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rshowalter - 01:05pm Jun 22, 2001 EST (#5785 of 5793)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Henry Kissinger on Trial: A Guide to the Controversy Surrounding the Diplomat February 2001

The February and March issues of Harper's Magazine ( http://www.harpers.org/ ) contain a two-part article arguing that former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger should be tried for war crimes. The author, journalist Christopher Hitchens, bases this "Case Against Henry Kissinger" on the diplomat's role, during his years as head of the National Security Council (1969-1975) and secretary of state (1973-1977), in conflicts around the world. Britannica.com takes you to these different parts of the globe during the periods in question and introduces you to the individuals involved, providing historical and political context to Kissinger's contested diplomatic undertakings and information on the journalist who has raised questions about them.

Kissinger

Who is Henry Kissinger?

Encyclopædia Britannica on Kissinger

PBS profile of Kissinger http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/china/peopleevents/pande02.html .... http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/vietnam/whos/whos-noframes.html

Theaters of Conflict

Events in which Kissinger's actions have stirred controversy:

• the war in Indochina • the subversion of the Allende regime in Chile • the invasion of Cyprus by the government of Turkey • the invasion of East Timor by the government of Indonesia • a coup d'état and mass terror in Bangladesh

Indochina

Vietnam

Hitchens accuses the Nixon campaign team of sabotaging the Paris peace negotiations on Vietnam in 1968: "...they privately assured the South Vietnamese military rulers that an incoming Republican regime would offer them a better deal than would a Democratic one. In this way, they undercut both the talks themselves and the electoral strategy of Vice President Hubert Humphrey."

The consequences of those talks breaking down, according to Hitchens:

" [S]ome 20,000 Americans and an uncalculated number of Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians lost their lives." "The chief beneficiary of the covert action, and of the subsequent slaughter," claims Hitchens, "was Henry Kissinger."

Encyclopædia Britannica on the Vietnam War

Vietnam 1945-1975: Timeline (from the BBC) http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/asia-pacific/newsid_1026000/1026782.stm

Nixon 'wrecked early peace in Vietnam' (from the London Guardian) http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,352224,00.html

Kissinger's (recently declassified) "Lessons of Vietnam" memo to President Ford http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/ford/library/exhibits/vietnam/750512b.htm …. (Has been removed.) http://www.wisc.edu/rshowalt/KissingLessons will be supplied, after I reconstruct altered files carefully, and in ways that maintain records of how files changed.

Cambodia

Hitchens argues that the secret bombing between 1969 and 1973 of then-neutral Cambodia by Nixon and Kissinger, which resulted in the deaths of several thousand civilians, constitutes crimes of war.

Encyclopædia Britannica on Cambodia

Confusion in Cambodia: People Mystified as Direct U.S. Role Ends At a Time of Military Adversity (from The New York Times) http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/specials/saigon/cambodiabombs.html

How Thatcher Gave Pol Pot a Hand (from the New Statesman)

Pol Pot: Life of a Tyrant (from the BBC) http://news6.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/special_report/1998/07/98/cambodia/newsid_78000/78988.stm

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