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Hello, I'm Erica Kelly from the podcast Southern Fried True crime, and if you want to go from podcast fan to podcast host, do what I did and check out spreaker from iheart. I was working in accounting and hating it. Then after just 18 months of podcasting with Spreaker, I was able to quit my day job. Follow your podcasting dreams, let's break or handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. Hey there, it's Ebony Monet, your co-host for the San Diego Zoo's Amazing Wildlife podcast. In this special episode, we're speaking with Doctor Jane Goodall about the fascinating journey that led to her social discoveries on chimpanzees. So four whole months, the chimps ran away from me. I mean, they take one look at this peculiar white ape and disappear into the vegetation. Bing wildlife on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. In the 1980s and 90s, a psychopath terrorized the country of Belgium. A serial killer and kidnapper was abducting children in the bright light of day. From Tenderfoot TV and iHeartRadio, this is La Monstra, a story of abomination and conspiracy. The story about the man who simply become known as. Lamaster. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi everybody. Robert Evans here and my novel after the revolution is available for preorder now from AKG press org. Now, if you go to akeypress.org, you can find after the revolution, just googleakpress.org. After the revolution, you'll find a list of participating indie bookstores selling my book. And if you pre-order now from either of these independent bookstores or from AK Press, you'll get a custom signed copy of the book, which I think is pretty cool. You can also pre-order it in physical or in Kindle form from Amazon or pretty much wherever books are sold. So please Google, AKA Press after the revolution, or find an indie bookstore in your area and pre-order it. You'll get a signed copy and you'll make me very happy. Ohh, welcome back to what is either behind the dollop or dollop. The ********. A podcast that no matter what name we choose for it, is about tickling? Absolutely. This, finally, is. That's how you make us feel at home. Thank you. Do you think anyone has ever tickled Kissinger? I can't imagine. I cannot picture it in my head. I can. This is the way he would laugh. Oht. Stop it. I'm going to wear my pants. Not my start makes me want to kill it. Just try to imagine him whispering into the ears of a sexual partner. Something like to finish. I'm about to finish. I'm going, you know, it'd be more like I'm going to end this. Say, say I'm. You cannot say you burned corpse. Only one of us makes it out alive. I actually did. While we were taking a break in between episodes, I I had a moment where I actually did. For the first time in my life, I felt profound sense of solidarity with Henry Kissinger. My cat is is named Saddam Hussein. And as I was feeding him during the break, I realized like Kissinger did at one point, he's gotten much bigger. Saddam has gotten much larger than I ever thought he would. You know, this is. I did not anticipate this. Yeah. Well, that's because you named him Saddam. Yeah. There's a lot to love in what you just said. Kissinger and I both make the same mistake. Ohh so I guess let's let's let's get get right back down let's party. What is for Kissinger memory lane and it is what for everyone else is Nightmare Ave because this is the story about why Vietnam lasted an extra half decade. Good times. We have a fun one here. So one of the many downsides of an intellectual upbringing like the one Henry Kissinger experienced is that he spent a lot of time surrounded by people. Might call political technologists. Now, this is a term I first heard in Ukraine from civilians describing Paul Manafort. That's what they called them. Political. Oh, that's right. It heard it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. These, like hired guns who come in and help anybody who just happens to like, have government money, like, do literally anything right there. Guys like his mentor, Professor Elliott, and like Harvard economist Thomas Schnelling, who advised powerful elected leaders and like they they all of the the way in which they think about the mechanisms of government. Are very mathematic and inhuman, right? Those are the people that Kissinger patterns himself off of now. Schnelling who are shelling who he just. Thomas Schelling, who's a Harvard economist we just introduced, was one of Kissinger's other mentors and shelling at the same time as he's. He's working at Harvard and mentoring. Kissinger is advising the Eisenhower administration on moral calculus. In the early stages of the Cold War, shelling argues that calculus, moral calculus. Have you never have you never talked about that? With anybody who's saying that a common conversation. No, sorry. No, I mean, I was terrible at calculus, but I was always squirrel. So, yeah, well, you can't be moral in no calculus. Which is why, you know, like pole, pot. I'm going to eventually set all of my listeners after people who know math. That's that's the end goal for Bobby right there. How many did we get? We're not sure, Sir. Idea. No clue. Possible to say, no way incalculable. People keep trying to tell us, and we just kill them. Adam to the pile. Yeah, someone had two numbers, but we were unable to. We can't negotiate it. Yeah. So shelling is advising the Eisenhower administration on moral calculus in the Cold War. And shellings argument is that whether you were, quote, deterring the Russians or your own children, the proper tactic was to figure out the right ratio of threat to incentive. So. Ready? Shelling might be the quickest I've ever described a person. And had it be clear, like, well, that's a *******. Like, that's a ***** ** ****. Yeah. That's not OK, obviously. So since I have no human feelings, I have to figure out this. And children and murderers are the same. Yeah, children. And the Soviet government only understand one thing. Threats. Can I have more ice cream, dad? Put your hand in the drawer and find out. Now, there you go. I'm gonna tell you something, Jimmy. You go for that ice cream. I have a loaded 38 on the table table. Now, one of the chambers is empty, Jimmy. So if you get that ice cream, maybe the hammer goes down on the empty chamber and I just want to go to bed. I don't like dessert. There you go, honey. Honey, you just feel like moral calculus is not the way to go with the ice cream. Maybe you could just say no. If you don't want him to have dessert, any dad can say no. I'm learning. So while Henry was teaching at Harvard, and this is before he gets, we ended the last episode of him getting that gig with the Council on Foreign Relations running about nuclear policy, right? And the period before that, when like shelling is his mentor, Henry learns a lot from him and he walks away from their relationship with the belief that, quote, bargaining power comes from the capacity to hurt, to cause, quote, sheer pain and damage. ******* twice where you're just kind of waiting for this person to step into the vacuum, essentially, right? Like you're waiting for someone to be like, you know, there's actually a bottom that's under the bottom. Yeah, yeah. Ohh, my Lord, it's like this ****. Like, if that were true, we're all watching this situation unfold between Russia and Ukraine, where you've got, like, a lot of people with the ability to hurt a lot of people on both sides. And you know what? It doesn't seem like negotiations are going great. Yeah, no, not really. Maybe that's not a good basis to proceed. From anything with yeah, yeah. I mean, I just, I can't believe that it's it's the craziest ******* idea. It's not that it's not it's not negotiating. Yeah. You you go into negotiations like, I'm probably not gonna get what I want. We're gonna try and get the best we can. And he's just like, how much can I ******* hurt you? And what will you give me if you spend enough time like I do around, like, gun culture? People on the right. In particular, there's these folks who, like, usually have never done anything, like in the military themselves, but they read a bunch of, like, books by Navy seals and **** and they'll say **** like. You should have a plan to kill everyone in every room you walk into and like their frame is that like, the world's dangerous? You gotta be ready. And I think any reasonable person is like, well, you are someone who should not have a gun. Absolutely you should not have a gun. You are out of your entire damn mind. And this is a guy who should never be negotiating. Yeah, exactly. Absolutely not. Ready to kill someone is like, you know what? Don't go into rooms. That's just gonna be your thing. You know? Don't go anywhere. Stay in your house. You go to one room. Yeah. No, I I could, I could tell your throat. I could come reach across the table, tell your throat out, and stab you in the eyes with ice picks. So, OK, I'm just, we're just talking about what, what price ice cream? Dan. He just asked you for some ice cream. Dan. So Henry gets his gig at the at the CFR and so he's the thing he's he's producing for the Council on Foreign Relations for his his buddy. The Rockefeller is supposed to be like a report on how the US is it, like it should use nuclear weapons, different ways in which like, they could approach it, right. And while he's writing this report because it's it's with this thing takes a very, very long process getting this out, he also starts working privately on a book of his own titled Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy. And this book is a version of the stuff he wants to write and this thing he's like. Might need to get out with the sides. Yeah, kind of. But also it's actually very smart what he does well, it'll take us a second to get there. So this book that Kissinger writes this is like own project criticizes US threats of full nuclear scale nuclear attack in response to Soviet aggression. Niall Ferguson sums it up in this way quote with his skill for simplifying and expressing complex ideas, Kissinger put the issue starkly. The dilemma of the nuclear. Can therefore be defined as follows. The enormity of modern weapons makes the thought of war repugnant, but the refusal. To run any risks would amount to giving Soviet rulers a blank check. Kissinger's conclusions were not original. The study group at the Council was almost unanimous in its desire to find some alternative to Eisenhower stated policy, and many defense intellectuals, most notably Bernard Brodie and Basil Little Heart, had also written on the subject of limited nuclear war. Kissinger's book demonstrated his talent as a creative synthesizer of their ideas, drawing out the implications of their work and arguing that for America's Cold War diplomacy to have any real substance, the US had to accept the possibility of the limited. Use of nuclear weapons. That Kissinger's own solution of limited nuclear war was also highly problematic was less important to many contemporary observers than that it broke free from the straitjacket of the Eisenhower administration's policy. So, but where does he describe? Like, where you would use it is like, is it like a tactical battlefield? Look, is it? Yeah, it's like to win Battlefield victories to like in in Vietnam. He will briefly flirt. Well, not even know that briefly. But he will consider using nuclear weapons to cut off train access between Vietnam. In China like which is like sane. Isn't that like as as a layman you you could cut off trains in another way presumably. Right woman, I've seen the general with Buster Keaton. You could throw some logs on it there. There are these other things called bombs. Just bombs that were on the train. They are Kissinger. Yeah. So it it it really. I mean it is kind of just itchy trigger finger and it is like if you live in the realm of this sort of dark thinking. How are you not going to start, you know, thinking of ways that are just even more vicious? Brutal. He's basically saying we they need to think we're a chained Mad Dog, right? And if we you let the dog off the leash once and he attacks the postman and then and then everyone's going to ******* know, go, then you don't get the mail anymore. Yeah, then you stop receiving your mail. We've bombed Japan already. Like, everyone gets it. We're already in our ******* minds, of course. Oh my God. Yeah. It's not like it's this theoretical. Weapon that's never been used to. Yeah, but like, and it worked pretty well as far as making people be like, *** **** they are out of their minds. Yeah, these people are crazy. Holy ****. But it's also there's