CZM Rewind: Kissinger Parts 1-3

Al Zone Media.

Hey everyone, Robert Evans here. It's the end of the year. A couple of big, heavy hitter holidays coming in a row, and we have them off both with the company and as a team. So since there's not a new Bastard's episode this week, and also since Henry Kissinger just died, we figured this would be a nice time to rerun the original six Henry Kissinger episodes. These are great, I think are a useful introduction if you, or perhaps your friends and family don't know why a lot of people

I couldn't disagree more?

That was the most organic, just real thing I think I've ever heard that.

It was, yeah, like, you're really the only thing I'm noticing is you didn't have plates. So I'm wondering how.

I was wondering as I started it, are they going to join in? Or am I going to just have to commit fully to this?

And now that's something where if it's me, I just let you go and then let.

You have inside. I was a dog in a yard that wanted to leave it. But I was like, I'll get it. I'm not supposed to leave, so I was I wanted to join that.

Oh gosh, well this is this is just a wonderful time. Obviously. Again you are Dave Anthony Gareth Reynolds, hosts of The Doll Up, the podcast that invented being funny about history on the Internet. Thank you so much for for sitting down with us today.

Thank you.

We've always for a long time, I've wanted to do something with you so and we've talked about this, but yeah.

We have.

This has been like bouncing back and forth for a while and it was just one of those things where it's like, well, when we finally do our six part series on Henry Kissinger, it's going to be the worst thing we've ever had to do.

They have a therapy session setup right afterwards.

Dave married a therapist in preparation.

That's good, really putting in the deep work to make this, to make this series of success.

So my working.

Title for this, which they probably won't let us use, is Henry Kissinger comma a big sack of donkey balls before?

Can we do that? So fun perfectly finds that what are you talking about.

What do you guys know, Like I kind of think we maybe it's a good idea to start with, like what's your your cliffs notes, we'll have We'll have you do it, Dave, because because you're the one who reads things normally Kissinger, Yeah, you know, a Kissinger.

The thing that you know obviously stands out as Vietnam and Camp and Camp Boda, and you know that's.

Just reprehensible beyond all words.

But he's really been a part of just so many horrific foreign policy decisions and had his He's always getting in there.

He's always a part of the business. Really was.

I don't know if he is now, but for a long time he was always a guy who would come in and go, why don't you do the worst thing?

Yeah?

And that's that's the thing that's that's interesting and even a little bit difficult about talking about him because he's not one of these guys. He's not like you can't say with him like you can with an Asaddam husseaying like oh, he ordered he started this war on this date, you know, or he he ordered this man. I mean, you can actually, but he's he's not like a he's not on paper supposed to be a warlord or an

We've had a couple figures on our podcast who I would relate to like, and I would say, maybe Kissinger is like the War Crimes Forrest Gump, where yeah, it's like yes, kind of you're like, oh, yeah, he was there, He's invented shit happens. I don't know, he invented that phrase.

Yeah, that's that's incredibly that's that might. I mean, that's honestly a better title than the one I came up.

This is the favorite title.

I mean, And obviously Forrest Gump is blameless and Kissinger is not, but it does get it. The fact that he's just like, he's just there. He's just in every fucking photo of like guys doing a war crime like it is baffling the number of things he's connected to. I should probably just start stop selling it, but I do kind of want to talk about the fact that he is. He is this kind of back room figure in a lot of the worst things that happened in

They might just have trouble understanding him. I know, I have.

Whatever what did we agree to Oh god, I was going to ask Gareth before we get started. Here is your German accent locked and loaded? Ah, I mean, listens to the disgust of the German people.

It is.

That's fine, that's fine they I think we can all agree. After the twentieth century, the Germans lost the right to be angry when people.

That's how It's like Texans. You know, everyone can do a Texan. Yeah, that's how.

I sure, I don't.

Think I can.

I can make any accent sound kind of English and sort of Spanish.

And you can't do English. It's really just sort of this amazing ability to.

See whenever I do a non American accent, it just drifts Russian at some point, like one hundred percent of the time.

Yeah, oh my god, Well this is your time. Now you can shine with what's going on.

I know, I know, I'm ready to just yuck it up over. Speaking of which, there's a number of roots of what's happening between Ukraine and Russia right now that you can type action. I mean that that's a little bit less his his the area that he fucked around in, But he did some fucking around there, Like one of the things. We are spending six episodes talking about Henry Kissinger and we're leaving some shit out.

Wow, yeah, you have to. I mean, he's been around so many years.

I mean, just the fact that he was still powering around Hillary Clinton in the election, and you're like.

What is that guy doing there?

Don't you know? He's bad and he's.

The thing that is so interesting about Kissinger is that he does have this equal He's equally good at talking to like people who would call themselves liberals and progressives as he is to like far right neo cons like he's he's he's I mean, you could I think you could say that. Part of what that reveals is that the ruling class in this country are all in agreement about things more often than they disagree about things. But part of it is just that, like he is so charming.

No.

I was hoping he would say this because I've wanted to fuck him for so long, Like that's one of the main things he's hot.

I call it henryone Fuckinger. I've always wanted. The kiss is not enough kiss. That's just a taste of what I'm after.

Oh boy, well, ab test the Forest, Gump and the Fuckinger title. Yeah, we'll just see what plays best in Poughkeepsie. So Heinz Alfred Kissinger was born on May twenty seventh, nineteen twenty three, in the city of Firth, Germany. The Kissingers were a Jewish family, And so given that this is Germany in the early twenties, you can tell we're not off to a great start already, right, this is this is not going to be a story that begins in a particularly pleasant place. He was born in a

I wouldn't want to go back to having a kaiser.

He was so we're so good.

Yeah, yeah, I want to have a king who gets us into World War One and like whaps off about his mom's hands.

That sounds great again. Well, now that I know what we're talking about, let's dance. I'm in I want a kaiser.

So Firth is. In some ways, you could see it. It's rep in Germany as being kind of like Portland today. It's a very left wing town. It's seen as a haven for socialists. But it's also kind of like Selma, Alabama during the Civil rights era. Because Firth has a very large Jewish population, and the period in like the late eighteen hundreds is when a lot of there's essentially apartheid against Jewish people in Germany for a long time.

Yeah, like Partland.

Yeah, it's got some similarities between a couple of things. So Heinz's parents, Paula and Lewis, had grown up in Imperial Germany, where Jews were restricted from holding certain jobs, going to certain schools, living in certain homes, and this had ended by the time the Kaiser had so Lewis Kissinger, Henry's dad, kime of age in a period in which a Jewish boy could actually build a professional life for

I never read any German history. Oh my god, it's so exciting. So he starts work.

Lewis as a teacher in a secular private school when he's eighteen, and he holds the job for fourteen years. And he was a very patriotic person. He's also like, he is an Orthodox Jew, so he's very religious, but he considers himself a German first and foremost, and his family is very patriotic. His brother fights in World War One, so does his wife's dad. Two of his cousins die fighting for the Kaiser, and when the war ends, German defeat.

Yeah, I'm sorry.

Are you talking about America twenty two or are you talking about Germany?

Yeah, we are talking about this on the day that Texas just announced a fun new law. Yeah, this is this is like, you know, Henry's wrong about a lot of stuff. His father is also wrong, but for a much sadder resent.

I guess there's a psychic gene in the family. I see us being tolerant for generation. Germany will be a watchword for tolerance. We will be a bastard for all types. Oh, poor buddy. Yeah, so he's Uh.

It's interesting because like the Zionist movement is rising in this time, and Kissinger's family rejects this wholeheartedly because they're so German right, like, they don't they don't want to ever leave. So obviously the Nazi party rises consistently through Henry's childhood. Firth was initially safe from this. Just a few months after Hines is born. In September of twenty three, the Nazis and other far right organizations hold a German

Let's end the story there.

I love it.

It's a great and it's the tale of Henry Kissinger, a kid who was a baby when some dudes did some rad stuff. So Firth was integrated enough that heines initially attended a public school with Christian classmates, which was not common for Jewish kids in this time. Yeah, he's like going to school with other like kids who are not Jewish. Eventually his dad puts him in his private school,

Quote.

Religion was a study and not a pleasant one, a lesson taught soullessly by a soulless old man. Even the day I see his evil conceited old face in my dreams. He thrashed formulas into us antiquated Hebrew prayers that we translated mechanically without any actual knowledge of the language. What he taught was paltry, dead, mummified, and that I think is broadly in line with how Henry feels. Because he's

Oh yeah, happening.

Oh wow.

Firth has like a locally renowned team. They're one of the best teams in jury many and so like their kids' teams, which are feeders into this whatever team are very competitive too. Henry starts playing in a youth league when he's six years old, and he later recalled quote, I wasn't really very good, though I took the game seriously.

But now what about soccer? We should talk about that?

Oh?

Sorry.

So his real prowess early on was in strategy, as this quote from Niall Ferguson's Kissinger, a book named Kissinger like the guy makes clear. Though no great athlete, Heinz Kissinger was already a shrewd tactician, devising for his team a system that, as as it turns out, is the way the Italians play soccer. The system was to drive the other team nuts by not letting them score by keeping so many people back as defenders. It's very hard to score when ten players are lined up in front

Yeah, we need to poison Henry, what are you talking about? Firebombs the holmes. We know what to do. Keeper. I know we are.

Six, but we will park the bus. There will be no joy in soccer.

It remove the keeper's hands. He is.

He is, as a six year old, doing the soccer equivalent of carpet bombing. So he gets so into soccer that he starts to neglect his studies and his father actually bans him from playing for a while. The older he gets, Henry has more and more conflicts with his dad, a thing that no one else has ever experienced. And yeah, he would regularly, after fighting with his father, bicycle over to the home of a friend who later recalled he

Just like a bit and just like pay attention to your studies beyond anything else. Yeah, I think I like this girl, Like, well, she doesn't. She's not going to the same school the focus Henry Focus.

Well yeah, and he's clearly a dick who's like, you know, you can't be a professional soccer player at eight, you have to go to school.

Like he's clearly an asshole.

Yeah, yeah, I mean he's definitely the villain of the story.

Yeah, no doubt, no doubt.

So Henry is magnetic to women from a well girls at this point from a very young age.

What in the fuck is happening I know, it's really weird. It's weird.

And this is the quotes about you know, girls really liking him at this age come from his father. But like this also happens when he's in his forties and the secretary of State. So I'm going to say his father's probably telling the truth.

I mean, at no point have I seen any version of Henry Kissinger. We're like, man, I mean, it is weird that got memory hold because there were there were New York Times stories about how much women like Henry Kissinger because he looks like a lump of clay you could mold into anything potentially that would be looked good.

Yeah.

No, no, but.

It's it's weird. I mean, yeah, he's the guy. Like, yeah, we'll talk about some of the things he said about sexuality later. I know you're all getting real excited for that episode.

Yeah. Yeah.

At one point, one of his friends was actually ordered not to hang out with him because he had quote earned a reputation as a skirt chaser. And this is like when he's nine. Wow, early little Henry cum Rocket Kissinger.

The first time sex was nine, So you know, like at this point he's rebelling against the family religion, he's hanging out with girls, he's playing a hell of a lot of soccer.

Which seems like a decent childhood. But obviously you know the Nazis. So in the mid twenties, the German nation goes on strike against some shit. France was doing Versailles stuff. We don't need to get into it. Inflation goes crazy, right,

Yeah, if you're really weird, it's very strong literal impact of fists had no impact upon him.

Yeah.

Yeah.

In nineteen fifty eight, he declared, quote, my life in Firth seems to have passed without leaving any deeper impressions. You don't get to say that, by the way. Yeah, I feel like you don't like. I feel like you don't.

I feel like I said that to a shrink once about my parents' divorce and then wept. Yeah. I didn't do anything anything. I mean, what's this, what's his flood coming out of it? And it's like Yeah.

In nineteen seventy four, when discussing the times he was beaten in the streets by Nazis, he insisted to a reporter quote that part of my childhood was not a key to anything. I was not consciously unhappy. I was not acutely aware of what was going on for children. These things are not that serious. It is fashionable now

Right, like I'm sure the reporters like, I'm ready to ask follow ups whatever. He stops talking. Yeah, you're not supposed to remember from before ten anyway. I mean, I wouldn't.

That's how I can kill I went not at nine. I don't feel anything.

It is.

It's like, you know, I got assaulted by a Nazi when I was thirty three, and it left a mark here.

But anytime it just growing up in that environment without being assaulted is going to leave psychological damage.

If your parents kick you completely safe from street violence, it would it could not. Yeah, And it's like, Henry, this is the only time I'm going to speak sympathetically to you.

But it's fine. If being beaten by Nazis as a child left a mark on it's the only time you want to Matt damon him what Robin Williams are Yeah, like it's okay, man, Okay, it happened.

It's interesting the way he the ways he explains why this didn't leave any mark on him are very interesting, and I want to quote from Henry Kissinger in two thousand and four. Now, I experienced the impact of Nazism, and it was very unpleasant, but it did not interfere in my friendship with Jewish people of my age, so that I did not find it traumatic. I have resisted the psychiatric explanations which argue that I developed a passion for order over justice and that I translated it into

Which you can't do both.

You can't pay attention yeah, soccer, obviously, as no one thinks, Henry that as an eight year old, you were like, well, this is going to impact the way that I believe state power should be used when I'm Secretary of State in.

Several decades an advised addiction.

Just like if you have a car accident as a kid, You're not thinking, well, this is going to make me unable to let other people touch me when I'm thirty three.

Right, you know I'll hate freeway merging.

Yeah, Like obviously, man, and I don't know, like there's a degree to which in terms of this is the period in which you can be sympathetic to him. I do think there's probably something to be said that if you have this childhood, maybe you don't want to give the Nazis anything, you know, even the car like this left an impact on me, right, because like, fuck him, I don't want to say that it had an influence on me, which I get.

No. Having grown up in a traumatic, you know, sort of childhood, you can shut it down and tell yourself that you're fine.

Like you he The way he survived it.

Was to to shut his emotions down a little bit and tell himself that he was fine when it actually is by far probably the most traumatic thing there, and and created a fucking monster because he didn't get any psychological help.

I'm like, naturally, it is not nature versus nurture. I would have killed just as many people, been a despicable piece of shit either the way. I don't judge my mity.

So as the twenties rolled to an end, the political situation in the Weimar Republic gets correspondingly more dire. In nineteen twenty five, during a Nazi rally in Firth, Hitler himself had called it the citadel of the Jews. The local response at that point in twenty five is overwhelmingly negative, and in nineteen twenty seven only two hundred people in Firth were members of the Nazi Party. Hitler visited the

Can I just flag the person who brought the potatoes to the rock throwing event. Yeah, I feel like he turned first. Yeah, how were doing rocks? Oh?

I know that was a drag of rock? Those look like potatoes. Now, lord, you know what I'm going to say it right now. If that guy had brought rocks, he might have killed Hitler. Could we kind have avoided.

Right the guy? Yeah, for want of a rock? World War two? Oh you guys, see my potato hit that car? It really smushed it.

I look, mas, I do left the idea that he also boiled it before.

Yeah, yeah, well I don't want to look weird.

So Lewis Kissinger lost his job teaching once the Nazis came to power. Henry again, who'd never gotten along with his dad, watches his father collapse into what biographer Thomas Allen Schwartz describes as a quote state of immobility and psychological depression. Lewis withdrew into his study. According to Henry's brother Walter, while the world outside veered closer to nightmare.

Free so months, yeah, I mean that is crazy.

When Henry Leive's Firth there are two thousand Jews in the Jewish community at the end of World War Two, there are forty Oh my god, yeah.

And three months is so? I mean that is barely meanly. That's like they stay as late as they possibly care. Right, Yeah, at least.

Thirteen members of Kissinger's family would perish in the Holocaust. Obviously, it being what it is. I don't know that you can it's not super easy to get exact numbers. But like, his family is as devastated as you would expect of a German Jewish family. And he does acknowledge for the first time, he admits that like some part of this

I mean, that's very common for that happened in you know, Chile, in other places where it all falls apart into authoritarianism. There's a lot of people who are like, I just want it to be the same.

Yeah, well, yeah, you hear that all the time here too. I mean, not like that. Obviously, it's far it was far more dire. But there are a lot of people I know who keep saying that shit here, who keep being like, I just wanted to go back to normal. And you're just like, that ship is fucking sailed.

That is not you know, yeah, it never does, it never can, but we all do it. Like even the kind of like obsession with nineties nostalgia is evidence of that, and not because the nineties were like a perfect time, but because like, yeah, you didn't. You weren't aware of how fucked like like Henry, like your dad hadn't collapsed into like an unable to handle him.

You're just likes too aggressive and yeah, oh my god, we don't have money.

Yeah yeah, you went from oh my gosh, you know, the OJ Simpson trial, what a mess too? Well, now what plague has killed him?

And people, oh my god, it's better give me that time capsule.

It's it's so funny that parallels because I'm i literally am writing a dollar right now, and and the guy turns into an authoritarian and his dad shut himself in his house and isolated.

It's it's so weird how these things.

I mean, if you I mean, just to continue off of that, Dave Hitler's dad dies when he's a little kid, pledges the family finances and situation into insecurity and chaos. Yeah. Yeah, it's when when something that seemed stable from your early childhood collapses. Perhaps it has an.

Influence, yes, by what Kissinger said, by what Kissinger said, But you know what, Henry Kissinger loves the products and services that support this podcast.

Look, Henry is one of the few VIPs on It's Island where you can hunt children anytime he wants. He gets a free three bedroom apartment on the child hunting Island. Sophie.

That yeah, because for some fucking reason, he is still alive.

Yes, well, let's be honest here. This is essentially as eulogy because when we finish this podcast and it's published, Kissingers should die.

It's possible. I'm planning a dark occult ritual using my own blood and a candle I bought in Mexico to deal, Like I mean, I'm not gonna say I'm not doing it.

Yeah, it's anyway.

Here's here's some ads. Oh we're back. Have you guys gone to the island where you can hunt little kids for sport?

Yes, it's amazing. It's also fresh. It's very the brisk, expect to be that fresh. So good.

So Kissinger today has i Kissinger today has idyllic recollections of his early years in the United States. He often talks about walking down the streets of his new neighborhoods, seeing a group of boys walking towards him and crossing the street because he's you know, he's afraid he's going to get beat. Yeah, and then he would realize like, oh, that doesn't happen here, which obviously it did.

Those boys. Yeah, they're just wearing brown shirts because they like brown.

