September 14, 2006

Mr. Henry Kissinger
Kissinger Associates Inc.
350 Park Ave. Fl. 26
New York, NY 10022

Dear Mr. Kissinger:

Now is the perfect time to join the **New Jersey Devils** season ticket family. The upcoming 2006-07 season marks a special time in Devils history because we will celebrate our 25th Anniversary. We have been able to establish a winning tradition in the National Hockey League and our commitment to bring the Stanley Cup back to New Jersey will never end. We are offering great prices on a variety of season ticket packages to fit your business or personal objectives.

Full-season ticket holders receive the following benefits:

* Same seats for all Devils home games.

* Opportunity to purchase reserved parking.

* Opportunity to purchase additional tickets to Devils regular season and playoff home games prior to public sale (based on availability).

* First priority to your season seats throughout the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

* First opportunity to renew your season seats.

Join us in the excitement of Devils Hockey as we commemorate our *Silver Season* with special nights and events. All seating is prioritized on a first-come, first-served basis. If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact me at **1-800-NJ-DEVIL**.

I look forward to speaking with you.

SEP 20 2006

NEW JERSEY DEVILS • P.O. Box 504 • East Rutherford • NJ 07073 • 201-935-6050 • Fax 201-935-2127

## TABLES

### I/We would like to reserve:

- LEADERSHIP Table(s) $50,000 each. Includes ten premier seats at the opera, a premier table of ten for dinner with champagne service, and listing in the invitation and evening's program.

- CHAMPION Table(s) $35,000 each. Includes ten prime seats at the opera, a prime table of ten for dinner with champagne service, and listing in the invitation and evening's program.

- BENEFACTOR Table(s) $25,000 each. Includes ten prominent seats at the opera, a prominent table of ten for dinner with champagne service, and listing in the invitation and evening's program.

- PATRON Table(s) $15,000 each. Includes ten choice seats at the opera, a choice table of ten for dinner, and listing in the invitation and evening's program.

- SPONSOR Table(s) $10,000 each. Includes ten good seats at the opera, a good table of ten for dinner, and listing in the invitation and evening's program.

## TICKETS

- LEADERSHIP ticket(s) $5,000 each. Includes premier seat(s) at the opera and dinner, and listing in the invitation and evening's program.

- CHAMPION ticket(s) $3,500 each. Includes prime seat(s) at the opera and dinner, and listing in the invitation and evening's program.

- BENEFACTOR ticket(s) $2,500 each. Includes prominent seat(s) at the opera and dinner, and listing in the invitation and evening's program.

- PATRON ticket(s) $1,500 each. Includes choice seat(s) at the opera and dinner, and listing in the invitation and evening's program.

- SUPPORTER ticket(s) $1,000 each. Includes good seat(s) at the opera and dinner, and listing in the invitation and evening's program.

I/We cannot attend but wish to enclose a contribution in the amount of $__________.

# A NIGHT AT THE OPERA

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2006

FALL GALA CONCERT

FALL GALA CONCERT

STARRING

Carol Vaness
Master of Ceremonies

WITH PERFORMANCES BY ARTISTS INCLUDING

Pamela Armstrong * Elizabeth Futral * Vivica Genaux
Brian Mulligan * Samuel Ramey * James Valenti (list in formation)

WITH
The New York City Opera Orchestra

LED BY MUSIC DIRECTOR
George Manahan

DIRECTED BY
Mark Lamos

AND
Julius Rudel
Returning to the City Opera podium for the first time in over 25 years

WITH A SPECIAL MESSAGE FROM
Beverly Sills and Plácido Domingo

LIVE FROM LINCOLN CENTER

Presentation of acclaimed City Opera productions featuring historic performances by City Opera artists:

ices Bible * José Carreras * Nico Castel * Phyllis Curtin * Mark Delavan * Plácido Domingo

Faith Esham * Lauren Flanigan * Jerry Hadley * Kitty Carlisle Hart * Maria Kanyova

rd Leech * Lotte Lenya * Catherine Malfitano * Erie Mills * Samuel Ramey * Regina Resnik

everly Sills * Norman Treigle * Carol Vaness * Rolando Villazón * Ruth Welting (list in formation)

Jesee LePorin

From: Hagan, Joe [Joe_Hagan@newyorkmag.com]
Sent: Wednesday, October 04, 2006 2:33 PM
To: Jleporin@KMAGlobal.com
Subject: Interview request for Dr. Henry Kissinger

OCT 04 2006

Dear Dr. Kissinger:

My name is Joe Hagan, a contributing editor at NEW YORK magazine. I'm writing to request an interview with you for a profile in the magazine. As you might guess, my request is partly inspired by Bob Woodward's report that you regularly advise President Bush on foreign policy matters. I'm interested in discussing your advice to Bush that "victory is the only meaningful exit strategy" in Iraq. If you're looking for an opportunity to clarify your views, correct misperceptions about your ideas or elaborate on them, I hope you'll consider this. I'm now reading "Does America Need a Foreign Policy?" and hoping you can freshen some of the observations you made there, as they relate to the current circumstances. Has your thinking changed as events have changed?

While I'm interested in how the Vietnam era informs your views, I'm equally interested in your life in the last decade, how you spend your waking hours, what your primary passions are now, what you read for news and ideas, which thinkers you trust, the meaningful details that make up a true profile of you as a New Yorker. I realize much of your business at Kissinger Associates is private, but I can work around that. I'd like to separate cliché from reality, especially at this hour in your career when more is assumed about you than actually known. It's easy to play armchair psychologist from the opinion page of the Times, but I genuinely want to know what you're thinking now, by talking to you, and so do our readers.

I'm a former reporter for the WALL STREET JOURNAL, having covered the Valerie Plame CIA leak case and other media-related matters there. My latest cover story for New York was a look at the New York Times and the challenges of its editor, Bill Keller. Here is a link:

http://nymag.com/news/media/20334/index.html

I hope you'll consider my request. I'd be happy to speak off the record if you'd like to discuss it or ask me any questions.

Joe Hagan
Contributing Editor
NEW YORK Magazine
444 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10022
212.508.0808 office
646.369.8327 cell

----- End of Forwarded Message

The Once and Future Henry Kissinger -- New York Magazine

Page 4 of 9

(Photo: Taryn Simon)

The elevator doors open onto Henry Kissinger's offices to reveal a bulletproof bank teller's window. The carpets are worn, the walls in need of fresh paint, the wing chairs stained by the hands of a thousand waiting dignitaries. In a corner sits a large planter holding the dried stumps of a long-dead bamboo tree. A Ronald Reagan commemorative album and a picture book of Israel collect dust on a shelf next to a replica of an ancient Greek bust with a missing nose. Across from Kissinger's door his hundreds of contacts—presidents, prime ministers, diplomats, and corporate titans—are catalogued in eight flywheel Rolodexes on his secretary's desk.

And then you hear it: The Voice, a low rumble from around the corner, like heavy construction on the street outside. When he finally appears, Kissinger—architect of the Vietnam War's tortured end, Nixon confidant and enabler, alleged war criminal, and Manhattan bon

vivant—is smaller than expected: stooped and portly, dressed in a starched white shirt and pants hoisted by suspenders, peering gravely through his iconic glasses. He's almost cute.

At 83, Kissinger has had heart surgery twice, wears two hearing aids, and is blind in one eye. His once-black hair has turned snowy white. But his presence is startling nonetheless, his Germanic timber so low and gravelly everyone else sounds weak by comparison. He starts our conversation on this late-October morning by placing a silver tape recorder on the coffee table.

"I want a record," he says.

If Kissinger wants a record, it's because he wants to correct it. As he nears the end of his public life, yet another disastrous war threatens to taint his legacy. *State of Denial*, the latest White House exegesis by famed reporter Bob Woodward, depicts Kissinger as privately advising President George W. Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney on the war in Iraq, calling him a "powerful, largely invisible influence." Woodward's portrait of Kissinger as a surreptitious Rasputin, cooing in the presidential ear that "victory is the only exit strategy," urging him to resist all entreaties to change course, has rankled the dour statesman.

"Look," Kissinger begins, eager to discuss the matter without discussing the matter, "I have had contacts with presidents and secretaries of State since the Kennedy administration. I believe what I can do for them is to give them my views without having to worry about getting into a debate with me afterwards about what I may or may not have said. Therefore, you have to understand why I'm reluctant to talk about what specifically I talk to them about."

But Kissinger is not so reluctant that he will allow the final chapters of his biography to be written without his input. Therefore, it must be pointed out that Woodward "happens to be wrong."

So he never told the president, as Woodward reports, "Don't give an inch"?

"Totally untrue," says Kissinger. "That quote is untrue."

It doesn't reflect his position?

"Read my articles."

http://nymag.com/news/people/24750/

4/26/2007

Page 5 of 9

I've read them, I say. Can't he answer?

"The least likely thing I'm going to do," he explains, "is go around Washington beating on doors and saying, 'I have a hot idea and it's encapsulated in one sentence and if you just listen to me and if you just hold on, never give an inch.' "

That wasn't exactly what Woodward said, but I don't press the point. Instead, I try another angle. In the book, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice appears to confirm Woodward's account, I say. "I doubt it," Kissinger says, shutting me down. "She wasn't present when I talked to the president to begin with."

Okay, I say, moving on to an event that seems relatively undeniable: the famous memo from 1969 he gave last year to former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson suggesting that withdrawing troops from Vietnam would be like giving "salted peanuts" to the public, who would demand more and more, leading to a premature defeat. The handing over of that memo suggests Kissinger was advising the Bush administration to avoid troop withdrawals, right?

"Gerson, whom I don't know, didn't know, and have never met again, came in to talk to me about a speech about withdrawals," he says testily. "I said, 'If you're thinking only about withdrawals, look at this memo to show you that it has its own complexity and the major theme of that memo is, 'You cannot do it in two years.'" This should not be read as indicating that Kissinger is entirely against withdrawing troops; he's just against a timetable. And in any case, he says, "obviously, if I want to influence policy, I don't go to a speechwriter I've never met."

It's like playing chess with a master; I gamely move another piece. What does he make of Woodward's criticism that Kissinger is fighting Vietnam all over again with advice straight out of the Vietnam playbook? Depends on your definition of the playbook, Kissinger argues. To Kissinger, the playbook was the efforts to extract the U.S. from Vietnam, starting with the 1967 Paris peace talks, "which I invented," he says. "That doesn't say 'Don't give an inch.' It doesn't say remotely 'Don't give an inch.' "

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4/26/2007

request for Kissinger piece on Sharon

Jessee LePorin

From: Cunningham, Mark [Cunningham@nypost.com]
Sent: Thursday, January 05, 2006 1:37 PM
To: jleporin@kmaglobal.com
Subject: request for Kissinger piece on Sharon

JAN 0 5 2006

Hi --

We're hoping Dr. Kissinger will do a piece on Ariel Sharon for us. I'm open as to the angle -- whether personal tribute or geostrategic analysis, though we probably have a slight preference for the former.

Also open on length -- 1,200 words would be a good target for a maximum, but 600 words could easily work, too.

Also happy to discuss payment, rights after first publication, etc. (Most notably, we'd certainly prefer to post it on our Web site immediately on publication, plus send to lexis/nexis ...) ....

-- Mark Cunningham
Oped editor
NYPost
(212)930-8539
cunningham@nypost.com

This message and its attachments may contain legally privileged and/or confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient (or responsible for delivery of the message to the intended recipient), you are hereby notified that you have received this transmission in error; any review, dissemination, distribution or copying of this transmission is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by reply or by telephone (call us at 212-930-8000) and immediately delete this message and all its attachments. Any content of this message and its attachments that does not relate to the official business of NYP Holdings, Inc. must be taken not to have been sent or endorsed by any of them. No warranty is made that the e-mail or attachment(s) are free from computer virus or other defect.

1/5/2006

Jessee LePorin

From: Steve Weisman [weisman@nytimes.com]
Sent: Tuesday, March 07, 2006 1:00 PM
To: jleporin@kmaglobal.com
Subject: query for Dr. Kissinger

Dear Ms. Leporin:

This is Steven Weisman, chief diplomatic correspondent of The New York Times in Washington.

I'm writing an article for The Times about the debate among Republicans over the promotion of democracy. There appears to be more and more criticism of the administration's approach in light of recent developments, including tensions with such countries as Egypt and Russia, the election results in the Palestinian territory and of course Iraq.

A number of people I have spoken to say on the record that they would describe Dr. Kissinger as a "traditional" Republican uneasy with making democracy-promotion as high a priority as it is. Among those who say this are Dmitri Simes of the Nixon Center and Richard Haass at the Council.

