Speaker 1: Al Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hey everyone, Robert Evans here. It's the end of the year.
Speaker 2: A couple of big, heavy hitter holidays coming in a row,
Speaker 2: and we have them off both with the company and
Speaker 2: as a team. So since there's not a new Bastard's
Speaker 2: episode this week, and also since Henry Kissinger just died,
Speaker 2: we figured this would be a nice time to rerun
Speaker 2: the original six Henry Kissinger episodes. These are great, I
Speaker 2: think are a useful introduction if you, or perhaps your
Speaker 2: friends and family don't know why a lot of people
Speaker 2: are happy that Henry's no longer in the world. I
Speaker 2: want to thank again the doll up guys, Dave Anthony
Speaker 2: and Gareth Reynolds for being wonderful guests for this. I
Speaker 2: checked in with them before we did this, just to
Speaker 2: see if they had anything to plug. Dave Anthony has
Speaker 2: an album out that you can find. It's a hot
Speaker 2: Head by Dave Anthony. You can go to Dave Anthony
Speaker 2: dot bandcamp dot com. I probably don't need a spell
Speaker 2: Dave Anthony for you, right, but enough one. And then
Speaker 2: we've got Gareth Reynolds, who is going to be touring
Speaker 2: quote all over the place in February and March of
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four. They have too many links to promote
Speaker 2: as one. But if you go to Gareth Reynolds dot
Speaker 2: com that's g A R E T h R E
Speaker 2: y n O l d s dot com you can
Speaker 2: find their schedule for live shows. Gareth is wonderful. Check
Speaker 2: those out too. Anyway, nothing else to say.
Speaker 1: Here are the episodes.
Speaker 3: Man, Yeah, yeah, yeah, oh how how we all?
Speaker 2: This is behind the doll up bastards, up bastards. This
Speaker 2: is those those doll up bastards. So, I don't know,
Speaker 2: what do you guys think? Out of all of the
Speaker 2: characters y'all have covered, who do you think Kissinger gets
Speaker 2: along with best?
Speaker 1: Oh? My god, better? I mean that's a tough one.
Speaker 2: That Judging the Bear, I mean, judge the Bear.
Speaker 1: He definitely gets along with. There's definitely guys like, uh.
Speaker 4: You know, the guys who did the filibustering Walker and
Speaker 4: those guys who just love to just take over other countries.
Speaker 1: Yeah, kill many people. There's not we've never experienced this
Speaker 1: level of casualty. Yeah we haven't. This is I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, like there are evil, it's it's the spray
Speaker 1: of your evil that is so remarkable about this. The
Speaker 1: ability to have your finger on this button with this
Speaker 1: level of darkness is uh, I don't know, it's a
Speaker 1: little you know, I wouldn't say it's you know again,
Speaker 1: I mean, we've covered evil motherfuckers, but I don't think
Speaker 1: they've been able to scattershot in the way that you know, kissingers.
Speaker 1: It's a rare talent at a rare time, on a
Speaker 1: rare team.
Speaker 5: I would put uh Jan Peter zun Cohen, who was
Speaker 5: the East the Dutch colony guy, the East India Dutch
Speaker 5: coin all right, he.
Speaker 1: Did a lot of killing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he definitely had the same sort of attitude, very
Speaker 4: casual about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's been a lot of people. Yeah, the the
Speaker 1: killing because we're white Americans, yeah, or just white people
Speaker 1: just you know, for for Land has been it's a theme.
Speaker 1: And Jackson I would put up there with.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Jackson, he's he's he's at that level of like
Speaker 2: monstrous national leader who believes in a fucked up thing,
Speaker 2: like in terms of his death well Andrew Jackson in
Speaker 2: his in his white supremacy Hitler and his Hitler stuff,
Speaker 2: you know, mao, and some of the weird things he
Speaker 2: believed about crop rotation, or like whatnot. He's at that
Speaker 2: level of like death toll, but he doesn't believe in anything,
Speaker 2: Like he's not trying to do a thing. He's not like,
Speaker 2: it's not like attempting some addition or society. There's guess yeah, I.
Speaker 4: Guess that's the weirdest part of him because yes, this
Speaker 4: sort of death count usually comes out of ideology.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's exactly what I was trying to get at.
Speaker 1: Yeah, imagine if his childhood affected him, what he would do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that might have an impactor. I imagine if that had
Speaker 1: actually impacted him in any way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it Yeah, that's the that's the it's so
Speaker 2: fucked up that like it's fucking Craig again. We keep
Speaker 2: getting back to like Walter from the Big Lebowski logic.
Speaker 2: But like, at least those other war criminals had an
Speaker 2: etho scene.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you could negotiate or talk down or at
Speaker 1: least there would be like an angle.
Speaker 2: At least like, oh, you are a you are a person,
Speaker 2: like not to morally compare him negatively to Hitler, because
Speaker 2: for the record, folks, Hitler's worse, you know than basically Yeah,
Speaker 2: but there's at least you can grasp onto a level
Speaker 2: of understanding with Hitler because it's like, well, I believe
Speaker 2: in things, and I even believe in things that like,
Speaker 2: I think it would be okay to like use violence
Speaker 2: in order to because of those things that I believe.
Speaker 2: I think there are situations that justify violence, and those
Speaker 2: are based on things that I believe about morality. And
Speaker 2: Hitler had things that he believed about morality that he
Speaker 2: felt justified violent violence. And so you can grapple at
Speaker 2: least with what must have been going on in the
Speaker 2: man's head when he did some of the terrible things
Speaker 2: he did. I cannot get into the head of a
Speaker 2: man who is willing to do this to keep a gig, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's for a gig. Yeah, it's for a gig that
Speaker 2: he didn't even need. He didn't even need this job.
Speaker 4: Now he's he's almost as bad as doctor phil Yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh, I mean, yes, that's a little bit hyperbolic, Dave,
Speaker 2: I don't think.
Speaker 1: I don't think that's hyperable, uh.
Speaker 2: Doctor Phillian levels of evil.
Speaker 1: It's also just the the dumb the idea that sixty
Speaker 1: minutes like was like take the keys hank, have the
Speaker 1: keys hank. There you go. Yeah, nobody. Yeah, just the
Speaker 1: run annual normalization.
Speaker 2: It's like, now, yeah, when it comes to the folks
Speaker 2: who will defend Henry Kissinger or even call him a
Speaker 2: great statesman, and those folks do exist. I have read
Speaker 2: some of their books. When you get to those people,
Speaker 2: there are generally a couple of achievements that they will trumpet.
Speaker 2: Is like, well, you have to give him, you know
Speaker 2: these things, right, and they sound impressive on paper. In
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy three, he and North Vietnam's Lee Tho won
Speaker 2: the Nobel Peace Prize for their work in the negotiations
Speaker 2: that became the Paris Peace Accords. Right, winning a Nobel
Speaker 2: Prize for stopping the Vietnam War impressive sounding on paper
Speaker 2: if you don't think about the fact that he extended
Speaker 2: the Vietnam War.
Speaker 1: I help to you know, right, was a part of that.
Speaker 2: He did negotiate the first Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty and
Speaker 2: Antillistic Missile Treaty with the Soviet Union.
Speaker 1: Those are good things. But yeah, but he Yeah, the
Speaker 1: whole thing is he loved It would be like, it's
Speaker 1: like congratulating Sully Sullenberger if he threw the geese into them,
Speaker 1: if he had been breeding geese and that exactly he
Speaker 1: was making bang noises to scare into the plane the
Speaker 1: hud set. Yeah, and they're like, what an amazing achievement.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and yeah, it's one of those things like, yeah,
Speaker 2: he he got and part of like the arms reductions
Speaker 2: that he secured with the Soviet Union are less impressive
Speaker 2: than they sound. I was just talking in the last
Speaker 2: episode about that documentary Command and Control, and one of
Speaker 2: the points it makes is that like these Atlas two
Speaker 2: missiles which nearly killed half of the people on the
Speaker 2: East Coast through radioactive fallout, were obsolete and not effective
Speaker 2: and recognized as not being useful, but they were kept
Speaker 2: in the arsenal not because we needed them, but because
Speaker 2: we were going to have a treaty with the Soviets
Speaker 2: soon and we wanted to have something we could give
Speaker 2: up that wouldn't actually cost us Anya, my god, like that,
Speaker 2: like it's that kind of shit, Like that's all of
Speaker 2: the booking.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he fucking fuel rods basically, Yeah, yeah, may garbage.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he does this, he helps negotiate reductions in
Speaker 2: nuclear arms after pushing the missile gap myth for the
Speaker 2: JFKA administration, right, He did help pass an international convention
Speaker 2: against biological weapons, which is cool if you don't think
Speaker 2: too much about the defolians that he ordered spread out
Speaker 2: across Southeast Asia.
Speaker 1: Jesus, we need to stop people like Kendrick kissing. We
Speaker 1: have to stop. I must be stopped. It is the
Speaker 1: only way to appease me.
Speaker 2: He had a role in the Helsinki Final Act Article ten,
Speaker 2: which committed nations on both sides of the Cold War
Speaker 2: to quote respect human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the
Speaker 2: freedom of conscience, religion, or belief for all without distinction
Speaker 2: to races.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Uh huh.
Speaker 4: He's literally the guy who's in a room and he's like,
Speaker 4: we should kill everyone, and then he walks out and
Speaker 4: comes back in another door and goes.
Speaker 1: Killing is bad, the killing must stop. It's like deal
Speaker 1: with me. O. J was like, I'm gonna find the
Speaker 1: real killer. Yes, yes, we gotta find this guy. He's
Speaker 1: yet out there.
Speaker 2: Henry Kissinger doesn't go to DC anymore because he might
Speaker 2: run into the man who ordered the carpet bombing of Lao.
Speaker 2: We are all trying to find a guy who did this.
Speaker 1: We're not going to leave till we find out which
Speaker 1: son of a bitch is behind this.
Speaker 2: Now there is, however, one huge titanic achievement that even
Speaker 2: the most hardened critics have to give Kissinger. He restored
Speaker 2: diplomatic relations between the United States and China. Now this
Speaker 2: is a huge deal, no matter how you slice it.
Speaker 2: For a brief primer, China had them a big old
Speaker 2: civil war between the communists who won and the nationalists
Speaker 2: who we backed, who we were called like, you know, democrats, republicans,
Speaker 2: whatever like called democratic forces. They had you know them
Speaker 2: a dictator, as it always is. He was a dude
Speaker 2: named Chang Kai Shek, and yeah, wins. In nineteen forty nine,
Speaker 2: Shang Kai Shek and his forces take all the gold
Speaker 2: they can carry, and they flee to Taiwan. And for
Speaker 2: the next thirty years, the United States refuses to acknowledge
Speaker 2: the legitimacy of the Chinese state and deal with it directly,
Speaker 2: in one of the most unhinged decisions in the history
Speaker 2: of US foreign policy, decades of presidents pretend Taiwan is
Speaker 2: the real China. Like Taiwan has a permanent seat on
Speaker 2: the UN Security Council, that is China's seat, but Taiwan
Speaker 2: is you can look on.
Speaker 1: A map an bitting, it's smaller.
Speaker 2: It is somewhat smaller than actual China.
Speaker 1: That's what we're doing. It's like what we're doing with Venezuela.
Speaker 2: No yah, yeah, it's like yeah, wreck, like that guy
Speaker 2: is the president nor yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right yeah.
Speaker 2: And it's one of those things like you don't have
Speaker 2: to be a fan of Mao to recognize this as stupid,
Speaker 2: Like Mao is in the head of a government that
Speaker 2: is this basically a whole continent, and you're just pretending
Speaker 2: he's not, and that's nuts.
Speaker 1: Has no land.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's craziness, it's stupid. Yeah. And in fairness again,
Speaker 2: because we're about to talk about like Kissinger had nothing
Speaker 2: to do with this, right, Kissinger is not why we
Speaker 2: refuse to recognize the existence of the Chinese government. This
Speaker 2: is a dumb thing that when he comes into power,
Speaker 2: he and Nixon are both very astutely recognized as a
Speaker 2: dumb thing, and they don't want this to continue, and
Speaker 2: it is It is hard to overstate how dangerous this
Speaker 2: state of affairs is. For one reason, after Stalindize in
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty three, relations between the USSR and mouse China
Speaker 2: steadily decline in nineteen sixty four, the year China conducts
Speaker 2: their first successful nuclear tests, diplomatic relations break down between
Speaker 2: both communist nations. So now you have three massive empires,
Speaker 2: all of whom are armed with nukes, none of whom
Speaker 2: are directly talking to each other. Oh, this is a
Speaker 2: bad situation, and Kissinger does recognize how dangerous the status
Speaker 2: quo is. Now in nineteen sixty nine, China and the
Speaker 2: Soviet Union have a series of border skirmish their soldiers
Speaker 2: are shooting at each other, Moscow threatens to start dropping nukes,
Speaker 2: and for a time the Chinese government conducts its affairs
Speaker 2: from underground bunkers. So again, very reasonable that Nixon and
Speaker 2: Kissinger are like, well, should probably have some way to
Speaker 2: fucking call these people on the goddamn phone, right, Like,
Speaker 2: this seems bad. Let's just get a phone. Let's get
Speaker 2: a fucking phone. You would think it would be that simple, Dave,
Speaker 2: But we're going to talk for about an hour and
Speaker 2: ten minutes about how it's not. So. By the time
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy one comes around, Nixon and Kissinger were also
Speaker 2: both looking for a major diplomatic coup that could distract
Speaker 2: from the fact that they hadn't quite managed to end
Speaker 2: that whole Vietnam War thing, and it had in fact
Speaker 2: made it all very much worse. There's also some rational
Speaker 2: self interest in here, you know, whatever else you can
Speaker 2: say about them, I don't think either of these men
Speaker 2: want to die, and they recognize like, well, this could
Speaker 2: cause a nuclear war that ends all life on Earth,
Speaker 2: including us. We should probably deal with this.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, they finally realized that life is actually has
Speaker 1: purpose once it's there. Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's also one of those this is getting a little
Speaker 2: off topic, but like people talk about, you will see,
Speaker 2: at least on the right people say like, well, you know,
Speaker 2: if the nationalists had won the Chinese Civil War, a
Speaker 2: lot less people would have died. And it's like, well,
Speaker 2: the specific things Mao did that killed a lot of
Speaker 2: people wouldn't have been done. But if Chang Kai shek
Speaker 2: is in charge of China and like, while China is communist,
Speaker 2: they almost get in a nuclear fight with the USSR.
Speaker 2: Do you think they're like right wing Chang Kai Shek
Speaker 2: led China is less likely to have a nuclear fight with.
Speaker 1: The Soviet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what is it like if they're not on the
Speaker 2: same ideological side. Yeah, people don't talk a lot about
Speaker 2: the fact that the USSR and communists China nearly nearly
Speaker 2: nuked each other, just while USSR.
Speaker 1: Also and also mal killed landlords.
Speaker 2: So are those people, well, yeah, some of them are
Speaker 2: were landlords. It's not the landlords we're complaining about. It's
Speaker 2: the you know, the people who didn't have grain. But
Speaker 2: that's a story for a completely different set of days.
Speaker 2: At this point in time, you've got two countries that
Speaker 2: should three country that should all be talking on the
Speaker 2: basis that they all individually have the ability to end
Speaker 2: all life on earth, and they're not. And Kissinger is like,
Speaker 2: you know what, I can get in here. You know,
Speaker 2: I can make this work. I can make this work.
Speaker 2: And also it'll help us win an election. So it
Speaker 2: just so happens that nineteen seventy one is also a
Speaker 2: time in which China is willing to sit down with
Speaker 2: the United States. Maw wants us help negotiating with the Soviets,
Speaker 2: which is very strange and like the does not make Yeah, I.
Speaker 1: Can't talk to these guys. I can't talk to them.
Speaker 1: You know, I need someone who else, can't talk.
Speaker 2: To these Nixon, Ye, you love communists, get in here,
Speaker 2: you know, it's just the you've got like the way
Speaker 2: the Cold War is portrayed from the thousand yard view
Speaker 2: to people like watching the propaganda of whatever state, and
Speaker 2: then you've got like Mao being like, hey, Nixon, I
Speaker 2: need your help to deal with these Soviets. I need
Speaker 2: a rational partner, and being like you're drug. You know
Speaker 2: who's gonna get me? Since me Richard Millhouse Nixon the
Speaker 2: election in seventy two, MAUSEI.
Speaker 1: Dug, it's so crazy, it is. It is weird politics, and.
Speaker 4: This is almost it's almost like there's only there's only
Speaker 4: three people in the world.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, so this is uh you know Nixon.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Once.
Speaker 2: Nixon is very much down to talk with China, but
Speaker 2: it is not that simple because since the diplomatic situation
Speaker 2: has been done for so very long, there aren't like
Speaker 2: US diplomats in China that we can like send a
Speaker 2: message through, right like you literally don't have those ties.
Speaker 2: So the US does have ways of communicating with the
Speaker 2: Chinese government. They're through back channels though, because you can't
Speaker 2: admit publicly that you're doing it because Taiwan is your
Speaker 2: ally and Taiwan doesn't want to acknowledge that the Chinese
Speaker 2: government is legitimate government, very dumb. One of the back
Speaker 2: channels is through the leader of Communist Romania, Nikolai Chichesku
Speaker 2: and the other great guy, Oh, Nikolaia is not the
Speaker 2: bad guy of this story.
Speaker 1: Weesco is your hero. Things are not Shad not your hero.
Speaker 2: But let's call them a benign force in the specific
Speaker 2: in se when is your straight man.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The other is through the military dictator of Pakistan, General
Speaker 2: Agha Mohammad ya Ya Khan. Now we should probably talk
Speaker 2: a little bit of history here. In nineteen forty seven,
Speaker 2: the British gave up ruling over the Indian subcontinent finally.
Speaker 2: As a rule, whenever colonial powers leave their former possessions,
Speaker 2: they attempted to set up states based on their pre
Speaker 2: existing alliances and racial biases. This is why we have,
Speaker 2: for example, the entire modern map of the Middle East.
Speaker 2: In this case of the Indian Subcontinent, what had once
Speaker 2: been a colony was split into India and Pakistan. India
Speaker 2: is obviously Hindu majority, in Pakistan is a Muslim majority nation. Now,
Speaker 2: if you know your English colonialists, you know they're not
Speaker 2: very good at maps. So the BRIT's divvying up the
Speaker 2: sub continent decide that Pakistan should include two huge chunks
Speaker 2: of land separated by more than one thousand miles of India.
Speaker 2: West Pakistan is the Pakistan we know and love today, right,
Speaker 2: classic Pakistan, like the Yeah, East Pakistan is like the
Speaker 2: new Coke of Pakistan, except for now it's Bangladesh, right,
Speaker 2: But at the time Bangladesh is East Pakistan. And there's
Speaker 2: just like a whole fuckload to India in between the two,
Speaker 2: which is there's like a line that Pakistani people will
Speaker 2: say at the time that like East and West Pakistan
Speaker 2: are only united by religion, the English language, and Pakistan Airlines,
Speaker 2: and by far, Pakistan Airlines is the strongest of the three.
Speaker 1: Cool England once again, I mean just playing guy, Yeah, really, yeah,
Speaker 1: what do you say? We put a blindfold on and
Speaker 1: they're trying to pin the taan on this junkie.
Speaker 2: And the fact that Indian partition, that England partitions India
Speaker 2: at all, is a humanitarian crisis on an incomprehensible scale.
Speaker 2: As many as two million people died, often as the
Speaker 2: result of horrific racial or religious violence.
Speaker 1: And Henry Kissing just hearing that, like, hold on, I'm
Speaker 1: getting hard. I can do better. That's nothing, baby, beat
Speaker 1: those rookie numbers a week where do I send congratulations called.
Speaker 2: Ten to twenty millionaire displaced. But even though East and
Speaker 2: West Pakistan are supposed to be united by faith, there's
Speaker 2: like massive ethnic divides, right, Like they're not. The fact
Speaker 2: that they're all ostensibly Muslim does not mean anything, because
Speaker 2: like they're completely different parts of the world with completely
Speaker 2: different chunks of history.
Speaker 1: Right, And at least America learns this lesson. Yes, thankfully
Speaker 1: we get this right.
Speaker 2: You know, by the time we get into Pakistan, we're
Speaker 2: done with the stupid stuff. We're faking a vaccine drive
Speaker 2: in order to steal people's blood. That's right, they're good guys. Hey, yeah,
Speaker 2: they're good guys.
Speaker 1: Are back. I know how to fix this. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So yeah, here's the Smithsonian magazine kind of laying out
Speaker 2: the relationship between East and West Pakistan. By the time
Speaker 2: Kissinger and Nixon take office, with most of the ruling
Speaker 2: elite having immigrated westward from India, West Pakistan was chosen
Speaker 2: as the nation's political center. Between nineteen forty seven and
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy, East pakist Stan had only twenty five percent
Speaker 2: of the country's industrial investments and thirty percent of its imports,
Speaker 2: despite producing fifty nine percent of the country's exports. West
Speaker 2: Pakistani elites saw their Eastern countrymen as culturally and ethnically inferior,
Speaker 2: and an attempt to make Urdu the national language less
Speaker 2: than ten percent of the population of East Pakistan had
Speaker 2: a working knowledge of Urdu was seen as further proof
Speaker 2: that East Pakistan's interests would be ignored by the government.
Speaker 2: Making matters worse. The powerful, powerful Bolas cyclone hit East
Speaker 2: Bangladesh in November of nineteen seventy, killing three hundred thousand people.
Speaker 2: Despite having more resources at their disposal, West Pakistan offered
Speaker 2: a sluggish response to the disaster. As French journalist Paul
Speaker 2: Dreyfus said of the situation, over the years, West Pakistan
Speaker 2: behaved like a poorly raised, egotistical guest, devouring the best
Speaker 2: dishes and leaving nothing but scraps and leftovers for East Pakistan. Well,
Speaker 2: it's not cool, it's not great, it's not great. And
Speaker 2: Pakistan's military is what's in charge, right, It's a military dictatorship.
Speaker 2: They run everything and they are hyper focused on India,
Speaker 2: who is their primary geopolitical rival. In nineteen sixty five,
Speaker 2: Pakistan attempts to invade Kashmir, sparking a vicious conflict. And
Speaker 2: I'm not giving you the whole detail of the conflict
Speaker 2: between India and Pakistan. Please don't take this as me
Speaker 2: throwing all of the blame on one side or the other.
Speaker 2: This is just like the bearest Cliff's notes, because we
Speaker 2: have a lot to cover in this episode, and the US,
Speaker 2: it's worth noting, had been selling arms to both countries
Speaker 2: in nineteen six Yeah, I.
Speaker 1: Know, America, Yes, strange. Come on, Sosh, our history is
Speaker 1: so different.
Speaker 2: Lbj's administration was forced by public outcry as a result
Speaker 2: of this, to issue an arms embargo on both nations.
Speaker 2: Pakistan saw the embargo was unfairly harming them, and as
Speaker 2: a result, there was bad blood among the high command
Speaker 2: towards the Democratic Johnson administration. By the time Kissinger and
Speaker 2: Nixon are in the White House, the president of Pakistan
Speaker 2: is again this guy ya Ya Khan. We'll just call
Speaker 2: him Yayah because it's fun to say, Yes, Yaya, I
Speaker 2: thought to say. He took power in March of nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty nine by forcing out another general and institute martial law.
Speaker 2: Kissinger Runs once wrote of him, yah Ya is tough,
Speaker 2: direct and with a good sense of humor. He talks
Speaker 2: in a very clipped way. Is a splendid product of
Speaker 2: Sandhurst and affects a sort of social naivete, but is
Speaker 2: probably much more complicated than this.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: Sandhurst is like the British Royal Military Academy. It's like
Speaker 2: a broadly speaking British West Point. Yahya affected an English air.
Speaker 2: He carried like a swagger stick. He dresses like he's
Speaker 2: a British officer. He acts like he's a British officer.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: He is also a raging alcoholic. One Akistani politician noted
Speaker 2: he starts with Kognak for breakfast and continues drinking throughout
Speaker 2: the day night, often finding him in a sodden state.
Speaker 1: Nice Soak. He's always.
Speaker 2: Just a drunk dude who always carries a stick for
Speaker 2: hitting horses.
Speaker 1: It's very Yeah, I mean Church will drink a fuck
Speaker 1: tod too, right, I mean yes, absolutely. It is one
Speaker 1: thing about JFK.
Speaker 2: Was on meth for a decent chunk of his early presidency.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, so great.
Speaker 2: It's we're like when we point out that a guy
Speaker 2: like Yahya is drunk. It is not to contrast him
Speaker 2: with Western leaders. Why don't you just some kind of
Speaker 2: fart drunk I think, I think what's his name, the
Speaker 2: guy who came after Nixon but not right after Carter
Speaker 2: probably pretty sober in the White House.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but his brother was making his brother, Billy was like,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what I'll drink from German.
Speaker 2: No problem, Oh, Billy, Billy Carter should have been the
Speaker 2: president that we would have gotten some shit done.
Speaker 1: Honestly, I'm fine with that. I'm fine with that different trajectory.
Speaker 1: Let's see what heck cow bad, fuck it, fuck it,
Speaker 1: let's dance.
Speaker 2: In nineteen seventy, Yahya decides to hold an election which
Speaker 2: is meant to be more for show than anything else. Right,
Speaker 2: it's this thing you do because he's Pakistan is definitely
Speaker 2: India is a neutral country. They're not on the side
Speaker 2: of this you need or the US and the stupid
Speaker 2: Cold War thing. They're very intelligently like, what does it
Speaker 2: benefit us to pick one side?
Speaker 1: Like fuck that stuff.
Speaker 2: But they also because India's got much more of a
Speaker 2: socialist especially early on, is much more of a socialist government,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of distrust from them. In the United States,
Speaker 2: and Pakistan really leans on that to be buddy buddy
Speaker 2: with the United States more and one of the ways
Speaker 2: as part of like his attempts to get closer and
Speaker 2: closer to the US because he wants arms like everybody
Speaker 2: who gets buddy buddy with the US. Yah Yah decides
Speaker 2: to hold an election because we love seeing people have elections.
Speaker 1: We don't really care how they go, but we like
Speaker 1: seeing them.
Speaker 2: You know, it's sport. It's sport. Yeah, So he's allowed.
Speaker 2: He has this election and his plan is to like
Speaker 2: basically rig it so that you know, it doesn't mean anything,
Speaker 2: It doesn't take any power away from the military. But yeah,
Speaker 2: Yah is not good at anything. This is an important
Speaker 2: thing to know. He's really bad at everythig he does.
Speaker 1: That breakfast Kanyac had anything to do with.
Speaker 2: This probably might have been a good question. So this
Speaker 2: election gets out of his hands immediately. East Pakistan is
Speaker 2: much larger than West Pakistan, and while West Pakistan's votes
Speaker 2: are split between parties like there's a bunch of different
Speaker 2: conflicting political parties, nearly everyone in East Pakistan gets in
Speaker 2: line behind the same party, the Awami League. They're big
Speaker 2: thing is they want autonomy from West Pakistan, you know,
Speaker 2: and they're very angry at like the fact that they're
Speaker 2: getting fucked over by the West. So the West, which
Speaker 2: is doing the fucking over, has a bunch of minor
Speaker 2: shit they're wabbling over. The East is just united behind
Speaker 2: let's stop getting fucked over. And as a result, they
Speaker 2: get a shitload of people elected in this massive block
Speaker 2: and they come to it's enough that they will completely
Speaker 2: dominate elector like the Parliament of Pakistan because of like
Speaker 2: how well this election goes for them. Yeah yah does
Speaker 2: not like this, and rather than allowing the newly elected
Speaker 2: assembly to sit, he cancels their first meeting and declares
Speaker 2: martial law. Nice, yeah, ryot's follow The leader of the
Speaker 2: Owami League, a guy named Sheik Mujhbur Rahman I, apologize
Speaker 2: for what is surely a mispronoiation, declared a civil disobedience movement.
Speaker 2: It was into this volatile situation that Henry Kissinger stepped
Speaker 2: in the spring of nineteen seventy one. Oh good now,
Speaker 2: He and Nixon had pretty good relations with West Pakistan's government,
Speaker 2: which is at this point, you know, just ya ya.
Speaker 2: They were loath to trust India since it was non aligned.
Speaker 2: Nixon also was very racist and hated the fact that
Speaker 2: India's democracy was popular among Americans while the country re
Speaker 2: maintained close ties with the USSR. He once told ya
Speaker 2: ya quote, there is a psychosis in this country about India. Now,
Speaker 2: A big part of Nixon's hatred of India is that
Speaker 2: it's led by a woman in dearra Gandhi. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: we'll be talking more about that in a second. Yaya,
Speaker 2: on the other hand, is one of the few people
Speaker 2: on planet Earth that Richard Nixon comes to consider as
Speaker 2: a friend. One of Nixon's one of Kissingers. Yeah, they're
Speaker 2: both trunk assholes.
Speaker 1: They don't remember the friendship, but god was it important
Speaker 1: to too.
Speaker 2: One of Kissinger's aides later said of the situation. They
Speaker 2: liked him. He was a soldier, he had stye, He
Speaker 2: was kind of a jaunty guy. Uh this this aide.
Speaker 2: Hodgkinson admits that Yaya was not very smart, but says
Speaker 2: that for Nixon and Kissinger, he was a man's man.
Speaker 2: He wasn't some woman running a country.
Speaker 1: Right. It sounds like they're talking about how people talk
Speaker 1: about Yelson. Yeah, right, he's a man's man.
Speaker 2: As he sees the Secret Service is tracking him down
Speaker 2: drunk in the middle of DC.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, Yeltsin, who like was passed out on the plane.
Speaker 1: I forget he was supposed to meet and he passed
Speaker 1: out on the plane and they were like, Boris, Boris,
Speaker 1: and He's.
Speaker 2: Like, no, notes, Boris. I Look if if if we
Speaker 2: had kept every world leader after that point to the
Speaker 2: standards of drunkenness that Yeltsin set, we wouldn't be having
Speaker 2: this war right now, I'll tell you that much.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: We might have had other wars well.
Speaker 1: In the middle of the night too, and he'd be like,
Speaker 1: drop the nuke, you know, and they'd be like, buddy.
Speaker 1: Like the next day he'd be like, I don't remember
Speaker 1: what I said. They're like, thank god.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we need to institute a mandatory drink minimum for
Speaker 2: all elected leaders in this.
Speaker 1: Country, George Bush, sobriety did not help.
Speaker 2: If you can't force term limits, you can force liver cancer.
Speaker 1: Yes, can We can brute force our way into getting
Speaker 1: him out office after a year or two. Hey, do
Speaker 1: you know who else can force liver cancer? Oh?
Speaker 2: Well, we are sponsored by stolich Naya vodka, which is
Speaker 2: now illegal in several states for reasons difficult to exclude
Speaker 2: it about.
Speaker 1: It's remarkable. Yeah, it's just how we so dumb? It's
Speaker 1: we're so dumb.
Speaker 2: It's amazing that in this like deeply ugly and complicated
Speaker 2: situation where large numbers of people are suffering, Americans recognize
Speaker 2: that the right thing to do is destroy bottles of vodka.
Speaker 2: Not amazingly, the country is involved in the conflict there.
Speaker 2: They're taking Finnish vodka and just throwing it into the streets.
Speaker 2: Great country. Here's some other ads.
Speaker 1: Ah, we're back man man ads.
Speaker 2: So this is not a Nixon mini series, but in
Speaker 2: order to talk about the friendship, the deep and abiding
Speaker 2: love that the two men had, there is an incredible
Speaker 2: paragraph from the book The Blood Telegram by Gary Bass
Speaker 2: that I'm going to read now. Despite all his global FaceTime,
Speaker 2: Nixon was a solitary, awkward, reclusive man. Kissinger who could
Speaker 2: not bring himself to say that he was fond of
Speaker 2: the president once famously asked, can you imagine what this
Speaker 2: man would have been had somebody loved him?
Speaker 1: Oh? My god, that's kind of Kissinger.
Speaker 2: That's the saddest thing I can imagine, being like, nobody
Speaker 2: really loved.
Speaker 1: If only someone had loved this man, can you imagine?
Speaker 2: Nixon's only true friend was Babe Riboso, a Florida banker.
Speaker 2: He said, it doesn't come natural to me to be
Speaker 2: a buddy buddy boy.
Speaker 1: Even H. R.
Speaker 2: Haldeman, the White House Chief of staff, worried that the
Speaker 2: Boss was too much in his own head and once
Speaker 2: tried to find the President a friend, tracking down an
Speaker 2: oil man whom Nixon had reportedly liked in his Los
Speaker 2: Angeles days, and him in a bogus White House gian.
Speaker 1: Okay, listen, listen, listen. The movie needs to be written.
Speaker 1: It's like driving Miss Daisy, but with a body count. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love you, I love you man with war crimes. Yeah. Okay.
Speaker 2: So I'm James franco Is someone in this movie.
Speaker 4: So I'm gonna I'm gonna work in the White House,
Speaker 4: but I can't act like I'm there to meet him,
Speaker 4: even though.
Speaker 1: That's my whole thing is That's right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So I'm just gonna so so what so I
Speaker 4: have to like try to get.
Speaker 1: In, just drink with him, Just drink with him and
Speaker 1: eat pineapple and whatever he wants to do, just do it.
Speaker 2: He's gonna want he's gonna want to put weird things
Speaker 2: in pineapple. He's gonna get really drunken, cry on your shoulder.
Speaker 2: He's gonna bomb several Southeast Asians.
Speaker 1: Are you guys talking about?
Speaker 6: Sorry, buddy, Okay, who's.
Speaker 1: Your face?
Speaker 7: My name is Bobby and I uh sorry, my my
Speaker 7: pineapple and uh and for lunch, I have pineapple and
Speaker 7: cottage cheese every day and it's it's uh, it just
Speaker 7: got out of my.
Speaker 2: Best is absolutely the best lunch you listen to.
Speaker 4: That's all I yeah, in between in between just guzzling vodka.
Speaker 1: That's generally what I have on my own cand of
Speaker 1: camera somewhere. You guys fucking around what he's talking about?
Speaker 1: I mean, just my heart is I feel them. I
Speaker 1: need to lay down. I'm sorry.
Speaker 4: Oh God, you're great. You're my favorite president. And I
Speaker 4: want to thank you for killing so many people.
Speaker 2: If you're hr haled them in right, how do you
Speaker 2: recognize that you are trying to make he dates for
Speaker 2: a man. It's bombing illegally multiple nations and not go
Speaker 2: democracy and all politics as a sham. I must go
Speaker 2: down in flames to take everyone out around me, because
Speaker 2: that is the only justice that can be achieved.
Speaker 1: Is like Nixon belongs in the bubble that the Good
Speaker 1: Witch and the Wizard of Oz lives in. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: he's on that level of It's like at some point
Speaker 1: you have to wake up and be like, Okay, look,
Speaker 1: these guys are bombing the shit out of countries, and
Speaker 1: my goal is to find the president a buddy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I have to get him a friend.
Speaker 1: I'm looking.
Speaker 2: I'm trying to get him a friend. He might do
Speaker 2: something crazy if he doesn't have any god a crazy
Speaker 2: I just it's great.
Speaker 1: It's just it's just like you have a president who
Speaker 1: doesn't have a friend. Like, that's really tough. The president
Speaker 1: doesn't have a friend.
