOR:
The problem now is future peace.

That is your job in Germany.

You'll see ruins,

you'll see flowers,

you'll see
some mighty pretty scenery.

Don't let it fool you.

You are in enemy country.

Be alert,
suspicious of everyone.

Take no chances.

FERGUSON:
Germany in 1945

was in a state of collapse.

FILM NARRATOR:
Proven war criminals must answer
for their crimes.

(gun fires)

FERGUSON:
As a member of
the Counter Intelligence Corps,

Kissinger had to find out,
who were the Nazis?

So Kissinger went from
fighting Germans

to trying to understand them.

FILM NARRATOR:
Somewhere in this Germany

are storm troopers
by the thousands.

Out of sight, part of the mob,

but still watching you
and hating you.

Trust none of them.

DAVID KISSINGER:
At a very young age,

my father was given
enormous authority

over an area around Hanover

to apprehend high-ranking Nazis.

KISSINGER:
My job was to arrest all Nazis

above a certain level.

(speaking German)

KISSINGER:
At that time, of course,

every German claimed
that he hadn't been a Nazi.

REILLY:
For someone so young,
it's a lot of responsibility,

and he carries out the job
effectively.

FERGUSON:
It's a rather extraordinary
thought

that the young 22-,
23-year-old Henry Kissinger

is in this position of power

over the very people

who had been murdering
his relatives,

the very people who had driven
his family across the Atlantic.

There's no vengeance
in Kissinger.

He is not searching

for some kind of feeling
of righteous vindication.

He is not
a black and white person.

He lives in the gray area
in between.

("Fair Harvard" playing)

FILM NARRATOR:
Fair Harvard,

thy sons to thy jubilee throng.

And with blessings
surrender thee o'er.

REILLY:
Kissinger enters Harvard
on the G.I. Bill,

alongside millions of other
new college students

who had served in the military.

And Kissinger is determined
to take his own experiences

and hit the ground running.

♪ ♪

FERGUSON:
He was the proverbial

young man in a hurry.

DAVID KISSINGER:
He tried many different
subjects.

For a while, he was on track
to be a chemistry professor.

He also flirted with going
to law school.

But ultimately,

his fascination with history
and government prevailed.

The old regime in France was
tyrannical, oppressive...

KISSINGER:
Insofar as one could learn
anything in preparation

for a high
governmental position,

I think a study of history
is the best preparation.

SCHWARTZ:
He was definitely
someone who was determined

to conquer academia

through sheer hard work
and labor,

not someone who joined
college activities,

joined college clubs.

DAVID KISSINGER:
He was very rigorous
about just

using all of his time
for his studies.

ALVANDI:
He is the guy who's
in the library 24/7,

squirreled away in his dorm,

reading from dawn to dusk,

and so most of his Harvard
contemporaries

barely remember him.

He manages to sneak in a dog.

(dog barks)
And I think that's pretty much

his only friend there,
by all accounts.

REILLY:
And then Kissinger writes

his undergraduate thesis,
"The Meaning of History."

"The Meaning
of History."

"The Meaning of History."

Yes, the famous
"Meaning of History."

(typewriter keys clacking)

(carriage slides, bell dings)

An extraordinarily detailed
and philosophical thesis,

which grapples with
the big questions of human life,

human meaning,
the meaning of history.

FERGUSON:
It was the longest senior thesis
in Harvard history.

(typewriter keys clacking)

ALVANDI:
It was so long that Harvard had
to introduce a rule

that dissertations had to be,

you know,
within a certain word limit.

(laughs)

"The Meaning of History"

is extraordinary,
but undisciplined, unedited,

and

confusing.

I have read it.

If you ask me
if I understand it,

I would bet, want
to punt that question,

but it produces
a summa cum laude degree

and admission
to the graduate program

in government and history.

He spends many, many years
at Harvard,

and he's just this very
frustrated young PhD graduate

who is kind of trying
to find a place for himself,

so what he does is,

he kind of invents a place
for himself.

REILLY: He studies the policies
of European statesmen

after the fall of Napoleon

and their attempts

to bring about
order and stability.

and of nuclear weapons,
in which states have to balance

against each other,

undergirded by a fear
of what war is like.

♪ ♪

FERGUSON:
The central problem
of the Cold War

was like a kind of chess game.

There were two superpowers:
the United States

and the Soviet Union.

All the rest of the world
was a chessboard.

All the other pieces could
be moved about that chessboard.

Diplomacy showed a way
in which at least

temporary peace
could be achieved.

ALVANDI:
It was not just accepting
the world as it is,

but understanding
the realities of power

and manipulating power

in order to achieve
the ultimate goal,

which was peace and stability.

REILLY:
It's about building
the right balance of power

so that war is impossible.

It's, victory is impossible,

because then only through that

would you prevent another war.

(plane engine roaring)

(guns firing)

FILM NARRATOR:
Machine guns chatter
a song of death

and rockets hiss down

with terrifying accuracy
onto the Reds below.

SCHWARTZ:
Shortly after Kissinger's
graduation,

the Korean War breaks out.

And the Korean War is really

the Pearl Harbor
of the Cold War.

♪ ♪

FERGUSON:
It was the moment

when Americans could no longer
ignore Stalin's ambitions

to expand communism
beyond the Soviet Union.

(cannons firing)

FILM NARRATOR:
The democratic peoples
must fight

and continue to fight

until the grim red shadow
that surrounds the world

is dispelled.

SURI:
We have a rising Cold War

that now has become a hot war.

And I think
what the Korean War does is,

it creates, for the next
50 years in the United States,

an axiom that
if you ever give the Communists

a little bit of space,

they will seize it
and seize more.

(firing)

(explosions pound)

And so the United States
has to be ever ready,

has to be prepared
for apocalypse

at any moment.

every city and town,

is within striking range
of a determined enemy.

FAREED ZAKARIA:
It's difficult for us today
to understand

how scared people were in the
'50s and early '60s

about the prospects
of nuclear war.

(explosion rumbling)

(explosion bangs)

Remember, these were
the most powerful weapons

ever designed in the world.

(explosions roaring)

And every military technology,
every weapon

that had ever been produced
in human history

had been used.

And nuclear weapons
had been used, twice.

