Behind the Bastards - Part Five: Kissinger

Episode Date: March 29, 2022

Robert is joined again by Gareth Reynolds & Dave Anthony (The Dollop) for part five of our epic six part series on Henry Kissinger.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations. In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests. It involves a cigar-smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse look like a lot of guns. But are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them? He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science?

And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price? Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest? I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. You'll get a custom signed copy of the book, which I think is pretty cool. You can also pre-order it in physical or in Kindle form from Amazon or pretty much wherever books are sold. So please Google AK Press after the Revolution or find an indie bookstore in your area and pre-order it. You'll get a signed copy and you'll make me very happy.

The dollop crossover special event week three of our Henry Kissinger series. And the stress is getting to everyone. David and Gareth fighting viciously. I mean, I've been quite calm when I'm attacked constantly. Like Henry Kissinger, I am attempting to maintain a balance of power between you and the state of detente. You get it. You have the answers. Yes, yes. Our podcasts are now bombing Cambodia. Finally. A show that I relate to. Oh boy. Well, this is week three.

Can you all believe we're already in the home stretch of this series? Is it week three? Yes. Wow. Episode five and six today. I can't believe we've been living together for three weeks. So most podcasts don't make all of the guests live together. How do they do it? What do they do?

I think with like the internet. I'm going to have to look that up in my dictionary. I've enjoyed our time here. I don't want to leave. I mean, we should. I got to go back as a family. We could do another couple of episodes on Henry Kissinger. Let's just do one a year for the next five years. We'll just be like a reunion show. What's Henry Kissinger up to?

A revival. Yeah, there's probably more chapters coming. Hopefully just dead soon. Hopefully dead as much as we have to. I don't think that ends it. Somehow I feel like that's not going to be enough. We'll be doing the episode about how Henry Kissinger brings the army of hell back through a portal. To somehow fight on both sides of the Ukrainian war. If hell's been misled as to the rationale, they're like, you said that there was going to be a lot more slavery here.

Go ahead, Duane, follow me. Come with me. I'll show you where they hide the WMDs. I should have studied Kissinger's accent before this. You do have an ear for accents. This will be so iconic that it will retroactively become Henry Kissinger's accent. Kind of like the Nazis are now British. I do one, just one Kissinger accent. I nail one thing.

That's the only way to get it. Perfect. Wow, it's like we're there. It's like we're in the Oval Office. I am excited for when, what's his name? The guy who did Vice, that director, what's his fucking name? You know the movie I'm talking about? The Chaney movie. Yes, Adam McKay. When Adam McKay does his Kissinger movie in ten more years, he'll use that accent, David.

That'll be great. David will be on set coaching Christian Bale. You're saying hello, and it's really more aloe, aloe, aloe. Like aloe vera. So, hear it behind the bastards. And at the dollop, which behind the bastards is the Kirkland brand version of. We like to ask questions that historians all too often try to ignore. Namely, how did bad people in history fuck?

Wait, what's happening? We're talking about how Kissinger boned. Are you excited for the stick? No, now I want to go. Can I leave? I think he wants to go now. Absolutely not. Take care of himself if you understand. You know, it is important to both cover the historical crimes of a guy like Kissinger and to get some personal color.

And since we've spent four episodes talking about his beliefs and his acts and power, it's only fair that we now turn our fuckroscopes onto his sex life. This episode is going to have bass under it, right? Absolutely. So, I think the best way for me to start this segment is by reading a quote from a September 15, 1971 article in the San Francisco Chronicle. As a warning, guys, there is a 30% chance this is going to give one of you a stroke. Oh, no.

Wait, you mean we're going to be stroking it or actual stroke? That is impossible to say. Okay. Quote, Henry Kissinger, sex symbol of the Nixon administration. Sorry, I'm going to buy this stick. Let me buy this stick. I'm just going to buy this stick just to be safe. I'm just going to get a branch in my mouth. Steps out of his office onto a sun-drenched San Clemente terrace with a cup of black coffee

and sits in a white deck chair with his legs crossed. Oh, thank God. The man who was pressured Moscow drafted state-of-the-world addresses, advised the president to enter Cambodia and pave the road to red China, appears as something of an anachronism in his baggy, midnight blue cotton trousers, black tie shoes, bright blue unfitted blazer, blue and white striped shirt and striped tie. What is the fuck? You guys holding on so far?

I mean, what? Fuck. Embedded reporter, L.L. Bean. What the fuck? I can't imagine combining the fashion sense with the war crime. It's so good. Because they acknowledged the war crimes and they're going to talk about how he stressed. It's like Henry could be walking down a catwalk like you'll see Henry right now

in a tight white pantsuit. You could see it sucked to him. Henry also known for ruining Cambodian, Vietnam. Spin around and continue the quote. Here comes Mass Motor's sex machine. Kissed into your, oh no, it's an open robe. On the back wall, you can see some victims of the Agent Orange campaign in Northern Vietnam. Yes, that's here, sucker. You could notice the outline of his hog in those, I don't know, fancy pants brands.

Otherwise, I would have finished that joke. But I'm going to finish the quote now because by God, there's more. What are you trying to do, seduce me? Henry will tease as he notices his visitor's hot pants. You know I like these hot pants very much. Then he'll light your cigarette, touching your hand as all Continentals do. Offer you a cup of coffee and discuss trivia as readily as he would a Sino-Soviet entente. The impeccably tidy image is perfect for dealing with Alexei Kostchen or Zhaowen Lai,

or lecturing at Harvard, but one cannot help wonder if the movie stars mind that the ankle socks of Washington's greatest swinger are falling down, or that his wiry chestnut hair, which flashes golden in the intense white sunlight, is too close-crop to run their fingers through, or that at least 10 of his 178 pounds protrude over his thin black belt, somehow shortening his 5'9". But suddenly, an electric twinkle will flash through the intense blue of his eyes, and one catches an inkling of that movie star magnetism, that special quality which causes some people to call him cuddly Kissinger.

How is that the craziest thing that's happened so far? How is that? How did that happen? Oh, man. Oh, my God, this is worse than war crimes. Yeah, this is... Oh, my God. A bottom below the bottom, folks. Can we go back to just murdering hundreds of thousands of Cambodians? How did that happen?

What in the fuck just went on? Is this a guy or a lady writing this? I think it's a lady. Probably one or the other. I'm not certain it's a lady, yeah. So she wants to fuck him. She wants to, or the dude wants to fuck him. Well, who wouldn't? He holds your hand when he lights your cigarette. Why do we have to talk about Kissinger's chest hair? Why? Why? Why indeed. Why indeed, David, because...

And can we napalm it? This is what napalms for, right? Speaking of napalm, a little pomade in that hair of Henry's. This has convinced me there is a place for the B-52 bomber. In his pants. Boy, that's what Henry calls little hank. What the fuck? Bafflingly, almost impossibly, it is not hard to find articles written at this exact sexual tenor.

And unfortunately, I would love to tell you guys that I'm sure this was like a satire or a joke, but people were weirdly serious about this kind of shit. In 1972, and there's no way you're ready for what comes after this part of the sentence, what? In 1972, the Playboy Club hosted a poll of the bunnies and asked them who was, quote, the man I would most like to go out on a date with. Henry Kissinger was number one. What the fuck? What in the fuck? No, no, no.

What a horrible indictment of... This is the worst indictment of America that has ever been. This is the most damning thing you can say about it. Boots on the ground in the Playboy Mansion. What? How is that? I can't... It's like we're in the Back to the Future Biff timeline. Well, hold on. The man who massacres hundreds of thousands knows how to fuck.

That's just an old saying. That is. That is an old saying. I want to fuck you like I fuck the people of Vietnam over. So once the first few articles about Henry Kissinger's, you know, sex symbol attitude dropped, you know, Kissinger himself started being questioned by reporters about the phenomenon. His standard reply became one of his most famous quotes. Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.

