DR HENRY KISSINGER

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don't know what conclusions we would have come to had we had to monitor this from
the beginning.

Billen: And you and Nixon would have done the same thing as Bush and Blair?

Kissinger: I would say almost certainly.

Billen: The problem is, because of the —

Kissinger: - I say 'almost' only because it's very hard to put oneself into the exact circumstances.

Billen: I know you said that President Nixon was a cautious man but completely ruthless when he made a decision.

Kissinger: Yes. Ruthless - Determined.

Billen: The problem is that now that these reports are coming out that there simply weren't these weapons the election's become a problem of faith and trust in the Presidency, hasn't it?

Kissinger: What one has to remember, the question really is, did the President knowingly present that there were weapons of mass destruction there and while being in doubt about this proceeded anyway? And I have no doubt about the fact that he sincerely believed that there were weapons there, nor did he have any reason to question it on the basis of anything that I have seen of intelligence estimates, admittedly probably incomplete what I have seen.

Billen: Obviously there were ancillary reasons given for removing Saddam, including his spectacular abuse of human rights. Was that any business of ours or America's?

Kissinger: I do not, as a general rule, believe that military intervention is justified if the only justification is abuse of human rights — though there is a limit beyond which I would support it.

Billen: Such as?

Kissinger: I thought that in Rwanda we should have stopped the killing.

Billen: That's very interesting.

Kissinger: Because that was mass murder, resisting had no huge international consequences.

Billen: And yet Clinton did nothing.

Kissinger: For very understandable reasons. It is a major decision whether you will go around the world as the policeman of human rights by military force.

Billen: I don't want to misrepresent you on human rights —

DR HENRY KISSINGER

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Kissinger: - but I would not have advocated it, nor did I ever advocate it, in Iraq on those grounds.

Billen: A friend of mine who wrote a book about human rights pointed out to me that you'd said in Santiago in 1976, 'Human rights are the very essence of a meaningful life and human dignity the ultimate purpose of government. A government that tramples on the rights of its citizens denies the purpose of its existence.' Which sort of surprised me because you're not really known for standing up for human rights, unless it's in negotiation with the Russians.

Kissinger: No. Until the Nixon administration, human rights was not an aspect of American foreign policy. It was generally believed by any that, that was beyond the reach of diplomacy, and if you look at the American administrations since World War Two, there isn't one that conducted an active human rights policy. As far as we were concerned, in the Nixon administration, I believed that we should stand for human rights. I also believed that we had other objectives and that that could not be our sole objective. Finally I believed that our most effective way of dealing with human rights was to deal with the government and use the attraction of better relations with the United States as a means of influencing these governments and therefore we started in 1969 to promote Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union. We never made any public claim for that. We never took any credit for it in the elections that were taking place. We raised the emigration from 900 to 40,000, or close to 40,000. Then it became a political issue and went into the public arena.

Billen: And that wasn't just in order to upset the Russians, a stick to beat them with. It was something you felt strongly about.

Kissinger: No, it was the opposite. It was to give the Russians an avenue to improve relations with us. We didn't threaten the Russians. What we said to the Russians, almost verbatim was, 'This is not something which we claim as a right to do. It is something, however, which we will notice and from which we will draw conclusions.'

Billen: Part of détente?

Kissinger: Yes. Now this remained our attitude. Now every once in a while they published some comment I made about say Latin American violations of human rights. But you will find that it followed the same pattern. I made a public speech asserting our interest in human rights.

Billen: As in Santiago?

Kissinger: Santiago.

DR HENRY KISSINGER

5

Billen: In '76.

