The Hidden Horrors: Kissinger's Complicity in Cambodia's War Crimes

“The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer.”

This was an odd and disconcerting joke for former Secretary Henry Kissinger to have made to the Turkish Foreign Minister in 1975. It is worth pointing out that it seems this line was a common tool in the Secretary’s arsenal of charm that he regularly deployed across the globe.

Depressingly, this is a joke that dies on the lips as it becomes apparent it wasn’t a joke at all. He seems to be a man far more fearful of peace than war. Sadly, many do withdraw from the idea of bringing such a mighty figure within the orbit of law and accountability.

There have been a number of iconoclasts who have sung this song about Kissinger for years. Further, they have worked with admirable fervor to have the term ‘war criminal’, instead of ‘diplomat’, enshrined on Kissinger’s epitaph. But more on them shortly.

In and of itself, the decades-old depredations of a statesman are hardly news. The sins of previous decades can be what might be called “accounted for” to a degree and require no fresh examination. 

However, with Kissinger now having recently earned the title of ‘centenarian’ and celebrated by people who should know better, it has now been revealed that Kissinger has committed even more war crimes than originally thought.

It was an aggressive and admirable investigation by reporter Nick Turse of “The Intercept” that brought to light previously darkened evidence that Kissinger ordered and oversaw a slew of carpet bombings that the United States conducted against Cambodia between the years of 1969 to 1973. 

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Mr. Turse’s investigation work, aptly titled, ‘Kissinger’s Killing Fields’ is, as The Intercept themselves reported , based ‘on previously unpublished interviews with more than 75 Cambodian witnesses and survivors of U.S. military attacks in 13 Cambodian villages so remote they couldn’t be found on maps. Their accounts reveal new details of the long-term trauma borne by survivors of the American war.’

The scathing indictment reveals, courtesy of the intrepidness of Mr. Terse, a wellspring of information via the U.S. National Archives. The Intercept further reported that the documents offered “previously unpublished, unreported, and underappreciated evidence of civilian deaths that were kept secret during the war and remain almost entirely unknown to the American people.” 

According to Turse, Kissinger’s involvement in the extirpation was far from passive. In an interview with Murtaza Hussein on the outlet’s podcast, ‘Intercepted’, Terse asserts that Kissinger’s actions were “...very hands-on. Kissinger was picking where bombs would be dropped in Cambodia,”. He went on to say in that same interview that the “... authentic documents associated with these strikes were burned and phony target coordinates and other forged data were supplied to the Pentagon and eventually Congress.” 

In that same interview with Hussein, Terse went on to report, “What I ended up coming up with as a conservative estimate, and it’s not my estimate, it’s by Ben Kiernan, formerly the Director of Genocide Studies at Yale University, and one of the foremost authorities on the U.S. Air Campaign in Cambodia. He estimated that as many as 150,000 civilians in Cambodia were killed during Kissinger’s tenure, that Kissinger bears significant responsibility for attacks that killed 150,000 civilians or so.”

The litany of what has been called “war crimes” committed by Kissinger has already been examined by giants of journalism such as the great Sy Hersh and the grand polemicist, Christopher Hitchens. The lesser known, but no less admirable name of Gary Bass should intrude itself as well. Bass wrote a tome of illumination called “The Blood Telegram” which chronicles Kissinger’s role in the Pakistani massacres of Bengalis. Nonetheless, special rancor might be reserved for Cambodia.  Indeed, the hallowed echo of Hitchen’s words calls to us from 2001, when he wrote in his book, “The Trials Of Henry Kissinger” that  “The bombing campaign, began as it was to go on — with full knowledge of its effect on civilians, and with flagrant deceit by Mr. Kissinger in this precise respect.”

In a recent appearance on DemocracyNow, Turse expounded on his research to Amy Goodman. Incidentally, Goodman is herself, a fine journalist who made her name covering East Timor, which is yet another country on Kissinger's hit list. Turse mentioned that while many people are aware of President Nixon's history of taping conversations, most people don't realize that Kissinger was also taping all his own phone conversations. Moreover, Kissinger had a group of aides who transcribed these recordings. Turse emphasized that by going through these transcripts, one can see, with haunting clarity, how hands-on Kissinger was with his policies in Cambodia.

Turse went on to affirm that Nixon may have been drunk during a number of these calls, reporting that, “[Nixon] was slurring his words, and giving orders, in one case that I focus on... basically attack everything with planes and helicopter gunships, and you can see the order come right from Nixon.”

