We continue with the charges.
These include:
1. The deliberate mass killing of civilian populations in Indochina.
2. Deliberate collusion in mass murder, and later in assassination, in Bangladesh.
3. The personal suborning and planning of murder, of a senior constitutional officer in a democratic nation - Chile -with which the United States was not at war.
4. Personal involvement in a plan to murder the head of state in the democratic nation of Cyprus.
5. The incitement and enabling of genocide in East Timor.
6. Personal involvement in a plan to kidnap and murder a journalist living in Washington, DC.
The above allegations are not exhaustive. And some of them can only be constructed prima facie, since Mr. Kissinger – in what may also amount to a deliberate and premeditated obstruction of justice - has caused large tranches of evidence to be withheld or destroyed.
However, we now enter upon the age when the defense of "sovereign immunity" for state crimes has been held to be void. As I demonstrate below, Kissinger has understood this decisive change even if many of his critics have not.
The Pinochet verdict in London, the splendid activism of the Spanish magistracy, and the verdicts of the International Tribunal at The Hague have destroyed the shield that immunized crimes committed under the justification of raison d'état.
There is now no reason why a warrant for the trial of Kissinger may not be issued, in any one of a number of jurisdictions, and why he may not be compelled to answer it.
Indeed, and as I write, there are a number of jurisdictions where the law is at long last beginning to catch up with the evidence. And we have before us in any case the Nuremberg precedent, by which the United States solemnly undertook to be bound.
A failure to proceed will constitute a double or triple offense to justice. First, it will violate the essential and now uncontested principle that not even the most powerful are above the law.
Second, it will suggest that prosecutions for war crimes and crimes against humanity are reserved for losers, or for minor despots in relatively negligible countries. This in turn will lead to the paltry politicization of what could have been a noble process, and to the justifiable suspicion of double standards.
Many if not most of Kissinger's partners in crime are now in jail, or are awaiting trial, or have been otherwise punished or discredited. His own lonely impunity is rank; it smells to heaven. If it is allowed to persist then we shall shamefully vindicate the ancient philosopher Anacharsis, who maintained that laws were like cobwebs: strong enough to detain only the weak, and too weak to hold the strong. In the name of innumerable victims known and unknown, it is time for justice to take a hand.
Introduction
On 2 December 1998, Mr. Michael Korda was being interviewed on camera in his office at Simon & Schuster. As one of the reigning magnates of New York publishing, he had edited and "produced" the work of authors as various as Tennessee Williams, Richard Nixon, Joan Crawford and Jo Bonanno.
On this particular day, he was talking about the life and thoughts of Cher, whose portrait adorned the wall behind him. And then the telephone rang and there was a message to call "Dr." Henry Kissinger as soon as possible.
A polymath like Mr. Korda knows-what with the exigencies of publishing in these vertiginous days-how to switch in an instant between Cher and high statecraft.
The camera kept running, and recorded the following scene for a tape which I possess.
Asking his secretary to get the number (759-7919–the digits of Kissinger Associates) Mr. Korda quips drily, to general laughter in the office, that it "should be 1-800-CAM- BODIA... 1-800-BOMB-CAMBODIA."
After a pause of nicely calibrated duration (no senior editor likes to be put on hold while he's receiving company, especially media company),
“it's Henry-Hi, how are you?... You're getting all the publicity you could want in the New York Times, but not the kind you want.... I also think it's very, very dubious for the administration to simply say yes, they'll release these papers... no... no, absolutely... no... no... well, hmmm, yeah. We did it until quite recently, frankly, and he did prevail.... Well, I don't think there's any question about that, as uncomfortable as it may be.... Henry, this is totally outrageous... yeah.. Also the jurisdiction. This is a Spanish judge appealing to an English court about a Chilean head of state. So it's, it... Also Spain has no rational jurisdiction over events in Chile anyway so that makes absolutely no sense.... Well, that's probably true.... If you would. I think that would be by far and away the best.... Right, yeah, no I think it's exactly what you should do and I think it should be long and I think it should end with your father's letter. I think it's a very important document.... but I think the letter is wonderful, and central to the entire book. Can you let me read the Lebanon chapter over the weekend?"
At this point the conversation ends, with some jocular observations by Mr. Korda about his upcoming colonoscopy: "a totally repulsive procedure."