a there's a a factor here. I a part of me wonders if he even really believed about this or cared about whether or not nukes should be used tactically, and if it was more a matter of this is a big debate of the day. And if I publicly take the most contrarian thing, intellectuals who don't really care about what? Works. But who care about who's thinking creatively? Like, right, like, that's the thing. He's like, well, it's not about whether or not his plan would work. It's about we're getting out of this straightjacket. Eisenhower's put us in and was like, no, that's not all that matters. Finally, yeah. Yeah, you know, it's really funny, but just I ironic about this is that funny fun it places like the Heritage Foundation for years have been have been saying that Putin would use. Tactical battlefield nukes. And that's why he's unhinged. That's one of the reasons. Yeah. Can you imagine someone doing like, it's, I would say anyone who would do that is crazy. Yeah, imagine now I'll keep him on as an advisor. Yeah, yeah, that that that's my feeling on nukes. Don't shoot them at people ever. Yeah, they see bad. I mean, it's just bad. Maybe an Independence Day kind of situation. I'll be honest when I watch Independence Day. Think, yeah. I might shoot some new. I might, at that point, try a nuke or too. Yeah, but you have Randy Quaid. I do. I I do hang out with him a lot. Yeah, that that's my main plan. If things go wrong, Randy, get in the plane. He lives in my basement. That actually tracks from the Instagram videos I've been seeing. So Kissinger's book was published in 1957, and it almost immediately sold 17,000 copies, which is a lot for a wonky book on nuclear warfare. It is on the New York Times bestseller list for 14 weeks. Wow, Jesus Christ. Yeah, it's not great. Now he's timing is perfect. He puts this book out right as the Soviets make too big advances in Hungary. There's like a a revolution that they kind of crush. And then in the Suez where like, that brings the British and the French are like. Going around in the Suez Canal and the Soviets are like, stop or we'll do something bad. And NATO, like, backs the **** ***. Right? So the Soviets have like 2 big kind of foreign policy wins in this. And Americans can't look at this as like, well, you know, maybe the ******* NATO should have been ******* around the Suez. And yeah, that **** in Hungary's ****** **. But like, maybe we can't do anything about it. They're like, we should listen to the guy who says, what if we nuke them? You know, just don't run. Yeah, that's that's where people go, right? They don't they? They're. They're Americans. They don't take the rational root. No, no. They hate us for our nuclear freedom. Yeah, they listen to the craziest person in the room about this, right? There's a lot of things that you could say about both what happened in Hungary and the Suez crisis that are not. Why don't we use nukes more often? But by God, Kissinger noses audience, you know? Kissinger writes this book and the New York Times in their review of it, right. For the first time since President Eisenhower took office, officials at the highest government levels are displaying interest in the theory of the little or limited war. The theory of massive retaliation is reexamined. I love that. Those are that. Those go together. Those are the options. Yeah. And then it's like the Little War is the nuclear war, like it's the baby war for us. Yeah. Yeah. Hear me out. Hear me out, baby nukes. Little tiny nukes. Well, yeah, it's it's like if someone's, like, look, we gotta decide if one of which of these is going to be legal sarin nerve gas bombs for civilians or or or chlorine gas bombs for civilians. One type of poison gas bomb has to be illegal. Like we all, we have to have access. Everyone has to be able to have one kind of poison gas. Last two is crazy. Tastes great. But if nobody has this, God, that's not, you know, that's not where things go here. So President Eisenhower is given a summary of of Kissinger's book. You know, he's president. They don't, they don't read books. Yeah, it's the Cliff notes he gets. Yeah, he gets a Cliff notes. And he recommends it to his Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, who we have talked about quite a lot on. God, it was just. Yeah. I mean, who? Like, if if he's the rational mind, if Doris is being like, this dude seems a little out of his mind. Big problem. That's yeah. That's not great because John Foster Dulles. ******* lunatic. Yeah. Complete lunatic. So the vice president at this point is a little dude you might have heard of called Richard Milhouse Nixon. He gets photographed with a copy copy of Henry Kissinger's book, which is not great. I mean, it's actually great foreshadow this is not writing a screenplay. This is great. Yeah, really? This is like season one of the Nixon show and you just like, see him with Kissinger's book. Yeah. Television, you know? Yeah. So the book is successful enough that it provokes Rockefeller, who gotten him the job at the CFR to rush out the report that Nixon had been or that Kissinger had been making. And yeah, Christ, yeah. The report from the CFR concludes the willingness to engage in nuclear war when necessary is part of the price of our freedom. Wow. I mean, the price of our freedom is pretty *** **** price, isn't it? It's it's a barn. The man. How can we how can we live if we're not dead? Yeah. How can we live without nuclear fallout? It's it's and it's amazing that it like it all like I if it was part of his plan or not. Like you said, the timing is just pretty remarkable to release this book and then it actually shifts the way that they view this to be. Yeah. You know, it's actually he's got a really good point in his best selling book about how nukes are cool, how nukes are sweet. You know, I I am I am excited for Ben Shapiro's book on the same subject. Lead to the annihilation of all life on Earth. Yeah, I'm gonna live underground. So that's a good idea. So this report is is a weird, like, weirdly popular. Like, again, this is a report from the the the center or the from the CFR, from the Council on Foreign Relations, which is like, not. You don't expect that to go viral, right? You know, have you read this pamphlet? Have you read this? Study by the CFR. Yeah. I mean, American never lets you down when you're like, oh, that won't happen now. That's what happens. That won't go. Yeah. Right. It does. Yeah. So Rockefeller actually goes on the Today show to talk about this report. The CFR wrote it. Like with Kissinger. I know. It's amazing. Amazing. Macaroni casserole. So next. So he gives people on the Today show an address where they can write for a copy of this report. No, they get 45,000 requests the first day and 200,000 requests the next. God, Hell's Post office is overwhelmed. The media, U.S. media called this report quote the answer to Sputnik, which is like, hey, the Russians sent in sent an unarmed ball into space to further exploration. We should we this book. About how everyone should be nuking everyone. It's the answer to that. We're thinking that this report on nuclear weapons will actually show the Russians thought and not go to space. Yeah, it's space. If you get rid of Russia, they can't go to space. Do you understand? Yeah, and it is. It's worth noting because I think, like in our popular history, the answer to Sputnik is the Apollo missions, and it's framed this like this beauty, which, you know, did eventually happen. But no, the first answer to Sputnik was a report about how we should be nuking each other more often. Yeah, that's a very. I get they they put a ball. And the orbit so we should we should blow up Saint. We should be ready to drop 13 nuclear warheads on Berlin at a seconds notice that will show them. Jesus. So this makes Henry Kissinger famous. He is all over the place. How this is his, this is how he becomes famous. Like some guy, some guys watch the Today show when he buys the book so he can tell everybody at the Elks Club that we need to use nukes. Someone happening? Give this accountant a soccer ball. Look, some people get famous because their dad is one of OJ Simpson's lawyers. Some people get famous because they write a book about how nuclear warfare is not that bad. You know, it's just in fame. It's a crapshoot. Yeah, absolutely. **** man. I mean, imagine being an anti nuke person. At this point you're just like, wait, what is what is going on? No, I have you read? Have you read the report? It's so good. We're gonna show them if they're what they should not be going to space. Yeah, next time they put a satellite up, we're gonna kill everyone in Paraguay. What we need to do is irradiated country. So on July 14th, 1958, Mike Wallace gives Henry Kissinger his first big break into the public sphere. So man in the sorry Christ is happening, it really is. It really is just ******* disgusting. Because I I go through this all the time on our show where I'm like, it is the same **** but again, it's just media using its platform irresponsibly to normalize things that are ******* batshit. Yeah, it's great, like 60 minutes having of a *******. Whole segment on a of the Havana ******* sound like this. Come on, Dave. You know that's real. I suffered from that for two years. Those crickets. Ohh man, I I will say like the stupidest joke that I laugh at every time is, yeah, I got Havana syndrome having another beer. Never doesn't get a chuckle out of me, but we've we've done we've had 60 minutes. Come on, 60 minutes. Did the the Satanic scare ****? Oh yeah. They were Big Lots and gamble and like they they just run with ideas that are crazy. Yeah they're. I mean because for for people who are at the level Mike Wallace is the definition of journalist is not afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. It's be a giant ********. Yeah, right. Be a huge shift. Man ohh man. So Mike Wallace introduces Henry Kissinger, the guy who's won achievement is a book about how nukes are cool. By saying this in the field of foreign policy and military affairs, Dr Kissinger, you're acknowledged to be one of the most penetrating minds in the country. He's penetrating. Yes, penetrating. Like an Atlas missile penetrates the cloud cover above a city full of women and children. Yeah wow. Now during the interview, Kissinger. Expressed that quote, a capitalist society or what is more interesting to me, a free society is a more revolutionary phenomenon than 19th century socialism. I think we should go on the spiritual offensive. Yeah, the spiritual, spiritual capital with a nuclear extension with nukes, you know, so. Connecting he he's connecting, you know, two options. 19th century socialist number capitalism, the current day capitalism and nukes. Those are the options. Yeah. And Mike Wallace just empty headedly sits there, goes like, I really love your property. Yeah, just smiles and behind his eyes as a dial tone. Oh my God. So this earned him finally the job at Harvard that he'd coveted. This is why they give him shut. Shut the **** **. Like whenever. Simple. I I can't. I cannot get over how ******* evil Harvard is. It's so good. It is monstrous from it's the beginning. It is a horrific. Some of us went there, *******. Ohh Anti Harvard action. So he gets his Harvard job and he keeps writing in 1961. What's he doing at Harvard? He's like teaching some **** you know, Kissinger stuff. Type classes. Yeah, about talking about Spangler a lot. Yeah, nukes. Nukes are awesome too. Nukes are awesome. Freedom is requires an absence of morality. Teaching kids good stuff, you know, teaching kids good things. So in 1961 he publishes a book titled The Necessity of Choice, which is his manifesto on how the United States should approach foreign policy in the 1960s. It is not an optimistic piece of writing. Quote the United States cannot afford another decline like the one which is characterized the past decade and a half, 15 years of more, of a deterioration of our position in the world, such as we have experienced since World War Two, would find us reduced to Fortress America. In a world in which we had become largely irrelevant, our margin of survival has narrowed dangerously. What? What the **** is he talking about? I mean, well, America invents. Not losing influence that no. This is like the height of American power, obviously. Yeah. To anyone who's not. But but Kissinger is he knows this is ********. He is part of a group of people who are pushing. Have you guys heard the term missile gap? No. No. In the in the early stages of the Kennedy administration there is suddenly this huge. And this is both like in conversations that people are having in DC and in like the media there's this constant talk of a missile gap. This idea that the Soviets have outpaced us in missile development and in the number of missiles. Have and there's talk about like, there's bomber gaps, there's tank gas, there's talk about like these gaps between. It's this idea that is totally ********. Like not that the Soviets have not made a lot of weapons. Soviet Union makes plenty of weapons. But the United there is no point in the Cold War in which the United States is like out ******* gunned to any degree that like has. It could be anyone reasonable could call like a missile gap and it just does not happen. It feels like we're still responding to that today to be like dude, to do first by a long shot. Yeah. And it yeah, it's it's it's this, it's it's this, it's not I I would say unhinged, but it's very reasonable because the the argument comes primarily out of the Defense Department and they're growing defense industry who it's great for them if everyone thinks there's a missile gap, like, of course. Yeah. Yeah. You got to build a lot more weapons. We'll sell them to you. I thought it was the place you could get khakis on your rockets, but you haven't missed. Thank you. Thank you. Welcome. And we'll be right back. Good question. I'm sorry, go. You know what? Yes, actually this is time for an ad break. 