DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

000049

The Merv Griffin Show

WTTG TV
Syndicated

December 3, 1979 9:00 PM

Washington, DC

Interview with Henry Kissinger

MERV GRIFFIN: Nice to welcome you to the show. And my congratulations on this giant work. You know, they say, "I couldn't put it down." I couldn't pick this up, Henry. This is the largest book I've ever seen. But it's wonderful.

I thought I'd be reading a Harvard textbook, a very scholarly work -- which it is. But the wonderful back -- I almost said backstage moments -- back-of-the-scenes at the White House, at the State Department, all over the world in your negotiations. It is a fascinating book. And I see in Southern California it's already in the top three bestsellers. In Southern California you jumped right to the top.

HENRY KISSINGER: Oh, really? I hadn't seen that.

GRIFFIN: It's awfully good.

How long did it take you to write it?

KISSINGER: About 18 months. But that was 12 hours a day.

GRIFFIN: Right. And you certainly left a lot of room for a sequel, didn't you?

KISSINGER: I'm working on that now.

GRIFFIN: Will you write it?

KISSINGER: Oh, yes.

GRIFFIN: Oh, you're doing it now?

DEC 17 1979

2

KISSINGER: Oh, yes. I've got seven chapters written.

GRIFFIN: My, my.

So that's how your time is occupied these days, in
writing? You're our elder statesman, and you're a young fellow.
Do you mind that title, elder statesman?

KISSINGER: Partly, yeah.

GRIFFIN: [Laughter] The "statesman" you like, but
not the...

KISSINGER: The "statesman" I like. The "elder" I have
a little trouble with.

GRIFFIN: Do they call on you a lot, Henry?

KISSINGER: They call not really a lot for advice.
They keep me informed. And I have to say that my successor,
Vance, has really been very generous in keeping me informed.
But you can't really give advice as an outsider.

GRIFFIN: You're very fond of Cyrus Vance. He comes
off very well in your book.

KISSINGER: Well, I think very highly of him. He's a
great public servant. He's a good professional, and a fine man,
a fine human being.

GRIFFIN: Isn't all of these -- aren't all of these
world negotiations, these problems above any kind of party poli-
tics? Why wouldn't a political leader call on your great know-
ledge?

KISSINGER: Well, I can't say that they don't call on
me. They do call on me from time to time. But, really, if you
conduct a negotiation, or conduct foreign policy, it's like
playing a game of chess. You can't call in an outsider, even
if he is a very good player, and say, "Make the next move for
me." Unless he can develop the moves, he can't really come in
in the middle of the game and make one or two moves.

So, if something strikes me when they brief me that
I think I should call to people's attention, I do it. But I
know that you really -- when I was in office, you really can't
use...

GRIFFIN: Outside advice.

KISSINGER: ...outside advice very much. You either
bring somebody in and give him a piece of work to do, or you keep

him generally informed, so that when you do need him, you can
call on him.

GRIFFIN: You do know the latest Henry Kissinger joke, don't you? About your meeting with Pope John Paul II?

KISSINGER: No.

GRIFFIN: That it went three hours because neither one of you knew which one should kneel first.

KISSINGER: [Laughter]

GRIFFIN: You like that one?

KISSINGER: I like that one, yes.

GRIFFIN: Henry, the jokes that get the biggest laughs about you are almost -- well, they are godlike in quality, because...

KISSINGER: Well, I've gotten that word around.

GRIFFIN: You have. [Laughter]

Because the negotiations and the things, the stages of the world that you're involved in have an almost godlike atmosphere about them: Nations wait while you men pound out those treaties. And people still starve to death while -- people die on battlefields while you're in there negotiating a lasting peace.

Is that horrendous pressure?

KISSINGER: Well, it's horrendous pressure, on the one hand. And on the other hand, there's an incongruity between what goes on in the conference room and the suffering -- or, the conditions outside. Because usually a negotiation moves in two stages. The easy things you settle relatively quickly. Then you get hung up on details. That turns, partly, into a test of endurance: Who is willing to stick longer to his position? -- and partly into a test of ingenuity: whether you can come up with a formula that is fair to both sides.

And you can't really -- I don't think in diplomacy it's a good idea to try to trick the other guy or outsmart the other guy, because you've got to deal with him again and again.

So, while this process of searching for a formula is going on, that can often take very petty forms, which are out of keeping with the importance of the subject you're dealing with. It usually gets hung up on some trivial issue.