I mean, like, there is... I mean, people are attracted to, like... Yeah. Psycho's too. Like, Ted Bundy had, like, a fan club and, like, you know, like... I mean, I've been compared to Jeffrey Dahmer a number of times, which has always been a pleasure. And you're both very handsome young men. Yes, thank you so much.

And both still in the primes of our youth. Absolutely. It's still, it's like... You feel like there is a separation with him and what... It just seems very, like, a very strange connection. It's baffling other than that. Like, here's the sad thing. We're going to get to this.

It's not just that he's powerful. And the other thing about him that makes him women so attracted to him is, like, bleak in a surprising way. But we'll get to that. So famous women loved being spotted on Kissinger's arm. One night, he was sighted at the Trader Vicks in the Los Angeles Hilton, flirting and holding hands with Jill St. John, who played the very first Bond girl.

What? He dated the first James Bond girl. Come on! The Hague. He needs to be in the Hague. Yeah, and so does Jill St. John, to be honest. Jill St. John fucked that little fucking murder troll. That is so horrifying.

Who goes from Bond to murder Munchkin? I mean, Bond is kind of a murder. Yeah, but he's a good guy. He wouldn't think he was. Come on, always a good guy. So while they were out on this date, Jill St. John and Kissinger were spotted by Ann Miller. Ann was a dancer, a famous dancer at the time.

She approached Kissinger and, quote, in a friendly way, these are the words of biographer Walter Isaacson, criticized him for having fun in public while our boys in Vietnam are getting their heads shot off. Kissinger responded dowerly, Miss Miller, you don't know anything about me. I was miserable in a marriage for most of my life. I never had any fun.

Now is my chance to enjoy myself. When this administration goes out, I'm going back to being a professor, but while I'm in the position I'm in, I'm damn well going to make it count. I mean, really avoiding the accusation. At no point does he acknowledge that that is an unfair thing he's doing.

He's just like, look, come on, even us psychopaths need to have some fun. Yeah, and it's nice to hear someone approach him and say something like that, too. Yeah, and of course, she approached him for not doing right by our G.I. as opposed to not doing right by millions of Cambodian and Vietnamese.

It's a morsel. It's a morsel. Laotian civilians. Yes, it is a morsel. I did something similar to the lead singer, the Counting Crows. I went up to him and said that his band was bad and they drove me crazy. Your band's a war crime.

You know, Dave, you might have had more of an impact if you'd criticized him for playing his music while our boys in Vietnam are getting their head shut off. Oh, man. You would have had some trouble parsing that out. Sir, are you okay? Yes. Yep.

Up here playing your jam band while our boys in Vietnam are out there dying in the mud. Face down in the muck. How dare you. I think you have the wrong person. You're the Counting Crows. I know what you did. Something about a parking lot.

That you are edging up on my favorite conspiracy theory, which is that the Tonkin Gulf incident was engineered by the Counting Crows in order to sell albums several decades later. We know it was. Absolutely. That seems proven at this point. So biographer Walter Isaacson describes Kissinger as having,

quote, the boyish glee of a senior on prom night and the twinkle of a middle-aged rake. He regularly had, quote, striking blonde women come with him into the White House on lunch dates so he could show them off to his colleagues, telling a coworker on at least one occasion to eat your heart out. He's very much like bragging to other dudes

about the fact that being Henry Kissinger has turned him into a sex symbol. He just had a gun and he was like, you literally eat your own heart. So it was known that Kissinger's notorious temper could be somewhat offset by tossing young women in front of him. When his staffers fucked up and had to give him bad news about a scheduling issue,

they'd send the youngest female secretary they had to go and give him the news. The White House press office used Diane Sawyer for this purpose. Oh, my God. Eventually, the two started dating. Oh, my God. Jesus Christ. I'd love to still be doing news.

I mean, you need to have your news license revoked. Do you think it just comes pure poison? Oh, it's like sarin gas. It's just like a gas slowly releases. We could have harnessed Henry Kissinger's come to get Europe off of Russian crude. They're going to drop the Kissinger goo on us. Diane Sawyer later told New York Magazine, quote,

the power of Henry working a room is still seismic. All of a sudden, everybody wants to step up their game and say something he'll find interesting or funny. And I don't know how much of this is just like his... He's clearly a charismatic man, right? He clearly has... It feels like it's dinner for schmucks, and he's like the Rube.

It feels like it's not... Everyone's just doing a bit. It's ignorant with the person that I see and hear about you're like, oh my God, if you can get in a room with Henry Kissinger, just get right next to him. You will not leave his side. Obviously, he's sexy. Obviously, he's sexy.

Who wouldn't want to fuck Henry Kissinger? Who wants to? Now, this is all profoundly upsetting, but it gets weaker. Stop saying that. Who's probably Kissinger's best biographer. If Walter Isaacson is correct, the reason all these women liked hanging around Henry

wasn't just that he was powerful, and no, it was not that he had incredible dick game, which I'm sorry for saying that in the context of Henry Kissinger. Don't ever say that again. We just lost. We just plunged in the rankings. I believe that's a fireball offense. Yeah.

I'm going to quote now from Kissinger, a biography by Walter Isaacson. Kissinger's secret with women was not all that different from his one with men whom he wanted to charm. He flattered them, he listened to them, he nodded a lot, and he made eye contact. But unlike the way he was with most men, Kissinger was exceedingly patient with women who wanted to talk.

Very few men in the 1970s actually listened to women, according to Betty Lord. Henry talked to you seriously and probed for what you knew or thought. He was someone who could, and would, make a Jill St. John feel intelligent, or a Shirley MacLean feel politically savvy. Next to Ingmar Bergman,

the first interesting man I have ever met, said Liv Ullman. He is surrounded by a fascinating aura, a strange field of light, and he catches you in some kind of invisible net. Over long dinners at public places, he would listen with sympathy while women talked about themselves, their lives, their hopes,

and even sometimes their slightly wacky new age philosophies. He would call them on the telephone late at night and talk for an hour or more at a time. He was a great friend, especially a telephone friend, always there when you needed him, said Jill St. John. Henry's relationship with women was that there was no dirty little secret.

He liked to go out with them, but not home with them. His fascination with affairs tended to be foreign rather than domestic. Henry's idea of being romantic was to slow down his car when he dropped you off at a date, said Howard. He may have been how, in fact, the most celibate letcher in Washington.

People say, yes, he doesn't do anything with these girls, his friend Peter Peterson once remarked. What the fuck is happening? I don't know. I mean, he definitely had sex. He had relationships. He had kids. But I think the being seen with women,

the being seen as a sex symbol, I don't think he had a particularly high sex drive. I don't think he's going out and fucking his way through famous people. I think he likes being seen in public with beautiful women. And I think beautiful women, number one, he's safe. He's not gonna pressure you for anything.

And number two, he'll actually listen to you. He's a good company. He's a low bar. It's really bleak, right? There is something to that. He's doing... I think that even now with guys, when I hear guys talk,

you're like, just be respectful and it'll probably get you... It at least makes you not an asshole. I mean, you know what it is, I think the women in this situation are getting something out of it. Being with Henry Kissinger gets you in the news.

You know, he's a good guy. He's extremely famous and powerful. And you get taken maybe even more seriously as a woman who's a journalist who wants to be seen as kind of intellectual. Being around Henry Kissinger, he's a very serious public intellectual. It's good for your career.

And also, he's just... Men in power were so much worse than they even are now that he was like the best dude in that world you could hang out. He's kind of like... It's almost like a Batman villain

in the sense that he's this evil piece of shit. But yet, he is also able to hold a conversation and not be a prick. And you're like, wow, who could pull off such opposing forces? He treats women like humans.

