Behind the Bastards - CZM Rewind: Kissinger Parts 1-3

Episode Date: December 26, 2023

Henry Kissinger is dead! If you're wondering why people are so happy about this, listen to our six hour series on the life and crimes of one of the 20th century's greatest war criminals. (Ft. Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds from The Dollop)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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It's the end of the year. Couple of big heavy hitter holidays coming in a row and we have them off both with the company and as a team. So since there's not a new bastard's episode this week and also since Henry Kissinger just died, we figured this would be a nice time to rerun the original six Henry Kissinger episodes. These are great, I think, are a useful introduction if you or perhaps your friends and family don't know why a lot of people are happy that Henry's no longer in the world. I want to thank again the dollop guys Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds for being wonderful guests for this. I checked in with them before we did this just to see if they had

anything to plug. Dave Anthony has an album out that you can find. It's a hothead by Dave Anthony. You can go to Dave Anthony dot band camp dot com. I probably don't need to spell Dave Anthony for you. Right. That's a simple enough one. And then we've got Gareth Reynolds, who is going to be touring quote all over the place in February and March of 2024. They have too many links to promote as one, but if you go to garrithrenalds.com, that's g-a-r-e-t-h-r-e-y-n-o-l-d-s.com, nothing else to say. Here are the episodes. Oh, Sophie, this plate of behind the bastards is so heavy, as we walk through this hallway.

Oh my gosh, is that David Anthony and Garrett Reynolds with a heavy plate of the dollop, oh no, oh no, I'm losing control. Oh God, you guys are slipping too. Ah! How was that? Oh, so bad. I love it.

I love it. I couldn't just bring more. That was the most organic, just real thing I think I've ever heard. That was, yeah. You're really. The only thing I think I've ever heard. Like it was, yeah. Like you're really a person. The only thing I'm noticing is you didn't have plates. So I'm wondering how.

How. I was wondering as I started it, are they gonna join in? Or am I gonna just have to commit fully to this? And now that's something where if it's me, I just let you go and then let you have inside. I was saying that all the time. I was a dog in a yard that wanted to leave it, but it was me, I just let you go and then let you have your time. I was saying that's like, I was a dog in a yard that wanted to leave it, but it was like, I'll get it.

I'm not supposed to leave. So I was on the other end. I wanted to join. Oh gosh. Well, this is just a wonderful time. Obviously, again, you are Dave Anthony, Gareth Reynolds, hosts of the dollop, the podcast that invented being funny about history on the internet.

Thank you so much for sitting down with us today. Thank you. We've always, for a long time, I've wanted to do something with you, so we've talked about this, but yeah. This has been like bouncing back and forth for a while, and it was just one of those things where it's like, well, when we finally do our six-part series on Henry Kissinger, it's going to be the worst thing we've ever had to do. I have a therapy session set up right afterwards. Dave married a therapist in preparation.

That's good. Really putting in the deep work to make this series a success. So my working title for this, which they probably won't let us use, is Henry Kissinger comma, a big sack of donkey balls. What's wrong with that? Can we do that so far? I perfectly find that. What are you talking about?

What do you guys know? I think maybe it's a good idea to start with like, what, what's your, your cliffs notes? We'll have, we'll have you do it, Dave, because, because you're the one who reads things normally. I mean, I think that's the right note of Kissinger. Yeah. You know, a Kissinger, the thing that, you know, obviously stands out as Vietnam and

Cambodia and, you know, that's just reprehensible beyond all words, but he's really been a part of just so many horrific foreign policy decisions and had his, he's always getting in there. He's always a part of the business, really so I don't know if he is now, but for a long time, he was always a guy who would come in and go, why don't you do the worst thing? Yeah, and that's the thing that's interesting, and even a little bit difficult about talking about him, because he's not one of these guys. He's not like, you can't say with him like you can without a Saddam Hussein, like, oh, he started this war on this date, or he ordered this man.

I mean, you can, actually. But he's not like a, he's not on paper, supposed to be a warlord or an elected leader. The thing that he is good at doing is getting the ability to do stuff that warlords and dictators do by sitting in the back rooms with people who are the ones who on paper hold the power and convincing them to let him do stuff. And he's the best at that there's ever been. We've had a couple figures on our podcast who who I would relate to, like, and I would say maybe Kissinger is like the war crimes for a scump.

We are. Yes. Yes. You're like, oh, yeah, he was there. He's better for you invented shit happens. I don't know if we invented that phrase. Yeah. That's, that's incredibly, that's, that might,

I mean, that's honestly a better title than what I came up with. Well, it's the favorite title. He is. I mean, it obviously, Forest Gump is, is, is blameless and Kissinger is not, but it does get at the fact that he's just like, he's just there. He's just in every fucking photo of like guys doing a war crime. Like, it is baffling the number of things he's connected to.

I should probably just start, stop selling it. But I, I do kind of want to talk about the fact that he is, he is this kind of back room figure in a lot of the worst things that happened in the 20th century. Because we're going to spend episode one, by the time this episode's over, he's not, you know, in the White House. He's not running shit. This is an episode where he talk about like his early life and his ideological roots because that's what, that's what underpins all of the things that he does. He's not a guy, people talk about like what Kissinger believes and Kissinger himself has written a bunch of books about what he believes. My opinion, as an amateur guy studying this dude, is that I don't think he believes things as much as he

beliefs and ideas are weapons that he uses in order to get people to let him do horrible things. And he is the master of using beliefs and moving between different groups of people who on paper are ideologically opposed and getting them all to agree with whatever bullshit he wants to do because he's really good at talking about ideas like a fucking philosopher. Like that's his superpower. They might just have trouble understanding him. I know I have. Sure, whatever. What did we agree to? Oh, God. I was going to ask Gareth before we get started here.

Is your German accent locked and loaded? I mean, listen, as to the disgust of the German people, it is. That's fine, that's fine. I think we can all agree after the 20th century that Germans lost the right to be angry when people leave. That's how I feel. It's like Texans, you know, everyone can do a Texan. Yeah.

That's how I feel. I don't think I can. I can make any accent sound kind of English and sort of Spanish at this time. And yet can't do English. It's really just sort of this amazing ability. See whenever I do a non-American accent, it just drifts Russian at some point, like 100% of the time. Yeah.

Oh my God. Well, this is your time. Now you can shine with what's going on. I know. I know. I'm ready to just yuck it up over. Yeah. Speaking of which there's a number of roots of what's happening between Ukraine and Russia right now that you can type actually in Rick Hissagesh.

Of course there is. I mean that's a little bit less his the area that he fucked around in but he did some fucking around there like one of the things we are spending six episodes talking about Henry Kissinger and we're leaving some shit out. Wow. Yeah, you have to. I mean, he's been around so many years.

I mean, just the fact that he was still paling around Hillary Clinton in the election. Yeah. And you're like, what is that guy doing there? Do you know he's bad? And he's, the thing that is so interesting about Kissinger is that he does have this equal, he's equally good at talking talking to people who would call themselves liberals and progressives as he is to far-right neocons. I think you could say that part of what that reveals is that the ruling class in this

country are all in agreement about things more often than they disagree about things. But part of it is just that like he is so charming. We will be talking a bit about Kissinger is a sex symbol, which is a thing that happens, and I am so sorry that we have this message. No, I was hoping he would say this, because I've wanted to fuck him for so long. Like that's one of the main things.

He's hot. I call it Henry Fuckingger. I've always wanted to do that. Kiss is not enough for me. That's just the taste of what I'm after. Oh boy,. Kiss is not enough for me. That's just a tasteful I'm after. Oh boy, will AB test the forest gump and the fucking Jirt title? We'll just see what plays best in Pau Kipsey.

So Heinz Alfred Kissinger was born on May 27, 1923, in the city of Firth, Germany. The Kissinger's were a Jewish family, and so given that this is Germany in the early 20s, you can tell we're not off to a great start already, right? This is not gonna be a story that begins in a particularly pleasant place. He was born in a very chaotic world.

The great year was like five years past when he comes on to the planet. Everything is falling apart in Germany, and a lot of other places. The year he's born, Primo de Rivera seized power as the dictator of Spain, Mustafa Kemal took power in Turkey, the Bulgarian prime minister was assassinated in a coup,

like it was a troubling time to be a baby. But Heinz's mother and father had some reasons for optimism, while Firth was not an attractive city. In fact, one contemporary described it as stifling in its narrow dreariness are unguardened city, city of Sutt. You know, it's a city. It's a city. It's a working-class factory town. But because of that, and this is the period in which the working class is a lot more

left-wing than, you know, folks didn't give it credit for being today, it's a very, it's like a haven for Democrats, not like our Democrats, but people who support democracy as opposed to wanna go back to having a Kaiser, you know? So, first is. Who wouldn't wanna go back to having a Kaiser? He was so awesome.

Yeah, he was so good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I wanna have a king who gets us into World War One and like wax off about his mom's hands. That sounds great again. Oh hell.

Now that I know what we're talking about, let's dance. I'm in. I don't want a Kaiser. So, first is, in some ways you could see it, it's reputation in Germany is being kind of like Portland today. It's a very left-wing town. It's seen as a haven for socialists. But it's also kind of like Selma al-Abama during the civil rights era because

Firth has a very large Jewish population and the period and like the late 1800s is when a lot of like there's up There's essentially a partite against Jewish people in Germany for a long time So Firth is the city that has Germany's first Jewish lawyer and it has a bunch of their other first Jewish You know exes person who does this job because it's it's this very progressive city with a very integrated Jewish community. So it's this mix of, hmm, the Nazis aren't going to like this town, right? Like Portland. Yeah, like Portland. Yeah, like Portland.

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

He was a member of the first and almost the last generation that this would be true of. Why, what happens? That's it. Oh, what happens? Oh, date. We may need to do it a separate podcast. I'm serious. I never read any German history. Oh my God, it's so exciting.

So he starts work Lewis as a teacher in a secular private school when he's 18. And he holds the job for 14 years. And he was a very patriotic person. He's also, like, he is an orthodox Jew, so he's very religious, but he considers himself a German first and foremost. And his family is very patriotic. His brother fights in World War I, so does his wife's dad, two of his cousins die fighting

for the Kaiser. And when the war ends in German defeat, you know, there's all these rumors spread throughout the far right that the nation's been stabbed in the back by an alliance of Jewish bogeyman. Heinz or sorry, Lewis kind of, he sees this as happening, but he doesn't think that it's ever going to like take hold. He's Henry would later call that his father would regularly say, we live in an age of tolerance. So his dad is not right. I'm sorry, are you talking about America in 2022?

Are you talking about Germany? Yeah, we are talking about this on the day that Texas just announced a fun new law. Yeah, this is like, you know, Henry's wrong about a lot of stuff. His father is also wrong, but for a much sadder reason. Something else, there was a psychic gene in the family. I see us being tolerant for a generation.

Germany will be a watchword for tolerance. We would be a bastard for all types. Poor buddy. Yeah, so he's, it's interesting because like the Zionist movement is rising in this time. And Kissinger's family rejects this wholeheartedly because they're so German, right? They don't want to ever leave. Obviously, the Nazi party rises consistently through Henry's childhood. Firth was initially safe from this. Just a few months after Heinz is born in September of 23, the Nazis and other far-right organizations hold a German day in Nuremberg. Several caravans

of them pass through Firth, sort of like Nazis do today in a lot of places. And, you know, they were looking for a fight when they drove. They went through Firth because it's the town where you can get a fight. And they got one. This is like right after Hintnery is born, a mob of brown shirts are assaulted by a hundred strong crowds screaming kill them and down with Hitler. Okay, let's end the story there. I love it. It's a great ending. And that's the tale of Henry Kissinger. A kid who was a baby when some dudes did some rad stuff. All right. So, Firth was integrated enough that Hines initially attended a public

school with Christian classmates, which was not common for Jewish kids in this time. Yeah, he's like going to school with other kids who are not Jewish. Eventually his dad puts him in a private school, but that's also an integrated private school. So while his education is secular, his family's very strict orthodox. He attended Hebrew school, which he hated. I found a quote from another Jewish guy who grew up in Firth at the same time that gives an idea as to why Henry was not a big fan of his early religious education.

Quote, religion was a study and not a pleasant one. A lesson taught solously by a soulless old man. Even the day I see his evil, conceded old face in my dreams. He thrashed formulas into us, antiquated Hebrew prayers that we translated mechanically without any actual knowledge of the language, what he taught was poultry, dead, mummifiedified and that I think is broadly in line with how Henry

feels because he's not well doesn't grow up very religious so Henry is is a little kid you know he does a lot of religion stuff but as he grows older he rejects his father's passion for faith and his dad's interests in classical music and theater instead Henry Kissinger falls in love with soccer. He is a huge soccer head. Oh, yeah. That's fucking happening. I know. Wow. Firth has like a locally renowned team. They're one of the best teams in Germany. And so like their kids teams, which are feeders into this, whatever team, are very competitive too. Henry starts playing in a youth league when he's six years old. And he later recalled, quote, I wasn't really very good, though I took the game seriously.

But now what about soccer? We should just talk about that. Oh, sorry, never mind. So his real prowess early on was in strategy. As this quote from Nile Ferguson's Kissinger, a book named Kissinger, like the guy, makes clear. The no-great athlete, Heinz Kissinger, was already a shrewd tactician, devising for his team, a system that, as it turns out, is the way the Italians play soccer. The system was to drive the other team nuts by not letting them score, by keeping so many people back as defenders. It's very hard to score when 10 players are lined up in front of the goal. So immediately, Henry Kissinger as a kid is like, you know what will help us win and also make this game no fun at all. Yeah, we need to poison that water. Henry,

what are you talking about? We must fire bombs at homes. We know what to do. Zed Diamond might under their keeper. I know we are six, but we will pop the bus. There will be no joy in soccer. Remove the keeper's hands. He is, he is as a six year old doing the soccer equivalent of carpet bombing. So he gets so into soccer that he starts to neglect his studies and his father actually bans him from playing for a while. The older he gets, Henry has more and more conflicts with his dad. So I think that no one else has ever experienced. And yeah, he would regularly after fighting with his father, bicycle over to the home of

a friend who later recalled. He liked being with us. It seems to me he had a problem with his father. If I'm not mistaken, he was afraid of him because he was a very pedantic man. His father was always checking Heinz's homework and kept it close watch on him. Heinz told me more than once that he couldn't discuss anything with his father, especially not girls. So, is that not like hitting him or anything? He's just like really, really annoying to him. And just like, and just like pay attention to your studies beyond anything else. Like, I think I like

this girl. Like, well, she doesn't, she's not going to the same school. Focus, Henry, focus. Yeah. And he's clearly a dick who's like, you know, you can't be a professional soccer player at eight. You have to go to school, like he's clearly an asshole. Yeah, yeah, I mean, he's definitely the villain of the story. Yeah, no doubt. No doubt. So Henry is magnetic to women from, well, girls at this point, from a very young age.

What in the fuck is happening? I know it's really weird. It's weird. And this is, the quotes about girls really liking him at this age come from his father. But like this also happens when he's in his 40s and the secretary of state. So I'm going to say his father's probably telling the truth. That's awesome. I mean, at no point have I seen any version of Henry Kissinger, you're like, man, I mean,

that is weird. That got memory hold. Because there were New York Times stories about how much women like Henry Kissinger. Because he looks like a lump of clay you could mold into anything, potentially. He never looked good. No, no, no.

But it's weird. I mean, yeah, he's the guy, like, yeah, we'll talk about some of the things he said about sexuality later. I know you're all getting real excited for that episode. Yeah Um, that's good one worth the gamble. Yeah At one point one of his friends was actually ordered not to hang out with him because he had earned a reputation as a skirt chaser. And this is like when he's nine. Wow. That is early. Little Henry Comrockett Kissinger. First time I sex was nine. So you know, like at this point, he's rebelling against the family religion.

He's hanging out with girls. He's playing a hell of a lot of soccer, which seems like a decent childhood. But obviously, you know, the Nazis. So in the mid-twenties, the German nation goes on strike against some shit. France was doing Versailles stuff. We don't need to get into it. Inflation goes crazy, right? This is the wheelbarrow's full of cash time. This hurts the Kissinger family badly because if you're like a, if you're a private laborer, if you're working for a private company, you can generally strike and organize to get your salary adjusted to deal with inflation somewhat, like it's still bad, but it's less bad.

If you're a public servant, you don't get shit. Your salary stays the same while inflation jumps up. This is really a disaster for the Kissinger family. Of course, economic trouble coincides with a constant acceleration of far-right violence. Later as an adult, Kissinger would note, without emotion, that he was somewhat regularly chased through the streets and beaten up by Nazi thugs as a child. Um, yeah, that stuff. No punchlines. No, no punchlines, but there is something weird about that because he's talked about this a few times, but every time he talks about this, it is so that he can emphatically state that this part of his life had no impact on him.

A matter of fact, yeah. It's really weird. It's very strange. A literal impact of this had no impact upon him. Yeah. In 1958, he declared, quote, my life and birth seems to have passed without leaving any deeper impressions. Well, you don't get to say that by the way.

Yeah, I feel like you don't, like I feel like you don't. I feel like I said that to a shrink once about my parents divorce and then wept. Yeah. I didn't do anything. I mean, what's this? What's this? Coming out of it. Yeah, in 1974, when discussing the times who's beaten the streets by Nazis, he insisted

to a reporter quote, that part of my childhood was not a key to anything I was not consciously unhappy. I was not acutely aware of what was going on for children These things are not that serious. It is fashionable now to explain everything psychoanalytically But let me tell you the political persecutions of my childhood are not what control my life Which is really interesting, right? I know right like I'm sure the fuck, I know, right? Like, I'm sure the reporters like, I'm ready to ask follow-ups, whatever he stops talking.

Yeah, I did. You're not supposed to remember for 10, anyway. I mean, I wouldn't know, that's how I can kill. I wouldn't know at nine, I don't feel anything. It is, it's like, you know, I got assaulted by a Nazi when I was 33 and it left a mark. You know, I'm like,

I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like not. Yeah. And it's like, Henry, this is the only time I'm going to speak sympathetically to you, but it's fine if being beaten by Nazis as a child left to mark on it. It's the only time you want to mat Damon him with your Robin Williams arm. Yeah. It's okay, man. It's okay, man.

Yeah. It's interesting. The way he explains why this didn't leave any mark on him are very interesting. And I want to quote from Henry Kissinger in 2004 now. I experienced the impact of Nazism, and it was very unpleasant, but it did not interfere in my friendship with Jewish people of my age, so that I did not find it traumatic. I have resisted the psychiatric explanations, which argue that I developed a passion for order over justice, and that I translated it into profound interpretations of the international system. I wasn't concerned with the international system.

I was concerned with the standing of the football team of the town in which I lived, which I, you can't do both. You can't pay attention to that. Yeah, it's not. Obviously, as, as, as, no one thinks Henry, that as an eight year old, you are like, well, this is going to impact the way that I believe state power should be used when I'm secretary of state and several decades. Oh, one of my advisors of addiction. Just like, if you have a car accident as a kid, you're not think, well, this is going to make me unable to let other people touch me when I'm 33. Right.

I'll hate freeway merging. Yeah. Like, obviously, man. And I don't know. There's a degree to which in terms of this is the period in which you can be sympathetic to him, I do think there's probably something to be said that if you have this childhood, maybe you don't want to give the Nazis anything. Even the, like this left an impact on me, right?

Because like fuck them. I don't want to say that it had an influence on me, which I get. Well, having grown up in a traumatic childhood, you can shut it down and tell yourself that you're fine. The way he survived it was to shut his emotions down a little bit and tell himself that he was fine. When it actually, it is by far probably the most traumatic thing there.

And created a fucking monster because he didn't get any psychological help. I'm a monster naturally. It is not nature versus nurture. I would have killed just as many people. I would have been in this picable piece of shit either way. I would have killed just as many people. I would have been in this picable piece of shit either way. I would have killed just as many people. I would have been in this picable piece of shit either way. I would have killed just as many people. I would have been in this picable piece. I would have been in this picable piece of shit either way.

I would have been in this picable piece. I would have been in this picable piece. I would have been in this picable piece. I would have been in this picable piece. I would have been in this picable piece. I would have been in this picable piece. I would have been in this picable piece. I would have been in this picable piece. I would have been in this picable piece. So as the 20s roll to an end, the political situation in the Vyma Republic gets correspondingly more dire. In 1925 during a Nazi rally in Firth, Hitler himself had called it the citadel of the Jews. The local response at that point in 1925 is overwhelmingly negative. And in 1927, only 200 people in Firth were members of the Nazi party.

Hitler visited the city again in 1928 to little effect. The party just got 6.6% of the vote in local elections that year. But the Great Depression rescues the end of the 20s, rescues the Nazis flagging poll members. As Firth's economy collapses, people grow more willing to listen to the fascists. In the 1930 elections, Nazis surged from 2.6% of the vote nationwide to 18.3%. In Firth, they won 23.6% of the vote, which is four times better than they'd done two years earlier, and very frightening for a lot of relevant reasons to today. Yeah. Yeah.

Nazis electoral successes continue to pace the next year and by 1933 more than 22,000 furthers were Nazi voters. I want to quote from Nile Ferguson's book again. On April 9, 1932, 15 SA men were set upon by iron front members as they left the pro-Nazi yellow lion pub. Two months later, Nazi supporter Fritz Reingruber was beaten up for being a swastikist. The same fate befell another Nazi caught selling the NSDAP newspaper, the Volkishabayobacter. The police watched helplessly on the evening of July 30th as a mob threw potatoes and stones at a Nazi motorcade going from the Firth Airport to the Nuremberg Stadium. The car carrying Hitler himself was among the vehicles.

But just a year after Hitler's car gets pelted after the Nazis begin to consolidate power, when Hitler's the chancellor, the mood is very different. On March 3rd, there's another Torchlit parade by the Nazis through Firth, and on the evening of March 9th, a crowd of between 10 and 12,000 people's gathers outside one of the bars there to watch the raising of the Red Nazi flag. So it gets bad pretty fast. Can I just flag the person who brought the potatoes to the rock throwing event?

Yeah. I feel like he turned first. Yeah. Yeah, I'm gonna do a rock. Oh, I meant. Oh, that was a drawing of a rock. Those looked like potatoes, hell. Good Lord.

You know what, I'm gonna say it right now. If that guy had brought rocks, he might have killed Hitler. We could have avoided it. Talk about the butt of Guy. That's the butt of Guy. That's the guy. Yeah. For one to the rock World War II.

Oh, did you guys see my potato hit that car? It really smushed it. It looked mashed. I do love the idea that he also boiled it before. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I don't want to look weird. So Lewis Kissinger lost his job teaching once the Nazis came to power.

Henry, again, who'd never gotten along with his dad, watches his father collapse into what biographer Thomas Allen Schwartz describes as a, quote, state of immobility and psychological depression. Louis withdrew into his study, according to Henry's brother Walter, while the world outside veered closer to nightmare. In his book Henry Kissinger and American Power, Schwartz writes, Kissinger and his brother saw the progressive segregation, isolation, and humiliation the Jews' aphyrth experienced.

Even their attempt to watch soccer games came with the risk of their being beaten by young Nazi thugs. The world of Heinz's childhood rapidly collapsed and his parents and the older generation of Firth's Jews could not protect their young from the hatred around them. After the passage of the Nuremberg laws in 1935, Kissinger's mother began to look for a way to leave Germany. A cousin in the United States was willing to provide the financial support that would allow the Kissinger to leave Germany. A cousin in the United States was willing to provide the financial support that would allow the Kissinger's to immigrate.

In August of 1938, after a last visit with Paulus elderly parents in Lutershauzen, where Heinz saw his father cry for the first time, the family headed to New York. Only three months later, during Kristallmacht, the synagogue and Firth, like hundreds of others throughout Germany, burned to the ground in a night of orchestrated violence.

Three months. Yeah, I mean, that is crazy. When Henry Leaves Firth, there are 2000 Jews in the Jewish community. At the end of World War II, there are 40. Oh my God. Yeah. And three months is so, I mean, that is fairly, I mean, really, that's like, they stay as late as they possibly came. Right.

At least 13 members of Kissinger's family would perish in the Holocaust. Obviously, it being what it is, I don't know that you can, it's not super easy to get exact numbers. But like, his family is as devastated as you would expect of a German-Jewish family. And he does acknowledge, for the first time he like admits that like some part of this had an influence on him. It was moving away from Germany and like going across the world to the United States. And he says, and this is, I think, him being somewhat honest, that the deepest impact of

all this was, quote, all the things that had seemed secure and stable collapsed. And many of the people that once, that one had considered the steady examples suddenly were thrown into enormous turmoil themselves and into fantastic insecurities. People will say, we'll talk about this later. He's very much an order obsessed guy. And like, okay, yeah, I get it. Like I get where that came from, you know?

Right. Yeah, I mean, that's very common for that happen in, you know, chilly and other places where it all falls apart into authoritarianism. They, there's a lot of people who are like, I just want it to be the same. Yeah, well, yeah, you hear that all the time here too. I mean, not like that, obviously, it was far more dire,

but there are a lot of people I know who keep saying that shit here, who keep being like, I just wanted to go back to normal. And you're just like, that shit is fucking sail. That is not, you know. Yeah, it never does, it never can. But we all do it, like even the kind of like obsession with 90s nostalgia is evidence of that.

And not because the 90s were like a perfect time but because like yeah, you weren't aware of as how fucked, like Henry, like your dad hadn't collapsed into like an unable to handle his own thing. Like look, this gets too aggressive. And I, oh my God, we don't have money. Yeah. Yeah. You went from, oh my gosh, you know, the OJ Simpson trial, what a mess to, well, now a plague has killed a million people. Oh my God.

It's very better. Give me that time capsule. It's so funny. The parallels because I'm literally I'm writing a dollop right now and the guy turns into an authoritarian and his dad shut himself in his house and isolated. It's so weird how these things. I mean,

how should if you, I mean, just to continue off of that, Dave, Hitler's dad dies when he's a little kid. Plus, he's the family, finances, and situation, and insecurity in chaos. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. When something that seemed stable from your early childhood collapses, perhaps it hasn't influenced. Oh, yes, maybe.

Despite what Kissinger said. Despite what Kissinger said. But you know what Henry Kissinger loves? The products and services that support this podcast. Oh, God, Robert. No. No. Well, I look, Henry is one of the few VIPs

on BEEPING Island where you can hunt children. Anytime he wants, he gets a free, three bedroom apartment on the child hunting island. Sophie, that B***ing owns. Yeah, because for some fucking reason, he is still alive. Yes. Well, let's be honest here, this is essential as eulogy, because when we finish this podcast and it's published, Kissinger should die.

