Or individuals like ourselves, neither better nor worse, ordinary creatures who do not deserve our anger, our admiration, or our envy? The question extends to the past, even a remote past of which we. Who is there to say that they did not teach us lies in school? Who can give us indisputable proof of the good faith. We know everything about their battles and nothing about their human dimension, about their weaknesses and lies, about their intellectual and moral wavering.
We have no evidence to show that Vercingetorix was a scoundrel. We do not even know whether Jesus Christ was tall or short, light or dark, educated or simple, whether he went to bed or not with Mary Magdalen, whether he really said the things that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John assert. Ah, if only someone had interviewed him with a tape recorder so as to capture his voice, his ideas, his words! Ah, if only someone had taken down in shorthand what Joan of Arc declared at her trial before going to the stake!
Ah, if. I do not trust news handed down by word of mouth, reports drawn up too late and that cannot be proved. Yes- terday's history is a novel full of events that 1 cannot check, judg- ments that I cannot contest. Not today's history. Because today's history is written the very moment it happens. It can be photographed, filmed, recorded on tape in interviews with the few people who control the world or change its course.
It can be transmitted immediately through the press, radio, television. It can be interpreted, heatedly discussed. For this reason I like journalism. For this reason I fear journalism.
What other profession allows you to write history at the very mo- ment it happens and also to be its direct witness? Journalism is an extraordinary and terrible privilege. Not by chance, if you are aware of it, does it consume you with a hundred feelings of inade- quacy. Not by chance, when I find myself going through an event or an important encounter, does it seize me like anguish, a fear of not having enough eyes and enough ears and enough brains to look and listen and understand worm hidden in the wood like a of his- tory.
I do not exaggerate, you when say that on every see, I profes- sional experience I leave some of my soul. And it is not easy for me to say, Oh, come now, there's no need to be Herodotus; for better or worse you'll contribute a little stone to help compose the mosaic; you'll provide information to help make people think. And if you make a mistake, never mind.
The present book was born in this way, in the span of four years, those in which I did the fourteen interviews for my paper, UEuropeo.
To the subjects here Hned up, in short, I went in this spirit: each time seeking, together with information, an answer to the question of how they are different from ourselves. To meet them was often an exhausting chore. My request for an appoint- ment was almost always met by cold silence or a refusal the four- teen in the book are not the only ones I tried to meet , and if later. When I was finally in their presence, I had to exert myself to.
Once there, how- ever, it became a game to reach the truth and discover that not even a selective criterion justified their power. Those who deter- mine our destiny are not really better than ourselves; they are nei- ther more intelligent nor stronger nor more enlightened than our- selves. If anything, they are more more ambitious. But these cases involved men who were not themselves in power; in fact they had fought it, and fought it at. As for those whom I liked or who charmed me in some way, the moment has come to confess that my mind remained reserved and my heart dissatisfied.
Deep down I was sorry that they were sitting at the top of the pyramid. Since I. So much the less as traveling companions. Perhaps it is because I do not understand power, the mechanism by which men or women feel themselves invested or become in- vested with the right to rule over others and punish them if they do not obey. Whether it comes from a despotic sovereign or an elected president, from a murderous general or a beloved leader, I see power as an inhuman and hateful phenomenon.
I may be mistaken but the earthly paradise did not end on the day that Adam and Eve were told by from now on they would work by the sweat God that of their brows and bring forth children in sorrow. Of course, to live in a group requires a governing authority; otherwise there is human chaos. But the most tragic side of the condition seems to me precisely that of needing an authority to govern, a chief. One can never know where a chief's power begins and ends; the only sure thing is that you cannot control him and that he kills your freedom.
Worse: he is the bitterest demonstration that absolute freedom does not exist, has never existed, cannot exist. Even if it is necessary to behave as though it existed and to.
I feel I should warn the reader how much I am convinced of this, and also that apples are born to be picked, that meat can even be eaten on Friday. Still more to remind him or her that, to the. I have always looked on disobedience toward the oppressive as the only way to use the miracle of having been born. I have always looked on the silence of those who do not react or who indeed applaud as the real death of a woman or a man. And listen: for me the most beautiful monument to human dignity is still the one saw on a I.
