American Experience

JOHN FARRELL: Richard Nixon is getting his daughter married at the White House.

(guests applauding) In the meantime, behind the scenes... ...this fella Daniel Ellsberg has leaked the secret history of the Vietnam War to "The New York Times."

And on the same Sunday where there's the picture of Tricia Nixon being married, there's this story about the Pentagon Papers.

REPORTER: Daniel Ellsberg, ex-Pentagon employee, made history by leaking to "The New York Times" the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret study of Vietnam policy.

HEDRICK SMITH: Pentagon Papers were 7,000 pages of secret history of the war in Vietnam commissioned by Robert McNamara, the former secretary of defense, who became disillusioned with the war, and wanted a full record of how we got into it and how it went wrong.

FARRELL: Nixon reads his newspaper and his daily briefings, and pfft, doesn't care about it.

Most of the Pentagon Papers are about Johnson and Kennedy.

They're not about him.

NIXON: Hello.

SECRETARY: Mr.

President, I have Dr.

Kissinger calling you.

NIXON: Okay.

FARRELL: But for some reason, Henry Kissinger reads this story in "The New York Times" and goes ballistic.

KISSINGER: It's, it's treasonable.

There's no question it's actionable.

I'm absolutely certain that this violates all sorts of security laws.

NIXON: What, what do we do about it?

Kissinger is convinced that Daniel Ellsberg, if he had access to the Pentagon Papers, has access to what's going on in Cambodia, and he's obsessed that Ellsberg's next step is to release information about the secret bombing campaign in Cambodia.

Ten years in prison is very cheap if they could contribute to ending this war.

FARRELL: Ellsberg was a Kissinger protg, and so, Kissinger is worried that the finger eventually is going to come back at him.

GREG GRANDIN: Kissinger describes Ellsberg as unhinged.

KISSINGER: Of course, that son of a bitch, I know him well-- he was a... NIXON: You know him?

KISSINGER: Oh, well.

From early '69 on, he just went off his rocker.

Just totally wild.

And he's moved into a more and more intransigent, radical position.

So, it's Kissinger that gins up Nixon about Ellsberg.

NIXON: Let's get the son of a bitch into jail.

KISSINGER: We've got to get him.

We've got to get him.

Kissinger's frantic self-protective reaction to the exposure of the Pentagon Papers drives Nixon to a place which eventually becomes the first step towards Watergate.

(phone ringing) (explosions pounding) (explosions pounding) (shouting) WINSTON LORD: From the very beginning of Nixon's administration, Kissinger was running all the major elements of foreign policy.

The three major, immediate objectives were all with communist countries: China, Russia, and Vietnam.

The broad strategy was to know where you want to go over the long run, to see how the pieces fit.

So, what you did with one country, how it would affect another country?

And I think Kissinger felt you had to reconcile the just with the possible.

ROBERT BRIGHAM: Vietnam, to Kissinger and to Nixon, was a thorn in their side.

They wanted it off page one so they could get to all the kind of things that Nixon had on his very expansive and aggressive foreign policy plate.

You couldn't do those until you had the Vietnam question settled.

JEREMI SURI: The United States seemed hemmed in in Vietnam.

We seemed unable to do anything right.

But Kissinger recognized that there was a lot of power in taking the initiative.

He was willing to take risks and he was able to manufacture opportunities where they did not exist before.

NIALL FERGUSON: Before they came to power, both Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger thought, "What might be done with China?"

I think it took the two of them spending time together, contemplating the great chessboard of the Cold War, to realize that, if we could only establish some communications with China, that could be helpful in a number of ways.

It could help you with the Vietnam problem, but it could also help you with the Soviets.

We had, for the last few decades, assumed that communism was a seamless whole.

Well, suddenly, not so much.

In the late '60s, you started to see friction and then clashes between the Soviets and the Chinese along border areas.

(shouting) HAASS: And you had people in the intelligence community saying, "Hey, "rather than being on the same team, "these guys are on different teams.

There's actually a split."

Which we began to call the Sino-Soviet split.

FILM NARRATOR: A disputed frontier between the dragon and the bear.

FERGUSON: A war broke out, a border dispute between the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China.

(people shouting) More importantly, there was an ideological battle for leadership of the communist world.

This was the setting within which Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger developed perhaps the boldest ploy in all of Cold War statecraft.

(band playing) (applauding and cheering) FAREED ZAKARIA: Mao's China was probably the most closed country in the world.

There were very few people who went in there.

So, it really was this place on the moon.

Nobody really knew what was going on inside.

FERGUSON: Mao's policies had reduced China to one of the lowest standards of living in the world.

Wretched poverty enforced by the draconian measures of communist rule.

JIANYING ZHA: I was born in late 1959, ten years after the communists took over China.

(crowd cheering and applauding) Mao was our Red Sun, was the savior of China.

(exclaiming) ZHA: We were schooled on all this anti-Western propaganda.

(explosion pounds) I grew up seeing this famous Korean War movies called "Heroic Children."

(speaking Chinese) And in it, you see American soldiers played by Chinese actors with fake noses and white powder.

And they were incredibly ridiculous creatures who would be mowed down by Chinese machine guns.

(explosion roars) So that was the very cartoonish picture of Americans that we had in our head.

(band playing "The Stars and Stripes Forever") (crowd cheering and applauding) LORD: As we came into office, one week after his inauguration... Do you, Richard Milhous Nixon... LORD: ...Nixon sent a memo to Kissinger and said, "Get in touch with the Chinese, see what we can do."

One week, and you could see his priority.

FERGUSON: This is where the story gets the most cloak and the most dagger.

The process of trying to get in touch with Beijing started almost immediately in 1969, but it was extremely difficult, because the Chinese were extremely hard to get to.

The Chinese had no diplomatic representatives anywhere in the world.

Even having an address where you could confidentially and reliably communicate with the Chinese didn't exist.

So, what they had to do is find discreet intermediaries who could play that role.

FERGUSON: Of all countries, it turned out to be Pakistan that made the connection happen.

REPORTER: Today's highlight is the new ambassador from Pakistan and his family.

LORD: And what would happen is that the Chinese would send a secret message, which would end up with the Pakistani ambassador in Washington, who would call on Kissinger with the message.

In January 1971, we had sent a message, and we hadn't heard back for months, and indeed, we got quite nervous.

FERGUSON: Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, the Chinese premier, were great believers in the subtle approach, and so, the faintest of signals was sent out from Beijing to the effect that there might possibly be a conversation worth having.

(crowd cheering) THOMAS SCHWARTZ: April of 1971, in Japan, an American Ping-Pong team was playing in, in international Ping-Pong matches, and one of the participants in that was the People's Republic of China.

ORVILLE SCHELL: What happened was, there was a young, sort of a hippie Ping-Pong player, with long hair, and tie-dyed shirts, and he got on the wrong bus-- it was the Chinese bus-- and met their star player.

And they kind of got to be friends.

And on the basis of that, I think Zhou Enlai saw a little flash of light.

SCHWARTZ: One of the coaches from the People's Republic approached the Americans about the possibility of them coming to China to play exhibition.