That is magic. He kills indiscriminately. And yet, he will look a woman in the eyes. Yeah, he is the only... He makes Jill St. John feel smart. The guy is a magician. Yeah, he is the only

man in power in Washington, D.C. who will sit down with a woman and listen to what she has to say. And as a result, he is the primary sex symbol of 1970s guacamole. Bar is so low. I mean, it's incredible. And also, again,

it comes down to what we've talked about before with him, which is media normalization and how it is just... Once you kind of create that bubble, most people just acquiesce. And then you're just like, you know, you kind of like Dianne Sawyer is just like, oh, yeah, well, he's...

People don't throw bricks at him when he's outside, so he's okay. Now, Isaacson gives an example of a typical relationship, Kissinger's friendship with Jan Golding, who's a New York socialite he dated from 70 to 71. She was 22. He's like 50.

Kissinger had been given her name by Kirk Douglas. Oh, Jesus Christ. Kirk Douglas is the fucking hookup in this case. Oh, my God. So... Henry calls her one day without warning and asks if she wants to come out for dinner.

When she flew down to D.C. to meet him, she was met at the airport by one of Kissinger's military aides, who drove her to a fancy club where he was dining. The two sat down to eat. In midway through dinner, Henry got a phone call for a few minutes. When he came back, he apologized

and said that the Secretary of State had needed his advice. But whenever he was present, he paid close attention to her and he asked her opinion on issues of the day. She found the overall experience heady. The two dated for half a year without any romance ever developing.

Isaacson writes, quote, only once did they go back to his apartment and when they arrived, they were called. Who's dying? Nobody's dying too. She wants to get fucked by the old weirdo. Yeah, she's into it.

I must warn you, my cock is horned. Yeah. Yeah, she said, I just don't think Henry was interested in sex when it came time to perform. Well, I just think he was too preoccupied for it. He didn't have time for it. Power for him may have been the aphrodisiac, but it was also the climax.

Oh, my God. Oh, God. He's dying right there. That's what he was doing in the bathroom for 40 minutes. Oh, Henry. So, on one occasion, Henry was more honest than usual with one of his female friends, Oriana Fallacci,

who's an Italian author and a former World War II partisan. She's actually a pretty fascinating person. He said, quote, when I speak to Lee Ducktoe, who was the Vietnamese negotiator for North Vietnam, I know what I have to do with Lee Ducktoe and when I'm with girls, I know what I must do with girls.

So, Lee Ducktoe doesn't at all agree to negotiate with me because I represent an example of moral rectitude. This frivolous reputation, it's partially exaggerated, of course. What counts is to what degree women are part of my life, a central preoccupation. Well, they aren't that at all. For me, women are only a diversion, a hobby.

Nobody spends too much time with his hobbies. See, for a minute there, you're sort of thinking, okay, well, if he's getting something out of female accompaniment, then in a way that is... I mean, there's something kind of like... There is something kind of nice

about the idea that a guy isn't just not trying to fuck his way through beautiful women. He's just enjoying the company of women. But then, the more you kind of peel back, the more it just does seem to be... Like, he's just... He's just backwards.

He's a backwards person. Every part of him has just been rearranged. He's like a mannequin body of guts that fell down and was put back improperly. Yeah. Now, the surprise Kirk Douglas cameo there. Maykee went on the fact

that Henry was also very popular with the celeb set. During a party thrown for Gloria Steinem by the talk show host Barbara Hauer, Kissinger told those assembled, I am a secret swinger. Now, yes. Yeah, that's the thing he clays.

I like any hole. Maybe it's a joke. Like, he's saying he likes to fuck, but all the evidence we have is that he doesn't like it. Yeah. Again, I think that's him mythmaking. I think that's the point. I like to go around and touch the genitals of fucking people.

Yeah, you go to a swinger's party in D.C. and Henry's just there putting a finger on things. Is it okay if I penetrate both of you with the pinky rings? I get nothing out of this. It's fine. Don't worry, I'm cumless. So, Kissinger missed the announcement

that he'd been nominated for secretary of state because he was on a date with Norwegian Oscar nominee Liv Ullman. He took Candice Bergen out on a date when she was a young star. She later said that he gave her, quote, the sense of shared secrets, probably the same set he gave every anti-war actress.

Like, he would act like, oh, I'm really against the war. I'm inside the administration like trying to get us out of these things. Like, yeah, he's just, he doesn't, yeah, he's a psycho. I don't know what else to say about him. Everything we've heard is completely contrary to that. He's the fucking devil.

Yeah, it's just psychotic. But also, you have to credit, like, I don't think Candice Bergen is lying. I can imagine how you're not privy at that point in time to any of what we have, right? To any of this information we have about how much he was planning this, about what a two-faced liar he was. So maybe you believe,

yeah, this man is so intelligent and so, like, emotionally competent. I can't imagine him being the architect of these war crimes. He must be just, it's such a titanic system of evil and he's fighting alone to bring it down and like... It must be why Hillary Clinton still hangs around

and he's like, look, I have nothing to do with any of that, hey, Lily. Don't worry, we'll talk about that, Garrett. Oh, great. So, I'm going to quote next from Niall Ferguson's Kissinger. Quote, for the press, the story was irresistible. The dowdy Harvard professor reborn

in Hollywood as Kerry Grant with a German accent. When Marlon Brando pulled out of the New York premiere of The Godfather, its executive producer, Robert Evans, unhesitatingly called Kissinger and Kissinger obligingly flew up despite blizzard conditions and a schedule the next day that began with an early

morning meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff to discuss the mining of Haifeng Harbor and ended with a secret flight to Moscow. A reporter asked, Dr. Kissinger, why are you here tonight at The Godfather premiere? Kissinger responded, I was forced, by who? By Bobby, Bobby Evans.

Did he make you an offer you couldn't refuse? Yes. As they fought their way through the throng, Evans had Kissinger on one arm and Ali McGraw on the other. What in the fuck is happening? I know, right, would you have called that when we started this shit? I mean, seriously.

You've lulled us into this being okay. Mm-hmm. Because at the beginning, absolutely not. Imagine, honestly, like a war criminal on a red carpet going like, look, I didn't want to, obviously I want to stay in South Vietnam, but Bobby called.

You know Bobby. Oh, man. It's incredible. You know who else attended the premiere of The Godfather with producer Robert Evans and Ali McGraw? I can't wait to hear.

The sponsors of this show all deeply tied in. Well, of course they are, right? They're the kind of people who get invited to hunt children on private island reserve off the coast of Indonesia. I've heard it's an archipelago. I refuse to believe that Hollywood producer

Robert Evans did not hunt children for sport at least once. There's just no way. Those glasses were just ghosts. He laughed like a man who has hunted the most dangerous game. Anyway, here's ads. During the summer of 2020,

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Now, in our Cambodia episode, we're done with the sex stuff. You made it through. I ripped my sweatpants. My sweatpants have ripped. Please get back to the killer. In our Cambodia episode, I mentioned that the illegal bombing of Cambodia

was leaked to the New York Times. This was a big story and it prompted Nixon to suspect that Kissinger's liberal staffers had been the ones who had done the leaking. After this gets leaked, Kissinger and Nixon worked together to orchestrate a wiretapping program.

While Kissinger initially ran the whole program, he was actually in charge for only like a day. Nixon decided pretty quickly that he didn't trust Kissinger after all, namely because Herbert Hoover expected that Kissinger was the one leaking things, and this is because Kissinger absolutely was leaking things.

He was not leaking the bombing of Cambodia, but Kissinger had his favorite journalists that he'd leak things to. Some of them were guys who wanted to write a book about him, and so he wanted them to give him positive coverage. Some of them were like leaks in order to hurt other people in the administration because there's just cons...

It's Nixon's... We're not getting into this enough, but Nixon's administration is just like an endless series of power struggles. Everyone is fucking over everybody else, right? That's the Nixon administration. That's incredible. It's really quite a tale. Kissinger's absolutely leaking some stuff.