Yeah, yes, Henry, this is a country where some people who wear brown aren't Nazis. Some of them are, some of them are, Henry.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Different did not mean easy. Though the Kissinger spent their first years in a crowded Bronx apartment living with family. Lewis got sick and even more depressed. Paula had to take control of the family and handle shit. She became a caterer and started a business that became the family's lifeline. The neighborhood they lived in was dominated by Orthodox Jewish

But whatever.

Kissinger was frustrated to though by the casual approach to life that he saw in his new peers. He thought they were superficial. He wrote at the time that quote no youth my age has any kind of spiritual problem that he seriously concerns himself with which, well, yeah, okay, Henry, all right, Hank fair I you come over from Nazi Germany and you're like people here seem carefree and.

Shallow and yeah, and your schooling was basically like some old dude being like you did, right, you know, like you're gonna be like geez, these guys are really not focused on what matters.

Yeah.

Look, I don't want to I don't want to be too critical, but New York used a little bit of Nazism, you know what I mean.

It's a little loose, good lord.

So because of all of this, this is this is why one of his biographers, Schwartz, describes young Henry as socially inept. He's not not great at talking to it's not great at dealing with his new peers. He did start dating again, though, first a girl who was a refugee from nearby Nuremberg, but most of his focus was on schoolwork in soccer. Because you graduated George Washington High School and started at the City College of New York. He took classes at night so he could work during

Brushes failth they boys keep going. It's the most amazing like old timey job ever. I mean, it's basically like all I can picture is just like the jobs are either like pressing sheets or washing brushes. These brushes I'm not going to clear themselves, gentlemen, how many times do I have to tell you?

Well?

In the corollary is some mom being like, Billy, you didn't take your sister's brushes to the cleaning shop. Now, it's very funny. Everything old timey is funny. People are going to think this in the future about I don't know, having water. So at this point Himry's ambition in life was to get quote a nice job, likely in accounting. One biographer noted, quote nothing that happened to Kissinger during

And if it.

Weren't for this, Henry Kissinger probably never would have been a figure of historical importance. Again, he just kind of wanted to be an accountant, but being drafted successfully disrupted his plans for a quiet, boring life and thrust him into the world that says it all. Yeah, it's not maybe don't draft this guy.

Right, yeah, don't right care right? I could be like you don't. I did not actually see your venmo this year, so the process.

Yeah, there's a future where he just has really strong opinions on W two's.

Yeah exactly ten ninety nine. But I feel like it was actually more like W four mm.

Yeah, or he does like a Bernie madeoff thing. But either way, it's a much better future than the one we got. I will take the madoff ending for him for sure.

Yeah. Fine, So we have.

Letters that Henry sent to his brother Walter during training. He purported to like the quote middle Americans he met there, but warned his sibling, don't become too friendly with the scum you invariably meet there.

Hell, hell he did.

He did pick up all something from the Nazis.

He's a little bit right.

Yeah.

He also he also advised against having sex with the quote filthy syphilis infected camp followers, which is too specific to have been random. I think the Kissinger had a bad experience with the camp follow.

Like everyone that's camp has syphilis.

Every girl I fucked had syphilis.

I thought one girl one of them has it. Yeah, that's what the notation zero of the syphilis epidemic. Surrounded by counselors.

So the Army administered a series of tests, which Kissinger excelled at, and he earned entrance into a special training program that sent particularly bright soldiers to college. He received his American citizenship in nineteen forty three while he was at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania. The program lasted just six months, and Henry finished twelve engineering classes. During his off hours,

He was more as salt if I've been other than he sounds like a book. This is really a weird way to describe it. Dude. It's kind of what but the way he looks now is like he eats books.

Yeah, kind of had like a visual like oh reaction to that, to that line, like, oh, cringe.

I now kind of want the story of that classmate, Like, yeah, caused you to describe a dude reading books that way?

Well, in my college, I hate analogies. I just would just just devour them. I need them like a synonym.

You know, His professors would use Henry to explain complicated concepts to the other soldiers, and for a brief period of time, he had status and respect, which he'd begun to crave as a young man. His time in this program was cut short because you know, d day we decide America is like we're going to do us a normandy landing, and the army is like, well, we probably don't need smart people for that, so let's police kids out of the class and show how to get shot by you guys.

We actually want to talk to you over here about something totally different. Guy. No, no, not you, not you, Chad, you stay right there, Jed, talk about these other guys. Thank you, good luck.

So Henry and his classmates get sent back to basic training, where the drill sergeants, according to Henry took glee and tormenting the college kids, which I don't know, probably true, while he was preparing to go overseas. And this is what my grandpa was doing in World War Two. And I hope he bullied Henry Kissinger. I hope my grandpa got a chance to give Henry Kissinger some shit fingers.

He did, right, he did, but he did absolutely so while he was preparing to go overseas.

His biographer Schwartz writes, even in the misery of Camp Claiborne, however, Kissinger stood out, selected by his commanders to provide soldiers with a weekly briefing on war news. Although he did the job well, Kissinger was more impressed with another older German refugee in an American uniform Fritz Kramer, who came to Camp Claiborne in May nineteen forty four to speak

Can I help you? Like, that's literally what the note is. Scared.

Yeah. Kramer responded almost immediately to the simple fan letter, returning a few days later to seek Kissinger out for conversation in dinner, insistingly speak in German, not English. The Lutheran Kramer later said that he was taken with this quote little Jewish refugee he had met, who he believed as yet knows nothing, but already he understands everything. Wow, that's an interesting way to describe him.

It sounds like, yeah, and this guy Kramer is Kramer is a Prussian, which I don't know the degree to which that that means anything to a lot of people, the Prussians.

So there was most of the resistance to the Nazis was from the left. Once the Nazis got into power, the resistance to the Nazis that meant anything was Prussian not because they were good dudes, but because they were way too conservative for Hitler. They were like, well, we want to fight on takeover all of Europe, but like with a kaiser who has royal blood, not this like

Right right, yeah right. They were like we have one small note, but everything else is working great for it.

They were the guys who were like Hitler's bad because he's not going to win the war against Russia, right wow, okay, yeah. So this guy, Fritz Kramer would be, in Henry's words quote, the greatest single influence on my formative years, since Fritz was a Prussian conservative. So for an idea of how fucking German Fritz Kramer is, he wears a monocle to make his wow I work harder to make his weak eye wow, Like, oh my god.

Oh I'm the craziest asshole ever.

Wow, And you know, Fritz hated the Nazis, which good good. He also hated the Communists, which you have to think there is some some some suss stuff there. Yeah, you know, Communists in a mixed bag like everybody. But I don't think he's very nuanced about it. Schwartz also credits Fritz with expressing quote a respect for international law and emphasis on the moral basis of civilization. And what Fritz Kramer means by the moral basis of civilization is not the same as what.

I think maybe you or I might need. Yeah, okay, now that Yeah.

I think the most important influence Kramer had was he's Kramer is very conservative, and he Henry is kind of a natural conservative. And Kramer really reinforces this feeling in Henry, which is expressed by a growing sort of revulsion in Kissinger towards any ideas outside of the political median right, which you get why he has a tendency towards this. If your life, if your childhood is this like battle of ex streams in your hometown, I get why you

Oh so that's bad. So that's gonna go really bad. I mean you really are like, I mean, this is his Morpheus. We're just starting to be like, Okay, this is And by the way, have you thought about maybe just losing the glasses and just going with the Wand that is so much like punish your weak eye. You much punished a week, even when it comes to your eyes. Yeah, yeah, he is.

He has found a kid who like has a problematic history of starting fires and is now teaching him how to build a fertilizer boss. Yeah.

Yeah, he's a bad influence. Yeah, and it matches us so so but have you ever seen a zippo?

Yeah? Great.

So Kissinger finishes training and is deployed with the eighty fourth entrant for Infantry Division as it moves towards Nazi Europe. His division sees a decent amount of combat.

He does not.

He's a back ranker. He handles administrative and management tasks, and he finds the power and authority he gets through his time in the service intoxicating. Though he never again he doesn't fight directly, he does earn a bronze star for a valor because he helps catch and take out a Gestapo sleeper cell, primarily due to the fact that like, he's just you know, a very observant dude. In nineteen forty five, he participates in the liberation of a concentration camp.

Mean, like you would be like, oh, maybe that could be the influence that made him be like oh, you know you can. There's good you can provide, like provide the people who are tortured and starved.

Some you know.

Yeah, you could take away from this like, my god, war is evil and we should do everything we can.

Yeah, right, as opposed to yeah maybe, well, let's see how it plays out, Dave.

Maybe this is the sixth part behind the Bastards episode about a cool dude who does nice things. I just brought you guys here to talk about a chill guy. So shortly after liberating this concentration camp, Kissinger writes an essay on his experience where he asks quote who was lucky the man who draws circles in the sand and mumbles I am free? Or the bones that are interred in the hillside. He concludes from the experience that this is humanity in the twentieth century. So, I mean an

I didn't think you're gonna be brave enough to do this, but fair enough?

Boy?

Wow, yeah, you know what makes me hungry.

Probably shouldn't go too far down that road. Let the ads do the talk. Let the ads do the talking.

The ads are going to come and win the same way the Soviet Union did.

Wave after wave of men into Nazi trenches. Anyway, I think we lost it. We had it for a minute, and there I took it too far, you know, I took it there.

Here we go.

Oh we're back. So when the war ends, World War two, you know that is uh. Sergeant Henry Kissinger finds himself as quote the absolute ruler of a small village named Binsheim.

He enjoys this experience. He really starts to like having power. One thing that we're.

Getting here is that he adores having power over people.

Yeah, he really likes it.

In his letters, he celebrates repeatedly to his family that he has quote absolute authority to arrest people.

And it's this is this is problematic because of what he does later.

I will say, if you are a Jewish kid who has to flee Germany and then you come back and get made like the military head of a town that's full of former Nazis, I get reveling in it a little bit.

Yeah.

Well for me, I'm having beheading tuesdays, if that's me.

Yeah. So again, he's not because of what he does later. This is unsettling, but like it's understandable in the moment. Yeah, he appropriates a luxury home and a fancy car, both of which had to have belonged to some Nazi, which is like, it's what you do, right.

He gets a butler.

He brags back to his family that he's a Nazi butler, a fucking Nazi butler.

For not giving me butter. Yeah, that is that is obvious. Now.

That said, he's also, to his credit, really aware of not wanting the Germans in town to identify this guy who is absolute ruler as being Jewish. I think because he doesn't want it to make things up problems for people whose Jewish people who stay behind in Germany. He makes other soldiers refer to him as mister Henry rather than by his last name. He's conscious he doesn't want them to think quote that the Jews were coming back

The civil of course, fucking like understandable beer, Yeah yeah, the Nazis butmi yeah yeah, And that's literally what happens.

So the Cold War, you know, early stages in nineteen forty six, but already in that period, Kissinger advocates strict surveillance of German civilians for left wing sympathies.

And yeah, that's Nazis just doing like did Yeah, the left is due, the left is due. He doesn't want them.

He also wants to ban Communists from teaching at the local schools, which.

Again is what the fuck?

He went straight Nazi all of a sudden. Yeah, he's he's definite. Well let's say fascists. Let's let's say fascists. Okay, yeah, fascist now, yeah, he does a bit.

He does a bit.

He starts dating a gentile German girl during this period, because again he's not very religious. His letters home to his parents though, because they don't like this at all. They're they're like, you're losing your your faith, and Henry gets very combative with them. He sees them as irrational, writing, quote, to me, there is not only right or wrong, but

How's the dog? How's the dog? Love you, mom? Love you mom? Alsopuffs good.

Is his.

And his parents. His parents have their reaction real died where they're like, hey, how are you? Hey? It seems like the war may have effect on you.

I've said this ever since you met the mono, but you're really intense.

Yeah, maybe maybe all of the things you've seen have had an impact on you. And herey response to this by getting enraged and saying, not everybody came out of this war as a psycho neeurotic.

Oh, that shows them. That'll teach them that that's exact. That's fine, that's fine, that's exactly right. That's the right reaction of a non psycho neurotic.

When you're when you're screaming, I'm not a psycho neurotic.

In letters, you're a psycho neurotic. I got from Garland Camp.

If all they're saying is like, hey, Henry, do you think maybe seeing a concentration camp has left some mental scars that you need to like heal from.

Hey, maybe I should drive that to the toilet. Okay, all right, buddy, all right, path We're just we're just writing letters here, buddy. We're just writing some letters. That's all we're doing. It's one of those things.

This is a period of time obviously, like every like one of the things that causes what happens later in American history is that sixteen million Americans go to war and a bunch of them get traumatized, and they come back to a world where like their dad would always like, if you talk about your feelings, I'm going to hit you.

Yeah.

Hearry's family doesn't seem to be like that. His parents are like, hey, do you want to talk about your feelings? And he's like, I'm not crazy.

Yeah.

Obviously, obviously, the fact that this is a time in which like men don't fucking do therapy does have an impact on it. But I think his family's probably more understanding than well.

He also has no I mean even now, he has no acknowledgment of like his trauma. So yeah, even in the actual moment, I mean, you're probably even more defensive.

You know.

Yeah.

In nineteen forty seven, Kissinger finally decides to leave Germany for the second time. On Fritz Kramer's advice. He applies. He applies late to Harvard, and he was accepted, winning one of the two national scholarships the school gave New Yorkers each year.

Wow, now, chop trap house did a tournament of evil people from Harvard.

It's a and a Kissinger one. So yeah, that makes sense.

Oh bo, the IVY League no good at producing bad people. Maybe we should look into that one. So one of his classmates recalls, and he obviously he does. Like it's Henry Kissinger. He's very good at school. One of his classmates recalls that he quote worked harder and studied more than anybody else on campus.

He school. He at school.

He couldn't stop him from shoving pencils.

In his mouth the campus like Godzilla would have. He nearly died.

He almost died from lead. His studies so absorbed him that he ignored the people around him. He made quote no lasting friendships with other students. He seemed scarcely aware of the extraordinary range of people gathered around him. So Kissinger's ideology evolved along the lines Kramer had started him

So, well, there we go.

He's made his choice very telling, Like we know, we know, we get up. Yeah, it's just nice to know where like around the time, Like, okay, so he was pretty defined. Okay, So Henry, you know some other people who thought that order was more important than justice. Yeah, they had an impact on your child. Yeah yeah, no shit, yeah, but yeah, it's just such a too.

It's a strange thing that it's so conscious, like he yeah, he's so completely aware of it.

Yeah, Like he's like a psychopath. He might be.

I mean, I think if you're I try to do too much like the psychoanalyzing people. But like fucking maybe.

Right, Well, psychopaths are very good at the stuff you talked about winning people over in the room, you know, ladies, man, Like there is a they learn how to be a human and then they sort of and.

A lot of you got syphlicid camp and a lot of them simplicit camp like Henry Kissingerry Well, Sophie.

Can we let's green light some Henry kiss some t shirts that are just Henry Kissinger with his face riding off from syphilis. People are gonna want to wear them.

He's making the kissy lips and his lips are falling off like a Kissinger. Let me French Kissinger you.

So he meets his second mentor at Harvard. Henry Kissinger has a lot of mentors, and this is maybe a lesson to never mentor anybody. You never know they might become Henry Kissinger. Yeah, don't teach people things. Sabotage them at every step. Right next time you drive past a kindergarten, throw him a textbook that's all lies, you know, Just slow him down. So his second mentor is this guy, William yandell Elliott. And Elliott has is a professor at Harvard.

What an old paper it is, right, I mean, honestly, he's not a dude who makes like little leaps, right, Yeah, why do we love this is the line.

The realm of freedom and necessity cannot be reconciled except by an inward experience, which is you know, read it again, the realm of freedom and necessity cannot be reconciled except by an inward experience.

Wow, and this is this is a.

Like a heavily influenced by French existentialism. His thesis cites Jean Paul Sart a lot, and both Start and Kissinger think that morality is not an inward thing. It's determined by actions, which is not an unreasonable thing to believe, right that, like what matters is what you do. You know, there's that line from the Bible. You're not damned by what goes into your head, but like what you know comes out right, Like, that's not an unreasonable thing to believe.

It's this idea that you.

Can't be bound by morality and be free. If you want to freely act, you have to be able to act above morality, right, Look.

That's yeah, so that's that's just giving yourself an excuse to do heinous acts.

I mean, a lot of his intellectual development is him, and I'll you know, also a lot of this is obviously all of this. One of the things that you have to account for is all of this analysis of like his development intellectually comes after he does all the horrible things like so sure right from him and from like the people who are sources who are saying this

Kiss the accountant said that. I'd be like, yeah, look, just you what do I owe?

Yeah? Yeah, tell me what the irs gets? Man, don't I don't need another lecture on this.

Yeah. And Kissinger's the fact that he becomes so kind of.

Moral relativism is the word of use. I don't even know if that's right, but like this idea that like freedom and morality are kind of like inherently opposed. This upsets a lot of people around him, including people who are like his big supporters, including that professor Elliott guy

Oh oh, that is amazing so many levels, like at your retirement party to be like hey and you listen, ship bag, chill out, and then for that also to be totally incorrect, Like you know, I saw this like clip of some some guy in like Atlantic City talking to Trump when Trump is going like, well, what is what makes a native American? And the guy just goes, sir, I'm glad You're never gonna get into any real power.

And you're like, oh, dude, oh dude, well, and one of the things like this, the Professor Elliott is like one of the guys who helps get him his first big gigs and shit, like he's a major bass and I think this is kind of him belatedly being.

Like, well no ooops boosy, poopsy, poopsy, poopsie.

I'm gonna go patronize a Cambodian restaurant just to make myself feel of the more. Yeah right, real well, when he went like, dude, just give me the tip slip. Don't I know the food, Just give me a tip slip. I owe you guys. I'm not going to tell you why. Here you go, don't worry about it. Take my take everything. Here's my pin hanged. I gotta go. Do you know if there's a Bangladeshi restaurant nearby? I'm actually heading a lot of spots tonight in not eating. I'll be honest.

So his thesis him, well, that that thing that that he says to Kissinger, it it should be what happens.

But our society rewards psychopaths above anybody else, and.

To be most societies.

Yeah, so what the things should be is the opposite. What he's talking about is a just world, which.

Isn't what this is.

And it's it's one of those things. This is something like that. Get kind of more into anthropological thinking. But like, one of the reasons people will say, like why we have psychopaths is that if you're in a band of seventy people who are like hunter gatherers, starving through the winter, it's helpful to have a guy like Henry Kissinger. You can say, like, well, these six people are too old and sick, and we have to let them die otherwise

How dare you?

