Posted on 04/29/2002 7:39:41 AM PDT by dead
He won the Nobel Peace Prize and his name was once a byword for diplomacy. But Henry Kissinger may yet be called to account for the murder and mayhem the US orchestrated in the 1970s, writes Vanity Fair columnist Christopher Hitchens.
Here are some snapshots from the recent career of Henry Kissinger. In May last year, during a stay at the Ritz Hotel in Paris, he is visited by the criminal brigade of the French police, and served with a summons. This requests that he attend the Palais de Justice the following day to answer questions from Judge Roger Le Loire.
The judge is investigating the death and disappearance of five French citizens during the rule of General Pinochet in Chile. Kissinger declines the invitation and leaves Paris at once.
In the same week, Judge Rodolfo Corrall of Argentina invites Kissinger's testimony in the matter of "Operation Condor" - codename for a state-run death squad, operated by the secret police of six countries - Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay and Ecuador - during the 1970s and '80s.
Its central co-ordination was run through a US base in Panama when Kissinger was the national security adviser and secretary of state (and chairman of the committee overseeing all US covert operations). Again, Kissinger declines to answer written requests for information.
Later in the year, Judge Guzman in Santiago, Chile, sends a written summons to the State Department requesting Kissinger's testimony about the death and disappearance of an American citizen, Charles Horman, in the early days of the Pinochet dictatorship. (The Homan story was dramatised by Constantine Costa-Gavras in the award-winning movie Missing.) Once again, no reply is received to this request for testimony.
On September 10, a major civil suit is filed in the Federal Court in Washington DC by the relatives and survivors of General Rene Schneider, the former head of the Chilean general staff, who was assassinated in 1970 because of his opposition to a military coup.
The lawsuit charges Kissinger with ordering and arranging Schneider's murder. The attorney for the plaintiffs, Professor Michael Tigar, announces that every document in the indictment comes from declassified government sources.
Recently, Judge Balthazar Garzon of Spain, supported by other judges in France, asks Interpol to detain Kissinger for questioning during his visit to London.
In Chile, the courts announce that if they continue to meet with no response to their requests for co-operation, they may seek Kissinger's extradition.
At the same time, the government of Brazil asks Kissinger to cancel a proposed visit to the city of Sao Paolo, saying that it cannot guarantee he will be immune from attempts to indict him.
Earlier this month, a petition for Kissinger's arrest is filed in the High Court in London, citing the destruction of civilian populations and the environment in Indochina during the years 1969-75. The High Court rules in such a manner as to leave room for a further application.
This is not a complete or exhaustive list of the difficulties now facing the United States' best-known former secretary of state. Recently, I was informed via the former Spanish ambassador to the US that Kissinger had approached the embassy asking whether he would be safe if he visited Spain. These days he does not travel without legal advice.
In the new legal context created by the arrest of General Pinochet and the trial of Slobodan Milosevic, the principle of "universal jurisdiction" applies, and states that crimes against humanity are indictable and punishable everywhere in the world.
It should be noted, though, that with the exception of the lawsuit in the Federal Court in Washington, Kissinger is not being sought as a defendant. He is being summonsed or subpoenaed only as a witness. His refusal to co-operate therefore licenses the suspicion that he has something very unpleasant to hide.
Parallel disclosures only help to materialise this same suspicion.The State Department recently declassified the verbatim conversation between Kissinger and General Soeharto on the day of the invasion of East Timor in 1975. The record shows Kissinger giving warm approval to the proposed annexation, and also promising to keep a flow of weapons coming to Indonesia.
This flagrant agreement to break both international law and the law of the US (which supplied weapons on the specific condition that they be used only in self-defence) contradicts every statement so far made by Kissinger on the subject.
Only a few weeks ago, documents released by the State Department also proved beyond doubt that Kissinger had urged the apartheid regime in South Africa to intervene in Angola before any Cuban soldier had landed in that disputed colony. Again, the disclosure represented a complete negation of everything ever said or written by Kissinger.
Without exaggeration, it can be said that these legal and investigative initiatives represent the highest point ever attained by the long campaign to enforce international law on human rights. Never before has so senior a figure in a government victorious in war been asked to answer questions about what he did, what he ordered, and what he covered up.
If the drive to put Kissinger in the witness box, let alone the dock, should succeed, then it would rebut the taunt about "victor's justice" in war crimes trials. It would demonstrate that no person, and no society or state, is above the law. Conversely, if the initiative should fail, then it would seem to be true that we have woven a net for the catching of small fish only.
Much hinges on this distinction. The International Criminal Court has won more than the 60-nation vote which was required for its establishment. Almost all Western and democratic nations, with the exception of the US, have "signed on".
Once again, it has to be inferred that there are matters, past and present, which American administrations would prefer not to submit to impartial judgement. Certainly, Kissinger himself has been prominent in the campaign against Congressional ratification of the treaty (which was signed by Bill Clinton as president but which still awaits confirmation).
Quite rightly, the new court will not be allowed to revisit atrocities which took place before it was set up. Unlike the exceptional case of Nuremberg, the accusation of retroactive justice cannot be hurled around.
However, this may not be as obvious in application as at first appears. There are many thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of Latin Americans, Greek Cypriots, Bangladeshis and Timorese, Cambodians and Vietnamese, who seek to know what happened to their "missing" family members.