And that's it. Nixon is pretty aware of who Kissinger is leaking things to. And as Walter Isaacson writes, the real reason why he pulled Henry from overseeing the program was that the two were having one of their periodic feuds. Nixon actually made the call to pull Kissinger from the wiretapping

program right before he flew to Camp David and like stopped returning Kissinger's phone calls for a week. It's this like thing, it was like fucking 19-year-olds fighting. It's very... Tell him I'm not here. Yeah. They literally had just little tiffs. Yeah, they had little tiffs.

Send them to voicemail. Put them to voicemail. There's so much petty bullshit between Kissinger and Nixon. And they're very much like, if you've ever been in a co-dependent relationship, the Kissinger and Nixon will seem extremely familiar because they'll like be fighting over some stupid bullshit

and then things will get bad and they'll like come together and be like also collapsing at the same time as they're propping each other up. It's very funny. I mean, millions die, but... I'm sorry that I said that to you earlier. Well, I've been waiting for your apology. I can't stay mad at you.

Who else will I bomb Cambodia with? Look, we have too many people to kill to stay mad at each other for this long, huh? So... Get over here, you piece of shit. Despite Kissinger and Nixon periodically being angry with him throughout the duration of the wiretapping program, Henry Kissinger retained

the ability to pretty much wiretap American citizens at command. He would submit names to the FBI. He would start a wiretap on that person. When the secret wiretapping program was leaked in 1973 and it blew up into a big congressional inquiry, Nixon took the blame, defending Kissinger

by saying it was his responsibility not to control the program but solely to furnish information to the FBI. So what they claimed is like, Kissinger wasn't ordering wiretaps. He was giving the FBI information on people we thought were suspicious and they would decide to wiretap and it's a coincidence that

all he would do was hand them a name and they would immediately start the wiretap. He would give the garment to the bloodhound but he wouldn't hunt the person anyway. But he's not hunting the child. He's not looking for him. So it's also though this might be the moment that proves

Dick Nixon was actually a better person than Henry Kissinger because he did kind of take a hit for his team. Not that he wasn't responsible for the wiretap but Kissinger certainly was too. In the land of no respect

a man with one ounce has it all. It was like a tiny, tiny dollop, if you will, of honor from Henry Kissinger and we just never see that from Nixon and we just never see that from Kissinger. It's kind of like saying that a cheese grater

is better to fuck than the blade of a jigsaw but it's something. Well, no, now that I think about it if someone laid it on the table and got a new hat, you'd be like Well, let's have me that cheese grater. Let's grate this cheese. What do we say gentlemen?

I'm going to drop trout. Let's get grating. So here's how the secret wiretapping program worked. Kissinger and another Nixon dude I think it was Haldeman would submit names to the FBI which the FBI viewed as requests. The transcripts of that person's conversations

then would all be sent to Kissinger's desk. So he got direct transcripts of every wiretap personally and he would decide what to bring to Nixon. He wasn't the only guy, because again, Nixon had multiple people competing through this program, right? He's like the head writer. Yeah, exactly.

So James Adams head of the FBI's intelligence division later told a biography that he did not think there was quote more or less wiretapping under Nixon than under previous presidents. What made things unusual then was that wiretaps Nixon and Kissinger ordered

were on NSC staff individuals that were part of the White House family in Isaacson's words. In other words, previous wiretaps had mainly been on suspected spies potentially subversive union leaders and the like. A regular program of wiretapping one's own aides was, according to

Thomas Smith, another top FBI official unprecedented. Oh my god. That's what's amazing, right? It's like, well no, it's not unusual to ask for this many wiretaps. It's just normally on people that you're worried about like attacking the country, not people

who you've hired. The FBI is like you know, we're okay with spying on dissidents, but they made a spy on their friends and we feel gross about this. Did you see Henry Kissinger's wiretapping Nixon? Yeah. He's getting very catty. Kissinger's

just asked for a wiretap on himself. I want to see what I'm up to. I don't trust myself. You were joking, but you have accurately predicted where the story goes. No! What the fuck? What?

This is such a weird chapter of American violence. I don't trust me as far as I can throw myself. Oh my god, I am such a fucking asshole. Look at what I was saying. Oh my god. So these wiretaps were all considered legal at the time. Although the Supreme Court did later

determine that they were illegal, it was kind of like one of these, at the time they were legal and because of how gross they were the Supreme Court was like, you know what? No. And thankfully the U.S. never, never wiretapped people again. That's the end of it. That's the end of it.

That's why Edward Snowden is famous for his reveal that no one was ever wiretapped again. That's why we don't know who Edward Snowden is. Yes! Famous private citizen living in Ohio. Edward Snowden. Pull a name out of the air. Random guy.

So a tremendous amount has been written on the subject of the wiretapping in the Nixon administration. I'm not going to go too into detail on it because as sleazy as it is, wiretapping your friends doesn't quite measure up to war crimes. Like it's gross, but it's also not that gross in context.

It's super weird. Yeah, it's just like weird. It's a weird thing about them. There is something I should read here that reveals something meaningful about Henry's character. William Sapphire was a New York Times op-ed columnist and a Nixon speechwriter. He later said that Kissinger was

capable of getting a special thrill out of working most closely with those he spied on the most. So Sapphire's attitude is like he was doing this mainly because he thought it was kind of hot to be wiretapping a guy that he was working next to. This is how he orgasms. Yeah.

Finally. It's the power thing. It's the power thing. He knows. He loves that he's like fucking over someone he's just hanging out with and talking to and they don't know. It's like sliver. Yeah, he gets this crazy thrill out of it.

He knows secrets about them like, oh god, it's so fucking weird. Going to wiretap the des. So he gets like, yeah, that quote from Kissinger powers the ultimate aphrodisiac. It's usually translated to him being like, that's why women are so into

me, right? Because power turns people on. But I think it literally means that like kind of gets off on on exercising power, right? Like a hundred percent. That's his thing. Oh my god. I can even fuck my friends over. Yeah. It is also worth noting that Henry

wiretapped himself. Once he took off as he had a secret. I know, I know, but it happened. Once he took off as he had a secretary listen in on all of his calls and take memo notes on his conversations. He also had a series of what are called dead key extensions added

to phones. These are keys that were secretly added to phones in his office so that his secretaries and aides could like press them to listen in on calls without other people knowing and take notes on the calls. When Nixon when Nixon would call Kissinger drunk slurring his words, Kissinger would like

wave all of his people like, get in there, get in there, get in there, like pick up the phone, pick up the phone. It's like a ghostbusters. And then he would make faces making fun of the president while his notes is like aides listen in. Okay. Okay.

That's the coolest thing about it. I'm on his side now. Take a step back and realize that Henry Kissinger is making fun of the wire tap he's called on himself while he's talking to the president who's blackout drunk.

It's something else. It's happening. Not to minimize how fucked up the current administration to the previous administration was, but by God, America still has not reached the Nixon peak of craziness in the White House. We've gotten it in like pieces

but we never had the four company. We've never had the full team together again. It's really hard to compete with Dick Nixon and Henry Kissinger. I mean, I'm talking about ahead of his time. Oh my God. His stuff age is great.

