The Trials of Henry Kissinger: The Movie
9 December 2002
Oakland, California
Henry Kissinger is a controversial figure at best. Throughout his career he has wielded enormous power in roles such as advisor to the Rockefeller dynasty, National Security Advisor to Richard Nixon, Secretary of State to Nixon and Gerald Ford, as well as member of a host of governmental advisory boards and private think-tanks. He has received many awards and accolades, including the Nobel Peace Prize (1973), the Presidentia1 Medal of Freedom (1977) and the Medal of Liberty (1986), but he has also been strongly reviled by his detractors who have found the morals of his policies seriously lacking.
The Book
By far the most powerful indictment of Kissinger has come from Christopher Hitchens in two essays published in Harper's magazine in February and March 2001 and which subsequently evolved into the book, The Trial of Henry Kissinger, published in the spring of 2001 (www.trialofhenrykissinger.org).
Hitchens proposed a case for charging Henry Kissinger "for war crimes, for crimes against humanity, and for offenses against common or customary or international law, including conspiracy to commit murder, kidnap, and torture" for his role in
- the mass killings of civilian populations in Indochina during the Vietnam war
- the mass murder and torture perpetrated by the Pakistani military regime in Bangladesh following the election of Sheik Mujibur Rahman in 1971, and the coup against and assassination of Rahman in 1975
- the plan to assassinate the chief of the Chilean Army, General Schneider, as part of a larger scheme to overthrow the democratically-elected government of Salvador Allende in 1973
- the plan by the Athens military junta to murder Archbishop Makarios, President of Cyprus, in 1974
- the genocide by Indonesia following its invasion of East Timor in 1975
- the plan to kidnap and murder Elias Demetracopoulos, a Greek journalist living in Washington DC, and a strong opponent of the Greek dictatorship.
The Movie
The book has in its turn provoked the making of an 80-minute BBC documentary entitled, The Trials of Henry Kissinger, released last September in New York. It focuses on three of the cases in the book: Indochina, Chile and East Timor. Extensive interviews with Kissinger's fiercest detractors as well as ardent supporters, archival footage and the presentation of classified documents, with haunting music in the background and the smooth narrating voice of Brian Cox, make for a captivating movie.
The film's talking heads provide the opening quotes. Alexander Haig says he has "deep respect for him because of his knowledge, his background and his philosophic outlook." William Safire of the New York Times calls him "a fascinating mixture of power and strategy." According to Walter Isaacson, a Kissinger biographer, "It wasn't just that power made you a celebrity, but it's sometimes that creating yourself as a celebrity gave you more power." William Shawcross, author of "Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia," suggests that Kissinger is "an extraordinarily brilliant man, but he did have this fatal flaw of preferring to act without public scrutiny."
"We wanted to give the fairest look at [Hitchens'] case. We would not have made the film if we didn't believe that his charges didn't have merit. The charges call for an inquiry", said director-producer Eugene Jarecki, in an interview with Human Rights Watch.
Going a step beyond the book, the film attempts to provide an understanding of the "accused" as a person. Writer-producer Alex Gibney told Human Rights Watch, "We were interested in Kissinger the man, looking for a possible explanation for his motives."
This particular line of enquiry leads the filmmakers to explore the effect of the holocaust on Kissinger's psyche. The son of Jewish academics, he was, in the words of biographer Isaacson, an "odd mix of ego and insecurity" and a misfit in German society. His family emigrated to the US in 1938 when Kissinger was 15 years old.
In 1944 he returned to Germany in an American military uniform, working in counter-intelligence, to find that the synagogue where his family worshipped had been burnt to the ground and 13 of his relatives had died in the camps.
The Holocaust experience gave rise to two different outlooks, according to Isaacson, with "a very moralistic foreign policy" at one end of the spectrum and "realpolitik, realism in foreign policy" at the other. "Kissinger had a mix of both but was mainly on the side of power politics believing that in the end what really mattered was power."
The filmmakers are hard-pressed to provide evidence of the moralistic element. In fact despite their declared attempt at a balanced presentation, it's clear which side of the argument they have come down on.
The voices of Kissinger defenders like Alexander Haig - who, disgusted with the accusations calls Hitchens a "sewer-pipe sucker" - Brent Scowcroft and William Safire, do little to mitigate the accusations, in fact they often seem to support them. For instance, in the Chile section, Haig responds to the question "Isn't kidnapping a crime?" with "It depends on what your objectives are."
The interviews with Christopher Hitchens provide a continual emotional thread throughout the movie, while for each of the three cases, different personalities are interviewed, including US ambassadors, journalists, Kissinger collaborators and human rights lawyers. Kissinger himself declined to be interviewed for the movie but clips from past interviews and public appearances are shown. "I'm not going to deal with Hitchens", he says.
It does not take long before the viewer finds frustration and resentment building inside him at the unfettered abuse of power, devoid of any ethical considerations, that gave rise to misery for untold numbers of people throughout the world.
The Reviews
The New York Times has called the movie "unwavering and arresting", the Boston Globe finds that it "builds a stunning and overwhelmingly cogent case" and the San Francisco Examiner declares it a "don't miss". According to the Hollywood Reporter " 'Kissinger' is both damning and damned compelling" and TV Guide believes "The case is a convincing one, and should give anyone with a conscience reason to pause." According to Slate, "although the case is blatantly one-sided, it's still riveting and, within limits, persuasive." Entertainment Today declares it "thought-provoking and utterly engrossing; it should be part of a cautionary series of required viewing for civics classes and would-be public servants alike."