**Fact:** When Prime Minister Mujibur Rahman visited the United States in September 1974 he met with President Ford in the White House. President Ford approved $60 million in emergency grain shipments to Bangladesh. This was in addition to nearly $500 million in humanitarian aid provided by the US to Bangladesh since independence, and $250 million in refugee relief funds during the 1971 crisis.

During the visit, the Bangladeshi Prime Minister met separately with Secretary Kissinger in New York where, as is the practice of all American Secretaries of State, Kissinger had temporarily set up his office for bilateral consultations during the opening week of the UN General Assembly.

b. **Hitchens** asserts that in November 1974, “on a brief face-saving tour of the region, Kissinger made an eight-hour stop in Bangladesh and gave a three-minute press conference in which he refused to say why he had sent the USS *Enterprise* into the Bay of Bengal three years before.”

**Fact:** Kissinger visited Bangladesh in October, not November, 1974. He was there not for "eight hours" but for nearly two days. Kissinger discussed US aid to Bangladesh in his meeting with Prime Minister Mujibur Rahman and, in the press conference that followed, Kissinger expressed his longstanding admiration for the prime minister, saying "It isn't often that one has the privilege of meeting someone who has been the father to his country and who has created a nation out of his convictions." During the press conference journalists asked Kissinger for his assessment of the Bangladesh economy and of relations between Pakistan and Bangladesh. No question was asked about the USS *Enterprise* or the 1971 India-Pakistan War. Later in his visit Kissinger expressed his "great pleasure at being the first Secretary of State to visit Bangladesh" and stated, in his toast at a dinner hosted by the Foreign Minister of Bangladesh, that "above all, I am moved to be here because it is not often that one can visit a country whose courage and suffering earned its independence in a so-recent past and which symbolizes so much the necessities of our period."

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c. Hitchens asserts that a few weeks after Kissinger's departure from Bangladesh on October 31, 1974, "a faction at the US Embassy in Dacca began covertly meeting with a group of Bangladeshi officers who were planning a coup against Mujib[ur Rahman]. On 14 August 1975, Mujib and forty members of his family were murdered in a military takeover." Hitchens asserts that Kissinger's "[d]eliberate collusion in" the August 1975 coup is self-evident, and that "[t]he task of disproving such a connection, meanwhile, would appear to rest on those who believe that everything is an accident."

*Fact:* There is no factual basis for linking the United States to the overthrow of Mujibur Rahman. The 1971 war had ravaged the economy and exacerbated ethnic tensions in Bangladesh. After independence, armed anti-government movements arose across the country. In December 1974, the central government in Dacca declared a state of national emergency. Soon thereafter civil rights were suspended and political activity banned, leaving Bangladesh under the control of a one-party regime headed by President Mujibur Rahman. On August 15, 1975 a group of young army majors assassinated Mujibur Rahman and declared a new government. Political and economic disarray persisted, and the majors were themselves overthrown on November 3, 1975.

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DRAFT/IN PROGRESS

JUL 28 2003

NOT A PUBLIC DOCUMENT

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Corrections and clarifications for

*The Trial of Henry Kissinger*

By Christopher Hitchens

July 2003

Schuyler Schouten

## Chapter 2

### Indochina

#### 1. Assertion:

"Morally speaking, Kissinger treated the concept of superpower rapprochement in the same way as he treated the concept of a negotiated settlement in Vietnam: as something contingent to his own needs."¹ One example of this is Kissinger's decision to "involve himself with an initiative that extended to direct contact with Hanoi," in which

[h]e became friendly with two Frenchmen who had a direct line to the Communist leadership in North Vietnam's capital. Raymond Aubrac, a French civil servant who was a friend of Ho Chi Minh, made common cause with Herbert Marcovich, a French biochemist, and began a series of trips to North Vietnam. On their return, they briefed Kissinger in Paris. He in turn parlayed their information into high-level conversations in Washington, relaying the actual or potential negotiating positions of Pham Van Dong and other Communist statesmen to Robert McNamara. (In the result, the relentless bombing of the North made any "bridge-building" impossible. In particular, the now-forgotten American destruction of the Paul Doumer bridge outraged the Vietnamese side.)²

**Analysis:**

This passage contains several major factual inaccuracies. A review of these inaccuracies reveals that the charge against Kissinger (that the "result" of Kissinger's alleged duplicity was "the relentless bombing of the North") is fallacious.

First, Hitchens implies that Kissinger acted immorally or illegally by "involv[ing] himself with an initiative that extended to direct contact with Hanoi." But numerous sources in the public record³ confirm that Kissinger, then a Harvard professor, was acting as an envoy of the United States government, and was authorized by President Johnson and Secretary of State Dean Rusk to contact Mssrs. Aubrac and Marcovich.

Second, Hitchens charges that Kissinger "parlayed their information into high-level conversations in Washington, relaying the actual or potential negotiating positions of Pham Van Dong and other Communist statesmen to Robert McNamara." This, Hitchens suggests, was an act of bad faith that prolonged the war. But Kissinger's explicit assignment was to make a peace overture to Hanoi via two French acquaintances. It defies logic to

¹ Hitchens, *The Trial of Henry Kissinger*, p. 20.

² Hitchens, p. 19.

³ See, for instance, Isaacson, *Kissinger: A Biography*, pp. 121-124; Johnson, *The Vantage Point*, pp. 266-268; Clifford, *Counsel to the President*, pp. 452-454; and Mann, *A Grand Delusion*, 557-558.