Oh, man. So Kissinger also used the transcripts he made to attack his co-workers and reinforce his loyalty to the president when his colleagues said something to him that he knew Nixon would hate or when someone made a comment agreeing with Kissinger on an issue he would pass those notes from his secret

conversations onto the president. So he would hand the president like a transcript of a call he'd had with like a thing underlined that made Kissinger look good. Oh my God. Kissinger, a biography, quote, William Sapphire, who dubbed the transcripts the dead key scrolls, said he once

saw Kissinger altering one to shore up a point he wanted to make to the president. He had been chewing out a reporter from the Christian Science Monitor for writing a story that was unfavorable to Nixon. In doing so, he also tossed in occasional complaints about the perfidy of Secretary Rogers. Since he was planning to send the transcript

to the president, Sapphire said, he had taken a draft and edited it, adding to the fierce loyalty of his own remarks. Did you mark it up to make him like be more of a kiss ass to kick to Nixon? I mean, fucking incredible. I know. Nixon's also like hammered. It's like, how hard do you have to work

to like convince this guy? You know what I mean? Yeah, hand him a Mai Tai, like it's easy. Yeah, here you go, this is from Trader Vicks. Like, you're my best friend. I love you, Henry. I've never had a closer friend than you, Hank. Look at how much of a, of your bitch I am. Look at that. The existence of these transcripts was revealed

by the Washington Post in 1971, but Kissinger insisted they were just for the president's files. In reality, he used them as notes to write his two books that he published after leaving power. But he was canny enough to know they had damning information. So when he considered quitting the Nixon

administration in 1973, he had them all shipped to a bomb shelter at Nelson Rockefeller's house. I mean, listen to what you just said. I know right. What you just said. Every third sentence you have to write about these guys.

It feels like magnet fridge poetry. Yeah, he illegally hid government files in Nelson Rockefeller's private bomb shelter. It's just like... Rockefeller, may I use your bomb shelter for storage? I need to put my biography

notes there. Of course. Of course, Henry. You know what I always say, my bomb shelter's yours. These are what? Short stories, right? Yes, sure, yeah. Whatever you need to tell yourself. I need them safe in case there's a nuclear war. So, obviously, this is very illegal.

And when Kissinger decided not to quit the administration, he had a military liaison send a plane to pick them up from Rockefeller's house. And then he hid them in a bomb shelter under the White House. Oh, after he left... Fuck. There's no rules for these people.

They're fucking notes. They don't need to survive the fucking nuclear holocaust. How great, though, if a bomb is incoming towards the White House and they all go there and it's just stacked with Kissinger papers. Yeah. Wow, this guy was a real piece of shit. This is awkward.

I think we're all going to perish. Yeah, he's just sitting in the corner. I don't think you should read those. So, after he left office, Kissinger donated the papers to the Library of Congress under the restriction that they would not be made available until he had been dead for five years.

Oh, come on. He's been dead for five years. We should be able to read him now. Come on. Who makes that deal? It's not a great thing. The Library of Congress? Jesus Christ. By the way, most people do

like the after I die. He wants the five-year buffer, which sounds a little unique. Yeah. Time for people to get things out of the country. I want to make sure I'm pure bone. Yeah. So, Kissinger was also convinced that Nixon's chief of staff,

Haldeman, had Nixon wiretapped and Nixon, sorry, Kissinger was also convinced that Nixon's chief of staff, Haldeman, and Nixon had wiretapped him, which they absolutely had. So, Kissinger was kind of tapping himself, but Nixon had also wiretapped Kissinger

and when he passed Haldeman in the hall, what do your taps tell you about me today? I don't remember when I was on where. Lily Tomlin was the one-ringy-dingy operator who keeps plugging in. It's almost like that with wiretaps, where you're just like, every wire is getting plugged and crossed. Nixon's wiretapping Kissinger,

who's wiretapping himself, who's wiretapping Nixon, who's also wiretapping Haldeman, who's wiretapping Kissinger, who's also wiretapping Nixon. And that's why we know so much about not just like the crimes they committed, but like what they were saying in the meetings while they committed the crimes, because unbeknownst to Kissinger

and to everyone else, Nixon was also wiretapping himself. Like he recorded every conversation that he had in the Oval Office in secret. Which again, is the most, that to me is like one of the most, I mean, it's why we know so much, because if you are able to like,

if Trump or, I mean, if any of them, I mean, if you had the bush tapes, like they would be fucking incredible, but it's also that Nixon recorded himself, and then it was like, okay, take him, and everyone's like, the fuck, are you drunk? And he's like, I am actually.

I am extremely, I am so drunk, my secretary of defense has a contingency plan, in case I try to nuke everyone. Checkers are on the touch. You've never been done drunk, no one has. So this was a secret until the Watergate scandal was really filled at the end of 1972. Kissinger was warned about this,

that like, the Watergate story was about to break two months ahead of time, and he was horrified by the implications, namely by the fact, by the things we've already gone over at length, that he had, like, he was on tape in these records agreeing and encouraging with Nixon's bigotry and his copious racial slurs.

So like, Kissinger is not involved in Watergate, so he's like, I'm not worried about that. I'm worried that everyone's gonna know that I was like, egging Nixon's bigotry on in order to kiss his ass. Yeah. Amazing, amazing for him to be horrified.

Like, of all the things he's done, like, for this to be like, it's always like the weirdest thing, but it's like, for this to, for him to be like, this could really damage my credibility. It's like people might face poorly of me. Yeah. When he was asked about this later

about like, encouraging Nixon's bigotry, Kissinger explained that the things he'd said to Nixon were based on quote, the needs of the moment rather than to quote, stand the test of deferred scrutiny, which was a nice way of saying I'm only racist around racists. In one of the most impressive feats

of mental gymnastics and political history, Kissinger actually argued that his egging Nixon on was meant to protect the American people. Quote, he was so much in need of suck-or, so totally alone, our national security depended so much on his functioning.

It's called yes and, okay? Yeah. He was Chicago's school. It's called the Improv Olympic Pell. I mean, again, to be able to get away with that argument, it just should not be... Now, speaking of Nixon's functioning,

it's probably time to talk a little more about Watergate. As previously covered in 1971, Nixon and his team, including Kissinger, hired a goon squad of ex-FBI and CIA agents called the Plumbers and asked them to investigate the leak of the Pentagon Papers.

These guys broke into the office of Daniel Ellsberg. That's the guy who leaked the Pentagon Papers. He was a Department of Defense employee. They break into the office of his psychiatrist to try and steal records to smear him. In 1972, one of the Plumbers, G. Gordon Liddy, was transferred to the committee

to reelect the president. The acronym of this organization was literally creep because satire has never happened even once. No. It's over. Liddy's team executed a wide-ranging plan to illegally spy on the Democratic Party,

which ended with them breaking into DNC headquarters in the Watergate building in D.C. and bugging the phones of staffers. They got arrested almost immediately. Like, that night, they get busted, right? That's like when this all starts. And so that's what... The fact that this Watergate scandal

and public knowledge starts is like, these guys getting arrested doing a break, and then a reporter named Bob Woodward in on the case, he was not a political journalist. He was like a crime beat D.C. reporter. But he hears about this break-in, and he's like, something's fucking going on here. And he winds up making, you know,

contacts with a guy who we later, eventually, like decades later, learned was the associate director of the FBI. That's deep throat, you know, famously. This guy gives him information, and the Washington Post under Woodward and Bernstein, right, he has a partner in it too. They're both doing very good journalism here.

They start dropping articles at the tail end of 1972, and a trial over the break-in starts in 1973, January, right after Nixon wins reelection. While Woodward and his partner Carl Bernstein were running down leads, they got in touch with another FBI guy and asked him, hey, who kept

authorizing all of these wiretaps? That FBI guy said, well, Henry Kissinger. In a lot of cases, it's Kissinger. He's like our main guy calling us. So Woodward calls Henry Kissinger, who plays dumb at first and then tries to blame Haldeman

for the wiretapping. Woodward asked, okay, well, is it possible you were the one doing the wiretapping, Henry? And Kissinger says, I don't believe it was true. Woodward asked. What? What? It's such a weasel answer. He's four years old.

Woodward asks, is that a denial? And Kissinger responds, I frankly don't remember. Oh, my God. It's kind of like, it is kind of like nice to see the Genesis because the I Don't Remember thing is just utilized so much now.