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I always tell people I am so not tech. Took me 5 minutes to get comfortable with spreaker, and when I find a new friend that has an incredible show, I want them to make money. I want them to be able to do what I did. Follow your podcasting dreams. Let's break your handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. Get paid to talk about the things you love. Spreaker from iheart. We are back. So it's ******** the idea of the missile gap and Kissinger is smart enough to know this, but he is one of the major proponents. He's not one of the there's other guys who are more influential pushing it, like actually within the halls of power, right? Because he's not super within the halls of power yet, but he is. He's he's all over TV and ****. Like he's a guy that you call now. Like once you get in the Rolodex of media people, you stay there, you know, he's the new guy. You wanna you wanna guy a positive new guy, there's people that you got like the negative new guy and the positive. OK, then he's the guy who says we don't have enough. You know the thing? We've ever not had enough of nuclear weapons. He is a big part of why we have so many ******* nukes and why the Russians have so many ******* nukes. Because once the US like once you start this, like we have to build a lot more nukes. They're going to build even more nukes. And like then you're going to get to build anymore nukes because you can say they built so many more nukes. We don't have enough nukes now. And then you wind up with like 12,000 of them in the world. I have a name for that. I can, I'll come over right now. Nuclear arms race. That's cool and that's that's a neat. Then we just finally a term for it. We should nuke him. I mean that would just be like the one thing I would like is just one piece fund me to just nuke him one of those Davy Crockett handheld missile launchers with the new whatever we could do. What about just a little a little tiny nuke that we shoot into him and it explodes but it's just a little guy yeah baby. Just enough to take out Kissinger. Yeah, just the Kissinger S Junior clear weapon. Yeah, but he would just ingest it and go. I am now more. Well, now I'm bigger and I'm more upset. It is. It is amazing to think about how seriously this guy gets treated by everyone immediately and how much influence he's allowed to have on an incredibly dangerous thing. And this is the same guy who got tricked by Theranos. This is the same nude it gets old, winked by the fake blood lady in the turtleneck. Like, it's really amazing. Yeah, it's so funny. It's so funny. So. Kissinger is is not. Again, he doesn't come up with the idea of the missile gap, but he's like a very influential voice in pushing this idea, right. He's a, he's a part of this, so he doesn't get there. If we could honestly do a whole episode on like, why there's so many ******* nukes that this would be a part of, but he is. He's a factor in this massive arms buildup. And he also starts but but he's also like, he's he's just doing this for careerism reasons because it like gets him in good with people who are in power. And part of how you know that is that Kennedy's not a guy. I'll give a lot of credit. But one of the things Kennedy says is that like limited nuclear war is insane. Like **** you, Enrique Kissinger. He doesn't say that, but he it it it it it gets made clear. The connections that Kissinger has in the in the Kennedy administration make it clear that like JFK does not buy your attitudes on limited nuclear war. And so he stops talking about that, Oh my God, he wants to become part. He doesn't believe in **** but he wants to be in the JFK administration, right? So he stops pushing this thing that makes him famous and saying other ****. Because he'll get, it'll get him closer to power. And that's all Henry Kissinger really cares about. Yeah. So I wonder if, like, the Today show's calling up and he's like, you know, I'm not really doing nukes anymore. No. Because he comes on. Yeah. The quote I'm gonna quote actually from Niall Ferguson here. He explains like what he starts doing on the Today show. Yeah. Kissinger now advocated a conventional arms buildup, since the dividing line between conventional and nuclear weapons is more familiar and therefore easier to maintain. He continued to insist that the United States develop smaller nuclear weapons, but he moved his own position to where he thought Kennedy's was. In effect, the necessity of choice was something of a job application, and Kissinger hoped Kennedy would make an offer so like, again, so it doesn't really. I mean, it's it's just Marjorie Taylor Green. I mean, it is the same **** essentially. And it's like, you know, the sensationalism. That gets you the headlines. And then once you're fat and it's any, it's really any form of our our pop culture entertainment. Now just make get your name in the ******* headlines and then define who you are and then you can, like, figure out what you actually think and actually believe or how you're going to ride that to power. But just make a bang. It's the IT is. It's it is like the political equivalent of a comedian, like saying a racial slur and then listening to the audience to determine whether or not they're joking. Yeah, like, right, yeah, like that. Like that's what he's doing. It's it's yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean show up to a club, take **** **** out and then write your hour. Yeah. It's called the it's Louis CK backwards. Yeah. It's the, it's the, it's the KC. I'm not going to figure out what the back. No, you're close. It's Casey Sewell. Casey Sewell, yeah. So this he does not get exactly what he wants, but he gets part of what he wants. He his buddy Nelson Rockefeller is able to give him a part time consulting gig, uh, for the national security advisor. So it's not, but it's not everything he wants. But he is now. He's that he has like, he's cracked his way, you know, like you, you start your way in and and it's unless you really **** **. And by **** ** I mean don't get a lot of people killed. You'll just get closer and closer to power because that's how our system works. So, you know, Kissinger is is obviously very conservative. Rockefeller is not. Again, he's part of the Kennedy administration. This is what I don't understand. Yeah, well, we'll talk. We're actually, we're gonna talk **** load about that over the next couple of episodes because this is like a consistent, weird thing about him. But like one of the things Kissinger does is he oils Rockefeller with effusive claims that Kennedy's inaugural speech, which Rockefeller had helped with, was so good he, quote, might become a registered Democrat. Right. Look, that's the kind of **** he says that, like, I'm almost a Democrat. Because of how good JFK speech was. So good. It was so good. He doesn't believe in **** like he just like, I can't overemphasize that. Other than that Henry Kissinger should be very close to power. He believes strongly in that, yeah, and he believes in that as much as anyone's ever believed in the Bible, right? He does not believe in ideas outside of saying happy birthday to the president, if at all possible. I saw what Maryland did, and let me tell you, it was sort of testament lover Kennedy. Sometimes they call me happy birthday, Mr present day. Yeah. Would you like to see where they call me Kissinger? Ohh not standing over this vent and look at what they're doing to my sport club. Ohh see that's the fan art I-1 of Henry Kissinger. Him just like trying to **** JFK with every bit of charm and his German body. Ohh dear nobody told me subway go over vent. Really look at this. You're gonna see everything ohk there goes my nook. So JFK is eventually assassinated by Bernard Montgomery Sanders and LBJ takes over. Mm-hmm. Ohh yeah. I mean, history is is a I gotta read this stuff. Banquet. I've got a pamphlet for you, but I printed it myself. That's my length. So LBJ is the President now and and LBJ is like between LBJ and JFK, it's like a decade. You know that the Democrats are in power and LBJ is very good at exercising power, right? And he's also not super into Henry Kissinger. He's not against Henry Kissinger either. But Henry kind of is kept in this weird like he's on the margins of power during this period of time, right? Finally. Which is. Well, not really, because while he's he's there's no breathers. There's no breathers, Scarface. Good to hear. While he's kind of on the not you know on the margins, he he's he's able to build connections with his many Republican lawmakers and their aides as he does with Democrats, right. Like that's what he's doing while he's doing these like part time gigs with the NSC and stuff is he's he's making friends with everybody he can. There is nobody. He's just a ******* networker. Like he is just a supreme networker. Yeah, right. There is so much I had when I was a kid in speech and debate one of the other kids in the debate team with me was obsessed with Kissinger. Like read his books and stuff. Thought he would. This was this thing that I heard too, from like, family members and stuff that like, well, he was, you know, he wasn't always right, but it was he was doing the hardest job anyone's ever had and he was just this really genius, man. And you can't really argue with him. If he read about what he was saying. It was like, no, he didn't believe in ****. He was he was a genius at making people like him. And that allowed him to nuclear model horrible things. Yeah. Which I guess, like, it's anyone who's really dangerous in politics is that's as a version of that guy, right? Like, yeah, 100%, yeah, like that's that's all of them. But he's he's a an interesting kind of that guy. And as a result, probably the most toxic kind of that guy we've ever had in the United States. Wow. Which is saying something really, really, really bad. But yeah, so yeah, he he makes all these connections, he cultivates them and he keeps his name in the news, right. That's a big part of why he's able to do what he does later. He's he keeps going on TV, he keeps being on the radio, he keeps being quoted and, like, cited and interviewed by journalists for articles. Henry makes it known that, like, if you're a journalist, I'm easy to reach. I will give you always give you a quote. You can always reach Henry Kissinger for like a lion or two on this thing, you know? Which is very smart of him. Yeah. It's it's very dumb and shameful and horrible for the journalists. Yeah, **** him. But like, it's great for Henry. Yeah. God. That they've learned. Thank God that doesn't happen anymore. Now, I turned to the New York Times story published today that described Nazis assaulting a book club as men with a swastika flag. Someone pointed out, well, the the article calls them Nazis. It's just all of the social media. They described them that way. And I was like, oh, I can't explain to you why I feel worse about that, but I do. Yeah. It was not just that. It was not just a dumb error. It was calculated. Yeah. Yeah. Moral calculus. It's. Yeah. Moral calculus. Right. Good. Good ****. So the professor cultivates connections. Yeah. He he gets. And he also, he goes to Vietnam at one point. And he makes connections with a bunch of people in Vietnam. Who were able to talk to not just the South but the North Vietnamese