In the absence of a proof of death, these cases might be adjudicated as "live" and therefore as contemporary and relevant. If so, Kissinger would be the most embarrassed man on the planet. He sat in the secret meetings during which the coups in Cyprus and Chile, the slaughter by the Pakistani army in Bangladesh, the carpet-bombing of Cambodia and the invasion of East Timor were discussed and (without the knowledge or consent of the US Congress) were approved.
Of the original group that formed the core of the Nixon regime and that took part in the many violations of the US constitution, by means of illegal bugging and illegal covert action, Richard Nixon had to accept a pardon in order to avoid prosecution, his vice-president, Spiro Agnew, had to resign in a flurry of indictments and his attorney-general, John Mitchell, became the first holder of that position to go to jail. Only Kissinger has so far avoided a full investigation of his abuses of power.
Of the despots on the international scene with whom he enthusiastically co-operated, Brigadier Ioannidis of Greece is in prison, as is General Videla of Argentina. Pinochet of Chile and Soeharto of Indonesia have avoided trial and condemnation by claiming that they are too sick to face prosecution (and more humane successor governments have spared them the kind of treatment they would have meted out to their own foes).
Only the senior partner in all this has evaded any inconvenience. Until now. We are once again forced to ask ourselves if we speak the truth when we say that no man is above the law.
Christopher Hitchens's book, The Trial of Henry Kissinger, is published in Australia by Text.
Subpoenas from a meaningless court without jurisdiction?
Fine.
The instant the first American citizen is subpoenaed or indicted by this court, a cruise missile should deliver our demurrer.
--Boris
I live for the day the world's socialists are indicted for their crimes against humanity. But unlike these nuisance suits they file to harry an old man to his grave, the charges against them will have real substance.
Or a principle and a precedent to protect.
If a new precedent is established that the ICC or any other foreign judicial body can suponea, indict, detain, try, convict, and imprison former and current US Govt officials for anything that anyone in the rest of the world disagrees with, then the US will become an isolated, parriah nation, and none of us will be safe to travel beyond our own borders. It is no surprise that we have enemies overseas that would want that. The thing that is a surprise is that we have people within this country that want it.
any other foreign judicial body can suponea, indict, detain, try, convict, and imprison former and current US Govt officials
Actually, they can subpeona, indict, try, and convict anybody they like. So can we.
It’s actually getting the living body into a prison that is tricky. And we’ll never support accomodating their requests for extradition.
So precise and astute that it bears repeating, and a bump.
The problem with the so-called International court is that it will be used by the leftist who control the international stage (the UN) to harass and harm those in the US who formulate and carry out US policy with which the leftists disagree.
Sadly, American leftists and the leftist American media will cheer all the while. The Interantional Court is a terrible development and its "justice" will soon resemble the "justice" of the French Revolution. Americans beware.
Let us oppose it forcefully.
But I do agree with Hitchens that Kissinger was a total scumbag. His solutions for dealing with Henry are a recipe for disaster, however. The best course for dealing with Kissinger is to expose his crimes and just let him die in disgrace.
But he fought a hot war against the communists at a time when they were on the march, and no one thought they could be stopped.
At the height of the struggle, there were 10's of thousands of Cubans in Angola, 10's of thousands in Ethiopia. Communists seized South Yemen, Nicaragua, Chile, almost all of Southeast Asia; with eastern Europe and China they controlled most of the Eurasian land mass, and they looked unstoppable.
With congress in the hands of Democrats crying for appeasement and withdrawal, Kissinger played a masterful round of geo-political chess, and did the best he could with what he had to work with.
He has turned out to be a little too pro-Chinese for my tastes, for business reasons I believe, and if someone wants to haul him into court for that its fine by me. But somehow I don't think thats what the ICC has in mind.
Pinochet is a bad-news bear, but does not fit the usual South American brand of caudillo. He stopped the communists there, hounded them into exile by means none of us here would care to try and defend; he then proceeded to put the country on a sound economic footing, created a 401k-style social security system that is unique in the world, and then established a democratic republic that works. And then stepped aside. Who else can match what he has done in Latin America?
It is telling that while the Spanish prosecuting judge was trying to arrest Pinochet in London, that Castro was able to visit Spain freely, no effort being made to call him to account for a half century of repression on his personal Hell of an island.
What a shame.
Not even Argentina is safe anymore!
War is precisely the result when legal norms have broken down. Countries go to war when the law can not resolve the issue at hand. The issues are then settled on the battle field, for good or ill, and that is that.
The leftist lawyers trying to run the war crimes tribunals have already sided with our enemies. Our complicity in encouraging international trials is going to come back to haunt us.
It is absolutely necessary that we "declare independence" of all of these international bodies before we paint ourselves into a corner. After all, none of us ever expects to obey any of these institutions; why, then, pretend that they have any legitimacy at all? Using these to try our enemies, such as the case of Milosevic, and the Libyan terrorists, only sets us up for big trouble down the road. Much better to simply blackmail the Yugos to deal with Milosevic, and take out the Libyan agents the old fashioned way.
Maybe it's because of the "naughty-boy" appeal of his slobbiness, his boyish but decadent air, his dirty toenails, his hint of roguishness, his charming British accent, his elfish anti-establishment stance (while he benefits hugely from our capitalistic system), and the apparently riveting-to-some "Joe Sixpack" love of fermented grain.
But he still is the antithesis of the basic principles of what our American society is or should be. I do admire him for the fact that he knows how to milk his considerable grungy personal assets.
P.T. Barnum was right.
Leni
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