It's possible I'm planning a darker coat ritual using my own blood and a candle I bought in Mexico to deal with I'm not doing it. Yeah, it's a voodoo doll podcast. Anyway, here's some ads. Ah, we're back. Have you guys gone to the island where you can hunt little kids for sports? Yes, it's amazing. It's also fresh. It's the brisket. It's expected to be that fresh. So good. So Kissinger today has I. So fish. Kissinger today has idyllic recollections of his early years in the United States.

He often talks about walking down the streets of his new neighborhood, seeing a group of boys walking towards him and crossing the street because he's, you know, he's afraid he's going to get beat. Yeah. Yeah. And then he would realize like, oh, that doesn't happen here, which obviously it did in other parts of the US, beating those be dead in other parts of the US. I can be dead in other parts of the US.

I can be dead in other parts of the US. I can be dead in other parts of the US. I can be dead in other parts of the US. I can be dead in other parts of the US. I can be dead in other parts of the US. I can be dead in other parts of the US. I can be dead in other parts of the US. I can be dead in other parts of the US.

I can be dead in other parts of the US. I can be dead in other parts of the US. I can be dead in other parts of the US. I can be dead in other parts of the US. I can be dead in other parts of the US. I can be dead in other parts of the US. I can be dead in other parts of the US. I can be dead in other parts of the US.

I can be dead in other parts of the US. I can be dead in other parts of the US. I can be dead in other parts of the US. I can be dead in other parts of the US. I can be dead in other parts of the US. I can be dead in other parts of the US. I can be dead in Lewis got sick and even more depressed. Paula had to take control of the family and handle shit. She became a caterer and started a business that became the family's lifeline. The neighborhood they lived in was dominated by Orthodox Jewish families with a familiar background. A lot of them were from other parts of Germany. And so the Kissinger's benefited from the help of several community organizations and getting back on their feet. He benefits a lot from the fact that, you know, there's not really a government support network,

but the other Jewish refugees who have come over from Europe have built support networks to make it easier for new folks coming in. Right. Henry's teen years were a mix of school and synagogue. He failed his first driving test, but excelled at soccer, and he grew to admire

many aspects of his new home, including, quote, American technology, the American tempo of work and American freedom, which I might say is in direct opposition to the American tempo of work, but whatever. Kissinger was frustrated, though by the casual approach to life that he saw in his new peers, he thought they were superficial. He wrote at the time that, quote, no youth my age has any kind of spiritual problem that he seriously concerns himself with, which, well, yeah. Okay, Henry. Alright, Hank, fair. I, like, if you come over from Nazi Germany and you're like, people here seem carefree and shallow. And your schooling was like, yeah, and your schooling was basically like some old dude being like,

you did the three of these right, you know, like, you're going to be like, geez, these guys are really not focused on what matters. Yeah. I don't want to be too critical, but New York can use a little bit of Nazism. You know what I mean? It's a little worse. Good Lord. So because of all of this, this is why one of his biographer Schwartz describes young Henry S socially inept. He's not great at talking, he's not great at dealing with his new peers. He did start dating again though, first a girl who was a refugee from nearby Nuremberg, but most of his focus was on schoolwork and soccer. Kissinger graduated George Washington High School and started at the City College of New York.

He took classes at night so he could work during the day at a brush cleaning factory, some of his cousins owned. These brushes are filthy boys! Keep going! That's the thing! It's the most amazing, like, old-timey job ever. It's like a brush cleaning. It's basically like all like a picture,

it's just like the jobs are either like pressing sheets or washing brushes. These brushes are not going to cleanself, gentlemen, how many times do I have to tell you? Well, and the corollary is some mom being like, Billy, you didn't take your sister's brushes to the cleaning shop. What the hell do you do now? It's very funny. Everything old tiey is funny.

People are going to think this in the future about, I don't know, having water. So at this point, Henry's ambition in life was to get, quote, a nice job, likely in accounting. One biographer noted, quote, nothing that happened to Kissinger during those years encouraged him to read more widely. His historical interests were, as underdeveloped when he was 20 as when he arrived in New York as a boy of 15, which is the first normal thing about him that like, yeah, dude, you know, whatever, like he's a kid. Yeah. We're about to get into the studio 54 years, I feel like. Yes. So World War II happens, starts for the United States at least. It started elsewhere

a bit earlier. But for the US, it's very true. All right, we'll do it. When Henry is 21, he did not initially feel called to volunteer for service. But when he got his draft notice in 1943, he complied and joined the roughly 16 million Americans who became soldiers during this period. And if it weren't for this, Henry Kissinger

probably never would have been a figure of historical importance. Again, he just kind of wanted to be an accountant. But being drafted successfully disrupted his plans for a quiet boring life and thrust him into the world. So that says it all. Yeah. It's not.

Maybe don't draft this guy. Right. Yeah, we're just in my way. Just write down. Right. You don't, I did not actually see your Ven mode this year. So, I'm gonna have to process. Yeah, there's a future where he just has really strong opinions on W2.

Yeah, exactly. You know, you put yourself as 1099, but I feel like it was actually more like W4. Yeah. Or he does like a Bernie made off thing, but either way, it's a much better future than the one we got. I will take the made off ending for him for sure. Yeah. Fine.

So we have letters that Henry sent to his brother Walter during training. He reported to like the quote, middle Americans he met there, but warned his sibling, don't become too friendly with the scum you invariably meet there. Well, hello. So he did pick up, he did pick up all of some from the Nazis. He's a little bit, right? He also, he also advised against having sex with the quote, filthy syphilis infected camp followers, which is too specific to, to have been random. I think you know, Kissinger had a bad experience with the camp.

Everyone that camp has syphilis. I'm doing it. Why is it that far? Every girl I fuck to had syphilis. I fuck one girl with that syphilis. Every one of them has it. That's what they animation zero of the syphilis said. But then it's right. That's right, so you're surrounded by counselors. So the Army administered a series of tests, which Kissinger excelled at, and he earned

entrance into a special training program that sent particularly bright soldiers to college. He received his American citizenship in 1943, while he was at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania. The program lasted just six months and Henry finished 12 engineering classes. During his off hours, he would hitch-i-com and see his girlfriend. He was a brilliant student recognized by his roommates as the quote, brainiest of a very intelligent class. One classmate recalled, he didn't read books. He ate them with his eyes, his fingers, and with his squirming in the chair or bed, and with his mumbling criticism.

No, you're just surprised. But that's still as more salt if I've been cooking other than that to be able to. He sounds like a book, which I'm not. This is really weird way to describe it, dude. It's kind of what the way he looks now is like he eats books. Yeah.

And now, yeah. Everyone had a visual reaction to that line, The way he looks now is like he eats books. Yeah. And now, yeah. I do kind of want- Everyone had like a visual like, ooh, reaction to that line, like, ooh, cringe. I know kind of what the story of that classmate. Like, yeah. I asked you to describe a dude reading books that way. Well, I'm a college, I ate analogies. I just would just, just devour them.

I eat them like a synonym, you know? His professors would use Henry to explain complicated concepts to the other soldiers. And for a brief period of time, he had status and respect, which he'd begun to crave as a young man. His time in this program was cut short because, you know, D-Day, we decide America's like, we're going to do us a Normandy landing and the army is like well we probably don't need smart people for that. So let's pull these kids out of the class and train how to get shot by them.

Hey guys, we want to talk to you over here about something totally different. No, not you Chad, you stay right there Chad. Talk about these other guys. Thank you. Good luck. So Henry and his classmates get sent back to basic training where the drill sergeants, according to Henry, took Glee in tormenting the college kids, which I don't know, probably true, while he was preparing to go overseas. And this is what my grandpa was doing in World War II, and I hope he bullied Henry Kissinger. I hope my grandpa got a chance to give Henry Kissinger some shit. Fingers crossed, right?

He did. He did. He did. Absolutely. I hope my grandpa got a chance to give Henry Kissinger some shit. Fingers crossed, right? He did. I, I, he did. He did. Absolutely. So while he was preparing to go overseas, his biographer Schwartz writes, even in the misery of Camp Clairborn, however, Kissinger stood out, selected by his commanders to provide soldiers with a weekly briefing on war news.

Although he did the job well, Kissinger was more impressed with another older German refugee in an American uniform. Fritz Kramer, who came to camp Clairborn in May 1944 to speak about the meaning of war. After Kramer's impassioned talk, Kissinger wrote him a note, dear private Kramer, I heard you speak yesterday. He's basically, yeah. He literally, like, it's like, I liked what you had to say. Can I help you?

Something like it's literally, what the note is, scare. Check your phone. Yeah. Cramer responded almost immediately to the simple fan letter, returning a few days later to seek Kissinger out for conversation in dinner, insistingly speak in German, not English. The Lutheran Cramer later said that he was taken with this quote, little Jewish refugee he had met who he believed,

as yet knows nothing, but already he understands everything. Wow. That's an interesting way to describe him. I mean, he sounds like a guy who eats books. Yeah. And this guy, Kramer is a Prussian, which I don't know the degree to which that means anything to a lot of people.

The Prussians, so there was most don't know the degree to which that means anything to a lot of people. The Prussians, so there was most of the resistance to the Nazis was from the left. Once the Nazis got into power, the resistance to the Nazis that meant anything was Prussian, not because they were good dudes, but because they were way too conservative for Hitler. They were like, well, we want to fight on take over all of Europe, but with a Kaiser who has royal blood, not this gross gross little corpall and stuff. And it's complicated because like a lot of those pressions got murdered by the Nazis and as a general rule your sympathy is with the people who get murdered by the Nazis, but it's also like, yeah you're that murdered by the Nazis for the wrong reasons.

Right, right, yeah. They were like, we have one small note, but everything else is working great for them. They were the guys who were like Hitler's bad, because he's not gonna win the war against Russia. Right, wow, okay. Yeah. So this guy Fritz Kramer would be in Henry's words, quote, the greatest single influence on my format of years.

Since Fritz was a Prussian conservative, so an idea of how fucking German Fritz Kramer is, he wears a monocle to make his, wow, eye work harder, to make his weak eye work better. Like, oh my God. Oh, I'm the craziest asshole ever. Wow. What the fuck?

And, you know, Fritz hated the Nazis, which good, good. He also hated the communists, which you have to think there was some, some, some, Nazis, which good, good. He also hated the communists, which you have to think there is some, some, some sus stuff there. Yeah. You know, communists, there's a mixed bag like everybody, but I don't think he's very nuanced about it. Schwartz also credits Fritz with expressing quote,

a respect for international law, and emphasis on the moral basis of civilization. And what Fritz Kramer means by the moral basis of civilization is not the same as what I think maybe you or I might mean. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Now, that, yeah, I think the most important influence Kramer had

was he's, Kramer is very conservative. And he, Henry is kind of a natural conservative and Kramer really reinforces this feeling in Henry, which is expressed by a growing sort of revulsion in Kissinger towards any ideas outside of the political median, right? Which you get why he has a tendency towards this if your life, if your childhood is this like

battle of extremes in your hometown, I get why you would kind of veer towards the middle and this guy Kramer really turns that up to 11 in him. One right up in the New Yorker notes, quote, he warned Kissinger not to emulate cleverling intellectuals and their bloodless cost benefit analyses. Believe in Kissinger to be musically attuned to history. He told him,

only if you do not calculate, will you really have the freedom which distinguishes you from the little people? Oh, so that's bad. So that's going to go really bad. I mean, you's really are like, I mean, this is his Morpheus. We're just starting to be like, okay, this is, yeah.

By the way, have you thought about maybe just losing the glasses and just going with the wand? That is so much like, I punish your weak eye. You must punish the weak even when it comes to your eyes. Yeah, he has found a kid

who like has a problematic history of starting fires and is now teaching him how to build a fertilizer bomb. Yeah. He's a bad influence. Matches are so, so, but have you ever seen a zippo? Yeah. He's a great. So Kissinger finishes training and is deployed with the 84th Infantry Division as it moved

towards Nazi Europe. His division sees a decent amount of combat. He does not, he's a back rancor, he handles administrative and management tasks. And he finds the power and authority he gets through his time in the service intoxicating. Though he never, again, he doesn't fight directly, he does earn a bronze star for a valor because he helps catch and take out a Gestapo sleeper cell. Primarily due to the fact that like he's just, you know, a very observant dude. In 1945, he participates in the liberation of a concentration camp, Alam, AH-LEM. I'm not 100% sure on how to pronounce it.

One prisoner at the camp remembered him as the young American who announced, you are free. For Kissinger, the overwhelming memory of this experience was seeing inmates he described as being barely recognizable as humans and feeling the instinct to feed them before learning that some were so starved that solid food would kill them. Shortly thereafter. Yeah, I mean, one thing you gotta say,

he just thought like he's not a sheltered upbringing. I mean, you wouldn't be like, oh, maybe that could be the influence that made him be like, oh, you know, you can, there's good. You can provide, like, provide the people who are tortured and starved some, you know, hell. You could take away from this, like, my God, war is evil and we should do everything we can to prevent it as opposed to, yeah, baby. Well, let's see how it plays out, Dave. Maybe, baby. Maybe this is the sixth part behind the bastard's episode

about a cool dude who does nice things. Yeah. Yeah. I just brought you guys here to talk about a chill guy. Yeah. Yeah. So, shortly after liberating this concentration camp, Kissinger writes an essay on his experience where he asks,

quote, who was lucky, the man who draws circles in the sand and mumbles, I am free, or the bones that are interred in the hillside. He concludes from the experience that this is humanity in the 20th century. So I mean, understandably bleak take from liberating a concentration camp. Yeah. That's fair. Yeah. You know what is a bad time to move to an ad plug?

I didn't think you're going to be brave enough to do this, but fair. Boy. Wow. Yeah. You know what makes me hungry, probably shouldn't go too far down that road. Let the ads do the talk. Let the ads do the talking. The ads are going to come and win the same way the Silvia Union did. There it is. Weaved after wave of men into Nazi trench it anyway. I think we lost it. We had it for a minute.

We had it for a second there. I took it too far. You know, I took it there. Here we go. Oh, we're back. So when the war ends, World War II, you know, that is, Sergeant Henry Kissinger finds himself as, quote, the absolute ruler of a small village named Binsheim. He enjoys this experience.

He really starts to like having power. Yeah, one thing that we're getting here is that he adores having power over people. Yeah, he really likes it. In his letters, he celebrates repeatedly to his family that he has, quote, absolute authority to arrest people. Oh, geez. And it's, this is, this is problematic

because of what he does later. I will say, if you are a Jewish kid who asked a flee Germany and then you come back and get made like the military head of a town that's full of former Nazis. I get reveling in it a little bit. Yeah. Well, I'm having beheading Tuesdays, if that's true.

Yeah. So again, he's not the because of what he does later. This is unsettling, but like it's understandable in the moment. Yeah. Yeah. He appropriates a luxury home and a fancy car, both of which had to have belonged to some Nazi, which is sure. Like it's what you do, right? Yeah. Fine. He gets a butler. He he brags back to his family that he's not a butler. A fucking Nazi butler. Absolutely. That's what I tested for not giving me butter. Yeah. That is that is

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

And he had a reputation in general as being more objective as a ruler in this kind of period than most Jewish veterans in similar positions. In general, Henry counseled accommodation and rapprochement with one exception, communists. As the civil war. Of course. Right the civil war be. Of course. Right, you fucking ass.

I know, right. We have this like understandable beard. Yeah. I don't want to upset the Nazis, but these communists. Yeah, oh my god. Yeah, and this literally what happens. So the Cold War, you know, early stages in 1946, but already in that period,

Kissinger advocates strict surveillance of German civilians for left-wing sympathies Yeah The left is do the left is do He doesn't want them he also wants to ban communists from teaching at the local schools, which again, is like, what the fuck? He went straight, not see all of a sudden. Yeah, he's definitely both, let's say fascist.

Let's say fascist. Yeah, yeah, fascist. Now he's a fascist. Yeah, he does a bit. He does a bit. He starts dating a Gentile German girl during this period, because again, he's not very religious. His letters home to his parents though, because they don't like this at all. They're like you're losing

your faith and Henry gets very combative with them. He sees them as a rational writing quote, to me there is not only right or wrong but many shades in between. The real tragedies in life are not choices between right and wrong. Real difficulties bear difficulties of the soul soul, provoking agonies, which you and your world of black and white can't begin to comprehend. How's the dog? How's the dog? I love you, mom. I love you, mom.

Also, how's it's good? It's good. It's good. Is he's tail better? And his parents have the reaction we all did where they're like, hey, how were you? But it seems like the war man had an effect on you.

I've said this ever since you met the monocle guy, but you're really intense. Maybe all of the things you've seen have had an impact on you. And he responds to this by getting enraged and saying, not everybody came out of this war as a psychoneorotic. Oh, that shows them. That'll teach them that. That's exactly, that's fine. That's fine.

That's exactly, that's the exact right reaction of a non-psychoneorotic. When you're screaming, I'm not a psychoneorotic in letters. You're a psychoneorotic. I got to tell you. That's the only thing. I got to see from Garland camp. If all they're saying is like, Hey Henry, do you think maybe seeing a concentration camp has left some mental scars that you need to like heal from? Hey, maybe I should drown that into the toilet. Okay. All right, buddy. All right, pal.

We're just, okay, we're just, we're just right letters here, buddy. We're just writing some letters. That's all we're doing. That's one of those things. This is a period of time obviously like every, like one of the things that causes what happens later in American history is that 16 million Americans go to war and a bunch of them get traumatized and they come back to a world where like,

their dad was always like, if you talk about your feelings, I'm going to hit you. Yeah. Henry's family doesn't seem to be like that. His parents are like, hey, do you want to talk about your feelings? And he's like, I'm not crazy. Yeah.

Yeah. Um, obviously, obviously the fact that this is a time in which like men don't fucking do therapy does have an impact on it. But I think his family is probably more understanding than men. Well, he also has no, I mean, even now he has no acknowledgement of like his trauma. So he probably, even in the actual moment, I mean, you're probably even more defensive, you know? Yeah.

In 1947, Kissinger finally decides to leave Germany for the second time. On Fritz Kramer's advice, he applies late to Harvard and he was accepted, winning one of the two national scholarships the school gave New Yorkers each year. Wow. Now, Chopped Chop House did a tournament of evil people from Harvard. It's awesome. And Kissinger won.

So that's awesome. That makes sense. Oh, boy, the Ivy League. I have. Good at producing bad people. Maybe we should look into that one. So one of his classmates recalls, and he obviously he does, like, it's Henry Kissinger. He's very good at school. One of his classmates

recalls that he quote, worked harder and studied more than anybody else on campus. He is a school. He is cool. Stopping from shuffling pencils in his mouth. The campus like Godzilla would have been nearly died. He almost died from lead. Um, his studies so absorbed him that he ignored the people around him. He made, quote, no lasting friendships with other students. He seemed scarcely aware of the extraordinary range of people gathered around him. So, Kissinger's ideology evolved along the lines Kramer had started him off on. He agreed with Gyrtha, I believe is the name of the German philosopher, that if he quote, had to choose between justice and disorder on

the one hand and injustice in order on the other, I would always choose the latter. So, well, there we go. He's made his choice. That's very telling. Like, we know, we know. We get it. Yeah. Yeah. It's just nice to know we're like around the time like, okay, so he was pretty defined. Okay. So Henry, you know some other people who thought that order was more important than justice. Yeah.

Yeah. They had an impact on your child. Yeah, yeah, no shit, yeah, right. But it's just, it's just such a trauma work, too. It's a strange thing that he, it's so conscious, like he, he's so completely aware of it. Yeah. Like he's like a psychopath.

He might be. I mean, I think if you're, I try not to do too much like the psychoanalyzing people, but like, fucking maybe, right? Well, psychopaths are very good at the stuff you talked about, winning people over in the room. Yeah.

You know, ladies man, like there is a, they learn how to be a human and then they sort of, about winning people over in the room. You know, ladies man, like there is a, they learn how to be a human and then they sort of. And a lot of you got syphilis at camp. And a lot of you get syphilis at camp, like Henry Kissinger, yeah. Well, Sophie, can we, let's green light some Henry Kiss, some T-shirts that are just Henry Kissinger

with his face writing off from syphilis. People are gonna wanna weigh that. That's why. Yeah. Oh, just five hundred. He's making the kissy lips and his lips are falling off. syphilis people are going to want to weigh that yeah just he's making the kissy lips and his lips are falling off yes you like a kissinger?

let me French kissinger you so he meets his second mentor at Harvard Henry Kissinger has a lot of mentors and this is maybe a lesson to never mentor anybody you never know they might become Henry Kissinger has a lot of mentors and this is maybe a lesson to never mentor anybody. You never know. They might become Henry Kissinger. Yeah. Don't teach people things. Sabotage them at every step, right? Next time you drive past a kindergarten, throw them a textbook that's all lies. You know, just slow them down. So his second mentor is this guy William Yandle Elliott. And Elliott has is a professor at Harvard. He's also like very politically connected. He had advised several US presidents on international matters. And Kissinger was drawn to this guy because not only is he a respected

educator, but he's really well connected to people with power. And Elliott, one of the things that like he is famous for being a big advocate of is what's called real politique. As embodied by, and particularly the guys that Kissinger grows up admiring and that Elliot helps teach him to admire, I'm in like Closvitz and Bismarck. These guys who are like Bismarck

is the dude who makes Germany, right? We get a Germany because Bismarck orchestrates over a period of, I think it's decades, gradually he welds all these different German principalities and kingships together and then helps to orchestrate this war, out of which emerges Germany, like that's the kind of dude that auto von Bismarck is.

And he is kind of the master of the kind of politics that Kissinger comes to respect. And he Kissinger calls, Clausewitz and Bismarck philosophers of history. That's how he sees this guy. These guys, which is not really what I would call out of on Bismarck. Like he's very good at what he does obviously, but not I wouldn't call him a philosopher. I want to quote now from the book Kissinger's Shadow by Greg Grandin. From these thinkers, Kissinger cobbled together his own view of how history operated. It was not a story of liberal progress, or of class consciousness, or of cycles of history,

or of cycles of birth, maturity, and decline. Rather, it was a series of meaningless incidents, fleetingly given shape by the application of human will. As a young infantryman, Kissinger had learned that victors ransacked history for analogies to guild their triumphs, while the vanquished sought out historical causes of their misfortune. So yeah, yeah, you know, it's, it's maybe not, yeah, yeah. You can think about that however you want. So a lot of folks who analyze the Kissinger in this period sees on one sentence in Kissinger's undergraduate thesis and his thesis is titled The Meaning of History.

Oh boy. But they can kind of explain a lot of what comes to be going down. What a bold paper. It is right. I mean, honestly, he's not a dude who makes like little leaps. It explains a lot of what comes to be going down. What a bold paper. It is right. I mean, honestly. He's not a dude who makes like little leaps. Right, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Why do we love? Mm-hmm. This is the line, the realm of freedom and necessity cannot be reconciled except by an inward experience, which is, you know, read it again.

The realm of freedom and necessity cannot be reconciled, except by an inward experience. Wow. And this is, this is a, like a heavily influenced by French existentialism, his thesis, site's Jean Paul Sartre a lot. And both Sartre and Kissinger think that morality is not an inward thing, it's determined by actions, which is not an unreasonable thing to believe, right? That like what matters is what you do, you know? Is that line from the Bible, you're not damned by what goes into your head, but like what comes out, right?

Like that's not an unreasonable thing to believe. Sart, he believes that like action creates the possibility of intellectual and collective responsibility, right? That morality is determined by action, but that our actions create this possibility of like individual and collective moral responsibility for things. Kissinger does not come to that conclusion.

Kissinger believes that morality is determined by action, but he also thinks that like moral indeterminancy is a condition of human freedom. It's this idea that you can't be bound by morality and be free. If you want to freely act, you have to be able to act above morality, right? Right, Lord.

Yeah, so that's just giving yourself an excuse to do heinous acts. That's obvious. I mean, a lot of his intellectual development is him. And also a lot of this is, obviously all of this, one of the things that you have to account for is all of this analysis of his development intellectually comes after he does all the horrible things.

Like so. Sure. Right, and including from him. And from the people who are sources who are saying this is what he was like as a kid, there is that degree of biasing, right? Like that this is after he is the person that he is because if he had gone on to just be a professor, nobody

would have given a shit about what Henry Kiss made the account and said that. Yeah, look, just, what do I owe? Yeah, yeah, tell me what the IRS gets, man. I don't need another lecture on this. And Kissinger is the fact that he becomes so kind of moral relativism as the word of you. I don't even know if that's right, but like this idea that like freedom and morality are kind of like inherently opposed.

This upsets a lot of people around him, including people who are like his big supporters, including that professor Elliott guy at his retirement party, Henry Kissinger, Elliott's retirement party. Henry Kissinger and a number of students gathered to like bid him farewell. And journalist David Helberstam wrote that Elliott had positive things to say about almost all of his students who had gathered there. But when he reached Kissinger, he said this, Henry, he began, you're brilliant, but you're arrogant.

In fact, you're the most arrogant man I've ever met. Kissinger became Ashenfaced. Mark my words, Elliott continued, your arrogance is going to get you in real trouble one day. Oh, that is amazing on so many levels like at your retirement party to be like, Hey, and you listen shit bag. Yeah, chill out. And then for that also to be totally incorrect. Like, you know, I saw this like clip of some some guy in like Atlantic City talking to Trump when Trump is going like, well, what is mate? What makes a Native American and the guy just goes,

sir, I'm glad you're never going to get into any real power. And you're like, no, dude, oh, dude. Well, and one of the things like this, the professor Elliott is like one of the guys who helps get him his first big gigs and shit like he's a major bass. And I think this is kind of him belatedly being like, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops,

whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops,

whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops, Just give me a tip slip. I owe you guys. I'm not gonna tell you why. Yeah, you go. Don't worry about it. Take my take everything Here's my thing. I gotta hang I gotta go. Do you know if there's a Bangladeshie restaurant nearby? I'm actually hitting a lot of spots tonight and not eating. I'll be honest I'm going a lot of places No, no, not German. No, not German. No, not German. You know what they're actually fine. I don't think I need So his thesis. Well, his, that thing that he says to Kissinger, it, it should be what happens, but our society rewards psychopaths above anybody else. And so what he most societies. Yeah. So what he thinks should be is the opposite. What he's talking about is a just world,

which isn't what this is. And it's one of those things. This is something like that kind of more in anthropological thinking, but like one of the reasons people will say, like why we have psychopaths is that, if you're in a band of 70 people who are like hunter-gatherers starving through the winter,

it's helpful to have a guy like Henry Kissinger a band of 70 people who are like hunter-gatherers starving through the winter. It's helpful to have a guy like Henry Kissinger, you can say, like, well, these six people are too old and sick and we have to let them die, otherwise we'll all starve, right? That's a situation in which it's good to have a psychopath because you need someone who just doesn't give a shit about certain things. When you have a society of billions that's global, it becomes a problem because that kind of thinking is not so useful and Tens to just get millions and millions of people killed. Yeah It's it's not great Anyway, Henry's thesis is published in 1950 at roughly the same time Harry Truman decides to send troops to Korea and to aid French forces in Vietnam

Professor Elliott told Kissinger that the Korean War was an example of the east, quote, testing the civilization of the West. Yeah, people doing their own thing in their own country is a test to us. Yeah, it's fucking right. Like the Koreans and the Vietnamese having completely their own shit going on as a test of us in the United States. How dare you? You know, Ho Chi Minh not wanting to be ruled over by the French is really a test of American power. It's very insulting. I mean, and obviously

they see that like the Soviet Union is orchestrating all this and the Soviet Union is involved too, but like they're just like, they're looking us in the eyes. They've got their own shit going on. They are on the same level. How dare they do this? So as the US increased its commitments to a growing series of wars in Southeast Asia, Kissinger grew more dedicated to the work of a guy named Oswald Spangler. Spangler's book The Decline of the West is not something I am well equipped to describe, we're explained in detail, but Greg Grandin is, so I'm going to quote from him again. Spangler waged a relentless assault on the very idea of reality. He insisted that there existed a higher plane of experience that was inaccessible to rational

thought, a plane where instinct and creativity reigned. We have, Spangler thought, hardly yet an inkling of how much in our reputably objective values and experiences is only disguise, only image and expression. To get behind image and expression, to penetrate perceived material power and interests, and grasp what Spingler called destiny, one needed not information, but intuition, not facts, but hunches, not reason, but a soul sense,

a world feeling, often enough, a statesman does not follow, does not know what he is doing, Spingler wrote, but that does not prevent him from following with confidence just the one path that leads to success. Oh my God. And that is George W. Bush crawl out of a pile of goo now. Yes. Yes. I mean, this is for our freedom.