Kissinger: Yes, Santiago. That was preceded by a speech in the Dominican Republic where I said similar things and followed by another speech in the Fall so this was not an isolated incident. I then spoke to Pinochet and to the Argentine leaders in the language of diplomacy, which was 'it is in your self interest to do this, because otherwise it will be difficult for us to help you as we want to help you. And we genuinely do not want to overthrow you,' because we thought the alternative to those governments was not democracy, but some radical terrorist or communist force. That was our strategy and we pursued it quite consistently. We achieved the breakthrough to majority rule in Rhodesia, it then took three years to implement it but we got Ian Smith but we always did it without what is now the standard method of the NGOs. I don't place any value judgement on this, I can only tell you that it was not surprising, it was a part of our policy, though it became very controversial because others wanted us to put it at the forefront of our concerns and achieve it through the public retreat and if necessary humiliation of the people we were seeking to influence.

Billen: This is very different from the neocon idea of a moral crusade transforming a region into a democratic vision.

Kissinger: Yes. I don't agree with that.

Billen: You don't agree with that? It strikes me, well, not only strikes me, strikes many people, it's a strange sort of Wilsonian exceptionalist doctrine being taken over by the right.

Kissinger: I believe that America has to stand for human values and democracy because this is an essential part of the American experience. And I also do not think that we can appoint ourselves as the moral guardian of – I don't want to say moral guardian – as the immediate transformer of every government by pressure, so I would leave something more to history.

Billen: Time?

Kissinger: I would leave something more to time and I think the neoconservative view is very similar to the Trotskyite view, in the sense that many of them believe there are no real foreign policy problems. There are problems in the domestic structures and if you can change those the foreign policy problems will solve themselves automatically.

Billen: You believe in regional interests?

DR HENRY KISSINGER

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Kissinger: I don't believe that. I believe one has to be more modest and that one has to take into account the history, the culture and often the dignity of the country that's involved.

Billen: Which is the lesson of Vietnam.

Kissinger: That's a lesson, yes. Although in Vietnam, what happened in Vietnam really it didn't start as a crusade. What happened in Vietnam was that we attempted to apply the principles we had learned in Europe of containment to circumstances that were radically different and that we thought South Vietnam was like central Europe and that a line could be drawn which could then be defended and we got ourselves into a peoples' war. Into a guerrilla war and that overstrained our domestic consensus.

Billen: How tight a grip on the American government do the neocons have now? How influential are the Dick Cheneys and so on? The New American Century people.

Kissinger: Dick Cheney's not a neocon.

Billen: He signed the New American Century petition in the 90s.

Kissinger: Yes, but he's not basically a neocon. He is a conservative. The neocon philosophy is that you can transform foreign policy into a moral crusade and if you have achieved the requisite moral impetus, that this will sweep what appear as foreign policy problems before them. I don't think that's exactly Cheney's views. He would be more on the traditional conservative, nationalist wavelength.

Billen: Anybody else up there, Wolfowitz?

Kissinger: Wolfowitz is closer to the neo-conervative view but the major issue is that they have demonised a number of people and think that they are a pernicious influence. The challenge that Bush will face, after re-election, is whether he can help create, as we did in the late 40s, a system that is relevant to this period. It can't be dealt with in slogans and you cannot have a peaceful order which is not supported by a significant number of the key countries, because otherwise you're engaged in an indefinite police action and no country can sustain that psychologically.

Billen: And you said, well before the war, in April 2002, 'I question the value of universal crusades because I think looking at it as an American they'll eventually go beyond our capacity.' And it looks like Iraq already - it's threatening to look like that. You've got a huge debt, you've got no go areas in the country, oil production is down by two million barrels a day.

Kissinger: All of this may be true to some extent but we cannot afford in Iraq to repeat the experience of Vietnam. Of tearing ourselves apart. Because the conflict will not

DR HENRY KISSINGER

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stop at the borders of Iraq and the issues that drew us in will continue the impact of a
radical fundamentalist victory in Iraq on the Moslem world which would be
catastrophic from Indonesia to Morocco. The impetus it would give - including
countries like India - the impetus it would give to radical challenges to advanced
societies would be enormous. And I think in their hearts most European leaders
understand this and until fairly recently most European leaders thought we would
prevail in some fashion without them and that they could participate in the second
phase.

