January 15, 1991, the deadline that President Bush and the United Nations have set for Iraq's withdrawal from Kuwait. Henry Kissinger, looking even more exasperated than usual, is stomping around his photograph-laden Park Avenue office. The world's most famous diplomat-for-hire is preparing to go to a long-scheduled meeting of Chase Manhattan's International Advisory Committee, and he's not happy. He wants instead to be available for calls from worried clients and, just as important, from television networks eager to broadcast his wisdom. "This is never to happen again," Kissinger rages as he pads the corridors. "Do you understand me?" Everyone nods gravely, although they seem unsure as to how they will henceforth make the world schedule its wars around Kissinger's corporate board meetings.

The next evening, displaying his legendary charm as he greets guests at his River House duplex on East Fifty-second Street, he plays a different role, that of a star in Manhattan's galaxy of jet-setters, media celebrities, and socialites. The pretext for the dinner is the wedding anniversary of Hollywood agent Swifty Lazar and his wife, Mary. Barbara Walers is among the three dozen guests, as are Barbara Howar, Barry Diller, novelist Larry McMurtry, investment banker Felix Rohatyn, and his wife, Liz. The guests and venue alone are enough to give the gathering a buzz, but there is an added reason for excitement: everyone has just heard the bulletins that the war against Iraq has begun. The first floor of the apartment, with its grand views of the East River, has no television, so dinner is delayed as guests troop upstairs to a bedroom. While flicking from station to station with the remote control, Kissinger delivers a rumbling commentary.

As he nears his seventieth birthday, with his aura and energy undiminished but his hope of re-entering high office faded, Kissinger's life has settled into a swirl of dinner parties and business trips and weekends in the Connecticut countryside, a glittering twilight in the vortex of Manhattan's world of power and high fashion. His life remains tightly scheduled, from dawn until midnight, months in advance. He still radiates nervous energy and an edge of impatience as he bustles about with retainers in his wake. Too driven and too overexposed to gain the mantle of a wise elder statesman, he appears to have found just the right balance of business activity, media stardom, and jet-set socializing to keep his adrenaline at the hum he enjoys.

Kissinger's predecessors, such as Dean Rusk, William P. Rogers, and even Dean Acheson, slipped back into private life with the pretense of enjoying the unassuming style that is the luxury of people who have already achieved great stature. Not Kissinger. Unlike any other previous secretary of state—indeed, unlike even any past president—he has been able, by dint of his own dedicated efforts and his larger-than-life personality, to remain a celebrity. In one of the most amazing gravity-defying feats in the American media age, he

Such success in the private sector was not what Kissinger had in mind when he left office in 1977. He would have been dismayed to know at the outset of the Carter administration that two successive Republican presidents would follow without calling him back to public office.

One possible path back to power that intrigued Kissinger as he settled into his New York exile was running for the Senate. His friend Jacob Javits was up for re-election in 1980; he would be seventy-six at the time and was

Kissinger is the world's premier private power player,

CHINESE LAUNDRY

Kissinger meets with Chinese president Yang Shangkun in November 1989, six months after the Tiananmen massacre.

has maintained his heightened aura long after his successors could re-enter restaurants unnoticed.

Although he enjoys and even cultivates this celebrity status, Kissinger shrouds his business dealings in secrecy, which serves to make them only more controversial and intriguing. Earlier this year, *60 Minutes* tried to link his consulting firm, Kissinger Associates, to everything from Iraqi arms deals to conflicts of interest regarding investments in China. Kissinger, who bristles at any intrusion into his business affairs, claims the report was provoked because he forgot to invite executive producer Don Hewitt to a reception that Kissinger organized following the funeral of CBS chairman William Paley. (Hewitt denies this.)

In fact, Kissinger's dealings make a compelling story: with his ability to juggle the roles of media commentator, corporate consultant, and unofficial government adviser, he has become the world's premier private power player, purveying insights and access for millions of dollars a year.

FORREST ANDERSON

THIS ARTICLE IS FROM THE FORTHCOMING BOOK KISSINGER, TO BE PUBLISHED THIS MONTH BY SIMON & SCHOUSTER

in poor health. Kissinger's name naturally came up as a replacement.

The electricity that Kissinger generated was on display at a party fund-raising dinner in Manhattan featuring Gerald Ford. The former secretary of state overshadowed the former president. Fat-cat businessmen unabashedly asked Kissinger for his autograph, and the wives asked their husbands to please find a way to introduce them. "Kissinger is catnip in New York politics these days," wrote David Broder in *The Washington Post*.

Yet Kissinger was not a natural pol. That night he left the fund-raiser early to have his own private dinner with West German foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher. Publicly, he made it clear he would not run if Javits wanted to seek a fifth term. Privately, he worried about living on the $60,000 salary of a senator. And his wife, Nancy, indicated that her reaction to his entering politics would fall somewhere between becoming a Democrat and seeking a divorce.

Kissinger asked Felix Rohatyn to put together a dinner to discuss the possibility of the race. Why, Kissinger was asked, would you want to be a senator? "I have ten years of capital left to my reputation," he replied. "Each year it will diminish. I need a platform." One participant brought up a newly published book by William Shawcross on Kissinger's role in the destruction of Cambodia, noting that it would bedevil him in a campaign. Kissinger erupted. "It's a tissue of lies!" he said, hitting the table. His thin skin, the group realized, would be a major hindrance.

In the end, Javits decided to run, Kissinger decided he would not, and Alfonse D'Amato became the next senator.

Later that year, at the Republican convention in Detroit, Kissinger was involved in an audacious set of political negotiations—never before fully revealed—that almost resulted in a restructuring of the American presidency and, though this was one of the touchiest points of contention, his own return to power. Nominee Ronald Reagan was casting around for a running mate and began toying with the notion of a dream ticket: former president Ford might be persuaded to accept the vice-presidential slot. Ford had previously rejected the idea, but on the second day of the convention he met with Reagan and agreed to reconsider. The one thing he wanted, Ford said, was a guarantee that his job would have meaningful responsibilities.

Kissinger got a call from William Casey, who was Reagan's campaign director, inviting him up to the Reagan staff suite. When Kissinger arrived, he found Casey and Reagan's other top aides, Edwin Meese and Michael Deaver. They wanted Kissinger to persuade Ford to join the ticket. Kissinger, who had a genuine affection for Ford, was excited to be asked for help by his old conservative tormentors and enticed by the prospect of an arrangement that could call him back into power.

Shortly before midnight, Kissinger went up to Ford's suite, where the former president was meeting with a couple of political aides and economist Alan Greenspan. Kissinger expressed doubts that a power-sharing plan between a president and vice president could work, but he prevailed upon Ford's sense of patriotism to get him to consider it. The nation, indeed the entire free world, was facing a dire situation, he said. If the Democrats were not defeated, disaster would ensue. After the meeting had been going on for an hour, Ford got up and asked Kissinger to come with him to a bedroom, where the two could talk privately. "But, Henry, it won't work," he said. Kissinger replied again that the country needed him.

From the outset, the role that Kissinger would get to play in the new administration was a sticking point. Reagan simply did not trust him, did not like him, and thought he was too soft on the Russians. The conservative ex-actor was an ideologue who saw simple truths where Kissinger saw nuances.

Aware of the animosity he engendered, Kissinger told Ford that no "personalities or names" should keep the deal from being done. But Ford made it clear that he wanted Kissinger to become secretary of state again. "I decided," Ford recalls, "that if I was going to be on the ticket, I was going to insist pretty strongly that Henry be secretary of state. I told Henry that was one of the things we were going to negotiate."

On Wednesday, as rumors of the possible dream ticket began rippling across the convention floor, Ford autho-

purveying insights and access for millions of dollars.

ssors

Kissinger

The

Javits

Javits

FORREST ANDERSON

Ford

# Kissinger's negotiations between Ford and Reagan almost resulted in a restructuring of the American presidency.

### ADVISE AND CONSENT

Kissinger and Nixon confer in Key Biscayne, June 1973. Nixon was to meet with Brezhnev the next day.

### POWER SHIFT

Gerald Ford admired his secretary of state (above), but George Bush was chilly.

Kissinger and three other advisers to meet with Reagan's top aides and see if a deal could be struck. Together they produced a two-page treaty that would, in essence, have made Ford the chief operating officer in the White House, with supervisory authority over the National Security Council and its domestic-side counterparts. Reagan would remain as chairman and chief executive officer, with final decision-making authority. Kissinger pronounced the paper "not unreasonable."

Late that afternoon, Ford called and asked if he could come see Reagan. He had decided it was time to press the Kissinger issue. "Ron, I'm making a sacrifice here," he said when he arrived. "And now I'm asking you to make a sacrifice. I want you to appoint Henry Kissinger as secretary of state."

Reagan was blunt and, Ford later recalled, rather annoyed. This was going beyond the bounds of what he had expected. "Jerry, I know all of Kissinger's strong points," Reagan told Ford. "I would use him a lot, but not as secretary of state. I've been all over this country the last several years, and Kissinger carries a lot of baggage. I couldn't accept that."

"I was pretty insistent," Ford recalls. "But Reagan wouldn't commit to it." After less than fifteen minutes of conversation with Reagan, Ford left to go back to his room and mull the matter over.

But the magic had gone from what was, as most participants admitted in retrospect, a somewhat wild notion. The Kissinger issue had pricked the balloon and spared the nation a rather unpromising effort to restructure the executive branch. That evening, Ford went on television to ruminate publicly about what Walter Cronkite called "a co-presidency." Impatiently, Reagan called Ford and said he needed a decision that night. An hour or so later, Ford came by to say he had decided against joining the ticket.

Reagan wasted little time making his next phone call. George Bush was sitting in his hotel room a few blocks away, dejected, watching the drama unfold on television and drinking a Stroh's beer. When the phone rang, his campaign manager, James Baker, picked it up. "Who's calling?" he said. "Governor Reagan" was the answer. Bush braced for the bad news. Word had reached him that the Reagan-Ford deal was set. Then, suddenly, his tense face broke into a grin. Waving his arms at his wife, Barbara, and Baker, he flashed them a thumbs-up sign. "I'd be honored," he said into the phone. "Very honored."

One small legacy of the misbegotten Ford affair was that it would enter the back of Bush's mind as another little reason to be cool toward Kissinger. Though (Continued on page 279)

we shouldn't underinterpret, either. When, pleased with my discovery, I point out the Albemarle correspondence to Tartt, she grows chilly. "I have nothing to say about that," she says.

*The Secret History* is co-dedicated to Bret Ellis and to Paul McGloin, "muse and Maecenas... the dearest friend I can ever hope to have in this world." Some say that Tartt and McGloin shared lodgings, in Boston and New York, after her graduation from Bennington, and that he supported her while she finished her book. "After I graduated from college, I lived with a friend who didn't make me pay rent" is all she will say. "My mother was helpful. I was in Boston, then I was in New York. I worked at a bookstore called the Avenue Victor Hugo for three months, in Boston. Then in New York I worked as an assistant to a painting teacher at Parsons. I was the monitor, and I helped him in his classes."

Was the accommodating friend McGloin, who went to Harvard Law School after graduating from Bennington, and who is now a member of a Manhattan law firm? She won't tell. The one thing she allows is "Paul was very good on sloughs of despond." Of which there appear to have been several. Even though Tartt's preternaturally graceful writing style seems to have been with her almost from the beginning, there were times when the structural challenges—not to mention the demands on her energy—of constructing such a huge novel almost defeated her. "There were nights I thought,

I've just wasted my life," she says.

The reward of her travail is a wonderment of a book, anachronistically rich with both intellectual and narrative waffle. As Bret Ellis puts it, mildly, "Bennington is so tolerant of any type of behavior, it seems odd that anyone who went there could write *The Secret History*. It's a much more traditional view of the novel than you'd think would come from there." Certainly more traditional than *Less than Zero*. Yet apparently Ellis's early criticism of asexuality in Tartt's book took hold, however it may have stung, for in subsequent drafts the absence magically became a subterranean presence. "I mean, this is basically a novel about repressed sexuality," she says. "There's sex all in the book, but it's really pressed down. And that's basically the plot—it's like a water pipe with weak spots, and it'll kind of explode in different places. But it's very controlled."

"It's a way of giving events back their power that have been cheapened by overuse," she says. "Because these are the most powerful things we have—there's nothing more powerful. And we sap their power every day. You know, it's better to kind of keep them in reserve for when you really need them. Well, not necessarily better. But it's a way of looking at things."

No one looks at things the way she does. To make an actual bacchanal come to life, with real force, in this day and age—and at a place like Bennington,

which seems to have been one continuous bacchanal—is no small achievement. And Henry Winter is one of the most chilling characters in recent memory. Does it matter whom he's based on, and what that person is to the author? And why, Donna Tartt seems to be asking—most anachronistically—should her private life be brought into it at all?

We're driving down a dark back road in Bennington, and I suddenly wonder how fame and wealth will take her. "I'm like Huck Finn," she says. "I can be perfectly happy on no money at all. Now that I have money, my life has changed not a bit. Everybody's expecting me to buy a condo, make investments. I don't care about any of that. I like ephemera—books, clothes. Food. That's all." I ask, musingly, if she ever intends to settle down and have a family. She shakes her head firmly. "Je ne vais jamais me marier," she says.

Suddenly she spots, with delight, a whirling flock of goldfinches. "Look at these goldfinches—do you see?" she cries. "Goldfinches are the greatest little birds, because they build their nests in the spring, a long time after all the other birds do. They're the last to settle down—they just fly around and they're happy for a long time, and just sing and play. And only when it's insanely late in the year, they kind of break down and build their nests. I love goldfinches," she sighs, huddling tinily in the big car seat. "They're my favorite bird." ☐

## Kissinger's Web

*(Continued from page 228)* it had not been his scheme, Kissinger had seemed just a little too eager to get Ford rather than Bush on the 1980 Republican ticket.

Reagan's appointment of Alexander Haig as secretary of state had the effect of keeping Kissinger at a distance; Kissinger was contemptuous of his former aide's shallow mind. But soon Haig self-immolated and was forced out.

Replacing him was George Shultz, a man Kissinger admired. In public, Kissinger had said that Shultz was the type of person he would trust to lead the nation in times of crisis. Yet in private he could not refrain from denigrating him, especially when his Middle East peace efforts bogged down. As usual, the information traveled. Kissinger's insults were soon buzzing

around Washington, and Shultz heard them. Coldly furious, he curtailed his courtesy of keeping Kissinger abreast of each new initiative. Kissinger never fully learned that the way he bad-mouthed people behind their backs—it was like an addiction—inevitably got him into trouble.