It was not a statue, it was not a flag, but three letters that in Greek signify No: oxi. Men thirsting for free- dom had written them among the trees during the Nazi-Fascist oc- cupation, and for thirty years that No had remained there, unfaded by the sun or rain. Then the colonels had obliterated it with a stroke of whitewash. But immediately, almost magically, the sun and rain had dissolved the whitewash.
So that day by day the three letters reappeared on the surface, stubborn, desperate, indelible. Truly, then, this book does not claim to be anything but what it. It does not want to promise anything more than it claims, that is, a direct testimony by fourteen political figures of contemporary history,each with his or her symbolic meaning and alignment in a symbolic sequence.
Because of this, I did not want to bring any in- terviewup to date, not even the older ones, nor to re-elaborate them, thereby spoiling their value as documents that crystallized the moments they were recorded.
I wanted to leave them intact in their genuineness, without worrying over the fact that Golda Meir is no longer prime minister, Willy Brandt no longer chancellor,. Panagoulis no longer a persecuted hero of the Resistance to the Greek colonels.
But while reading it, you should keep in mind that No that reappears, stubborn, desperate, indelible, among the trees on a hill in the Peloponnesus. This too famous, too important, too lucky man, whom they call Superman, Superstar, Superkraut, and who stitches together para-. This incredible, inexplicable, unbearable personage, who meets Mao Tse-tung when he likes, enters the Kremlin when he feels like it, wakens the president of the United States and goes into his bed-.
This absurd character with horn-rimmed glasses, beside whom James Bond becomes a fla- vorless creation. He does not shoot, nor use his fists, nor leap from speeding automobiles likeJames Bond, but he advises on wars, ends wars, pretends to change our destiny, and does change it.
But still, who is Henry Kissinger? Books are written about him as about those great figures whom history has by now digested. Books like the ones illustrating his po-. With With the French his university colleagues he never cared to speak. He alludes to them to. The story of his hfe is the object of research bordering on a cult, simultaneously paradoxical and grotesque, so everyone knows that he was born in Furth, Germany, in , son of Louis Kissinger, a high-school teacher, and Paula Kissinger, a housewife.
Everyone knows that his family is Jewish, that fourteen of his relatives died in the concentration camps, that together with his father and mother and his brother Walter he fled in to London and then to New York, that at that time he was fifteen years old and was called Heinz, not Henry, nor did he know a word of English. But he learned it very quickly, and while his father worked as a post-office clerk and his mother opened a bakery shop, he did so well at his. Everyone knows that at twenty-one he was a soldier in Germany, where he was one of a group of GI's selected by test and judged to have an IQ close to genius, that because of this and despite his youth he was entrusted with the job of organizing the government of Krefeld, a German city left without a government.
Indeed it was in Krefeld that his passion for politics flowered, a passion that was to be gratified by his becoming an adviser to Kennedy and Johnson, later the presidential aide to Nixon, finally his secretary of state, until he came to be considered the second most powerful man in.
And some maintained that he was already at that time, much more, as is shown by the joke that for years made the rounds of Washington. Richard Nixon would become president of the United States! They had even coined a wicked and revealing surname for him and Nixon: Nixin- ger. They said that Nixon could not do without him; that he wanted.
Above all, for every decision. If Nixon. If Nixon de-. If Nixon announced reaching an agreement with Hanoi that would abandon Thieu, it was Kis- singer who had persuaded him to take this step. Metternich, a veritable president who used the White House as his own house. Kissinger did not sleep there, since he wouldn't be allowed to bring in women, you would have said he had not, as yet, married.
For nine years he had created a myth of his amorous adventures and he carefully nourished it, always allowing himself to be seen with actresses, starlets, singers, models, women journalists, dancers, and million- airesses. In this sense, too, he was the most talked-about man in. America, and the most fashionable. His thick glasses had created a fashion, his curly hair, his gray suits and blue neckties, his decep- tively ingenuous air of one who has discovered life's pleasures.
Then Nixon resigned in shame, unmasked and defeated by a. Some said,. Kissinger remained where he was, still a powerful secretary of state and the new mental wet nurse of Ford, as unshakable and indestructible as a rock, or a cancer. Had he managed this devious Putsch? Was he irreplaceable, as the new president had intimated while begging him to stay? The mystery arose and is left to history. After all, the whole Kissinger case is a mystery.