Speaker 2: And that's a big part of why when it comes
Speaker 2: to deciding who should be the US Internet to talk with,
Speaker 2: maw Yah Yah wins out over Chichesku because Nixon likes Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, that's that's that's a big part of it.
Speaker 2: Not the whole reason, but that's a big part of it.
Speaker 4: Now, and again, let's just let's remind every but was great,
Speaker 4: So I can't.
Speaker 1: Believe that flawless flawless man. Also, by the way, great death.
Speaker 1: If we are going to talk about it, pretty good.
Speaker 1: I'll get punishing death a lot more.
Speaker 2: I'll go so far to say most of the people
Speaker 2: we name in these episodes could have handled a chou Chescu.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, we have been a bad way for him
Speaker 1: to go out.
Speaker 2: So when it comes time to decide, yeah, so anyway
Speaker 2: they go with Yai Yat. Now by nineteen seventy one, again,
Speaker 2: spring of seventy one is when all of this political
Speaker 2: stuff with East Pakistan's coming to head, these protests are happening.
Speaker 2: You know, things are on the brink there of kind
Speaker 2: of like a civil conflict. Kissinger has been the center
Speaker 2: of US policy for three years at this point, right,
Speaker 2: US foreign policy, and folks in d C. By seventy
Speaker 2: one are amazed at the degree to which he has
Speaker 2: centralized power. His junior Southeast Asia Aid sam Hoskin recalled,
Speaker 2: the power was there, he was gathering it up. You
Speaker 2: felt like you were at the political center of the universe,
Speaker 2: he and the president. That was where the decisions were made.
Speaker 1: What sounds like a democracy to me, baby. And you
Speaker 1: know what, instead of getting away from that, let's just
Speaker 1: replicate it forever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's just do versions of this forever, but with
Speaker 2: people who are well not. Yeah, let's just do versions
Speaker 2: of this forever. I'm not even going to try to
Speaker 2: quantify it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: At age forty eight, Kissinger was new enough to power
Speaker 2: that he was noted at the time as being extremely
Speaker 2: jealous of anyone who might be seen as a rival.
Speaker 2: He focused obsessively on pleasing Nixon. Henry himself had no
Speaker 2: particular biases against India or Indian politicians, at least not
Speaker 2: compared to Nixon, but when he saw how racist his
Speaker 2: boss was, he knuckled down and found his inner bigot.
Speaker 2: He was successful enough that Nixon said of him, Henry
Speaker 2: is my least pathological pro India lover around here.
Speaker 1: God, good work, Henry. You did it, buddy, You won.
Speaker 1: He won the worst thing.
Speaker 2: In late nineteen seventy, Kissinger and ya Ya began to
Speaker 2: make plans for a broker's secret meeting between the United
Speaker 2: States and China as a thank you for his help.
Speaker 2: In October of nineteen seventy, yah Yah got to visit
Speaker 2: the White House in person, where Nixon agreed to sell
Speaker 2: weapons to his country again. Now this is illegal because
Speaker 2: there's an arms embargo which does not get lifted. But
Speaker 2: they decide we'll just do it. It'll be a limited
Speaker 2: violation of the I believe that there was a loophole
Speaker 2: for the FFS.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he got drunk with me.
Speaker 2: Born in Kanya. Quote from the Blood Telegram. Yah Yah
Speaker 2: got a reward for his efforts in late in late
Speaker 2: October nineteen seventy when he met Nixon in the Oval
Speaker 2: Office at the White House and their last meeting before
Speaker 2: the crisis erupted. Nixon began to sell weapons to ya
Speaker 2: Ya again. And what was officially built is a one
Speaker 2: time exception to the US arms embargo imposed on both
Speaker 2: India and Pakistan in nineteen sixty five. It was the
Speaker 2: kind of exception that demolishes the that embargo had already
Speaker 2: been eroding under Johnson. But now Yaya secured a moderately
Speaker 2: big haul, a harbinger of much larger ones likely to come.
Speaker 2: The promised weapons included six F one to oh four
Speaker 2: fighter planes, seven B fifty seven bombers, and three hundred
Speaker 2: armored personnel carriers. You want to guess what's going to
Speaker 2: be done with the weapons we send him?
Speaker 1: Nothing?
Speaker 2: Yep, that's right. Episode's done. All right, we all had fun.
Speaker 2: In March of nineteen seventy one, mushibur who is the
Speaker 2: he's like the guy the East Pakistani political leader, right,
Speaker 2: who runs this party that wins the elections. He meets
Speaker 2: with ya Ya and Dhaka, which is the capital of
Speaker 2: East Pakistan, in an attempt to reach an agreement over
Speaker 2: the elections. Ya Ya had just decided to ignore.
Speaker 1: At first, like an agreement was already electorally with the voters.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So at first Yaya's like, hey, we settled things great,
Speaker 2: And then the very next day he has Mushiburg arrested
Speaker 2: and sends sixty thousand soldiers into East Pakistan. Now, actually,
Speaker 2: I say sins in. These guys had been slowly infiltrating
Speaker 2: the country for weeks by air because you have to
Speaker 2: like fly him in, right, they can't just like drive
Speaker 2: anywhere because there's India in between the two. They embarked
Speaker 2: on an operation called Searchlight. And I'm going to quote
Speaker 2: now from an article in The New Yorker. Firing squads
Speaker 2: spread out across East Pakistan, sometimes assisted by local collaborators
Speaker 2: from his Lomist groups that had been humiliated in the elections.
Speaker 2: In the countryside where the armed resistance was strongest, the
Speaker 2: Pakistanian military burned and strafed villages, killing thousands and turning
Speaker 2: many more into refugees. Hindus, who composed more than ten
Speaker 2: percent of the population were targeted. Their unmuslimness ascertained by
Speaker 2: a quick inspection underneath their clothing. Tens of thousands of
Speaker 2: women were raped in a campaign of terror. Bengali's also
Speaker 2: murdered and raped Urdu speaking Muslims, whom they suspected of
Speaker 2: being Fifth columnists for West Pakistan. Archer Blood, the US
Speaker 2: consul general in Dhaka, among others, reported the slaughter of
Speaker 2: professors and students at Dhaka University, an attempt to silence
Speaker 2: the intellectual class who had eloquently articulated Bengali grievances. So
Speaker 2: Archer Blood is in the Blood Telegram really goes into
Speaker 2: detail about this guy. One of the very few cases
Speaker 2: of a powerful state department or of a state department
Speaker 2: official with some power who's like a genuinely good person.
Speaker 2: Blood works all over for the state.
Speaker 1: Evil name.
Speaker 2: He does have the worst like Kissinger things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's like you should shoot fire arrows.
Speaker 2: He has opportunities to be and like what are considered
Speaker 2: more prestigious postings, including Greece, but he doesn't want to
Speaker 2: be in Greece because it's a CIA backed dictatorship at
Speaker 2: this point, and Bengal, you know, what becomes Bangladesh is
Speaker 2: like he feels like I can do something there.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: It's this place that has a lot of like legitimate problems,
Speaker 2: but also there's this like burgeoning democratic movement and people
Speaker 2: are like taking and he's renown in the area for
Speaker 2: like being incredibly social with Bengali's you know, like his
Speaker 2: kids make friends with local children who live around. They
Speaker 2: invite them into their home and have slumber parties. Like
Speaker 2: he's just like a like a nice person, right, and
Speaker 2: they're not going to run.
Speaker 1: Yeah, who wants that? Guy?
Speaker 2: Blood sends a telegram to Nixon and Kissinger. You know, Dave,
Speaker 2: when we tweeted about this, you asked, will there be blood?
Speaker 2: And I said there was going to be a blood telegram.
Speaker 2: This is what that is. In the Blood Telegram, Archer
Speaker 2: Blood attacks the Nixon administration for their deafening silence towards
Speaker 2: the violence in Bangladesh and moral bankruptcy in the face
Speaker 2: of what he termed a genocide. And this gets signed
Speaker 2: by every diplomatic official who's in who's in Dhaka. This
Speaker 2: enrages Nixon, and Kissinger soothed his boss by saying that
Speaker 2: Consolan Daka doesn't have the strongest nerves, basically like, oh,
Speaker 2: he's just he's just getting scared by a little massacre
Speaker 2: of all of the students and professors at the university.
Speaker 1: This guy, huh ca't.
Speaker 4: I cannot believe his last name is Bloodine.
Speaker 2: Really would work better for my last name.
Speaker 1: You know why My last name is about kissing and
Speaker 1: he has blood. He is kissing guy kissing, I'm bloody
Speaker 1: the use, Kissinger added.
Speaker 2: And this is him now talking about what yah Ya
Speaker 2: is doing in East Pakistan. Quote the use of power
Speaker 2: against seeming odds pays off. He's very impressed by the
Speaker 2: fact that that yah Yah gains control of East Pakistan
Speaker 2: with just a few thousand soldiers. You know, he's really impressed.
Speaker 2: So there's a bunch of people get angry. You know,
Speaker 2: one of the big people who's most vociferous in the
Speaker 2: US government against what's happening in East Pakistan is Ted Kennedy.
Speaker 2: He is like a really like like takes this on
Speaker 2: as like a banner crusade. So you know, once again,
Speaker 2: people get very angry at the administration for what's going on.
Speaker 2: Nixon tells Kissinger, quote the people who bitch about Vietnam
Speaker 2: bitch about it because we intervened in what they say
Speaker 2: is a civil war. Now some of the same bastards
Speaker 2: want us to intervene here both civil wars. Is being like,
Speaker 2: see how inconsistent they are.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, what do you want, Henry Hood?
Speaker 2: Do you think selling arms to one side and a
Speaker 2: civil war might be intervening?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Is that? Is it impossible? We're not going to
Speaker 1: do that. We're not going to do that.
Speaker 2: Oh ya ya needs how many more missiles?
Speaker 1: Absolutely?
Speaker 2: So, Kissinger writes up a policy paper in which he
Speaker 2: urges the US to quote make a serious effort to
Speaker 2: help Yaya end the war he'd started. And again, this
Speaker 2: isn't even really a civil war. East Pakistan isn't like
Speaker 2: mobilizing a vast army to fight for their independence. They
Speaker 2: like voted and then soldiers to kill them all civil
Speaker 2: It does like there start to be gorillas, and like
Speaker 2: the Indian government starts sending weapons into like the gorilla
Speaker 2: fighters in East Pakistan, but like the massacres start first.
Speaker 1: Well and again I mean like to what you're saying there,
Speaker 1: He held an election. I mean, this would be like
Speaker 1: if David Cameron just yeah, he had tanks the day
Speaker 1: after Brexit.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, Oh god, that's.
Speaker 1: Not what I would have.
Speaker 2: I meant marginally better. I guess Britain somehow colonizes the EU.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, Britain finally colonizes itself. I say that
Speaker 1: you are well, we already bloody work for you now
Speaker 1: you do, No, we already did with British. You will
Speaker 1: work for the British now. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And because of their Sandtrist educations, Gareth, your same fake
Speaker 2: accent can work for ya ya.
Speaker 1: Lovely DESI Yeah, yeah, so cognac on the mind. I think.
Speaker 2: Nixon responds to Kissinger's policy paper with a handwritten note
Speaker 2: that he adds to the paper saying, don't squeeze.
Speaker 1: Ya ya at this time?
Speaker 2: Do you want advice? Under normal circumstances?
Speaker 1: In May?
Speaker 2: In May Indian and this is you know, India. There's
Speaker 2: a degree of legitimate concern among Indian people for like
Speaker 2: the humanitarian crisis. There's also politically there's tons of refugees, right,
Speaker 2: and so there's also this like very blunt political like, well,
Speaker 2: we can't let this be happening. Because refugees are a
Speaker 2: political problem for us. Right, there's states. You know, nations
Speaker 2: don't make decisions ever because it's the right thing or
Speaker 2: the wrong thing to do. But India is broadly speaking
Speaker 2: on the right side of this one. I think that's
Speaker 2: fair to say so, because they're watching what's happening. India
Speaker 2: starts massing troops on the border of East Pakistan in
Speaker 2: order to potentially intervene, but they don't do anything yet.
Speaker 2: Nixon tells Kissinger to cut off economic aid to India
Speaker 2: if they intervene in this genocide, and Kissinger responds, quote,
Speaker 2: the last thing we can afford to do and now
Speaker 2: is to have the Pakistani government overthrown, given the other
Speaker 2: things that we are doing. This is a clear reference
Speaker 2: to their plans.
Speaker 1: To meet with China.
Speaker 2: Right, these very directly saying the reason we can't let
Speaker 2: anything happen to Yaya's government, even though they're carrying out
Speaker 2: a genocide, is because we need him to get to China.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: Kissinger follows this up with a soop to Nixon's racism,
Speaker 2: calling Indians quote the most aggressive goddamn people are around there.
Speaker 1: Again. I mean, it's obviously like the projection is obviously insane.
Speaker 2: Nixon responds by telling Kissinger that what India needs is
Speaker 2: a mass famine.
Speaker 1: Kissinger notes.
Speaker 2: Kissinger does not disagree, and he follows up by saying
Speaker 2: India has no right to invade another country. Quote, no
Speaker 2: matter what Pakistan does in its territory.
Speaker 1: You know, Okay, I'm gonna take a five. You guys
Speaker 1: can keep going. I'm gonna take a five. You guys
Speaker 1: keep going. Now, that's fine. I'm gonna go outside, guy through
Speaker 1: a wall.
Speaker 2: Real concerned about national sovereignty.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine someone doing something like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we can discuss, given the history of the United
Speaker 2: States as a whole, who gets to fairly complain about
Speaker 2: violations of national sovereignty? But definitely not Henry Kissinger. Yeah, yes,
Speaker 2: certainly not this guy. Right, It's like the fucking dudes
Speaker 2: from the Bush administration yelling at like what Russia is
Speaker 2: doing in Ukraine, not that the Russian actions in Ukraine.
Speaker 2: It is like, no, not you, not you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot of people we don't want to
Speaker 1: hear from that.
Speaker 2: You're absolutely not, crystal, So Kissinger assures his boss. Besides,
Speaker 2: the killing has stopped, so it's fine. It had not
Speaker 2: as a head said it is not.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: In April of nineteen seventy one, which is, by the way,
Speaker 2: the you know Archer Blood, the State Department official who
Speaker 2: does everything possible to get the US to act, Kissinger
Speaker 2: and Nixon fire him immediately. Got to get that guy
Speaker 2: out of there, right, Yeah, out of there.
Speaker 1: He's terrible. He doesn't know what he's talking about. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, in April of nineteen seventy one, the same month
Speaker 2: as the Blood telegram, and Nixon receives his official invitation
Speaker 2: from the Chinese, from the Chinese government, and it's again
Speaker 2: it's a secret invitation, right, you know, everything's because they
Speaker 2: don't know that it's going to like where you can't
Speaker 2: just have Nixon go to China first. You have to
Speaker 2: send someone ahead of time to handle early negotiations. Wheel like,
Speaker 2: it's a it's a whole process.
Speaker 1: It's a preacher it. Yeah, it's a pret China.
Speaker 2: You gotta yeah, you gotta lube up your China before
Speaker 2: you get that dick. Yeah, before you get that dick
Speaker 2: in there. Actually, yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: So I come.
Speaker 2: Nixon gleeful tells Kissinger to go. Kissinger is the lube
Speaker 2: in this situation. He tells Kissinger to go in secretly
Speaker 2: and handle these early negotiations. He claims that this visit
Speaker 2: to China they're planning will be quote a great watershed
Speaker 2: in history, perhaps clearly the greatest since World War Two.
Speaker 2: And that's what Nixon says. Kissinger, being a kiss ass,
Speaker 2: responds by saying, no, no, it'll be the greatest since
Speaker 2: the Civil War.
Speaker 1: I mean, my god, I'm the idea that you're following
Speaker 1: that up with no no better. Two. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So July came and Kissinger set off for Southeast Ashan
Speaker 2: what was built as a diplomatic tour of the region
Speaker 2: but obviously is in reality a secret diplomatic mission code
Speaker 2: named oh Boy, Oh No, Operation Marco Polo.
Speaker 1: Oh fucks. I mean, at least just get a better
Speaker 1: marketing person.
Speaker 4: It's like Nixon Nixon, listen to me, Marco fresh water Marco.
Speaker 2: So, Nixon visits India and then he flies to West
Speaker 2: Pakistan and shortly after landing he's drinking.
Speaker 1: Yeah, fakes the stomach bugre tend to get his stomach pumped. No, no, no.
Speaker 1: So he's like, you tell everybody I'm shitting, Yeah, tell
Speaker 1: everyone I'm pooping. You've got a extry tell him, I'm
Speaker 1: on the toilet shitting my brains out, so he cancels.
Speaker 2: Kissinger cancels a couple of days of planned meetings, and
Speaker 2: then while he's supposed to be sick, he boards in
Speaker 2: secret a special plane and flies from Islamabad to Beijing.
Speaker 2: Now I'm gonna quote from a write up in The
Speaker 2: Daily Star, which was an Indian newspaper, that summarizes what
Speaker 2: happens next. During Kissinger's China visit, both sides discussed a
Speaker 2: variety of issues. Kissinger found Zowen Lai, who had studied
Speaker 2: in France and Germany from nineteen twenty to nineteen twenty three,
Speaker 2: to be a very articulate person who could converse even
Speaker 2: in German Kissinger's mother tongue with ease. Both leaders agreed
Speaker 2: on recognizing Communist China as the only China and allotting
Speaker 2: a permanent seat in the UN Security Council to Beijing
Speaker 2: instead of Taiwan. The situation in the Indian subcontinent was
Speaker 2: discussed in detail, on which they had similar views, with
Speaker 2: both expressing their on wavering support to Pakistan. Zau briefed
Speaker 2: Kissinger about the Indo Chinese border skirmishes and Brave and
Speaker 2: blamed India for provacations. Both leaders had complete convergence of
Speaker 2: views on Yahya's stand on the Bangladesh issue. Kissinger flew
Speaker 2: back to Paris and reached Washington on July thirteenth. So, okay, good,
Speaker 2: I mean again, like, yes, they should be talking.
Speaker 1: Yes, this is fine.
Speaker 2: Yes, if you're going to have a security council, Beijing
Speaker 2: should probably sit on it rather than fucking Taiwan.
Speaker 1: Also, it's just a shame that it needs to come
Speaker 1: from mainly alcoholics. Yes, in order to make the right decisions,
Speaker 1: it needs to come on the back of genocides and blackouts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And like I feel like probably if the Nixon
Speaker 2: administration had had just like announced publicly through like the
Speaker 2: global media, we were wrong the United States and our
Speaker 2: policy towards Taiwan, and we want to recognize China and
Speaker 2: establish relationships with them and put them on the U.
Speaker 2: If they just like said that and like a news thing,
Speaker 2: probably China would have been like, oh, okay, this all
Speaker 2: kind of happened. But that also would have looked weak
Speaker 2: by the standards of like politics, right, it would have
Speaker 2: looked like begging. And so they're not going to do that.
Speaker 2: They're going to do this instead because it looks all strong.
Speaker 4: Yeah for the base, who you know, just wanted Vietnamese
Speaker 4: and can't buddy people to be fucking massacred so they'd
Speaker 4: feel better, Like, yeah, it's the base, we're talking about.
Speaker 1: Base on a blood and they fired him.
Speaker 2: So when he got back to DC and sat down
Speaker 2: with his boss, Kissinger excitedly relayed the story of the
Speaker 2: Cloak and Dagger exercise week. He's very excited that he
Speaker 2: got to deal with James Bond, he tells Kissinger, or
Speaker 2: a Kissinger tells Nixon. Quote, yeah, yeah, hasn't had such
Speaker 2: fun since the last Hindu massacre.
Speaker 8: Oh, in the there needs you need to just like
Speaker 8: bring in another I mean, Blood would have been a
Speaker 8: good person, but there just needs to be a regular person.
Speaker 1: Like, hey, I'm sorry, we can't talk like that. You
Speaker 1: guys keeping really comfy with this language. It's really not okay. Yeah,
Speaker 1: nobody says that.
Speaker 2: Goddam, there has to be like some motherfucker cleaning up
Speaker 2: Nixon's like puke in the corner.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, just a janitor who just like quietly shakes
Speaker 1: his head every time. Yeah to camera, Yeah, yeah, they've
Speaker 1: got a gym in there. Yeah, so that the bartender,
Speaker 1: the knowing bartender. Just imagine that coming out of your mouth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're you can't. It's not a joke when you
Speaker 2: say that, while there's a genocide going on here hasn't genocide.
Speaker 2: So that says a lot of just you celebrating a
Speaker 2: guy killing people.
Speaker 1: You realize how cool you got to be to them. Look,
Speaker 1: I don't have a friend, but if I did so.
Speaker 2: On July fifteenth, nineteen seventy one, Richard Nixon addressed the
Speaker 2: United States and told everyone that Henry Kissinger had just
Speaker 2: conducted a secret mission which had concluded with an agreement
Speaker 2: for Nixon to travel to Beijing and negotiate. By this point,
Speaker 2: hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshi civilians were dead and more
Speaker 2: than a million had been made refugees. India was edging
Speaker 2: closer and closer to war over the whole matter, and
Speaker 2: it was the considered opinion of the defense establishment that
Speaker 2: they would win fairly easily. India had started arming the
Speaker 2: Bengali guerilla fighters at this point, and during one meeting
Speaker 2: on the matter, Nixon described Indians as quote a slippery,
Speaker 2: treacherous people who would like nothing better than to use
Speaker 2: this tragedy to destroy Pakistan.
Speaker 1: Oh for fucks, I mean you can't even talk about it.
Speaker 1: I mean it's like you can't evensation anymore. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just insane, not sense.
Speaker 9: Yeah, yeah, it's just so crazy.
Speaker 1: This you know, this is imperialism, colonialist language. It's just
Speaker 1: never faded. No, No, there's just always guys in power.
Speaker 1: They've been talking like this is the fucking fifteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: It's never stopped.
Speaker 2: It's the I mean, this guy's not you couldn't really
Speaker 2: call him in power, but it's that fucking journalist for
Speaker 2: whoever talking about like Ukraine and like this is the
Speaker 2: first war between civilizations, Like what the fuck?
Speaker 1: Dude, Like, you know, it's quite different to see people
Speaker 1: who are white and European do it. That feels quite different.
Speaker 1: And the way he's carefully that journalists you're talking about
Speaker 1: the way he's carefully picking his language, and he's like,
Speaker 1: you're like, wait, this is your.
Speaker 2: Thoughtful version, this is your delicate statement. He cut the
Speaker 2: slurs out.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was like, gotta be carefully, I'm gonna say
Speaker 1: some dirty words.
Speaker 2: Because Nixon and they absolutely say some slurs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 2: So the outcry domestically and internationally reaches a fever pitch
Speaker 2: at this point, kind of late summer in nineteen seventy one,
Speaker 2: and in August, the escalating crisis is India to sign
Speaker 2: a formal treaty of friendship with the Soviet Union. Anti
Speaker 2: communists Nixon included, considered this a disaster and as good
Speaker 2: as an end to India's neutrality, but condemning ya Ya
Speaker 2: or stopping the sale of US weapons to a country
Speaker 2: committing genocide, was not considered an option. Yahya had to
Speaker 2: be kept in power until the China trip was conclusively
Speaker 2: locked down. I'm going to quote it from the Blood Telegram.
Speaker 2: After a while after Kissinger returned from Beijing, he said,
Speaker 2: we cannot turn on Pakistan, and I think it would
Speaker 2: have disastrous consequences with China that after they gave us
Speaker 2: an airport, we massacre them. In this case, for Kissinger,
Speaker 2: massacre meant putting pressure on a government, not the actual massacres.
Speaker 1: I mean it, They've done so many massacres that massacres
Speaker 1: aren't massacres anymore.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is the only thing Henry Kissinger ever described
Speaker 2: as a massacre, as people mean to Nixon's drunk genocide.
Speaker 1: But ye, Nixon, Meanwhile, I was committing a genocide. That's good.
Speaker 2: That's good that you know what, Somebody make a Nixon
Speaker 2: themed gin cocktail the genocide.
Speaker 1: It should be red in color pineapple deaf harries a
Speaker 1: little bit of a little bit of your own puke
Speaker 1: from the first stimp.
Speaker 10: So.
Speaker 2: Also in August, George Harrison and Rabbi Shankar organized a
Speaker 2: benefit concert in New York supporting relief efforts in Bangladesh.
Speaker 2: Nixon brushed this off to Kissinger, saying, quote, Biafras stirred
Speaker 2: up a few Catholics, But you know, I think Biafraus
Speaker 2: stirred people up more than Pakistan, because Pakistan they're just
Speaker 2: a bunch of goddamn brown Muslims.
Speaker 1: For shake fucking christ. Ah. Yeah, we need to bomb
Speaker 1: the Beatles. Yeah, the Beatles, right, the only one we
Speaker 1: could cape his ringo. He seems like we could maybe
Speaker 1: shift him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're bad again.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's like you, you would expect and again,
Speaker 1: I mean, or at least in my head, at some point,
Speaker 1: you would expect someone to just be like, guys, what
Speaker 1: the fuckuck? And even if it didn't. Even if it
Speaker 1: didn't really change anything, it would at least change the
Speaker 1: casual language and races. Is just kind of tossed around,
Speaker 1: or someone would be like, Hey, you shouldn't be recording
Speaker 1: all this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, boy, you shouldn't be recording all this.
Speaker 1: Dick. Hey, I'm gonna that's all. I'm gonna stop on this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm noted the Nixon administration Nixon did.
Speaker 6: Nixon was like, I think we got a mall and
Speaker 6: it might be drunk me. I think the block outrads
Speaker 6: recording us. We did a final war on night Nixon.
Speaker 2: On October twenty fifth, nineteen seventy one, the People's Republic
Speaker 2: of China was admitted to the u WIN as a
Speaker 2: permanent member of the Security Council. Again, there's seed to
Speaker 2: have been occupied for Taiwan by years. Taiwan gets like
Speaker 2: let out very unceremoniously, China gets put in place. The
Speaker 2: People's Republic of China. A representative celebrates with a vocal
Speaker 2: attack on quote American imperialists and their running dogs. But
Speaker 2: nobody took this seriously. It was generally referred to as
Speaker 2: firing by empty cannons. You know you're China you gotta
Speaker 2: get you gotta you gotta throw out your attack on
Speaker 2: the US. But like, you know, everybody's getting along at
Speaker 2: this moment. By November again, when we just talked about
Speaker 2: the guy who built that giant mountain sized cannon for Saddam,
Speaker 2: Like not long after this, the CIA is like illegally
Speaker 2: helping that arms designer subvert international treaties to sell cannons
Speaker 2: to China because China's you know, not on good terms
Speaker 2: with the uss R. It's all just like brinksmanship, political
Speaker 2: fuck rations that doesn't.
Speaker 1: Match up with some of the history in this country.
Speaker 1: That's strange.
Speaker 2: So yeah, this By November of nineteen seventy one, more
Speaker 2: than ten million people had been made refugees by the
Speaker 2: violence in Bangladesh. Jeffrey Davis a doctor who was brought
Speaker 2: into the country by the U win later to perform
Speaker 2: late term abortions on rape victims. Again, this is like,
Speaker 2: so part of what happens is the system mass rape
Speaker 2: by Pakistani soldiers of Bangladeshi women. The UN brings a
Speaker 2: doctor in afterwards to like perform these abortions on these
Speaker 2: rape victims. The estimate before this doctor comes in is
Speaker 2: that between two hundred and four hundred thousand Bengali women
Speaker 2: had been raped, and Jeffrey Davis says, oh, it's way
Speaker 2: more than that. God, Oh my god, it's much more
Speaker 2: than that. The CIA estimates two hundred thousand civilians are
Speaker 2: murdered in this period. Given where the US stands on
Speaker 2: this issue, you might not want to trust the CIA's numbers.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: The Soviet newspaper Pravda estimates some three million dead, which
Speaker 2: is also likely not entirely accurate, but is probably closer
Speaker 2: than the CIA's numbers. Credible low estimates of the death
Speaker 2: toll are over half a million. It is very likely
Speaker 2: that between one and two million Bengalis were murdered. One
Speaker 2: and a half million is often what you will hear,
Speaker 2: probably pretty fair, although any kind of exact count is
Speaker 2: obviously impossible. But this is a jit aside on a
Speaker 2: Titanic scale.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: In December, West Pakistan declared war on India. Remember yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: is not good at things, So.
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean he's again breakfast kanyak will do
Speaker 1: he's a crazy shit So their man declares war again.
Speaker 1: Yah yah declares war. That's right, many fun Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Nixon and kissing your blame this on in Deira Gandhi.
Speaker 1: Oh, this is why I kind of a woman in India.
Speaker 1: It's going to be attacked.
Speaker 2: Nixon tells Henry that it makes your heart sick to
Speaker 2: see Pakistan be done so by the Indians.
Speaker 1: And after we have to go, after we've warned the bitch.
Speaker 1: Oh sorry, I cut you off. Yeah, and after we
Speaker 1: have warned the bitch, I mean again, It's like you're
Speaker 1: not in a tavern. This is the fucking White House.
Speaker 4: Should we put that in a fresh an official press statement.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the in the morning. Oh, let's call
Speaker 1: her a whore. Then, let's just.
Speaker 2: Yah Yah proved to be as bad at war as
Speaker 2: he was good at being friends with Dick Nixon. The
Speaker 2: Indian military kurb stomps Pakistan. I cannot exaggerate the degree
Speaker 2: to which these guys get their asses handed to them.
Speaker 2: Within a week, it is clear that not only is
Speaker 2: West Pakistan going to lose the war, but Pakistan might
Speaker 2: not survive as a country as a result of how
Speaker 2: badly they're being beaten. Right, yeah, yeah, not good at anything.
Speaker 2: I want to quote now from a ride up by
Speaker 2: an Indian veteran of them, Oh, he's very good at drinking.
Speaker 2: He's really pretty good at drinking. Yes, what do you
Speaker 2: mean yet?
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, knockout.
Speaker 2: So I want to quote now from a write up
Speaker 2: by an Indian veteran of the conflict for Indye TV,
Speaker 2: which is another Indian uh news periodical, on December eighth.
Speaker 2: This Pakistani defenses in East Pakistan were falling before the
Speaker 2: onslaught of the Joint Command of the Indian Army and
Speaker 2: Bangali Dashi Mukti Bahini liberation warriors. Richard Nixon and Henry
Speaker 2: Kissinger were busy plotting ways to change the tide of
Speaker 2: war or arrest it. Henry Kissinger, in a meeting with
Speaker 2: Richard Nixon and Attorney General Newton Mitchell, now to classified,
Speaker 2: said he has got a message for you to you
Speaker 2: from the Shah of Iran which says he can send
Speaker 2: ammunition to a beleaguered Pakistan. He is doing it now.
Speaker 1: What is good? I mean? I know we can help
Speaker 1: us here. The Shah of Iran the level of war
Speaker 1: to stop war.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so another piece of ship we can bring in
Speaker 4: on this.
Speaker 2: The brilliant diplomat also revealed that Iran will send fighter
Speaker 2: planes to protect Jordan from Israel, while Jordan will send
Speaker 2: jets to Pakistan for the war effort against.
Speaker 1: India's Honestly, what is like It's how like an NFL
Speaker 1: trade works. Yeah, how could you have thought this would work?
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a it's a drunk game of risk. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah it is. He's just wasted playing risk. The US
Speaker 1: National Security Advisor also expressed fear that India would attack
Speaker 1: West Pakistan in a major way after winning the war
Speaker 1: in the East. The Indian plan is now clear, this
Speaker 1: is Kissinger. They're going to move their forces from East
Speaker 1: Pakistan to the west. They will then smash the Pakistan
Speaker 1: landforces and air forces, annex the Pakistan occupied part of Kashmir,
Speaker 1: and then call it off Warrant Henry Kissinger. When this
Speaker 1: has happened, the centrifugal forces in West Pakistan would be liberated,
Speaker 1: but Lukastan and the Northwest Frontier will celebrate. West Pakistan
Speaker 1: would become a sort of intricate Afghanistan. So this is
Speaker 1: Aghanistan that's Henry's concern. So he insists this is enough
Speaker 1: of a disaster that the US has to send the
Speaker 1: Seventh Fleet into the Bay of Bengal in order to
Speaker 1: scare India. The seventh is headed by the USS Enterprise
Speaker 1: and is widely considered to be the most powerful naval
Speaker 1: force on Earth. This prompts the Russians to send a
Speaker 1: fleet in as well, and the world gets to live
Speaker 1: through another period of are we going to have a
Speaker 1: nuclear war? Kissinger, because he's real good at calming people down,
Speaker 1: encourages China to intervene against India and, in Nixon's words, quote,
Speaker 1: scare those goddamn Indians to death. China's like, do you
Speaker 1: maybe we should go back to the Taiwan thing? That
Speaker 1: actually seemed to be it's gonna be a little seemed
Speaker 1: to be pretty good. Actually that was working a little better,
Speaker 1: I think for you guys. Now you're in hell. Yeah.
Speaker 2: In the end, Kissinger's plan failed. India does not take
Speaker 2: his bait, and in late December, Pakistan surrenders to India
Speaker 2: East Pakistan because its own independent nation Bangladesh.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yah is forced out of office and placed under house arrest,
Speaker 2: where he suffers a stroke.
Speaker 1: So that's jeez, I'm gonna not you for coming back.
Speaker 1: But it's comeback, knyac kid. Oh you mean I can't leave?
Speaker 1: It'll be fine.
Speaker 2: So Kissinger claims, this whole state of affairs, how this
Speaker 2: all resolves, is a victory for the Nixon administration.
Speaker 1: Of course I announced.
Speaker 2: He announces this by saying, congratulations, mister President, you saved
Speaker 2: West Pakistan.
Speaker 1: What time was it last night? You saved West pack Amazing?
Speaker 1: I mean it was a hero I mean two months
Speaker 1: congratulations being said. Amazing.
Speaker 2: Now, two months after the end of the war, Nixon
Speaker 2: makes his big visit to China. The media eats it up,
Speaker 2: and suddenly Nixon's re election campaign has something to hang
Speaker 2: their hats on, beyond claims that peace in Vietnam is
Speaker 2: going to happen one of these days. The taunt with
Speaker 2: the Soviets. This announced soon after, right, they do like
Speaker 2: they're good thing. Obviously it's good. Like this happens, good
Speaker 2: things result from it. During a conversation later that year,
Speaker 2: Becassinger tells his boss, no one has yet understood what
Speaker 2: we did in India Pakistan and how we saved the
Speaker 2: China option, which we need for the bloody Russians. Why
Speaker 2: should we give a damn about Bangladesh.
Speaker 1: Well, there you go. That says that says it all right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: nobody's congratulating us. On how good of a job we did. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean in their opinion and their track record of
Speaker 1: foreign policy, it's all about egg breaking, Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: for whatever version of omelet they insist they're serving.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's like, yeah, man, I agree us. You know,
Speaker 2: Mawen fucking Kissing or Mawen Nixon should have sat down
Speaker 2: and talked like all of these conversations shouldn't happened to
Speaker 2: talk with Russia.
Speaker 1: Good.
Speaker 2: Feel like you didn't need to back a genocide to
Speaker 2: make that happen, you know, like that wasn't a necessary ingredient.
Speaker 4: It's it's easy to look back on a genocide and
Speaker 4: go was this right or wrong?