government. Like, that's the thing he consciously does, is like, I want to be able to, like, be able to take the temperature of like, guys, which is not, like, I would say actually, like the most reasonable thing he does. If you think you're going to be in power, like, yeah, it's good. You probably want to be able to talk to those guys even though we're fighting with them. That's not an unreasonable thing. He will use it badly. Right. Who's he's doing that on the part of? Just himself. Yeah. What? Well, he he is working. He has a gig with the guy. He's like an adviser to the National Security Council. And he's a known academic, you know, he's probably being like, you know? I'm an academic. I'm trying to understand the dimensions of this and like I, I want to talk to everybody. I'm a very fair minded man. I don't let ideology get in the way outta yada yada. Like one of the things about Henry Kissinger too. Like he's as good he can. He's he he ******* his buddies with Mao, like he's great at talking with people who are communists and stuff. As long as you like Henry Kissinger and what he's selling, he'll sell it to anybody you know. So crazy. It's wild that like, he might, he must have eyes that just starts spinning and like you just have to get close to notice that he's got hypnotic eyes you like. He isn't so bad now that I'm talking to him. You know, let's think about Vietnam for a second. Right. If you're going to war in Vietnam, Gareth. Right. If you decide not to Gareth Reynolds, I'm gonna go to war in Vietnam. How long do you think it would take you to realize that was a bad idea? It would be. I mean, I, I, Gareth Reynolds, it would be instantaneous pretty quickly. Very quickly. I mean the second. David. Yeah. Can I. OK. Can I just, can I ask a question? Which side am I fighting on? The the not Vietnamese side. OK, then. Really quick. Yeah, really quick. I feel like you could. I feel like you could you could take Vietnam, David. Dave could. Not gonna see it tonight. They're not gonna see it coming. I I would certainly be the guy who they'd be. Like we broke him or me. We broke him before we even shouted at him. Like, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to show up with pants that were already ****** in. I know. I know one thing about me, and that's it. If things got really, really chaotic and bad that I. I kind of thrive in that environment. Yeah, Dave, you'd be like, Dave, we don't have time to eat their brains. You'd be like, shut up. I'm figuring out what they know. It's like Doctor Manhattan ending the Vietnam War. Both sides surrendered to Dave in the mid 60s, which is fairly early on considering how late the Vietnam War goes. It is clear to people, especially a lot of people protesting in the United States. They're like, oh **** this ain't going great, right? Like it's not hard for people. There are people who buy into the US propaganda, but like people who are actually Privy to information on the war are aware that it is not going well. Kissinger still decides we should escalate things and I'm going to quote again from Kissinger. Shadow by Greg Brandon upon returning from his first visit to South Vietnam in late 1965, Kissinger threw himself into a campaign to build public support for ongoing intervention. In early December, he joined 189 other scholars from Harvard, Yale, and 15 other New England universities in an open letter expressing confidence that Johnson's policies would help quote people of South Vietnam determine their own destiny. A Vietcong victory will spell disasters, said the letter. Then, later that month, he led a Harvard team against a group of Oxford opponents on. Of the war and the debate held in Great Britain and broadcast nationally in the United States. On CBS, Kissinger passionately defended the bombing of northern Vietnam, insisting that it was not a violation of international law. He invoked the analogy of World War Two, saying Washington's actions in Indochina were his righteous and justified as they were in Nazi Germany. Bob Shrum, who went on to become a Democratic political consultant, was on Kissinger's team and says that when he today watches a recording of the of the debate, he is, quote, amazed by two things. How long we how young we look, even Kissinger. And how wrong we were. So first, officially, Kissinger, you don't feel bad enough. I don't know how bad you feel about this. It's not enough. Not nearly enough. Your first reaction? Be like, God, we were kids. We were young. We were young. I got that. There's like some Vietnamese dude next to him thinking about like bombs raining down on the jungle and he's like crows feet back then. Look at me. Believe that we had Kissinger. Oh my God, his jewels. Look at a Hank. Yeah, he's only got 1 jewel at that time. That's before he got the eight. Our hair looked so stupid. Am I right? Am I right? Where did your legs go, by the way? It's before Henry Kissinger looked like chicken. Weird science after things go wrong. It's like, and it's it's. There's a lot in that paragraph. Both like, of course, when the debate starts to build, like, should we escalate this nightmarish war? The first thing, one of the first things that happens is that a bunch of ******* New England universities decide to have a debate about, right? Yeah, right. That's the right. Like, restlet. Everyone here, let's have the best arguments of both sides about whether or not we should buy these behinds. Yeah, yeah. Like, First off, **** everyone involved in this, even the people arguing against the war. A little bit. Like, just don't do. That's the premise. Yeah. The premise is bad. Yeah, less so. Certainly. I don't know. I don't know, maybe, like, it made sense. There's a bunch of virgins debating which position is the best to **** in. Yeah, you know, what the hell? Why is this a instead of the debate? Like, hey, why are we there? Like, really? Why? Why? Sorry, that's we're not. We're not debating that. We're not asking. That's not a question for the debate. And it is again, it's like and and you can see just about how comprehensively wrong these people are that like, #1 this idea that this will help the people of South Vietnam determine their own destiny, which is the South Vietnamese government was a dictatorship the entire time the war was going on. It's not any more democratic in any meaningful sense than than the northern Vietnam. And also like a Vietcong victory will spell disasters like there's plenty of things to criticize the Vietnamese government for, but like broadly on an international level, fine looking country seems seems to be doing. Right. Like better than a lot of places. Yeah, did pretty good job at COVID like, you know, it did. It didn't seem like a disaster. Maybe if we hadn't killed 5 million people, things would be even better. It's like it couldn't hurt, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Again, they're wrong about everything like Kissinger in this. Everything that he said it like, that's the he has this reputation is such an intellectual Titan and he's like, so constantly ******* wrong. But this is there's always like, yeah, it's the same as today, all of these people that are constantly ******* wrong just, yeah, keep on getting positions of power, being media and they're always ******* wrong. And there's this **** like people will will bring up like, well, but there's this nuclear arms treaty he helped make and there's this like, peace deal. Negotiated in the Middle East and like, all of these things, like, yeah, but that was like 2% of the **** that he did. And it was largely because other people that he wanted to stay in good with were pushing for that kind of **** too. Like Henry Kissinger. Whenever he has expressed an idea that his his legitimate idea is like, really, really disastrously wrong. Yeah. Amazing. Yeah, **** it. Nobody cares. Yeah, nobody cares. He's gotta get to invest in Theranos still, as opposed to being the one. Victory. The one victory. Weekend victory. That's why we should pardon her. Yeah, right. Yeah, right. Yeah. Look, you stole a lot of money, but you made Henry Kissinger look, kind of gonna release you to come up with another scheme to take more money from this bag of **** but you don't get to make a company anymore. But we're going to have cameras following you think of have you sprank show. Yeah. Have you seen punked? OK, we're talking about there, but it's just every week for Henry Kissinger. I put on mustaches and, like, fake wigs and you're just gonna try to **** with telling me this is a way for me to get a Blonger spine. I mean a lot to get a little money. This popcorn has 0 calories. I can't believe what I'm hearing, but you you know what's awesome about that story is that she's a younger female. Kissinger. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, 100%. She's like blood kissing everyone. Everyone was super into her and she was just saying whatever people wanted to hear and like, yeah, yeah, right. It's a because there's there's the the. The good grifters and the evil ones. We just finished our four parter on the Czar and talked about the fact that, like before Rasputin, there was another spiritualist grifter who pretended to talk to, like, ghosts and stuff right named Philippe, who like got a bunch of money for them, tricked the Zarina into thinking she was pregnant, and then bounced with a bunch of their money. And the last thing he did before he left was like, I'm going to come back in another form as another spiritual healer I should trust. Whatever I said, very funny, took all the money and ran, and when he died, it was found out that he had been. Paying for the mortgages and rentals of, like, 52 impoverished families, like, Oh my God, perfect guy. Very like the opposite of Kissinger. Like, yeah, yeah, just taking money from the Czar to help poor people out. What a dude. Be great if he showed up again. Yeah, yeah, let's put that guy in front of Kissinger, see what he can do. So in private, Kissinger admitted already while he is doing all this, while he's a part of this big debate. You know, while he's taking the side that we should escalate in private and his conversations, he admits to his friends that Vietnam is an unwinnable disaster of a war. Ohh my ******* God. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He defended it in public though, because there was at least a 50% chance the Democrats were going to stay in power after the next election, that is. And he just he didn't want to give up on the chance of having a job. You know, I think it a lot of times you just you. You. I guess he's a little different because he's such a shapeshifter. Yeah. You know, there, I think. And it's just the way we are. You are like, they can't just be that base evil. Yeah, he sure can. But he he is he. Yeah. Yeah. It's something. It's something I always think about climate change is that people can't wrap their heads around the fact that there might be a significant portion of rich people in control who actually want everybody to die. Yeah. Yeah. Or at least don't care because. What really matters is like maintaining their level of relative power. Yeah. Everyone else. And they know. And it's just like, what are they gonna do? Call themselves out? Yeah. Yeah. It's cool. So it's cool, obviously. And it's one of those things I don't actually know that he really believes that Vietnam was a disaster because he may have been lying to his friends when he said because he wants to keep, like, he wants to keep a bridge to the other side open. You know, like it's impossible to say because he's ******* Henry Kissinger is impossible. There's two kissinger's. Yes. OK. What if there's six? Ohh. I'd be amazed they ever touched. Cambodia will be ohh Yep. You know what? OK. So the fact that Kissinger and private be like, yeah, Vietnam. What a **** ** and in public would be like, let me binge Shapiro about Vietnam. Let's win this. That really ****** *** a lot of his friends, including the political scientist Hans Morgenthau. Kissinger had admitted to Morgenthau that the war was unwinnable, unwinnable even while he continued to go on in the media and advocate expanded saturation bombing. Morgenthau found this deeply disappointing. But Henry was increasingly tailoring his public statements to the ear of a man who was already a fan of his. Work, Richard Milhouse? Nixon? Could we get like, yeah, some sound effects. A lightning whips across the screen in a screen and a whole palace. Prepared actyl. Which will do a whole Nixon episode one of these days. A lot of our Kissinger series will also be about Nixon, because you can't unwrap the two men. You know you can't. So there are two kids