You know, ho Chi men not wanting to be ruled over by the French is really a test of American power. It's very sting, I mean, and obviously they see that, like the Soviet Union's ormonstrating all this, and the Soviet Union is involved too.

But like they're looking at us in the eyes. They've got their own shit going on. Dude, they are on the same level. How dare they do this?

So, as the US increased its commitments to a growing series of wars in Southeast Asia, Kissingery got more dedicated to the work of a guy named Oswald Spangler. Spangler's book The Declient of the West is not something I am well equipped to describe or explain in detail, but Greg Grandon is, so I'm going to quote from him again. Spangler waged a relentless assault on the very idea of reality.

Oh my god, and that is George W. Bush crawl out of a pile of goon now I means for our freedom.

George Bush like pops out of Henry's Kissinger's back, is Apollo's.

Rumsfeld bush like thing like way now where they are there in the east west north and.

Kissinger finds this logic intoxicating, But he did disagree with Spingler about Spengler's primary contention, which is that civilizational decay

This everything dies. Yeah, well that's actually.

Not with.

Of course, the man who is like living way beyond his shelf life is like told you so, doesn't die.

So here's grand and again talking about Kissinger. How Kissinger grapples with this aspect of Spangler having lost a sense of purpose. Civilizations lurch outward defined, meaning they get caught up in a series of disastrous wars, propelled forward to doom by history's cosmic beat, power for power's sake, blood for blood. Imperialism is the inevitable product of this final stage, Kissinger wrote, summing up the decline of the West's argument

Yeah, but you were well what if I was involved in everyone? What if I was like Mickey in the corner of Rockie.

Yeah, it's it isn't amazing, like this guy being like, here is what happens to empires every single time there's an empire. This is a thing you can go through history and see constantly occurs through thousands of years.

And Kisser's just like, no, I can do it, right, But to be like, no, you're pretty you're pretty close. You're pretty close. Bah I saw.

I'm just thinking kill more like I heard what you said ups and downs, but I think you wipe everybody.

Out, you know, if you try to get blood.

It is the same logic I have seen. Every time I've seen more than one person get stuck in the mud, it's always either one person gets stuck in the mud or fifty two. Because one person gets stuck in the mud and the other forty nine go well, I saw it happened to that guy. But I think I can figure it out. I can get around.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. It's almost like when you enter Congress. I've got a plan. I've got a plan. Oh I get money. Oh, never mind, I don't have a plan.

Plan.

Yeah, well, I have a plan, but it's a different one, and you are not going to like it a lot.

More about a pool. Yeah.

In nineteen fifty one, Henry got a gig working as a consultant with the Army on psychological war fair while he finished his graduate studies. Kissinger's doctoral thesis on the Congress of Vienna did not seem overly relevant to politics, but its first sentence had discussed nuclear weapons and proposed to readers that the efforts of British and Australia, and that the efforts the British and Austrians made to contain

A sword?

Kissinger believes he sees that containment is a failure, which it is because people do not like being colonies, and if the opposition to being a colony is communism, they'll be like, well, let's try communism. Being a colony seems to suck. So Kissinger sees that containment is a failure. But he also believes believes not that like, well, why don't we just like let people do things and like just take care of our own shit. He's like, no, because containment's a failure, war with.

The Soviet Union is inevitable.

Now, in Kissinger's view, this has nothing to do with the actions of the United States, but as instead quote, because of the existence of the United States as a symbol of capitalist democracy. It is literally the early extent of like, well, they hate us for our freedom, right right, yeah, right, yeah, Like that's that's that's where he's starting down. Obviously a lot of people are saying shit like this, right, this is not a Kissinger invention. You know, you've got the

I mean, honestly, it is so amazing with his background to be like to have that attitude. It just is, it really is. It's hard. It's hard to get there. You got to give him credit. The man covers some ground. The man is a Batman villain, Yeah, he really is.

So Yeah, his love of politics and his first attempt to build influence at Harvard Is by starting a journal named Confluence. Now, this is ostensibly a journal that exists to create what he calls an international forum for discussion. Right, I just want to get good people talking from all around the world, you know, let the ideas fly. It's

Well, that's fair. I mean I've always agreed with that. I mean, that is just sovers. I love a blood river. Oh, the laziest of rivers. Mm yeah, because you float real good. Oh yeah, yeah, it's molasses.

That's freedom you can if you can say immigrants are like a river of blood, that's the freedom he's talking about.

That's the freedom.

You want to know what other kind of freedoms he's interested. I'm going to quote from Nil Ferguson from the book Kissinger here an article by Ernst von Sullomon, a right wing German writer who had been convicted for his role the assassination of Walter Rathanow, a German foreign minister in the Weimar Republic. The article provoked an angry letter from Shepherd Stone of the Ford Foundation, who had provided money

I mean, if you can upset the you're crossing that line.

If the Ford Foundation is like your connection to a Nazi worries met.

Hey you have, and that's coming from us who I'm really who we are, like tuper find of that look.

I have the protocols of the Elders of Zion tattooed on my chest. But Ford Foundation employees, I'm gonna.

Throw a flag on the play. I'm still a flag in the play. And are Carr's coming out the Ford Ta yeah, oh man so quote.

Stone was appalled that Kissinger would publish an article by a criminal and a Nazi sympathizer like Solomon. Kissinger told Stone he disliked Solomon and opposed what he stood for, considering him a damned soul driven by the furies. Demonstrating a remarkable self confidence for a graduate student, Kissinger defended himself for publishing the article. I may air occasionally on the side of two great tolerance, partly because I believe

Oh my god, this is he's just doing it. Now, he's just doing it. Now, he's got the monicle that too.

It's like you're Glenn Greenwald talked to Joe Rogan.

Yes, It's like, what the how?

How is this still happening? How are you the pioneer of this? Henry Kissinger? How are you the pioneer of this?

Oh? That's his explanation if you're if you're me just listening to like, uh okay, okay, I'm not sure what he's saying, but all right, okay, So we got to hear from this nazi who shot a dude? You okay because you all right? Well, is it'll anger the lips as light as you said. It's cool.

And next next month we have ed Gean is doing a little.

Number, and Deane's gonna walk us through lamp workings.

So and then we're having the Zodiac Killer on to teach us about proper parking technique.

Uh huh pentagram. He'd actually be pretty good at that. Yeah.

So, once he had finished his dissertation and graduated, Henry found himself in need of like a steady He's doing like it wasn't a professor at that point, but he was like doing like graduate students, you know, helping to teach whatever. I didn't do a college so, but you know how grad students teach shit and stuff. But he wants like a full on gig. He's trying to get an actual full time job as an assistant professor, but he's not able to because most people don't like Henry Kissinger.

I wonder any reason why a lot of people at Harvard not a huge fan loving the Nazi publishing June. Yeah, they are. They consider him slightly problematic.

Drifts for a bit, he's unable to find work, you know, and he's still he's still doing some stuff at Harvard, but he's like not He's kind of a drift in his career until in nineteen fifty four he runs into a friend Arthur Slushinger, Junior at Harvard slashing our head a letter in his possession from a former Secretary of the Air Force defending Eisenhower. The Eisenhower administration standard of

To take, he's gonna make it worse. He's gonna make it worse.

He shared us that that's exactly what he does, Gareth, because because Kissingers, we'll talk about what he does in a bit. But he writes a letter kind of writing out some critiques to this, and he has his friend Nelson Rockefeller send it to Eisenhower. He's friends with Nelson Rockefeller, but su everyone is in this period. When the President rejects Kissinger's analysis, at the advice of John Foster Dullis, Rockefeller resigns and he resigns from his job with the administration,

What's happening? He thinks?

He thinks it's bad to have nukes and not use them.

He's yeah, that's his answer, that's his angle. What in the fuck?

Yeah, it's wild that in this argument between if there's a fight, will kill everybody? Or what if we just try using nukes a little bit the kill everybody. Guys have the more reasonable take.

I mean, really, you're close, you're close together.

Yeah, we can get off a couple of much faster.

It's it's incredible. And also but like again, this is this he's the people he's arguing with is the Eisenhower administration. Nelson Rockefeller is not a right winger who's like, this guy's got some shit going on. You know, we should listen to him, and like, he's a lot of people who are not like, you know, hard right dudes are like, yeah, maybe it makes sense we got to be using these like tactical nuclear we consider the possibility. You know, he

What a guy.

In part two we'll talk about how he gets into power. So that's going to be a.

Hoot for everybody.

But I feel like before we do that, you guys, do you guys like do you like them, like like like a giant influential popular podcast that maybe this, this podcast is heavily influenced by.

Is that something you guys do are you talking about Rogan?

Yes, yes, you are both Joe Rogan, right, yeah, the doll Yes, the dollar it is your podcast, we believe, yes that that was your six part series, The Dollups.

Why we need the nuke PI Go for it.

Check out The doll Up.

If you have not already. Just a fucking, very very funny podcast.

You guys want to plug anything else before we roll out into part two?

I mean my ears a couple of times during this, but yeah, well you can dot com. We're on tour all over the place and domestically soon. That will be very exciting. I am excited for tour touring to exist again in our lives. Yeah, fingers crossed until part two.

Go home and read some Oswald Spangler and then disagree with it in a way that makes you much much worse.

Yep, yes, put the monica on the bad eye.

Yeah all right, Oh, welcome back to what is either Behind the doll Up or Dollup the Bastards, a podcast that, no matter what name we choose for it is about tickling absolutely.

This finally, is that's how you make us feel at home? Thank you.

Do you think anyone has ever tickled Kissinger?

I can't imagine. I cannot picture it in my head.

This is the way he would laugh. Stop it, I'm going to work with my pants.

I just try to imagine him whispering into the ears of a sexual partner something.

I'm about I'm going to know. It'd be more like I'm going to end this corpse. Only one of us makes it out a lie. I actually did.

While we were taking a break in between episodes, I had a moment where I actually did for the first time in my life, I felt a profound sense of solidarity with Henry Kissinger. My cat is named Saddam Hussein, and as I was feeding him during the break, I realized, like Kissinger did at one point, he's gotten much bigger. Saddam has gotten much larger than I ever thought he would. You know this is I did not anticipate this. Yeah, well that's because you there's a lot to love what

Right, those are the.

People that Kissinger patterns him self off of. Now, Schnelling, who are Shelling? Who is just Thomas Shelling, who's a Harvard economists we just introduced was one of Kissinger's other mentors, and Shelling at the same time as he's he's working at Harvard and mentoring Kissinger is advising the Eisenhower administration on moral calculus in the early stages of the Cold War.

Shelling argues, calculus, moral calculus? Have you never have you never talked about that with anybody? Is he not a common condres now? No? Sorry? No, I mean I was terrible at calculus. Yeah.

Well you can't be moral and no calculus, which is why you know, like polepot, I'm going to eventually set all of my listeners after people who know math.

That's that's the gold Bobby right there. How did we get We're not sure, sir, No idea, No possible to say, no way, incalculable. People keep trying to tell us, and we just kill them. Adam to the pile. Someone had two numbers, but we were unable to We can't negotiate it. Yeah, so uh.

Shelling is advising the Eisenhewer administration on moral calculus in the Cold War, and Shelling's argument is that whether you were quote deterring the Russians or your own children, the proper tactic was to figure out the right ratio of threat to incentive. So already Shelling might be the quickest I've ever described a person and had it be clear like, well, that's a bastard.

That's not okay obviously.

So since I have no human feelings, I have to figure out this. And children and murderers are the same.

Yeah, children in the Soviet government only understand one thing, threats.

Can I have more ice cream?

Dad?

Put your hand in the drawer and find out. Now, there you go.

I'm gonna tell you something, Jimmy. You go for that ice cream. I have a loaded thirty eight on the table. Now one of the chambers is empty, Jimmy, So if you give that ice cream, maybe the hammer goes Stepp.

I just want to go to bed. I don't like dessert. There you go, money, Honey. You just feel like moral calculus is not the way to go with the ice cream. Maybe maybe you could just say no if you don't want him to have dessert. Any dad could say no, I'm learning.

Yeah.

So, while Henry was teaching at Harvard, and this is before he gets we ended the last episode him getting that gig with the Council on Foreign Relations learning about nuclear policy. In the period before that, when like Shelling is his mentor, Henry learns a lot from him and he walks away from their relationship with the belief that quote bargaining power comes from the capacity to hurt, to cause quote sheer pain and damage.

She means, fucking Christ, you're just kind of waiting for this person to step into the vacuum essentially, right, like you're waiting for someone to be like, you know, there's actually a bottom that's under the bottom.

Yeah, oh oh my lord, it's like this shit, like if that were true. We're all watching this situation unfold between Russia and Ukraine where you've got like a lot of people with the ability to hurt, a lot of people on both sides.

And you know what, it doesn't seem like negotiations are going great. Yeah, not really. Maybe that's not a good basis to proceed from anything with. Yeah, I mean, I just I can't believe that.

It's it's the craziest fucking idea.

It's not.

It's not.

It's not negotiating.

Yeah, you go into negotiations, you're like, I'm probably not gonna get what I want.

We're gonna try and get the best we can.

And he's just like, how much can I fucking hurt you?

And usually you give me if you spend enough time like I do around like gun culture. People on the right in particular, there's these folks who like usually have never done anything like in the military themselves, but they read a bunch of like books by Navy seals and shit, and they'll say shit like you should have a plan to kill everyone in every room you walk into, and like their frame is that, like the world's dangerous, you

Yes, you should not have a gun. You are out of your entire damn mind.

Like this is a guy who should never be negotiating.

Yeah, absolutely not ready to kill someone. Is like, you know what, don't go into rooms. That's just going to be your thing. You don't stay anywhere, stay in your house.

You go to one room. Yeah no, I could.

I could tell your throat.

I could come reach across the table, tell your throat out and stab you in the eyes with ice picks.

So I'm just we're just talking about what.

He just wants ice cream, Dan, He just asked you for an ice cream, Dan.

So Henry gets his gig at the at the CFR, and so he's the thing he's producing for the Council on Foreign Relations for his buddy the Rockefeller It's supposed to be like a report on how the US is like should use nuclear weapons different ways in which like they could approach it right. And while he's writing this report, because it's with this thing takes a very very long process getting this out, he also starts working privately on a book of his own titled Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy.

So, but where does he describe like where you would use it is like a tactical battlefield book.

Is it's like to win battlefield victories? To like in Vietnam, he will briefly flirt, well, not even all that briefly, but he will consider using nuclear weapons to cut off train access between Vietnam and China, which.

Isn't sane, Like as as a layman, you can cut off trains in another way, presumably, right. I mean I've seen the General with buster keat and you could throw some logs on it.

There there are these other things called bombs, just bombs.

Kissinger. Yeah, so it really, I mean it is kind of just itchy trigger finger, and it is like, if you live in the realm of this sort of dark thinking, how are you not going to start, you know, thinking of ways that are just even more vicious brutal.

He's basically saying they need to think we're a chained mad dog, and if we you let the dog off the leash once and he attacks the postman and then and then everyone's going to fucking.

Know then you don't get the mail anymore. Yeah, then you start seeing your mail. We've bombed Japan already, like everyard gets it already, mind of course, Oh my god.

Yeah, it's not like it's this theoretical weapon that's never been used and.

It worked pretty well as far as making people be like, god damn, they are out of their minds. Yeah, look crazy, oh shit.

But it's all Also there's a there's a factor here a part of me wonders if he even really believed about this or cared about whether or not nukes should be used tactically, and if it was more a matter of this is a big debate of the day, and if I publicly take the most contrarian thing intellectuals who don't really care about what works, but who care about who's thinking creatively, Like right, Like that's the thing. He's like, Well, it's not about whether or not his plan would work.

Finally, Yeah, you know, it's really funny, Well just ironic about this is the funny fun it. Places like the Heritage Foundation for years have been have been saying that Prutin would use tactical battlefield nukes, and that's why he's unhinged.

That's one of the reasons. Yeah, it's I would say, anyone who would do that is crazy. Yeah, imagine keep him on as an advisor.

Yeah, yeah, that's my feeling on nuke's. Don't shoot them at people ever?

Yeah, yeah, its bad.

Maybe an Independence Day kind of situation. I'll be honest, when I watch Independence Day, I think, yeah, I might shoot some news. I might at that point try a nuker too. Yeah, but you have Randy Quaid I do. I do hang out with him a lot. That's my main plan. If things go wrong, Randy get on the plane. He lives in my basement.

That actually tracks from the Instagram videos I've been seeing.

So Kissinger's book was published in nineteen fifty seven, and it almost immediately sold seventeen thousand copies, which is a lot for a wonky book on nuclear warfare. It is on the New York Times bestseller list for fourteen weeks.

Wow, Jesus Christ.

Yeah it's not great.

Now.

He's timing is perfect. He puts this book out right as the Soviets make two big advances in Hungary, there's like a revolution that they kind of crush, and then in the Suez, where like that brings the British and the French are like fucking around in the Suez Canal and the Soviets are like stop or we'll do something bad,

Know, don't run.

Yeah, that's that's where people go, right, They don't. They they're Americans. They don't take the rational route.

Now, No, they hate us part nuclear freedom.

Yeah, they listened to the crisiest person in the room about this. Right, there's a lot of things that you can say about both what happened in Hungary and the Suez crisis that are not why don't we use nukes more often?

Sure?

By God, kissing your noses, audience, you know, Kisody writes this book, and The New York Times in their review of it. Right, For the first time since President Eisenhower took office, officials at the highest government levels are displaying interest in the theory of the little or limited war. The theory of massive retaliation is re examined. I love that those are that those go together, those are the options.

Yeah, and then it's like the little war is the nuclear war, Like it's the baby war for us.

Yeah yeah, hand me out, hear me out, baby nukes, little tiny nukes.

Well yeah, it's like if someone's like, look, we got to decide if one of which of these is going to be legal Sarah nerve gas bombs for civilians or or chlorine gas bombs for civilians. One type of poison gas bomb has to be legal, like we all we have to have access. Everyone has to be able to have one kind of poison gas Two is crazy taste.

Great?

What if nobody has those? Oh god, that's not you know, that's not where things go here. So President Eisenhower is given a summary of Kissinger's book. You know, he's a president. They don't they don't read books. Yeah, it's gets Yeah, he gets a cliff notes and he recommends it to his Secretary of State John Foster Doulas we have talked about quite a.

Lot on God, it was just yeah, I mean, who, like, if he's the rational mind.

If Dulas is being like this, dude seems a little out of his mind, big problem, that's yeah, that's not great because John Foster Dulas fucking lunatic.