Surprisingly, Kissinger found that most of his disagreements with Reagan's policies were from the right. Reagan had entered office critical of the arms-control process for merely *limiting* rather than *reducing* missiles. The Soviets decided to call what looked like a bluff and accept real reductions. The result was an agreement, known as the "Zero Option," to remove all medium-range nuclear missiles from Europe. Kissinger was dismayed, and said so forcefully in his newspaper columns; he had been an advocate of the

Euromissiles ever since he began pro-pounding his theories about "limited nuclear wars" in the 1950s. Even more horrifying was Reagan's willingness, at the 1986 Reykjavík summit, to accept Gorbachev's vision of eliminating all nuclear weapons from the face of the earth and to embrace the Gorbomania sweeping Washington.

Kissinger's criticisms were sincere, but his increasingly conservative public positioning sprang from a mix of motivations. Among them was his desire—which seemed at times as desperate as it was doomed—to conquer the hearts and minds of the Reaganite right. In addition to his natural yearning to win over all critics, he realized that it was the true believers on the right rather than his old academic colleagues on the left who had the power to

VANITY FAIR/SEPTEMBER 1992

279

Kissinger's Web

prevent him from serving in another Republican administration. With an eagerness that struck his more moderate friends as unseemly, even craven, he courted the conservatives with all eight cylinders of charm.

It was a difficult task. The die-hard Movement Conservatives had been his foes since the early days of détente. But it was not just Kissinger's policy positions that they objected to. They were also put off by his style and even his background. At its core, the Reagan Revolution had a populist, often resentful tinge. Most of its activists espoused an America First blend of isolationism and unilateralism, and they mistrusted internationalist gobbledygook about such things as the Atlantic Alliance. The revolution's bogeymen were members of the East Coast establishment, the Rockefellers, the media and banking elite—in other words, all of Kissinger's patrons.

The lure of elective office again enticed Kissinger in 1986, when New York State Republican leaders sounded him out about the possibility of running against Mario Cuomo for governor. Kissinger as a senator would have made sense; but to most observers the notion of him as a governor, milking cows at state fairs and wrestling with legislators over highway funds, was ridiculous. Many Republican leaders felt the same, but they were desperate to find someone to take on Cuomo. "The Republican Party is scraping the top of the barrel," said political consultant David Garth. Kissinger finally abandoned the idea.

In the race for the 1988 Republican presidential nomination, there were two candidates who would likely have brought Kissinger back from the wilderness: Senator Robert Dole and Congressman Jack Kemp, both of whom were secure in their conservative credentials and in need of foreign-policy expertise. Unfortunately for Kissinger, George Bush was the opposite.

More significantly, he did not like Kissinger very much. Bush's aides recalled an incident when he was ambassador to the United Nations and Kissinger was withholding information at a meeting; Bush stalked out in anger, muttering, "I don't have to take this shit." In Bush's studiously polite campaign autobiography, Kissinger was one of the few people who got needled; Bush complained that as envoy to Beijing and to the U.N. he had been cut out of policy-making by Kissinger, and he described in a mildly mocking tone one of Kissinger's imperial visits to China.

The new president and his secretary of state, James Baker, were Texas-style pragmatists with little feel for what Bush dismissively called "the vision thing." Kissinger, who had geostrategic visions galore, was not their sort.

Evidence of this came early, just after Bush's inauguration in 1989, when Baker subtly humiliated Kissinger over an idea he had proposed that would become known derisively as "Yalta II." The notion behind Kissinger's plan was that a tacit "framework of accommodation" would be hatched—preferably by a secret envoy such as himself—in which Moscow would agree to allow liberalization in Eastern Europe, and in return the U.S. would agree not to exploit these changes in a way that would threaten Russian security, such as by trying to lure Moscow's allies out of the Warsaw Pact.

It was the ultimate in Kissingerian diplomacy: a sweeping private deal based on spheres of influence that would lead to unabashed détente between the Russians and the Americans. The scheme raised the specter of Yalta, the 1945 summit where, according to conservative demonology, Roosevelt sold out Eastern Europe to Stalin. But Kissinger felt that, on the contrary, his plan would lead to "the reversal of Yalta, not the revival of Yalta."

Kissinger suggested this package plan to President-elect Bush and Baker at a private meeting in December 1988. Bush seemed interested, and he authorized Kissinger to broach the idea with Soviet president Gorbachev. When Kissinger explained the plan at a private meeting with Gorbachev in January 1989, the Soviet leader leaned forward and inquired whether it was a device to get the Soviets to reveal their ultimate intentions in Eastern Europe. Kissinger replied that there was no hidden agenda. Gorbachev designated Kissinger's old back-channel partner, Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin, to serve as a conduit with Kissinger for future talks.

But Baker was not eager to encourage a grand diplomatic gambit that would be handled by Kissinger rather than himself. With the effortless air of a skeet shooter, he sent the idea floating into the sky, eyed it with wry interest, and then casually blasted it away in an interview with *The New York Times*. "I think that it is worthy of consideration because it is a novel approach," Baker said of the Kissinger plan, distorting it slightly. Then he proceeded to suggest that there was a major problem with the idea: it was not necessary. Favorable trends were already under way in Eastern Europe, "so why not let the process move forward for the time being?"

Kissinger felt angry and betrayed. At a

Trilateral Commission meeting in Paris, he vented his fury at the secretary of state. "Baker has developed a new art form," he told some of the participants. "He defends a proposal I didn't make, then says he was interested in it in purely intellectual terms, then rejects it on the grounds that it will give away Eastern Europe to the Soviets."

There were, however, plenty of flaws in Kissinger's scheme. It assumed that the Americans and Soviets still had the clout to negotiate matters affecting the fate of their allies. More importantly, Baker turned out to be right: the Soviet satellites got their freedom without any security concessions by the West. If a grand new Yalta compromise had been reached, it might have actually preserved the Warsaw Pact's power.

From the Yalta II incident on, Kissinger's relations with Bush and Baker were chilly. Although they occasionally would meet with him, there was no effort to involve him in the administration's momentous decisions as the Soviet empire crumbled.

Cut off from the main players, Kissinger eventually found himself in an odd-couple relationship with Vice President Dan Quayle, whom he coached for his 1988 debate with Lloyd Bentsen and courted thereafter. Quayle was invited to a dinner Kissinger hosted in September 1990 at his River House apartment. As usual, Kissinger invited a mix of his business and media friends. Laurence Tisch of CBS was there and Thomas Murphy of ABC, investor Warren Buffett and insurance magnate Maurice Greenberg, Jim Hoge of the New York *Daily News* and Lester Crystal of *The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour*.

What struck many of the guests was how incongruous Kissinger and Quayle seemed together, how little they had in common. A question would be raised, Quayle would stumble around like a C student searching for a safe response, then Kissinger would supply the correct answer. But it was a relationship based on reciprocal needs. To Quayle, Kissinger could provide the heft and substance that seemed so missing in the vice president's vacant visage. And to Kissinger, Quayle offered a link to conservatives—and a chance, perhaps, to be influential some day in the future.

In July 1982, after it was clear that Reagan was never going to make him secretary of state, Kissinger activated his nascent consultant business, Kissinger Associates. With no legal training and little financial acumen, he decided not to follow the usual revolving-door practice of going to a law firm or bank. So he set

280

VANITY FAIR/SEPTEMBER 1992

Kissinger's Web

himself up as a statesman-for-hire, one who would, for a hefty fee, purvey strategic advice to private corporations, undertake diplomatic assignments for them, and serve as a personal national-security adviser to their chairmen.

With $350,000 lent to him by Goldman Sachs and a consortium of three other banks, Kissinger opened an office on Park Avenue at Fifty-first Street in Manhattan and another on Eighteenth and K streets in Washington. The loans were for five years; by the end of the second year, he repaid them in full. His annual revenues reached $5 million by 1987, and today they are more than double that.

To be the first associate in Kissinger Associates, he tapped his longtime deputy, former national-security adviser Brent Scowcroft, who was doing some private consulting work of his own in Washington. Although Scowcroft kept his own private clients in Washington, he would make close to $300,000 a year from Kissinger Associates by the time Bush asked him to return as national-security adviser in 1989. The other principal was Lawrence Eagleburger, who was lured aboard after serving as undersecretary of state. Uncovered by Kissinger, jovial and likable, he helped build the firm into a major enterprise. In 1988, his final year with the company before joining the Bush administration, he made $674,000 in salary and more than $240,000 in severance payments.

In addition there was Alan Stoga, low-key and good-natured, who was referred to by Kissinger and his clients simply as "the economist." After Eagleburger and Scowcroft left in 1989 to rejoin the government, Kissinger hired L. Paul "Jerry" Bremer, who had been his personal aide in the State Department, then the chief anti-terrorism official during the Reagan administration. In addition, William D. Rogers, a lawyer and former undersecretary of state (not to be confused with former secretary William P. Rogers), began working in the Washington office on a part-time basis.

By the early 1990s, Kissinger Associates had more than two dozen corporations as clients, about two-thirds of them American. The list was a closely guarded secret, and the contract with Kissinger Associates barred either side from revealing the relationship. Yet from proxy statements, other financial forms, government-disclosure requirements, interviews, and the tendency of businessmen to talk about their relationship with Kissinger, it is possible to come up with a list of the major

clients that had contracts or arrangements with Kissinger or his firm in the late 1980s and early 1990s:

- American Express and its subsidiary Shearson Lehman Brothers.

- American International Group, the assurance underwriter.

- Anheuser-Busch, brewers of Budweiser and other beers.

- ASEA Brown Boveri, a Swiss-Swedish engineering and manufacturing firm.

- Atlantic Richfield (ARCO), the oil company.

- Banca Nazionale del Lavoro (B.N.L.), a Rome-based bank that, it was later revealed, made illegal loans to Iraq.

- Bell Telephone Manufacturing of Belgium.

- Chase Manhattan Bank.

- Coca-Cola.

- Continental Grain, a privately held grain company.

- Daewoo, a South Korean manufacturing and shipbuilding conglomerate.

- Fiat, the Italian automobile company.

- Fluor, a global engineering and construction company.

- Freeport-McMoRan, a Louisiana-based oil-gas-mineral company.

- GTE, the Connecticut-based telecommunications company.

- H. J. Heinz, the food-product conglomerate.

- Hollinger, a Canada-based global newspaper company.

- Hunt Oil, a Texas-based firm.

- L. M. Ericsson, a Swedish telecommunications company.

- Merck, the pharmaceutical giant.

- Midland Bank, a British retail bank.

- Revlon, the international cosmetics company.

- S. G. Warburg, the British investment bank.

- Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken, a Stockholm-based bank.

- Trust Company of the West, a California-based investment-management firm.

- Union Carbide, the chemical and plastics conglomerate.

- Volvo, the Swedish automobile company.

Kissinger Associates is not listed in the directory of the steel-and-glass Park Avenue office tower that houses its headquarters. A visitor getting off the elevator at the correct floor finds a sparse waiting area with a receptionist behind a Plexiglas window. There is no name on the door.

When Henry Kissinger is in, the office buzzes with a mixture of low-level terror and excitement. The former secretary of state is not one to sit quietly at his desk. Instead, he tends to pace around, wander in and out of colleagues' offices, demand clarifications of various decision memos in his folders, glance warily at his future schedules, and then reject them all as completely unacceptable. In between, he

proclaims certain things, some global and others trivial, to be total outrages. The staff he is burdened with, he growls, is surely some cruel punishment inflicted by vengeful gods. Then, just as suddenly, he tosses out an incisive compliment or suggestion about a project in the works.

Yet such tantrums are leavened by an undercurrent of humor, a shared realization that it is partly an act. With a distracted air, Kissinger jumps from flashes of anger to praise, from weary resignation to self-deprecating jokes. His staff has learned to cope. When he is out of the office and telephones in, his call is put through on a special extension so everyone can react as soon as they see that light blinking. The office security system has a monitor with a camera trained on the elevator bank; the staffers watch it whenever he leaves, and they let loose an audible all-clear sigh as soon as it shows the doors closing behind him. There is a sense of indulgence at times, as if they are dealing with an exceedingly gifted but temperamental child.

The typical annual retainer for Kissinger's services is $200,000, with special projects costing an additional $100,000 or so per month—plus expenses. For that, corporate clients generally receive a full briefing on world events two or three times a year. These are given orally. Nothing is put on paper. Kissinger has no desire to see his perceptions Xeroxed, passed around, and referred to months later.

Each briefing is tailored to the firm's particular interests, but it does not involve specific investment advice. The view is usually medium-range: what to expect in the European Community or Russia or Indonesia in the next five to ten years. In addition, Kissinger is available for regular telephone consultations. As the war against Iraq erupted in 1991, five or six calls from major clients came in each day asking for insights. In such cases, the advice sought generally has little business connection. Corporate executives are not immune to the ego kick that comes from being able to say, "Well, I talked to Henry this morning and he feels..."

In fact, part of what Kissinger Associates has to sell is the famous name and rumbling accent. An executive who has to make a tough foreign-investment decision can feel safer if, when presenting the plan to his board, he can talk about the breakfast he had with Kissinger on the subject. "If something goes wrong in one of the countries where we've made an investment," explains one corporate executive, "I know that we will not look negligent if we'd discussed the situation with Henry beforehand."

282

VANITY FAIR/SEPTEMBER 1992

Kissinger recoils at the notion that he sometimes serves as a glorified fixer, but at least one-quarter of his project work is cutting through bureaucratic problems that clients face in foreign countries. This often involves making a few well-placed phone calls to friends in top government positions.

Increasingly during the speculative boom years of the 1980s, Kissinger sought to branch into the field of putting together deals. As he watched his investment-banker friends such as Peter Peterson rake in millions in percentage fees on big deals, Kissinger came to realize that this was how the real money was made. Kent Associates, a subsidiary of Kissinger Associates named after the town his country home is near, was formed partly for that purpose, and Alan Batkin, an investment banker with Shearson Lehman Brothers, was hired in 1990.

Commercial acumen, however, is not a prominent component of Kissinger's intellect, and the business of deal-making, already in decline when he became involved, did not become a major part of his work. "Just because he's a genius," says Maurice Greenberg, chairman of American International Group, "doesn't mean he has a feel for commerce or the makings of an investment banker."

There is one area of deal-making that still offers promise: the privatization of government-owned enterprises—telephone systems, banks, heavy industries, transportation systems—as countries around the world move toward market-oriented economies. Because American banks are nervous about making loans directly to Third World governments, these countries increasingly rely on selling equity in state-owned businesses to foreign investors. "Privatization is the most important new trend," says Robert Day, the chairman of Trust Company of the West, "and Henry is perfectly poised to be at the fore. There is no one in the world today who has the personal contacts in so many governments and can help work out privatization deals."

