The Trials of Henry Kissinger (2002)

Useful for getting some unpleasant suppressed truths out there
The narrator of this documentary adopts a tone of unbiased inquiry, stating at the end of it that whether or not Henry K is a war criminal, looking at his record brings up many interesting insights into the perils of power and secrecy in govt. Well the actual evidence presented in this film proves that one has to be pretty irrational, morally dense and worshipful of American state power to deny that Kissinger is a war criminal.

The first issue discussed is Kissinger's direction of the so-called secret bombing of Cambodia. 600,000 Cambodians were slaughtered, the country's economy destroyed, its social infrastructure dismantled. The environment was ripe for the Khmer Rouge to seize the reins of power. The narrator says that the Khmer Rouge killed 3 million people. This is a figure taken from Vietnamese propaganda in the late 70's. It was probably between a million and a million and a half.

The film observes that the Christmas bombing of North Vietnam of December 1972 was completely gratuitous. Many civilians died and were maimed because Kissinger wanted to prove to President Thieu that the United States would be willing to use force to protect him after the agreement with Le Duc Tho that Kissinger had secretly agreed to in October 1972 was put into effect. The film also mentions the 68'Nixon presidential campaign's efforts to encourage President Thieu not to cooperate with American peace negotiations with North Vietnam during the 1968 election season. The film asserts that the Johnson administration's peace plan towards the end of its run was hardly different from the one Kissinger finally accepted five years later. I'm not sure about that.

Too really understand Kissinger's criminality in the war, one should probably be given a much broader history about American involvement including the nature of the regimes we supported in Saigon, and how hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese still are suffering terribly from the effects of our chemical warfare on South Vietnam. This film does not do so obviously because space was short in the film. But the discussion of Cambodia in the film is certainly appreciably superior to the often dishonest and idiotic American norm.

We then move to Kissinger's role in the overthrow of Allende. We hear about the meetings granted to executives of ITT and Coca-Cola to express to Nixon their concerns about the economic nationalist policies of Allende. They were greatly upset about Allende's immediate fulfillment of his campaign pledge to nationalize Chile's copper (a measure which was supported by most Chileans regardless of class. Government run copper firms have been a big part of Chile's economic well being since Pinochet fell). In any case, the viewer is shown CIA cables and transcripts of meetings describing how Kissinger was continuously involved and coordinating with the CIA in plotting Allende's overthrow. A big first incident in this plot was the attempt to neutralize General Rene Schneider, the chief of the Chilean armed forces, who while not apparently enthusiastic about Allende's policies, firmly believed that the Chilean military should respect Allende's election. Kissinger claimed that he called of the entire effort against Allende, including the Schneider sub-plot on October 15th 1970. However the film presents the reader with transcripts from October 15th where Kissinger asked the CIA to continually apprise him on their efforts to destabilize Allende's regime. The military attaché at the U.S. embassy in Santiago and the U.S. ambassador in Chile in 1970 Edward Korry both say in this movie that Kissinger is lying about the alleged 10/15 coup call-off. Schneider was eventually ambushed while in the backseat of a veichle and murdered. The chilean leader of the group conducting the ambush recived a package of rifles from the CIA just before the act and afterwards the CIA sent $35,000 dollars to one of the members of the ambush group. The excuse afterward, repeated in this film by Al Haig is that no CIA individiual is responsible for murder because the action was originally supposed to be a mere kidnapping and the murder was not planned. Apparently the aforementioned military attaché was a key figure for passing CIA money and arms to anti-Allende groups and I think is the same guy from the CNN cold war series declaring that Pinochet's coup was a good thing because Allende's regime was full of bad people.

The last major topic is Kissinger's backing of Indonesia's genocidal invasion of East Timor in December 1975. David Newson, U.S. ambassador to Indonesian in 1975 and Kissinger (speaking on NPR) utter some vague apologies such as there was nothing that the U.S. could do to stop it and Suharto's government was an important ally and guarded important sea lanes and it was the cold war,etc. In response to this the film quotes transcripts of a meeting of Kissinger and his staff eleven days after Indonesia's invasion where he yells at them because they couldn't prevent someone in the department warning congress that U.S. arms export laws were being violated. U.S. military aid provided almost all Indonesia needed to conduct the invasion (and subsequent horrendous occupation). In response to the statement of one of his subordinates that U.S. military aid was supposed to be used only for self-defense he responded "And we can't construe a communist government in the middle of Indonesia as self-defense?" The film does not say so but the main nationalist movement dominating East Timor, Fretilin,was probably construed by Kissinger as "communist" on the ground that it appeared to be not 100 percent welcoming to the relentless economic exploitation of its people. The film does not also challenge the statement of ambassador Newson that Kissinger was worried about "Chinese Communist influence" in East Timor. Of course, not that the invasion would be justified if it were true, the evidence for this influence is nill.