4

GRIFFIN: Like in negotiating the shape of the negotiating table, for example, in the Vietnam...

KISSINGER: That's right. In the Vietnamese...

GRIFFIN: How long did that...

KISSINGER: That took four months. I was not involved in that. That happened just before I...

GRIFFIN: But that really was kind of a cover-up for a delaying action, wasn't it?

KISSINGER: It was a delaying action, but it was also a symbol of -- the issue for the South Vietnamese was that if they permitted the Communist South Vietnamese at the conference table in a status equal to them, that this would already undermine their position as the legitimate government of South Vietnam.

So it went -- so finally they came up with a formula in which that the two South Vietnamese parties didn't recognize the other and were part of somebody else's delegation. And therefore they needed a table in which there was no side as-signed to each of these sides.

This is how that...

GRIFFIN: Is it frustrating, as a negotiator, as a diplomat? Or do you understand that?

KISSINGER: I understand it. It's frustrating. I generally never felt it until the negotiation was already over. And for me the problem was that I had my biggest letdown after the negotiation was over. I didn't -- during the negotiation, whatever the problem was, it kept you going. But then when it was finished, and even when you succeeded and people were applauding you, that's when I had my letdown.

GRIFFIN: Let's back up a ways, to your beginnings, if we might. Your forma -- your early years were spent in Hitler's Germany.

KISSINGER: Yeah.

GRIFFIN: How old were you when you left Germany?

KISSINGER: I was 15.

GRIFFIN: Right. So you experienced the degradation of -- at that time, of being a Jew, and the Nazi Youth, and stoning in the street, and the cursing and the name-calling,

and...

KISSINGER: Well, first of all, I saw how a democracy
can go towards a dictatorship almost without noticing it. I
remember I was -- at that time, I was eight years old, or nine
years old. We were in class, and somebody came in and whispered
in the teacher's ear and told him that Hitler had been appointed
Chancellor. I didn't pay too much attention to it at the time,
but it was an absolutely fundamental event. After that, there
was a dictatorship. Freedom of the press ended. Then the per-
secution of the Jewish people started.

And so I saw something of the fragility of modern
societies that native-born Americans are fortunate enough never
to have experienced.

GRIFFIN: Right.

How did you get out of Germany at that point?

KISSINGER: Well, we had a cousin, a second cousin of
mine, a cousin of my mother's, who lived in the United States,
lived in New York. And he brought us over.

GRIFFIN: Has it -- did it leave a mark with you, Henry?
Or is it something that you have dismissed, but you're always
conscious of? And does it affect...

KISSINGER: Well, I don't know if it left a mark of
which I'm conscious. It left a mark -- it left a residue in two
senses.

One, I have seen how fragile modern societies can be.
And, therefore, I was -- I am leery of those who take the imper-
fections in American society as an excuse to assault all our
institutions and all of our values, and who talk -- they must
change this system and they must alter things radically. Be-
cause I think when you play around with a society and when you
make people lose faith in themselves, you can get results that
you never counted on.

And secondly, I have, perhaps, a feeling for the im-
portance of America to the rest of the world that others cannot
have. When I was a kid, to us America was a sort of a magic
country in which people would be free, in which that persecution
wasn't possible. And even though I didn't know much about Am-
erica, it was this sort of symbol. And I don't want that des-
troyed for other people. And I know how significant the Ameri-
can experiment is.

In this respect, it has left a residue.

6

GRIFFIN: Could you liken the end of democracy in
Germany to anything that's happening in America today, with the
collapse of certain institutions, and certain groups rising and
rebeling against...

KISSINGER: No, no. America is a much stronger society than the Germany in which I grew up.

But when I saw the bitterness of the demonstrations
during the Vietnam War, the name-calling, the attack on all
values, the way people seemed to take comfort out of calling
their leaders war criminals, and then the bitterness of the
Watergate period and this endless assault, I saw the beginning
of a process which, if people didn't become aware of, could
become very dangerous for us.

GRIFFIN: Could a despot like an Adolf Hitler ever
arise in...

KISSINGER: Well, not like an Adolf Hitler. But if
America is doomed to fail everywhere -- which I don't think it
is -- then I think -- I think the American people will not be
defeated without a struggle. We have seen that recently in
these demonstrations evoked by the Iranian taking of hostages.
The American people do not like to be pushed around.