Day has been particularly active in pursuing privatization deals in Mexico, Venezuela, Chile, and elsewhere in Latin America. His company, a privately held asset-management fund group, handled $20 billion worth of investments for four hundred institutional and private clients in 1990. That year, T.C.W. decided it wanted to put the money together to buy a major share in the Mexican telephone system, Telmex. With Kissinger's help, T.C.W. joined forces with GTE, which also happened to be a Kissinger client, and with Telefónica de España. Although the bid

was not successful, T.C.W. and GTE pursued other privatization ventures in Latin America. Last December, for example, a GTE-led consortium paid $1.9 billion for a 40 percent stake in Venezuela's phone company.

Kissinger gives T.C.W. regular briefings on the political climate of Mexico. But he also does something no other consultant can do: provide instant access to the top. In March 1990, while in Acapulco on vacation, Kissinger arranged a quick trip with Day to Mexico City. They flew in Day's corporate jet, had a breakfast meeting with the finance minister, and in the course of the day met with every other major Cabinet officer. That evening, they went to a reception thrown for Kissinger by the American ambassador, John Negroponte, who had once been a member of Kissinger's White House staff. On hand were eighty of Mexico's top political and business leaders.

In addition, Kissinger has traveled with Day to Japan and China. "Wherever Henry goes, everyone wants to meet with him," says Day, a tan and fit Californian with an easygoing verve. "This guy is larger than life. It's like traveling with someone who is still a secretary of state. And there's a reason: he works at it."

A business relationship with Kissinger often brings with it a social component. When Day went to New York early last year, for example, Henry and Nancy Kissinger held a small dinner in his honor with a dozen or so of their most social friends. Among the guests were Ahmet and Mica Ertegün, Sid and Mercedes Bass, and Oscar de la Renta and his wife, Annette.

Maurice Greenberg, known as "Hank," has also become both a client and a social friend. A wiry and tightly wound man with a good sense of humor and a secure smile, Greenberg built American International Group into the leading U.S.-based international insurance company, with half of its income from foreign sources. In 1987, he made Kissinger the chairman of his International Advisory Group and began retaining him to handle three or four projects a year for the company. "Henry hasn't lost the spellbinding mystique he had when he was secretary of state," Greenberg says. "He gets immediate respect wherever he goes."

One case Kissinger handled for A.I.G. involved Argentina's state-owned insurance company, which decided in the 1980s to get into the international reinsurance business. Among the policies it bought up were some that had been issued by A.I.G. But the insurance market went into a bad

cycle, the Argentinean state company began losing money, and in 1987 it quit paying off claims, which left A.I.G. holding the bag. Greenberg turned to Kissinger to bring about a resolution.

On a trip to Argentina, Kissinger met with the finance minister to figure out what could be done. What impressed Greenberg was not simply that Kissinger could open doors—though the ease with which he got an appointment with the finance minister was impressive—but also that he studied the details of the problem and worked on ways it could be mediated. "He helped bring both parties off their fixed position," Greenberg says. While the matter was being discussed, Greenberg traveled to Argentina with Kissinger, where the former secretary of state was an honored guest at the inauguration of President Carlos Menem.

In November 1989, Greenberg took a trip through Asia with Kissinger that showed the value of his relationships. Their first stop was in Malaysia, whose prime minister, Mahathir Bin Mohamad, had been a student in Kissinger's international seminar at Harvard. Next they went to Singapore, where Kissinger's close friend Lee Kwuan Yew, the prime minister from 1959 to 1990, hosted a private lunch and then a large reception for him. The trip ended with a visit to Beijing, the first by Kissinger since the Tiananmen Square crackdown that June. Deng Xiaoping, the supreme ruler, threw a well-publicized intimate lunch for Kissinger and Greenberg in the Great Hall of the People. "Henry's image and influence in China is such that just by the fact that you're with him there's a nice rub-off effect," Greenberg says.

Another close client is Freeport-McMoRan chairman James Moffett, an exuberant executive with the wildcat confidence of a man who has spent more than twenty years creating one of the world's most impressive sulfur, gold, copper, oil, and gas exploration companies. Bold, unvarnished, and optimistic, with few of the troubles that are spawned by excessive reflectiveness, Moffett (who likes to be called Jim Bob) is Kissinger's opposite. But he understands how much help Kissinger can be to a company with global aspirations. He consequently has made Freeport-McMoRan one of Kissinger's most lucrative clients: in 1989, it paid his firm a $200,000 retainer and $600,000 in fees, plus it promised a commission of at least 2 percent on future capital investments made on the basis of its advice that year. In addition, Kissinger makes more than $30,000 annually in director's compensation for his service on the company's board.

VANITY FAIR/SEPTEMBER 1992

283

Kissinger's Web

Moffett is the type of executive who
likes having Kissinger around simply for
the joy of hearing him hold forth. So on
the eve of the company's January 1991
board meeting, he took over Moran's
Riverfront Restaurant on the edge of New
Orleans' French Quarter, had a big square
table placed in the middle, and invited the
Freeport-McMoRan board and top execu-
tives to eat oysters Rockefeller and shrimp
rémoulade while Kissinger expounded on
the impending war with Iraq.

Moffett also likes to use Kissinger for
political and risk assessments, which are
the core services that Kissinger Associates
offers. For example, Freeport-McMoRan's
biggest venture is a gold and copper mine
in Indonesia. In 1991, the company got a
thirty-year permit to work the mine,
which would require an investment of at
least $550 million. Before completing the
deal, Moffett asked Kissinger to provide
an analysis of the political future in Indo-
nesia for the next ten to twenty years.

"When you're making a commitment of half a billion dollars," Moffett says, "a few hundred thou for a consultant who knows his way around the place is nothing." And if a revolution ever hits Indonesia and the mines are nationalized, Freeport-McMoRan's stockholders will have a hard time accusing their chairman of being reckless. (Nor, for that matter, could they hold Kissinger liable; under his contract, the company indemnifies him and holds him harmless for any bad advice he gives.)

When Gerald Ford was planning to retire from the board of American Express, he recommended Kissinger be made a director. "A lot of you fellows may not like Henry," Ford argued, "and he may be controversial in this country, but he is not controversial abroad. He knows people and can get doors open and can get things done." Another director demurred, noting that "a company as big and sophisticated as American Express doesn't need anyone to open doors for it." A few other board members argued that Kissinger might be too radioactive. But Kissinger was elected, and the firm's chairman, James Robinson, became one of his biggest fans.

The fee the company pays Kissinger Associates fluctuates, but for 1989 it included a $100,000 retainer for advising Robinson on international affairs plus $200,000 as a consultant to Shearson Lehman Brothers, the company's investment-banking subsidiary. In addition, Kissinger personally received $120,000 for making

speeches and appearances at company
functions and $48,000 for his work as a
member of the American Express board.

"Henry has an incredible capacity to stay current," says Robinson. Before leaving on a major trip, Kissinger usually calls Robinson to see if there are any issues to be explored in the countries he plans to visit. Sometimes Robinson cites a specific problem or two. For example, American Express was seeking a license for its banking subsidiary to do business in Hungary. When Kissinger traveled there, he raised the issue with the new government and stressed that the American Express Bank should get priority because it would also serve to build the country's tourism industry.

In addition to his consulting business, Kissinger serves on various corporate boards, including American Express, R. H. Macy, Hollinger, Union Pacific, Continental Grain, CBS, Revlon, Freeport-McMoRan, and Trust Company of the West, as well as on the international advisory committees of Chase Manhattan Bank and A.I.G. The standard annual compensation for each board position is about $40,000, which amounts to more than $300,000 in additional income. Added to that is his income from giving speeches. His average fee is about $30,000; he generally makes more than a hundred speeches a year, about half for charity, the other half for a fee. So his income from speaking approaches $1.5 million a year.

Kissinger's annual income thus is as high as $7 million. Kissinger once ribbed Peter Peterson about how much money the investment banker must be making. Peterson replied with an I'll-show-you-mine wager: he would guess Kissinger's income, and if he was wrong by more than 20 percent, he would be willing to tell Kissinger his own. When Kissinger agreed to this rather odd game, Peterson made his guess about Kissinger's annual earnings: $7.5 million. Kissinger smiled, tacitly assenting that the guess was close to correct.

Nothing that Kissinger does as a consultant is illegal. In fact, his activities are generally more pristine than what is common practice in Washington. But like his foreign policy, Kissinger's world as a businessman is filled with linkages, and they form an interesting case study of the standards of public, business, and journalistic conflicts of interest.

Kissinger is part of an old if not particularly venerable breed: top officials who leave government and then find themselves paid handsomely by clients who value not just their minds and talents but

also their clout and Rolodexes. Some
make it seem more respectable by doing it
under the thin guise of being a lawyer.
Others come right out and call themselves
lobbyists and consultants. Some influence
peddlers attempt to be elegantly discreet,
such as Clark Clifford; others do not, such
as Michael Deaver. There is no clear line
between what is acceptable and what is
not. Rather, it is a matter of degree, dis-
cretion, and style.

Countless stabs at revising the Ethics in Government Act have produced a few principles for what is considered proper in this game: the longer you wait after leaving office, the better; and it is best not to lobby those you once worked with. By these standards, Kissinger displays a respectable propriety. Until he had been out of office for four years, he refrained from joining any corporate boards or pursuing his own business. Unlike most eager-Deaver consultants, he provides his clients with substantive expertise rather than merely with connections or introductions. In addition, he never does any domestic lobbying, does not represent any foreign governments, nor does he deal with the White House, State Department, or Congress on behalf of clients.

The primary potential conflict that Kissinger faces comes from his work as a television commentator and a columnist for the Los Angeles Times Syndicate. He argues that it is "absurd" to think that he would tailor his opinions to suit his clients' financial interests, and there is no evidence that he ever does. Yet it is reasonable to believe that his thoughts on some issues are influenced by listening to the strong opinions of people who pay him quite well. In addition, consciously or subconsciously, his journalistic comments on some foreign leaders could be influenced by his desire to have a cozy relationship with them.

Take, for example, Kissinger's columns on Mexico and its debt problem. The issue is of specific concern to companies that Kissinger advised. In 1989, the Chase Manhattan Bank added $1.15 billion to its reserve fund to cover its Third World debt, and its former chairman David Rockefeller and his successor, Willard Butcher, have been active in urging Washington to help on the issue. Similarly, the American Express Bank had more than $2 billion of Latin-American debt at the end of 1986. Chairman Robinson publicly advocated the creation of an International Institute of Development and Debt, which would provide debt relief so that developing nations could trade and prosper. Kissinger read over drafts of Robinson's

284

VANITY FAIR/SEPTEMBER 1992

Kissinger's Web

plan and made numerous suggestions.

In his role as a press pundit and as an
informal adviser to top U.S. officials,
Kissinger initially urged the banks to re-
duce their Latin-American debt claims,
then urged the government to do the
same. In addition, his commentary about
Mexico and its leaders was exceedingly
sympathetic, which served to enhance the
favored treatment he got when he traveled
there with his clients.

For example, shortly after Carlos Salinas was elected president of Mexico in 1988, Kissinger wrote a column praising him and urging the U.S. to help end his debt problem. "Salinas's liberal economic policy can be sustained only by growth. But the Mexican economy cannot grow so long as debt service consumes more than six percent of the Gross Domestic Product." The burden should not fall solely on the banks that made the loans. "Some of the burden of relief must be borne by creditor governments, including the United States," Kissinger wrote. He even proceeded to plug an "innovative proposal" along these lines by "James Robinson of American Express," without mentioning that he was a client.

The next year, Kissinger wrote a column about the request made by major Latin-American nations for a summit to discuss "their increasingly intractable debt problem." Kissinger argued, "It is an invitation the incoming Bush Administration should accept." Again, he insisted that the burden should be on governments, not the banks. "Most of them have gone to the limit of what profit-making organizations can absorb," he wrote. "They have been generally innovative in designing financing schemes." And just this past May, Kissinger wrote a column urging Congress to authorize more than $300 million "for forgiveness of Latin America's official debt." He also lavished praise on the "remarkable" Mexican government and its "extraordinary" efforts toward the privatization of state-owned industries, without noting that he was paid by companies, such as T.C.W., seeking a role in such efforts.

Kissinger's opinions were sincere; he
held most of them even before his paying
clients began pushing these causes, and
some even ran counter to their interests.
But his analysis was probably affected by
the strong opinions of Rockefeller,
Butcher, Robinson, and Day. "His
views have influenced my thinking,"
says Robinson, "and I like to think my

views have had a modest impact on his.”

An even clearer and more controversial case of intertwined interests involved China. On the evening after the Tiananmen Square crackdown in June 1989, ABC News sent a Minicam crew to Kent to interview its paid consultant live on the news. "What should America do, Dr. Kissinger?" asked Peter Jennings. Emphasizing the importance of maintaining good relations with China, Kissinger argued, "I wouldn't do any sanctions." Throughout the summer, he continued to advocate these positions during appearances on ABC, with which he had a $100,000-per-year contract.

In his newspaper columns, Kissinger
likewise argued strongly against sanc-
tions. Although he wrote that he was
"shocked by the brutality," he stressed
that this was an internal matter, that Deng
should be praised as a real reformer, and
that the stakes in maintaining good rela-
tions with China "could not be higher."

Later that summer he went further in a column that denounced Congress for voting sanctions on China "in reaction to events entirely within its domestic jurisdiction." Although he again expressed dismay at the brutality, he added, "No government in the world would have tolerated having the main square of its capital occupied for eight weeks by tens of thousands of demonstrators." Whatever Americans feel personally about what happened, he said, "China remains too important for America's national security to risk the relationship on the emotions of the moment."

At the time, although the viewers of ABC or the readers of his column did not know it, Kissinger's involvement with the Deng regime in China was extensive. He had gone there in 1987 with Robert Day of T.C.W. Early in 1988, he had set up an impressive itinerary for a meeting in Beijing of Chase's International Advisory Committee, during which he and David Rockefeller met with Deng. He had helped Atlantic Richfield negotiate a deal to market oil it had discovered in China. He had worked with ITT to arrange for it to hold a board meeting in Beijing. He had provided advice and introductions for H. J. Heinz executives who were trying to set up a baby-food facility there. He was negotiating with the Chinese government on behalf of Freeport-McMoRan, which was trying (unsuccessfully) to work out an arrangement for digging major coal and copper mines there. And A.I.G., whose international advisory board he chaired, was building an office tower in Shanghai.

Kissinger's most ambitious scheme for

dealing with China was a limited investment partnership he established called China Ventures. Officially launched in December 1988, six months before the Tiananmen crackdown, the company was set up to enable a group of top American corporations to invest in new enterprises and joint ventures in China. Kissinger was chief executive and general partner of China Ventures. For that, he was to receive management fees that could have totaled more than $1 million per year plus 20 percent of any profits that the partnership made after paying an 8 percent return on investors' capital.

