Part Six: Kissinger

You can also pre order it in physical or in kindle form from Amazon or pretty much wherever books are sold. So please google a k press after the Revolution um or find an indie bookstore in your area and pre order it. You'll get assigned a copy and you'll make me very happy. So this is episode six. You know, we're what eight hours into talking about Mr Kissinger. Yeah, really meet me from eight hours ago, buddy. It's like when Bill and Ted meet each other halfway through and

they don't another journey they're about to go upon. Yeah, buddy, le up. So the things the thing that Kissinger gets the most credit for that we haven't mentioned. We we've talked about a bunch of the things that he gets credit for is bringing peace to the Middle East. Um, he does get credit for being that guy. Obviously he did not do that, but he did play a significant role in stopping what had been a decade's long cycle

of wars between Israel and the Arab nations around it. Now, to call that bringing peace would be ignoring a tremendous amount of ongoing violence against the Palestinian people. But Kissinger did help ensure Like you know, there were all these different like everyone would invade, YadA, YadA, YadA, there'd be a bunch of fighting. That doesn't really happen anymore. And

Kissinger is part of why that doesn't happen anymore. The gist of it is that on October sixth, nineteen seventy three, on Yam kapoor Um, Egypt and Syria launched a coordinated assault on Israel that for a time threatened the state's very existence. Kissinger had not spent much of his time working on Mid East related stuff up to this point. This was partly because Nixon thought having a Jewish man

negotiate with Arab countries would be a had idea. UM. It was also because Kissinger was kind of buried in Vietnam stuff right. But by October of seventy three, negotiations with Hannoi had been concluded, US forces had stepped back from an active role, and Kissinger had been awarded a Nobel Peace Prize with his Vietnamese counterpart Le Ducto. Absolutely now, I can't. There's no counter argument. Absolutely no, he he nailed it. Um, I mean now, Nobel Peace Prize. It

really doesn't. I mean, they must hit sometimes. I'm just familiar with a lot of the nose, though it seems mostly to be misss in my experience. When he got that, that's called the no. Yeah. And you know who felt that way, Gareth Lee Ducto, who was also awarded the Noble Peace Prize with Kissinger. I don't want mine. I don't want mine. Yeah. He literally was like, no, I'm not going to take it. The war isn't over yet.

Like all he's done. All we've done is negotiate the US no longer murdering people on the scale they had been, and he's in charge of it. Yeah. And its specifically, he was angry because right before the armistice was signed, in order to like try and force Hannoi to agree on some points, Kissing Your orchestrated a massive nighttime bombing campaign on Christmas of Hanoi. Um, they didn't bomb on Christmas Day, just the day before, in a bunch of

the days after. But it gets called the Christmas bombing. We're worried we'll hit center. Jolly blood on my hands. So Lee Docto was like, I don't I'm not going to take an award for peace with this guy. Suck him. So Kissing Your accepted it alone. Oh my god, he's such a cool dude. He's such a cool dude. More credit for me. I can't believe I'm the only one who go out that this year. I must be really good at this stuff. So yeah, he's like the con

wet Kanye of the Nobel Peace Price. Right right right, Sorry, you did great, But Kissinger had the best water of all time, of all time. It would have been really funny if Henry Kissinger had like shoved Taylor Swift off stage. You have the great, great piece, but come on talking about the baby. So by October of seventy three, Kissinger is free and clear and ready to get it on in the Middle East. And this actually went better than

you might think. Weirdly enough, Henry Kissinger was probably one of the fairest negotiators the United States ever sent into that conflict. In fact, he was more or less in constant tension with Israel because he would do stuff like try to halt arms shipments there, like during the Okimpor War. Right Israel's on a backfoot, They're in real danger of

being overrun. They want US weapons and like US arms and a bunch more F four Phantom planes, and Nixon agrees to give them to him, but Kissinger's like, we're not giving them anything until they can arrange for commercial flights to ship the weapons to them, because I don't want I'm trying to negotiate with UM, with Syria and Egypt, and if they see US military aircraft landing in UM Jerusalem to give the Israeli's weapons, that's gonna funk up

my negotiations. So like, he's actually really unpopular with a lot of folks in Israel because he does stuff like this. UM And in fact, Kissingers and obviously like every US negotiator in this conflict, Kissinger is more on israel side than anyone, but he's it's probably fair to say he's less on Israel side than any other negotiator we ever put in there, which is like some weird It sounds like he's the most progressive because I mean, like obviously we had we could give a funk. You know, he's

not a Zionist. For one thing. He doesn't have like there's not a you know, he's Jewish, but he's not really that. Like there there is some amount of, like as a Holocaust survivor. He believes strongly that, like you know, Israel needs to exist, so he does have that going for him. Again. He eventually agrees to ship them weapons on US planes after it becomes enough of an issue, but he like still moment of principles. The fact that

there's like any of that at all is weird. Yeah, I mean like he probably had like a little Nixon on his shoulder, who was like, I know, you're just gonna be a jew about them, and he was like, no, I will not not devil Nixon. It's weird how plugged in you are to how Nixon reacts to everything exactly. Yeah, oh man, So Kissinger's best relationship in the Middle East wound up being with anwar Sadat the president of Egypt.

The two like we're legitimately good buddies. They would kiss each other on the cheek like they liked each other. They found the one. Yeah. Meanwhile, Kissinger and Gold of My Ear, which was the leader of Israel, had a really contentious relationship. Um. At the end of the day, Kissinger again would always side with Israel on existential issues, but he wound up giving them a lot more ship

than you might expect. Now. The fact that the US eventually sends in arms turns the war around for Israel, which allows them their forces to deal decisive blows to Egyptian and Syrian militaries. But once Israel was out of kind of the period of most risk for them as a state, Kissinger starts to push back on them even harder. He's particularly enraged at the fact that they kept attacking while he was trying to negotiate a ceasefire. Um. And again, his main concern here this is not because he just

wants to stop the blood letting. It's really important to him to negotiate a peace and it be seen as Henry Kissinger brought peace to the Middle East, So he's pissed that they're fucking over his negotiations. And he cares more about his reputation than he does about Israeli military success forgetting about the people of Kissinger. Yes, exactly, the real chosen people. So when Israeli forces surround the Egyptian Third Army and encircle it, violating a ceasefire, Kissinger is

livid um and he's particularly angry. We're not getting as much into this aspect of his beliefs, but his whole thing in this period, the reason he organs like as we talked about in our China episode, and this like three way to a messy thing that he deals with China and the Soviet Union. Um, he wants what's called a balance of power. That's his whole thing. He's he gets a he's a he's a big cold warrior. Obviously he overthrows a lot of communist governments, but he's not

one of these people who thinks we can eliminate communism. Instead, he really wants like this balance of power, and he wants a balance of power in the Middle East between Israel and her neighbors too. And he's lived about in part that they violated the ceasefire. But he's also worried that, like well, if the Israelis wipe out the Egyptian third Army, that's going to mean Egypt is humiliated. And if they're humiliated, Sadat can't actually make peace and there's going to be

another war. And I want to try and stop the next war. Which but he is like broadly on the right side of this um. Yeah. Over the course of several chaotic days, he makes numerous trips between each of the belligerent nations in this war, negotiating with their heads of state, and one of his primary tactics is to mock whoever he'd just been talking to when he's in

front of the next person. So like that guy, yeah, when he's so when he's dealing with Hafes asad Or and Sadat, this means talking shit about the Israelis and often Jewish people in general to get on their good side. So when Israel violates that ceasefire, he has heard to complain at a meeting quote, if it were not for the accident of my birth, I would be anti Semitic.

Oh my god. On another occasion, he says, quote, and I need to remind you, this is a Holocaust survivor saying this, boy, any people who have been persecuted for two thousand years. Must be doing something wrong. Jesus Christ, he fucking said that. Holy sh it, man, we are

just we are just such fucking assholes. I'm on fire, I'm just now is so good down he kills at the clubs in Damascus, And yeah, he is actually like really popular with not all because there are other we have quotes from other like people who are like particularly other Egyptian military leaders under Sadat who are like well, Sadat's fallen forward. He's obviously just saying whatever he thinks will make us like him like he doesn't. Clearly he

can't believe this ship. He's just trying to like. There are people who see through it, but he he's able to trick The folks who matter, which is in this case are Sadat and and hafez Um. So all that aside. This period is again, broadly speaking, the one where Kissinger does the most actual good. But it's worth noting that even when he's on the right side of things. I think negotiating an end to a war is generally the

right thing to do when there's a war, um. But even when he's on the right side of things, his ego plays a massive and often toxic role in how

everything shakes out. See, well, all this is going on, Nixon is barreling towards impeachment, and a big part of why he's constantly over there, Like while all of the big milestones in the Watergate case hit, Like when when Nixon is like ordering the cover up and ship and doing the things that will get him impeached, Kissinger is always away, Like he's like very studiously as soon as the story breaks, like I need to be overseas as

much as fucking possible. So is it possible. He's competently trying to negotiate Middle East piece because he's trying to save his own ass and does Yeah, that is literally what's going on. Because he's he's not a dumb man. He sees that Nixon is fucked, and he doesn't like when I can't just be doing nothing. Yeah, and why don't I actually try to make this work? I guess I'm in another trouble domestically. Yeah, I mean that's it.

Like he wants to because part of it is he doesn't want to be near Nixon because Nixon's toxic, and part of it is like, well if if the last thing everyone remembers about Henry while Nixon is going down is that he ended war in the Middle East. I'm gonna keep being Secretary of State. You know. There's a friend of mine who had this theory when he was like he said, when it might even be a bit I don't remember. When he's in like a ride share, he won't talk, and then the last two minutes he'll

just take great interest. So he leaves on a real high note. And so it's like he's kind of like distant and not really doing much, and then the last two minutes and be like, oh that sounds great, well, good luck with your family. And then so that's kind of like he's just trying to leave, like leave on a high note. So the last thing he's going to try to do is actually decent after a bunch of bullshit. Yeah, when I when I enter a party, I set off an I e ed at the start of it, so

everyone's really like shaken up. But then at the end I handle it a six pack of beer, and right that means everybody is like, you know, that was the guy who dropped the idea, Oh, come on, he's the six pack guy in my opinion. That's who that guy is. That is how Henrica Securr handle everything. So yeah, now again,

but here here's the thing. The fact that like this is all existential for Henry right, ending the war in in between Israel and in her neighbors is like he knows he has to do this or he's not going to keep his gig um. So not only is he trying to negotiate peace, but he can't let anyone else play a role in bringing peace to the Middle East, right, because this is how this is his job interview and

you know how Henry kissing your treats job. You've seen what he'll do for a job interview, right, he won't do to get a job. I'd like, I can see

that list. So this becomes a problem when while this is all going on, this Egyptian and Israeli general, you've got this massive encircled Egyptian army, the Egyptian general in charge of that in the Israeli general like meet each other in the field between their armies and like sit down and start negotiating a ceasefire and figuring out how to pull like they start like talk like people like it's one of these weird moments in military history where

these guys are like, I think we can work something out, Like we don't need to be doing this anymore. Shoot the bit, kill them quick. So Henry is enraged when he hears this happening, and he's still and he starts again. All these people who, like in any other situation, neither like in Israeli general or in Egyptian general in the nineteen seventies, not guys you would expect to be the

voices of reason, but because his kissingers in the story. Yeah, so he starts maneuvering to make these guys shut the funk up. Um. He sends a letter to the Israeli ambassador asking what does Yarev? Yarev's the Israeli general selling here, tell him to stop. Suppose Yahrev comes out a great hero on disengagement, what do you discuss on December eighteenth, which is the next round of negotiations. I mean, he's such yeah, I mean, it's just what a heinous asshole.