singers. Yeah, there. One of them is Richard Nixon. So by the end of 1968, as the presidential race between Vice President Hubert Humphrey and former Vice President Richard Nixon heats up, Kissinger's profile had raised enough that he was seen as the front runner for a serious foreign policy job in either potential administration. As time went on, either yeah, he's got a gig no matter what, baby. He's the Raytheon of people. Can't lose. So as time goes on, though, he increasingly leans towards Nixon, which surprises his friends whom he had told, quote, Richard Nixon is the most dangerous of all the men running to have as president. But I want him to give me a gig. You know, I can't with him. I need job, Satan. But I like you good. So he was heartbroken when his friend Rockefeller lost to Nixon. And he commented, now the Republican Party is a disaster and Nixon is not fit to be president. Oh my God. Yeah, come over and over and over. This one, they said about reading. This was about Bush, this one. This is about Trump. OK, yeah, it's always the same calculus. This is true. But Kissinger didn't let his complete contempt for Nixon stop him from trying to get a job with the man. To explain why, here's The New Yorker. It took Kissinger's close contemporary, the political theorist Sheldon Wolin, another son of Jewish immigrants who fought in the war and studied at Harvard with William Yandell Eliot, to fully dissect Kissinger's careerist instincts. On the surface, wollen art. Observed Kissinger. Would have appeared a mismatch for the anti elitist Nixon, but the pairing was perfect. Nixon needed someone who could elevate his opportunism to a higher plane of purpose and make him feel like a great figure in the drama of history as wollen wrote. What could have been more comforting to that barren and inarticulate soul than to hear the authoritative voice of Doctor Kissinger who spoke so often and knowingly about the meaning of history? I mean so. It's just an empty sack and an evil sack and the evil sacks. Like I can feel you. Yeah, well, I feel evil. Like someone could fill me, somebody's gonna fill me up. Somebody's gonna load me with something. Ohh, that's real. No, he's not gonna do it. Put all that black pile down inside of me. Thank you, Hank. Ohh boy Gareth. He doesn't call him Hank, but we'll get to that later. Come on, spanky. A lot worse than that, Gareth. Alright, so in 1968, the Johnson administration was carrying out an extensive series of negotiations between South and North Vietnam in an attempt to secure an end to the war. LBJ wants credit for his legacy, right? I'm not going to give LBJ credit for like, caring about human death and suffering because he's also a monster. Yeah, no, not trying to make him seem good by comparison, but he sees ending the war both as a way to like, I want to go out on a good note. And also this is going to if he could, if he could even secure a significant. Like ceasefire, that would help Humphrey get reelected, right because nobody's in the US is very pro the Vietnam War within the majority of most voters are very anti it so. So that's kind of the play that that LBJ is making. He wants to in the war in order to help Humphrey win. Over the course of the election year, his Secretary of State, national security adviser, and his Secretary of Defense, Clark Gifford became aware that something was amiss. Some of the moves that the South Vietnamese government made which said look threatened. The negotiation seemed bizarre. They would like these wild. Ranges whereas like suddenly South Vietnam's not willing to negotiate. Like what the **** we had like worked all this out. Why are you guys pulling out at the last minute? N Vietnams willing to come to the table in the trial of Henry Kissinger, Christopher Hitchens writes. Quote from his seat in the Pentagon Clifford, whose again the Secretary of Defense had actually been able to read the intelligence transcripts that picked up and recorded what he terms a secret personal channel between President Thieu and Saigon and the Nixon campaign. The chief interlocutor at the American end was John Mitchell, then Nixon's campaign. Manager and subsequently attorney general. He was actively assisted by Madame Anna channel, known to all as the Dragon Lady. A fierce veteran of the Taiwan lobby and all-purpose right wing intriguer. She was a social and political force in the Washington of her day. So LBJ's administration, this is suspicious as ****. Let's bug the Nixon campaign, right, which is not illegal. Obviously, like you have, it is an act of ******* treason to try and extend a war by sabotaging negotiations. This is one of the very few cases we're like, yeah, you should wiretap. Most people, you should you should tap the **** out of those phones. But it's also this is they don't want this to get. LBJ doesn't want this **** to get out at all. This would be #1A hanging crime. You get executed for doing this kind of **** like, on paper at least, right? And so LBJ's administration, while they're wiretapping Nixon and getting evidence about like this, would increasingly becomes clear as a conspiracy keeps ******* quiet about it, because they're worried that revealing this would create a crisis of confidence in the American government. ******* ******* liberals. ******* liberals. This is how times how many ******* times Bush stole two elections. This is what they did. This is what they ******* did. It's really. It really is. I mean yeah, it's it's just it's, I mean the I that is so ******* crazy to put the clubhouse. Yeah. I mean above it is it is like the one time where for President had had his political opponents hanged it would be like, yeah, that's what you should have done and you have to that one session of hangings really would have gone a long way with this country would be in so much a better position if they'd hung Nixon and several other people were about to talk about it would also give a Nixon good posture. Finally, yeah, finally. I knew about that Nixon had done. I did not know that the that they knew. I didn't know they knew he had time like that. Oh yes, David. ******* insane. The liberal mind. I always think about this story about when the hunter took over in Chile before Pinochet got into power and they asked all the they they said we want to have interviews with people and the Liberals so believed in government that they went and lined up for the secret. Police interviews. Because they're like, well, this is what we do. And they're like, no, they're taking your names down to possibly kill you. But they lined up because they're like, well, this is, we don't want to mess up the system. Like, we're supposed to kind of go get interviewed by the government. Yeah. Like it's a hunter. Like, it's just the mindset of just, this is how our Constitution works and this is what we're supposed to do. And you're like, no, it's literally not working. The thing isn't working. This is a great this is one of the best examples ever of yeah, like, yeah. And this is the the germ of truth in Kissinger's whole ideology about conflict is that if you are in a conflict with someone who is willing to throw down and you aren't, they're going to win, right? Like, that is a truth of history, right? It's a truth of fighting fascists, right? It's not enough to say, like, punching them isn't the entirety of it, but if you're not willing to throw down, they will win, right? And that is the thing that is often taken exactly the wrong way at the geopolitical level. But like, you see in this that. Like, LBJ was not willing to throw down and Nixon was, and everything we're going to talk about in the rest of this series happens as a result. And it's like LBJ loved throwing down, but yes, it's amazing that he doesn't in this. I think that's the craziest thing is that, like, that was the ******* *** ****. I'm gonna take a **** and you're gonna listen to me. Guy like he gave no ***** and threw down with everybody. You know what I think it is, Dave? I think for all of his many, many, many flaws and evil acts, committed. They think LBJ believed in things. Yeah. And Nixon and Kissinger down, he wouldn't throw down, but he would throw two ads. Iiht. Robert, you agree? Yeah, I would. Cause you know, LBJ was famous for whipping *** **** which he called Jumbo out at all times. He wants ****** on a Secret Service agent at a party because he couldn't get to the bathroom easily enough. And, like, that's the secret. Yeah, all of our sponsors are the same and that their ***** are called jumbo and they do **** on the secret. Nervous? Everyone of our sponsors ****** on the Secret Service. That's a promise. So. Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist. Nope, there isn't one. Mint Mobile just has premium wireless from 15 bucks a month. There's no trapping you into a two year contract. 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Get paid to talk about the things you love with spreaker from iheart. We're back. Ohh boy, good times. So South Vietnam pulls out of the negotiations, right? I think they're happening in Paris and I'm being, I haven't really gone into detail about what happened up to this point because those details are very obscure to the American people. What is publicly available, possible like known is that N Vietnam and South Vietnam are supposed to come to the table, have this big negotiation to try to come to like some way in which the war can come to an end. And South Vietnam, after a bunch of like, throwing a bunch of like wrenches in the process, finally just backs out entirely, right. And so the negotiations don't happen and the war continues. That's what everybody sees. You know, if you're just like a dude paying attention on the news, that's what you're aware of happening here. LBJ's administration knows something sketchy is going on between Nixon and the South Vietnamese government, but even for them, they don't know precisely what happened. Here's what happened. As part of the negotiations, LBJ offered the North Vietnamese a bombing halt. Now you can see why this is very enticing for Hanoi, right? Because being bombed is not pleasant. And the US was doing a lot of it. So this is like what LBJ is like, hey, I will ******* stop bombing Vietnam if you guys will come to the table. And talk about stuff. And the North Vietnamese government not being made entirely of soulless cockroaches is like, well, OK, like, that's a pretty good offer, actually. Yeah, we we were bombing star. We we actually chopped John McCain. Yeah, we did drop John McCain. You guys might have caught him. Keep him for a while. He'll come back into the picture. It'll be a big problem. He'll also, weirdly enough, be the least objectionable Republican elected leader for a long time. So it's a mess. Just so you guys know, that's our future hero. Yeah, he and Jesse the body. Ventura will be the only conservative voices against torture. So heads up. It is amazing watching that old clip of Jesse Ventura on the view being the most reasonable American in ******* early 2000s. Yes, next to Gilbert Godfried at least. It's actually not Gilbert Godfrey. This mean alternative universe. Yeah. So, yeah, this is very enticing offer for Hanoi that this the bombing cessation and it's good enough if, like, if you won't bomb us anymore. Yeah, maybe we can concede on some stuff if you're not murdering people in mass. Like, yeah, of course we'll negotiate with. Sounds pretty good. Yeah. Nixon cannot let this happen. This would be a disaster. But Vietnam not getting bombed, he sees as like the worst case scenario, even though he is campaigning on ending the war, by the way, right? That's his promise. I'm going to get us out of this. Yeah. On my watch, that happens before one of my campaigning on yeah. So Nixon uses his back channel to the South Vietnamese government to get them to torpedo their end of the negotiations because the government of South Vietnam is frightened, obviously, that the US is going to stop bombing N Vietnam. So if you're following along, something should be obvious at this point. Since the Johnson administration was negotiating secretly with N Vietnam, there should have been no way for the government in Saigon to know that LBJ had proposed a bombing halt. But obviously Saigon knew, which means there was a secret informant within the Johnson. Administration passing information to the Nixon administration and sharing a lot of top secret data with Saigon. So the big question is who could possibly should be so deep into both camps that he could feed information from one to the other forest? Oh my God, that's right baby. Executed for treason. Absolutely. Should be executed for treason. My