The list of corporations making investments was secret, but most were Kissinger clients. Among the big investors: American Express, Freeport-McMoRan, American International Group, Trust Company of the West, H. J. Heinz, and Coca-Cola. The total pool they created for investments was $75 million. American Express, for example, committed $10 million to the investment kitty and in 1989 paid $200,000 to Kissinger in management fees. Freeport-McMoRan, whose commitment was $3.3 million, paid $66,667 in management fees.

China Ventures never got off the
ground. First of all, it suffered from Kiss-
singer's limitations in the field of venture
capitalism. Most of the proposed projects
did not make much economic sense. In
the case of the Freeport-McMoRan min-
ing project, the Chinese wanted to retain
control. A plan to manufacture textiles
near Shanghai, said Greenberg, "was
really too small to make much sense, a
waste of everybody's time."

More significantly, the events in Tian-
anmen Square, and the ensuing outcry for
sanctions, caused the partners to put the
venture on hold. No investments were
consummated, the committed capital was
never called, and by the end of 1990 the
partnership was formally dissolved. All of
the investment money was returned.

Kissinger insists that it is wrong to
charge that he had any business conflicts
in publicly urging the U.S. to maintain
good relations with China, "because the
fact is China Ventures never made any in-
vestments." However, if the American
reaction to Tiananmen had been mild, as
Kissinger urged, China Ventures would
have proceeded, and Kissinger might have
made a lot of money. In addition, Kissin-
ger represented quite a few other business
interests in China, and he was profiting
from his good relationship with the Deng
regime. Thus he in fact had a stake in
Deng's survival. Indeed, the potential
conflict was discussed within his firm,

VANITY FAIR / SEPTEMBER 1992

285

Kissinger's Web

and there was great relief that China Ventures folded, so that it would no longer be a public issue.

When John Fialka of *The Wall Street Journal* revealed the existence of China Ventures in September 1989, Kissinger was asked about it during an appearance on *The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour*. It was outrageous, he replied, to insinuate that financial considerations had prompted him to defend the Chinese regime. Congressman Stephen Solarz, a liberal Democrat, came to Kissinger's defense, sort of. I am sure finances played no part, the congressman said; Dr. Kissinger has always defended oppressive dictatorships whether or not he had a financial stake in them. Winston Lord, Kissinger's longtime aide, who had been ambassador to China, had a falling out with Kissinger over his defense of Deng. But like Solarz he said of Kissinger, "If he didn't have a cent of commercial interest in China, he would have taken the same position."

In November 1989, Kissinger decided to take a highly visible trip to China to signify that, at least in his personal view, the time for ostracism was over. Joining him was Maurice Greenberg, one of the principals in the now dormant China Ventures. At a small luncheon given for Kissinger and his guests by Deng in the Great Hall of the People, Tiananmen Square was raised. Deng talked about the Cultural Revolution, when he was purged and radicals threw his son out of a window and crippled him. The point of Deng's tale, Kissinger surmised, was that he felt he had faced another incipient revolution that past June, and that, like Kissinger, he had been taught by life to value order and authority.

Upon his return, Kissinger was invited for dinner at the White House, where he briefed Bush, Baker, and Scowcroft. The U.S. would have to make a gesture, he said, if relations were ever to be restored. He explained how paranoid the Chinese were about outsiders who attempted to meddle in their domestic affairs. The Chinese had broken with the Soviets over the same sort of issue thirty years earlier.

What Bush decided to do made Kissinger seem even more influential than he was: he dispatched Scowcroft and Eagleburger, Kissinger's two former business associates and N.S.C.-staff colleagues, on a secret trip to China to toast Deng and repair the breach. Kissinger did not know of the plans beforehand, and he was flabbergasted when he found out. He realized that it would look as if he had been

an unseen force behind the decision.

Kissinger's intertwined web of commentary, inside influence, and business connections remained in good shape. In February 1990, he gave a dinner at his River House apartment for the Chinese ambassador to the U.S. Some of his business clients were there, along with such media celebrities as Barbara Walters. In his toast, Kissinger noted that Americans do not fully understand China's proud tradition of resisting foreign meddling. As the party was ending, the ambassador huddled with Kissinger in the entry hall and expressed his worry about a resolution favoring sanctions that was being debated in Congress. As one of his business associates watched, Kissinger pulled out his black leather notepad and jotted down "Call Brent." There is no evidence that he ever did. But it was the type of little gesture that could impress almost anyone, from a Chinese ambassador to a C.E.O.

"If I had known then what I know now, I wouldn't have wanted him on that broadcast, plain and simple," Peter Jennings says about his interview with Kissinger the evening after Tiananmen. On the other hand, his overlapping business, journalistic, and government interests make him a more informed analyst.

As with so many of his actions while in government, the problem with these overlapping interests is exacerbated by Kissinger's penchant for secrecy. Sunlight can be a good disinfectant; if he would disclose his client interests, readers and viewers could weigh them as they saw fit. Even if he does not wish to reveal the names of specific clients, he could at least note in general terms, when relevant, that he has given advice to clients who have a stake in the subject at hand. Being open about potential conflicts would not magically make them go away, but it would be the best policy for earning trust—which is what good journalism, like good business relationships and good government, is based upon.

When Kissinger sits down each year to budget his personal finances with the help of Robert Day, they often assume that the amount he will make from speaking fees will begin to decline, that his fame and drawing power will surely diminish. But so far this has not occurred. As if by magical suspension, his celebrity remains as high as ever, far above that of almost any other world figure.

How does Kissinger keep his celebrity so high? Mainly by working at it. Like a trouper to the limelight, he is drawn to the television camera, and news producers

find him an irresistible jewel for their shows. He even agreed to do the weather reports one day for *CBS This Morning*, having confided to anchor Paula Zahn that prognosticating about meteorological rather than geopolitical trends was a secret ambition. "If you live anywhere between Egypt, Pennsylvania, and Lebanon, New Hampshire, I perceive peaceful weather for you," he intoned. The regular forecaster, Mark McEwen, joked about how he feared that Kissinger would take his job.

In working to maintain his image, Kissinger continues to be obsessed with converting his enemies, a trait he displayed back in the late 1960s when he would invite anti-war protesters into the White House and try to explain himself. He is drawn to his critics with the mixture of insecurity and ego that comes from growing up feeling both smarter than everyone else and more persecuted. After Kissinger sided with a campaign to block the construction of a large office complex on Manhattan's Columbus Circle, he ran into the developer, Mortimer Zuckerman, and told him, "You know, I'm only doing this to appease my liberal friends."

Likewise, he commiserated with his old friend Peter Peterson about the problems that led to his resignation from Lehman Brothers; when journalist Ken Auletta wrote an unflattering account of Peterson's role, Kissinger sent him a note praising his reporting. He also complimented editor Harold Evans on his book about his struggles with the newspaper magnate Rupert Murdoch, then later told Murdoch that he disagreed with Evans's thesis about the proper relationship between editor and publisher. Some of these stories may be exaggerated in the retelling, but there are so many of them precisely because Kissinger has never realized how the retelling process works.

This desire to court approval from a wide swath of people, a common enough human trait but one that has been more pronounced in Kissinger, leads his friends to suggest that the attainment of great power and wealth has not dispelled the sense of vulnerability that dwells inside the refugee from Germany. Despite the aura of grandeur that he studiously projects, he is deeply sensitive to criticism, obsessed with his enemies, and paranoid about many of his friends.

"He has always had a harder time feeling totally secure on a human level than he has on an intellectual one," says Peter Glenville, the refined British director who is Kissinger's occasional traveling companion. "The word 'insecure' is usually a put-down, but I mean it as a deep compli-

286

VANITY FAIR/SEPTEMBER 1992

ment when I say of Henry that deep down
there are parts of him that are still insecure
after all these years. There is a great per-
sonal vulnerability there, as well as a
great strength of character."

Some of their Washington friends tend to disparage the new, rather glitzy crowd that now forms the social world of the Kissingers. "Up in New York, Nancy seems to like to dine with her dressmakers," says famed Washington matron Susan Mary Alsop, referring to people such as Oscar de la Renta. "I find them to be very nice people, but they really aren't my sort."

Most of the old friends blame Nancy for choosing a social life that revolves around the sort of people pictured in *Women's Wear Daily*. In fact, her husband is the one who seems to enjoy the comfort and fun that come from hanging around international jet-setters. Whether it be Hollywood or Manhattan or Paris, he enjoys a certain frisson when among the rich and socially prominent.

But the crowd that the Kissingers gath-

er around themselves is more diverse than the gossip columns make it seem. The full range was on display at his sixty-ninth birthday party this May. At four round tables in their blue-lacquered and gold-trimmed River House dining room, the Kissingers hosted an eclectic mix of forty or so close friends. Guests included Barbara Walters, Laurence Tisch, Mort Zuckerman, Bette and Winston Lord, Abe and Casey Ribicoff, Robert and Georgette Mosbacher, Henry Kravis and Carolyn Roehm. Rupert Murdoch was there, along with Harold Evans. So was Faye Wattleton, then head of Planned Parenthood, and Brooke Astor, the doyenne of old New York society.

If there is anything missing from Kissinger's twilight, it is that, both socially and professionally, his world is now filled more with show than with substance. Every now and then, in a humorous pang of self-reflection, he refers to his new social circle as "the bratty rich." With most of these friends, he lacks a soulful or intellectual connection, and their frivolity re-

mains somewhat alien. Still, the parties are glamorous and the trips are grand and the camaraderie is comforting.

Likewise, his business success lacks some of the satisfaction to be found in more substantive statecraft; making Indonesia safe for Freeport-McMoRan is not quite as fulfilling as making the world safe for China. Still, it allows him to fly around the globe in private planes playing diplomat and foreign-affairs adviser, the things he likes to do best.

Napoleon once said of Metternich that he confused policy with intrigue. Kissinger is a master at both, but as with Metternich, Kissinger's political and business policies reflect the complexities of his personality—his brilliance, his secretive ness, his odd mixture of ego and insecurity, and his instinctive feel for linkages and patterns. These traits have helped make him both the premier star and also one of the most controversial figures in each realm he has sought to conquer, from academia and government to business and jet-set society. ☐

## Dan's Big Plan

*(Continued from page 216)* and the White House, they wrote the speeches of Clarence Thomas, and they sway internal arguments in conservative think tanks that often become the subjects of public policy. Former State Department official Francis Fukuyama, who wrote *The End of History and the Last Man*, is an influential Straussian.

Leo Strauss was a virtually unknown German émigré philosopher at the University of Chicago. In several books of dense abstraction published in the late 1950s, he explained that the corruption of Western civilization began with the turn away from classical Greek philosophy in the Renaissance. By a close reading of philosophical texts, Straussians believe they can discern esoteric meanings that give them special insight into the ancient verities. The rulers, who are necessary to the maintenance of public order, lack this knowledge—but can be instructed to follow the right path. The highest calling of the Straussian in politics is as the tutor. "It's not inconsistent with the Straussian vision to leave the political-science department at Harvard and materialize as a policy operator in Washington," says Dinesh D'Souza, the author of *Illiberal Education*, who is консenton along with Irving Kristol at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.

The conservative elite sees its mission as the overthrow of "the liberal establishment"; its cause is nothing less than morality versus amorality. Irving Kristol summarized the case in a 1976 article, explaining that neoconservatives "believe that the individual who is abruptly 'liberated' from the sovereignty of traditional values will soon find himself experiencing the vertigo and despair of nihilism." This lofty, even superior Straussian tone was not removed from realpolitik: behind the rhetoric lies the old-left sense of power plays, now deployed on the right.

Revealing his genetic code, Bill Kristol explained the approach in a 1985 article in the Heritage Foundation's *Policy Review* on how three Reaganites (including his boss, Bennett) had succeeded in government: "To the degree they have governed successfully... it is because they have tried to govern strategically. This means first of all having certain fundamental objectives... One implication of this perspective is that the political executive ought not to be afraid of publicity—or controversy." Four years before he signed on as Dan Quayle's brain, Bill had programmed his mode of attack.

Bill also laid out Quayle's credo in a 1987 review of Allan Bloom's neo-Straussian best-seller, *The Closing of the Ameri-

can Mind*, in *The Wall Street Journal*. Bill, echoing Irving, praised Bloom's attack as "a fierce and fundamental attack on the establishment"—the "cultural establishment." What is needed to overcome what Bloom called America's "easygoing nihilism" is an assertion of traditional values. Thus Quayle's higher rationalization had been prepared while he was still mouthing campaign slogans in Terre Haute.

Senator Quayle was elected in the Republican upsurge of 1980 along with a host of other conservatives. He surrounded himself with neoconservative advisers. Quayle genuinely liked the high-flown intellectual talk of the policy experts and ideologues, which was exotic and heady. To him, this was how Washington differed from Indiana. Quayle started out with neocon defense wonks who brought him into contact with like-minded ideologues in other fields. Ken Adelman was always suggesting books to read (heavy on the biographies of Churchill and George Marshall), and the junior senator was eager to show that he had read them. There is "a chirpiness" to him, says Adelman. Quayle is the Deke who is fascinated by the wonks.

"The vice president ribs me about New York and Harvard," says Kristol, who is

VANITY FAIR/SEPTEMBER 1992

287

U.S. NEWS

jections from Roger Shields, the Pentagon official responsible for POW/MIA affairs, recorded the unaccounted-for servicemen as dead. Shields has testified that he challenged Clements on the decision. "You didn't hear me," Clements responded, according to Shields: "I said they're all dead."

■ On March 29, 1973, the same day President Nixon declared that all Americans held prisoner in Southeast Asia were free, Kissinger was in possession of a Defense Department list of 80

servicemen still unaccounted for in Laos. As Kissinger noted in his memoirs, the information on at least some of the 80 men was solid, having come from intercepted voice communications from downed "airmen." Internal Defense Department tabulations show that as late as May 5, 1973, the Pentagon listed at least 72 servicemen as "current captured."

■ When Nixon was informed on March 20 that the North Vietnamese had failed to include on their list of prisoners the names of 10 Americans and Canadians the Defense Department had confirmed as being under Viet Cong control, the president ordered Adm. Thomas Moorer, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to suspend the withdrawal of American troops from South Vietnam. Had it remained in force, the

suspension could have jeopardized the Paris Peace Accords that ended the war. The North Vietnamese promptly accounted for the 10 prisoners—but not for any of the others listed on Kissinger's 80-name list. Despite that, just 24 hours after he ordered its suspension, Admiral Moorer was ordered by the White House to resume the troop withdrawal. By doing that, many analysts believe, Nixon gave up significant leverage that might have forced the North Vietnamese to turn over more U.S. prisoners.

■ During the repatriation of 591 American servicemen in early 1973, while many senior administration officials were trying to confirm information about soldiers and airmen still unaccounted for, Nixon detailed Scowcroft to keep track of statements by returning servicemen who mentioned the presi-

dent by name. The select committee this week will release pages of documents labeled "Statements on the President" that Defense Department officials forwarded to Scowcroft.