Speaker 1: But when you're in the middle of a genocide, you're like,
Speaker 1: this seems pretty okay. I'm getting I'm getting a which
Speaker 1: genocider you are? How else can I talk to people?
Speaker 2: I'm having kognac with ya ya before flying the chat.
Speaker 1: Keep in mind, I'm good here. I'm pretty much blackout
Speaker 1: drunk for all. This pretty good for a guy who
Speaker 1: can't walk on a straight line.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's anyway, that's how Henry Kissinger made peace between
Speaker 2: the nuclear powers.
Speaker 4: Well on that one, I mean, it is the most chaotic, insane,
Speaker 4: fucking nonsense.
Speaker 1: It's just crazy. No, I really it is on a
Speaker 1: level where I mean, it's it's it's been hard to
Speaker 1: process the whole time, but now it's like it's normalized
Speaker 1: and you're seeing the version when they're sort of there,
Speaker 1: the training wheels have been taken off, how much they
Speaker 1: are actually doing and getting away with in way like again,
Speaker 1: I mean, just to have an adult in the room,
Speaker 1: but I mean they fire, you fire the adult, obviously,
Speaker 1: but it is on. It is I mean, it just
Speaker 1: is absolutely fucking preposterous that this is not well known
Speaker 1: about or even if it even if it is well known,
Speaker 1: how the fuck Kissinger keeps showing up over and o
Speaker 1: over again. Oh yeah, with all these people that people
Speaker 1: that people are sycophants for in our in our politics. No,
Speaker 1: I can never I.
Speaker 4: Can never get over the fact that Hillary Clinton was
Speaker 4: campaigning with him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that people are like, oh, look who's back shady.
Speaker 2: One of the things that's so this doesn't really like
Speaker 2: mark on like the moral list of things that he
Speaker 2: did wrong. But I just find it so shameful that like, again,
Speaker 2: you have all of these other people, like all of
Speaker 2: the folks we've talked about, like yeah, yeah, like Nixon
Speaker 2: who do horrible things in her but are like also
Speaker 2: getting to like exercising power and like the big men
Speaker 2: and like you know, the the dudes that the like,
Speaker 2: I don't know, they're not like sycophants, whereas Henry is
Speaker 2: just sort of like sucking up to everyone around him
Speaker 2: in order to further war crimes. Which again, yeah, it
Speaker 2: doesn't isn't. It doesn't rate discussing on a moral level
Speaker 2: compared to everything else. It just is like that's the.
Speaker 1: Guy he is. Yeah, he's just like a power guy.
Speaker 1: He is. He's just like he is not I mean.
Speaker 1: And also, and I don't mean to keep beating this drum,
Speaker 1: but they're drunk.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well I don't think Kissinger is, but Nixon for
Speaker 2: that's what I mean.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and yeah, yah is yeah, yeah, yeah is a
Speaker 1: Nixon is a Kissinger is not. And he's still like, ah,
Speaker 1: that's pretty good idea. Yeah, you know it to be
Speaker 1: like it would be like if you're around like like
Speaker 1: you're in a car ride to Florida with three drunk
Speaker 1: guys and they're just like, hey, well what did we
Speaker 1: drink last night? The one guys like I have a drink,
Speaker 1: but let's go to Florida.
Speaker 2: Yeah, God, it's man and the blatant racism.
Speaker 1: As far as like who you're willing to sacrifice, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know as usual kiss country where Yeah, you just
Speaker 1: you really do not give a fuck.
Speaker 4: They really just literally do not care about anybody who's
Speaker 4: not They just don't care.
Speaker 1: Why why would they? I mean, if you're them, there's
Speaker 1: no referee in this game, So foul as much as
Speaker 1: you want, I'm just.
Speaker 4: Fucking to fucking you know, grow up with the Nazis
Speaker 4: right there and watch the Holocaust and then.
Speaker 1: Dave to be able to child his childhood. He didn't
Speaker 1: was not affected by this child, that's true. Sorry, no
Speaker 1: impact on going back to that, but that that again,
Speaker 1: we've we've sort of knocked that domino down. That did
Speaker 1: not happen, like it never occurred. It didn't happen, clearly, Yes.
Speaker 2: You know that's why. Look, that's why he's fine with
Speaker 2: what's happening in Bangladesh. He knows it's not going to
Speaker 2: affect those kids.
Speaker 1: Five those who lived through history are doomed to repeat
Speaker 1: it because it was fine. Yeah, because it was fine.
Speaker 1: It was fine. Why because I said, so, yeah.
Speaker 4: Oh, anyway, I just I just typed in Kissinger's name
Speaker 4: in to Google, and the first thing that comes up
Speaker 4: is you pile.
Speaker 1: Oh god, what did he say?
Speaker 4: Fucking we don't to settle the UK christis start at
Speaker 4: the end.
Speaker 1: I don't even want to know.
Speaker 2: Okay, Okay, still nonsense, Like, of course, yes, it would
Speaker 2: be great to start at the point where there's not
Speaker 2: a war, but that's not really helpful, right yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: thanks buddy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, whatever you know. Yeah, he's on the same thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's doing kisses like, well, it doesn't matter, like
Speaker 2: obviously when you say there's point things like the fucking
Speaker 2: nuclear disarmament where like you can find moments in history
Speaker 2: where he's right. It doesn't matter if he's right or
Speaker 2: wrong about a specific issue, because we see what he
Speaker 2: actually does, which is whatever it takes to keep himself
Speaker 2: close to power. Like he doesn't believe anything to the
Speaker 2: extent that he's ever right or a part of something
Speaker 2: good like arms reductions. It's because that's the thing that
Speaker 2: the people who he's sick of fans to want to do.
Speaker 2: And it doesn't matter that he supported the opposite thing
Speaker 2: for years, Like because he doesn't care.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because it's a parasite just looking for a hub.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's the thing. Like I don't give him
Speaker 2: credit for anything.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, like it's funny.
Speaker 4: It's funny you say that because all these articles about
Speaker 4: what he said about Ukraine in twenty fourteen, so people
Speaker 4: been going back to like he.
Speaker 1: Said, and you're like, yeah, no, that guy's a fucking.
Speaker 2: If only he'd thought to start at the end of
Speaker 2: the war, if only we'd thought of that, Henry great point,
Speaker 2: Henry Solid, We're gonna start, We're.
Speaker 1: Gonna start to go fund me to get you bones.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh god, oh lord. If he doesn't die immediately, Obviously,
Speaker 2: him dying immediately is my primary hope. But I hope
Speaker 2: if he doesn't die immediately, he lasts long enough to
Speaker 2: get sucked into one crypto scam. You know, just just
Speaker 2: one good cryptocurrency scam. Can we get that?
Speaker 1: At least I wanted to start his own crypto called
Speaker 1: hank Bank Heck of America. I am noble blockchain. You
Speaker 1: could buy a piece of my skin.
Speaker 2: Each NFT represents an individual time Richard Nixon vomited into
Speaker 2: my lap.
Speaker 1: I'm becoming NFT.
Speaker 2: Oh god, all right, well again plug anything here, I
Speaker 2: mean again, it's getting arder.
Speaker 1: All right. We we are the doll Up and you
Speaker 1: can go to Dollar podcast dot com for to our information.
Speaker 1: We will be all over Australia and America this summer
Speaker 1: and and then you can go to my website which
Speaker 1: is Gareth Reynolds dot com for stand up data domestically
Speaker 1: and in Australia, and go to Parasite dot com, which
Speaker 1: is just pictures of a Kissinger.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, go to his parasite. Go to his parasite.
Speaker 2: I have a novel, just google a k Press after
Speaker 2: the Revolution. It's it's for pre order now you can
Speaker 2: still get it signed.
Speaker 1: Every copy.
Speaker 2: I will spit on Henry Kissinger's grave once when he dies,
Speaker 2: so you can make me.
Speaker 1: Nob's getting woozy. Everybody hurry.
Speaker 2: Look like like all politicians, I won't entirely keep my promises.
Speaker 2: Some of that spit's going to be pissed, you know,
Speaker 2: some of it's going to be pissed.
Speaker 1: Here we go, already breaking already breaking it. YEA thought
Speaker 1: I knew you. Oh God.
Speaker 2: The doll Up Crossover Special event Week three of our
Speaker 2: Henry Kissinger series and and the stress is getting to everyone.
Speaker 2: David and Gareth fighting viciously.
Speaker 3: I'm not.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've been quite calm. I just I just
Speaker 1: when I'm attacked.
Speaker 2: Like Henry Kissinger, I am attempting to maintain a balance
Speaker 2: of power between you and the state of Detan.
Speaker 1: You get it. You have the answers.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, our podcasts are now bombing Cambodia.
Speaker 1: Finally show that I relate to Oh boy, well this
Speaker 1: is this is week three?
Speaker 2: Can y'all believe we're already in the home stretch of
Speaker 2: of this this series?
Speaker 1: Is it week three? Yes? Wow? Episodes for three weeks.
Speaker 2: I know most podcasts don't make all of the guests
Speaker 2: live together, but they do it.
Speaker 1: What do they? Yeah, I think with like like the internet.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to look that up in my dictionary. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I've enjoyed our time here. I've really like, I don't
Speaker 1: I don't want to leave, so I mean, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I you know, we should. I got to
Speaker 1: go back to it as a family.
Speaker 2: We could do another couple of episodes on Henry Kissinger,
Speaker 2: but you know, just do one a year for the
Speaker 2: next like five years.
Speaker 1: There we just do. We'll just be like a reunion show. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what's Henry Kissinger revival. Yeah, there's probably more chapters. Yeah,
Speaker 1: hopefully just dead soon. Hopefully dead is what we'll do.
Speaker 1: I don't think that. I don't think that ends it.
Speaker 1: Somehow I feel like that's not gonna be enough.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll be doing the episode about how Henry Kissinger
Speaker 2: brings the Army of Hell back through a portal, Yeah,
Speaker 2: to somehow fight on both sides of the Ukrainian War.
Speaker 1: And the Army of Hell has been misled as to
Speaker 1: the rationale. They're like, you said that there was going
Speaker 1: to be a lot more slavery. Here, follow me, come
Speaker 1: with me. The w mds Henry Kissinger. I should have
Speaker 1: studied Kissinger's accent before this totally, But do you have
Speaker 1: an ear for accents?
Speaker 2: It's all right, this will be so iconic that it
Speaker 2: will retroactively become Henry Kissinger's accent, kind of like the
Speaker 2: Nazis are now British.
Speaker 1: I do one, I do one, just one stranger accent.
Speaker 1: I nail one thing. It's really good. Perfect.
Speaker 2: Wow, it's like we're there. It's like we're in the
Speaker 2: Oval office. I am excited for when what's his name?
Speaker 2: The guy who did vice that director? What's his name?
Speaker 2: I'm talking about the Cheney, Yes, Adam mckadam. When Adam
Speaker 2: McKay does his Kissinger movie in ten more years, he'll
Speaker 2: use that accent.
Speaker 1: That'd be great. Davi would be on set coaching Christian Bale.
Speaker 1: You know you're saying hello, and it's really more.
Speaker 2: Like alo Vera, so hear it behind the bastards and
Speaker 2: and at the dollop, which behind the bastards is the
Speaker 2: kirklan brand version of We like to ask questions that
Speaker 2: historians all too often try to ignore it, namely, how
Speaker 2: did bad people in history fuck? So? Yeah, we're talking
Speaker 2: about how Kissinger boned? Are you excited for the state?
Speaker 1: No? No, I want to go? Can I leave it?
Speaker 1: I think you want to take care of himself?
Speaker 2: If you know this is it is important to both
Speaker 2: cover the historical crimes of a guy like Kissinger and
Speaker 2: and to get some personal color. And since we've spent
Speaker 2: four episodes talking about his beliefs and his acts and power,
Speaker 2: it's only fair that we now turn our fuckroscopes onto
Speaker 2: his sex life.
Speaker 1: This episode is going to have bass under it, right, absolutely, Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I think the best way for me to start
Speaker 2: this segment is by reading a quote from a September fifteenth,
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy one article in the San Francisco Chronicle as
Speaker 2: a warning, guys, there is a thirty percent chance this
Speaker 2: is going to give one of you a stroke.
Speaker 1: No, you mean way, you mean we're gonna be stroking
Speaker 1: it our actual stroke.
Speaker 2: That that is impossible to say, okay. Quote Henry Kissinger,
Speaker 2: sex symbol of the Nixon administration.
Speaker 1: Let me bite a stick. I'm just gonna bite a
Speaker 1: stick to be safe. I'm I'm just gonna get a
Speaker 1: branch in my mouth.
Speaker 2: Steps out of his office onto a sun drenched San
Speaker 2: Clemente terrace with a cup of black coffee and sits
Speaker 2: in a white deck chair with his legs crossed. The man, yeah,
Speaker 2: the man who has pressured Moscow drafted state of the
Speaker 2: World addresses, advised the President to enter a Cambodia and
Speaker 2: pave the road to red China appears as something of
Speaker 2: an anachronism in his baggy midnight blue cotton trousers, black
Speaker 2: tie shoes, bright blue unfitted blazer, blue and white striped
Speaker 2: shirt and striped tie.
Speaker 1: What you guys home then? So far? I mean, what fuck?
Speaker 1: Embedded reporter Lban why I can't I can't imagine combining
Speaker 1: the fashion sense with the war crime. It's so good
Speaker 1: because they acknowledged the war crimes and they're going talk
Speaker 1: about it. It's like Henry could be walking got a
Speaker 1: catwalk like like you'll see Henry right now in a
Speaker 1: tight white pants suit. You can see it suck to him. Henry,
Speaker 1: also known for ruining Cambodia in Vietnam, continued to quote.
Speaker 4: He comes mass murder's sex machine, kissing your Oh no,
Speaker 4: it's an open robe.
Speaker 2: On the back wall, you can see some victims of
Speaker 2: the aged Orange campaign.
Speaker 9: And then in.
Speaker 2: Vietnam and on Henry yoursucker, you could notice the outline
Speaker 2: of his hog in those I don't know fancy pants brands.
Speaker 2: Otherwise I would have finished that, but I'm gonna finish
Speaker 2: the quote now, because by god, there's more.
Speaker 1: What are you trying to do? Seduce me?
Speaker 2: Henry will tease as he notices his visitors hotpants. You
Speaker 2: know I like these hotpants very much. Then he'll light
Speaker 2: your cigarette, touching your hand as all continentals do, offer
Speaker 2: you a cup of coffee, and discuss trivia as readily
Speaker 2: as he would a Sino Soviet entaunt. The impeccably tidy
Speaker 2: image is perfect for dealing with Alexi Qostan or Chowan
Speaker 2: or zowyn Lye, or lecturing at Harvard, But one cannot
Speaker 2: help wonder if the movie star's mind that the ankle
Speaker 2: socks of Washington's greatest swinger are falling down, or that
Speaker 2: his wiry chestnut hair, which flashes golded in the intense
Speaker 2: white sunlight, is too close crop to run their fingers through,
Speaker 2: or that at least ten of his one hundred and
Speaker 2: seventy eight pounds protrude over his thin black belt, somehow
Speaker 2: shortening his five feet nine inches. But suddenly an electric
Speaker 2: twinkle will flash through the intense blue of his eyes.
Speaker 2: And what it catches, an inkling of that movie star magnetism,
Speaker 2: that special quality which causes some people to call him
Speaker 2: cuddly kissinger.
Speaker 1: No craziest thing that's happened so far? How did that happen? Oh? Man,
Speaker 1: it's worse than war crimes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is, oh my god, a bottom below the
Speaker 2: bottom folks.
Speaker 9: Can we go back to just murdering hundreds of thousands
Speaker 9: of Cambodians?
Speaker 1: How did that happen? What in the fuck just went on?
Speaker 1: Is this a guy or a lady writing this? We
Speaker 1: think it's a late I'm on a certain it's a lady. Yeah,
Speaker 1: fuck him. She wants to or the dude wants to? Well,
Speaker 1: what he holds your hand when he lights your cigarette?
Speaker 1: Why did we have to talk about Kissinger's chest hair? Why? Why? Why? Indeed,
Speaker 1: why indeed, David? Because can we napalm it?
Speaker 10: That?
Speaker 2: This is what Nate Palm's for?
Speaker 11: Right?
Speaker 1: Speaking of palm, a little palmade in that hair of Henry's.
Speaker 2: This has convinced me there is a place for the
Speaker 2: B fifty two bomber.
Speaker 1: In his pants. Boy, that's what Henry calls little Hank.
Speaker 2: So fuck bafflingly, almost impossibly, it is not hard to
Speaker 2: find articles written at this exact sexual tenor, and unfortunately
Speaker 2: would I would love to tell you guys that I'm
Speaker 2: sure this was like a satire or a joke, but
Speaker 2: the people were weirdly serious about this kind of shit
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy two. And there's no way you're ready
Speaker 2: for what comes after this part of the sentence. What
Speaker 2: In nineteen seventy two, the Playboy Club hosted a poll
Speaker 2: of the bunnies and asked them who was quote the
Speaker 2: man I would mostly not do that on a date
Speaker 2: with Henry Kissinger was number one.
Speaker 1: Oh in the fuck, no, no, no.
Speaker 9: What a horrible indictment of it, No first indictment of
Speaker 9: America that has ever been.
Speaker 1: This is the most damning thing you can say about.
Speaker 1: It's right on the ground in the Playboy mansion. What
Speaker 1: how is that? I can't It's like we're in the
Speaker 1: back to the future, Biff Timeline. Well, hold on, the
Speaker 1: man who massacres hundreds of thousands knows how to fuck.
Speaker 1: That's just an old saying. That is that is an
Speaker 1: old saying. I want to fuck you like I fucked
Speaker 1: the people of Vietnam overl So.
Speaker 2: Once the first few articles about Henry Kissinger's you know
Speaker 2: sex symbolitude dropped, you know, Kissinger himself started being questioned
Speaker 2: by reporters about the phenomenon. His standard reply became one
Speaker 2: of his most famous quotes. Power is the ultimate afrodisiac.
Speaker 1: I mean like there are there is. I mean people
Speaker 1: are attracted to like, yeah, psychos too, like Ted Bundy
Speaker 1: had like a fan club, and like you know, like
Speaker 1: I mean j like I've been compared to Jeffrey Dahmer
Speaker 1: a number of times looks wise, which has always been
Speaker 1: a pleasure.
Speaker 2: And you're both very handsome young men.
Speaker 1: Yes, thank you so much, and both still in the
Speaker 1: primes of our youth. Absolutely, it's still it's like you
Speaker 1: feel like there is a separation with him and what
Speaker 1: it just seems very like a very strange connection.
Speaker 2: It's it's baffling. Other than that, Like, here's the sad thing.
Speaker 2: We're gonna get to this. It's not just that he's powerful,
Speaker 2: and the other thing about him that makes him women
Speaker 2: so attracted to him is like bleak in a surprising way.
Speaker 2: But but we'll get to that. So famous women loved
Speaker 2: being spotted on Kissinger's arm one night he was sighted
Speaker 2: at the Trader vis in the Los Angeles Hill like
Speaker 2: flirting and holding hands with Jill Saint John, who played
Speaker 2: the very first Bond girl. What he dated the first
Speaker 2: James Bond girl on He needs Yeah, so you'll Saint
Speaker 2: John to be honest.
Speaker 1: Murder troll, Well, so horrifying part, But who goes from
Speaker 1: Bond to murder munchkin?
Speaker 2: I mean, Bond is kind of a murder.
Speaker 1: Like Yeah, but he's good. He's a good guy. Was
Speaker 1: he come on, ra always a good guy.
Speaker 2: So while they were out on this date, Jill Saint
Speaker 2: John and Kissinger were spotted by Ann Miller. Anne was
Speaker 2: a dancer, famous adnswer at the time. She approached Kissinger
Speaker 2: and quote in a friendly way. These are the words
Speaker 2: of biographer Walter Isaacson criticized him for having fun in
Speaker 2: public while our boys in Vietnam are getting their head
Speaker 2: shot off. Kissinger responded dourly, Miss Miller, you don't know
Speaker 2: anything about me. I was miserable in a marriage for
Speaker 2: most of my life. I never had any fun. Now
Speaker 2: was my chance to enjoy myself. When this administration goes out.
Speaker 2: I'm going back to being a professor. But while I'm
Speaker 2: in the position i'm in, I'm damnwill going to make
Speaker 2: it count.
Speaker 1: I mean, really avoiding the the centralization. I mean, at
Speaker 1: no point does he acknowledge that that is an unfair
Speaker 1: thing he's doing. He's just like, look, come on, even us.
Speaker 1: You know, psychopaths need to have some fun. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's it's I mean, it's nice to hear someone like
Speaker 1: approach him and and say something like that too. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And of course she approached him for not doing right
Speaker 2: by our gis and as opposed to not doing right
Speaker 2: aliens of Cambodian and Vietnamese.
Speaker 1: It's a morsel.
Speaker 2: It's a morsel out yeah, civilians, but yes, it is
Speaker 2: a morsel.
Speaker 1: I did something similar to the lead singer of the
Speaker 1: count Crows. I went up to him and said that
Speaker 1: his band was bad, and they drove me crazy. Your
Speaker 1: band's a war crime, you know, da.
Speaker 2: If you might have had more of an impact, if
Speaker 2: you'd criticized him for playing his music while our boys
Speaker 2: in Vietnam are getting their head shut off, you.
Speaker 1: Would have had some trouble parsing that out. Sir. Are
Speaker 1: you okay? Yes, yeah, I'm been playing your jam bag
Speaker 1: while I omer off there dying in the mud, face
Speaker 1: down in the mock. God, damn you. I think you
Speaker 1: have the wrong person. I know what you did, something
Speaker 1: about a parking lot that you are edging up on.
Speaker 2: My favorite conspiracy theory, which is that the Tonkin golf
Speaker 2: incident was engineered by the Counting.
Speaker 1: Crows in order to sell out. Several decades later we
Speaker 1: know it was.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely act that seems proven at this point. So
Speaker 2: biographer Walter Isaacson describes Kissinger as having quote the boyish
Speaker 2: glee of a senior on prom night in the twinkle
Speaker 2: of a middle aged rake. He regularly had quote striking
Speaker 2: blonde women come with him into the White House on
Speaker 2: lunch dates so he could show them off to his colleagues,
Speaker 2: telling a coworker on at least one occasion to eat
Speaker 2: your heart out. He's very much like bragging to other
Speaker 2: dudes about the fact that being Henry Kissinger has turned
Speaker 2: him into a sex symbol, as.
Speaker 1: He just had a gun and he was like, no, literally,
Speaker 1: eat your own heart.
Speaker 2: So it was known that Kissinger's notorious temper could be
Speaker 2: somewhat offset by tossing young women in front of him.
Speaker 2: When his staffers fucked up and had to give him
Speaker 2: bad news about a scheduling issue, they'd send the youngest
Speaker 2: female secretary they had to go and give him the
Speaker 2: news the White House Press Office. He's Diane Sawyer for
Speaker 2: this purpose.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. Eventually the two started dating. Oh my god.
Speaker 1: I mean, Jesus, she should not be allowed to still
Speaker 1: be doing news. I mean you need to have your
Speaker 1: news license revoked. You do you think he just comes
Speaker 1: pure poison. Oh yeah, it's like Sara, It's just like
Speaker 1: a gas slowly releases. Yeah, we could harn as.
Speaker 2: Henry Kissinger's come to get Europe off of Russian crude.
Speaker 1: They're going to drop the Kissinger goo on us.
Speaker 2: Diane Sawyer later told New York Magazine, quote, the power
Speaker 2: of Henry working a room is still seismic. All of
Speaker 2: a sudden, everybody wants to step up their game and
Speaker 2: say something he'll find interesting or funny. And you know,
Speaker 2: I don't know how much of this is just like
Speaker 2: his Now, he's clearly a charismatic man, right, he clearly.
Speaker 1: Has It feels like it's it's dinner for schmucks, and
Speaker 1: he's like the rooub Like it feels like it's not
Speaker 1: just doing as a bit. Everyone's just doing a bit.
Speaker 1: Like it's just like it's a congruing with the person
Speaker 1: that we I see and hear about that. You're like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, if you could get in a room
Speaker 1: with Henry Kissinger, just get right next to you will
Speaker 1: not leave his side. Yeah, obviously he's sexy. Obviously he's sexy.
Speaker 1: Who wouldn't want to fuck Henry Kissinger? Of course want to.
Speaker 2: Now this is all profoundly upsetting, but it gets Baker
Speaker 2: so it's Isaacson, Who's who's probably Kissinger's best biographer. If
Speaker 2: Walter Isaacson is correct, the reason all these women liked
Speaker 2: hanging around Henry wasn't just that he was powerful and no,
Speaker 2: it was not that he had, you know, incredible dick game,
Speaker 2: which I'm sorry for saying that in the context of
Speaker 2: Henry Kissinger.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 12: I are we just lost, we are we just plunged
Speaker 12: in the rankings, say fireball men, Yeah yeah, I'm going
Speaker 12: to quote now from Kissinger, a biography by Walter Isaacson.
Speaker 12: Kissinger's secret with women was not all that different from
Speaker 12: his one with men, whom he wanted to charm. He
Speaker 12: flattered them, he listened to them, he nodded a lot,
Speaker 12: and he made eye contact. But unlike the way he
Speaker 12: was with most men, Kissinger was exceedingly patient with women
Speaker 12: who wanted to talk. Very few men in the nineteen
Speaker 12: seventies actually listened to women. According to Betty Lord, Henry
Speaker 12: talked with you, talk to you seriously, and probed for
Speaker 12: what you knew or thought. He was someone who could
Speaker 12: and would make a Jill Saint John feel intelligent or
Speaker 12: a Shirley Maclin feel politically savvy, next to Ingmar Bergmann.
Speaker 12: He is the most interesting man I have ever met,
Speaker 12: said liv Ulman. He is surrounded by a fascinating aura,
Speaker 12: a strange field of light, and he catches you in
Speaker 12: some kind of invisible net. Over long dinners at public places,
Speaker 12: he would listen with sympathy while women talked about themselves,
Speaker 12: their lives, their hopes, and even sometimes their slightly wacky
Speaker 12: New Age philosophies. He would call them on the telephone
Speaker 12: late at night and talk for an hour or more
Speaker 12: at a time. He was a great friend, especially a
Speaker 12: telephone friend, always there when you needed him, said Jill
Speaker 12: Saint John. The dirty little secret about Kissinger's relationship with
Speaker 12: women was that there was no dirty little secret. He
Speaker 12: liked to go out with them, but not home with them.
Speaker 12: His fascination with affairs tended to be foreign rather than domestic.
Speaker 12: Henry's idea of being romantic was to slow down his
Speaker 12: car when he dropped you off at a date. Said
Speaker 12: howar he may have been. How in fact the most
Speaker 12: celibate lecture in Washington. People say, yes, he doesn't do
Speaker 12: anything with these girls. His friend Peter Peterson once remarked.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, what is happening is happening. So he's a
Speaker 1: little asexual. I don't know if him.
Speaker 2: I mean, he definitely had sex, he had relationships, he
Speaker 2: had kids, but I think the being seen with women,
Speaker 2: the being seen as a sex symbol, wasn't But I
Speaker 2: don't think he had a particularly high sex drive. I
Speaker 2: don't think he's going out and like fucking his way
Speaker 2: through like famous people. I think he likes being seen
Speaker 2: in public with beautiful women. And I think beautiful women
Speaker 2: number one he's safe, like he's not gonna pressure you
Speaker 2: for anything, and number two, he'll actually listen to you
Speaker 2: like he's it's.
Speaker 1: An extremely low bar. I mean, right, there is like
Speaker 1: something to that, you know, it's like he's he's doing yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean I think that even now with guys like what,
Speaker 1: I'll hear like guys talking like yeah, it's like, just
Speaker 1: be respectful and it'll probably get you, like I mean,
Speaker 1: it at least makes you not an asshole.
Speaker 2: I mean, he's he's he's you know what it is.
Speaker 2: I think the women in this situation are getting something
Speaker 2: out of it, right, Being with Henry Kissinger gets you
Speaker 2: in the news, it raises your profile. He's extremely famous
Speaker 2: and powerful, and you get taken maybe even more seriously,
Speaker 2: you know, as as a woman's who's a journalist who
Speaker 2: wants to be seen as kind of intellectual being around
Speaker 2: Henry Kissinger. He's a very serious public intellectual. It's good
Speaker 2: for your career. And also he's just men in power
Speaker 2: were so much worse than they even are now that
Speaker 2: he was like the best dude in that world you
Speaker 2: could hang out.
Speaker 1: He's kind of like it's almost like a Batman villain
Speaker 1: again in the sense that like he's got he's this
Speaker 1: evil piece of shit, but yet he is also able
Speaker 1: to hold a conversation and not be a prick, And
Speaker 1: you're like, wow, who could pull off such opposing courses A. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he treats women like humans. That's exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, literally that is Yeah, he will look a woman
Speaker 2: in the eyes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he is the st John feels smart. The guy
Speaker 1: is a magician.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he is the only he is the only man
Speaker 2: in power in Washington, DC who will like sit down
Speaker 2: with a woman and listen to what she has to say.
Speaker 2: And as a result, he is the primary sex symbol
Speaker 2: of nineteen seventies. Squaka bar so. I mean it's incredible.
Speaker 1: It also again is it comes down to what we've
Speaker 1: talked about before with him, which is media normalization and
Speaker 1: how it is just once you kind of create that bubble,
Speaker 1: most people just acqui yes, and then you're just like,
Speaker 1: you know, you kind of like Diane Zayer is just like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, well he's people don't throw bricks at him
Speaker 1: when he's outside, so he's okay now.
Speaker 2: Isaacson's gives an example of a typical relationship. Kissinger's friendship
Speaker 2: with Jan Golding, who's a New York socialite he dated
Speaker 2: from seventy to seventy one. She was twenty two, he's
Speaker 2: like fifty. And Kissinger had been given her name byke
Speaker 2: Kissinger had been given her name by Kirk Douglas. Kernie
Speaker 2: Douglas is the fucking hook up in this case. My god,
Speaker 2: So Henry calls her one day without warning and asks
Speaker 2: if she wants to come out for dinner. When she
Speaker 2: flew down to DC to meet him, she was met
Speaker 2: at the airport by one of Kissinger's military aids, who
Speaker 2: drove her to a fancy club where he was dining.
Speaker 2: The two sat down to eat, and midway through dinner,
Speaker 2: Henry got a phone call and stayed away for forty minutes.
Speaker 2: When he came back, he apologized and said that the
Speaker 2: Secretary of State had needed his advice. But whenever he
Speaker 2: was present, he paid co close attention to her, and
Speaker 2: he asked her her opinion on issues of the day.
Speaker 2: She found the overall experience heady. The two dated for
Speaker 2: half a year, without any romance ever developing isaacson Wright's quote,
Speaker 2: only once did they go back to his apartment, and
Speaker 2: when they arrived and aid was their fielding telephone calls.
Speaker 2: By Golden's count, the phone rang forty times. You couldn't
Speaker 2: do anything romantic in that place, even if you were
Speaker 2: dying too, she.
Speaker 1: Recalled, who's dying. Nobody's dying too. She wants to get
Speaker 1: fucked by the old weirdo. Yeah, she's into it. I
Speaker 1: must know my cock is horned.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, she said. I just don't think Henry was
Speaker 2: interested in sex when it came time to perform. Well,
Speaker 2: I just think he was too preoccupied for it. He
Speaker 2: didn't have time for it. Power for him may have
Speaker 2: been the aphrodisiac, but it was also the climax.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I know that's a line right there.
Speaker 1: That's what he was doing in the bathroom for forty minutes. Yeah, oh, Henry.
Speaker 2: So. On one occasion, Henry was more honest than usual
Speaker 2: with one of his female friends, Orianna Fialacci, who's an
Speaker 2: Italian author and a former World War Two partisan. She's
Speaker 2: actually a pretty fascinating person, he said. Quote when I
Speaker 2: speak to Lee Ducto, who is the Vietnamese negotiator for
Speaker 2: North Vietnam, I know what I have to do with
Speaker 2: Lee Ducto, and when I'm with girls, I know what
Speaker 2: I must do with girls. Besides, Lee Ducto doesn't at
Speaker 2: all agree to negotiate with me because I represent an
Speaker 2: example of moral rectitude, This frivolous reputation, it's partially exaggerated,
Speaker 2: of course. What counts as to what degree women are
Speaker 2: part of my life a central preoccupation, Well they aren't
Speaker 2: that at all for me. Women are only a diversion,
Speaker 2: a hobby. Nobody spends too much time with his hobbies.
Speaker 1: See for a minute there you're sort of thinking, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: if he's getting something out of female accompaniment, then in
Speaker 1: a way that is I mean, there's something kind of like,
Speaker 1: there is something kind of nice about the idea that
Speaker 1: a guy is just not like trying to fuck his
Speaker 1: way through, you know, beautiful women, like he is just
Speaker 1: enjoying the company of women. But then the more you
Speaker 1: kind of peel back, the more it just does seem
Speaker 1: to be a like he's just he's just backwards. He's
Speaker 1: a backwards person. Every part of him has just been rearranged.
Speaker 1: He's like a mannequin body of guts that fell down
Speaker 1: and was put back improperly.
Speaker 2: Now the surprise, Kirk Douglas cameo there. Make Key went
Speaker 2: on the fact that Henry was also very popular with
Speaker 2: the celeb set. During the party thrown for Gloria Steinem
Speaker 2: by the talk show host Barbara Hower, causing, you're told
Speaker 2: those assembled I am a secret swinger. Now, yes, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's the thing he claimed. I like an maybe it's
Speaker 2: a joke.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that means he's like, he's saying he likes to fuck.
Speaker 1: But all the evidence we have is that he doesn't.
Speaker 2: Like Yeah, again, I think that's him myth making.
Speaker 1: I think that's just saying that I like to go
Speaker 1: around and touch the jenitos of fucking people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you go to a swingers party in DC and
Speaker 2: Henry's just there putting a finger on things.
Speaker 1: Is it, okay, both of you at the pinkeetings. I
Speaker 1: get nothing out of this. It's fine, don't worry. I'm comeless.
Speaker 2: So Kissinger missed the announcement that he'd been nominated for
Speaker 2: Secretary of State because he was on a date with
Speaker 2: Norwegian Oscar nominee liv Oulman. He took Candice Bergen out
Speaker 2: on a date when she was a young star. She
Speaker 2: later said that he gave her, quote the sense of
Speaker 2: shared secrets, probably the same set he gave every anti
Speaker 2: war actress, Like he would act like, oh, I'm really
Speaker 2: against the war. I'm inside the administration, like trying to
Speaker 2: get us out of these things.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It's it's like, yeah, he doesn't. He's yeah, he's a psycho.
Speaker 1: Psycho. I mean, it's to say about it's just I
Speaker 1: mean that way, he's completely everything we've heard is completely contrary.
Speaker 2: He's the fucking devil. Yeah, yeah, it's just psychotic.
Speaker 1: But also you have.
Speaker 2: To credit like, I don't think Candice Bergen is lying.
Speaker 2: I can imagine how you're not privy at that point
Speaker 2: in time to any of what we have, right to
Speaker 2: any disinformation we have about how much he was planning this,
Speaker 2: about what a two faced liar. He was so maybe
Speaker 2: you believe. Yeah, this man is so intense intelligent and
Speaker 2: is so like emotionally competent. I can't imagine him being
Speaker 2: the architect of these war crimes. He must be just
Speaker 2: it's such a titanic system of evil and he's fighting
Speaker 2: alone to bring it down, and like.