God. Slowly. Yeah. Slowly executed. Yeah. It should be that incompetent dude who hung the Nazis at Nuremberg and, like, kept ******* up and making it worse. Bring that dude back. Sorry, can I just do? Let me try one more time before you guys get mad. We should have frozen that ************ in Carbonite to break out when the nation needed him. Yeah, that's amazing. That's God. How are you guys waking me up to kill me? No, we actually we're huge and drunk and doing other hanging huge fans. We've got you a handle of gin here and this is Henry Kissinger is great. Why would you like kisses? Shut up. Just do whatever. You just kill him as fast as you can. That's the only note. But I took a lot of notes from him back in the day. Like he's great, he's great. Just kill him, OK. I don't think he could die though. I will say I don't think that guy could read. So obviously Kissinger is the back channel who was spreading this information. Now, in his own memoirs, Nixon later admitted to hearing about the proposed bombing halt through what he termed as a highly unusual channel. Christopher Hitchens continues. It was more unusual even, that he than he acknowledged. Kissinger had until then been a devoted partisan of of Nelson Rockefeller, the Matchless sly, wealthy Prince of liberal republicanism. His contempt for the person and policies of Richard Nixon was undisguised. Indeed, President Johnson's Paris negotiators, led by Averill Harriman, considered Kissinger to be almost one of themselves. He had made himself helpful as Rockefeller's cheap foreign policy adviser by supplying French intermediaries with their own contacts in Hanoi. Henry was the only person outside of the government that we were authorized to discuss the negotiations with, says Richard Holbrooke. We trusted him. It is not stretching the truth to say that Nick the Nixon campaign had a secret source within the US negotiating team, so the likelihood of a bombing halt, wrote Nixon, came as no real surprise. For me, he added, I told Haldeman that Mitchell should stay continuous liaison with his Kissinger and that we should honor his desire to keep his role completely confidential. So this is all out in the open now. You know, they also. I mean Nixon really just never shut the **** **. I mean he sure didn't he really just he was like if the drunk guy at a party who would just sort of tell you whatever. Like honestly he's the guy Donald Trump might put a hand on be like, hey man, you're saying you should like you say, it's some stuff that you probably shouldn't right now. I think you might not. I think you might. Regret ****. **** slow down. You're saying a lot of stuff you probably shouldn't. And I'm on Twitter. Yeah, that's so that is just so crazy and just says it all, you know? And this is, and it's gotten worse. I mean, it's just ******* bonkers. Now, the bombing halt was planned for October 23rd, but thanks to Kissinger, the Nixon campaign was able to lobby South Vietnam to increase their demand suddenly at the bargaining table, which wrecked attempted agreements being made with N Vietnam. This, you know, there's a process. This happens back and forth until the bombing halt is completely scuttled. In peace, negotiations fall apart. Since all this was happening behind closed doors, Humphrey never got to present the possibility of a bombing halt to the American people. Nixon avoided having to take into stance of any kind on the issue because obviously as the peace candidate he couldn't say you shouldn't do it right. He didn't even want it to come up at all. The Johnson administration made one final attempt to push through a bombing halt at the end of October, but the South Vietnamese government, warned by Kissinger via Nixon, preempted this with a surprise boycott of the peace talks now while all this is happening. Messenger is also advising the Humphrey campaign and is so respected there that he was considered a shoe in for a senior job if they'd managed to win. There's three of them. *******. Yeah. Democrats are so ******* stupid. I know, right? There's three of them. There's three kids singers. No, you're ******* animal free walking around. I got my buddy Henry's. I'm gonna give him a good old job, alright? That's our party you're talking about, Mr. And then I can never get over the fact that Hillary walked around with him during the ******* campaign. It's well, he wasn't really walking to be fair day. He he he ******* is. He's like one of those episodes of Frasier where he's dating two women at the same time and trying to keep it secret. But that's the same restaurant like that Jack Tripper, yeah. It's very funny, except for all of the millions and millions. Yeah. Well, that. Let me ask you that. So, yeah. Do you have the numbers on where the deaths are at in Vietnam? Oh, you don't where they ended up? Like, actually, yeah, I'll get you that in a minute. Why did I ask? Yeah. Nixon by also, like, grows in convinced of Kissinger's value during this period of time, too, and he becomes a shoe in for a senior job there. He was particularly impressed by the skill with which Kissinger protected his identity as the leaker from the Humphrey campaign. Nixon later wrote one factor that had most convinced me of Kissinger's credibility was the length to which he went to protect his secrecy. What a terrible. I mean, that's just not a good personality trait. It's really not. It's actually not. But doubt is up. It is. But not this guy. This guy is the best double agent. He's so ******* great he'll find. This guy's an unbelievable ******* liar, yeah. I mean, honestly, it makes sense that, like, Nixon would be super into that. Oh yeah. Wow. This guy's a real ***** ** **** hole. I'm Dick Nixon. This this guy could lie to you. Yeah, let me tell you as a liar. Ohh **** it's it's ******* amazing. It's bad. Clark Clifford, who would later was again the Secretary of Defense at the time, would later blame the fact that the war did not end in 1968 and the loss of the Humphrey campaign in that election. On the school duggery of the Nixon campaign, which was orchestrated in part by Henry Kissinger. Quote the activities of the Nixon team went far beyond the bounds of justifiable political combat. It constituted direct interference in the activities of the executive branch and the responsibilities of the chief. Executive the only people with authority to get to negotiate on behalf of the nation. The activities of the Nixon campaign constituted a gross, even potentially illegal, interference in the security affairs of the nation by private individuals, which is the polite political wonk way of saying it. In the book, Kissinger's Shadow, Greg Grandin, is even more pointed the fact that Kissinger participated in an intrigue that extended the war for five pointless years, 7 if you count the fighting between the 1973 Paris Peace Accords and the 1975 Fall of Saigon, is undeniable. Adding to the evidence is Kissinger himself. He's been caught on tape twice on recordings recently released admitting he passed on useful information to Nixon. Jesus Christ. My God, it's like killing him isn't enough. No, he should he should be gibbeted, I said. So we need to bring back gibbeting and just hang that ************ somewhere in a in a nice cage box, like, yeah, leave him out there. Leave him out. Let people pelt him with stuff. Yeah, ****. Like kill him by throwing potatoes at him. So you gotta make sure there's. Yeah, that's right. Because he's not that strong anymore and you want it to last a while. Potatoes? Yeah. Yeah. So we'll talk a bit later about how we got caught on tape and why we know about all of this, because that's a fun story, guys. It involves a different series of crimes, but Grandon makes another point that's worth acknowledging here. Weld Kissinger definitely had inside information from the Johnson campaign, which he passed on. He also didn't have as much information as he pretended to know when he talked to the Nixon campaign. Jesus quote, even with access to. Nonsense negotiating instructions. He couldn't have had exact information about the decisions being made at the White House. He had to have been winging it, at least to some degree. Guessing at what others knew, imagining what others would do with that guest, playing the angles, sussing out the chance. Oh well. Giving the appearance of composure and certainty. He was right. Winging it. I mean, just one. No. Absolute ******* psychopath. Like, that's the kind of ****. Like he said, if you're dating two women here trying to figure it out and get through some sticky situation. But he's doing this with ******* Vietnam. Yeah. And two presidential campaigns. I don't. Yeah. Craziness. The absolute lack of a soul is. Oh yeah, bounding. He is pure blackness inside. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Dave, let me push back. In a second, I know. Oh, God. Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can't. I mean, it's it's it's hard to even speak to it because it's like the to. Look, I'll kill five people for a job, but at some point you have to five is normal. Sure. Yeah, that's regular. Yeah. But but to to let, I mean to just, I don't know, I it's it is he killed? He killed. I mean, how many Vietnamese died? After that, like so many. Yeah. Yeah, we're talking, you know, was it like a million died in the whole war is more than. No, I mean it. It is because you also have to include the people who died in Cambodia and Laos and in in Vietnam. We're gonna get into more of this in episode 3, but conservatively, an additional couple of million deaths as a result of this in addition to an additional 20,000 U.S. debt. It's kind of hard, the death toll to get precise, like couple million. Like in the millions couple of national debt. Because you went to this day, by the way, because like, I was just gonna say you still die because he wanted a job. This was what did a gig. He's essentially lying in a job interview like he would if you were had no fast food experience and were dealt Taco. Except millions of people are dying. Yeah, it's awesome. Holy the crazy. Such a bad person. It's the the crazy the, the the thing you've done here is you've you've you've humanized the situation for me. Yeah, because like I can understand that that there's evil people out there and they do stuff like, they want to bomb camp Cambodia, they want to do this other stuff. But when you take it to a level where it's a guy winging it in a meeting, it takes on a whole different flavor of evil. That is something. Because now that's something we can all understand. We've all been in a situation where like. Yeah, this guy did a thing and then I did A and you're just trying to get through a situation. Yeah. We've all experienced that. None of us have experienced given the green light to, you know, dropping bombs and killing people. But that I get and I feel in my bones of like, well, holy **** you. But you're doing that with millions of people's lives on the line. It is. It is this thing where the idea I had always had before I really got into it was that like, well, he did, you know, he was involved in all of these horrible things that I knew was involved in. But, like, I assumed it was from a wonky. Perspective of, like, he believed strongly in the need to fight these wars and that anything was justified. And so he did these horrible things because he believed we were in this, like, civilizational struggle and certain things were necessary in that. And, like, he had all of these different kind of very complex moral beliefs that he wrote dozens of books about explaining why he did the things at the end of the day. No, ************ wanted a gig. Yeah. Like. And by the way, it's not like he would have been out of politics, like, like, even in his downtime, he was like, you know, he was gigging. Like, it's just like he would have been. Patiently waiting for another administration or he would have been working in LB whatever, like, you know, no he didn't he didn't wanna work at Uncle Chuckle job. Yeah, he didn't wanna work at Uncle Chuckle Fox. He wanted to get Charlie good nights, like he's not gonna work in the premier club. It's unreal. Like he he he literally like did the like, that's the thing. He didn't do this for a job. He did this for like one of the two jobs and the one he kind of didn't want as much. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The guy. Yeah. On, on. ******* conscionable. Yeah. It's really hard to like it. It is hard in like, it's, I think it's easier to understand now what he did. It's hard to, like, judge him adequately and moral terms that are even, like, comprehensible because it's so much out there it's hard to process it. It really is one of those, like, say what you will about the tenants of nihilism, dude. At least it's an ethos, moments where it's like, I'm thinking about like people like ******* Saddam or whatever, where it's like, yeah, that was a ***** ** ****. There were definitely some things he believed, though. Like, yeah, like there there's pieces of ****. Like ******* out there who like, there are things they believe. And Kissinger just believes he should be close to power. Kissinger. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Political doctrine was Kissinger. He's like, I'm really smart. I should be in the top game. And yeah, I just wanna be there. It's awesome. Yeah. Like, I like how he thinks his childhood didn't **** with him. Yeah. Yeah. Like, dude, bro. Yeah. What you know, would be even better if he if all this was happening and it was just because like, he he. He gives like, I know I can get so many more chicks if I'm in the White House. Yeah that was the whole reason for it. He's just like, I just wanna *** ****. Well it is not a nonfactor. Wait, is he, is he married right now or is he single at this point? Knows he's. I mean I think he gets married at some point, but he's also like, you know, well I don't know, actually he's kind of like a bachelor dude. We'll talk about that later. I'm I'm still working on those episodes because there's a whole thing to be said about Kissinger and women in sex appeal. He gets he was married. He definitely was married at points. But he's also, like kind of a Playboy ohd, which would go back in time a little bit and talk about some of that later. He was married his first. His first marriage was 1949 to 1964, so I don't think he's. And then he's not remarried again until 74. So it sounds like he's married. And this little hob. I wonder why she left him. Yeah. No idea. So he's the only guy who who comes black? Hmm. I haven't written the episode yet, but I have several pages of people talking about Henry Kissinger's sex appeal on the news that are real. Real black. Pilling is, the kids say. Oh my God, not good. So Nixon wins the 68 election, obviously. He gets inaugurated in 1969. The Vietnam War continues on for half a decade. Ish. This was an almost incalculable humanitarian tragedy as well as disastrous for the future stability and cohesion of the United States. But it was dope as hell for Henry Kissinger, who was swiftly appointed Nixon. Yeah, like to put out there that my uncle went to Vietnam and it totally, you know, he had to kill a lot of people and it totally ******* ruined his life. And he watched. And stuff. So thank you, Richard Nixon, you. Thank you. Richard Nixon, everybody who went to Vietnam after 68th say a thank you to Richard for Nixon and Kissinger for, you know, all of the trauma and the trauma that in some cases some of you passed on to your family members. And the trauma that has been passed on societally based on our attitudes towards war because of how Vietnam went and the ways in which some people were always looking for a rematch. And it got us into other, you know. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good stuff. Imagine if, like, that had been the end of Vietnam, that, like, there was actually a president realized, you know, the foolishness of a conflict. And we went to the table and, like, negotiations were made and and I don't think, I don't think the first Iraq war happens, the, the Veja Panama doesn't happen. You would think that for how long Vietnam dragged on that that would have actually been a lesson to not go into conflicts, you know, aimless conflict, but so. No, I guess the problem is we're thinking there's people should learn lessons. Yeah, leading countries, well, that war is in any way like a moral decision or like actually comes from a place of actual, you know, save your mentality, anything like that, you know? Yeah, it's good stuff. It's great. Getting this appointment as national security adviser required a lot more politicking from Kissinger, including spreading rumors to Nixon before his inauguration that Johnson planned to either depose or kill the President of South Vietnam. Before he left office, Kissinger pushed this rumor to the president-elect via regular ********. Pod side character and Rhodesia enthusiast. Enthusiast William F Buckley, Buckley's middle man, delighted Nixon. The translator. Yeah. You know, William F Buckley, whose son went on to write honestly? A pretty fun book, but we don't need to think too much about that. Wow. Great Aaron Eckhart performance in the movie. So Nixon appreciated Kissinger's hotspot and connections enough that when he put him at the head of the National Security Council, he ordered the professor to reorganize it in order to take foreign policy control away from the state and defense departments. This means that Nixon gave Kissinger it was very close to a blank check to take total control of US foreign policy. Obviously Nixon wanted this because he was a paranoid control freak. He did not want any kind of separation of powers. He certainly did not want to have a Secretary of State who could, like, do things that Nixon might not be explicitly ordering. But the result of this was that Kissinger found himself in a position where he could exercise near absolute power in foreign policy as long as the president kept liking him. Now God's justice. Kissinger had little love for Nixon. Our buddy **** Millhouse was not particularly warm to his new right hand man. Now you had given a couple of them. Spanky, Hank? Yeah. You wanna know his real nickname for him? Kissinger was *** ***. Oh my God. Jesus Christ. It is Nixon, but it's like, I mean, I thought we would be jumping off of the name a little bit. He's just like, what am I gonna call you? Spanky? Hank? No. Little *** ***? Good Lord, right. And again, it says a lot about Henry Kissinger that he's like, yeah, right. That's pretty good. Yeah. There. Very funny, Sir, very funny. Did they mention our childhood have no effect on me today? Nah, what's this? So there must have been an element of Nixon then. Who knew? What an *** kissing little ***** he was? Oh, because he's he's belittling him to his face. Oh yeah, and knowing he'll stick around. It's why you get hired for these jobs, because it's just like it's not, you know, an an empty vacuum. Who is gonna be your right hand man is still, you know, there's security in that. There's there's secrecy in that. He's like a vacuum, Gareth. And that he'll suck Nixon's ****. But he's also like a toilet and that he'll take Nixon. **** you know, that's Henry Kissinger. He's a he's * ****. He's a human. He's a human. Human pumpkin. Yeah, yeah, he's like the Toto toilet is pretty effective, but have you ever had * **** ******* toilet? The shifter come either way. I'm ready for it, baby. Yeah. Henry Kissinger so became the title be Henry Kissinger **** ******* toilet. It's also pretty OK, we got it Nick. Alright, I do draw big at * **** ******* toilets. It is time for a commercial break. That is, who sponsors our podcasts? Raytheon's new **** ******* toilet went well. It it is gonna fire a missile at a busload of children. But that's that's just the Raytheon, you know, we we can't avoid it. We're contractually obligated. Yeah. Yeah, it's how it works. So Nixon announced Kissinger's appointment as the national Security adviser before he had even picked a Secretary of State, which is an unprecedented move. He announced Henry as quote, and this is again in his like public announcement to the country as quote. A man who is known to all people who are interested in foreign policy is perhaps one of the major scholars in America and the world in this area. And he acknowledged that while Kissinger had never held a full time government job before, he had Nixon's confidence to bring in a whole new foreign policy team quote. Newman to develop new ideas now. The conservative media of the day immediately roared into gear, hailing Ken Henry Kissinger as an unprecedented policy genius, the man necessary to get America back on track after nearly a decade of disastrous war under Democratic presidents, William F Buckley wrote. Not since Florence Nightingale has any public figure received such universal acclamation. Doing her ******* William F Buckley ***** ** ****. They're flirt, flirt, Snyder tastic. Yeah, it's amazing, yeah. But even ostensibly liberal figures were wooed by Kissinger, scored Titanic intellect, and Henry Kissinger and American power, Thomas Schwartz writes the liberal historian Arthur Schlesinger junior simply referred to it as the best appointment so far. The New York Times columnist Tom Wicker noted the collective sigh of relief that went up from the liberal eastern establishment and the Ivy League, fearing Nixon's cold warrior image. Both shared in the sentiment of Kissinger's Harvard colleague, Adam Yarmulke. Your malinsky will all sleep a little better each night knowing Kissinger is down there, you mean, and the toilet getting ready to **** ****. You know, again, it's exactly what happened with Trump and yes and it's it's like it's the way that I mean again it's peoples natural reaction is normally kind of there. It's just the the fears are assuaged by people who they consider to be, you know, the. The the compass. And they're just not. And so when they when you're told that there are the good guys inside the bad camp, it's like it's just never ******* true. It is rot from the core. Yeah. And it is. These Liberals are also are also impressed by him and so comforted by him because they think he's smart, because he's good at quoting smart dead people, right. It is the same thing that happened with Mattis. Mattis, thankfully, is not nearly as toxic a person as Henry Kissinger, but like if you actually look at Madison's background, one of the things he did in the Iraq war. Let's cover up a war cry. Like, he's not a not a man to be like, I mean. And he was like, he was very popular among, like, people who served under him, which is part of, like, why there was this kind of collective relief. But it's this idea that he's like, the warrior monk, right. They love the idea that, like, well, this guy who's president is a maniac. But this dude reads books that he hired so that'll it'll be OK and as you know, it's never OK. You can continue to lower the bar more and more. You're obviously, like, the people that you're bringing back are part of a lower bar. But because the bar is even lower, it seems and feels a little higher, but it is all just. It's this is this is exactly what happened with Colin Powell, who was a ******* evil. We did a double. Exactly. Yeah. Evil ******* monsters. Yeah, cover it up. ******* the massacres in ******* Vietnam. That's like when he started out like terrible human being, but the press did the same ****. If you can quote old books and smile and you're willing to give journalists time, they will talk about you as being the secret. Reasonable. Or person within the war crimes party, you know, like that's all it takes. It's great. It's just the same thing as if you're a Nazi who reads books. You can get a New York Times profile. Yeah, or a dress nicely. Yeah, yeah. Or you'll get on 60 minutes or whatever, you know? It's it's don't trust people who want you to think they're smart. Yep, that's never a good sign. Smart. But it's the same thing. It's the same thing with like, people who want you to believe they're dangerous. If they want you to believe something specific about them, they're lying about it. That's how people work and how and if if a doctor wants to get on the news to talk about COVID and be famous on the news, that's actually not a doctor. You should listen to that. A great guy. No, also, I mean, it's, you know, it's from the same publications and the same networks. It the idea that you could. Continue to listen to these sources about what is right and what is wrong just because they have fancy terms like senior policy advice. It's like it's all *******. It's it's days of our lives. It's they're actors. These are teleprompters, yeah, and they don't know anymore than you about anything that matters as a general rule. Every now and then you get. But like, even like within agencies that are heavily, like medical oriented, like the CDC, where you would expect them to have a lot of specialized knowledge, it doesn't necessarily mean they're going to do a good job. I'll say that much times comfortably lied about Iraq. Yeah, it's it's not great. So during the transition from the Johnson to Nixon administration, U.S. military command began to act under what General Creighton Abrams described as a Total War mindset against the infrastructure of the Vietcong insurgency. This