As long as I'm going to quote people characterizing Dr. Kissinger this way, I would like your help in a) asking if he would care to comment or disagree or b) pointing me to any recent statements or articles about this.

Thanks very much. I'm hoping to complete the article by close-of-business on Thursday.

Steven Weisman 202-862-0353.

DEADLINE IS COB THURSDAY

Dear Ms. Leporin!

Steven Weisman 202-862-0353.

Henry A. Kissinger

The Washington Post
Monday, May 16, 2005

# Implementing Bush's Vision

*To Effectively Spread Democracy, We Must Balance Values and Geopolitical Challenges*

Extraordinary advances of democracy have occurred in recent months: elections in Afghanistan, Iraq, Ukraine and Palestine; local elections in Saudi Arabia; Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon; the opening up of the presidential election in Egypt; and upheavals against entrenched authoritarians in Kyrgyzstan. This welcome trend was partly triggered by President Bush's Middle East policy and accelerated by his second inaugural address, which elevated the progress of freedom in the world to the defining objective of U.S. foreign policy.

Pundits have interpreted these events as a victory of “idealisers” over “realists” in the debate over conduct of American foreign policy. In fact, the United States is probably the only country in which “realist” can be used as a pejorative epithet. No serious realist should claim that power is its own justification. No idealist should imply that power is irrelevant to the spread of ideals. The real issue is to establish a sense of proportion between these two essential elements of policy. Overemphasis of either leads to stagnation or overextension.

Values are essential for defining objectives; strategy is what implements them by establishing priorities and defining timing.

Strategy must begin with the recognition that the freedom agenda does not make geopolitical analysis irrelevant. There are issues for which crusading strategies tend to be off the mark. The rise of China is, in essence, a geopolitical challenge, not a primarily ideological one.

U.S. relations with India are another case in point. During the Cold War, India saw no imperative to support the cause of democracy against communism. Its national interest was not involved in issues such as the freedom of Berlin. Now India is, in effect, a strategic partner, not because of compatible domestic structures but because of parallel security interests in Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean, and vis-a-vis radical Islam.

In its own terms, a clear-eyed commitment to the freedom agenda should keep these principles in mind:

* The process of democratization does not depend on a single decision and will not be completed in a single stroke. Elections, however desirable, are only the beginning of a long enterprise. The willingness to accept their outcomes is a more serious hur-

dle. The establishment of a system that enables the minority to become a majority is even more complex.

* Americans need to understand that successes do not end their engagement but most probably deepen it. For as we involve ourselves, we bear the responsibility even for results we did not anticipate. We must deal with those consequences regardless of our original intentions and not act as if our commitments are as changeable as opinion polls.

* Elections are not an inevitable guarantee of a democratic outcome. Radicals such as Hezbollah and Hamas seem to have learned the mechanics of democracy in order to undermine it and establish total control.

As the world's dominating democratic power, we must relate values to power, institutional political change to geopolitical necessities. In countries where a vacuum must be filled and U.S. forces are present, the American capacity to affect events is considerable. Even then, however, it is not possible to automatically apply models created over centuries in the homogeneous societies of Europe and the United States to ethnically diverse and religiously divided societies in the Middle East, Asia and Africa. In multiethnic societies, majority rule implies permanent subjugation of the minority unless it is part of a strong federal structure and a system of checks and balances. To achieve this by negotiation between parties that consider dominance by the other groups a threat to their very survival is an extraordinarily elusive undertaking. It will, however, determine the degree to which democratic goals in Iraq and, to a lesser extent, in Afghanistan can be achieved.

Lebanon illustrates another aspect of these considerations. The upheaval that expelled Syrian forces is a testimony to the growth of popular consciousness but also to the changed strategic environment. Syria, too weak to resist international pressures, may calculate that withdrawal eventually will return the situation to the chaos that triggered Syrian intervention in the first place.

Three times since 1958 — the United States that year, Syria in 1976 and Israel in 1981 — foreign intervention held the ring in Lebanon to prevent collapse into vio-

lence and to arbitrate among the Christian, Sunni, Shiite and Druze groups that constitute the Lebanese body politic. The internal conflict is made all the sharper because the established constitutional arrangement no longer reflects the actual demographic balance.

At this point, the driving force in Lebanon is less democratic than populist; it is a contest by which the factions organize competitive demonstrations partially designed to overawe their opponents. The test will be whether the United States and the international community are able to bring about an agreed political framework and whether they can mobilize an international presence to guarantee that the conflicting passions do not once again erupt into violence, and that outside adventures are discouraged.

In Egypt and Saudi Arabia the vacuum is potential, not actual. A wise policy will navigate between efforts to overcome stagnation and pressures that will dissolve the existing political framework into a contest of radical factions or the victory of one of them. The fundamentalist victory in the local elections in Saudi Arabia illustrates this danger. Policies erring in either direction could turn these countries into the Achilles' heel of the entire Middle East policy.

BY BARRIE MAGUIRE

(OVER)

-2-

The United States has made clear its conviction that a democratic evolution reflecting popular aspirations is a long-term necessity. But it has not yet defined what it means either by that phrase or an appropriate evolutionary process.

The revolution in Iran teaches the lesson of the risks of procrastination in the 1960s and 1970s before the fundamentalist upheaval, but also of the perils of pressures in the Carter administration that resulted in a system far more autocratic than the shah's. Major strategic issues are at stake in a sensitive handling of these concerns, including the viability of Palestinian negotiation.

Finally, there is the challenge of how to deal with societies such as China and Russia, which so far have relied on the Western political tradition only to a small degree, if at all, in their transition to the globalized world. They have used their own histories or national senses of identity as guides. To what extent and by what means can the United States influence this process? And in what direction? What level of understanding of domestic context, influenced by centuries of history, is necessary to produce confidence in desired outcomes? What price in medium-term strategic interests are we prepared to pay?

No single nation is strong enough or wise enough to involve itself in every political evolution around the world simultaneously. Priorities based on the national interest are imperative. Otherwise, psychological exhaustion and physical overextension are a real possibility, along with a global coalition of the resentful and nationalistic resisting perceived American hegemony.

President Bush has put forward a dramatic vision. The national debate now needs to focus on the concrete circumstances to which it must be applied. The nongovernmental groups should participate in this process.

Having made their point about the importance of the subject, they should now contribute to the development of a responsible substance. A strategy to implement the vision of the freedom agenda needs consensus-building, both domestically and internationally. That will be the test as to whether we are seizing the opportunity for systemic change or participating in an episode.

The writer, a former secretary of state, is chairman of Kissinger Associates.

Democracy Push by Bush Attracts Doubters in Party - New York Times

The New York Times
nytimes.com

Page 1 of 3

TH
FOR
SPONSORED BY

March 17, 2006
Diplomatic Memo

# Democracy Push by Bush Attracts Doubters in Party

By STEVEN R. WEISMAN

Even as it presents an updated national security strategy, the Bush administration is facing fresh doubts from some Republicans who say its emphasis on promoting democracy around the world has come at the expense of protecting other American interests.

The second thoughts signify a striking change in mood over one of President Bush's cherished tenets, pitting Republicans who call themselves realists against the neoconservatives who saw the invasion of Iraq as a catalyst for change and who remain the most vigorous advocates of a muscular American campaign to foster democratic movements.

"You are hearing more and more questions about the administration's approach on this issue," said Lorne W. Craner, president of the International Republican Institute, a foundation linked to the Republican Party that supports democratic activities abroad. "The 'realists' in the party are rearing their heads and asking, 'Is this stuff working?' "

The critics, who include Senators Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Richard G. Lugar of Indiana and Representative Henry J. Hyde of Illinois, as well as Henry Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft, are alarmed at the costs of military operations and of nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan.

They have also been shaken by the victory of Hamas in Palestinian elections in January and by the gains Islamists scored in elections in Iraq, Egypt and Lebanon.

The administration, with support from legislators like Senators John McCain of Arizona and Sam Brownback of Kansas, contends that whatever their outcome, elections are better than violent upheaval. But critics worry that antidemocratic extremists will prevail wherever tradition and existing civil institutions are too weak to protect the rights of minorities or to nurture moderates.

They also argue that heavy-handed pressure has strained American relations with Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Russia and China, making it harder to enlist them in fighting terrorism, stabilizing the Middle East and curbing nuclear weapons.

The renewed violence in Iraq since the voting there has discredited, in their view, the promise of democracy as an outlet for tensions, bringing sectarian parties—and their affiliated militias — to the fore.

"You cannot in my opinion just impose a democratic form of government on a country with no history and no culture and no tradition of democracy," said Senator Hagel.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is traveling this week in South America, Asia and Australia in

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/17/politics/17democracy.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&page... 3/17/2006

Page 2 of 3

part to promote democracy, acknowledges the growing dissent but says the administration will stick to its goals.

"There is a debate, and I think it's a debate that's healthy," she said. "This is obviously a really big change in American foreign policy, to put the promotion of democracy at the center of it. And people take very seriously what this president is doing and intends to do."

Mr. Bush's intent is clear from the very first sentence of the national security strategy paper issued yesterday: "It is the policy of the United States to seek and support democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world." The 49-page document calls this task "the work of generations."

It names as strongholds of tyranny North Korea, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Belarus, Myanmar and Zimbabwe. It gives the United States credit for toppling Saddam Hussein and the Taliban, and cites "some preliminary steps" toward democracy in Saudi Arabia and "more open but still flawed" elections in Egypt. It says that the Palestinian voting was "free, fair and inclusive" but that democratic principles "are tested by the victory of Hamas."

The concern, expressed by Representative Hyde, chairman of the International Relations Committee, is that the administration views democracy as a "magic formula."

"Implanting democracy in large areas would require that we possess an unbounded power and undertake an open-ended commitment of time and resources, which we cannot and will not do," he said.

William Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, said: "What's really driving the criticism is disenchantment with the war. But it's unfair to say that supporters of the war thought it was going to be easy to build a democracy in Iraq."

Even many supporters of the democracy program say the administration's miscalculations in Iraq have done damage to the cause.

"I think this administration tends to have the right general policies but to be remarkably unwilling to look at how weak their instruments of implementation are," said Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker.

The American effort has also stirred controversy abroad. This year the United States is spending $1.7 billion to support groups seeking political change, but lately Russia, Egypt, China and many countries in Africa and Latin America have cracked down on these groups.

Senator McCain, a leading proponent of the program, said that despite these setbacks and controversies, and the lack of civilian structures and rule of law in many countries, the administration was right to push for democracy and elections.

"The moral of the story is that democracy is tough," he said. "We have to recognize that you can have two steps forward and one step back."

The issue of which should come first — civil society and rule of law, or elections — was underscored by the Hamas victory. Before the Palestinian elections, Washington had pressed for a law requiring political candidates to disavow racism and lawlessness, but was rebuffed.

Page 3 of 3

"There's an assumption here that somehow you can neatly build a civil society, and neatly build the habits of democracy, and then you take off the authoritarian hat and everything's in place for democracy to rise," Ms. Rice said, when asked about such criticism. "I just don't think it works that way in the real world."

One prominent neoconservative, Francis Fukuyama, asserts in a new book that the administration embraced democracy as a cornerstone of its policy only after the failure to find unconventional weapons in Iraq. The issue was seized upon to justify the war in retrospect, and then expanded for other countries, he says.

Mr. Fukuyama, who opposed the war in Iraq, said in an interview that it was naïve and contrary to the tenets of conservatism for the United States to think that it could act as midwife or cheerleader for democracy in societies it knows little about.

Indeed, as he points out, in the 2000 election campaign, both Mr. Bush and Ms. Rice, then his foreign policy adviser, criticized the Clinton administration's interventions to promote democracy in Somalia, Haiti and the Balkans as misplaced idealism.

"It's this weird situation, where you have a really conservative Republican president using all this Clintonesque rhetoric about rights and ideals," Mr. Fukuyama said.

Administration officials say they are guided not by naïveté but by hard-nosed necessity. If authoritarian governments in the Middle East do not open themselves to reform, extremists will eventually blow them up, they say.

Mr. Craner, of the International Republican Institute, who was an assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor in Mr. Bush's first term, said that at least rhetorically, Republicans generally supported democracy and were likely to continue doing so.

Even such leaders of the "realist" camp, like Mr. Kissinger, a former secretary of state, and Mr. Scowcroft, national security adviser under the first President Bush, say they support democracy as a major part of American foreign policy.

But in an echo of the cold war debates over whether to confront or negotiate with the Soviet Union, both have also warned that the United States should not risk alienating crucial allies or fomenting unrest by demanding rapid internal change.

Mr. Kissinger noted in a commentary last year, for example, "The United States is probably the only country in which 'realist' can be used as a pejorative epithet."

