fact that when they recently bombed Baghdad only four people knew about it. I don't criticize this. I am simply pointing out that when you are posed to make actual decisions there are many factors you have to take into account.

Q.: And finally one quote I like very much. Its one by ambassador Dobrynin. He said, "Kissinger is the only person I know, who has learned to eat caviar with chopsticks." What did he mean by that?

Kissinger: He said it at a toast, when he wanted to show that I was using American-Chinese the relationship to influence the Soviet Union.

Q.: Since Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford regarded you as "the greatest diplomat of our times" - why hasn't there been a Kissinger comeback, when Reagan und later Bush became Presidents?

Kissinger: For two reasons: 1. Presidents do not like in their entourage someone who has an independent public position. And therefore in case of a disagreement with me they would have had to take into account that I have a certain public following. 2. I have found myself in the strange position that while the Vietnam revisionists attack me from the left the conservative Republicans attack me from the right for being unwilling to negotiate with the Soviets. And for a republican President the opposition of the conservative right is very painful and even dangerous. I had very good personal relationships with both Reagan and Bush and saw them quite often.

Q.: Isaacson writes you were living in the past, when the Soviet empire started to crumble in the late eighties. But didn't you have a strong influence on american foreign policy at that time through your close friends Eagleburger and Scowcroft in the State Department and the White House?

7

Kissinger: I think that Isaacson did not really carefully analyse either what I was writing and he did not know what I was advising. I told President Bush shortly after his election that the most important event of his presidency would be the collapse of the east european satellite orbit and I undertook a private mission for him on the subject. So this is simply wrong.

Q.: Since you had influence on the Reagan and Bush-Administration has the present administration of Mr. Clinton sought your advise so far?

Kissinger: I do not want to exaggerate my influence on the Reagan- and Bush-Administration. Yes I have had conversations with President Clinton, Tony Lake and Foreign Secretary Christopher. But I would not claim that I had any considerable influence.

Q.: How do you judge their foreign policy so far, especially towards Bosnia?

Kissinger: Firstly I think it's to early to tell. Secondly I think there isn't such thing as a good foreign policy with respect to Bosnia.

Q.: Let me come back to Isaacsons book. His most severe attack against you reads like this: „Kissinger had an instinctive feel, ein „Fingerspitzengefühl“, for power and for creating a new global balance, but not for the strength of the american democratic system or for the moral values“. In fact he frequently discovers in your policy a lack of morality. Jacob Heilbrunn detects in his review of Isaacsons book in this kind of judgement a kind of antisemitism.

Kissinger: Well, it is a funny kind of racism, because it may not be antisemitism, but he always treats me as if I were a German. Now I am proud of my German friendships but my formative experience in Germany was under the Nazis and it is ridiculous to say that in my youth I learned in Germany about Metternich and Bismarck when I had to go to a segregated school. I have

a lot of course Eagleburger + Scowcroft were close friends.

because he constantly implies that qualities he dislikes are due to my being German.

concentrates on people who for a variety of reasons left working with me, who really tell things that are very hard to know. And there is no analysis of serious negotiations for instance in the Middle East. Instead he writes about me throwing a map at Dayan during the Elan Heights negotiations. It is not a big deal. But I think that anybody who negotiated with me has ever seen me loosing my head. It is a kind of destructive type of biography. It is indeed a serious problem.

Q.: There is a chapter in Isaacsons book about the secret life of Henry Kissinger as a sex symbol and that exactly is the reason why I started speaking about the decline of american biography-writing. It containes a lot of gossip and ends with the final verdict: "The dirty little secret about Kissingers relationship with woman was that there was no dirty little secret. Nothing romantic ever developed". If that's the result, why is it worth a chapter in this book?

Kissinger: The question is how does he even know that? What he did is he called some of the ladies, with whom I was seen publicly on the telefone. They did not know him. What are they supposed to say? What did he expect them to say? Many of them know Nancy. What kind of a biography is it when you on the telefone ask people what was your relationship to Henry Kissinger?

Q.: In view of these judgements do you finally plan to write the definitive Kissinger-biography and if so why didn't it happen earlier?

Kissinger: Well I have written two volumes of my memoirs. One period is missing - the two and a half years of President Ford. I am now writing a long book which will come out next spring which is not a biography of me but which is a full statement of my view of the nature of foreign policy and through a series of historical examples shows what I think of power and morality in foreign policy. But I have no intention of writing an autobiography.

over twenty years ago
before I was married

1 What is the point
of those phone calls?

Q.: You changed and you watched world politics during the last 25 years as no other person did. Which foreign politician impressed you most during the last decades?