began with a 6 month operation to clear the Mekong Delta code named Operation Speedy Express. This would prove to be the first major military operation that both Nixon and Kissinger oversaw. And it was a Titanic, bloodlet bath. There is a good article on this operation in the nation. And the title of the article is a mylie a month. Oh my God. Yeah. So it's it's bad. Oh my God. Now, the Mylai massacre had occurred in 1968, before Nixon or Kissinger were in power. You know, that ain't on them. And Seymour Hersh didn't like, break the story until 69, which is the year that they come to power. And this slaughter of 500 civilians by U.S. troops was horrific enough. But within a few months of taking power, Speedy Express had exceeded it many times. Quote from the Nation, an inkling. Something terrible had taken place in the Mekong Delta appeared in a most unlikely source, a formerly confidential September 1969 senior officer Debriefing report by none other than the commander of the 9th Division, then Major General Julian Ewell, who came to be known inside the military as the butcher of the Delta because of his single minded fixation on body count. In the reports, copies of which were sent to Westmoreland's office and to other high-ranking officials, you will candidly noted that while the 9th Division stressed the discriminate and selective use of firepower in some areas of the delta where this emphasis. Wasn't applied or wasn't feasible. The countryside looked like the Verdun battlefields, the site of a notoriously bloody World War One battle that December, a document produced by the National Liberation Front sharpened the picture. It reported that between December 1st, 1968 and April 1st, 1969, primarily in the Delta provinces of Quinoa and DIN Tuang, the 9th Division launched an express rate and mopped up many areas, slaughtering 3000 people, mostly old folks, women and children, and destroying thousands of houses, hundreds of hectares of fields, and orchards. But like most NLF reports of civilian atrocities, this one was almost certainly dismissed as propaganda by U.S. officials. A United Press International report that same months in month, in which US advisers charged the division with having driven up the body count by killing civilians with helicopter gunships and artillery, was also largely ignored. And it's because they're saying they're soldiers that they're shooting from a distance on helicopters and they just have like Colin Powell justified it by saying, well they're they're providing food for the enemy so there's no difference. Yeah. By the time Speedy Express comes to an end, U.S. forces had killed more than 10,000 people. The vast majority of these were claimed to have been insurgent fighters, but extensive mop up effort operations after the fact found less than 800 weapons on all these bodies they they shared that is. ******* crazy. Yeah. I mean, like, we can't even frame them competently. No. And and also remember, you're taking guys that you drafted. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Right. You know, to do this. Yeah. I mean, like you said with your uncle. I mean, it it it is it's like the generational ripple through that and the lifetime, you know what? What? It does it. I mean, just it's pretty beyond who dies. Who doesn't live again? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And. And what? Yeah. What do people take back with them now? It is fair and necessary to note that this began in the December before Nixon and Kissinger took office. This is not entirely on them. Some of the blame for this goes on the LBJ administration as well, obviously, but it continued under them. This paragraph, written by Christopher Hitchens, gives you some idea of the savagery of what occurred in the early days of the Nixon administration's control of the Vietnam War. The people who still live in pacified quinoa all have vivid recollections of the devastation. American firepower brought to their lives. In early 1969, virtually every person to whom I spoke had suffered in some way. There were 5000 people in our village before 1969, but there were none. In 1971, village elder told me the Americans destroyed every house with artillery air strikes or by burning them down with cigarette lighters. About 100 people were killed by bombing, others were wounded, and others became refugees. Many were children killed by concussion from the bombs, which their small bodies could not withstand, even if they were hiding underground. O. Nixon's plan at the beginning, you know, when his people had derailed the peace negotiations in 68, was that he would win election and then make peace with with Vietnam, right? Then he's gonna do the thing that he promised to do. But it swiftly became clear that peace was a messy prospect. One of the things he's worried about is that, like, well, if we withdraw from with Vietnam, the Saigon government is probably going to fall, right? Because there we're just barely propping up this ****** dictatorship. And that'll be it will make me look weak, right? And and so I can't do it because it will make me look weak. Give me one beer and then I'll quit drinking. Yeah. And then I won't win reelection in 1972. And that's unacceptable. I mean, yeah. And that and that, I mean, obviously keeps going over and over. Like, it's you get into office and then you're like, well, what about reelection instead of going, like, the best direction for it is one of the few things I'll give Biden some credit for because he had the same calculus with Afghanistan, a lot of criticisms to make about the pullout from Afghanistan. But he did not make the same decision Nixon and Kissinger did. He did ******* get out. It would have been easy hours. Yeah. Yeah I would like to be. I have a much more darker outlook on that and I mean it's yeah it's he he he knew that Ukraine was was kicking off because that's been kicking off since he actually 2001 election. But you know it it was a Zelinsky was largely for peace until all of a sudden Biden got elected and then he flipped and I was like I wanted to and all the ****. So you know if you can pull out of Afghanistan if you know there's another area, cook it up. Not that I mean negative on that ship. Yeah, yeah. It's probably too complicated to wanna get into here, because that's a whole another several. It's a ******* **** it's worth of story. It's a shithole of just unbelievable garbage all over the place. Yeah, so withdrawing from Vietnam and Saigon is going to fall. The government is going to fall, and that will be bad in the 72 elections, and it might push Kissinger and Nixon out of power. Neither of them can accept this. And this description of a meeting from December 1970 by HR Haldeman shows Kissinger's role in pulling back. And peace. Kissinger came in and the discussion covered some of the general thinking about Vietnam and the president's big peace plan for the next year with Kissinger later, which Kissinger later told me he does not favor. He thinks that any pullout from next year would be a serious mistake because the adverse reaction to it could set in well before the 72 elections he favors instead of continued winding down. And then a pullout right at the fall of 72 so that if any bad results follow, they will be too late to affect the election. Yeah. And it's, you know that. That's what our wars always are. They're all about. Yeah. They're all about elections. They ******* always are. It's, you know, I mean, there, there, yeah. This led to Republicans thinking that, you know, they had to get war back on track at some point. Yeah. But and, you know, it's always, it's it's never it never works like it. It's it's just such a crazy idea. And you also, like, people are watching body bags go home, like no one's happy about anything that's going on. No. And it. This they just kind of. I mean, that's part of why it keeps going is, yeah, this kind of Craven knowledge that, like, well, the worst thing that could happen is we don't get reelected. Yeah, at no point is he thinking about any of the human beings involved, even any of the American human beings involved. It's just like, well, we can't be losing reelection. You know, imagine if Kissinger was damaged from his childhood, how bad things would get. It could be really bad. And it's like, you know, actually when we talk about the story of like American presidents making Craven political decisions, one of the reasons FDR did not approve more effort being taken to evacuate Jewish refugees from Germany as he did not want to be seen as Pro Jew, Jesus, the socialist policies and stuff that we're going through, he knew that that could hurt him. There were a number of other reasons, but like, yeah, they're like, they did not. That is like there is there were things that were done that led to the US government saving fewer Jewish people from the Holocaust. That were done for Craven political reasons by the FDR administration. Let me hear this Kaiser pitch again. It, actually. Big hat. I love the hat. Biggest hat you've ever seen. Big hairy spiky now loves his mom's hands. But. Ohh God. So the fun thing about this episode is that everything we're going to talk about in part three is even worse, because in part three we're going to talk about ******* Cambodia. So. Whoo. Yeah, well she you guys wanna plug anything after my ears? 3 hours? Yeah, I'm going to be, I'm going to be in a toilet trying to get clean. After that, you can go to the go to dollarpodcast.com for tour information and my website scaredreynolds.com. I'm on tour, but not like tours of duty. Just like stand up and podcast tours with the aim of bringing joy to people. I don't want to talk like that anymore, Dave Slaughter. When you're out there, Dave, shut your ******* mouth and you can just listen to the last time. My last time I saw you do is say you just ******* murdered the whole ******* crowd. ******* face. Like the way you killed the crowd, you left unexploded ordinance in the crowd that they then tripped over later have been over 15 minutes earlier. And like with unexploded ordinance and Lao, 40% of the people who loved your jokes after the set ended were children. There'll be no more relating. There'll be no more correlating. Yeah. Anyway, that's Part 2. You got two more weeks of Henry Kissinger ahead of you folks. The strap in gets a lot uglier, but also we'll be talking about his sex life. So, you know, a lot of. I was going to say something to look forward to, but like, not really. Yeah. Yeah. Come back next week for more of *** **** ******* toilet. Henry Kissinger. That's a pretty good title. Hmm. So if he's not happy with it, no, Sophie's not on board. I don't love it, but you know, alright. Hi everybody, Robert Evans here and my novel after the revolution is available for preorder now from AK Press Org. Now if you go to Akuressa org, you can find after the revolution just googleakapress.org. After the revolution, you'll find a list of participating indie bookstores selling my book, and if you pre-order now from either of these independent bookstores or from AK Press, you'll get a custom signed copy of the book, which I think is pretty cool. You can also pre-order it in physical or in Kindle form from Amazon. Pretty much wherever books are sold, so please Google AK, Press after the revolution, or find an indie bookstore in your area and pre-order it. You'll get a signed copy and you'll make me very happy. Hello, I'm Erica Kelly from the podcast Southern Fried true crime. And if you want to go from podcast fan to podcast host, do what I did and check out spreaker from iheart. I was working in accounting and hating it. Then after just 18 months of podcasting with Spreaker, I was able to quit my day job. Follow your podcasting dreams. Let's break our handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. Hey there, it's Ebony Monet, your co-host for the San Diego Zoo's Amazing Wildlife podcast. In this special episode, we're speaking with Doctor Jane Goodall about the fascinating journey that led to her impactful behavioural discoveries on chimpanzees. It wasn't until one of the chimpanzees began to lose his fear of me, but I began to really make discoveries that actually shook the scientific world. Listen to amazing wildlife on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. In the 1980s and 90s, a psychopath terrorized the country of Belgium. A serial killer and kidnapper was abducting children in the bright light of day. From Tenderfoot TV and iHeartRadio, this is La Monstra, a story of abomination and conspiracy. The story about the man who simply become known as. Lamaster. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.