I mean, I feel like he could still tell the credit towards him, but he's like, I love my fingerprint, sole I don't want to like get too into like what might have happened. Because I'm not an expert on either Egyptian or Israeli military history, but you have to think maybe it would have and good if like an Israeli general and an Egyptian general had like brought peace to the conflict, and like maybe that had been part of the military legacy in the area. Might have been nice.

I don't know. We're staring down the battle of a tragedy right now not recognized as the one so Kissinger A biography continues the story quote at Kissinger's behest, both Sadat and my year reigned in their generals at the kilometer one on one talks that's like where this army is encircled. The Israeli ambassador, although a Kissinger partisan, felt that it was largely a matter of ego. Kissinger's view was that if any concessions were to be made, they

should be made by him. Then it's recalled. He was very upset when he found out that things were actually being settled by the general's at Kilometer one on one. We had to make them stop. Ego was a weakness of his, but it was also the source of his greatness, which I might with the weakness is understating, yes, I'm in an air strike. Can we can we kill both generals? And if we're going to find no generals, these guys are getting a long way too well. And I didn't

I wasn't there. Listen, Dick, I know the Watergate stuff has you, but can we invade both countries? Come? So to his sort of credit though, the piece that Henry helped negotiate into the Yom Kipper War would prove to be durable, and it's set up diplomatic relations between Egypt and Israel for the next time. There's this very powerful moment when like gold of my Year, because like Sadak still can't talk directly to Israel. There's a whole like

diplomatic thing going on. But he tells Kissinger to tell her like I'm taking off my military uniform and I'm never going to wear it again, basically like things do. Like this is a really like good move in a lot of ways. Obviously that you could say this also like paves the way for nobody ever coming to help the Palestinians again, which is worth noting, but it does bring it into this series of like constant wars um. So yeah, what an amazing risk to take the to

be like you guys, stop, We'll do my version. We gotta do it my way, Yeah, the Franks then of Middle East peace negotiations. That is kind of the reputation he gets because obviously this plays incredibly well for Americans, and so Nick's Kissinger is seen as still this like massive hero, even while this is a big part of why he's so popular, even as the rest of the Edmund goes down in flames. Now, this inaugurates a period

of what comes to be known as shuttle diplomacy. That's a term you'll hear associated with Kissinger all the time, and it's him flying all these different countries in the Middle East and in Africa, him flying from like capital to capital for weeks on end, doing these negotiations where he's always the man in the center of things. Um Henry actually kind of grew addicted to throwing himself in the middle of international crises and flying NonStop between capitals

to do these negotiations. It was this and the popularity he earned from being seen as a peacemaker that arranteed him to keep his job in Ford's cabinet. One of the few upsides to Kissinger's career prior to the seventies is that he hadn't really fucked with Africa to any appreciable degree. Now this is not because Henry Kissinger would have an issue with fucking with Africa, but it is because the US, like, we didn't have a huge footprint and the continent until the sixties. You know, that's just

there's so many to ruin. Yeah, yeah, this is like him learning Spanish. He just never found the time. Anyone. I'm a little older than I get the times I can ruin. So um. Yeah. The the US footprint in Africa started up when the c I in like the early sixties. I think when the CIA murdered or allowed other people to murder. It's a little unclear. Patrice Lamumba, the left wing democratically elected leader of the Congo. The

US backed a right wing general. Well even calling like right and left are less useful terms of this, but we back a general called Joseph Mubutu, who proceeded to spend the next couple decades robbing the country blind. It seems like a pattern. Yeah, it happened. It's it's weird that it keeps happening all the time. UM. While there was other U S factory in Africa throughout the sixties and early seventies, it stated a fairly low EBB until April of nineteen seventy five, when Saigon fell to North

Vietnam now known as just Vietnam. Nineteen seventy five was known by some in the media as the Year of Intelligence, not because any particularly good decisions were being made, but because Congress was investigating the presidency over Watergate, and there was this big flood of public questions about clandestine foreign actions carried out under the ages of Cold War politics.

A lot of the stuff we were talking about in episodes like two, three, and four had started to leak by this point, and so people are like, there's this big national discussion about like what the what should we be doing? All the should we have like a CIA, like should we maybe? And there are like the CIA gets like the there's a reforming of the CIA that occurs in this period. You can, yeah, you a question

the degree to which it mattered. M Yeah, it may have made them less good at doing the bad things that they did, um, but not for lack of trying hard to imagine it's the reform in the CIA is the difference between overthrowing salvador I end and those like us guys pissing themselves in Venezuela after getting like arrested by fishermen. Um. For Henry Kissinger, though, the Year of Intelligence was a year where he spent trying to reorient the United States towards a new anti communist conflict. His

target this time was the nation of Angola. Now, Angola is a mid sized African nation located on the southwest coast of the continent, directly under the Congo and directly above Namibia. It's close enough to South Africa to get fucked with, but not so close that they can just send troops right over the border. You know, which is a better place to be than directly bordering South Africa

in this period. In nineteen sixty one, the people there are decided to have themselves a good old fashioned war of independence which lasted thirteen years, killed tens of thousands of people, and only ended when a coup overthrew the dictator of Portugal. Now this coup was, by the way, very weird. Most sources will describe it as a left wing coup against the dictator. The reality is a lot

more muddled. The guy who winds up in charge of Portugal on paper is a monocle wearing general um who's like him already yeah yeah, and he's not really leftist, but the powers behind him are some very left wing army officers. They form a new democratic government, which includes several elected communist leaders. So Portugal has like elected communist deputies. Now Henry Kissinger flips the funk out at this. He is certain the country will fall to Soviet influence. Interestingly,

like this datent he's worked at with the Soviets. A big part of it is this idea that like, well, the Soviets have their sphere of influence in the East, and we have like the West has its sweet sphere of influence in Western Europe and the So it's kind of hold to that here because they don't get involved in Portugal. They don't like try to make push things further in their direction. Henry is like convinced they're going

to and is absolutely wrong because paranoia from Nixon. He was like, well, yeah, yeah, um, Portugal eventually elects other people. Like again, the government stays fairly left wing by his standards, but like it does not as you might notice it does not join the Iron curtain, you know, right, It's yeah, Kissinger is just like there's we have some quotes from He's absolutely certain that like they're about to go full Stalinist,

because again he's wrong about most things. Actually, he does not have a good understanding of like what's going to happen anywhere. No, it's just almost at this point he's hunt around so long that you're kind of just like, I guess he must know. I mean you want to know about He's probably like he like he must know something.

I think it's worth looking at, like what happens, like Henry's expectations for what's going to happen in Portugal versus what happens, and then think back to Chile where like Hendry's like is gonna lead to they're gonna go full communeist and it's going to be you know, no, maybe if I had stated in power there just wouldn't have been a dictator and things would have been fine, and they would have had a lot less problems than they see how many people die in the communist version, Yeah,

probably less. The puppets that we put in power are not like these amazing like peacekeepers it's just it's just like everyone, We're like the Midas of genocides. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So the biggest international result of the coup is that the new Portuguese government had no stomach for colonies, right. Uh. They negotiate a treaty with the three largest militant groups in Angola in seventy five. These were the f n

l A, the mp l A, and UNITA. Um. The non acronym names of all these groups are in French. I am I'm not I'm not even gonna try absolute. Um. What you need to know is that the mp l A were Marxists, right, Um, kind of Marxists. They were formed at least the chanization had been formed by members of angles intelligencia who were Marxist, and Marxism had like a big influence on the m p l A. Unfortunately, like yeah meanwhile, like kind of so that's one faction.

The fn l A and UNITA are are generally described as being right wing groups. But this is one of those things where like grafting Western political terms onto the civil war and Angola does not work great. Um. All of these groups, even the ostensibly Marxist m p l A, are very tribal in origin, and by that I mean like they are based on specific tribal grievances and tribal like like arguments, right, that are going on in the region.

Um as opposed to like being clearly like, well we're pro communist, we're anti communists, Like that's really less of what's going on. Made. Yeah. Um For an example of how useless a strict ideological lens is here, UNITA was initially very left wing and its messaging attacking the United

States as quote the notorious agents of imperialism. Unitis fighters were literally really trained by North Korean soldiers, but by the end of the civil war in Angola, they had been receiving arms from the Reagan administration for years, brokered via their paid representative, Paul Manifort. So that's the kind of war this is where like United starts off being like we're gonna end American imperialism, and by the end they're like, Paul Manafort, get us weapons. If you're get

next to this manifest character, it's a good time. Yeah, just like to show you how weird this is. Technically, in the Angolan Civil War, Paul Manafort and North Korea are on the same side, I feel like fifty years old. Yeah, um, yeah, I mean and by the end it is fair to say that, like by the end of the Civil war, United's like leader Jonah Sambi is calling himself an anti communist,

that's his messaging, but he's less about anti communism. And again they're specific local grievances he has with the m p l A, and like that's more why they're fighting than that he like believes strongly in anti communism. He just knows that's how you get weapons. Okay, that's right. He speaking the language, right, Yeah, and when North Korea is training his guys, he's not into jua, you know, He's like he wants to train his guys. Yeah. Right now.