(air raid siren blares)

FILM NARRATOR:
Even the pigeons take part,

as New York holds
its biggest civil defense drill.

ZAKARIA:
The U.S. strategy, which was
called massive retaliation,

was that, if the Soviets use
a single nuclear weapon

against an American interest,

the United States will hurl

hundreds of nuclear missiles
all the way to Moscow.

FILM NARRATOR:
Times Square waits.

Millions wonder:
suppose it were real.

ZAKARIA:
But if the Soviet Union
did something

in a second-tier
European country,

would we really sacrifice
New York and Washington

by retaliating against them?

Kissinger's thought was no,
and everybody knows it.

FERGUSON:
Kissinger understood

that there was something absurd
about a strategy

which gave you a choice between
capitulation or Armageddon.

And it was also true
that there must be

some limited use
for nuclear weapons.

KISSINGER:
What is the role
of nuclear weapons?

What is the significance
of conventional forces?

FERGUSON:
He talked to the experts,

picked their brains,
and then wrote his own book,

and that book became "Nuclear
Weapons and Foreign Policy."

It was the book
that made him famous.

(applauding)

MAN: Henry Kissinger...
MAN: Henry Kissinger...

MAN:
Henry Kissinger is the author
of the bestseller

"Nuclear Weapons
and Foreign Policy."

REILLY:
Kissinger is offering
the possibly radical argument

that the United States

should be willing
to use nuclear weapons

in smaller wars.

You think American strategy
should be reevaluated

to restore war as
a usable instrument of policy?

American strategy
has to face the fact

that it may be confronted
with war,

and that if Soviet aggression
confronts us with war

and we are unwilling to resist,

it will mean
the end of our freedom.

REILLY:
It suddenly makes him a hugely
important public intellectual.

He gets invited on television.

He can write op-eds
in "The New York Times."

He is now recognized
as an important person

in the conversations
about the Cold War.

MAN:
Dr. Kissinger,

do you believe it's true

that we have
no coherent strategy?

I have no doubt
that our military services

have a plan for every
conceivable contingency.

But I have the uneasy feeling
that these plans

are not the same
in each service.

(others laughing)

(applauding)

ALVANDI:
He's a very ambitious person,

but he's also ambitious
for his ideas.

He wants to have an impact
on history.

And he realizes
that in order to do that,

he must cultivate relationships
with power.

So he begins to use

the sort of cachet and prestige
of Harvard

to build relationships
for himself beyond university.

FERGUSON:
Now, if you are
a policy intellectual,

you're pretty stupid

if you don't get expert

about what's gonna become

the dominant, divisive foreign
policy issue

of the later 1960s.

And that is

the war in Vietnam.

♪ ♪

LYNDON JOHNSON:
We do not want an expanding
struggle

with consequences
that no one can perceive.

Nor will we bluster, or bully,

or flaunt our power.

But we will not surrender.

And we will not retreat.

(fires)

FERGUSON:
The United States had been

getting steadily more involved
in Vietnam

during the Kennedy
administration,

but it was under Lyndon Johnson,

after Kennedy's assassination,

that U.S. involvement escalated,

and large numbers of U.S. troops
began to be committed.

JOHNSON:
Retreat does not bring safety

and weakness
does not bring peace.

FERGUSON:
The escalation really dates
from '65,

and that's the year that
Kissinger first visits Vietnam.

Why did he go?

Well, I think Kissinger
was genuinely interested

in the problem that was
evolving in Vietnam.

JOHN NEGROPONTE:
I first heard of him

when we were all called

into the political counselor's
office in the embassy in Saigon,

and he told us Dr. Kissinger
was coming soon,

and I was asked to take him

up to the northern part
of the country.

And so we took him to
some remote places in Vietnam.

I wouldn't say
he was exactly fearless.

I can tell you one phobia
he absolutely had,

and that was flying.

(chuckling):
I remember, one time,
walks up to the pilot,

and he says, "Good morning,
pilots," he says...

(imitating):
"Can this plane really get
over those mountains?"

(laughs)

(plane rattling, wind blowing)

Henry was holding on to the
curtains of that airplane

for dear life.

(chuckles)

The reports that he wrote

from that and later trips
to Vietnam in the mid-'60s

are extraordinary,

because he understood
very quickly

why the United States' effort
to prop up South Vietnam

was failing.

SCHWARTZ:
He recognizes
that the United States

is likely not able to prevail
in the amount of time

that public opinion would
be supportive of the war effort.

And he, from a very early point,

believes that the United States

has to find some type
of negotiated solution.

KISSINGER:
I concluded then
that there was no way

of winning the war in the manner
in which it was being conducted.

So I felt from that moment on

that we had to find
a negotiated way out.

But I also felt that, having
committed that many forces,

we couldn't simply walk away.

MAN:
Professor Henry A. Kissinger
of Harvard.

He's been an adviser to
the United States government

under four presidents

and has recently returned
from Vietnam.

Professor Kissinger,

I find American intervention
in Vietnam as immoral

as Nazi and Italian intervention
in Spain before last war.

Why don't you?

(audience laughing and clapping)

KISSINGER:
I don't find

the intervention in Vietnam
immoral,

because our purpose is

to give the people of
South Vietnam a free choice.

The Nazi intervention
was to deprive the people

of a free choice.

And I would have thought
that people in Britain

should know the difference

between American motivations
and fascist motivations.

(audience cheers and applauds)

JOHNSON:
I bring with me the love
of your families

and the affection
of your friends.

I bring with me also
the gratitude of the nation

that you serve so honorably

and so loyally and so well.

FERGUSON:
By 1968,

what Kissinger had spotted
in 1965

was becoming obvious even
to President Lyndon Johnson.

The war in Vietnam

was proving extremely hard
to win.

REPORTER:
Americans risk,
and sometimes give,

all that they have
half a world away from home.

FERGUSON:
In order to try to figure out

a graceful exit
from Southeast Asia,

a negotiation had to happen.

Good evening,
my fellow Americans.

Tonight, I want to speak to you

of peace in Vietnam
and Southeast Asia.

Then, in 1968...

I shall not seek,

and I will not accept,

the nomination of my party
for another term

as your president.