Yeah yeah, So the vice president at this point is a little dude you might have heard of called Richard Millhouse Nixon. He gets photographed with a coffee copy of Henry Kissinger's book, which is not great. I mean, it's actually great, foreshadow, it's just not writing a screenplay.

This is great.

Yeah.

Really, this is like season one of the Nixon Show. And you just like see him with Kissinger's book, right right, yeah, yeah right, good television, you know. So the book is successful enough that it provokes Rockefeller, who gotten in the job at the CFR, to rush out the report that Nixon had been or that Kissinger had been making. And yes, christ yeah, the report from the CFR concludes, the willingness to engage in nuclear war when necessary is part of the price of our freedom.

Wow, I mean the price of our freedom is pretty good. Damn price he isn't it? Is it combinsive?

Yeah?

Man?

How can we How can we live if we're not dead?

Yeah?

How can we live without nuclear fallout?

It's it's and it's amazing that it like it all like I if it was part of his plan or not. Like you said, the timing is just pretty remarkable to release this book and then it actually shifts the way that they view this to me, Yeah, you know, it's actually he's got a really good point in his best selling book about how nukes are cool, how nukes are sweet. You know I am.

I am excited for Ben Shapiro's book on the same subject to lead to the annihilation of the whole life.

Yeah wait, I'm gonna live underground. So that's a good idea to you.

So this report is a weird like weirdly popular like again, this is a report from the Center or from the CFR, from the Council on Foreign Relations, which is like not you don't expect that to go viral?

Right, you know you read this pamphlet. Have you read this study by the CFR.

I mean, you can never let you down when you're like, oh, that won't happen, that won't happen, that won't.

Go Yeah right it does. Yeah.

So Rockefeller actually goes on the Today Show to talk about this report the CFR.

Wither, I know, it's amazing Macaroni castrole.

So next, so he gives people of the Today Show an address where they can write for a copy of this report. No, they get forty five thousand requests the first day and.

The next Hell's post office is over.

Well.

Yeah, the media US media called this report quote the answer to Sputnik, which is like, hey, the Russian sent sent an unarmed ball into space to further exploration. We should this book about how everyone should be nuking everyone. It's the answer to that.

We're thinking that this report on nuclear weapons will actually show the Russians that to not go to space. Yeah, that's space. If you get rid of Russias, I can't go to space. Do you understand.

Yeah, And it is it's worth noting because I think, like in our popular history, the answer to Sputnik is the Apollo missions and its frame beauty, which you know did eventually happen. But no, the first answer to Sputnik was a report about how we should be nuking each other more often.

Yeah, I get they put a ball in the orbit, so we should we should blow up SAT.

We should be ready to drop thirteen nuclear warheads on Berlin at a second's notice.

That's what I showed them.

So this makes Henry Kissinger famous. He is all over the place.

This is his This is how we become famous.

Want some guy, some guys watch the today show when he buys the books, so we can tell everybody at the.

Elks Club that we need to use nukes.

Someone's happening. Give this accountant a soccer ball. Some people get famous because their dad is one of oj Simpson's lawyers.

Some people get famous because they write a book about how nuclear warfare.

It is not that bad. Uh huh, you know, it's just in fame. It's a crapshoot. Absolutely fuck.

I mean, imagine being an anti nuke person at this point, you're just like, wait, what is going on?

Have you read the report? It's so good. We're gonna show them if what they should not be going to space.

Yeah, next time they put a satellite up, we're gonna kill everyone in Paraguay.

What we need to do is a radiated country.

So on July fourteenth, nineteen fifty eight, Mike Wallace gives Henry Kissinger his first big break into the public sphere.

So many what happened? It really is, it really is just fucking disgusting because I go through this all the time on our show, where I'm like, it is the same shit. But again, it's just media using its plats irresponsibly to normalize things. That are fucking batship.

Yeah, it's great, Like sixty minutes having a fucking whole segment on the havana fucking.

Sound it's come on, Dave, you know that's real. I suffered from that for two years, those crickets. Oh man.

I will say, like, the stupidest joke that I laugh at every time is, yeah, I got havana syndrome. Having another beer never doesn't get a chuckle out of me.

But we've done.

We've had sixty minutes. Come on, sixty minutes. Did the uh the uh satanic scare shit? Well, yeah, they were big lots dandles, like they just run with ideas that are crazy.

Yeah.

There, I mean because for people who are at the level Mike Wallace is, the definition of journalist is not afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. It's be a giant shithead. Yeah right, be a huge shihead.

Man. Oh man.

So Mike Wallace introduces Henry Kissinger, the guy whose one achievement is a book about how nukes are cool. By saying this, in the field of foreign policy and military affairs, doctor Kissinger, you're acknowledged to be one of the most penetrating minds in the country.

Oh, he's penetrating.

He is penetrating like an Atlas missile penetrates the cloud cover above a city full of women and children.

Yeah. Wow.

Now, during the interview, Kissinger expressed that quote a capitalist society, or what is more interesting to me, a free society, is a more revolutionary phenomenon than nineteenth century socialism. I think we should go on the spiritual offensive.

Yeah, the spiritual with a nuclear extension with Lukes. Yes, so he's connecting, he's connecting. You know, the two options nineteenth century socialist capitalism or the current day capitalism and nukes. Those are the options. Yeah. And Mike Wallace just empty headedly sits there and goes like, I really love your property.

Yeah, just smiles in behind his eyes as a dial tone.

Oh my god.

So this earns him finally the job at Harvard that he'd coveted.

This is why they give him. Shut, shut the fuck up. It was ever simple. I can't I.

Cannot get over how fucking evil Harvard is. It's so good, it is monstrous from it's the best. It is a horrific some of us with their asshole.

Anti Harvard action. So he gets his Harvard job, and he keeps writing. In nineteen sixty one, taking a heart.

What's he doing at Harvard?

He's like teaching some shit, you know, Kissinger stuff type classes. Yeah, talking about Spangler a lot.

Yeah.

Nukes are awesome too, Nukes are awesome. Freedom is requires an absence of morality, teaching kids good stuff, you know, teaching kids good things. So in nineteen sixty one he publishes a book titled The Necessity of Choice, which is his manifesto on how the United States should approach foreign policy in the nineteen sixties. It is not an optimistic

What in the fuck is he talking about?

Well, America influence. No, this is like the high of American power. Obviously, yeah to anyone who's not, but Kissinger is he knows this is bullshit. He is part of a group of people who are pushing Have you guys heard the term missile gap?

No?

No.

In the the early stages of the Kennedy administration, there is suddenly this huge and this is both like in conversations that people are having in DC and in like the media. There's this constant talk of a missile gap, this idea that these Soviets have outpaced us in missile development and in the number of missiles they have, and there's talking about like there's bomber gaps, there's tank gaps, there's talk about like these gaps between this idea that

It just does not happen. It feels like we're still responding to that today to be like, do do first by a log shot?

Yeah, and yeah, it's it's it's this, it's it's this, it's not I would say on him, but it's very reasonable because the argument comes primarily out of the Defense Department and the growing defense industry, who it's great for them if everyone thinks there's a missile.

Gap, like of course, yeah, you got to build a lot more weapons. We'll sell them to you. I thought it was the place you could get Khaki's on your rockets. But you have a missile gap.

Thank you, Thank you, a welcome.

We'll be right back. Question. I'm sorry, you know what, Yes, actually this is time for an ad break.

So you know, if you're looking for a way to dress up your RNI and X knife missile before firing it into some guy's car, check out the missile gap.

We are back.

So it's bullshit, the idea of the missile gap. And Kissinger is smart enough to know this, but he is one of the major proponents. He's not one of the there's other guys who are more influential pushing it, like actually within the halls of power, right, because he's not super within the halls of power yet, but he is. He's all over TV and shit, like he's guy that you call now, Like once you get in the rolodex of media people, you stay there, you.

Know, he's the nuke guy you want to he's the other guy, a positive nuke guy. There's people that you gonna get the negative nuke guy in.

The positive nuke guy, and he's the guy who says we don't have enough. You know, the thing, we've ever

I have a name for that, I can. I've come over right now. Nuclear arms race. That's cool.

That's that's a neat one. We should finally a term for it.

We should nuke him. I mean that would just be like the one thing I would one made it, just nuke him one if the dam Crockett handheld missile watcher sweating every wee could do.

What about just a little a little tiny nuke that we shoot into him explodes, But it's just a little guy, Kissinger.

Yeah, you're nuclear weapon.

Yeah, but he would just ingest it and go I am no, I'm bigger and more upset it is.

It is amazing to think about how seriously this guy gets treated by everyone immediately, and how much influence he's allowed to have on an incredibly dangerous thing. And this is the same guy who got tricked by Farranos, the same nude he gets winked by the fake blood lady in the turtleneck. It's really amazing. Yeah, it's so funny. It's so funny. So uh, Kissinger is is not Again, he doesn't come up with the idea of the missile gap,

And so he.

Stops talking about that. He wants to become part He doesn't believe in shit, but he wants to be in the JFK administration, Right, so he stops pushing this thing that makes him famous and saying other shit because he'll get it'll get him closer to power. And that's all Henry Kissinger really cares about.

Yeah, so I wonder if, like the Today Show is calling up.

And he's like, you know, I'm not really doing nukes anymore.

No, he comes on.

Yeah, the quote I'm gonna quote actually from Nia Ferguson here he explains like what he starts doing on the Today Show. Yeah, Kissinger now advocated a conventional arms build up, since the dividing line between conventional and nuclear weapons is more familiar and therefore easier to maintain. He continued to insist that the United States developed smaller nuclear weapons, but he moved his own position to where he thought Kennedy's was. In effect, the necessity of choice was something of a

I mean it is the same shit essentially, And it's like, you know, the sensationalism that gets you the headlines and then once you're fail, it's any it's really any form of our pop culture entertainment. Now, just get your name in the fucking headlines and then define who you are and then you can like figure out what you actually think and actually believe or how you're going to ride that to power. Yeah, just make a bang. It's the it is it.

It is like the political equivalent of a comedian like saying a racial slur and then listening to the audience to determine whether or not they're joking.

Like that's what he's doing. He's it's yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean show up to a club, take your dick out, and then right your hour. Yeah, it's called it's uh luisyk backwards. It's the it's the Casey. I'm not going to figure out what.

The back.

Casey Casey Sewell yeh. So this he does not get exactly what he wants, but he gets part of what he wants. His buddy, uh Notlson Rockefeller is able to give him a part time consulting gig for the National Security Advisor. So it's not but it's not everything he wants, but he is now he's he has like he you know, like you start your way in and it's unless you really fuck up. And by fuck up, I mean don't

Yeah, well, I we'll talk.

We're actually we're going to talk a shitload about that over the next couple of episodes, because this is like a consistent weird thing about him. But like One of the things Kissinger does is he oils Rockefeller with effusive claims that Kennedy's inaugural speech, which Rockefeller had helped with, was so good he quote might become a registered Democrat, Right, that's the kind of shit. He says that, like, I'm almost a Democrat now because how good JFK.

Speech was so good.

He doesn't believe in ship like I can't overemphasize that other than that, Henry Kissinger should be very close to power. He believes strongly in that, and he believes in that as much as anyone's ever believed in the Bible.

Right.

He does not believe in ideas.

Birthday to the President. I saw what Maryland did and testament sometimes the president.

Would you like to see where they call me Kissinger? Oh, I'm standing over this event and look at what they're doing to my book. See that's the fan art. I would have him kiss just like trying to fuck JFK with every bit of charm in his German body.

Oh dude, nobody told me Subway go over vent Look at this, You're going to see everything goes nuke.

So JFK is eventually assassinated by Bernard Montgomery s and LBJ takes over. Oh yeah, I mean history is a read this banquet. I've got a pamphlet for you myself.

That's my length.

So LBJ is the president now and and LBJ is like between LGMJK. It's like a decade you know that the Democrats are in power, and LBJ is very good at exercising power. Right, And he's also super into Henry Kissinger. He's not against Henry Kissinger either, but Henry kind of is kept in this weird like he's on the margins of power during this period of time, right finally, which is yeah, well not really because while he's there's no breath,

He's just networker, like he is just a supreme networker.

Yeah, right, there is so.

Much when I was a kid in speech and debate, one of the other kids in the debate team with me was obsessed with Kissinger, like read his books and stuff, thought held and this was this thing that I heard too from like family members and stuff that like, well he was you know, he wasn't always right, but it was he was doing the hardest job anyone's ever had, and he was just this really genius man and you can't really argue with him if you read about what he was saying, and it's like, no, he.

Didn't believe in shit he was.

He was a genius at making people like him, and that allowed him to horrible things. Yeah, which I guess, like anyone who's really dangerous in politics is that's as a version of that guy, right, Like yeah, like that's that's all of them. But he's he's an interesting kind of that guy and as a result, probably the most toxic kind of that guy we've ever had in the United States. Wow, which is saying something really bad, but yeah, so, yeah, he makes all these connections, he cultivates them, and he

Yeah him, but like, yeah, God that they've learned. God, that doesn't happen anymore now.

I turned to the New York Times story published today that described Nazis assaulting a book club as men with a swastika flag. Someone pointed out, well, the article calls them Nazis. It's just all of the social media they described them that way. And I was like, oh, I can't explain to you why I feel worse about that, but I do.

Yeah, it was not just that. It was not just the dumb error. It was calculus. Yeah, yeah, moral calculus.

It's yeah, moral calculus, right, good, good ship. So the professor cultivates connections, Yeah, he gets good. He also he goes to Vietnam at one point and he makes connections with a bunch of people in Vietnam who were able to to not just the South but the North Vietnamese government. Like that's the thing he consciously does is like I want to be able to like be able to take the temperature of like guys, which is not like I would say, actually, like the most reasonable thing he does.

Yeah, it's so crazy. It's wild that like he might he must have eyes that just start spinning in h Like you just have to get close to notice that he's got hypnotic eyes. You're like, oh, he isn't so bad now that I'm taking him.

You know, let's think about Vietnam for a second. Right, if you're going to war in Vietnam, Gareth, Right, if you decide how to go, Gareth Reynolds, I'm going to go to war in Vietnam. How long do you think it would take you to realize that was a bad idea?

It would be I mean, I Gareth Reynolds, it would be instantaneous, very quickly, very quickly. I mean it's David. Yeah, can I okay?

Can I just can I ask a question?

Which side am I fighting on? The not Vietnamese site? Okay? Then really quick? Yeah, really quick. I feel like you could. I feel like you could. You could take Vietnam, David, Dave going to see it the night they're not going to see it coming. I would certainly be the guy who they'd be like, we broke him. We broke him before we even shouted at him. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to show up with pants that were already pissed in.

I know.

I know one thing about me, and that's that if things got really, really chaotic and bad, that I I kind of thrive in that environment.

Yeah, you'd be like, Dave, we don't have time to eat their brains. He'd be like, shut up, I'm figuring out what they know. It's like Doctor Manhattan ending the Vietnam War.

Both sides surrendered to Dave in the mid sixties, which is fairly early on considering how late the Vietnam War goes. It is clear to people, especially a lot of people protesting in the United States, they're like, oh shit, this ain't going.

Great, right, Like, it's not hard for people.

There are people who buy into the US propaganda, but like people who are actually privy to information on the war are aware that it is not going well. Kissinger still decides we should escalate things. And I'm going to quote again from Kissinger's Shadow by Greg Brandon. Upon returning from his first visit to South Vietnam, and late nineteen sixty five, Kissinger threw himself into a campaign to build

It's not enough. Your first reaction be like, god, we were kids, were young, we were young.

There's like some Vietnam these dude next to him thinking about like bomb's race down on the jungle and.

Cross feedback. We had Kissinger, Oh my god, it's joelous. Heck yeah, he's only got one jowl at that time. That's before he got the eight Our hair looked so stupid? Am I right?

Am I?

Right?

Where did your legs go? By the way, before Henry Kissinger looked like weird science.

After things go wrong, it's amazing, like and it's it's there's a lot in that paragraph both like of course, when the debate starts to build, like should we escalate this nightmarish war? The first thing, one of the first things that happens is that a bunch of fucking New England universities decided to have a debate about it. Right, yeah, right, that's the right, Like, let's let everyone here, let's have the best arguments of both.

Sides about whether or not behinds.

Yeah, like, first off, fuck everyone involved in this, even the people arguing against the wall a little bit like just don't do that's the premist.

Yeah, the premiss it's bad.

Yeah. Less so certainly, I don't know, I don't know.

Maybe like it made sense, there's a virgins debating which position is the best to fucking why is this instead of the debate like hey, why are we there? Like really why? Sorry, that's we're not we're not debating that, we're not asking that. It's not the debate, and it is.

Again, it's like and you can see just about how comprehensively wrong these people are that like number one, this idea that this will help the people of South Vietnam determine their own destiny, which is, the South Vietnamese government was a dictatorship the entire time the war was going on. It's not any more democratic in any meaningful sense than

Yeah.

Yeah, Again, they're wrong about everything. Like Kissinger in this period, everything that he said, like that'sz he has, this reputation is such an intellectual titan, and he's like so constantly fucking wrong.

But he didn't bring up there's always like yeah.

It's the same as today, all of these people that are constantly fucking wrong. Just yeah, keep on getting positions of power and being media and they're always fucking wrong.

And there's this shit like people will will bring up like whoa, but there's this nuclear arms treaty he helped make, and there's this like peace deal he negotiated in the Middle East and like all of these things like yeah, but that was like two percent of the shit that he did, and it was largely because other people that he wanted to stay in good with were pushing for that kind of shit too, like Henry Kissinger. Whenever he has expressed an idea that is his legitimate idea is

We're gonna release you to come up with another scheme to take more money from this bag of ship. You don't get to.

Make a company anymore, but we're gonna have cameras fall. Think of you, Frank Show. Have you seen punked?

You can't. It's just every week for a Kissinger.

You're gonna put on mustaches and like fake wigs, and you're just gonna try.

To find telling me this is a way for me to get a longer spine. I mean, popcorn has zero calories. I'm here.

But you know it's about that story. Is that she's a younger female kissinger. Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent. She's like blood kissing. Everyone was super into her, and she was just saying whatever people wanted to hear, and like.

Yeah, right, it's amazing because there's there's the good grifters and the evil ones. We just finished our four parterre on the Tzar and talked about the fact that, like before Respute and there was another spiritualist grifter who pretended to talk to like ghosts and stuff named Philippe, who like got a bunch of money for them, tricked the Tsarina into thinking she was pregnant, and then bounced with

Very funny.