The fn l A is led by a guy named and that's the other usually called a right wing faction, is led by a guy named Holden Roberto who used to work with Sevimbi before sevenby formed United. I know, this is a very complicated conflict. I'm sorry. Um. They're generally described as like right wing, and they did receive aid from the CIA, so that would like okay, yeah, definitely right wing getting aid from the CIA. They also

got military aid from China. Romania, India, Algeria, ZI Year, the A f L C I O, and the Ford Foundation or at least aid of some sort. So it gets like the sides here are just fucking baffling, Like the tender Swindler. There's working every side. Yeah, China, the C I A and the A f L C I O shaking hands over backing. Yeah, it's like big brother,

what you guys here too? We Foundation, Wow. The m p l A, which these again are the kind of Marxist guys and if you're of the three factions, they are the ones who most do believe in like a political thing that like we would recognize in terms of

like left right sides. They are partly armed by the Soviet Union, which should not be surprising, but most of their military aid comes from Cuba, and we're not really going to get into it, but it's worth noting, like how substantial Cuban aid is to the m p l A. Cuba starts sending soldiers to Angola in November of seventy five, and by they had more than fifty five thousand soldiers in the country, and like that's a trick. I don't know if you guys know this but Cuba in the

west coast of Africa not super close. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's a bit of a jaunt, yeah uh. And that's also a long involvement. You know, they're in there more than a decade um. There's a lot of commitment here, so as is generally Cuban. Now, as is generally the case, all of the communists were not an agreement about Angola. The People's Republic of China did not particularly care about like a left wing struggle in Angola. They wanted to keep Soviet power at bay on a continent where they

were starting to do some business themselves. So China and the US work together to support the fn l A and UNITA. This is exactly the sort of thing Kissinger had been going for when he pushed to connect the U S diplomatically to China. I want to quote now from a write up by Maria Gouda of Wilford Laurier University. Quote. This was part of Kissinger's grand strategy of triangular diplomacy.

Triangular diplomacy was essentially the US exploiting the relationship between communist China and the Soviet Union to create a three way to taunt between the countries with the US at the Helm. Kissinger was not pushing for covert operations through the CIA in order to elevate American standing in China, because Nixon and Kissinger were orchestrating something larger. This was

to use China as a counterweight against the Soviets. Kissinger's emphasis on triangular diplomacy caused him to view regional conflict in terms of involvement on the Chinese and the Soviets, not in terms of a local struggle. So he very much sees this as a battle ground between different ideologies. But anyone who knows anything about the angles of orbit knows that, like, no, that's not really what's going on.

Like everyone is, like everyone is in here, and it is certainly not like about what kind of political ship individual parties believe. Um, yeah, the side. You can't graph these easily under like a Western axis. But as Isaacson writes, Angla became quote a vivid example of Kissinger's tendency to

see complex local struggles in an East West context. In all respect to Kissinger, wrote Jonathan Quitney in his study of the Angolan War, one really has to question the sanity of someone who looks at an ancient tribal dispute over control of distant coffee fields and sees it as a Soviet threat to the security of the United States. I mean, what a guy. Yeah, it's like, I mean

it's also I mean it's it's so again. I mean, the ego on this fucking dude to be able to just go into things massive conflicts, have no clue and make it that binary and think that he's doing anything. I mean, he's just he's just so emboldened. Yeah, he's emboldened. He just like he's so arrogant that he's like, well, I don't do me a favorite. Could some of you wear red shirts and some of you wear blue kind

of time, let's do shirt skins. Huh. Yeah. I don't need to, like Henry Kissinger, don't need to like understand the actual dimensions of why these sides are fighting. I can just assume that it graphs onto every other conflict I've ever cared about. Knowledge is weakers. Yeah, and this is like, He's not the only American to be arrogant in this specific way about a conflict in Africa, but

the last he's the last one. He would be the last thing last since then so c i A. Funding for UNITA in the f n l A was initially quite low, but Kissinger pushed for an escalation, and soon the agency had poured twenty two million dollars in covert support for both of these groups. Kissinger felt they were thinking small, though. He believed that after suffering a public defeat in Vietnam, US foreign policy needed to come back.

And yeah, baby, yeah, yeah, everybody cares what. Everyone's plugged in. You're gonna love my new stuff. The problem with Vietnam is that it was too distant from American concerns. And that's it. That's the problem now. He yeah, So he believes that, like Angola is going to be our fucking comeback tour. It's the equivalent of I don't know one one of the times Elton John did a did a did a farewell tour. I got yeah something something like that.

He's not his night. Yeah, there's a lot of similarities between Henry Kissinger and Elton John's musical Yeah Bumming Jets. Yeah. Actually, tiny dancer that song is about is about Henry Kissinger. He is a tiny dancwer. Um he's he is. He is a little guy. So yeah, Kissinger wants to prove that the United States is still a global power, and he also wants to prove that Henry Kissinger has like is still a Secretary of State with some teeth. You know, he's just like seated a bunch to the fucking in

these negotiations with Vietnam. The big piece of mind to Hendry Kissinger, Yeah, he is, like everyone is going to see Vietnam as an l for me. So so yeah, you could kind of see his attitude in Angola as like the powerful sociopath version of buying a sports car to impress like twenty year olds, like when you're you know, an old man. Yeah right, he's his midlife for a crisis. And the people around Kissinger are a lot less bullish

about escalating involvement in Angola. Uh and in fact this includes like the fucking CIA, but they had really big shoes to fill, to be Yeah, they're just like, we don't want any part of this right now. Wow, you guys are really negative, you guys. It's ala. Where is the wind? Gotta be a fucking hole in one baby. In June of seventy five, Kissinger holds a meeting with President Ford, the Defense Secretary the Joint chiefs of Staff

and the head of the CIA. They discussed the invasion of Angola, and while most of that meeting is still classified, we know Kissinger urged what he called a diplomatic offensive quote, if we appealed to the Soviets to not be active, it will be a sign of weakness. He played on stereotypes of Africa as mysterious and wild, claiming it is an area where no one can be sure of its judgments.

Next Guda rights quote, revealing his talent for manipulation. Kissinger used daunting and dramatic language to illustrate the situation in Angola as he saw it, by giving the impression that there was no way to tell how the Engolden civil war would play out, kissing, You're pushed forward the idea that the US had better get involved in Angola through

tangible or covert means before it was too late. The US, through the CIA needed to support the f and l A and united to repeat to prevent the dominance of the Soviet backed m p l A. This view wholly disregards the idea that the Angolan Civil War was indeed that a civil war. Kissinger was positioning Angola in a wider east first his West context. Oh my kids, you

got biggie, You've got Tupac. I mean, only the United States can want to be and like, only the United States can be sold on getting involved in a conflict. Or he's like, we have no clue what's going on, so we gotta get that. Really throw our dicks in this one. Come on, guys, let's get moving. It could be crazy. And this is one where like the US actually doesn't really want to get involved. Like this, Kissinger is the one pulling everyone else in here. He's a

marketing wizard. Yeah, And and based on his urgings, the CIA comes up with a plan called I a feature Um. It was a covert par paramilitary operation in which US military advisors and special forces would be sent to Angola in a manner basically identical to how US involvement in Vietnam started. Kissingers literally like, let's do that again, baby, Let's see it goes pretty good? Will we do it? This? This is how I get to bomb Namibia. That's my

vision board is dreams of flattening the Congo. I woke up, I thought that I had done this. Now despite the fact that the CIA did come up with this plan at his behest. There's intense resistance within the agency, a lot of whom think Kissinger has lost his fucking mind. And thus CIA director William Colby joins our pantheon of bad guys who seem reasonable because Henry Kissinger is involved.

So Kobe is like pretty rattled by how Vietnam ended um and also by the fact that there's all these congressional inquiries into like the c A doing a bunch of other terrible ship right there actively being investigated right now. So this isn't Koby being a good guy. This is Kobe being like, I don't want to drive when I've got you know, ship in the car basically right like I'm holding right now, you know what. Honestly, any other time, I'm just fucking angle a crazy, like I'm just sucking

going nuts. But it's just not the right time. We got it right right now. Yeah, he's the guy who's like, he's like kiss it just like on a casino floor and he's been cheating, and like the securities gathered and they're whispering and pointing at him. He notices, and he's still playing. He keeps going. He's gonna let it write

on black one more time many times hit me. So the forty Committee, which again kissing your heads, approves I a feature, but William Kolby is like, okay, but I'm going to insist we actually go to Congress to have the funds appropriated. That's branch those guys, what oh my god. Versions So while Kissinger argues for his covert operators, South Africa sends troops in to support the fn l A and Unita, who it again originally been trained by North Korea.

So there's fin l A troops who received training from both South Africa and North Korea. This is just a very weird war. So China has the reaction we're all having and it's like, you know what, this is too messy for me. I don't even need this right now, Like I got other ship going on. And they kind of bounced from the situation. Okay. The Soviets and the Cubans, though, extend more aid to the m p l A, who win the war handily and installed themselves in the capital

Luwanda by the end of nineteen seventy five. So a few weeks after this, the CIA holds an inter Agency Working Group meeting with Kissinger to discuss how to ask Congress to send in US advisors and like, at this point, the war is lost and they're Kissingers like, no, we gotta get some guys in there. No one else wants this, right, they're all everyone else is like, this seems like way more of a hassle. Come on, let's keep going shots. Yeah, the CIA is already puking from how much they've had

to drink in Vietnam. Come on, I brought absence. Let's go, so Kissinger or so, yeah, they have this meeting, um and like, so Kissinger has a meeting with h one of the like a guy in this with this a bunch of people, and then like they hold a separate meeting afterwards with the CIA about what Kissinger had said.