Kissinger declined to comment, but people close to him reject these criticisms. "The release of the POWs was a top U.S. priority," one adviser says. "That they somehow were allowed to just fall through the cracks is hogwash. . . . We simply didn't know [what] happened to all the POWs], so we made repeated efforts to try to find out."

Over the past 19 years, there have

North Vietnam and, most important, the decisions made to secure the release of some American servicemen while leaving others behind. The time frame in question extends broadly from August 1972 to May 1973, but members are likely to focus intensively on the period from late March through the middle of April, and particularly on the 15 days between the Defense Intelligence Agency's report to the White House of the estimated 350 missing servicemen in Laos and the announcement by the Pentagon on April 12, 1973, that all U.S. servicemen not yet

returned from Southeast Asia were dead. "We want to understand what the decision makers knew," explains select committee chief counsel Codinha, a veteran trial attorney who has taken a leave from his Boston law firm to direct the POW/MIA inquiry. "We have to know what they knew. How do you decide there are prisoners left? What do you do about it?"

For years, Kissinger and others involved in the decisions made at the time have sought to explain that there was little more that could have been done. But some committee members say the failure to do more for the POWs stemmed from Kissinger's negotiation of the Paris accords. In a letter dated Feb. 1, 1973, five days after signing the accords, Kissinger presented a secret letter to the

North Vietnamese prime minister detailing the Nixon administration's interpretation of Article 21 of the accords, which pledged that the United States would contribute to "healing the wounds of war and post-reconstruction." Analysts estimated the cost of such aid at between $1 billion and $1.5 billion, but Congress was never informed of the pledge of aid, and on April 6, 1973, the Senate voted 88 to 3 to bar any assistance to North Vietnam. Some committee members now believe this was a key reason that North Vietnam continued to hold Americans prisoner. "We had the executive branch lying to us in the beginning of the war," an investigator says. "And we had the executive branch lying to us at the end of the war." ■

Kerry. A lawyerly inquiry has uncovered fresh evidence.

been seven official inquiries into the handling of the POW/MIA issue by the Pentagon, the Nixon administration and its successors. Each focused on the efforts to secure the freedom of servicemen in Southeast Asia. The investigation conducted by the Kerry committee, however, is the first to focus closely on the decision-making process.

By focusing on the decisions that were made at the time, the select committee at the very least will clarify some historical anomalies that earlier inquiries have failed even to address. In its questioning of Kissinger and other witnesses this week, committee members are expected to address three broad areas. These are the negotiations of the Paris accords that ended the war, the secret pledge by the Nixon administration to pay reparations to

BY BRIAN DUFFY

U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, SEPTEMBER 28, 1972

# After 20 Years, Kissinger Says He's Sorry for Aide's Wiretap

By MARTIN TOLCHIN

Special to The New York Times

11/13/92

WASHINGTON, Nov. 12 — After more than two decades, Henry A. Kissinger has apologized for his role in wiretapping the home telephone of Morton H. Halperin, was then a White House aide.

As a result, Mr. Halperin today dropped his 19-year-old lawsuit seeking damages for the 1969 telephone tap, ending one of the longest-running feuds in Washington.

"It is something if circumstances were repeated I would not do again," Mr. Kissinger wrote Mr. Halperin, his former protégé and national security aide, who had been suspected of disclosing classified information to reporters. Mr. Kissinger was then President Richard M. Nixon's national security adviser. He later served as Secretary of State.

Mr. Kissinger's letter, written in December 1991, was made public today after Senior Judge John Helm Pratt of Federal District Court dismissed Mr. Halperin's lawsuit at his request. Mr. Halperin delayed his action until earlier court rulings were vacated.

## 'Accepting Responsibility'

"I agreed to the dismissal of the case in return for the letter from Kissinger," Mr. Halperin, a senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said in a telephone interview today. "He is accepting moral responsibility for what happened."

In his letter, Mr. Kissinger said: "Both of us have paid a price. Twenty years ago your privacy and your family's were invaded and you have been pursuing legal relief ever since. For me the result has been virtually a decade and a half of defending myself in court against charges that I was the principal person responsible for a violation of constitutional rights."

Mr. Kissinger said that he accepted "moral responsibility" because he had "acquiesced in the tap," which was conducted without a court order. Although J. Edgar Hoover, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had originally identified Mr. Halperin as a possible source of the news disclosures, Mr. Kissinger said, the National Security Council "office became part of the process at least to the extent of reading the reports until May 1970."

Mr. Kissinger said he also bore moral responsibility because "I never required into termination procedures." The wiretap lasted 21 months.

It was prompted by newspaper articles in May 1969 describing the United States bombing of Vietcong and North Vietnamese supply dumps in Cambodia. The articles infuriated President Nixon and Mr. Kissinger, who enlisted Mr. Hoover in tapping the telephones of national security aides and journalists in an effort to discover who had disclosed the information.

My, Muslim separation in the Southern Philippines and the soldiers who staged several coup attempts against Mrs. Aquino. He has also granted amnesty to thousands of rebels, and in September he lifted a ban on the Communist Party of the Philippines.

## Rebel Gets Pass for Talks

According to news reports in Manila, the charismatic leader of the rebellious soldiers, Col. Gregario (Gringo) Honasan, has been given a safe-conduct pass by the Government to leave his underground hiding place in the Philippines for peace talks.

Some rebels and supporters of Colónel Honasan have mocked the President's calls for reconciliation. A Filipino believed to be the former leader of the Communist Party described his pardon by President Ramos as a "vicious joke" since it came only one day before his scheduled release date from prison.

Other rebel leaders say there is reason to hope for peace, given that Mr. Ramos's military background could help blunt criticism of the Government if it decides to make major concessions to the insurgents during negotiations. Mr. Ramos served as Mrs. Aquino's Defense Secretary before resigning to run for President.

While the Communist insurgency

© 1992 GEOFFREY, INC.

S

R

# THE WORLD'S BIGGEST TOY STORE!

Hours vary in Manhattan.

## CHARGE IT!

* VISA

* MASTERCARD

* AMERICAN EXPRESS

* DISCOVER

## NEW YORK

* BAY PARK

* BAYSHORE

* BRONX

* BROOKLYN

* CARLETON

* COMMERCE

* DOUGLAS

obvious appeal, not least to Elliott.

Mr. Isaacson tells us Mr. Kissinger chose most-
ly young men and women "in elective office, civil
service jobs or journalism." He is said to have
usually "sprinkled in a poet or writer."

Again, error on error. The group that came
from the humanities was generally almost as large
as those concerned with what we would today call
public policy. The poets, painters, writers and
sculptors — some of whom subsequently achieved
substantial renown, others of whom disappeared
into obscurity — when taken with those who came
from more institutional settings, formed a striking
group. In time, junior civil servants also came,
along with politicians, but they never dominated
the seminar.

There were no "fat fees" for the professors invited to lecture, let alone those appointed to handle the seminar each week. Participants lived in barely furnished rooms in the Yard, and those invited to speak from outside Harvard were generally paid modest honorariums. The whole operation was low cost; Mr. Kissinger did not spend "much of his time hustling funds."

Mr. Isaacson quotes Thomas Schelling, one of
Mr. Kissinger's less friendly Harvard colleagues,

MARK SUMMERS

as saying: "Henry collected a repertoire of people. ... I don't think it was altruism. He had an instinct for inviting someone who could turn out to be his host later." The issue of "altruism" is a red herring, to be discounted. Mr. Kissinger knew that he profited personally from the seminar. The profit, for him, was overwhelmingly intellectual. He also believed that Harvard gained from having such a company of men and women in its midst. His greatest concern, however, almost to the end, was with showing able men and women from abroad what the United States was at its best.

If Mr. Isaacson has scant understanding of the
nature or purposes of the International Seminar,
his ignorance about the journal Mr. Kissinger
founded, Confluence, shows equal blindness. Per-
suaded it was produced for the same reasons that
moved Mr. Kissinger in all other matters — the
wish to win power and to consort with the great —
he goes to extreme lengths to prove both. One
presumes he looked at the journal, but he mistaken-
ly describes it as "a quarterly magazine filled with
foreign affairs disquisitions." Even a superficial
glance at Confluence would have suggested that
this is a distorted description of its content. The
first number, truly gray — a term Mr. Isaacson
uses — carried articles on the subject "What Are
the Bases of Civilization?" with the major essay by
Pierre Emmanuel, a relatively unknown French
poet at the time whom Elliott had brought to the
summer school to teach, who years later gained
"immortality" as a member of the French Acad-
emy, only to renounce it for political reasons.

Mr. Isaacson speaks of "a dazzling array of
famous contributors whom Kissinger, as editor,
was able to court." In its last year of publication,
Confluence published such eminent individuals as
Leo Silberman-de Villiers, Guido Calogero, Huma-
yun Kabir, Hazil, Herbert von Borch, Gunzo Ko-
jima and R. J. Henle. It would be surprising if Mr.
Kissinger's biographer, or any of his readers, rec-

ognize even two of these names. Mr. Kissinger
could not have been seeking a "power base" with
articles written by such luminaries, on subjects
such as "Education Today" and "Woodrow Wilson
and the Problems of Liberalism." His interest must
have been a different one. His concern, in fact, was
to create the first really international quarterly,
not at all like the Anglo-American reviews that
existed at the time and are even more common
today.

Mr. Isaacson, searching for support for his
arguments on Mr. Kissinger's motives in creating
Confluence, finds it again in Thomas Schelling, who
is quoted as saying that he always suspected the
journal was "a fake." Mr. Kissinger, according to
Mr. Schelling, "used to keep piles of issues stashed
away in his closet because he didn't even have a
distribution system. He used it, like he used the
summer seminars, to make contacts, to gather
articles from people he wanted to meet. It was
primarily an enterprise designed to make Henry
known to great people around the world." Would
anyone reading this damning indictment by a for-
mer Harvard colleague realize that Mr. Schelling
was not even at Harvard during the time that
Confluence was published, that he did not arrive
until a year after it had ceased publication? Would
anyone be surprised that a former editor, with no
other storage space, had "piles of issues stashed
away in his closet"?

Why is any of this important? For one reason,
principally. If a biographer is cavalier in treating
the life of his subject when all the documents are
available, can he be trusted to treat that part of his
life when many are not? His description of Mr.
Kissinger's divorce, for example, while not libelous,
is invented out of whole cloth. It is patronizing and
simple, awkward in its prose, insubstantial in its
content. Mr. Isaacson writes: "Ann was, in her
unpretentious way, rather sophisticated. She liked
music and art, and she could be an engaging con-
versationalist around people who made her feel
comfortable. Nevertheless, Kissinger grew some-
what embarrassed by her as he began to move in
more glamorous orbits. She did not have the style
to fit in, he thought, with a Rockefeller or Kennedy
crowd." What authority can the author cite for such
statements? Mr. Kissinger did not move very much
in the "Kennedy crowd," and there is no evidence to
suggest that he found Ann an embarrassment in the
Rockefeller family circles, very different from
those of John F. Kennedy.

But this is not all. Mr. Isaacson writes: "From
Ann's perspective, Henry did not fit into the com-
forting and ordered home life to which she aspired.
She wanted a husband, not a statesman." Did Ann
Kissinger say this to Mr. Isaacson? Did she say it to
others who repeated it to him? Not very likely. It
was not the reason for the breakup of the marriage,
and Mr. Isaacson, relying wholly on gossip, has no
notion whatever of why the marriage ended.

That such a book, based on such evidence, is
accepted by a commercial publisher, that it will
make a great deal of money for the author, perhaps
releasing him from his chores at Time magazine, is
in no way surprising. That an able journalist, Theo-
dore Draper, experienced in the close study of
documents, should have been taken in by it is much
more serious. Lives — even those of famous men —
ought not to be reduced to such conventional and
trite late-20th-century clichés.

Today, when journalists and historians have
begun to rewrite the history of our times, Mr.
Isaacson repeats the conventional wisdom of yes-
terday. Mr. Draper is wrong to say that this "is the
book to end all books on Mr. Kissinger." Before the
century is out, a young historian or journalist,
fastidious and fair, endowed with energy, patience
and tact, may be inspired to write accurately about
Mr. Kissinger's years in Cambridge and Washing-
ton. Such a work will rely not on casual gossip or
secret sources. Contemporary history is too impor-
tant to be so demeaned. Mr. Kissinger's own mem-
ors merit a new reading, not least in the light of
what has happened to the world since 1989. No such
reading was made by Mr. Isaacson; he looked for
transcripts of a handful of recorded telephone con-
versations and consulted those who told him what
he wanted to hear.
STEPHEN R. GRAUBARD

STEPHEN R. GRAUBARD

Cambridge, Mass.

PATRIOT

HARRISBURG, PA
DAILY 56,571

FRIDAY
APR 17 1992

BURRELLE'S ZR

170

# Living in a perfect world

## Time to look beyond 'morality play,' says Kissinger

8020

EVEN HENRY KISSINGER spoke with some awe at a recent meeting here about the world we Americans see around us these incomparable days.

"This is an astonishing situation for a society," he told a meeting at the Center for Strategic and International Studies here. "I know of no other society that has done everything it set out to do, in the Cold War.

Georgie Anne Geyer

"What happened between 1989 and 1992 was the exact correlation of what men like George Kennan and Allen Dulles intended."

Then he paused. "I know of no other country in history which achieved what we did. But the exact qualities which led to success, qualities from the previous period, are not probably the qualities needed for the next period — because we have now brought about a situation different from the previous period.

"It's not a criticism to say you have achieved everything you set out to achieve, and that now you must redirect yourself."

Dr. Kissinger, a man who has seen just about everything, was of course talking about the West's incredible "victory" (although no one wants to use exactly that word) over communism in the last three years. I think he began to capture and perhaps explain the strange malaise that now hangs over the United States.

WHEN YOU THINK about the mood in the United States, it is all quite odd indeed. Is it possible that we are simply bad winners? Is it possible, as Kissinger intimates, that we may be in for a kind of parallel struggle to the former Soviet Union's, as we both emerge out of the certainty that yesterday's battles at least assured? Can it be that the president's "new world order" will really be fraught with confusing new disorders?

Eleanor Milli/Mill News/Art Syndicate

### Henry Kissinger

It seems to me that part of our confusion is due to our misinterpretation of the nature of 45 years of full-blown Cold War — and so we were not really prepared for this outcome.

We tended to look at the East-West struggle as an imperial and military struggle — for physical hegemony in the world, for sovereignty in space, for victory over men's bodies. But this is not only far too simplistic, it is dangerously misleading.

As much as I hated the oppression and lies of communism, I think we can understand the present situation better by understanding that the truth of the modern period was the fact that the two superpowers were vying to see who could first transform man.

