- Paperback: 160 pages
- Publisher: Verso Press USA; New edition edition (Jun 27 2002)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1859843980
- ISBN-13: 978-1859843987
- Product Dimensions: 18.8 x 13.5 x 1.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 227 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (47 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #100,366 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
Christopher Hitchens doesn't mince words when it comes to The Trial of Henry Kissinger, the former secretary of state and national-security advisor: in his view, Kissinger deserves vigorous prosecution "for war crimes, for crimes against humanity, and for offences against common or customary or international law, including conspiracy to commit murder, kidnap, and torture." The Trial of Henry Kissinger is a polemical masterpiece; even readers who don't agree that its target is an emanation of "official evil" will appreciate the verve and style brought to Hitchens's fiery brief. ("A good liar must have a good memory: Kissinger is a stupendous liar with a remarkable memory.")
The book is best understood as a document of prosecution--both because Hitchens limits his critique to what he believes might stand up in an international court of law following precedents set at Nuremberg and elsewhere, and also because his treatment of Kissinger is far from even handed. The charges themselves are astonishing, as they link Kissinger to war casualties in Vietnam, massacres in Bangladesh and Timor, and assassinations in Chile, Cyprus, and Washington, DC. After reading this book, one wants very badly to hear a full response from the defendant. Hitchens, a writer for Vanity Fair and The Nation, is a man of the Left, though he has a history of skewering both Democrats (he is the author of a provocative book on the Clintons, No One Left to Lie To) as well as Republicans (like Kissinger).
At the root of this latest effort is moral outrage, and a call for Americans, of all people, not to ignore Kissinger's record:
They can either persist in averting their gaze from the egregious impunity enjoyed by a notorious war criminal and lawbreaker, or they can become seized by the exalted standards to which they continually hold everyone else... If the courts and lawyers of this country will not do their duty, we shall watch as the victims and survivors of this man pursue justice and vindication in their own dignified and painstaking way, and at their own expense, and we shall be put to shame.--John J Miller --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Publishers Weekly
The arrest of Augusto Pinochet signaled a significant shift in enforcing international law, noticed by Henry Kissinger if not others. Vanity Fair columnist Hitchens (No One Left to Lie To, etc.), a self-described "political opponent of Henry Kissinger," writes to remedy the awareness gap, focusing on specific charges of Kissinger's responsibility for mass killings of civilians, genocide, assassinations, kidnapping, murder and conspiracy involving Indochina, East Timor, Bangladesh, Cyprus, Greece and Chile. If the book's title is direct, Hitchens's style is not. Indeed, so much attention is given to unraveling Kissinger's denials and cover stories that the underlying allegations recede into the background. Most of the material is known, but Kissinger's possible culpability has been overlooked for so long that Hitchens's stylish summation may be precisely what's required to bring resolution to a chapter in American foreign policy. Topics include what Hitchens casts as Kissinger's role in helping Nixon undermine the Paris peace talks on the eve of the 1968 election; the bombings of Cambodia and Laos, which killed roughly a million civilians; the assassination of Chilean chief of staff General Rene Schneider, whose loyalty blocked the planned coup against Allende; Kissinger's approval and support for Indonesia's invasion of East Timor and the resulting genocide; his support for the Pakistan military government's 1971 genocide in Bangladesh and for a bloody military coup in independent Bangladesh in 1975, and more. If America does not act promptly, Hitchens warns, others will, further eroding our claims to moral leadership. (May)Forecast: Hitchens's fame and reputation as a contrarian guarantee that his indictment will receive media attention (it's already been serialized in Harper's), and leftists will delight in his skewering of Kissinger.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Trial of Henry Kissinger,
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Trial Of Henry Kissinger (Hardcover)
A well-documented, most credible book. Kissinger emerges as an evil influence, with unrestricted power ceded to him by a weak president. His sabotage of the 1968 Paris Peace Talks to further his own political aims resulted in the loss of countless American lives and even more lives among civilians in Indo-China. At the least, his Nobel Peace Prize should be revoked while he is still alive. Although he should be tried for war crimes as have been tyrants from the Balkans and from Africa, to say nothing of the Nazis at Nuremberg, he knows the U.S. government will protect him, not least because it wants to deflect its own guilt it would have to admit to the world. How can America export democracy to the world while it protects this criminal by a veil of hypocrisy ?