The man him- self, as well as his unparalleled success, is unexplained. As often happens when someone becomes very popular and very important, the more you know about him, the less you understand. Besides, he protects the incomprehensibility of his phenomenon so well that trying to explain it becomes a fatiguing exercise bordering on the im- possible. Very rarely does he grant personal interviews; he speaks only at press conferences arranged by the administration.
And I swear that I will never understand why he agreed to see me, scarcely three days after receiving my letter, in which I had entertained no illu-.
He says it was because of my interview with General Giap in. Hanoi in February It may be so. But the fact remains that after his extraordinary "yes," he changed his mind and decided to see me on one condition: that he would tell me nothing.
Assuming he could find the time. Yes, the time was found, the appointment made for Thursday, November 2, , when I saw him arrive out of breath and unsmiling, and he said, ''Good morning. Miss Fal- laci. Here he forgot about me, turned his back, and began reading a long typewritten report. Indeed it was a little. It was also stupid and ill-man- nered on his part. However, it allowed me to study him before he studied me. And not only to discover that he wasn't attractive at all,.
Before facing someone, he needs to take time and pro- tect himself by his authority, a frequent phenomenon in shy people who try to conceal their shyness and by this effort end by seeming rude. Or by really being rude. After reading the typewritten report meticulously and carefully, to judge by the time it took him he turned me and finally to in-. Then he took the adjacent armchair, higher than the couch, and from this privileged and stra-. He reminded me of my mathematics and physics teacher at the Liceo Galilei in Florence, an individual I hated because he enjoyed frightening me by staring at me ironically from behind his spectacles.
He even had thesame baritone, or rather guttural, voice as this teacher, and the same way of leaning back in the armchair with his right arm out- stretched, the gesture of crossing his legs, while his jacket was so tight over his stomach that it looked as though the buttons might pop.
If he intended to make me ill at ease, he succeeded perfectly. The nightmare of my schooldays assailed me to such a degree that,. Oh, God, will I know the an- swer? Because if I don't, he'll flunk me. His first question was about General Giap.
The reason why I'm about to consider the possibility of granting you one is that I read your interview with Giap. What is Giap like? Jo- vial and arrogant at the same time, but actually as boring as a rainy day.
It was less an interview than a lecture. I couldn't get excited about him. Still what he told me turned out to be true. The expression "French snob" there- fore left Kissinger bewildered. Perhaps he did not understand it. The revelation that he was "as boring as a rainy day" disturbed him; he knows that he himself carries the stigma of being a boring type, and his blue eyes flashed twice with hostility.
The detail that struck him the most, however, was that I gave Giap credit for having predicted things correctly. Indeed he interrupted me: "Why true? The blue eyes flashed again. This time he did not comment. He only asked, "Does he think that the initiative was started by the Vietcong? Even chil- dren know that Giap likes tank engagements la Rommel. In fact the Easter offensive was carried out la Rommel and He answered, "He'll give He has to. He asked me what thought of I.
I told him that I had never liked him. Kissinger, you know better than I. You tried for three days, or rather four, to get something out of him. But during that first meeting, for some reason he made Httle effort to control himself Every time I said something against Thieu, he nodded or smiled with complicity.
Of the first he said that he was weak and talked too much. Of the second he said he was sorry not to have known him. For this too, I suppose, they had assassinated him. Here he pretended astonishment. By whom?
The helicopter didn't crash because it was hit by mortar fire, but because someone had tampered with the blades. And certainly Thieu did not shed any tears over that crime. Nor did Cao Ky. Even during my interview with him, he attacked them merci- lessly. This is what happened when he asked me about the last time I had been to Saigon, about what I had seen, and I replied that I had seen an army that wasn't worth a fig, and his face assumed a perplexed expression.
Indeed, since I was sure that he was putting on an act, I joked. Kissinger, don't tell me you need me to find out these things. You who are the most well-informed person in the world! He knows how to flatter with diabolical, hypocritical or should I say diplo- matic? After fifteen minutes of conversation, when I was biting my nails for having accepted this absurd interview from the man I was sup- posed to interview, he forgot a little about Vietnam, and, in the tone of a zealous reporter, asked me which heads of state had impressed me most.