George Bush like pops out of Henry's Kissinger's back as a polyphonic. Yeah. That's like Dr. Pimplepopper pops it. It's too hidden, rumous, fell, bush, like thing, like, we know where they are. They're in the east, west, north, and south. Kissinger finds this logic intoxicating. But he did disagree with Spingler about Spingler's primary

contention, which is that civilizational decay was inevitable. Spingler argued that civilizations had springs, summers, bottoms, and winters, right? That they proceed through kind of like inevitable stages. And there's not really any way to stop this procession, right? Which is I think a pretty reasonable, like yeah, any civilization is gonna have like a life cycle,

right? That's a thing like historically you can argue pretty well. Kissinger doesn't believe this. Everything dies. Yeah. Of course. That's actually, well. Kissinger doesn't believe this. Everything dies. Of course, that's actually not what Kissinger did. Of course, the man who is living way beyond his shelf life is like, doldu so. Doesn't die.

So here's Brandon again talking about Kissinger, how Kissinger grapples with his aspect of Spangler. Having lost a sense of purpose, civilizations lurch outward to fine meaning. They get caught up in a series of disastrous wars, propelled forward to doom by history's cosmic beat, power for power's sake, blood for blood. Imperialism is the inevitable product of this final stage, Kissinger wrote, summing up the decline of the West's argument, an outward thrust to hide the inner void. Kissinger accepted Spangler's critique of past civilizations, but rejected his determinism. Decay was not

inevitable. Spingler, Kissinger said, merely described a fact of decline, and not its necessity. There is a margin, he would write in his memoirs, between necessity and accident, in which the statesmen, by perseverance and intuition, must choose and thereby shape the destiny of his people. So, Spingler's like, yeah, it seems like when civilizations lose their purpose and start to age, they lurch out what it engage in wars of imperial conquest and a search for meaning, and that leads to disaster, which destroys them, and Kissinger's like, but what if you did the wars right? Yeah.

But what if you were gay? But what if I was involved in everyone? What if I was involved in everyone? What if I was like Mickey in the corner of Rocky? It is an amazing like this guy being like, here is what happens to empires every single time there's an empire. This is a thing you can go through history and see constantly occurs through thousands of years and Kestich is like, no, I can do it right.

But to be like, no, you're pretty close. You're pretty close. Bye. So I'm just thinking, kill more. Like I heard what you said, ups and downs, but I think you wipe everybody out. You know, have you tried to get them blood? It is the same logic I have seen.

Every time I've seen more than one person get stuck in the mud, it's always either one person get stuck in the mud or 50 due. Because one person gets stuck in the mud and the other 49 go one person get stuck in the mud or 50 due, because one person get stuck in the mud, and the other 49 go, well, I saw it happen to that guy, but I think I can figure it out. I can get around.

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

Well, I have a plan, but it's a different one. It's changed, it's like it. It's more about a plan. I have a plan. I have a plan. Well, I have a plan, but it's a different one. It's changed. You are not going to like it. A lot more about a pool. Yeah. In 1951, Henry got a gig working as a consultant with the army on psychological warfare while he finished his graduate studies. Kissinger's doctoral thesis on the Congress of Vienna did not seem overly relevant to politics,

but his first sentence had discussed nuclear weapons and proposed to readers that the efforts of British and Austrians made to contain Napoleon might be useful in handling the Soviet Union. I might argue, didn't Napoleon have a way to end all life on Earth if things went badly? With condemnation. Was that a factor in the poli? I was not. Yeah. Scammits. So a sword.

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

He's like, no, because containment is a failure, war with the Soviet Union is ineffitable. Now, in Kissinger's view, this has nothing to do with the actions of the United States, but is instead, quote, because of the existence of the United States as a symbol of capitalist democracy, it is literally the early extent of like, well, they hate us for our freedoms. Right, yeah, right. Yeah, like that's where he's starting down.

And obviously a lot of people are saying shit like this, right? This is not a Kissinger invention. You know, you've got the John Birch Society, all sorts of shit on this period. I don't want to give him too much credit there. It's clear by this point that Henry was going to get into politics, although law enforcement was a possibility too, because he gets, he starts being a professor at Harvard, right? Like after he graduates and stuff, he starts like helping out as stuff and teaching

some classes. And at one point, the school hosts an international seminar. And when he hears that like a bunch of foreign academics are coming to Harvard, he calls the FBI and volunteers to spy on people for. That's amazing. As I mean, honestly, it is so amazing with his background to be like, to have that attitude.

It just is, it really is, it's hard. It's hard to get there. You gotta give him credit. The man covers some grounds. The man is a Batman villain. He really is. So, yeah, his love of politics and his first attempt to build influence at Harvard is by starting a journal

named Confluence. Now, this is a stensibly a journal that exists to create what he calls an international forum for discussion, right? I just wanna get good people talking from all around the world, you know, let the ideas fly. It's like a TED Talk kind of pitch. Sure. But he's really vague about, he doesn't really seem to care

about what particular discussion he encourages. And his critics would later claim that this journal was quote, a fake, primarily an enterprise designed to make Kissinger known to powerful people, right? Oh, yeah. Like he's just giving, letting powerful people write articles, because then he gets them and he gets their phone number, right? Right.

They're mailing it. He's not working. Yeah, he's not working. Confluenced leads to Henry's first mention in the pages of The New York Times. And despite what his critics claim, which is probably broadly accurate, the journal did also publish some really significant figures, including Reinhold neighbor and Hannah Arent. But while he claimed commitment to free discourse, Kissinger had a real tendency to publish right-wing shitheads, including Inak Powell, a conservative British politician famous for comparing immigration to quote, rivers of blood.

Well, so that's good. I mean, I've always agreed with that. I mean, that is just. So, but you like blood rivers. You like love a blood river. Oh my God. That's the laziest of rivers. Yeah, because you float real good. Oh yeah, he made it. Yeah, it's molasses. That's freedom.

If you can say immigrants are like a river blood, that's the freedom he's talking about. That's the freedom. You wanna know what other kind of freedom he's interested in publishing? Oh, God. Oh, my God. I'm going to quote from Nile Ferguson from the book Kissinger here, an article by Ernst

von Salomon, a right-wing German writer, who had been convicted for his role in the assassination of Walter Rathanaugh, a German foreign minister in the Weimar Republic. The article provoked an angry letter from Shepherdstone of the Ford Foundation who had provided money from both the international seminar and the journal. So first note, he publishes a guy who's basically pretty close to Winnatsi, a far-right German terrorist in the Vimar years. And it's so upsetting that a representative of the Ford Foundation complaints. Oh my lord. I mean, if you could upset the Ford Foundation, you could cross a guideline. If the Ford Foundation is like your connection to a Nazi werey smake.

Hey, you have, and that's coming from us, who I really go with that. You know who we are, we're like, super fend of that. Look, I have the protocols of the elders of Zion tattooed on my chest, but I'm also gonna. Ford Foundation employees, I'm gonna throw a flag on the play. I'm still flagging the play. And our new car is coming out the Ford Tastica.

Yeah. Oh, man. So, quote, stone was appalled that Kissinger would publish an article by a criminal in a Nazi sympathizer like Solomon. Kissinger told Stone he disliked Solomon and opposed what he stood for, considering him a damned soul driven by the furies, demonstrating a remarkable self-confidence for a graduate student, Kissinger defended himself for publishing the article. I may air occasionally on the side of too great tolerance, partly because I believe our readers sufficiently mature to make their own

judgments. Kissinger argued that what Solomon represented was a symptom of certain tendencies of our age, but that by appearing in a liberal journal like Confluence, Solomon was the one who was compromised. Kissinger was not simply defending free speech. He had solicited the article from Solomon, telling the German about, quote, having long admired your writings, even if I could not share your point of view. What? So it gets better and more relevant to today because when there's an outcry against this, Kissinger writes a letter to his friend, Kramer, and says, I have now joined you as the cardinal villain in liberal demonology. Oh my God.

I know it's he's just doing it now. What he's just doing now. He's got the lot of. It's like you're Glenn Greenwald talk to Joe Rogan Yes, it's like what the hell how is this still happening Pioneer of this Henry Kissinger. How are you the pioneer of this? Nation if you're FI your me just listen to like, uh, okay That's an amazing explanation if you're your me just listen to it like, uh, okay, okay, not sure what he's saying But all right, okay, so we got to hear from this Nazi who shot a

Okay, cuz you all right, well, it'll anger the lips. Why is he said it's cool and next next month We have Ed Geen is doing a little number Ed Geen's gonna walk us through lamp workings. So. Mm-hmm. And then we're having the zodiac, Killer-on, to teach us about proper parking techniques. Uh-huh, and pentagramming. And coding.

He'd actually be pretty good at that, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So once he had finished his dissertation and graduated, Henry found himself in need of like a steady gig. He's doing like, he wasn't a professor at that one. He was like doing like graduate students, you know, helping to teach whatever.

I didn't do a college, so, but you know how grad students teach shit and stuff. Sure. But he wants like a full on gig. He's trying to get an actual full-time job as an assistant professor, but he's not able to, because most people don't like him, Rick Kissinger. I wonder what, I wonder any reason why they need him.

A lot of people at Harvard are not loving it. Not a huge fan of people. I'm not loving the Nazi publishing, June. Yeah, from Germany. Yeah, they consider him slightly problematic. I wonder what it is. He drifts for a bit. He's unable to find work.

You know, and he's still doing some stuff at Harvard, but he's not. He's kind of a drift in his career. Until in 1954, he runs into a friend Arthur Slesinger, Jr. at Harvard. Slesinger had a letter in his possession from a former secretary of the Air Force, defending Eisenhower, the Eisenhower administration's standard of threatening massive retaliation for the Soviets. Now, the gist of this idea that the Eisenhower administration really kicked off was that if we promised the Soviets that if there's ever a confrontation, we will immediately like send out a world ending hail of nukes, right? Then those lines won't get crossed, right?

We won't have any kind of fight at all. If everyone knows those mistakes, then nothing will happen, right? That's the idea. Kissinger disagrees with this take, which is reasonable to disagree with. There's a lot of problems with the, we will end the world if there's any kind of issues. I'm worried where he's going to take it. He's going to make it worse. He's going to make it worse. You know what guys? He shared us exactly what he does, Garith, because Kissinger, we'll talk about what he does in a bit, but he, he writes a letter kind of writing out some critiques to this. And he has his friend Nelson Rockefeller send it to Eisenhower.

He's friends with Nelson Rockefeller by the way. Sure. Everyone is in this period. All the people. When the president rejects Kissinger's analysis, the advice of John Foster Dulles, Rockefeller resigns, and he resigns from his job with the administration, which like temporarily like closes a door to Henry, but the letter that Kissinger had received was well enough, like popular enough among other thinkers in Washington that it earns him a job offer,

heading a study group at the council on foreign relations, studying nuclear weapons and foreign policy. But of course, Henry's problem with massive retaliation wasn't that using nuclear weapons was unconscionable. It was that the world and the nature of the threats the Eisenhower administration was making meant they would never new anybody. And Kissinger thought this was a terrible idea. He thought that nuclear weapons should be used tactically to see if your battlefield victories against the communists. What's What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? if there's a fight will kill everybody or what if we just try using dukes a little bit? The kill everybody guys have the more reasonable take.

I mean, really, you're close, you're close together. You can do much faster. It's incredible. And also, but like again, this is this, the people he's arguing with is the Eisenhower administration. Nelson Rockefeller is not a right-winger who's like this guy's got some shit going on You know we should listen to him and like he's a lot of people who are not like you know Hard right dudes are like yeah, maybe it makes sense. We got to be using these like tactical nuclear weapons

You should consider the possibility, you know he makes a good point. He uses smart words He's considered a possibility, you know? He makes a good point. He uses smart words and he quotes for these smart people. He talks about new king folks. You've got a lot of words. Uh, so that is part one of our epic series, Henry Kissinger. Jesus. Jesus Christ, dude, maybe we'll become an accountant.

Oh my God. What a guy. In part two, we'll talk about how he gets into power. So that's gonna be a hoot for everybody. Mm-hmm. But feel like before we do that, you guys, do you guys like do like a, like a, like a, like a giant influential popular podcast that maybe this, this podcast is heavily influenced by? Is that something you guys do? Are you talking about Rogan? Yes, yes, you are both Joe Rogan, right? The dollop.

Yes. The dollop. It is your podcast. You believe it is. News. Yes, that was your six part series, the dollops. Why we need to nook be. Go for it. Check out the dollop if you have not already. Just a very, very funny podcast. You guys want to plug anything out before we roll out into part two? I mean, my ears a couple times during this, but yeah. Well, you can go to dollapodcast.com where I tour all over the place. And I'll stress it out. And to most of the place soon, that will be very exciting. I am excited to work to ring to exist again. Yeah. I think in our lives. Yeah. fingers crossed.

So until part two, go home and read some Oswald Spangler and then disagree with it in a way that makes you much, much worse. Yep. Yes. Put the modicle on the bad eye. All right. When Walter Isaacson set out to write his biography of Elon Musk, he believed he was taking

on a world-changing figure. That night he was deciding whether or not to allow Starlink to be enabled to allow a sneak attack on Crimea. What he got was a subject who also sowed chaos and conspiracy. I'm thinking it's idiotic to buy Twitter because he doesn't have a fingertip feel for social emotional networks. I'm thinking it's idiotic to buy Twitter because he doesn't have a fingertip feel for social emotional Networks and when I sat down with Isaacs in five weeks ago. He told me how he captured it all They had Kansas spray paint and they're just putting big axes on machines

And it's almost like kids playing on the playground Just choose them up left right in center and then like Dr. Jekyll and mr. Hyde He doesn't even remember it getting getting the bars, done an excuse being a total f***. But I want the reader to see it in action. My name is Evan Ratliffe, and this is On Musk with Walter Isaacson. Join us in this four-part series as Isaacson breaks down how he captured a vivid portrait of a polarizing genius. Listen to On Musk on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Cheryl McCollum, host of the Colkays Podcast, Zone 7. Join us every Wednesday to hear cases like the Long Island Serial Killer. Here, Carrie Rossin, daughter of the notorious Serial Killer BTK, weigh in on the accused Long Island Serial Killer's children. You show like genuine interest and you can't fake it. But these guys can see like right through to your soul. So you have to be like walled off, prepared. And if you don't know your stuff,

they're going to just call you out. And they're going to be like, no, I'm talking to somebody else. I'm not talking to you. Here great insight from one of New York City's finest detective Joe Jackalone a Col. K. Secksburg. You know as well as I do cops weren't even aware of it back then so they're going to have some difficulty putting those cases together unless of

course he confesses. Listen to zone seven with Cheryl McCollum on the I Heart Radio app Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. At the Planet Money Podcast, we ask questions like, who decides when we're in a recession? Why does every insurance company seem to have a mascot? Do food expiration dates even matter? I'm Jeff Guo, co-host of NPR's Planet Money, where we bring you stories about people, about weird schemes and wonderful mistakes, to show you how the economy actually works.

Listen to Planet Money from NPR on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Oh, welcome back to what is either behind the dollop or dollop the bastards a podcast that no matter what name We choose for it is about tickling Absolutely, yes finally is that's how you make us feel at home. Thank you. Do you think anyone is ever tickled Kissinger? I can't a man. I cannot picture it in my hands. This is the way he would laugh. Stop it. I'm going to wet my pants. Not my pants. That makes me want to be. I just try to imagine him whispering into the ears of a sexual partner.

I'm about to finish. I'm about to finish. I'm going to. I mean, no, it'd be more like, I'm going to end this. Say, say I'm about to finish. He's bringing me bird-shaped. He cannot sing. He cannot sing.

He cannot sing. Oh, they're one of us makes it out alive. I actually did while we were taking a break in between the episodes. I had a moment where I actually did for the first time in my life, I felt profound sense of solidarity within Re Kissinger. My cat is named Saddam Hussein, and as I was feeding him during the break, I realized like Kissinger did at one point, he's gotten much bigger. Saddam has gotten much larger than I ever thought he would. You know, I did not anticipate this.

Yeah. Well, that's because you named him Saddam. There's a lot to love about you just said. Kissinger and I both make the same mistake. Oh. So. I guess that's a, let's get right back down. That's party.

What is for Kissinger, memory lane, and is what for everyone else is nightmare avenue. Because this is the story about why Vietnam lasted an extra half decade. Good time. We're going to have a fun one here. So one of the many downsides of an intellectual upbringing like the one Henry Kissinger experienced is that he spent a lot of time surrounded by people you might call political technologists.

Now this is a term I first heard in Ukraine from civilians describing Paul Manafort. That's what they called them, political technologists. Oh, that's right. I heard it. Yeah, yeah. These like hired guns who come in and help anybody who just happens to like have government money.

Like do literally anything, right? They're guys like his mentor, Professor Elliott, and like Harvard economist, Thomas Schnelling, who advised powerful elected leaders and like they all of the way in which they think about the mechanisms of government are very mathematic and inhuman, right? Those are the people that kiss andinger patterns and self-off of. Now, shelling, or shelling, who we just Thomas Shelling, who's a Harvard economist, we just introduced, was one of Kissinger's

other mentors, and shelling at the same time as he's working at Harvard and mentoring Kissinger, is advising the Eisenhower administration on moral calculus in the early stages of the Cold War. Shelling argues that. More calculus. More calculus. Have you never talked about that with anybody? I mean, not a common conversation. No, no, no, no. I mean, I was terrible at calculus. I was always moral, so no. Well, you can't be moral and no calculus, which is why you know like Pol Pot

I'm going to eventually set all of my listeners after people who know math That's the end goal. This poppy right there How many did we get we're not sure sir? No idea no possible to say it's a no way and calculable people keep trying trying to tell us, and we just kill them, add them to the pile. Yeah, so many two numbers, but we were unable to, we can't negotiate it. Yeah. So, shelling is advising the Eisenhower administration

on moral calculus in the Cold War. And shelling's argument is that, whether you were quote, deterring the Russians or your own children, the proper tactic was to figure out the right ratio of threat to incentive. So, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, human feelings. I have to figure out this and children and motorists are the same. Yeah, children in the Soviet government only understand one thing, threats. Can I have more ice cream, Dad? Put your hand in the drawer and find out.

No. There you go. I'm going to tell you something, Jimmy. You go for that ice cream. I have a loaded 38 on the table. Now, one of the chambers is empty, Jimmy. So if you get that ice cream, maybe the hammer goes down the empty Maybe you could just say no if you don't want them to have dessert any dad could say no So while Henry was teaching at Harvard and this is before he gets we into the less episode and getting that gig with the counsel and foreign relations, writing about nuclear policy. Right. In the period before that, when like shelling is his mentor, Henry learns a lot from him and he walks away from their relationship with the belief that quote, bargaining power comes from the capacity to hurt, to cause quote, sheer pain and damage.

She needs this fucking price. You're just kind of waiting for this person to step into the vacuum essentially, right? Like you're waiting for someone to be like, you know, there's actually a bottom that's under the bottom. Yeah. Oh, oh my lord. It's like the shit, like, if that were true, we're all watching this situation unfold

between Russia and Ukraine, where you've got like, a lot of people with the ability to hurt a lot of people on both sides. And you know what, it doesn't seem like negotiations are going great. Yeah. No, not really. Maybe that's not a good basis to proceed from anything with.

Yeah. I mean, I just, I can't believe that it's the craziest fucking idea. It's not. It't believe that it's the craziest fucking idea. It's not negotiating. It's not negotiating. Yeah. You go into negotiations, you're like, I'm probably not gonna get what I want.

We're gonna try and get the best we can. And he's just like, how much can I fucking hurt you? And what do you give me? If you spend enough time like I do around like gun culture people on the right in particular, there's these folks who who usually have never done anything like in the military themselves, but they read a bunch of books by Navy seals and shit.

And they'll say shit like, you should have a plan to kill everyone in every room you walk into. And their frame is that the world's dangerous, you gotta be ready. And I think any reasonable person is like, well, you are someone who should not have a gun. Absolutely.

You should not have a gun. You are out of your entire damn mind. Like, yeah, this is a guy who should not have a gun. Absolutely. You should not have a gun. You are out of your entire damn mind. What? Yeah, this is a guy who should never be negotiating. Yeah, and he actually absolutely not. Ready to kill someone. He's like, you know what, don't go into rooms. No, no.

No, no, no, no. You don't go anywhere. You're staying in your house. You got a one room. Yeah. I could tell your throat, I could reach across the table, tell your throat out and stab you in the eyes with ice picks. Okay.

I'm just, we're just talking about what price is. He just wants ice cream, Dan. He just asked you if there's an ice cream, Dan. So Henry gets his gig at the CFR. And so he's, the thing he's producing for the Council on Foreign Relations for his, his buddy, the Rockefeller. It's supposed to be like a report on how the US is, it like, it should use nuclear weapons different ways in which they could approach it, right? And while he's writing this

report, because it's with this thing, it's a very, very long process getting this out, he also starts working privately on a book of his own titled nuclear weapons and foreign policy. And this book is a version of the stuff he wants to write and this thing he's like, I'm waiting to get out with the C. F.R.s. Yeah, kind of, but also it's actually very smart what he does. It'll take us a second to get there.

So this book that Kissinger writes, that's his like own project, criticizes US threats of full nuclear scale nuclear attack and responsive Soviet aggression, Nile Ferguson sums it up in this way. Quote, with his skill for simplifying and responsive Soviet aggression, Nile Ferguson sums it up in this way. Quote, with his skill for simplifying and expressing complex ideas, Kissinger put the issue starkly.

The dilemma of the nuclear period can therefore be defined as follows. The enormity of modern weapons makes the thought of war repugnant, but the refusal to run any risks would amount to giving Soviet rulers a blank check. Kissinger's conclusions were not original. The study group at the council was almost unanimous in its desire to find some alternative to Eisenhower's stated policy, and many defense intellectuals, most notably Bernard Brody in Basil Little Heart,

had also written on the subject of limited nuclear war. Kysentia's book demonstrated his talent as a creative synthesizer of their ideas, drawing out the implications of their work, and arguing that for America's Cold War diplomacy to have any real substance, the U.S. had to accept the possibility of the limited use of nuclear weapons. That Kissinger's own solution of limited nuclear war was also highly problematic, was less

important to many contemporary observers than that it broke free from the straight jacket of the Eisenhower administration's policy. So, but where, does he describe like where you would use it? Is it like a tactical battlefield? Yeah, it's like to win battlefield victories to like in Vietnam, he will briefly flirt, well not even though that briefly, but he will consider using nuclear weapons to cut off train access between Vietnam and China.

Like which is insane. Like as a layman, you could cut off trains in another way. Presumably right? I see the general with Buster Keaton, you could throw some logs on it. There are these other things called bombs, just bombs that were blowing the train. Yeah, so what they are, Kissinger?

Yeah, so it really, I mean, it is kind of just itchy trigger finger. And it is like, if you live in the realm of this sort of dark thinking, how are you not going to start thinking of ways that are just even more vicious brutal? He's basically saying they need to think we're a chained mad dog. Right. And if we, you let the dog off the leash once and he attacks the postman and then everyone's gonna fucking no go.

Then you don't get the yell anymore. Yeah. Then you stop receiving your mail. We've bombed Japan already. Like everyone gets it. We're already fucking miles. Nice. Of course.

Oh my god. Yeah, it's not like it's this theoretical weapon that's never been used to me. And it like, it worked pretty well as far as making people be like god damn they are out of their minds But it's also there's a there's a factor here I part of me wonders if he even really Believed about this or cared about whether or not nukes should be used tactically and if it was more a matter of This is a big debate of the day.

And if I publicly take the most contrarian thing, intellectuals who don't really care about what works, but who care about who's thinking creatively, like, right? Like that's the thing. He's like, well, it's not about whether or not his plan would work. It's about we're getting out of this straight jacket. Eisenhower's put us in. And it's like, no, that's not all that matters. Finally.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, you no, that's not all that matters. Finally. Yeah. Yeah. Um, you know, it's really funny. Well, just ironic about this is that it places like the Heritage Foundation for years have been, have been saying that Putin would use a tactical battlefield nukes and that's why he's unhinged. That's one of the reasons. Yeah. And you imagine he's unhinged. That's one of the reasons. Yeah, and you

would say he's someone doing it. I would say anyone who would do that is crazy. Yeah, imagine. Now, and I'll keep him on as an advisor. Yeah. Yeah, that I that's my feeling on nukes. Don't shoot them at people ever yeah Maybe in an independence day kind of situation. I'll be honest when I watch independence day I think yeah, I might shoot some new I might at that point try a newker to you know, but you have Randy quaid I do I do hang out with him a lot That's my main plan things go wrong Randy getting the plane He lives in my basement! That actually tracks from the Instagram videos I've been seeing.