If, therefore, some groups in our society impose on
them constant retreat, sooner or later there'll be a reaction.
And that's what we must avoid.

GRIFFIN: But it's a very delicate line that everybody
has to walk in dealing with a free society,...

KISSINGER: Absolutely.

GRIFFIN: ...where people are allowed to get up and
speak against the government and the press is allowed to write
against the government.

KISSINGER: No, no. Speaking against the government
is desirable. It keeps the government on its toes. It's the
attack on fundamental values and institutions that creates the
uncertainty.

GRIFFIN: Time out now for a commercial message.

*

*

*

GRIFFIN: At any time, did they dramatically hurt our
negotiations, or did we lose points with the opposition because
of what they saw going on in America?

7

KISSINGER: I believe that these massive demonstrations, these assaults on the credibility of the government greatly weakened our negotiating position. Because the North Vietnamese knew that all they had to do was to produce a deadlock, and the blame would fall on the American government and not on them.

And at practically every negotiation, we began the negotiation with Le Duc Tho, who was my opposite number on the negotiating table, reading the excerpts from the American domestic dissent. And I'd tell him, "That's none of your business." And we'd have about 10 minutes of debate. On one occasion I finally said to him that this was rather revolting to hear this from a representative of a country that did not permit opposition in its own country, and he should leave the exposition of what -- of our positions to those who understand such things.

Well, this kept him quiet at that session, but it didn't keep him from the next time. He'd read statements from senators or others, or newspaper editorials. It definitely undermined our negotiating position.

GRIFFIN: Is negotiating anything like playing poker, Henry? I mean a poker face, keeping a hand close to your chest.

KISSINGER: Well, my negotiating tactic was a little bit different. Normally, negotiators think that they should keep their cards very close to their chest, and to just play and to make a minimum of concessions a little bit at a time. The disadvantage with this is that if the other side knows that that is what you're going to do,...

GRIFFIN: You're in trouble.

KISSINGER: ...they play the same game. And so there's never an end to the negotiation. And when you reach your final position, they don't know whether you haven't got another hole card that you want to play.

GRIFFIN: So you play with an open hand, do you?

KISSINGER: I generally had the tactic -- which it's, I admit, unusual -- of having two aspects.

One, I generally told my opposite number what I was after. Because we finally had to settle, and finally the settlement had to reflect something he wanted and I wanted, since I couldn't force him.

And secondly, after -- I'd go through an initial sparring period to be sure I understood his position. After that,

I would make all of our concessions, or nearly all of our concessions at once, and go immediately from my opening position to very close to my final position.

GRIFFIN: Ahhhh.

KISSINGER: This put him somewhat at a disadvantage. I was a bigger concession than he expected. On the other hand, he knew I'd stick there. So he had a big decision to make.

Now, you can do that with everyone except -- I did it with everyone except the Soviets. It doesn't work with the Soviets, because the Soviets feel that they have to haggle; and if they don't haggle, they are not getting their money's worth and they can't justify making concessions.

GRIFFIN: Right.

KISSINGER: So, with the Soviets -- once we were engaged in a negotiation with the Soviets that involved money. And if I had followed my usual procedure, I would have gone to our final position right away, which was actually slightly lower than the one they had to pay us, which was slightly lower than what we settled for. But knowing their mentality, I asked for a ridiculously high figure. And by the time we haggled our way down, I got 10 million more than we had...

GRIFFIN: It's like buying...

KISSINGER: ...than we were willing to settle for.

GRIFFIN: It's like buying real estate in Southern California, isn't it?

KISSINGER: I guess so. It wasn't a lot of money. I mean 10 million over 10 years was not a huge amount between states, but...

GRIFFIN: What do you say to those critics, Henry, who say to you that from the moment you stepped into negotiation in the Vietnam situation, that from that moment you started negotiating till the end of it all, 16,000 men died?

KISSINGER: You have to remember we inherited a war in which there were 550,000 Americans already engaged, 100,000 people from other nations that we had gotten involved there, plus a million South Vietnamese. We couldn't turn this off the way you turn off a tele -- change a television program.

The way we got out would affect American credibility around the world, and therefore the lives of other Americans in other crisis spots.

(w)

9

Secondly, of these 16,000 Americans, 11,000 died in the first year, before anything we did could have made any difference. Nine thousand died in the first six months of our coming into office.

So the question was whether the 4000 or 5000 lives that were spent in trying to get an honorable settlement were excessive.