This was an extraordinary moment and received incredible coverage in the American media.

NEWS ANCHOR: The first films are now coming out of Red China of the visit by the first U.S.

group ever invited by the Chinese communists.

Today, Premier Zhou Enlai met the visiting players.

He told them their visit opens a new door.

FERGUSON: It was a signal that, yes, there was an opportunity to send an American representative to Beijing.

The question was, who would that be?

Secrecy was crucial, and that meant that Nixon could only really entrust it to the one person who already knew that this was his cherished goal, and that was Henry Kissinger.

KISSINGER: I knew nothing about China.

That's a great qualification for a secret mission, but it happens to be true.

(audience chuckling) I had the same thought in the '50s that everyone else had, that, that the Chinese were revolutionary near-madmen.

LORD: We had to set up what the cover story would be.

So we go on a public trip to four countries.

And we stop, of course, in Pakistan.

Henry's cover was going to be that he's got a stomachache.

NEWS ANCHOR: Presidential adviser Henry Kissinger is staying an extra day in Pakistan because of an upset stomach.

LORD: You know, and at 2:00 a.m., we're driven to the Islamabad airport by the defense minister.

The four of us get on the plane.

And so here we are, flying toward Beijing.

None of the world knows where we are.

We were exhilarated and anxious, I mean, this was a gamble-- this was no sure thing.

We land at a military airport in Beijing, and of course, we drove in automobiles where the curtains were down, nobody could see us.

FERGUSON: Kissinger was deeply impressed by Zhou Enlai, the Chinese premier, and this was one of the great meetings of minds that happened in his career.

KISSINGER: He was a man of extraordinary intelligence, one of the most intelligent people I've ever met.

He had an extraordinarily expressive face.

He understood English, though he did not admit it, so his face registered while you talked to him.

SCHELL: The driving force was hopes that if we could pull China more into our orbit, we could resolve the Vietnam War.

Most of the military equipment going to North Vietnam was coming through China.

JOHN NEGROPONTE: I remember him telling Zhou Enlai, "We don't want to wake up in the morning in the second term reading battlefield reports from Vietnam."

One term was enough.

LORD: The Chinese had two major goals.

One was to balance the Soviet Union, which was increasingly threatening them, and the other was coming out of diplomatic isolation.

The key issue, of course, we had to get around was the Taiwan issue.

SCHWARTZ: And so Kissinger made it clear to the Chinese that the United States would withdraw some of its forces from Taiwan if the Vietnam War came to an end.

(talking in background) SCHWARTZ: Toward the end of the talks, it was finally raised that President Nixon would come to China.

SCHELL: I think Kissinger did have a recognition something big had happened.

After all, he had gotten to the top of China.

And he had, in effect, triggered an invitation for Nixon himself.

DAVID KISSINGER: I do remember how jubilant he was when he returned from his secret trip.

I had never seen him like that before.

He was just vibrating with excitement.

SCHWARTZ: Kissinger briefs Nixon, and Nixon schedules a national television speech.

Good evening.

SCHWARTZ: The secrecy was such that people thought it was about Vietnam.

It hit the nation on a Sunday night as a complete surprise.

NIXON: I have taken this action because of my profound conviction that all nations will gain from a reduction of tensions and a better relationship between the United States and the People's Republic of China.

TOM JARRIEL: Details of Henry Kissinger's secret trip, which led to that announcement, were spelled out today in a factual account which makes most detective story fiction seem bland.

REPORTER: Henry, can you just tell us, do you feel encouraged as a result of your trip to Peking?

I think we, we made some progress.

JARRIEL: The Taiwanese ambassador was visibly upset.

JAMES SHEN: I got a 20 minutes' notice last night-- I couldn't believe it.

We think it's not the kind of thing a friend and an ally should do to another.

(crowd cheering and applauding) REPORTER: Observers may argue over whether Dr.

Henry Kissinger is a secret swinger or a square masquerading as one, but there's no doubt he is the deputy president on this trip.

The brilliant, elusive intellectual, who has structured the substance of the top-level talks, will be at the president's side throughout.

(no dialogue) ZHA: We heard this official announcement that Nixon was coming to China.

I still remember rounds of school briefings to prepare, in case you should encounter any Americans on the street.

The correct attitude is not too arrogant and not too obsequious.

(band playing) And I remember, when Nixon actually landed, somehow, I had a sense this was a super-important moment that's going to, in some ways, change your life.

REPORTER: The first American president ever to do so steps onto Chinese soil.

(band playing) SCHELL: The meetings with Mao Zedong took place in an area adjacent to the Forbidden City called Zhongnanhai.

And that's where Mao held court.

REPORTER: The fact that Chairman Mao arranged an immediate meeting with the American chief of state in his home is considered significant by diplomatic observers.

SCHELL: Just to be there was to be in the most forbidden, inaccessible place on Earth.

I think it must have been quite exhilarating.

KISSINGER: It's one of those few experiences you have when you are an adult which have some of the quality of childhood about them, that everything is totally new.

LORD: We were used to these elegant Mandarin discourses by Zhou Enlai.

What we got from Mao was laconic phrases, allegories, either that were brilliant, and we stupid Westerners couldn't understand, or he was slightly senile.

(chuckles) ZHA: Mao was a great performer.

He says a Chinese phrase.

He said, "The wind and, and rain are coming, so the swallows are busy."

Kissinger's reaction was, "Oh, that was so deep, it would take me several days to fully grasp that."

But in fact, it's a very tacky, trite Chinese, you know, sort of saying.

Kissinger ate it right up.

REPORTER: Zhou and Nixon sit down for conversations which last for more than 30 hours.

The result is the Shanghai Communiqu.

ZAKARIA: You can see the mastery of Kissinger's diplomacy by looking at what's called the Shanghai Communiqu, which is, how do you get around the problem that the United States basically thinks Taiwan is the real China?

SCHELL: So what did they do to put the Taiwan question aside?

They agreed on this very guileful solution where the United States... And there's a word in Chinese, they said was "ren shi dao."

"We, we acknowledge," "we take note of the fact" that China says Taiwan is part of China.

(talking in background) (chuckles): It's masterful in its obfuscation and vagueness, but it somehow satisfied everyone.

FERGUSON: It was a dream come true for Richard Nixon himself and also for Henry Kissinger.

This was good news after an unremitting diet of bad news over Vietnam and over Cambodia.

It felt as though they were changing the subject of the American conversation.

SPIRO AGNEW: We have witnessed, through the miracle of satellite television, the sights and sounds of a society that has been closed to Americans for over two decades.

SAM HOSKINSON: The opening to China was maybe, in the 20th century, the most strategic move that any president has ever made.

It was the height of the Cold War, China and the Soviet Union were allies, and we peeled off China-- it was that simple.

ZHA: I think to see the realpolitik played out was very sobering.

The whole thing was part of a geopolitical game to balance the Soviet Union.

Nixon and Kissinger had no interest in helping improve the political situation in China.

They had no thoughts, not a iota of thoughts, about human rights.

At one level, how could I expect anything more?