So Kissinger's book was published in 1957 and it almost immediately sold 17,000 copies, which is a lot for a wonky book on nuclear warfare. It is on the New York Times bestseller list for 14 weeks. Wow. Jesus Christ. Yeah, it's not great. Now, he's timing is perfect. He puts this book out right as the Soviets make

two big advances in Hungary. There's like a revolution that they kind of crush. And then in the Suez, we're like, the British and the French are like, fucking around in the Suez Canal. And the Soviets are like, stop in the Suez canal and the Soviets are like stopper will do something bad and NATO like backs the fuck off, right? So the Soviets have like two big kind of foreign policy wins in this period and Americans

can't look at this as like, well, you know, maybe the fucking NATO shouldn't have been fucking around in the Suez and yeah, that shit and Hungary's fucked up, but like maybe we can't do anything about it. They're like, we should listen to the guy who says, what if we'd nuked them? You know what? That's don't run. Yeah, that's where people go, right?

They don't, they're Americans. They don't take the rational route. No, no, no. They hate us for our nuclear freedom. Yeah, they listen to the craziest person in the room about this. That's right. There's a lot of things that you can say about

both what happened in Hungary and the Suez crisis that are not, why don't we use Nukesmore often? Sure. But, by God, Kissinger knows his audience, you know. Kissinger writes this book and The New York Times in their review of it, right? For the first time since President Eisenhower took office, officials at the highest government levels are displaying interest in the theory of the little or limited war. The theory of massive retaliation is reexamined. I love that those are, that those go together. Those are the options. Yeah, and then it's like the little war is the nuclear war. Like gets the baby war for us. Yeah. Yeah. Hit me out, hit me out, baby nukes, little tiny nukes.

Oh yeah. It's like if someone's like, look, we got to decide if one of which of these is going to be legal, Sarah Nerv Gas Bombs for civilians or chlorine gas bombs for civilians. One type of poison gas bomb has to be legal. Like, we all have to have access. Everyone has to be able to have one kind of poison gas. Two is crazy. That's crazy.

Right. When if nobody has this. Take, right. We have nobody has this. Oh, God. That's not, you know, that's not where things go here. So President Eisenhower is given a summary of Kissinger's book. You know, he's a president. They don't read books. Yeah, it's the Cliff Notes.

He gets a Cliff Notes. And he recommends it to his secretary of state, John Foster Dolas. We have talked about quite a lot of those just, I mean, who like if he's the rational mind, if Dolas is being like this dude seems a little out of his mind. That's a big problem. That's, yeah, that's not great because John Foster Dolas fucking lunatic. Yeah, it could be lunatic. So the vice president at this point is a little dude you might have heard of called Richard Milhouse Nixon.

He gets photographed with a coffee copy of Henry Kissinger's book, which is not great. I mean, it's actually great foreshadowing. This is not a blog. Writing a screenplay. This is great. Yeah. Really. This is like season one of the Nixon show, and you just like see him with Kissinger's book. Right, right. Kissinger, yeah. Right. Right. Good television, you know? So the book is successful enough

that it provokes Rockefeller, who'd gotten him the job at the CFR to rush out the report that Nixon had been, or that Kissinger had been making. And yeah, the report from the CFR concludes, the willingness to engage in nuclear war when necessary is part of the price of our freedom. Wow. I mean, the price of our freedom is pretty good. The price of it. price, isn't it? That's the next spence. Yeah. And man, how can we

how can we live if we're not dead? Yeah. How can we live without nuclear fallout? It's, it's, and it's amazing that it like, it all like, if it was part of his plan or not, like you said, the timing is just pretty remarkable to release this book. And then it actually shifts the way that they view this. Yeah, you know, it's actually, he's got a really good point in his best selling book about how nukes are cool. I am, I am excited for Ben Shapiro's book on the same subject to lead to the annihilation of whole life on Earth. Yeah, right. I'm gonna live underground soon.

That's a good idea. So this report is a weird, like weirdly popular. Like, again, this is a report from the, the center or from the CFR, from the Council on Foreign Relations, which is like, not, you don't expect that to go viral. Right, you know? That's what it's like.

Have you read this pamphlet? Have you read this, this big report, study by the CFR? Yeah. I mean, I'm not gonna let you down when you're like, oh, that won't happen. That won't happen. That won't go.

Yeah, it does. Yeah, so Rockefeller actually goes on the Today Show to talk about this report, the CFR. It's like with Kissinger. I know, it's amazing. That's amazing, macaroni casserole. So next. So he gives people up with the Today Show in address,

where they can write for a copy of this report. Oh, no. They get 45,000 requests the first day and 200,000 requests the next. God. Hell's post office is overwhelmed. Yeah. The media, the US media called this report quote, the answer to Sputnik, which is like, hey, the Russian sent an unarmed ball into space to further exploration.

We should, this book about how everyone should be nuking everyone, it's the answer to the ex. We're thinking that this report on nuclear weapons will actually show the Russians that are not go to space. Yeah, that's space. If you get rid of Russia, I can't go to space. Do you understand?

Yeah. And it is, it's worth noting, because I think like in our popular history, the answer to Sputnik is the Apollo missions and it's framed as like this but, it's worth noting, because I think like in our popular history, the answer to Spudnik is the Apollo missions and its frame is beautiful. Which did eventually happen, but no, the first answer to Spudnik was a report about how we should be nuking each other more often. Yep, that's the very, they put a ball in the orbit, so we should blow up Saint-Petersburg.

We should be ready to drop 13 nuclear warheads on Berlin at a second's notice. That's what it's all about. Jesus, what the fuck. So this makes Henry Kissinger famous. Um, he is all over the place. How? This is his. This is how it becomes famous.

Like some guy, some guys watch the today show and he buys the books so he can tell everybody at the Elk Club that we need to use nukes. This is what's happening? Give this accountant a soccer ball. Some people get famous because their dad is one of O.J. Simpson's lawyers. Some people get famous because they write a book about how nuclear warfare is not that bad. You know? It's just in fame, it's a crapshoot.

Absolutely. Fuck. Imagine being an anti-nuked person at this point, you're just like, wait, what is going on? No. Have you read the report? It's so good. We're going to show them if they're what they should not be going to space.

Yeah, next time they put a satellite up, we're going to kill everyone in Paraguay. What we need to do is a radiated country. So on July 14th, 1958, Mike Wallace gives Henry Kissinger his first big break into the public sphere. So, man, it really is just fucking disgusting because I go through this all the time on our show where I'm like, it is the same shit. But again, it's just media using its plaps to media irresponsibly to normalize things

that are fucking batshit. Yeah, it's like 60 minutes having of a fucking whole segment on a, the Havana fucking sound. It's not real. It's not real. Come on, Dave, you know that's real. I suffered from that for two years.

Those crickets. Oh, man, I will say like the stupidest joke that I laugh at every time is, yeah, I got Havana syndrome, having another beer. Never does we get a chuckle out of me. But we've done, we've had 60 minutes, come on, 60 minutes did the, the, uh, Satanic scare shit. Oh, yeah, they were big. Last time they were. Come on, 60 minutes did the Satanic scare shit with that? They were big, a lot of Satanic stuff. They just run with ideas that are crazy.

Yeah, I mean, because for people who are at the level of Mike Wallace's, the definition of journalist is not afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. It's be a giant shithead. Yeah. Be a huge shithead.ead. Yeah. Yeah. Be a huge shithead. Man. Oh, man. So Mike Wallace introduces Henry Kissinger, the guy who's won a achievement as a book about

how nukes are cool by saying this. In the field of foreign policy and military affairs, Dr. Kissinger, you're acknowledged to be one of the most penetrating minds in the country. Oh, he's penetrating. Yes. Penetrating like an Atlas missile penetrates the cloud cover above a city full of women and children. Yeah. Wow.

Now, during the interview, Kissinger expressed that, quote, a capitalist society, or what is more interesting to me, a free society is a more revolutionary phenomenon than 19th century socialism. I think we should go on the spiritual offensive. Yeah. The spiritual, spiritual capitalists. With a nuclear extension.

With nooks, you know. No, so. So he's connecting, he's connecting the capitalists and. You know the two options, 19th century socialist number capitalism, or the current day capitalism. And nooks. Those are the options.

Yeah. And Mike Wallace. Those are the options. Yeah. And Mike Wallace just empty head at least and goes like, I really love your property. Yeah, just miles in behind his eyes is a dial tone. Oh my God. So this earns him finally the job at Harvard that he'd coveted.

This is why I think him. Shut up. Shut up. Shut the fuck up. It's just so simple. I cannot get over how fucking evil Harvard is. It's so good. It is monstrous from its best. It is a horrific. Some of us went there, asshole. Anti-Harvard action. So he gets his Harvard job and he keeps writing in 1961. Thank God. What's he doing at Harvard? He's like teaching some shit, you know, Kissinger stuff. Yeah, talking about spangler a lot. Yeah. Nukes are awesome too. Nukes are awesome.

Freedom requires an absence of morality. Teaching kids good stuff, you know. Teaching kids good things. So in 1961, he publishes a book titled The Necessity of Choice, which is his manifesto on how the United States should approach foreign policy in the 1960s. It is not an optimistic piece of writing. Quote, the United States cannot afford another decline, like the one which has characterized the past decade and a half. Fifteen years of more of a deterioration of our position in the world, such as we have experienced since World War II, would find us reduced to fortress

America in a world in which we had become largely irrelevant. Our margin of survival has narrowed dangerously. What in the fuck is he talking about? I mean, and in America, it's not losing influence. So no, this is like the height of American power, obviously, to anyone who's not, but Kissinger is, he knows this is bullshit. He is part of a group of people who are pushing. Have you guys heard the term Missile Gap? No.

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

there's bomber gaps, there's tank gaps, there's talk about these gaps between, it's this idea that is totally bullshit. Like, not that the Soviets have not made a lot of weapons. So you mean mix plenty of weapons, but the United, there is no point in the Cold War in which the United States is like out fucking gunned to any degree that like has, it could be anyone reasonable could call like a missile gap. I mean, it just does not happen. It feels like we're still responding to that today to be like, do do do first by a log shot.

Yeah. And yeah, it's this, it's this, it's this, it's not, I would say unhinged, but it's very reasonable because the argument comes primarily out of the defense department and the growing defense industry who it's great for them if everyone thinks there's a missile gap. Like, of course, yeah, you got to build a lot more weapons. We'll sell them to you. I thought it was the place you could get khakis on your rockets, but... Yeah, the missile cap.

Thank you. You're welcome. And we'll be right back. Am I on the third question? I'm sorry. You know what, yes, actually, this is time for an ad break. So, you know, if you're looking for a way to dress up your R&I next knife missile before firing it into some guy's car, check out the missile gap.

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

He's the new guy. He's the new guy. He's the new guy. A positive new guy. There's people that you got like the negative new guy in the positive new guy. And he's the guy who says we don't have enough. You know, the thing we've never not had enough of, nuclear weapons. He is a big part of why we have so many fucking nukes.

And why the Russians have so many fucking nukes? Because once the US, like once you start this, like we have to build a lot more nukes, they're gonna build even more nukes. And like, then you're gonna get to build any more nukes, because you can say they've built so many more nukes. We don't have enough nukes now. And then you wind up with like 12,000 ofukes because you can say they've built so many more nukes. We don't have enough nukes now. And then you wind up with like 12,000 of them in the world.

I have a name for that. I can, I'm coming over right now, a nuclear arms race. Mm-hmm, that's cool. And that's a neat one. I'm glad there's finally a term for it. We should nuke him. I mean, that would just be like the one thing I would let

it is just one use. It's just one use. I made it just nuke him. What if those daily crockets handheld, Mr. Watchers, what if we could do? What if I just a little, a little tiny nuke that we shoot into and then it explodes, but it's just a little guy.

Yeah, just enough to take out Kissinger. Yeah, Kissinger's not junior queer weapon. Yeah. But he would just ingest and go, I am now more. Oh, now I am bigger and I'm more upset. It is, it is amazing to think about how seriously this guy gets treated by everyone immediately and how much influence he's allowed to have on an incredibly dangerous thing. And this is the same guy who got tricked by Theranos.

Like, this is same dude, he gets a hood wink win by the fake blood lady in the turtle neck. It's really amazing. Yeah. It's so funny. It's so funny. So, uh, Kissinger is not again. He doesn't come up with the idea of the missile gap, but he's like a very influential voice in pushing this idea, right? He's a part of this. So he doesn't get there's if we could honestly do a whole episode on like why there's so many fucking nukes that this would be a part of, but he is a factor in this massive

arms build up. And he also starts, but he's also like, he's just doing this for careerism reasons because it like gets him in good with people who are in power. And part of how you know that is that Kennedy, not a guy I'll give a lot of credit to, but one of the things Kennedy says is that like limited nuclear war is insane. Like, fuck you Henry Kissinger. He doesn't say that, but he, it gets made clear. The connections that Kissinger has in the Kennedy administration make it clear that like JFK

does not buy your attitudes on limited nuclear war. And so he stops talking about that. Oh my God. He wants to become part. He doesn't believe in shit, but he wants to be in the JFK administration, right? Wow. So he stops pushing this thing that makes him famous and saying other shit because he'll

get it'll get him closer to power. And that's all Henry Kissinger really cares about. Yeah. So I wonder if like the today show is calling up and he's like, you know, I'm not really doing nukes anymore. No, he's coming. Yeah, I'm going to quote actually from Nile Ferguson here. He explains like what he starts doing on the today show.

Yeah. Kissinger now advocated a conventional arms build up since the dividing line between conventional and nuclear weapons is more familiar and therefore easier to maintain. He continued to insist that the United States developed smaller nuclear weapons, but he moved his own position to where he thought Kennedy's was. In effect, the necessity of choice was something of a job application and Hutt Kissinger hoped Kennedy would make an offer. So like, again, doesn't believe shit.

It's just Marjorie Taylor Greene. I mean, it is the same shit essentially and it's like, you know, the sensationalism that gets you the headlines. And then once you're fit, and it's really any form of our pop culture entertainment now, just get your name in the fucking headlines and then define who you are. And then you can like figure out what you actually think

and actually believe, or how you're gonna ride that to power. But just make a bang. It's the, it is, it is like the political equivalent of a comedian like saying a racial slur and then listening to the audience to determine whether or not they're joking. Yeah. Like, that's what he's doing. It's, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

I mean, show up to a club, take your dick out and then write your hour. Yeah. It's called, it's Louis CK backwards. It's the, it's the, it's the KC. I'm not going to figure out what the back of the blue. Well, you're close to KC. It's KC soul. KC soul. So this, he does not get exactly what he wants, but he gets part of what he wants. He, his buddy, Nelson Rockefeller is able to give him a part-time consulting gig for the national security advisor. So it's part of what he wants. His buddy Nelson Rockefeller is able to give him a part-time consulting gig for the national security advisor.

So it's not everything he wants, but he has now, he has like, he's racked his way in. You start your way in and unless you really fuck up and by fuck up, I mean, don't get a lot of people killed. You'll just get closer and closer to power because that's how our system works. Kissinger is obviously very conservative. Rockefeller is not, again, he's part of the Kennedy administration. This is what I don't understand. Yeah. We'll talk, we're going to talk shitload about that over the next couple of episodes

because this is a consistent, weird thing about him. But like one of the things Kissinger does is he oils Rockefeller with a few of claims that Kennedy's inaugural speech, which Rockefeller had helped with, was so good he quote, might become a registered Democrat, right? Like that's the kind of shitty says that like I'm almost a Democrat now

because how good JFK speech was. That was so good. That was so good. Like he didn't believe in shit. Like he just, I can't overemphasize that other than that, Henry Kissinger should be very close to power. He believes strongly in that.

Yeah. And he believes in that as much as anyone's ever believed in the Bible. Right. He does not believe in ideas. I'd like to say something happy birthday to the president if what the possible. I saw what Merrill did and let me tell you.

So, to test them, I love our Kennedy neighborhood. Sometimes they call me. And the birthday is the present day. Would you like to see where they call me Kissinger? Oh, I'm not standing over this vent and look at what they're doing to my sport club. See, that's the fan art. I want to have him recast the air. Just like trying to fuck JFK with every bit of charm in his German body.

Oh, dear, nobody told me subway go over vent. Oh, look at this. You're going to see everything. Oh, dad, that's my nuke. No. No. So JFK is eventually assassinated by Bernard Montgomery St. and LBJ takes over.

Oh, yeah. I mean, history is a banquet. I've got a pamphlet for you. But I have to hold myself. That's my length. So LBJ is the president now. And LBJ is like between LBJ and JFK. It's like a decade, you know,

that the Democrats are in power and LBJ is very good at exercising power, right? And he's also not super into Henry Kissinger. He's not against Henry Kissinger either, but Henry kind of is kept in this weird like he's on the margins of power during this period of time, right? Um, finally, which is frustrating. Yeah. Well, not really, because while he's, there's no, there's no, there's no, there's no breather scar. Good to hear.

Um, while he's kind of on the, not, you know, on the margins, he's, he's able to build connections with as many Republican lawmakers and their rates as he does with Democrats, right? Like that's what he's doing while he's doing these like part-time gigs with the NSC and stuff as he's he's making friends with everybody he can. There is nobody. He's just a fucking networker. Like he is just a supreme networker. Yeah.

Right. There is so much I hit when I was a kid in speech and debate, one of the other kids in the debate team with me was obsessed with Kissinger, like read his books and stuff thought he would. And this was this thing that I heard too from like family members and stuff that like, well, he wasn't always right, but it was, he was doing the hardest job anyone's ever had. And he was just this really genius man. And you can't really argue with him if you read about what he was saying. And it's like, no, he didn't believe in shit. He was, he was a genius at making people like him. And that allowed him to do a lot of horrible things.

Yeah. Um, which I guess like anyone who's really dangerous in politics is that's as a version of that guy, right? Yes. Yes. Yeah. Like that's all of them. Um, but he's, he's a, an interesting kind of that guy.

And as a result, probably the most toxic kind of that guy we've ever had in the United States. Wow. Which is saying something. I mean, you're just saying something. You're really bad people with shark cheer. Yeah. I don't know how to.

But yeah, so yeah, he makes all these connections. He cultivates them and he keeps his name in the news, right? That's a big part of why he's able to do it as later. He keeps going on TV, he keeps being on the radio, he keeps being quoted and like cited and interviewed by journalists for articles. Henry makes it known that like, if you're a journalist, I'm easy to reach. I will give you always give you a quote. You can always reach Henry Kissinger for like a line or two on this thing, you know.

Which is very smart of him. It's very dumb and shameful and horrible for the journalists. It's great for Hillary. Yeah, that they've learned. That doesn't happen anymore. Now I turned to the New York Times story published today that described Nazis assaulting a book club as men with a swastika flag. Someone pointed out, well, the article calls them Nazis. It's just all of the social media. They describe them that way. And I was like, oh, I can't explain to you why I feel worse about that. But I do. Yeah. It was not just that it was not just the dumb error. It was Calculus. Yeah. Yeah. Moral calculus. It's, yeah, moral calculus, right? Good,

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

like the most reasonable thing he does if you think you're gonna be in power like Yeah, it's good. You probably want to be able to talk to those guys even though we're fighting with them That's not an unreasonable thing. He will use it badly. Right. Who's he's doing that on the part of it just himself? Yeah, what well he is working he has a gig with the guy He's like an advisor to the National Security Council and he's a known academic, you know He's probably being like, you know, I'm an academic. I'm trying to understand the dimensions of this and like I want to talk to everybody. I'm a very fair minded man. I don't let ideology get in the way. Yadda, yadda, yadda. Like one of the things

about Henry Kissinger too, like he's as good. He can, he's, he's, he's fucking his buddies with Mao. Like he's great at talking with people who are communists and stuff. As long as you like Henry Kissinger and what he's selling, he'll sell it to anybody. You know? It's so crazy. It's wild that like he must have eyes that just start spinning and hit like you just have to get close to notice that he's got hypnotic eyes. You're like, he isn't so bad now that I'm talking to him.

You know, let's think about Vietnam for a second, right? If you're going to war in Vietnam, Gareth, right? If you decide I get rid of it, I'm going to go to war in Vietnam. How long do you think it would take you to realize that was a bad idea? It would be, I mean, I get rid of it. It would be instantaneous. Very quickly. Very quickly.

I mean, David. Can I just ask a question, Which side am I fighting on? The not Vietnamese side okay then really quick. Yeah, really quick. I feel like you could I feel like you could you could take Vietnam David Dave could not gonna see it coming I'm not gonna see it coming I'm certainly be the guy who they'd be like we broke him or we broke him before we even shouted at him I'm sorry. I didn't mean to show up with pants that were already pissed in. I know, I know one thing about me and that's that if things got really, really chaotic and bad that I, I kind of thrive in that environment.

Yeah, Dave, you'd be like, Dave, we don't have time to eat their brains. You'd be like, shut up. I'm figuring it out what they know. It's like Dr. Manhattan ending the Vietnam War. Yeah. Yeah. Both sides surrendered to Dave. and had an ending the Vietnam War. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Both sides surrendered to Dave in the mid 60s, which is fairly early on considering how late the Vietnam War goes. It is clear to people, especially a lot of people protesting in the United States that like, shit, this ain't going great, right? Yeah. Like, it's not hard for people. There are people who buy into the US propaganda, but like people who are actually privy to information on the war are aware that it is not going well.

Kissinger still decides we should escalate things. And I'm going to quote again from Kissinger's shadow by Greg Randon. Upon returning from his first visit to South Vietnam in late 1965, Kissinger threw himself into a campaign to build public support for ongoing intervention. In early December, he joined 189 other scholars from Harvard, Yale, and 15 other New England universities in an open letter expressing confidence that Johnson's policies would help quote, people of South Vietnam determined their own destiny. A Vietcong victory will spell disasters, said the letter.

Then, later that month, he led a Harvard team against a group of Oxford opponents of the war, and a debate held in Great Britain and broadcast nationally in the United States on CBS. Kissinger passionately defended the bombing of Northern Vietnam, insisting that it was not a violation of international law. He invoked the analogy of World War II, saying Washington's actions in Indochina were as righteous and justified as they were in Nazi Germany. Bob Schrum, who went on to become a democratic political consultant, was on Kissinger's team and says that when he today watches a recording of the debate, he is, quote,

amazed by two things, how long we, how young we look, even Kissinger, and how wrong we were. So first off, Bob, you don't feel bad enough. I don't know how bad you feel about this. It's not enough. Yeah, that's not really enough. Your first reaction, you're like, God, we were kids. We were young. we were kids.

We were young, like a, we were young, like a, there's like some Vietnamese dude next to him thinking about like bombs raining down on the jungle and he's like, bombs being like, that crow's feet back there. Look at me, wait, we're in Kissinger.

Oh my God, his jails. Look at a hey, yeah, he's only got one gel at that time. That's before he got the eight. Our hair looked so stupid Am I right? Am I right? Where did your legs go by the way? It's before Henry Kissinger looked like shit and weird science after things go wrong It's a me like and it's it's there's a lot in that paragraph both at like of course when the debate

There's a lot in that paragraph, both at, like, of course, when the debate starts to build, like, should we escalate this nightmarish war? The first thing, one of the first things that happens is that a bunch of fucking New England universities decide to have a debate about it. Right, that's the right thing. Let's let everyone hear it. Let's have the best arguments of both sides about whether or not the body is people. The most experienced minds. Yeah.

Like, first off, fuck everyone involved in this. Even the people arguing against the war a little bit. Like, just don't do, that's bad. Well, the premise, yeah, the premise alone, yeah. The premise is bad. Yeah. Um, less so, certainly, I don't know, I don't know. Maybe like it made sense.

Here's a bunch of virgins debating which position is the best to fucking. Yeah. What the hell? Why is this a, instead of the debate like, hey, where are we there? Like really? Why? Sorry, we're not debating that. We're not asking that.

That's not out of the way. We're not asking for the debate. And it is, again, it's like, and you can see just about how comprehensively wrong these people are, that like, number one, this just about how comprehensively wrong these people are, that like, number one, this idea that this will help the people of South Vietnam determine their own destiny. Which is just... The Vietnamese government was a dictatorship the entire time the war was going on.

Right. It's not any more democratic and any meaningful sense than the northern Vietnam. And also like a Viet Cong victory will spell disasters. Like, there's plenty of things to criticize the Vietnamese government for, but like broadly on an international level, it's fine. Like a country seems to be doing all right. Like better than a lot of places. It's fine. Yeah, did a pretty good job at COVID. Like, you know, it didn't seem like a disaster. Maybe if we hadn't killed 5 million people, things would be even better. It seems like it couldn't hurt. Yeah.

Yeah, again, they're wrong about everything. Kissinger in this period, everything that he said, that's the, he has this reputation is such an intellectual titan and he's like so constantly fucking wrong. But this is, it's always like, yeah. It's the same as today. All of these people that are constantly fucking wrong just keep on getting positions of power and big media and they're always fucking wrong. And there's this shit, like people will bring up like, well, but there's this nuclear arms

treaty he helped make. And there's this like peace deal he negotiated in the Middle East and like all of these things. Yeah, but that was like 2% of the shit that he did. And it was largely because other people that he wanted to stay in good with were pushing for that kind of shit too. Like Henry Kissinger, whenever he has expressed an idea that his legitimate idea is like really, really disastrously wrong.

Yeah. Amazing. Yeah, fuck it. Nobody cares. Yeah, nobody cares. He's got to get to invest in Theranos still, as opposed to being the one victory. The one victory we can.

We can't. That's why we should pardon her. Yeah, right. Yes, right. Yeah. Look, you stole a lot of money, but you made Henry Kissinger this kind of. We're gonna release you to come up with another scheme

to take more money from this bag of shit. But you don't get to make a company anymore, but we're going to have cameras, Folly. Have you, have you, have you seen punked? Are you okay? We're talking about there, not punk, but it's just the every week for head and vest Kissinger. You're going to put on moustaches and like fake wigs and you're just going to try to fuck with that.

You're telling me this is a way for me to get a longer spine. I mean, I'm not a good little one. This popcorn has zero calories. I can't believe what I'm hearing. But you know what's awesome about that story is that she's a younger female kissinger. Yeah, yeah. A hundred percent. She's like blood kissing.

Everyone super into her and she was just saying whatever people wanted to hear and like. Yeah, right. It's a mate because there's the good grifters in the evil ones. blood kissing. Everyone super into her and she was just saying whatever people wanted to hear and like, yeah. Right. It's a mate because there's the good grifters in the evil ones. We just finished our four-parter on the czar and talked about the fact that like before Rasputin, there was another spiritualist grifter who pretended to talk to ghosts and stuff named Philippe who like got a bunch of money for them, tricked the czarina into thinking

she was pregnant and then bounced with a bunch of their money. And the last thing he did before he left was like, I'm going to come back in another form as another spiritual he learned, trust whatever I said. Very funny, took all the money and ran. And when he died, it was found out that he had been paying for the mortgages and rentals of like 52 impoverished families. Like the perfect guy, like the opposite of Kissinger, like, yeah, just taking money from the czar

to help poor people out. What a dude. Be great if he showed up again. Right. Yeah, let's put that guy in front of Kissinger. Yeah, see what he can do. So in private, Kissinger admitted, already while he is doing all this,

while he's a part of this big debate, you know, while he's taking the side that we should escalate, in private in his conversations, he admits to his friends that Vietnam is an unwinnable disaster of a war. Oh my fucking god. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He defended it in public though,

because there was at least a 50% chance the Democrats were gonna stay in power after the next election. That is on his own. And he just, he didn't want to give up on the chance. I have an a job. Oh my God. You know, I think in a lot of times you just, you do, I guess he's a little different because he's such a shape shifter.