From Angola to Cuba to Vietnam, the Soviets worked at and dreamed of transforming random man to a disciplined, autotomatomic "socialist man." From Brazil to Egypt to South Korea, America tried to form democratic man.

It was a thoroughly new kind of con-

test; in many ways, a grand contest. But it was also a terribly disorienting contest for many parts of the world. What we can now see is that this cultural contest, not for men's bodies but for their souls, would confuse, confound and destroy many traditional cultures.

These cultures could not absorb or adapt to this pounding *blitzkrieg* of change. One need only look at Iran under the shah, at Cambodia, at Peru, and all of Eastern Europe today to see how the assaults on traditional beliefs and structures have driven whole peoples quite mad. We now have case study after case study of how even the best-meaning attempts at "modernization" have created a world of dangerous disorientation among people torn from their past.

THUS, WHILE there is indeed a "new world order" on the levels of international organization and of cooperation between Americans and former Soviets, there is this other dangerous level underneath that may doom even the best intentions.

It is this cultural struggle — which was going on all the time parallel to the military struggle — that in great part has led to the American confusion over where we are today. The military struggle was relatively easy; the cultural one is utterly be-devilings.

Dr. Kissinger thinks we need to look at the world now as less of a morality play between good and evil. That kind of thinking may have been appropriate for the Cold War, with its simplicity, but not for this period, with multiple centers of power and more amorphous types of leadership. We now need to deal with "more modest objectives," he says, with "trade-offs" that we never dreamed of in those simple Cold War days, and with "some definition of what we can do and what we can't do."

He is mostly right. And, while it isn't going to be easy to change our minds for the next era any more than it is going to be easy to change others' minds, we can at least begin by trying to understand what really happened in this incredible period of human history.

Georgie Anne Geyer's syndicated column appears Wednesdays and Fridays in *The Patriot*.

DAY
of showers

62-67
42-48

TUESDAY
Chance of showers

High 61-66
Low 42-48

Air Quality Index

Temperatures
(As of 8 p.m. at Hbg. Int. Airport)

High yesterday 53
Record high (1896) 85
Last year 75
Overnight low 44
Record low (1943) 25
Mean yesterday 49
Normal mean 52
Relative humidity 96
Barometric pressure 30.08F

Precipitation

YESTERDAY

For 24 hours ending 8 p.m.:

Rain: 0.04"
Snowfall: None

FOR APRIL:

Actual precipitation 0.06"
Normal precipitation: 1.75"
Snowfall: None

FOR THE YEAR:

Actual precipitation 8.37"
Normal precipitation: 10.98"
Snowfall (seasonal): 12.9"

Almanac

Sunset today 7:46 p.m.
Sunrise tomorrow 6:27 a.m.
Moon rise tomorrow 8:46 p.m.
Moon sets tomorrow 6:14 a.m.

May 9

May 16

April 24

May 2

DROUGHT - From Page A1

day's rain began, only .02 of an inch had been received this month at Harrisburg International Airport.

Singel noted the state's water supply today actually is lower than a year ago. "What we have now will have to see us through the growing season and the heavy summer demands," he said.

The recovery can be defined best by Harrisburg's DeHart Reservoir, which on March 5 was down 185 inches. Six weeks later, the water level at DeHart is 64 inches below the spillway, or at 83 percent of capacity.

Ten days ago, officials of the state Department of Environmental Resources Bureau of Water Resources Management recommended that only 12 counties, including Dauphin and Schuylkill, be removed from drought emergency status.

However, Joseph Hoffman, assistant director of the bureau, said the changes were warranted after additional evaluation, which was done on a day-to-day basis.

"The 1991 county rainfall deficits do not directly impact on our current status," Hoffman said. "While rainfall continues to be 8 to 10 inches below normal in a

number of counties for 1991 and 1992, much of that deficit would have been consumed by plant life in the growing season and would not have become part of the local water supply."

Countywide deficits, calculated from October 1991, include: Dauphin, 1.77 inches; Cumberland, 2.32 inches; Perry, 4.77 inches; Adams, 3.38 inches; Franklin, 4.14 inches; Juniata, 5.21 inches; Mifflin, 5.29 inches; York, 4.13 inches; Lancaster, 3.83 inches; Lebanon, 2.44 inches; Schuylkill, 5.28 inches, and Northumberland, 2.56 inches.

Hoffman said DER will continue to monitor conditions close-

ly "until we're definitely out of the woods." Singel said the area of the state causing the most concern now is the Delaware Valley.

Singel said crop losses from last summer's drought totaled about $600 million. He said conditions appear satisfactory for planting.

Singel praised the state's residents for saving hundreds of millions of gallons of water during the drought emergency, which was extended by amendment twice, on Oct. 21 and Jan. 16. At its peak, 55 counties were under drought emergency.

"That conservative ethic must continue today," Singel said.

## WHAT IT MEANS

Under the drought emergence water were banned:

* Using hoses to wash cars

* Watering lawns with sprinklers

* Hosing down porches and driveways

* Operating ornamental fountains

* Filling kiddie swimming pools

* Serving water to restaurant patrons unless requested

* Watering fairways at golf courses

## NEW RULES

* Under drought-warning status, residents are asked to voluntarily cut their water consumption by 15 percent.

■ PENNSYLVANIA POLITICS

# Bush pushes America 2000 plan for education

BUSH - From Page A1

"education doesn't end with graduation. Learning has got to be a lifelong pursuit."

Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, already has endorsed a similar proposal.

In his 30-minute address yesterday, Bush marked the one-year anniversary since he unveiled the America 2000 education-reform plan, a six-pronged proposal to overhaul U.S. schools before the turn of the century.

He railed against what he called Congress' "bankruptcy of the status quo," and faulted Capitol Hill for failing to approve key components of the plan, including

parochial school.

"Choice works, and here's why: When our students are a captive audience, our schools have no incentive to improve," Bush said. "Say what you want about reforming our schools. If you're for change, you're for school choice."

While Bush's remarks on school choice elicited only a lukewarm response from the students, parents and business leaders at the school yesterday, the president's other remarks prompted stronger support from his audience.

In describing his America 2000 plan, Bush said he wants students to have basic skills when entering school.

In his talk, interrupted by applause 14 times, the president also touched on other issues in this year's national election — the government's operations, health care, the legal system and the economy — saying the time is ripe to enact reforms in each area.

And while many members of the audience aren't old enough to vote this year, some said they would pull the lever next to Bush's name if they could.

"As far as education, I think he's done real well," said Susan Benner, 16, a Dieruff student. "It was inspiring that somebody is actually doing something to fix the schools. In Allentown, there

812

g: 86

usable.

25'

15'

5'

ven.

ational Weather Service: 234-7379

York

Pittsburgh

Washington

# Kissinger rebuts '60 Minutes' show questioning role with Iraq, China

## ■ Ethical? He did U.S. media analysis while a financial consultant for foreign clients.

By Gregory Skwira

THE DETROIT NEWS

4-1-92

A 60 Minutes segment suggesting that former U.S. diplomat Henry Kissinger had a conflict of interest in his dual roles of business consultant and foreign affairs commentator was riddled with "absurdities" and errors, Kissinger said Tuesday.

"It was a pity that this program wasn't completed three months earlier. It could have made the Academy Award for fiction," Kissinger told reporters before a speech to the Economic Club of Detroit.

It was his first public comment since Sunday, when CBS aired the 60 Minutes program.

The program said Kissinger Associates Inc. had a consulting relationship with clients with financial ties to Iraq at a time Kissinger was providing regular commentary on U.S.-Iraq relations for various news organizations.

It also cited Kissinger's links with a group of investors studying opportunities in China at the same time Kissinger was providing commentary for ABC News on the 1989 student uprising there.

Kissinger, secretary of state in the Nixon and Ford administrations, denied improprieties in connection with his firm, which advises corporate clients on international affairs.

"I have a consulting business. Companies ask my opinion," Kissinger said. "I do not represent them. Nobody has suggested that I should write."

Kissinger said he had no financial ties to Iraq,

and added: "I was the first public figure who agreed with military retaliation against Iraq."

Kissinger said he was involved with investors studying opportunities in China at the time of the student revolution, but scrapped plans after the Chinese government crushed the movement.

"No investments ever were made," he said. "The venture was abandoned and all money was returned to investors."

Kissinger, who is a member of the board of directors of CBS, said: "On the basis of no evidence whatsoever, let them not make accusations that my opinions are for sale."

Roy Brunett, a spokesman for 60 Minutes, said the network stands by its Kissinger segment.

"We believe it was fair and balanced," Brunett said. "We repeatedly asked Mr. Kissinger for an interview, and he declined unless the interview was conducted on his terms."

Kissinger made no mention of the CBS report in his speech on foreign policy to 1,700 people at the Westin Hotel. He told his audience:

■ Looking 20 years ahead, we need a foreign policy that assumes several "comparable" world powers: the United States, the European community, Japan and "whatever emerges from the old Soviet Union."

■ He backs the proposed free-trade pact with Mexico because it "improves the competitiveness of the Western hemisphere" in world trade.

■ "I've always held the view that Japan will match its economic strength with military capacity. ... Japan will become a more significant military power."

■ Economic collapse, not yearning for U.S.-style democracy, led to the fall of the Soviet Union, and

"the patterns of 400 years of Russian history" are likely to resurface and produce a well-armed, aggressive world power.

DALE G. YOUNG/The Detroit News

> "This program ... could have made the Academy Award for fiction."

HENRY KISSINGER

well understood in
credit meaningful
in a year like
a tight election as
likely to feel able

lacks health insur-
ance the lower-paid work-
their dependents. As
in creating a public
employment to
ins and some Demo-
yers and employees
insurance on their

ided one such incen-
tive Finance Com-
sen, a health insur-
n in the 1990 budget
ident and Congress.
ates how costly such
it is limited to the

They would require every tammy to buy a minimum of health insurance, give the poor chits in the form of tax credits to pay most of the cost, phase the credits down and finally out as income rises, and finance them by also phasing out the less progressive form of health care tax forgiveness under which employer-paid health insurance premiums are currently excluded from employee income. Their goal is universal coverage with a minimum of governmental interference; they believe—the greatest weakness of such hands-off proposals—that market forces would control both quality and costs.

If the president proposes only modest steps in this direction, one problem will be where to stop. If you have two businesses, one providing insurance, the other not, do you help only the one that is not (unfair to the one that already is) or both of them equally (at twice the cost)? An incremental credit would raise many questions such as this, of adequacy, fairness and cost. This is not an easy issue that Mr. Bush has thus far avoided in his presidency.

## Surgery in Fairfax

ard Chairman Thom-
ed his first available
lead the Washington
through painful but
Just as he had an-
ing office last week,
t any longer, and none
ave. The consequences
budgets or postponing
tional taxes would be
to work right away.
ted political courage, a
roted for serious cuts in
I county spending plans;
living raises for county
a referendum on a 4
x and the sale of bonds
way; establishment of an

economic recovery commission; and the possibility of still other taxes that every politician in the county had pledged or hoped wouldn't be imposed.

There will surely be more flak than cheers from the constituents—and the results of this operation will be almost impossible to measure for some time. Tack on the prospect of an increase in the property tax rate and the as-yet unfelt consequences of eliminated or drastically curtailed government services, and you have the makings of a long, trying recovery to what may never be the county's heyday health.

For now, however, Mr. Davis deserves understanding and credit for making decisions, for telling people that “the one thing we’re not doing is standing by and conducting business as usual,” that the voters are “going to get decisive action. They may not like it, but they’ll get it.”

children have been
in Ohio. One county in another
state reported that in a population
of 9,000, 50 percent were down
with influenza. They never had
more than two physicians. One of
these was in the service. The other
was aged and had a wooden leg so
that he could not get about in the
hills except with the greatest diffi-
culty.

"The county has never had a
trained nurse. Among those ill,
many lived in one-room cabins
without a single window, Mr.

another instance where the in-
ther had already been buried, he
found the mother dead in bed and
three small children in the house
without any care.

"I have realized as never before
how woefully weak our health ma-
chinery is in many communities,
how insufficient our hospital facili-
ties are and how inadequately we
are supplied with community
nurses."

JOHN R. FIESER
Burke

## Unfair Emphasis on Kissinger Associates

I am writing about the Dec. 27
article "LTV Bankruptcy: A Field Day
for Fees" [Business].

The article asserted that Kissinger Associates Inc. did not return a call from The Post reporter. This is incorrect. Mr. Batkin, our vice chairman, returned The Post reporter's call twice on Dec. 26, leaving messages on his answering machine. The reporter never called back.

If he had spoken to us, The Post
reporter would have learned that our
firm's involvement in the LTV bank-
ruptcy has been comparatively small.
(Indeed, the fees we have received
are less than one percent of the total
fees referred to in the article.)

The reporter would have learned
that the LTV Corp. is a longstanding
client of Mr. Batkin's former employ-
er, Lehman Brothers, and that Mr.
Batkin was the managing director re-
sponsible for the account since 1978.
In 1985 LTV retained Lehman Broth-
ers, paying the firm a monthly retain-
er. When LTV filed for bankruptcy in
1986, this retention and fee were
approved by the bankruptcy court.
Kissinger Associates had nothing to
do with establishing the fee.

When Mr. Batkin decided to leave
Lehman Brothers to join Kissinger

Associates in 1990, LTV specifically
requested that Mr. Batkin continue
to handle its account in light of his long
experience with its interests.

LTV and Lehman agreed that less
than half of the court-approved Leh-
man fee would be assigned to Kissin-
ger Associates when Mr. Batkin came
to work for us. This arrangement too
was approved by the court. As is
appropriate, Mr. Batkin's compensa-
tion from Kissinger Associates re-
flects the vast bulk of the LTV fee,
and our firm keeps only a small por-
tion of the fee to help defray normal
overhead costs.

For these reasons we consider it
objectionable that The Post's story
should give such prominence to our
company's alleged exploitation of the
bankruptcy process.

Finally, the criticism of Mr. Batkin
is unfair and untrue. If The Post
reporter had checked carefully, he
would have found, as we did before
hiring Mr. Batkin, that in financial
circles he enjoys the highest reputa-
tion for both integrity and compe-
tence.

L. PAUL BREMER III

Managing Director
Kissinger Associates Inc.

New York

time service appointment at the
Washington Post.

Age was not only not the
factor," it was no factor at
decision. A part-time and
whereby Prof. Weiss would
graduate seminar in his home
pensation well in excess of
normally paid to part-time
rejoice with the news.
rejected by Dr. Weiss.

Contrary to the impression
by Mr. Buckley, Prof. Weiss
fewer doctoral dissertations on
his colleagues. And none of the
gentlemen" at CUA has "all
decided that Paul Weiss is not
scholar of Thomism to qualify
as a teaching philosopher." That
is not so.