So like basically Kissinger now yeah. So basically they present Kissinger with a report on like what would have to be done to send US advisors into Angola, and Kissinger reads the report and rather than giving a yes or a no, he grunts and walks out of his office. So after this, all of these CIA guys have to sit down and decide like what does Henrykissinger grunting mean? But this guy was really good at deciphering what Henry grunts mean. Well, gentlemen, it was a pretty long grunt,

which is never good. It's a sid grunt, which for Henry means he's a little agitated. I'm gonna quote about writing about this meeting Kissinger, a biography by Walter Isaacson. Everyone found this rather disconcerting, especially since Kissinger was heading off for Beijing. Well, someone asked, was it a positive grunt or a negative grunt? Moka, He paused, it was just a grunt, he explained, like mp, I mean, it

didn't go up or down. Stockwell, the agent in charge marveled as a group of Somber officials supervising the nation's only extant war sat around a table trying to decipher a Kissinger grunt. Malka. He provided his imitation of the grunt, once again emphasizing its flatness. Someone else at the other end of the table tried it. There were a few experiments contrasting positive grunts with the voice rising than a

negative one with the voice falling. Different people attempted it. Well, asked the CIA officer who was cheering the meeting, do we proceed with the advisors Malka. He scowled and puffed on his pipe. We better not, he finally said, trying to decipher his boss's mind. Because since you're just decided not to send Americans into the SIGNI there were a lot of nods. The request for advisors was shelved. It was an amazing way to run a war, Malka, he

said years later as he recalled the incident. Oh. Yeah, by the way, this is they accidentally wrote a home improvement script at the end of this This is actually where the show came from. Tom and Taylor. It was it was like no, no, I was like, okay, I

like that. That sounds a little more positive. It's just like, what a moment for the United States, all these fucking spooks with blood on their hands being like, well, it's like or like you know, because you do, at least at some point in your existence, for the most part, you do believe that when someone is saying the Central Intelligence Agency that it is really like working on intelligence and gather and and is intelligent and is a body

that is actually you know, processing information that potentially you don't have access to, and instead they're just sitting around a fucking table going like do the grunt again, Jim, Yeah, it real again. It reveals And this is I think where a lot of folks on the left kind of mix up viewing the CIA is like hyper competent, and it's where a lot of people everywhere up viewing Kissinger is hyper competent. Like no, they have a lot of

power and they use it badly. But like at the end of the day, Kissinger doesn't have the balls to like say yes or no on something, and so he grunts and then all of these fucking again bloody handed monsters spend an entire meeting like repeating the grunt and trying to figure out if it means yes or no. And there's no like it's so unchecked. I mean there, you there, and it's it's still is that it? But it's just there's nobody there to be like, hey, this

is fucking nuts. Yeah. Instead they're like, do the grunt again, try to grown again, yes or nod? Dan have the best grunt? Dan, do it again, because I want to play it slow for everyone. Bro. It's while I think it's Sad's ambivalent. Having known Henry for a little while, he's pissed. So the CIA's request for another twenty eight million in funding, and the discussion of sending an advisors was again leaked to see Moore Hirsh. Congress cut off all aid. He obviously he puts out an article about it.

Congress cuts off aid to Angola. As a result of this, Kissinger does not get his way, but the CIA money he'd already funneled into United helped the group stay alive. The Golden Civil War did not officially end until two thousand two. Although again this is one of those things. This is a really nasty civil war. It lasts a

ridiculous amount of time. Kissinger gets a lot of the blame, but we should also note that like Paul Manafort is much more on this, Like he is the guy maniforts, the guy who brings Savimbi to you see and gets Reagan to send a funk load of weapons over to like really escalate things. Thank god for Reagan. Yeah, thank god for Reagan. But it is amazing that this fucking goes on into two thousand two. Crazy, Yeah, what a legacy, What a legacy. So I have teased y'all that Kissinger

has a Rhodesia connection. Um, And yet again, the funniest thing about this is that it's one of the least fucked up things he's ever involved in. But the story is kind of funny, so I'm gonna tell it anyway. So in Rhodesia, you've got this country, we're about eight percent of the population at the height of like white population in Rhodesia, about eight percent of them are white, but they hold effectively a hundred percent of the political power.

This obviously is not something a lot of the black people living there like sure, for reasons I don't think I need to explain. So some of them decide to fight back, and there's a number of rebel groups and soon in an ugly insurgent war between the Rhodesian government, which by the way, is an international pariah right there, like atually not supposed to exist basically, um so no

one can legally sell them arms. So everything has to get like smuggled through South Africa, and the soldier of Fortune magazine winds up sending a bunch of fighters over William F. Buckley Jr. Or William F. Buckley raises money for them. YadA YadA, YadA. Very nasty war. We've talked about it in other episodes. Yeah, it is it is a go fund me war. So by the time Kissinger is in office, the white minority government of Rhodesia has spent years locked into the losing side of a grinding

insurgent campaign. The international community widely condemns Rhodesia as an apartheid state, and there's a bunch of arms embargoes um. And in fact, pretty much everyone hates Rhodesia except for South Africa and the US right wing, who see the Rhodies as anti communist crusaders. Kissinger was locked into an awkward position here. He wanted to negotiate an end to the fighting and an end to the white supremacist government of Rhodesia, but he also doesn't want to piss off

his right wing base too much. You know, this is like a really messy situation for him. Yeah. So policy towards Rhodesia in the Nixon years. Um, there's a plan Nixon approved to South Africa in nineteen sixty nine that is like US policy in Rhodesia for nearly a decade, and it is literally called I am sorry for saying this, but Nixon calls US plans like the US stance towards

Rhodesia quote the tar Baby option on the podcast. Oh my god, at least there's no stream of white supremacy through American This was the one time it's like I can't believe the guy fucking recorded himself for like, this is not just recorded himself. This isn't just like Nixon saying a slur in a conversation with his buds. This is an official US government policy. Yeah, we write this out places someone it down. I was like, okay, I'll hand it in if you're share Mr President's pretty demand.

This is this is not just towards Rhodesia. This is towards all of like South Africa, to these like white minority governments in Africa and the premises that quote, the whites are here to stay and the only way that constructive change can come is through them. So it's so and it really hasn't changed that much. We just have fancier titles. Yeah, we're we we don't put the slurs right in the title. Yeah, we don't reguard the president

and we don't put the slurs in the title. So the policy is sold to American liberals and moderates by basically saying the only way to liberate Black Africans is to improve their economic outcomes through trade, and that means dealing with the white government's right because yeah, it's really

really tech. We've just changed it to tech essentially. Yeah, we would maintain the document declared public opposition to racial repression, but relax political isolation and economic restrictions on the white states. I mean, it's fucking crazy, Like, you know, the problem here is that people don't like the eight percent white people that run the entire fucking place. It's one of those we continue, and we'll always have debates over like

sanctions and like when they're good and bad ideas. But the argument here is that, like, we can't sanction South Africa and Rhodesia because it will hurt black people. And the degree to which that's a lie is that, like, well, you're saying, we have to start selling them fucking weapons so that they can oppress black people in order to improve economic outcomes for black people. And perhaps that's fucking insane. Um, it's a little more nuanced than that, by not by

a lot, not much, not much. To his credit. When Nixon is out and Ford is in, Kissinger kills the racial slur option, and he authors a new plan, one that is a lot better and that is actually focused on spirited opposition to white minority rule in Rhodesia. Kissinger gives a big speech in Lusaka that immediately enrages the right wing of the Republican Party. Basically, he's like, our plan, like under Ford, we want to bring an end to the government in Rhodesia, like government the right way. It's

like unbelievable. Yes, Ronald Reagan of the Populist you can't disenfranchise seven percent of Rhodesia. Have you seen the color of their goddamn skin. That is essentially what Ronald Reagan says um if he denounces Kissinger's plan is undercutting the possibility of a quote, just an orderly settlement, and argues that it will provoke a massacre of white people. Boy, I mean, you want to have a head popping moment. Try to find a good guy in a Reagan Kissinger debate.

It is. It is an amazing fight. It's just like, yeah, I hate everyone involved in this. We should pay more attention to the white people. I think we need to be careful. I feel like you're both conning me into something. I mean like you guys are a good cop, bad copy, and you're working for the same outcome. Look, Henry, I'm not sure why I think you're wrong in this, but you must be. The other guy's got to be wrong too, though,

So I don't really know what to do here. Don't trust Reagan and hate him, but kissing your you're the worst person on the planet. So I call a bit of a pickle. Yeah, this is a doozy of an issue. I've got to go in the other room and do some grunning. Yeah, so he Yeah, what's happening here is that Kissinger is trying to wrench US government policy in Africa away from supporting explicitly racist regimes in Africa, and he's trying to get into a country club or something.

There's gotta be some angle of I mean, obviously, the same reason he does anything right. He wants to be seen as being the guy who negotiates right into these big issues, and he's trying to I think he recognizes by this point that like, well, Republicans aren't going to stay in power forever. But I him re Kissinger when I have a shot that being in power still, and maybe if I if I get rid of this bad government Rhodesia. People will be like, enri que, let's give

him a gig. You know. He accidently stumbles into yes, the proper outcome because personally he wants to end it, and so he sees the way to end it is actually the way that's good. It's not we're lining up Henry's personal interests with a prudent solution. And happened that at Eclipse is very rare. Yeah, it's he's like a guy who like stops a home invader from murdering a family.

But but but it's later found out that it's because he was hitting on a fifteen year old girl, like he was trying to flirt with their daughters and stuff like. It's like that sort of situation where it's like, well, good, I guess like he stops a robbery because he was peeping through a window that he felt Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it is. It is hard to find the moral lesson to take out of it. Um. So yeah, obviously the Reagan right loses their minds over what Kissinger's doing here.

Pat Buchanan, a former Nixon speech writes in a column quote, it is too early to determine if Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's safari through Black Africa did greater damage to US policy interests or to President Ford's hopes in the remaining primaries. I mean again, I like it, just it needs to stop. Where like this this never ending? What

does it due to your reelection chances? Ship? And it's like that we were so conditioned to that being how we operate and do everything, as opposed to actually just trying to do the thing that does long term good. And what would you do the thing that is long term good? Is exactly You're right, You're right. I mean, it's true, but it's I don't know, it's just it's a foregone conclusion now that everything is viewed through the prism of what is it due to the poll numbers?

Can I just say take off your masks? Yeah. So Kissinger did not achieve a tremendous amount in Rhodesia while he was Secretary of State. He got ian Ian Smith, who's the leader of Rhodesia, to agree to a two year turnover from minority rule to an actual democracy. But the way he did this was by assuring Smith that Black moderates had agreed that during the turnover whites would remain in control of the military and police. This was a lie. The black people in Rhody, like like the

black moderates in Rhodesia, had never agreed to this. He's just lying the Smith to get him to agree to this um and the whole anytime there's like a two year deal that you're like, that's just your way of like letting it sort of settle so that you can pushing you the fun or exactly. Yeah, the story of the negotiations is classic Kissinger. He's telling everyone what they want to hear and then kind of weaseling his way into getting people to sign things that make him look good.