Kissinger: Adenauer, de Gaulle, Sadat, Tschu En-lai, Nixon, in his way, they are not all of the exactly same stature. In a way, Mrs. Thatcher. And I have very high regard for Kohl. Very high regard. Schmidt, he is a good friend of mine.

Q.: In Jacob Heilbrunns review of Isaacsons book I found this assessment: „Among the true diplomats of the last 20 years the true realist was not Henry Kissinger but Hanns Dietrich Genscher. It was Genscher, in emphasizing human rights und close diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, who struck the balance that eluded Kissinger and finally brought down the Berlin Wall”. Do you agree?

Kissinger: Genscher is a good friend of mine, and I have high regard for him. I don't want to make a competitive statement. I think Genscher will agree that when we worked together we were in substantial agreement. When Genscher came in he did not know very much about foreign policy. On the other hand I have never known someone learning it so well. Genscher and I had some tactical disagreements. My major disagreement with Genscher, if I had one, was that I would have liked other countries than Germany to carry out Genscher's policy because I was afraid there was a potential for it becoming nationalistic. But I didn't disagree with the substance of his policy.

Q.: In hindsight: what do you regard as your biggest success in your time as National Security Adviser and Foreign Secretary?

Kissinger: I came into office at a time when America had 550 000 troops abroad and it was losing a war, when the confidence in America's ability to manage international affairs was

collapsing and we tried to start a tradition which avoided the oscillations between commitment and withdrawal which was so characteristic of America. And with the openings to China, the Middle East Initiative, the attempt to improve relations with Europe, with having a policy of resistance against Soviet expansion and also concret negotiations with the Soviets to start a pattern that could be sustained over a period of years. I like to think that if you look at the nature of American initiatives most of them originated in the Nixon period. I am not saying I did them all alone but that is what I tend to look back on. That is what we were really trying to do.

Q.: And the biggest failure?

Kissinger: The biggest sadness is: we wanted to end the war in Vietnam honorably the way de Gaulle endet the Algerian war so that America could look back to it without division. And here we did not succeed. We did not heal the domestic wounds in America of which Isaacsons book is an example.

Q.: White House speechwriter Robert Hartmann said about your work for President Ford: "People who employ geniuses, as Ford did with Kissinger, have to pay a price". Could it be that any genius, who works in this complicated world and especially in Washington, has to pay a price as well. And could this price be a book like that of Mr. Isaacson?

Kissinger: Yes. I think that is true. And again you have to remember: every President has his entourage and that entourage is extremely protective of him and gain their identity through him. Then comes somebody like myself who has an autonomous position. That's very painful to them. But I am sure that if you would interview President Ford, who is and has remained one of my closest friends, he would say that on balance we had an extraordinary relationship. But I think it is a fair statement. Which does not mean that I am saying that I am a genius.

Hartman was a speechwriter to the looked at foreign policy from that perspective.

AUG 24 '93 08:30 KISSINGER ASSOC

P.2

[Y]

②

Kissinger: One of the problems with the Isaacson-book is he publishes at the end a list of people he interviewed.

Q: ... 148 all together.

Kissinger: But if you look at the names, you will see that the large majority didn't know me at all. Many of the people he keeps quoting about having worked with me, worked with me for nine months in 1969 and then left as a group, like Roger Morris, Tony Baker. Some never worked for me at all like Les Gelb. But if you look at the index you will find that some of them are the most quoted people. When you work in Washington you work under tremendous pressure. There is always more to do than you can possibly do as a National Security Adviser. So it is quite possible that you say things in the heat of the moment that have no long-term significance. However there were two occasions when I seriously considered resigning. One was when I found that one of the military members on my staff had diverted my documents to the Pentagon and the other was after President Ford dismissed secretary of defence Schlesinger. I thought it would ease the debate if both Schlesinger and I left because we have been at loggerheads so it did not look as if I had removed him. The other time I said to a staff member, 'if this goes on I will have to leave', this I cannot tell you. Secondly I think it is better to be in a position where you do not cling to the job and be in the position as if you had hung on for all that it is worth. But the main thing to remember - and what Isaacson does not do - is to distinguish between office gossip and serious action.