The first -- nobody -- there was no possibility -- it takes two years to remove 550,000 people. And for the United States to end the war, the terms that were put to us that we could have to withdraw unconditionally and that we would have to overthrow the government with which we were allied and put a Communist government in its place. The Communist government would assure the safe withdrawal of Americans.

Now, can you imagine having 550,000 Americans sitting there, taking -- we estimated it would take us 16 to 18 months to remove them -- to remove them on the basis of the goodwill of a Communist government that could hold them as hostages at any moment? The disgrace for the United States would have triggered a wave of uncertainty around the world.

We had a situation in the Middle East which could explode at any moment. And if people thought that we wouldn't stick by our friends, we might have lost many more lives in the Middle East and elsewhere.

GRIFFIN: Was our credibility at all damaged by the fact that the minute we withdrew from Vietnam, they just swarmed over the borders and took over South Vietnam anyway?

KISSINGER: No, no. It wasn't the minute we withdrew.

GRIFFIN: But in [unintelligible] time.

KISSINGER: Well, we withdrew in January 1973, at a time when President Nixon was at the height of his prestige. He had just gotten a tremendous electoral victory. And the American people could take some pride in having achieved, with great sacrifice, an honorable peace. So there was no reason to suppose that the American people would not stand behind that peace in Vietnam the way they had stood behind the peace in Korea.

Within three months of this, Watergate disintegrated the position of the Pres -- of President Nixon. Nobody could expect that.

The Congress then legislated an end to all American military operations in and around Indochina. On top of that,

10

they cut aid to Vietnam from $2 billion in '73 to $1 billion in
'74 to $700 million in '75, at a time when fuel prices quadrupled.

So, we couldn't give aid to Vietnam. It's military
forces ran down. They had tremendous casualties. And then the
North Vietnamese, in total violation of all agreements, put 19
of their 20 divisions into South Vietnam and just overran the
country. Now, if they did this in Korea, there'd be a war. In
Vietnam, our hands were tied.

So, the thing collapsed because no peace treaty enforces
itself. And it was importantly the result of our own domestic
divisions.

GRIFFIN: What's the greatest lesson, Henry, that we learned out of that whole Vietnam, Korean involvement?

KISSINGER: I think the basic lesson is that when the United States engages its military power, it has to win. And if it doesn't want to win, it shouldn't engage its military power. You get no awards for losing with moderation, and you get -- and stalemates are just too painful to those whose sons are killed and whose lives are put in jeopardy.

GRIFFIN: But would you have ever gotten us into Vietnam in the first place?

KISSINGER: I think it was probably a mistake to go into Vietnam in the first place.

GRIFFIN: Wasn't that part of that old domino theory? And is that still valid today? The Communists take -- a lot of Americans are still -- still worried about a Communist takeover of the world.

KISSINGER: Well, I think there is a lot in the domino theory. You can see that the collapse of South Vietnam was immediately followed by the occupation of Laos, and soon followed by the occupation of Cambodia by the Communists, and a general decline of American influence all over the world.

What happened in Iran, in the overthrow of the Shah and the taking of American hostages, probably could not have happened in the pre-Vietnam period.

So, there is a domino theory.

On the other hand, I think, in retrospect -- it was not done while I was in office -- the involvement of the United States was out of proportion to anything that could be gained in Vietnam, and it was probably a mistake to go in to begin with.

11

(cc)

GRIFFIN: Let me take a commercial break....

*

*

*

GRIFFIN: Khrushchev, I think in the '60s, came here and rattled his shoes and his guns at us and told us he would bury us, and they'd never fire a shot and they'd take over the whole world. And he was shortly out of office, and now gone.

Is that the possibility? I mean they've never fired a shot, the Russians. We've been involved in military action, now, in two major conflicts, Korea and Vietnam. And the Soviets have never fired one gun, have they, that I know of?

KISSINGER: No. The Soviets have fired guns, but only at allies.

GRIFFIN: That's true, isn't it?

KISSINGER: It's been more dangerous to be ally of the Soviet Union.

GRIFFIN: To their little satellite countries.

KISSINGER: They've used force in Germany, in East Germany, in Hungary, and in Czechoslovakia, and they've threa-tened to use it in Poland.

GRIFFIN: Is that still a valid plot in the world, Henry, the takeover of the world by -- and there is a leadership to the Communists?