Took all the money and ran, and when he died, it was found out that he had been paying for the mortgages and rentals of like fifty two impoverished families. Like the perfect guy, like the opposite of Kissing. Yeah yeah, just taking money from the tsar to help pour people out.

What a dude.

Great if he showed up again, Yeah yeah, let's put that guy in front of Kissinger, see what he can do. So in private, Kissinger admitted already, while he is doing all this, while he's a part of this big debate, you know, while he's taking the side that we should escalate in private. In his conversations, he admits to his friends that Vietnam is an unwinnable disaster of a war.

Oh my fucking god. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He defended it in public though, because there was at least a fifty percent chance the Democrats were going to stay in power after the next election. That is, he he didn't want to give up on the chance of having a job.

You know, I think a lot of times you just you do. I guess he's a little different because he's such a shape shifter. Yeah, you know, there, I think, And it's just the way we are. You are, like, they can't just be that base evil. Yeah, he sure can. He yeah, m hmm.

Yeah.

It's something.

It's something I was thinking about with climate change, is that people can't wraps around the fact that there might be a significant portion of rich people in control who actually want everybody to die.

Yeah yeah, or at least don't care, because what really matters is like maintaining their level of relative power to everyone else.

What are they going to do? Call themselves out?

Yeah, it's cool. So obviously it's one of those things. I don't actually know that he really believed that Vietnam was a disaster because he may have been lying to his friends when he said that because he wants to keep like he wants to keep a bridge to the other side open, you know, like it's impossible to say because he's fucking Henry Kissinger.

Is it possible there's two Kissingers? Yes, Okay, what if there's six? Am they ever touched Cambodia will be oh, yeah, you know what. Yeah.

So the fact that Kissinger in private be like, yeah, Vietnam, what a fuck up, and in public would be like, let me bing Shapiro about Vietnam tea win. This that really pissed off a lot of his friends, including the political scientist Hans Morgenthau. Kissinger had admitted to Morgan Thou that the or was unwinnable, unwinnable, even while he continued to go on in the media and advocate expanded saturation bombing.

A wolf House.

Yeah, incomes the.

Which we will do a whole Nixon episode one of these days. A lot of our Kissinger's series will also be about Nixon, because you can't unwrap the two men, you.

Know, you can't.

So there are two Kissingers. Yeah, one of them is Richard Nixon. So by the end of nineteen sixty eight, as the presidential race between Vice President Hubert Humphrey and former Vice President Richard Nixon heats up, Kissinger's profile had raised enough that he was seen as the front runner for a serious foreign policy job in either potential administration.

Time went on either Yeah, he's got a gig, no matter what, Baby, It's just he's the raytheon of people.

So as time goes on, though, he increasingly leans towards Nixon, which surprises his friends, whom he had told, quote, Richard Nixon is the most dangerous of all the men running to have his president.

But I want him to give me a gig. Yeah, I need job.

So he was heartbroken when his friend Rockefeller lost to Nixon, and he commented, now the Republican Party is a disaster and Nixon is not fit to be president.

Oh my god, and over and oh this was they said about regular about Bush.

Okay, yeah, it's always the same calculus. This is true.

But Kissinger didn't let his complete contempt for Nixon stop him from trying to get a job with the man. To explain why, here's the New Yorker. It took Kissinger's close contemporary, the political theorist Sheldon Wolan, another son of Jewish immigras, who fought in the War and studied at Harvard with William Yandel Elliott, to fully dissect Kissinger's careerist and sincts. On the surface, Wollant observed, Kissinger would have appeared a mismatch for the anti elitist Nixon, but the

Ugh, I mean, it's just an empty sack and an evil sack, and the evil sacks like I can feel you. Yeah, well, somebody's gonna off. Somebody's gonna load me with something. He's not gonna do it. Put all that black pile down astonomy, thank.

You, Oh boy, Gareth, he doesn't call him Hank, but we'll get to that later.

How come on this panky. It's a lot worse than that, Garethright, So, in.

Nineteen sixty eight, the Johnson administration was carrying out an extensive series of negotiations between South and North Vietnam and an attempt to secure an end to the war. LBJ wants credit for his legacy, right, I'm not going to give LBJ credit for like caring about human death and suffering, because he's also a monster.

Yea.

No, not trying to make him seem good by comparison, But he sees ending the war both as a way Tolke I want to go out on a good note. And also this is going to if he could, if he could even secure a significant like ceasefire, that would help Humphrey get reelected. Right, because nobody's in the US is very pro the Vietnam War, within the majority of most voters are very anti its. So that's kind of the play that that lbj's making he wants to end

You should tap the fuck out of those phones.

But it's also this is they don't want this to get LBJ doesn't want this shit to get out at all.

My fucking fucking liberals, the fucking liberals.

This is how many times, how many fucking times bustool two elections this is what they did.

This is what they fucking did. It's really it really is. I mean yeah, it's just it's I mean the I that is so fucking crazy to put the clubhouse, Yeah, I mean above it. It is. It is like the one time where for president had had his political opponents hanged. Yeah, he'd be like, yeah, that's what you should have done, and you'd have to that one session of hangings really would have gone a long way with this country.

You would be in so much a better position. They'd hung Nixon and several other people were about to talk about.

And would also given Nixon good posture. Finally, yeah, finally I.

Knew about that Nixon had done. I did not know that the that they knew. I didn't know they knew.

At the time, like that, Oh yes, David fucking scene the liberal mind.

I always think about this story about when the HUNTA took over in Chile before Pinochet got into power, and they asked all the they said, we want to have interviews with people, and the liberals so believed the government that they went and lined up for the secret police interviews because they're like, well, this is what we do. And they're like, no, they're taking your names down to possibly kill you. But they lined up because they're like, well, this is we don't want to mess up the system,

Of yeah, like yeah, and this is the germ of truth in Kissinger's whole ideology about conflict is that if you are in a conflict with someone who is willing to throw down and you weren't, they're going to win, right, Like that is a truth of history, right, It's a truth of fighting fascists. Right. It's not enough to say, like punching them isn't the entire of it. But if you're not willing to throw down, they will win, right. And that is a thing that has often taken exactly

The craziest thing is that, like that was the fucking big dick. I'm gonna take a shit and you're gonna listen to me guy, Like he gave no fox and threw down with everybody.

You know what I think it is, Dave.

I think for all of his many many mini flaws and evil acts committed, I think LBJ believed in things yeah, and Nixon and kissing you downk.

He wouldn't throw down, but he would throw to ads. Yeah, I would.

Because you know, LBJ was famous for whipping his dick, which he called jumbo, out at all times. He wants pissed on a Secret Service agent at a party because he couldn't get to the bathroom easily enough.

Like that's the secret.

Yeah, all of our sponsors are the same, and that their dicks are called jumbo and they do piss on the Secret Service. Every one of our sponsors pisses on the Secret Service. That's a promise.

So we're back. Oh, boy, good times.

So South Vietnam pulls out of the negotiations, right, I think they're happening in Paris, and I'm being I haven't really gotten to detail about what happened up to this point because those details are very obscure to the American people.

Actually, yeah, we were bombings.

Are we actually dropped John McCain.

Yeah, we did drop John McCain. You guys might have caught him. Can keep him for a while. He'll come back into the picture. It'll be a big problem. He'll also, weirdly enough, be the least objectionable Republican elected leader for a long time.

So it's just you guys know, that's our future hero.

Yeah, and Jesse the Body Ventura will be the only conservative voices against torture.

So heads up.

It is amazing watching that old clip of Jesse Ventura on the view being the most reasonable American in fucking early two thousands next to Gilbert Godfried. At least.

It's actually not the Gilbert.

So Yeah, this is very enticing offer for Hanoi, the bombing cessation, and it's good enough if like, if you won't bomb us anymore, Yeah, maybe we can concede on some stuff if you're not murdering people in mass like, Yeah, of course we'll negotiate with that.

That's pretty good.

Nixon cannot let this happen. This would be a disaster. Vietnam not getting bombed, he sees is like the worst case scenario, even though he is campaigning on ending the war. By the way, that's promise, I'm gonna get us out of that. But yeah, on my watch, it happens before what am I campaigning on. So Nixon uses his back channel to the South Vietnamese government to get them to torpedo.

Oh, oh my god, that's right, baby, should be executed for treason.

Absolutely should be executed for treesa my god. Slowly, yeah, slowly executed. Yeah, it should be that incompetent dude who hung the Nazis at Nuremberg and like kept sucking up and making it worse.

Bring that dude badry, Can I just do? Let me try one more time before you guys get mad.

We should have frozen that motherfucker in carbonite to break out when the nation needed him.

Yeah, that's amazing. Oh you guys waking be up to kill me. No, we actually we're huge drunk and do another hangar huge fans. We've got you a handle of gin here, and this is very kissinger. Shut up, just do whatever. You just kill him as fast as you can. That's the only note. But I took a lot of notes from him back in the day, like he's great, he's great.

Just kill him.

Okay, I don't think he could die, though, I will say I don't think that guy could read.

So.

Obviously, Kissinger is the back channel who was spreading this information. Now in his own memoirs, Nixon later admitted to hearing about the proposed bombing Hall through what he termed as a highly unusual channel. Christopher Hitchen continues, it was more unusual even than he acknowledged. Kissinger had until then been a devoted partisan of Nelson Rockefeller, the matchlessly wealthy prince of Liberal Republicanism. His contempt for the person and policies

Yeah.

I also, I mean Nixon really just never shut the fuck up. I mean he didn't. He really he was like the drunk guy at a party who had just sort of tell you whatever.

Like honestly, he's the guy Donald Trump might put a hand on be like, hey man, you're.

Saying you shouldn't you say some stuff that you probably shouldn't right now. I think you might not. I think you might regret this. Sxplode. I just take a lot of stuff you probably shouldn't. And I'm on Twitter. Yeah, so that is just so crazy and just says it all, you know, And this is and it's gotten worse. I mean, it's just fucking bonkers. Now.

The bombing halt was planned for October twenty third, but thanks to Kissinger, the Nixon campaign was able to lobby South Vietnam to increase their demands suddenly at the bargaining table, which wrecked attempted agreements being made with North Vietnam. This, you know, there's a process. This happens back and forth until the bombing halt is completely scuttled and peace negotiations

There's three of them.

Sucking Democrats are so fucking stupid, I know, right.

There's three of them. There's three kiss olers. No, just are you walking around buddy Henry's I'm gonna give him a good old job. That's our body. You're talking about men, sir.

And then I can never get over the fact that Hilary walked around with him during the fucking campaign.

It's amazing, really walking to be fair day he fucking is.

He's like one of those episodes of Fraser where he's dating two women at the same time and trying to keep it secret. That's the same restaurant Jack Tripper. Yeah, it's very funny, except for all.

Of the millions and millions. Yes, let me ask you that.

So do you have the numbers on where the deaths were at in Vietnam?

I'll yeah, I'll get you that in a minute.

Why did I ask? Yeah?

Nixon by also like grows convinced of Kissinger's value during this period of time too, and he becomes a shoe in for a senior job there. He was particularly impressed by the skill with which Kissinger protected his identity as the leaker from the Humphrey campaign. Nixon later wrote, one factor that had almost convinced me of Kissinger's credibility was the link to which he went to protect his secrecy.

What a terrible I mean, that's just not a good personality trait. It's really not it's actually not is but not this guy.

This guy is the best double agent. He's so fucking great, he'll.

Fuck And this guy's an unbelievable ship bag liar.

Yeah, I mean, honestly, it makes sense that like Nixon would be super into that. Oh yeah, wow, this guy's a real piece of shit.

Oh I'm Jick Nixon. This guy can lie to you. Let me tell you as a liar.

Oh fuck, it's fucking amazing.

It's bad.

Clark Clifford, who would later was again the Secretary of Defense at the time, would later blame the fact that the war did not end in nineteen sixty eight and the loss of the Humphrey campaign in that election, on the school duggery of the Nixon campaign, which was orchestrated in part by Henry Kissinger.

Quote.

The activities of the Nixon team went far beyond the bounds of justifiable political combat. It constituted direct interference in the activities of the executive branch and the responsibilities of the chief executive. The only people with authority to negotiate on behalf of the nation. The activities of the Nix campaign constituted a gross, even potentially illegal interference in the security affairs of the nation by private individuals, which is

Jesus Christ, my god. It's like killing him isn't enough.

No, he should be gibbeted.

I said, so, we need to bring back Gibbeting and just hang that motherfucker somewhere in a nice cage box, like, yeah, leave him out there.

Leave him out, Let people pelt him with stuff.

Yeah, fuck, kill him by throwing potatoes at it, right, because he's not that strong anymore. And you want it to last a while, tatoes. Yeah.

Yeah, So we'll talk a bit later about how he got caught on tape and why we know about all of this, because that's a fun story, guys. It involves a different series of crimes. But Grandon makes another point that's worth acknowledging here. Well, Kissinger definitely had inside information from the Johnson campaign, which he passed on. He also didn't have as much information as he pretended to know when he talked to the Nixon campaign.

Oh Jesus quote.

Even with access to Johnson's negotiating instructions, he couldn't have had exact information about the decisions being made at the White House. He had to have been winging it, at least to some degree, guessing at what others knew, imagining what others would do with that, guess playing the angle, sussing out the chance a well, giving the appearance of composure and certainty, he was right winging it.

I mean, yeah, what an absolute fucking psychopath on Like, that's the kind of shit. Like you said, if you're dating two women, you're trying to figure it out and get through some sticky situation. But he's doing this with fucking Vietnam and two presidential campaigns.

I don't, yeah, craziness, the absolute lack of a soul is oh yeah, he is pure blackness inside.

M Yeah, Dave, let me push back for a second. God, wow, yeah, you can't. I mean, it's it's it's hard to even speak to it because it's like to look, I'll kill five people for a job, but at some point you have to.

Be a normal share Yeah that's regular.

Yeah, but but to to let, I mean, to just I don't know, it's it is he killed, he killed.

I mean, how many Vietnamese died after that?

Like so many?

Yeah, we're talking, you know, was it like a million died in the whole wars?

More than no?

I mean it is because you also have to include the people who died in cam Radia and and in in Vietnam. We're gonna get into more of the episode three, but conservatively an additional couple of million deaths as a result of this, in addition to an additional twenty thousand US dead. It's kind of hard the death toll to get precisely like a couple million, like in the million, A couple of additional dead because this day by the way because I was just going.

To say die because he wanted a job.

This was he wanted a He's essentially lying in a job interview like you would if you were I had no fast food experience in where taco except millions of people are dying.

Yeah, it's awesome, holy crazy, it's the crazy.

The thing you've done here is you've you've you've humanized the situation for me, because, like, I can understand that there's evil people out there and they do stuff like they want to bomb Camp Cambodia, they want to do this other stuff. But when you take it to a level where it's a guy winging it in a meeting, it takes on a whole different flavor of evil. That is something because now that's something we can all understand.

Yeah, we've all experienced that.

None of us have experienced given the green light to you know, dropping bombs and killing people. But that I get and I feel in my bones of like, well, holy shit, but you're doing that with millions of people's lives on the line.

It is. It is this thing where the idea I had always had before I really got into was that like, well he did you know, he was involved in all of these horrible things that I knew who was involved in, but like I assumed it was from a wonky perspective of like he believed strongly in the need to fight these wars and that anything was justified, and so he did these horrible things because he believed we were in this like civilizational struggle and certain things were necessary in that.

Yeah. And by the way, it's not like he would have been out of politics, like even in his downtime, he was like, you know, he was gigging. Like it's just like he would have been patiently waiting for another administration or have been working in whatever, like you know, he didn't. He didn't want to work at job.

Yeah, he didn't want to work at Uncle Chuckle Fox. He wanted the gig at Charlie Good Nights like he doesn't want to work at a premier club.

He literally like did the Like that's the thing. He didn't just do this for a job. He did this for like one of the two jobs and the one he kind of didn't want as much.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, the guy. Yeah, I'm un fucking conscionable.

Yeah, it's really hard to like, it is hard and like it's I think it's easier to understand now what he did. It's hard to like judge him adequately in moral terms that are even like comprehensible because it's so much out.

Yeah, it's hard to process.

It really is one of those like say what you will about the tenets of nihilism, dude. At least it's an ethos moments where it's like I'm thinking about like people like fucking Saddam or whatever, where it's like, yeah, that was a piece of ship. There were definitely some things he believed though, like yeah, like there's pieces of shit out like fucking out there who like there are things they believe, and Kissinger just believes he should be close to power.

Kissinger. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he was like doctrine was Kissinger.

He's like, I'm really smart, I should be in the top game, and yeah, I just want to be there.

It's awesome. Yeah. I like how he thinks his childhood didn't fuck with him. Yeah. Yeah, like dude, bro, yeah what.

You know, it would be even better if he if all of this was happening, and it was just because, like he he was like, I know, I can get so many more chicks if I'm in the white House. Yeah, that was the whole reason for it.

He's just like, I just want to get laid.

Look, it is not a non factor.

Wait is he Is he married right now? Or is he single? Oh?

Lord, who knows? He's I mean I think he gets married. It's point. But he's also like, you know, well, I don't know. Actually, he's kind of like a bachelor dude. We'll talk about that later. I'm still working on those episodes because there's a whole thing to be said about Kissinger and women and sex appeal. He gets he was married, Well, yeah, he definitely was married at points, but he's also like kind of a playboy.

God.

I'm going to go back in time a little bit and talk about some.

Of that later.

He was married his first His first marriage was nineteen forty nine to nineteen sixty four, so I don't think he's and that he's not remarried again until seventy four, So that sounds right. He's married in this little hall.

Yeah, I wonder why she left him.

Yeah, no idea.

So he's the only guy who comes black.

I haven't written the episode yet, but I have several pages of people talking about Henry Kissinger's sex appeal on the news that are real, real black pilling as the kids saying, oh my god, not good. Oh. Nixon wins the sixty eight election. Obviously, he gets inaugurated in nineteen sixty nine. The Vietnam War continues on for half a decade ish. This was an almost incalculable humanitarian tragedy as well as disastrous for the future stability and cohesion of

Yeah, like to put out there that my uncle went to Vietnam and nutally, you know, he had to kill a lot of people and until he fucking runed his life and he watched Fastey and stuff.

So thank you, Richard Nixon. Thank you Richard Nixon.