Billen: They're less sure now.

Kissinger: Less sure now, yes.

Billen: The problem is it's like Vietnam, isn't it? It's a double blow for America. It
assails its moral leadership and it looks weaker than a super power should look.

Kissinger: But I have the unfashionable view that we did not need to lose in Vietnam.

Billen: How could you have won?

Kissinger: Well this would get us into an endless discussion. You have the strange
situation that all supplies to Vietnam were coming through Laos over essentially
uninhabited territory. It was assigned to Laos in the 19th century for essentially
colonial reasons. There were sanctuaries along the Cambodian border from which
four Vietnamese divisions were killing American soldiers, yet the attempt to destroy
these sanctuaries is usually listed among the moral disabilities of the Nixon
administration. And nobody, until it was too late, attempted to cut the Ho Chi-Minh
trail which would have made bombing unnecessary because it would have stopped
supplies, or forced a battle. Our dilemma in Vietnam was that they could use the
guerrilla forces to distract our main forces and then their main forces could operate.
Or vice versa. So we could never apply the American strategy, historic strategy of
attrition because they fought only when they wanted to. This would not have been true
in Laos. Now I did not advocate that at the time.

Billen: Why not?

Kissinger: That's a very interesting question. We finally did try to do it in 1971 but by
that time we no longer had American ground combat forces in Vietnam and there
were such Congressional inhibitions against using airpower outside of the territorial
limits of Vietnam -

Billen: Cambodia and so on?

DR HENRY KISSINGER

8

Kissinger: - so that it did not succeed. The South Vietnamese were not strong enough to do it, but conceptually it would be hard to argue that it would not have succeeded.

Billen: So the lessons we learnt is, don't lose in Iraq? Don't lose this second war in Iraq now.

Kissinger: Yes, that is essential.

Billen: Even if it makes America unpopular still?

Kissinger: Well, I would think that after the election everybody can take another look and we should then have a dialogue about the political evolution of Iraq and avoid the question of military deployment and see what efforts can be shared in that enterprise and then that can lead later on to a re-examination of the security question.

Billen: Do you think they can get these elections taking place in January?

Kissinger: Well, they almost have to take place over there.

Billen: It's very hard to see how they're going to get ballot boxes in places they can't even get soldiers right now.

Kissinger: Well, I'm assuming that they must have some strategy for repeating what happened in Samara, in the other cities.

Billen: I'm sorry, I'm just smiling because there doesn't seem to be much strategy for this peace, so called.

Kissinger: Well, we need it obviously. I think they now have a strategy.

Billen: The tragedy of it really, from the European perspective, is that President Bush failed to get a coalition beyond the willing. I think you've been involved in a group looking at how to repair European American relations.

Kissinger: Yes, I was the Chairman of a study group on repairing European-American relations.

Billen: Have you reported?

Kissinger: Yes, we've reported and I can give you a copy and it was, I believe, a constructive report and a conciliatory report and it was also significant from the American point of view because about half of the group was sort of Clintonite Democrats and the other half more or less they were Republican and we achieved a unanimous report, while the rest of the country was very divided.

Billen: That's remarkable for these times.

Kissinger: And so I believe that something like this can and must be attempted after the election in relations with Europe.

Billen: A new institution of some sort?