Yeah. But you know, I think and it's just the way he are. You are like, they can't just be that base evil. Yeah. He sure can't. He is. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's something, I always think about climate change. He sure can't. But he is. Yeah.

Yeah. It's something I always think about climate change is that people can't wrap up a whole thing on the fact that there might be a significant portion of rich people in control who actually want everybody to die. Yeah. Yeah. Or at least don't care because what really matters

is like maintaining their level of relative power. Yeah. And the death of Goliensers. And the death of Goliensers. What are they going to do? Call themselves out. Yeah. It's cool.

So obviously, and it's one of those things, I don't actually know that he really believes that Vietnam was a disaster because he may have been lying to his friends when he said that because he wants to keep, like, he wants to keep a bridge to the other side open, you know, like it's impossible to say because he's fucking Henry Kissinger. It is impossible. There's two Kissinger's. Yes. Okay. What if there's six? I'd be amazing. And if they ever touch Cambodia, we'll be, oh, yeah, you know what? All right. Yeah. So the fact that Kissinger in private would be like, yeah, Vietnam, what a fuck up. And in public would be like, let me bin Shapiro about Vietnam to... Let's win this.

That really pissed off a lot of his friends, including the political scientist Hans Morgan Thau. Kissinger had admitted to Morgan Thau that the war was unwinnable, unwinnable, even while he continued to go on in the media and advocate expanded saturation bombing. Morgan Thau found this deeply disappointing, but Henry was increasingly tailoring his public statements to the ear of a man who was already a fan of his work. Richard, Mill House, Nixon. Can we get like, yeah, subsouad effects, a lightning whips across the screen and a little house?

It comes in a paradox. Which we'll do a whole Nixon episode one of these days. A lot of our Kissinger's series will also be about Nixon, because you can't unwrap the two men, you know. So there are two Kissagers. Yeah, one of them is Richard Nixon. So by the end of 1968, as the presidential race between Vice President Hubert Humphrey and former Vice President Richard Nixon heats up.

Kissinger's profile had raised enough that he was seen as the front runner for a serious foreign policy job and either potential administration. As time went on, either, yeah, he's got a gig no matter what, baby. It's just unbelievable. He's the Ray Fion of people. Can't believe. So as time goes on though, he increasingly leans towards Nixon, which surprises his friends, whom he had told, quote, Richard Nixon is the most dangerous of all the men running to have his precedent. But I want him to give me a gig. I need job, Satanan, but I need good. So he was heartbroken when his friend Rockefeller lost to Nixon and he commented, now the Republican

party is a disaster and Nixon is not fit to be president. Oh my god. I am Kelly. I'm Kelly out of the hallway. And over and oh, this is what they said about Reagan. This was about push. This one, they said about Trump. OK. Yeah, that's always the same calculus.

This is true, but Kissinger didn't let his complete contempt for Nixon stop him from trying to get a job with the man. To explain why, here's the New Yorker. It took Kissinger's close contemporary, the political theorist Sheldon Wolland, another son of Jewish emigres who fought in the war and studied at Harvard with William Yandell Elliott,

to fully dissect Kissinger's career in sinks. On the surface, Wollinar observed Kissinger would have appeared a mismatch for the anti-Aletus Nixon, but the pairing was perfect. Nixon needed someone who could elevate his opportunism to a higher plan of purpose and make him feel like a great figure in the drama of history. As Wollin wrote, What could have been more comforting to that barren and inarticulate soul than to hear the authoritative voice of Dr. Kissinger who spoke so often and knowingly

about the meaning of history? Uh, I mean, it's just an empty sack and an evil sack and the evil sacks like, I can fill you. Yeah. Yeah, it's like I can feel you yeah Like a somebody can film me. So somebody's gonna film me off somebody's gonna load me with something Oh, that's not gonna do it put all that black pile down inside me. Thank you Hank Oh boy, Garrett. He doesn't call him Hank, but we'll get to that later Come on, spanky. It's a lot worse than that. So in 1968, the Johnson administration was carrying out an extensive series of negotiations between South and North Vietnam and an attempt to secure an end to the war. LBJ, once credit for his legacy, right, I'm not going to give

LBJ credit for like caring about human death and suffering because he's also a monster. No, not trying to make him seem good by comparison, but he sees ending the war both as a way to like, I want to go out on a good note. And also this is going to, if he could, if he could even secure a significant like ceasefire, that would help Humphrey get reelected, right? Because nobody's in the US is very pro the Vietnam War within the majority of most voters are very anti-it.

So that's kind of the play that LBJ is making. He wants to in the war in order to help Humphrey win. Over the course of the election year, his secretary of state, national security advisor and his secretary of defense, Clark Gifford, became aware that something was a miss. Some of the news that the South Vietnamese government made, which threatened the negotiations, seemed bizarre. They would take these wild changes, where it's like suddenly South Vietnam's not willing to negotiate.

Like what the fuck, we had worked all this out. Why are you guys pulling out at the last minute? North Vietnam's willing to come to the table. In the trial of Henry Kissinger, Christopher Hitchens writes, quote, from his seat in the Pentagon, Clifford, who's again the Secretary of Defense, had actually been able to read Kissinger, Christopher Hitchens writes, quote, manager and subsequently attorney general. He was actively assisted by Madame Anna Chanel known to all as the dragon lady, a fierce veteran of the Taiwan lobby and all purpose right wing and trigger. She was a social and political force in the Washington of her day. So, yeah, LBJ's administration, this is suspicious as fuck. Let's bug the Nixon campaign, right? Which is not illegal, obviously, like you ever, it is an act of fucking

treason to try and extend a war by sabotage negotiations. This is one of the very few cases where like, yeah, you should wiretap those people. You should tap the fucking of those phones. But it's also, this is, they don't want this to get LBJ. It doesn't want this shit to get out at all. This would be number one, a hanging crime. You get executed for doing this kind of shit, like on paper at least, right? And so LBJ's administration, while they're wiretapping Nixon and getting evidence about

like this would increasingly becomes clear as a conspiracy, keeps fucking quiet about it. Cause they're worried that revealing this would create a crisis of confidence in the American government. Oh my fucking, fucking liberals. I know, right? Liberals. This is how many times. How many fucking times, Bush stole two elections.

That's what they did. This is what they fucking did. It's awesome. It really is. I mean, yeah, it's just, I mean, the, I, that is so fucking crazy to put the clubhouse. Yeah. I mean, above everything. It is, it is like the one time where for president had had his political opponents

hanged. Yeah, that's what you should have done. And the man gets, you have to, that one session of hangings really would have gone a long way with this kind of trip. We would be in so much a better position Yeah, hung Nixon and several other people were about to talk about it would also give a Nixon good posture finally Yeah, finally, I knew about that Nixon had done I did not know that they knew I didn't know they knew oh yes

I'm like oh yes David fucking Same Yes, David. Fucking insane. The liberal mind. I always think about this story about when the Honta took over in Chile before Pino Shaygon into power, and they asked all the, they said we want to have interviews with people, and the liberals so believed in government that they went and lined up for the secret police interviews because they're like, well, this is what we do. And they're like, no, they're taking your names down

to possibly kill you, but they lined up because they're like, well, this is, we don't want to mess up the system. Like we're supposed to go get in there. By the government. Yeah. And you're like, it's a huntah. Like it's just the mindset of just,

this is how our constitution works and this is what we're supposed to do. And you're like, no, it's just the mindset of just, this is how our constitution works and this is what we're supposed to do. And you're like, no, it's literally not working. The thing isn't working. This is a great, this is one of the best examples ever. Yeah, yeah. And this is the germ of truth in Kissinger's whole ideology about conflict,

is that if you are in a conflict with someone who is willing to throw down and you aren't, they're going to win, right? Like that is a truth of history, right? It's a truth of fighting fascists, right? It's not enough to say like punching them isn't the entirety of it, but if you're not willing to throw down, they will win, right?

And that is a thing that is often taken exactly the wrong way at the geopolitical level, but like you see in this that like LBJ was not willing to throw down and Nixon was and everything we're going to talk about in the rest of this series happens as a result. And it's like LBJ loved throwing down, but it's amazing that he doesn't in this. I think that's the craziest thing is that like that was the fucking big dick.

I'm going to take a shit and you're going to listen me guy like he gave no fucks and threw down with everybody You know what I think it is Dave I think for all of his many many many flaws and evil acts committed I think LBJ believed in things. Yeah, and Nixon and Kissinger down. He wouldn't throw down But he would throw to ads Yeah, I would, because you know, LBJ was famous for whipping his dick, which he called jumbo out at all times. He wants pissed on a secret service agent at a party

because he couldn't get to the bathroom easily enough. And like, that's the secret. Yeah, all of our sponsors are the same and that their dick's are called jumbo and they do piss on the secret service. Every one of our sponsors pisses on the secret service. That's a promise. So.

We're back! Oh boy, good times. So South Vietnam pulls out of the negotiations, right? I think they're happening in Paris. And I'm being, I haven't really gotten to the tale about what happened up to this point because those details are very obscure to the American people.

What is publicly a possible, like known is that North Vietnam and South Vietnam are supposed to come to the table, have this big negotiation to try to come to like some way in which the war can come to an end. And South Vietnam after a bunch of like, throwing a bunch of like, wrenches in the process, finally just backs out entirely, right? And so the negotiations don't happen and the war continues. But South Vietnam, after a bunch of like throwing a bunch of like wrenches in the process, finally

just backs out entirely, right? And so the negotiations don't happen and the war continues. That's what everybody sees. You know, if you're just like a dude paying attention on the news, that's what you're aware of happening here. Um, LBJ's administration knows something sketchy's going on between Nixon and the South Vietnamese government, but even for them, they don't know precisely what happened. Here's what happened.

As part of the negotiations, LBJ offered the North Vietnamese a bombing halt. Now you can see why this is very enticing for Hanoi, right? Because being bombed is not pleasant and the US was doing a lot of it. So this is like what LBJ is like, hey, I will fucking stop bombing Vietnam if you guys will come to the table

and talk about stuff. And the North Vietnamese government, not being made entirely of solace cockroaches is like well okay like that's a pretty good offer actually yeah we were bombing star we did we actually job john McCain yeah we did drop john McCain you guys might have caught him you can keep for a while he'll come back into the picture it'll be a big problem he'll also weirdly enough be the least objectionable Republican elected leader for a long time. So it's a mess.

Just so you guys know, that's our future hero. He and Jesse, the body venturally, the only conservative voices against torture. So heads up. It is amazing watching that old clip of Jesse even sure on the view being the most reasonable American in fucking early 2000s. Yes. Next to Gilbert Godfrey at least. It's actually not Gilbert Godfrey, but me, and I'll turn the TV on the other side.

So yeah, this is a very enticing offer for Hanoi, the bombing cessation, and it's good enough if you won't bomb us anymore. Yeah, maybe we can concede on some stuff if you're not murdering people in mass. Like, yeah, of course we'll negotiate with you. That's pretty good. Nixon cannot let this happen. This would be a disaster.

Vietnam not getting bombed. He sees as like the worst case scenario, even though he is campaigning on ending the war, by the way. Right. But that's his promise. I'm gonna get us out of the, but yeah, on my watch, that happens before when I'm my campaigning on ending the war by the way. Right. That's his promise. I'm going to get us out of the way. But yeah, on my watch, that happens before when I'm I campaigning on. Yeah.

So Nixon uses his back channel to the South Vietnamese government to get them to torpedo their end of the negotiations because the government of South Vietnam is frightened, obviously, that the US is going to stop bombing North Vietnam. So if you're following along, something should be obvious at this point, since the Johnson administration was negotiating secretly with North Vietnam. There should have been no way for the government in Saigon to know that LBJ had proposed a bombing halt. But obviously Saigon knew, which means there was a secret informant within the Johnson

administration passing information to the Nixon administration and sharing a lot of top secret data with Saigon. So the big question is, who could possibly be so deep into both camps that he could feed information to the other. Oh my God. That's right, baby. Should be executed for treason. Absolutely should be executed for treason.

My God. Slowly. Yeah. My God. Slowly. Yeah. Slowly executed. Yeah. It should be that incompetent dude who hung the Nazis at Nuremberg and like fucking up and making it worse, bring that to bed. Sorry, can I just do one more time before you guys get mad.

We should have frozen that motherfucker in carbonite to break out when the nation needed him. Yeah. That's amazing. Oh God. How are you guys wake up to kill me. No, we actually we're huge. You can do another huge fans. We've got you a handle a gin here and this is every Kissinger. Oh, he's great. Why would you like Kissinger? Shout out to just do whatever you just kill him as fast as you can. That's the only note. But I took a lot of notes from him back in the day. Like he's great.

He's great. Just kill him. Uh-huh. Okay. I don't think he can die though. I will say I don't think that guy could read. So obviously Kissinger is the back channel who is spreading this information. Now, when his own memoirs, Nixon later admitted to hearing about the proposed bombing halt

through what he termed as a highly unusual channel. Christopher Hitchens continues, it was more unusual even than he acknowledged. Kissinger had until then been a devoted partisan of Nelson Rockefeller, the matchlessly wealthy prince of liberal republicanism. His contempt for the person and policies of Richard Nixon was undesguised. Indeed, President Johnson's Paris negotiators, led by Avril Herrimen, considered Kissinger to be almost one of themselves. He had made himself helpful, as Rockefeller's cheap foreign policy advisor, by supplying

French intermediaries with their own contacts in Hanoi. Henry was the only person outside of the government that we were authorized to discuss the negotiations with," says Richard Holbrook. We trusted him. It is not stretching the truth to say that the Nixon campaign had a secret source within the U.S. negotiating team. So the likelihood of a bombing halt, wrote Nixon, came as no real surprise to me. He added, I told Haldeman that Mitchell should stay a continuously liaison with Kissinger and that we should honor his desire to keep his role completely confidential. So this is all in the open now. Yeah, I also, I mean Nixon really just never shut the fuck up. I mean, he was just, he was like, if a drunk guy had a party who had just started telling

you whatever. Like honestly, he's the guy Donald Trump might put a hand on be like, hey man, you're saying. You should all, you say it some stuff that you probably shouldn't right now. I think you might not, I think you might regret this. I just say a lot of stuff you probably shouldn't and I might Twitter. Yeah. And so that is just so crazy and just says it all, you know, and this is, and it's gotten worse. I mean, it's just fucking bonkers. Now, the bombing halt was planned for October

23rd, but thanks to Kissinger, the Nixon campaign was able to lobby South Vietnam to increase their demands suddenly at the bargaining table, which rectited tempted agreements being made with North Vietnam. This, you know, there's a process this happens back and forth until the bombing halt has completely scuttled and peace negotiations fall apart. Since all this was happening behind closed doors, Humphrey never got to present the possibility of a bombing halt to the American people. Nixon avoided having to take into stance of any kind on the issue, because obviously,

as the peace candidate, he couldn't say you shouldn't do it, right? He didn't even want it to come up at all. The Johnson administration made one final attempt to push through a bombing halt at the end of October, but the South Vietnamese government, warned by Kissinger via Nixon, preempted this with a surprise boycott of the peace talks. Now, while all this is happening, Kissinger is also advising the Humphrey campaign and is so respected there that he was considered a shoe-in for a senior job if they'd managed to win. Jesus fucking, yeah. Democrats are so fucking stupid.

I know, right. There's three of them. There's three Kissinger's. No, you just fucking hate me. You're fucking a hell free walking round. I got my buddy Henry's. I'm gonna give him a good old job. That's our body you're talking about, Mr.

And then I can never get over the fact that Hillary walked around with him during the fucking campaign. Well, he wasn't really walking to be fair today. He fucking is, he's like one of those episodes of Frazier where he's dating two women at the same time and trying to keep it secret that the same restaurant is like that's him and get Jack Trapper. It's very funny, except for all of the millions and millions of us.

Well, let me ask you that. So do you have the numbers on where the deaths were at and Vietnam? Oh, you don't even know where they ended up. Like, I'll get you to that. Yeah, I'll get you that in a minute. Why did I ask? Yeah, Nixon by also like grows in convinced of Kissinger's

value during this period of time too. And he becomes a shoe-inferessing your job there. He was particularly impressed by the skill with which Kissinger protected his identity as the leaker from the Humphrey campaign Well, Nixon later wrote one factor that had most convinced me of Kissinger's credibility was the length to which he went to protect his secrecy I mean, that's just not a good personality trait. It's really not. It's actually not But down is up it is, but not this guy. This guy is the best double agent. He's so fucking great. He'll fucking this guy's an unbelievable shitbag liar

I mean honestly it makes sense that like Nixon would be super into that. Yeah, wow this guy's a real piece of shit This guy could lie to you. Yeah, let me tell you as a liar I'm just a kid. I'm just a kid. I'm just a kid. I'm just a kid. I'm just a kid. I'm just a kid. I'm just a kid. I'm just a kid. I'm just a kid. I'm just a kid. I'm just a kid.

I'm just a kid. I'm just a kid. I'm just a kid. I'm just a kid. I'm just a kid. I'm just a kid. I'm just a kid. I'm just a kid.

I'm just a kid. I'm just a kid. I'm just a kid. I'm just a kid. I'm just a kid. I'm just a kid. I'm just a kid. I'm just a kid. I'm just a kid. I'm just a kid. Defense of the time would later blame the fact that the war did not end in 1968, and the loss of the Humphrey campaign in that election, on the school doggery of the Nixon campaign, which was orchestrated in part by Henry Kissinger. Quote,

The activities of the Nixon team went far beyond the bounds of justifiable political combat. It constituted direct interference in the activities of the executive branch and the responsibilities of the chief executive, the only people with authority to negotiate on behalf of the nation. The activities of the Nixon campaign constituted a gross, even potentially illegal interference in the security affairs of the nation by private individuals. Which is the polite political wonk way of saying it, in the book Kissinger's shadow Greg Grandin is even more pointed. The fact that Kissinger participated in an intrigue that expdended the war for five pointless years, seven, if you count the fighting between the 1973 Paris Peace Accords and the 1975 fall

of Saigon, is undeniable. Adding to the evidence is Kissinger himself. He's been caught on tape twice on recordings recently released, admitting he passed on useful information to Nixon. Jesus Christ. My God. It's like killing him isn't enough. No, he should be gibbeted. I said so. We need to bring back gibbeting and just hang Jesus Christ. My God. It's like killing him isn't enough. No, he should be gibbeted. I said, so we need to bring back gibbeting and just hang that motherfucker somewhere

in a nice cage box, like leave him out there. Leave him out there, let people pelt him with stuff. Yeah, fuck you. Let's kill him by throwing potatoes at him. So, you gotta make sure there's potatoes, right? Is he's not that strong anymore? And you want it to last a while, potato. Yeah.

Yeah. So we'll talk a bit later about how we got caught on tape and why we know about all of this because that's a fun story, guys. It involves a different series of crimes. But Grandin makes another point that's worth acknowledging here. Well, Kissinger definitely had insight information

from the Johnson campaign, which he passed on. He also didn't have as much information as he pretended to know when he talked to the Nixon campaign. Oh, Jesus. Quost. Even with access to Johnson's negotiating instructions, he couldn't have had exact information about the decisions being made at the White House. He had to have been winging it, at least to some degree, guessing at what others knew, imagining what others would do with that guess, playing the angle, sussing out the chance, oh oh well giving the appearance of composure and certainty he was right

winning it. I mean just want to see. Yeah. What an absolute fucking psychopath like that's the kind of shit like he said if you're dating two women you're trying to figure it out and get through some stinky situation, but he's doing this with fucking Viet Nam and two presidential campaigns. I don't yeah craziness the absolute lack of a soul is Downing he is pure blackness inside

Yeah, uh, Dave let me push back for a second. I know. Oh, God. Wow. Yeah, you can't, I mean, it's hard to even speak to it because it's like to look, I'll kill five people for a job, but at some point you have to be like, five is normal, sure, yeah, that's normal, sure, yeah. That's regular, yeah. But to let, I mean, to just, I don't know. It's, it is, he killed, he killed, I mean,

how many Vietnamese died after that? So many. Many. We're talking, you know, wasn't like a million died in the whole wars more than that? No, I mean, it is because you also have to include the people who died in Camradia and And in Vietnam we're gonna get into more of this in episode three

But conservatively an additional couple of million deaths as a result of this and addition to an additional 20,000 US dead It's kind of hard the death toll to get precise. A couple million, like in the millions, a couple additional debt. Because he went to this day, by the way, because like he was just going to say, he was going to die because he wanted a job. This was what it did. He's essentially lying in a job interview like he would if you were at no fast food experience in where Del Taco except millions of people are dying. Yeah, it's awesome. Holy the crazy

such a bad person. The crazy that the thing you've done here is you've you've you've humanized the here is you've humanized the situation for me because like I can understand that there's evil people out there and they do stuff like they want a bomb camp camp buddy they want to do this other stuff but when you take it to a level where it's a guy winging it in a meeting it takes on a whole different flavor of evil that is something because now that's something we can all understand. We've all been in a situation where like, ah yeah, this guy did a thing and then I did a thing and you're just trying to get through a situation. Yeah. We've all experienced that. None of us have experienced giving the green light to, you know, dropping bombs and killing people, but that I get and I feel in my bones of like, well, holy shit, but you're doing that with millions of people's lives on the line. But that I get and I feel in my bones of like,

well, holy shit, but you're doing that with millions of people's lives on the line. It is this thing where the idea I had always had before I really got into him was that like, well, he was involved in all of these horrible things that I knew he was involved in, but like, I assumed it was from a wonky perspective of like, he believed strongly in the need to fight these wars

and that anything was justified. And so he did these horrible things because he believed we were in this like civilizational struggle. And certain things were necessary in that. Like he had all of these different kind of very complex moral beliefs that he wrote dozens of books about explaining why he did the things. At the end of the day, no motherfucker wanted to gig. Yeah.

Like, and by the way, it's not like he would have been out of politics. Like, no, like, he was down time. He was like, you know, he was gigging. Like, it's just like he would have been out of politics. Like, no, he was like, you know, he was gigging. Like, it's just like he would have been patiently waiting for another administration, or he would have been working at Elby, whatever. Like, you know, he didn't want to work at Uncle Chuckle Fox. He didn't want to work at Uncle Chuckle Fox. He wanted to get good night's,

like he's not going to work in the premier club. I don't know. He literally like did the, like that's the thing. He didn't just do this for a job. He did this for like one of the two jobs and the one he kind of didn't want as much. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

An un, un fucking comfortable. Yeah, it's really hard to like, it is hard in like, it's, I think it's easier to understand now what he did. It's hard to like judge him adequately in moral terms that are even like comprehensible because it's so much out there. It's hard to understand now what he did. It's hard to judge him adequately in moral terms that are even comprehensible because it's so much out there. It's hard to process. It really is one of those, say what you will

about the attendance of nihilism, dude, at least it's an ethos moment. I'm thinking about people like fucking Saddam or whatever, where it's like, yeah, that was a piece of shit. There were definitely some things he believed though. Like, there's pieces of shit out, like fucking out there who like, there are things they believe.

And Kissinger just believes he should be close to power. Kissinger, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he's like a, he's like a, he's like, I'm really smart, I should be in the top game. And I just wanna be there, it's awesome. Yeah, I like how he thinks his childhood didn't fuck with him.

Yeah, he had like, dude. Bro, bro. Yeah. You know what, be even better if he, if all this was happening and it was just because like he, he, he was like, I know I can get so many more chicks if I'm in the White House. Yeah. That was the whole reason for it. He's just like, I just want to get laid.

Well, it is not a non-factor. Wait, is he married right now or is he single? Oh, Lord knows. He's, I mean, I think he gets married at some point, but he's also like, you know, well, I don't know actually. He's kind of like a bachelor, dude. We'll talk about that later. I'm still working on those episodes

because there's a whole thing to be said about Kissinger and Women in sex appeal. He gets... He was married. Yeah, he definitely was married at points, but he's also like kind of a playboy. Oh, God, I'm going to be sick. We'll go back in time a little bit and talk about some of that later. He was married. His first marriage was 1949 to 1964, so I don't think he's...

Yeah. And then he's not remarried again until 1974, until 74, so he's married in this little hub. I wonder why she left him. Yeah, I wonder why he is. No idea. So he's the only guy who comes black. I haven't written the episode yet, but I have several pages of people talking about Henry Kissinger's sex appeal

on the news that are real black real black peeling is the kids sex. Oh my God. Not good. So, Nixon wins the 68 election. Obviously, he gets inaugurated in 1969. The Vietnam War continues on for half a decade-ish. This was an almost incalculable humanitarian tragedy, as well as disastrous for the future stability and cohesion of the United States. But it was dope as hell for Henry Kissinger,

who was with the appointed Nixon. Yeah. I'd like to put out there that my uncle went to Vietnam, and it totally, you know, he had to kill a lot of people and then totally fucking run his life, and he watched my style and stuff. So thank you, Richard. Nixon, you're fun. Thank you, Richard. Nixon. Everybody who went to Vietnam after 68 say a thank you to Richard for Nixon and Kissinger for, you know, all of the trauma and the trauma that in some cases some of you passed on to your family members. And the trauma that has been passed on societally based on our attitudes towards war because of how Vietnam went and the ways in which some people were always looking for a rematch. And it got us in the other, you

know, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good stuff. war because of how Vietnam went and the ways in which some people were always looking for a rematch. It got us in the other. You know, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Good stuff. Imagine if like that had been the end of Vietnam that like there was actually a president

realized, you know, the foolishness of a conflict and we went to the table and like negotiations were made and I don't think, I don't think the first I record happens the Bayes Japana not isn't happened you would think that for how long Vietnam dragged on that that would have actually been a lesson to not go into conflicts you know no aimless conflict yeah so I guess the problem is we're thinking there should people should learn lessons yeah Yeah. That's the problem. Well, that war isn't anyway like a moral decision or like actually comes from a place of actual, you know, save your mentality of anything like that.