Everybody who went to Vietnam after sixty eight, say thank you to Richard for Nixon and Kissinger for you know, all of the trauma and the trauma that in some cases some of you passed on to your family members, and the trauma that has been passed on societally based on our attitudes towards war because of how Vietnam went and the ways in which some people were always looking for a rematch, and it got us into other you know, thank you, thank you, thank you, Yeah, thank you stuff,

Don't think I don't think the first Iraquis happens, the evasion Panama doesn't happen.

You would think that for how long Vietnam dragged on, that that would have actually been a lesson to not go into conflicts, you know, no aimless conflict.

But no, I guess the problem is we're thinking there's people should learn lessons.

Yeah, well that war is it anyway like a moral decision or like actually comes from a place of actual you know, savior mentality, anything like that. You know, Yeah, it's good stuff.

Getting disappointment as National Security Advisor required a lot more politicking from Kissinger, including spreading rumors to Nixon before his inauguration that Johnson planned to either depose or kill the president of South Vietnam before he left office. Because you pushed this rumor to the pre intellect via regular bastards, pods side character and Rhodesia enthusiast enthusiast William F. Buckley, Buckley's middleman to lighten Nixon.

Translator. Yeah, William F.

Buckley, whose son went on to write, honestly a pretty fun book. But we don't need to think too much about that.

Wow.

Great Aaron Eckart performance in the movie. So Nixon appreciated Kissinger's hutzpa and connections enough that when he put him at the head of the National Security Council, he ordered the professor to reorganize it in order to take foreign policy control away from the State and Defense departments. This means that Nixon gave Kissinger it was very close to a blank check to take total control of US foreign policy. Obviously, Nixon wanted this because he was a paranoid control freak.

He's just like, what am I gonna call you? Spanky Hank? No little jew boy lord.

And again it says a lot about Henry Kissinger that he's like, yeah, right.

That's pretty good, funny childhood have no effect on me today, not whats.

So there must have been.

An element of Nixon then who knew what an ass kissing little bitch he was. Oh, because he's belittling him to his face oh yeah, and knowing he'll stick around.

It's why you get hired for these jobs because it's just like it's not, you know, an empty vacuum. Who is going to be your right hand man is still you know, there's security in that, there's there's secrecy in that.

He's like a vacuum Gareth, and that he'll suck Nixon's dick. But he's also like a toilet, and that he'll take nixon ship. You know, that's.

He's a dick.

He's a human human human.

Yeah, yeah, he's like the Toto toilet is pretty effective. But if you ever had a dick sucking toilet, shit don't come either way. I'm ready for it, baby, Henry Kissing.

So can the title be Henry Kissinger dick sucking toilet?

We got it, draws thinking of dick sucking toilets, It is time for a commercial break.

That is who sponsors our podcast Raitheon's new dick sucking toilet. Well, it is going to fire a missile at a busload of children. But that's that's just the raytheon. You know, we can't avoid it. We'll be obligated.

Yeah, it's how it works.

So Nixon announced Kissinger's appointment as the National Security Advisor before he had even picked a Secretary of State, which is an unprecedented move. He announced Henry as quote, and this is again in his public announcement to the country as quote, a man who is known to all people who are interested in foreign policy, is perhaps one of the major scholars in America and the world in this area.

William F.

Buckley wrote, not since Florence Nightingale has any public figure received such universal acclamation.

Ruin her William F. Buckley fantastic. Yeah, it's amazing.

But even ostensibly liberal figures were wooed by Kissinger's titanic intellect and Henry Kissinger and American power. Thomas Schwartz, writes. The liberal historian Arthur Slushinger Junior simply referred to it as the best appointment so far. The New York Times columnist Tom Wicker noted the collective sigh of relief that went up from the liberal Eastern establishment and the Ivy League fearing Nixon's cold warrior image, most shared in the

No, mean, Kissinger is down there, you mean, in the toilet, getting ready to suck that. You know, it's exactly what happened with Trump. Yes, And it's like it's the way that I mean again, it's people's natural reaction is normally kind of there. It's just this, the fears are assuaged by people who they consider to be, you know, the compass, and they're just not. And so when you're told that there are the good guys inside the bad camp, it's like it's just never fucking true. It is rot from

These liberals are also are also impressed by him and so comforted by him because they think he's smart, because he's good at quoting smart dead people. Right. It is the same thing that happened with Mattis. Maddis, thankfully is not nearly as toxic a person as Henry Kissinger. But like, if you actually look at Madis's background, one of the things he did in the Iraq War was cover up a war crime. He's not a not a man to

You continue to lower the bar more and more. You're obvious, like the people that you're bringing back are part of a lower bar. But because the bar is even lower, it seems and feels a little higher. But it is all just.

It's just this is exactly what happened with Colon Powell is sucking evil.

We did the exactly evil Monsterson, Yeah, cover up fucking the massacres in fucking Vietnam. That's like when he started out like terrible human being. But the press did the same shit.

If you can quote old books and smile and you're willing to give journalists time, they will talk about you as being the secret reasonable person within the war crimes party, you know, like that's all it takes.

It's great.

It's just the same thing as if you're a Nazi who reads books. You can get an archtyvee profile, yes or yeah, or you'll get on sixty minutes or whatever.

You know.

It's it's don't trust people who want you to think they're smart. Yep, that's never a good sign smart. It's the same thing. It's the same thing with like people who want you to believe they're dangerous. If they want you to believe something specific about them, they're lying about it. That's how people work.

And and if if a doctor wants to get on the news to talk about COVID and be famous on the news, that's actually not a doctor you should listen.

To and a great guy.

No.

Also, I mean it's you know, it's from the same publications and the same networks. The idea that you continue to listen to these sources about what is right and what is wrong just because they have fancy terms like senior policy advised. It's like it's all fucking it's it's days of our lives. It's they're actors. These are teleprompters. Yeah, and they don't know any more than you about anything that matters.

As a general rule. Every now and then you get but like even like within agencies that are heavily like medical oriented, like the CDC, where you would expect them to have a lot of specialized knowledge, it doesn't necessarily mean they're going to do a good job.

But I'll say that much times comfortably lied about Iraq.

Yeah, it's it's not great. So during a transition from the Johnson to Nixon administration, US Military Command began to act under what General Creighton Abrams described as a total war mindset against the infrastructure of the Vietcong insurgency. This began with a six month operation to clear the Mekong Delta, code named Operation Speedy Express. This would prove to be the first major military operation that both Nixon and Kitschinger oversaw,

Oh my god.

Yeah, so it's it's oh my god.

Now the Myli massacre had occurred in nineteen sixty eight, before Nickson he Kissinger were in power. You know that ain't on them, and Seymour Hirst didn't like break the story until sixty nine, which is the year that they come to power. And this slaughter of five hundred civilians by US troops was horrific enough, but within a few months of taking power, speedy express it exceeded it many times.

And then they justied.

Colin Pale justified it by saying, while they're providing food for the enemy, so there's no difference.

Yeah.

By the time Speedy Express comes to an end, US forces had killed more than ten thousand people. The vast majority of these were claimed to have been insurgent fighters, but extensive mop up after operations after the fact found less than eight hundred weapons on all these bodies they shared.

That is fucking crazy. Yeah, I mean, like we can't even frame them competently now.

And also, remember you're taking guys that you drafted.

Yeah yeah, right, yeah, right, you know to do this. Yeah, I mean, like you said with your uncle, I mean, it is it's like the generational ripple through that and the lifetime you know what it does really, I mean yeah, it's pretty beyond who dies, who doesn't live again?

Yeah, yeah, exactly, And what you know, what do people take back with them now? It is fair and necessary to note that this began in the December before Nixon and Kissinger took office. This is not entirely on them. Some of the blame for this ghosts on the LBJA administration as well, obviously, but it continued under them. This paragraph, written by Christopher Hitchins, gives you some idea of the savagery of what occurred in the early days of the

One. Village elder told.

Me the Americans destroyed every house with artillery airstrikes or by burning them down with cigarette lighters. About one hundred people were killed by bombing, others were wounded, and others became refugees. Many were children killed by concussion from the bombs, which their small bodies could not withstand, even if they

Yeah.

If you beer, that'll quit drink it. Yeah, And then I won't win reelection in nineteen seventy two. And that's unacceptable. I mean that, and that I mean obviously keeps going over and over again. It's you get into office and then you're like, well, what about re election instead of going like the best direction for.

It is one of the few things I'll give Biden some credit for because he had the same calculus with Afghanistan. A lot of criticisms to make about the pull out from Afghanistan, but he did not make the same decision Nixon and Kissinger did. He did fucking get out. It wouldn't yeah, yeah, So withdrawing from Vietnam mean Saigon is going to fall. The government's going to fall, and that will be bad in the seventy two elections, and it

Ah.

Yeah, And it's you know, that's what our wars always are. They're all about Yeah, they're all about elections. They fucking always are. It's you know, I mean, yeah, this led to Republicans thinking that, you know, they had to get war back on.

Track at some point.

Yeah, But it's you know, it's always it's never never works, like it's just such a crazy idea. And you also like people are watching body bags go home, Like no one's happy about anything that's going on.

No, and it this they just kind of I mean this part of why it keeps going is, yeah, this kind of craven knowledge that like, well, the worst thing that could happen is we don't get reelected.

Yeah.

At no point is he thinking about any of the human beings involved, even any of the American human beings involved. It's just like, well, we can't be losing reelection.

You know, imagine if Kissinger was damaged from his childhood, how bad things would get. It could be really bad.

It's like, you know, actually, when we talk about the story of like American presidents making craven political decisions, one of the reasons FDR did not approve more effort being taken to evacuate Jewish refugees from Germany as he did not want to be seen as pro jew Oh Jesus the socialist policies and stuff that we're going through. He

Let me hear this Kaiser pitch again. It actually big hat.

I learn the hat, biggest hat you've ever seen, big, very spiky now loves this mom's hands. But oh god. So the fun thing about this episode is that everything we're going to talk about in part three is even worse because in part three we're going to talk about fucking Cambodia. Soo y well, you guys want to plug anything after my ears three hours.

Yeah, I'm going to be I'm going to be in a toilet trying to get clean.

After that, you can go to the Dollar Go to Dollar podcast dot com for two more information and my website Karen Reynolds dot com. I'm on tour, but not like tours of duty, just like stand up and podcast tours with the aim of bringing joint of people. I don't want to talk like that anymore. Dave, Dave, shit your fucking mouth and you can.

Just listen to the last last time I saw you do a seay. You just fucking murdered the whole fucking shit your.

Fucking face, like kill that crowd.

You left unexploded ordnance in the crowded.

Over should have been over fifteen minutes earlier.

And like with unexploded ordinance in low forty percent of the people who loved your jokes after the set and we're.

Children no more.

There'll be no more relating. There'll be no more correlating. Yeah, anyway, that's part two. You got two more weeks of innardy kissing. You'r ahead of you, folks, to strap in gets a lot uglier. But also we'll be talking about his sex life. So you know, I was going to say something to look forward to, but like not really.

Yeah, yeah, come back next week for more of the dick Sucking toilet Henry Kissinger.

That's a pretty good title.

Sophie's not happy with it.

No, Sophie is not on board. I don't love it. But you know, all right, Oh I don't.

How do I, Sophie, how do I introduce part three of the Kissinger series?

You just did it? Gareth and David are right here, they're waiting for something good and I just I'm just I'm fucking it.

Up, Sophie.

I mean, yeah, but you you accidentally introduced the podcast which is behind the.

Bastards Behind the doll Ups doll Up the Bastard the Bastards hybrid podcast, and like all hybrids, it is incapable of procreating, but better at getting up steep mountain passes.

It's getting a little goading.

Now we can multiply by cell division, but not through sexual Yeah.

Yeah, we've tried.

Yeah, we have, we have. We're in that process.

We tried.

So since we last recorded a podcast, war has broken out and I was.

Just thinking, mister in Europe, God, three days yeah, but we like ended it and then it was like, oh wow, it's happening, and now it feels like it's been two months since. Then had a brief conversation what do you think is going to happen?

And then immediately checked our phones to be like, oh, okay, so they're shipping all over the place. Oh so, y'all are we ready to learn about Henry Kissinger and a little country you might have heard of called Cambodia, Oh god, and also a separate country you might have called Lao, and also Vietnam. Still so that energy, I.

Am, let's go, let's do it.

Yeah.

So on February fourteenth, Valentine's Day, nineteen sixty five, President Lyndon B. Johnson approved Operation Rolling Thunder. This was a long term campaign of aerial bombing against North Vietnam. It's primary aims were to help them morale with the South Vietnamese and the Sikon government, to persuade North Vietnam to stop supporting the Viet Cong, and to destroy the North Vietnamese transportation infrastructure and industrial base so as to stop them from sending men.

And equipment south. It did not succeed. As a spoiler, none of this, none of this works.

Like it's just amazing that, like you have all this firepower, you have all these planes, and really you're talking about destroying like railroads and shipping.

And like underground tunnels too. This is the ho Chiman Trail, you know.

Yeah, yeah, I mean is that what we're talking about, the Hochiman Trail?

Yes, okay, And we're never going to do that. No.

This is like a lesson that no one ever learns in warfare. Because you can also point to like the saturation bombing of Germany, which had a minimal effect on German industrial production. You can talk about like what's happening right now in Ukraine, which has not succeeded in its

Yeah, no, it doesn't. Yeah, you know what it does. It terrifies the civilian population.

It sure does, yes, and it helps the Pentagon a lot. I think it does help the Pentagon. It makes money for people, so I guess to that extent it succeeds in its goal. And Operation Rolling Thunder did make some people a lot of money. It continued for three straight years until November of nineteen sixty eight. During this period, Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps planes through more than three hundred thousand attack sorties, which dropped more than eight

It's amazing to think of the number of bombs you're talking about. And then they made a tunnel. Yeah, it turns out they dug a hole. Yeah, a really good haul. But it's like Chopak, it's not just a tunnel.

It's in a jungle, like we're tying him out a very difficult sort of environment to make a tunnel.

It's not that like it's incredible what they did. Yeah.

So lbj's administration sent planes into Lao to bomb the trail and to escort Laochian planes while they bombed the trail. When US airmen were killed or captured over Lao, their families were told they'd gone down in Southeast Asia to allow LBJ to claim he'd abided by his nineteen sixty four election promise to avoid a wider war. Cambodia was bombed as well, but during lbj's administration, Lao was considered a more important target. They thought more stuff was getting

I mean we the marketing that we have gone for in this country for so long has been so absurd.

Steel Tiger, well, I mean they're just taking y and T album names at this point.

Yeah, if only they'd gone with like Prince Operation Purple Rain. But it's likely the folianth that gives everyone cancer. So I should note here that all secret operations carried out by any US forces anywhere in the world during the Nixon administration were approved personally by Henry Kissinger. Henry was the chairman of something called the forty committ Hell oh sorrys This was a semi secret body that had been set up to provide management and oversight to CIA covert operations.

So that's good, that's nice. Yeah, don't let's do a different thing.

He decides which war crimes to commit, like we decide like jeans or sweatpants in the morning.

I mean, I think that would go really well. With what we're doing. Now that a really tie the whole thing together. Yeah, it's quite a life.

So immediately after taking office, Henry helps his new boss put together a menu of bombardment targets in Cambodia. This is literally called Operation Menu.

Now, yeah, what before some great ideas to tip your bombardier.

Get this?

That was That's what I don't know. I actually don't recall off the top of my head which bombing operation McCain was involved in. But there's a good there's a good tip joke to be made there. Somebody will figure it out. Well people do in post. Yeah, we'll figure it out. Different parts of Operation Menu had code names. Different targets had code names like breakfast, lunch, certain.

What I mean? It is one thing to be like so sadistic, and it's just another thing to tie it into. Wanted to try brunch. Yeah, we're going back to brunch finally under the watchful.

So slaughter can be fun, like you can find fun.

Yeah, it's you should got to love what you do, Dave, otherwise you're just going to feel like work, you know.

Ye.

So, before they began this series of bombings, the Joint chiefs of Staff they warned the White House quote, some Cambodian casualties would be sustained in the operation. Surprise effectiveness would tend to increase casualties. So they're like the fact that we're not warning anyone and that we're keeping this a secret means more civilians will die. Like, heads up, so you know what you're doing. This is what's going to happen.

Now.

As they approached the question of bombing Cambodia a Kissinger and Nixon had a choice. They could either tell Congress or they could hide what they were doing and use the presidential power over the Armed Services to appropriate funds from other places in order to carry out the bombing and secret. Nixon had been elected with Kissinger's help in part due to the LBJA administration's failure to end the war.

It's so much work. Yeah, reminds me of when I used to skip school, that like the lengths I would go to to get away with cutting class, and like the point would be made always to me, like if you put this focus towards studying, you'd probably you'd spend less time and it would be more effective. But instead you just waste so much. Instead of just stopping, you do all this gymnastics just to continue the thing that is the problem, that makes the problem compound.

Yeah, it's they really are are going through a lot of work to illegally bomb a neutral country to look like they're not bombing. Yeah, to look like they're not. It's gaslighting, you know, this is that's what That's what this is kissing.

You know.

We're finally going to get him canceled.

This is going to be what it would be. Imagine a Canceler book.

We're gonna do Kissinger on Hannibal Burst did to Cosby.

Oh man, come on, come on.

So you know, obviously this is very illegal. There's a lot of and there's a lot of parts of it

I mean yeah, like, yeah, I'm going to a secret basement, Yeah, to talk about bombing, Like maybe maybe this isn't how it's supposed to be done.

Him seem like a democracy I feel like we shouldn't be doing things like this in a basement. I can't come to secret democracy basement. Yeah. Yeah. The people voted for this basement. A knock, so I know it's you.

I noted here that they kind of cut out a large chunk of like the military command apparatus to do this, which doesn't mean that those guys were against what they were doing. And in fact, all of Sitton's superiors knew what he was doing. They just didn't want to be involved because again, it was a crime, you know.

Like so they so they're like they're down with the cutout because they're just like, yeah, you do it.

I don't want my name on this shit.

It's crazy, but go with it for sure. Yeah I love it. Yeah we love it. Give me out of the loop.

But yeah, they didn't know about the bombing f Cambodia the same way. I have never known a pot dealer, right, So Sitting would regularly like, I don't know. I'm not going to say this is to his credit, but he was like this is weird, and he would go he did, on a couple of occasions go to his superiors and was like, are.

You okay with this?

And his exact phrase about what they responded was just do just what you're doing. When you get a call to go to the White House, go because you don't really have a choice.

Just great, Oh my god.

