Kissinger's skewering

Jim heartfield jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk
Sat Feb 12 10:02:46 PST 2000


In message <Pine.LNX.3.96.1000211120839.29438C- 100000 at falcon.ece.uci.edu>, Prashanth Mundkur <mundkur at ece.uci.edu> writes
>
>Do you know if there is realaudio for this?
>
>--prashanth

I couldn't find it, but this transcript and report is taken from the Guardian (UK) newspaper:

'Did you feel a fraud?' Tuesday June 29, 1999

The exchanges in full:

Jeremy Paxman: "It's been 17 years since the last volume of your memoirs. You said you wanted to let the dust settle but [didn't you] need the distance in order to rewrite history?"

Dr Kissinger: "No I based these memoirs on documents which were as valid then as they are now."

Paxman: [describes Kissinger's claim that he ended the cold war as "farfetched"] "What bothers a lot of people is you seem to ignore the human rights of people within regimes with which you're trying to establish a balance of power."

Kissinger: "That's not correct either."

Paxman: question about supporting General Pinochet and undermining President Allende in Chile.

Kissinger: "We did not support Pinochet. In what way did we support Pinochet?"

Paxman: "You supported the military regime."

Kissinger: "After the coup we preferred Pinochet to Allende."

Paxman: "It doesn't stop there... You're on record justifying the [behaviour of the] Chinese government in Tiananmen Square."

Kissinger:... "I have never supported what the Chinese did in Tiananmen Square."

Paxman: "Did you feel a fraud for accepting the Nobel Prize [for the Indo-China agreement]?"

Kissinger: "I wonder what you do when you do a hostile interview?"

Paxman: [accuses Kissinger of a "wilful misreading of history"]

Kissinger: "It may be a misreading but it wasn't wilful."

Paxman: question about the "hundreds of thousands of people killed in the bombing of Cambodia".

Kissinger: "That's absolutely untrue. We have no evidence that hundreds of thousands of people were killed... I think this is an absolute outrage, it's nonsense."

Paxman: "You don't deny [the bombing of Cambodia] was secret though?... This was a secret operation against a neutral country..."

Kissinger: "Come on now, Mr Paxman, this was 15 years ago, and you at least have the ability to educate yourself about a lie on your own programme... "

Paxman: "What's factually inaccurate?"

Kissinger: "... That's outrageous... " ------

Kissinger walks out of Paxman programme 'Did you feel a fraud?'

Janine Gibson, Media Correspondent

Tuesday June 29, 1999

It was probably not how Henry Kissinger wanted to Start the Week. After an extraordinarily bad-tempered interview with Jeremy Paxman on the Radio 4 debate programme yesterday, Dr Kissinger left suddenly in the middle of the broadcast.

What was meant to be a gentle opportunity to plug the latest chapter in his memoirs for the 75-year-old diplomat, turned into a scuffle as he could barely conceal his rising temper during a "challenging" interview with Mr Paxman.

Dr Kissinger, who had been reluctant to appear at all on the programme, was clearly unaccustomed to the robust questioning of Mr Paxman. However the former US secretary of state got off lightly compared to the former home secretary Michael Howard, once famously asked the same question 13 times by Mr Paxman on Newsnight.

On three occasions Dr Kissinger accused Mr Paxman of inaccuracies in his questions - at one point suggesting he had been promised an easy ride, responding: "I wonder what you do when you do a hostile interview".

That followed Mr Paxman's question: "Did you feel a fraud accepting the Nobel prize [for the Indo-China peace agreement]?"

After two questions from his fellow guests, Dr Kissinger left the studio muttering as Mr Paxman interrupted himself to bid him a hasty "thank you and goodbye".

Suspecting that he would be "set up" by the other panellists, the diplomat had warned the BBC that he might not stay for the round table debate and, as soon as his interview had finished, he left the studio.

Protracted last-minute negotiations revealed that he was concerned that some of his more controversial positions, such as the bombing of Cambodia and his more recent support for General Pinochet, might prove unpopular in the adversarial show.

He is understood to have been told by production staff that he did not have to join in the debate. He had expressed his unhappiness at the line-up of fellow guests including the human rights campaigner and barrister Geoffrey Robertson QC, and the writer Frances Stonor Saunders, whose book on the influence of the CIA is just about to be published.

Before their meeting on air this morning, both Mr Robertson and Mr Stonor Saunders had said how much they were looking forward to challenging Dr Kissinger. They had to get in quick however, before the man Mr Paxman described as the world's most famous diplomat decided enough was enough.

A BBC spokeswoman denied Dr Kissinger had stormed out of the programme, saying the production team had always known he might not stay for the debate. In a statement, the BBC said: "The challenging conversation in this morning's Start The Week between Dr Kissinger and Jeremy Paxman made fascinating listening.

"We welcomed his contribution to the programme and hope he would join the debate with the other guests, although we were aware that this might not be possible. Sadly he chose to leave the programme after the interview."

-- Jim heartfield



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