But the leaders of the cause are not backing down.

"Obviously, we want stability and we want allies in the war on terror," said one, Representative David Dreier, Republican of California. "But I don't think we should back down from democratization just because it's hard."

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company | Home | Privacy Policy | Search | Corrections | XML | Help | Cont

AUG 10 2006

NY Times

Jessee LePorin

From: Serge Kovaleski [kovaleski@nytimes.com]
Sent: Wednesday, August 09, 2006 2:10 PM
To: Jessee LePorin
Subject: RE: Serge F. Kovaleski at the NY TIMES

hi jessica,

hope all is well with you! i am sending you another note in the hopes that i could talk with dr. kissinger on the brooke astor matter, which obviously the new york times takes very seriously. we feel dr. kissinger's insights would be very valuable to the on-going coverage of this story.

thanks again.
best regards,
serge

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

From: Serge Kovaleski [mailto:kovaleski@nytimes.com]
Sent: Friday, July 28, 2006 10:46 AM
To: jleporin@kmaglobal.com
Subject: Serge F. Kovaleski at the NY TIMES

Dear Dr. Kissinger,

I hope this note finds you very well, sir. I am writing you because I would like to talk with you about the Brooke Astor matter and, specifically, among other things, about the circumstances that got you involved in the case. As I always do in my reporting, I would meticulously go over with you all quotes and facts you provided me prior to publication of a story. I have been operating this way for the 20 years or so that I have been a journalist.

Thank you, Dr. Kissinger. I look forward to meeting you.

Respectfully,
Serge F. Kovaleski

Serge F. Kovaleski
Metropolitan News
The New York Times
229 West 43rd Street
New York, NY 10036
(O) 212-556-1652
(M) 917-674-3364

8/9/2006

Message

Page 1 of 2

Jessee LePorin

From: Jessee LePorin [jleporin@kmaglobal.com]

Sent: Thursday, August 10, 2006 3:03 PM

To: 'Serge Kovaleski'

Dr. Kissinger is not commenting on the Brooke Astor matter.

Thank you,
Jessee LePorin

Jessica P. LePorin
Office of Henry A. Kissinger
Kissinger Associates, Inc.
350 Park Avenue, 26th Floor
New York, NY 10022
TF (212) 759-7919
Fax (212) 759-0042

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

To: Jessee LePorin

hi jessica,

thanks again.

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

To: jleporin@kmaglobal.com

Dear Dr. Kissinger,

8/10/2006

Message

8/10/2006

DATE 10/04/06

CORR. FILE New York Times

ACTION: Alan Stape Dennis

Jessee Theresa Rose

John Maggie Suzanne

SUBJ. FILE

CROSS REF.

STAFF MEMO

COMMENTS:

10/4

HK said not to answer other
than saying he's traveling

DC OFFICE:
Christie / Jody / Ann

INFO COPY TO:

ROUTE CC COPY TO:

TO BE FILED

The Ghost of the Oval Office - New York Times

THE
OFFICE
SPONSORED BY

October 5, 2006

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

# The Ghost of the Oval Office

By JAMES MANN

Washington

ON the surface, it sounds implausible: why would former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, the world's best-known proponent of balance-of-power diplomacy, give advice to the Bush administration, whose professed strategy and ideals run contrary to his philosophy?

And, conversely, why would the president and his aides consult Mr. Kissinger? After all, their National Security Strategy of 2006 dropped the idea that America should even pursue a balance of power. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice declared last year that the United States has abandoned 60 years of trying to "buy stability at the expense of democracy" in the Middle East. What could possibly be more un-Kissingerian? Mr. Kissinger has warned for decades against placing too much emphasis on democracy, human rights or moral values in foreign policy.

Yet Bob Woodward's new book, "State of Denial," describes how Vice President Dick Cheney has met with Mr. Kissinger at least once a month, and President Bush has talked to Mr. Kissinger frequently. The book portrays the 83-year-old Mr. Kissinger as the single most frequent outside adviser to Mr. Bush on foreign policy. The meetings are not some recent innovation; previous news reports have indicated Mr. Kissinger advised the administration back in Mr. Bush's first term, too.

One might at first be tempted to attribute this curious relationship to the simple notion of elitism — the idea that there are only a handful of officials who have actually run American foreign policy and therefore only a few people for Messrs. Bush and Cheney to consult.

But this explanation doesn't hold up. Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski, who served as national security advisers for Mr. Bush's father and for Jimmy Carter, respectively, are among the same foreign-policy elite (and Mr. Scowcroft, in particular, has long shared Mr. Kissinger's philosophical commitment to realism in foreign policy). Yet the Bush administration has consulted with neither of these men to the same extent as it has Mr. Kissinger, perhaps because

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Page 2 of 3

both have openly challenged current foreign policy more than he has.

So Mr. Kissinger's role seems to be unique. Yet it is not all that surprising, when you look at his own history and that of previous administrations. Since Mr. Kissinger left government in 1977, he and several presidents have subtly made use of each other in similar fashion.

Differences in ideology have rarely been obstacles to the mutual seductions of the Kissinger Schmooze. Mr. Kissinger maintains his access to the White House and insider status, while administrations obtain a sense of validation for their policies.

It also helps for a president to know that he is keeping Mr. Kissinger on board — that even if Mr. Kissinger were to conclude that an administration's policies were dead wrong, or stupid, or directly contrary to his own philosophy, he wouldn't say so in public. (In 2002, Mr. Kissinger was reported in newspaper articles to have broken ranks with the Bush administration on Iraq; but Mr. Kissinger, quickly made plain that his views had been misinterpreted.)

Ronald Reagan campaigned against Mr. Kissinger in 1976 when he challenged President Gerald Ford in the Republican primaries, not only condemning Mr. Kissinger's policies but promising that if elected, he would replace him as secretary of state. But once Mr. Reagan won the Republican nomination in 1980 and went on to the White House, Mr. Kissinger's relationship to the Reagan administration was not an adversarial one.

When President Reagan branded the Soviet Union an “evil empire,” thus seeming to contradict both Mr. Kissinger's past policies and his views of foreign policy, Mr. Kissinger minimized the significance of the speech; he wrote that it was up to Soviet officials to choose when to be insulted. Mr. Reagan appointed Mr. Kissinger to head a bipartisan commission on Central America in an effort to build a consensus for his administration's policy.

Mr. Kissinger's advisory role has not been confined to Republican administrations. When Bill Clinton, campaigning for the presidency in 1992, denounced the deadly 1989 crackdown on the Tiananmen Square demonstrations in Beijing, he took aim at the underpinnings of the China policy that Mr. Kissinger had established. Yet two years later, when President Clinton announced he was abandoning efforts to link China's trade benefits to improvements in human rights, aides reported that Mr. Kissinger had been one of Mr. Clinton's leading outside advisers.

Some might hypothesize that Mr. Kissinger's perpetual re-emergence as éminence grise reflects the tendency of presidents to change their views after taking office and gradually move in Mr. Kissinger's direction. That explanation would apply to Mr. Clinton's turnabout on China policy,

Page 3 of 3

for example. But the theory doesn't work so well for Mr. Reagan, who even late in his administration was out of tune with Mr. Kissinger. In 1987, Mr. Kissinger complained that the Reagan administration was moving unwisely towards an arms-control agreement with Mikhail Gorbachev; it was one of the few instances where Mr. Kissinger has taken on a president in public, and in that instance Mr. Kissinger did so in the role of a hawk.

The current Bush administration does not appear to have gone through any evolution towards Kissingerian realism, at least not if you look at the president's public remarks. Although Mr. Bush gave one speech invoking democratic ideals on the eve of the Iraq war, it was not until his second inaugural address, in January 2005, that he really made democratic freedom the centerpiece of his foreign policy. He has done so ever since. So rhetorically, at least, Mr. Bush has been moving further and further away from a Kissingerian foreign policy.

There remains the possibility that Mr. Bush's actual views may differ from his pro-democracy rhetoric. Perhaps he talks about democracy in public but not in private. If so, that would help explain why he has been so quiet about the regular meetings with Mr. Kissinger.

More likely, however, the president and Mr. Kissinger do not see any need to try to reconcile the chasm between the administration's avowed commitment to spreading democracy and Mr. Kissinger's career-long admonitions against any such efforts. Mr. Kissinger is like the Oval Office furniture; for presidents, he is always in the background. Advising the White House is what he does. And presidents usually seem to think that a part of conducting foreign policy is to talk to Mr. Kissinger, even if it goes nowhere.

*James Mann, the author of "Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet," is an author in residence at Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies.*

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DATE

10/12/06

CORR. FILE

ACTION:

Alan Stape Dennis

Jessee Theresa Rose

John Maggie Suzanne

COMMENTS:

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Christie / Jody / Ann

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10/14/06

TO: Dr. Kissinger

FROM: Theresa

RE: Request from The New York Times Syndicate

The *New York Times* Syndicate emails a request for you to write a piece for its annual year-end "Turning Points 2006" package, a special package of stories syndicated to newspapers around the world. It features "some of the world's top writers and thinkers writing, exclusively for the Syndicate, about the key turning points of the past year."

Your suggested topic would be the North Korean nuclear test – not the
immediate political and diplomatic tactics in dealing with the situation
but “the longer-term impact of what has to be regarded as a collapse
of nuclear nonproliferation.” They would like you to address the key
question of “how the world, in Asia but also in Europe, America and
beyond, will be different in light of the North Korean test.”

**Approximate deadline would be late October or early November,** with the ability to tweak the piece later in the year to reflect subsequent developments. But the specific deadline would be worked out with the **NYT** Syndicate senior editor.

Payment would be 50% of the gross proceeds of your piece, with a
guarantee of $1,500. The NYT Syndicate buys newspaper, magazine
and non-exclusive electronic rights for a year, after which the rights
would revert back to you.

I assume Tribune Media Services would not want you to write for
another Syndicate.

Regret NYT request, explaining I have a contract with
TMS ____

Ask if the NYT would want to run an article I write for my own
Syndicate (assuming you write on the topic of the North Korean
nuclear test before year's end) ____

Prefer:

Maggie Halley

GAYDEN WREN/NY Times

From: Gayden Wren/CORPHQ/NYTIMES [wreng@nytimes.com]
Sent: Wednesday, October 11, 2006 5:00 PM
To: mhalley@kmaglobal.com
Subject: Henry Kissinger--"Turning Points 2006"

OCT 12 2006

Dear Dr. Kissinger:

I'm a senior editor at The New York Times Syndicate, and I'm writing to inquite as to whether you'd be interesting in writing a piece for our year-end "Turning Points 2006" package.

Each year The New York Times Syndicate creates a special package of stories called "Turning Points," which is syndicated to newspapers around the world. This premium package, tightly limited in size and quality, features some of the world's top writers and thinkers writing, exclusively for the Syndicate, about the key turning points of the past year-ways in which the world of December 31 is different from the world of January 1.

The past few "Turning Points" packages have included such authors as M.J. Akbar, Madeline Albright, John M. Barry, Jimmy Carter, Noam Chomsky, Niall Ferguson, Michael Ignatieff, Erica Jong, Enrique Krauze, Anthony Lewis, Tomas Eloy Martinez, Nicholas Negroponte, Salman Rushdie, Gloria Steinem, Joseph E. Stiglitz and Karel van Wolferen.

For "Turning Points 2006," we'd very much like to add your name to that list.

The topic on which we suggest that you might wish to write is the North Korean nuclear test-not the immediate questions of political and diplomatic tactics in dealing with this particular rogue regime, but the longer-term impact of what has to be regarded as a collapse of nuclear nonproliferation. North Korea was, after all, atop virtually everybody's list of "countries which shouldn't be allowed to get the bomb."

Is this effectively the end of nonproliferation as a policy goal, mandating acceptance of a multinuclear world and demanding new policies and processes to recognize that fact? Or can a new line be drawn in the sand, say with Iran?

Most coverage of this topic has understandably dwelt on the "what now?" questions, but the "what then?" may be more significant. How will the world be different five years from now, given that not only has a rogue nation come up with the nuclear bomb but also it has been made pretty clear that there is little that the world as a whole can do to prevent nuclearization of all but the smallest and most friendless countries?

There are obviously other facets of this, and perhaps you would want to explore some of them, but the overall key question remains: How will the world, in Asia but also in Europe, America and beyond, be different in light of the North Korean test?

I believe that editors and readers around the world would be interested in your take on this topic; I know I would.

