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PROGRAM The Today Show

STATION WRC TV
NBC Network

DATE November 29, 1979 7:00 AM CITY Washington, D. C.

SUBJECT An Interview with Dr. Henry Kissinger

TOM BROKAW: It's 7:13. Standing by in Washington, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who has been an active, if not a public, participant in all of this discussion about what is going on in Iran this morning. Many charges have been levelled against him. Last night, the President of the United States said, however, Dr. Kissinger had no impact on the President's decision to admit the Shah to the United States.

Dr. Kissinger, everybody has now heard the President say that last night. Other highly placed administration sources agree. They also point out that there was a persistent pattern of recommendations from you throughout the past several months that the Shah be admitted.

Didn't you realize that the admittance of the Shah to this country would put the United States in precisely the bind it now finds itself in in Iran?

DR. HENRY KISSINGER: First of all, the decision to admit the Shah had to be the administration's decision. My role as a private citizen is to tell the administration what I believe to be the right course, and then the administration has to take the ultimate responsibility, knowing all the facts.

I was involved originally in the question of the domicile of the Shah by the administration itself when, in January of this year, I was asked by high administration officials to help find him a domicile in order to give him an incentive to leave Iran, which was considered to be *dec3 1979* portant to the national interest at that moment. Even though

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I disagreed with that analysis, I, together with some friends, did my best to help him find a domicile.

A few weeks later, I was asked again by the administration to call on the Shah and urge him not to ask for a visa to come to the United States at a moment when he was supposed -- when he had to leave Morocco. And then he had, quite literally, no place to go. I disagreed with the administration decision, said so to a number of high officials. When these officials persisted in their view that the Shah should not be admitted to the United States, I had no further contact with the administration, at any level, from July on.

I do not believe that if we had admitted the Shah immediately we would have been in exactly the same bind. I do not believe the administration could expect, in fairness to the administration, that another government would do something that no totalitarian government has done in this century; namely, to disrespect diplomatic immunity and hold American diplomats as hostages.

And what I have said is not a criticism of the administration's lack of foresight on the matter, because this is a matter, this is something that could not be foreseen. And in this particular crisis, I think the major purpose of everyone should be to get behind the President.

BROKAW: But given the unpredictable and often bizarre behavior of the Ayatollah Khomeini in the months before the Shah was admitted to the United States, wouldn't prudence have suggested that instead of bringing him here, where he would become the symbol that he's already become, that we fly medical experts to wherever he was, in Mexico for example?

DR. KISSINGER: As I said, I had no contact with the government after July. The decision to admit him occurred in October. His illness was diagnosed in October. As I understand it, the medical records were submitted to the Department of State, and, on the basis of them, they admitted the Shah to the United States.

I do not believe it is quite so easy to fly medical experts for complicated operations to other countries. And I understand that the administration checked with the government in Iran, was told that while they didn't like it, they would nevertheless assure the safety of our embassy. I agree with the President's statement last night that he was carrying out traditional American principles towards an old friend of the United States, a humanitarian concern. Nobody could predict what was going to happen.

And that another government would push matters to such a barbaric extreme is unprecedented. Not even the communist and Nazi dictatorships have ever done this before.

BROKAW: You said in Austin, Texas recently that the United States people are tired of being pushed around, and that the fall of the Shah was a debacle. That's quite a critical statement of the administration.

DR. KISSINGER: First of all, that Austin speech has been widely misinterpreted. I was....

BROKAW: But didn't you say those words, "the fall of the Shah?"

DR. KISSINGER: Wait a minute. What I was saying -- I was speaking about the foreign policy challenges that the United States will be facing in the '80s. I was not speaking about the current situation.

I do believe....

BROKAW: But Dr. Kissinger, it's very hard to separate the current situation when you made the speech in the middle of the Iranian crisis.

DR. KISSINGER: Well, that speech had been scheduled for four months. And I think if you read the text of that speech, I said at the beginning of it and at the end of it that there should be support for the administration in the handling of the current crisis. I was talking about the overall balance of power in the world, saying nothing different from what I've been saying in my SALT testimony in July and in many public statements since then. And I do believe that the overall balance of power in the world is shifting against the United States and that it must be rectified, that this is our big problem in the 1980s.

I also believe that the fall of a friendly government in Iran has had catastrophic consequences for regional stability which we are seeing today, which will affect -- which has already affected the oil prices, which has affected the Middle East peace processes, and which has started a turmoil of which we have not yet seen the end. This is an analytical statement with which everybody must cope and, on the basis of which, we must design our foreign policy.

What we do about it in the present crisis is quite another matter. In the present crisis, we must act as a united people. And immediately after the crisis is over, we also should

stop bickering and try to define what our challenges are and
see where we go from there. We cannot -- foreign policy can-
not and should not be a partisan issue.

BROKAW: Well let me ask you about the friendly
government aspect of all of this and your description of
the Shah as a friend of the United States. That raises a
lot of questions in the minds of a lot of people.

During his reign, oil prices went up four times. Went up four times. There were human rights violations, it's now clear to us, with the assistance in some instances, we're told, of CIA training. He had SAVAK agents in this country. There was an enormous arms build-up in Iran at a time when the official policy of the United States was to try to lessen the arms build-up in that country. And he was, by all accounts, an authoritarian figure in Iran.

DR. KISSINGER: Well, let's take -- let's take
the point of the arms build-up first.

In 1972, the United States became aware that a
friendship treaty had been signed between the Soviet Union
and Iraq, on the basis of which very large quantifies of
Soviet modern arms were going into Iraq. Large quantities
of Soviet arms were going into Syria. There was a Soviet
military combat presence still in Egypt at that time. And
at that precise moment, the British were withdrawing from
the Persian Gulf. In other words, there was no counter-
vailing influence or military power to Soviet influence
in that area. And at that time, the United States decided
to increase the armaments for the Shah. And if that had
not been done, we would have seen the turmoil in the region
then that we are seeing now.

Secondly for his governmental practices. I do
not say that no wrongs were committed in a 37 year rule.
But this has to be weighed and has to be considered in
terms of the standards of the region, as a whole, the
standards of other governments with which we have main-
tained and are maintaining....

BROKAW: Now we've not been reluctant to speak
out against other governments, though, with which we don't
agree when they have those kind of human rights violations.

DR. KISSINGER: Let me -- let me finish my point.
For seven -- seven American Presidents since 1949, Democrat
and Republican, have lauded the Shah as being a close friend
of the United States, as being a progressive ruler in this
area, of responding to his people's aspirations, which, to
a large extent -- all of these comments were, to a large

-5-

extent, true.

I do not condone the things, all the things that were done under the Shah's rule. At the same time, to raise them after 40 years, after he has been driven from office: this seems to me to be a different question.

BROKAW: Dr. Kissinger, thank you very much.

It's now 7:22 in the morning. This is "Today" on
NBC.

[Newsclip at 8:30]

JANE PAULEY: President Carter last night took full responsibility for the Shah's presence in the United States, saying former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger played no part in that decision.

Kissinger said on the "Today" program earlier this morning that the President's decision was the right one. When asked about the Shah's wealth and charges of corruption in his regime, Kissinger had this response.

DR. KISSINGER: If you touch it by the residences, from what I saw these were not extravagant compared to most other residences of heads of government. That isn't the issue. I'm not saying that there was not corruption. I simply don't know enough about it. I think it is very probable that there was. There is in every developing -- there is in every developing country.

The question we have to ask is there are many neighboring countries on which we rely for moderation, in which the practices are not substantially different. In many cases they're worse. And we always have to balance the considerations of the immediate national interest against long-term considerations of improving the situation.