KISSINGER: Well, the takeover, in the sense of physical occupation by the Soviet armies, is not the most probable thing. But what is happening is that the Soviet Union has developed, since 1962, a tremendous military capacity. They've been increasing their military budget at the rate of about five percent a year each year for 17 years. And you compound interest at the rate of five percent a year for 17 years and it really amounts to an enormous amount.

GRIFFIN: Are we behind them?

KISSINGER: We're behind them in most of the -- we are either even with them, as in strategic power, or behind them, as in tactical nuclear forces and conventional forces. If that continues, their capacity for intervening around the world is much greater than ours.

And they have at their disposal proxy forces, like the Cubans, the North Vietnamese...

12

GRIFFIN: Who can start these little brushfire wars.

KISSINGER: Well, you have the Vietnamese occupying Cambodia. You have the Cubans in Angola and in Ethiopia and in South Yemen now. And all of this is aimed to undermine the security and the self-confidence of our allies.

So, what you see is a gradual disintegration of countries that are friendly to the United States, to move them from friendship either to neutrality or to hostility.

And, for example, there was a conference of nonaligned nations, allegedly nonaligned nations, in Havana in September. It's already ridiculous to have Castro as the president of the nonaligned movement. He is a man that gets a million dollars a day from the Soviet Union to keep his system going. They passed a resolution that was viciously hostile to the United States.

Now, it's not possible to be nonaligned and to criticize the United States for everything. We cannot be wrong all the time. Sometimes we are bound to do something right, which you would think the nonaligned would notice.

And that, I think, reflects a decline of our position, which we ought to take seriously.

GRIFFIN: The argument that you give the Soviets about their bases close to their allies close to America, such as Cuba. Their argument is immediately, "Well, you have missiles pointing right at us from Turkey, from Spain. You've surrounded us with missiles."

KISSINGER: Well, but what one has to observe here is the trends. Basically, if you compare the situation of the Soviet Union in 1950 with the situation in 1979 and '80, almost all the trends, with the exception of Egypt, have been in favor of the Soviet Union. The American overseas involvement has been shrinking; the Soviet overseas involvement has been growing.

So, what we are witnessing is a decline of the area in which we have influence and an increase in the Soviet one. And this process, if it goes on indefinitely, is going to lead to the radicalization of major areas of the world, which creates great problems.

GRIFFIN: Who are our friends today, Henry?

KISSINGER: Well, our friends -- we have, still, friends in the industrial democracies, in Western Europe and in Japan. We have a curious relations, an ambivalent relationship of friendship, coupled with ideological hostility, with the People's Republic of China. In fact, we have most of the major

industrial nations on our side, except that we don't seem to be
able to organize each other.

GRIFFIN: We'll return right after this commercial
message....

GRIFFIN: It's almost as though America is being blackmailed.

KISSINGER: America is being blackmailed.

GRIFFIN: Pardon?

KISSINGER: America is being blackmailed in many parts
of the world.

GRIFFIN: I remember in an interview with General Gur in Israel a couple of years ago. And it was shortly after the hijacking of the plane that went to Uganda, and then the Entebbe raid. And he said the one thing America has to be conscious of at all times is the fear of being blackmailed. If America can be blackmailed, then all of us are in trouble.

KISSINGER: That's right.

GRIFFIN: Well, the Iranian thing is obviously blackmail. I mean it's made our leaders impotent.

KISSINGER: Well, it's blackmail, and it shows something about the perception of danger in challenging the United States. It is a fact that no Soviet embassy has ever been occupied, even in countries very far away from the Soviet Union and...

GRIFFIN: Are they behind this?

KISSINGER: No, I don't think the Soviet Union is behind it. But the Soviet Union has also not been very helpful in ending it. If you read the daily Tass commentaries and Radio Moscow, they're certainly not doing anything to calm the emotions.

GRIFFIN: You write in the book a great deal about the art of negotiating, and it is an art. But how can you use this art of negotiating with that kind of leadership? They don't understand your formal art of negotiating.

KISSINGER: You are talking now about Iran or the
Soviet...

GRIFFIN: Yes, the Ayatollah Khomeini is more a religious leader than...

KISSINGER: With a -- of course, I never had to deal with Khomeini, or indeed with anyone like Khomeini. So I have no personal experience of how you deal with this.

My general impression is that when you deal with somebody that is not accessible to rational argument, the best thing to do is to magnify as many pressures on him as you can. For that, in turn, it helps to create some sense of urgency in those countries that may have some influence there.