As to the details of time, money and such:

The deadline would have to be determined by you and myself. Broadly speaking, the earlier we can get the piece, the easier it will be for our sales reps to sell it; on the other hand, this is a fast-changing part of the world, and we don't want you to feel pressured into doing less than your best work. I would think sometime in late October or early November would be a fair splitting of the difference, with the ability to tweak it later in the year to reflect subsequent developments, but again this would be something that you and I would have to determine, based on your schedule and other such considerations.

The finances are straightforward: All "Turning Points" writers, like virtually all Syndicate writers, receive 50 percent of the gross proceeds of their pieces; in the case of "Turning Points," we offer a guarantee of $1,500 U.S. We buy newspaper, magazine and nonexclusive electronic rights for a year, after which those rights revert to the author, who retains all other rights from the beginning.

The piece itself can be submitted in whatever form you like (via e-mail, fax, disk, hard copy or whatever).

If there is anything else I can tell you about "Turning Points 2006," about the

DATE : 12/29/06

CORR. FILE New York Times

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SUBJ. FILE

Josh (Jessee) Maggie

CROSS REF. _________

Security Suzanne Theresa

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January 23, 2006

NYU Today 7

# Stern's Nouriel Roubini Warns of Dangerous Economic Waters Ahead

Nouriel Roubini, professor of economics and international business at the Stern School of Business, is author with Brad Setser of the new book, *Bailouts or Bail-ins? Responding to Financial Crises in Emerging Economies*, which studies the currency, financial, and sovereign debt crises in emerging market economies in the last decade. The book also explores the efforts made to resolve these crises via policy adjustment, International Monetary Fund (IMF) “bail-out” packages, and private sector involvement.

Roubini, who received his Ph.D. in economics from Harvard, has been a long-time consultant to the World Bank, the IMF, and other private and public institutions. He has published theoretical and empirical policy papers on international macroeconomic issues, the Asian and global financial crisis, emerging markets, and the reform of the international financial system.

Before joining Stern, Roubini was a faculty member in the economics department at Yale University and has served as the senior economist for international affairs at the White House Council of Economic Advisers, the senior advisor to the under secretary for international affairs, and the director of the Office of Policy Development and Review at the U.S. Treasury Department. He is also chairman of Roubini Global Economics, an economic information and consultancy service.

NYU Today recently spoke to

Nouriel Roubini

When I came back to Stern, a lot of what I wrote was related to financial crises in emerging market economies and reform, which affected how I was teaching my courses. There is no separation between being a teacher and somebody who is involved in the real world. When I think about research, I think about current policy questions and not just academia.

**You have researched ways to prevent financial crises for years. How can countries do so?**

Crisis prevention, like avoiding a disease, is just making sure that you have healthy habits and a healthy diet and that your economic policies are sound. Usually countries that have a large budget deficit, unsustainable

on our foreign or domestic debt. The U.S. is still the major reserve currency in the world. We borrow in our own currency rather than in a foreign currency. So those elements reduce our vulnerability, but sooner or later, if you keep this budget deficit and this current account deficit we are going to accumulate too much foreign debt in a short time period. Eventually you are going to have a severe crisis of the dollar and a spike in interest rates, which could lead to an ugly, hard landing of the U.S. economy.

**In the short term, it seems like we have weathered recent storms, but looking towards the future, what impact will the hurricanes and the rise in oil prices have on the economy?**

I am very worried about a severe economic slowdown in the U.S. Today's U.S. consumer is over-stretched, shopped out, and has borrowed a lot. Income is high, but the savings rate of the household is now negative—people are spending more than their income, so they are running down their assets or they are borrowing. Housing has done well, but people have borrowed too much against their housing value, and if there is a housing market crash then that can hurt. The Fed has increased interest rates from one percent last year to four percent on November 1, so the burden of debt payments is increasing. You have consumers shocked by high oil prices, Katrina, high interest rates, high debt, and nervousness about where we are headed as an economy. If there is a U.S. slowdown, then there will be a

## Henry Kissinger and Colombian President Uribe Discuss 'New Political Policies'

Former Secretary of State **Henry Kissinger**, pictured in inset, recently participated in a panel discussion titled "New Political Policies for the Americas." Sponsored by NYU's King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center, other panelists included **Felipe González**, former prime minister of Spain; **Alvaro Uribe** (pictured above), president of Colombia; and **Ernesto Zedillo**, former president of Mexico. The dialogue was moderated by Spanish Judge **Baltasar Garzón**, holder of the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Chair at NYU. He specializes in investigations of terrorism, crimes against humanity, and international organized crime.

New York University
A private university in the public service

Center For European and Mediterranean Studies

285 Mercer Street, 7th Floor
New York, NY 10003

Telephone: (212) 998-3838

FAX: (212) 995-4188

Professor Sibylle Quack
Max Weber Chair

The Honorable Henry Kissinger
350 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10022

18 October 2006

Dear Mr. Kissinger,

Michael Blumenthal encouraged me to write to you. I am the current Max Weber
Professor at the Center for European Studies at NYU. In cooperation with the Leo Baeck
Institute New York, I am planning a conference entitled "Immigration and Cultural
Exchange: German Jewish Presences in the US and in Post Cold War Germany"
scheduled for March 25-27, 2007. For the afternoon session on Monday, March 26th, we
are inviting well-known representatives of European Jewish background who immigrated
to this country, like you, to participate in a round table discussion of their experiences in
politics, academia, and the media. Your participation would be a wonderful and rich
contribution to the round table. Peter Gay, Ted Koppel, and Madeleine Kunin are among
the other invitees to the discussion which will be moderated by Carol Kahn Strauss,
director of the Leo Baeck Institute in New York.

The first day of the conference will focus on the experiences of Jewish refugees from
Germany and Central Europe who immigrated to the United States before and during
World War II; explore their impact on the American culture, society and scholarship; and
raise the issue of how the refugees and their descendants were shaped by the American
environment. The second day will be dedicated to issues of immigration and cultural
exchange for the growing Jewish community in contemporary Germany. Sessions will
address the Jewish community's dialogue with the Turkish immigrant population in
Germany, as well as the work of American Jews addressing German Jewish issues in
Berlin. Enclosed please find a draft version of the conference program.

We would be delighted and honored to have you as a participant in this event.

OCT 24 2006

Contact:

Prof. Sibylle Quack
Center for European Studies
New York University
Phone: 212-998-3717
Email: msq1@nyu.edu

October 16, 2006

Conference
Draft

"Immigration and Cultural Exchange: German Jewish Presences in the US and Post
Cold War Germany"
25 – 27 March, 2007

Center for European Studies, NYU, and Leo Baeck Institute, New York

Sunday night: **Keynote** (invited speaker: Michael Blumenthal)

Monday

Morning Session (NYU)

1. Panel: **Personal and Historical Reflections on Immigration and Transformation in Different Countries of Refuge**

Chair: Renate Bridenthal

Topics:

Sosua (Marion Kaplan)
Palestine/Israel (Ofer Nur)
US (Atina Grossmann)
Canada (Deborah Simon)

2. Panel: **Cultural experiences of German Jewish refugees and their impact on Culture, Society, and Scholarship in the US**

Chair: Hasia Diner

Topics:

Hannah Arendt's views on American Society and Culture (Barbara Hahn)
Study on Leo Strauss (Eugene Sheppard)
Bringing Europe to America: Abraham Joshua Heschel and the Quest for Authentic Judaism (Susannah Heschel)
Study of anti-Semitism and Frankfurt School (Jack Jacobs)

Lunch

Afternoon Session

3. Panel: Refugee's Impact on Professions, Welfare System, and Popular Culture

Chair: Sibylle Quack

Topics:

Transformation of Social Work. Gisela Konopka and Hans Falck (Michael Reisch)

Victor Gruen, inventor of the American Mall (Jeff Hardwick)

African Americans and German Jews in Hollywood, 1933-1965 (Jonathan Skolnik)

Late afternoon: Round Table Discussion: Politics, Media, and Academia

Moderator: (Carol Strauss)

Participants: TBA

Robin Hirsch Cabaret: "Last Days at the Hotel Kempinsky"

Tuesday

Topic: Jewish Presence in the New Germany

4. Panel: Americans addressing German Jewish Issues in Berlin

Chair: (Frank Mecklenburg)

Participants: (Deidre Berger, Jeff Peck, Susan Neiman, Leslie Morris)

5. Panel: German and Russian Jews - Cultural Encounter, Social Integration

Chair: (TBA)

Participants: (Hermann Simon, Michael Brenner, Michael Bodemann Sergey

Lagodinsky)

Lunch

6. German Jews as Model: Assimilation and Cultural Exchange/ Jewish - Turkish dialogue

Chair: (Cornelia Schmalz-Jacobsen)

Participants: (Cem Sey, Goekce Yurdakul, TBA, Friedrich Ebert Foundation sponsored panel)

Concluding Remarks: TBA

MAR 01 2004

New York Yankees

GEORGE M. STEINBRENNER III

February 25, 2004

Dr. Henry A. Kissinger
350 Park Avenue
26th Floor
New York, New York 10022

Dear Doctor:

Thank you very much for your letter of February 20. You are quite right when you say, "she is an exceptional young woman". Haley was bubbling with enthusiasm after her visit to The College of William and Mary. Haley is also an applicant as a Moorhead Scholar to North Carolina of which both of her parents are alumni.

Incidentally, she is one of the few young ladies from Culver to enter the state finals for swimming, a very difficult feat in Indiana for, as you know, Indianapolis is the headquarters for the Olympics.

Again, I thank you for your support as it relates to my granddaughter Haley and your unwavering support and friendship with me.

TAMPA OFFICE
LEGENDS FIELD
1 STEINBRENNER DRIVE
TAMPA, FLORIDA 33614
(813) 281-9001

Kissinger Quotes

Jessee LePorin

From: Ioffe, Julia [Julia_loffe@newyorker.com]
Sent: Friday, June 23, 2006 10:42 AM
To: jleporin@kmaglobal.com
Subject: Kissinger Quotes

Dear Ms. Leporin,

I'm Jeff Toobin's fact-checker at The New Yorker. He interviewed Mr. Kissinger for his article on the World Cup, and I wanted to run these quotes by you (or Mr. Kissinger) to check their accuracy in time for our deadline this afternoon.

Thank you in advance for taking the time to check these.

Julia

Question: Is it true that Mr. Kissinger spoke to Mr. Toobin by phone from New York this week?

Quotes:

"Soccer does not have the rhythm that Americans are used to. Americans like their games segmented into different plays, which can then be statistically analyzed. Soccer, with its continuous action, requires a change of thinking."

After the US-Ghana game yesterday, Mr. Kissinger said, referring to the American team, "I think our team has regressed since 2002."

6/23/2006

THE SPORTING SCENE

UN-AMERICAN ACTIVITY

*The World Cup and our problem with soccer.*

BY JEFFREY TOOBIN

On the steps in front of the Brau-
haus Hibernia, a cheerful pub on
the main square in Gelsenkirchen, a
coal town in the Ruhr Valley, one woozy
rendition of “The Star-Spangled Ban-
ner” followed another. Captain Amer-
ica was there in full regalia, along with
Evel Knievel and a complete starting
five of the Harlem Globetrotters, drib-
bling a basketball—with their feet, of
course. The celebrants were among
about five hundred American soccer
fans, most of them wearing U.S. team
jerseys, with the Stars and Stripes tied
around their necks as capes. Soccer fans
in America are evangelical in their fer-
vor, yet cultish in their number, and a
couple of hours before the United States
team was to play its opening match in
the first round of this year’s World Cup
tournament, their creed was being re-
peated and reaffirmed: Soccer in America
is growing. Our team is a genuine world
power. We made the quarter-finals last
time, so this year, just maybe...

Over the alcoholic din, Nathaniel
Max, from Riverside, California, re-
called his trip to the World Cup in
France, eight years ago. "All the fans
from opposing teams wanted to take
pictures of me," he said. "It was like,
'Look! An American soccer fan! Never
seen one of them before!' This scene tells
you how much things have changed."

The quality of the American team,
however, still ranks with the quantity of
its fans—that is, at best, in the middle
of the international pack. Not six min-
utes into the game in Gelsenkirchen,
Zdenek Grygera, of the Czech Repub-
lic, fired a cross in front of the American
goal. The ball flew high and hard to-
ward Jan Koller, the Czech striker, who
resembles no American athlete. There
are basketball players as tall as Koller (he
is six feet seven inches), football players
with backs as broad, professional wres-
tlers with heads as bald. But no one has
quite the same combination of graceful

athleticism and lurid menace, and cer-
tainly no one looks so much like Lurch,
from "The Addams Family." With a
couple of American defenders standing
beside him like an honor guard, Koller
leaned in for a header. The dull thud of
his head crashing into the ball suggested
a sandbag hitting a dam. It was, per-
haps, a good thing that Kasey Keller,
the American goalkeeper, just grazed
the ball—its full impact might have hurt
him. By the ten-minute mark of the
game, the Czech fans were making the
universal sign of spectator boredom: the
wave. The Czech players, bigger, stron-
ger, and faster than the Americans, con-
trolled the entire game, and the final
score, 3–0, was one of the worst defeats
suffered by any team in the first round
of the tournament.