It is important to remember that all U.S. administrations since World War II have engaged in very blantant war criminality and international terrorism. One will discover such things if one reads Noam Chomsky who conducts his intellectual inquiries in a manner quite the opposite of the one Mr. Hitchens has been following since 911. There have been plenty of war crimes in this Iraq war that Hitchens has supported. Don't get me started on Hitchens's conduct since 911. However all that does not take away from the fact that Hitchens's book on Kissinger on which this film is based is a very fine piece of work and certainly more comprehensive than this movie.

One of many American war criminals
I don't think that Kissinger's viciousness can be rationalized by saying his decisions were a matter of making "hard choices in war time." I'm sure the Nazis, Saddam's regime and every other tyranny used lines like that. Kissinger's positions, like those of other killers, had to do with money and power and an utter disregard for the lives of other people. He also enjoyed the sex that came with his position, stating that "power is the ultimate aphrodisiac." Like the Bible says, the prostitutes of Babylon will make themselves available to blood-soaked war mongers with plenty of wealth. John Perkins makes a similar point in his book "Confessions of an Economic Hit Men" about the powerful addiction of sex that kept him and others in a profession that was doing incalculable harm to people across the globe.

Ford just died, and amid all the praising of him as a "healer" of this nation, there has been little said about how Ford and Kissinger destroyed another nation, East Timor. "The Trials of Henry Kissinger" includes a section on how our masters of war supported the Indonesian invasion of East Timor, supplying 90% of the weapons that killed a third of that nation's people. In fact, Ford and Kissinger were clinking champagne glasses with General Suharto the night before Indonesian forces charged into East Timor. Amy Goodman (the host of Democracy Now! radio) was almost beaten to death while she was in East Timor, and appears in this film. More details of the destruction of East Timor can be found in the film "Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media."

The "threat of communism" and now the "threat of terrorism" is a convenient cover for the harm America's power elite bring to people throughout the world, including the domestic population. Our nation's aggressors utilize an ounce of truth to extract a pound of deception to deflect attention away from the threat our corporatists pose to the entire global South. The list of our victims, oppressed via our tax dollars and lack of opposition, is long - Guatemala, Vietnam, Iran, Laos, Nicaragua, Cambodia, Haiti, El Salvador, Chile, Angola, and many others. After a while, one would hope we would begin to laugh in disgust when we hear about the threats others pose to us, and instead could look ourselves in the mirror and see the blood on our own hands.
Jarecki has a more recent documentary that explains our pathological violence, it's called "Why We Fight," and includes clips of Eisenhower's famous speech about our military industrial complex.

Maybe an International Criminal Court will bring people like Kissinger to justice some day, and America's "good Germans" will stop making excuses for the barbarity that calls itself "realpolitik."

Hard choices have to be made in wartime. It's easy to criticize. Well done but one sided.
This documentary is skillfully made, using newsreel footage, interviews, talk show excerpts and TV comedic satires. There's also some newly declassified information and lots of opinion by the filmmaker, Eugene Jarecki, who adapted his material from a book by Christopher Hichens. It's all tied up in a neat little package, and builds to the conclusion that Henry Kissinger should be tried as a war criminal.

A war criminal? And this film is the trial? Funny, I thought that a trial was supposed to present two sides.

I wish I knew more about Henry Kissinger. But all I can remember is recognizing his face on newscasts throughout my adult life. He's a diplomat and has held some important positions in the government. And, if I would believe what this film says, he alone was responsible for extending the Vietnam War an extra seven years, bringing Pol Pot to power in Cambodia, assassinating the democratically elected communist president of Chile, and murdering thousands of people in East Timor.

Hey! That sure is a lot of power for one man. I can't buy it.

Henry Kissinger was a diplomat during a period in U.S. history where the biggest threat seemed to be communism. He was good at his job. In the cold light of history, there were many misdeeds done. But the filmmaker wasn't there behind the closed doors when the hard choices were made. And one thing I know is that these kinds of choices are always hard. Of course they'll be mistakes. And compromises made. But, hey, someone has to do it. And often that person was Henry Kissinger.

What is truth? I don't believe that's an easy answer either.

The film piqued my interest. I'd like to learn more about the man. Learn more facts. Only then can I judge the content of the film. I'm just an average person though. I can't debate the actual issues. But I do know when someone is subject to an attack.

I'm glad I live in a country where a film like this is possible. That's why I recommend it, and for that reason only. It shows the true character of Americans. We question everything.