Speaker 1: It must be why Hillary Clinton still hangs around him.
Speaker 1: He's like lose. I had nothing to do with then, Taylor,
Speaker 1: don't worry. We'll talk about that. Gareth. Oh good, oh great,
Speaker 1: oh god.
Speaker 2: So I'm going to quote next from Niall Ferguson's Kissinger
Speaker 2: quote for the Press. The story was irresistible. The dowdy
Speaker 2: Harvard professor reborn in Hollywood as Kerry Grant with a
Speaker 2: German accent. When Marlon Brando pulled out of the New
Speaker 2: York premiere of The Godfather, It's executive producer, Robert Evans
Speaker 2: unhesitatingly called Kissinger, and Kissinger obligingly flew up despite blizzard
Speaker 2: conditions and a schedule the next day that began with
Speaker 2: an early morning meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Speaker 2: to discuss the mining of Haiphong Harbor and ended with
Speaker 2: a secret flight to Moscow. A reporter asked, doctor Kissinger,
Speaker 2: why are you here tonight at the Godfather premiere? Kissinger responded,
Speaker 2: I was forced by who? By Bobby Bobby Evans. Did
Speaker 2: he make you an offer you couldn't refuse?
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 2: As they fought their way through the throng, Evans had
Speaker 2: Kissinger on one arm and Ali McGraw on the other.
Speaker 2: What I know, right, would you have called that when
Speaker 2: we started this shit.
Speaker 1: Like you've Kissingers, You've lulled us into this being okay,
Speaker 1: because at the beginning absolutely not. But now I mean imagine,
Speaker 1: honestly like a war criminal on a rent carpet going like, look,
Speaker 1: I didn't want to obviously, I want to stay in
Speaker 1: sel Vietnam. But Bobby called Bobby.
Speaker 2: Oh man, it's incredible. You know who else attended the
Speaker 2: premiere of the Godfather with producer Robert Evans and Ali McGraw.
Speaker 2: I can't wait to hear the sponsors of this show,
Speaker 2: oh deeply tied in Well, of course they are, right,
Speaker 2: Like they're the kind of people who get invited to
Speaker 2: hunt children on private islands off the coast of Indonesia.
Speaker 1: You know, I've heard it's an archipelago.
Speaker 2: I refuse to believe that Hollywood producer Robert Evans did
Speaker 2: not hunt children for sport at least once.
Speaker 1: There's just no way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, those glasses were just scopes, he laughed, like a
Speaker 2: man who has hunted the most dangerous game. Anyway, here's ads.
Speaker 2: We're back now. In our Cambodia episode I mentioned and
Speaker 2: by the way, we're done with the sex stuff.
Speaker 1: You made it through. Wow, I read my sweatpants, my
Speaker 1: sweatpants half ripped. God, please get back to the killer. Well,
Speaker 1: don't worry.
Speaker 2: In our Cambodia episode, I mentioned that the illegal bombing
Speaker 2: of Cambodia was leaked to the New York Times, and
Speaker 2: this was a big story, and it prompted Nixon to
Speaker 2: suspect that Kissinger's liberal staffers had been the ones who
Speaker 2: had done the leaking. And so after this gets leaked,
Speaker 2: Kissinger and Nixon work together to orchestrate a wire tapping program. Well,
Speaker 2: Kissinger initially ran the whole program. He was actually in
Speaker 2: charge for only like a day. Nixon decided pretty quickly
Speaker 2: that he didn't trust Kissinger after all, namely because Herbert
Speaker 2: Hoover expected that Kissinger was the one leaking things. And
Speaker 2: this is because Kissinger absolutely was leaking. Now, he was
Speaker 2: not leaking the bombing of Cambodia, right, But Kissinger had
Speaker 2: his favorite journalists that he'd leaked things to. Some of
Speaker 2: them were guys he wanted to write a book about him,
Speaker 2: you know, and so he wanted them to give him
Speaker 2: positive coverage. Some of them were like leaks in order
Speaker 2: to hurt other people in the administration.
Speaker 1: Because there's just.
Speaker 2: Constant it's Nixon's We're not getting into this enough. Nixon's
Speaker 2: administration is just like an endless series of power struggles.
Speaker 2: Everyone is fucking over everybody else, right, like that that's
Speaker 2: the Nixon administration, right, That's incredible. Yeah, it's really quite
Speaker 2: quite a tale. So, yeah, Kissinger's absolutely leaking some stuff.
Speaker 2: And that said, Nixon is pretty aware of who Kissinger
Speaker 2: is things too, And as Walter Isaacson writes, the real
Speaker 2: reason why he pulled Henry from overseeing the program was
Speaker 2: that the two were having one of their periodic feuds.
Speaker 2: Nixon actually made the call to pull Kissinger from the
Speaker 2: wire tapping program right before he flew to Camp David,
Speaker 2: and like stopped returning Kissinger's phone calls for a week.
Speaker 1: It's just like thing. It was like, it's like fucking
Speaker 1: nineteen year olds fighting. It's dull. I'm not here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they literally had just little TIFFs. You know.
Speaker 2: There's so much petty bullshit between Kissinger and Nixon, and
Speaker 2: they're very much like if you've ever been in a
Speaker 2: codependent relationship, the Kissinger and Nixon will seem extremely familiar
Speaker 2: because they'll like be fighting over some stupid bullshit and
Speaker 2: then things will get bad and they'll like come together
Speaker 2: and be like also collapsing at the same time as
Speaker 2: they're propping each other up.
Speaker 1: It's very funny. I got I mean, millions die. But
Speaker 1: I'm sorry that they said that. The well, I've been
Speaker 1: waiting for your apology. I can't stay mad at you.
Speaker 1: That's how this bomb Cambodia with. Look, we have too
Speaker 1: many people to kill to stem out at each other
Speaker 1: for this loan, So good over, Harriet Chef.
Speaker 2: Despite Kissinger Nixon periodically being angry with him throughout the
Speaker 2: duration of the wire tapping program, Henry Kissinger retained the
Speaker 2: ability to pretty much wiretap American citizens at command. He
Speaker 2: would submit names to the FBI, he would start a
Speaker 2: wiretap on that person. When the secret wiretapping program was
Speaker 2: leaked in nineteen seventy three and blew up into a
Speaker 2: big congressional inquiry. Nixon took the blame, defending Kissinger by
Speaker 2: saying it was his responsibility not to control the program,
Speaker 2: but solely to furnish information to the FBI. So what
Speaker 2: they claimed is like Kissinger wasn't ordering wiretaps. He was
Speaker 2: giving it the FBI information on people we thought were suspicious,
Speaker 2: and they would decide to wiretap, And it's a coincidence
Speaker 2: that all he would do was hand them a name
Speaker 2: and they would immediately start the wiretap.
Speaker 1: Right. It's like he would give the garment to the bloodhound,
Speaker 1: but he was exactly person.
Speaker 2: He's not hunting the child looking for him on go.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So it's also though, like this might be the moment
Speaker 2: that proves Dick Nixon was actually a better person than
Speaker 2: Henry Kissinger because he did like kind of take a
Speaker 2: hit for his team, not that he wasn't responsible for
Speaker 2: the wire topics.
Speaker 1: In the land of no respect, a man with one
Speaker 1: outs has on all.
Speaker 2: It was like a tiny, tiny dollar, if you will,
Speaker 2: of honors from Henry Kissinger. Yeah, and we just never
Speaker 2: see that or from from Nixon and we just never
Speaker 2: see that from Kissinger. It's kind of like saying that,
Speaker 2: like a cheese greater is better to fuck than the
Speaker 2: blade of a jigsaw.
Speaker 1: But you know, it's something I well know that now
Speaker 1: that I think about it. I mean, if someone laid
Speaker 1: it on the table again, right, yeah, well, cheese raider,
Speaker 1: that's great. This jeez, what do we say, gentlemen, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna drop drought. Let's get great.
Speaker 2: So here's how the secret wire apping program worked. Kissinger
Speaker 2: and another Nixon dude I think it was Haldeman, would
Speaker 2: submit names to the FBI, which the FBI viewed as requests, right.
Speaker 2: The transcripts of that person's conversations then would all be
Speaker 2: sent to Kissinger's death desk. So he got direct transcripts
Speaker 2: of every wiretap personally, and he would decide what to
Speaker 2: bring to Nixon. He wasn't the only guy he because
Speaker 2: again Nixon had multiple like people kind of competing through
Speaker 2: this program, right right, He's like the head writer. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So.
Speaker 2: James Adams, head of the FBI's Intelligence Division, later Total
Speaker 2: Biography that he did not think there was quote more
Speaker 2: or less wired tapping under Nixon than under previous presidents.
Speaker 2: What made things unusual, then, was that the wiretaps Nixon
Speaker 2: and Kissinger ordered were on NSC staff individuals that were
Speaker 2: part of the White House family in Isaacson's words right quote.
Speaker 2: In other words, previous wiretaps had mainly been on suspected
Speaker 2: spies potentially subversive union leaders in the like a regular
Speaker 2: program of wiretapping one's own aids was, according to Thomas Smith,
Speaker 2: another top f be I official, unprecedented.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, it's amazing, Like that's what's amazing, right,
Speaker 1: It's like, well, no, it's not unusual that as for
Speaker 1: this many wire taps. It's just normally on people that
Speaker 1: you're worried about, like attacking the country, not people who
Speaker 1: you've hired. The FBI is like, you.
Speaker 2: Know, we're okay with spying on dissidence, but they made
Speaker 2: a spy on their friends, and we feel gross about this.
Speaker 1: Henry Kissinger's wiretapping Nixon, Yeah, he's getting very caddy. Kissingers,
Speaker 1: just as you a wiretap on himself. Up, I love
Speaker 1: trust myself. You were joking, but you have accurately predicted
Speaker 1: where the story goes. No, what the fuck? This is
Speaker 1: such a chapter of American Trust Me as far as
Speaker 1: I could throw myself. Oh god, I am such a
Speaker 1: fucking asshole. Look at what I was saying. Oh my god.
Speaker 2: So these wire taps were all considered legal at the time,
Speaker 2: although the Supreme Court did later determine that they were illegal.
Speaker 2: It was kind of like one of these at the time,
Speaker 2: they were legal, and because of how gross they were,
Speaker 2: the Supreme Court was like, you know what, No, And
Speaker 2: thankfully the US never never wire tapped people again. That's
Speaker 2: the end of it. Famously, that's why Edward Snowden is
Speaker 2: famous for his reveal that no one was ever wire tapped.
Speaker 1: Again, that's why we don't know who Edward Snowden is.
Speaker 2: Yes, famous private citizen living in Ohio. Edward call a
Speaker 2: name out of the air, random guy. So a tremendous
Speaker 2: amount has been written on the subject of the wire
Speaker 2: tapping in the Nixon administration. I'm not going to go
Speaker 2: too into detail on it because as sleazy as it is,
Speaker 2: wiretapping your friends doesn't quite measure up to war crimes.
Speaker 2: Like it's gross, but it's also not that gross. And
Speaker 2: because it's super weird. Yeah, it's just like weird. It's
Speaker 2: a weird thing about them. There is something I should
Speaker 2: read here that reveals something meaningful about him.
Speaker 1: He's character. WILLIAMS.
Speaker 2: Sapphire was a New York Times op ed columnist and
Speaker 2: a Nition speech wise and a Nixon speech writer. He
Speaker 2: later said that Kissinger was quote capable of getting a
Speaker 2: special thrill out of working most closely with those he's
Speaker 2: spied on the most. So like, my Sapphire's attitude is
Speaker 2: like he was doing this mainly because he thought it
Speaker 2: was like kind of hot to be wire tapping a
Speaker 2: guy that he was working chasms.
Speaker 1: Yeah, finally, it's the power thing. It's the power thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: who knows he's he loves that.
Speaker 9: He's like fucking over someone he's just hanging out with
Speaker 9: and talking to him.
Speaker 1: They don't know he's it's.
Speaker 9: Like sliver, It's like, yeah, he gets it's this crazy
Speaker 9: thrill out of it. Yeah, he has secrets about them, like,
Speaker 9: oh god, it's so fucking weird.
Speaker 1: Going to that does.
Speaker 2: So he gets like yeah, that quote from Kissinger, power
Speaker 2: is the ultimate aphrodisiac. It's usually translated to him being
Speaker 2: like that's why women are so into me, right, because
Speaker 2: power turns people on. But I think it literally means
Speaker 2: that like he kind of gets off on exercising power, right,
Speaker 2: like that's his thing.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I can even fuck my friends over. Yeah.
Speaker 2: It is also worth noting that Henry wire tapped himself
Speaker 2: once he took off, as he had a secretary. I know,
Speaker 2: I know, but it happened. Once he took office. He
Speaker 2: had a secretary listening on all of his calls and
Speaker 2: take memo notes on his conversations. He also had a
Speaker 2: series of what are called dead key extensions added to phones.
Speaker 2: These are keys that were secretly added to phones in
Speaker 2: his office so that his secretaries and aids could like
Speaker 2: press them to listen in on calls without other people
Speaker 2: knowing and take notes on the calls, Oh Nixon. When
Speaker 2: Nixon would call Kissinger drunk, slurring his words, Kissinger would
Speaker 2: like wave all of his people like get in there,
Speaker 2: get in there, get in here.
Speaker 1: Like pick up the phone, pick up the.
Speaker 2: Phone, and then he would make faces making fun of
Speaker 2: the president while his notes is like aids listened it.
Speaker 1: Okay, I mean job, Okay, that's the coolest thing about.
Speaker 1: Take a step back and realize that Henry Kissinger is
Speaker 1: making fun of the wiretap he's called on himself while
Speaker 1: he's talking to the president who's blackout drunk.
Speaker 2: It's it's something else. War is not to minimize how
Speaker 2: fucked up you know the current administration to the previous
Speaker 2: administration was. But by god, America still has not reached
Speaker 2: the Nixon peak of craziness.
Speaker 8: We've gotten it in like pieces, a little bit company.
Speaker 1: I've never had like the full team togethering. Yeah, you can't.
Speaker 2: It's it's really hard to compete with Dick Nixon and
Speaker 2: Henry Kissinger.
Speaker 1: And I mean I talk about ahead of his time.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, his stuff age is great. Oh man.
Speaker 2: So Kissinger also used the transcripts he made to attack
Speaker 2: his coworkers and reinforce his loyalty to the president. When
Speaker 2: his colleague said something him that he knew Nixon would hate,
Speaker 2: or when someone made a comment agreeing with Kissinger on
Speaker 2: an issue, he would pass those notes from his secret
Speaker 2: conversations onto the president. So he'd hand the president like
Speaker 2: a transcript of a call he'd had with like a
Speaker 2: thing underlined that made Kissinger look good.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. From Kissinger.
Speaker 2: A biography quote, William Safire, who dubbed the transcripts the
Speaker 2: Dead Key Scrolls, said he once saw Kissinger altering one
Speaker 2: to shore up a point he wanted to make to
Speaker 2: the president. He had been chewing out a reporter from
Speaker 2: the Christian Science Monitor for writing a story that was
Speaker 2: unfavorable to Nixon. And doing so, he also tossed in
Speaker 2: occasional complaints about the perfidy of Secretary Rodgers. Since he
Speaker 2: was planning to send the transcript to the president, Sapphire
Speaker 2: said he had taken a draft and edited it, adding
Speaker 2: to the fierce loyalty of his own remarks, so he
Speaker 2: would like mark it up to make him like be
Speaker 2: more of a kiss ass kick to Nixon.
Speaker 1: I mean, fu incredible. Nixon's also like hammered. It's like,
Speaker 1: how hard do you have to work to convince this guy?
Speaker 1: You know what I mean? You hand him a my tie,
Speaker 1: Like it's easy. There you go. You're my best friend.
Speaker 1: I love you, Henry. I've never had a closer friend
Speaker 1: than you, Hank. Look at how much of your bitch
Speaker 1: I am.
Speaker 2: The existence of these transcripts was revealed by The Washington
Speaker 2: Post in nineteen seventy one, but Kissinger insisted they were
Speaker 2: just for the President's files. In reality, she used them
Speaker 2: for as notes to write his two books that he
Speaker 2: published after leaving power. But he was canny enough to
Speaker 2: know they had damning information. So when he considered quitting
Speaker 2: the Nixon administration in nineteen seventy three, he had them
Speaker 2: all shipped to a bomb shelter at Nelson Rockefeller self.
Speaker 1: I mean, listen, just happened. I never what you just said.
Speaker 2: Every third sentence you have to write about these guys.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like Magnet Fridge poetry.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he illegally hit government files and Nelson Rockefeller's private
Speaker 2: bomb shelter.
Speaker 1: It's just like it feels like, Rockefeller, may I use
Speaker 1: your bomb shelter. I need to put my biography notes there,
Speaker 1: of course, of course. And right, that's you know what
Speaker 1: I always say, my Bob shelters yours.
Speaker 2: These these are short stories, right, yes.
Speaker 1: Sure, yeah, whatever you need to tell yourself. I need
Speaker 1: I need them say, in case there's a nuclear war.
Speaker 2: So obviously this is very illegal. And when Kissinger decided
Speaker 2: not to quit the administration, he had a military liaison
Speaker 2: Cinda plane to pick them up from Rockefeller's house, and
Speaker 2: then he hid them in a bomb shelter under the
Speaker 2: White House. Oh, after he left him. No, there's no
Speaker 2: rules for these people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're fucking notes.
Speaker 9: They don't need to survive the fucking nuclear holocaust.
Speaker 1: How great, though, if a bomb is in coming towards
Speaker 1: the White House and they all go there and it's
Speaker 1: just stacked with Kissinger papers. Yeah, well this guy was
Speaker 1: a real piece of shit. This is awkward going to petish. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's just sitting in the corner. I don't think you
Speaker 1: should read those.
Speaker 2: So after he left office, Kissinger donated the papers to
Speaker 2: the Library of Congress under the restriction that they would
Speaker 2: not be made available until he had been dead for
Speaker 2: five years.
Speaker 1: Well he's been. He's been for five years. We should
Speaker 1: tell the raid him now. Who makes that deal.
Speaker 2: It's not a great thing, the Library of Congress.
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ Fie. By the way, most people, most people
Speaker 1: do like the after I die. He wants the five
Speaker 1: year buffer, which sounds a little.
Speaker 2: He wants time for people to get things out of
Speaker 2: the country.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I want to make sure i'm pure bone. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, Kissinger was also convinced that Nixon's chief of staff Haldeman,
Speaker 2: had Nixon wire tapped and Nixon sorry. Kissinger was also
Speaker 2: convinced that Nixon's chief of staff Holdman and Nixon had
Speaker 2: wire tapped him, which they absolutely had, so Kissinger was
Speaker 2: kind of tapping himself, but Nixon had also wire tapped Kissinger,
Speaker 2: and when he passed Haldeman in the hall, Kissinger would say, quote,
Speaker 2: what do your taps tell you about me? Today?
Speaker 1: It's almost remember that what was it? I don't remember
Speaker 1: what it was on where Lily Tomlin was the one
Speaker 1: ringy dinghy operator who keeps plugging in on it. It's
Speaker 1: almost like that with wire taps, where you're just like
Speaker 1: every wire is getting plugged across. Nixon's wire tapping Kissinger,
Speaker 1: who's wire tapping himself, who's wired tapping Nixon, who's also
Speaker 1: wire tapping Halderman, who's wire tapping Kissinger, is also wired
Speaker 1: tapping Nixon.
Speaker 2: And that's why we know so much about not just
Speaker 2: like the crimes they committed, but like what they were
Speaker 2: saying in the meetings while they committed the crimes. Yeah,
Speaker 2: because unbeknownst to Kissinger and everyone else, Nixon was also
Speaker 2: wire tapping himself, like he recorded every conversation that he
Speaker 2: had in the Oval office.
Speaker 1: Again is the most that that to me is like
Speaker 1: the one of the most. I mean, it's why we
Speaker 1: know so much, because if you are able to, like
Speaker 1: if Trump or I mean, if any of them, I mean,
Speaker 1: if you had the Bush tapes, like they would be
Speaker 1: fucking incredible. But it's also that Nixon recorded himself that
Speaker 1: was like okay, take him and everyone's like, the fuck
Speaker 1: are you drunk? And he's like, I am, actually, I
Speaker 1: am extremely I am so drunk.
Speaker 2: My secretary of Defense has a contingency plan and in
Speaker 2: case I try to nuke everyone, checkers ever.
Speaker 1: Been that drunk? No one has.
Speaker 2: So this was a secret until the Watergate scandal was
Speaker 2: really feeled at the end of nineteen seventy two. Kissinger
Speaker 2: was warned about this that like the Watergate story was
Speaker 2: about to break two months ahead of time, and he
Speaker 2: was horrified by the implications, namely by the fact by
Speaker 2: the things we've already gone over at length that he had,
Speaker 2: like he was on tape in these records agreeing and
Speaker 2: encouraging with Nixon's bigotry and his copious racial slurs. So, like,
Speaker 2: Kissinger is not involved in Watergate, so he's like, I'm
Speaker 2: not worried about that. I'm worried that everyone's gonna know that.
Speaker 2: I was like egging Nixon's bigotry on in order to
Speaker 2: kiss his ass.
Speaker 1: Yeah, amazing for him to be horrified, like of all
Speaker 1: the things he's done, like for this to be like
Speaker 1: it's it's always like the weirdest thing, but it's like
Speaker 1: for this, for him to be like, this could really
Speaker 1: damage my credibility.
Speaker 2: When he was asked about this later about like encouraging
Speaker 2: Nixon's bigotry, Kissinger explained that the things he'd said to
Speaker 2: Nixon were based on quote, the needs of the moment,
Speaker 2: rather than to quote stand the test of deferred scrutiny,
Speaker 2: which was a nice way of saying, I'm only racist
Speaker 2: around racists. In one of the most impressive feats of
Speaker 2: mental gymnastics and political history, Kissinger actually argued that his
Speaker 2: egging Nixon on was meant to protect the American people.
Speaker 2: Quote he was so much in need of suckor so
Speaker 2: totally alone. Our national security depended so much on his functioning.
Speaker 1: Uh, it's called yes and okay, he was Chicago school.
Speaker 1: It's called the Implympic pod. I mean again, to be
Speaker 1: able to get away with that argument, it just should
Speaker 1: start loud.
Speaker 2: Now, speaking of Nixon's functioning, it's probably time to talk
Speaker 2: a little more about Watergate. As previously covered. In nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy one, Nixon and his team, including Kissinger, hired a
Speaker 2: goon squad of ex FBI and CIA agents called the Plumbers,
Speaker 2: and asked them to investigate the leak of the Pentagon papers.
Speaker 2: These guys broke into the office of Daniel Ellsberg, that's
Speaker 2: the guy who leaked the Pentagon papers. He was a
Speaker 2: Department of Defense employee. They break into the office of
Speaker 2: his psychiatrist to try and steal records to smear him.
Speaker 2: In nineteen seventy two, one of the Plumbers, g Gordon Lyddie,
Speaker 2: was transferred to the Committee to re elect the President.
Speaker 2: The acronym of this organation organization was literally creep because
Speaker 2: satire has never happened even once, Like it's impossible, nope,
Speaker 2: over over Lyddy's team executed a wide, raging plan to
Speaker 2: illegally spy on the Democratic Party, which ended with them
Speaker 2: breaking into DNC headquarters in the Watergate Building in DC
Speaker 2: and bugging the phones of staffers. They got arrested almost immediately,
Speaker 2: like that night they get busted, right, that's like when
Speaker 2: this all starts. And so that's what like the fact
Speaker 2: that this, like the Watergate scandal in public knowledge starts
Speaker 2: is like these guys getting arrested doing a break in.
Speaker 2: He's a crime reporter named Bob Woodward, and on the
Speaker 2: case he was not a political journalist. He was like
Speaker 2: a crime beat DC reporter. But he hears about this
Speaker 2: break in and he's like, something's fucking going on here,
Speaker 2: and he winds up making you know, contacts with a
Speaker 2: guy who we later eventually, like decades later, learned was
Speaker 2: the associate director of the FBI. That's deep throat, you know, famously,
Speaker 2: this guy gives him information and the Washington Post under
Speaker 2: Woodward and Bernstein, right, he has a partner in it too,
Speaker 2: Like they're both doing very good journalism here. They start
Speaker 2: dropping articles at the tail end of nineteen seventy two,
Speaker 2: and a trial over the break in starts in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy three January, right after Nixon wins reelection, well Woodward
Speaker 2: and his partner Carl Bernstein were running down leads. They
Speaker 2: got in touch with another FBI guy and asked him, Hey,
Speaker 2: who kept authorizing all of these wire taps? That FBI guy?
Speaker 2: I said, well, Henry Kissinger. In a lot of cases,
Speaker 2: it's Kissinger, he's like our main guy calling us. So
Speaker 2: Woodward calls Henry Kissinger, who plays dumb at first and
Speaker 2: then tries to blame Holdeman for the wire tapping. Woodward asked, Okay, well,
Speaker 2: is it possible you were the one doing wiretapping Henry,
Speaker 2: and Kissinger says, I don't believe it was true.
Speaker 1: What.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's such a weasel answer. He's four years old.
Speaker 2: Woodward asks is that a denial? And Kissinger response, I
Speaker 2: frankly don't remember.
Speaker 10: I mean, it's kind of like it's it is kind
Speaker 10: of like nice to see the genesis because the I
Speaker 10: don't remember things just utilized so much now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like it's like one of the first like
Speaker 1: where you're just like, I think if I just say
Speaker 1: I forgot, I can go the way with this shit. Yeah.
Speaker 2: You can imagine a young Bill Clinton reading this news
Speaker 2: story and saying, I'm not.
Speaker 1: Sure why, but I think I'm gonna take notes on this.
Speaker 1: I remember, but I don't remember how that came to be.
Speaker 1: It's also it shows you, like how insulated they were
Speaker 1: in their psychotic little dome that once they actually take
Speaker 1: their tactics out of the real world, people like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a crime, and we have you. They're like, yeah, shit,
Speaker 1: fuck the president's drunk.
Speaker 2: So Kissinger admitted after that line of question that he
Speaker 2: might have given the FBI the names of some people
Speaker 2: who had access to leaked documents and quote, it's quite
Speaker 2: possible they construed this as an authorization. So once he
Speaker 2: makes this admission to Woodward, Henry starts to get looser
Speaker 2: and he talks about how he figured he probably should
Speaker 2: take responsibility for the wiretapping, and then he realized almost immediately, like,
Speaker 2: oh shit, I fucked up. And he asks Bob Woodward,
Speaker 2: you aren't quoting me, right, Like, he's like, this isn't
Speaker 2: on the record, is it.
Speaker 1: That's what it works too, right, you put it on
Speaker 1: the record, and then you're like record.
Speaker 2: Woodward says, of course, this is on the record.
Speaker 1: Like what the fuck?
Speaker 2: Like like, I never said this was off the record. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Kissinger insisted, well, I was only speaking on background.
Speaker 1: Quote.
Speaker 2: I've tried to be honest, and now you're going to
Speaker 2: penalize me. In five years in Washington, I've never been
Speaker 2: trapped into talking like this. If a journalist calls you
Speaker 2: and asks you questions. As the Secretary.
Speaker 1: Of State, you're calling us bff. Right, you just wanted
Speaker 1: to chat, right, I thought, how are you? What times
Speaker 1: have you committed bub Yeah, it's it's fascinating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, dumb, it's so dumb, dumb, and it shows what
Speaker 2: fucking tame little pricks the entirety of the White House
Speaker 2: Press Corps were, right, Yeah, because Kissinger thought he could
Speaker 2: get away with this and he finally encountered like an
Speaker 2: actual journalist for the ones, right, and just like thirty
Speaker 2: seconds with Woodward and he's blown wide open and it.
Speaker 1: Does not handle it. Yeah, he's just pissing his pay cry.
Speaker 2: You know what it is if you've seen those videos
Speaker 2: of like those fucking those tai Chi champions who are
Speaker 2: like in those videos fighting their students where they're just
Speaker 2: like flipping everyone around the room, throwing them and then
Speaker 2: like they fight an actual MMA fighter who just like
Speaker 2: takes them down in thirteen seconds.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's like how Segal fights where yeah, yeah
Speaker 1: it's Stephen Judo. Yeah it is.
Speaker 2: This is this is the moment for Kissinger. That's like
Speaker 2: when when Steven Sagall got choked out by Jean LaBelle
Speaker 2: and shot his past. All right, okay, I'm the start
Speaker 2: come on this could happen?
Speaker 1: Come on, no Well play fake.
Speaker 2: Next from Kissinger a biography quote. Woodward wondered what kind
Speaker 2: of treatment Kissinger was accustomed to getting from the press.
Speaker 2: He consulted Murray Martyr, the kindly soft edged diplomatic reporter
Speaker 2: who covered Kissinger for The Post. Well Martin admitted Henry
Speaker 2: was regularly allowed to put statements on background after he
Speaker 2: had made them.
Speaker 1: I mean it really it does. And what's so frustrating
Speaker 1: is that it's like, you know, they they've all kind
Speaker 1: of learned from the mistakes of this time in ways
Speaker 1: where it is it's kind of the same shit. I mean,
Speaker 1: everything is kind of a fluff piece. You're allowed to
Speaker 1: be in the White House Press Corps if you ask
Speaker 1: softball questions, you know, it like this this was like
Speaker 1: a major fuck up, and they all were like, well,
Speaker 1: the lesson we've learned here is don't let good reporters
Speaker 1: around you. Yeah, don't let journalists exist.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's one of those there's so much going on here.
Speaker 1: It really is. This is like we are peaking.
Speaker 2: There are ways in which, like, there are times when
Speaker 2: journalism does work that way. Right when I am like
Speaker 2: sitting down and talking to like a fucking dissident or
Speaker 2: a protester, someone who like might be targeted by the
Speaker 2: state or by you know, fucking fascist or whatever and murdered,
Speaker 2: and they like say something and then later are like, oh,
Speaker 2: you know, can I take that off the record? I'm
Speaker 2: worried that's gonna like reveal me. Yeah, of course, like
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna lie, but like, yeah, it doesn't. It
Speaker 2: should never work that way for cabinet level fucking government official, right,
Speaker 2: they can't if you agree ahead of time to make
Speaker 2: something off the record. Yeah, that that happens. That's like
Speaker 2: a thing that occurs. Although I think that's problematic too,
Speaker 2: But like they don't get to just take something off
Speaker 2: the record retroactively.
Speaker 1: That's not how it works.
Speaker 9: Yeah, And I mean it's just a care about his access,
Speaker 9: so they don't know about the actual story.
Speaker 1: They just want to talk to them again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they want to keep getting access.
Speaker 1: It is. It's like it needs to be a group
Speaker 1: of people need to say that this is all fun,
Speaker 1: but instead they're like, oh, what a great cocktail party.
Speaker 2: And Woodward, to his credit, there's critiques to make about
Speaker 2: Woodward later in his career, but to his credit is like,
Speaker 2: I don't give a shit about access. I'm trying to
Speaker 2: take down a president, Like I could give a fuck
Speaker 2: write this off here, you know. Like so Nixon eventually
Speaker 2: took the fall, as we've covered, but the issue was
Speaker 2: brought up again in nineteen seventy three when Kissinger went
Speaker 2: through his confirmation hearings to become Secretary of State. We
Speaker 2: don't need to cover the politicking he did to secure
Speaker 2: that job, but I should note all the fallout over
Speaker 2: wiretapping in the disaster in Cambodia didn't do shit to
Speaker 2: reduce Henry's popularity at home. In nineteen seventy two, he
Speaker 2: had ranked fourth on the list of most admired Americans.
Speaker 2: In nineteen seventy three, he was number one, largely because
Speaker 2: Harry Trump had died, which is also pretty bleak. Yeah, baby,
Speaker 2: we are, I.
Speaker 1: Mean, and that's when you're like, we deserve it. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you are that incapable of deciphering reality from fiction
Speaker 1: to some extent, you want to be taking advantage of Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're the rube who opens the door to the vacuum
Speaker 1: cleaner salesman. Yeah, well, okay, yet a shirt on my floor.
Speaker 1: I want to see how this thing sucks. You need
Speaker 1: my social Security number of course. Okay, a new promise,
Speaker 1: I get five hundred thousand dollars in the mail. Okay.
Speaker 2: So one congressman that proposed a constitution amendment to allow
Speaker 2: foreign born citizens to run for president because of like
Speaker 2: how much he liked fucking Kissinger. I don't like Henry.
Speaker 2: Henry received a figure at Madame Tussaud's wax Museum in London,
Speaker 2: which quickly became the star attraction. Miss Universe pageant contestants
Speaker 2: voted him quote the greatest person in the world today.
Speaker 1: Is it possible that we just put a heart in
Speaker 1: the Madame Tusso's figure and melted it and that's what's
Speaker 1: walking around now, Yeah, that's we just left it in
Speaker 1: the sun for a week.
Speaker 9: Like you bring up the media like this is just
Speaker 9: so like they just normalize monsters. They act like monsters
Speaker 9: are great people. Yeah, and people don't actually hear the
Speaker 9: fucking heinous shit that they're doing.
Speaker 1: No, and they just hear he's a smart guy. But
Speaker 1: it's because that's what matters.
Speaker 2: That's he can like quote smart dead people that they
Speaker 2: you haven't read, but you know they're smart because their
Speaker 2: name sounds vaguely familiar, and so you're like, well, this
Speaker 2: guy's read all these smart dudes. He must be a
Speaker 2: good guy, because smart people don't do bad thing.
Speaker 1: Well, and smart people like go out with reporters, and
Speaker 1: you know, you would just be like, look at Frankenstein
Speaker 1: at the Playboy mansion. Gosh, he's got those bolts on
Speaker 1: his neck and the girls love to twirl them.
Speaker 2: So it is perhaps not surprising, even though the Watergate
Speaker 2: scandal had built to a fever pitch by seventy three,
Speaker 2: that Henry Kissinger was a shoe in to be appointed
Speaker 2: as Secretary of State. On the day of his first
Speaker 2: Congressional confirmation hearings, someone in the press asked, do you
Speaker 2: prefer to be called mister secretary or doctor secretary? He replied,
Speaker 2: I do not stand on protocol. If you just called
Speaker 2: me excellency, it will be okay, oh excuse me, pardon
Speaker 2: and again, as a journalist, the proper response to that
Speaker 2: is to throw your handheld recorder at his face, like
Speaker 2: try to take a chair to.
Speaker 1: His nose like they did to Heraldo. You know, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: break his face. I'm not talking up on times. If
Speaker 1: you can just bow and call me on majesty.
Speaker 2: So Kissinger was extremely nervous going into the confirmation hearings
Speaker 2: because again, Nixon is being torn apart for Watergate right now,
Speaker 2: and he was expecting that he'd be interrogated about all
Speaker 2: the shady wiretapping he'd done. But as it turned out,
Speaker 2: all he had to do was lie and say he'd
Speaker 2: never recommended wiretapping. Everyone decided that was fine, and he
Speaker 2: was confirmed by Secretary of State seventy eight votes to
Speaker 2: seventy seven.
Speaker 1: Jeez. And here's the thing.
