''The Trial of Henry Kissinger'' is a 2001 book by
Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Eric Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was a British-American author and journalist who wrote or edited over 30 books (including five essay collections) on culture, politics, and literature. Born and educated in England, ...
examining the alleged
war crimes of
Henry Kissinger
Henry Alfred Kissinger (; ; born Heinz Alfred Kissinger, May 27, 1923) is a German-born American politician, diplomat, and geopolitical consultant who served as United States Secretary of State and National Security Advisor under the presid ...
, the
National Security Advisor and later
United States Secretary of State
The United States secretary of state is a member of the executive branch of the federal government of the United States and the head of the U.S. Department of State. The office holder is one of the highest ranking members of the president's Ca ...
for Presidents
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was ...
and
Gerald Ford. Acting in the role of the prosecution, Hitchens presents Kissinger's involvement in a series of alleged war crimes in
Vietnam
Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making i ...
,
Bangladesh
Bangladesh (}, ), officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the eighth-most populous country in the world, with a population exceeding 165 million people in an area of . Bangladesh is among the mos ...
,
Chile
Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...
,
Cyprus
Cyprus ; tr, Kıbrıs (), officially the Republic of Cyprus,, , lit: Republic of Cyprus is an island country located south of the Anatolian Peninsula in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Its continental position is disputed; while it is ge ...
and
East Timor
East Timor (), also known as Timor-Leste (), officially the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, is an island country in Southeast Asia. It comprises the eastern half of the island of Timor, the exclave of Oecusse on the island's north-west ...
.
Summary
In the words of Hitchens, Kissinger deserves prosecution "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." He further calls him "a stupendous liar with a remarkable memory."
The book takes the form of a prosecutorial document, as Hitchens limits his critique to such charges as he believes might stand up in an international court of law following precedents set at Nuremberg and elsewhere. These link Kissinger to war casualties in Vietnam, massacres in Bangladesh and Timor and assassinations in Chile, Cyprus, and
Washington, D.C.
)
, image_skyline =
, image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...
The book takes a very negative view of Kissinger and calls for Americans to not ignore Kissinger's record. In the author's words, "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."
Publication history
Highlights from the book were serialized in ''
Harper's Magazine'' in February and March 2001.
The book was re-issued in 2012 by
Atlantic Books
Atlantic Books is an independent British publishing house, with its headquarters in Ormond House in Bloomsbury, in the London Borough of Camden. It is perhaps best known for publishing Aravind Adiga's debut novel '' The White Tiger'', which r ...
and
Twelve Books
Hachette Book Group (HBG) is a publishing company owned by Hachette Livre, the largest publishing company in France, and the third largest trade and educational publisher in the world. Hachette Livre is a wholly owned subsidiary of Lagardère Grou ...
along with two other short books by Hitchens, ''
The Missionary Position, ''a critique of
Mother Teresa
Mary Teresa Bojaxhiu, MC (; 26 August 1910 – 5 September 1997), better known as Mother Teresa ( sq, Nënë Tereza), was an Indian-Albanian Catholic nun who, in 1950, founded the Missionaries of Charity. Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu () was ...
, and ''
No One Left to Lie To
''No One Left to Lie To: The Triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton'' is a 1999 book about President of the United States Bill Clinton by author and journalist Christopher Hitchens. It was first published in hardback by the ''New Left Review' ...
,'' a'' ''criticism of the political maneuvering and personal character of President
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson Clinton ( né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and agai ...
.
Reception
Tim Walker of ''
The Austin Chronicle
''The Austin Chronicle'' is an alternative weekly newspaper published every Thursday in Austin, Texas, United States. The paper is distributed through free news-stands, often at local eateries or coffee houses frequented by its targeted demogr ...
'' lauded Hitchens as "a brilliant polemicist and a tireless reporter. Both sets of skills are on display throughout this book as he presents damning documentary evidence against Kissinger in case after case."