Q: It is a different book. All the previous Kissinger-biographies were full of admiration. Then came Hersh Seymour with his Anti-Kissinger-Biography in 1983 and now this book. Is the Kissinger-legend gone?

AUG 24 '93 08:31 KISSINGER ASSOC

P.3

[Y]

3

Kissinger: It is not for me to create or destroy the Kissinger-legend. I think one thing to remember is that many of the people that are now writing are of the Vietnam generation and were activists or were influenced by the activists on the Vietnam debate. And they are in a very complicated position because what they recommended led to a desaster. But they don't want to say that what they did, led to a desaster. So there is now a massive revisionism going on in which those of us who rightly or wrongly thought that America honor requires that we do not betray an ally are now accused of doing the things they recommended. And I think that is in the heart of this revisionism. Isaacson for example in his book says President Nixon should have proposed, when he came in, that he would withdraw unilaterally in a 15 month-period. If you look at the realistic American debate of the period President Nixon had never said anything like this as a candidate and on the democratic side President Johnson had never said anything like this. Senator Kennedy, McGovern, the people who were in the protest movement at the convention, also have never said anything like this. They called for a mutual withdrawal, for a de-escalation, not for the end of hostilities. Now how could Nixon as a republican candidate suddenly propose something that the most radical groups had never proposed and for which there was no realistic basis-whatsoever? We had nearly 600 000 people there at the time. We in fact asked the joint chiefs how long it would take to remove them. They told us 15 to 18 months. We could not leave for about 15 month 550 000 troops between 700 000 betrayed South Vietnamese and 500 000 aggressive North Vietnamese. So this is one of these myths that he suddenly invented. Or at the end he

fudge.

Isaacson's book is part of the Vietnam debate which will not end.

some critics, filing critics know that this country is redeemed of what happened are trying to escape responsibility by whitewashing history

AUG 24 '93 08:33 KISSINGER ASSOC

P.6

[Y]

5

Q.: His judgements about you are mostly in a strange way conflicting. On page 1 he calls you ,,Americas most admired person'' and on page 2 he quotes liberal intellectuals and conservative activists calling you ,,a power manipulator, dangerously devoid of moral principles''.

Kissinger: That is not for me to judge. That is obviously not something that is for me to answer.

Q.: But that is not just a simple judgement, it is a vicious judgement.

Kissinger: Yes, but that has to be answered by people who know me better. But there is a pattern. He uses examples from the period of the Vietnam crisis when we had near-civil war-conditions. And of course he never admits the riots and demonstrations that were going on. This is part of a peculiar american debate in which we simply cannot come to grips with the past and keep the Vietnam war going for ever.

Q.: Let me quote some of the judgements about you by people close to you which I found in this book. For instance Lawrence Eagleburger. He is quoted as saying: ,,Nixon and Kissinger developed a conspiratorial approach to foreign policy management''.

Kissinger: Eagleburger denies having said that. I don't believe that if you would interview Eagleburger he would say anything remotely like this. Eagleburger is one of my close friends. Eagleburger tells me, that he did say many favorable things that were not reported. But of course I was not present, when they talked.

Q.: Or Tony Lake, once your aide und today National Security Adviser of President Clinton. I quote him: ,,Some secrecy is necessary. But Henry crossed the line from secret to debit.'''

Kissinger: Lake, I mean, was a friend of mine. Left early and who had no independent knowledge after April 1970. But I noticed that the Clinton Administration prided itself on the

Knowledge after February 1970 + that to be marked for Democrat presidential candidates one more.

It is a good example of the Isaacson method. Eagleburger is one of my close friends. We worked together for 12 years. We really frequently. He saw Isaacson at my request. To it plausibly at least I added a remark: Isaacson doesn't tell us what else Eagleburger said if he said it. Well, he doesn't tell us what questioning this was on an answer.

AUG 24 '93 08:34 KISSINGER ASSOC

Kissinger: He said it at a toast, when he wanted to show that I was using an American-Chinese relationship to influence the Soviet Union.

P.8

[Y]

7

Q.: Let me come back to Isaacsons book. His most severe attack against you reads like this:,,Kissinger had an instinctive feel, ein ,,Fingerspitzengefühl'', for power and for creating a new global balance, but not for the strength of the american democratic system or for the moral values''. In fact he frequently discovers in your policy a lack of morality. Jacob Heilbrunn detects in his review of Isaacsons book in this kind of judgement a kind of antisemitism.