Speaker 2: Even among the people who voted against him, there was
Speaker 2: not always strong antipathy. George McGovern voted against confirming him,
Speaker 2: but he called Kissinger afterwards to privately endorse him, to
Speaker 2: be like, hey, publicly, I got to pretend I don't
Speaker 2: like you, but like.
Speaker 1: Ooh right, bro, I don't worry. Someday I'll be the
Speaker 1: president and I got my eye on you, Henry. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, honestly, that might have happened. Yeah, probably so.
Speaker 2: When he was sworn in on September twenty first, nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy three, a family friend presented Kissinger with a copy
Speaker 2: of the Old Testament that had been published in Firth
Speaker 2: in eighteen oh one for him to be sworn in on.
Speaker 2: Kissinger decided instead to use Nixon's copy of the King
Speaker 2: James Bible with I just open it.
Speaker 1: It's a bottle of bourbon. Oh sorry, it's actually it's
Speaker 1: use an Firth one.
Speaker 2: So alast for Dick Nixon, seventy four was an even
Speaker 2: worse year for him than seventy three had been. In
Speaker 2: July of that year, three Southern Democrats on the House
Speaker 2: Judiciary Committee announced that they were voting to impeach him.
Speaker 2: On August fifth, a transcript of taped conversations between him
Speaker 2: and Haldeman was released, which proved his involvement in the
Speaker 2: cover up of the Watergate break and proved he'd lied
Speaker 2: under oath. This was the nail in the coffin. On
Speaker 2: August seventh, Bury Goldwater told Nixon he would not survive
Speaker 2: an impeachment vote. Nixon had already made the decision to leave.
Speaker 2: He met with Jerry Ford, his vice president, and told
Speaker 2: him that he was about to be president. He urged
Speaker 2: Ford to keep Kissinger on as his secretary of State.
Speaker 2: Ben Nixon made his big announcement to the American people
Speaker 2: next from history dot com. After the speech, kissing your
Speaker 2: accompanied Nixon to his living quarters one last time. History
Speaker 2: is going to a called that you were a great
Speaker 2: president kissing you're assured Nixon. Henry the President said that
Speaker 2: will depend on who writes the history.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine a wasted Nixon showed Gerald Ford around, like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is the vodka.
Speaker 6: Put that in your wadies in the morning. This is pineapple,
Speaker 6: used to eat those with cottage cheese every day.
Speaker 1: Now here's a deck Nixon sacred.
Speaker 2: If you pour a little diet coke in the bourbon,
Speaker 2: they can't tell you're getting drunk at nine in the morning.
Speaker 1: When you're confused. Just not.
Speaker 6: When you're throwing up in the toilet and say something
Speaker 6: disagreed with you and it's diarrheal.
Speaker 2: The Secret Service agents have to let your puke down
Speaker 2: their sleeves.
Speaker 1: That's what I've been doing. This is the vodka room.
Speaker 1: This is the vodka room. And this is the vodka room.
Speaker 6: This draw this drawer, here's for letters and things like
Speaker 6: steps like that, And this is the drawer you can
Speaker 6: puke in. But just bend over and pretend you're looking
Speaker 6: for some I'm gonna be honest, I've been shitting in
Speaker 6: the fireplace a lot.
Speaker 2: It's hard to find the bathroom when you're turned in
Speaker 2: the oval.
Speaker 1: Look.
Speaker 6: Look, if you're worried, just lift this cushion up. This
Speaker 6: chair is actually a toilet with wheels such behind the
Speaker 6: ask trying to think what else Baser laws, you can
Speaker 6: wipe your ass with them.
Speaker 1: By the way, this is all being recorded. Everything is wait,
Speaker 1: this chest hair is actually a tape recorder.
Speaker 2: Kissinger's sorrow over his boss stepping down was sopped somewhat
Speaker 2: by the fact that right around the same time, he'd
Speaker 2: succeeded in overthrowing an actual democratically elected leader, doctor salvadoran Day. Now, yeah,
Speaker 2: we have We're not going to talk about this in
Speaker 2: a lot of detail because we have gone into detail
Speaker 2: on the coup against Diande in both our episodes on
Speaker 2: The Dullest Brothers into the School of the Americas. It's
Speaker 2: just like, not this is the thing to like cut
Speaker 2: out of our Kissinger story because we've covered it a
Speaker 2: lot before. But I will give an overview of Kissinger's
Speaker 2: involvement for the listeners who maybe aren't familiar.
Speaker 1: Robert, Yeah, I know we are all on the same page,
Speaker 1: but you're Daris or whatever.
Speaker 2: Salvadoriende was a socialist e dude who was elected in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy Like all kind of socialists the US overthrows,
Speaker 2: he was not nearly as radical as they pretended he was,
Speaker 2: but he was like solidly left wing the US back
Speaker 2: to military coup that overthrew him in nineteen seventy three,
Speaker 2: i Inde committed suicide and was replaced by General Augusto Pinochet,
Speaker 2: who tortured and murdered tens of thousands of people over
Speaker 2: the next seventeen years. So I'm going to be brief
Speaker 2: here and I'm going to read a summary of Kissinger's
Speaker 2: role in that kerfuffle from the Transnational Institute. Less than
Speaker 2: a week after Nixon received the disappointing news about the
Speaker 2: presidential vote, he decided to annul the Chilean vote. A
Speaker 2: quote widely attributed to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger explained
Speaker 2: to Nixon's morality, I don't see why we need to
Speaker 2: stand by and watch a country go communist due to
Speaker 2: the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too
Speaker 2: important for the Chilean voters to be left it aside
Speaker 2: for themselves.
Speaker 1: I mean, like you are, you need to be like
Speaker 1: so far gone to be comfortable speaking in that way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you you that's ghoulishly evil.
Speaker 1: I mean it's just like you could come up with
Speaker 1: a version of that that would also probably sound effective,
Speaker 1: but to basically be like, look, the people have fucked
Speaker 1: up voting. They've they've wrongly voted. Oopsie, poopsie. Let's we can't. Well,
Speaker 1: we'll do it for him. We'll figure out, I mean,
Speaker 1: we'll take care of this again. United States policy pretty much,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, all the time, and perpetuity.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's it's it's good.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And after the bloody coup that that Kissinger and Nixon endorsed,
Speaker 2: Kissinger pushed to recognize Pinochet's coup government and offered economic aid.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: He pressured international lending organizations to lend money to the
Speaker 2: new Chilean government. Yeah, he sucks. This is a thing
Speaker 2: that he did. You can hear a lot more about it.
Speaker 2: And honestly, Kissinger's was involved, but like the Doulas Brothers
Speaker 2: were a much bigger part of this specific thing. So
Speaker 2: check that out in our Dollst Brothers episode.
Speaker 1: All this with Raquel Welch on his arm, Jill Saint
Speaker 1: John I love the way you.
Speaker 2: Actually the woman he does marry, Nancy McGinnis, who is
Speaker 2: also a fairly prominent person, is a huge fan of
Speaker 2: the overthrowing of the Chilean government. Henry, his wife is
Speaker 2: like more hardcore right wingman.
Speaker 1: He has come to bed.
Speaker 2: Tell me about how you ignored the will of the
Speaker 2: Chilean voters, Henry. Oh, yeah, So I don't know much
Speaker 2: about the working relationship Henry had with Jerry Ford, honestly,
Speaker 2: Like they didn't spend a lot of time together. We're
Speaker 2: not going to delve super deep into it. There were
Speaker 2: like too much to talk about. Still, there is one
Speaker 2: thing I want to note about his relationship with with
Speaker 2: kiss with Nixon, Like, for the first several years that
Speaker 2: he's working with Nixon, He's desperate to go to Camp David.
Speaker 2: Any time the President invites him, He's excited to go.
Speaker 2: But then when the Watergate thing is going on and
Speaker 2: Nixon feels isolated and alone, Kissinger spends like the whole
Speaker 2: Watergate hearing time jetting around the Middle East and stuff
Speaker 2: doing diplomacy, and Nixon begs him like.
Speaker 1: Do you want to come hang out at Camp David
Speaker 1: with me?
Speaker 2: And Henry's like, oh, buddy, I'd love to, but you know,
Speaker 2: sounds so I just got so much worse.
Speaker 1: I'm swamped over here with stuff. You know, it's like
Speaker 1: such a wirmund gosh.
Speaker 2: It's amazing that there's a moment at this where you're like, oh, man, Dick,
Speaker 2: he did you dirty?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's not Yeah, you're such a friend to him,
Speaker 1: a little bit of sympathy for n Do you want
Speaker 1: to come to summer camp David with me? I can't.
Speaker 1: I could really use a friend. I broke my arm.
Speaker 1: I can't get any medic budgets or anything this summer.
Speaker 1: My mom said, so.
Speaker 2: Oh man, it's amazing. So yeah, there's so much to
Speaker 2: talk about. I will tell you. I will note that
Speaker 2: one of the first things that Henry did as Secretary
Speaker 2: of State for President Ford was to deliberately enable another genocide,
Speaker 2: which put him just one genocide away from earning a
Speaker 2: free coffee at the Pentagon Starbucks.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, he's close. He's close. He's close.
Speaker 2: We're going to talk about that, but you know, we
Speaker 2: got to talk about right now products and services that
Speaker 2: support this podcast. Finally, he including Starbucks, commit five genocides,
Speaker 2: and Starbucks will fund to six if it reduces the
Speaker 2: price of coffee.
Speaker 1: Bee make sure as a venti. Oh, we're back. So.
Speaker 2: In nineteen sixty nine, the US conspired with the Indonesian
Speaker 2: dictator Suharto to encourage the illegal annexation of West Papa
Speaker 2: through what was called the Act of Free Choice. This
Speaker 2: was a shameless propaganda exercise which allowed the United States
Speaker 2: to pretend democracy. Rah rah rai, you get the idea.
Speaker 2: Behind the scenes support by the US at the u
Speaker 2: WIN allowed Suharto to solidify his control on West Papa.
Speaker 2: This led to four decades of geniside policies which have
Speaker 2: killed huge numbers of the Popuin population. Six years later,
Speaker 2: Suharto had another fun idea. East Timor was nearby and
Speaker 2: near the end of a twenty seven year long process
Speaker 2: of being decolonized by Portugal. Having just been ruled pretty
Speaker 2: brutally in the name of capital, you'll be surprised to
Speaker 2: hear that the East Timorese people were somewhat sympathetic towards socialism.
Speaker 2: The leftist Friedland Freight Fretilan Fredolin Party began to gain
Speaker 2: ground as freedom grew near In nineteen seventy five, it
Speaker 2: had a brief civil war with the much smaller right
Speaker 2: wing Pro Indonesian Party. This freaked out Portugal, who pulled
Speaker 2: their last people out of the country during the fighting.
Speaker 2: Seeing the territory abandoned, General Suharto felt he had an opportunity.
Speaker 2: He and others in the Indonesian military began to complain
Speaker 2: to the Americans that East Timor might be used as
Speaker 2: a base for dastardly communists to inspire secessionist movements in Indonesia.
Speaker 1: Over in it's just like, you know, East Timor seems
Speaker 1: like it's going to be really bad. Oh, we gotta
Speaker 1: tell them, we gotta get rid of them.
Speaker 2: I'm like the side of this. Over in East Timor. Fritlin,
Speaker 2: the Socialist de Party recognized the fact that they were
Speaker 2: in danger. They had their oh we're in danger moment,
Speaker 2: and they declared their independence on November twenty eighth, nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy five, so they could ask for help from the
Speaker 2: United Nations. Everyone ignored them. Japan, a major investor in Indonesia,
Speaker 2: twiddled her thumbs. Australia looked away. This left the United
Speaker 2: States as the only power that could potentially stop Indonesia
Speaker 2: from invading more.
Speaker 1: Do we do it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, we did it. Everything's good. Now they're doing great.
Speaker 2: They're flying cars.
Speaker 1: Yeah. How many times do we have to be the heroes? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Another job well done for the United States.
Speaker 2: On December sixth, nineteen seventy five, on the eve of
Speaker 2: the planned invasion, Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger flew to
Speaker 2: Jakarta to meet with Suharto. The very next day, Indonesian land,
Speaker 2: Air and Naval Force is invaded. The timing is predominant,
Speaker 2: predominant enough that people have debated ever since whether or
Speaker 2: not Kissinger and Ford gave Suharto the green light here too,
Speaker 2: from a rite up in the nation. Kissinger, who does
Speaker 2: not find room to mention East timor even in the
Speaker 2: index of his three volume memoir, has more than once
Speaker 2: stated that the invasion came to him as a surprise
Speaker 2: and that he barely knew of the existence of the
Speaker 2: timeorees question. He was obviously lying, but the breathtaking extent
Speaker 2: of his mendacity has only just become fully apparent with
Speaker 2: the declassification of a secret State Department telegram. The document,
Speaker 2: which has been made public by the National Security Archive
Speaker 2: at George Washington University, contains a verbatim record of the
Speaker 2: conversation among Suharto, Ford, and Kissinger. We want your understanding
Speaker 2: if we deem it necessary to take rapid or drastic action,
Speaker 2: Suharto opened bluntly, We will understand and will not press
Speaker 2: you on the issue. Ford responded, we understand the problem
Speaker 2: you have and the intentions you have. Kissinger was even
Speaker 2: more emphatic, but had an awareness of the possible spin
Speaker 2: problems back home. It is important that whatever you do
Speaker 2: succeeds quickly, he instructed the despot. We would be able
Speaker 2: to influence the reaction if whatever happens happens after we return.
Speaker 2: If you have made plans, we will do our best
Speaker 2: to keep everyone quiet until the president returns home. Micromanaging
Speaker 2: things for Suharto, he added, the president will be back
Speaker 2: on Monday at two pm Jakarta time. We understand your
Speaker 2: problem and they need to move quickly, but I am
Speaker 2: only saying it would be better if we're done after
Speaker 2: we returned.
Speaker 1: Worst case scenario, I'll just say I never said this,
Speaker 1: and nobody will ever have a Trenscoo said anything. I
Speaker 1: mean to be scheduling it like a yeah, like a
Speaker 1: golf day.
Speaker 2: Can you crack down on the independence and freedom of
Speaker 2: these people and engage in a gena sudtle war like
Speaker 2: once we're back, there's.
Speaker 1: A lot that went on. Three or like four on
Speaker 1: Monday would be great, Tuesday would be unbelievable. Tuesday would
Speaker 1: like that's a lot of time. Yeah, I thought it
Speaker 1: was a Workout's right. Yeah, there's a lot of US
Speaker 1: fuckery in fucking Indonesia. Sorry, I'm not going to hear this, gentlemen.
Speaker 1: That's enough of that talk place the greatest country on Earth.
Speaker 2: You do have that, and Indonesia and the United States shaking
Speaker 2: hands over a burning East timor tattoo over your heart.
Speaker 1: Well, I would hate for that that speculation, and please
Speaker 1: cut that out, Sophy. Can we make a note that
Speaker 1: that should not be included in the episode. It seems
Speaker 1: a little incriminating.
Speaker 2: So Suharto's troops when they invaded east to More, which
Speaker 2: they did, we're equipped with the finest US made weaponry.
Speaker 2: Under the Foreign Assistance Act, such material could only be
Speaker 2: provided to nations who would use it exclusively for self defense.
Speaker 2: When this was brought up to Suharto, and when this
Speaker 2: was brought up to Kissinger, and he was asked whether
Speaker 2: or not selling arms to Suharto had violated the act,
Speaker 2: Kissinger responded, it depends on how we construe it, whether
Speaker 2: it is in self defense or it is a foreign operation.
Speaker 2: Back in DC on December eighteenth and a meeting his
Speaker 2: minutes are now to classified, Kissinger admitted that he knew
Speaker 2: that he and the United States we're violating the statute
Speaker 2: from the nation. And even more sinister note was struck
Speaker 2: later in the conversation, when Kissinger asked Suharto if he
Speaker 2: expected a long guerrilla war. The dictator replied that there
Speaker 2: will probably be a small guerrilla war, while making no
Speaker 2: promise about its duration. Bear in mind that Kissinger has
Speaker 2: already urged speech and dispatch urged speed and dispatch upon Suharto.
Speaker 2: Adam Mallik, Indonesia's Prime minister at the time, later conceded
Speaker 2: in public that between fifty thousand and eighty thousand Timorary
Speaker 2: civilians were killed in the first eighteen months of the occupation.
Speaker 2: These civilians were killed with American weapons, which Kissinger contrived
Speaker 2: to supply over congressional protests, and their murders were covered
Speaker 2: up by American diplomacy.
Speaker 1: Sough, I mean we did it again. We did it again. Gus.
Speaker 1: It really it really is like it's it's like a
Speaker 1: like a serial killer who just gets very comfortable with killing,
Speaker 1: gets kind of cocky about it, starts leaving clues. But
Speaker 1: in this case, there's no cops chasing anyone. There's nobody
Speaker 1: who's really trying to solve the case. It's like if
Speaker 1: the UNI bomber left his name on every package. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that was like, this is okay a return address, yeah.
Speaker 1: Kazinski Shack nine.
Speaker 2: Roughly three hundred thousand East Timmerise civilians, roughly half the population,
Speaker 2: were forced out of their homes and into camps during
Speaker 2: the fighting. By nineteen eighty, the death toll was at
Speaker 2: least one hundred thousand, and possibly as high as two.
Speaker 1: Hundred thirty thousand.
Speaker 2: Thomas Meanie, writing in The New Yorker, has tried to
Speaker 2: make sense of this all. Kissinger's sign off on the
Speaker 2: Indonesian President Suharto's genocidal campaign in East Timor was meant
Speaker 2: to signal that America would unquestioningly reward those who had
Speaker 2: decimated communists within their reach. In retrospect, the notion that
Speaker 2: everything America did would be duly registered and responded to
Speaker 2: by its opponents and friends seems like an expression of
Speaker 2: geopolitical narcissism. At the time, the thirty three year old
Speaker 2: Senator Joe Biden accused Kissinger at a Senate hearing of
Speaker 2: trying to promulgate a global Monroe doctrine. The Kissinger is
Speaker 2: that guide to where repeatedly terrible people will be like, well,
Speaker 2: you're in the right here, but only because you're talking
Speaker 2: about Henry Kissinger.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, yeah, He's like, yeah, it's like.
Speaker 2: In the next episode, we're gonna have a moment where
Speaker 2: the CIA is a voice of reason to give you
Speaker 2: an idea.
Speaker 1: Of with six and how many people have to be
Speaker 1: the voice of reason. I mean, it just is like
Speaker 1: he's like cocky. I mean, it's just they just no
Speaker 1: shit's given at this point to have no I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not like he's had a soul throughout all of this.
Speaker 1: But you would think that once you have a soul
Speaker 1: for such a long period of time, you would start
Speaker 1: to notice the absence of a soul and at least
Speaker 1: start to act like you had a soul.
Speaker 2: Well, good news, Gareth, nothing like that ever happens. Oh
Speaker 2: fucking great.
Speaker 1: Yeah we are.
Speaker 2: We're gonna have fun in episode six. But you know,
Speaker 2: now it's time to just chill out, you know, have
Speaker 2: a drink of just a nice sip of the blood
Speaker 2: of I don't know, East Timmeri's dissonance, and uh go
Speaker 2: watch the Theronose documentary. Yeah, Henry Kissinger get cooked by fucking.
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, you need only only like I forget
Speaker 1: who said it, but that's true. That's our hero. She's
Speaker 1: our hero Niko who was like, hey, yeah you can,
Speaker 1: we can do this with your blood at Walgreens because
Speaker 1: she got Henry Kissinger involved. And I mean just's he's
Speaker 1: not It's not like he's not a genius. There's just
Speaker 1: not a lot of genius. It takes to just be
Speaker 1: awful and indiscriminate. Yeah, he's just like he's networker of
Speaker 1: all time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and here's the thing. Episode six, we're going to
Speaker 2: talk about his political downfall because he does get his comeuppance,
Speaker 2: but it's from people who suck maybe even worse at
Speaker 2: least as bad as he does, and so there's no
Speaker 2: satisfaction in it.
Speaker 1: Like and he's also it's also it's like.
Speaker 2: Hitler had gotten assassinated by Hitler two, who had been
Speaker 2: like expanded.
Speaker 1: And it's also by people who are like they're there
Speaker 1: because of him, Like they like he had to walk
Speaker 1: so they could.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, exactly, Yes, there's someone needs to paint a
Speaker 2: picture of like Henry Kissinger kind of on the bow
Speaker 2: of the Titanic holding up Dick Cheney with.
Speaker 1: Our arms right red white. Oh that feels nice, that
Speaker 1: feels real nice, Henry, you are so you love your form?
Speaker 2: Let me paint you Kissinger walked so that Donald Rumps
Speaker 2: felt could stagger. Yes, Oh, but that's gonna be part
Speaker 2: six till then, Dave what Gareth.
Speaker 1: I want to drink? Like Nixon? We uh again, look
Speaker 1: at what capitalism gets U.
Speaker 13: Yeah.
Speaker 1: We we will be invading the shores of Australia searching
Speaker 1: for their WMDs, which we believe in north, South, East
Speaker 1: and West. You can go to dolloppodcast dot com and uh,
Speaker 1: I'll be also doing stand up over there, and you
Speaker 1: can go to Gareth Reynolds dot com for those stand
Speaker 1: up dates. And we're also touring America this summer. Sorry,
Speaker 1: we're touring the best country on Earth this summer, and
Speaker 1: you can go to Dollar podcast dot com for all
Speaker 1: that information.
Speaker 2: Now I should note here y'all that that you guys
Speaker 2: have an ongoing, uh an ongoing argument over over whether
Speaker 2: or not Gere is an appropriate nickname for you. Gareth,
Speaker 2: and I felt like maybe we could bring in a
Speaker 2: negotiator to help us, to help us deal with this question.
Speaker 2: So I'd like to introduce to the Paul doctor Henry Kissings.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I'm sorry, I said. I think gets great.
Speaker 1: I do look like a gooty a little bit.
Speaker 2: He's got his nice shorts on.
Speaker 1: He's got those nut huggers. You can see the outline.
Speaker 1: You can see the whole bread basket looks like a
Speaker 1: baby bird than the nest. No, but it comes a python.
Speaker 1: When the water starts. They should call me shout once
Speaker 1: the bombs hit the soil. I lived babies. I really
Speaker 1: hope people stop listening, so desperately I stopped listening and
Speaker 1: I'm talking.
Speaker 2: All right, everybody, all right, We'll see you on Thursday.
Speaker 1: So this is episode six.
Speaker 2: You know, we're what eight hours into talking about mister Kissinger.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we really meet me from eight hours ago. Buddy.
Speaker 1: It's like when Bill and Ted meet each other halfway
Speaker 1: through and they know another journey they're about to go upon. Yeah, buddy,
Speaker 1: backle up.
Speaker 2: So the things, the thing that Kissinger gets the most
Speaker 2: credit for that we haven't mentioned. We've talked about a
Speaker 2: bunch of the things that he gets credit for is
Speaker 2: bringing peace to the Middle East. He does get credit
Speaker 2: for being that guy. Obviously he did not do that,
Speaker 2: but he did play a significant role in stopping what
Speaker 2: had been a decades long cycle of wars between Israel
Speaker 2: and the Arab nations around it. Now, to call that
Speaker 2: bringing peace would be ignored ing a tremendous amount of
Speaker 2: ongoing violence against the Palestinian people. But Kissinger did help
Speaker 2: ensure like you know how, they were all these different
Speaker 2: like everyone would invade, YadA, YadA, YadA, there'd be a
Speaker 2: bunch of fighting. That doesn't really happen anymore. And Kissinger
Speaker 2: is part of why that doesn't happen anymore. Okay, The
Speaker 2: gist of it is that on October sixth, nineteen seventy three,
Speaker 2: on Yam Kapor, Egypt and Syria launched a coordinated assault
Speaker 2: on Israel that for a time threatened the state's very existence.
Speaker 2: Kissinger had not spent much of his time working on
Speaker 2: Mid East related stuff up to this point. This was
Speaker 2: partly because Nixon thought having a Jewish man negotiate with
Speaker 2: Arab countries would be a bad idea. It was also
Speaker 2: because Kissinger was kind of buried in Vietnam stuff.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: But by October of seventy three, negotiations with Hanoi had
Speaker 2: been concluded, US forces had stepped back from an active role,
Speaker 2: and Kissinger had been awarded a Nobel Peace Prize with
Speaker 2: his Vietnamese counterpart Lee duc To.
Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely, now, I can't. There's no counter argument. Absolutely no,
Speaker 1: he nailed it. I mean, now the Nobel Peace Prize
Speaker 1: really doesn't. I mean, they must hit sometimes. I'm just
Speaker 1: familiar with a lot of the nose, though.
Speaker 2: It seems mostly to be missus in my experience.
Speaker 1: When he got that, that's called the no. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And you know who felt that way, Gareth Lee duc Toe,
Speaker 2: who was also awarded the Noble Kissinger.
Speaker 1: I don't want mine. I don't want mine. Yeah.
Speaker 2: He literally was like, no, I'm not going to take it.
Speaker 2: The war isn't over yet. Like all he's done. All
Speaker 2: we've done is negotiate the US no longer murdering people
Speaker 2: on the scale they had been.
Speaker 1: And he's in charge of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And specifically he was angry because right before the
Speaker 2: armistice was signed, in order to try and force Hanoi
Speaker 2: to agree on some points, Kissinger orchestrated a massive nighttime
Speaker 2: bombing campaign on Christmas of Hanoi. They didn't bomb on
Speaker 2: Christmas Day, just the day before and a bunch of
Speaker 2: the days after, but it gets called the Christmas bombing.
Speaker 1: We'll hit sa jolly blood on my hands.
Speaker 2: So Lee Docta was like, I don't. I'm not going
Speaker 2: to take it Award for Peace with this guy.
Speaker 1: Fuck him.
Speaker 2: So Kissinger accepted it alone. Oh my god, he's such
Speaker 2: a cool dear. He's such a cool dear. Wow, more
Speaker 2: credit for me.
Speaker 1: I can't believe I'm the only one who got it
Speaker 1: this year. I must be really good at this stuff.
Speaker 2: So yeah, he's like the Kanye of the Nobel Peace Price.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, right right, Sorry, you did great, But Kissinger
Speaker 1: had the best war of all time, of all time.
Speaker 2: It would have been really funny if Henry Kissinger had
Speaker 2: like shoved Taylor Swift off stage.
Speaker 1: You had a great war, you did great with peace,
Speaker 1: but come on, you're talking about the kid baby.
Speaker 2: So by October of seventy three, Kissinger is free and clear,
Speaker 2: and ready to get it on in the Middle East,
Speaker 2: and this actually went better than you might think. Weirdly enough,
Speaker 2: Henry Kissinger was probably one of the fairest negotiators the
Speaker 2: United States ever sent into that conflict. In fact, he
Speaker 2: was more or less in constant tension with Israel because
Speaker 2: he would do stuff like try to halt arms shipments there,
Speaker 2: like during the amkipor war. Right Israel's on a backfoot,
Speaker 2: They're in real danger of being overrun. They want US
Speaker 2: weapons and like US arms and a bunch more F
Speaker 2: four Phantom planes, and Nixon agrees to give them to him.
Speaker 2: But Kissinger's like, we're not giving them anything until they
Speaker 2: can arrange for commercial flights to ship the weapons to them,
Speaker 2: because I don't want I'm trying to negotiate with Syria
Speaker 2: and Egypt, and if they see US military aircraft landing
Speaker 2: in Jerusalem to give the Israelis weapons, that's going to
Speaker 2: fuck up my negotiations. So like, he's actually really unpopular
Speaker 2: with a lot of folks in Israel because he does
Speaker 2: stuff like this. And in fact, Kissingers and obviously, like
Speaker 2: every US negotiator in this conflict, Kissinger is more on
Speaker 2: israel side than anyone, but it's probably fair to say
Speaker 2: he's less on israel side than any other negotiator we
Speaker 2: ever put in there, which is like some weird fascinating.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sounds like he's the most progressive because I mean,
Speaker 1: like obviously we have we could give a fuck now.
Speaker 1: You know, he's not a Zionist. For one thing.
Speaker 2: He doesn't have like there's not a you know, he's Jewish,
Speaker 2: but he's not really that.
Speaker 1: Like there there is some.
Speaker 2: Amount of, like as a Holocaust survivor, he believes strongly that,
Speaker 2: like you know, Israel needs to exist, so he does
Speaker 2: have that going for him. Again, he eventually agrees to
Speaker 2: ship them weapons on US planes after it becomes enough
Speaker 2: of an issue.
Speaker 1: But he like still is that moment of principles. The
Speaker 1: fact that there's like any of that at all is weird. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he probably had like a little Nixon on his shoulder,
Speaker 1: who was like, I know, you're just gonna be a
Speaker 1: jew about them. He was like, no, I will not
Speaker 1: devil Nixon.
Speaker 2: It's weird how plugged in you are to how Nixon
Speaker 2: reacts to everything exactly what the president.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh man, So Kissinger's best relationship in the Middle East
Speaker 2: wound up being with anwar sadat the president of Egypt.
Speaker 2: The two were legitimately good buddies. They would kiss each
Speaker 2: other on the cheek like they liked each other. Yeah. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: Kissinger and gold in my Ear, which was the leader
Speaker 2: of Israel, had a really contentious relationship. At the end
Speaker 2: of the day, Kissinger again would always side with Israel
Speaker 2: on existential issues, but he wound up giving them a
Speaker 2: lot more shit than you might expect.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: The fact that the US eventually sends in arms turns
Speaker 2: the war around for Israel, which allows their forces to
Speaker 2: deal decisive blows to Egyptian and Syrian militaries. But once
Speaker 2: Israel was out of kind of the period of most
Speaker 2: risk for them as a state, Kissinger starts to push
Speaker 2: back on them even harder. He's particularly enraged at the
Speaker 2: fact that they kept attacking while he was trying to
Speaker 2: negotiate a ceasefire. And again, his main concern here this
Speaker 2: is not because he just wants to stop the blood letting.
Speaker 2: It's really important to him to negotiate a piece and
Speaker 2: it be seen as Henry Kissinger brought peace to the
Speaker 2: the least, So he's pissed that they're fucking over his negotiations,
Speaker 2: and he cares more about his reputation than he does
Speaker 2: about Israeli military success.
Speaker 1: I'm forgetting about the people of Kissinger.
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly, the real chosen people. So when Israeli forces
Speaker 2: surround the Egyptian Third Army and encircle at violating a ceasefire,
Speaker 2: Kissinger is livid, and he's particularly angry. We're not getting
Speaker 2: as much into this aspect of his beliefs, but his
Speaker 2: whole thing in this period, the reason he organ like
Speaker 2: as we talk about in our China episode, this like
Speaker 2: three way diplomacy thing that he deals with China and
Speaker 2: the Soviet Union. He wants what's called a balance of power.
Speaker 2: That's his whole Thing's he gets a he's a big
Speaker 2: cold warrior. Obviously he overthrows a lot of communist governments,
Speaker 2: but he's not one of these people who thinks we
Speaker 2: can eliminate communism. Instead, he really wants like this balance
Speaker 2: of power, and he wants a balance of power in
Speaker 2: the Middle East between Israel and her neighbors too. And
Speaker 2: he's livid about in part that they violated the ceasefire,
Speaker 2: but he also worried that like well, if the Israelis
Speaker 2: wipe out the Egyptian third Army, that's going to mean
Speaker 2: Egypt is humiliated. And if they're humiliated, Sadat can't actually
Speaker 2: make peace and there's going to be another war. And
Speaker 2: I want to try and stop the next war, which now, yeah,
Speaker 2: we're so good fruit but he is like broadly on
Speaker 2: the right side of this.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Over the course of several chaotic days, he makes numerous
Speaker 2: trips between each of the belligerent nations and this war,
Speaker 2: negotiating with their heads of state, and one of his
Speaker 2: primary tactics is to mock whoever he'd just been talking
Speaker 2: to when he's in front of the next person, so like.
Speaker 1: He is that guy, yeah.
Speaker 2: When he's so when he's dealing with hafes asad Or
Speaker 2: and war, Saddat this means talking shit about the Israelis
Speaker 2: and often Jewish people in general to get on their
Speaker 2: good side. So when Israel violates that ceasefire, he has
Speaker 2: heard to complain in a meeting quote, if it were
Speaker 2: not for the accident of my birth, I would be
Speaker 2: anti Semitic.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. Wow.
Speaker 2: On another occasion, he says, quote, and I need to
Speaker 2: remind you this is a Holocaust survivor saying this, boy,
Speaker 2: any people who have been persecuted for two thousand years
Speaker 2: must be doing something wrong.
Speaker 1: Oh Jesus Christ, he fucking said that. Wow, Holy shit, man,
Speaker 1: are just we are just such fucking assholes. This is
Speaker 1: I'm on fine, I'm just lifting right now. This is
Speaker 1: so good. Someone writers down, I'm wire tapping myself.
Speaker 2: He kills at the clubs in Damascus.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2: And yeah, he is actually like really popular with a
Speaker 2: not all because there are other We have quotes from
Speaker 2: other people who are like particularly other Egyptian military leaders
Speaker 2: under Saddat, who are like, well, Saddat's fallen for it.
Speaker 2: He's obviously just saying whatever he thinks will make us
Speaker 2: like him, like he doesn't. Clearly he can't believe this shit.
Speaker 2: He's just trying to, Like, there are people who see
Speaker 2: through it, but he he's able to trick the folks
Speaker 2: who matter, which is in this case are Sadat and Hafez. Right,
Speaker 2: So all that aside, this period is again broadly speaking,
Speaker 2: the one where Kissinger does the most actual good. But
Speaker 2: it's worth noting that even when he's on the right
Speaker 2: side of things, I think negotiating an end to a
Speaker 2: war is generally the right thing to do when they're
Speaker 2: the war. But even when he's on the right side
Speaker 2: of things, his ego plays a massive and often toxic
Speaker 2: role in how everything shakes out. See, while all this
Speaker 2: is going on, Nixon is barreling towards impeachment, and a
Speaker 2: big part of why he's constantly over there, Like while
Speaker 2: all of the big milestones in the Watergate case hit,
Speaker 2: like when Nixon is like ordering the cover up and
Speaker 2: shit and doing the things that will get him impeached,
Speaker 2: Kissinger is always away, Like he's like very studiously as
Speaker 2: soon as the story breaks, like, I need to be
Speaker 2: overseas as much as fucking possible.
Speaker 1: So is it possible. He's competently trying to negotiate Middle
Speaker 1: East piece because he's trying to save his own ass
Speaker 1: and doesn't want.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is literally what's going on. Because he's he's
Speaker 2: not a dumb man. He sees that Nixon is fucked, so.
Speaker 1: He doesn't He's like, well, I can just be doing nothing, yes,
Speaker 1: And why don't I actually try to make this work?
Speaker 1: I guess I'm gonna trouble domestically.
Speaker 2: I mean that's it, Like he wants to because part
Speaker 2: of it is he doesn't want to be near Nixon
Speaker 2: because Nixon's toxic, and part of it is like, well,
Speaker 2: if the last thing everyone remembers about Henry Weill Nixon
Speaker 2: is going down is that he ended war in the
Speaker 2: Middle East, I'm going to keep being Secretary of State.
Speaker 1: You know. There's a friend of mine who had this
Speaker 1: theory when he was like he said when he or
Speaker 1: it might even be a bit I don't remember. Like
Speaker 1: when he's in like a ride share, he won't talk,
Speaker 1: and then the last two minutes he'll just take great interest.