This right up from The New York Times sums it up well. Mr Smith has said he agrees to the five point plan he made in public because he had received assurances from Mr Kissinger that the black leaders had accepted the whole package, including Mr Smith's edition on white menace on the white ministers. In his view, either the

blacks have renegged or Mr Kissinger misled him. The Blacks, such as President Julius Neurere of Tanzania, insists that they did not give their approval to the details of the five point plan only to the general thrust of majority rule in two years, leaving it to Britain to work out details later with black and white Rhodesians. They say they would have rejected the proposal for white ministers. Mr

Kissinger and his aids have been evasive. On October, Mr Kissinger said on television that I think everybody is telling the truth. What an incredible guy. Wow, the baddest. That is the best bullshit statement ever ending. I believe. I'm not sure everyone's lying. It's awesome. I think everyone who is the bad guy in Rhodesia nobody ever you need

a bad guy. In the end, the talks collapsed. The war continued on for two more years until the Rhodesian Strategic Fuel Reserve was blown up by insurgents and the government was forced to the table. Kissinger and his supporters would later claim that the eventual piece was negotiated on the terms laid out during Kissinger's negotiations. That's kind of questionable.

It's probably it is fair to say that that by coming in very strongly, and he was very unequivocal about condemning the government of Rhodesia by doing this as the Secretary of State, Kissinger caused a shift that led to a significant increase in trust of the US by Black

African nations. Um, you know, yeah, obviously it's one of his better moves from an ethical standpoint, but an ego move still, everything is an Obviously, it's a it's a sign of how much more fucked up things become that doing this broadly good thing causes the beginning of the end of his career in politics. Of course, it's like I can't help the black people. That's it. You're done. Yeah, yeah, that that's it for you, kissing. But to be fair, at worked for me. That's why I did it. We know,

but we know, buddy. But you know what won't fail to bring peace to Rhodesia. What's that the sponsors of this podcast, who orchestrated the destruction of the Rhodesian Strategic Field reserve that that is, we are sponsored entirely bye by the Rhodesian rebel forces. Um, here's an ad ah,

we're back. Good stuff. Yes, so yeah. On the whole, Kissinger's last year or so as Secretary of State involved his least number of war crimes per month, which point to personal growth, but probably points to the fact that he and Nixon had just exhausted the US government's ability to do shady ship. We needed a breather, right, we had to take a breather. It took us a few

years to get geared up for Reagan. You know. Yeah, he's like he's been go ahead, Dave, We've just kidded so many It's like, no, Like why do we dig up? We dig them up and kill them again, Like it's we're out of ammunition. He's like, he's no longer a starting QB's being traded. He's riding the pine. Yeah, he's got like he got a wrist injury, you know, he's yeah, he's on I R for the year. Yeah, so the last one of his escapades were going to cover them.

His Kissinger's relationship with the Kurds not yeah, baby christ. The Kurdish people are the largest ethnic group on Earth without a nation of their own. They make up large chunks of southern Turkey, southern Iran, Northern Iraq, in northeast Syria. Now, if you look at this kind of broad Kurdistan region

on a map, you'll notice a couple of things. For one, it's all landlocked, which means if if you were and there was a lot of talk when like colonial powers left started to leave the Middle East after World War Two that like should and promises were in fact made to the Kurds. Um. One of the issues that comes up is that it's going to cause like severe economic

difficulties because they would be landlocked. Um. You'll also note that their territories all tend to exist in chunks of states that have wound up fighting each other repeatedly over the last half century or so, right, Turkey and Syria around and exactly, and the Kurds were used on purpose by basically everyone as buffer zones and proxy fighters in these conflicts. Now, starting in the Niction administration, the Shot

of Iran had a problem. He was engaged in an escalating conflict with a new sexy, young dude on the block, Saddam Hussein of a rat. Now, can I just say right away, I like both these guys. They seem like they're both gonna go good places. So the shot acides he wants to arm. He wants the US to arm Kurdish fighters in order to give Saddam some trouble in ease up pressure. Um, the ostensible leader of the Kurdish people struggle in Iraq at this time as a guy

named Mustapha Barzani. Now, Mustafa had been leading his people in battle against the Iraqi state prior to Saddam taking power for like a decade at this point, and he had repeatedly begged the United States for aid. The US traditionally did not like Barzani because he had spent a decade exiled in the Soviet Union and had some socialist e tendencies. But the Israelis and the Shah had experienced great luck in using the Kurds to keep Saddam, who

taken power pretty recently, off of their back. Kurdish rebels tied up eighty percent of the Iraqi military during the nineteen sixty seven war against Israel and are probably a big part of the reason why Iraq did not join in that war. In April of nineteen seventy two, Saddam signed a treaty of friendship with the Soviet Union. This finally tipped things with the friendship is just a great term. I mean, it is a nice term. When I was seven at a tree, Yeah, can you sign my broke contract?

It comes with a K forty seven. We are signing the BFF treaty. So this finally tips things for the NIXT administration, and Kissinger gives the go ahead for CIA Director Richard Helms to express American sympathy with the Kurds and to clare our quote readiness to consider their requests for exist for assistance. Next from a write up in Foreign Policy, in early nineteen seventy four, Saddam violated the terms of the March Accord and unilaterally imposed a watered

down version of autonomy for the Kurds. Barzani responded by traveling to Iran, where he met with the SHAW and the CIA station chief to request US backing for a plan to set up an Arab Kurdish government that would

claim to be the sole legitimate government of Iraq. As Kissinger wrote in his nineteen ninety nine memoir Years of Renewal, Barzani's request triggered a flood of communications among US officials focused on two questions, whether the United States would support a unilateral declaration of autonomy and what level of support

the United States was willing to give the Kurds. The c A in particular warned against increasing US assistants, but Kissinger was dismissive of CIA director William Colby's caution, writing quote Colby's resistance was as unrealistic as Barzani's enthusiasm. Nixon ultimately decided to increase to increase US assistants to the Kurds, including the provision of nine hundred thousand pounds of Soviet made weapons that the CIA had stockpiled and a one

million dollar lump sum of refugee assistants. In April of nineteen seventy four, Kissinger, why why the Soviet weapons? Is that confuse things you don't want people see in them? With US weapons, that's gonna make it seem like we're involved in what an amazing move? I mean, it's dope murder. Yeah. So in April of nineteen seventy four, kiss Kissinger sent Nixon's orders to the US ambassador in Tehran. This cable was important because it laid out a succinct proclamation of

US interests of VISA VI the Kurds. The objectives, he wrote were to a give the Kurd's capacity to maintain a reasonable base for negotiating recognition of rights by Baghdad government. B to keep present Iraqi government tied down, but see not to divide Iraq permanently because an independent Kurdish area would not be economically viable. And US and Iran have no interest in closing the door on good relations with

Iraq under moderate leadership. But there are are I mean, I'm not crazy, but there are landlocked countries that stands a huge amount of oil. Yeah, it's such a crazy thing that they're saying, like, it's just it's fucking insane what they are doing. What Kissinger is establishing and writing here is US policy towards Kurdish people for more than

half a century. And the idea comes down to, we will provide them with aid and weapons when they fight our enemies, but only to such an extent that they achieve minor tactical successes, never enough to allow them permanent autonomy, because that's going to upset the balance of power. Right, This has been ever since. This is what we do with the curs right, And Kissinger is the guy who

lays it out first. Now, Mustapha Barzani made the terrible mistake of believing that the US actually supported his people's independence. For three years, the Kurds battled Saddam, sustaining thousands of casualties but then, in nineteen seventy five, the Shaw and Saddam made peace, and the SHAW asked the CIA to cut off all aid to the Kurds. As part of a deal with Iraq. The weapons Kurdish fighters had relied upon suddenly dried up. Barzani's fighters were massacred. Thousands fled

to Iran, but were turned away by the Shaw. Desperate, Mustafa cabled Kissinger, whom he had gratefully sent three rugs and a golden pearl necklace's wedding gifts just months earlier, Your excellency, the United States has a moral and political responsibility to our people. Kissinger never replied. Later that year, the House Intelligence Committee asked him to justify this betrayal.

He responded, covert actions should not be confused with missionary where, oh my god, so cool, Like you don't understand that sometimes I'm also just doing missionary stuff. Yeah. The key is that I don't give a ship as he stands naked on his rug with just his pearl necklace song speaking of mission narity. So in the nineteen seventy six presidential elections, Ronald Reagan attempted to primary Gerald Ford from

the right. The Reagan campaign targeted Kissinger heavily, not for his numerous war crimes, but because of the fact that he had made a de taunt with the Soviet Union. Right, that's why there because it's amazing to be like, you know what, the rights actually got a point. He committed war crimes in Vietnam. I mean, you're talking about a guy who's killed millions of innocent people. No, that's actually

not that said. We're at the peace stuff. We're pissing there a little angry at some of this peace stuff he's been lacking in. They are specifically they're livid that like part of the Dean means Kissinger was like, we're not gonna funk with Soviet spheres of influence in Eastern Europe, and Reagan and his college to like, well, this means

they're just giving up Eastern Europe to communism. You know right Away's communism exactly, it's fascist communists, I mean, and Kissinger's political instincts and charm we're sufficient to find off an attempt because there's within the Ford administration, there's an attempt to get forward to promise to fire him in a second term, largely because they think it will help him win the primary against Reagan and Nixon beats everyone here.

He manages to get forward to be like, no, I would never fire Henry Kissinger, but this is no, no, no no, not. Kissinger succeeds in doing that with four okay, So I thought, like, it's like, if you're listening to it at this point, there's a lot of mixing in the area. You know, you mix it up. He's just at a cupboard in the White House. Still, Gerald can't be some Gin also

keep Hank around. So the fact that Henry wins the fight within the Ford administration means that he becomes like a major marketing term for the Reagan campaign, right, Like they not stop. In fact, they institute a plank in the Republican Party that year that's basically the anti Kissinger plank that says, like, you will never accept that like communist states should exist anywhere. Essentially, that's kind of what they do, stabbing him in the heart. Yeah it is.

