A reporter on Thursday confronted former secretary of state Henry Kissinger over his connections to alleged war crimes in Southeast Asia and his support for Chile’s military junta in the 1970s. The 100-year-old Kissinger had no response to the line of inquiry, which was carried out by Vox’s Jonathan Guyer, who was covering Kissinger’s speaking engagement at the Council on Foreign Relations. Following the event, Guyer asked if Kissinger had “any comment on Cambodia or Laos five decades later,” adding that “a lot of alleged war crimes have been documented by historians and reporters.” Kissinger helped orchestrate the U.S. military’s bombing of those nations during the Vietnam War—a campaign that killed hundreds of thousands of people. Guyer also asked if Kissinger had “any reflections on Pinochet,” referring to the Chilean dictator who came to power with U.S. support in 1973 through a military coup that ousted democratically-elected socialist president Salvador Allende. Pinochet’s 17-year rule saw tens of thousands of human rights abuses, including executions and state-sponsored torture.
It's also fifty years since Pinochet.
I asked Dr. Kissinger if he had any reflections on the military juntas he had empowered five decades ago and the well-documented alleged war crimes.