Five days later, the U.S. team sal-
vaged a measure of respectability in a
madcap 1–1 tie with Italy. Then, last
Thursday, a clearly superior team from
Ghana beat the United States 2–1, con-
demning the Americans to last place in
their four-team group. In all, the World
Cup in 2006 suggested another false
dawn for soccer in America. The game
that captivates the rest of world—where
it is a source of rapture and revenue—
remains only a niche product at home.
Even a better performance at the Cup
probably would not have altered the
sport's trajectory much. Soccer is the
Canada of American sports, viewed less
with contempt than with indifference.

In early June, my thirteen-year-old
Ison, Adam, and I flew to Frankfurt
for the start of the games. This was sup-
posed to be the dodgiest of the twelve
venues in Germany, because the English
team, accompanied by its notoriously
loutish fans, would be playing its first
game there, against Paraguay. In every
participating city, the German organiz-
ers put on what they called a Fan Fest
for the thousands of locals and visitors

28

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 3, 2006

TNY—2006_07_03—PAGE 28—133SC

who couldn't get tickets to the games. The English visitors, with their alleged tendency to riot, were perhaps, in the eyes of their highly organized hosts, most in need of diversionary Fan Festing. The Fest in Frankfurt was surely the most spectacular of the Teutonic side-shows: it featured giant double-sided video screens on stilts in the middle of the Main River. Tens of thousands lined the banks to watch England try to recapture its former glory.

In the years since the English team won its only Cup, in 1966, its supporters have come to resemble Red Sox fans circa 2003, in their amazing ability to conjure, then experience, scenarios of doom and the resultant self-pity. Perhaps that's why they drink so much. There were said to be forty thousand English fans, mostly men, in the crowd along the Main—far more than from any other country—and most of them came supplied with cases of lager and stout. (They didn't wait for kickoff to start drinking, either.) England survived its opener, 1-0, thanks to a brilliant free kick by David Beckham that nicked a Paraguayan defender and slipped into the goal. Beckham's celebrity has come almost to obscure his greatness as a player, most notably his extraordinary gifts as a passer. Beckham also set up the winning goal in England's second game, sending a perfect cross to Peter Crouch, an underfed Jan Koller, putting the team ahead of Trinidad and Tobago in the eighty-third minute.

The real test for the English fans, and for their German minders from the *Polizei* (as well as about eighty police officers on loan from the English authorities), came after the game, when the risk of hooliganism is supposedly greatest. England wisely banned more than three thousand known hooligans from travelling to Germany, and the precaution paid off. The fans who made the trip turned out to be as docile as they were drunk, and they settled for episodic naughtiness. In the bars of the

Römberg, the old town square, which is surrounded by replicas of medieval houses, the Brits serenaded their hosts with a ditty called "Ten German Bombers." It was sung to the tune of "She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain," and each verse concluded: "And the R.A.F. from England shot one down!" The local cops laughed, at least through the first dozen rounds. The only tense moment occurred the next day, when some

boisterous Englishmen came upon a group of Iranian fans on the vast pedestrian mall known as the Zeil. The Iranians, in order to salve the wounds of a 3-1 loss to Mexico, were dancing to a scratchy tape of a woman singing in Farsi. The English knew that they weren't supposed to like the Iranians, but German Pilsner had dulled their geopolitical instincts. "Fuck the I.R.A.!" they chanted at the baffled Persians.

In the first weeks of the Cup, England and Germany found common ground on the subject of the WAGs—that is, the wives and girlfriends of the English players. As the team's members struggled against weak opposition to

advance out of the first round, their significant others cut a sybaritic swath through Germany, using the spa town of Baden-Baden as a base for exploring the boutiques and bars of the host country. There was, for example, a postprandial visit to a night spot in Baden-Baden called Garibaldi, where four WAGs "ordered £270 worth of Moët & Chandon champagne, nine vodka and Red Bulls and assorted sambucas, Bacardis and lagers,

and danced the night away," according to the *Daily Mail*, "with a total bar bill of £450"—about eight hundred and twenty dollars. (The so-called Queen of the WAGs, Victoria Beckham, the former Posh Spice, who is said to have brought sixty pairs of sunglasses to Germany, skipped the outing to Garibaldi.) "They have the stamina and spending power that showed England has a team to take on the world—in shopping," the *Daily Telegraph* said of the WAGs. "How can you tell the difference between the species of English women and the majority of German women?" asked the mass-circulation *Bild Zeitung*. "In ten minutes they spend more cash on clothes than ours do in half a lifetime."

It wasn't just a shared taste for catty gossip that drew the former adversaries together; for once, the soccer wasn't driving them apart. In general, a harmless nationalism has prevailed over tribal hatred at this World Cup. (In Marseilles during the 1998 Cup, English fans rampaged for three days, attacking rival fans, throwing bottles, and vandalizing cars and shops.) Germany's red-black-and-gold flag is everywhere, a sign that, six decades after the Second World War, the country is becoming a normal nation. The changing character of German society is also reflected in its national team, which includes a black player, Gerald Asamoah, who was born in Ghana, and two who were born in Poland, Lukas Podolski and Miroslav Klose. (Klose was the top goal-scorer in the first two weeks of the Cup.) "Could it be that the government

Soccer in America can't quite transcend its suburban roots.

AROUND ROTH

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 3, 2006

29

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has realized the old hippie dream and laced our drinking water with LSD?" asked an editorial in *Die Welt*, in response to the outburst of patriotism. According to the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, the support for the team merely reflected a "beautiful sense of normalcy."

The international nature of contemporary soccer has scrambled alliances and contributed to the jolly atmosphere in Germany. Many of the visiting English fans doubtless spend most of their time at home rooting for Chelsea, which is currently the top team in the English Premier League. That polyglot ensemble includes half a dozen stars who, in the Cup, are playing for other teams, among them Petr Cech, of the Czech Republic; Michael Essien, of Ghana; Arjen Robben, of Holland; Didier Drogba, of Ivory Coast; and Hernán Crespo, of Argentina. (Chelsea has a Portuguese coach, José Mourinho, and is owned by a Russian billionaire, Roman Abramovich.) Your hero in May is hard to hate in June. "Everyone's used to foreign players in England now," said Roy Phillips, fifty-five, of Gloucestershire, who was attending the Cup with his son and daughter. "It's not a problem. Everyone just goes where the money is. It's just a new world, innit?"

The free market for soccer talent has even affected American players, who can put themselves up for worldwide auction as well. In the buildup to the 2006 tour-

nament, no one on the U.S. squad received more attention than Landon Donovan, who is what passes for a celebrity in the American soccer world. A twenty-four-year-old from the Los Angeles area, Donovan is a fleet midfielder who was the breakout U.S. star during the team's surprising run to the quarterfinals at the 2002 World Cup. He has a contract with Bayer Leverkusen, in Germany's Bundesliga. But, in two stints with the club, Donovan washed out, failing to establish himself as a starter, and he is now on loan to the United States, where he plays in the more congenial and less competitive Major League Soccer.

Donovan, who began playing soccer at the age of five, cultivates a surfer-dude persona. (When I met him earlier this year, at a U.S. team training session outside Los Angeles, his first words to me were "No worries, man.") But his laid-back approach did not go over well in Germany. Even though the Americans qualified with relative ease for the 2006 tournament—a two-year ordeal that reduces about two hundred soccer-playing nations to the thirty-two represented in Germany—the squad has always had trouble scoring goals, and it was Donovan's primary responsibility to put the ball in the net. But against the Czech Republic he was completely ineffective; the team's defenders physically barred his passage anywhere near the goal. Even Bruce Arena, the coach

of the U.S. team, who generally speaks in bland nostrums to the press, singled out Donovan after the game, saying, "Landon showed no aggressiveness."

Anyone can have a bad game, but the kind of bad game Donovan and his teammates had against the Czechs—desultory, erratic, clueless—suggested a larger problem for the Americans in international competition. The problem wasn't just a dearth of skill but a lack of mettle. The American players collectively had more World Cup experience than their opponents, but they seemed timid by comparison. The game was an object lesson in what haunts American soccer: the curse of the minivan.

John G. Roberts, Jr., during his confirmation hearings, was asked how, if he became Chief Justice of the United States, he would stay in touch with the concerns of ordinary Americans. Roberts replied that he had two young children and that he would be attending "a lot of soccer games," where he would mix with regular folk. The assertion made perfect sense. Soccer has exploded in popularity in the last few decades: there are now as many as six million Americans under eighteen who play in youth leagues. Among young people, the sport is now second in popularity to basketball. Every kid in the American suburbs, it seems, owns a pair of shin guards. Soccer accords nicely with baby-boomer parents' notions about sports: every kid gets to play, no one stands out too much, there's plenty of running and trophies for all. If the Chief Justice's children are typical, they will play neighborhood soccer for a few years, with enthusiastic but inexperienced parent coaches, and then wander away from the game by adolescence. Good high-school athletes tend to migrate to football and basketball, where they can play in front of big crowds and perhaps qualify for college scholarships. Soccer in the suburbs serves mostly as a bridge between Barney and Nintendo; it's a pleasant diversion, not a means of developing brutes like Jan Koller, to say nothing of the magicians who stock the Brazilian team.

Even so, the growing number of soccer players in the country has certainly improved the level of play in the United States, including that of the national

"I never thought turning eighty would be so much fun!"

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team. "Soccer is the only sport with a
real championship," Arena told me
when I visited the team's training facil-
ity, in Carson, California, in February.
"We call the Super Bowl a world cham-
pionship, but that's a joke. Who else
plays? The best athletes in every coun-
try in the world play soccer. It's the rea-
son our country is best at basketball. It's
what our best people do." As we were
talking, Eddie Johnson, a leonine
striker, was doing his stretching on the
ground in front of us. "Look at him,"
Arena said. "He was a wide receiver at
his high school in Florida. Those are the
best athletes in the country, and he's
with us now. That's a big difference
from four years ago—just the quality of
the athletes." (Johnson is African-
American; soccer is only beginning to
make inroads among blacks. Oddly, the
national team includes almost no His-
panics, the one ethnic group in Amer-
ica that seems to need no encourage-
ment to love the sport.) "We've finally
figured out a system where we can find
the best players in the country for the
national team," Arena said. "In other
countries, the best players would already
be affiliated with a top club when they
were twelve years old."

In Berlin, I had a chance to see what
Arena meant when my son and I visited
the city's newest tourist attraction. Adi-
das, the German company that usually
plays the nerdy older brother to Nike in
the athletic-footwear wars, had decided
to show its clout on home turf by build-
ing the World of Football, a fantasyland
on a vast plaza in front of the Reichstag.
In addition to a ten-thousand-seat rep-
lica of the city's Olympic Stadium, where
the Cup games were projected on video
screens, there were half a dozen artificial-
turf pitches for small-squad pickup
games and organized tournaments. On
the day we were there, Adidas hosted
the Berlin lower-school championships,
for players under twelve. The kids were
local schoolchildren, but the play was
fast and highly skilled. The future of
soccer in Germany looked secure.

Brazil arrived at this year's Cup the
expected winner, as usual. "Look,
the World Cup is the same every time,"
Sunil Gulati, the president of the U.S.
Soccer Federation, who is also a Co-
lumbia economics professor specializ-

ing in international development, said.
"Brazil needs, wants, expects to win
every World Cup. Everyone else crawls
and scratches to get out of the first
round, and then sees what happens and
if lightning strikes. No one goes in say-
ing, 'We are going to win,' except Bra-
zil." Winners of five Cups, two more
than any other country, the Brazilians so
dominate international soccer that their
iconic yellow-and-green jersey practi-
cally serves as a symbol of the sport.

Brazil's first game was against Croa-
tia, and it was held in the Olympic Sta-
dium in Berlin. The Cup organizers had
arranged for a shimmering new trans-
parent canopy to be built on top of the
arena, but, thanks to Leni Riefenstahl,
it is still recognizably the home of the
1936 games. It's one of the few positive
symbols of those years—the place where
Jesse Owens refuted Hitler's theory of
Aryan supremacy—yet the concrete
oval remains a sombre classic of Fascist
architecture. All the better, then, that
the stadium was the venue for the tour-
nament's first appearance by Ronald-
inho, soccer's presiding genius, who is as
well known for his ever-present smile as
for his gifts on the pitch. From the first
whistle of the opener against Croatia, it
was clear that the Brazilian team be-
longed to him this year, and when he
took an early ball down the right side
and dribbled around four defenders, it
seemed possible that we might be see-
ing a performance that would elevate
Ronaldinho into Brazil's pantheon of
World Cup heroes.