ELIZABETH BECKER:
...President Johnson

declared he would not run
for reelection.

He was gonna devote himself
to finding a solution,

and he was coming close.

REPORTER:
The diplomatic deadlock

over a site for the peace talks

was finally broken.

The North Vietnamese
had revealed

a willingness to talk,

but only on their terms.

REPORTER:
In Paris, politics and diplomacy

eventually assembled all parties

to try to find peace in Vietnam.

ROBERT BRIGHAM:
The Johnson administration

opened secret negotiations
in Paris.

The American public
wanted to win,

but they wanted
to get out.

And the clock is ticking.

♪ ♪

JOHN FARRELL:
Kissinger saw that there
was a chance to claim power,

and he went to Paris
in September,

and he heard over there

that there may be
this bombing halt coming.

This was the golden moment
to say,

"If I don't
walk through that door now

"and Nixon gets elected,

"it's going to be four years,
or eight years,

"and I'm gonna be a Harvard
professor again.

"No matter how smart I am,

this is my shot."

And this was despite the fact

that Kissinger and Nixon
did not know each other,

and Kissinger had said
throughout that summer

that Nixon would be a disaster
if he got elected president.

FERGUSON:
Henry Kissinger had steered
clear of Richard Nixon

throughout his career
as a policy intellectual,

declining invitations
to meet with Nixon

because he really had

a pretty low opinion
of Nixon.

(phone calling out)

GRANDIN:
But Kissinger quickly
made contact

with, with the Nixon campaign.

(call answered)
And he passed on

the status of the talks

through his contact
Richard Allen.

ALLEN:
Henry Kissinger

volunteered
information to us

through a, a spy
he had,

former student,

that he had in the
Paris peace talks.

He called me from pay phones
and we spoke in German.

And he offloaded
mostly every night

what had happened that day
in Paris.

FARRELL:
So he sends two different
messages to Nixon

on two different days
in September,

saying, "There's
this bombing halt coming.

"I just want you to know.

Think about what your position
is going to be."

GRANDIN:
Kissinger told the Nixon
campaign, you know,

"They're getting closer
to a deal."

And Nixon's people told
the South Vietnamese government

that it would get better terms

if Nixon was in the White House.

This was the moment

in which that distance
between self-interest

and national interest,
at least in his mind,

collapsed into each other.

From that point forward,

there was no daylight between
the interests of Henry Kissinger

and the interests
of the United States,

at least in Henry Kissinger's
mind.

(crowd cheering and applauding)

NIXON:
Having lost a close one
eight years ago,

and having won a close one
this year,

I can say this:

winning's a lot more fun.

(laughing,
audience cheers and applauds)

FARRELL:
After the election,

Nixon invites Kissinger

to come to the Pierre hotel
in New York City.

FERGUSON:
The Henry Kissinger who goes
to the Pierre hotel

after Richard Nixon's
election victory

is a player, but a bit player.

MORRIS:
Nixon had a general disdain
for academics,

but he wanted and needed
a kind of authority

that Henry gave him
in academic terms.

FERGUSON:
Kissinger had met Nixon
just once before,

and they have one
of those awkward conversations

which were Richard Nixon's
signature dish.

And that's why Nixon's decision

to offer Kissinger the job
of national security adviser

came as such a surprise
to Kissinger

that he didn't realize
Nixon had offered him the job.

FARRELL:
Nixon is just so awkward
with people

that he had neglected
to actually make the offer.

(phone ringing)

So Kissinger comes away
from the meeting with Nixon

and he gets a phone call
from John Mitchell,

who is the campaign manager.

(phone ringing)

And Mitchell says...

(over phone):
"So, um, how do you like
the new job?"

(in interview):
And Kissinger says...

(over phone):
"Well, what job?
No job was actually offered."

(in interview):
And Mitchell goes...

(over phone):
"Oh, for Christ's sake,
he messed it up again!"

NEWS ANCHOR:
President-elect Nixon made

his first major foreign policy
appointment today.

He named Harvard professor
Henry Kissinger

to be his special assistant
for national security affairs.

Dr. Kissinger is a man
who is known

to all people who are
interested in foreign policy

as perhaps one of the
major scholars in America

and the world today
in this area.

ALVANDI:
The relationship between Nixon
and Kissinger is fascinating,

and it becomes
a bizarre marriage.

SURI:
There's a wariness they have
of each other early on,

but I think they each see

quite a bit of themselves
in the other.

The president-elect and I

have had many extensive
conversations

over the past week.

FERGUSON:
It quickly became clear to Nixon

that Kissinger was an asset.

First of all,
he understood Nixon.

KISSINGER:
I enthusiastically accept
this assignment,

and I shall serve
the president-elect

with all my energy
and dedication.

FERGUSON:
Kissinger got inside his head
super-quickly

and very quickly began
to understand how to talk

to this lonely, difficult,
mistrustful man.

Dr. Kissinger is keenly aware
of the necessity

not to set himself up as a wall

between the president
and the secretary of state

or the secretary of defense.

♪ ♪

ZAKARIA:
Nixon wants to bring
foreign policy

into the White House.

In this, he finds a perfect
partner in Henry Kissinger.

I don't think one could have
expected this,

but Kissinger turned out to be

a very savvy
bureaucratic player.

He was very good at maneuvering
and counter-maneuvering,

and he liked the secrecy,
as well.

REPORTER:
Kissinger meets alone
with the president every day,

sometimes for as long
as an hour and a half.

GRANDIN:
Nixon and Kissinger

turned the National
Security Council

into basically the main hub
of foreign policy.

MORRIS:
I had joined the NSC under
the Johnson administration.

It was a very loosely
run operation,

very small.

There were only 11 or 12 of us.

That was not true at all
under Kissinger.

REPORTER:
These are the senior people

from his National Security
Council staff

of about 40 persons.

MORRIS:
Kissinger's NSC staff

was a much more concentrated
power structure

than anything
that we had seen before.

Kissinger made very clear

that he did not
want yes-men.

He wanted
candid advice.

Disagreement, if necessary.

Argue your case.

If you lose the battle,

then faithfully carry out
the policy.

He enjoyed

thinking and arguing issues
through.

and then we'll make it
depend on the other thing.