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Notes for

CHAPTER 4:
"Bangladesh: One Genocide, One Coup, and One Assassination"

Sky Schouten

When Pakistan first achieved independence in 1947, the country consisted of two non-contiguous "wings": West Pakistan (today's Pakistan) and East Pakistan (today's Bangladesh). Over the decades that followed, West Pakistan came to dominate the country's military and political elite. Disaffection mounted in the East, particularly among the Bengali majority. After an abortive 1967 coup in Dacca, the army was called in from West Pakistan to restore order. Bengalis began to talk openly of secession.

In December 1970, Pakistan's head of state General Yahya Khan called a general election – the country's first in ten years – and announced his goal of transferring power to a civilian administration. Yet the election results, once counted, posed a grave political challenge. In the West, Benazir Bhutto's nationalist Pakistani People's Party won 81 of 138 contested seats in the National Assembly. In the East, Sheikh Mujibur Rahaman ("Mujib")'s separatist Awami League won 160 out of 162 – and thereby a nationwide majority.²

At first Yahya Khan delayed convening the National Assembly, hoping to goad Bhutto and Mujib into a settlement. But when they hardened their positions, Yahya's nerves snapped. He arrested Mujib for treason, and instituted a harsh military crackdown on the Awami League's supporters in the East. Reports of army atrocities were widespread, and often gruesome; Bengali militants responded by attacking supporters of the central government. In the ensuing chaos, millions of refugees fled across the border to India.

Once there, some of the refugees joined "Mukti Bahini" ("liberation force") guerilla armies trained and equipped by the Indian military. These guerillas then reentered East Pakistan from Indian base camps to fight Islamabad's forces. In November 1971, India intervened on behalf of the Mukti Bahini and invaded East Pakistan. Possessing 6 to 1 numerical advantage and a superior arsenal (due in large part to a Soviet arms pipeline), New Delhi won soundly and established East Pakistan as the independent state of Bangladesh.

Hitchens argues that Washington's continued contact with the Pakistani government during the crisis, and its failure to back the Indian position, constituted "the complicity of the United States government in genocide." He maintains that "Nixon and Kissinger's direct complicity in the massacres" (or, more accurately, their failure to condemn them publicly) represents a "crime against humanity" worthy of prosecution. Furthermore, he charges that Kissinger, driven by his "[u]nremitting hostility and contempt" for Bangladesh and its people, conspired to have Mujib killed in a military coup in 1975. These charges, and the context of the 1971 India-Pakistan crisis, are analyzed in detail in the following pages.

¹ The so-called "Agartla Conspiracy" of December 1967. See Owen Bennett Jones, *Pakistan: The Eye of the Storm*, p 158.

² Richard Sisson and Leo E. Rose, *War and Secession: Pakistan, India, and the Creation of Bangladesh* (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), p 32.

³ Hitchens, *The Trial of Henry Kissinger*, p 50.

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CHAPTER 4
"Bangladesh: One Genocide, One Coup, and One Assassination"

In the spring of 1971, Bengali separatists in East Pakistan moved to declare independence from central government rule. In response, Islamabad arrested separatist leader Mujibur Rahman ("Mujib") and instituted a harsh military crackdown on his supporters. A Pakistani civil war soon resulted, in which Bengali guerilla armies battled Islamabad's forces for control of East Pakistan. In November 1971, India intervened on the side of the guerillas and declared an independent state of Bangladesh.

Hitchens argues that, since Washington's 1970-72 opening to China relied in part on a Pakistani diplomatic channel, Kissinger is therefore guilty of "deliberate collusion in mass murder, and later in assassination, in Bangladesh"; and that the White House's failure to denounce publicly the conduct of the Pakistani military constitutes "direct complicity, on Nixon and Kissinger's part, in the massacres."

1. Assertion:

"In late April 1971, at the very height of the mass murder, Kissinger sent a message to [Pakistani head of state] General Yahya Khan, thanking him for his 'delicacy and tact.'"¹

Facts:

Throughout Nixon's first term, Washington and Beijing sought a rapprochement. Since the two longtime adversaries lacked any means of confidential communication, they relied on the Pakistani government as an intermediary.

On April 27th, Islamabad's Ambassador to Washington, Agha Hilaly, delivered a breakthrough letter in which Premier Chou Enlai invited President Nixon to China "for a direct meeting and discussions."

The next day, Kissinger drafted a response on Nixon's behalf, thanking Yahya Khan for his "delicacy and tact" in relaying Chou's sensitive message.² Nixon traveled to Beijing in February 1972, ending two decades of Sino-American estrangement.

2. Assertion:

"Those who like to plead realpolitik, however, might wish to consider some further circumstances. There already was, and had been for some time, a back channel between Washington and Beijing. It ran through Nicolae Ceauescu's Romania - not a much more decorative choice but not, at that stage, a positively criminal one. There was no reason to confine approaches, to a serious person like Chou En Lai, to the narrow channel afforded by a blood-soaked (and short-lived, as it turned out) despot like the 'delicate and tactful' Yahya Khan. Either Chou En Lai wanted contact, in other words, or he did not....

"There is another consideration outside the scope of this book, which involves the question: why did Kissinger confine his China diplomacy to channels provided by authoritarian or totalitarian regimes? Why was an open diplomacy not just as easy, if not easier? The answer - which also lies outside the scope of this book - is apparently that surreptitiousness, while not essential in itself, was essential if Nixon and Kissinger were going to be able to take the credit for it."³

Facts:

When Nixon took office in 1969, China was still highly isolated from the international community. Since all but one of Beijing's foreign ambassadors had either been

¹ Hitchens, p. 47.

² Kissinger, *White House Years*, p. 718.

³ Hitchens, p. 47-48.

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