It didn't turn out that way. Ronal-
dinho, who is twenty-six, soon ceased
his theatrics and spent the rest of the
game steering the ball to his teammates.
Brazil managed only a single goal, near
the end of the first half: a bullet from the
top of the box by Kaká, a midfielder
who, in most other countries, would be
the best player. Croatia was outclassed,
and the team went down 1-0, in a game
that was actually a lot less close than the
score made it appear.

The real drama of the game was the
performance of Ronaldo, the top scorer
at the last Cup and Ronaldinho's prede-
cessor as the team's dominant figure.
Since 2002, Ronaldo appears to have
been following the training regimen as-
sociated with such earlier stars as Mara-
dona and George Best (think beer and

supermodels), and the pilowing effects
on his physique have been as one might
expect. The fans at Real Madrid, Ro-
naldo's club in the Spanish league, now
call him El Gordo—the fat guy. Against
Croatia, Ronaldo seemed barely able to
jog. For most of the game, he stood at
the top of the box looking lost, waiting
for someone to pass him the ball.

The Brazilian fans are knowledge-
able as well as passionate, and before the
end of the first half against Croatia they
were chanting, "Robinho, Robinho,"
the name of yet another superstar, even
younger than Ronaldinho, who was rid-
ing the bench. In the sixty-ninth min-
ute, Coach Carlos Alberto Parreira,
yielding to the fans' demands, put Ro-
binho into the game, where he chased
balls down in the corners, fed his team-
mates passes for shots, and provided the
Brazilian side with a jolt of energy, if no
more goals.

Ronaldo later checked himself in to
a Frankfurt clinic, where he was said to
be suffering from mysterious symptoms,
including dizzy spells. Released five
days later, he played better, scoring two
goals against Japan last Thursday. Ro-
naldo's saga would be of little more than
casual interest were his prospects, and
those of other aging stars, not tied to the
future of American soccer.

Earlier this year, the Red Bulls, the New York franchise in Major League Soccer, apparently offered Ronaldo a ten-year contract for around a hundred million dollars, an enormous sum even by the standards of the top European leagues. (All the best players in the world earn their living in Europe, including twenty of the twenty-three players on the Brazil roster.) The deal has not been finalized, however, and media reports suggest that it may be dead, with the Red Bulls looking to sign Beckham instead. Sooner or later, one of the big stars in the European game is likely to wind up playing in America. Such a move would undoubtedly generate tremendous interest and boost ticket sales—but fail as a long-term strategy.

Professional soccer has flourished
only fitfully here since the founding of
the New York Cosmos, in the early sev-
enties, by the Warner Communications
entertainment conglomerate. Steve
Ross, the showboating chief executive,

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THE NEW YORKER, JULY 3, 2006

31

advised by Ahmet Ertegun, the music mogul, and Ertegun's brother Nesuhi, decided that America was ready to embrace soccer. From their experience promoting the Rolling Stones, among others, Ross and Ertegun knew that Americans loved superstars, so the Cosmos signed Pelé, the incomparable Brazilian, who was then thirty-four years old and in his dotage as a player. Pelé and the Cosmos began selling out Giants Stadium, with seventy-five thousand seats, and the infant North American Soccer League thrived, at least for a while.

Then, in 1977, just twenty-eight months after he joined the Cosmos, Pelé retired, and the professional game in America seemed to retire with him. The Cosmos had signed other aging world stars, including Franz Beckenbauer and Giorgio Chinaglia, but none of them had Pelé's magic at the box office. The league went bust in 1984, and the experience so traumatized American sports executives that no one tried again for a decade. (The story of the Cosmos' rise and fall is told in "Once in a Lifetime," a new documentary.)

Several soccer-mad Americans, including Henry Kissinger, helped bring the World Cup to the U.S. in 1994. In that tournament, the Americans progressed to the final sixteen for the first time since 1930, but they lost 1-0 to Brazil, the eventual winner; the final was held in the Rose Bowl, in Pasadena. The Cup games drew huge crowds, but they hardly triggered a national groundswell. The Women's World Cup in 1999 produced an American win—and made Mia Hamm the best-known native soccer player—but the women's professional league went out of business in 2001, a victim of insufficient corporate sponsorship and low attendance.

Today, Major League Soccer, which was founded in 1996, is trying to promote the sport by, among other tactics, hiring American college players. (Salaries range from about thirty-five thousand dollars a year to around nine hundred thousand, for stars like Donovan and Johnson.) M.L.S. has survived largely because of Phil Anschutz, the Colorado billionaire and right-wing media mogul, who owns four of the twelve teams and has been willing to subsidize heavy losses. Other owners may prove less patient.

Earlier this year, Dietrich Mateschitz, the Austrian soft-drink entrepreneur, bought the New York MetroStars, renamed them the Red Bulls, after his caffeine-laced beverage, and began courting Ronaldo, and possibly Beckham. The arrival of either player could produce a Pelé-style stir, but celebrity hires are not a solution, especially now that cable television and the Internet allow American fans to follow the top European leagues at least as easily as they can follow M.L.S. (My son has posters on his bedroom wall celebrating his favorite team, Arsenal, in London. The Fox Soccer Channel shows many more of their matches than the Red Bulls'.) In all, the professional game in America is likely to remain roughly as popular as it is now: somewhere behind hockey and ahead of bowling.

The U.S. game against Italy took place in the strangest of the German venues—Kaiserslautern, a big town tucked amid the hills of the Rhineland-Palatinate, near the border with Luxembourg. The Cup stadiums all have covered seating, video simulcasts, and clean bathrooms—true luxuries to someone used to the semicircular slum that is Shea Stadium. The arena in K-town (as the soldiers at nearby Ramstein Air Base call it) looks as if it had been made from vintage Legos. Noise reverberates inside the big rectangle, and the outnumbered and desperate American fans almost drowned out their Italian rivals. (The Italians were at a disadvantage: it is difficult to cheer while talking on a cell phone and smoking a cigarette.)

The U.S. players appeared transformed. For a while, they beat the Italians to loose balls, passed the ball with zip, and kept the action in the Italian end. But in the twenty-second minute the American defense went glassy-eyed on a thirty-yard free kick that Andrea Pirlo curved into the box, and Alberto Gilardino headed it into the goal. Suddenly, a repeat of the Czech disaster

seemed likely. But five minutes later Bobby Convey, an American midfielder, sent a free kick from the right sideline and it went off course, straight to Cristiano Zaccardo, who was guarding the far end of the net. The Italian swung his left foot to clear the ball out of the zone, but he misjudged the kick, and the ball squirted backward into his own goal. At first, the American players seemed more stunned than elated; like everyone else, they couldn't understand how such a gross blunder could have occurred. But the score was now 1-1.

The indignity of the goal unnerved the Italians, and their frustration turned ugly. Without provocation, in the center of the pitch, Daniele de Rossi, a midfielder, savagely elbowed Brian McBride, a forward, in the face, causing a wound that required three stitches. The referee, Jorge Larrionda, of Uruguay, promptly showed de Rossi a red card—that is, threw him out of the game for a flagrant foul. (McBride, displaying the kind of grit associated with the English Premier League, where he plays for Fulham, returned to the game after the repair.) The attack seemed all too consistent with the current state of Italian soccer.

The oldest cliché in soccer journalism holds that style of play reflects national character. It is said that the Brazilians play with “Samba-infused joy and creativity,” the Dutch with “meticulous precision,” the English with “stubborn determination.” It is telling that there is no particular phrase associated with the American style, which, such as it is, relies on speed and intelligence. These days, Italians play a style known as *catenaccio*—door bolt—which focusses far more on preventing goals than on scoring them. This defensive approach often leads to unattractive behavior, such as de Rossi’s assault on McBride, and, as a consequence, Italian players are also famous for making operatic complaints to referees, who are especially important in their games. Italian teams often rely for goals on free kicks and penalties, which only referees can award. This, in turn, has contributed to corruption scandals, including one this year involving apparent payoffs to referees by people associated with the famous club Juventus, of Turin. A police investigation, known as Clean Feet,

32

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 3, 2006

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has led to the resignation of the team's
general manager, its entire board of di-
rectors, and even Aldo Biscardi, the sev-
enty-five-year-old host of Italy's most
popular soccer television show. (Gov-
ernment wiretaps revealed that Biscardi
had conspired with the Juventus man-
ager to give favorable treatment to the
team.)

In any event, after McBride's bloody mugging, Larrionda, the referee, became the game's protagonist. Ejected players can't be replaced, so the United States began playing with an eleven-to-ten advantage. Then, just before halftime, Larrionda showed a red card to an American defender, Pablo Mastroeni, who had clipped the ankle of Andrea Pirlo while attempting a tackle. This seemed excessive, and the American fans howled even louder than when their team had scored. Mastroeni had surely committed a foul, which leads to a free kick for the opposing team, and he may have deserved a yellow card, which constitutes a formal warning against more serious infractions. (Two yellow cards result in ejection.) Then, immediately after the half, Larrionda gave a second yellow card to Eddie Pope, another American defender, resulting in a bizarre ten-to-nine setup on the field, in Italy's favor. Each of Larrionda's calls was perhaps defensible, but together they looked dubious, like a sop to the Italians.

With so few players, the field was suddenly wide open, which increased each side's chance of scoring. But exhaustion began to weaken both teams, especially the undermanned Americans. Donovan partially redeemed himself for the Czech debacle by leading the Americans at midfield and distributing the ball confidently to his teammates, but he could not put it in the net. In the sixty-fifth minute, DaMarcus Beasley slid a ball into the goal, but Larrionda called it back after finding McBride offside. At the other end of the field, Kasey Keller, the goalkeeper, made a series of diving saves that kept the Americans in the game, and in the tournament.

By the end, the two teams looked
like club fighters in a church basement,
wearily throwing haymakers at each
other. The ragged performances by
both teams were unlikely to impress
Argentina or Spain—the early stand-

outs in the tournament—but the tie
meant that the United States had sur-
vived to play a meaningful third game.
If the Italians beat the Czechs, and the
Americans defeated Ghana, then Are-
na's team would somehow stagger on to
the final sixteen.

African teams have their own reputations—“flamboyant,” “undisciplined,” “creative”—which seem rooted more in racial stereotypes than in what transpires on the field. In Nuremberg last Thursday, Ghana played a sober, risk-averse game against the Americans. In the twenty-second minute, Haminu Draman, a Ghanaian forward, humiliated Claudio Reyna, the American captain, stripping him of the ball just left of the box and then firing a perfect shot into the upper right corner of the goal. Beasley, who had been having a dismal tournament, made up for it by setting up Clint Dempsey for the first American goal, in the forty-third minute. But the American momentum was short-lived. Just before halftime, Oguchi On-yewu, an American defender, was whistled for a dubious penalty in the box, and Stephen Appiah, Ghana's captain, converted the penalty kick to put his team back in the lead.

Like many soccer games, the contest
was more stressful than enjoyable to
watch. Because goals are so rare, fans al-

ternate between frustration with their
team and anxiety about the opponent.
The clock never stops in each forty-five-
minute half, so there's no respite from
the tension, or even time to buy a snack.
(To leave one's seat is to risk not seeing
one of the game's few goals get scored.)
It's little wonder that many American
fans, raised on the pauses between in-
nings in baseball, and the committee
meetings known as huddles in football—
not to mention the pitching changes and
time-outs that prolong the conclusions of
these games—find soccer games both
bewildering and annoying. “Soccer does
not have the rhythm that Americans are
used to,” Kissinger told me from New
York last week. “Americans like their
games segmented into different plays,
which can then be statistically analyzed.
Soccer, with its continuous action, re-
quires a change of thinking.”

