HENRY KISSINGER TRANSCRIPT

CHECKED AGAINST TAPE

HK: My problem with the New York Times starts with the new publisher, not with the old. But it's not a vendetta. It's a tone. They haven't done anything to me. I have no personal concerns.

Q: I believe we also have a mutual friend in Karsten Voigt.

K: Oh yes...Karsten Voigt. I mean this is not...Oh, I like him very much.

Q: I usually stay with him when I'm in Germany.

K: When you are in Germany, in Berlin.

Q: Yah. (A dog enters the room) Ah, a sweet puppy

K: (To the dog) Yes, my sweetheart, my good girl...She's getting too old.

Q: I feel that if we can just give this enough time, we can do a fabulous interview.

HK: Well, we'll have two...we have about 45 minutes now and about 35 minutes on Friday.

Q: The President is on his way to Vietnam today.

HK: Yes.

Q: In your book, in your new book which comes out in June, and this will not come out till June, one can almost hear your annoyance with the epidemic of apologies that we've been sending out, for the last few years.

HK: Have you read any chapters?

Q: Yes, I've read the manuscript.

HK: Wait a minute. Which one?

Q: The manuscript to the book that comes out in June.

HK: But which version have you read? Because it was rewritten, major parts of it.

Q: Whatever version that exists as of three weeks ago. But I have an impression, and let's just ... I'm not going to quote from it.

HK: But a much better version is around now. Much better, no comparison.

Q: Well, I have a sense of your ideas.

HK: Yes. But, you know ...

Q: I'm not going to quote specifically from it because it's too early.

HK: Well, I think that it's wrong for the President of the United States to go around the world apologizing in various countries for the alleged misdeeds of various of his predecessors, drawn from the vocabulary of the Vietnam protest. When foreign nations deal with us, they have to assume a certain continuity of philosophy. And actually what you read was not intended to refer, primarily, to Vietnam.

Q: Well, what was it then, that you referred to?

HK: Well, it was meant to refer to apologizing all over Africa for our part in the absence of democratic institutions in those countries. The leaders of those countries were almost invariably those who had lead the independence struggle. And the United States had a very marginal influence if any, in selecting the leaders. And

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really very little of this happened when I was in office. So this is just not a defense
of ... except for the Congo, I really don't know anyplace where the United States
played a role in installing a leader in Africa.

Q: Well, and foremost ...

HK: And then, he is apologizing really for the alleged support of junta(?), and he apologized to Iran, for the removal of Mossedegh(?). This is separating events from a historical context. And it is always done with the argument that other people at Cold War inventions or actions ... as if the Cold War were some invention. There were real problems, and whether they were treated well or badly, it's open for discussion.

But not in the categories that were invented 30 years later. I thought it was inappropriate. Not inappropriate for us to have a domestic discussion of these issues. I'm talking about the President of the United States apologizing ABROAD for these things.

Q: He's not the only one who has apologized. I mean, this seems to be a trend.

HK: Well, he is the President of the United States.

Q: In his book on the Vietnam War, former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara wrote, "We were wrong, tragically wrong." How do you feel aesthetically, politically about him saying something like that?

HK: Well, I don't think we were wrong. We made a mistake.

Q: What was that mistake?

HK: The mistake in Vietnam was that we applied the values by which we had conducted the post-war reconstruction to cultures and circumstances in which it was

difficult to apply them. And to which they really did not fit. But unlike many of the
critics, I do not think it was a moral mistake--I think it was a mistake of historical
imagination.

The motive was noble. We wanted to bring democracy to a region of the world that
was engaged in civil war. And to prevent the spread of communism--this was our
operating philosophy throughout the Cold War period. I understand that objective. I
don't think Vietnam was the place to exercise it.

Q: Did you say that then?

HK: Then, I didn't understand it well enough and I didn't ... I don't know what I said then because I was not involved in Asian policy. I said as soon as I visited Vietnam, and the first time that was, was 1965, I said that the war could not possibly be won that way.

Q: With this nation building and ...

HK: And I'm urged to ... negotiated outcome. But when I parted company with
the protesters, is in treating the War as a moral stain on America and as a reflection
on American moral inadequacies.

Q: One of the (Overlap)

HK: But I certainly I don't want to make this interview ... this book is not about
Vietnam.

Q: No, and clearly this interview is a general interview but there's ...

HK: I am amazed they gave you the manuscript. It was so unready.

[L.C.]

Q: Well, I'm not quoting from the book, you know, it was just to get a sense of what you were saying and thinking. As someone who lived through the hell of the Nixon impeachment and the subsequent resignation, how did you feel last year as you watched the Clinton impeachment?

HK: I was opposed to the impeachment.

Q: You were?

HK: And I thought that the correct outcome would have been some form of censure by the Congress of what had been done. I am very worried about turning our system into a kind of parliamentary system by using the impeachment process to get rid of our chief executives. So I did not favor the impeachment process.

Q: But your feelings as you watched it?

HK: Well, I had a lot of sympathy for what... people were going through. I think that Nixon...that CLINTON was a President unusually given to operate in and at the edge of legal procedures. But I did not think impeachment was the right way to deal with it.

Q: So when you say you had sympathy ... for theFACTS?

HK: I had sympathy for theFACTS, sure.

Q: Could you elaborate a little bit?

HK: Well, I've been through procedures ... every day, there is something about our media culture now that once a crisis starts, it almost cannot end. And you cannot hide from the repetition of news stories, what is new or what is a recycling of what has already been covered. And therefore ... and I saw in the Nixon period this growing preoccupation with survival from day to day and the focus on technical

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details which are undoubtedly important, but not decisive for the future of the
country. So for all of these reasons, I was hoping that the impeachment process
would come to an end, and indeed that there wouldn't be an impeachment.

Q: I almost don't want to ask you today about the Presidential race, because we are talking about something that will be published in June, and it seems like a million years away. And for the reasons you've just cited, it will be old news. But to go back a bit, one of the things that always puzzled me in reading about you was why so many conservatives had animosity towards you. During the Reagan administration despite your heading that Commission on Central America, it often seemed like for many of the Reagan Republicans, Kissinger was the devil incarnate.

HK: Nixon?

Q: No, during the Reagan period.

HK: Nixon was the devil incarnate?

Q: No, no, Kissinger.

HK: I was the devil incarnate?

Q: For the neo-cons ... and the conservatives.

HK: (Pensively, ironically) Yes, I united American people.. the intellectuals. I have no trouble with the American people. Well, some of the conservatives are looking to conduct foreign policy as a crusade, and as a confrontation between good and evil and they want ultimate showdowns. Some of the liberals wanted to turn it into a morality play.

And in my belief is more historical. I believe that foreign policy shapes the history of
a country and not any one aspect of which, which be conclusive. Every aspect of if,

[L.C.]