Yeah, yeah. It's like one of the first like where you're just like, I think if I just say I forgot I can get away with this shit. Yeah, you can imagine a young Bill Clinton reading this news story and saying, I'm not sure why, but I think I'm going to take notes on this. I remember ejaculating,

but I don't remember how that come to be. Yeah. It's also, it shows you like how insulated they were in their psychotic little dome that once they actually take their tactics out of the real world, people are like, yeah, that's a crime and we have you. They're like, oh, shit.

Fuck. The president's drunk. So Kissinger admitted after that line of questioning that he might have given the FBI the names of some people who had access to leaked documents and quote, it's quite possible they construed this

as an authorization. So once he makes this admission to Woodward, Henry starts to get looser and he talks about how he figured he probably should take responsibility for the wiretapping. And then he realized almost immediately like, oh, shit, I fucked up. And he asks

Bob Woodward, you aren't quoting me, right? Like he's like, this isn't on the record, is it? That's how it works too, right? You put it on the record and then you're like, Woodward says, of course this is on the record. Like what the fuck? Like I never said this was off the record. What's wrong with you?

Kissinger insisted, well, I was only speaking on background, quote, I've tried to be honest and now you're going to penalize me in five years in Washington. I've never been trapped into talking like this. If a journalist calls you and asks you questions as the secretary

of state. You're calling as BFF, right? Yeah, you just wanted to chat, right? You're just going to chew the fed for a while, I thought. How are you? What crimes have you committed, Bob? Yeah, it's fascinating. It's so dumb. It's so dumb.

And it shows what fucking tame little pricks the entirety of the White House press corps were, right? Because Kissinger thought he could get away with this. And he finally encountered like an actual journalist for the once. And just like 30 seconds with Woodward

and he's blown wide open. He cannot handle it. He's just pissing his pants crying. You know what it is? If you've seen those videos of like those fucking, um, uh, those Tai Chi champions who are like in those videos fighting their students where they're just like flipping

everyone around the room throwing them and then like they fight an actual MMA fighter who just like takes them down in 13 seconds. Yeah, yeah. It's like how Seagal fights. This is Steven Seagal. Did I say Putin's judo?

It is. This is the moment for Kissinger. That's like when Steven Seagal got choked out by Gene Labelle and Shadys past. All right. I'm the star here. I didn't think this could happen. Come on now. We'll play fake.

Next from Kissinger a biography quote, Woodward wondered what kind of treatment Kissinger was accustomed to getting from the press. He consulted Murray Marder, the kindly soft edge diplomatic reporter who covered Kissinger for the post. Well, Marder admitted Henry was regularly allowed to put statements on background

after he had made them. I mean, it really it does and what's so frustrating is that it's like, you know, they they've all kind of learned from the mistakes of this time in ways where it is, it's kind of the same shit. I mean, everything is kind of

a fluff piece. You're allowed to be in the White House press corps if you ask softball questions. You know, it like this this was like a major fuck up and they all were like, well, the lesson we've learned here is don't let good reporters around you. Yeah, don't let

journalists exist. It's one of those there's so much going on here. It really is. This is like we are peeking. There are ways in which like there are times when journalism does work that way, right? When I'm like sitting down and talking to like a fucking dissident or a protest

or someone who like might be targeted by the state or by you know, fucking fascist or whatever and murdered and they like say something and then later are like, oh, you know, can I take that off the record? I'm worried that's going to like review me. Yeah, of course. Like, I'm not going to like, but like it doesn't it should never

work that way for cabinet level fucking government officials, right? They don't they can if you agree ahead of time to make something off the record. Yeah, that that happens. That's like a thing that occurs although I think that's problematic too, but like they don't get to just take something off the record

retroactively. That's not how it works. Yeah. But they just all they care about is access. So they don't care about the actual story. They just want to talk to them again. Yeah, they want to keep getting access. It is. It's like it needs to be a group of people need to say that this is all fucked, but instead

they're like, oh, what a great cocktail party. And Woodward to his credit, there's critiques to make about Woodward later in his career, but to his credit, Woodward is like, I don't give a shit about access. I'm trying to take down a president like I could give a fuck who like this off here, you know, like. Yeah.

Um, so Nixon eventually took the fall as we've covered, but the issue was brought up again in 1973 when Kissinger went through his confirmation hearings to become Secretary of State. We don't need to cover the politicking he did to secure that job, but I should note

all the fallout over wiretapping and the disaster in Cambodia didn't do shit to reduce Henry's popularity at home. In 1972, he had ranked fourth on the list of most admired Americans. In 1973, he was number one, largely because Harry Truman had died.

Which is also pretty bleak. What the fuck? Yeah, baby. We are. I mean, and that's when you're like, we deserve it. I mean, if you are that incapable of deciphering reality from fiction to some extent,

you want to be taken advantage of. Yeah. Yeah. You're the Rube who opens the door to the vacuum cleaner salesman. Yeah. Okay, yeah. Pour some dirt on my floor. I want to see how this thing sucks. You need my social security number, of course. Okay. And you promise I get $500,000

in the mail. Okay. So one congressman proposed a constitutional amendment to allow foreign-born citizens to run for president because of like how much he liked fucking Kissinger. I don't like this. Henry received a figure at Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum

in London, which quickly became the star attraction. Miss Universe pageant contestants voted him, quote, the greatest person in the world today. Is it possible that we just put a heart in the Madame Tussauds figure and melted it and that's what's walking around now?

Yeah. We just left it in the sun for a week. Like you bring up the media, like this is just so like, they just normalize monsters. They act like monsters or great people. Yeah. And people don't actually hear the fucking heinous shit that they're doing. No.

And they just hear he's a smart guy, but that's what matters. He can like quote smart dead people that they, you haven't read, but you know they're smart because their name sounds vaguely familiar and so you're like, well, this guy's read all these smart dudes. He must be a good guy because smart people don't do bad

thing. Well, and smart people don't like go out with reporters and you know, just be like look at Frankenstein at the Playboy mansion. Gosh, he's got those bolts on his neck and the girls love to twirl him. So, it is perhaps not surprising even though the Watergate scandal had built to a fever pitch by 73

that Henry Kissinger was a shoe in to be appointed as secretary of state. On the day of his first congressional confirmation hearings, someone in the press asked, do you prefer to be called Mr. Secretary or Doctor Secretary? He replied, I do not stand on protocol. If you just

call me Excellency, it will be okay. Excuse me? Pardon? And again, as a journalist, the proper response to that is to throw your handheld recorder at his face. Like try to take a chair to his nose

like they did to Geraldo. Yeah, right, yeah. Break his face. Oh, I'm not talking up on titles. You can just bow and call me on Majesty. So, Kissinger was extremely nervous going into the

confirmation hearings because, again, Nixon is being torn apart for Watergate right now and he was expecting that he'd be interrogated about all the shady wiretapping he'd done. But as it turned out, all he had to do was lie and say he'd never recommended wiretapping. Everyone decided that was fine and he was

confirmed as secretary of state, 78 votes to 77. Jesus fucking Christ. And here's the thing, even among the people in the system, there was not always strong antipathy. George McGovern voted against confirming him, but he called Kissinger afterwards to privately endorse him.

He'd be like, hey, publicly, I gotta pretend I don't like you, but like, cool, right, bro? Ha, ha, ha, ha. Ha, ha, ha. And don't worry, someday I'll be the president and I've got my eye on you, Henry. Yeah. I mean, honestly, that might have happened.

Yeah, probably. So when he was sworn in on September 21st, 1973, a family friend presented Kissinger with a copy of the Old Testament that had been published in 1st in 1801 for him to be sworn in on, Kissinger decided instead to use Nixon's copy of the King James Bible.

They just opened it, it's a bottle of bourbon. Oh, sorry, that's actually... It's just a bottle of liquor, yeah? Let's use that other one, this is that 1st one. So, alas for Dick Nixon, 74 was an even worse year for him than 73 had been. In July of that year,

three Southern Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee announced that they were voting to impeach him. On August 5th, a transcript of taped conversations between him and Haldeman was released, which proved his involvement in the cover-up of the Watergate break and proved he'd lied under oath. This was the nail in the coffin.