It's so it's it's straight out of the show snowfall. Like it's just like this shit just happens all the time. Yeah, this is what happened with Iran. Contract was the same,

He has not even begun to micromanage this, this war crime day. So the purpose of this illegal bombing campaign was not just to stop the movement of Vietnamese troops and materiel. It also it also pleaded a role in advancing what Nixon called his Madman theory. Now, the President had shared this with close confidence to the nineteen sixty

Like the idea someone's like, so you want us to try to convey that you're crazy? Okay, that seems I think it's coming across her. Honestly, I think that's already baked into this whole thing a little bit.

It's also very funny that, like they are trying to scare Ho Chi Minh, who at this point is fighting his second winning war against a major world power with like a very very small number of people, you know, Like no, North Vietnam not a big country compared to say the French imperial forces or the United States. He's not a kind of you're not going to scare ho Chi minh.

Right, he's not. He's not a guy who gets spooked.

Yeah.

No, it's over.

That's just absolutely not happening at this point.

Yeah.

Now, Kissinger either believed in his boss's plan or understood that he had to play along. Greg Grandon argues that Nixon's mad Man theory was actually just an extension of the foreign policy arguments that Kissinger himself had been making for years. Quote toughness after all was a late motif that run ran through much of his state craft, the idea that war and diplomacy are inseparable, and that to be effective, diplomats need to be able to punish and

I mean it like it's not I mean it's not a double down. It's like it's eighteen double downs. But at some point you just I at least in my lifetime had a moment where I did believe that there there were people who were who would like point out the crazy shit. And the more you learn, the more you go, No, there's just there's not They are just all like it's like a bunch of junkies figuring out how to get more junk. Yeah, I mean, it's just like it's just how do you get through the day.

You know, there's a degree to which and this is like one of the things that's most frustrating about this part of how this always gets justified is there's legitimate logic in that, Yeah, Hitler gobbled up a bunch of little chunks of Western Europe and nobody stopped him, and they should have, like something should have been done, like when he decided to take Czechoslovakia, you know, or during the Angelis there's certainly you know, like there, and they

Nonsense escalation. Chamberlain also is always in play there too, because it's like everyone's like, you know, want to be Chamberlain.

Yeah, we're appeasing North Vietnam if we don't drop more bombs than we're dropped in all of World War Two on Cambodia.

Yeah, I have Cambodia.

It's this nonsense escalation of logic, of historical logic that's like like someday Nixon's just gonna look in the mirror and be like, sometimes I think I'm I'm just fighting a war inside of myself. There actually are some quotes from Kissinger that aren't all that far off here.

We're back.

So the first bombing mission in this operation was launched on March eighteenth, nineteen sixty nine. Kissinger was in conversation at the time when he was interrupted with a note telling him that the bombing run had been a success. He smiled and then sent the information on to the President. Nixon's chief of staff, later recalled historic day. Kissinger really excited.

And it does.

Yeah, I guess no fucking expertise in this area, absolutely none.

He's a fucking nerd who reads books like you don't know anything about what to bomb, Henry.

It's like me showing up at a hospital and being like, all right, give me this surgical schedule. I need to start to working these surgeries and getting them in order like that. Yeah, it's fucking crazy, it is. I mean, this is there's a human impulse here, right.

We're seeing it in Ukraine where all these like random people are being like, here's how you disable a tank, and it's like, you've never disabled a tank. You don't know what the fuck you're talking about. Like you're not gonna like throwing paint on it isn't going to stop it. You're going to get people killed. If any one's stupid enough to listen to you shut up. It just like Kissinger is actually in a power to really do that.

And there's and there's. It doesn't sound like there's anybody who's going like, no, that doesn't make any sense. Is this out of its mind? Yeah? Yeah, it's just like it is. It's just people being like, okay, sure.

Because there's a lot Obviously, the the unrestricted drone warfare that that escalated during the Obama administration and continued at an even higher pace under Trump is indefensible morally, but also the way that it tended to work was like you would get, you know, these guys with the administration at whichever one it was, would say like, these are the things we are we are going to target with drones, and then the military would bring them like, well, here

Like a it's a coach and it's someone in the huddle with an actually with coach k he's drawing a plan on a whiteboard and then a fan just scribbles it out and like rubs it all down with his arm. And then he's like, instead, I don't we all run up the court at the same time, and then we passed the battle bunch. Try to do it. That would make someone head the butt into the.

It's it's I think, yeah, I'm just upset because I bought forty gallons of paint.

Because you were going to try to knock out a couple of tanks.

Tank war, and now the whole fucking thing shot.

Like yeah, yeah, there are some things paint is good at when it comes to conflict. There were some very funny moments in one of the big HUD fights we had up in Portland, where kids filled a fire extinguisher with paint and like ruined thousands of dollars in tactical gear.

That was that was good.

Wow.

Look, it's not to say that amateurs never have good ideas, but they were not amateurs at that point though.

Those kids.

I've been finding those proud boys for a minute, so Kissinger's extraordinary degree of control over the situation was possible because he had literally reformed the entire national security apparatus around himself. Nixon wanted a buffer from his own secretary of State, which provided Henry with the opportunity to take as much power and centralize it around the National Security Advisor. And he could do this as long as he kept

And he was a teacher, and he was a year before.

He was a guy whose primary claim to fame before this was we need more new we don't have enough fucking nukes, and also we should use them. Whenever it's I was just watching there's a great documentary called Commanded Control. That's about a nuclear disaster in the US in nineteen eighty that nearly killed half of the people on the East Coast. That enough folks don't know about. A guy accidentally dropped a bolt and it ignited part of a

It was a big old It was a big kerfuffle. And say so the guys there's a profile and the thing.

That's nuts about it. But one of the things that pointed out I think we have Sophie can google this for me. I think we have about six thousand nuclear weapons right now, which is way too many.

But as a result we have yeah, we have the Soviet Russia is around six thousand. We have around forty eight hundred.

I think forty eight hundred, So that's too much. Both countries have too many nukes. I think we can all say that's fair.

It's a lot. I'm not sign enough on that.

As a result, in part of Kissingers, we have a missile gap and we need to build more. By this point in the mid sixties, there are thirty two thousand nuclear weapons in the United States.

It is that's even an aside because it's like a Kardashian with shoes. Yeah.

I feel my thing has always been every every person who owns property should be allowed to have a nuke.

Your own nuke.

Look, I think you can all agree, you know what, you know what there wouldn't be if everyone had a nuke. Dave, no knock raids by the cops.

That's true.

You're not gonna have any of that shit.

They're gonna be busted down doors. Yeah, come on, guys, are fine doors of mesole.

Real different situation are the cops if everybody's got a nuke?

Other problems though there would there would be some other problems I don't seem Yeah.

So anyway, Kissinger is the the Kissinger is effectively turned himself into the eyes and ears of the United States military applats.

He decides what it's great.

You can argue he's one of the two or three most powerful people who's ever lived at this point. An argument could be made so Marvin and Bernard Kolb, who were both diplomats at this point, describe what Henry builds here as Henry's wonderful machine.

Quote.

Since Kissinger, I know, Willy Wonka mister Magoriam's nuclear emporium. Since Kissinger controlled the system, he controlled the decision making process. Everyone reports to Kissinger and only Kissinger reports to the president. This set up allowed Henry to micromanage bombing campaigns, over order, covert arms deals, and engage in secret diplomacy at will. He was not merely executing the president's orders. He himself was free to make national policy as long as Nixon

It doesn't even sound like it's I mean, it's like ego based. Yeah, it's it's not even I mean there's there's there's so little actual. It just shows you, like what happens when you're in a bubble. Yeah, but I mean, I just don't think most people would would be capable of this. But it's it is. It's just like it's not really for anything other than he is just feels great being at the helm of this and it's an extremely powerful position.

And it's such a bad idea, Like if you proceed like a moment, get ourselves in the headspace. If someone who thinks all of this is morally justified, it's a bad idea because a person can't competently manage all.

Of this, right they would, right, they would be like, look, I need help. I mean, we're doing what we're going to do, like a reasonable warlord would be like delegated, rational, level headed, Yeah, yeah, I mean yeah.

So when he was signing off on bombing, Kissinger poured over raw intelligence documents, which included information on exactly, in many cases, down to the number how many civilians lived in a certain target area. Now, sometimes it was a little bit less specific in this. For example, Area seven oh four, which had quote sizable concentrations of civilians, didn't have an exact number, but was bobbed two hundred and

It's like a sturgeon with eggs.

Yeah, yeah, it is. It is just completely indiscriminate. Yeah, one Cambodian survivor, because people did live. As we've stated, these are never as good at killing people as the military likes to claim, which is not to minimize the horror. It's just like it's also not it doesn't work except I mean, one Cambodian survivor of US bombing described it this way. Three f one on ones bombed right center of my village, killing eleven of my family members. My

Oh for fucks, Yeah, it is. Yeah. You cannot you cannot exaggerate the extint to which this is indiscriminate. Yeah, it's just total madness on top of madness. Yeah, I mean, there's no Yeah.

People are rightly furious about like bombing in Ukrainian cities right now. What the United States is doing in Cambodia is eliminating grid squares on a map of all life, like, yeah, which.

Is a country that has nothing to fucking do.

Yeah, some d these are walking through it, you know, like it's cop logic, where like, well, a guy who stole a car was seeing in this neighborhood, so we had to shoot anyone someone we saw in the window of their house, you know, like it's that kind of shit, which I guess it makes sense that cops act the way they do because this has always been the way people with guns and power act everywhere through all time. Yeah, so that's good.

Yeah, Yeah.

So the ostensible purpose of all this carnage which to put an end to North Vietnam's ability to wage war, but a huge factor for both Kissinger and Nixon, even larger than any actual impact on the war itself, was to preserve their personal power. Right after the bombing of cambodi began, Nixon sent Kissinger to talk with the Soviet ambassador,

H Oh, I mean the honest, like you'd think you'd at least lie about it. No, No, just the Oh my god, Look, it's murdering. A demicide is one thing, Gareth, but dishonesty, t christs, It's just it's disgusting. That's I feel like a parent. Look the ambassador someone Kissinger drinks with, you know, yeah, exactly lie to him. I mean, I just I would love to see a version where he just keep up an appearance. Look, he can. We just Nixon hates losing. That's what this is about. We can't

Between March of nineteen sixty nine and May of nineteen seventy, more than three thousand, six hundred and thirty rates were flown across the cam Bodium border. Each was approved personally by Henry Kissinger. The New York Times broke this story to the American public for the first time in May of nineteen sixty nine. So that's pretty good, right, like the New York Times actually is pretty shocking on this and reveals what has happened. This prompts protests, an international outcry.

These bright spots where you're like, you fuckers, Well, it's like a broken clock.

Though it's you know, every now and then, it's like a broken clock. But when it's right, it's about like the massacre of civilians on an industrial scale. But also when it's wrong, it's about the massacre of civilians. Southern investors, so mixed bag. So there's immediately protest, an international outcry. Armed students sees a building at Cornell University, which is very based. Students at Kissinger's own Harvard engage in a

Give me, give me one year to kill all the babies. And it also shows how fucking crazy you are, Like if you're doing this, you know you'd be like, look, hide me. I do not want to talk to the fact that he's like, I'll meet them, it's like you can make it work.

Yeah, I'll just tell him what's up. Like, look, we gotta kill him, but we gotta kill people for like a year. Let's let's see how it goes. Give me a year. I'm gonna bomb the ship out of just villages and ship and kill a bunch of babies and ladies.

Have no idea year.

It's just nice. Nice to be back at Look at the campus. You guys changed a couple of things.

Huh.

You guys are just like you guys are like I heard something bad.

We're just getting started.

But give me a year is an amazing thing to say. What it's on this Look, yeah, this is happening. In the year, we'll revisit. It's like, yeah, no, not a year. You don't get to revisit this, you revisit we should revisit where we are in the story after this break.

Yeah, let's revisit the sponsors of the show.

You know who else?

You know who else need a year to keep killing?

Yeah?

Look, if if it has not stopped the carpet bombing of Cambodia in a year, then then you can cancel your subscription, you know.

Either way talking, that's menus. Those are menu options operate very much like Yeah, it's very much like a white House visit with a hell, well, do you want to make a case of deal or do you want to do this checkpiece? What do you there's options? You want to do a flood bread? Oh we're back?

So uh, there's congressional inquiries about the illegal carpet bombing?

What are they after? What they smell some smoke?

I should also note seizing Cornell offices with arms, dope, actually sitting down with Henry Kissinger to let him talk about how things aren't really that bad, not dope. Maybe throw a stapler in his face, you know something, You you hit him really hard to hit him. You know, at least give him a shoe. You know, you've got options from a fucking baseball team at Harvard had to have been able to hit him with a fastball.

There are people that if you're around you should be Cheney Bush.

Get around certain people, you get close to him, you should fucking hit them, hit him hard.

Look, dig Cheney is basically like a charging phone. Just unplug him at this point and see what happens. Whatever is little plugging a microwave. Next time, just have a microwaving an extension cord.

Put a.

Yeah, look we we we all know.

Everybody here knows that eventually Cheney and and Kissinger shed their human skins and become one ball of energy.

I think Kissinger currently is shedding his human skin. If you've seen him lately, it looks like he's halfway through the moor's crossed. Yeah, but the two of them merge and then you know wings, Oh yeah, I get it. So they kind of become like a like a cerebus or something like that. Yeah, then they're one. It's like, Henry, let's get out of here. Find that they got through, and then they.

And they locate in nuke microbiological life on Europa.

No one has done yet. I love that it is coming.

So there's congressional inquiries. Kissinger gets brought before the Senate where he assures everyone that Cambodian territory is bombed by the US were all quote unpopulated. He knew this was a lie at the time. We know from briefing documents Kissinger received that he was warned into tail about such things. The breakfast bombing target he was told wasn't he but by sixteen hundred and forty civilians, dessert had three hundred and fifty.

Nixon, it's just like ice cream. Yeah, you wouldn't get angry at me for bombing a baskin Robbins, would you?

There are no people there, senator who hates cake.

It's called the magic shell.

So Nixon eventually initially blamed Kissinger for the leaks that had revealed the story of the bombing of Cambodia to the New York Times. And this is because Kissinger brings in a lot of like liberals. Like a lot of Kissinger's staff are not Republicans, are not like right wing guys. They're like Northeastern liberals.

Because yeah, and he's charming. They are.

But Nixon is like, it must have been one of these East Coast liberals you brought in that leaked at the Times.

Heath right, so he thinks it's an extension of Kissinger, not Kissinger. No, no, no, he doesn't kissing. That would be someone's really up to something. Somebody's fuckinglogy. I won't tell you who those.

But this is just like bringing Woody Allen in. He's funny, he tells you he's good.

This is some good context on how comprehensively shitty a person Kissinger is, how incapable of real loyalty he is. Thomas Schwartz writes that in order to preserve his own position, Kissinger had to throw large numbers of his team members under the bus quote. Kissinger called FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and gave him a list of those staffers in his office with access to the information, telling Hoover that he would destroy whoever did this if we can find him,

It's a media or raw. It's like American idol level sudden impact as far as because I mean, as you pointed to, he wasn't like this crazy. I mean he was crazy, but now it's like he's just it's on roids. The level that he the level he's gotten to, and the level of insanity that he's gotten to is really even for this country historic.

Yeah, it's it's pretty cool. And just like it's great he is he's not capable of even like treating his very loyal friends. Well, so, yeah, this would come back to bite Kissinger and Nixon and the ass in the not too distant future. But we're gonna take a while to get to that because there's a lot in between there and now. So let's return to Cambodia. It is worth noting that Operation Menu achieved nothing. It was useless in a military sense. The enemy command and control facilities

They have.

Nineteen seventy, Nixon incited to escalate again by ordering a ground invasion of Cambodia. He announced this with a typically unhinged speech. And again this is public because at this point, you know, the New York Times is revealed things. So we live in an age of anarchy. We see mindless attacks and all the great institutions which have been created by free civilizations in the past five hundred years. It's happening because kids are like protesting and colleges yeah, like yeah.

He framed it as a test of the nation's quote will and character. Serious. Now he's right.

When one of his staff members balkman, Kissinger's staff members balked at plans to illegally invade Cambody with ground troops troops, Henry told him, quote, your views represent the cowardice of the Eastern establishment. This staff member, William Watts, tried to physically attack Henry Kissinger who hid behind his desk.

Ah, it's just like that, if he was only able to just kill him. What imagine the ripple, if only there'd been a sharper letter opener on the desk, put it like a pen through his neck.

Yeah, it's very funny that Kissinger did at some point have to hide behind a desk to stop his staff from.

So strong bombing everywhere. And then he's hiding under his desk. The relax.

So this staff member, uh Watts resigns right after this, And when staff member Anthony Lake echoes Wats' concerns, Kissinger, presumably still hiding behind his desk, calls Lake not manly enough to do what was necessary, and so Lake resigns too.

Yeah. Bold words from behind the hiding behind a desk. Yeah, big tough guy.

Four days after Nixon's speech announcing the invasion of Cambodia, four students were shot dead at Kent State during a protest over the invasion. Nine more were wounded. Two weeks later, at Jackson State, police shot into a crowd of black students protesting the war. Two were killed and twelve wounded. The invasion prompted some of the first consequences and only consequences. Kissinger, ever,

Now sound at this point you've seen from Rudy when they all hand in there.

Yeah for to get ready to play. It's like that and stories.

If you have oh god, what's his fucking name, I'm spacing the West Wing, motherfucker.

If Aaron is a description of him.

If Aaron Sorkin is writing this, this is like the heroic moment where like the conscience of the American ruling class that comes in is like, this is not right, Henry, and really that's bullshit, that's not what's happening. And Ferguson goes on to note that these guys were kind of full of shit. They're all Washington insiders. They have Shelling advised LBJ to massively escalade violence throughout the war in Vietnam. Ferguson continues, and this is his explanation of what they

So it's amazing it fuck sake, Yeah, I mean, honestly, that's what this happens on the dollop a lot where I'm like, all right, we got a hero, and then immediately I'm like more villains. God damn it.

I mean to the extent that there's some heroes, the kids on these campuses who are actually like lighting buildings on fire and destroying things. They do make Henry Kissinger and his academic friends afraid and uncomfortable briefly, which is more than anyone else does.

Yeah, and I mean this would kind of be the last time that that even happens, really, right, that like that people in that level of power do feel any sort of like threat from the So the regular folk.

Yeah, credit where it's due. They are the only people that I'm aware of who made Henry Kissinger briefly feel something that vaguely resembles shame.

So emotion.