DR HENRY KISSINGER

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Kissinger: Some dialogue in which we restate the question don't ask support for military operations, but rather learn how allies view the political evolution of Iraq. If, what I have said is correct, then in the end Europe will also be profoundly affected by the radicalisation of the Islamic world, in fact Europe will be more immediately affected, having more Moslems citizens, a greater percentage of Moslems. And so I think that we should not be obsessed now with the debates of the moment. It's also not true that all of Europe was opposed. Eastern Europe was not opposed to us and many in western Europe participated to the limits of their abilities that were not infinite. So when we talk about the dispute we're talking about Germany, France, Belgium and a few other countries that are very important and we would far prefer their respect. And that's another thing to be considered. The problem is, in western Europe. There is no resentment of that type in our relations with Russia, China, India, Japan. Over three quarters of the human population. And the reason is, there are many reasons, but Europe, or many countries in Europe, are in the process of giving up the concept of the state. And so here is the United States acting like a 19th century European state which is what they're trying to overcome. So that rings all the alarm bells. On the other hand Europe can offer no clear cut alternative yet as Europe.

Billen: So America's the new Germany or the new France.

Kissinger: Because it is torn between its past which it's trying to overcome and the future it hasn't built yet. So this is not just caused by American statements, there are deeper reasons for it.

Billen: As always, you see a geo-political cause beneath the obvious.

Kissinger: I think there is a geopolitical, historical evolution. This is one of the great upheavals of history.

Billen: The easier thing is to say elect Kerry and then America has a fresh start in getting on with France and Germany.

Kissinger: I didn't want to get into personalities, but I can make a safe comment. It is absolutely out of the question that Kerry will get significant additional military support from Europe and the attempt to get it will involve such a bitter controversy that paradoxically, in order to heal the alleged rift, or the supposed rift, one would recreate it. So whatever Kerry may or may not achieve he cannot achieve this. And as I pointed out earlier in the process of transition, so many new questions would be raised independent of his qualities, that this is not the right period for change in my view.

DR HENRY KISSINGER

10

Billen: The President has not proved a brilliant diplomat though he has on the international stage?

Kissinger: The President has an opportunity to – I would say a necessity, but certainly an opportunity – to emerge like Truman did in second term and he has many of the qualities of Truman, though Truman had concerned himself more with history. So I think the opportunity exists. I even believe, based on some conversations, that he realises this opportunity. Now can we implement it? That is the question we'll have to settle. We can't do it alone.

Billen: Has he the skills to do it?

Kissinger: No, he hasn't. I mean I'm an outsider.

Billen: You don't know him personally?

Kissinger: I know him, yes, I know him quite well. Not quite well, I see him a few times.

Billen: He seems a persuasive man in talking to the American public through television. I just don't know whether he's any good one to one as a negotiator with other nations.

Kissinger: Presidents are not needed as negotiators. Negotiators compose [???] differences. Presidents are needed to set objectives and to enable other countries to feel that these objectives are at least compatible, and hopefully more than that, with their own. Now this President, they have to keep – well, one of the weaknesses of our system is the process of transition because 5,000 jobs change hands.

Billen: Unlike in Britain.

Kissinger: There are months of security clearances as a practical matter. The Under Secretaries and Deputy Secretaries and Assistant Secretaries will not be in place fully until July, August. That's an irritant. So this President came in in 2001. By the time he had his team in place he was immediately faced with an emergency that was absolutely unprecedented and traumatic. And it was bound to be felt more by Americans than by foreigners, however close, and especially foreigners could not understand the shock for Americans to realise that there were people so hostile that they were willing to commit suicide. To do damage at great distances.

Billen: More understandable for Europe.

Kissinger: In Europe people have experienced hostility before. So all of this has to be understood in assessing the American reaction.

Billen: And assessing the President.

DR HENRY KISSINGER

11

Kissinger: And in assessing the President.

Billen: Do you think, as some people now think, that unilateralism, American
unilateralism is dead? I know you don't think it is unilateral entirely.

Kissinger: We have to bring this to a conclusion.

Billen: I'd beg you another five minutes for me if possible.

Kissinger: I don't accept this distinction between unilateralism and multilateralism.
How does unilateralism arise? It emerges when a country feels that its fundamental
national interest is in some way alone and it cannot get support. Then it has to decide
whether it prizes the value – whether it prizes obtaining support so much that it will
act against its own best judgement and risks its security. But in the long term, if one
created a vital international system such situations should not arise in that manner. If
one reaches a point where one says, for the sake of multilateralism we must deny
ourselves our security it will collapse, the system will collapse. So therefore the
question is can one give multilateralism a definition that satisfies the basic
requirements of the key countries?