Speaker 1: So he leaves on a real high note, and so
Speaker 1: it's like he's kind of like distant and not really
Speaker 1: doing much. And then the last two minutes it'll be like,
Speaker 1: oh that sounds great, well, good luck with your family.
Speaker 1: And then so that's kind of like he's just trying
Speaker 1: to leave, like, yeah, leave on a high note. So
Speaker 1: the last thing he's going to try to do is
Speaker 1: actually decent. After a bunch of bullshit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when I when I enter a party, I set
Speaker 2: off an ied at the start of it, so everyone's
Speaker 2: really like shaken up, but then at the end I
Speaker 2: handle it A six pack of beer, and right, that
Speaker 2: means everybody is like, you know, that.
Speaker 1: Was the guy who dropped the idea. Oh, come on,
Speaker 1: he's the six pack guy. In my opinion, that's who
Speaker 1: that guy is.
Speaker 2: That is how Henry kissing your handles everything. So yeah,
Speaker 2: now again. But here's the thing. The fact that like
Speaker 2: this is all existential for Henry right, ending the war
Speaker 2: in between Israel and her neighbors is like he knows
Speaker 2: he has to do this or he's not going to
Speaker 2: keep his gig. So not only is he trying to
Speaker 2: negotiate peace, but he can't let anyone else play a
Speaker 2: role in bringing peace to the Middle East, right, because
Speaker 2: this is how this is his job interview. And you
Speaker 2: know how Henry kissing your treats job. You've seen what
Speaker 2: he'll do for a job, interview, Right, He won't do
Speaker 2: to get a job.
Speaker 1: I'd like to see that.
Speaker 2: So this becomes a problem when while this is all
Speaker 2: going on, this Egyptian in his race general, You've got
Speaker 2: this massive encircled Egyptian army, the Egyptian general in charge
Speaker 2: of that in the Israeli general like meet each other
Speaker 2: in the field between their armies and like sit down
Speaker 2: and start negotiating a ceasefire and figuring out how to
Speaker 2: pull like they start like talk like people like it's
Speaker 2: one of these weird moments in military history with these
Speaker 2: guys are like, I think we can work something out,
Speaker 2: Like we don't need to be doing this anymore.
Speaker 1: Running, God, you guys been quiet? Shut up, shoot a bit,
Speaker 1: kill them quick.
Speaker 2: So Henry is enraged when he hears this happening, and
Speaker 2: he's stick.
Speaker 1: And he starts again.
Speaker 2: All these people, who, like in any other situation, neither
Speaker 2: like an Israeli general or an Egyptian general in the
Speaker 2: nineteen seventies, not guys you would expect to be the
Speaker 2: voices of reason. But because Kissinger's in the story, yeah,
Speaker 2: oh my god. So he starts maneuvering to make these
Speaker 2: guys shut the fuck up. He sends a letter to
Speaker 2: the Israeli ambassador asking what is Jarev Yariv's the Israeli
Speaker 2: general selling here? Tell him to stop. Suppose Jaiv comes
Speaker 2: out a great hero on disengagement. What do you discuss
Speaker 2: on December eighteenth, which is the next round of negotiations.
Speaker 10: Well, I mean, god, he's such yeah, I mean, it's
Speaker 10: just what a heinous asshole I mean, I feel like
Speaker 10: he could still tilt the credit towards him, but he's
Speaker 10: like I loved my finger, Prince Solio.
Speaker 2: Yes, I don't want to like get too into like
Speaker 2: what might have happened, because I'm not an expert on
Speaker 2: either Egyptian or Israeli military history. But you have to think,
Speaker 2: maybe it would have been good if like an Israeli
Speaker 2: general and an Egyptian general had like brought peace to
Speaker 2: the conflict, and like maybe that had like been part
Speaker 2: of like the military legacy in the area might have
Speaker 2: been nice.
Speaker 1: I don't know, you realize we're staring down the battle
Speaker 1: of a tragedy right now. I'm might not.
Speaker 2: Recognized as the one so Kissinger. A biography continues the
Speaker 2: story quote a Kissinger's test. Both Saddat and my ear
Speaker 2: reigned in their generals at the kilometer one oh one talks.
Speaker 2: That's like where this army is encircled the Israeli ambassador.
Speaker 2: Although a Kissinger partisan felt that it was largely a
Speaker 2: matter of ego, Kissinger's view was that if any concessions
Speaker 2: were to be made, they should be made by him.
Speaker 2: In It's recalled, he was very upset when he found
Speaker 2: out that things were actually being settled by the generals
Speaker 2: at kilometer one on one. We had to make them stop.
Speaker 2: Ego was a weakness of his, but it was also
Speaker 2: the source of his greatness, which.
Speaker 1: I might quit with a weakness is understating, yes, I
Speaker 1: would you call it a strike? Can we can we
Speaker 1: kill both generals? And if we're they need to find
Speaker 1: the generals. These guys are getting a long way too well.
Speaker 1: And I didn't that wasn't there.
Speaker 2: Listen, Dick, I know the Watergate stuff has you, but
Speaker 2: can we invade both countries?
Speaker 1: For sure? Complain camp.
Speaker 2: So to his sort of credit, though, the piece that
Speaker 2: Henry helped negotiate to end the am Kipper War would
Speaker 2: prove to be durable, and it's set up diplomatic relations
Speaker 2: between Egypt and Israel for the next time. There's this
Speaker 2: very powerful moment when like gold of my ear because
Speaker 2: like Sadak still can't talk directly to Israel. There's a
Speaker 2: whole like diplomatic thing going on, right. But he tells
Speaker 2: Kissinger to tell her like I'm taking off my military
Speaker 2: uniform and I'm never going to wear it again, basically
Speaker 2: like things do, Like this is a really like good move.
Speaker 2: In a lot of ways. Obviously that you could say
Speaker 2: this also like paves the way for nobody ever coming
Speaker 2: to help the Palestinians again, which is worth noting. But
Speaker 2: it does bring an into this series of like constant wars.
Speaker 1: So, yeah, what an amazing risk to take though to me, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you guys stop, We'll do my version. We gotta do
Speaker 1: it my way. Yeah, the Frank Sinatra of Middle East
Speaker 1: peace negotiations.
Speaker 2: That is kind of the reputation he gets because obviously
Speaker 2: this plays incredibly well for Americans, and so Ni Kissinger
Speaker 2: is seen as still this like massive hero even Wow,
Speaker 2: this is a big part of what he's so popular,
Speaker 2: even as the rest of the ed Men goes down
Speaker 2: into flames. Now, this inaugurates a period of what comes
Speaker 2: to be known as Shuttle diplomacy. That's a term you'll
Speaker 2: hear associated with Kissinger all the time, and it's him
Speaker 2: flying all these different countries in the Middle East and
Speaker 2: in Africa, him flying from like capital to capital for
Speaker 2: weeks on end, doing these negotiations where he's always the
Speaker 2: man in the center of things. Henry actually kind of
Speaker 2: grew addicted to throwing himself in the middle of international
Speaker 2: crises and flying NonStop between capitals to do these negotiations.
Speaker 2: It was this, and the popularity he earned from being
Speaker 2: seen as a peacemaker that guaranteed him to keep his
Speaker 2: job in Ford's cabinet. One of the few upsides to
Speaker 2: Kissinger's career prior to the seventies is that he hadn't
Speaker 2: really fucked with Africa to any appreciable degree. Now this
Speaker 2: is not because Henry Kissinger would have an issue with
Speaker 2: fucking with Africa, but it is because the US, like,
Speaker 2: we didn't have a huge footprint in the continent until
Speaker 2: the sixties.
Speaker 1: You know, that's just not there's so much, so many
Speaker 1: countries to ruin. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is like him learning Spanish. He just never
Speaker 2: found the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I look, anyone, I'm a little older, and I
Speaker 1: get the times. I can rule it, my god.
Speaker 2: So yeah, the US footprint in Africa started up when
Speaker 2: the CI in like the early sixties. I think when
Speaker 2: the CIA murdered or allowed other people to murder.
Speaker 1: It's a little unclear.
Speaker 2: Patries Lamumba, the left wing democratically elected leader of the Congo.
Speaker 2: The US backed a right wing general well, even calling
Speaker 2: over like right and left or less useful terms in
Speaker 2: this but we back a general called Joseph Mbutu who
Speaker 2: proceeded to spend the next couple decades robbing the country blind.
Speaker 1: It seems like a pattern.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it happened. It's weird that it keeps happening all
Speaker 2: the time. While there was other US fuckery in Africa
Speaker 2: throughout the sixties and early seventies, it stayed a fairly
Speaker 2: low EBB until April of nineteen seventy five, when Saigon
Speaker 2: fell to North Vietnam now known as just Vietnam. Nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy five was known by some in the media as
Speaker 2: the Year of an intelligence not because any particularly good
Speaker 2: decisions were being made, but because Congress was investigating the
Speaker 2: presidency over Watergate, and there was this big flood of
Speaker 2: public questions about clandestine foreign actions carried out under the
Speaker 2: ages of Cold War politics. A lot of the stuff
Speaker 2: we were talking about in episodes like two, three, and
Speaker 2: four had started to leak by this point, and so
Speaker 2: people are like, there's this big national discussion about like
Speaker 2: what the what should we be doing? All the should
Speaker 2: we have like a CIA like should we maybe? And
Speaker 2: there are like the CIA gets like there's a reforming
Speaker 2: of the CIA that occurs in this area. You can, Yeah,
Speaker 2: you can question the degree to which it mattered. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it may have made them less good at doing the
Speaker 2: bad things that they did, but not for lack of
Speaker 2: Try hard to imagine it's the reform in the CIA.
Speaker 2: Is the difference between overthrowing Salvador I NDE and those
Speaker 2: like us guys pissing themselves in Venezuela after getting like
Speaker 2: arrested by fishermen. For Henry Kissinger, though, the Year of
Speaker 2: Intelligence was a year where he spent trying to reorient
Speaker 2: in the United States towards a new anti communist conflict.
Speaker 2: His target this time was the nation of Angola.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: Angola is a mid sized African nation located on the
Speaker 2: southwest coast of the continent, directly under the Congo and
Speaker 2: directly above Namibia. It's close enough to South Africa to
Speaker 2: get fucked with, but not so close that they can
Speaker 2: just send troops right over the border. You know, which
Speaker 2: is a better place to be than directly bordering South
Speaker 2: Africa in this period. In nineteen sixty one, the people
Speaker 2: there decided to have themselves a good old fashioned war
Speaker 2: of independence, which lasted thirteen years, killed tens of thousands
Speaker 2: of people and only ended when a coup overthrew the
Speaker 2: dictator of Portugal. Now this coup was, by the way,
Speaker 2: very weird. Most sources will describe it as a left
Speaker 2: wing coup against the dictator. The reality is a lot
Speaker 2: more muddled. The guy who winds up in charge of
Speaker 2: Portugal on paper is a monocle wearing general who's like real,
Speaker 2: I love him, yeah yeah, and he's not really leftist,
Speaker 2: but the powers behind him are some very left wing
Speaker 2: army officers. They form a new democratic government which includes
Speaker 2: several elected communist leaders. So Portugal has like elected communist deputies.
Speaker 1: Now okay. Henry Kissinger flips.
Speaker 2: The fuck out at this. He is certain the country
Speaker 2: will fall to Soviet influence. Interestingly, like this daytant He's
Speaker 2: worked at with the Soviet. It's a big part of
Speaker 2: it is this idea that like, well, the Soviets have
Speaker 2: their sphere of influence in the East, and we have,
Speaker 2: like the West has its sphere of influence in Western Europe,
Speaker 2: and the Soviets kind of hold to that here because
Speaker 2: they don't get involved in Portugal. They don't like try
Speaker 2: to make push things further in their direction. Henry is
Speaker 2: like convinced they're going to and is absolutely wrong.
Speaker 1: Because paranoia from Nixon.
Speaker 2: He was like, well, yeah, yeah, Portugal eventually elects other people,
Speaker 2: like again the government stays fairly left wing by his standards,
Speaker 2: but like it does not, as you might notice, it
Speaker 2: does not join the Iron Curtain.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, it's yeah.
Speaker 2: Kissinger is just like, there's we have some quotes from
Speaker 2: He's absolutely certain that like they're about to go full Stalinist,
Speaker 2: because again he's wrong about most things. Actually, he does
Speaker 2: not have a good understanding of like what's going to
Speaker 2: happen anywhere.
Speaker 1: No, it's just almost at this point he's hung around
Speaker 1: so long that you're kind of just like, I guess
Speaker 1: he must. I mean you want to know about He's
Speaker 1: probably like You're like, he must know something.
Speaker 2: You I think it's worth looking at, like what happens,
Speaker 2: like Henry's expectations for what's going to happen in Portugal
Speaker 2: versus what happens. And then think back to Chile, where
Speaker 2: like Henry's like Aundo is going to lead to they're
Speaker 2: going to go full communist and it's going to be
Speaker 2: you know, no, maybe if had stayed in power there
Speaker 2: just wouldn't have been a dictator and things would have
Speaker 2: been fine, and and they would have had a lot
Speaker 2: less problems than.
Speaker 1: They But see the communist version on how many people
Speaker 1: die in the communist version, Yeah, probably less. The puppets
Speaker 1: that we put in power are not like these amazing
Speaker 1: like peacekeepers. It's just it's just like we everyth We're
Speaker 1: like the Midas of genocides.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So the biggest international result of the
Speaker 2: coup is that the new Portuguese government had no stomach
Speaker 2: for colonies. Right, they negotiate a treaty with the three
Speaker 2: largest militant groups in Angola in seventy five. These were
Speaker 2: the FNLA, the MPLA and UNITA. The non acronym names
Speaker 2: of all these groups are in French. I am I'm naughty.
Speaker 2: I'm not even going to try it, day, Dave, you
Speaker 2: can absolutely not. What you need to know is that
Speaker 2: the MPLA were Marxists, right, kind of Marxists. They were
Speaker 2: formed at least the organization had been formed by members
Speaker 2: of Angola's intelligencia who were Marxists, and Marxism had like
Speaker 2: a big influence on the MPLA. Unfortunately, Like yeah, meanwhile,
Speaker 2: like kind of. So that's one faction. The FNLA and
Speaker 2: UNITA are generally described as being right wing groups, but
Speaker 2: this is one of those things where like grafting Western
Speaker 2: political terms onto the civil war in Angola does not
Speaker 2: work great. All of these groups, even the ostensibly Marxist MPLA,
Speaker 2: are very tribal in origin, and by that I mean
Speaker 2: like they are based on specific tribal grievances and tribal
Speaker 2: like arguments right that are going on in the region,
Speaker 2: as opposed to like being clearly like, well we're pro communist,
Speaker 2: we're anti communists. Like that's really less of what's going on.
Speaker 2: We're getting shirts made.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: For an example of how useless a strict ideological it
Speaker 2: lens is here, UNITA was initially very left wing in
Speaker 2: its messaging, attacking the United States as quote the notorious
Speaker 2: agents of imperialism. UNITAS fighters were literally trained by North
Speaker 2: Korean soldiers, but by the end of the civil war
Speaker 2: in Angola they had been receiving arms from the Reagan
Speaker 2: administration for years. Broker via their paid representative, Paul manifests,
Speaker 2: Oh my god, what that's the kind of where this
Speaker 2: is where like United starts off being like we're going
Speaker 2: to end American imperialism. And by the end they're like,
Speaker 2: Paul Maniford, get us weapons.
Speaker 1: If you get next to this Manifold character, he is
Speaker 1: a good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just like to show you how weird this is. Technically,
Speaker 2: in the Angolan Civil War, Paul Manafort and North Korea
Speaker 2: are on the same side.
Speaker 1: I feel like fifty years old.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean, and by the end, it is
Speaker 2: fair to say that, like by the end of the
Speaker 2: civil war, UNITA's like leader Jonas Savimbi is calling himself
Speaker 2: an anti communist, that's his messaging, but he's less about
Speaker 2: anti communism. Then again, there's specific local grievances he has
Speaker 2: with the NPLA, and like that's more why they're fighting
Speaker 2: than that he like believes strongly in anti communism.
Speaker 1: Is he just knows that's how you get weapons, right, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's right. He's yeah, speaking the language, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: And when North Korea is training his guys, he's not
Speaker 2: into Jucea, you know, he's like wants the dudes to
Speaker 2: train his guys.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Right now.
Speaker 2: The FNLA is led by a guy named and that's
Speaker 2: the other usually called a right wing faction, is led
Speaker 2: by a guy named Holden Roberto who used to work
Speaker 2: with Savimbi before Savimbi formed United.
Speaker 1: I know this is a very complicated conflict. I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: They're generally described as like right wing, and they did
Speaker 2: receive aid from the CIA, so that would like okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: definitely right wing getting aid from the CIA. They also
Speaker 2: got military aid from China, Romania, India, Algeria, Zaiyir, the
Speaker 2: a fl CIO and the Ford Foundation, or at least
Speaker 2: aid of some sort. So again, like the sides here
Speaker 2: are just fucking baffling.
Speaker 1: They're like the tender swindler. They're working every side.
Speaker 2: Yeah, China, the CIA and the a fl CIO shaking
Speaker 2: hands over backing the f NLA.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like big brother. Wait you guys here two.
Speaker 2: Well, the Ford Foundation, Well, well.
Speaker 1: The m p l A.
Speaker 2: Which these again are the kind of Marxist guys. And
Speaker 2: if you're of the three factions, they are the ones
Speaker 2: who most do believe like a political thing that like
Speaker 2: we would recognize in terms of like left right sides.
Speaker 2: They are partly armed by the Soviet Union, which should
Speaker 2: not be surprising, but most of their military aid comes
Speaker 2: from Cuba. And we're not really going to get into it,
Speaker 2: but it's worth noting, like how substantial Cuban aid is
Speaker 2: to the MPLA. Cuba starts sending soldiers to Angola in
Speaker 2: November of seventy five, and by nineteen eighty eight they
Speaker 2: had more than fifty five thousand soldiers in the country. Wow,
Speaker 2: And like that's a trick. I don't know if you
Speaker 2: guys know this, but Cuba in the West coast of
Speaker 2: Africa not super close.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's a bit of a jaunt.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's also a long involvement. You know, they're
Speaker 2: in there more than a decade. There's a lot of
Speaker 2: commitment here, so as is generally.
Speaker 1: Actually Cuba now.
Speaker 2: To be a as is generally the case. All of
Speaker 2: the communists were not an agreement about Angola. The People's
Speaker 2: Republic of China did not particularly care about like a
Speaker 2: left wing struggle in Angola. They wanted to keep Soviet
Speaker 2: power at bay on a continent where they were starting
Speaker 2: to do so business themselves. So China and the US
Speaker 2: work together to support the FNLA and UNITA. This is
Speaker 2: exactly the sort of thing Kissinger had been going for
Speaker 2: when he pushed to connect the US diplomatically to China.
Speaker 2: I want to quote now from a write up by
Speaker 2: Maria Guda of Wilford Laurier University.
Speaker 1: Quote.
Speaker 2: This was part of Kissinger's grand strategy of triangular diplomacy.
Speaker 2: Triangularly diplomacy was essentially the US exploiting the relationship between
Speaker 2: communist China and the Soviet Union to create a three
Speaker 2: way to taunt between the countries, with the US at
Speaker 2: the helm. Kissinger was not pushing for covert operations through
Speaker 2: the CIA in order to elevate American standing in China,
Speaker 2: because Nixon and Kissinger were orchestrating something larger. This was
Speaker 2: to use China as a counterweight against the Soviets. Kissinger's
Speaker 2: emphasis on triangular diplomacy caused him to view regional conflict
Speaker 2: in terms of involvement on the Chinese and the Soviets,
Speaker 2: not in terms of a local struggle. So he very
Speaker 2: much sees this as a battle ground between different ideologies.
Speaker 2: But anyone who knows anything about the Angolis of Orbit
Speaker 2: knows that, like, no, that's not really what's going on.
Speaker 2: Like everyone is like everyone is in here, and it
Speaker 2: is certainly not like about what kind of political shit
Speaker 2: individual parties believe. Yeah, the site you can't graft these
Speaker 2: easily onto like a Western axis. But as Isaacson writes,
Speaker 2: Angola became quote a vivid example of Kissinger's tendency to
Speaker 2: see complex local struggles in an East West context. In
Speaker 2: all respect to Kissinger, wrote Jonathan Quitney in his study
Speaker 2: of the Angolden War, one really has to question the
Speaker 2: sanity of someone who looks at an ancient tribal dispute
Speaker 2: over control of distant coffee fields and sees it as
Speaker 2: a Soviet threat to the security of the United States.
Speaker 1: I mean, what a guy. Yeah, it's like, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's also I mean it's it's so again. I mean,
Speaker 1: the ego on this fucking dude to be able to
Speaker 1: just go into things, massive conflicts, have no clue and
Speaker 1: make it that binary and think that he's doing anything.
Speaker 1: I mean, he's just he's just so embolden.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's in bolden. He just like he's so arrogant
Speaker 2: that he's like, well, I don't do me.
Speaker 1: A favorite because some of you wear red shirts and
Speaker 1: some of you were blue, so they could kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: Let's do shirt skins. Huh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't need to, like I Henry Kissinger, don't
Speaker 2: need to like understand the actual dimensions of why these
Speaker 2: sides are fighting. Yeah, I can just assume that it
Speaker 2: grafts onto every other conflict I've ever cared about.
Speaker 1: Knowledge is weak, yes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And this is like, He's not the only American
Speaker 2: to be arrogant in this specific way about a conflict
Speaker 2: in Africa.
Speaker 1: Right, the last he's the last one. He would be
Speaker 1: the last that lost. Since then, so CIA.
Speaker 2: Funding for UNITA in the FNLA was initially quite low,
Speaker 2: but Kissinger pushed for an escalation, and soon the agency
Speaker 2: had poured twenty two million dollars in covert support for
Speaker 2: both of these groups. Kissinger felt they were thinking small though.
Speaker 2: He believed that after suffering a public defeat in Vietnam,
Speaker 2: US foreign policy needed a comeback. And yeah, baby, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 9: A better place than al everybody cares.
Speaker 1: What, everyone's plugged in. You're gonna love my new stuff.
Speaker 2: The problem with Vietnam is that it was too distant
Speaker 2: from American concerns.
Speaker 1: And that's it. That's the problem now.
Speaker 2: He yeah, So he believes that like Angla is going
Speaker 2: to be our fucking comeback tour. It's the equivalent of
Speaker 2: I don't know one other times Elton John did a
Speaker 2: did A did a farewell tour.
Speaker 1: I got yeah something like that. He's not his n Yeah, there's.
Speaker 2: A lot of similarities between Henry Kissinger and Elton John's
Speaker 2: musical Yeah Jets. Yeah, actually, tiny dancer that song is
Speaker 2: about uh is about Henry Kissinger.
Speaker 1: He is a tiny dancer. He's he is he is
Speaker 1: a little guy.
Speaker 2: So yeah, Kissinger wants to prove that the United States
Speaker 2: is still a global power, and he also wants to
Speaker 2: prove that Henry Kissinger has like is still a Secretary
Speaker 2: of State some teeth.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: He's just like seeded a bunch to the fucking in
Speaker 2: these negotiations with Vietnam.
Speaker 1: He's a big peace of mind to hand their Kissinger. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he is, like everyone is going to see Vietnam as
Speaker 1: an l for me, so I need a wind baby.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you.
Speaker 2: Could kind of see his attitude and Angola as like
Speaker 2: the powerful sociopath version of buying a sports car to
Speaker 2: impress like twenty year olds.
Speaker 1: Like when you're you know, an old man. Yeah right,
Speaker 1: he's his midlife war crisis.
Speaker 2: And the people around Kissinger are a lot less bullish
Speaker 2: about escalating involvement in Angola. Uh and in fact, this
Speaker 2: includes like the fucking CIA, but they had really big
Speaker 2: shoes to fill, to be fair, Yeah, yeah, they're just like,
Speaker 2: we don't want any part of this right now.
Speaker 1: Wow, you guys are really negative.
Speaker 9: Yeah, you guys, it's Angola.
Speaker 1: It's Angola. Where's the wind?
Speaker 2: Gotta be a fucking hole in one baby. In June
Speaker 2: of seventy five, Kissinger holds a meeting with President Ford,
Speaker 2: the Defense Secretary, the Joint chiefs of Staff, and the
Speaker 2: head of the CIA. They discussed the invasion of Angola,
Speaker 2: and while most of that meeting is still classified, we
Speaker 2: know Kissinger urged what he called a diplomatic offensive quote,
Speaker 2: if we appealed to the Soviets to not be active,
Speaker 2: it will be a sign of weakness. He played on
Speaker 2: stereotypes of Africa as mysterious and wild, claiming it is
Speaker 2: an area where no one can be sure of its judgments.
Speaker 2: Next Guda rites quote revealing his talent for manipulation. Kissinger
Speaker 2: used daunting and dramatic language to illustrate the situation in
Speaker 2: Angola as he saw it, by giving the impression that
Speaker 2: there was no way to tell how the Angolan Civil
Speaker 2: War would play out. Kissinger pushed forward the idea that
Speaker 2: the US had better get involved in Angola through tangible
Speaker 2: or covert means before it was too late. The US,
Speaker 2: through the CIA, needed to support the FNLA in United
Speaker 2: to to prevent the dominance of the Soviet backed MPLA.
Speaker 2: This view wholly disregards the idea that the Angolan Civil
Speaker 2: War was, indeed that a civil war. Kissinger was positioning
Speaker 2: Angola in a wider East versus West context.
Speaker 1: Oh my good, you've got biggie, you've got tupac he does.
Speaker 1: I mean, only the United States can want to be in, Like,
Speaker 1: only the United States can be sold on getting involved
Speaker 1: in a conflict. Or he's like, we have no clue
Speaker 1: what's going on, so we got to get hats, throw
Speaker 1: our decks in this one. Come on, guys, let's get moving.
Speaker 1: It could be crazy.
Speaker 2: This is one where like the US actually doesn't really
Speaker 2: want to get involved like this. Kissinger is the one
Speaker 2: pulling everyone else in here. He's a marketing wizard. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And based on his urgings, the CIA comes up with
Speaker 2: a plan called IA Feature. It was a covert parrot
Speaker 2: paramilitary operation in which US military advisors and special forces
Speaker 2: would be sent to Angola in a manner basically identical
Speaker 2: to how US involvement in Vietnam started.
Speaker 1: It is literally like, let's do that again, baby, let's
Speaker 1: see it. It goes pretty good when we do it.
Speaker 2: This this is how I get to bomb Namibia. That's
Speaker 2: not my vision. He has dreams of flattening the Congo.
Speaker 1: I woke up, I thought that I had done that.
Speaker 2: Now, despite the fact that the CIA did come up
Speaker 2: with this plane at his behest, there's intense resistance within
Speaker 2: the agency, a lot of whom think Kissinger has lost
Speaker 2: his fucking mind. And thus CIA director William Colby joins
Speaker 2: our pantheon of bad guys who seem reasonable because Henry
Speaker 2: Kissinger is involved, right, Kobe is like pretty rattled by
Speaker 2: how Vietnam ended, and also by the fact that there's
Speaker 2: all these congressional inquiries into like the CIA doing a
Speaker 2: bunch of other terrible shit. Right, They're actively being investigated
Speaker 2: right now. So this isn't Kobe being a good guy.
Speaker 2: This is Kobe being like, oh, I don't want to
Speaker 2: drive when I've got you know, shit in the car,
Speaker 2: basic right, like I'm holding right now, you know what.
Speaker 9: Honestly, any any other time, I'm just fucking Angol like crazy,
Speaker 9: Like I'm just fucking going nuts.
Speaker 1: But it's just not the right time. We got a
Speaker 1: right right now. Yeah, he's the guy who's like, he's
Speaker 1: like kissing is like on a casino floor, and he's
Speaker 1: been cheating, and like the securities gathered and they're whispering
Speaker 1: and pointing at him. He notices, and he's still playing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he keeps going, He's gonna let it right on
Speaker 2: Black one more time.
Speaker 1: How many times I have to say hit me?
Speaker 2: So the forty Committee, which again Kissinger heads, approves I
Speaker 2: a feature, but William Colby is like, okay, but I'm
Speaker 2: going to insist we actually go to Congress to have
Speaker 2: the funds appropriated for this secret option.
Speaker 1: That's branch. Those guys, what are they still you? Oh
Speaker 1: my god.
Speaker 2: So, while Kissinger argues for his covert operators, South Africa
Speaker 2: sends troops in to support the FNLA in United who
Speaker 2: would again originally been trained by North Korea. So there's
Speaker 2: FNLA troops received training from both South Africa and North Korea.
Speaker 1: Jesus, this is just a very weird war.
Speaker 2: So China has the reaction we're all having, and it's like,
Speaker 2: you know what, this is too messy for me.
Speaker 1: I need this right now, Like I got.
Speaker 2: Other shit going on, and they kind of bounce from
Speaker 2: the situation.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: The Soviets and the Cubans, though, extend more aid to
Speaker 2: the MPLA, who win the war handily and install themselves
Speaker 2: in the capital Luanda by the end of nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 2: So a few weeks after this, the CIA holds an
Speaker 2: Interagency Working Group meeting with Kissinger to discuss how to
Speaker 2: ask Congress to send in US advisors and like, at
Speaker 2: this point, the war is lost, and there's Kissinger's like, no,
Speaker 2: we got to get some guys in there. Come on, God,
Speaker 2: no one else wants this, right. Everyone else is like
Speaker 2: this seems like way more of.
Speaker 1: A hassle to the party at like two am. Come on,
Speaker 1: let's keep going, let's do shots. What do you mean
Speaker 1: the kegs tame.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the CIA is already puking from how much they've
Speaker 2: had to drink in Vietnam.
Speaker 1: Hit. Come on, I brought absinthe let's go.
Speaker 2: Who else, so Kissinger or so, Yeah, they have this
Speaker 2: meeting and like so Kissinger has a meeting with one
Speaker 2: of this like a guy in this with this a
Speaker 2: bunch of people, and then like they hold a separate
Speaker 2: meeting afterwards with the CIA about what Kissinger had said.
Speaker 1: So like, so basically the side meetings Kissinger now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So basically they present Kissinger with a report on
Speaker 2: like what would have to be done to send US
Speaker 2: advisors into Angola, and Kissinger reads the report and rather
Speaker 2: than giving a yes or a no, he grunts and
Speaker 2: walks out of his office. So after this, all these
Speaker 2: CIA guys have to sit down and decide, like, what
Speaker 2: does Henry Kissinger grunting mean?
Speaker 1: But was this a yes or no? This guy is
Speaker 1: really good at deciphering what Henry grunts mean. Well, gentlemen,
Speaker 1: it was a pretty long grun, which is never good.
Speaker 1: He it's a side grunt, which for Henry means he's
Speaker 1: a little agitated.
Speaker 2: I'm going to quote about talk writing about this meeting
Speaker 2: Kissinger a biography by Walter Isaacson. Everyone found this rather disconcerting,
Speaker 2: especially since Kissinger was heading off for Beijing. Well, someone asked,
Speaker 2: was it a positive grunt or a negative grunt? Molkahi paused,
Speaker 2: it was just a grunt, he explained, like umph, I
Speaker 2: mean it didn't go up or down stockwell, the agent
Speaker 2: in charge marveled as a group of Somber officials supervising
Speaker 2: the nation's only extant war sat around a table trying
Speaker 2: to decipher a Kissinger grunt. Molkahi provided his imitation of
Speaker 2: the grunt, once again emphasizing its flatness. Someone else at
Speaker 2: the other end of the table tried it. There were
Speaker 2: a few experiments, contrasting positive grunts with the voice rising,
Speaker 2: then a negative one with the voice falling. Different people
Speaker 2: attempted it well. Asked the CIA officer who was chairing
Speaker 2: the meeting, do we proceed with the advisors? Mokahi scowled
Speaker 2: and puffed on his pipe. We'd better not, he finally said,
Speaker 2: trying to decipher his boss's mind. Kissinger just decided not
Speaker 2: to send Americans into the Sinai. There were a lot
Speaker 2: of nods. The request for advisors was shelved. It was
Speaker 2: an amazing way to run a war, Molkahi said years
Speaker 2: later as he recalled the incident.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, by the way, this is they accidentally wrote
Speaker 1: on Home Improvement script at the end of this this
Speaker 1: is actually where the pilot that show came from Legim
Speaker 1: to toolman Taylor. It was it was like no, no,
Speaker 1: it was like okay, I let that that sounds a
Speaker 1: little more positive.
Speaker 2: It's just like, what a moment for the United States,
Speaker 2: all these fucking spooks with blood on their hands being
Speaker 2: like yeah, well like or like you.
Speaker 1: Know, I mean, because you do, at least at some
Speaker 1: point in your existence, for the most part, you do
Speaker 1: believe that when someone is saying the Central Intelligence Agency
Speaker 1: that it is really like working on intelligence and and
Speaker 1: is intelligent and is a body that is actually, you know,
Speaker 1: processing information that potentially you don't have access to, and
Speaker 1: instead they're just sitting around a fucking table going like
Speaker 1: do the grunt again, Jim, Yeah, again.
Speaker 2: It reveals And this is I think where a lot
Speaker 2: of folks on the left kind of mix up. The
Speaker 2: CIA is like hyper competent, and it's where a lot
Speaker 2: of people everywhere fuck up if viewing Kissinger is hyper competent, Like, no,
Speaker 2: they have a lot of power and they use it badly.
Speaker 2: But like at the end of the day, Kissinger doesn't
Speaker 2: have the balls to like say yes or no on something,
Speaker 2: and so he grunts and then all of these fucking
Speaker 2: again bloody handed monsters spend an entire meeting like repeating
Speaker 2: the grunt and trying to figure out it. It means
Speaker 2: yes or no, and there's no like it's so unchecked.
Speaker 1: I mean like you there and it's it still is that,
Speaker 1: but it's just there's nobody there to be like, hey,
Speaker 1: this is fucking nuts. Yeah. Instead they're like, do the
Speaker 1: grunt again, to try the grunt again? Yes or no?
Speaker 1: Dan have the best grunt, Dann, do it again, because
Speaker 1: I want to play it slow for everyone to me
Speaker 1: bro it's while I think it sounds ambivalent. Having known
Speaker 1: Henry for a little while, he's pissed.
Speaker 2: So the CIA's request for another twenty eight million in
Speaker 2: funding and the discussion of sending in advisors was again
Speaker 2: leaked to Seymour Hirsh. Congress cut off all aid. Obviously,
Speaker 2: he puts out an article about it. Congress cuts off
Speaker 2: aid to Angola. As a result of this, Kissinger does
Speaker 2: not get his way, but the CIA money he'd already
Speaker 2: funneled into Unit I helped the group stay alive. The
Speaker 2: Angolan Civil War did not officially end until two thousand
Speaker 2: and two. Although again this is one of those things,
Speaker 2: this is a really nasty civil war. It lasts a
Speaker 2: ridiculous amount of time. Kissinger gets a lot of the blame,
Speaker 2: but we should also note that like Paul Maniford is
Speaker 2: much more on those.
Speaker 1: Like he is the guy.
Speaker 2: Manifort's the guy who brings Savimbi to DC and gets
Speaker 2: Reagan to send a fuck load of weapons over to
Speaker 2: like really escalate things.