Yeah. It's good stuff. It's great. Getting this appointment as National Security Advisor required a lot more politicking from Kissinger, including spreading rumors to Nixon before his inauguration that Johnson planned to either deposer kill the president of South Vietnam before he left office. Kissinger pushed this rumor to the president elect

via regular bastard's pod side character and Rhodesia enthusiasts, William F. Buckley. Buckley's middleman, Delight and Nixon. Oh, he's a Rhodesian face. That's translator. Yeah, you know, William F. Buckley's middle man to light a Nixon Translator yeah, you know will you that buckley? Whose son went on to write honestly a pretty fun book But we don't need to think too much about that. Wow great air and heck art performance in the movie So Nixon appreciated Kissinger's Hutz-But and connections enough that when he put him at the head of the National Security Council, he ordered the professor to reorganize it in order to take foreign

policy control away from the state and defense departments. This means that Nixon gave Kissinger it was very close to a blank check to take total control of US foreign policy. Obviously, Nixon wanted this because he was a paranoid control freak. He did not want any kind of separation of powers. He certainly did not want to have a secretary of state who could like do things that Nixon might not be explicitly ordering. But the result of this was that Kissinger found himself in a position where he could exercise near absolute power in foreign policy as long as the president kept liking him. Oh, God. Just as Kissinger had little love for Nixon, our buddy Dick Millhouse was not particularly warm

to his new right hand man. Now you had given a couple of, spanky, Hank. Yeah, you wanna know this real thing for him? Oh, yeah, Kissinger was? Jew boy. Oh my God, she's just Christ. Oh, I'm gonna mix it.

It is Nixon, but it's like, I mean, I thought we would be jumping off of the name a little bit. He's just like, what am I gonna call you? Spanky, Hank? No, little Jew boy. Oh my God. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ.

Right. And again, it says a lot about Henry Kissinger that he's like, yeah, right? That's pretty good. Yeah, he's also been there. He's very funny, sir. Very funny. Yeah. That I mentioned in our childhood, there's no funny, sir. Very funny. The little man's not a child who

would have no effect on me today. Yeah. Not what, sees? So there must have been an element of Nixon then who knew what an ass kissing little bitch he was. Oh, yeah. He's, he's belittling him to his face. Oh, yeah.

And knowing he'll stick around. It's why you get hired for these jobs because it's just like it's not, you know, an, an empty vacuum who is going to be your right hand man is still, you know, there's security in that. There's, there's secrecy in that. He's like a vacuum, Garrett, and that he'll suck Nixon's dick, but he's also like a toilet and that he'll take Nixon's shit, you know. That's him, Rick, isn't sure. He's a a vacuum garrot and that he'll suck Nixon's dick, but he's also like a toilet and that he'll take Nixon shit You know, that's him Rick is a chair. He's a bloom. He's a dick sucking toilet

Yeah, he's like the total toilet is pretty effective, but if you ever got a dick sucking toilet Dead shit don't come either way. I'm ready for it, baby And we kiss it or so be can the title be Henry Kissinger Dick Sucking Toilet? It's awesome. We got it next. Speaking. I do draw the line.

I'm speaking of Dick Sucking Toilets. It is time for a commercial break. That is who sponsors our podcast. Raytheon's new Dick Sucking Toilet. that is who sponsors our podcast. Raytheon's new dick sucking toilet. Well, it is gonna fire a missile at a busload of children, but that's just the Raytheon, you know, we can't avoid it.

We're gonna try to fully obligate it. Yeah, it still works. So Nixon announced Kissinger's appointment as the national security adviser before he had even picked a secretary of state, which is an unprecedented move. He announced Henry as quote, and this is again in his like public announcement to the country, as quote, a man who is known to all people who are interested in foreign policy is perhaps one of the major scholars in America and the world in this area.

And he acknowledged that while Kissinger had never held a full-time government job before, he had Nixon's confidence to bring in a whole new foreign policy team. Quote, new men to develop new ideas. Now the conservative media of the day immediately roared into gear, Hailing can in re Kissinger as an unprecedented policy genius. The man necessary to get America back on track after nearly a decade of disastrous war under democratic presidents. William F. Buckley wrote, not since Florence Nightingale has any public figure received such universal acclimation.

Why you got to ruin her? William F. Buckley piece of shit? Yeah, you better reflect that. Floor site is fantastic. Yeah, it's amazing. But even ostensibly liberal figures were wooed by Kissinger's corset Titanic intellect and Henry Kissinger and American power, Thomas Schwartz writes. The liberal historian Arthur Slesinger Jr. simply referred to it as the best appointment

so far. The New York Times columnist Tom Wicker noted, the collective sci of relief that went up from the liberal eastern establishment and the Ivy League. Fearing Nixon's cold warrior image, most shared in the sentiment of Kissinger's Harvard colleague Adam Yarmolinsky will all sleep a little better each night knowing Kissinger is down there. You mean in the toilet getting ready to suck it? You know, it's exactly what happened with Trump. Right?

Yes. And it's like, it's the way that, I mean, again, it's people's natural reaction is normally kind of there. It's just the fears are asswaged by people who they consider to be, you know, the compass and they're just not. And so when you're told that there are the good guys inside the bad camp it's like it's just never fucking true it is rot from the core yeah and it is these liberals are also can are also impressed by him and so comforted by him because they think he's smart because he's

good at quoting smart dead people right it is the same thing that happened with madis madis thankfully is not nearly as toxic a person as Henry Kissinger, but like, if you actually look at Mattis' background, one of the things he did in the Iraq war was cover up a war crime. Like he's not a man to be like, I mean, he was very popular among like people

who served under him, which is part of like why there was this kind of collective relief, but it's this idea that he's like the warrior monk, right? They love the idea that like, well, this guy who's president is a maniac, but this dude reads books that he hired. So that'll, it'll be okay. And so, no, it's never okay. As you continue to lower the bar more and more, you're obvious like the people that you're bringing back are part of a lower bar, but because the bar is even lower, it seems and feels a little higher, but it is all just.

It's just this is exactly what happened with Colin Powell, who is a fucking evil. We did the dollop on exactly. Yeah, a horrible person. Yeah, hovered up fucking the maskers and fucking Vietnam. That's like when he started out like terrible human being, but the press did the same shit. If you can quote old books and smile and you're willing to give journalists time, they will talk about you as being the secret, reasonable person within the war crimes party.

Right. Like that's all it takes. Yeah. It's great. It's just the same thing as if you're a Nazi who reads books, you can get a file. Yeah, or address nicely. Yeah, or you'll get on 60 minutes or whatever, you know.

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

And if a doctor wants to get on the news to talk about COVID and be famous on the news, that's actually not a doctor you should listen to. Not a great guy. No. Also, I mean, it's from the same publications and the same networks. The idea that you continue to listen to these sources about what is right and what is wrong, just because they have fancy terms,

like senior policy advice. It's like, it's all fucking, it's days of our lives. They're actors. These are telepropters. Yeah, and they don't know any more than you about anything that matters as a general rule. Every now and then you get, but like even like within agencies

that are heavily like medical oriented, like the CDC where you would expect them to have a lot of specialized knowledge, it doesn't necessarily mean they're gonna do a good job. But I think you're gonna say that much. Yeah, it's a lot. Comfortably lied about Iraq. Yeah, it's not great.

So during the transition from the Johnson to Nixon administration, US military command began to act under what General Craten Abrams described as a total war mindset against the infrastructure of the Vietcong insurgency. This began with a six month operation to clear the Meekong Delta, codenamed Operation Speedy Express. This would prove to be the first major military operation that both Nixon and Kissinger oversaw, and it was a Titanic bloodlet bath. There is a good article on this operation in the nation, and the title of the article is a My Lie a Month. Oh my God. Yeah. So it's it's bad. Oh my God. Now

the My Lie massacre had occurred in 1968. Before Nixon or Kissinger were in power, you know that ain't on them. And Seymour Hersh didn't like break the story until 69, which is the year that they come to power. And this slaughter of 500 civilians by US troops was horrific enough. But within a few months of taking power,

Speedy Express had exceeded it many times. Quote from the nation. An inkling that something terrible had taken place in the Meekong Delta appeared in a most unlikely source, a formerly confidential September 1969 senior officer debriefing report by none other than the commander of the ninth division, then major general Julian Ewell, who came to be known inside the military as the butcher

of the Delta because of a single-minded fixation on body count. In the reports copies of which were sent to Westmoreland's office and to other high-ranking officials, you will candidly note that while the 9th Division stressed the discriminant and selective use of firepower in some areas of the Delta, where this emphasis wasn't applied or wasn't feasible, the countryside looked like the Verdun battlefields, the site of a notoriously bloody World War I battle. That December, a document produced by the National Liberation Front, sharpened the picture.

It reported that between December 1, 1968 and April 1, 1969, primarily in the Delta provinces of Kenhua and Dintwang, the 9th Division launched an express raid and mopped up many areas, slaughtering 3,000 people, mostly old folks, women and children, and destroying thousands of houses, hundreds of hectares of fields and orchards. But like most in Eleph reports of the civilian atrocities, this one was almost certainly dismissed as propaganda by US officials. A United Press International report that same month, in which US advisors charged the division with having driven up the body count by killing civilians with helicopter gun

ships and artillery, was also largely ignored. Because they're saying they're soldiers that they're shooting from a distance on helipadage. And then they just, like, call and pal just divided by saying, well, they're, they're providing food for the enemy. So there's no difference. Yeah. By the time speedy express comes to an end,

US forces had killed more than 10,000 people. These vast majority of these were claimed to have been insurgent fighters. But extensive mop-up offer operations after the fact found less than 800 weapons on all these bodies. I mean, that is fucking crazy. Yeah. I mean, like, we can't even frame them competently. No.

No. And also remember, you're taking guys that you drafted. Yeah, right, right. You know, to do this. Yeah, I mean, like you said with your uncle, I mean, it is, it's like the generational ripple through that and the lifetime, you know, what it does, it roots, I mean,

it's pretty, it beyond who dies, who doesn't live again. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And what do people take back with them? Now, it is fair and necessary to note that this began in the December before Nixon and Kissinger took office. This is not entirely on them. Some of the blame for this goes on the LBJ administration as well, obviously, but it continued under them.

This paragraph written by Christopher Hitchens gives you some idea of the savagery of what occurred in the early days of the Nixon administration's control of the Vietnam War. The people who still live in pacified Quienhoa all have vivid recollections of the devastation that American firepower brought to their lives in early 1969. Virtually every person to whom I spoke had suffered in some way. There were 5,000 people in our village before 1969, but there were none in 1970. One village elder told me. The Americans destroyed every house with artillery, airstrikes, or by burning them down with cigarette

lighters. About 100 people were killed by bombing. Others were wounded and others became refugees. Many were children killed by concussion from the bombs, which their small bodies could not withstand, even if they were hiding underground. So Nixon's plan at the beginning, when his people had derailed the peace negotiations in 68 was that he would win election and then make peace with Vietnam, right? Then he's going to do the thing that he promised to do. But it swiftly became clear that peace was a messy prospect. One of the things he's worried about is that like, well, if we withdraw from with Vietnam, the Saigon government's probably going to fall, right?

Because they're, we're just barely propping up this shitty dictatorship. And that'll be, it'll make me look weak, right? And so I can't do it because it'll make me look weak if I'm paying the time on. Yeah, give me one beer and then I'll quit drinking. Yeah, and then I won't win re-election in 1972. And that's unacceptable. Yeah, and that, I mean, obviously keeps going over and over like, you get into office and then you're like, well, what about reelection instead of going like the best

direction for it is one of the few things I'll give Biden some credit for because he had the same calculus with Afghanistan. A lot of criticisms to make about the bullet from Afghanistan, but he did not make the same decision Nixon and Kissinger did. He did fucking get out. And it would have been. Yeah. Yeah. So with drawing from being, I mean, Saigon is going to fall. not make the same decision Nixon and Kissinger did. He did fucking get out. And it would have been five years. Yeah.

Yeah. So, withdrawing from Vietnam in Saigon is going to fall. Like the government's going to fall. And that will be bad in the 72 elections. And it might push Kissinger and Nixon out of power. Neither of them can accept this. And this description of a meeting from December 1970 by HR Holdeman shows Kissinger's role in pulling back from peace.

Kissinger came in and the discussion covered some of the general thinking about Vietnam and the president's big peace plan for the next year, with Kissinger later, which Kissinger later told me he does not favor. He thinks that any pull out from next year would be a serious mistake because the adverse reaction to it could set in well before the 72 elections. He favors instead a continued winding down and then a pull out right at the fall of 72 so that if any bad results follow, there will be too late to affect the election. Yeah. And it's, you know, that's what our wars always are. They're all about, they're all about elections.

They fucking always are. It's, you know, yeah, This led to Republicans thinking that they had to get war back on track at some point. Yeah. But it's always, it's never works. Like it's just such a crazy idea. And you also, like people are watching body bags go home. Like no one's happy about anything that's going on.

No, and it, this, they just kind of, I mean, this part of why it keeps going is, this kind of craven knowledge that like, well, the worst thing that could happen is we don't get reelected. Yeah. At no point is he thinking about any of the human beings involved, even any of the American human beings involved.

It's just like, well, we can't be losing reelection, you know? Imagine if Kissinger was damaged from his childhood, how bad things would get. It could be really bad. And it's like, you know, actually, when we talk about the story of like American presidents making Craven political decisions, one of the reasons FDR did not approve more effort being taken to evacuate Jewish refugees from Germany, is he did not want to be seen as pro-Jew? Oh, Jesus. The socialist policies and stuff that we're going through, he knew that that could hurt him.

There were a number of other reasons, but like, yeah, they did not, that is, like, there is, there were things that were done that led to the US government saving fewer Jewish people from the Holocaust that were done for Craven political reasons by the FDR administration. Let me hear this Kaiser pitch again. It actually does. Big hat. I love the hat. Big is hat you've ever seen.

Big and very spiky. Now, loves this mom's hands, but. Oh, God. So the fun thing about this episode is that everything we're gonna talk about in part three is even worse because in part three we're gonna talk about fucking Cambodia. So. three hours. Yeah. I'm going to be, I'm going to be in a toilet trying to get clean after sure. You can go to the dot, go to dollarpodcast.com for tour information. And my website is kennelz.com. I'm on tour, but not like tours of duty, just like stand up and podcast tours with the aim of creating joint

of people. I don't want to talk like that anymore Dave. You just slaughter when you're up there. That Dave, shut your fucking mouth. Last time I saw you do a say, you just fucking murdered the whole fucking crowd. Shut your fucking face. Like the way you killed that crowd. You left unexploded ordinance in the crowd. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, Yeah, anyway, that's part two. You got two more weeks of Ingrid Kissinger ahead of you folks.

So strap in, gets a lot uglier. But also we'll be talking about his sex life. So you know, a lot earlier. I was gonna say something to look forward to, but like not really. Yeah, yeah. Come back next week for more of the dick sucking toilet, Ingrid Kissinger. Well, that's a pretty good title. Come back next week for more of the dick sucking toilet and re-kissing your That's a pretty good title

So if he's not happy with it now, so if he's not on board. I don't love it, but you know, all right When Walter Isaacson set out to write his biography of Elon Musk He believed he was taking on a world-changing figure that night He was deciding whether or not to allow Starlink to be enabled to allow a sneak attack on Crimea. What he got was a subject who also sowed chaos and conspiracy. I'm thinking it's idiotic to buy Twitter because he doesn't have a fingertip feel for social emotional networks. And when I sat down with Isaacs in five weeks ago, he told me how he captured it all. They had Kansas spray paint, and they're just putting big axes on machines, and it's almost like kids playing on the playground, just choose them up left, right, and center. And then like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, he doesn't even remember it, getting the bars,

done and excused being a total f***. But I want the reader to see it in action. My name is Evan Ratliffe, and this is On Musk with Walter Isaacson. Join us in this four-part series as Isaacson breaks down how he captured a vivid portrait of a polarizing genius. Listen to On Musk on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Cheryl McCollum, host of the Colk case podcast, Zone 7. Join us every Wednesday to hear cases

like the Long Island serial killer. Here, Carrie Rossin, daughter of the notorious serial killer BTK, weigh in on the accused Long Island serial killer's children. You show like genuine interest and you can't fake it. But these guys can see like right through to your soul. So you have to be like walled off, prepared. And you if you don't know your stuff, they're going to just call you out.

And they're going to be like, Nope, I'm talking to somebody else. I'm not talking to you. Here great insight from one of New York City's finest detective Joe Jackalone, a co-K sex expert. You know, as well as I do, cops weren't even aware of it back then, so they're going to have some difficulty putting those cases together, unless, of course, he confesses. Listen to Zone 7 with Cheryl McCollum on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. At the Planet Money Podcast, we ask questions like, who decides when we're in a recession? Why does every insurance company seem to have a mascot?

Do food expiration dates even matter? I'm Jeff Guo, co-host of NPR's Planet Money, where we bring you stories about people, about weird schemes and wonderful mistakes, to show you how the economy actually works. Listen to Planet Money from NPR on the I Heart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. I don't, how do I, Sophie, how do I introduce part three of the Kissinger series? You just did it.

Gareth and Dave are right here. They're waiting for something good, and I just, I'm just, I'm fucking it up, Sophie. I mean, yeah, but you accidentally introduced the podcast, which is behind the bastards. Behind the dollops, dollop the bastards. Dollop the bastards. Dollop the bastards dollop the bastard the bastard the hybrid podcast and like all hybrids it is incapable of procreating that's a better at getting up steep mountain passes we can multiply by cell division but not through

sexual yeah yeah we've tried yeah we, we have we're in that process So since we last recorded a podcast war has broken out and I was just thinking in Europe God three days We like ended it and then it was like oh wow, it's happening and now it feels like it's been two months since Had a brief conversation. What do you think's gonna happen? And then immediately checked our phones to be like, oh, okay, so they're shilling all over the plate. Okay.

Oh, so, y'all, are we ready to learn about Henry Kissinger and a little country you might have heard of called Cambodia? Oh, God. And also a separate country you might have heard of called Lao. And also Vietnam still. So that energy. I am. Let's go. Let's do it. Yeah. So on February 14th, Valentine's Day, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson approved Operation Rolling Thunder.

This was a long-term campaign of aerial bombing against North Vietnam. It's primary aims were to help the morale of the South Vietnamese and the Saigon government to persuade North Vietnam to stop supporting the Vietnam and to destroy the North Vietnamese transportation infrastructure and industrial base so as to stop them from sending men and equipment south. It did not succeed as a spoiler. None of this works. It's just amazing that you have all this firepower, you have all these planes.

And really, you're talking about destroying railroads and chipping. And on your ground tunnels, too, this is the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Yeah. I mean, is that what we're talking about, the Ho Chi Minh Trail? Yes. Okay. Well, then they're never going to do that. No, this is is like a lesson

that no one ever learns in warfare, because you can also point to like the saturation bombing of Germany, which had a minimal effect on German industrial production. You could talk about like what's happening right now in Ukraine, which is not succeeded in its strategic aims. You could talk about a number of wars the US has been involved. And you could have about like World War One,

where the British would drop a million shells in a couple of hours on a chunk of trench line, and then I'll get killed by machine gun fire, because the shells didn't do enough. Like, military leaders always have this idea that we can just bomb our problems away, and it just never really works. Yeah, no, it doesn't.

Yeah. And you know what it does? It terrifies the civilian population. It sure does, yes. And it helps the Pentagon a lot, I think. It does help the population. It sure does, yes. And it helps the Pentagon a lot, I think. It does help the Pentagon. It makes money for people. So I guess to that extent, it succeeds in its goal.

And operation really fun. It did make some people a lot of money. It continued for three straight years until November of 1968. During this period, Air Force Navy and Marine Corps planes threw more than 300,000 attacks orities, which dropped more than 864,000 tons of bombs. For reference, the United States dropped half a million tons

of bombs in the Pacific theater during all of World War II. It's crazy, it's crazy. Yeah, it is hard to exaggerate the extent to which we bomb the shit out of North Vietnam to no notable effect. According to our trustworthy friends at the CIA, the raids did $500 million in damage, killed 21,000 people, and injured more than 30,000 more.

The CIA says that 75% of all casualties were people involved in military operations. US government estimates not by the CIA, however, estimate at least 30,000 civilian fatalities. Other estimates placed the civilian death toll much higher at close to 200,000 civilians. Probably fair to say north of 100,000, you know. A lot of folks. By the time Kissinger and Nixon took office, it was clear that Rolling Thunder had failed miserably. This was due in part to the existence of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. In 1959, this is before US soldiers had officially entered the country.

The trail had been created under order by the Lao Dong, which is the Communist Party of Vietnam, to aid them in what was at that point a building conflict with South Vietnam. At the start, it led across just the demilitarized zone into K-San and South Vietnam. Porters would carry boxes of ammunition and rifles on their body, which they would then hand to insurgents in the South. Over time, the trail was expanded to a vast underground transit network, more than 12,000 miles in size, capable of moving more than 10,000 troops and thousands of trucks per year, as the fighting escalated the trail veered into Lao, where the government was engaged,

fighting its own insurgency and unable to stop the transit of weapons. The Ho Chi Minh Trail allowed North Vietnam to smuggle equipment south and to evade the US naval blockade that sought to choke it out. Today, even Defense Department sources recognize it as one of the greatest logistical successes of 20th century warfare. It works pretty good. It's amazing to think of the number of bombs you're talking about, and then they made a tunnel. Yeah, not only they make a tunnel. Yeah, I'm really good hall, but it's like El Chapo. It's not just a tunnel. It's in a jungle. Like we're tying him out a very difficult sort of environment

to make a tunnel. It's not that, like it's incredible what they did. Yeah. So LBJ's administration sent planes into LOW to bomb the trail and to escort LOWSHAN planes while they bombed the trail. When US Airmen were killed or captured over LOW, their families were told they'd gone down in southeast Asia to allow LBJ to claim he divided by his 1964 election promise to avoid a wider war.

Cambodia was bombed as well, but during LBJ's administration, Laos was considered a more important target. They thought more stuff was getting into Vietnam through Laos. This changed in 1968, when the TET offensive made it clear that North Vietnam had gotten very good at running troops in and out of Cambodia. Johnson hadn't been willing to escalate the bombing campaign against a neutral country, though, especially since again, there was this big election going on, and he was kind of having his vice president run on the promise that

like we're really going to end this thing. So, you know, LBJ, when he's trying to tease North Vietnam with a bombing halt, isn't going to just start laying into Cambodia. Right. In the spring of 1969, after Kissinger and Nixon took office, they approved the expanded use of U.S. special forces in Laos law along with a campaign of sustained air strikes. This was called Operation Steel Tiger. All of these stupidest names.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the marketing that we have gone for in this country for so long has been so absurd. Steel Tiger. Well, I mean, they're just taking Y&T album names at this point. Yeah. If only they'd gone with like Prince, Operation Purple Rain, but it's like the

full length that gives everyone cancer. So I should note here that all secret operations carried out by any US forces, anywhere in the world during the Nixon administration were approved personally by Henry Kissinger. Henry was the chairman of something called the 40 committee. Hell! Oh, sorry. The chair, yes. This was a semi-secret body that had been set up to provide management and oversight to

CIA covert operations. The committee was made up of members of the National Security Council. They concerned themselves regularly with the question of how to stop weapons from flowing into Vietnam. By this point, trails ran through parts of Laon Cambodia, but also from the Vietnam Chinese border. So, Kissinger is the head of this committee considers a number of ways to stop weapons from getting into Vietnam, including the use of thermonuclear weapons to annihilate

the railways between North Vietnam and China, which is Jesus Christ out of its entire damn mind. And to be fair, is nuts enough that even Kissinger is like, no, that's a little too far. He also considered bombing the dikes that kept North Vietnam's irrigation system from flooding all of its fields. Both of these would have been war crimes on a Titanic scale. Thankfully, Kissinger declined to do either in favor of a completely different set of war crimes. So that's good.

That's nice. Nice. Yeah. Let's do a different thing. He decides which war crimes to commit. Like we decide like jeans or sweatpants in the morning. This is a nightmare. I mean, I think that would go really well with what we're doing now.

That'll really tie the whole thing together. Yeah. That's quite a life. So immediately after taking office, Henry helps his new boss put together a menu of bombardment targets in Cambodia. This is literally called Operation Menu. He knows. No. What?

Have you bombed the desper for? Yeah. Can I just mention, we've got some great ideas on special. You have to tip your bombed deer. Get the sample platter. That's what I don't, I actually don't recall off the top of my head, which bombing operation McCain was involved in, but there's a good tip there's a good tip joke to be made there. Somebody will figure it out.

Um, well, people doing buzz. Yeah, we'll figure it out. Different, or parts of Operation Menu had code names, different targets had code names like breakfast, lunch, snack. Oh my gosh. What the fuck? What? Oh.

What the fuck? What? I mean, it is one thing to be like so sadistic. And it's just another thing to tie it into, it will do a lot of the tried brunch. Yeah, should we do it in the bum rush? Should we do it in the bum rush? Yeah, we're going back to brunch finally

under the watchful, I am the next, the next thing to do is away from us. So it's nice. It's nice that it's slaughter can be fun. Like you can find fun. Yeah, it's the, you should. Yeah, I love what you do, Dave.

Otherwise, it's just gonna feel like work, you know? Yeah. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. So before they began the series of bombings, the joint chiefs of staff, they warned the White House, quote, some Cambodian casualties would be sustained in the operation and that would be a surprise effective effect, could it tend to increase casualties?

So they're like, the fact that we're not warning anyone and that we're keeping this a secret means more civilians will die. Like heads up. So you know what you're doing. This is, this is what's going to happen. Now, as they approach the question of bombing Cambodia, Kissinger and Nixon had a choice. They can either tell Congress or they could hide what they were doing, and use the presidential power over the armed services to appropriate funds from other places in order to carry

out the bombing and secret. Nixon had been elected with Kissinger's help, and part due to the LBJ administration's failure to in the war. He didn't want to go into 1972's reelection campaign, having to defend the fact that he expanded it. Henry Kissinger worked with Colonel's Alexander Hague and Ray Sitten to figure out a way for the president to direct bombing operations in a private manner, and I'm going to quote from Kissinger's shadow by Greg Brandon.

Sitten, based on recommendations he received from General Craterne Abrams, the commander of military operations in Vietnam, would work up a number of targets in Cambodia to be struck, then he would bring them to Kissinger and Hague in the White House for approval. Kissinger was very hands-on, revising some of Sitten's work. I don't know what he was using his reason for varying them, sitting later recalled. Strike here in this area, Kissinger would tell them, or strike there in that area. Once Kissinger was satisfied with the proposed targets, Sitten would backchannel the coordinates to Saigon, and from there a courier would pass them on to the appropriate radar stations, where an officer would make a last minute switch.

The B-52 would be diverted from its cover target in South Vietnam, in Cambodia, where it would drop its bomb load on the real target. When the run was complete, the officer in charge of the deception would burn whatever documents, maps, computer printouts, radar reports, messages, and so on, that might reveal the actual flight. Then he would write up false post-strike paperwork, indicating that the South Vietnam sortie was flown as planned. It's so much work.