The loss was especially frustrating for the U.S. team, because Italy wound up beating the Czechs 2-0, which meant that an American victory would have put the team into the final sixteen. “I think our team has regressed since 2002,” Kissinger said. Or, as Ratomir Dujkovic, Ghana’s Serbian-born coach, put it, “For me, the result was not a surprise.” He added, in the gently patronizing way that the world speaks of American soccer, “Your team is good, but now, unfortunately, they have to go home.” ♦

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THE NEW YORKER, JULY 3, 2006

33

Kissinger Quotes

Jessee LePorin

New Yorker
office of Jeff Toobin

**From:** Ioffe, Julia [Julia_loffe@newyorker.com]
**Sent:** Friday, June 23, 2006 10:42 AM
**To:** jleporin@kmaglobal.com
**Subject:** Kissinger Quotes

Dear Ms. Leporin,

Julia

JUN 26 2006

Quotes:

6/23/2006

Message

Jessee LePorin

**From:** Jessee LePorin [jleporin@kmaglobal.com]
**Sent:** Friday, June 23, 2006 12:50 PM
**To:** 'Ioffe, Julia'
**Subject:** RE: Kissinger Quotes

Julia:

I have had the opportunity to confirm the accuracy of the quotes you sent (mentioned in the e-mail below).

Best,
Jessee

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

**From:** Ioffe, Julia [mailto:Julia_Ioffe@newyorker.com]
**Sent:** Friday, June 23, 2006 10:42 AM
**To:** jleporin@kmaglobal.com
**Subject:** Kissinger Quotes

Dear Ms. Leporin,

Julia

Quotes:

7/5/2006

THE SPORTING SCENE

UN-AMERICAN ACTIVITY

BY JEFFREY TOOBIN

On the steps in front of the Braunschweig Hibernia, a cheerful pub on the main square in Gelsenkirchen, a coal town in the Ruhr Valley, one woozy rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” followed another. Captain America was there in full regalia, along with Evel Knievel and a complete starting five of the Harlem Globetrotters, dribbling a basketball—with their feet, of course. The celebrants were among about five hundred American soccer fans, most of them wearing U.S. team jerseys, with the Stars and Stripes tied around their necks as capes. Soccer fans in America are evangelical in their fervor, yet cultish in their number, and a couple of hours before the United States team was to play its opening match in the first round of this year’s World Cup tournament, their creed was being repeated and reaffirmed: *Soccer in America is growing. Our team is a genuine world power. We made the quarter-finals last time, so this year, just maybe...*

Over the alcoholic din, Nathaniel Max, from Riverside, California, recalled his trip to the World Cup in France, eight years ago. “All the fans from opposing teams wanted to take pictures of me,” he said. “It was like, ‘Look! An American soccer fan! Never seen one of them before!’ This scene tells you how much things have changed.”

The quality of the American team, however, still ranks with the quantity of its fans—that is, at best, in the middle of the international pack. Not six minutes into the game in Gelsenkirchen, Zdenek Grygera, of the Czech Republic, fired a cross in front of the American goal. The ball flew high and hard toward Jan Koller, the Czech striker, who resembles no American athlete. There are basketball players as tall as Koller (he is six feet seven inches), football players with backs as broad, professional wrestlers with heads as bald. But no one has quite the same combination of graceful

athleticism and lurid menace, and certainly no one looks so much like Lurch, from “The Addams Family.” With a couple of American defenders standing beside him like an honor guard, Koller leaned in for a header. The dull thud of his head crashing into the ball suggested a sandbag hitting a dam. It was, perhaps, a good thing that Kasey Keller, the American goalkeeper, just grazed the ball—its full impact might have hurt him. By the ten-minute mark of the game, the Czech fans were making the universal sign of spectator boredom: the wave. The Czech players, bigger, stronger, and faster than the Americans, controlled the entire game, and the final score, 3–0, was one of the worst defeats suffered by any team in the first round of the tournament.

Five days later, the U.S. team salvaged a measure of respectability in a madcap 1–1 tie with Italy. Then, last Thursday, a clearly superior team from Ghana beat the United States 2–1, denying the Americans to last place in their four-team group. In all, the World Cup in 2006 suggested another false dawn for soccer in America. The game that captivates the rest of world—where it is a source of rapture and revenue—remains only a niche product at home. Even a better performance at the Cup probably would not have altered the sport’s trajectory much. Soccer is the Canada of American sports, viewed less with contempt than with indifference.

In early June, my thirteen-year-old son, Adam, and I flew to Frankfurt for the start of the games. This was supposed to be the dodgiest of the twelve venues in Germany, because the English team, accompanied by its notoriously loutish fans, would be playing its first game there, against Paraguay. In every participating city, the German organizers put on what they called a Fan Fest for the thousands of locals and visitors

28

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 3, 2006

TNY—2006_07_03—PAGE 28—133SC.

advance out of the first round, their significant others cut a sybaritic swath through Germany, using the spa town of Baden-Baden as a base for exploring the boutiques and bars of the host country. There was, for example, a postprandial visit to a night spot in Baden-Baden called Garibaldi, where four WAGs "ordered £270 worth of Moët & Chandon champagne, nine vodka and Red Bulls and assorted sambucas, Bacardis and la-

*Soccer in America can't quite transcend its suburban roots.*

ARNOLD ROTH

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 3, 2006

29

TNY—2006_07_03—PAGE 29—1335C.—LIVE ART R15276

ing in international development, said,
"Brazil needs, wants, expects to win
every World Cup. Everyone else crawls
and scratches to get out of the first
round, and then sees what happens and
if lightning strikes. No one goes in say-
ing, 'We are going to win,' except Bra-
zil." Winners of five Cups, two more
than any other country, the Brazilians so
dominate international soccer that their
iconic yellow-and-green jersey practi-
cally serves as a symbol of the sport.

The Brazilian fans are knowledge-
able as well as passionate, and before the
end of the first half against Croatia they
were chanting, “Robinho, Robinho,”
the name of yet another superstar, even
younger than Ronaldinho, who was rid-
ing the bench. In the sixty-ninth min-
ute, Coach Carlos Alberto Parreira,
yielding to the fans’ demands, put Ro-
binho into the game, where he chased
balls down in the corners, fed his team-
mates passes for shots, and provided the
Brazilian side with a jolt of energy, if no
more goals.

TNY—2006_07_03—PAGE 31—1335C.

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 3, 2006

31

The oldest cliché in soccer journalism holds that style of play reflects national character. It is said that the Brazilians play with “Samba-infused joy and creativity,” the Dutch with “meticulous precision,” the English with “stubborn determination.” It is telling that there is no particular phrase associated with the American style, which, such as it is, relies on speed and intelligence. These days, Italians play a style known as *catenaccio*—door bolt—which forbusses far more on preventing goals than on scoring them. This defensive approach often leads to unattractive behavior, such as de Rossi’s assault on McBride, and, as a consequence, Italian players are also famous for making operatic complaints to referees, who are especially important in their games. Italian teams often rely for goals on free kicks and penalties, which only referees can award. This, in turn, has contributed to corruption scandals, including one this year involving apparent payoffs to referees by people associated with the famous club Juventus, of Turin. A police investigation, known as Clean Feet,

32

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 3, 2006

In any event, after McBride's bloody mugging, Larrionda, the referee, became the game's protagonist. Ejected players can't be replaced, so the United States began playing with an eleven-to-ten advantage. Then, just before half-time, Larrionda showed a red card to an American defender, Pablo Mastroeni, who had clipped the ankle of Andrea Pirlo while attempting a tackle. This seemed excessive, and the American fans howled even louder than when their team had scored. Mastroeni had surely committed a foul, which leads to a free kick for the opposing team, and he may have deserved a yellow card, which constitutes a formal warning against more serious infractions. (Two yellow cards result in ejection.) Then, immediately after the half, Larrionda gave a second yellow card to Eddie Pope, another American defender, resulting in a bizarre ten-to-nine setup on the field, in Italy's favor. Each of Larrionda's calls was perhaps defensible, but together they looked dubious, like a sop to the Italians.

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 3, 2006

TNY-2006_07_03-PAGE 33-1335C.-LIVE OPI ART-A11405

World Cup

Jessee LePorin

From: Coatney, Mark [Mark.Coatney@Newsweek.com]
Sent: Friday, July 07, 2006 12:57 PM
To: 'jleporin@kmaglobal.com'
Subject: World Cup

Jessee--Dr. Kissinger had asked for a transcript of his audio bits with us; here it is. Also, we had agreed to talk one last time, on Tuesday; is there a time on his schedule that would be good? Thanks and best, Mark

Kissinger and the Cup (June 14, 2006)

This is Mark Coatney, editor at Newsweek.com. I'm talking today with Dr. Henry Kissinger, Nobel Peace Prize winner, former US Secretary of State and a huge soccer fan, about the first week of World Cup play. Dr. Kissinger, what have been your impressions so far of the tournament?

The matches I have seen I've found impressive. The German team played more on the offensive style than I've seen Germany play before, but they had a very weak opponent, so I have to reserve judgment until they come up against a stronger team. The Brazilians were good but not as overwhelming as some of the previews seemed to indicate. The Croatians surprised me in how they performed against Brazil. England did just enough to win against Uruguay. So we're at this stage of this competition in which the teams who think they have a chance of winning the Cup are above all concerned about getting into the next round. They're not trying to score overwhelming victories, and therefore the games on the whole, are very low scoring; most are competitive—the only runaway game has been Spain against Ukraine. At this round there are a lot of teams whose players are not in the professional leagues and they find it hard to keep pace with the European countries and with the strong Latin American countries.

In regards to the Brazil match, people had been talking about this team as being the equal of the 1970 team when they came out against Croatia and it was a fairly close match. Do you think that the team isn't as good as people expected? Or do you think that the competition is better than it was in 1970 overall?

It's too early to tell whether the team is as good as it can be, but one thing that struck me in this game is the following: I saw the Brazilians in the 70s, and they were an exuberant, acrobatic bunch, and they were playing mostly in the Brazilian league. These players of the current team are playing, except for three members, almost exclusively in Europe, and so they've become much more adjusted to the European style, much less exuberant. But they're still faster and somewhat more acrobatic than the typical European player. But I get the impression that the globalization of soccer has sort of leveled out the playing style. Two things have happened with globalization: in the 70s I don't think the Croatian team could've withstood a team of the speed and skill of the Brazilians, but now the defenses have become so scientific that any team that has reasonably good players can make scoring against it extremely difficult. I would not think at this stage that one can say that the other teams are significantly better than they were in the 70s. It's a different style of football which has become much more homogeneous.

Dr. Kissinger, what did you think of the US match against the Czech Republic? How do you think the US played?

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I can only judge them from what I saw. They did not look to me as if they were either in good enough condition to compete in a place of high-level professional football nor were they strategically in a position to conduct their game on this Saturday which the Czechs operated. They seemed rather slow and at no point very dangerous, but this may have been a flat day. We will see on Saturday. They have a very tough opponent in Italy. They must at least tie it and then win the final match against Ghana to have a chance.

## Assessing Round One (June 24, 2006)

This is Mark Coatney from Newsweek.com talking today with Dr. Henry Kissinger about World Cup Soccer. We're now in Round 16- could you talk a little about three teams you think have been really impressive so far in this World Cup?

**Argentina, Germany, Spain, and probably Brazil.**

Would you say those are your favorites to perhaps win or have the strongest chance?

**Well, I would say Germany has the public behind it. In terms of ability, I would say Argentina or Brazil.**

Spain has an interesting match coming up. They play France, who, a few days ago, people weren't even sure if they were going to make it into the second round.

**On any one day, France can beat anybody. The problem is that the players have gotten old and apparently have lost their spark, but if they played like they did in '98, they'd be tough to beat.**

And they're playing a team from Spain that has traditionally not perhaps played up to its potential.

**That's true. They haven't in the past played up to their potential, but they've looked good in the games that I've seen on television.**

In looking ahead to the match-ups of the next round, are there any games you think in particular will be really nice games? There's Brazil v. Ghana or Portugal v. Netherlands?

**Portugal against Netherlands looks to me like the toughest match to predict, but in the round around after this, if both Argentina and Germany win, they'll play each other in the next round, then that'll be a tough game for both of them.**

Do you think that the home field in Germany will have an advantage?

**It did. It helped Korea in 2002. It helped Italy in '90- it didn't quite make it to the finals.**

It even helped the US in '94 a little bit. Since we're on the topic of the US, they had sort of a disappointing finish. What do you think this means for the future of United States soccer?

**I think they have a number of problems. One is that our players, when they play in the MLS, don't have enough competition to play at the international level. The only ones who get the really**

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tough experience are the ones who play in Europe, so I agree with the people who argue that we should see if more of our players could go to Europe. Secondly, I think we should have more minorities. Third, we have to start recruiting at an earlier age because our team seems to me to lack endurance. I know they hang on in the Italy game, but when you only make four shots on goals in three games and score only one real goal, then you don't really play a good tactical game. And with modern defenses you can't rely on individual players--you have to have a strategy for getting the ball through.

That's interesting. I wonder how you do that. I agree--the best athletes in the United States tend to go to play basketball or play in the NFL. Soccer is not seen as the first choice for a lot of people.