Mr. Buckley's affection for
he admired at Yale promi-
trude into a matter he does
stand and has chosen to distan-
cate.

WILLIAM

The Catholic Times

## The Washington Post

EUGENE MEYER, JR.
PHILIP L. ORAHAN, JR.

DONALD E. GRAHAM
Publisher

LEONARD DOWNIE JR. MBOB
Executive Editor

ROBERT O. KAISER STEFANI
Managing Editor Deputy Editor

THOMAS H. FERROUG
President and General
VICE PRESIDENTS

BENJAMIN C. BRADLEE
NICHOLAS C. CANNISTARO Adver-
tisers

MICHAEL CLURMAN
F.J. HAVLICEK Industrial Relations

BOB EUILLET JONES JR.
ELIZABETH J. LOKER
THEODORE C. LUTZ
THOMAS O. MIGHEIT Adver-
tisers

VINCENT E. REED
MARGARET SCOTT SCHIFF
RALPHS TERKOWITZ Adver-
tisers

Published by The Washington Post

KATHARINE GRAHAM
Chairman of the Board

DONALD E. GRAHAM
President and Chief Executive

ALAN G. SPOON
Executive Vice President and Chief

# $144.5 Million in Fees Paid in LTV Bankruptcy

## LTV, From A1

tors of the company's steel division have paid the law firm of Stroock & Stroock & Lavan of New York at least $10.9 million for its advice.

None of the law firms returned calls except for LeBoeuf, Lamb, which declined to comment.

The law and investment firms also charge hefty fees just for preparing their bills. The pension consulting firm of Kwasha Lipton of Fort Lee, NJ., charged $3,514, or $382 per hour, to prepare its bill. Gruntal & Co., a New York investment firm, charged an even higher rate to compose its bill—$915.75 per hour. The law firm of McKenna & Cuneo of Washington recently billed for 81 hours spent preparing its statement, a request dubbed "excessive" by the U.S. trustee and that has not yet been approved by the court.

The LTV case also demonstrates how difficult it can be to reorganize a company that goes bankrupt with huge unfunded pension liabilities. The biggest obstacle to LTV's emergence from bankruptcy court has been the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. (PBGC), which has been fighting the company over who must pay LTV pension benefits. Meanwhile, the company's under-funded pension obligations, which are insured by the agency, have swelled to $3.5 billion from $2 billion.

The PBGC and the company are now in agreement, but other creditors have blocked the settlement because it reduces the assets available to them.

## Military Aircraft Maker

LTV, which traces its roots to an electrical construction and engineering firm started in 1947, makes military aircraft and missiles, drilling equipment and other energy products, and steel. It filed for bankruptcy in July 1986 after its steel and energy businesses faltered. As of June 30, its liabilities totaled $11.4 billion and its assets $6.6 billion.

In bankruptcies, the indebted company pays the bill for the advisers for almost all parties in the case. LTV is paying the professional fees with some of the proceeds from sales of parts of its business.

Even stockholders, who have virtually no chance of getting a penny after creditors are paid, have run up big fees for lawyers looking after their interests. The committee that represents LTV's common stockholders has spent over $4.7 million on advisers and legal counsel.

The professional firms charge not only for their expert advice and time spent preparing their bills—which lawyers say can involve a lot of paperwork—but also for meals, first-class air travel and flight insurance.

Some firms are especially creative in their billing lingo. The Boston law

<table><thead><tr><th>Applicant</th><th>Nature of<br>Representation</th><th>AMOUNT<br>Rec'd</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Locke Purnell<br>Rain Harell</td><td>Special<br>Counsel</td><td>Fee:<br>Holdbacks:<br>Expenses:</td></tr><tr><td>McKenna & Cuneo</td><td>Special<br>Counsel</td><td>Fee:<br>Holdbacks:<br>Expenses:</td></tr><tr><td>Patton, Boggs<br>& Blow</td><td>Special<br>Counsel to the<br>Steal<br>Creditors<br>Committee</td><td>Fee:<br>Holdbacks:<br>Expenses:</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Countersuit</td><td>Fee:</td></tr></tbody></table>

A portion of the bankruptcy court's interim authorization for payr

firm of Choate, Hall & Stewart billed for what it called "passive travel." When asked about it by Judge Burton R. Lifland, chief judge of the bankruptcy court for the Southern District of New York who is presiding in the case, the firm said that the term referred to time lawyers spent sleeping or reading a magazine on a plane on the way to a bankruptcy meeting.

But the investment bankers have negotiated even better fee arrangements than the lawyers. "The lawyers are jealous of the investment bankers," said the vice chairman of one of the creditor committees, who did not want to be named, "because not only do they get monthly retainers, they do not have to account for their time the way the lawyers do. The bankers just get paid no matter what."

According to a source with knowl-

edge of the case, a pre-ment bank like CS First gets a retainer of about plus "success fee" of the price which was sold. Second-tier firms Inc. typically receive $100,000 a month from sources said, and less bankers like Gruntal represents the equity mittee, get $25,000 a month.

Kissinger Associates in the case because its Alan Batkin, helped manage account when he was banker at Lehman B. Batkin left Lehman for 1990, he brought along and Lehman held onto Lehman declined to co-fee, and Kissinger Ass-return phone calls.

Batkin is best known Street as the investment OPM Leasing, a company that went banking behind a horde of tors and bad debts. ("Other People's Money" then at Lehman, was performing "due diligence" confirming that OPM executives said it was well raised money. But that OPM had overstated contracts it had been Lehman paid $23 million in lawsuits filed by lenders they had relied on Leh-

James P. Hassett, pointed trustee who while it was in bankruptcy report that described the and faulted Batkin, although not seeing signs of much evidence. When that Batkin was now vice-Kissinger Associates. "You're kidding. Wow, think much of Kissinger LTV's third invest-

# High Bid for LTV Subsidiary Draws Fire

NEW YORK—The bidding for a major LTV Corp. subsidiary that makes the Humvee military vehicle has raised questions about the fairness of the bankruptcy process.

Alan Batkin of Kissinger Associates and the bankers at Lehman Brothers are recommending a sale of LTV's AM General subsidiary to investor Ira Rennert for $81 million—$45 million in cash, and notes valued by the bankers at about $36 million. Dan Moore, a Cleveland industrialist, the other bidder for AMG, has offered $115 million, including $75 million in cash.

Moore's bid has been opposed by LTV's investment bankers even though it is higher than Rennert's. And at a hearing before Judge Burton R. Lifland Monday, an investment banker at Rothschild Inc. testified that AM General was worth at least $120 million.

Batkin and the others solicited offers from 40 like-ly buyers; both bidders they came up with had preex-

isting business or social ties to LTV Chairman David Hoag.

Moore has retained the law firm Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson to fight for his bid.

"The bidding process stinks," a source close to Moore said. "The company does not seem to want to maximize the values it could get for AMG."

At the hearing Monday, Lifland postponed approving Rennert's bid until mid-January so that Moore's offer could be reconsidered by the company. He concluded the hearing by saying he hoped Rennert would raise his bid.

Of the cash amount in Rennert's bid, $5 million would come from Rennert and $40 million would be borrowed against AM General's receivables. In effect, he is committing $41 million of his own assets—the $5 million in cash and the $36 million in paper, largely promissory notes and stock in his company—to buy a company earning $35 million a year.

—Brett D. Fromson

10 v

# The 'Bizartful Miss Miles

Sylvia Miles is back, in an Off Broadway role that's usually done in drag. And she's not on stage, she's everywhere.

By RON ALEXANDER

“THESE are not tchotchkes,” Sylvia Miles said the other afternoon, her outstretched arms taking in the theatrical posters, autographs, photographs, paintings and assorted what-nots that blanket the walls and fill the shelves of her home. “They are a mosaic of my life.” The posters are of her theater and film appearances. Most of the photos are of the actress with a curious cross-section of celebrities — Tennessee Williams, Bob Dylan, Dick Cavett, Larry Rivers, Cyndi Lauper, Andy Warhol, Shelley Winters (“She’s the fat one,” Miss Miles said with a smile).

In the kitchen of the one-bedroom apartment in the Central Park South building that has been her home for 16 years, every nook is filled with miniature toys, Coney Island-type souvenirs, Campbell's soup drinking glasses, props from plays in which she has appeared, mementos of places she has been. She has been to many.

Miss Miles is not exactly invisible on the New York scene. Anyone who asks, “Who is Sylvia?” has probably been frozen for decades, like Woody Allen in “Sleeper.” She is reported to be seen everywhere, eating everywhere, partying everywhere. She is a glitzy, wrapped package of kitsch and flash — an endearing camp legend.

Last Tuesday, Miss Miles took over the role of Sylvia St. Croix in the Off Broadway musical-comedy thriller “Ruthless!” — stepping into the high-heeled shoes of Joel Vig, who played the role in drag. It may have been the quintessence of this era of gender bending.

“Sylvia has that bigger-than-life quality the role requires,” said Joel Paley, the show's writer, lyricist and director.

Miss Miles is aware that there are those who consider her fashion sense a bit bizarre. She, on the other hand, prefers “bizartful,” her own word.

to concentrate on artfully ries.” As for those accessories of drawers and drawers, “For God’s sake, don’t for they’re not real,” she said, “I could fill the house of Cha need.” Faux or not, her

For a photo session she wore gloves (“a lady always a faux-pearl ankle brace, trimmed black patent Fer full-length shots”).

Miss Miles invited a gu refrigerator. “Cholesterol proudly. “Only fruits and lost 40 pounds. Does it see the bathroom. It’s g

Among that room’s a Academy Award nominated Supporting Actress in “N several framed reviews, a ing Elizabeth Taylor’s li Ullmann’s wine stains on and a piece of Andy War There is also a see-through had to buy 30 bucks’ wo Bloomingdale’s to get it.”

also where Miss Miles pro to be heard. “Jackie and in here,” she said. “On a do Ava.”

Miss Miles’s “Ruthless as they say, limited (thro jobs aren’t easy to come 1992, a three-week enga three-month commitme sides, this could open ne

At a recent rehearsal, few tentative Margo Ch award the front of the st Mr. Paley and Michael I “Don’t leave me in the da

“You’re good, good, go said. “And I love the way flowers are bigger than

DETROIT LEGAL NEWS

DETROIT, MI
DAILY 2,600

MONDAY

MAR 23 1992

407
t.e.c

x MF
lg....

LOOKING AHEAD

Kissinger speaks at ECOD

The Economic Club of Detroit will host a luncheon on Tuesday, March 31, at noon at the Westin Hotel.

The speaker will be Henry Kissinger, former secretary of state, discussing "The New World Order: Risks and Opportunities."

At present, Kissinger is chairman of Kissinger Associates Inc., an international consulting firm. He is also a counselor to the Chase Manhattan Bank and a member of its International Advisory Committee; chairman of the International Advisory Board of American International Group Inc.; a counselor to and trustee of the Center for Strategic International Studies; and an honorary governor of the Foreign Policy

Association.

Among the awards Kissinger has received have been the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973; the Presidential Medal of Freedom (the nation's highest civilian award) in 1977; and the Medal of Liberty in 1986.

Kissinger is the author of a number of books and articles on U.S. foreign policy, international affairs and diplomatic history. His column, syndicated by the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, appears in leading U.S. newspapers and in over 40 foreign countries.

Tickets for the luncheon are $22.50 for members and spouses and $27.50 for guests. For more information, call 963-8547.

## CORPORATE STAFF ATTORNEY

With 6-12 years specialized experience in environmental, regulatory and natural resources law. Experience in acquisitions and divestitures. General background in corporate, business and employment law matters preferably manufacturing, industrial or mining clients. Presently in Ann Arbor, ultimately in Dundee, MI. Submit resume to:

Vice President and General Counsel
101 N. Main Street, Suite 840
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-1476

practitioner in the tax and business area, preferably with experience in employee benefits. Candidate must have an excellent academic background, a demonstrated ability to perform quality work and be able to communicate well with sophisticated business clients. Salary commensurate with experience. Candidate need not have own clientele.

Please respond to:

50 Monroe Place, Suite 740
West; Grand Rapids, MI 49503.

All responses will be held in the strictest confidence.

## PERSONAL INJURY TRIAL ATTORNEY

with minimum 2 years experience. Excellent opportunity. Large Farmington Hills P.I. office. Non-smoker. Reply to Box 628, Detroit Legal News, 2001 W. Lafayette, Detroit, MI 48216.

## ASSOCIATE ATTORNEY

For Plaintiff Personal Injury Firm. 1 year experience preferred. Reply to BOX 636, Detroit Legal News, 2001 W. Lafayette, Detroit, MI 48216.

## ATTORNEY

With 2 to 6 years experience needed for Southfield defense firm specializing in medical malpractice. Please submit resume to Box 642, Detroit Legal News, 2001 W. Lafayette, Detroit, MI 48216

POSITION AVAILABLE
STATE APPELLATE DEFENDER

INTERNATIONAL

Secret Betrayal of American POWs in the
Soviet Union."

According to retired army Col. Philip Corso, who wrote a top-secret report on the incident for President Dwight Eisenhower in 1953, the Soviets' probable motive was espionage: the POWs would be interrogated about the details of their lives, and these life histories would then be supplied to Soviet spies for use as cover stories. Corso says he told Eisenhower the POWs should be given up for dead. "Is this your recommendation, Colonel?" Eisenhower said. "What can I recommend?" Corso replied. "Based on what I know of Soviet policy, these boys will never come back alive." Eisenhower,

Corso says, shook his head and agreed. "The fear of general war [with the Soviet Union and China] tied our hands," Corso says. "We never said anything to the families. We didn't know what to say."

Malcolm Toon, a former U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union who now heads the U.S. investigative team in Moscow, said last week, "There is no question in our minds" that large numbers of U.S. POWs from Korea were shipped to the Soviet Union. Toon said Yeltsin's government was eager to cooperate, but that the search for information about these POWs was being frustrated by resistance from elements of the former KGB and the GRU, Russian

military intelligence. The Americans "were interrogated, imprisoned, maybe killed," Toon said. "We're trying to pin this down now." Meanwhile, he said, "the question about the same thing happening during the Vietnam War is much more murky—there's very little evidence of that." So far, he said, "I have seen nothing that would indicate there is a live American POW here." But the search for POWs will continue, very possibly for years—while Americans, and particularly the families of the missing, can only wonder whether the whole truth has yet been told.

MELINDA LIU with CLINTON O'BRIEN
in Moscow and TOM MORGANTHAU in New York

Kissinger: Betrayal of the Apostles?