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Library of Congress Protects Another Criminal,
By
This review is from: Trial Of Henry Kissinger (Paperback)
Although Hitchens wrote this book in order to expose the criminality of Henry Kissinger, it is of utmost importance to Library of Congress employees (as well as other librarians) to see how the institution was misused and [bad]. Really, just how can a government employee hide government papers as his own personal papers?A bit out of date, Hitchens details on page 76 how this was done: "On leaving the State Department, Kissinger made an extraordinary bargain whereby (having first hastily trucked them for safekeeping on the Rockefeller estate at Pocantico Hills, New York) he gifted his papers to the Library of Congress, on the sole condition that they remained under seal until after his demise. However, Kissinger's friend Manuel Contreras made a mistake when he killed a United States citizen, Ronni Karpen Moffitt, in the Washington car bomb which also murdered Orlando Letelier in 1976. by late 2000, the FBI had finally sought and received subpoena power to review the Library of Congress papers, a subpoena with which Kissinger dealt only through his attorneys." I am also assuming one of Kissinger's attorneys could be listed as the General Counsel of the Library, Elizabeth Pugh. Left out is the story of the man who took the papers under a [tricked] Deed of Gift, signed on Christmas Eve no less, between then Librarian of Congress Daniel Boorstin and Kissinger. Boorstin, a highly duplicitous man in his own right, is a former communist who named names at the McCarthy hearings. The current Librarian of Congress, right-winger James Billington, is the man who fought the FBI subpoena. Maybe that is because he later named an endowed Library of Congress chair after Kissinger? I particularly liked Hitchens summary of just who Kissinger is on page 16: "The signature qualities were there from the [Nixon] inaugural moment: the sycophancy and the duplicity, the power worship and the absence of scruple; the empty trading of old non-friends for new non-friends. And the distinctive effects were also present: the uncounted and expendable corpses; the official and unofficial lying about the cost; the heavy and pompous pseudo-indignation when unwelcome questions were asked...It debauched the American republic and American democracy, and it levied a hideous toll of casualties on weaker and more vulnerable societies." This description goes for a lot of people in power in Washington. One bit of work that needs to be done is to be found on page 110 and concerns the attempted assassination attempt Kissinger helped plan against Greek journalist Elias Demtracopoulos. The journalist had been very critical of the junta of generals who had taken over Greece, engaging in suppression of democracy as well as murder (and tied to Nixon and Kissinger). The index for Kissinger's papers at the Library of Congress gives this tanalizing hint about Kissinger's role: "keywords acknowledging sens moss burdick gravel re mr demetracopoulos death in athens prison due 701218." It would be nice for the Library of Congress to release those papers, would it not? My only complaint about this book is the fact that the Library of Congress figures prominently in hiding the criminal behavior of Kissinger, yet "Library of Congress" is not to be found in the index at the back of the book.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Trial of Henry Kissinger,
By
This review is from: Trial Of Henry Kissinger (Paperback)
Is former secretary of state and Nobel Peace Prize winner Kissinger a war criminal? Hitchens, a journalist (the Nation, Vanity Fair) and author (Hostage to History: Cyprus from the Ottomans to Kissinger), believes that Kissinger committed crimes around the world, from Cambodia to Bangladesh to Chile. With the recent detention of Chile's August Pinochet and the international interest in prosecuting Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic, Hitchens theorizes that the era of "sovereign immunity" for state crimes has ended. He would limit Kissinger's prosecution to "offenses that might or should form the basis of a legal prosecution: for war crimes, for crimes against humanity and for offenses against common or customary or international law." Hitchens relies on congressional hearing testimony, transcripts of the infamous Nixon tapes, and the memoirs and papers of Nixon, Ford, and Reagan administration officials to support his case against Kissinger. Although there is limited attribution of the quoted and referenced documentation, the substance of the material makes an intriguing case. Recommended for political science and international relations collections.
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