WATCH: Reporter Confronts Wheelchair-Bound Kissinger About His Support For ‘Alleged War Crimes’
Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was confronted by a reporter who bombarded him with questions on several of the most controversial parts of his political legacy.
Vox’s Jonathan Guyer covered Kissinger on Thursday as he spoke before the Council on Foreign Relations about the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. As Kissinger was escorted by staff to his car after the event, Guyer confronted the group and noted that it has been 50 years since Augusto Pinochet took power as dictator of Chile.
“Do you have any reflections on Pinochet?” Guyer asked. Kissinger didn’t answer the question, and Guyer had to explain he was a member of the press to a retainer who was leading Kissinger to his car.
“Dr. Kissinger, any comment on Cambodia, Laos five decades later?” Guyer continued to ask. “A lot of alleged war crimes have been documented by historians and reporters.”
Kissinger didn’t respond to any of this, nor Guyer’s repeated inquiries about Chile’s military junta.
As the secretary of state to Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, Kissinger is one of the most polarizing figures in modern American history. Part of this stems from how Kissinger advised Nixon that the U.S should intervene in Chilean politics to work against Socialist Party presidential candidate Salvador Allende.
When Allende won the election of 1970, the Nixon administration backed the CIA as they tried to encourage a Chilean military coup to prevent the inauguration. Kissinger influenced U.S. policy toward Chile in the years that followed until Allende’s government was overthrown by the 1973 military coup where Pinochet rose to power.
Declassified documents flagged by NPR show that Kissinger told Nixon after the coup, “We didn’t do it. I mean we helped them… created the conditions as great as possible.” Kissinger was also on record saying the U.S. would be “favorably disposed” to Pinochet’s government which went on to commit crimes against humanity.
Watch above via Jonathan Guyer.