ALVANDI: I think it's a mistake to see Kissinger's realpolitik as an absence of morality.

What he sees as the moral good is the preservation of American security.

Where I think we begin to enter into a moral gray area for Kissinger is, what means are acceptable in order to achieve that end?

And I think he had very few limits.

FERGUSON: Every president, every national security adviser, takes decisions in which there are priorities accorded to countries and in which evils are ranked not just according to their moral magnitude, but, more importantly, according to their strategic magnitude.

KISSINGER: The East Pakistan crisis erupted at the time that Pakistan was our only channel of communication to China.

We were in the process of arranging my secret trip in the precise period that West Pakistan was trying to put down the uprising in East Pakistan.

FERGUSON: The partition of British India had produced a strange situation in which there were essentially two parts to Pakistan.

What we know today as Pakistan was West Pakistan.

What we know today as Bangladesh was East Pakistan.

RAAD RAHMAN: East Pakistan and West Pakistan did not share a language, they did not share culture, they did not share history.

It's a complete recipe for conflict.

(protesters shouting) SCHWARTZ: In 1970, the residents of East Pakistan voted overwhelmingly for a different government from the West Pakistanis.

(shouting) ROGER MORRIS: The eastern portion is beginning to revolt against the authority of the West Pakistani government.

It's got its own elected parliament, its own elected leadership, a man named Mujib, and it's on the verge of civil war.

(chanting, cheering) ALVANDI: Yahya Khan is the channel through which Nixon and Kissinger are communicating with China, and it's absolutely vital that he remain in power.

President Yahya Khan of Pakistan flies to East Pakistan tomorrow to try to talk his opposition into obeying the central government.

(protesters shouting) W. SCOTT BUTCHER: In Dhaka, I was the junior political officer.

At 1: 26 in the morning of the 26th of March, all hell broke loose.

The West Pakistani military were unleashed with a vengeance.

Automatic weapons right outside of our bedroom.

MORRIS: The Pakistanis murdered large numbers of the opposition politicians in their beds at night, killed their families, raked Dhaka-- the capital of East Pakistan-- with artillery, wantonly killing innocent civilians.

RAHMAN: The Pakistani army went into Dhaka University and just rounded up academics, including my uncles, and disappeared them.

(people shouting in background) HOSKINSON: I mean, what was happening was genocide before our very eyes.

(people calling in background) KISSINGER: We are in the process of attempting to negotiate a ceasefire in the Dhaka area in order to be able to evacuate the Americans.

GARY BASS: The Nixon administration had lots of information about what's happening.

They're getting real-time reporting from the U.S.

consulate in Dhaka.

These Foreign Service officers have seen that kind of violence before, and they're saying, "This is in a completely different category.

We've never seen anything like this."

NIXON: None of them reliable.

ALVANDI: There's enormous pressure on Nixon and Kissinger to cut aid and military support for Pakistan.

But they choose not to do that.

BUTCHER: We were absolutely mortified that our government was not responding in what was a, a humanitarian disaster inflicted by a government that we supported.

So, a number of us, especially younger officers, felt that we needed to send in this, an expression of dissent.

"Our government has failed to denounce "the suppression of democracy.

"Our government has failed to denounce atrocities.

"Our government has evidenced what many will consider moral bankruptcy."

NIXON: We've been in touch, of course, with the Pakistanis through messages we've sent to President Yahya.

And incidentally, he's been very forthcoming.

Well, we can't be blamed for it.

There are many, many areas of the world that, that we just can't, we can't be responsible for.

HOSKINSON: I was shocked by the lack of reaction from Kissinger and Nixon.

They seemed, uh, unaffected by it, except in, in the sense that they wanted it to go away.

RAHMAN: As far as Kissinger was concerned, these lives in South Asia, they just didn't matter.

We've never recovered the bodies of my uncles.

SCHWARTZ: There could have been an arms cutoff, there could have been stronger measures taken against Pakistan which were not taken.

BARBARA KEYS: Ultimately, it comes down to Kissinger's assessment that what matters is China, and what happens in East Pakistan is almost a footnote relative to these larger objectives.

KISSINGER: There are governments in power that may not meet all our criteria for democratic principles, but the alternative to which are likely to be positively hostile to our interests.

To manipulate the domestic politics of another country is always an extremely complicated matter.

And you can start a process which you cannot control, and you may not know how to do it.

JUAN GABRIEL VALDS: My first encounter with the "great man" was when there was a luncheon at our residence.

My father was foreign affairs minister.

And in this luncheon, there was a big debate, and Kissinger says, "Look, I don't care about Latin America.

"I don't care about your development.

"History doesn't go through the South.

"History comes from Russia to Japan "to Europe and to the United States.

The South has no importance."

(bell ringing) KEYS: Kissinger called Chile "a dagger pointed at the heart of Antarctica."

He did not think that Latin America was important.

He, in fact, said, "Latin America is not important."

VALDS: Chile was probably the country that first had a stable democracy in the region.

We had a democracy even before some European countries.

Salvador Allende was a person who had represented the hopes of the poor in Chile for decades.

And poor people felt that he was their leader.

(people chanting) PETER KORNBLUH: Allende was head of the Socialist Party.

He believed in the need for social change, redistribution of wealth, and that this could be done through the, the ballot box.

ARIEL DORFMAN: There is a sense in Kissinger that Allende's example could proliferate all over the continent.

And he considers that one must stop the contagion.

Allende made no secret of his determination to bring about a revolutionary transformation.

FERGUSON: Nobody wanted another Cuba.

And so, when any left-wing leader showed signs of coming to power in a Latin American country, the red lights started flashing on the dashboard in the Situation Room.

KEYS: In the Cold War, every inch of territory matters.

It's a zero-sum game.

Any victory for the communists is a loss for the United States.

KORNBLUH: And so, all eyes were on Chile on September 4, 1970, as this election took place.

(people talking in background) KEYS: The presidential election in Chile in 1970 is a three-way race in which Salvador Allende wins 36.6% of the vote.

(people cheering, car horns honking) DORFMAN: But this must be ratified by Congress.

So, there is a chance for those who are against Allende to try to find a way to stop Allende from becoming president.

KORNBLUH: Kissinger talks to C.I.A.

director Richard Helms on the phone and basically says, "We cannot let Chile go down the drain."

And Helms says, "I'm with you."

And they start to plot out how they're going to keep Allende from actually being inaugurated as president.

(chanting): Allende!

Allende!

KEYS: Kissinger says, "I don't see why we should "let a country go communist "just because of the irresponsibility of its own people."

(crowd clamoring) KORNBLUH: President Nixon called in to Richard Helms and Kissinger to the Oval Office, and Helms took handwritten notes on Nixon's orders.

"Save Chile.

"Don't tell the ambassador.

"Make the economy scream.

48-hour game plan."

KEYS: Nixon authorizes two tracks, and then Kissinger carries these out.

Track one is essentially an attempt to bribe the Chilean members of Congress from ratifying Allende.

Track two is what becomes infamous.

It is an effort to help the Chilean military institute a coup against Allende.