Billen: Can you?

Kissinger: Well, look at the Cold War. If the principle that is now being advertised, that you must have unanimity of the Security Council had been applied in the Cold War, no crisis would have been dealt with. The only war that had United Nations approval until the end of the Cold War was the Korean War, and that by a fluke, because the Russian Ambassador was boycotting the Security Council over the issue of Chinese admittance to the U.N. and nothing to do with this. So is unilateralism dead? I don't like unilateralism as a principle and as a preferred course, but multilateralism can also turn into an alibi for doing nothing, and that's what we should try to give content to.

Billen: Can I just ask you just three very quick questions slightly off subject.

Kissinger: I don't know if it's possible for me to be quick answers.

Billen: Are you still friends with and a supporter of Conrad Black, despite his recent
troubles?

Kissinger: I never give up friends. I am disappointed in many things I have learned
and saddened by them, but I consider my relations with Conrad Black friendly.

Billen: Are you still on the board of Hollinger?

Kissinger: Well, I'm on the board because one has an obligation to help clean up the
situation. But that's independent of friendship.

DR HENRY KISSINGER

12

Billen: You were pretty shocked by what happened?

Kissinger: I was surprised, yes.

Billen: Secondly, one reads all these stories about Chilean judges after you. Does this ever restrict your movement internationally?

Kissinger: No. It hasn't. One reads constantly about cases abroad. One never reads when they are dismissed.

Billen: Have the been dismissed?

Kissinger: All the American cases have been dismissed.

Billen: Have they?

Kissinger: And all the other cases have been satisfied in the sense that the American government provided the answers these judges have asked for and that no new questions have been asked.

Billen: There were new papers released this year about South America. Do you fret about your posthumous reputation?

Kissinger: It's not my posthumous reputation that I fret about, it's the day to day newspaper coverage. You ought to remember this. I made available 30,000 telephone conversations. Only maybe less than ten of those produced controversy even though I'm not short of traducers who are searching eagerly through them. If you analyse what they find it is exactly what I've described here. That my approach to human rights depended on diplomacy and was attempted to be built into the diplomacy and geopolitics. It was not a separate, frontal assault.

Billen: But was still there.

Kissinger: That was my approach. Now we can debate this, but that's the essence, and if you read it from this point of view it is a totally unhistorical approach to pick office conversations and pick one sentence out of that conversation and then not look at the speeches that have been made, at the other things that went on, so I'm relaxed about this.

Billen: I bet you never thought at the time, 20, 30 years on people would be demanding your imprisonment.

Kissinger: Yes, but I'm not complaining. I had an opportunity to practice my hobby as my profession.

Billen: And you became the most famous man in the world.

Kissinger: I have no complaint and I don't feel I'm being persecuted.

Billen: Don't you?

DR HENRY KISSINGER

13

Kissinger: No.

Billen: You're on CNN and Fox and MSNBC all the time, aren't you? It's not as if you're a kind of pariah. You're still obviously highly respected.

Kissinger: I'm being treated respectfully. I have no complaints. I mean I have no basic complaints, there'd be plenty of minor complaints, but not for this interview.

Billen: At the height of your power and fame did you play up the kind of playboy image? Was it foisted on you by the press?

Kissinger: It was unimaginable when it started and it was sort of amusing while it lasted.

Billen: Was there a grain of truth in it?

Kissinger: Eventually somebody will write a biography and put everything into context.

Billen: Yes, I wonder who that will be?

Kissinger: I think Neil Ferguson has tried to do it.

Billen: I remember your old detractor Christopher Hitchin saying on the sex life stuff, the dirty little secret is that there wasn't one.