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

country. To look like they're not bombing. Yeah, to look like they're not. It's gaslighting, you know? That's what this is, Kissinger, you know? We're finally gonna get him canceled. This is gonna be what this is. I thought I'd be a man.

I know. It would be a man. Kissinger. It's like a man's double. We're gonna do Kissinger what Hannibal Burris did to Cosby. Oh man. Oh, come on. Come on.

Oh, so, you know, obviously this is very illegal. There's a lot of, and there's a lot of parts of it that are illegal. For example, the military has a chain of command and Citton was bypassing his bosses in the Department of Defense because he's just a colonel, right? Like, colonels don't get to,

that's not their, like, you're not at that level, right? So he is bypassing the normal chain of command in order to directly orchestrate an illegal bombing campaign with the White House, and kind of cutting out a chunk of the Pentagon. Sitin knew at the time that it was weird to cut his commanding officers out and report directly to Henry Kissinger. He later recalled, I kind of felt I was way out on a limb and skating

on some pretty thin ice with all my trips to the West Basement of the White House. Yeah, where he's meeting with Kisinger. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to a secret basement. Yeah. To talk about bombing. Like maybe maybe this isn't how it's supposed to be done. He'll not seem like a democracy. Yeah. I feel like we should be doing things like this in a basement. We've come to secret democracy, basement. Yeah. The people voted for this basement.

No, the fun knock. So I know as you. I noted here that they kind of cut out a large chunk of like the military command apparatus to do this, which doesn't mean that those guys were against what they were doing. And in fact, all of sit and superiors knew what he was doing. They just didn't want to be involved because again, it was a crime.

So they're like, they're down with the cut out because they're just like, yeah, you do it. I don't want my name on this shit. That's like crazy. But go with it for sure. I love yeah, you do it. I don't want my name on this shit. That's crazy, but go with it for sure. I love it. I love it. I like to have it. Keep me out of the loop.

But I love it. They didn't know about the bombing of Cambodia, the same way I have never known a pot dealer. Right. Right. So, sitting with regularly, like, I don't know, I'm not going to say this is to his credit, but he was like, this is weird. And he would go, he did on a couple of occasions go to his superiors and was like,

are you okay with this? And his exact phrase and what they responded was, just do just what you're doing. When you get a call to go to the White House, go because you don't really have a choice. Just great. Oh my God, it's so good. It's straight out of the show snowfall.

Like it's just, like this shit just happens all the time. Yeah, this is what happened with Iran culture. It was the same fucking shit, but, you know, yeah. It's all crimes, and it's worth noting that like, the United States is going to war with a neutral country in secret under the personal direction of a guy who several months ago had been a Harvard professor. Like, his teacher is not even a year distant

from being a fucking teacher. And now he is orchestrating a secret war in Cambodia. And like, I love the beginning thing where he said, there's like a guy whose job it is to pick targets and he's picking targets and, and kissing just taking the maps and going, no, I like, just bomb here. Like just totally random. He doesn't have any fucking idea what he's doing. He's just like, that hill looks like it should go away.

He has not even begun to micromanage this war crime day. Ah! So the purpose of this illegal bombing campaign was not just to stop the movement of Vietnamese troops in material. It also played a role in advancing what Nixon called his madman theory. Now the president had shared this with close confidants prior to the 1968 election.

He told his future chief of staff that in order to negotiate an end to the war with favourable terms, he felt he had to make the North Vietnamese quote, �Belief I've reached a point where I might do anything to stop the war. We'll just slip the word to them that, for God's sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about communists. We can't restrain him when he's angry. And he has his hand on the nuclear button, and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days, begging for peace. Which is like, the idea is someone's like, so you want us to try to convey that you're crazy?

Okay. That seems, I think it's coming across her, honestly. I think that's already sort of, that's baked into this whole thing a little bit. It's also very funny that like, they are trying to scare Ho Chi Minh, who at this point is fighting his second winning war against a major world power with like a very, very small number of people. You know, like North Vietnam,

not a big country compared to say, the French imperial forces, or United States. He's not a kind of, you're not going to scare Ho Chi Minh, right? He's not a guy who gets spooked. No, it's over. It's just absolutely not happening at this point. Yeah.

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

In fact, the madman theory was an extension of Kissinger's philosophy of the deed, that power wasn't power unless one was willing to use it, that the Madman theory was an extension of Kissinger's philosophy of the deed that power wasn't power unless one was willing to use it. That the purpose of action was to neutralize the inertia of an action. I mean, it's not a double down. It's like, it's 18 double downs, but at some point, I at least in my lifetime had a moment where I did believe that there were people who would like point out the crazy shit. And the more you learn, the more you go, no, there's just, there's not.

They are just all like, it's like a bunch of junkies figuring out how to get more junk. I mean, it's just like, it's just how do you get through the day? It's not long-term anything. Yep, you know, there's a degree to which, and this is like one of the things that's most frustrating about this, part of how this always gets justified is there's legitimate logic in that, yeah, Hitler gobbled up a bunch of little chunks of Western Europe and nobody stopped him and they should have, like something should have been done, like when he decided to take Czechoslovakia, you know, we're doing the angeles, or certainly, you know, like, and they take this logic of like,

yeah, if you have this like massive militarized nation gobbling up its neighbors, you can't just necessarily do nothing. And they apply that to like, well, okay, we've got a bomb Cambodia because some dudes are hiking through it with guns on their back. Like, change the nonsense escalation. Chamberlain also is always in play there too, because it's like everyone's like, oh, you know what to be, Chamberlain.

Yeah. We're appeasing North Vietnam if we don't drop more bombs than we're dropped in all of World War II on Cambodia. Yeah. It's Cambodia. It's this nonsense escalation of, of, of logic, of historical logic that's like. Like, someday Nixon's just gonna look in the mirror and be like, sometimes I think I'm just fighting a war inside of myself.

They're actually, there are some quotes from Kissinger that aren't all that far off gear. We're back. So the first bombing mission in this operation was launched on March 18, 1969. Kissinger was in conversation at the time when he was interrupted with a note telling him that the bombing run had been a success. He smiled and then sent the information onto the president. Nixon's chief of staff later recalled, historic day, Kissinger really excited. He came in beaming with the report.

Now, it was noted by people who were around the White House that Kissinger seemed to enjoy, quote, playing the bomb a deer, taking great pains to direct the destruction. Same or her, she wrote that quote, when the military men presented a proposed bombing list, Kissinger would redesign the missions, shifting a dozen planes, perhaps, from one area to another and altering the timing

of the bombing runs. And it does, yeah, I guess no fucking expertise in this area. Absolutely none. His, he's a fucking nerd who reads books like you know anything about what to bomb, Henry. It's like me showing up at a hospital and being like, I give you this surgical schedule. I need to start working these surgeries and get them in order. Like, it's fucking crazy.

It is. I mean, this is, there's a human impulse here. I was seeing in Ukraine where all these like random people are being like, here's how you disable a tank. And it's like, you've never disabled a tank. You don't know what the fuck you're talking about. Like you're not gonna, like throwing paint on it isn't going to stop it. You're going to get people killed if anyone's stupid enough to listen to you.

Shut up. It just like Kissinger is actually in a power to really do that. And there's this, I don't know what it is. I don't know what it is that makes some people certain that like they know how to prosecute an entire war based on their experience, reading a lot of books at a school. And there's, and it doesn't sound like there's anybody who's going like, not, doesn't make any sense.

Is this out of its mind? Yeah, yeah, so it's just like, it is. It's just people being like, okay, sure. Because there's a lot, obviously, the unrestricted drone warfare that escalated during the Obama administration and continued at an even higher pace under Trump is indefensible morally.

But also the way that it tended to work was like you would get, you know, these guys, the administration, whichever one it was, would say like these are the things we are, we are going to target with drones. And then the military would bring them like, well here are the different options for strikes that we have and they would like pick which one to do.

Kissinger is literally taking the maps from them, erasing their plans and like writing in his own, which is like a coach. It's a coach in the, it's someone in the, the huddle with an actually like with coach K, he's drawing a plan, a whiteboard, and then a fan just scribbles it out

and like rubs it all down with his arm. And then he's like, instead, why don't we all run up the court at the same time and then we pass the ball a bunch and try to do it that way. Make someone head the ball into the net, huh? It's, it's not, I think, yeah. I'm just upset because I bought 40 gallons of paint. Cause you were gonna try to knock at it.

That's a couple of tanks. You were coming tank war and now a little fucking thing. Shot like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There are some things paint is good at when it comes to conflict. There were some very funny moments in one of the big chud fights we had up in Portland where kids filled a fire extinguisher with paint and like ruined thousands of dollars in

tactical gear. That was nice. That was good. Wow. Yes. Look, it's not to say that amateurs never have good ideas, but they were not amateurs at that point though. Those kids had been fighting those bratboys for a minute. So Kissinger's extraordinary degree of control over the situation was possible because he had literally reformed the entire national security apparatus around himself. Nixon wanted a buffer

from his own secretary of state, which provided Henry with the opportunity to take as much power and centralize it around the national security adviser. And he could do this as long as he kept Nixon happy. Under Kissinger, the national security council, which he headed, became the center of US foreign policy. A massive bureaucracy fed piles of information, embassy cales, cables, intelligence reports, etc. Straight to Henry Kissinger.

He decided, he's again, Henry is where all of the information from this vast apparatus embassy cales cables intelligence reports et cetera straight to Henry Kissinger he decided he's again henry is where all of the information from this vast apparatus that the u.s. has to gather information right the eyes and ears of the president you know all of the things that are supposed to provide the president with information all of that comes directly to henry and he decides what to give the president and he was a teacher teacher. And he was a... A year before. He was a guy whose primary claim to fame before this was, we need more nukes.

We don't have enough fucking nukes. And also we should use them whenever. It's, I was just watching. There's a great documentary called Commandant Control that's about a nuclear disaster in the US in 1980 that nearly killed half of the people on the East Coast. That enough folks don't know about. A guy accidentally dropped a bolt and it ignited part of a nuclear missile and it nearly killed

everyone on the East to seaboard. It was a big, oh, it was a big kerfuffle. And, uh, so this guy's, there's a lot of the stuff. That's nuts about it. But one of the things that pointed out, I think we have, Sophie can Google this for me. I think we have about 6,000 nuclear weapons right now, which is way too many. But as a result, we have, yeah, we have the, so the Soviet Russia has around 6,000. We have around 4,800 I think.

4,800. So that's too much. Both countries have too many nukes. I think we can all, it's fair. It's a lot. It's a lot. I'm not signing up on that. As a result, in part of Kissinger's, we have a missile gap and we need to build more.

By this point in the mid 60s, there are 32,000 nuclear weapons in the United States. That's even an aside because it's like a Kardashian with shoes. Yeah, I feel my thing has always been every person who owns property should be allowed to have a nuke. You're own nuke. Look, I think just for all the great, you know what, you know what there wouldn't be if everyone had a nuke, Dave, no non-raids by the cops.

That's true. You're not gonna have any of that shit. They're gonna be busted down doors. Yeah. Come on in, guys, it's fine. Door's up, asshole. Real different situation, Ari, the cops, if everybody's got a nuke. Other problems though, there would be some other problems.

I don't see any other problems. So anyway, Kissinger is effectively turned himself into the eyes and ears of the United States military appress. He decides what's the saying? It's crazy. You can argue he's one of the two or three most powerful people who's ever lived at this point. An argument could be made.

So Marvin and Bernard Coulbe, who were both diplomats at this point, described what Henry builds here as Henry's wonderful machine. Quote, since Kissinger, I know. diplomats at this point, describe what Henry builds here as Henry's wonderful machine. Quote, since Kissinger... I know. Really woke up. Mr. McGoriam's new clear.

Since Kissinger controlled the system, he controlled the decision-making process. Everyone reports to Kissinger and only Kissinger reports to the president. This set up allowed Henry to micromanage bombing campaigns over order covert arms deals and engage in secret diplomacy at will. He was not merely executing the president's orders. He himself was free to make national policy as long as Nixon was happy with him. From Kissinger's shadow. Quote, Kissinger, according to Marvin and Bernard Cald, called, knew almost instinctively that he would be able to control the bureaucracy and thus help reorder American diplomacy only to the degree that he became indistinguishable from the president and his policies.

Rogers' state was opposed to the idea of escalating the war into Cambodia, layered at the Pentagon was for it, but thought it needed to be done above board, legally and publicly through the normal chain of command. This gave Kissinger an opening, letting him stake out in Naples ultra-position. He wanted to bomb. He wanted to bomb in a way that inflicted the most pain and he wanted to bomb an absolute secrecy completely off the books. As a result, every war crime committed by the United States during the Nixon administration,

every bad thing US forces do particularly under the under the ages of special operations at least, right? Has to be considered one of Henry Kissinger's crimes because it is his job to personally sign off on all of them. And he is not just a rubber stamper. He is actively pushing for things. So we are going into very specific to tale

about one specific crime. If you find a bad thing that the US, that the CIA or Special Forces did from 1969 to 1973, Henry Kissinger gave that the old thumbs up. So again, we're going to have to leave out a lot. It doesn't even sound like, it's, I mean, it's like ego-based. Yeah. It's not even, I mean, there's, there's, there's so little actual, it just shows you

like what happens when you're in a bubble. Yeah. But I mean, I just don't think most people would be capable of this, but it is. It's just like, it's not really from anything other than he is just feels great being at the helm of this. And it's an extremely powerful position. It's such a bad idea. Like, if you proceed like a moment, get ourselves in the headspace.

If someone who thinks all of this is morally justified, it's a bad idea. Like if you proceed like a moment, get ourselves in the headspace, if someone who thinks all of this is morally justified, it's a bad idea because a person can't competently manage all of this. Right, like this is too much. Yeah, right, they would be like, look, I need help. I mean, we're doing what we came to do. Like a reasonable warlord would be like

delegating more. Yeah, level headed. Yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah. So when he was signing off on bombing runs, Kissinger poured over raw intelligence documents, which included information on exactly, in many cases, down to the number how many civilians lived in a certain targeted target area.

Now sometimes it was a little bit less specific in this, for example, area 704, which had quote, sizable concentrations of civilians, didn't have an exact number, but was bombed 247 times on Henry Kissinger's orders. And since we're going to be talking a lot about bombing, we should discuss exactly what that meant in this case, because all bombings are not created equal. The bombings Kissinger directed were carried out by B-52 bombers. These are massive planes. These are like the size of the big international commercial aircraft.

Roughly, right, these are not like fighter jets and stuff. These fly too high to be seen from the ground. And they are incapable of meaningful discrimination between civilian and military targets. This is not an era in which there's much at all in the way of precision guided bombing. And with a B-52, you cannot even attempt precision. You are dropping explosives blindly from like a mile up. it all in the way of precision guided bombing, and with a B-52 you cannot even attempt precision.

You are dropping explosives blindly from like a mile up. I want to quote now from a write-up by Taylor Owen and Ben Kearinen for a Yale. Quote, a single B-52, the big belly payload, consists of up to 108, 225 kg or 4,340 kg bombs, which are dropped in a target area of approximately 500 by 1500 meters. In many cases, Cambodian villages were hit with dozens of payloads over the cloak course of several hours. The result was near total destruction. When US officials stated at the time, we had been told, as said everybody, that those

carpet bombing attacks by B-52s were totally devastating, that nothing could survive. It's like a sturgeon with eggs. Yeah. It is completely indiscriminate. Yeah. One Cambodian survivor, because people did live, as we've stated, these are never as good at killing people as the military likes to claim, which is not to minimize the horror.

It's just like, it's also not, it doesn't work. One Cambodian survivor of US bombing described it this way. Three F 111s bombed right center of my village killing 11 of my family members. My father was wounded but survived. At that time, there was not a single soldier in the village or in the area around the village. 27 other villages were also killed. They had to run into a ditch to hide and then two bombs fell right into it. Oh, for fuck's sake. Yeah, it is, yeah. You cannot exaggerate the extent to which this is indiscriminate. Yeah, it's just total madness on top of madness.

I mean, there's no, yeah. People are rightly furious about like bombing in Ukrainian cities right now. What the United States is doing in Cambodia is eliminating grid squares on a map of all life. Like, yeah, which is a country that has nothing to fucking do. Yeah, some dudes are walking through it, you know, like it's cop logic. We're like, we're a guy who stole a car was seen in this neighborhood.

So we had to shoot anyone, someone we saw in the window of their house. You know, like, it's that kind of shit, which I guess it makes sense that cops act the way they do because this has always been the way people with guns and power act everywhere through all time. Yeah. Yeah. So that's good. Yeah.

So the ostensible purpose of all this carnage, which to put an end to North Vietnam's ability to wage war, but a huge factor for both Kissinger and Nixon, even larger than any actual like impact on the war itself, was to preserve their personal power. Right after the bombing of Cambodia began, Nixon sent Kissinger to talk with the Soviet ambassador, a fellow named Dubrinion. In Henry Kissinger in American power, Thomas Schwartz writes, quote, Kissinger put forward a straightforward, put forth a straightforward domestic political account for Nixon's motivation and thinking. Noting that Nixon is not seeking a military victory, but he cannot go down in American

history as the first US president to have lost the war in which the US participated. Oh, I mean, the, the, the, the honest like you'd think you'd at least lie about. No, no. Just the, oh my God. Look, it's murdering a, a democide is one thing, Gareth. But dishonesty, I just, it's disgusting. That's, I feel like a parent. Look, the someone who's an ambassador, someone who kissing your drinks with, you know?

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Exactly, I mean, I just, I would love a parent. Look, the summit ambassador, someone Kissinger drinks with, you know? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Exactly. I mean, I just, I would love to see a version where he just keeps up an appearance. Look, he can't, we just nicks and hates losing. That's what this is about. We can't take the people. Yeah, it's, so between March of 1969 and May of 1970, more than 3,630 raids were flown

across the Cambodian border. Each was approved personally by Henry Kissinger. The New York Times broke this story to the American public for the first time in May of 1969. So that's pretty good, right? Like the New York Times actually is pretty shocking on this and reveals what has happened. This prompts protests an international outcry. That's one of the frustrating things about the New York times because there's a million things to be angry at them

all the time. And then it's like, oh, and they also, where the first people reveal the horrific crime against humanity. Because they have bright spots where I like, yeah, you fuckers. Well, I can't. It's like a broken clock, though.

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

Ever PR savvy, Kissinger agreed to meet with student protesters in order to prop up his image among liberals. He told them, if you come back in a year and things haven't changed, we won't have a morally defensible position. So like, hey, you know, I know it's all fucked up. I've got to fix this whole messed up. It's been going on for years. You know, I'm working on it.

If you come back in a year and it's fixed. I'll fix it. I've got to fix this whole messed up. It's been going on for years. You know, I'm working on it If you come behind this I was figuring it out I figured out I'm going to be the problem as a cougain here Give me give me one year to kill all the baby and it also shows how fucking crazy you are like if you're doing this You know you'd be like look hide me. I do not want to talk to the fact that he's like, I would meet them. It's like, you can make it work. Yeah.

Yeah, from this. He doesn't control it. I'll just tell him what's up. Like, we got to kill people for like a year. Let's see how it goes. Give me a year. I'm going to bomb the shit out of just villages and shit and kill a bunch of babies and ladies.

You have no idea how many babies. After a year, after a year. It's just nice to be back at high, but look at the campus. You guys are gonna change the couple things, huh? You guys are just like, you guys are like, oh, I heard something bad. We're just getting started.

But like, in my year, is an amazing thing to say when this is on this, look, if this is happening in the year, we'll revisit. It's like, yeah, no, not a year. You don't get to revisit this. You're not gonna revisit. We should revisit where we are in the story after this break. Yeah, let's revisit the sponsors of the show.

Yeah. Who else, you know who else need a year to keep killing. Yeah, look, if if if it has not stopped the carpet bombing of Cambodia in a year, then then you can cancel your subscription, you know? By the way, talking that's menus, those are menu options. They have a very much like, yeah, it's a very much like a white house visit with a hell what do you want to make a piece of deal? Do you want to do this chickpea salad? What do you have to?

There's options you want to do a flatbread muggerita's though? We're back. So there's congressional inquiries about the illegal carpet bombing of Cambodia. On what? What are that? What are they after? They smell some smoke? I should also note, seizing Cornell offices with arms, dope, actually sitting down with

Henry Kissinger to let him talk about how things aren't really that bad, and not dope, maybe throw a stapler at his face, something like it's a journey. You fucking hit him really hard. You tried to hit him, you know? At least give him a shoe, you know? You've got options. Somebody from a fucking baseball team at Harvard

had to have been able to hit him with a fastball. There are people that if you're around, you should chaining, bush, get around certain people, you get close to them, you should fucking hit them. Hit them hard. Look, dig chainy is basically like a charging phone, just on plug him at this point, see what happens. Just whatever is a little plug,

just be like, turn on a microwave next to him. Yeah, just have a microwave and an extension cord to put it up popcorn and throw it in his lap. Yeah, but look, we all know, everybody here knows that eventually, Cheney and Kissinger shed their human skins and become one ball of energy. I think Kissinger currently is shedding his human skin. If you've seen him lately, it looks like he's halfway

through the fingers crossed. Yeah, but the two of them merge and then, know, wings, oh, yeah, I get it. So they kind of become like a like a therapist or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Then they're one. It's like, come on, Henry, let's get out of here. Finally, they got through form.

Mm-hmm. And they, they, they, they locate a new microbiological life on Europa. We all come to say water. recall life on Europa. No one has done yet. So there's congressional inquiries Kissinger gets brought before the Senate where he assures everyone that Cambodian territories bombed by the US were all, quote, unpopulated. He knew this was a lie at the time. We know from briefing documents Kissinger received that he was warned in detail about such things the breakfast

bombing target he was told was inhabited by sixteen hundred and forty civilians dessert had three hundred and fifty and it's just it's just like ice cream yeah you wouldn't get angry at me for bombing a baskin robins would you there are no people there he said it to who hates cake it's called the magic shell so nixon eventually initially blamed kissinger for the leaks that had a revealed the story of the bombing of hamboa to the new york times

and this is because kissinger brings in a lot of like liberals like a lot of kissinger's staff are not republicans are not right wing guys, they're like Northeastern liberals. Yeah, because. Yeah. And then this is much different. They are not. But Nixon is like it must have been one of these East Coast liberals you brought in that leaked at the time. So he the right. So he thinks it's an extension of Kissinger, not Kissinger. No, no, no, he doesn't. Kissinger. No, that would no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, Context on how comprehensively shitty a person, Kissinger, is how incapable of real loyalty he is. Thomas Schwartz writes that in order to preserve his own position, Kissinger had to throw large numbers of his team members under the bus.

Quote, Kissinger called FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and gave him a list of those staffers in his office with access to the information, telling Hoover that he would destroy whoever did this if we can find him, no matter where he is. Among the first to be wiretapped was Morton Halperin, who had helped devise the NSC system. Home at Saunenfeld, Kissinger's fellow German Jewish refugee, and even Winston-Lord, the man Kissinger later called his conscience on poor and policy issues. And all there would be 17 FBI wiretaps, by the White House, 13 on government employees, including Kissinger's staff, and 4 on Newsmen, among them Kissinger's British friend who is a reporter for the London Times.

It's a meteoric raw. It's like American idol level sudden impact as far as because I mean, he has you pointed to he wasn't like this crazy, I mean, he was crazy, but now it's like, he's just, it's on Reuters. The level that he, the level he's gotten to and the level of insanity that he's gotten to is really, even for this country, historic. Yeah, it's, it's pretty cool. And just like, it's great. He is not capable of even like treating his very loyal friends well. So yeah, this would come back to bite Kissinger in Nixon and the ass in the not too distant

future, but we're going to take a while to get to that because there's a lot in between there and now. So let's return to Cambodia. It is worth noting that Operation Menu achieved nothing. It was useless in a military sense. The enemy commanded control facilities. They were ostensibly trying to destroy, we're never taken out.

And it was useless from a negotiating standpoint because North Vietnam did not bulge. A budge. Bulge. It may have been bulged. Are they bulged, baby? Are they fucking bulged? Can they have 1970, Nixon decided to escalate again

by ordering a ground invasion of Cambodia. He announced this with a typically unhinged speech. And again, this is public, because at this point, the New York Times has revealed things. So we live at an age of anarchy. We see mindless attacks on all the great institutions which have been created by free civilizations

in the past 500 years. What's happening? It's because kids are like protesting in Koga. Yeah. Like, yeah, he framed it as a test of the nation's quote, Will in character. Seriously. He's right.

When one of his staff members, Bulk, when Kissinger staff members, Bulked at plans to illegally invade Cambodian with ground troops, troops, Henry told him, quote, your views represent the cowardice of the Eastern establishment. This staff member, William Watts, tried to physically attack Henry Kissinger,

who was hit behind his desk. Oh, it's just like, if he was only able to just kill him, what a, what a, imagine the ripple. If only there'd been a sharper letter opener on the desk. Yeah, I think it'd just pen to put it like a pen through his neck. Yeah, it's very funny that Kissinger did, it's some point have to hide behind a desk to stop his own staff from assaulting him.

So strong bombing everywhere and that he's hiding under his desk. Oh, no, the relax. So this staff member, uh, you know, Watts resigns right after this. And when staff member Anthony Lake echoes Watts's concerns Kissinger, presumably still hiding behind his desk, calls Lake not manly enough to do what was necessary. You go to the ruins too. Yeah, bold words from behind the, hiding behind a desk. Yeah, big tough guy.

Four days after Nixon's speech announcing the invasion of Cambodia, four students were shot dead at Kent State during a protest over the invasion. Nine more were wounded. Two weeks later, at Jackson State, police shot into a crowd of black students protesting the war. Two were killed and 12 wounded. The invasion prompted some of the first consequences and only consequences Kissinger ever faced, stern rebukes from fancy academics he respected. A group of them, men who had often acted as his brain trust and advised him and other presidential advisers on issues, marched

into his office after the invasion. One of the men, Thomas Shelling, opened by saying that he supposed he should explain who they were. Kissinger responded with confusion that, I know who you are. You're all good friends from Harvard. Next, from Nile Ferguson's Kissinger, no, said Shelling. We're a group of people who have completely lost confidence in the ability of the White House to conduct our foreign policy

And we have come to tell you so we are no longer at your disposal as personal advisors each of them then proceeded to berate him taking five minutes a piece Now This point Seen from Rudy when they all hand in their form to get Rudy to play It's like that. And this is like Rudy. If you have, oh God, what's his fucking name?