Vietnam War whistleblower
Fred Branfman argued that "only a nation in deep spiritual and psychological disarray could honor a man with as much blood on his hands as Henry Kissinger" and wrote that "
itchens'sbook deserves much wider attention." Keith Phipps of ''
The A.V. Club
''The A.V. Club'' is an American online newspaper and entertainment website featuring reviews, interviews, and other articles that examine films, music, television, books, games, and other elements of pop-culture media. ''The A.V. Club'' was cre ...
'' praised the text as a "persuasive, damning account of Kissinger's activities as an international power-broker", and said that "by the time the author—using the same careful, if one-sided, reporting—implicates Kissinger in the planned assassination of a dissident Greek journalist, it seems well within the bounds of plausibility." In the ''
Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the U ...
'',
Warren I. Cohen said Hitchens "does a lawyerly job of demonstrating Kissinger's involvement" in the 1973 overthrow of
Salvador Allende
Salvador Guillermo Allende Gossens (, , ; 26 June 1908 – 11 September 1973) was a Chilean physician and socialist politician who served as the 28th president of Chile from 3 November 1970 until his death on 11 September 1973. He was the fir ...
and "also spells out the American role in the Greek junta's attempt in 1974 to assassinate
Archbishop Makarios
Makarios III ( el, Μακάριος Γ΄; born Michael Christodoulou Mouskos) (Greek: Μιχαήλ Χριστοδούλου Μούσκος) (13 August 1913 – 3 August 1977) was a Cypriot politician, archbishop and primate who served as ...
, president of Cyprus, and catches Kissinger and Ford acquiescing in the Indonesian
invasion of East Timor in 1975."
A month after Hitchens' death, John R. MacArthur of ''
Harper's Magazine'', while criticizing Hitchens's interventionism after the
September 11 attacks
The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commer ...
, referred to ''The Trial of Henry Kissinger'' as a "landmark book".
Conversely, in a review for ''
The Daily Telegraph
''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally.
It was f ...
'', author
George Jonas
George Jonas, CM (June 15, 1935 – January 10, 2016) was a Hungarian-born Canadian writer, poet, and journalist. A self-described classical liberal, he authored 16 books, including the bestseller '' Vengeance'' (1984), the story of an Israeli ...
accused Hitchens of using devices improper to nonfiction, arguing that in one passage the author "admits he is guessing, but this does not prevent him from starting the paragraph by placing 'a tremor of anxiety' - ie, a consciousness of guilt - into Dr Kissinger's mind. This device might be acceptable in a novel - except this is not a novel."
Kissinger biographer
regarded the book as "deeply flawed
ndbased on very thin research".
Documentary film
The book inspired the 2002
documentary film
A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in te ...
''
The Trials of Henry Kissinger
''The Trials of Henry Kissinger'' is a 2002 documentary film directed by Eugene Jarecki and narrated by Brian Cox. Inspired by Christopher Hitchens' 2001 book ''The Trial of Henry Kissinger'', the film examines war crimes alleged to have been per ...
'', which was co-written by Hitchens and fellow writer/director,
Alex Gibney.
Hitchens makes an appearance in the film, being interviewed about Kissinger. The documentary also features film of Kissinger but only in archive footage.
See also
*
Seymour Hersh
Seymour Myron "Sy" Hersh (born April 8, 1937) is an American Investigative journalism, investigative journalist and political writer.
Hersh first gained recognition in 1969 for exposing the My Lai Massacre and its cover-up during the Vietnam Wa ...
References
External links
''Washington Journal'' interview with Hitchens on his ''Harper's'' article, "The Case Against Henry Kissinger", January 22, 2001 C-SPANPresentation by Hitchens on ''The Trial of Henry Kissinger'', June 28, 2001 C-SPAN
{{DEFAULTSORT:Trial of Henry Kissinger, The
2002 non-fiction books
Non-fiction books adapted into films
Books by Christopher Hitchens
Political books
Henry Kissinger
Verso Books books