Speaker 1: Thank god for Reagan.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank god for Reagan. But it is amazing that
Speaker 2: this fucking goes on until two thousand and two.
Speaker 1: Crazy. Yeah, what a legacy, What a legacy.
Speaker 2: So I have teased y'all that Kissinger has a Rhodesia connection,
Speaker 2: and yet again, the funniest thing about this is that
Speaker 2: it's one of the least fucked up things he's ever
Speaker 2: involved in. But the story is kind of funny, so
Speaker 2: I'm gonna tell it anyway. Okay, So in Rhodesia, you've
Speaker 2: got this country, we're about eight percent of the population
Speaker 2: at the height of like white population in Rhodesia, about
Speaker 2: eight percent of them are white, but they hold effectively
Speaker 2: one hundred percent of the political power. This obviously is
Speaker 2: not something a lot of the black people living there
Speaker 2: like sure for reasons I don't think I need to explain.
Speaker 2: So some of them decide to fight back, and there's
Speaker 2: a number of rebel groups and soon an ugly insurgent
Speaker 2: war between the Rhodesian government, which by the way, is
Speaker 2: an international pariah, right, they're like actually not supposed to
Speaker 2: exist basically, so no one can legally sell them arms.
Speaker 2: So everything has to get like smuggled through South Africa,
Speaker 2: and the soldier of Fortune magazine winds up sending a
Speaker 2: bunch of fighters over.
Speaker 1: William F.
Speaker 2: Buckley Junior or William F. Buckley raises money for them.
Speaker 1: YadA YadA, YadA. Very nasty war.
Speaker 2: We've talked about it in other episodes, the go fundme,
Speaker 2: Yeah it is. It is a go fund me war.
Speaker 2: So by the time Kissinger is in office, the white
Speaker 2: minority government of Rhodesia has spent years locked into the
Speaker 2: losing side of a grinding insurgent campaign. The international community
Speaker 2: widely condemns Rhodesia as an apartheid state, and there's a
Speaker 2: bunch of arms embargoes, and in fact, pretty much everyone
Speaker 2: hates Rhodesia except for South Africa and the US right
Speaker 2: wing who see the rhodes as anti communist crusaders. Sure,
Speaker 2: Kissinger was locked into an awkward position here. He wanted
Speaker 2: to negotiate an end to the fighting and an end
Speaker 2: to the white supremacist government of Rhodesia, but he also
Speaker 2: doesn't want to piss off his right wing base too much.
Speaker 1: You know, this is like a really messy situation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so policy towards Rhodesia in the Nixon years. There's
Speaker 2: a plan Nixon approved through South Africa in nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: nine that is like US policy in Rhodesia for nearly
Speaker 2: a decade, and it is literally called I am sorry
Speaker 2: for saying this, but Nixon calls US plans like the
Speaker 2: US stance towards Rhodesia, quote the tar Baby option.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, got dust on the podcast.
Speaker 9: Oh my god, there's no stream of white supremacy through American.
Speaker 2: Now, this was the one time it's like I can't
Speaker 2: believe the guy fucking recorded himself for like, this is.
Speaker 1: Not just recorded himself.
Speaker 2: This isn't just like Nixon saying a slur in a
Speaker 2: conversation with his buddy.
Speaker 1: This is official US government. Yeah, yeah, we write this
Speaker 1: out places like Okay, I'll hand it in if you're sure,
Speaker 1: mister president. It's pretty good to me. And this is
Speaker 1: this is not just towards Rhodesia.
Speaker 2: This is towards all of like South Africa, to these
Speaker 2: like white minority governments in Africa. And the premise is
Speaker 2: that quote, the whites are here to stay and the
Speaker 2: only way that constructive change can come is through them.
Speaker 1: So it's so and it really hasn't changed that much.
Speaker 1: We just have fancier titles. Yeah, we don't put the
Speaker 1: slurs right in the title. Yeah. No, we don't regard
Speaker 1: the press it and we don't put the slurs in
Speaker 1: the title.
Speaker 2: So the policy is sold to American liberals and moderates
Speaker 2: by basically saying the only way to liberate Black Africans
Speaker 2: is to improve their economic outcomes through trade, and that
Speaker 2: means dealing with the white governments.
Speaker 1: Right, just yeah, I mean it tech. We've just changed
Speaker 1: it to tech essentially.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we would maintain the document declared public opposition to
Speaker 2: racial repression, but relax political isolation and economic restrictions on
Speaker 2: the white states.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's fucking crazy, Like, you know, the problem
Speaker 1: here is that people don't like the eight percent white
Speaker 1: people that run the entire fucking place.
Speaker 2: It's one of those we continue and we'll always have
Speaker 2: debates over like sanctions and like when they're good.
Speaker 1: And bad ideas.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but the argument here is that, like, we can't
Speaker 2: sanction South Africa in Rhodesia because it'll hurt black people.
Speaker 2: And the degree to which that's a lie is that, like, well,
Speaker 2: you're saying we have to start selling them fucking weapons
Speaker 2: so that they can oppress black people in order to
Speaker 2: improve economic.
Speaker 1: Outcomes for black people.
Speaker 2: And perhaps that's fucking insane. Yeah, it's a little more
Speaker 2: nuanced than that, by not by a lot.
Speaker 1: So much, not much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, to his credit, when Nixon is out and Ford
Speaker 2: is in, Kissinger kills the racial slur option and he
Speaker 2: authors a new plan, one that is a lot better
Speaker 2: and that is actually focused on spirited opposition to white
Speaker 2: minority rule in Rhodesia. Kissinger gives a big speech in
Speaker 2: Lusaka that immediately enrages the right wing of the Republican Party. Basically,
Speaker 2: he's like, our plant, like under Ford, we want to
Speaker 2: bring an end to the government in Rhodesia, like his.
Speaker 1: Government can unbelievable.
Speaker 2: Yes, Ronald Reagan, Ronald seven percent of the populace. You
Speaker 2: can't disenfranchise seven percent of Rhodesia.
Speaker 1: Have you seen the color of their goddamn skin.
Speaker 2: That is essentially what Ronald Reagan says. He denounces Kissinger's
Speaker 2: plan is undercutting the possibility of a quote just an
Speaker 2: order release settlement and argues that it will provoke a
Speaker 2: massacre of white people.
Speaker 1: Boy, So, I mean, you want to have a head
Speaker 1: popping moment. Try to find a good guy in a
Speaker 1: Reagan Kissinger debate. It is. It is an amazing fight.
Speaker 2: It's just like, well, yeah, I hate everyone involved in this.
Speaker 1: We should pay more attention to the white people. I
Speaker 1: think we need to be careful. I feel like you're
Speaker 1: both conning me into something. I mean, you guys are
Speaker 1: a good cop, bad coping, and you're working for the
Speaker 1: same outcome.
Speaker 2: Look, Henry, I'm not one hundred percent sure why I
Speaker 2: think you're wrong in this, but you must be.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The other guy's got to be wrong too, though, So
Speaker 2: I don't really know what.
Speaker 1: To do here. Don't trust Reagan and hate him. But Kissinger,
Speaker 1: you're the worst person on the planet. So i'd call
Speaker 1: a bit of a nickel.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a doozy of an issue.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna need to go on the other room and
Speaker 1: do some grunning.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so he yeah, what's happening here is that Kissinger
Speaker 2: is trying to wrench US government policy in Africa away
Speaker 2: from supporting explicitly racist regimes in Africa and Reagan.
Speaker 1: He's trying to get like into a country club or something.
Speaker 1: There's got to be some a well, I.
Speaker 2: Mean, obviously for the same reason he does anything right.
Speaker 2: He wants to be seen as being the guy who
Speaker 2: negotiates right into these big issues, and he's trying to
Speaker 2: I think he recognizes by this point that like, well,
Speaker 2: Republicans aren't going to stay in power forever, but I,
Speaker 2: Henry Kissinger want to have a shot at being in
Speaker 2: power still, and maybe if I, if I get rid
Speaker 2: of this bad government Rhodesia, people will be like Henri
Speaker 2: que let's give him a gig. You know.
Speaker 13: He accidentally stumbles into yes, the proper outcome because personally
Speaker 13: he wants to end it, and so he sees the
Speaker 13: way to end it is actually the way that's good.
Speaker 1: We're lining up Henry's personal interests with a prudent solution,
Speaker 1: and happened that eclipse is very rare.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's he's like a guy who like stops a
Speaker 2: home invader from murdering a family, but it's later found
Speaker 2: out that it's because he was hitting on a fifteen
Speaker 2: year old girl, like he was trying to.
Speaker 1: Flirt with their daughter and stuff like it. It's like
Speaker 1: that sort of situation where it's like, well, good, I guess,
Speaker 1: like he stops a robbery because he was peeping through
Speaker 1: a window that he fell through.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, yeah, it is. It is hard to find
Speaker 2: the moral lesson to take out of this here. So yeah,
Speaker 2: obviously the Reagan wright loses their minds over what Kissinger's
Speaker 2: doing here. Pat Buchanan, a former Nixon spear, writes in
Speaker 2: a column quote, it is too early to determine if
Speaker 2: Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's safari through Black Africa did
Speaker 2: greater damage to US policy interests or to President Ford's
Speaker 2: hopes in the remaining primaries.
Speaker 1: I mean again, I like he just it needs to stop.
Speaker 1: Where like this this never ending? What is a duty?
Speaker 1: A real election chance? As shit, It's like we are
Speaker 1: so conditioned to that being how we operate and do everything,
Speaker 1: as opposed to actually just trying to do the thing
Speaker 1: that does long term good.
Speaker 2: And why would you do the thing that is long
Speaker 2: term good?
Speaker 1: Exactly? You're right, you're right. I mean, it's true, but
Speaker 1: it's I don't know, it's just it's a foregun conclusion.
Speaker 1: Now that everything is viewed through the prism of what
Speaker 1: does it do to the poll numbers? Can I just
Speaker 1: say take off your masks? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Right, So, Kishinger did not achieve a tremendous amount in
Speaker 2: Rhodesia while he was Secretary of State. He got Ian Smith,
Speaker 2: who's the leader of Rhodesia, to agree to a two
Speaker 2: year turnover from minority rule to an actual democracy. But
Speaker 2: the way he did this was by assuring Smith that
Speaker 2: black moderates had agreed that during the turnover, whites would
Speaker 2: remain in control of the military and police.
Speaker 1: This was a lie.
Speaker 2: The black people in Rudie, like the black moderates in Rhodesia,
Speaker 2: had never agree to this.
Speaker 1: He's just lying the Smith to get him to agree
Speaker 1: to this. And on the whole, like anytime there's like
Speaker 1: a two year deal that you're like, that's just your
Speaker 1: way of like letting it sort of settle so that
Speaker 1: you can pushing you the fuckery exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: The story of the negotiations is classic Kissinger. He's telling
Speaker 2: everyone what they want to hear. And then kind of
Speaker 2: weaseling his way into getting people to sign things that
Speaker 2: make him look good. This right up from the New
Speaker 2: York Times sums it up well. Mister Smith has said
Speaker 2: he agrees to the five point plan he made in
Speaker 2: public because he had received assurances from mister Kissinger that
Speaker 2: the black leaders had accepted the whole package, including mister
Speaker 2: Smith's addition on white on the white ministers. In his view,
Speaker 2: either the Blacks have renegged or mister Kissinger misled him.
Speaker 2: The Blacks, such as President Julius Nurere of Tanzania, insists
Speaker 2: that they did not give their approval to the details
Speaker 2: of the five point plan, only to the general thrust
Speaker 2: of majority rule in two years, leaving it to Britain
Speaker 2: to work out details later with black and white Rhodesians.
Speaker 2: They say they would have rejected the proposal for white ministers.
Speaker 2: Mister Kissinger and his aides have been evasive. On October
Speaker 2: twenty fourth, mister Kissinger said on television that I think
Speaker 2: everybody is telling the truth.
Speaker 1: Wow. What an incredible guy.
Speaker 9: Wow, the baddest. That is the best bullshit statement I've.
Speaker 1: Ever It's out. I believe, I'm not sure. I don't
Speaker 1: everyone lying, it's awesome.
Speaker 2: I think everyone who is the bad guy in Rhodesia nobody, nobody.
Speaker 1: I think everyone's cool. You need a bad guy.
Speaker 2: In the end, the talks collapsed. The war continued on
Speaker 2: for two more years until the Rhodesian Strategic Fuel Reserve
Speaker 2: was blown up by insurgents and the government was forced
Speaker 2: to the table. Kissinger and his supporters would later claim
Speaker 2: that the eventual piece was negotiated on the terms laid
Speaker 2: out during Kissinger's negotiations. That's kind of questionable. It's probably
Speaker 2: it is fair to say that that by coming in
Speaker 2: very strongly, and he was very unequivocal about condemning the
Speaker 2: government of Rhodesia. By doing this as the Secretary of State,
Speaker 2: Kissinger caused a shift that led to a significant increase
Speaker 2: in trust of the US by black African nations. You know, yeah,
Speaker 2: obviously it's one of his better moves from an ethical standpoint,
Speaker 2: but it's an ego move still. Everything is an ego movement,
Speaker 2: and obviously it's a it's a sign of how much
Speaker 2: more fucked up things become that doing this broadly good
Speaker 2: thing causes the beginning of the end of his career
Speaker 2: in politics.
Speaker 1: Of course, it's like, we're gonna can't help you can't
Speaker 1: help the black people. That's it. You're done.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's it for you, kissing. But to be fair,
Speaker 2: it worked for me. That's why I did it. We
Speaker 2: know her, but we know buddy. But you know what
Speaker 2: won't fail to.
Speaker 1: Bring peace to Rhodesia. What's that?
Speaker 2: The sponsors of this podcast orchestrated the destruction of the
Speaker 2: Rhodesian Strategic Fueld Reserve. That is, we are sponsored entirely
Speaker 2: bye by the Rhodesian rebel forces. Here's an ad ah,
Speaker 2: we're back. Good stuff. Yes, yes, so yeah.
Speaker 1: On the whole.
Speaker 2: Kissinger's last year or so as Secretary of State involved
Speaker 2: his least number of war crimes per month, which might
Speaker 2: point to personal growth, but probably points to the fact
Speaker 2: that he and Nixon had just exhausted the US government's
Speaker 2: ability to do shady shit. We needed a breather, right,
Speaker 2: We had to take a breather. It took us a
Speaker 2: few years to get geared up. For Reagan, you know,
Speaker 2: he's like he's been go ahead.
Speaker 1: David, We've just kidded so many there's like no, like
Speaker 1: we dig them up and kill them again. Like it's hard,
Speaker 1: We're out of ammunition. He's like, he's not are starting QB.
Speaker 1: He's being traded. He's riding the pine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's got like I got a wrist injury, you know.
Speaker 1: He's yeah, he's on IR for the year.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the last one of his escapades we're going
Speaker 2: to cover. Then his Kissinger's relationship with the Kurds, not munk.
Speaker 1: Ye baby, Jesus fucking Christ.
Speaker 2: The Kurdish people are the largest ethnic group on Earth
Speaker 2: without a nation of their own. They make up large
Speaker 2: chunks of southern Turkey, southern Iran, northern Iraq, in northeast Syria. Now,
Speaker 2: if you look at this kind of broad Kurdistan region
Speaker 2: on a map, you'll notice a couple of things. For one,
Speaker 2: it's all landlocked, which means if if you were and
Speaker 2: there was a lot of talk when like colonial powers
Speaker 2: left started to leave the Middle East after World War
Speaker 2: Two that like.
Speaker 1: Should and promises were in fact made to the Kurds.
Speaker 2: One of the issues that comes up is that it's
Speaker 2: going to cause like severe economic difficulties because they would
Speaker 2: be landlocked. You'll also note that their territories all tend
Speaker 2: to exist in chunks of states that have wound up
Speaker 2: fighting each other repeatedly over the last half century or so. Right,
Speaker 2: Turkey and Syria, Iran and exactly and the Kurds were
Speaker 2: used on purpose by basically everyone as buffer zones and
Speaker 2: proxy fighters in these conflicts. Now, starting in the Nition administration,
Speaker 2: the Shah of Iran had a problem. He was engaged
Speaker 2: in an escalating conflict with a new sexy, young dude
Speaker 2: on the block, Saddam Hussein of Iraq.
Speaker 1: Now, can I just say right away, I like both
Speaker 1: these guys. They seem like they're both gonna go good places.
Speaker 2: So the Shad asides he wants to arm. He wants
Speaker 2: the US to arm Kurdish fighters in order to give
Speaker 2: Saddam some trouble and ease up pressure. The ostensible leader
Speaker 2: of the Kurdish people struggle in Iraq at this time
Speaker 2: is a guy named Mustafa Barzani. Now, Mustafa had been
Speaker 2: leading his people in battle against the Iraqi State prior
Speaker 2: to Saddam taking power for like a decade at this point,
Speaker 2: and he had repeatedly begged the United States for aid.
Speaker 2: The US traditionally did not like Barzani because he had
Speaker 2: spent a decade exiled in the Soviet Union and had
Speaker 2: some socialist e tendencies, but the Israelis and the Shah
Speaker 2: had experienced great luck in using the Kurds to keep Saddam,
Speaker 2: who taken power pretty recently, off of their back. Kurdish
Speaker 2: rebels tied up eighty percent of the Iraqi military during
Speaker 2: the nineteen sixty seven war against Israel and are probably
Speaker 2: a big part of the reason why Iraq did not
Speaker 2: join in that war. In April of nineteen seventy two,
Speaker 2: Saddam signed a treaty of friendship with the Soviet Union.
Speaker 2: This finally tipped things for the next dam Friendship is
Speaker 2: just a great term.
Speaker 1: I mean, it is a nice term.
Speaker 2: Good.
Speaker 1: It's like a bro my BFF when I was seven
Speaker 1: at a tree house. Yeah, can you sign my broke
Speaker 1: on tract? Yeah, I'm bros. It comes with AK forty seven.
Speaker 1: So we are signing the BFF treaty.
Speaker 2: So this finally tips things for the Nixon administration, and
Speaker 2: Kissinger gives the go ahead for CIA Director Richard Helms
Speaker 2: to express American sympathy with the Kurds and to clear
Speaker 2: our quote readiness to consider their requests for assistance. Next
Speaker 2: from a write up, in Foreign Paul. In early nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy four, Saddam violated the terms of the March Accurt
Speaker 2: and unilaterally imposed a watered down version of autonomy for
Speaker 2: the Kurds. Barzani responded by traveling to Iran, where he
Speaker 2: met with the SHAW and the CIA's station chief to
Speaker 2: request US backing for a plan to set up an
Speaker 2: Arab Kurdish government that would claim to be the sole
Speaker 2: legitimate government of Iraq. As Kissinger wrote in his nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety nine memoire Years of Renewal, Barzani's request triggered a
Speaker 2: flood of communications among US officials focused on two questions,
Speaker 2: whether the United States would support a unilateral declaration of
Speaker 2: autonomy and what level of support the United States was
Speaker 2: willing to give the Kurds. The CIA in particular warned
Speaker 2: against increasing US assistance, but Kissinger was dismissive of CIA
Speaker 2: Director William Colby's caution, writing Kolby's resistance was as unrealistic
Speaker 2: as Barzani's enthusiasm. Nixon ultimately decided to INCREASEIA to increase
Speaker 2: US assistance to the Kurds, including the provision of nine
Speaker 2: hundred thousand pounds of Soviet made weapons that the CIA
Speaker 2: had stockpiled, and a one million dollar lump sum of
Speaker 2: refuge assistance. In April of nineteen seventy four, Kissinger saying.
Speaker 1: Why why the Soviet weapons? Is that to confuse things?
Speaker 2: You don't want people seeing them with US weapons. That's
Speaker 2: going to make it seem like we're involved.
Speaker 1: In what amazing? What an amazing move. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: dope to commit a murder. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So in April of nineteen seventy four, Kissinger sent Nixon's
Speaker 2: orders to the US ambassador in Tehran. This cable was
Speaker 2: important because it laid out a succinct proclamation of US
Speaker 2: interests visa vi the Kurds. The objectives he wrote were
Speaker 2: to a give the Kurds capacity to maintain a reasonable
Speaker 2: base for negotiating recognition of rights by Baghdad government. B
Speaker 2: To keep present Iraqi government tied down, but see not
Speaker 2: to divide Iraq permanently, because an independent Kurdish area would
Speaker 2: not be economically viable, and US and Iran have no
Speaker 2: interest in closing the door on good relations with Iraq
Speaker 2: under moderate leadership.
Speaker 9: There art are I mean, I'm not creat but there
Speaker 9: are landlocked countries that Yeah, Economics Bible.
Speaker 1: And Kurtis stands a huge amount of oil.
Speaker 9: Yeah, it's such a crazy thing that they're saying, like,
Speaker 9: it's just it's fucking insane what they.
Speaker 2: Are doing and what Kissinger is establishing and writing. Here
Speaker 2: is US policy towards Kurdish people for more than half
Speaker 2: a century. And the idea comes down to, we will
Speaker 2: provide them with aid and weapons when they fight our enemies,
Speaker 2: but only to such an extent that they achieve minor
Speaker 2: tactical successes, never enough to allow them permanent autonomy, because
Speaker 2: that's going to upset the balance of power.
Speaker 1: Right, right, this has been ever since.
Speaker 2: This is what we do with the Kurds, right, And
Speaker 2: Kissinger is the guy who lays it out first. Now,
Speaker 2: Mustapha Barzani made the terrible mistake of believing that the
Speaker 2: US actually supported his people's independence. For three years, the
Speaker 2: Kurds battled Saddam, sustaining thousands of casualties. But then in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy five, the Shah and Saddam made peace, and
Speaker 2: the SHAW asked the CIA to cut off all aid
Speaker 2: to the Kurds as part of a deal with Iraq.
Speaker 2: The weapons Kurdish fighters had relied upon suddenly dried up.
Speaker 2: Barzani's fighters were massacred. Thousands fled to Iran but were
Speaker 2: turned away by the Shaw. Desperate Mustafa cabled Kissinger, whom
Speaker 2: he had gratefully sent three rugs in a golden pearl
Speaker 2: necklace's wedding gifts just months earlier. Your excellency, the United
Speaker 2: States has a moral and political responsibility to our people.
Speaker 2: Kissinger never replied. Later that year, the House Intelligence Committee
Speaker 2: asked him to justify this betrayal. He responded, covert actions
Speaker 2: should not be confused with missionary work.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, what's so cool? Like you don't understand
Speaker 1: that sometimes I'm also just doing missionary stuff. Hmm. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The key is that I don't give a shit.
Speaker 4: As he stands naked on his rug with just his
Speaker 4: pearl necklace an.
Speaker 2: Speaking of missionary So in the nineteen seventy six presidential elections,
Speaker 2: Ronald Reagan attempted to primary Gerald Ford from the right.
Speaker 2: The Reagan campaign targeted Kissinger heavily, not for his numerous
Speaker 2: war crimes, but because of the fact that he had
Speaker 2: made it a taunt with the Soviet Union. Right, that's
Speaker 2: why they're a because.
Speaker 1: It's amazing to be like, you know what, the rights
Speaker 1: actually got a point. He committed war crimes in Vietnam.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're talking about a guy who's killed millions
Speaker 1: of innocent people. No, that's actually not that said, we're
Speaker 1: at the peace stuff. We're pissing angry some of this
Speaker 1: peace stuff he's been lacking in.
Speaker 2: They are specifically they're livid that like part of the
Speaker 2: detent means Kissinger was like, we're not going to fuck
Speaker 2: with Soviet spheres of influence in Eastern Europe. And Reagan
Speaker 2: and his colleagues are like, well, this means they're just
Speaker 2: giving up Eastern Europe to communism, you know.
Speaker 1: Right, always communism, exactly fascist communists. I mean yeah, got it.
Speaker 2: And Kissinger's political instincts and charm we're sufficient to fend
Speaker 2: off an attempt because there's within the Ford administration, there
Speaker 2: is an attempt to get Ford to promise to fire
Speaker 2: him in a second term, largely because they think it'll
Speaker 2: help him win the primary against Reagan. And Nixon beats
Speaker 2: everyone here. He manages to get forward to be like, no,
Speaker 2: I would never fire Henry Kissinger.
Speaker 1: But this.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, not Nixon. Kissinger succeeds in doing that
Speaker 2: with four.
Speaker 1: Okay, I thought, like I was like, if you're listening,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of nixident are you know you mix
Speaker 1: it up. He's just at a cupboard in the White House. Still, Gerald,
Speaker 1: get me some Gin also keep Hank around.
Speaker 2: So the fact that Henry wins the fight within the
Speaker 2: Ford administration means that he becomes like a major marketing
Speaker 2: term for the Reagan campaign, right, like they do not stop.
Speaker 2: In fact, they instituted a plank in the Republican Party
Speaker 2: that year that's basically the anti Kissinger plank that says, like,
Speaker 2: you will never accept that like communist states should exist anywhere.
Speaker 1: Essentially, that's kind of what they do. Okay, stabbing him
Speaker 1: in the heart.
Speaker 2: Yeah it is. It's amazing, and it's amazing. It's a
Speaker 2: it's a mark of like how much he fucked things
Speaker 2: up that you can't even feel good about his downfall
Speaker 2: because he's replaced by people who just sucking. More So,
Speaker 2: Ronnie felt the spheres of influence that Kissinger had established
Speaker 2: with the Soviet Union were yeah, giving up the Eastern
Speaker 2: like block to communism. He also attacked Kissinger for negotiating
Speaker 2: with Panama's new government because Henry was willing to give
Speaker 2: the Panama Canal back to the Panamanian people.
Speaker 1: Canal. Ye, so, and Reagan wrote that thing. But they
Speaker 1: were so fucking bad. There's no clay, have no claim
Speaker 1: to that canal. Yeah, Reagan said in a speech.
Speaker 2: We built it, we paid for it, and were going.
Speaker 1: To keep it.
Speaker 2: Refer to our two parter on the US and Panama
Speaker 2: or on that one. So Reagan's primary attempt failed, but
Speaker 2: by struggling against the rising far right, Kissinger had hammered
Speaker 2: the final nail into his political careers coffin. In the
Speaker 2: Ford administration's last days, a dark alliance materialized, and, smelling
Speaker 2: blood in the water, they acted to cut Kissinger off
Speaker 2: many future career in Republican politics. The three main members
Speaker 2: of this alliance were Paul Wolfowitz from the CIA, Vice
Speaker 2: President Dick Cheney, and Secretary of Defense Donald Bright.
Speaker 1: Baby. Yeah, like there's four Kissingers. It's like killing Satan
Speaker 1: and then three winged demons fly out of him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's so funny.
Speaker 2: It is so funny, good, really funny and in fact
Speaker 2: so uh Kissinger. His Kissinger like Rumsfeld, he sees is
Speaker 2: almost like a protege. Like he and Rumsfeld are very close,
Speaker 2: and when Rumsfeld turns against him, Kissinger describes him as
Speaker 2: quote the rottenest person I've known in government, which is
Speaker 2: Henry from you, utterly meaning honestly, absolutely meaning that's from you.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're not a Yeah, it's so funny. It's
Speaker 1: so funny.
Speaker 2: So it's not funny for all the people who are
Speaker 2: going to die, but it's kind it's funny in like
Speaker 2: an existential sense, like if you're if you're an alien
Speaker 2: looking at all, this like a TV show, it's pretty funny.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you'd be like, why don't they got a good guy.
Speaker 1: You're like, well, it's really yeah, explained, but they just don't.
Speaker 1: If you can't laugh at all the people dying? Are
Speaker 1: you an American? Yeah? No, the answer was no. By
Speaker 1: the way, the first time that Nixon heard that Kissinger
Speaker 1: was working with the guy named Rumsfeld, he was like, well,
Speaker 1: pour him in a glass for me, get some mice
Speaker 1: on it.
Speaker 2: So Rumsfeld and Cheney worked within the White House.
Speaker 1: God, I can't believe I got to hear their name.
Speaker 1: I know, I know, baby, I know well.
Speaker 2: Wolf of Witz is part of the CIA's Team B.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: Team B is an intelligence review board set up by
Speaker 2: Gerald Ford as a sop to the far right the
Speaker 2: Reagan Conservatives, who he's again trying to win over and
Speaker 2: get behind him so can win election against Carter. The
Speaker 2: Reagan Conservatives were certain the agency had been the CIA,
Speaker 2: I mean, had been under reporting Soviet military power because
Speaker 2: the Soviet military and like the early chunk of the
Speaker 2: Ford administration is like they're actually not doing great, Like
Speaker 2: they're like, we we really don't need to keep buying
Speaker 2: a shitload of weapons.
Speaker 1: Like they're not.
Speaker 2: They're not they don't have the kind of military assets
Speaker 2: that we've been saying for years.
Speaker 1: So they now are getting a shady CIA inside of
Speaker 1: well shady CIA.
Speaker 2: Yes, this is like this it's like a Russian nesting
Speaker 2: doll of the CIA inside the CIA.
Speaker 1: CIA.
Speaker 2: So the Reagan Conservatives were certain that the CIA had
Speaker 2: been under reporting Soviet military power, and Team B like
Speaker 2: was basically Ford gave them Team B so that they
Speaker 2: could get new appraisals that showed that the Soviet Union
Speaker 2: was actually increasing their military assets.
Speaker 1: So basically what we like what like I mean essentially
Speaker 1: like what would eventually happen with a RAQ where you're like, look,
Speaker 1: I'm not liking the uh I'm like the non distilled information,
Speaker 1: give me a bunch of bullshit.
Speaker 2: That's exactly what's happening. And one of the things that's
Speaker 2: fascinating here is that in essence, this is a return
Speaker 2: of missile gap logic, right, which Kissinger helped get off
Speaker 2: the ground, but now because he supports the state tent policy,
Speaker 2: and that's like his big claim to like fame within
Speaker 2: you know, his career, that he reached the top with
Speaker 2: the Soviet Union. He's on the opposite side of like
Speaker 2: a missile gap bullshit myth right, Oh man, this.
Speaker 1: Is the levers leopards, leopards, ain't my face?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: That every thought could happen to me. Yeah, And then
Speaker 1: they came for the Kissingers, and there was Kissingers that
Speaker 1: to speak.
Speaker 2: For me, it's the same thing as like Dick Cheney
Speaker 2: speaking out against the Trump administration and why his daughter
Speaker 2: gets slandered, and.
Speaker 1: It's and it's what it's gonna be in twenty years,
Speaker 1: when you know, Trump is welcome to a president's funeral
Speaker 1: and we're gone. You know, Trump really wasn't that bad.
Speaker 2: I like away he said we shouldn't nuke everyone on Earth,
Speaker 2: as opposed to the next guy who nuked everyone on Earth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean yeah, Jill Biden handed him a piece
Speaker 1: of peppermint candy. He's not that bad.
Speaker 2: So, Former CIA analyst Melvin Goodwin later said of Team
Speaker 2: B quote, they wanted to tough en up the agency's estimates.
Speaker 2: Cheney wanted to drive the CIA so far to the
Speaker 2: right that it would never say no to the generals.
Speaker 1: Not how estimates again, this is the estimate, Like they're estimates.
Speaker 2: Pause this and listen to our episodes on the Dulles Brothers.
Speaker 2: And then realized that Cheney's like, I want them further
Speaker 2: right than that.
Speaker 1: That's not nearly right wing enough. That is the craziest
Speaker 1: fucking thing yet. Bug fuss. Yeah, wanted a gang bang,
Speaker 1: being like I want more orifices, not enough holes here.
Speaker 1: I can't expec my deck and enough stuff.
Speaker 2: So in December of nineteen seventy six, as the Ford
Speaker 2: administration pre prepared to hand over power to Jimmy Carter,
Speaker 2: the CIA finished and released a fifty five page report.
Speaker 2: Greg Grandon describes this as quote the rights answer to
Speaker 2: the Pentagon Papers, a nearly perfect negation of the document
Speaker 2: Daniel Elsberg had leaked three years earlier. The scholars and
Speaker 2: policymakers who composed the Pentagon Papers represented the kind of
Speaker 2: men Kissinger disdained, experts enthralled to facts. In contrast, the
Speaker 2: members of Team B were admitted ideologues. It's members, as J.
Speaker 2: Peters Scoblic notes, saw the Soviet threat not as an
Speaker 2: empirical problem, but as a matter of faith.
Speaker 1: Oh what kind I mean? You just it's a church.
Speaker 1: It's a war church. It's also what's happening here because
Speaker 1: they are against Kissinger. But as Grandon notes, they're using
Speaker 1: the kind of logic he used, right, Yes.
Speaker 9: Yeah, he's there with him on all of the murder
Speaker 9: crazy American ship.
Speaker 1: But they're like, he's just not racist. I mean, they're
Speaker 1: basically like, we got to get rid of Kissinger so
Speaker 1: we can worship his tactics properly.
Speaker 2: That's exactly what's going on here, and in Kissinger's shadow.
Speaker 2: Grandon continues quote previewing what would become known as Dick
Speaker 2: Cheney's one percent doctrine. Team B interpreted threats with the
Speaker 2: smallest posi probability of occurring as likely to occur. Absence
Speaker 2: of proof of Russian superiority was taken as proof of superiority.
Speaker 2: Teamb's failure to find a Soviet non acoustic anti submarine
Speaker 2: system was evidence that there could well be one that someone.
Speaker 1: Which makes sense, of course, I mean it would be Yeah.
Speaker 2: There is no evidence that I have e got it,
Speaker 2: and you know one an Emmy and an Oscar and
Speaker 2: a grammyator, so that that's pretty solid evidence that I
Speaker 2: am back. Yeah, you have all of that. Yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 2: In December of nineteen seventy seven, The New York Times
Speaker 2: published a front page story on the intelligence findings of
Speaker 2: Team B, which provided legitimacy to the bogus s might
Speaker 2: and ensured the next decade of defense spending was geared
Speaker 2: towards stopping a zing Soviet titan that did not exist.
Speaker 1: You God, thanks nailed it on that one. Star Wars
Speaker 1: on top of that, which.
Speaker 2: Is well, yeah, Star Wars proceeds directly creation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and.
Speaker 2: It proceeds directly like TEMB is laying the groundwork for
Speaker 2: Star Wars.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So, while these tactics ran directly counter to Kissinger's current positions,
Speaker 2: they rested directly on what Grandon calls his philosophy of history.
Speaker 2: Henry had been an advocate on the value of intuition
Speaker 2: and assessing threats and guiding responses. Historian Anna Hessen Khan
Speaker 2: writes that they used Kissinger's own philosophy to quote, belittle, besmirch,
Speaker 2: and tarnish Henry Kissinger.
Speaker 1: Had to be a tough spot for Kissinger, where he
Speaker 1: was like, it's a shame that I've been vilified, but
Speaker 1: goddamn do I love the way they did it, so
Speaker 1: me everything everything.
Speaker 9: That's that's why when people, you know, you look at
Speaker 9: the current situation in Russia and and everyone's like, we
Speaker 9: got to get rid of them, And I'm always like,
Speaker 9: just but just remember, whenever the US gets what it wants,
Speaker 9: it's always worse. Yeah, some time that it can be worse,
Speaker 9: Like he can be gone. He's a fucking monster, but
Speaker 9: don't be surprised. Yeah it comes after is really fucking bad.