I'm space, the West Wing mother fucker. Aaron Sorkin. Aaron Sorkin. If Aaron Sorkin is writing this. The West Wing mother fucker. That is your best description of him. If Aaron Sorkin is writing this, this is like the heroic moment where like the conscience of like the American ruling class like comes in and like, this is not right, Henry, and

really, that's bullshit. That's not what's happening. And Ferguson goes on to note that these guys were kind of foolish. They're all Washington insiders. They have adv- shelling advised LBJ to massively escalate violence throughout the war in Vietnam. Ferguson continues, and this is his explanation of what they were really doing. Quote, For these men, publicly breaking with Kissinger, with journalists briefed in advance about

the breach, was a form of self-excollpation, not to say an insurance policy as student radicals back on the Harvard campus ran riot. When Newstadt told the Crimson, I think it's safe to say we're afraid, he did not specify of what. Others were more candid, as shelling put it. If Cambodia succeeds, it will be disaster, not just because my Harvard office may be burned down when I get home, but it will even be a disaster

in the administration's own terms. So it's amazing. It, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, lot, where I'm like, all right, we got a hero. And then immediately I'm like, more villains, god damn it. I mean, to the extent that there's some heroes, the kids on these campuses who are actually like lighting buildings on fire and destroying things, they do make Henry Kissinger and his academic friends afraid and uncomfortable briefly, which is more than anyone else does.

Yeah, and this would kind of be the last time that even happens, really, right? That like, that the people in that level of power do feel any sort of like threat from the, so the regular folk. Yeah, credit where it's due, they are the only people that I'm aware of who made Henry Kissinger briefly feels something that vaguely resembles shame. So motion. Yeah, good, like seriously, good work.

Yeah. But of course, you know, that doesn't stop anything, obviously. Yeah. Like seriously, good work. But of course, you know, that doesn't stop anything, obviously. Yeah, of course. He's got many desks. Yeah. So Cambodia falls into chaos as a result of the, as most places would, when bombed on this level, right? Hard to maintain a state with this level of things exploding.

It is unclear precisely how many people die in Operation Menu, the subsequent invasion of Cambodia and the bombing campaigns that followed. The low estimate is 50,000. The high estimates are 150 to 200,000. 30 to 50,000 low-tions die in the bombing campaign, which makes these sparsely populated nation the most densely bombed place on Earth. 30% of these bombs fail to detonateate and in the years since the bombing and other 20,000 people have died.

From the estimated 80 million bombs left in the soil, 40 percent of the victims are children. One aid worker said of the situation, there are parts of LOW where there is literally no free space. There are no areas that have not been bombed. And when you are in the villages now, you still see the evidence of that. You see the bomb craters. You still see an unbelievable amount of metal and wreckage and an exploded ordinance

just lying around in villages and it's still injuring and killing people today. What a legacy. Now, if any of this concern, Nixon and Kissinger, I would like to, I would like you just to throw out there that I do feel that gardening should be more dangerous. So, yes, and nobody's disagreeing about that.

And we have enough bombs in this country to make gardening a lot more dangerous. Oh, yeah, yes. Nobody's disagreeing about that. And we have enough bombs in this country to make gardening a lot more dangerous. Oh, can we do it? Yeah. That fucking hurt. It hurt 24. Are we a fucking beans? If there's not a one in three chance,

digging up a potato loses you with goddamn arm, you're not really a gardener. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. So, how are the tomatoes? Ken's dead. Ken died. If any of this concern Nixon and Kissinger, we have no evidence of it. We know that in 1972, Nixon asked how many did we kill in LOW and the press secretary

Ron Zeagler responded with a guess, maybe 10,000, 15, Kissinger agreed. In the lotion thing, we killed about 10, 15. This is how they talk about the showcase showdown. Three to five nine elevens worth of people. It's the way you talk about it. Did you get like one bag of grapes or two? I think I had two bags of grapes. What's the cover fee to get into that, to get into that concert? Oh, it's like $10,000,000. Yeah. Yeah.

Except for this is, they're just complete and total fucking psychopaths. And they're off by a half at least, you know. It's hard to get accurate, you know, death tolls here. And the bombs were not the only thing left behind by the campaign that Kissinger orchestrated. Greg Grandin writes, defoliation chemicals did their work. Just over a two-week period, April 18th to May 2nd, 1969, US dropped agent orange caused significant damage, Andrew Wells-Dang, who has long been involved in relief aid to Southeast Asia rights.

Both the US government and independent inspection teams confirmed that 173,000 acres were sprayed, 7% of Compongcham province, 24,700 of them seriously affected. The rubber plantations totaled approximately one-third of Cambodia's total and represented a loss of 12% of the country's export earnings. Washington agreed to pay over 12 million in reparations, but Kissinger tried to defer the payment to fiscal year 1972 when the money could be made without a specific, without a special request that would have revealed US cross-border activity.

Every effort, isn't your vote, should be made to avoid the necessity for a special budgetary request to provide funds to pay this claim. Oh my God. Look, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to need the money. You're going to get the money. You're going to get the money. You're going to get the money. You're just going to take a while.

I just need to, I just need to, I just need to, move, yeah, I need to move some stuff around. Just, but you're going to get it. It's fine. Let's just keep it on the deal. You know what I mean? Yeah, it's, yeah. The secret service wasn't calling Trump agent orange, by the way.

The fact wasn't his code name. That's a disappointment. That is, I mean, there's a lot of reasons to be disappointed in the secret service, but that is one of them. That's my number one. So the loss of life and economic damage caused Cambodia to spiral into chaos, or at least it was a factor. Other stuff's going on.

We have a couple episodes about King Notre Dame, Sahannuk, who was a real piece of shit in the King of Cambodia in this period. A lot's happening. But unrest by the caused by the bombings in the economic devastation helped to spark a right wing coup, which was likely orchestrated with CIA help and that's what the direct input. You guys are looking to change things up here.

We've got a plan. We got an idea. So the man would happen. Someone bomb you? Well, why don't we provide some help? Yeah, exactly. And the coup, you know, over throws the king who then starts backing the Camarroosh. Oh, they win.

They're great. Yeah, their counter revolution against the right-wing coup, and this leads to the establishment of Polpots Khmer Rouge government. Yay! Once the Rouge took over in 1975, Nixon had left office, because in just a though was still in power. In November of 1975, he told Thailand's Foreign Minister, you should also tell the Cambodians that we will be friends with them. They are murderous thugs, but we won't let that stand in our way.

We are prepared to improve relations with them. I mean, we get it. Kissinger. I mean, my people, I get it. Murderous thugs, I'm all about murderous thugs. I think we could find common ground. This man wants to kill a million people. I think that is a cute start.

In 1988, when questioned on this, Kishenji explained that, quote, the tie in the Chinese did not want a Vietnamese dominated Indochina. We didn't want the Vietnamese to dominate. I don't believe we did anything for Pol Pot, but I suspect we closed our eyes when some others did think something for Pol Pot. Of course, the United States attempted at least to provide direct military aid to the Khmer Rouge in order to help them oppose Vietnam. And there's a lot of debate and uncertainty. It seems that very little if any actually made it to the Khmer, but this is primarily because of difficulty getting shit into Cambodia at this point in time.

But it is fair to say that Kissinger and Nixon's actions were crucial in creating the circumstances that brought Pol Pot to power. And once he wasn't charged in mass-occurring people, they tacitly supported his government because they thought it would stime the Vietnamese. In total, from the killing that started when the US bombing raids began, to the people killed by Pol Pot's regime, to those who died fighting with Vietnam that finally brought the Rouge to an end, 1.7 million Cambodians died, more than a quarter of the population of the country pre-war.

It's so incredible how their ideology of just communism bad, they're like, well, communism will kill a bunch of people and they're just fucking everything they can to save those people. Well, it's also like, they don't even really believe comedies, because the commercial comedies is hell and they're fine with working with them, because it's Vietnam is the ones who beat them, and so they're angry at Vietnam, and it's like, and Vietnam fights Cambodia, like it's not, there's no, these people don't believe in anything.

Yeah, there's not good lessons to take from this, but No, it's it's really should have stabbed Henry Kissinger. That's for sure Stabbed him yeah, there's so many people we should have stabbed There's so many but Kissinger's way up there and in this story, right? Like we're not obviously you can't blame all of the deaths in Cambodia on Kissinger a lot Just like you can't blame all of the deaths in Vietnam on Kissinger and Nixon, but like just so many of that. The people who lead a witch he's central to a lot of the worst actions in these wars. Well, and so the, I, I, I keep thinking about the point you made in the last episode, where it, you know, the idea that LBJ, that, that he broke up the LBJ plan to sort of end all of this

and just for political reasons made that not happen. And that just, the avenue that we are down now is just, I mean, it's unconscionable, you know? And there's so much to do. We also, besides just the straight bombings, we destabilize areas, we change the trajectory. Look, Putin is our fucking doing. Yeah.

We fucking took out the government. We, we, we, to Yeltsin, all that shit. That was a fucking emergency. Well, I'm not going to let you sit here and talk shit on Yeltsin. He was a very in control of what he was doing. He definitely knew what was happening. It wasn't like having a bottle of beer, not in charge. Nothing that happened.

Everything we get involved with turns into a fuck pie. I mean, it's just we just create chaos. Yeah, we're murder Midas. It's this thing where we're talking about like how insane it is that Kissinger is micromanaging these bombings, which is not to say that like the military men who were doing it before, we're particularly better. And this is the problem that we're going to have, you know, with Ukraine and whatnot, too, is just that like, well, now we have all of these people who are supposed to be, are the people we call experts who are now going to be doing things.

And like, if you actually look at their resumes, it is not a wide-ranging history of successes, you know? And it is the same thing with Russia. You could look at like Russian intervention, no bunch of places, it's a nightmare. It's the kind of people who are in a position to make calls when the conflicts get to this level are always ghouls and they're always bad at anything but causing devastation. And that's why all of this keeps happening.

Because none of these people are any good at it. And no one gets punished for that. And nobody ever gets punished for that. And nobody ever gets punished for that. Yeah. The fact that Bill Crystal is still saying what anybody she's doing anywhere in the world, you're like, what in the fuck is going on?

Who gets, who goes away? Who goes away? Favouriteing his tweets. I imagine. I know somebody who lost their job at a grocery store who gets to go who goes away who goes away never knew his weird i imagine i know somebody who lost their job at a grocery store because they got arrested protesting for like protesting against police violence uh...

meanwhile uh... bill christmas like a guest on the media shows it's it's still you think well i mean uh... uh... i yeah it, it's frustrating. Every now and then, far too seldom, you get a story like that billionaire Russian arms dealer who's yacht got partially sunk, but there's like three of those stories for every thousand Kissinger's. And they don't ever mean anything because that guy can afford to fix his fucking yacht.

So, they were, they were egging Bezos' boat, when he was getting that bridge torn down. Yeah. You're like, I mean, this is an aside, it's buying us some people to pay. Yeah, it's like, he's gonna have someone hose it down and that's the way.

He's fine. Yeah. Everybody, you look yachts burn. We know this. Yeah, that's, they burn. That's the thing, yachts burn in so do Bill Christel's. Bill Christel, sorry, I think it's like in a trance. No, yeah thing. Yacht's burn in so-do bill crystals. Bill's crystals. I think it's like in a term. No, actually, when you burn him, he just turns into a few crystals. So Greg Grandin author Kissinger's shadow sees the bombing campaign in Cambodia and Laos as the terminal phase

in what he calls the crack up of America's domestic consensus, which had begun under Johnson. Kissinger considered conditions in the country at the time of Kent State to consensus, which had begun under Johnson. Kissinger considered conditions in the country at the time of Kent State to be, quote, near civil war conditions. The paranoia Nixon had felt led him to push for illegal expansions of domestic surveillance, which eventually led to his ouster from office. The Senate investigation into the Watergate scandal

concluded, quote, Kent State marked a turning point for Nixon, the beginning of his downhill slide towards watergate nixon grew increasingly unhinged which is a story for another time uh... that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that for all of the things happening at this point nixon is as a rule anytime i quote him

in kiss and she's out in kiss and you're talking nixon is as a rule drunker than you have ever been right like then you have ever been i don don't care how drunk you've gotten. You have never gotten Nixon in the White House hammered. Oh, so with Kissinger's help, Nixon cooks up a plan to pursue an arms control treaty in order to discredit his political rivals. Kissinger agreed that attacking the left was the right way to distract from the disaster they'd created in Southeast Asia.

He told his boss, we've got to break the back of this generation of democratic leaders. Nixon responded in agreement. We've got to destroy the confidence of the people in the American establishment. Good news on that one, buddy. Yeah. I mean, honestly, yeah. You know what? A rare swish. And he's drunk, and he's right. Yeah. That is a whole-in and one for you, my friend.

No, no. So precious. Yeah. Yeah. Re-election in 1972 was always going to be dicey for Nixon and Kissinger. Nixon's plan was the infamous Southern strategy, cultivating racial resentment in order to turn whites into a reliable Republican voting block. There's a lot to be said about this.

Obviously, we are just kind of breezing past it. But part of the strategy, part of his strategy for doing this, to get these Southern whites on his side, was to continue carpet bombing huge chunks of Southeast Asia, even though this had no impact on the war's course, and he knew it. Grant and describe the continued bombing as quote, blood tribute paid to the growing power

of the American right. And as yeah. Yeah it's, yeah. Just, I mean, it is like, I mean, it's what our politics is now, which is just constantly the optics on how to get reelected. It's just the number crunch on how do you get reelected by doing things illegally or shifting prior, whatever it is. But unmasking. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, whatever it is. But, but unmasking. Yeah, whatever it is. We all know that war helps pull numbers. Well, some of them do. Yeah, but in the short term, it seems like there's a short term gain to be made. Certainly, if you're on the right for sure. Yeah. It's worth noting, because I always had this idea, even at past the

point where I stopped believing Henry Kissinger was a hero, that he was doing what he was doing in Southeast Asia, because there were like very specific wonky things he believed about the conduct of the war and how to win it. It was just like willing to do these horrible things. But like, no, they know it's not winning the war. This is for votes. Yeah. And Kiss and Kiss. Yeah. So, I mean, you're basically just saying it is just a white supremacist thing. They're killing people of color to make whites in the South happy. Yeah, that's all we're saying. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's supremacist the country, but that doesn't fit on a lawn placard. Yeah, get one of those like in this in this house, we believe in this next and in the situation. We believe in covering up right now.

Brian is doubling down on racism and so it's worth noting too. Kissinger isn't just micromanaging the actual racist bombing campaign that they're doing to get votes. He is also the frontman Nixon sends out to talk to right wing leaders to try and like pump them up about this. Nixon sent him to talk to Ronald Reagan, then the governor of California. And Kisinger sat down on Nixon's behalf with Billy Graham with William F. Buckley with Bob a hoax. Oh, my God. His pattern went like this. The president wanted me to give you a brief

call to tell you that with all the hysteria on TV and in the news on LOW, we feel we have set up everything we set out to do, destroyed more supplies than in Cambodia last year, set them back many months. We achieved what we were after. Well, I tell you, I really, I can't wait to go out there and rally those troops there, Hank. Having, having just been doing some research, he is friends with Frank Sinatra, Frank would call him on the phone. Yeah, that sounds right. That sounds right. Can I get a nuclear weapon? Is that possible? Frank Sinatra with a nuke. Thatke that's yet there's no people left if that had happened

and you know it's a marten's drinker and that's maybe kissinger spent a particularly long time bragging to run all reagan about the administration's achievements quote we wouldn't have had cambodia we wouldn't have had law and we wouldn't have had an eighty billion dollar defense budget you know without nixon getting elected he also told reagan we wouldn't have had an $80 billion defense budget, you know, without Nixon getting elected. He also told Reagan, we wouldn't have had Amchitka. Now Amchitka is an island off the coast of Alaska. In the early 1970s, the White House wanted to nuke it for a lot of complicated reasons.

No, I get that. This is one thing I'm actually, I was going with them on. Not other islands, but specifically Amchitka. We, yeah, yeah. We're like, shittka. So the White House wants to nuke this island off the coast of Alaska. And as you do, like environmentalists and indigenous people, it just folks who's brave, hard to speak. Oh, yeah. Why is fucking that? Why did they hate freedom?

They hate freedom. Here's Greg Grandin again. The test had no military or scientific benefit, but was seen as something of a ritual by the right. Fireworks to celebrate the end of Johnson's presidency when many hawks like Curtis Lemay felt the United States had fallen behind on nuclear development.

Then when public opposition to the detonation began to grow, Nixon had a chance to show conservatives that he would stand up to liberals. He let me know that we're the Supreme Court to issue an injunction against the test. He would go forward anyway. The court didn't block the test, but Hall Demon told Kissinger to play it for politics anyway. Tell Reagan we're taking an unmitigated heat in order to keep that thing going. We need all the support of the right. Later, after the test was conducted, Nixon met with Senator Barry Goldwater and mocked the fears of environmentalists. The seals are still swimming, the president said, I'm damn proud of you, Goldwater told him.

I need to get a bucket to barf in. When people think like, oh, we've become dumb recently, we've always been so fucking stupid. It cannot be emphasized enough. We're just really dumb. I honestly, I definitely thought that we've, I mean, it is a shocking level of dumb. It's the fact that it's just this dumb, and it's just been going on.

That's an island because, because they wanted a fireworks. And then it's just, because he wanted fireworks. And it's also they could tell Reagan. It's like his gender reveal fucking party. Like right, right. Jesus Christ. It's a bomb.

It is worth noting for the sake of talking about how dumb we still are today. Curtis Lemay, who is one of the people cheering on the bombing of this random island, is essentially the hero of Malcolm Gladwell's book, The Bomber Mafia, which talks about how cool the bombing apparatus we set up was and how it helped keep things peaceful and built the wonderful Pax Americana. That's... I'm sure these Cambodians, civilians, we've talked about, appreciate it. Well, that's the one where you need to...

It once you have 10,000 bombs, you're an expert. Yeah, that's right. need to, it once you have 10,000 bombs, you're an expert. Yeah, that's right, that's right. If you drop 10,000 bombs, you're an expert. And an expert at bombing. Yeah, that's right. That's exactly right. So in order to be able to do it right, you have to do it wrong for a long time.

You gotta log the bombs, that's exactly right, Kier. So part of what made Kissinger remarkable though, was his ability to rope conservatives in line for mass murder while also charming the entire liberal establishment of the East Coast. Nixon's chief of staff later recalled, The belligerent Kissinger would suddenly become a dove and the press beguiled by Henry's Charmin humor bought it. They just couldn't believe that the intellectual smiling humorous Henry the K was a hawk like that bastard Nixon. It really is all about like if Donald Trump had talked like an Aaron Sorkin character and like quoted books that people don't read but know our smart books, he would have been the most popular president in a generation.

Well, and I mean, that'll happen. Yeah, no, no, no. They'll think you, one of them will figure it out. Yeah, it'll, they'll think they're correct. They'll think they're correct and you gotta, you gotta dial the racism down a little and you gotta dial the polite up and then kind of equalize them and then you can, yeah. And then if you, and then with the right access to the right people in media.

Yeah, you know, I mean, we already saw that, I mean, even under Trump, where you've got all these fucking reporters who had these like bombshells about horrible crimes being committed that they like didn't release for a year in change because they got a book deal. Yeah, right, right. Yeah, I mean, John Bolton was basically just there to write a book. Yeah, everyone was Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, John Bolton was basically just there to write a book. Yeah.

Everyone was the whole administration was. Yeah. They're like fucking Navy seals with the books. Yeah. So Kissinger's reputation was as a brilliant computer-brained policyworn, but his success came from his charm. He was able to win reporters over with a mix of leaks and a fuse of praise for their work, something that made them feel like insiders and thus sympathetic. He had a regular series of lunches with Arthur Slesinger, a liberal historian, whom he made sure to confidentially inform, quote, I have been thinking a lot about resignation after the invasion of Cambodia. Slesinger was not privy to the information that proved Kissinger had planned the whole thing, so he believed Kissinger when Henry said that he'd only kept working for Nixon to prevent more damage to quote institutions of authority.

Kissinger would warn his liberal friends that if he resigned, Spiro Agnew would run for in policy. He was basically threatening, if I'm not here, the far right's going to be totally in power in foreign policy. I mean, only one keeping things from going crazy. It's like sessions with Trump. I mean, there are multiple people like that. But the amount of times when people will be like, oh, McMaster's, you know, these are the

good guys inside of the, you know, the box is this too, as he's drawing on a map, we're to annihilate. Yeah. Yeah. And it works. It always works because it works. And it works over and over and over again. As a rule, if their job is to be a journalist who spends their time face to face with powerful people, they're bad at their job. As a rule, it's every now and then, you get an exception. But as a rule. No, it's like when Chomsky points out to that reporter

that he has the right, he's sitting in that seat. Yeah, you get the odd people who are willing to like report on the Pentagon papers or whatever. And like do, you know, you get, or the Afghanistan papers will Washington post, not to, not to downplay the fact that there are people in those institutions who do, do damning reports on, on power, but also the level of complicity within the broader media apparatus means that even when you get a damning report on, for example, the war in Afghanistan, which the Washington post, if you've read that, it's utterly damning.

It didn't do anything. It doesn't matter. It doesn't stop anything. I mean, you know, and then the reason why people do it less and less is because you are attacked. So, I mean, it works. The public attacks discredit you and then you are what you are. You're no longer, you no longer get access to that information.

Yeah, it's great. So a good example of how Kissinger used his charm as a speech he gave at MIT in January of 1971. He started off by feigning a confidential air and telling the students that Nixon had not been his quote, first choice, but that in time he'd come to see the bombing of Cambodia as the only quote, sensible path towards the Vietnamization.

The Vietnamization is like the process of the US getting out in South Vietnam taking over, right? That's the big buzz word Nixon and what is your using. When one student asked him what it would take to make him resign from the Nixon administration, Kisncher said he wouldn't, quote, unless gas chambers were set up or some horrendous moral outrage.

What? You, wait, wait, what does that mean exactly? He wouldn't get out unless, unless the... In the mixin was setting up guest chambers. I mean, what the fuck? What the fuck is that like his childhood? His childhood? His childhood didn't affect him in any way.

Yeah, outrageous. And it's confidence. The student, and it's interesting, because then the student who asked this question of Kissinger later realized like, is there really a difference between forcing people into a gas chamber and incinerating from the sky with a bombing campaign? I guess not. But at the moment, this doesn't really occur to him. And at the moment, he writes, quote, he had sounded so sincere, so sympathetic, so much

one of us. And right, I'll blame the journalists. Like, I'm not going to blame a student for falling for Henry, because like he's essentially still a child, and Henry Kissinger is the most powerful man in the world. Of course, he's good at walk talking circles around these fucking kids. The week after that speech, Kissinger and Nixon sent ground troops into Laos after another massive round of aerial bombardment.

This involved 17,000 South Vietnamese troops supported by US air power. It was a catastrophe. 8,000 South Vietnamese soldiers were killed or wounded. The United States lost 215 men. Nixon considered it a victory because it played well with conservatives. When the media... Oh, fuck you.

God, and he's drunk. And he's drunk. Yeah, he is, and he's, he is. That's pretty good, isn't it? That's not too bad, huh? He just just he just pounded back an entire bottle of vodka before saying that when the media savaged Lao as a pointless bloodbath, Kissinger ran to his boss and complained about vicious coverage saying if Britain had pressed like this in World War II, they would have quit in 42 Both Kissinger and Nixon saw Lao as a win because it benefited their domestic chances

of reelection as Nixon told his right hand man. The main thing and re on Lau, I don't care what happens there. It's a win. See? Oh, a win. See? There's a little gangstri. That's right. Henry, it's a win. See? It's incredible. Dirty coppers. Oh, and as the reelection campaign churned forward, Kissinger was about to help his boss engineer another win. And this one, boy, how do you think we've seen a body count so far? Oh my God, what the fuck? I'm so, but that's still morning that island up in the last year.

That's another in sweeps. Yeah, yeah, now they're hitting sweeps. And if you think hundreds of thousands of Cambodia and dead plus aiding in the deaths of another million or so, was bad. It was, it's really bad. It's a historic crime. But also Henry Kissinger's just getting started. So, I'm just getting more and more.

Maybe you guys wanna plug anything? My ears. Yeah. Just death. I remember, because when I did an episode on our podcast about Tim Leary and there's a lot of the, you know, uh, Nixon Law and Order President stuff in there. And how drunk he was, but also his lunch every day was, uh, pineapple circles with cottage cheese in the middle. And, um, and so that was And so that was his daily drunk lunch.

And then there's the one night where he's starting to feel the heat. Well, maybe I don't know if you'll get into that. He basically goes out hammered with his valet and he goes and talks to some of the people protesting him. And like one of the he wakes one of these guys up and he's like, you really think I'm a bad guy and the guy is just like the fuck is going on right? Nixon? Drinks and out, cow cruising.

Yeah, well we as you know look it sounds like the world loves America after hearing some of this stuff. So we will be going to Australia on a tour. You can go to dolloppodcast.com for those tour dates. We'll be touring America. And even if we do badly, we won't bomb as hard as Kissinger Nixon. Yeah. I mean, it would be hard to. It would be tough to bomb on that level. I don't, honestly, we still have a lot of bombs. I don't know if we have enough bombs to bomb that hard anymore. I don't think so. I honestly, we still have a lot of bombs. I don't know if we have enough bombs to bomb that hard anymore. I don't think so. I honestly think we could pull our pants down and fight with our penises and still people be like, that's not, that's, I've seen, I've heard of Wars bombings. I, I have seen a couple of cities leveled by American bombs at this point and it's still

not as much as fucking Laogat bombed. Um, it's just, it's Christ. Yeah. He cannot process it. And I'm on the road too. Go to garrath Christ. Yeah. He cannot process it. And I'm on the road too, go to garrathrenalds.com for tour dates. Yeah.

But feels wrong to do that. It's a hard promotion. Well, I will put in a plug for the concept of death because as long as men die, you know, there's all of these ghouls eventually had to face the end of of of everything in the same way that that those people in Cambodia did. And one day it will come for Henry Kissinger and he will be frightened and alone and and

left. I feel like he bombed the Reaper. I mean, he like is the level of melting. I mean, he is. I hope melting. I mean, he is. I hope he dies. I hope he just, I hope he shits himself and then slowly dies over eight hours. Yes. It needs to be like that. He needs to be, it needs to be a letting. There's a, you know, the one war criminal in all of history who got close to what he deserved

is Reinhard Hyderick, the architect of the Holocaust, who stupidly charged a bunch of assassins and got wounded by a bomb and shat into his own guts for several days until he died of sepsis over the course of a week and change. That's the kind of death. That's war. And not just Kissinger, there's like 30 people we've named in this story who deserve that kind of death. Yeah.

There's a lot of folks. I mean, whole pot died old and relatively unpunished, you know? They all, most of them do. That would be great to hear a judge sentence Kissinger to that. Like, I said, it's you to shitting in your own guts for about a week after a bomb, just embellish you. That's the right punishment for this kind of stuff. All right.

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