GRIFFIN: Will those crises continue in various places in the world? Where are the other hot spots today? Still the Middle East.

KISSINGER: There's still the Middle East. There's southern Africa. And there's, more and more, Central America.

GRIFFIN: Has this...

KISSINGER: And now Korea may -- isn't yet a hot spot, but nobody knows how the evolution is going to go after the assassination of their president. This is a very passionate people.

GRIFFIN: How will this peaceful agreement between Israel and Egypt, how will it do? I mean are there good signs, are there good results from it so far?

KISSINGER: Well, I think that the visit of Sadat to Israel was one of the great gestures of our period, one of the moving, dramatic gestures. And I think Sadat is a very great man.

And I think, also, that Israel has responded vis-a-vis Egypt by making concessions which I never thought possible -- namely, giving up the whole Sinai, in return, really, in effect, for peace.

It has run into two obstacles. One is that the negotiations on the West Bank are infinitely more complicated than they are on the Sinai; and, secondly, that those on whom we would normally have been able to count, even when I was still in office -- like Saudi Arabia and Jordan -- the moderate Arab governments cannot -- are not as prepared to risk themselves now as they were before, since the collapse of the Shah of Iran, because they are more afraid of the radicals, and less confident in American ability to support them.

GRIFFIN: In your negotiations, was there ever harassment because of the accusation that you would, because being Jewish, be more aligned with Israel?

(LC)

KISSINGER: Never. No. I had excellent relations with the Arabs.

GRIFFIN: Did you?

KISSINGER: First of all, I like the Arab -- I like the Arab leaders very much. They're wild, romantic individuals. And you can't always tell where epic poetry ends and reality begins, or vice versa. And they're extremely jealous of each other. And very interesting human traits.

But to their enormous credit, I have to say that nobody every mentioned my origin. I had great relationships with them. And I had, of course, excellent relationships also with the Israelis. They were tough negotiations, but that argument never came up.

GRIFFIN: And the PLO. What do you say about all the people trying to negotiate for us with the PLO?

KISSINGER: Well, first of all, I don't think anybody should negotiate for the American government with other groups.

Secondly, I think that the PLO is not -- it's a group that is funded by the Soviet Union that has been supporting movements of subversion from Iran -- in a way, to Ireland -- in wars -- what are called wars of liberation. It's a group whose demands, even among its more reasonable members, are likely to be more extreme than the established states in the area.

So I have always thought that the best solution would be for Jordan and Israel to talk about the West Bank. Then let Jordan and the PLO negotiate about their internal relationship, or the PLO and the other Arabs, to make the PLO from an international problem into an Arab problem. And within that context, I think the PLO can play a role.

But for us to look for ways of negotiating with a group that is dedicated to the destruction of an ally, and then, on top of it, really has a program that would be very hard to reconcile with our objectives, that I would question.

GRIFFIN: You've never met with Arafat.

KISSINGER: No.

GRIFFIN: I also...

KISSINGER: I've never met with any PLO people.

GRIFFIN: I also asked Barbara Walters recently about

16

diplomacy. A lot of our journalists in this country are in very
good situations, where they can go right -- they can phone heads
of state. And I'm sure those heads of state of foreign govern-
ments tend to manipulate our press, too; certainly around the
time of elections.

KISSINGER: You have to assume that any political
figure, American or foreign, when he talks to the press has some
purpose that he wants to achieve.

GRIFFIN: Would that drive you crazy at the time you
were Secretary of State? Or were you able to use any of those
journalists' information?

KISSINGER: Well, I was -- well, you can rarely --
you can use the journalists' information to establish the mood,
because at least you can learn what the fellow is trying to
accomplish.

I generally try to convey to my opposite number that
if he wanted to settle, he'd have to talk to me, that he couldn't
do it through Walter Cronkite or through any of the others.

But on the other hand, it never bothered me, unless
he -- they revealed secret negotiations.

The people who were really murder on this were the
North Vietnamese. At one point, the North Vietnamese published
nine points, a nine-point peace program. I was meeting with
them secretly at that time, and they gave me a seven-point peace
program. I said, "Which one do you want to negotiate, the seven-
or the nine-point?"

They said, "The seven-point."

I said, "Fine." We negotiated the seven-point secretly.
All the time I'm negotiating the seven-point secretly, they keep
demanding that we answer the nine points publicly. And American
senators and journalists say, "The Administration is missing a
tremendous opportunity. Here are these nine points. They've
never answered them."

This went on for about seven months, until we couldn't
stand it anymore, and we went public with our seven points --
with their seven points, with our response.

GRIFFIN: Did you manipulate the press a lot?

KISSINGER: Well, I was accused of manipulating the
press. And I had very good relations with the press.

On the other hand, you have to remember, I had never

17

had a press conference before I came to Washington. I didn't
know any of these journalists.

GRIFFIN: In fact, you thought -- in your book, "The
White House Years," you wrote that in your initial meetings with
the President-elect, Mr. Nixon, that you wouldn't ever have to
meet...

KISSINGER: That's right.

GRIFFIN: That you'd be working out of a nice quiet
office...

KISSINGER: I made it a condition that I'd never have
to meet the press.

GRIFFIN: Right.

KISSINGER: And he said, "Absolutely." So I never met --
I thought I'd never have to deal with the press.

My general strategy, my general approach to the press
was to tell them as frankly as I could what I was trying to do,
and to make them understand my general approach.

Now, of course, many of them were looking forSEX
and they...

GRIFFIN: I beg your pardon?

KISSINGER: They were looking for...

GRIFFIN: Hooks.

KISSINGER: Hooks.

GRIFFIN: Right. I don't want to accuse the press of
something they're not guilty of.

KISSINGER: It would ever cross their mind.

GRIFFIN: Right.

[Laughter]

KISSINGER: At any rate, they were looking for evasions,
and so forth.

But basically, I think that those who were on the plane
with me will agree that I tried to tell them what I was trying to
do. I met with them at every stop.

18

I, in turn, have to say that they were fair. And when they didn't agree with me, I'd have to say, of course, that not even the press can be right a hundred percent of the time.

GRIFFIN: We have commercials...

*

*

*

GRIFFIN: If it weren't for Watergate, would Mr. Nixon have gone down in history as a strong and great President?

KISSINGER: Well, I think he'll go down in history, anyway, as a strong President. I think Mr. Nixon [unintelligible] gone down as a President with very major foreign policy accomplishments.

GRIFFIN: Right. Excellent.

KISSINGER: And he was decisive in crises. He was courageous. And he was President during a major transformation of American foreign policy.

Watergate was a disaster for the country, for him, and was pointless.

GRIFFIN: But what amazed me in your book, Henry, was even his -- we keep using the word impotence -- his impotence. I mean various strong members of his Cabinet, during your Vietnam negotiations, were running in every direction. Laird was announcing one thing. Rogers, the Secretary of State, was announcing another thing, without clearing with the top man.

Is that a problem with all Presidents, that they can't control their...

KISSINGER: I think one of the big problems any President has is how to control a huge bureaucracy, particularly one that he inherited and that may not feel any excessive loyalty towards him.

In the case of Nixon, it was compounded by the fact that Nixon could be very decisive, but usually on paper. He could not bring himself to call somebody into his office and say, "You do this, or else." Therefore...

GRIFFIN: Of course, we always thought that's exactly what he was doing in there, threatening everybody.

KISSINGER: Absolutely not. He could not do it.

GRIFFIN: He was weak in that one...

(c)

19

KISSINGER: He had a horror of face-to-face confrontations. Therefore, he transmitted all unpleasant orders through his assistants, which in the field of foreign policy was I. But since I was often in disagreement with these Cabinet members, they naturally thought that when I transmitted an order, either I had put him up to it, or maybe I hadn't even put him up to it, I was just giving them my idea.

So, Nixon then would set up elaborate channels to get around his own subordinates instead of giving them a direct order.

GRIFFIN: That's the same thing he did in Watergate, though, isn't it, in denying the break-in of the -- he went all the way around instead of facing right up to the issue.

KISSINGER: I think that you'd have to say, historically, that this was Nixon's failing. This was his weak point.

GRIFFIN: Your friends and fellow professors at Harvard almost laughed at you when you went with the Nixon Administration. I mean that was so...

KISSINGER: Well, they didn't laugh at me when I went with the Administration. What they...

GRIFFIN: They were horrified, weren't they?

KISSINGER: Well, at Harvard, when I was a professor at Harvard, opposition to Nixon was so much taken for granted that if anyone at a dinner party had said a good word for Nixon, it would have been considered unbelievable. He would have totally disqualified himself.