It's amazing, um, And it's amazing. It's a it's a mark of like how much he fucked things up that you can't even feel good about his downfall because he's replaced by people who just suck even more. Yes, um, So, Ronnie felt the spheres of influence that Kissinger had established with the Soviet Union were giving up the Eastern like

block to communism. He also attacked Kissinger for negotiating with Panama's new government because Henry was willing to give the Panama Canal back to the Panamanian people, to the Panama So and Reagan wrote that thing, but they were so No, there's no clay, have no claim to that canal. Yeah, Reagan said in the speech, we built it, we paid for it, and we're going to keep it. Um. Refer to our two part on the US and Panama. More

on that one. So Reagan's primary attempt failed, but by struggling against the rising far right, Kissinger had hammered the final nail into his political career's coffin. In the Ford administration's last days, a dark alliance materialized, and, smelling blood in the water, they acted to cut Kissinger off from

any future career in Republican politics. The three main members of this alliance were Paul Wolfowitz from the CIA, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Secretary of Defense Donald ru God baby, yeah, it's like for Kissingers, it's like killing Satan and then three winged demons fly out of him. Yeah, it's so funny. It is so funny. Um, really funny. Um and in fact so uh kissing your Kissinger like Rumsfeld, he sees

is almost like a protege. Like Hei and Rumsfeld are very close, and when Rumsfeld turns against him, Kissinger describes him as quote the rottenest person I've known in government, which is henry from you, utterly absolutely meaningless from you. I mean, you're not allowed. Yeah, it's so funny. It's so funny. So it's not funny for all the people who are going to die, but it's kind of it's funny in like an existential sense, like if you're if you're an alien looking at all, this like a TV show,

it's pretty funny. Yeah, you'd be like why, why don't think you're a good guy. You're like, well, it's really kind to explained, but they just don't. If you can't laugh at all the people dying, Are you an American? Yeah? No, the answer was no. By the way, the first time that Nixon heard that Kissinger was working with the guy named Rumsfeld, he was like, well, I pour him in a glass for me gets mice on it. So Rumsfeld and Cheney worked within the White House. But I can't

believe I got to hear their name. I know, I know, baby, I know. While wolf A Witz is part of the CIA's Team B. Now, Team B is an intelligence review board set up by Gerald Ford as a sop to the far right the Reagan Conservatives, who he's again trying to win over and get behind him so we can

win election against Carter. The Reagan Conservatives were certain the agency had been the CIA, I mean, had been under reporting Soviet military power because the Soviet military and like the early chunk of the Ford administration is like they're actually not doing great, Like they're like, we we really don't need to keep buying a shipload of weapons. Like they're not. They they're not they don't have the kind

of military assets that we've been saying for years. Um, so we now are getting a shady CIA inside of shady c I A. Yes, this is like this it's like a Russian nesting doll of the CIA inside the cia' I A. So the Reagan Conservatives were certain that the CIA had been under reporting Soviet military power, and Team B like was basically Ford gave them Team Beast so that they could get new appraisals that showed that the

Soviet Union was actually increasing their military assets. So basically what we like what like I mean essentially like what would eventually happen with a rack where you're like, look, I'm not liking the uh, I'm like the non distilled information, give me a bunch of bullshit. That's exactly what's happening.

And one of the things that's fascinating here is that, in essence, this is a return of missile gap logic, right, which Kissinger helped get off the ground, but now because he supports the state tent policy, and that's like his big claim to like fame within you know, his his career that he reached the talk with the Soviet Union. He's on the opposite side of like a missile gap bullshit myth right man, slepards my face. Yeah, I never thought it could happen to me. Yeah, And then they

came for the Kissingers and there was Kissingers. It's the same thing as like Dick Cheney speaking out against the Trump administration, his daughter gets slandered and stuff, and it's what and it's what It's gonna be in twenty years when you know Trump is welcomed at the President's funeral and we're gone. You know, Trump really wasn't that bad. I like the way he said we shouldn't knuke everyone on Earth as opposed to the next guy who knuked

everyone on Earth. Yeah, I mean yeah, Jill Biden handed him a piece of peppermint candy. He's not that bad. So, former CIA analyst Melvin Goodwin later said of Team b quote, they wanted to toughen up the agency's estimates. Cheney wanted to drive the CIA so far to the right that it would never say no to the generals. How estimates and this is the st estimate, like their estimates. Pause this and listen to our episodes on the Dulless Brothers. And then we wize that, and he's like, I want

them further right than that. That's not nearly right wing enough. That is the craziest fucking thing yet, bug a gang bang, being like, I want more orifices, not enough holes here. I can't expect my deck and enough stuff. So in December of nineteen seventy six, as the Ford administration prepared pre prepared to hand over power to Jimmy Carter, the

CIA finished and released a fifty five page report. Greg Grandon describes this as quote the rights answer to the Pentagon Papers, a nearly perfect negation of the document Daniel Ellsberg had leaked three years earlier. The scholars and policymakers who composed the Pentagon Papers represented the kind of men Kissinger disdained, experts enthralled to facts. In contrast, the members

of Team B were admitted idealogues. It's members, as j. Peters Scope Scope look notes, saw the Soviet threat not as an empirical problem, but as a matter of faith. What kind I mean, it just it's a church. It's it's a church. It's also what's happening here because this they are against Kissinger. But as Grandon notes, they're using the kind of logic he right, he's not. He's there with him on all of the murder crazy American ship.

But they're like, he's just not racist. I mean, they're basically like, we got to get rid of Kissinger so we can worship his tactics properly. That's exactly what's going on here and in Kissinger's shadow, Grant Grandon continues, quote previewing what would become known as Dick Cheney's one percent doctrine. Team BE interpreted threats with the smallest possibility probability of occurring as likely to occur. Absence of proof of Russian

superiority was taken as as proof of superiority. Team be's failure to find a Soviet non acoustic anti submarine system was evidence that there could well be one, which makes sense that of course, I mean it would be U. There is no evidence that I have got it, and and you know one an Emmy and an Oscar and a Grammy, so that that's pretty solid evidence that I am. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

absolutely so. In December of nineteen seventy seven, The New York Times published a front page story on the intelligence findings of Team B, which provided legitimacy to the bogus and then shared the next decade of defense spending was geared towards stopping a rising Soviet Titan that did not exist. You know, thanks nailed on that one. Star Wars. Yeah, Star Wars proceeds directly, yeah yeah, and it proceeds directly

like Team B is laying the groundwork for Star Wars. Right, So, while these tactics ran directly countered a Kissinger's current positions. They rested directly on what Grandon calls his philosophy of history.

Henry had been an advocate on the value of intuition and assessing threats and guiding responses history, and Anna hescent Khn writes that they used Kissinger's own philosophy to quote the little besmirch and tarnish Henry Kissinger had to be a tough spot for Kissinger, where he was like, it's a shame that I've been vilified, but goddamn do I love the way they did it? So everything, we everything.

That's that's why when people, you know, you look at the current situation in in Russia and everyone's like, you gotta get rid of him, And I'm always like, just but just remember, whenever the US gets what it wants, it's always worse. Yeah, every time that it can be worse, Like he can be gone. He's a fucking monster, but don't be surprised what comes after. It's really fucking bad. And the idea of not questioning shit, like we're the

country who cried war. At some point you have to be like, look, sorry, everybody, you're really gonna need to step up with a lot of evidence because you you constantly just fucking invention. I mean, if you if you are forming organizations inside of bullshit, organizations meant to bring like that. If there's no submarines, it means there are submarines. I mean, it's just kind of like and the fact that it's still effective, it's constantly effective. It's never it's

never stopped. This is just a continuation, and it's even like this is a domestic version of what we what happens everyhere else. We just create more and more worse things. Yeah, internally, externally it's what we do. Don't worry, We'll make it worse. Yeah, that's that is That is the promise that the United States makes itself in the world. Don't worry, don't worry. We can funk this up. More lifeguard waits to throw

on you. Yeah, I mean we fucking created Putin. If you go back and look at it, like yeah, and all that ship it looks looking at the at the bombing of Kevan, going, you know what'll fix this? If Bangladesh doesn't get COVID nineteen, which is something is going to be like we will at some point solve something. Just totally on accident. Like, yeah, so when he left office in nineteen seventy seven, Henry Kissinger would never return to direct political power. Um, he desperately wants to. He

really wanted to. Then he has always wanted to. Yeah, that's nice now now I understand two. Yeah, he really wanted it to happen, but he never quite made it pulled it off. He eventually started a consulting firm, which he would rapidly grow into an eight to ten million dollar a year business for himself. Um, he makes a ton of money doing this. Ship. Of course, he goes into consulting like absolutely, consultings job is to get the worst advice yea, and to make people feel good, and

he's great at that now. Walter Isaacson, author of the biography Kissinger, claims that Henry was actually much more ethical in this period of his life than most former government officials who start consulting businesses. Um, he waited an unusually long time to start his business. He avoided for years directly connecting his clients to people he'd worked with in the State Department. It may be accurate that he is more ethical in his conduct here than most people. But again,

that's a low ass bar um. Most of his business, the business he does in this period, can be boiled down to like, he's helping oil and gas and other extractive industries. So he's doing stuff. Yeah yeah, yeah, so he's just destroying the world. Well yeah, absolutely, he's a middleman for the people destroying the world. Let's let's let's be clear about you know, he's he's he's making he's making connections between people whoever linked. To be fair, he's

pining to be in charge of it again. He is um probably his most morally questionable moment, And like I guess a conventional sense is that, uh so, like right after the Tenement Square crackdown, he shows up on Peter Jennings Show um to argue that, like whatever went on, the U S should not impose any economic consequences on China. And this is again not due to a principled stand

against sanctions. It's because Kissinger was working on a massive business deal that involved the Chinese government in several large corporations. And here's the thing. He's he's working as a journalist

at that point. He is a regular columnist for The l A Times, in the Washington Post and he advocates in both magazines not putting any kind of economic like like doing any economic harm to China over this, which is like ethical issue as a journalist because again he does not disclose that he has any of these business relationships, and it causes a minor uproar um. It's one of those things where it's like, yeah, that's unethical behavior, but also in Kissinger terms, like not even on the fucking

radar right is an abhorrent act. But congratulations on turning over Lea Henry. Yeah, yeah, wow, Henry, you've really improved. You really are less ship. You waited until after the thing to do something bad. So in his post power years,

he became even more of an international celebrity. He's actually surprised when he's when he starts doing this job, he's raking, racking up huge amounts of money as like a public speaker, and he and his his like accountant expect the value of him as a speaking like well, it's obviously it's going to decline over a time, hor it just gets bigger. He just becomes more and more valuable as a public speaker. Now for some insight into his life, uh, in what

we might call retirement. I found a New York Magazine article from two thousand six quote he bonds with Oprah Winfrey over their shared love of dogs. She recommended an artist to paint a portrait of Kissinger's lab, and with Alex Rodriguez over their shared love of the Yankees. He and a rod had lunch at the Four Seasons. Last year, he and his wife of thirty two years, Nancy McGinnis, spent every Christmas with close friends Oscar and Annette de

la Rena. In The Dominican Republic. Asked about the nature of that friendship, given the unlikely connection between a former statesman and a fashion mogul, Kissinger says, they are dear friends of line. They have no utility. I'm going to try to kill them. Yeah, I will kill them in some plans to kill them soon. Can we just can we finally agree that Oprah Winfrey is a fucking monster? Yeah? I mean right. Oprah buddies with Henry K. Winfrey. Yes, I meant to Phil. Yes, your oz like she creates.