Yeah, good, like seriously good work.

But of course, you know that doesn't stop anything, obviously, you know he's got of course, he's got many desks. Yeah.

So Cambodia falls into chaos as a result of the as most places would when bombed on this level. Right, hard to maintain a state with this level of things exploding. It is unclear precisely how many people die in Operation Menu, the subsequent invasion of Cambodia and the bombing campaigns that followed. The low estimate is fifty thousand. The high estimates are one hundred and fifty to two hundred thousand. Thirty to

What a legacy.

Now, If any of this concerned Nixon and Kissinger.

I would like you to just throw out there that I do feel that gardening should be more dangerous.

So yes, and nobody's in disagreement about that. And we have enough bombs in this country to make gardening a lot more dangerous.

Yeah, four fucking beans.

If there's not a one in three chance digging up a potato loses you a goddamn arm, you're not really a gardener.

So how are the tomatoes? Ken's dead?

If any of this concerned Nixon and Kissinger, we have no evidence of it. We know that in nineteen seventy two, Nixon asked how many did we kill in LAO, and the Press Secretary ron Ziegler responded with a guess, maybe ten thousand fifteen. Kissinger agreed in motion in the lotion thing killed about ten fifteen. This is how they talk about.

It's the showcase showdown three to five, nine eleven's worth of people.

I mean, it's the way you talking about. Did you get like one bag of grapes or two?

Yeah? I think I had two bags of grapes.

Oh, what's the cover fee to get into that? To get into that concert? It's like ten or fifteen bucks?

Yeah?

Yeah, except for this is they're just complete and total fucking psychopaths and.

They're off by a half at least. You know, it's hard to get accurate. You know, death tolls here and the bombs were not the only thing left behind by the campaign that Kissinger orchestrated. Greg Brandon Wrights defoliation chemicals did their work just over a two week period April eighteenth to May second, nineteen sixty nine. US dropped agent Orange caused significant damage. Andrew Wells Dang, who has long

Oh my god, look, we're gonna, we're gonna, we're going to get the money.

You're gonna get the money.

You're gonna get the money.

The money. It's just gonna take a lot. I just need to it's a thing. Move.

Yeah, I need to move some stuff around. Just but you're gonna get it.

It's fine. I don't know.

Let's just keep it on the on the d L, you know what I mean.

Yeah, it's yeah, it is.

Hecret Service wasn't calling Trump Agent Orange by the way, Uh, if that wasn't his code name, that's a disappointment, that is.

I mean, yeah, there's a lot of reasons to be disappointed in the Secret Service, but that is one of them.

That's my mom one.

So the loss of life and economic damage caused Cambodia to spiral into chaos, or at least was a factor. Other stuff's going on. We have a couple episodes about King Notre Dam Sahanok, who is a real piece of shit. In the King of Cambodia. In this period, a lot's happening, but unrest by the caused by the bombings and the economic devastation helped to spark a right wing coup, which was likely orchestrated with CIA help.

And US with the direct input it. You guys are looking to change things up here. We've got a plan, We got an idea. Well do no matter what happened, someone bomb you will Why don't we provide some help? Yeah, exactly.

And the coup, you know, overthrows the king, who then starts backing the.

Khmer Rouge then wins. They're great.

Yeah, their counter revolution against the right wing coup, and this leads to the establishment of Polpot's Khmer Rouge government.

Yay.

Once the Rouge took over in nineteen seventy five, Nixon had left office. Kissinger, though, was still in power. In November of nineteen seventy five, he told Thailand's foreign minister, you should also tell the Cambodians that we will be friends with them. They are murderous thugs, but we won't let that stand in our way. We are prepared to improve relations.

That's what I mean. Yeah, I mean we get it. We get a Kissinger. I mean my people were I get it. Murderous thugs. I'm all about murderous thugs. I think we could find common ground. This man wants to kill a million people.

I think that is a cute start.

I've got adorable. In nineteen eighty.

Eight, when questioned on this, Kissinger explained that quote, the Tie and the Chinese did not want a Vietnamese dominated into China. We didn't want the Vietnamese to dominate. I don't believe we did anything for pole Pot, but I suspect we closed our eyes when some others did something for pole Pot. Of course, the United States attempted at least to provide direct military aid to the Khmer rouge in order to help them oppose Vietnam, and there's a

It's it's so incredible how their ideology of just communism bad. They're like, well, communism will kill a bunch of people, and they're just.

Fucking everything they can to say people well.

And it's also like they don't even really believe communists because the Khmara or communists hell, and they're fine with working with them because it's Vietnam is the ones who beat them.

And so they're angry at Vietnam.

And it's like and Vietnam fights Cambodia, Like it's not there's no these people don't believe in anything. Yeah, there's not good lessons to take from this, but no, it's it's really someone should have stabbed Henry Kissinger, that's for sure.

Oh I stabbed him.

Yeah, there's so many people we should have stabbed.

I mean there's so many, but Kissinger's.

Way up there and in this story right, like we're not. Obviously, you can't blame all of the deaths in Cambodia on Kissinger a lot, just like you can't blame all of the deaths in Vietnam on Kissinger and Nixon, but like just so many lead to which he's central to a lot of the worst actions in these wars.

Well, And so the I I keep thinking about the point you made in the last episode where it you know, the idea that LBJ, that that he broke up the LBJ plan to sort of end all of this, and just for political reasons made that not happen, and that just that the avenue that we are down now is just I mean, it's unconscionable.

And there's there's so many also we also besides just the straight bombings, we destabilize areas, we change the trajectory.

Look putin is our fucking doing.

Yeah, we fucking took out the government, We did Yelsen, all that shit.

That was a fucking I'm not gonna let you sit here and touch shit on Yeltsen. He was very in control of what he was doing to it.

I definitely knew what was happening.

It wasn't like having a bottle of sphar enough in charge. Nothing that happened.

Everything we get involved with turns into a fuck pie. I mean, it's just we just create chaos.

Yeah, we're murder midas.

It's this, it's this thing where we're talking about like how how insane it is that Kissinger is micromanaging these bombings. Which is not to say that like the military men who were doing it before were particularly better. And this is the problem that like we're going to have, you know,

And no one gets punished and nobody ever mean.

Yeah, the fact that Bill Crystal is still saying what anybody do anywhere in the world, You're like, what in.

The fuck is going on? Guess who gets to go, who goes away? Who goes away favoring his tweets?

I imagine I know somebody who lost their job at a grocery store because they got arrested protesting for like protesting against police violence.

Meanwhile, meanwhile, Bill Crystal's like a guest on an media show.

Yeah, it's it's Bill. What do you think I mean, Yeah, it's it's frustrating. Every now and then, far too seldom you get a story like that billionaire Russian arms dealer who's yacht got partially sunk. But there's like three of those stories for every thousand kissingers. Yeah, and they don't ever mean anything because that guy can afford to fix his fucking yacht.

So, yes, when they were they were egging Bezos's boat, when when he was getting that bridge torn down, Yeah, you're like, I mean people, Yeah, it's like, yeah, he's gonna have someone hoes it down, and that he's fine. You look, yachts burn. We know yes, we've it.

They burn, that's the thing. Yachts burn, and so do Bill Crystals. Bill Crystal, I think.

It's like anals. No, yeah, actually when you burn and he just turns into a few crystals.

So.

Greg Grandon, author of Kissinger's Shadow, sees the bombing campaign in Cambodia and Lao is the terminal phase in what he calls the crack up of America's domestic consensus, which had begun under Johnson. Kissinger considered conditions in the country at the time of Kent State to be quote near civil war conditions. The paranoia Nixon had felt led him to push for illegal expansions of domestic surveillance, which eventually

Nixon's starting to lose a gang.

It is worth noting that for all of the things happening at this point, Nixon is as a rule, anytime I quote him and Kissinger talking, Nixon is as a rule, drunker than you have ever been. Like then you have ever been. I don't care how drunk you've gotten, you have never gotten. Nixon in the White House hammered. So, with Kissinger's help, Nixon cooks up a plan to pursue an arms control treaty in order to discredit his political rivals.

Yeah, yeah.

Re Election in nineteen seventy two was always going to be dicey for Nixon and Kissinger. Nixon's plan was the infamous Southern strategy, cultivating racial resentment in order to turn whites into a reliable Republican voting block. There's a lot to be said about this. Obviously, we were just kind

As yeah, just and I mean it is like I mean, you, it's what our politics is now, which is just constantly the optics on how to get re elected. It's just the number crunch on how do you get reelected by doing things illegally or you know, shifting priority whatever it is. Butasking you, yeah, yeah, whatever it is. I mean, you know, like we all know that war helps pull numbers, so

You're on the right, for sure. Yeah, And it's it is worth noting because I always had this idea, even at past the point where I stopped believing Henry Kissinger was a hero, that he was doing what he was doing in Southeast Asia because there were like very specific wonky things he believed about the conduct of the war and how to win it. It was just like willing to do these horrible things. But no, they know what's not winning the war. This is for votes.

Yeah, and Kissinger they yeah, So, I mean you're basically just saying it is just a white supremacist thing.

They're killing people of color to make whites in the South happy.

Yeah, that's all we're saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah, m hmm. Yeah, that's supremacist the country. But that doesn't fit on a lawn placard.

Yeah, get one of those, like in this in this house, we believe in.

The nick administration. We believe in covering up doubling down on racism in order to And so it's.

Worth noting too Kissinger isn't just micromanaging the the actual racist bombing campaign that they're doing to get votes. He is also the frontman Nixon sends out to talk to right wing leaders to try and like pump them up about this. Nixon sent him to talk to Ronald Reagan, then the governor of California. Kissinger sat down on Nixon's behalf with Billy Graham with William F. Buckley, with Bob Hooking,

Well, I tell you, I really am. I can't wait to go out there and rally.

That was true, Sir Hank having just been doing some research. He is friends with Frank Sinatra. Frank would call him on the phone.

Yeah, that sounds right, That fucking sounds right.

When I get a nuclear weapon? Is that possible?

Frank Sinatra with a nuke?

That's yeah.

There's no people left if that had happened.

I imagine on Dean Martin's drink, and he didn't notice.

Baby Kissinger spent a particularly long time bragging to Ronald Reagan about the administration's achievements. Quote, we wouldn't have had Cambodia, we wouldn't have had LAO, and we wouldn't have had an eighty billion dollar defense budget, you know, without Nixon getting elected. He also told Reagan, we wouldn't have had Amchitka.

No.

Chica is an island off the coast of Alaska in the early nineteen seventies. The White House wanted to nuke it for a lot of complicated reasons.

Maybe I get that. Yeah, this is one thing.

I'm actually I was from, not other islands, but specifically Amchitka. Yeah, we're like am Shitka. So the White House wants to nuke this island off the coast of Alaska. And as you have like environmentalists and indigenous people, just folks who's brain.

Yeah, freedom, I hate freedom.

Here's Greg Grandon again. The test had no military or scientific benefit, but was seen as something of a ritual by the right fireworks to celebrate the end of Johnson's presidency when many Hawks, like Curtis LeMay, felt the United States had fallen behind on nuclear development. Then, when public opposition to the detonation began to grow, Nixon had a chance to show conservatives that he would stand up to liberals. He let me known that we're the Supreme Court to

I need to get a bucket to Barfin.

When people when people think like, oh, we've become dumb recently, we've always been so fucking stupid.

It cannot be emphasized enough. We're just really dumb.

I honestly, I definitely thought that we've I mean, it is a shocking level of dumb. It's the fact that it's just this dumb. Yeah, it's just been going on the island because because they wanted the fireworks. Yeah, because he wanted fireworks.

And it's as they could tell Reagan, it's like his gender reveal fucking party, like right right, Jesus Christ, the bomb.

It is worth noting for the sake of talking about how dumb we still are today. Curtis LeMay, who was one of the people cheering on the bombing of this random island is essentially the hero of Malcolm Gladwell's book The Bomber Mafia, which talks about how cool the bombing apparatus we set up was and how it helped keep things peaceful and built the wonderful packs Americana. That that's I'm sure these Cambodian civilians we've talked about appreciate it.

Well, that's the one where you need to Once you have ten thousand bombs, you're an expert. Yeah, yeah, that's right. That's right.

If you drop ten thousand bombs, you're a bombing Yeah, that's right. That's exactly. So in order to be able to do it right, yeah, you have to do it wrong. For those bomb you gotta.

Log the bombs.

That's exactly right here. So part of what made Kissinger remarkable, though, was his ability to rope conservatives in line for mass murder while also charming the entire liberalistat plishment of the East Coast. Nixon's chief of staff later recalled we knew Henry is the Hawk of hawks in the Oval office, But in the evenings, a magical transformation took place. Touching glasses at a party with his liberal friends. The belligerent Kissinger would suddenly become a dove, and the press, beguiled

Like well, and I mean that'll happen. Yeah, No, one of them will figure it out.

Yeah, yeah, cracked, And you gotta dial the racism down a little, you gotta dial the polite up and then kind of equalize them, and then you can yeah, and then.

And then the right access to the right people in media.

Yeah, you know, I mean we already saw that. I mean even under Trump, where you've got all these fucking reporters who had these like bombshells about horrible crimes being committed that they didn't release for a year in change because they got a book deal.

Yeah yeah, right right, yeah, yeah, I mean John Bolton was basically just there to write a book.

Yeah, everyone was. The whole administration was. Yeah, they're like fucking navy seals with the books. Yeah. So, Kissinger's reputation was as a brilliant, computer brained policy wonk, but his success came from his charm. He was able to win reporters over with a mix of leaks and effusive praise for their work, something that made them feel like insiders

It's like sessions and with Trump. I mean there are multiple people like that, but the amount of times when people would be like, oh, McMasters, you know, these are the good guys inside of the you.

Know, but this too as he's drawing on a map where to annihilate. Yeah, oh yeah, and it works. It always works. It works, and it works over and over and over again. As a rule, if their job is to be a journalist who spends their time face to face with powerful people, they're bad at their job. As a rule, every now and then you get an exception, but.

As a rule, no, it's like when Chomsky points out to that reporter that he has the rye, he's sitting in that seat.

Yeah, you get the odd people who are willing to like report on the Penanon papers or whatever, and like do you know you get or the Afghanistan papers with

Been do anything doesn't matter. Yeah, like this doesn't stop anything very I mean, you know, and the reason why people do it less and less is because you're attacked. So, I mean it works. The public attacks discredit you, and then you are you are what you are, You're no longer you no longer get access to that information.

Yeah, it's great. So A good example of how Kissos used his charm is a speech he gave at MIT in January of nineteen seventy one. He started off by feigning a confidential air and telling the students that Nixon had not been his quote first choice, but that in time he'd come to see the bombing of Cambodia as the only quote sensible path towards the Vietnamization. Vietnamization is like the process of the US getting out in South Vietnam taking over, Right, that's the big buzz Nixon and

What wait, wait, what is it? What does that mean? Exactly?

He wouldn't get out unless and less Nixon was setting up gas chambers.

I mean, what the fuck? U child? His childhood didn't affect him in any way. Yeah, outrageous, And it's confidence the student.

And it's interesting because then the student who asked this question of Kissinger later realized, like, is there really a difference between forcing people into a gas chamber and incinerating from them from the sky with a bombing campaign. I guess not. But at the moment, this doesn't really occur

Fu.

Oh god, and he's drunk, and he's drunk, and he's he is that's pretty good.

He just pounded back an entire bottle of vodka before saying that. When the media savaged Lao as a pointless bloodbath, Kissinger ran to his boss and complained about vicious coverage, saying if Britain had pressed like this in World War Two, they would have quit. In forty two. Both Kissinger and Nixon saw LAO as a win because it benefited their domestic chances of re election. As Nixon told his right hand man, the main thing on Lao, I don't care what happens there.

It's a win. See a win. See he's a little gangstere that's right. Henry to Orange started coppers.

Oh.

And as the re election campaign turned forward, Kissinger was about to help his boss engineer another win. And this one, boy, how do you think we've seen a body count so far?

My god, what the fuck?

But that's still morning that island. So now they're in sweeps. Yeah.

Yeah, now they're hitting sweeps. And if you think hundreds of thousands of cambodi and dead, plus aiding in the deaths of another millionaire.

So was bad.

It was.

It's really bad. It's a historic crime. But also Henry Kissinger's just getting started.

So I'm just you guys want to plug anything my ears death? Yea, I remember because when I did an episode on our podcast about Tim Leary and there's a lot of the you know, Nixon law and Order president stuff in there, and how drunk he was. But also his lunch every day was pineapple circles with cottage cheese in the middle, and so that was his that was his daily drunk lunch. And then there's the one night where he's starting to feel the heat. Well maybe I

Right?

Nixon out cruising? Yeah, Well, we'll we as you know, Look, it sounds like the world loves America after hearing some of this stuff. So we will be going to Australia on a tour. You can go to dollapodcast dot com for those tour dates. We'll be touring America, and even if we do badly, we won't bomb as hard as Kissinger Nixon.

Yeah, I mean it would be hard to.

Bomb on that level.

I honestly, we still have a lot of bombs. I don't know if we have enough bombs to bomb that hard anymore.

I don't think so. I honestly think we could pull our pants down and fight with our penises and still people be like, that's not that I've seen. I've heard of Wor's bombings.

I have seen a couple of cities leveled by American bombs at this point, and it's still not as much as fucking law got bombed.

And christ yeah he cannot process it. And well I'm on the road to go to Garethronolds dot com for tour dates. Yeah, but feels feels wrong to do that. Yeah, hard promotion.

Well it's great.

I will put in a plug for the concept of death because as long as as long as men die. You know, there's all of these ghouls eventually had to face the end of of everything in the same way that that those people in Cambodia did. And one day it will come for Henry Kissinger and he will be frightened and alone and left.

I feel like he bombed the reaper. I mean he like he is the level of melting. I mean he is. I hope he dies.

I hope he just I hope he shits himself and then slowly dies over eight hours.

Well, yes, it needs to be like that. He needs to be. It needs to be a letting.

There's a you know, the one war criminal in all of history who got close to what he deserved is Ryan Hard Heydrich, the architect of the Holocaust, who stupidly charged a bunch of assassins and got wounded by a bomb and shatted into his own guts for several days until he died of sepsis over the course of a week and change. That's that's the kind of death. And and not just Kissinger. There's like thirty people we've named

It's great to hear a judge sentence Kissinger to that, like it would be you to shitting in your own guts for about a week after a bomb just embowels you. That's that's the right that's the right punishment for this kind of stuff, all right, Yeah, yeah.

Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.