Review: The Trial of Henry Kissinger

Mr. Hitchens premise behind this book is to bring to light “those Kissingerian 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, including conspiracy to commit murder, kidnap and torture.” This book is a prosecutorial document and it is based on a compilation of facts that are already well established. If you prefer to think, before reading it, that this is merely a book with a political agenda or that it is leftist propaganda, then this book will leave you with either open eyes or a lot of back peddling. Mr. Hitchens sources transcripts from the Nixon tapes, the memoirs and papers of Nixon, Ford and Reagan administration officials and congressional hearing testimony. There is information that has previously been unpublished and material released under the Freedom of Information Act. With this he investigates Kissingers involvement in the Indochina invasion that led to genocide in East Timor, his support for the Pakistan military government that led to mass murder in Bangladesh (and a bloody military coup), assassination conspiracies in Cyprus, Greece, and bombings of Cambodia and Laos, which killed roughly a million civilians. His use of “two track” policies like the one used in Chile; “one the diplomatic one and the other, unknown to the State Department or the US ambassador to Chile, was a strategy of destabilization, kidnap and assassination, designed to provoke a military coup.”

With the detention of Augusto Pinochet and the international interest in prosecuting Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic, Mr. Hitchens “case” for prosecution as these criminals. In a final quote from Hitchens “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.”

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Jennifer Jordan

Book Review: The Trial of Henry Kissinger