I'm not going to stick everybody dr shit talk, but the other ones you got me don't forge Grett, don't forget John of God. Yeah, right, under your Sue Harto tattoo, Garrett doctor Oz high fiving. Henry Kissinger not to be this before he got his show. So I liked him early. This was just this was just like aspirational. You know, yeah, I didn't know. It's a great pal. So Kissinger became a New York socialite and was reputed to enjoy the city social scene because quote, Manhattan social life is more

generous than Washington's political life. Wanted to pick where he wants to go out. I mean, he should have to get food raised to his sell in a bucket. It's the same thing, is that? What the cook was it? David Cooke, the one that just died, But it was

the same thing. Everyone just accepted him in those circles and it's like, yeah, he's a fucking And then Charles Coke is the one who's like, you know, was like on a rehabilitation tour for like six months and you and you know, major news outlets are reporting like, look, he recognizes they fucked up a lot. It's like he feels bad. He feels bad to give a fuck de genitalize him. So was regularly and I think probably still is regularly seen on the arm of Barbara Walters, who

calls him a loyal friend. She was hanging out with Henry and his wife one night at a dinner party when kissing You're endured one of his few public shamings. It came courtesy as the real the only real hero of these episodes, ABC News anchor Peter Jennings, who sees Kissinger at a restaurant and is fucking in raged and screams out, how does it feel to be a war criminal? Henry? Peter Jennings baby, And of course Peter Jennings is gone,

so he died. Yeah, kissing You're probably like invaded his lungs. Yeah, should happen every restaurant, every and to all these people. Yeah, Jennings is basically the only person at Kissinger's social level who calls him out. And imagine, and I mean he's he's a nightly news anchor on a major network. Imagine if you had that sort of vitriol pointed at some of these people that we have in present day, who are again not only allowed to walk around but you're

still in spheres of power. But but Dick, like we were saying about Dick Cheney, Like you know, George w. Bush should not he should not be in public. He should not be releasing thoughts on Russian invasion. He certainly shouldn't be picking. Yeah, he shouldn't be, shouldn't he should fingers? No, his daughter should not be on the fucking Today Show,

like I don't know stronger on. So I want to continue the story because I'm not telling with the story of Peter Jennings like calling Kissinger out at a restaurant. And to finish that tale, I'm gonna quote from the New York magazine again. The subject of Kissinger's past sins was very much in the air at the time. Judges in both France and Spain were seeking Kissinger for questioning.

Is the long simmering debate over his connection to Chilean General Augusto Pinochet's brutal killing of dissidents in the seventies returned with a vengeance, not least in Christopher Hitchens right

ringing indictment the trial of Henry Kissinger. These developments clearly rattled Kissinger, who had preemptively written a lengthy article for Foreign Affairs decrying the dangerous legal precedent of using universal jurisdiction to try state actors for past actions, the same precedent under which German courts hoped to try Donald Rumsfeld. The question in the question by Peter Jennings, how does

it feel to be a war criminal? Stunned the dinner guests, who included Time Inc. Editor Henry Grunwald, who also died last year and Yeah, and former ABC chairman Thomas Murphy. Gruenwald told Jennings the comment was unsuitable. Yeah, as unsuitable as fucking bombing Cambodia, Like Jesus fucking Christ. This is the manners they care about, manners they don't care about all the And to to his credit, when like Gruenwald is like Peter, that's really unsuitable, Peter's like, I don't

give a ship. He's a fucking criminal. He doesn't say that exactly, Peter, he says the emotional equivalent of that. Barbara Walters later said, at the moment, I tried to change the subject, but it was a very uncomfortable moment talk about reacted very strongly and hurt Kissinger said nothing, man, it really is like you know it. You see this a lot when like protesters will go into events and they will you know, they'll have a message, they'll have signs,

they'll have something orchestrated set up. And not only will the politicis and the people on the politicians days sort of be like okay, okay, but the people at the event will be the ones who are like, you know, like a congressional here, this isn't the time or place, This isn't the time. It's like, there's no time or fucking place. What what do you fucking expect? That's all we have at this point is that's the only thing you can really do is try to make them hate

living in the world they're ruining. It is a fucking mark of how fucked up any kind of accountability to the political classes in our society that the most consequence Henry Kissinger ever faces is Peter Jennings yelling at him dinner, a man who has been dead for twenty years, fifteen years. I mean, when Sarah Huckabee Sanders was out to dinner and some people yelled at her, I mean you saw

both sides condemning it. Some fucking dude yell at fucking Tucker Carlson from people, and there are there are Republicans and Democrats who always condemn that sort of stuff. And it's not because people believe in public decorum. It's because they don't want it to show up on their fucking doorsteps right right, because they don't want like that ship to come back on them. And I'm sure if someone's gonna point out Peter Jennings did something fucked up, he

must have. He was in media for very eleven. He'd oh right, he did nine eleven. That was Peter Jennings. He threw those planes right into those towers. I'd forgotten about that, um, But at the at fucking least he was there and and didn't mince words, just like your a war criminal, not like how does it feel to be here where American boys are dying? But like no, no, you did war crimes, Henry Kissinger, Fuck you. Someone has

to say it. Um. In his many decades worth of declining years, Henley Henry has focused his remaining powers in an attempt to secure his legacy. In two thousand and three, he opened up his White House archives to a British history and named Nil Ferguson, whose book also just titled Kissinger. I've cited a few times in these episodes. Ferguson claimed his biography would quote provide a warts and all look

at the man. But quotes he made about the relationship with the light of that and this is Ferguson like writing about how jazz he is to be hanging out with Henry. I'm in Henry Kissinger's swimming pool talking about his meetings with mouse dung, thinking I must be dreaming ship in that pool. I know, fucking hell nile everyone. Now, obviously I have quoted from this biography because of the details the information Kissinger provides about his early life, it

is not without value. It's probably the most detailed look at his childhood we have. It also only goes up to nineteen, which neatly avoids the most controversial moments of Kissinger's life. Right, that's not great the story. Yeah, that was the end of Henry Kissinger. Blah blah blah. Even when journalists and historians that Henry hasn't authorized specifically interview him, they are likely to find themselves enraptured or at least

tripped up by his clever word play. Bob Woodward, who first interviewed Kissinger in seventy four, wrote, he wants to control not just what he says, but people's perceptions of what he says, and it's kind of like one long book review where he is arguing with the reviewer of

his book, or his life, or his policy. Seymour Hirsch was more blunt in nineteen eighty three when he wrote he lies like most people Breathe now the most comprehensive biography of Henry Kissinger and the one if you were looking. If you're looking for just a book on Kissinger's influence in Like the US and how toxic it was, I recommend Kissinger's Shadow by Grandon. If you want an actual biography of Kissinger's whole life and time and power, I

recommend Walter Isaacson's book Kissinger. I actually think Isaacson is too fair to Henry Kissinger. But even so, even though he clearly like does not wholly condemn the man, I find the book utterly damning. Right like the book condemns him, even I Isaacson doesn't such a piece of shape. It's just impossible if you're accurate, and I think is pretty at Yeah. Now, the best thing I can say about Isaacson's book Kissinger is that Henry Kissinger himself complained endlessly

about it. He wind to Isaacson's boss, Henry Grunwald, who defended Isaacson and said he felt the book was balanced and down the middle. Kissinceer responded, what right does that young man have to be balanced and down the middle about me? I mean, wow, just it just shows you. I mean, like he should never be in the position where he should be pointing out that other people are crazy. No, no, you don't get to say that, Henry. Yeah. As New

York Magazine notes, Kissinger denies that exchange ever happened. Um, I believe Henry. I mean, the guy does a lie. He seems like an honest man. I bet Nixton still had him wire tapped. And here here's a quote from that article. It's very funny. I've never read the Isaacson book, he says, then quickly clarifies. I've read a few parts of the isaacs which I didn't like, but I understand that there are many parts of the books that are very positive. I missed those, he says, with a sly smile.

That is so, that is so trumpy. I know it really is right. I didn't read it. I read parts one through. Isaacson says, Kissinger wrote him a series of letters contesting numerous passenges. My view, and this is Isaacson, My view is that if Kissinger reread his own memoirs, who would be outraged that they did not treat him favorably enough? Kissinger, who wrote this? You did? That's sort of a bit I gotta get me. Kissinger claims to be unconcerned about his place in history. I cannot defect

my legacy, he says. And what does he think his legacy is? I have no view, he says. I can't control it by what I say. I tell him I don't believe him. You're not in your eighties yet, he replies. Now, a lot has been made about Kissinger's purported role in like the invasion of Iraq. He did it apparently like urge Bush and Cheney to go through with it. I think crediting him with specifically with having an impact on that is not realistic because this is Bush and Cheney.

By the time they talked to Kissinger about this, they had made up their you know, it's probably didn't push them into invading Iraq. It's like similar when like the Queens of the Stone Age have Dave Groll on drums. Yeah, exactly. He's a player for sure, but he's not writing all the songs. I mean, Josh, he's got. Kissinger is definitely

the Dave Groll of the Bush administration. Um. And I think that rather than like actually being a meaningful role in arranging consent for the invasion of Iraq, I think Kissinger was doing here what he always did. He was sucking up to powerful people to tell them by telling them what they wanted to hear. And the best example of this comes from two thousand eight, when during a presidential debate, both John McCain and Barack Obama cited Kissinger

as supporting their positions towards Iran. Both men held opposite views of what the U. S Should do in regards to that country. So, Mike, like you might expect, like, and I don't think either of them is lying. I think they're both because I think Kissinger just would be like, yeah, of course that's the right call. Absolutely. Look, look what the start date to be, just so I can put it in my good call. Guys, we should invade them

and leave them alone. Yeah. So um yeah. As a young law student at Yale, Hillary Clinton had taken part an outrage protests against Kissinger's bombing of Cambodia as Secretary of State. She praised the astute observations he shared with her, and wrote in a review of one of his books, Kissinger is a friend. And again the astute observations are Kissinger saying whatever she wanted to do was the right thing to do, right, Like, that's that's what That's why

these people like like him and think he's astute. He's not. I think he does today get kind of like looked at his this secret power pulling the strings. I think instead he's just like the ultimate kiss ass. He's just like, oh, you're in power. Nout. Yeah, whatever you want to do is the is the good thing to do? Absolutely right? You know. Yeah. I would tell people like if you're if you're young and you don't understand what it means

to see Hiller Clinton standing there with with Kissinger. It's no different than in in ten years, if all a sudden your Democrat candidate standings to Cheney, You're like, what the fun is going on? And I guarantee you that lost her. A bunch of people didn't vote for because they saw her standing. Yeah, I guarantee guarantee h and um, yeah, I think though when you're trying to talk about like his actual influence and like the fucked up things that

have been happening in the last couple of decades. It's less than whatever advice he was giving politician Airby, And it's more in the way he shaped the way the US government functions in terms of foreign policy. He centralized power and set the precedent of allowing the executive branch to execute military actions without consent of anyone outside the

