On Wed, 24 Oct 2001, Doug Henwood wrote:
> [good to see Hitchens take some time out from beating the war drums
> for beating on Kissinger - this isn't on The Nation's website, so I
> scanned it - apologies for any remaining scanner oddities]
>
> The Nation - November 5, 2001
>
> CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
> Court Time for Henry
>
> AIthough it may appear that the aftershocks of September 11 have
> somewhat deposed the discourse of human rights and international law
> and replaced it with that of law and order, there is still a great
> deal to fight for. If anything, in fact, the new context makes it
> more urgent that there be solid rules of international criminal
> evidence and reliable institutions of international law. The Bush
> Administration is opposed to the International Criminal Court that is
> now taking shape, which meant that when the President was asked what
> he intended to do about the perpetrators of the recent aggression he
> had to embarrass himself by resorting to his least attractive "don't
> mess with Texas" mode, and babble, about "wanted dead or alive" like
> a cartoon sheriff.
>
> The military option has the effect of overshadowing all others, and
> it is of course true that the Nuremberg trials and the Bosnia, Kosovo
> and Rwanda tribunals all required a bit of a shift in the balance of
> power before they could occur. Nonetheless, here might have been the
> first opportunity in history for an American administration to say,
> in advance of any meditated action, that it would attempt to bring
> the common enemies of humanity before a properly constituted
> tribunal. And the chance was thrown away in advance.
>
> The most vocal public opponent of the principles of "universal
> jurisdiction" is Henry Kissinger, who has a laughably self interested
> chapter on the subject in his turgid new book Does America Need a
> Foreign Policy? (a volume, incidentally, that if it had any other
> merit might be considered as a candidate for title of the year). This
> chapter was also solemnly recycled by the establishment's house
> organ, Foreign Affairs. It was utterly nauseating to see Kissinger
> re-enthroned as a pundit in the aftermath of September 11, talking
> his usual "windy, militant trash," to borrow Auden's phrase for it. I
> caught him talking to John McLaughlin and looking on the bright side
> by saying that the mass murder had strengthened something called the
> Western alliance. Say what you will about our Henry, he can find the
> joy in any nightmare.
>
> He may also have had a personal reason to take comfort from the
> hideous events of that day. On September 10, he was hit with a
> lawsuit that was filed in federal court in Washington, DC. The suit,
> which is brought by members of the family of the late Rene Schneider,
> accuses him and his co-defendant former CIA chief Richard Helms, and
> some other members of the Nixon Administration, of "summary
> execution" - in other words, of murder and, by implication,
> international terrorism. (Gen. Rene Schneider, head of the Chilean
> General Staff in 1970, was resolutely opposed to any military
> intervention against the elected government of Salvador Allende. He
> was therefore marked for death by Kissinger and others. A fairly full
> account of the background to the case, and of the newly declassified
> documents that support and underpin it, can be found in chapters five
> and six of my book The Trial of Henry Kissinger.) To summarize the
> story briefly, Richard Nixon told Kissinger and Helms to commence the
> destabilization of Chile before Allende had even become President.
> They were instructed to employ the transition period between the 1970
> election and the confirmation of the results by the Chilean Congress.
> They were also told not to be too choosy about methods. They selected
> as their proxies a militarist gang that had once tried to overthrow a
> Christian Democratic government from the right. Fascists, to be plain
> about it, and proven criminals.
>
> The lawsuit, which will produce details of the recruiting of
> international death squads, the use of US diplomatic pouches to
> smuggle illegal arms and money, and of other terrorist techniques,
> made it into the Washington Post on September 11 but has gone largely
> unremarked since then. Let's not complain about that for now; the
> point is that it is in the system. It joins several, other legal
> initiatives against Kissinger, which now include a similar complaint
> filed in Chilean courts, a request from the judge in the Pinochet
> case for information from Kissinger about the murder of the US
> journalist (and sometime Nation contributor) Charles Horman, a
> request for Kissinger's testimony from Judge Rodolfo Corral in Buenos
> Aires (this concerns Kissinger's knowledge of the coordination of
> state terrorism known as Operation Condor) and a summons issued by
> Judge Roger Le Loire in Paris, requesting his attendance at the
> Palais de Justice to answer questions about several Frenchmen
> "missing" from the Pinochet years. In default of a working system of
> international criminal law, in other words, a number of initiatives
> are beginning to supply a framework of precedent, of which the most
> celebrated is obviously the arrest of Kissinger's friend Augusto
> Pinochet himself.
>
> This is good news in a dark time. It joins a number of other legal
> initiatives, including one for compensation in the case of Clinton's
> criminal rocketing of a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan in 1998. The
> most common. objection I have met with, in my campaign to get
> Kissinger into the dock, is that "all this was a long time ago." I
> think that opportunistic, ahistorical objection may now dissolve. The
> question of international viciousness and the use of criminal
> violence against civilians is now, so to speak, back on the agenda.
> It's important that we make our opposition to such conduct both
> steady and consistent.
>
> Incidentally, suing Kissinger can also be fun. Having refused comment
> on my book for some time, and having broken his silence only to say
> that it was "contemptible" and that the charges were "old:' our Henry
> suddenly announced that I was a Holocaust denier. I was moved by this
> to send him my first-ever lawyer's letter. His attorneys immediately
> replied by saying that they would not repeat the allegation and then,
> after some more correspondence, sent me a very grudging and graceless
> but nonetheless unmistakable retraction. Since some of my more
> extreme ill-wishers sometimes repeat Kissinger's charge, I have
> amassed the whole background to it and the complete refutation, and
> you can visit it if you care to by directing your trusty web browser
> to my site at <http://www.enteract.com/~peterk.>
>