On August 7th, Barry Goldwater told Nixon he would not survive an impeachment vote. Nixon had already made the decision to leave. He met with Jerry Ford, his vice president, and told him that he was about to be president. He urged Ford to keep Kissinger on as his secretary of state. Then Nixon made his big announcement to the American people.

Next, from history.com. After the speech, Kissinger accompanied Nixon to his living quarters one last time. History is going to record that you were a great president. Kissinger assured Nixon, Henry, the president said, that will depend on who writes the history.

Can you imagine a wasted Nixon showing Jerry Ford around like, oh, this is the vodka. Yeah. Put that in your weedies in the morning. This is pineapple. You should eat this with cottage cheese every day. Now, here's a Dick Nixon secret.

If you pour a little diet coke in the bourbon, they can't tell you're getting drunk at night in the morning. When you're confused, just nod. When you're throwing up in the toilet, say something disagreed with you and it's diarrhea. The secret service agents have to let you puke down their sleeves.

That's what I've been doing. This is the vodka room. This is the vodka room. And this is the vodka room. And this is the vodka room. This drawer here's for letters and things like stamps like that. And this is the drawer you can puke in,

but just bend over and pretend you're looking for something. I'm going to be honest. I've been shitting in the fireplace a lot. It's hard to find the bathroom when you're turnt in the oval. Look, look, if you're worried, just lift this cushion up. This chair's actually a toilet with wheels. It sits behind the desk.

Try to think what else. These are laws. You can wipe your ass with them. By the way, this is all being recorded. Everything is. This chest here is actually a tape recorder. Kissinger's sorrow over his boss stepping down was soft somewhat by the fact that right around the same time,

he'd succeeded in overthrowing an actual democratically elected leader. Oh, good. Dr. Salvador Allende. Oh, fuck, this makes me mad. Yeah. We're not going to talk about this in a lot of detail because we have gone into detail on

the coup against Allende in both our episodes on the Dolis Brothers and on the School of the Americas. It's just like not... This is the thing to cut out of our Kissinger story because we've covered it a lot before, but I will give an overview of Kissinger's involvement. For the listeners who maybe aren't familiar, Robert.

I know we are all on the same page, but you're garras or whatever. Salvador Allende was a socialist e-dude who was elected in 1970. Like all kind of socialists the U.S. overthrows. He was not nearly as radical as they pretended he was, but he was like solidly left-wing.

The U.S. backed a military coup that overthrew him in 1973. Allende committed suicide and was replaced by General Augusto Pinochet who tortured and murdered tens of thousands of people over the next 17 years. So, I'm going to be brief here and I'm going to read a summary of Kissinger's role

in that kerfuffle from the Transnational Institute. Last than a week after Nixon received the disappointing news about the presidential vote, he decided to annul the Chilean vote. A quote widely attributed to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger explained Nixon's morality. I don't see why we need to stand by

and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves. I mean, you need to be like so far gone to be comfortable speaking in that way.

Yeah. That's ghoulishly evil. I mean, it's just like you could come up with a version of that that would also probably sound effective, but to basically be like, look, the people have fucked up voting. They've wrongly voted.

Oopsie poopsie. We'll do it for them. We'll take care of this for them. Again, United States policy pretty much all the time in perpetuity. Yeah. It's good. And after the bloody coup

that Kissinger and Nixon endorsed, Kissinger pushed to recognize Pinochet's coup government and offer it economic aid. He pressured international lending organizations to lend money to the new Chilean government. Yeah, he sucks. This is a bad thing that he did.

You can hear a lot more about it. Honestly, Kissinger was involved, but the Dolis Brothers were a much bigger part of this specific thing, so check that out in our Dolis Brothers episode. All this with Raquel Welch on his arm. Yeah. Jill St. John, I love the way you...

Actually, the woman he does marry, Nancy McGuinness, who is also a fairly prominent person, is a huge fan of the overthrowing of the Chilean government. His wife is like more hardcore right wing than he is. Come to bed.

Tell me about how you ignored the will of the Chilean voters, Henry. Oh, yeah. So, I don't know much about the working relationship Henry had with Jerry Ford. Honestly, like, they didn't spend a lot of time together. We're not going to delve super deep into it. There were, like, too much

to talk about, still. There is one thing I want to note about his relationship with Nixon. Like, for the first several years of Nixon, he's desperate to go to Camp David any time the president invites him. He's excited to go. But then when the Watergate thing is going on

and Nixon feels isolated and alone, Kissinger spends, like, the whole Watergate hearing time jetting around the Middle East and stuff doing diplomacy, and Nixon begs him, like, do you want to come hang out with me? And Henry's like, oh, buddy, I'd love to, but, you know...

Oh, sounds so great. I just got so much work. Oh, gosh. It's amazing that there's a moment at this where you're like, aw, man, Dick, he did you dirty. That's not, yeah. You were such a good friend to him. A little bit of sympathy for Nixon.

Do you want to come to summer camp, David, with me? I can't... I could really use a friend. I broke my arm. I can't get any merit badges or anything to some on my mom's head. Oh, man, it's amazing. So, yeah,

so much to talk about. I will tell you, I will note, that one of the first things that Henry did as Secretary of State for President Ford was to deliberately enable another genocide, which put him just one genocide away from earning a free coffee at the Pentagon Starbucks. Oh, my gosh, so close.

He's close. He's close, he's close. We're going to talk about that, but you know what we got to talk about right now? Products and services that support this podcast. Finally. Commit five genocides and Starbucks will fund a sixth

if it reduces the price of coffee beans. Make sure it's a venti. During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations. And you know what? They were right.

I'm Trevor Aronson, and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. I sometimes get to grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation.

In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy-voiced, cigar-smoking man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of goods.

He's a shark, and not in the good badass way. He's a nasty shark. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science.

And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial

to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus? It's all made up.

Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lance Bass, and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that

when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me.

About a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991 and that man, Sergei Krekalev, is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on Earth, his beloved country,

the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space. 313 days that changed the world.

Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Oh, we're back. So in 1969, the US conspired with the Indonesian dictator,

Suharto, to encourage the illegal annexation of West Papa through what was called the Act of Free Choice. This was a shameless propaganda exercise which allowed the United States to pretend democracy, rah rah rah, you get the idea. Behind the scenes support by the US at the UN

allowed Suharto to solidify his control on West Papa. This led to decades of genocidal policies which have killed huge numbers of the Papuan population. Six years later, Suharto had another fun idea. East Timor was nearby and near the end of a 27-year long process

of being decolonized by Portugal. Having just been ruled pretty brutally in the name of capital, you won't be surprised to hear that the East Timorese people were somewhat sympathetic towards socialism. The leftist Freitalan party began to gain ground

as freedom grew near. In 1975, it had a brief civil war with the much smaller right-wing pro-Indonesian party. This freaked out Portugal, who pulled their last people out of the country during the fighting. Seeing the territory abandoned, General Suharto felt he had an opportunity.

He and others in the Indonesian military began to complain to the Americans that East Timor might be used as a base for dastardly communists to inspire secessionist movements in Indonesia. Over in East Timor, Freitalan, the Socialist Party, recognized

the fact that they were in danger. They had their, oh, we're in danger moment, and they declared their independence on November 28th, 1975, so they could ask for help from the United Nations. Everyone ignored them. Japan, a major investor in Indonesia, twiddled her thumbs. Australia looked away.

This left the American left the American left the American left the American left the American left the American Australia looked away. This left the United States is the only power that could potentially stop Indonesia from invading East Timor. Oh, does it?