The buzz quickly went out on the nationwide network of Henry Kissinger's former acolytes: "Stay tuned." Winston Lord, one of Kissinger's longtime former aides, had just testified before a Senate panel on the fate of Vietnam-era POWs, and he left the impression that some Americans probably were abandoned in the withdrawal from Vietnam in 1973. Lord made it clear that he wasn't criticizing Kissinger for continuing the withdrawal anyway. Still, the Kissinger hands watched in morbid fascination, waiting for their mentor to go ballistic. He did. Testifying before Sen. John Kerry's committee the next day, he denounced the implication (not made by Lord) that he knowingly left POWs behind as a "flat-out lie."

"I was angry at Kerry, not at Winston," Kissinger told NEWSWEEK. "Winston is my friend." Still, there are growing signs—and even more cocktail-party talk—of a cooling between Kissinger and some of his adopted family of former advisers. As national-security adviser and secretary of state, Kissinger nurtured a remarkable succession of protégés who went on to become leading foreign-policy figures in both parties and every administration since then. They include Bush's NSC adviser Brent Scowcroft, Acting Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger and top Clinton

adviser Anthony Lake. Lord, for one, split with Kissinger on China after Tiananmen Square.

Now, the publication of Walter Isaacson's new biography, "Kissinger," has added to the tension. The book portrays Kissinger as a masterful and farsighted diplomat, but also as a manipulative, deceitful and paranoid bureaucratic infighter. Isaacson, a top Time magazine editor, clearly got many of his anecdotes from Kissinger protégés. New York Times columnist Leslie Gelb, who studied under Kissinger at Harvard and says his first foray at book-writing was sabotaged by Kissinger, has an explanation. "I've never known a man so ad-

mired and distrusted at the same time," Gelb says. "Over time, the admiration has waned, and people are left with their Kissinger scars. When Walter scratched the scabs, they started to bleed."

A close associate says Kissinger believes that many of the most damning stories in the book come from some former NSC aides who split with him bitterly over the Vietnam War and charges of wiretapping. Kissinger has stayed close to most of his other aides, though. But most of this group talked to Isaacson, too, and apparently couldn't help telling some of the stories of ego and deceptiveness that they had only swapped privately among themselves for years.

(The former girlfriend of one aide recalls, "We could be in the most romantic setting, and suddenly he'd want to talk about what Kissinger did in 1970.") Now many of these friends are telling Kissinger, "Isaacson didn't use any of the positive things I told him." It's "a tough time for Henry," says one friend. "He feels betrayed."

**Angry call:** Kissinger has refrained from discussing the book publicly. But friends have heard an earful. "He is insane over this book," says one former associate. William Hyland, the recently retired editor of the prestigious Foreign Affairs journal and a longtime Kissinger friend, published a brief review praising the Isaacson book for its "balanced objectivity." After an angry phone call to Hyland, Kissinger made his feelings public: he did not attend the journal's 70th-birthday gala—which was also being held to honor Hyland's retirement—even though he had been scheduled as the kickoff speaker. (Kissinger cited a scheduling conflict.)

Most of the acolytes still believe history will judge Kissinger a great figure. "This isn't anything for Henry to be upset about," said one. "This is just a long-overdue correction to his Superman image." But for Kissinger, who has nurtured that image both in and out of power for a quarter century, it's a correction he could have done without.

MARGARET GARRARD WARNER

MARTIN SIMON—SABA

'A tough time for Henry': Testifying to the Senate committee

50 NEWSWEEK: OCTOBER 5, 1992

bureaucratic documents and use one sentence to prove what the [administration's] motive was," an angry Kissinger told Democratic Sen. John Kerry, a Vietnam veteran and prominent opponent of the war. "Sir, this is not a 'bureaucratic document'," Kerry retorted. "This is an American serviceman who was held as a prisoner in Vietnam."

Kerry's committee aims to settle the question of just how many U.S. servicemen were left behind in 1973—and then, if possible, to press for a final accounting from the tight-lipped apparatchiks in Hanoi. But the target last week seemed to be Kissinger, the architect of the Paris peace accords and the man who, with Le Duc Tho of North Vietnam, shared the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize for helping to end the conflict in Vietnam. Kissinger angrily defended the Nixon administration's decision to negotiate the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam despite allegations that U.S. officials knew the list of 591 returning POWs was almost certainly incomplete. That allegation was an "unforgivable libel," Kissinger said vehemently. "No confirmed report of living American prisoners ever crossed my desk," he said, "although I am not saying they did not exist."

The caveat was crucial, given the testimony of former defense secretaries Melvin Laird and James Schlesinger. Schlesinger said he had a "high-probability assessment that people were left behind in Laos, and a medium probability with regard to Vietnam." Laird said he had a "gut feeling" that some POWs were never released and that Pentagon officials regarded letters from the POWs themselves as the best evidence that Hanoi's accounting was not

complete. These letters, which were received by POW families in the United States between 1960 and 1972, suggested to U.S. analysts that as many as 474 or 478 POWs—Laird couldn't remember which— had never been included in Hanoi's lists, thus raising the question whether some or all had been left behind. (At this point, according to The New York Times, between 100 and 200 POW/MIA reports are regarded by U.S. officials as credible but unresolved.) Schlesinger said the chances

were "very slim" that any of the POWs were still alive—and retired Gen. Vernon Walters, former deputy director of the CIA, said he thought their captors had simply killed them.

The thrust of this testimony was to suggest that—wittingly or not—Nixon and Kissinger had abandoned hundreds of Americans in Southeast Asia. Kissinger argued that no one could have done more than he and Nixon did, and that congressional restrictions on the use of military

in which the Chinese proposed that 20 percent of all U.S. POWs from the Korean War be detained for use as diplomatic leverage on Washington. The messages broadly support one of the most dramatic POW stories of all—the allegation that between 800 and 1,200 U.S. prisoners were rounded up by Chinese or North Korean troops and shipped north through Manchuria to the Soviet Union. (The story appears in a newly published book by three American journalists, "Soldiers of Misfortune: Washington's

force in Southeast Asia prevented them from putting pressure on Hanoi to live up to its agreement to account for all U.S. POWs. "If servicemen were kept by our enemies, there is one villain and one villain only—the coldhearted rulers in Hanoi," he said. Winston Lord, a former Kissinger aide, said he supported the decision to withdraw because "American society would have blown apart" if Nixon had bombed North Vietnam over the "very disturbing evidence ... of discrepancies" in the POW lists. "The president decided not to scuttle [the Paris peace] agreement over the MIA issue," Lord said. "It was a very tough decision."

**Secret missions:** There were plenty of precedents from previous administrations. Recently unearthed evidence indicates that hundreds and perhaps thousands of U.S. POWs may have been abandoned by their government during the cold war, in the aftermath of the Korean conflict and even as early as World War II. Stunned by Boris Yeltsin's admission last summer that U.S. prisoners from World War II and Korea had been detained in the Soviet Union, the Bush administration is pushing a joint U.S.-Russian attempt to trace fragmentary reports of American prisoners once held in the Gulag. Last week the Russians handed over reports on 54 Korean War POWs who had been interrogated by Soviet and Chinese agents in China, along with Soviet records on U.S. pilots who were shot down on secret missions in the cold-war years.

The documents included a stunning exchange of secret telegrams between Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai and North Korea's Kim Il Sung,

UPI-BETTMANN

U.S. soldiers on display in a North Korean POW camp, 1951

## Korean War

**SAID THEN:** The Communists returned 3,597 U.S. POWs; Washington listed 8,177 others as missing and presumed dead.

**KNOW NOW:** A former U.S. intelligence aide says 800 to 1,200 U.S. POWs were shipped from Korea to the Soviet Union.

SOLDIERS OF MISFORTUNE, NATIONAL PRESS BOOKS

U.S., British POWs after 'liberation' by the Soviets in 1945

## World War II

**SAID THEN:** The U.S. "has no information that there are American soldiers... being held in Soviet labor camps."

**KNOW NOW:** A new book claims that 23,500 Americans captured by the Nazis were later lost in the Soviet Gulag.

NEWSWEEK: OCTOBER 5, 1992 49

ASSOCIATED PRESS

**Two Nobel Peace Prize winners** — former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev (left) and former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger — confer today in Moscow. Gorbachev now is chairman of a political think tank he formed last year.

# Gorbachev meets with Kissinger during the first day on new job

ASSOCIATED PRESS

JAN 14 1992

MOSCOW — (Mikhail S. Gorbachev) began his first work-day as a private citizen today, meeting at his political think tank with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

Gorbachev's return to work as chairman of the Fund for Socio-Political Research, which he founded last summer, marked the end of a three-week holiday after his resignation on Dec. 25 as president of the former Soviet Union.

Most of Gorbachev's powers — and his Kremlin office — now belong to Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin, who in December joined leaders of other former Soviet republics in creating the

Commonwealth of Independent States.

Gorbachev's meeting with Kissinger was announced by Tass and in a front-page story in the daily newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta. It attracted dozens of reporters.

Gorbachev and Kissinger, both winners of the Nobel Peace Prize, met at the former Communist Party Institute of Social Sciences in northwestern Moscow.

The stated goal of the organization, often referred to as "Gorbachev's Fund" in the Russian media, is to organize political and scientific exchanges with foreign experts, prepare research reports for Russian legislators and help politicians with election campaigns.

Kissinger: No proof of live POWs

SEP 2 2 1992

John Diamond

ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON — Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger told a Senate committee today that he knew North Vietnam had provided an inadequate accounting of U.S. prisoners of war, but had no solid evidence that any were alive during peace negotiations.

"We did not know of con-

firmed prisoners and had we known it, we would have taken the most drastic steps," Kissinger told the Senate Select Committee on POW-MIA Affairs.

In a lengthy statement and a sometime heated exchanges with lawmakers, Kissinger said he pressed North Vietnam repeatedly in negotiations and supported further military action. But he said the Nixon administration's hands were tied by

Congress and a public opposed to the war in Vietnam.

Kissinger testified the day after two former secretaries of defense in the Nixon administration told the committee they believed some American prisoners were still in Vietnam and Laos after U.S. troops were withdrawn.

The two, James R. Schlesinger and Melvin Laird, told the committee that they knew of reliable reports of

more POWs than the 591 who were returned by North Vietnam.

Kissinger said today that news stories suggesting that high Nixon administration officials knew of more POWs amount to "the most dishonorable accusation that can be made."

The committee has contacted Nixon about receiving testimony from the former

Please see POWs, A-10

INVESTMENT SERVICES
AT BANK OF AMERICA
BRANCHES

A specialist who knows the ins and outs of investing. And a specialist when it comes to listening. To your questions. To your goals.

An Investment Specialist, fully licensed

A lot of ways to make your money really work, one person to explain them all, and the convenience of being able to link your invest-

ment account to your checking account. To find out more, visit your branch or call 1-800-822-2222.

# POWs/
Kissinger: We kept faith with POWs

CONTINUED FROM A-1

SEP 22 1982

president, but no formal arrangements have been made.

In his statement to the committee, Kissinger said, "Let us stop torturing ourselves. The United States government kept faith with those who served their country. If servicemen were kept by their enemies, there is one villain and one villain only: the cold-hearted rulers in Hanoi."

In a direct challenge to the committee chairman, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., Kissinger said, "It is a really bizarre situation when the people who were parading and arguing that we shouldn't be

doing what we were doing" now say that Nixon administration negotiators should have been tougher.

Kerry, a decorated Vietnam War veteran, turned against the war in 1970 and helped found the Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

"Look, I didn't ask for this job. I'm here because 20 years later the questions still confound America," Kerry said.

Kerry read from newly released secret documents suggesting that while the fate of POWs was a top priority during peace negotiations, it became a secondary concern after the Paris peace accords were signed in 1973.

"Mr. Chairman, you're just playing with documents," Kissinger said.

"I'm playing with facts," Kerry replied.

Kissinger said that in his peace negotiations with North Vietnam-

ese diplomat Le Duc Tho, the printed record does not reflect the full negotiations.

"Generally, when I threatened Le Duc Tho, I did not do it on the record," Kissinger said.

He added that because of the political restrictions on the use of force, "all I could do was to bluff my way through this," Kissinger said of the peace talks.

Kissinger said he advised Nixon to resume military operations against North Vietnam in March 1973, two months after the signing of the Paris peace accords, because of what Kissinger called repeated and flagrant violations of the treaty.

According to documents released by the committee Monday, Kissinger voiced surprise in a 1973 White House meeting that more U.S. airmen were believed held in Laos after he negotiated the peace accords with North Vietnam.

The meeting was held on March 13, 1973, nearly two months after Nixon announced the agreement to withdraw U.S. forces from Vietnam and return American POWs.

On March 29, 1973 — two weeks after Kissinger learned of the possibility of POWs still held in Laos — Nixon told the nation in a televised address that as a result of the Paris accords, "All of our American POWs are on their way home."

On Monday, Laird, who had resigned as secretary of defense before Nixon gave that speech, told the committee he regretted Nixon's implication that all POWs were accounted for.

Kerry's investigation is the seventh official inquiry into the fate of American POWs since the end of the war.

Times Tribune news services contributed to this report.

performance F-15 XP warplanes to Saudi Arabia was followed by a protest from Israel insisting that "the U.S. act in accordance with its commitment to maintain the qualitative edge of the Israeli Defense Forces." Translated that means Israel will expect the U.S. to sell the same F-15s to them and to guarantee the loans for that government to do so. The Israeli government said it best when it warned that the sale of F-15s to Saudi Arabia would accelerate the arms race in the Middle East.

The United States is selling F-15s to Taiwan and Saudi Arabia in order to create jobs in this country. It is a tragic reminder that the Bush administration has no economic program for the '90s and is mired down in the same fiscal policies which fueled the Cold War arms race. While President Bush acknowledges that the world is in transition and that the end of the Cold War has

Oct. 20

Oct. 27

Nov. 3

Nov. 10

The Package Products for the investor who wants to avoid day to day decisions. Unit Trust vs. Mutual Funds, the advantage and disadvantages of each. Investment Advisors.

For the very conservative or very aggressive investor, the World of Options. How options can be used with conventional stock and fixed income portfolios to reduce risk, increase incomes and hedge and/or speculate. Will discuss Index Option Listed & OTC Stock Options, Debt Options, Futures, and Precious Metal Options.

Tax Advantage Investments in real estate, oil and gas, equipment leasing, and venture capital. Can you and should you use them? Tax deferred annuities and other insurance oriented tax advantage investments. Individual Retirement Account (IRA), the best tax shelter of all.

Personal Financing Planning: Estate, Tax and Retirement Planning, Living Trust, and Income Shifting. Creative and practical strategies so you can get to keep more of your investment dollar than Uncle Sam does.

# DEAN WITTER

A member of the Sears Financial Network

1992 Dean Witter Reynolds Inc. Member SIPC

* **Retirement Planning**
  Speaker Chuck Corl
  Brother's will address now for a financially

* **Retirement Housing**
  Representatives from developments will provide information about

To attend, you must be by Wednesday, September 15 by calling (415) 853-

T