White House. And obviously there were like things that were done to restrict the power of the executive branch from doing that, but then those things were all undone after the like right like if this, if this kind of

tuggle war thing. Um. But Kissinger, even though he did not set obviously the policy after nine eleven that that expanded the executive government's ability to to do military ship abroad, he did set the present of like how you would actually centralize power in that way within the executive and he made up he set a lot of ideological and philosophical trends that are still shaping the way the US

government functions in regards to foreign policy today. And if you're looking for perhaps the most direct and succinct explanation for how Kissinger influenced the world of modern American politics, you can find it in this quote he himself wrote in nineteen sixty three. There are two kinds of realists, those who manipulate facts and those who create them. The West requires nothing so much as men able to create

their own reality. Wow. Wow, wow to not to not be able to define realists and you're two to definite tear two tier definition of realism is absolutely deliverable. Yeah, for neither of your definitions of realists to involve people who care about material reality. Yeah, what did you say in the first one? I was like, Oh, the second one is gonna be realists. It's like no, no, no, no, No other one is realists. No. So that's Henry Kissinger.

It's it's so unbelievable. And to what you like, you know, he really he his legacy, like you're sort of saying, is not just directly connected to the things he's connected to because there was no um prosecution for what Nixon did, and there's no prosecution for Reagan did, and there's no prosecution because we never prosecute and we never actually hold any of these people accountable. You know, you do see the seeds of that flourish now like you can invade.

I mean, we're at the point where most people don't even know we've invaded countries we've invaded, Like at least with Vietnam, people had access to seeing it and being disgusted by it. And then under Bush it was like, well, we're not going to show the coffins returning, And you said, I mean, it's not just Republicans. You see it under democratic presidents to it just as kind of more egregious

at times under Republican presidents. But you know, it's it's every president gets more powerful, does more, and it does kind of boil down to they're going to be evil. Journalists and media need to recognize what they're fucking jobs are. If you're in some of these jobs, like it's it should not be a popularity contest for access only there should be you should be beholden to doing good and

and making these people held accountable. Because it's so relevant in what you're talking about with Kissinger that they just let the access to him because he became a popular figure, completely blind i'd them as to what was actually going on. Well, it's actually worse than not punishing them. Remember when when Obama was elected, everyone was like, these guys have to be tried for war crimes, and he said, we got to move on. And you know that we're talking about

torture in war crimes and everything else. But it went, it went further than that, because they gave Bush like the Medal of Freedom. I mean, there's a picture of fucking Biden hanging on his chest. And they also they also honored this guy named Henry Kissinger did honored him. So it's beyond not doing anything. Well, it's not even just it's not even just him. I mean, it's just

it's systemic. It's just and you know what if you are if you are one of these, if you are a fucking anchor at CNN, like if you're Jim Acosta, think of how fucking popular you would be if you did just start using your access to just be like Peter Jennings likes here, we are craving this fucking figure. But they would be immediately fired. I mean but they would be, but you would also, I mean, having even

a moment of that would carry your career. Like if we had that Peter Jennings ship now, it would go so viral and people would talk about that person endlessly. That I mean, it's like, it's like when you know when billionaires started competing over being philanthropists. You know you at some point you're so far in the other direction that you're not that far off from just doing the thing that is you're supposed to do is going to be such a radical move. It's this, it's very frustrating.

Like right now you have all of these big media figures like moving their shows to Ukraine to be able to film shelling in the distance, and obviously to be a journalist in combat up close, covering war crimes up close requires a lot of physical courage. Those like Sky News reporters who got fucking shot and Ship the Daily Beast reporters got shot that but like being like Lester Holt, like having your show filmed with like shelling in the distance.

They have massive security teams, they have massive resources invested in making sure they are in as little danger as they can possibly be, and more than anything, they are out there and doing it for the fucking cloud. Because that that is easy to like feels like I'm brave. What's actually brave is Peter Jennings yelling at Henry Kissinger at a fucking dinner party full of powerful people and making sure that for just a second he has a

moment of accountability. And if one of them was willing to do fucking that to any of these goals, I would have a lot more respect than I would have them filming Shelling and Key from a mile and a half away. Yeah. Look, there there was Wolf Blitzer who during the First Gulf War put on a helmet and was in Saudi Arabia where st those were flying, and

it's saying how danger he was. At the same time there were journalists, American journalists in the fucking bag that hotel being being shot at and rocketed by American troops, and those guys didn't work anymore. And will Blitzer got his own TV show on seeing it. Or Brian Williams when he talked to when he was like the way that he embellished his his story about like getting off of a helicopter and taking RPG fire. Yeah yeah, yeah, I mean I don't know, we could use another Jennings

or two at least in this regard. Yeah, I mean it's it's hard because it's like, what would you, I mean, what would like you're like, we want like we want a politician for the people, and it's like I like that's like that's what you wish for, but you like the step first is to just have these people vilified for the things they should be vilified for. Yeah, it would be nice if there was a journalist. That's the

end of the state. Well, honestly, like this was, I mean just fucking incredible and just such a ridiculous stick. He's a pretty bad one, right, I don't think I don't think he is. He I know that there was talk of like into the countries, of like trying him outside of you know, not having him there. Yeah, but can he travel anywhere he wants or is he he restricted he can't I'm not aware of. I mean there may be. Like he also now like he's become like

this watery figure. So he's kind of like the T one thousand where if you just get close to him, he turns into silver goo and just can go through a drain or something. You can't put a handcuff around a pile of watery goo. I mean, he's he's a big part. Like he he argues vociferously for why like Rumpsfeld shouldn't be able to be charged, and I think

Germany it is. And he's doing it like selfishly. He would put his and Jerry danger right like I'm giving it enough loyalty to Rummy, who he probably hates at this point. Although I don't know that Kissinger can take things personally actually, so maybe, like I don't know, he's almost he's like the Bill Walsh coaching Tree of War Criminals. Yeah,

I don't know what that means. Well, Bill Walsh like coach the forty Niners and invented the West Coast offense and you just see the ripple effect through the NFL for generations and decades changed football. It just changed everything. And it's like that's what he did. He just was the guy who was like, you know, I came up with a new offense, and it's like everyone's just reading

off of that playbook and tweaking it. Yeah. That guy you said robber football is when uh okay the title of this episode like that guy, Garrett said of the football, but the politics. I liked the two yeahs that preceded your I don't know who that guy? Yeah, hey, who is that? Yeah? It's like it's like in basketball when Phil Jackson made the offense triangle diplomacy, it's like the

triangle thing. Yes, absolutely, yeah, yeah, alright, alright, ale an offense is the opposite of defense, right, what everyone said, That's what everyone said. In my opinion, it definitely is. You know, the team with the most points wins, well, for sure that's going to be critical. Yeah. Absolutely. And you know when the overtime gets the first down, that's really that's that's causing finishing. You've nailed it already. Absolutely,

three pointer a touchdown for Robert. Let's go Globetrotters. Well, honestly, thank you for allowing us to enter your dojo and mess around for a little while. I don't know if thank you was the right thank you. I thank you for listening to me read one thousand words about Hinry Kissing, because we talked about it and I was like, I can't do it because it's not one episode. It's so any episode. Yeah, this is like the minimum I think you can responsibly cover Henry Kissinger. Like we could have

done another couple episodes. Hey, let's do it it, Garett, Yes, let's just rip a couple. Yeah, we'll get a couple of photos of him hanging out with Jill st John joke about his hog. Yeah, let's take it on the road. We can get another forty minutes of content out of that. Honestly, we could just keep redoing parts of this on the road for a year and a half. The Doll Up and Behind the Bastards present three guys going through shots of Henry Kissinger at fancy parties and talking about the

shape of his dick under his pants. Honestly, honestly, should work. Looks like he was having a chubb day to day. What do you think, Dave all nuts on the table. That the only one I'm focused on. Look at those tennis shorts. This is how we make our millions. Well, genuinely, thank you. I am generally super scared having having watched how Colin Powell was treated. Yes, when he died, people are going to react to death. Yeah, you're gonna watch liberals be like he was fucking awesome and you're just

like everything about him was bad. Yeah, yeah, w it'll be fun. Any plug doubles at the end here, sure? Yeah? Listen. Well, first of all, we've got the Kissinger. We should do Kissinger live, and we should use the kiss font and we should also wear like the kiss makeup and we should just do kissing. Um yeah we uh. We will be in Australia and America. Best country on Earth will be in Australia in the middle of April to May. You can go to Dollar podcast dot com for all

that information. Were all over the place and then I am doing stand up in Australia and I'll so over the summer. So you can go to Gareth Reynolds dot com for all that information, and you can follow us on social media's with our I'm at Reynolds Gareth, Dave's at Dave Underscore Anthony on Instagram, I'm at Reynolds Gareth on Twitter, Dave's at Dave Anthony on Twitter, and um whoo who all right, thank you for having us again, motherfucker. Yeah,

everyone go pray for Henry Kissinger's painful tomise. Yeah, let's have Let's all hope that Tim tim Allen takes him out somehow. He smuggled he smuggles coke into a party Kissinger's at and it just blows out the old man's art or he just starts doing war improvement with kissing James's character. Yeah, Kissinger would be the you know, the the owl. He's the owl, right right, right right? No, you got a bomb Cambodiat Tim all right, and there's

a good that's the note thing. Hi, everybody, Robert Evans here and my novel After the Revolution is available for pre order now from a k press dot org. Now, if you go to a k press dot org, you can find After the Revolution. Just google a k press dot org After the Revolution you'll find a list of participating indie bookstores selling my book. And if you pre order now from either these independent bookstores or from a K Press, you'll get a custom signed copy of the book,

which I think is pretty cool. You can also preorder it in physical or in kindle a form from Amazon or pretty much wherever books are sold. So please google a k press after the Revolution um or find an indie bookstore in your area and pre order it. You'll get assigned a copy and you'll make me very happy.