VALDS: The Chilean "consultants" that the C.I.A.

had and Kissinger had at the time recommended the kidnapping of the commander-in-chief of the armed forces.

That meant General Schneider.

KORNBLUH: General Ren Schneider, head of the Chilean armed forces, was pro-constitution.

He was the principal obstacle to any coup plot involving the military, and so he had to be removed, neutralized, eliminated.

(teletype machine clacking) VALDS: They sent machine guns through the pouch of the American embassy and $30,000 for the general who was in charge of Santiago.

KORNBLUH: On October 22, General Schneider got into his car.

The car drove three or four blocks.

It was intercepted by several other vehicles filled with thugs.

One thug got out with a sledgehammer and started smashing in the windows.

VALDS: General Schneider had a, a gun, and he tried to defend himself, and they killed him.

KORNBLUH: Henry Kissinger... (phone ringing) ...gets on the phone with Richard Nixon as General Ren Schneider lies dying in a military hospital, and he says, "The first step of the coup plot took place, "but, such an incompetent bunch, these Chilean military officers, that the rest of the plot is not going forward."

(crowd murmuring) (bell ringing) VALDS: The shock that this murder produced in Chilean society, instead of weakening Allende, gave an enormous strength to the election of Allende.

(crowd chanting) Allende, therefore, was proclaimed president ten days later.

(crowd cheering and applauding) KEYS: Kissinger does not give up.

He wants Allende out of there.

So there's an American effort to undermine his government.

And that includes cutting off loans and aid, funding opposition parties, opposition media, and fomenting strikes.

VALDS: The first thing that Nixon said after the election of Allende was, "Make the economy scream."

In fact, the economy screamed.

A country becomes tense, becomes polarized, and then you have a society which was a healthy society in political terms that becomes absolutely out of control.

(people shouting, weapons firing) REPORTER: Army, navy, air force, and national police staged the coup that ends 46 years of democratic rule in Chile.

The military moves in, the palace is surrounded.

KORNBLUH: September 11, 1973, the Chilean military undertook a very violent coup.

They launched rocket attacks, bombarding the Moneda Palace.

(explosions pound) ALLENDE (in Spanish on radio): VALDS: Allende was in the presidential palace.

He began talking on the radio.

ALLENDE (speaking Spanish): VALDS: He persuaded the rest of the people who were inside to leave the palace.

When they were leaving the palace, one of the doctors of Allende decided that he would come back to where the office of the president was, and he saw Allende sitting with a machine gun here, and he shot himself.

KEYS: There is no direct evidence that Nixon and Kissinger knew about that coup in advance, and there's no evidence that they helped plan it.

But they were thrilled that Allende was gone, and they immediately threw U.S.

support behind Pinochet.

(band playing) VALDS: Augusto Pinochet was the commander-in-chief of the army at the moment in which the coup happened.

(shouts in Spanish) (respond in Spanish) VALDS: Pinochet came late to the conspiracy to organize a coup, and in order to persuade those who had been from the first moment in favor of the coup, he had to be more brutal than them when he took power.

KYLE BURKE: Pinochet began rounding up leftists and suspected subversives, gathered them up in a series of detention centers, including the national soccer stadium, and began the process of executing many of them.

Many were tortured for information.

Many more were tortured simply for the purpose of instilling the Chilean population with fear.

VALDS: There were thousands of people killed, thousands of people tortured, thousands of people who had to live abroad forever.

I would say that it is incomparable to any other event in, in our history.

KORNBLUH: After the coup, Nixon seems preoccupied that the United States might be exposed, and Kissinger says, we didn't do it.

I mean, we helped them "create the conditions as best as possible."

KEYS: You would think that as a refugee from Nazi Germany, that Kissinger would be deeply committed to democracy.

But he seemed to think that it was not a problem at all to have dictators be on the side of the U.S.

in the struggle against communism.

And in cases like Chile, he was clearly willing to subvert democracy.

The argument that Kissinger makes is that everything that he is doing is in the service of the best outcome for the world.

He's thinking about the global chessboard.

And the fact that there are gonna be people suffering, dying on the ground, that to him is a necessary consequence of pursuing policies that are going to result in global stability.

REPORTER: Russia puts on its annual May Day show of strength in these just-released films from Moscow.

FERGUSON: The Soviet Union at the beginning of the Nixon administration had good reason to think that they were winning the Cold War.

The United States was bogged down in Vietnam, but that wasn't its only problem.

With every passing year, the Soviets built more nuclear weapons until they achieved parity, and then overtook the United States in terms of the size of their nuclear arsenal.

SURI: From 1945, from Hiroshima, until the early '70s, it's a breakneck race to build more nuclear weapons.

This was a very unstable situation, and there was no obvious end to it.

(explosion roars) KISSINGER: When the decision of peace and war involves the survival of tens of millions of people, you're no longer playing power politics in the traditional sense.

To conduct confrontation politics when the stakes are going to be determined by nuclear weapons is the height of irresponsibility.

This is what we mean by "dtente."

(people exclaiming) FERGUSON: "Dtente" is a French word that really just meant improving relations.

It was about buying some time, reducing the risk of World War III, and trying to recover from what was becoming the insolvable problem of Vietnam.

(crowd talking in background) CAROLYN EISENBERG: Kissinger definitely saw a role for the Soviet Union in the resolution of Vietnam, and he is very clear that he's interested in getting help from them in bringing this to a close.

FERGUSON: Kissinger would creatively suggest the possibility of a summit meeting, and the Soviets would say, "Nyet."

This changed with the opening to China.

KISSINGER: When we opened to China, the Soviets suddenly realized that we had a bigger canvas to paint on than they had calculated.

And in that sense, there was leverage.

SMITH: The Soviets who are looking at the world stage are saying, "Wait a minute.

"We've just been outflanked.

"And if we don't get into talks with the Americans "and strike a deal that makes us an equal superpower, the Chinese are gonna replace us."

Good evening.

President Nixon has announced that he'll be going to Moscow next May for a summit conference with Soviet leaders.

It'll be the first trip to the Soviet Union by an American president since Franklin Roosevelt journeyed to Yalta in the waning days of World War II.

NEGROPONTE: Kissinger and Nixon accepted an invitation to stay in the Kremlin.

I mean, whether you, as president of the United States, would have wanted everything you did... (chuckling): ...in your guest room bugged and photographed, I don't know.

But that's, that's what Henry agreed to do.

So they stayed in the Kremlin.

ALVANDI: The Soviet leadership had installed Leonid Brezhnev.

Not the sharpest knife in the drawer intellectually, let's put it that way.

SMITH: Brezhnev is a classic Communist Party apparatchik who has risen to the top by being very careful at playing all sides against each other.

He's not a thug, but he's not very far from a thug.

(chuckling) FERGUSON: The most surreal moment in their relationship must have been when Brezhnev treated Kissinger to a visit to his hunting lodge.

Henry Kissinger was not the kind of person who goes shooting wild boar as a recreational pastime.

KISSINGER: They put out the food.

You sit in a tower and shoot these poor bastards as they come by to feed.

When he had killed about three boars and God knows what else, he unpacked a picnic and said, "Look, I want to talk to you privately."