Yeah, we did it! Everything's good now! They're doing great! They're flying cars! How many times do we have to be the heroes? Another job well done for the United States. On December 6th, 1975,

on the eve of the planned invasion, Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger flew to Jakarta to meet with Suharto. The very next day, Indonesian land, air and naval forces invaded. The timing is predominant enough that people have debated ever since whether or not Kissinger and Ford gave Suharto

the green light he or two. From right up in the nation. Kissinger, who does not find room to mention East Timor even in the index of his three-volume memoir, has more than once stated that the invasion came to him as a surprise and that he barely knew of the existence of the Timorese question.

He was obviously lying, but the breathtaking extent of his mendacity has only just become fully apparent, with the declassification of a secret State Department telegram. The document, which has been made public by the National Security Archive at George Washington University, contains a verbatim record of the conversation among Suharto,

Ford and Kissinger. We want your understanding if we deem it necessary to take rapid or drastic action Suharto opened bluntly. We will understand and will not press you into the problem you have and the intentions you have. Kissinger was even more emphatic but had an awareness of the possible spin

problems back home. It is important that whatever you do succeeds quickly, he instructed the despot. We would be able to influence the reaction if whatever happens happens after we return. If you have made plans, we will do our best to keep everyone quiet until the president returns home.

Micromanaging things for Suharto, he added, the president will be back on Monday at 2 p.m. Jakarta time. We will understand your problem and the need to move quickly, but I am only saying it would be better if it were done after we returned. Worst case scenario, I'll just say I never said this and nobody will ever have a transcript

of this or anything. I mean to be scheduling it like a golf day. Can you crack down on the independence and freedom of these people and engage in a genocidal war like once we're back, there's a lot going on. 345 or like 4 on Monday would be great.

Tuesday if you could wait would be unbelievable like that's a lot of time. I thought it was a workout. There's a lot of US fuckery in fucking Indonesia. I'm sorry, I'm not going to hear this gentlemen. Enough of that talk please. The greatest country on earth.

You do have that giant Indonesia in the United States shaking hands over a burning East Timor tattoo over your heart. Well, I would hate for that. That's speculation and please cut that out. Sophie, can we make a note that that should not be included in the episode?

It seems a little incriminating. So, Suharto's troops when they invaded East Timor, which they did, were equipped with the finest US-made weaponry. Under the Foreign Assistance Act, such material could only be provided to nations who would use it exclusively for self-defense. When this was brought up to Suharto,

when this was brought up to Kissinger and he was asked whether or not selling arms to Suharto had violated the act, Kissinger responded, it depends on how we see it, whether it is in self-defense or it is a foreign operation. Back in DC, on December 18th, in a meeting whose minutes are now

declassified, Kissinger admitted that he knew that he and the United States were violating the statute from the nation. An even more sinister note was struck later in the conversation. When Kissinger asked Suharto if he expected a long guerrilla war, the dictator replied that there will probably be a

small guerrilla war while making no promise about its duration. Bear in mind that the country urged speed and dispatch upon Suharto. Adam Malek, Indonesia's prime minister at the time, later conceded in public that between 50,000 and 80,000 Timorese civilians were killed in the first 18 months

of the occupation. These civilians were killed with American weapons, which Kissinger contrived to supply over congressional protests, and their murders were covered up by American diplomacy. So, rough! We did it again! We did it again, guys! Back to murder! It really is like

it's like a serial killer who just gets very comfortable with killing, gets kind of cocky about it, starts leaving clues, but in this case, there's no cops chasing anyone. There's nobody who's really trying to solve the case.

It's like if the Unabomber left his name on every package. Yeah! Everyone was like, this is okay! A return address! Yeah! Ted Kaczynski, Shack 9. Shack 9! Roughly 300,000 East Timorese civilians, roughly half

the population, were forced out of their homes and into camps during the fighting. By 1980, the death toll was at least 100,000, and possibly as high as 230,000. Thomas Meany, writing in The New Yorker, has tried to make sense of this all. Kissinger's sign-off on the Indonesian

President Suharto's genocidal campaign in East Timor was meant to signal that America would unquestioningly reward those who had decimated communists within their reach. In retrospect, the notion that everything America did would be duly registered and responded to by its opponents and friends seems like an expression

of geopolitical narcissism. At the time, the 33-year-old senator Joe Biden accused Kissinger at a Senate hearing of trying to promulgate a global Monroe doctrine. Kissinger is that guy where repeatedly terrible people will be like, well, you're in the right here, but only because

you're talking about Henry Kissinger. Yeah, right. Yeah, he's like... In the next episode, we're going to have a moment where the CIA is a voice of reason to give you an idea of where things go. And how many people have to be the voice of reason?

I mean, it just is like he's like cocky. I mean, it's just no shit's given at this point to have no... I mean, it's not like he's had a soul throughout all of this, but you would think that once you have a soul for such a long period of time, you would

start to notice the absence of a soul and at least start to act like you had a soul. Well, good news, Gareth. Nothing like that ever happens. Oh, fucking great. Yeah. We're going to have fun in Episode 6. But, you know,

now it's time to just chill out, you know, have a drink, just a nice sip of the blood of, I don't know, East Timorese dissonance and go watch the Theranos documentary. Yeah.

Henry Kissinger would get cocked by a fucking grifter. I mean, yeah, you need only, like, I forget who said it, but that's true. That's our hero. She's our hero. The psycho who was like, hey, yeah, we can do this with your blood at Walgreens. Because

she got Henry Kissinger involved and I mean, just he's not, it's not like, he's not a genius. There's just not a lot of genius it takes to just be awful and indiscriminate. Yeah, he's just like the best war networker of all time.

Yeah. And here's the thing, Episode 6, we're going to talk about his political downfall because he does get his comeuppance, but it's from people who suck maybe even worse, at least as bad as he does. And so there's no satisfaction in it.

Of course. It's like if Hitler had gotten assassinated by Hitler too, who had then, like, expanded. And it's also by people who are like, they're there because of him. Like, they, like, he had to walk so they could run. Yes, exactly.

Yes, there's, someone needs to paint a picture of like Henry Kissinger, kind of on the bow of the Titanic, holding up Dick Cheney with his arms spread wide. Oh, that feels nice. That feels real nice, Henry. You're so, awesome. Let me paint you.

Kissinger walked so that Donald Rumsfeld could stagger. Yeah. Oh, but that's going to be Part 6. Wow. Till then, Dave. What? Gareth. You got any plugables to plug?

I want to drink like Nixon. Yeah. We, again, look at what capitalism gets us. We're invading Australia like that. We're invading the shores of Australia, searching for their WMDs, which we believe are North, South, East and West.

You can go to dolloppodcast.com and I'll be also doing stand-up over there. And you can go to garethrenalds.com for those stand-up dates. And we're also touring America this summer. Sorry, we're touring the best country on earth this summer.

And you can go to dolloppodcast.com for all that information. Now, I should note here, y'all, an ongoing argument over whether or not Gareth is an appropriate nickname for you, Gareth. And I felt like maybe we could bring in a negotiator to help us deal with this question.

Yes, sure. So I'd like to introduce to the Paul Dr. Henry Kissman. Oh, my God! I'm sorry, I said all those horrible things. Gary is a fine name. I think Gary works great. You look like Gary a little bit.

He's got his nice shorts on. He's got those nut huggers. You can see the outline. You can see the whole bread basket. Looks like a baby bird in the nest now, but it becomes a python when water starts. They should call me Dixon.

They're techniques. Once the bombs hit the soil, I'll rip these babies. I really hope people stop listening at this point. I stop listening and I'm talking. I stop listening and I'm talking. All right, everybody.

We'll see you on Thursday. It's pretty cool. You can also pre-order it in physical or in Kindle form from Amazon or pretty much wherever books are sold. So please Google AK Press after the Revolution or find an indie bookstore in your area

and pre-order it. We'll be happy. We'll see you on Thursday. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science and the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price?

And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.