Kissinger: Well, it is a funny kind of racism, because it may not be antisemitism, but he always treats me as if I were a German. Now I am proud of my german friendships but my formative experience in Germany was under the Nazis and it is a sort of ridiculous to say that in my youth I learned in Germany about Metternich and Bismarck when I had to go to a Jewish segregated school. I have

[LC]

2

Kissinger: One of the problems with the Isaacson-book is he publishes at the end a list of people he interviewed...

Q.: ... 148 all together.

Kissinger: But if you look at the names, you will see that the large majority didn't know me at all. Many of the people he keeps quoting about having worked with me, worked with me for nine month in 1969 and then left as a group, like Roger Morris, Tony Lake. Some never worked for me at all like Les Gelb. But if you look at the index you will find that some of them are the most quoted people. When you work in Washington you work under tremendous pressure. There is always more to do than you can possibly do as a National Security Adviser. So it is quite possible that you say things in the heat of the moment that have no long-term significance. However there were two occasions when I seriously considered resigning. One was when I found that one of the military members on my staff had diverted my documents to the Pentagon and the other was after President Ford dismissed secretary of defence Schlesinger. I thought it would ease the debate if both Schlesinger and I left because we have been at loggerheads so it did not look as if I had removed him. The other times whether I said to a staff member, 'if this goes on I will have to leave', this I cannot tell you. Secondly I think it is better to be in a position where you do not cling to the job and be in the position as if you hang on for all that it is worth. But the main thing to remember - and what Isaacson does not do - is to distinguish between office gossip and serious action.

Q.: It is a different book. All the previous Kissinger-biographies were full of admiration. Then came Hersh Seymour with his Anti-Kissinger-Biography in 1983 and now this book. Is the Kissinger-legend gone?

[Lc]

4

says we betrayed Thieu, because we
said the North Vietnamese could keep
troops under very strict
restrictions. If you read the public
statements of President Nixon and
myself you will see that we proposed
precise terms and when those terms
were accepted we settled and I took a
special trip to Saigon in August
before there were any serious
negotiations to tell Thieu that when
our terms were accepted we would
settle. Of course it was terribly
painful for Thieu, for whom I had
deep sympathy, but the reason we had
to do it was because we were
convinced Congress would vote us out
of the war at the next session. So it
is not the question of my legend, it
is the question of massive
revisionism in which whoever writes
history can determine what has
happened.

Q.: Nevertheless, though you didn't
authorize Isaacsons biography about
you, you gave him two dozen
interviews and access zu private
papers. So you trusted him?

Kissinger: Yes. He told me that the
personal attacks had already been
done, that he wanted to make an
analysis of the foreign policy, not
of all the horror stories that he is
telling and I discussed with him in
great detail why we did what we did
on the theorie that it is usefull to
have a description of our policy.

Q.: Isaacson writes: „This book
containes disclosures and judgements,
that Henry Kissinger would surely
dispute”. I am sure you will. Which
are they?

Kissinger: I dispute totally his
analysis of the Vietnam war. I
totally dispute his analysis of how
Nixon was running the government. His
account of almost all negotiations is
totally onesided even when he is
favorable to me. It is a journalists
book. He doesn't understand
historical circumstances. And the
reader can tell which Germans he
interviewed. He interviewed exactly
one German, Egon Bahr.

[Lc]

S

Q.: Or Tony Lake, once your aide und today National Security Adviser of President Clinton. I quote him: ,,Some secrecy is necessary. But Henry crossed the line from secret to deceit.''

Kissinger: Lake is one of those who left early and who had no independent knowledge after April 1970. But I noticed that the Clinton Administration prided itself on the

[Lc]

Q.: And finally one quote I like
very much. Its one by ambassador
Dobrynin. He said >>Kissinger is the
only person I know, who has learned
to eat caviar with chopsticks.<< What
did he mean by that?

Kissinger: He said it at a toast,
when he wanted to show that I was
using my American-Chinese
relationship to influence the Soviet
Union.

Q.: Since Richard Nixon and Gerald
Ford regarded you as >>the greatest
diplomat of our times'' - why hasn't
there been a Kissinger comeback, when
Reagan und later Bush became
Presidents?