And he said, "Look, you and me are partners.

You and me are going to run the world."

NEGROPONTE: I participated in the meeting with Brezhnev at his dacha.

It was an evening devoted to Vietnam.

LORD: The meeting was just three or four top Soviet leaders, including Brezhnev, took turns lambasting Nixon about his Vietnam policy, all of which was to show Hanoi how tough they were.

NEGROPONTE: And we met for four hours!

And I remember Nixon leaning over to Kissinger saying, you know, "Jesus Christ, we gotta get out of here."

(chuckling): At that point, Brezhnev says, "Well, now we're going upstairs for dinner."

(people talking in background) LORD: The whole mood changed, everyone got half-drunk.

And then, toward the end of that dinner, Brezhnev says to Nixon, "I think Kissinger should go off and negotiate with my people on, on the SALT agreement."

FERGUSON: SALT was the first treaty ever negotiated to limit the growth of what were euphemistically called "strategic arms."

NEGROPONTE: We go back to Moscow.

We needed to Xerox the SALT treaty, because it was being signed.

And suddenly, the Xerox machine wouldn't work anymore.

And so Henry goes to the Xerox machine, he grabs the treaty, he holds it up to the chandelier.

And he says, "General Antonov"-- Antonov was our KGB minder.

(laughing): He said, "General Antonov, can I have six copies of this, please?"

(laughs) REPORTER: SALT I was signed.

One of the results was the anti-ballistic missile treaty and agreement to shelve the elaborate and expensive anti-ballistic missile apparatus in the U.S.

and the Soviet Union.

FERGUSON: The first SALT agreement was not a trivial achievement.

Of course, it didn't stop the Soviets building nuclear warheads, but I think, from Kissinger's point of view, you'd created a new basis for the relationship, and you'd at least created a mode within which arms limitation could be achieved.

SMITH: The psychological impact was powerful.

Powerful because we're acknowledging we're vulnerable to each other, and we're saying, "Hey, this is crazy to keep spending money this way and threatening each other."

My recollection is, they let Nixon go on Soviet television, which was unheard of-- we couldn't believe it.

NIXON: Dobry vecher.

I deeply appreciate this opportunity your government has given me to speak directly with the people of the Soviet Union, to bring you a message of friendship from all the people of the United States.

SCHWARTZ: The SALT agreement at the time was seen almost as the end of the Cold War.

To many Americans, the idea that the Soviets and the Americans could actually meet and negotiate about their arms signaled that we were not headed toward nuclear destruction.

ALVANDI: What it really did was establish a relationship of trust.

They weren't two enemies on either sides of the barricades anymore.

But dtente did not end the Vietnam War.

The Vietnamese Communist Party was not going to abandon the idea of reunifying Vietnam simply because Moscow said so.

I think Nixon and Kissinger and a lot of other people saw the North Vietnamese as being linked to and run by the Russians and the Chinese, and they weren't.

They were running the war themselves for their own national mission.

REPORTER: This was the 17th private meeting and the fourth time in the last two months that Kissinger has met secretly with Le Duc Tho and Xuan Thuy.

He left the meeting grim-faced and solemn, without answering questions, giving no indication of what happened inside.

FERGUSON: The pace of negotiations with the North Vietnamese picked up in 1971-72.

A big question was what exactly Kissinger was playing for.

Was he playing for the long-term survival of South Vietnam?

Or was he playing for a decent interval, a respectable amount of time that South Vietnam would survive, long enough for, say, Richard Nixon to get re-elected?

(cheering and applauding) REPORTER: Mr.

Nixon is running for a second term, but as he does, what happens in the war is his responsibility.

CROWD: Four more years!

FERGUSON: Nixon and Kissinger could sometimes sound as if they were focused on getting through the '72 election, and after that, the fate of South Vietnam would really not be their problem.

NEGROPONTE: If you read some of the tapes, there's one place where Nixon and Kissinger are talking, and Kissinger says to Nixon, "Well, Mr.

President, if Saigon collapses "before the election, you really have a problem.

But if it collapses afterwards, it doesn't really matter."

KISSINGER: The, the question is now, how can we maneuver it so that it can look like a settlement by Election Day, but that the process is still open?

If we can get that done, then we can screw them after Election Day, if necessary.

LORD: The North Vietnamese worried about Nixon getting re-elected.

Their latest offensive had been blunted by our military response.

They thought Nixon might be anxious for a settlement before the election.

The breakthrough came in early October when Le Duc Tho handed us a counter-proposal which essentially left the South Vietnamese government in place.

(speaking indistinctly) LORD: As soon as Le Duc Tho read out his proposal to us, we called for a break in the negotiations, and Henry and I went outside in the Paris garden, and we shook hands and smiled at each other and said, "We've done it!"

SCHWARTZ: Kissinger was overjoyed.

And he was absolutely convinced that the October Agreement was the real achievement for American diplomacy.

NEGROPONTE: Kissinger went back to Washington, and, on the 26th of October, had a famous press conference where he said peace was at hand.

REPORTER: Months of secret meetings, days of persistent rumors, reached their climax as presidential adviser Henry Kissinger met with reporters.

We believe that peace is at hand.

SCHWARTZ: What he overlooked, of course, was whether he could get the South Vietnamese to agree.

LORD: Henry and I were quite optimistic that, with some nudging and reassurance about support in the future, that President Thieu would be so pleased that we'd get him aboard.

But we went in there, and we ran into a buzzsaw.

REPORTER: The Saigon government-controlled radio says any separate agreement between North Vietnam and the United States will not concern South Vietnam in any way.

SCHWARTZ: There were about 100,000 North Vietnamese troops in South Vietnam at the time, and the South Vietnamese government wanted them out.

But the agreement did not insist that North Vietnamese troops withdraw from South Vietnam.

EISENBERG: The South Vietnamese government blows up.

They're absolutely furious.

And they make that clear immediately, that they, this is completely unacceptable, it's a sellout.

NEGROPONTE: We excluded them entirely from the negotiation of their own fate.

I mean, this is a negotiation about the future of South Vietnam.

REPORTER: Henry Kissinger confirming Radio Hanoi's claim that October 31 had been tentatively agreed upon as the date for signing a Vietnam ceasefire.

But Kissinger went on to say Saigon's President Thieu declined to go along until more guarantees were given.

SCHWARTZ: I think he believed that we had such leverage on the South Vietnamese, and that they didn't really have a choice.

(band playing "Hail to the Chief") REPORTER: Richard Nixon, re-elected president by one of the largest margins in history.

The mandate he sought he got.

(crowd cheering and applauding, music ends) LORD: After the election, we re-engaged the North Vietnamese in negotiations.

And not only did we not make progress, but they began to, to slip back on some of the concessions they had made.

KISSINGER: I was extremely depressed, because things had reached the point where we were so close to a settlement, and the thing blew up again.

I warned Hanoi that we would do something.

I didn't tell them what, because I didn't know what we were going to do.

BRIGHAM: Kissinger said repeatedly, "This raggedy-ass "fourth-rate country has a breaking point.

I'm going to find it."

KISSINGER: Nixon was of the view that something shocking had to be done.

And I think Nixon turned out to be right.

SCHWARTZ: Nixon and Kissinger decide on a massive bombing campaign: the so-called Christmas bombing.

(explosions pounding) NEWS ANCHOR: North Vietnam has gone through another day of the most intense bombing in the history of the Indochina war.

REPORTER: North Vietnamese officials claim that thousands of civilians have been killed or wounded, and that large sections of Hanoi have been wiped out.

(people calling, crying in background) EISENBERG: The Christmas bombing inflicted tremendous damage not only to their soldiers, but to civilians.

It was just inflicting as much damage as you could.

LORD: A lot of people said, "Oh, this was heartless and lots of innocent people were killed."

Now, I'm sure there was some collateral damage.

But basically, we did hit military targets.

BRIGHAM: Kissinger believed the Christmas bombings actually drove Hanoi back to the bargaining table.

Good morning from New York.

Peace is not only at hand, it is here.

KISSINGER: There is to be issued a new order on the ceasefire, which is to go into effect roughly 36 hours from now, and which we hope, and expect, will be implemented fully.

LIEN-HANG NGUYEN: The Paris agreement to end the war and restore the peace failed to do either.

It did not end the war, it did not end the fighting, and it did not bring about peace and stability to Vietnam.

All that it achieved was allowing the United States to withdraw militarily from Vietnam.

Kissinger knew full well that the fighting would resume even before the ink would dry on the piece of paper.

FARRELL: Nixon and Kissinger definitely knew the deal they signed in January 1973 would condemn South Vietnam to eventual defeat.

(band playing "Hail to the Chief") (crowd cheering and applauding) (band pauses) ANNOUNCER: Ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States.

(band resumes, crowd cheering and applauding) NIXON: We stand on the threshold of a new era of peace in the world.

(crowd cheers and applauds) MORRIS: 1972 was a landslide victory.

But Watergate, of course, begins to sink Nixon despite the massive re-election and begins to erode that landslide support almost immediately.

FARRELL: There's this tick-tick-ticking coming from closets and file cabinets in the White House, because a bunch of ding-dongs had been caught burglarizing the Democratic National Committee headquarters.

NEWS ANCHOR: The Watergate bugging case involves a bizarre break-in at the Democratic Party headquarters in which two men connected with the Nixon re-election campaign were arrested.

FARRELL: From that point on, everything else goes on back burners, while Nixon focuses almost exclusively on dealing with this threat to his presidency.

FERGUSON: When he came under attack for Watergate, Richard Nixon hoped that his way out was yet more foreign policy success.

And if Kissinger could deliver success, somehow, Nixon could extricate himself from the scandal.

SCHWARTZ: This was the moment when Nixon decides to appoint Kissinger to secretary of state.

NEWS ANCHOR: The Senate today approved the nomination of Henry Kissinger as secretary of state.

So a country boy from Frth, Germany, becomes the first American secretary of state ever born in another country.

KISSINGER: By the time I became secretary of state, the executive authority of the president was eroding at an alarming rate.

One of my jobs was to give the impression that we were capable of a purposeful foreign policy in this miasma of a president who was on the verge of being indicted or impeached.

MORRIS: If you're going to have a crisis in which you face the possibility of impeachment, Kissinger is the one firm thing.

He becomes the indispensable man.

FILM NARRATOR: October 6, 1973.

A surprise attack on the holiest of days.

FERGUSON: With the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War, Kissinger faced the most complex problem of his career.

SCHWARTZ: The Yom Kippur War began with an attack by the Egyptian army crossing the Suez Canal and the Syrian army attacking in the Golan Heights.

(firing) SALIM YAQUB: The Israelis had an inkling that something might occur.

But they did not realize how effective the Egyptian and Syrian assaults would be.

KISSINGER: 6:30 on October 6, 1973, my assistant secretary woke me up and said, "There's some trouble on the Suez Canal, "and if you get on the phone right away, you can get it under control."

HOSKINSON: We're in the Situation Room with the secretary of defense, and the director of C.I.A., and everybody's wringing their hands, including me, on the back bench.

Henry, chairing the meeting, says, "There's an opportunity here."

Henry always was looking for the opportunity.

LORD: He immediately saw that we could use this, if we'd play our cards right, to begin negotiations between Israel and some of its neighbors, and also to begin to displace Soviet influence in that region.

(guns firing, explosions pounding) YAQUB: There was panic inside the Israeli government.

The Israelis were running short of ammunition, and so they appealed desperately for resupply from the United States.

Kissinger wanted to ensure that Israel got the upper hand.

KISSINGER: We were trying to prevent a military victory achieved by Soviet arms.

So, we started an airlift and put an overwhelming amount of arms.

REPORTER: Now the counter-offensive has begun.

The Israelis claim to have knocked out most of the bridges the Egyptians laid across the canal.

YAQUB: By the middle of October, the momentum had shifted in favor of Israel.

LORD: The Israelis had struck back and they had surrounded the Egyptian army.

Kissinger knew that if we could freeze that moment, you might have a psychological impetus on both sides to finally talk to each other.

WILLIAM QUANDT: Kissinger said to the Israelis, "You're in a very strong position right now, "but don't overdo it.

"Take your win, and then we get serious about the diplomacy."

FERGUSON: Kissinger gets a ceasefire just in time for the Egyptian position not to collapse.

He can then embark on a negotiation.

YAQUB: You get this phenomenon that becomes known as "shuttle diplomacy."

Kissinger is going back and forth between various Middle Eastern capitals to meet separately with Middle East leaders.

LORD: He knew you could only make progress if you talked to each side, understood its needs, that it wouldn't work just through cables.

This was too emotional, too precarious.

You had to go in person to Sadat, and go in person to Golda Meir, and then go back to the other and explain where they were willing to move ahead and where they really had a need to dig in.

SCHWARTZ: They negotiated with Kissinger.

They didn't negotiate with each other.

And Kissinger frequently used American guarantees to get the parties to agree.

DICK CAVETT: Were you ever so tired, you couldn't remember whether you were talking to Sadat or Barbara Walters?

That distinction I never lost.

(Cavett murmurs) (audience laughs) But... There's one thing that keeps you going, which is that you know there's nothing more important you could possibly be doing.

And that has an exhilarating effect.

SURI: Kissinger literally spends most of two years going from Damascus to Cairo to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, meeting with one leader after another, cajoling them, negotiating at a detailed level.

And as he himself says, it's literally a Middle Eastern bazaar.

ANWAR SADAT: Henry, when I met him for the first time in November '73, I found him quite acquainted with the minute detail of all the dimensions.

For that, we, we didn't spend except one hour, and after that, we felt that we are friends since years and years before.

(people talking in background) ALVANDI: The massive achievement for Kissinger was Sadat's decision to essentially throw the Soviets out of Egypt and to take Egypt, the most important, biggest Arab state, essentially out of the conflict and into friendship with the United States, and eventually, a few years later, into peace with Israel.

Now, that came at the expense of the Palestinian question.

He left this issue of the Palestinians to kind of fester away, unaddressed.

KISSINGER: Whatever you solve in foreign policy is not final.

It is simply an admissions ticket for some other crisis.

NEWS ANCHOR: Good evening.

The news is dominated tonight by one explosive story.

REPORTER: The White House mounted an elaborate cover-up operation in the Watergate affair.

JEB MAGRUDER: And there was, of course, the projects including wiretap, tapping, electronic surveillance, and photography.

NEWS ANCHOR: The number-two man in the Nixon re-election campaign today admitted his own guilt in the planning and cover-up of Watergate.

REPORTER: Sources say there is no question that the president knew of the cover-up operation, which may be the most damning accusation of all.

KEYS: As the Watergate scandal dragged on, it seemed like the president and his closest aides were being drawn into the mire.

And Americans were relieved to see that at least Kissinger was untainted by the scandal.

GRANDIN: He survived Watergate largely because he was seen as the only adult in the room.

FERGUSON: This was the height of Kissinger's fame.

This was when he was, like, a kind of diplomatic version of Superman.

KEYS: Kissinger was the most admired man in the United States.

He was tremendously popular.

ELIZABETH BECKER: The world was so happy that the United States was finally getting out of Vietnam that Henry Kissinger received the Nobel Peace Prize.

But his Vietnamese colleague, Le Duc Tho, said, "This is not the end of the war, and I'm not accepting the peace prize."

In Oslo, several thousand Norwegian students demonstrated today against the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

(chanting in Norwegian) DAVID KISSINGER: I was on the playground, and some kid came up to me and said, "You know, my parents don't think your father should have won the Nobel Peace Prize."

And I apparently replied, "That's okay, neither does my mother."

(audience applauding) KISSINGER: That's the most important goal any administration can set itself, is to work for a world in which the award will become irrelevant, because peace will have become so normal.

DAVID KISSINGER: Of course, he was deeply honored, but I think it also presented a huge headache for him, because he knew that it would not be well received by President Nixon.

FARRELL: Knowing Richard Nixon, it must have driven him crazy that Kissinger was the one awarded the peace prize.

He managed to keep his jealousy under control, to a great extent, in part because he needed Kissinger more and more.

SCHWARTZ: The relationship between Nixon and Kissinger begins to reverse-- there is a way in which Nixon now is almost pleading for reassurance and support from Kissinger.

NIXON: I've even been considering the possibility of, frankly, just kind of throwing myself on the sword and... (Nixon and Kissinger talking at once) NIXON: ...and letting Agnew take over, what the hell?

KISSINGER: That is out of the question, with all due respect, Mr.

President.

That cannot be considered.

You have saved this country, Mr.

President.

The history books will show that when no one will know what Watergate means.

FERGUSON: Henry Kissinger often said to me that there was a Shakespearean quality to Richard Nixon's presidency.

The culmination of the tragedy is Nixon's final, agonized decision to resign.

FARRELL: One day, Kissinger goes over to the White House, and they talk, and there's this moment where Nixon says, "Henry, I'm not a praying man, but pray with me."

And you have this amazing scene of the two of them on their knees, praying, in the White House.

DAVID KISSINGER: I remember him coming home that night, and the sense of sorrow and compassion that he had for Nixon at that moment.

KISSINGER: The human problem of a man who had spent all of his life trying to become president, whose personality really did not lend itself to politics-- he didn't like to meet new people, he didn't like to give direct orders-- he made himself do all these things, and everything collapsed on him.

(crowd applauding) WARREN BURGER: ...and repeat after me: I, Gerald R. Ford, do solemnly swear... I, Gerald R. Ford, do solemnly swear... ...that I will support and defend the constitution... FERGUSON: Gerald Ford was as different in personal, temperamental terms from Richard Nixon as it's possible to imagine.

...against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

FERGUSON: And yet, when Ford became president, one of the very first decisions that he took was to keep Kissinger on in both roles, national security adviser and secretary of state.

Somebody said that as soon as Nixon was gone, Kissinger would lose his Teflon position and become the lightning rod in turn.

And so it proved.

Good evening to all of you from California.

FERGUSON: Within a relatively short time of Nixon's departure, the attacks on Kissinger began.

Dr.

Kissinger is quoted as saying that he thinks of the United States as Athens and the Soviet Union as Sparta.

The day of the U.S.

is past and today is the day of the Soviet Union.

But peace does not come from weakness or from retreat.

DAVID KISSINGER: My father had played such a dominant role for six years that in the nature of American politics, it's almost inevitable that you become a focal point, and that the, uh, the worm turns.

JOHN PILGER: At 7:30 a.m.

on April the 17th, 1975, the war in Cambodia was over.

It was a unique war, for no country has ever experienced such concentrated bombing.

On this, perhaps the most gentle and graceful land in all of Asia, President Nixon and Mr.

Kissinger unleashed 100,000 tons of bombs, the equivalent of five Hiroshimas.

Then, out of the forest, came the victors, the Khmer Rouge, whose power had grown out of all proportion to their numbers.

KHATHARYA UM: The Khmer Rouge was essentially an insignificant movement up until 1970.

And the question is, how is it that this relatively marginal force were able to seize power in five years?

The bombing did not create the Khmer Rouge, but it was a powerful recruitment tool.

PILGER: The horror began almost immediately.

Phnom Penh, a city of two-and-a-half million people, was forcibly emptied within hours of their coming.

SOPHAL EAR: Within 24 hours, they announced that the city would have to be evacuated.

They emptied the hospitals while people were still in the middle of surgery.

Patients were left to die on the gurneys.

And that was just the beginning of the killing.

PILGER: The Khmer Rouge interrogated and then exterminated anyone they suspected of opposing them.

UM: I have yet to find anyone who have not been affected by a loss.

We have a Khmer word, which is baksbat.

It's the broken spirit.

It's, like, when the spirit has been so broken under fear, under terror, that it doesn't recover.

MORRIS: I think the tragedy of Cambodia is directly attributable to the policies of Kissinger and Nixon.

There's no question that our continued bombing of the countryside, which was savage and relentless, led to the rise of the Khmer Rouge.

LORD: The North Vietnamese, they had bases in not only Cambodia, but Laos.

They were coming over, killing American troops and South Vietnamese, and then retreating.

So they spread the war to these countries.

We did not spread it.

DAVID FROST: You say in your book... (Kissinger murmurs) FROST: ...that you considered bombing North Vietnam, so that you had the alternative of bombing North Vietnam and not embroiling Cambodia.

And... Cambodia was embroiled!

It is an absurdity to say that a country can occupy a part of another country, kill your people, and that then you are violating its neutrality when you respond against the foreign troops that are on that neutral territory.

I, I... It is total hypocrisy!

EAR: They were all supposed to be well-intended decisions.

My father, who died, my oldest brother, who's still missing to this day, are they the victims of geopolitics and of decisions made with good intentions, but that led to disaster?

Yes, absolutely.

UM: Sometime it makes me wonder about the hierarchy of suffering, and the unequal value that's attributed to people's lives.

Some lives are worth more than others, right?

Some countries are worth sacrificing in order that others can prosper.

NEWS ANCHOR: Good evening.

The fighting is over for American ground soldiers in Vietnam.

REPORTER: The extraction of the last combat soldiers is a slow process.

While the men wait, they happily donate some of their leftover ammunition to their South Vietnamese replacements.

It is now their war.

BURKE: Ultimately, when the United States extricated itself from the Vietnam War, the South Vietnamese government hobbled along for two years.

So great was the South Vietnamese entire dependence upon the United States that in no way, shape, or form could it stand on its own.

CHARLES TRAN VAN LAM: I'm still hopeful that the United States will respond positively to our request for aid.

REPORTER: Sir, Mr.

Kissinger said today that if that aid is not approved, the collapse of your country is inevitable.

Do you share that assessment?

(stammering) I still think that the aid will be forthcoming.

DAVID KISSINGER: If my father had one regret that he often expressed to me, it was that Congress prevented the United States from having an ongoing military role after the peace accords.

He believed that there was a path for at least preventing the human catastrophe that occurred in Vietnam after we withdrew, and that we failed to do that.

KISSINGER: We consider we have a moral obligation to the tens of thousands of people who worked with us, relying on us for 15 years, and we are positive that the American people will fulfill that obligation.

Thank you, Mr.

Secretary.

(planes roar overhead) BURKE: When the North Vietnamese began the final assault in April of 1975, the regime basically disappeared overnight.

REPORTER: Saigon, April the 30th, 8:00.

The last American helicopter on the roof of the American embassy prepares to lift off the last of the evacuees fleeing before the advancing communist armies.

(car horns honking) MORRIS: I felt great anger at the United States government.

We had deceived and misled not only ourselves, but we had deceived and misled a whole people in South Vietnam.

There was a chance, given his talents, that Henry alone might have been able to end that war much, much earlier.

That he did not, I find that, like the rest of the war, rather unforgivable.

HANG: At the end of the day, when Kissinger was alone with his own thoughts, I think he would've admitted to himself that South Vietnam did not have the ability to defend itself.

I think all of the allegations, to say that Congress lost the will to fight, that the American people lost the will to fight, that the media misreported that war, was a way for him to assuage his guilt.

KISSINGER: The collapse of South Vietnam and the evacuation of Saigon was, without doubt, the saddest moment of my governmental experience.

I am unreconstructed in my conviction that Vietnam did not have to fall, that we did that to ourselves.

(crowd cheering) LAKE: He was not a monster.

But he was wrong, and the result was millions of people, not just American soldiers, 55,000-plus, but millions of Indochinese-- Laos, Cambodia, South Vietnam, North Vietnam-- died as a result of this horrendous, horrendous mistaken effort.

(crowd cheering and applauding) REPORTER: With 272 electoral votes, James Earl Carter is the next president of the United States.

(cheers and applause continue) KISSINGER: Our new president and secretary of state deserve the understanding and the support of all Americans.

I expect to lead a happy and full life once I leave the government.

(audience laughs) KEYS: One of Kissinger's most impressive achievements was staying famous for 50 years.

GILDA RADNER: Secwetary of State Dr.

Henwy Kissinger.

(audience laughs) Have you any final words for the Amewican pubwic?

No.

(audience laughs) He institutes this kind of remarkable self-levitation feat, where he stays in the public eye for nearly half a century.

Partly because he devotes his entire life to foreign policy.

He's advising leaders.

You know, I'm here as a private citizen.

I'm here as a private citizen.

KISSINGER: I'm now speaking of my personal view, not necessarily Governor Reagan's.

KEYS: He's giving speeches, going to conferences.

He's a ubiquitous presence on television.

He was always invited to opine on whatever crisis is happening at the moment.

KISSINGER: I think that the warning of the president that a continuation of repression could harm U.S.-Chinese relations was correct.

KEYS: He publishes hundreds of articles and op-eds, and many books, putting out his own version of history.

HOST: Dr.

Kissinger has a new book hitting bookstores tomorrow.

ZAKARIA: If you looked at his schedule on any given day, it was packed with meetings, breakfasts, lunches, TV interviews.

He stayed in the game because he loved international relations.

And he loved power.

FERGUSON: Throughout the long years out of government, Henry Kissinger fought to uphold his reputation against all comers.

WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY: If an Allende were to come to power tomorrow, you would not feel that you could recommend such action as you thought appropriate in 1970?

No, I'm not saying that.

FERGUSON: No criticism went unanswered.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: The statement "Henry Kissinger is a war criminal" is not a piece of rhetoric, it's not a metaphor, it's a job description.

And it might feature on an indictment.

MAN: I want to know how you would amend your testimony today.

Uh, why should I amend my testimony?

(audience chuckles) ALVANDI: He was determined that he would be the one to write his own history.

But it really was a double-edged sword, because he kind of made himself a big target, and in many ways became a kind of scapegoat for all the failures of American foreign policy.

PROTESTERS (chanting): Arrest Henry Kissinger for war crimes!

Arrest Henry Kissinger for war crimes!

LORD: When people attack Kissinger by saying, "You're dealing with tyrants," or, "You're ignoring human rights," they, they don't remember the agonizing choices that had to be made.

After all, preserving civilization is a human right, as well.

KISSINGER: The average person thinks that morality can be applied as directly to the conduct of states to each other as it can to human relations.

That is not always the case, because sometimes statesmen have to choose among evils.

MORRIS: I think he thought whatever he was sacrificing of American values, he was doing so for American interests.

My view of that is that the sacrifice of, of values was intrinsically a sacrifice of interests.

BEN RHODES: One of the sources of strength that the United States has is the story that we've been telling around the world, which is a story about freedom and equality of peoples and nations.

Yeah, I think Kissinger's theory was, it's the credibility of being willing to use power, being willing to kill a lot of people, being willing to destroy countries to send a message to other potential adversaries, "This is what happens if you challenge the will of the United States."

I think the fundamental problem with that is, it just obliterates the credibility of the story that we tell.

DAVID KISSINGER: My father was a realist, but it was realism in the cause of principles that he believed in deeply.

He was not just trying to advance the power of the United States in some kind of Darwinian struggle.

He was advancing the strength of the United States, in his mind, because America was the last, best hope of humanity, and he had experienced that personally.

The final days of his life were deeply revealing.

He was transported back to the trauma of his childhood.

He was right back there.

He was speaking German.

He was afraid that pogroms were at the door.

He was showing the deep-seated injury that he had experienced as a child.

But there was also a tremendously moving final hallucination.

He was lying in a bed looking out on this garden that he loved in Connecticut, and he imagined that his brother, who had died a couple of years earlier, was outside building a platform.

It wasn't clear whether this was some kind of train stop, or a platform for my father to ascend onto, but it seemed to give him a great deal of peace.

(audience cheers and whistles) KISSINGER: At an early age, I have seen what can happen to a society that is based on hatred and strength and distrust, and that I experienced then what America means to other people: its hope and its idealism.

ANNOUNCER: "American Experience: Kissinger" is available with PBS Passport and on Amazon Prime Video.