So, suddenly, the first time I saw Nixon and he offered me a job, I didn't even understand he had offered me a job, because that thought had never occurred to me. And also, he had put it in his usual indirect way, to avoid being refused.

Then I asked my -- finally, Mitchell got it straightened out, and Nixon managed to -- saw me again and conveyed the fact that, indeed, he had offered me a job, and what the job was, neither of which I had known.

So I then consulted my colleagues. At that point, they were more willing for me to go, partly because they liked to have one of their own in Washington.

What they didn't understand was that when you're assistant to the President, your obligation is to the President, not to your Harvard colleagues. And they became more and more unhappy with me because I was carrying out Nixon's policies, rather than

20

their own, even though their own was on the liberal Democratic side, which had lost the election.

GRIFFIN: And Nixon had a built-in hate for all of the Eastern scholars, didn't he? He thought they were all against him.

KISSINGER: Nixon -- I was in the funny position that my colleagues at Harvard, my ex-colleagues at Harvard were restless with me because I was carrying out Nixon's policies, even though that was my job, and even though I agreed with Nixon's policies. And Nixon, close as we worked together, always was a little suspicious that I really was emotionally still attached to some of my former friends, which was partly true.

GRIFFIN: We have to take a break....

* * *

GRIFFIN: ...wonderful association with President Ford.

KISSINGER: I had a great relationship.

GRIFFIN: And a finer man never lived. I mean that is a great man, President or no President.

KISSINGER: President Ford is one of the finest human beings that I have ever met. And he was an excellent President. People don't give him credit for it. He is not very articulate in his expressing himself, but he has an absolutely first-class mind. He's an absolutely decent human being.

GRIFFIN: Once again, all his good work was dwarfed by that pardon of Nixon. That seemed...

KISSINGER: But it was absolutely right. Here he came in as a new President. Imagine putting a former President on trial, and the divisions in our society. And he had to bite that bullet.

I was not, myself, involved in that decision. He asked my view once. I gave it to him. But he made that decision substantially on his own, certainly not in close association with me. Still, I think it was absolutely the right decision. He had nothing to gain from it.

GRIFFIN: We would have wallowed in that for a year or two more, wouldn't we, of court trials?

KISSINGER: Just the spectacle of a President of the United States in court, the divisions this would have caused, the suffering to the American psyche, the undermining of the

American position.

I think that Nixon -- that President Ford was absolutely right.

And if you remember, he came into office in August 1974. Within a year, he was already involved in a primary campaign. He never really had a chance to govern without pressure.

And considering all of this, I think he did an absolutely outstanding job.

GRIFFIN: Are you a very political man, as far as party politics go, Henry? Or do you like to stay away from that, so you can do your work?

KISSINGER: I think, fundamentally, the foreign policy of the United States ought to be a nonpartisan enterprise. Our national interest doesn't change every four or eight years. Our national interest ought to be permanent.

GRIFFIN: But your political hero was Nelson Rockefeller.

KISSINGER: Politically, it was Nelson Rockefeller, who was a sort of an independent Republican. And, of course, by inclination, I'm closer to -- now much closer to the Republican Party. And I try to be helpful to -- especially Republican candidates who worked with me when I was in office and who I thought reflected the national interest.

But I have not engaged in personal attacks on the Carter Administration, and I try to do what is in the national interest.

GRIFFIN: I know in Denver that you did say that if Mr. Ford ever ran, that you would be glad once again to return to the position of Secretary of State. And now we also see you photographed occasionally with John Connally. Is that your Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval on Mr. Connally?

KISSINGER: No -- well, John Connally is, in my view, a very outstanding public figure and has the qualifications to be a very good President.

GRIFFIN: And Ronald Reagan?

KISSINGER: I am -- basically, will not endorse any candidate. And I will -- the role I think that I can most usefully play is to say what I think the right foreign policy is for our nation, and let any candidate pick it up. I will not endorse any candidate.

22

GRIFFIN: So you are an elder statesman, aren't you?

KISSINGER: Well, drop the "elder."

GRIFFIN: [Laughter]

Well, we've never had the category of younger statesman.

I don't want you to leave yet. You're not tiring out
or anything, are you?

Let me show them this wonderful book once again, "Henry
Kissinger: White House Years." You won't want to miss a word
of this.

We'll be back.

* * *

GRIFFIN: Once again, Henry Kissinger's book, "White
House Years."

And our thanks to you, Henry.