Kissinger: For two reasons: 1.
Presidents do not like in their
entourage someone who has an
independent public position. And
therefore in case of a disagreement
with me they would have had to take
into account that I have a certain
public following. 2. I have found
myself in the strange position that
while the Vietnam revisionists attack
me from the left the conservative
Republicans attack me from the right
for being to willing to negotiate
with the Soviets. And for a
Republican President the opposition
of the conservative right is very
painful and even dangerous. I had
very good personal relationships with
both Reagan and Bush and saw them
quite often.

Q.: Isaacson writes you were living
in the past, when the Soviet empire
started to crumble in the late
eighties. But didn't you have a
strong influence on American foreign
policy at that time through your
close friends Eagleburger and
Scowcroft in the State Department and
the White House?

[Lc]

7

Kissinger: Well, it is a funny kind of racism, because it may not be antisemitism, but he always treats me as if I were a German. Now I am proud of my german friendships but my formative experience in Germany was under the Nazis and it is sort of ridiculous to say that in my youth I learned in Germany about Metternich and Bismarck when I had to go to a yewish segregated school. I have

[LC]

8

many close friends in Germany and I have close ties to post war Germany of which I am proud but whatever my thinking is I did not learn from Germans. I learned it on my own and related it to German. But to come back to the question of morality: I don't answer the question, because it is not for me to call myself moral. I will say this: If you think about the role of a statesman, it is very easy to give the impression that you can implement certain principles in their pristine state. That's what professors can say. Statesmen have to move gradually because they have many elements to consider. And the morality of a statesman is expressed in his ability to make difficult choices to its worthwhile objectives and cannot be judged by these office-gossip incidents in which Isaacson specializes.

Q.: Since you mentioned gossip. In his review about this book Jacob Heilbrunn of Georgetown University complaines that „this book containes to much chatter and relies to much on titillating gossip, which Isaacson uncritically reports“.

Kissinger: I think that is correct.

Q.: Is it a coincidence, that at the moment a discussion is going on in Amerika about the decline of biography-writing, which was prompted by McGinnis' book about Ted Kennedy. And is it a coincidence that Isaacson's book about you was published by the same publisher als Ted Kennedys biography?

Kissinger: I cannot criticize the publisher because he is publishing my next book. But I think there is a problem with biographies. You would think that somebody who writes about me as a German would ask the Germans who know me, people like Schmidt, Kohl, Genscher or any leading German who has known me for years. In his whole list of people he interviewed there is only Egon Bahr who is also a friend of mine and who isn't quoted as saying anything critical. So what kind of a biography is it that

concentrates on people who for a variety of reasons left working with me, who really tell things that are very hard to know. And there is no analysis of serious negotiations for instance in the Middle East. Instead he writes about me throwing a map at Dayan during the Golan Heights negotiations. It is not a big deal. But I think that anybody who negotiated with me has ever seen me losing my head. It is a kind of destructive type of biography. It is indeed a serious problem.

Q.: There is a chapter in Isaacsons book about the secret life of Henry Kissinger as a sex symbol and that exactly is the reason why I started speaking about the decline of american biography-writing. It contains a lot of gossip and ends with the final verdict: „The dirty little secret about Kissingers relationship with woman was that there was no dirty little secret. Nothing romantic ever developed”. If that's the result, why is it worth a chapter in this book?

Kissinger: The question is how does he even know that? What he did is he called some of these ladies, with whom I was seen publicly, on the telefone. They did not know him. What are they supposed to say? What did he expect them to say? Many of them know Nancy. What kind of a biography is it when you on the telefone ask people what was your relationship to Henry Kissinger?

[L]

Kissinger: Adenauer, de Gaulle, Sadat, Tschu En-lai, Nixon in his way, they are not all of the exatly same stature. In a way Mrs. Thatcher. And I have very high regard for Kohl. Very high regard. Schmidt, he is a good friend of mine.

Kissinger: Genscher is a good friend of mine and I have high regard for him. I don't want to make a competitive statement. I think Genscher will agree that when we worked together we were in substantial agreement. When Genscher came in he did not know very much about foreign policy. On the other hand I have never known someone learning it so well. Genscher and I had some tactical disagreements. My major disagreement with Genscher, if I had one, was that I would have liked other countries than Germany carry out Genschers policy because I was afraid there was a potential for it becoming to nationalistic. But I didn't disagree with the substance of his policy.

Kissinger: I came into office at a time when America had 550 000 troops abroad and it was loosing a war, when the confidence in Americas ability to manage international affairs was