Here's a Laugh: Kissinger is Going to Heal US-EU 'Rift'

by Jimbo Tue Apr 15, 2003 18:05

Kissinger's the man who's afraid to set foot in a number of European countries in case he's charged with war crime offences for his involvement in illegal bombing of Cambodia and Laos, the murder of Chilean President Allende and myriad other allegations.

HK was ignominously chased from his car into the back entrabce of the Boole library in Cork when he came to let our business leaders in on a few staff relations tips. He will probably get the same reception anywhere he goes in Europe (if he doesn't get charged). Good luck to HK!!

by Josef Wed Apr 16, 2003 09:11

Jezza called him a war criminal to his face in an interview - with hilarious consequences.

by DC Wed Apr 16, 2003 10:33

>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."

by kokomero Wed Apr 16, 2003 13:08

I have the greatest respect for Paxman and would love to have seen him in action at the Whitehouse war "briefings" (infomercials?) had he been there.

by AL Wed Apr 16, 2003 15:44

check out the many MediaLens articles:

Dated 6th February, 2003
"In similar vein, on the BBC's Newsnight programme, Oxbridge journalists like
Jeremy Paxman laugh and joke with an assortment of white, establishment
grandees about the ironies and 'realities' of diplomacy and realpolitik. As
American journalist Dennis Hans notes, when it comes to foreign policy,
"It's a White, White, White, White Media World."

Newsnight journalists and guests resemble members of an elite club bantering
about issues that have nothing to do with the public who might be looking
in, 'ordinary' people who do not mix in the same rarified circles. Most
recently (February 4, 2003) Newsnight's Martha Kearney reported cheerily
from Le Touquet on the Blair/Chirac meeting. In a gross misreading of the
public mood on Iraq, Kearney's report was interspersed with quotations from
the comic writer P.G. Wodehouse, who also visited Le Touquet. With the world
perhaps weeks away from a monstrous war, it's hard to imagine what was going
throu
gh the Newsnight editors' minds.

Paxman - the BBC's "rotweiller" - gave Iraq one passing mention in his
latest book of tittle-tattle about parliamentary politics, The Political
Animal. Paxman certainly barks like an attack dog, but then aggression, even
rudeness, is fine enough - what politicians fear is the kind of analysis
that transcends the carefully policed limits of acceptable debate, and which
is forever excluded.

It's worth bearing in mind that the Newsnight presenters interviewing
members of the establishment elite are themselves very much of that elite.
Writing in the New Statesman in 2000, Nick Cohen estimated that Paxman
earned between £750,000 and £1 million a year (Nick Cohen, 'Hacking their
way to a fortune, the New Statesman, May 22, 2000). In 2002, Newsnight
presenter Kirsty Wark agreed a £3.5m-plus package with the BBC to present
and produce programmes for the next three years, according to Conal Walsh in
the Observer. ('Us versus Them at the Beeb', The Observer, January 6
, 2002)"

Dated 10th Feb 2003
"Paxman came out fighting in the first part of his interview with Blair, but
the challenge wilted at the first sign of resistance. Paxman quickly
corrected Blair that UN Unscom arms inspectors were not "put out" of Iraq in
1998, as Blair had suggested, they were withdrawn. Blair responded:

"I'm sorry, that is simply not right. What happened is that the inspectors
told us that they were unable to carry out their work, they couldn't do
their work because they weren't being allowed access to the sites.

"They detailed that in the reports to the security council. On that basis,
we said they should come out because they couldn't do their job properly."

Blair had thereby already admitted the deception - the claim that inspectors
were thrown out of the country is a misreprese
ntation of the reality, that
they were withdrawn. Blair clearly knows the facts but the idea that
inspectors were thrown out serves his purpose, which is to suggest that Iraq
is unwilling to cooperate peaceably with inspectors and so must be subjected
to military assault. Paxman repeated that being told to "come out" was not
the same as being "put out". Blair replied:

"No, I'm sorry Jeremy, I'm not allowing you away with that, that is
completely wrong. Let me just explain to you what happened. They were
effectively thrown out for the reason that I will give you. Prior to them
leaving Iraq they had come back to the security council, again and again,
and said we are not being given access to sites. For example, things were
being designated as presidential palaces, they weren't being allowed to go
in there.

"As a result of that, they came back to the United Nations and said we can't
carry out the work as inspectors; therefore we said you must leave because
we will have to try and enforce this
action a different way. So when you say
the inspectors, when you imply the inspectors were in there doing their
work, that is simply not the case."

Is Blair telling the truth? Paxman certainly didn't correct him and could be
heard repeatedly mumbling "right" as Blair was giving this account. So what
are the public to make of Blair's claim that the inspectors, while not
thrown out, weren't allowed to do their jobs?

The answer is that they must surely believe Blair because they will have
heard almost nothing to counter this claim in the media. Barring a window of
comparative media honesty in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of
Unscom inspections in 1998 - when inspectors were accurately described as
having been withdrawn amid admissions of CIA infiltration and spying
(intelligence that was used to bomb Iraq in Operation Desert Fox in December
1998) - in the four years since, the media has almost completely buried the
reality.
"

And plenty more decent journalism where that came from...
http://www.medialens.org

by Josef Wed Apr 16, 2003 17:20

as do I and a great many others. He risked his career and a serious backbench revolt to get his war. He is a man of principle.