LAKE:
I think he enjoyed
having a few of us,

maybe not too many,
but a few of us

who did not agree

with him or the president
politically.

And I suspect he liked it
because he won every argument.

(chuckles):
In part because
he was very smart,

and in part because,

let me see, oh, yes,
I worked for him.

REPORTER:
Kissinger admits to being
a perfectionist,

not an easy man to work for.

HOSKINSON:
He was a demanding perfectionist
with his staff.

Nothing could ever be right.

There was also the joke

that if Henry didn't yell
at you,

he didn't love you.

with pride
and a kind of affection.

They call him Henry and regard
him, too, with warmth,

salted with a degree
of apprehension,

for he has a sharp temper.

MORRIS:
We were graded.

We were told
we had done a B-plus

or maybe an A-minus
if we were really lucky,

but always, of course,
you had to go back,

because the only real A

was Henry's own rendition.
(chuckles)

LORD:
Kissinger, he stretched
my patience.

He stretched my nerves.

Will this meeting take
very long?

(man talking
in background)

REPORTER:
He is regularly late
to meetings.

His staff despairs
good-naturedly of that.

I would quit about once a week.

He was a mentor

and a tormentor.

♪ ♪

MORRIS:
We worked murderous hours.

We were often 7:00
in the morning

till 8:00 or 9:00 at night.

And, uh, it took a toll
on families.

It took a toll
on our physical stamina.

But Kissinger demanded
to be the guiding light,

the North Star,

of the Nixon foreign policy.

And that meant
the policy in Vietnam.

♪ ♪

(bombs falling)

(explosions pounding)

(firing)

ZAKARIA: Kissinger and Nixon
enter the White House

at a time when the United States

is in a very, very difficult
place in Vietnam.

(helicopter blades whirring)

LORD:
In 1969,

tens of thousands of Americans
had already been lost.

We were losing about 200 a day.

(firing)

We were heading toward 535,000
troops in Vietnam.

It was a hellish situation.

(guns firing)

KISSINGER:
We inherited a nightmare.

It was shaking
our domestic stability.

It was the consuming concern
of the intellectual community.

(explosion pounds)

We made up our mind
from the beginning

that we were going to try
to disengage from Vietnam.

♪ ♪

MORRIS:
That the war should end

was unquestioned.

The question was, how?

The question was, when?

The question was,
under what circumstances?

With what honor,
or sense of honor?

I want to end this war.

The American people want
to end this war.

The people of South Vietnam
want to end this war.

MORRIS:
Very soon, the enormous
sentiment against the war

that had haunted and driven
Lyndon Johnson out of power

was going to be turned
on Richard Nixon.

They knew that.

MAN: What do we want?
PROTESTERS: Peace!

MAN: When do we get it?
PROTESTERS: Now!

KEYS:
What the Vietnam War did
to many Americans

was shake their faith

that their country
was decent and honorable.

Because it seemed like
the United States

was fighting a war in
a distant country

in an extremely brutal way,

using chemical weapons
like napalm,

destroying villages,

massacring civilians.

MORRIS:
And Nixon understood

you had to change course.

(reporters talking
in background)

How are you doing,
Mr. President,

in your efforts
to end the Vietnam War?

Once the enemy recognizes

that it is not going
to win its objective

by waiting us out,

then the enemy will negotiate,

and we will end this war
before the end of 1970.

That is the objective we have.

LAKE:
Nixon had to show
that there is hope,

there's light at the end
of the tunnel,

and we're going to get out--
but with honor.

KISSINGER:
Ending the Vietnam War had been

the principal goal
of Nixon's first term.

♪ ♪

Not only in order
to bring peace,

but in order to end
our domestic divisions.

♪ ♪

And I wanted
to create the conditions

which would unify
the country again

by having an honorable end
to the war in Vietnam.

♪ ♪

DAVID KISSINGER:
Foremost in my father's mind

was finding a way
to end the Vietnam War

without a collapse of America's
influence in the world,

without a betrayal

of millions of people

who had relied on us,

whose lives hung in the balance.

Melvin Laird,
secretary of defense,

arrived in Saigon today
for a firsthand look

at the progress
of Vietnamization,

which he said was
"irreversible."

BRIGHAM:
The secret plan
that Nixon had to end the war--

that wasn't so secret
or really a plan--

was Vietnamization.

CAROLYN EISENBERG:
Vietnamization is the brainchild

of Melvin Laird,
the secretary of defense.

LAIRD:
You cannot guarantee the will
and the desire of any country,

but you can give them the tools
to do the job.

(firing)

EISENBERG:
The basic idea is

that we should begin a policy

as quickly as we can...

(firing)

...of pouring money

and training

into the military
in South Vietnam.

(fires)

And that they'll be able
to replace American troops.

REPORTER:
20% of these young men
are farmers' sons,

out of the rice paddies
and flying solo

in a matter of weeks,

and that's what
the 300 South Vietnamese

are doing here:

learning to fly choppers
for combat.

LORD:
So, over a period of time,
we felt

that we could gradually
withdraw American troops,

which would maintain
domestic support at home,

and buy time
for the other prong,

which was secret negotiations.

♪ ♪

The fact is that there were
some public exchanges in Paris,

but they were essentially
propaganda battles,

but the real negotiations
were secret.

REPORTER (speaking French):

I won't discuss
any of the subject.

♪ ♪

LORD:
Here's the way it would work.

We had to make a cover,

pretending
we're still in Washington.

So I would leave the office
and say to my compatriots,

"I'm going to
take the weekend off."

And then
I would join Kissinger.

We'd fly into
the middle of France.

And we were met by
a military attaché

who would sneak us
into a safe house.

In the safe house,
we used code names,

so that the housekeeper
wouldn't know who we were.

I was Major Larkin,
I remember.

I couldn't even be
a lieutenant colonel.

It was one humiliation
after another.

♪ ♪

If the negotiations were secret,

then Henry would have

much more flexibility
in how to negotiate with them.

So, first point was

that they were secret
not only from other governments,

but from the State Department

and the rest
of the American government.

NEGROPONTE:
We cut the State Department out
of an awful lot of stuff,

and it was Henry versus them,

and he just didn't want them

to be involved or get
any credit.