Of another head of state, of whom I had said that he did not seem to me highly in-. The quality that counts in a head of state is strength. Courage, shrewdness, and strength. It illustrates his type, his. The man loves strength above all. Courage, shrewd- ness, and strength. Intelligence interests him much less, though he himself possesses it abundantly, as everyone says. But is it a matter.
The intelligence that counts, as far as I'm concerned, is the humane kind, that which is bom from the understanding of men. And I wouldn't say that he has that kind of intelligence.
So on this subject one ought to go a little deeper. Assuming it's worth the trouble. The last phase of my examination emerged from a question that. I really didn't expect. I said. There will not be many neutralists or many Vietcong to form part of the provisional government after the cease-fire. But there will be inter- national supervisors!
Kissinger, even in Dacca there were the Indians. But they didn't succeed in stopping the Mukti Bahini from slaughtering the Biharis. A perfect example of his shrewd use of flatter ': he couldn't care less. And yet, I fell for the ploy. I could have bitten my tongue, I could have wept. Indeed I think my eyes were wet when I looked at him again. Kis- singer, the mutual slaughter will take place anyway today, in a year, two years. And if the war goes on another year or two, besides the dead from that slaughter, we will have to count those from the bombing and fighting.
Do I make myself clear? Ten plus twenty makes thirty. Aren't ten victims better than thirty? But he consoled me by saying that I shouldn't upset myself by feeling guilty, that my mathematical calculation was correct, better ten than thirty, and this episode too illustrates his type and personality. The man likes to be liked, so he listens to everything, records everything like a computer. And just when it seems that he has discarded some now old and useless piece of information, he brings it forth as though it were valid and up to date.
After about twenty-five minutes, he decided that I had passed my examination. But there remained one detail that bothered him a little: I was a woman.
It was with a woman, the French journalist who had written the book, that he had had an unfortunate experi- ence. Supposing, despite my good intentions, I too were to cause him embarrassment? At this point I got angry. Certainly I couldn't him what was on the tip of my tell tongue, namely that I had no intention of falling in love with him. But I could tell him other things, That I was not going to put myself in a situation and I did.
That Mr. Kissinger should understand that I was not responsible for the bad taste of a lady who happened to be in the same profession as my own. So I shouldn't have to pay. He agreed to let me interview him, without smiling, and an- nounced that he would find an hour on Saturday. At ten-thirty I entered his office to begin perhaps the most uncom- fortable and the worst interview that I have ever had.
God, what a chore! Every ten minutes we were interrupted by the telephone, and it was Nixon who wanted something, asked something, petu- lant, tiresome, like a child who cannot be away from its mother. Henry Kissinger Kissinger answered attentively, obsequiously, and the conversation with me was interrupted, making the effort to understand him still more difficult.
Then, just at the high point, when he was setting forth for me the elusive essence of his personality, one of the tele- phones rang and again it was Nixon. Could Dr. Kissinger look in. Of course, Mr. He jumped up, told me to wait, saying he would still try to give me a little time, and left. And thus ended our meeting. Two hours later, while I was still.
Kissinger had to go with him. He would not be back in Washing- ton before Tuesday evening, in time for the first election returns, but it was extremely doubtful that he would be able to conclude the interview at that time. If could wait until the end of November, I. I couldn't, and anyway it wasn't worth the trouble. What was the point of trying to clarify a portrait that I already had before me?
A portrait emerging from a confusion of lines, colors, evasive an- swers, reticent sentences, irritating silences. On Vietnam, ob- viously, he could not tell me anything more, and I am amazed that he had said as much as he had: that whether the war were to end or go on did not depend only on him, and he could not allow himself the luxury of compromising everything by an unnecessary word.
About himself, however, he didn't have such problems. Yet every time had asked him a precise question, he had wriggled out like 1. An eel icier than ice. God, what an icy man! During the whole interview he never changed that expressionless countenance, that hard or ironic look, and never altered the tone of that sad, mo- notonous, unchanging voice. The needle on the tape recorder shifts when a word is pronounced in a highei or lower key.
With him it and more than once had to check to make remained still, 1. Do you know that obsessive, sure that the hammering sound of rain falling on a roof? His voice is like that. And basically his thoughts as well, never disturbed by a wish or fan- tasy, by an odd design, by a temptation of error.
Everything in him is calculated, controlled as in the flight of an airplane steered by the automatic pilot. He weighs every sentence down to the last ounce, no unintentional words escape him, and whatever he says always forms part of some useful mechanism. Kissinger has the nerves and brain of a chess player. Naturally you will find explanations that take into consideration other aspects of his personality.
For example, the fact that he is un- mistakably a Jew and irreparably a German. For example, the fact that, as a Jew and German, transplanted to a country that still looks with suspicion on Jews and Germans, he carries on his back a load of knotted contradictions, resentments, and perhaps hidden hu- manity. In fact, they attribute to him boundless gifts of imagina- tion, unappreciated talents for greatness.
Could be. But in my eyes he remains an entirely common man and the most guilty repre-. Let us not forget that he owes his success to the worst president that the United States has ever had: Nixon, trickster and liar, sick. Let us not forget that he was, and still is,. Nixon's creature. If Nixon had not existed, probably we would never even have known that Kissinger had been born.
For years Kissinger had been offering his services to two other presidents, nei- ther of whom took him seriously. He was picked up by a governor who most certainly did not shine with acute brilliance and had ar- rived at political prominence only because of his billions: Nelson Rockefeller.
Later Rockefeller had recommended him to Nixon, and the latter, in his ignorance, had been seduced by the pompous erudition of the German professor. Or was it by his totalitarian theses on the balance of the great powers, a laborious dusting-off of. Theirs was a meeting of two arrogant minds that believed neither in democracy nor in the changing world.
And in. So far as I know, he did not even take the trouble to pay a visit to his Pygmalion who lay "dying" in a California hospital. He didn't even bother to say a few words in his defense, to assume any responsibility for the misdeeds.
He went over bag and baggage to his successor, Ford, and merrily continued his career as secretary of state. Let's put it this way: he is an intellectual adventurer. And there would be nothing wrong in his being an intellectual adventurer many great men and many great politicians have been I would say almost all if he succeeded in living in his own time and invent- ing something new, instead of going back to the decrepit concepts of his erudition or to personages who are in every sense defunct.
In- stead he is a man who lives in the past, without understanding the present and without divining the future. Much as he denies it, he really believes himself to be the reincarnation of Metternich, that is. And it is for this reason that Kissinger's successes always turn out to be brief and accidental: a flash in the pan or smoke in the eyes. It is. His peace in Vietnam did not resolve the problem or even the war. In Vietnam, after the armistice, the fighting and dying continued; in Cambodia where he and Nixon had brought the war there was never a moment of truce.
And finally it ended as it did, because his peace accords were a fraud. A fraud to save Nixon's face, bring home American boys, the POW's, withdraw the troops, and the erase the uncomfortable word "Vietnam" from the newspapers. And his mediation between the Arabs and Israelis? Extolled and publicized as it has been, it has not lightened the tragedy of the Middle East by an ounce and if anything has worsened matters for the proteges of the United States.
Since he began meddling in that. And the Cyprus drama? It was precisely under Kissinger that the Cyprus drama exploded, with all its consequences.
Did Kissinger know or not know that the fascist junta in Athens was preparing that in- vasion? If he knew, he was a fool not to understand the mistake. If he didn't know, he was a bad secretary of state and even lacked the information that he boasts of having. And, in any case, the Cyprus drama deprived him of valuable allies: the Greek colonels. In ab- dicating they left Greece on the brink of war with Turkey. What American, before Kissinger, has ever found himself with two NATO countries preparing to go to war and with the Atlantic Alliance made to look so ridiculous?
And then on Kissinger lies the horrible stain known as Chile. The documents that have appeared in the American press prove, beyond any possibility of denial, that it was Kissinger as well who wanted the overthrow of the democratic regime in Chile, the end of a democratically elected government. They also prove that Kis- singer unleashed the CIA against Salvador Allende Gossens, that Kissinger financially helped those who were preparing the coup dtat.
There are many who wonder if, like Macbeth, he is not troubled at night by a bloody ghost of Banquo: the ghost of Al- lende. No toasts with Chou En-lai and Leonid Brezhnev will ever be able to wash away the suspicions that lie on him for Allende's. Nor does it help to see how generously Kissinger behaves with Franco and Franco's Spain, deaf to the future that a demo- cratic Spain prepares for herself in spite of Ford's visits.
It is almost unbelievable how this shaker of Communist leaders' hands shows his esteem and friendship only for the countries ruled by some form of Fascism. And it is poor consolation to go on saying that his star. Published in its entirety in the weekly New Republic, quoted in itsmore salient moments in the Washington and New York dailies, and then by almost all the newspapers in the the United States, the in- terview with Kissinger kicked up a fuss that amazed me as much as its consequences.
Obviously, I had underestimated the man and the interest that flourished around each of his words. Obviously, I. In fact it immediately became the topic of the day. And the rumor soon spread Nixon was enraged with Henry, that he that therefore refused to see him, that in vain Henry telephoned him, asking for a hearing, and went to seek him out in his San Clemente residence. The gates of San Clemente remained closed, the hearing was not granted, the telephone went unanswered because the presi- dent did not care to answer.
Ameri- cans like that immensely. Americans like the cowboy who leads the wagon train by riding ahead alone on his horse, the cowboy who rides all alone into the town, the village, with his horse and noth- ing else. The had always been generous with Kissinger, merciless press toward Nixon.
In this case, however, the sides were reversed and every newspaperman condemned the presumption, or at least the imprudence, of such a statement.
How did Henry Kissinger dare to assume the whole credit for what he had achieved as Nixon's envoy? How did he dare to relegate Nixon to the role of spectator? Where was the president of the United States when the little profes-. The cruder newspapers published cartoons showing Kissinger dressed as a cowboy and galloping toward a sa-. Others showed a picture of Kissinger in cowboy hat and spurs, with the caption "Henry, the Lone Ranger. I sent him a angrier than telegram to Paris, at the American embassy, where he happened to be at the moment, and in substance I asked him if he were a man of honor or a clown.
Kissinger should not forget that it had been recorded on tape and that this tape was at the disposal of everyone to refresh his memory and I made the the exactness of his words. And the altercation went on for almost two months, to the unhappiness of both of us, especially me. I could no longer stand Henry Kissinger; his name was enough to upset me. But certainly would be incorrect to say that at that time wished it 1.
The truth is that my anathemas have no effect. Their cease-fire was ac- complished. The American prisoners returned home. Those pris-. And the real-. Then, of a year later, Kissinger became secretary of state in place of William. Kis- singer. I'm wondering if you too are disappointed, like our- selves, like most of the world. Are you disappointed, Mr. What has happened these days about which I should be disappointed?
Though you had said that peacewas "at hand," and though you had confirmed that an agreement had been reached with the North Vietnam- ese, peace has not come. The war goes on as before, and. We have decided to have it and we will.
It will come within a few weeks' time or even less; that is, im- mediately after the resumption of negotiations with the North Vietnamese for the final accord. This is what I said ten days. Yes, we will have peace within a reason-. These ''ifs" are the only uncertainty these days. But it is an uncertainty that I don't even want to consider. You're letting yourself succumb to panic, and in. Nor even The fact is that to impatience. Well, for. You've kept saying that they would come to noth- ing.
Then, all of a sudden, you shouted about peace being al-. In saying you take our temperature every day, four this,. But you take it from Hanoi's point of view. The North Vietnamese wanted us to sign on October 31, which was reasonable and unreasonable at the same time and. No, I don't intend to argue about this. But it. We would not have been able to observe a date simply be- cause, in good faith, we had promised to make every effort to observe it.
So at what point are we? At the point where those details remain to be clarified and where a new meeting is in- dispensable. They say it's not indispensable, that it's not neces- sary. I say that it is indispensable and that it will take place. But this is only November 4, today is November 4, and I can understand that the North Vietnamese don't want to.
I can understand their postponing things. But I, at least, cannot conceive their rejecting another meeting. Just now when we have covered ninety percent of the ground and are about to reach our goal. No, I'm not disap- pointed. I will be, certainly, if Hanoi should break the agree- ment, if Hanoi should refuse to discuss any changes. But I. I can't even suspect that we've come so far only to fail on a question of prestige, of procedure, of dates, of nuances.
They've gone back to a hard line, they've made serious, almost insulting, accusations against you. It's happened before and we never gave it any importance. I would say that the hard line, the serious accusations, even the insults, are part of the normal situation. Nothing has changed essentially. Since Tuesday, October 31, that is ever since we've calmed down here, you re- porters keep asking us if the patient is sick.
And I really maintain that things are going to develop more or less as I say. Peace, I repeat, will come within a few weeks after the resumption of negotiations.
Not within a few months. Within a few weeks. That's the point. I'm here waiting. But without feeling anxious, I assure you. For God's sake! Before, two or three weeks used to go by between one meeting and another!
I don't see why now we should be upset if a few days go by. The only reason that you're all so nervous is that people are wondering, "But will they resume these talks? You were too pessimistic in the beginning, then too op- timistic after my press conference, and now again you're too pessimistic.
You can't get it into your heads that everything is. It seems to me I then figured on a couple of weeks. But even if it should take more. That's enough, I more about Vietnam. I can't don't want to talk any allow myself to, at this time. Every word I say becomes news. At the end of November perhaps Listen, why don't we. Because Thieu, for instance, has dared you to speak.
Look at this clip- ping from The New York Times. It quotes Thieu as saying: "Ask Kissinger on what points we're divided, what are the points I don't accept. No, I won't answer him. I won't pay any attention to this invitation.
He's al-. North Vietnamese troops will remain in South Vietnam. Kissinger, do you think you'll ever succeed in convincing Thieu? Do you think that America will have to come to a separate agreement with Hanoi? I have to keep to what I said publicly ten days ago I cannot, I must not consider an hypothesis that.
I do not think will happen. I can only tell you that we are determined to have this peace, and that in any case we will have it, in the shortest. Thieu can say what he likes. That's his own business. Kissinger, if I were to put a pistol to your head and ask you choose between having dinner with Thieu and having to.
I do not wish to answer that question. I found him a man very dedicated to his cause, very serious, very strong, and always polite and courteous. Also sometimes very hard, in fact difficult, to deal with, but this is. Yes, I have great re-. Naturally our relationship has been very professional, but I think I think I've noticed a cer- tain niceness that shines through him. It's a fact, for instance, that at times we've even succeeded in making jokes. We said. Well, I would call our relations good.
At first. The South Vietnamese have said that you didn't greet each other like the best of friends. Would you care to state the opposite, Dr. And not necessarily the same viewpoints. So let's say that we greeted each other as allies, Thieu and I. Kissinger, that Thieu was a harder nut to crack than any- one thought has now been shown. So as regards Thieu, do you feel that you've done everything you could or do you hope to be able to do something more?
In short, do you feel op-. I still have things to do. I'm not through yet, we're not through yet! And I don't feel powerless, I don't feel discouraged. Not at all. I feel ready and confident.
If I can't speak of Thieu, if I can't tell you what we're doing at this point in the negotiations, that doesn't mean I'm about to lose faith in being able to arrange things within the time I've said. That's why it's useless for Thieu to ask you reporters to make me spell out the points on which we disagree.
It's so useless that I don't even get upset by such a demand. Furthermore I'm not the kind of person to be swayed by emotion.
Emotions serve no purpose. Less than anything do they serve to achieve peace. In the newspapers this morning there's an awful pic- ture: a very young Vietcong dead two days after October And then there was an awful piece of news: twenty-two Ameri- cans dead in a helicopter downed by a Vietcong mortar, three days after October And while you advise against haste, the American Defense Department is sending fresh arms and am- munition to Thieu.
Hanoi is doing the same. It always happens before a cease-fire. Don't you remember the maneuvers that took place in the. Middle East at the moment of the cease-fire? They went on for at least two years. You see, the fact that we're sending more. And don't make me talk about Viet- nam anymore, please. It's absurd to say that President Nixon, a presi- dent who in the face of the Soviet Union and Communist China and on the eve of elections in his own country has as- sumed an attitude of aid and defense for South Vietnam against what he considered a North Vietnamese invasion.
And why should he sell out just now? What we have done hasn't been a sellout. Now it's up to the South Vietnamese to. As we've always said. There are no great differences between what we proposed last May and what the draft of the accepted agreement contains. We haven't put in any new clauses, we haven't made other concessions. I absolutely and totally reject the notion of a "sellout. Let's talk about Machiavelli, about Cicero, anything but about Vietnam. You're not a pacifist, are.
Even though I respect genuine pacifists, I don't agree with any pacifist, and especially not with halfway pacifists: you know, those who are pacifists on one side and anything but pacifists on the other. The only. But even with them I'm only willing to speak to tell them that they will be crushed by the will of the stronger and that their pacifism can only lead to horrible suffering. War is not an abstraction, it is something that depends on conditions.
The war against Hitler, for ex-. By that I don't mean that war is neces- sary in itself, that nations have to make war to maintain their virility. I mean that there are existing principles for which na- must be prepared to fight. You've never been against the war in Vietnam, it seems to me. Not even before holding the position I.
If it is a question whether the war in Vietnam was necessary, a just war, rather than. After all, my role, our role, has been to reduce more and more the degree to which America was involved in the war, so as then to end the war. In the final analysis, history will say who did more: those who operated by criticizing and nothing else, or we who tried to reduce the war and then ended it.
Yes, the verdict is up to his- tory. When a country is involved in a war, it's not enough to say it must be ended.
It must be ended in accordance with some principle. And this is quite different from saying that it. Kissinger, that it's been a useless war?
But let's not forget that the reason why we entered this war was to keep the South from being gobbled up by the North, it was to permit the South to remain the South. Of course, by that I don't mean that this was our only objective.
It was also something more But today. I'm not in the position to judge whether the war in Vietnam it was useful or has been just or not, whether our getting into useless.
But are we Vietnam? And, still speaking of Vietnam, do you think you can say that these negotiations have been and are the most important undertaking of your career and even of your life? Also often the most painful. But maybe it's not even right to call them the most difficult undertaking. It's more exact to say that they have been the most painful undertaking. Because they have in- volved me emotionally. You see, to approach China was an intellectually difficult task but not emotionally difficult.
Peace in Vietnam instead has been an emotionally difficult task. As for calling these negotiations the most important thing I have done. No, what I wanted to achieve was not only peace. I've always attached great importance to the prob-. I would say no less than to the rapprochement with China and to ending the war in Vietnam.
The coup with China has been a success, the coup with Russia has been a success, and the coup of peace in Vietnam almost. So at this point ask you, Dr. Kis- I. What will you do after the moon; what else can you do besides your job as an astronaut? And what did the astronauts say? I really don't know what I'll do afterward.
But, unlike the astronauts, I'm not confused by it. I have found so many things to do in my life and I am sure that when I leave this post Of course, I'll need some time to recuperate, a. No one who is in the position I am can just leave it and start something else right away. But, as soon as I've been decompressed, I'm sure to find something that's worth doing.
I don't want to think about it now, it could. But it's very, very unlikely. There are more interest-. Furthermore, I've by no means decided to give up like it very much, you know. Kissinger, to what course. Try to be frank. You see, when you have power in your hands and have I. I'm sure that when I leave this post, I'll feel the lack of power. Still power as an instrument in its. Who would ever have said it was possible?
No, such thoughts don't interest me. And if I should happen to have them, they certainly don't become a determining fac-. Anyway it wasn't a.
If you look at. I've been against him in a good three elections. You once even stated that Nixon "wasn't fit to be president. But I suppose must have said something I.
Anyway if I did say it, that's the proof that Nixon wasn't included in my plans for gaining a high govern- ment position. And as for feeling embarrassed with him I had toward him the usual atti-. But I was wrong. President Nixon has shown great strength, great ability. Video Audio icon An illustration of an audio speaker. Audio Software icon An illustration of a 3. Software Images icon An illustration of two photographs.
Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses. EMBED for wordpress. Want more? Advanced embedding details, examples, and help! Topics interview with history , interview , oriana fallaci Collection opensource Language English. Interview with History Intervista con la storia in Italian is a book consisting of interviews by the Italian journalist and author Oriana Fallaci — , one of the most original and controversial interviewers of her time.
She interviewed many world leaders of the time.
0コメント