Speaker 1: And the idea of not questioning shit like we're the
Speaker 1: country who cried war. At some point you have to
Speaker 1: be like, look, sorry, everybody, you're really gonna need to
Speaker 1: step up with a lot of evidence because you you
Speaker 1: constantly just fucking invention. I mean, if you have if
Speaker 1: you are forming organizations inside of bullshit, organizations meant to
Speaker 1: bring like that if there's no submarines, it means there
Speaker 1: are submarines. I mean, it's just kind of like I
Speaker 1: and the fact that it's still effective. It's constantly effective.
Speaker 1: It's never it's never stopped.
Speaker 9: This is just a continuation, and it's even like this
Speaker 9: is a domestic version of what we what happens ross,
Speaker 9: we just create more and more worse things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, internally, externally it's what we do.
Speaker 2: Don't worry, We'll make it worse. Yeah, that is, that
Speaker 2: is the promise that the United States makes itself.
Speaker 1: In the world. Don't worry, don't worry. We can fuck
Speaker 1: this up more. Yeah, lifeguard he waits to throw on you.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I mean we fucking created Putin. If you go
Speaker 9: back and look at it like we were behind all
Speaker 9: that shit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's looks looking at the at the bombing of
Speaker 2: Kiev and going, you know, what'll fix this? If Bangladesh
Speaker 2: doesn't get COVID nineteen it's.
Speaker 1: Right, which it's somethin is gonna be what like we
Speaker 1: will at some point solve something, just totally on accident.
Speaker 1: Like Yeah.
Speaker 2: So when he left office in nineteen seventy seven, Henry
Speaker 2: Kissinger would never return to direct political power. He desperately
Speaker 2: wants to, really wanted to.
Speaker 1: Like then he has always wanted to.
Speaker 13: Yeah, that's nice, man, now I understand twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he really wanted it to happen, but he'd never
Speaker 2: quite made it pulled it off. He eventually started a
Speaker 2: consulting firm, which he would rapidly grow into an eight
Speaker 2: to ten million dollar a year business for himself.
Speaker 1: Christ, he makes a ton of money doing this shit.
Speaker 9: Of course, he goes into consulting like, oh, absolute consultant's
Speaker 9: job is to get the worst advice yea, and to.
Speaker 1: Make people feel good, and he's great at that. I'm
Speaker 1: a shit oracle.
Speaker 2: H Walter Isaacson, author of the biography Kissinger, claims that
Speaker 2: Henry was actually much more ethical in this period of
Speaker 2: his life than most former government officials who start consulting businesses.
Speaker 2: He waited an unusually long time to start his business.
Speaker 2: He avoided for years directly connecting his clients to people
Speaker 2: he'd worked with in the State Department.
Speaker 1: Like a low bar.
Speaker 2: It may be accurate that he is more ethical in
Speaker 2: his conduct here than most people, but.
Speaker 1: Again that's a low ass bar. Yeah. Most of his business, the.
Speaker 2: Business he does in this period can be boiled down
Speaker 2: to like, he's helping oil and gas and other extractive industries.
Speaker 1: So he's like doing nanthropical stuff. Yeah, yeah, so he's
Speaker 1: just destroying the world.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, absolutely, he's a middle man for the people
Speaker 2: destroying the world. Let's let's let's be clear about you know,
Speaker 2: he's he's he's making he's he's making connections between people whoever.
Speaker 1: Linda, he's pining to be in charge of it. Again.
Speaker 2: He is probably his most morally questionable moment in like,
Speaker 2: I guess a conventional sense is that, uh so, like
Speaker 2: right after the Tianeman Square crackdown, he shows up on
Speaker 2: Peter Jenning's show to argue that, like whatever went on,
Speaker 2: the US should not impost any economic consequences on China.
Speaker 2: And this is again not due to a principled stand
Speaker 2: against sanctions. It's because Kissinger was working on a massive
Speaker 2: business deal that involved the Chinese government in several large corporations.
Speaker 2: And here's the thing, He's he's working as a journalist
Speaker 2: at that point. He is a regular columnist for the
Speaker 2: La Times and the Washington Post, and he advocates in
Speaker 2: both magaz means not putting any kind of economic like
Speaker 2: like doing any economic harm to China over this, which
Speaker 2: is like an ethical issue as a journalist because again
Speaker 2: he does not disclose that he has any of these
Speaker 2: business relationships, and it causes a minor uproar. It's one
Speaker 2: of those things where it's like, yeah, that's unethical behavior.
Speaker 2: But also in Kissinger terms, like not even on the
Speaker 2: fucking radar.
Speaker 1: Right from most people. This is an a boring act.
Speaker 1: But congratulations on turning over a new leave, Henry.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, wow, Henry, you've really improved.
Speaker 1: You really are less shit.
Speaker 2: You waited until after the thing to do something bad.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, in his post power years, he became even more
Speaker 2: of an international celebrity. He's actually surprised when he's when
Speaker 2: he starts doing this job, he's raking, racking up huge
Speaker 2: amounts of money as like a public speaker, and he
Speaker 2: and his like accountant expect the value of him as
Speaker 2: a speaking like, well, it's obviously it's going to decline over time,
Speaker 2: it just gets bigger. He just becomes more of more
Speaker 2: valuable as a public speaker. Now or some insight into
Speaker 2: his life in what we might call retirement, I found
Speaker 2: a New York Magazine article from two thousand and six quote.
Speaker 2: He bonds with Oprah Winfrey over their shared love of dogs.
Speaker 2: She recommended an artist to paint a portrait of Kissinger's lap,
Speaker 2: and with Alex Rodriguez over their shared love of the Yankees.
Speaker 2: He and a rod had lunch at the Four Seasons.
Speaker 2: Last year, he and his wife of thirty two years,
Speaker 2: Nancy McGinnis, spent every Christmas with close friends Oscar and
Speaker 2: Annette de la Renta in the Dominican Republic. Asked about
Speaker 2: the nature of that friendship, given the unlikely connection between
Speaker 2: a former statesman and a fashion mogul, Kissinger says, they
Speaker 2: are dear friends of mine. They have no utility.
Speaker 1: I'm going to try to kill them. Yeah, I will
Speaker 1: kill them. Plans to kill them soon. Can we just
Speaker 1: can we finally agree that Oprah Winfrey is a fucking monster? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I mean right to Oprah buddies with Henry K. Winfrey.
Speaker 9: Yes, I mean you have to fill Yester Oz like
Speaker 9: she creates.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to chick her out ready, doctor ozhit talk,
Speaker 1: but the other ones you got me. Don't forgett don't
Speaker 1: forget John of God.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right under your Suharto tattoo. Gareth doctor Oz high
Speaker 2: fiving Henry Kissinger.
Speaker 1: Madam is this before he got his show? So I
Speaker 1: liked him early. This was just this was just like aspirational,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, I don't know. It's a great pal.
Speaker 2: So Kissinger became a New York socialite and was reputed
Speaker 2: to enjoy the city's social scene because quote, Manhattan social
Speaker 2: life is more generous than Washington's political life.
Speaker 1: He should not to pick where he wants to go out.
Speaker 1: I mean he should have to get food raised to
Speaker 1: his selling a bucket.
Speaker 9: It's the same thing as that. What the Cooke was
Speaker 9: a David Coke, the one that just died, But it
Speaker 9: was the same thing. Everyone just accepted him in those
Speaker 9: fucking circles and it's like, yeah, he's a fucking.
Speaker 1: And then Charles Coke is the one who's like, you know,
Speaker 1: was like on a rehabilitation tour for like six months. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, major news outlets are report like, look,
Speaker 1: he recognizes they fucked up a little. It's like he
Speaker 1: feels bad. He feels bad. I give a fuck, Yeah,
Speaker 1: degenitalize him.
Speaker 2: So it was regularly and I think probably still is
Speaker 2: regularly seen on the arm of Barbara Walters, who calls
Speaker 2: him a loyal friend. In fact, she was hanging out
Speaker 2: with Henry and his wife one night at a dinner
Speaker 2: party when Kissinger endured one of his few public shamings.
Speaker 2: It came courtesy as the real the only real hero
Speaker 2: of these episodes, ABC News anchor Peter Jennings, who sees
Speaker 2: Kissinger at a restaurant and is fucking enraged and screams out,
Speaker 2: how does it feel to be a war criminal?
Speaker 1: Henry Peter Jennings baby, And of course Peter Jennings is gone,
Speaker 1: So yeah he dies. Yeah, Chrissinger probably like invaded his lungs.
Speaker 9: Yeah, happened every restaur every to all these people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Jennings is basically the only person at Kissinger's level
Speaker 2: who calls him out.
Speaker 1: And imagine, I mean he's He's a nightly news anchor
Speaker 1: on a major network. Imagine if you had that sort
Speaker 1: of vitriol pointed at some of these people that we
Speaker 1: have in present day who are again not only allowed
Speaker 1: to walk around but are still in sphears of power.
Speaker 1: But but Dick, like we were saying about Dick Cheney, like,
Speaker 1: you know, George W. Bush should not he should not
Speaker 1: be in public. He should not be releasing thoughts on
Speaker 1: Russian invasion. No, he certainly shouldn't be fucking packing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he shouldn't be shouldn't he shouldn't have fingers. No, his
Speaker 1: daughter should not be on the fucking Today Show. Like,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I like Strawberry and my Margarita.
Speaker 2: So I want to continue the story because I'm not
Speaker 2: telling with the story of Peter Jennings like calling Kissinger
Speaker 2: out at a restaurant. And to finish that tale, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna quote from the New York magazine again. The subject
Speaker 2: of Kissinger's past sins was very much in the air
Speaker 2: at the time. Judges in both France and Spain were
Speaker 2: seeking Kissinger for questionings. The long simmering debate over his
Speaker 2: connection to Chilean General Augusto Pinochet's brutal killing of dissidence
Speaker 2: in the seventies returned with a vengeance, not least in
Speaker 2: Christopher Hitchen's right, ringing indictment the trial of Henry Kissinger.
Speaker 2: These developments clearly rattled Kissinger, who had preemptively written a
Speaker 2: lengthy article for Foreign Affairs decrying the dangerous legal precedent
Speaker 2: of using universal jurisdiction to try state actors for past action,
Speaker 2: the same precedent under which German courts hoped to try
Speaker 2: Donald Rumsfeld. The question in the question by Peter Jennings,
Speaker 2: how does it feel to be a war criminal? Stunned
Speaker 2: the dinner guests, who included Time Inc. Editor Henry Grunwald,
Speaker 2: who also died last year and Yeah, and former ABC
Speaker 2: chairman Thomas Murphy. Grunwald told Jennings the comment was unsuitable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what unsuitable thing to say.
Speaker 9: Was as unsuitable as fucking bombing Cambodia. Like Jesus fucking Christ,
Speaker 9: this is the manners. They care about manners. They don't
Speaker 9: care about all the fucking bodies.
Speaker 2: And to his credit, when like Grunwald is like Peter,
Speaker 2: that's really unsuitable, Peter's.
Speaker 1: Like, I don't give a shit.
Speaker 2: You have to say that exactly, Peter, she says the
Speaker 2: emotional equivalent of that, it's such a bummer. Barbara Walters
Speaker 2: later said of the moment, I tried to change the subject,
Speaker 2: but it was a very uncomfortable moment Nett talk about
Speaker 2: reacted very strongly and hurt Kissinger said, nothing, man.
Speaker 1: It really is like you know it. You see this
Speaker 1: a lot when like protesters will go into events and
Speaker 1: they will you know, they'll have a message, they'll have signs,
Speaker 1: they'll have something orchestrated set up, and not only will
Speaker 1: the politician and the people on the politician's dais sort
Speaker 1: of be like okay, okay, but the people at the
Speaker 1: event will be the ones who are like, you know,
Speaker 1: I like a congressional here, this isn't the time or place.
Speaker 1: This isn't the time. It's like, there's no time or
Speaker 1: fucking place. Where's the what what do you fucking expect?
Speaker 1: That's all we have at this point is that's the
Speaker 1: only thing you can really do is try to make
Speaker 1: them hate living in the world they're ruining.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is a fucking mark of how fucked up
Speaker 2: any kind of accountability to the political classes in our
Speaker 2: society that the most consequence Henry Kissinger ever faces is
Speaker 2: Peter Jennings yelling at him.
Speaker 1: Once at dinner, a man who's been dead for twenty years,
Speaker 1: fifteen years. I mean, when Sarah Huckeby Sanders was out
Speaker 1: to dinner and some people yelled at her. I mean
Speaker 1: you saw both sides, Oh yeah, condemning it.
Speaker 2: Some fucking dudes yell at fucking Tucker Carlson from his
Speaker 2: lawn terror.
Speaker 1: There are there are Republicans and Democrats who always condemn
Speaker 1: that sort of stuff. And it's not because people believe
Speaker 1: in public decorum. It's because they don't want it to
Speaker 1: show up on their fucking doorsteps, right.
Speaker 2: Right, because yeah, they don't want like that shit to
Speaker 2: come back on them. Yes, I'm sure if someone's going
Speaker 2: to point out Peter Jennings did something fucked up, he
Speaker 2: must have. He was immediately even he oh right, he
Speaker 2: did nine to eleven. That was Peter Jennings. He threw
Speaker 2: those planes right into those towers. I'd forgotten about that, Gary.
Speaker 11: Yeah, but at fucking least he was there and didn't
Speaker 11: mince words, just like you're a war criminal, not.
Speaker 2: Like how does it feel to be here where American
Speaker 2: boys are dying? But like, no, no, you did war crimes,
Speaker 2: Henry Kissinger, Fuck you, someone has to say it. In
Speaker 2: his many decades worth of declining years, Henry has focused
Speaker 2: his remaining powers in an attempt to secure his legacy.
Speaker 2: In two thousand and three, he opened up his White
Speaker 2: House archives to a British historian named Niall Ferguson, whose
Speaker 2: book also just titled Kissinger. I've cited a few times
Speaker 2: in these episodes. Ferguson claimed his biography would quote provide
Speaker 2: a warts and all look at the man, but quotes
Speaker 2: he made about the relationship put the light of that.
Speaker 2: And this is Ferguson like writing about how jazzed he
Speaker 2: is to be hanging out with Henry. I'm in Henry
Speaker 2: Kissinger's swimming pool talking about his meetings with MAUSEI dung,
Speaker 2: thinking I must be dreaming shit in that pool. I know,
Speaker 2: fucking hell Nile everyone. Now, obviously I have quoted from
Speaker 2: this biography because of the details the information Kissinger provides
Speaker 2: about his early life, it is not without value. It's
Speaker 2: probably the most tailed look at his childhood we have.
Speaker 2: It also only goes up to nineteen sixty eight, which
Speaker 2: neatly avoids the most controversial moments of Kissinger's life.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, that's not great, even journal Yeah, and now
Speaker 1: we end the story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that was the end of Henry Kissinger.
Speaker 1: Yeah, blah blah blah.
Speaker 2: Even when journalists and historians that Henry hasn't authorized specifically
Speaker 2: interview him, they are likely to find themselves enraptured or
Speaker 2: at least tripped up by his clever wordplay. Bob Woodward,
Speaker 2: who first interviewed Kissinger in seventy four, wrote, he wants
Speaker 2: to control not just what he says, but people's perceptions
Speaker 2: of what he says. And it's kind of like one
Speaker 2: long book review where he is arguing with the reviewer
Speaker 2: of his book, or his life or his policy. Seymour
Speaker 2: Hirsch was more blunt in nineteen eighty three when he wrote,
Speaker 2: he lies like most people breathe.
Speaker 1: Wow. Now, oh yeah.
Speaker 2: The most comprehensive biography of Henry Kissinger And if you
Speaker 2: were looking, If you're looking for just a book on
Speaker 2: Kissinger's influence in Like the US and how toxic it was,
Speaker 2: I recommend Kissinger's Shadow by Grandon. If you want an
Speaker 2: actual biography of Kissinger's whole life and time and power,
Speaker 2: I recommend Walter Isaacson's nineteen ninety two book Kissinger. I
Speaker 2: actually think Isaacson is too fair to Henry Kissinger.
Speaker 1: But even so, even though he.
Speaker 2: Clearly like does not wholly condemn the man, I find
Speaker 2: the book utterly damning. Right like, the book condemns him,
Speaker 2: even if Isaacson doesn't entirely try such a piece of shaite.
Speaker 2: It's just impossible. Not if you're accurate, and I think
Speaker 2: is pretty active.
Speaker 1: You lay out the facts, that's it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, the best thing I can say about Isaacson's book, Kissinger,
Speaker 2: is that Henry Kissinger himself complained endlessly about it. He
Speaker 2: wind to Isaacson's boss, Henry Grunwald, who defended Isaacson and
Speaker 2: said he felt the book was balanced and down the middle.
Speaker 2: Kissinger responded, what right does that young man have to
Speaker 2: be balanced and down the middle about me?
Speaker 1: Ugh? I mean, wow, wow, it just shows I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: like he should never be in the position where he
Speaker 1: should be pointing out that other people are crazy.
Speaker 2: No, no, fucking like you don't get to say that, Henry.
Speaker 1: Yeah no.
Speaker 2: As New York Magazine notes, Kissinger denies that exchange ever happened.
Speaker 1: Oh I believe Henry. I mean, the guy doesn't lie.
Speaker 1: He seems like an honest man. I bet Nixon still
Speaker 1: had him wire tapped.
Speaker 2: And here's a quote from that article that's very funny.
Speaker 2: I've never read the Isaacson book, he says, then quickly clarifies,
Speaker 2: I've read a few parts of the Isaacson book, which
Speaker 2: I didn't like, but I understand that there are many
Speaker 2: parts of the book that are very positive. I missed those,
Speaker 2: he says, with a sly smile.
Speaker 1: That is so. That is so trumpy. I know it
Speaker 1: really is right. Yeah, I didn't read it. I read
Speaker 1: parts one through five.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Isaacson says Kissinger wrote him a series of letters
Speaker 2: contesting numerous passages. My view, and this is Isaacson. My
Speaker 2: view is that if Kissinger reread his own memoir, who
Speaker 2: would be outraged that they did not treat him favorably enough?
Speaker 1: Kissing who wrote this? You did? Oh? Oh the fuck?
Speaker 1: That's son of a bitch. I gotta get me.
Speaker 2: Kissinger claims to be unconcerned about his place and history.
Speaker 2: I cannot defect my legacy, he says. And what does
Speaker 2: he think his legacy is. I have no view, he says.
Speaker 2: I can't control it by what I say. I tell him,
Speaker 2: I don't believe him. You're not in your eighties yet,
Speaker 2: he replies. Now a lot has been made about Kissinger's
Speaker 2: purported role in like the Invasion of Iraq. He did,
Speaker 2: apparently like urge Bush and Cheney to go through with it.
Speaker 2: I think crediting him with specifically with having an impact
Speaker 2: on that is not realistic because this is Bush and Cheney.
Speaker 2: By the time they talked to Kissinger about this, they
Speaker 2: had made up their fuck you know, it's probably didn't
Speaker 2: push them into invading Iraqs.
Speaker 1: It's like similar when like the Queens of the Stone
Speaker 1: Age have Dave Grohl on drums. Yeah, yeah, exactly. He's
Speaker 1: a player for sure, but he's not writing all the songs.
Speaker 1: I mean, Josh, yeah, he's got this. Kissinger's definitely the
Speaker 1: Dave Groll of the the Bush administration. Yeah right, great job.
Speaker 2: And I think that rather than like actually being a
Speaker 2: meaningful role in arranging consent for the invasion of Iraq,
Speaker 2: I think Kissinger was doing here what he always did.
Speaker 2: He was sucking up to powerful people to tell them
Speaker 2: by telling them what they wanted to hear. And the
Speaker 2: best example of this comes from two thousand and eight, when,
Speaker 2: during a presidential debate, both John McCain and Barack Obama
Speaker 2: cited Kissinger as supporting their positions towards Iran. Both men
Speaker 2: held opposite views of what the US should do in
Speaker 2: regards to that country. So I might like, you might
Speaker 2: expect like, and I don't think either of them is lying.
Speaker 2: I think they're both because I think Kissinger just would
Speaker 2: be like, yeah, of course that's the right call.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, Yeah, Look what the start date to be, just
Speaker 1: so I can put it in my cale.
Speaker 2: Yeah, good call, guys, that's great.
Speaker 1: We should invade them and leave them alone. Yeah. So yeah.
Speaker 2: As a young law student at Yale, Hillary Clinton had
Speaker 2: taken part in outraged protests against Kissinger's bombing of Cambodia.
Speaker 2: As Secretary of State, she praised the astute observations he
Speaker 2: shared with her, and wrote in a review of one
Speaker 2: of his books, Kissinger is a friend. And again the
Speaker 2: astute observations are Kissinger saying whatever she wanted to do
Speaker 2: was the right thing to do, right, Like, that's that's what.
Speaker 2: That's why these people like him and think he's astute.
Speaker 1: He's not.
Speaker 2: I think he does today get kind of like looked
Speaker 2: at as this secret power pulling the strings.
Speaker 1: I think instead he's just like the ultimate kiss ass.
Speaker 2: He's just like, oh, you're in power now, Yeah, whatever
Speaker 2: you want to do is the good thing to do,
Speaker 2: absolutely right, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, one hundred percent.
Speaker 9: I always I would tell people like, if you're if
Speaker 9: you're young and you don't understand what it means to
Speaker 9: see a Hillar Clinton standing there with Kissinger. It's no
Speaker 9: different than in ten years of all of sudden your
Speaker 9: Democrat candidate's standings to Cheney. Yeah, you're like, what the fuck.
Speaker 1: Is going on? And I guarantee you that lost her.
Speaker 9: A bunch of people didn't vote for her because they
Speaker 9: saw her staying next to Kissinger.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guarantee you. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I think though, when you're trying to talk
Speaker 2: about like his actual influence and like the fucked up
Speaker 2: things that have been happening in the last couple of decades,
Speaker 2: it's less in whatever advice he was giving politician airb
Speaker 2: And it's more in the way he shaped the way
Speaker 2: the US government functions. In terms of foreign policy. He
Speaker 2: centralized power and set the precedent of allowing the executive
Speaker 2: branch to execute military actions without consent of anyone outside
Speaker 2: the White House. And obviously there were like things that
Speaker 2: were done to restrict the power of the executive branch
Speaker 2: from doing that, but then those things were all undone
Speaker 2: after the like right, like this it's this kind of.
Speaker 1: Tuggo war thing.
Speaker 2: But Kissinger, even though he did not set obviously the
Speaker 2: policy after nine to eleven that that expanded the executive
Speaker 2: government's ability to do military shit abroad. He did set
Speaker 2: the present of like how you would actually centralize power
Speaker 2: in that way within the executive and he made up
Speaker 2: he set a lot of ideological and philosophical trends that
Speaker 2: are still shaping the way the US government functions and
Speaker 2: regards to foreign policy today. Sure, and if you're looking
Speaker 2: for perhaps the most direct and succinct explanation for how
Speaker 2: Kissinger influenced the world of modern American politics, you can
Speaker 2: find it in this quote he himself wrote in nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty three. There are two kinds of realists, those who
Speaker 2: manipulate facts and those who create them. The West requires
Speaker 2: nothing so much as men able to create their own reality.
Speaker 1: Wow wow, what fuck wow to not to not be
Speaker 1: able to define realists and your two definite your two
Speaker 1: tier definition of realism is absolutely deliciable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for neither of your definitions of realists to involve
Speaker 2: people who care.
Speaker 1: About material reality. Yeah, you're saying the first one, I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, and the second one's going to be realists.
Speaker 1: It's like no, no, no, no, no, either one is realists. No,
Speaker 1: So that's Henry Kissinger it's so unbelievable and to what
Speaker 1: like you know, he really he his legacy, like you're
Speaker 1: sort of saying, is not just directly connected to the
Speaker 1: things he's connected to, because there was no prosecution for
Speaker 1: what Nixon did, no, and there's no prosecution for what
Speaker 1: Reagan did, and there's no prosecution because we never prosecute
Speaker 1: and we never actually hold any of these people accountable.
Speaker 1: You know, you do see the seeds of that flourish now,
Speaker 1: like you can invade. I mean, we're at the point
Speaker 1: where most people don't even know we've invaded countries we've invaded,
Speaker 1: Like at least with Vietnam, people had access to seeing
Speaker 1: it and being disgusted by it. And then under Bush
Speaker 1: it was like, well, we're not going to show the
Speaker 1: coffins returning. And you see, I mean it's not just Republicans.
Speaker 1: You see it under democratic presidents too. It just is
Speaker 1: kind of more egregious at times under Republican presidents. But
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's every president gets more powerful, does more,
Speaker 1: and it does kind of boil down to they're going
Speaker 1: to be evil journalists and media need to recognize what
Speaker 1: their fucking jobs are. If you're in some of these jobs,
Speaker 1: like it's it should not be a popularity contest for
Speaker 1: access only. There should be you should be beholden to
Speaker 1: doing good and making these people held accountable. Because it's
Speaker 1: so relevant in what you're talking about with Kissinger that
Speaker 1: they just let the access to him because he became
Speaker 1: a popular figure, completely blind them as to what was
Speaker 1: actually going on.
Speaker 9: Well, it's actually worse than not punishing them. Remember when
Speaker 9: when Obama was elected, everyone was like, these guys have
Speaker 9: to be.
Speaker 1: Tried for war crimes.
Speaker 9: Yeah, and he said, we got to move on, and
Speaker 9: you know that we're talking about torture and war crimes
Speaker 9: and everything else. But it went, it went further than
Speaker 9: that because they gave Bush like the Medal of Freedom.
Speaker 9: I mean there's a picture of fucking Biden hanging on
Speaker 9: his chest.
Speaker 1: And they also they also honored this guy named Henry Kissinger.
Speaker 9: They did honored him. So it's beyond not doing anything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, it's just it's not even just him, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just it's systemic. It's just and you know what,
Speaker 1: if you are if you are one of these people,
Speaker 1: if you are a fucking anchor at CNN, like if
Speaker 1: you're Jim Acosta. Think of how fucking popular you would
Speaker 1: be if you did just start using your access to
Speaker 1: just be like Peter Jennings, Like here we are craving
Speaker 1: this fucking figure. But they would be immediately fired. I mean,
Speaker 1: but he would never talk, but they would be. But
Speaker 1: you would also, I mean, having even a moment of
Speaker 1: that would carry your career. Like if we had that
Speaker 1: Peter Jennings shit now, it would go so viral and
Speaker 1: people would talk about that person endlessly that I mean.
Speaker 1: It's like it's like when you know, when billionaires started
Speaker 1: competing over being philanthropists. You know, you at some point
Speaker 1: you're so far in the other direction that you're not
Speaker 1: that far off from just doing the thing that you're
Speaker 1: supposed to do. Is going to be such a radical move.
Speaker 1: It's this it's very frustrating.
Speaker 2: Like right now you have all of these big media
Speaker 2: figures like moving their shows to Ukraine to be able
Speaker 2: to film shelling in the distance. Like obviously, to be
Speaker 2: a journalist covering combat up close, covering war crimes up
Speaker 2: close requires a lot of physical courage. Those like Sky
Speaker 2: News reporters who got fucking shot and shit, the Daily
Speaker 2: Beast reporters got fucking shot that. But like being like
Speaker 2: less your holt, like having your show filmed with like
Speaker 2: shelling in the distance. They have massive security teams, they
Speaker 2: have massive resources invested into making sure they are in
Speaker 2: as little danger as they can possibly be, and more
Speaker 2: than anything, they are out there in doing it for
Speaker 2: the fucking clout. Because that is easy to like, feels
Speaker 2: like I'm brave. What's actually brave is Peter Jennings yelling
Speaker 2: at Henry Kissinger at a fucking dinner party full of
Speaker 2: powerful people and making sure that for just a second
Speaker 2: he has a moment of accountability. And if one of
Speaker 2: them was willing to do fucking that to any of
Speaker 2: these goals, I would have a lot more respect than
Speaker 2: I would have them filming shelling in Key from a
Speaker 2: mile and a half away.
Speaker 9: Yeah, look, there was Wolf Blitzer who during the First
Speaker 9: Gulf War put on a helmet and was in Saudi
Speaker 9: Arabia where scud missles were flying and saying how in
Speaker 9: danger he was. At the same time, there were journalists,
Speaker 9: American journalists in the fucking bag that hotel being being
Speaker 9: shot at and rocketed by American troops, and those guys
Speaker 9: didn't work anymore, and wolf Blitzer got his own TV
Speaker 9: show on CNN.
Speaker 1: Or Brian Williams when he talked to when he was
Speaker 1: like the way that he embellish his story about like
Speaker 1: getting off of a helicopter and taking RPG fire, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean I don't know we could use another Jennings
Speaker 2: or too, at least in this regard.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's it's hard because it's like, what
Speaker 1: would you I mean what would like You're like, we want,
Speaker 1: like we want a politician for the people, and it's like,
Speaker 1: I like that's like that's what you wish for, but
Speaker 1: you're like, the step first is to just have these
Speaker 1: people vilified for the things they should be vilified for.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it would be nice if there was a journalist.
Speaker 2: That's the end of the stay.
Speaker 1: Well, honestly, like this was, I mean just fucking incredible
Speaker 1: and just such a ridiculous He's a pretty bad one, right,
Speaker 1: I don't think I don't think there's a worse America.
Speaker 1: The worst he is. He. I know that there was
Speaker 1: talk of like into the countries, of like trying him
Speaker 1: outside of you know, not having him there. Yeah.
Speaker 9: Yeah, but can he travel anywhere he wants or is restricted?
Speaker 1: He can't.
Speaker 2: I'm not aware of. I mean there may be like
Speaker 2: one place.
Speaker 1: He also now like he's become like this watery figure.
Speaker 1: So he's kind of like the T one thousand where
Speaker 1: if you just get close to him, he turns into
Speaker 1: silver goo and just can go through a drain or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can't put a handcuff around a pile of watery goo.
Speaker 2: I mean he's he is a big part. Like he
Speaker 2: argues vociferously for why like Rumpsfeld shouldn't be able to
Speaker 2: be charged and I think Germany it is and he's
Speaker 2: doing it like selfishly again then shock, then it would
Speaker 2: put Kissinger in danger, right, like he's not giving it
Speaker 2: enough loyalty to Rummy, who he probably.
Speaker 1: Hates at this point.
Speaker 2: Although I don't know that Kissinger can take things personally actually,
Speaker 2: so maybe like I don't.
Speaker 1: Know, he he's like the Bill Walsh coaching Tree of
Speaker 1: War criminals. Yeah, I don't know what that means. Well,
Speaker 1: Bill Walsh like coached the forty nine ers and invented
Speaker 1: the West Coast offense and you just see the ripple
Speaker 1: effect through the NFL for generations in decades. Yeah, changed football,
Speaker 1: It just changed everything. And it's like that's what he did.
Speaker 1: He just was the guy who's like, you know, I
Speaker 1: came up with a new offense, and it's like everyone's
Speaker 1: just reading off of that playbook and tweaking it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: said reference Robert Robert. Football is when uh.
Speaker 2: Ok the title of this episode. I love that guy,
Speaker 2: Gareth said, of the football, but the politics.
Speaker 1: I liked the two yeahs, the precedgure. I don't know
Speaker 1: who that guy is. Noah, Hey, who is that? Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's like it's like in basketball when Phil Jackson made
Speaker 1: the triangle offense.
Speaker 2: That's somebody triangle diplomacy. It's like the triangle thing.
Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely, yeah, yeah, like all right, I'll right, A trag.
Speaker 2: An offense is the opposite of defense, right, Yes, what
Speaker 2: everyone said, that's what everyone says. In my opinion, it
Speaker 2: definitely is you know.
Speaker 1: The team with the most points when well, for sure
Speaker 1: that's going to be critical.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, And you know when the overtime gets a
Speaker 2: first down, that's really that's that's probably.
Speaker 1: I'd finish it. You've nailed it already, absolutely, three pointer,
Speaker 1: absolutely point touchdown for Robert. Let's go glove trotters. Well, honestly,
Speaker 1: thank you for allowing us to enter your dojo and
Speaker 1: mess around for a little while. I don't know.
Speaker 2: Thank you is the right thank you, bro, I thank
Speaker 2: you for listening to me read thirty one thousand words about.
Speaker 9: Because we talked about it and I was like, I
Speaker 9: can't do it because it's not one episode, it's so
Speaker 9: any episode.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is like the minimum I think responsibly cover
Speaker 2: Henry Kissinger. Like, we could have done another couple episodes.
Speaker 1: Hey, let's do it it, Gareth, Yes, just rip a couple.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll get a couple of photos of him hanging
Speaker 2: out with Jill Saint John, joke about his hog.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's take it on the road. We can get
Speaker 1: another forty minutes of content out of that. Honestly, we
Speaker 1: could just keep redoing partons of this on the road
Speaker 1: for a year and a half.
Speaker 2: The develop and Behind the Bastards present three guys going
Speaker 2: through shots of Henry Kissinger at fancy parties and talking
Speaker 2: about the shape of his dick under his pants.
Speaker 1: Honestly, honestly, it should work.
Speaker 2: Looks like he was having a chubb day today. What
Speaker 2: do you think, Dave.
Speaker 1: At the walnuts on the table, I'm the only one
Speaker 1: I'm focused on. Look at those tennis shorts.
Speaker 2: This is how we make our millions.
Speaker 1: Well, genuinely, thank you.
Speaker 9: I'm generally super scared having watched how Colin Powell was treated.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, when he died. Beast scared. People are going
Speaker 1: to react to Yeaher's death. Yeah, you're going to watch
Speaker 1: liberals be like he was fucking awesome and you're just
Speaker 1: like everything about him was bad. Yeah, yeah, w it'll
Speaker 1: be fun. Any pluggables at the end here, sure? Yeah, listen. Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, we've got the Kissinger. We should do
Speaker 1: Kissinger live, and we should use the kiss font and
Speaker 1: we should also wear like the kiss makeup and we
Speaker 1: should just do Kissinger. Yeah. We will be in Australia
Speaker 1: and America. Best country on Earth will be in Australia
Speaker 1: in the middle of April to May. You can go
Speaker 1: to dollapodcast dot com for all that information. We're all
Speaker 1: over the place. And then I am doing stand up
Speaker 1: in Australia and also over the summer, so you can
Speaker 1: go to Gareth Reynolds dot com for all that information
Speaker 1: and you can follow us on social media's with our
Speaker 1: I'm at Reynolds, Gareth Dave's at Dave Underscore Anthony on Instagram.
Speaker 1: I'm at Reynolds Gareth on Twitter, Dave's at Dave Anthony
Speaker 1: on Twitter and who all right, thank you for having
Speaker 1: us again. Mother.
Speaker 2: Yeah, everyone go pray for Henry Kissinger's painful demise. Yeah,
Speaker 2: let's have let's all hope that Tim tim Allen takes
Speaker 2: him out somehow smuggles coke into a party Kissinger's at
Speaker 2: and it just blows out the old man's heart.
Speaker 1: Or he just starts doing war improvement with Kissinger. Yah,
Speaker 1: his character. Yeah, Kissinger would be the you know, the
Speaker 1: the owl. He's the owl, right right?
Speaker 2: Oh, you got a bomb Cambodia, Tim, all right, there's
Speaker 2: a good.
Speaker 1: That's a note. Dingo Behind the Bastards is a production
Speaker 1: of cool Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media,
Speaker 1: visit our website cool zonemedia dot com, or check us
Speaker 1: out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts.