Chotiner Eviscerates Koppel on Kissinger

After giving a softball interview, he apparently expected one in return.

A few months back, Dan Drezner wondered, “Why Do People Talk to Isaac Chotiner?” The basis on the question—and resulting speculation as to the answer—was that Chotiner is a brutally effective interviewer who tends to make his subjects look very, very bad.

I was reminded of Drezner’s essay this morning reading Chotiner‘s “Ted Koppel on Covering—and Befriending—Henry Kissinger.” While I’m more sympathetic to Kissinger than Chotiner or Drezner—and am even sympathetic to Koppel going easy on a controversial figure on the occasion of his 100th birthday—Koppel, to say the least, does not come off well in the interview.

What do you think he’s meant to the country? What do you think his legacy is?

Let me come at that in a slightly different fashion. I was particularly disappointed the other day with the Washington Post. It’s my home-town newspaper, and when Kissinger turned a hundred, I thought, “Well, maybe they’ll feel the need to do something special.” What they did to at least give him some kind of halfway-favorable coverage was to let his son write an op-ed. And then the next day they had a piece in which they sort of highlighted how despised he is on the Internet.

There is no question that Kissinger has done things that are worthy of opprobrium. There is no doubt about that. However, if you look back at a career, a public career, that began in effect when he was a young professor at Harvard, he was the first to point out that in the event of a major threat to the interests of the United States, the only available option to us was something that would effectively lead to the destruction of mankind. And it wasn’t until he raised that issue that policy with regard to the use of nuclear weapons changed.

So, you have a career that has included the opening to China, a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, a normalizing of relations between Israel and Syria, a career that has included the strategic-arms-limitation talks and treaties that the United States reached with the Soviet Union. It has been an extraordinary career. And, yes, it has been marked by not just these episodes but actions that have led to untold human suffering. Were those justified by the responsibilities that he had at that time? I’ll leave it to others to judge that.

That reminds me of an interview where you once said that from an ethical point of view he had something to answer for, but that “that’s between him and his Maker.” Isn’t that for journalists like you or me to look into rather than for God?

Well, obviously we—

You said you’d “leave it to others” just now.

Obviously we can and we do, and that’s one of the things you’re doing right now. But, if I may, let me offer a historical perspective. Imagine that a hundred years from now, historians are looking back at the careers of Henry Kissinger, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump. Trump will be perceived by historians as a thoroughly despicable human being who accomplished effectively nothing while he was in office. I think George W. Bush is a very pleasant person to be around, but the invasion of Iraq never needed to take place and resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of Iraqis—thousands of young Americans. What do you think history will have to say a hundred years from now as you compare Henry Kissinger to two of his contemporaries who also held great power?

Why not include Attila the Hun, too?

Those are examples, I think, of careers and actions that were uniformly unfortunate at the very least. In Kissinger’s case, I think he deserved to be seen through a larger lens.

In your recent interview with Kissinger, you said, “There are people at our broadcast who are questioning the legitimacy of even doing an interview with you. They feel that strongly about what they consider—I’ll put it in language they would use—your criminality.” Why did you phrase it this way?

Because that’s exactly the way it was presented to me. I got the word that some of my colleagues on the program felt that because they consider him to be a war criminal, he should not have been interviewed.

And you don’t consider him that?

No, I not only don’t think that, but the question was once raised, “If you had a chance to interview Osama bin Laden, would you do so?” And I said, “Absolutely, without any hesitation.”

What’s the connection between this and whether Kissinger’s a war criminal? Sorry, I was just a little confused.

I thought the thrust of your question was, Let’s say for the sake of argument that there are actions that he has taken over the years which meet that standard. Would it be appropriate to interview him? I put it in the context of some of my colleagues at “Sunday Morning” taking the position that you shouldn’t even interview this guy.

I actually meant it somewhat differently. I absolutely agree that Henry Kissinger should be interviewed. I was more wondering about the tone of the interview. For example, the way you phrased that question by putting it in other people’s language.

Here’s another example. You play a clip in which Kissinger, back when he was Secretary of State, said that he would resign if foreign-policy decisions were being made for political reasons. You are the interview expert here, but I might say, “Mr. Kissinger, is it true that you played some part in sabotaging the Paris peace talks, which led to South Vietnam pulling out of them right before the 1968 election, which led to the Vietnam War going on for five more years?” [This was orchestrated by the Nixon campaign, with Kissinger’s help, to prevent then President Lyndon B. Johnson from striking a deal that would have presumably helped Nixon’s opponent, Hubert Humphrey.] I might say, “Oh, that’s a good opportunity to ask him a question like that.”

Yes. Look, first of all, I don’t know that to be the case, and I’m not sure you do, either. Do you?

Well, it’s been extensively reported by multiple biographers of Nixon and Kissinger.

Yeah, I understand. But I’m not sure that that is the case. Can we at least acknowledge that the whole point of that interview was to look back on the life of a man who was just about to turn a hundred? There are occasions when I agree with you, Isaac, that that kind of hard-edged interviewing is called for. And there are other times when I think you have to ease up just a little bit, don’t you?

No, not really with public, political figures.

Really?

No.

You’re a tougher guy than I am. Not even for a hundredth birthday?

No, especially if you’ve been involved in bombing Cambodia and overthrowing democratically elected governments. He’s a figure who has made an impact in the world, and he should be interviewed about that, and asked serious questions, regardless of his age.

It doesn’t get better after that.

Again, my assessment of Kissinger’s legacy is more charitable than many. He was National Security Advisor and/or Secretary of State from January 1969 to January 1977, a time with considerably different sentiments to the use of military force and what was then called the Third World than we have today. That he advocated policies (that, ultimately, were ordered by President Nixon, not Kissinger—who had no such authority) that we look askance at today in service of advancing American Cold War aims bothers me less than it does others. (I do agree with Drezner that Kissinger pioneered cashing in on government services with boutique “consulting” services for the rich. I don’t blame him in the least for doing so but think the world would be a better place if former government officials still retired to sinecures in academia.)

But, have mercy, Koppel seems to have been completely blindsided by rather obvious questions. Chotiner is masterful at probing but the basic critiques of Kissinger are hardly new. 1977 was a while ago. That Koppel, no stranger to interviewing techniques, wasn’t better prepared to defend himself is remarkable. Granted, he’s 83 years old but there’s no evidence of cognitive decline.

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James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Comments

  1. charontwo says:

    The basis on the question—and resulting speculation as to the answer—was that Chotiner is a brutally effective interviewer who tends to make his subjects look very, very bad.

    Not necessarily, it depends who he is interviewing. I have read Chotiner interviews where the interviewee comes off perfectly fine.

    Chotiner just excels at exposing phoniness and contradictions, which not all interviewees exhibit.

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  2. Modulo Myself says:

    He was National Security Advisor and/or Secretary of State from January 1969 to January 1977, a time with considerably different sentiments to the use of military force and what was then called the Third World than we have today.

    Pretty sure that the sentiments of the Cambodians (or Vietnamese) about being bombed are probably the same, now and then. And there were enormous protests against these actions and around the world. They were obvious war crimes and for no purpose whatsoever.

    Regardless, Ted Koppel is just doing a job which has always existed. Selling out and selling one’s soul is not new or rare or hard-to-figure. He grovels before Henry Kissinger because he grovels before power. Kick him to the curb and a younger version will sound more acceptable until their expiration date runs out.

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  3. Kathy says:

    People who depend on any measure on their image, like Koppel, should prepare better for interviews. This includes noting what kind of questions the interviewer tends to ask, as well as preparing for harder questions which may come.

    Asking the questions is not the same as answering them.

  4. James Joyner says:

    @Modulo Myself: It’s worth noting that the bombings of Cambodia began under LBJ, not Nixon, and were overwhelmingly aimed at legitimate military targets. Even Eisenhower supported them as a no-brainer. In hindsight, the results were disastrous but the policy was understandable given the nature of the Cold War and the prejudices of the times.

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  5. Gustopher says:

    @James Joyner: there was a difference in scale, including carpet bombing from B-52s.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Menu

    According to the data, the air force began bombing the rural regions of Cambodia along its South Vietnam border in 1965 under the Johnson administration; this was four years earlier than previously believed. The Menu bombings were an escalation of what had previously been tactical air attacks. Newly inaugurated President Richard Nixon authorized for the first time use of long-range Boeing B-52 Stratofortress heavy bombers to carpet bomb Cambodia.

    The “Everyone else was doing it” defense is poor in general, and just factually wrong in this case. There’s a difference in scale that I would term petit war crimes vs. grand war crimes.

    Further, “ In hindsight, the results were disastrous but the policy was understandable given the nature of the Cold War and the prejudices of the times” sounds a lot like “well, everyone who was anyone had slaves back then, we can’t judge them by modern standards” despite there being a lot of opposition at the time of people judging them by the standards of that time, and the fact that this basically was modern times.

    As for the consequences of the war crimes being unknowable and unforseeable, I’d say that if you are committing war crimes, you own all the consequences even if it doesn’t go as you hope.

    Finally, Kissinger is a smug shit who shows neither remorse nor contrition, and who has somehow gotten the entire establishment to defend him, with very few people in the establishment willing to say anything worse than “he has a complicated legacy.” Part of the burning hatred people have for him is just that.

    It’s like Epstein’s black book not being used to open investigations and prosecute the people who were raping children on Pedophile Island. When the ruling class makes itself untouchable, it offends people.

    Should Henry Kissinger be beaten to death by an angry mob? It’s a complicated question that belies his complicated legacy in American
    and world history that reverberates to this day.

    I would say that Kissinger is scapegoated somewhat in that his co-grad-war-criminals are not the focus of such vitriol. But that goes into the smug shit thing — most war criminals try to avoid the spotlight.

    That and a little sprinkling of antisemitism. He lives up to stereotypes. Just as some black people like fried chicken and watermelon (yum!), some Jewish people exercise a control over foreign policy and use that to try to reshape the world through grossly amoral calculations.

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  6. charontwo says:

    @charontwo:

    Link for sampling other interviews by Chotiner:

    https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/isaac-chotiner

  7. Mister Bluster says:

    In the Mid ’70s I met a guy who was drafted out of high school. He was in Vietnam during the 1972 elections and voted for Nixon. When I asked him why he said he wanted Nixon to continue bombing because everytime there were bombing raids the enemy shelling of the positions where he was would stop. I could not argue with him.

    The war finally ended for him a couple of years ago when he died. The last few years of his life were spent suffering from what he was convinced were the effects of Agent Orange. The last time I saw him he was in a wheel chair. He could not sit up straight and could barely speak. He was a year older than me so he was in his early 70s when he died. He left two sons.
    Steve Blake
    RIP

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  8. That he advocated policies (that, ultimately, were ordered by President Nixon, not Kissinger—who had no such authority) that we look askance at today in service of advancing American Cold War aims bothers me less than it does others.

    I think you are being way too charitable here.

    I can also say that a lot of people who studied Latin America contemporaneously to many of those decisions in question were not impressed at the time.

    And, indeed, I personally came to the conclusion, decades ago, that our “ends justify the means” approach in the Cold War (whether is SE Asia or Latin America) was not justified.

    I mean, if your alleged raison d’etre is freedom and you are willing to undermine the elected government of Chile (for example) in the name of fighting communism, then are you really fighting for freedom?

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  9. Raoul says:

    I find it startling that Koppel denies the Nixon/Kissinger 1968 Paris intervention. Instead of defending Kissinger he simply could have asked him, but chose not to do so. He really has fallen a long way. I can only imagine what he would ask OBL- “some say attacking the twin towers was an overreaction, what do you say to your critics” – no wonder Trump was elected, it is almost to say that journalism doesn’t exist anymore (everybody is protecting their sinecures to use JJ language).

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  10. MarkedMan says:

    Last week I read a review of the movie “The Zone of Interest” which is takes place in the family home of a Nazi death camp administrator. Per the review, he and his associates are technocrats, discussing and debating the efficiencies of various methods of killing and incinerating thousands of people. In calm and measured tones they express admiration for a colleague who has come up with various methods and mechanisms yielding a smoother and easier to run process.

    I then noticed that the Washington Post had given space to Kissinger’s son to write a hagiography and I thought of the irony. If the editors had seen the movie above, they would have reassured themselves that they could never become so callous as to look at atrocity and analyze it in cool measured tones for efficiency of the process flow. Yet Kissinger is the same as those well dressed, well mannered technocrats. You can put aside everything he did in his government service (you can, but I won’t) but for the next 4 or 5 decades he consulted with every murderous regime in Latin and Central America or the Mideast. We may never know what advice he offered over conference tables in crisply air conditioned rooms with assistants bringing forth manila folders full of briefings and analysis, but he was no idiot and he knew the mass murder, rape and child abductions that were going on.

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  11. gVOR08 says:

    @Raoul:

    (everybody is protecting their sinecures to use JJ language).

    I tend to see it as the establishment closing ranks, and Koppel thinks he’s part of the establishment.

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  12. JohnSF says:

    Thing about Kissinger, if you read his books and speeches (“Diplomacy” is actually very good, for some historical topics) is that he tends to misperceive the situation due to his combination of historical preconceptions and “vanity of despair”
    The conclusion as somebody (I can’t remember who right now) said:
    “Kissinger thinks he’s Bismark. He’s actually Berchtold.”
    And that the he vaunts Metternich as a model; and seems to forget that Metternich’s reactionary folly set Europe on course for the failure of liberal nationalism and the disastrous course of Europe to the apocalypse of 1914.

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  13. dazedandconfused says:

    My take was so different. As eviscerations go, t’was but a scratch. Pretty much everybody this side of Adolf and Joe Stalin deserve a bit of slack on their 100th birthday. My impression was Koppel defended himself well enough. Short of breaking even, maybe, but it was close.

  14. DrDaveT says:

    @James Joyner:

    bombings of Cambodia began under LBJ, not Nixon, and were overwhelmingly aimed at legitimate military targets

    James, you are enough of a military historian to know that, prior to the introduction of precision guided munitions in the 80s, about one air-dropped bomb in ten hit somewhere near the target it was aimed at. The rest hit… somewhere else, and everyone knew that. So how many bombs did we (deliberately) drop on unintended targets in Cambodia? Quantity, as someone famously said, has a quality all its own.

  15. DrDaveT says:

    @MarkedMan:

    Last week I read a review of the movie “The Zone of Interest” which is takes place in the family home of a Nazi death camp administrator. Per the review, he and his associates are technocrats, discussing and debating the efficiencies of various methods of killing and incinerating thousands of people. In calm and measured tones they express admiration for a colleague who has come up with various methods and mechanisms yielding a smoother and easier to run process.

    As a tangent, I’ll note that I saw the play “Here There Are Blueberries” last week. It’s a fact-based dramatization of the discovery of an album of photos taken for and held by the adjutant at Auschwitz. No inmates appear in any of the 150+ pictures; it’s full of smiling groups of officers, families on holiday at the camping lodge on the camp grounds, choral singing, groups of young female clerks eating blueberries… And the discussions at the Holocaust Museum about whether they should display these images or not. Fascinating, and I thought very well done (with one minor exception I won’t go into here).