Henry Kissinger is turning 100. He still has blood on his hands.
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- Published on Sunday, 29 November -0001 16:00
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Henry Kissinger turned 100 years old on Saturday — and true to form, much of the media leapt at the opportunity to fawn over him.
Time magazine called him “a towering figure” and rhapsodized about his “transcendental statesmanship.” The Wall Street Journal celebrated Kissinger as “the great teacher of statesmen — essential to averting a global calamity during the Cold War.”
At The Intercept, we believe journalists should confront the powerful, not erase their crimes. So instead of toasting Kissinger’s birthday, we published a sweeping investigation with new evidence that his illegal bombing of Cambodia killed even more civilians than was previously known.
But with so... many news outlets still adopting a servile posture toward U.S. militarism, who will expose the next Henry Kissinger?
The U.S. still spends more on “defense” than the next nine countries combined — and with much of the foreign policy establishment salivating over the prospect of new cold wars with Russia and China, it’s a virtual certainty that crimes and corruption in the military-industrial complex are going unreported.
There are no corporate advertisers — and definitely no defense contractors — clamoring for more of The Intercept’s reporting. Yet with a Democrat in the White House, too many donors have lost interest in ambitious investigations that expose abuses of power.
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The hagiographic whitewashing of Kissinger’s genocidal legacy over the last week has been truly remarkable, even by the standards of a national news media that has genuflected before Kissinger and the national security establishment for decades.
The Economist interviewed Kissinger for eight hours to gain his putatively sage words about current global flashpoints, including Ukraine and Taiwan.
The Washington Post published an adoring column written by Kissinger’s son, describing his mind as “a heat-seeking weapon that identifies and grapples with the existential challenges of the day.”
CNN even suggested that President Joe Biden consider sending the 100-year-old Kissinger to Russia right now to meet with Vladimir Putin.
The Intercept begs to differ. We marked Kissinger’s 100th birthday with a sweeping new investigation, years in the making, of Kissinger’s carpet-bombing of Cambodia from 1969 to 1973.
Our reporting, based on U.S. military documents and groundbreaking interviews with Cambodian survivors and American witnesses, reveals that Kissinger is responsible for more civilian deaths in Cambodia than was previously known. We’ve published unreported evidence of civilian casualties that were kept secret during the war and remain almost entirely unknown to the American people.
The evidence shows that Kissinger personally directed the strikes in Cambodia. But to this day, he’s evaded any and all accountability for these crimes — and remained a guest of honor among the D.C. press and foreign policy elite.
The Intercept was founded largely in response to the corporate media’s failure to hold the United States accountable for its foreign policy crimes and blunders, and our unsparing investigative reporting is needed now more than ever.
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The Intercept team
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