Kissinger: Who said this?

Billen: Christopher Hitchins.

Kissinger: I don't comment on that.

Billen: Well thank you very much indeed. I haven't heard explained so clearly your approach to human rights before. Grateful for it. And you'll be voting, but you won't say for whom.

Kissinger: Well no, I vote for Bush.

Billen: But without saying anything to detract from his opponent

Kissinger: Since my voting residence is New York.

Billen: It wouldn't make much difference.

Kissinger: It will not be decisive.

Billen: Thank you very much indeed. What I can do is get a transcript of this, the whole thing and I could send it to you.

Kissinger: I would appreciate that. Would you let me tighten it up a little bit and if I wanted to add a sentence – and it will appear a week from Tuesday?

Billen: Yeah, I think probably a week on Tuesday. Howard Dean is the first one, next Tuesday.

DR HENRY KISSINGER

14

Kissinger: How was he?

Billen: Strange, he now works from a small officer in Berlington Vermont with about five helpers, three volunteers and he's clearly waiting to see what happens and I got the impression he might well be interested in having another go.

Kissinger: He won't get it. If Kerry doesn't make it I think Hilary will.

Billen: He was a very strange politician, he kept saying I don't know or I haven't thought about that issue to me.

Kissinger: But now are you going to use most of this or just the human rights part?

Billen: I'll use as much as I can to reflect the balance of the conversation.

Kissinger: That's what I would appreciate.

Billen: You look very well though. I read about your heart attack a few years ago and you seem fine.

Kissinger: Yes we were lucky we caught it at an early stage so there wasn't any significant damage to the heart.

(end of tape and interview)

The London Times/ interview with Dr Kissinger

Page 1 of 3

Theresa Cimino

**From:** Monica Burch [monica@tmslondon.com]
**Sent:** Monday, September 06, 2004 7:14 AM
**To:** Tracy Clark; tcimino@kmaglobal.com
**Cc:** Annabel Martin
**Subject:** The London Times/ interview with Dr Kissinger

Hi Tracy/ Theresa,

Monica here from the London TMSI office. I've just had a call from Burhan Wazir at the London Times who is still waiting to be contacted about interviewing Henry Kissinger.

You will remember that Annabel replied last week saying that was fine - but no one has been in touch with the Times since then. They were hoping to do the interview in September - and so are getting a little anxious.

Could you please let me know how things are progressing and when you have contacted Burhan. I, in the meantime am pushing for the Times to take Kissinger's column as the Telegraph cancelled not long ago - this could provide a good opportunity.

Burhan Wazir's details are all at the bottom of this mail.

Thanks very much and best wishes,
Monica.

Burhan Wazir,
Deputy Features Editor,
The Times,
Tel: 44 207 782 5984.
burhan.wazir@the-times.co.uk

----- Forwarded Message -----

From: "Clark, Tracy" <TClark@Tribune.com>
Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2004 10:10:57 -0500
To: "'pia@tmslondon.com'" <pia@tmslondon.com>
Subject: From the Times of London per Henry Kissinger request

Ms. Engberg, we received this request in our Chicago office today. I have taken over editing duties for the Kissinger column from John Simpson in LA who indicated that we would receive these requests for permission from the Kissinger camp on occasion. We're to check whether or not the paper in question is a subscriber to the Kissinger feature. If it is, Dr. Kissinger will agree to participate. If it is not a subscribing paper and, in fact, a rival paper to one in which his feature appears, he will decline the offer.

Would it be possible for London sales to check Kissinger's list to make sure there's no conflict and let me know what information I should pass along to Kissinger's assistant, Theresa Cimino? Thank you.

Tracy Clark
Associate Editor

-----Original Message-----

From: Theresa Cimino [mailto:tcimino@kmaglobal.com]
Sent: Thursday, August 26, 2004 9:40 PM
To: Clark, Tracy

10/15/2004