But to play soccer, you don't have to be 6 foot 6, and you don't have to weight 300 lbs. Really, you should have a bigger group of people from whom you can draw.

It'll be very interesting to see. I mean, it's certainly played a lot more than it used to be in the United States.

It's played a lot more, and if our team had been successful- we need a pivotal game. We need something like the Giants v Colts game of '58, which put the professional game of football on the map.

Some had said that the Italy game might have become that, but I think the US would have had to move on for that to have really been the case.

But if you look at the Ghana game, we lost two goals. One because Reyna lost the ball to a Ghanaian who then ran in and scored, and the second probably was a harsh penalty, but still, a really disciplined team wouldn't have let either of these goals happen.

## Kissinger and the Cup (June 30, 2006)

This is Mark Coatney from Newsweek.com talking today with Dr. Henry Kissinger about World Cup Soccer. I'd like to start with the match that just concluded- did you get a chance to see the Germany vs. Argentina?

**Yes, I saw it.**

What did you think? It was not quite the match I thought it was going to be. It was a little bit slower especially at first. Both teams seemed very wary and then of course very dramatic at the end with the shootout.

Yes, but that's the essence of soccer. Germany either was not as good as it was in its previous games or the Argentineans were so much better than the teams they have beaten up to now. It couldn't get its offensive style really developed in the first half and never really fully developed throughout the game. The Argentineans played about as I expected--very fluid. But I think they probably made a mistake when they were ahead from about the 60th minute on, it seemed to me that they were just trying to get in overtime.

I've noticed that teams invariably seem to get punished for doing that--for trying to hold on to that lead, especially in these high levels of Cup play.

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Well they think the risk they run in attacking is that the other team will suddenly make a counterattack and score, but in practice, to defend for a half hour against a first class team is a very tough thing to manage.

Of course Argentina was down to its second string goalie after the injury, which in the end made the difference.

I have seen the Germans now in penalty shootouts and I don't think they've ever lost in a penalty shootout.

Yeah, they looked fantastic in that.

During the European Cup, I forget when it was--maybe 8 years ago, in London--I talked to the head of the English federation before the German v English game, and he said he knew what was going to happen: it would be tied; there would be a penalty shootout. The first five kickers on each side would score, but the English had only trained the first five, and he was certain the Germans had trained all 10 of them-- and that's what happened: six penalties the Germans made and the English didn't.

As far as Germany's chances in the Cup, they actually look pretty good now.

They always have trouble with Italy. They were beaten by this Italian team 4-1 in Florence in April, but I would say the German chances are pretty strong, at least to get to the finals.

The Italian team has surprised me--they keep winning, even though I'm not entirely sure how.

The Italians play a brutal, and somewhat Machiavellian game, their basic strategy is to frustrate the other team until it makes a mistake and then they score a goal, and then they frustrate them even more by going on total defense.

That brings up a good point, which is that a lot of people, especially Americans, watching the Cup, have commented on how much exaggerating an injury has become part of this game, and they use the Italians- specifically, for instance, the Australian game--where there was that kind of very late foul, and people were arguing that it wasn't really a foul.

Yes, the Italians are very good at doing that. I didn't see that game, but most commentators seem to think that that foul at the end was a result of faking.

In general, there's been some controversy about the officiating. Has it been excessive?

I thought the officiating in the Portugal v. Holland game was terrible. So many players were thrown out. Most of the games I saw, I thought the officials seemed very good. Of course they can make mistakes.

Finally, I was looking ahead to some of the other matches. There's Italy, and then Brazil will play tomorrow. How do you see some of the other games coming up?

I don't think France will win the championship, but on any one day they can beat any team. They have good players. They are getting old. They haven't played with the spirit they had in '98, but they obviously outplayed Spain, which was a much younger team, and I think they're going to give

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AUG-07-2006 14:26

'We Are at War'

For Israel's Shimon Peres, victory means keeping Hizbullah away from Lebanon's southern border.

By Lally Weymouth

Newsweek

Aug. 14, 2006 issue - Israel's vice prime minister Shimon Peres, the last of his country's founding fathers, has served in every position from prime minister to minister of Defense. Last week, while in the United States to lobby for support for Israel's war against Hizbullah, he spoke with NEWSWEEK's Lally Weymouth.

Excerpts:

**WEYMOUTH:** Is it true that you were the only person in the Israeli cabinet to raise objections to this operation?

**PERES:** After two weeks, I forgot everything. We are at war and have to be united. I'm not going to make an account of who was right and who was wrong.

**Is the operation going according to the original plan or has it expanded?**

We are using more ground forces and have reduced the bombing.

**Have you been surprised by the strength and tenacity of Hizbullah?**

Not their strength but the strangeness of this operation. Nobody understands why they started to attack, what the purpose of the attack was and why they are using so many rockets and missiles. We knew they had them but were surprised they used them.

**How long will it take to get a ceasefire?**

If the ceasefire is just a declaration, it will remain a piece of paper. Somebody must make sure that Hizbullah does not return to the south of Lebanon.

**Did the Iranians order this?**

They are behind it. [Javier] Solana [secretary-general of the European Union] visited Tehran on July 11 and got a totally negative response [on restraining their nuclear program], and Hizbullah struck [Israel] on the 12th of July.

**What does Israel have to show after three weeks of this operation?**

What Israel has to show is a great performance of the people. We never experienced having 100 to 150 missiles and rockets every night falling at random. And over a million people living in the shelters, keeping [up] their morale. It's quite a demonstration of unity and determination. I think in spite of everything, we are weakening Hizbullah. It's not a confrontation with an army, so we can't have a victory in a military sense. I see it as three confrontations: one is an attempt to destroy Israel ... The second is about Lebanon ... They want to de-Lebanize Lebanon-to transform it from a multicultural country into a Shiite country under the spell of the Iranians. And the third-the real confrontation-is between the Arabs and the Iranians for the hegemony of the Middle East. It's not a surprise that countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan stood up openly against Hizbullah.

**But that was in the beginning.**

They may have changed their rhetoric, but I don't think they have changed their minds.

**Do you think Israel has been too dependent on air power in the operation in Lebanon?**

No, we used air power and ground power for different reasons. We used the air power to bomb the headquarters of Hizbullah. There was a headquarters a complex

AUG-07-2006 14:26

of buildings-of Hizbullah in Beirut, and we decided to bomb it. And then we decided to destroy their communication systems. Now we are using ground forces because they hide weapons in private homes and villages.

**What do you want to achieve?**

We decided to bomb the buildings of Hizbullah in Beirut, and we want to destroy their communication systems. Now we are using ground forces because we want to achieve the perception that you cannot bombard Israel. We shall not permit Hizbullah to come back to [the] southern border between Israel and Lebanon. The second is to stop the firing of missiles and rockets. The third is to release our two soldiers that were taken hostage. And the fourth is to get control over their arsenal of rockets and missiles.

**How can you stop the rockets and missiles coming in from Syria and Iran?**

We want to achieve the perception that you cannot bombard Israel. We shall not permit Hizbullah to come back to [the] southern border between Israel and Lebanon. The second is to stop the firing of missiles and rockets. The third is to release our two soldiers that were taken hostage. And the fourth is to get control over their arsenal of rockets and missiles.

**The roads and airports you bombed can be repaired.**

Yes, but they can be bombed again.

**Many believe that force will not work in the long run.**

In the long run, we want to see Lebanon governed by Lebanese. We want the Lebanese Army to stop being an army that doesn't participate in the defense of its country. They are 80,000 soldiers, and they will be thickened by an International force.

**Reportedly, the Syrian Army is now on the highest state of alert.**

But they are not the best army in the Middle East. Since the Russians stopped supplying them with modern arms, they have an obsolescent arsenal of weapons. The Syrians cannot fight alone. They need an ally. They cannot fight without Egypt, but Egypt doesn't want to fight.

**Do you feel that the military gains you have made have been offset by the damage to Israel's Image? Hasn't this war strengthened Hizbullah's Image in the Arab world?**

We could do without it, yes. It's building and destroying [Hizbullah] at the same time. What are they going to achieve-prestige, applause?

**How much longer do you think this will go on?**

I think this is a matter of weeks and not months. I think that Hizbullah is beginning to feel the Israeli action. They've lost two of their six senior commanders. They have paid heavily.

AUG-07-2006 14:26

'We Are Weakening Hezbollah'

Sunday, August 6, 2006; B07

Shimon Peres, 82, has served his country in every position from prime minister to minister of defense. The last of his country's founding fathers, he was in the United States last week to explain Israel's strategy in its war against Hezbollah to U.S. offsprings and others. In an exclusive interview, he spoke with Newsweek-Washington Post's Lally Weymouth. Excerpts

Q: Is it true that you were the only person in the Israeli cabinet to raise objections to this operation?

A: After two weeks, I forgot everything. We are at war and have to be united. I'm not going to make an account of who was right and who was wrong.

Q. Is the operation going according to the original plan or has it expanded?

A. We are using more ground forces and have reduced the bombing. The purpose of the bombing was to destroy the headquarters of Hezbollah in the cities.

Q. Are Israeli forces going all the way to the Litani River? Will Israel reoccupy southern Lebanon?

A. No. We shall make incursions but not stay there.

Q. Have you been surprised by the strength and tenacity of Hezbollah?

A. Not their strength but the strangeness of this operation. Nobody understands why they started to attack, what the purpose of the attack was and why they are using so many rockets and missiles.

Q. The Turks say they won't go to Lebanon as part of a force if they have to disarm Hezbollah.

A. We don't need a group of observers; we need people who will be effective in fulfilling their task: to implement U.N. Resolution 1559, which calls for the Lebanese army to replace Hezbollah along the Israeli border.

Q. Do you believe Israel can win a military victory over Hezbollah?

A. I think Hezbollah as a political and military force will emerge in the eyes of the Lebanese as a very costly affair. The tragedy of Lebanon is the result of the ambition of Iran.

Q. Did the Iranians order this?

A. They are behind it. There is one connection that remains questionable. [Javier] Solana [foreign policy chief of the European Union] visited Tehran on July 11 and got a totally negative response [on restraining the Iranian nuclear program] and Hezbollah struck on the 12th of July.

Q: What does Israel have to show after three weeks of this operation?

A: What Israel has to show is a great perfumance of the people. We never experienced having 100 to 150 missiles and rockets every night falling at random. And over a million people living in the shelters, keeping [up] their morale. It's quite a demonstration of unity and determination. I think in spite of everything, we are weakening Hezbollah...

AUG-07-2006 14:26

P.05

I see it as three confrontations. One is an attempt to destroy Israel. They thought they'd break our morale and we'd become scared. The second is about Lebanon, which is not less important. They want to de-Lebanize Lebanon -- to transform it from a multicultural country into a Shiite country under the spell of the Iranians. And the third -- the real confrontation in the Middle East -- is between the Arabs and the Iranians for the hegemony of the Middle East. It's not a surprise that countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan stood up openly against Hezbollah.

*Q. But that was in the beginning.*

A. They may have changed their rhetoric, but I don't think they have changed their minds. And the Iranians are running wild, and their strength stems from the world's weakness.

*Q. Do you think Israel has been too dependent on air power in the operation in Lebanon?*

A. No, we used air power and ground power for different reasons. We used the air power to bomb the headquarters of Hezbollah... And then we decided to destroy their communication systems... Now we are using ground forces because they hide weapons in private homes and villages.

*Q. What do you want to achieve?*

A. I want to achieve the perception, the conviction, that you cannot bombard Israel. We shall not permit Hezbollah to come back to the southern border between Israel and Lebanon.

*Q. You mean stop missiles and rockets coming in from Syria?*

A. Yes. We bombed the road from Syria to Lebanon so they won't be able to send rockets in, and we bombed the runways [in Beirut] so Iranian planes will not bring in re-supplies.

*Q. Many believe that force will not work in the long run.*

A. No, in the long run we want to see Lebanon governed by Lebanese. We want the Lebanese army to stop being an army that doesn't participate in the defense of its country. They are 80,000 soldiers, and they will be thickened by an international force. Then we want to demonstrate that the intervention of Iran in the Middle East... is of a limited nature. We also want to contain Syria and eventually to return to see what can be done with the Palestinians.

*Q. Do you really think the Lebanese army has the power to disarm Hezbollah?*

A. The answer is they have to try... You cannot have a state within a state and an army within an army.

*Q. Do you feel that the military gains you have made have been offset by the damage to Israel's image? Hasn't this war strengthened Hezbollah's image in the Arab world?*

A. We could do without it, yes. It's building and destroying [Hezbollah] at the same time. What are they going to achieve -- prestige, applause?

*Q. How much longer do you think this will go on?*