SCHWARTZ:
Kissinger always feared,

to a certain extent,
that the State Department

could undermine his control
of foreign policy.

And he made it a point

of his role as
national security adviser

to try to gather in

the authority of foreign policy
to himself.

ALVANDI:
And this gave Kissinger

just tremendous power,
because really,

he was the only person
that was fully in the loop.

SCHWARTZ:
The North Vietnamese

want the complete withdrawal
of American forces.

In effect, they want
a type of American surrender,

and the North Vietnamese leaders

were far more unified
and determined

to forcibly reunify
their country

at almost any cost

than Nixon and Kissinger
truly appreciated.

FERGUSON:
Henry Kissinger always had

considerable and usually
quite well-placed faith

in his ability to negotiate.

So, his assumption was that
if he could get in the room

with a well-empowered
North Vietnamese representative,

he could find some room
for maneuver.

But they were also

the hardest negotiations
Kissinger ever experienced.

KISSINGER:
It was our misfortune
that Le Duc Tho's assignment

was to break the spirit of
the American people for the war,

and that he was engaged
in a campaign

of psychological warfare,

so what he attempted to do to us

was extremely painful.

ALVANDI:
The North Vietnamese negotiators
drive Kissinger insane,

because he tries to come up
with every conceivable formula

and variation of language

that would be enough
to achieve some kind of deal,

but they just simply refuse.

(talking softly)

LAKE:
We would sit across the table,

and it would be Henry
and an interpreter and me,

and I would look at them
very carefully.

And they were not
in the slightest cowed,

as far as I could tell.

But after all,
they had defeated the French,

they'd been holding off
the Chinese for 2,000 years,

and it was hard
to convince them.

FERGUSON:
The problem was that his
negotiating position

was weakened by the fact

that the U.S.
began withdrawing troops

even before
he began negotiating.

♪ ♪

LAKE:
We were going to San Clemente,

the White House in California,

and I wrote a memo to Kissinger

saying, the problem here is

that if we are Vietnamizing,

then the first tranche of troops
that come home

are like salted peanuts,

and the taste for further
withdrawal of American forces

is going to become overwhelming.

The North Vietnamese
are not idiots,

and they know
that if they simply wait us out,

then we're going to be
withdrawing, while they're not.

So, we've got a problem,
and therefore,

we need to cut
the best deal we can now.

Well, Henry took the conclusion
off my memo,

made it his own memo to Nixon,

and then said that we have
to threaten them all the more

with measures of great force

in order to make up
for the weakness of our position

on mutual withdrawal.

INTERVIEWER:
How would you characterize

Nixon administration's policy
towards Cambodia?

Well, the, you know,
there's been the charges

that have been made that...

♪ ♪

BECKER:
What's important to know
about Cambodia

was that it was
in the middle of the war.

To the west was Thailand,
which was the equivalent

of the air base
for the American war.

To the north is Laos,

and to the east,
of course, is Vietnam.

It's right in the middle,
and it's neutral,

run by a very charismatic leader

named Prince Norodom Sihanouk.

(crowd cheering)

SIHANOUK (speaking French):

for the United States
in Vietnam,

because even though
the Cambodian leader and others

are trying to play neutral,

the North Vietnamese are
sending supplies

through Cambodia--
that's just a fact.

♪ ♪

REPORTER:
U.S. bombing raids
in North Vietnam

forced the creation
of a primitive method

for keeping supply lines open.

GRANDIN:
Nixon and Kissinger

came up with the idea,

"Well, we'll start bombing
Cambodia."

(cannon fires)

FERGUSON:
Kissinger thought

if the North Vietnamese
supply lines could be broken,

if the flow of men and materiel

could be disrupted,

then the North Vietnamese
would be greatly weakened.

(guns firing, explosion pounds)

LORD:
The North Vietnamese were
the ones who spread the war.

They were sitting in Cambodia,

along the border, for two years,

coming across the border,

killing Americans
and South Vietnamese,

and returning to safe havens.

(explosions pound)

And so the bombing was to
not let them have safe havens.

So we are not talking about
an attack on a neutral country.

We are talking about the attack

on territory occupied
by an enemy force

that is killing Americans
from that territory.

(device beeps)

GRANDIN:
But the real reason
for the bombing

was to put into place
what Nixon and Kissinger

had come to call
the Madman Theory.

This was the idea
that Nixon was so crazy,

so unhinged,
that he might do anything.

And it was supposed
to project to North Vietnam

a sense of fear,

and sort of, and force them back
to the bargaining table.

♪ ♪

So, Operation Menu is launched,
in which sorties

where the Ho Chi Minh Trail
is located.

MORRIS:
Technically, there was
no sanction for this

in the U.S. Congress
of any kind.

And you're, you're coming
at a time

when there's enormous pressure
to wind down the war,

enormous pressure
to limit the war,

not to extend it,

not to expand it in any way.

♪ ♪

EISENBERG:
It was very clear to everybody,

including Kissinger himself,

that if the American public
learned

that they were bombing Cambodia,

that there was going to be
an explosion

in the United States.

HEDRICK SMITH:
And so that's why
they went secret.

Because they knew damn well

they couldn't get it any other
way.

♪ ♪

GRANDIN:
Kissinger was
intimately involved

in choosing the bombing sites.

He came up with basically
a dual bookkeeping system

in which bombs
that were supposed to be

dropped along the border
within South Vietnam

were actually dropped
in Cambodia.

There's descriptions of him
in an office

in the, in the basement
of the White House

with his maps, picking out
the bombing sites

and working in this
very clandestine manner.

(explosions pounding)

♪ ♪

This had the effect

of really kind of pushing
the White House

deep into paranoia,

into a sense that,

that there were enemies
all around.

RAY SITTON:
We were told
that this is so sensitive,

that it must be done

with the absolute minimum
number of people

being exposed to it.

At one point,

Dr. Kissinger even
suggested that,

why don't we do it
using Skyspot radar?

Even the crews won't know
where they're dropping.

BRIGHAM:
Mel Laird,
Nixon's secretary of defense,

was opposed to the secret
bombing of Cambodia.

they wanted to carry out
that bombing

I thought would lead to trouble.

BRIGHAM:
He thought there was no way

that Congress wouldn't
eventually find out.

And I told the National
Security Council,

the president,

the presidential adviser
for national security,

and the secretary of state

that their proposal
to keep it secret

just would not work.

SURI:
It was monumentally stupid
to think that they could

actually get away
with doing this in secret.

At some point, someone,

some low-level
Air Force official,

would hand the books
to a reporter.

Which is what happened.

EISENBERG:
There's an article

that appears in
"The New York Times"

by William Beecher.

If you blinked,
you might have missed it,

but Kissinger and Nixon
don't miss it.

And that really sets
Nixon and Kissinger off,

enraged, like,
"How did he get that news?

Who told him?"

And so that's the point
at which they make

a very fateful decision

to start wiretapping
people in the government,

as well as wiretapping
certain reporters.

(people murmuring)

SMITH:
Nixon and Kissinger
were paranoid about leaks.

They wanted not only
to control policy,

but they wanted to control
the narrative about policy.

They wanted to decide
when the public could find out,

when the Congress
could find out,

when other members of the
administration could find out.

SCHWARTZ:
Kissinger had brought
to Washington

a large number of officials

in his National Security Council
staff

who were known
to politically lean

more toward the Democrats.

And this immediately
raised the suspicion

that they leaked this
in order to undermine

the policy
of the administration.

SMITH:
Kissinger was convinced

there were people
in his own staff--

Mort Halperin, Tony Lake,
Roger Morris, you name it--

that were deliberately
undermining their policy,

that if they had an argument
behind closed doors,

that these guys
were going public with it.

That actually was a major
subject for discussion, but...

SMITH:
Nixon and Kissinger were both

conspiratorial themselves,

and if you're
conspiratorial yourself,

you tend to suspect
everybody else

of being conspiratorial, too.

♪ ♪

SARAH B. SNYDER:
I do think that Nixon
and Kissinger--

and, and I think it's important
to think about them together--

they fed
on one another's paranoia,

they fed on one another's need
for secrecy,

and they saw enemies
in a very stark light.

And so there was always
a sort of us-versus-them.

I was on vacation

on Martha's Vineyard

when Seymour Hersh called me.

(phone ringing,
receiver picks up)

And he said...

(on phone):
"I'm running a story tomorrow

"that you, your phone
was tapped,

and they've been listening
to your telephone."

(in interview):
And I was really pissed.

I mean, I threw rocks
at seagulls for a while.

(gulls crying)

I don't find out about
the wiretap for four years,

but my home was wiretapped,
my family was wiretapped.

The kids' conversations,

my wife's conversations
with her mother.

I, I've got the wiretap logs
now.

"Neighbor talks to Mrs. Smith.

"Mrs. Smith said
they would be leaving

"in ten minutes for the weekend,

"destination not given,

"and wanted the neighbor
to hold the papers for her.

"Mrs. Smith calls Hazel,
the maid,

"and asks if she is coming over
tomorrow.

Hazel said she would be there."

This is outrageous!

I mean, what the,
what is the government doing,

listening to our phone calls,
and, and...

Even if they were looking
for national security,

not having the decency
and the smarts to say,

"We don't need this."

Unless they thought maybe
we were passing secret signals

to the neighbor or Hazel.

(people talking in background)

EISENBERG:
It's a fateful decision
to wiretap,

because it begins a policy

of distrust of your own people.

You know,
even if they're your friends,

even if the people on your staff

came on your staff,

as many did for Kissinger,

because they think
that Henry Kissinger

is going to bring peace,
and they're there to help,

they're there to pitch in
and make that happen.

And now, he's gonna
start treating them

like they're enemies.

And when that happens,

sort of the level
of paranoia

begins to grow exponentially.

MORTON HALPERIN:
There was secrecy, subterfuge,

and confusion,

and you learned that Kissinger's
word could not be trusted.

Whatever he told you,

you knew something else
was going on.

He played off everybody
against each other.

(talking in background)

LAKE:
The truth,

as my Victorian grandmother
used to say,

was not always in him.

Nice to see you.

You could tell when

the eyebrows would come together

and he would be like this
that he was being

perhaps a little devious.

But he was very effective,

mostly because
of how smart he was

and because he had absolute
certainty in his views.

♪ ♪

HOSKINSON:
He sought celebrity status,

and he got celebrity status.

There was something about him
that was different.

(people talking in background,
piano playing, glasses clinking)

SALLY QUINN:
The first time I met
Henry Kissinger

was at a party
for Gloria Steinem,

and about halfway
through the dinner,

I looked up and saw

this little guy
standing alone in a corner.

So, I knew who he was,

because I'd seen his picture,

so I walked over to him,
and I said,

"Dr. Kissinger, how are you?

I'm Sally Quinn from
'The Washington Post.'"

And I said, "Why are you hiding
over here in the corner?"

And he looked at me, he said...

(imitating):
"Well, I'm really
a secret swinger."

(chuckles)

KISSINGER:
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?"

The next day,

he was inundated with calls
from movie stars.

REPORTER:
Kissinger is cutting
quite a swath

on Washington's social scene.

He likes to spend
well-publicized evenings

in the company of such ladies

as Jill St. John
or Shirley MacLaine,

who add luster to his image

as the playboy
of the Western Wing.

He was at Sans Souci restaurant

every night, every lunch,

with some babe.

It was incredible.

He became this sex symbol
in Washington.

FERGUSON:
Others watched in bewilderment,

trying to work out why this
somewhat portly, overweight,

bespectacled Harvard professor
with a strong German accent

could possibly
be appealing to actresses.

NIXON:
Where the hell

do you think
Kissinger was

over the weekend

when I was trying
to call him?

ROSE MARY WOODS:
Probably out with some babe.

Why did he encourage

the secret swinger
reputation?

I think he truly was
just having fun.

I mean, you know,

when Marlo Thomas
and Candice Bergen

are interested
in going on a date with you,

and you're a 46-year-old
single man,

who wouldn't?

QUINN:
Well, listen,

I was not in the bedroom
with them.

(laughing):
But, but I don't think
that it was real romance.

But then he met Nancy,

and they were inseparable
from then on.

♪ ♪

DAVID KISSINGER:
She's a very brilliant,

warm, and charismatic person,

very confident in her own right,

and her energy, her ability
to live a big life,

matched his.

And she also doesn't lack
for self-confidence.

So, they just made
for a very fulfilling pair.

Nancy was the love of his life.

You know,
my parents divorced in 1962,

shortly after my birth,

and he had met Nancy in 1968.

I think he was ready
to marry her

from the moment they met.

So, all these other detours
were really just that.

♪ ♪

FERGUSON:
The reality was,
Henry Kissinger

was more a workaholic
and a control freak

than he was a secret swinger.

But Kissinger understood
that this gave him

not only stardom,

but more importantly,

some real influence.

Being popular
with the journalists

can matter a lot,

particularly when,
as invariably happens,

Washington politics turns nasty.

KEYS:
Kissinger was a master
manipulator of the press.

This was at a time

when diplomatic correspondents

needed official sources of
information,

pretend to share secrets,
flatter them.

MORRIS:
He lied to them,

he deceived them,
he rewarded them.

He paid attention to them
ceaselessly.

He curried the press

as no foreign policy figure
before him.

REPORTER:
When he signed on
Henry Kissinger,

the president had no idea

how effective he would turn out
to be with the press corps.

FERGUSON:
His backgrounders,

the background briefings,

became the most popular events

for the Washington press corps

that there had been in years.

REPORTER:
How do you like the reporting
on the backgrounders?

I like the way
that my anonymity is maintained.

(all laughing)

SMITH:
Kissinger was a charmer,

and he knew
how to turn on the charm.

QUINN: But Henry was
always using everybody.

That was his thing,
that's what he did.

So, of course
he was using the press.

I mean, he, he was very cynical
about the press.

I mean, there are plenty
of people in Washington

who use people all the time.

But Henry took it to such
another level of,

of expertise.
(chuckles)

You can't come back there
with us.

QUINN:
So when you're
with Henry Kissinger,

you always had to weigh
two things.

(laughing):
Your own morals,

values, and ethics,

and the fact that there's
a really brilliant guy

who was fun to be around,
had a good sense of humor.

CROWD:
♪ We shall overcome ♪

REPORTER:
On October 15,

the first moratorium
against the war

turned out huge crowds in cities
all across the nation.

(shouting)

SCHWARTZ:
In 1969,

there are massive demonstrations

throughout the United States

calling for an end
to the war in Vietnam.

(chanting)

MORRIS:
Now, we were, we were seeing
those protests

from the outside and the inside.

Tony Lake and I had at one point
stood outside,

on the South Lawn
of the White House,

and watched our wives
and children...

(chuckling):
...demonstrating down
Pennsylvania Avenue

against the war.

(chanting):
Peace now! Peace now!

Peace now!

LAKE:
And I can remember, in the Old
Executive Office Building,

when I went up
to the fifth or sixth floor,

there were American troops
sitting there

with their backs to the walls
and weapons,

in case the White House

was attacked by
the demonstrations outside.

And I agreed
with the demonstrators,

but there I was.

(protesters chanting)

SCHWARTZ:
This has an enormous effect
on Nixon,

who does not want
to admit it has an effect.

What he does do in response

is give the
"Silent Majority" speech.

Good evening,
my fellow Americans.

Tonight I want to talk to you

on a subject of deep concern
to all Americans

and to many people
in all parts of the world,

the war in Vietnam.

FERGUSON:
He has the kind of epiphany

that everybody else has missed.

If there is an educated minority

implacably opposed to the war...

...their government has told
them about our policy...

...doesn't that mean that
there's a majority

that doesn't feel that way?

To you,

the great silent majority

of my fellow Americans,

I ask for your support.

I pledged in my campaign
for the presidency

to end the war

in a way
that we could win the peace.

FERGUSON:
Nixon had his own innate
disabilities as a politician.

What he also had, though,

was this ability
to read the public

and to sense
what the moment called for.

North Vietnam cannot defeat
or humiliate the United States.

Only Americans can do that.

(teletype machines clacking)

REPORTER:
Public reaction to the address
was prompt,

and some of those regarded
as a silent majority

broke their silence.

FERGUSON:
He's deluged with positive
feedback to that speech.

And it helped him in the polls,

which he, of course,
obsessively tracked.

And it helped him
in the kind of feedback

that he got from telegrams
and calls to the White House.

REPORTER:
The White House says it received

thousands of letters
and postcards,

the vast majority supporting
the president on Vietnam.

In addition, many...

FERGUSON:
It gave him time.

It gave him the time
he desperately needed

to find some way out.

(film reel whirring)

And Kissinger had a plan.

(jet engines roaring)

KHATHARYA UM:
The bombing campaign in Cambodia

was a secret, maybe,
to the American,

but certainly not
to the Cambodians.

EAR:
Cambodia was never

in the foreground
of the Vietnam War.

(explosion pounds)

Cambodia's suffering

was not in the public eye,
and therefore

allowed to continue,

because nobody knew about it.

American B-52s
ultimately dropped

539,000 tons of bombs.

That is more than Japan
during World War II.

(people talking in background)

EAR:
The bombing eviscerates
the country,

and two million people
end up in Phnom Penh

as basically internally
displaced persons.

REPORTER:
Some families manage
to cling together.

Somehow they survive
and find a sort of peace.

EISENBERG:
The secret bombing of Cambodia
sets in motion

a set of events which result

in the overthrow
of Prince Sihanouk,

and almost within a year,

a relatively stable place

has been turned into a hellhole.

KISSINGER:
We could not permit
the Communists

to act in Cambodia
with total impunity,

which they had occupied
before we did anything.

The situation that is
confronting

both Nixon and Kissinger

in April of 1970

was that Cambodia was
disintegrating politically.

REPORTER:
Many children
still go to school,

but many others carry guns.

The war in Cambodia
touches everyone

and knows no age limits.

EISENBERG:
What they were now confronting
was, not only are you

going to have Communist troops

right on the border
of South Vietnam,

but that the whole country
is going to go Communist,

and then any possibility

of an acceptable deal
in South Vietnam,

you know, would really
begin to evaporate.

♪ ♪

FERGUSON:
Kissinger argues that there
was an opportunity here

to impact the course of the war.

The case he made to Nixon
and to others

was, air power has its limits.

There's only so much
you can do with a B-52.

You need to go in on the ground.

♪ ♪

MORRIS: He managed, I think,

to make his view Nixon's view

in a very skillful way,

while leaving Nixon
with the impression

that Nixon had made the policy.

That it was Nixon's brilliance
and not Henry's.

REPORTER:
From CBS News in Washington,

this special report.

Ladies and gentlemen,

the president
of the United States.

Good evening,
my fellow Americans.

BECKER:
President Nixon went on air.

He stands in front of the map

and he says,

"We are going into Cambodia,

"and we are going to go
after the North Vietnamese,

"who they don't want
in their country,

and sending the North Vietnamese
back to their country."

NIXON:
If North Vietnam also occupied

this whole band in Cambodia,

or the entire country,

it would mean that South Vietnam
was completely outflanked.

BRIGHAM:
And he explains, you know,

there are
North Vietnamese troops

clearly inside of Cambodia,

violating Cambodia's neutrality,

and that those troops
and supplies

pose a direct threat
to the United States.

We will be patient

in working for peace.

We will be conciliatory

at the conference table.

But we will not be humiliated.

KISSINGER (dramatized):
The president wants

a massive bombing campaign
in Cambodia.

He doesn't want to hear
anything.

It's an order-- it's to be done.

Anything that flies
on anything that moves.

(receiver replaced)

LAKE:
In April of 1970,
Kissinger called in

me and Roger Morris,

and then three others,
I believe.

At the meeting,

Kissinger said that we are going

to go into Cambodia.

And, "What do you think?"

And then we argued
that this was bad strategically,

because Cambodia is now in play,
et cetera, and domestically,

it was going to be
a firestorm of some sort.

MORRIS:
I remember banging my fist
on the desk

to the point that some
of the papers actually rose.

So, I said, "If there's
one (muted) trooper

across that line,
I'm out of here."

Because I felt it was just,

it was the last straw
of escalation.

We were working very hard,

night and day, literally, on a,

on a peace settlement.

(helicopters flying)

The notion that we would,
at that point,

escalate very decidedly

with an armed invasion
of, of American forces?

No, I mean, I just,
I thought it was intolerable.

LAKE:
I bore the brunt
of the argument,

and at the end of it,

Kissinger said, and
I can still hear his voice,

"Well, Tony, I knew
what you were going to say."

And I thought to myself,
"I can leave now.

"I can send him

"a subscription to
'The New Republic' or something,

and I can go."

And afterwards, I said to Roger,
"Okay, this is it.

I've had it." And he agreed.

And so we wrote a joint letter
to him,

and handed it to Al Haig,
and said,

"Please give it to him

on the day
the invasion takes place."

Which he did.

And Kissinger was not pleased.

NEWS ANCHOR:
There are several thousand
American troops

moving into Cambodia tonight.

The dimensions of the war

have certainly widened.

NEWS ANCHOR:
It's a gamble,

both in terms of the reaction
of the enemy

and the reaction
of American public opinion.

(shouting)

FERGUSON:
As usual, when the United States
escalates in any way

in the Vietnam War,

the anti-war movement
goes into action.

College campuses erupted.

(canister bursts)

(people yelling)

BECKER:
What in the hell were we doing
invading Cambodia?

(protesters shouting)

Everybody was angry--
they were waiting for peace.

And Congress was furious,

because this was done
without their consent.

(protesters shouting)

The student population
went insane.

SCHWARTZ:
It led to an explosion of unrest

at universities
across the country,

leading to the tragic killing
of students at Kent State.

(guns firing)

REPORTER:
National Guardsmen

opened fire
with semi-automatic weapons.

EISENBERG:
Suddenly, you have
the National Guard,

like, shooting at students.

I mean,
this is absolutely stunning.

REPORTER:
After the shooting,

one young man dipped
a black flag of revolution

in the blood
and waved it about.

EISENBERG:
You know, and then
you have thousands

and thousands of students
coming to Washington.

(shouting and chanting)

WALTER CRONKITE:
Mr. Nixon bore heavily

his decision to send U.S. troops
into Cambodia

and the awesome explosive impact
of that decision here at home.

BECKER: It's hard to exaggerate
the anger.

REPORTER:
A few of the demonstrators

confronted a cordon of buses
at Lafayette Square

protecting the White House,

and from the other side,

police eventually responded
with tear gas.

PROTESTER:
It was a peaceful rally.

Peaceful until it was attacked

in a vicious
and brutal manner...

SCHWARTZ:
Nixon came close
to a nervous breakdown

in the wake of Kent State.

This was the price we paid
for opposing Nixon

and his genocidal policies.

SCHWARTZ:
And Kissinger felt himself

surrounded by protesters
in his office.

PROTESTER:
...over and over again,

in the blood
of our young people.

They certainly felt
very much under siege.

KISSINGER:
The biggest problem domestically

was whether we could
finally unite the country,

in which those who wanted peace
would have peace,

and those who wanted honor

could live with themselves.

MORRIS:
I think Kissinger
harbored the notion

that he could somehow
pull off what Nixon wanted,

which was peace with honor.

But I think the quest
for an end with honor

was really a prolongation

of the senseless waste
and casualties.

(explosion pounds)

That he did not pursue
ending the war in Vietnam,

as he might have,
with all of his gifts,

that he did not use his genius
in that way,

I think is his,

his ultimate indictment.

♪ ♪

ANNOUNCER:
Next time...

WINSTON LORD:
From the very beginning,

Kissinger was running
all the major elements

of foreign policy.

JOHN NEGROPONTE:
And it was Henry versus them.

ROHAM ALVANDI:
This gave Kissinger

just tremendous power

because really he was
the only person

that was fully in the loop.

DAVID KISSINGER:
In his mind,

he was advancing the strength
of the United States,

because America was
the last best hope of humanity.

ANNOUNCER:
The conclusion of "Kissinger"--

next time
on "American Experience."

Made possible in part
by Liberty Mutual Insurance.

♪ ♪

"American Experience: Kissinger"
is available with PBS Passport

and on Amazon Prime Video.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