Terse went on to say, “Then I was able to show that you can see the palpable effects in the field that just after these orders came down, helicopter attacks on Cambodia went sky high, they tripled over the course of the month after this call. So you can really see the direct effects of Kissinger in the White House, and how it affected Cambodians on the ground.”

In another of Turse’s articles, entitled “Transcripts Of Kissinger’s Calls Reveal His Culpability”, Turse interviewed one of Kissinger’s former secretaries, Judy Johnson, who was one of many who worked to transcribe these recordings. Terse reported: “I just had a call from our friend,” Kissinger told his aide Alexander Haig moments after getting off the phone with Nixon on that December night, according to Johnson’s transcript. The president “wants a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia,” Kissinger told Haig. “He doesn’t want to hear anything. It’s an order, it’s to be done. Anything that flies on anything that moves. You got that?” In a notation, Johnson indicated that while it was difficult to hear him, it sounded as if Haig started laughing.

The final curtain to this drama rose with an interview Turse did with Ny Sarim. This concerned the bombing that took place in Neak Luong back in 1973. Turse reported, in a piece titled “Notorious 1973 Attack Killed Many More Than Previously Known” that:

“Ny was sleeping at home when the bombs started dropping on Neak Luong, 30 tons all at once. She had felt the ground tremble from nearby bombings in the past, but this strike by a massive B-52 Stratofortress aircraft hit the town squarely.”

 “Not only did my house shake, but the earth shook,” she told The Intercept.

Sarim went on to say that “Those bombs were from the B-52s.” Many in the downtown market area where she worked during the day were killed or wounded. “Three of my relatives — an uncle and two nephews — were killed by the B-52 bombing,” she said.

Such was the malevolence and bloodshed wrought by the strike on Neak Luong.  Turse makes the horrifying claim that “may have killed more Cambodians than any bombing of the American war, but it was only a small part of a devastating yearslong air campaign in that country.” ‘

In all, the United States dropped well over 257,000 tons of explosives across Cambodia in 1973, which is roughly about half the total dropped on Japan during all of World War II.

Back in 2003, Kissinger wrote the self-indulgently titled book “Ending The Vietnam War”. In it, even he relents that “more than a hundred civilians were killed” in Neak Luong, but Turse reported that “U.S. records of ‘solatium’ payments — money given to survivors as an expression of regret — indicate that more than 270 Cambodians were killed and hundreds more were wounded in Neak Luong. State Department documents also show that the U.S. paid only about half the sum promised to survivors.”

The hard numbers, hopefully meant to stir some soft emotions, are that there were, as Turse reported in the same article,  officially 137 Cambodians killed and 268 wounded. This was according to the Phnom Penh-based U.S. Embassy.

It was some months later that, as Turse reports, Deputy Chief of Mission Thomas Enders,”... in a confidential, December 1973 cable that went to Kissinger and then-Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger, confided that the U.S. had actually paid out solatium for 273 dead, 385 seriously wounded, 48 who suffered ‘mutilation,’ and 46 victims of slight injuries. All told, that figure — 752 people hurt or killed — was 86 percent higher than the official number.”

These horrifying numbers and the stories they tell are just one part of the blood-stained trail that Kissinger saunters. There is hardly enough space in a single book, let alone a single article, to lament the thunderous silence on the part of the United States that has been returned to the curdled and tortured screams of his victims.

A cursory internet search shows that Kissinger’s actions were such that multiple legal systems across the world developed an interest. Chile and France would perhaps be the most salient. Indeed, Chilean civilians even brought their own lawsuit paying for it themselves who've already had family members murdered.

The Washington Post reported, alas, on September 11th, 2001 that “The family of Chilean military commander Rene Schneider, who was killed 31 years ago during a botched kidnapping, filed a federal lawsuit in Washington yesterday accusing Henry A. Kissinger, Richard M. Helms and other officials in the Nixon administration of orchestrating a series of covert activities that led to his assassination.” The date the article went to publication might signal its lack of otherwise merited attention.

But the closing act would have to be noticing the want of a real sense of shame on the part of the United States. Why is an American District Attorney not doing this? Why is Congress not doing it? Why are the American courts not leading the march? Why instead, do we see Kissinger galivanting on a world tour celebrating his birthday with stops in New York, London, and his hometown of Fürth, Germany?

Perhaps, justice will be done soon in light of this new evidence and the long-ignored screams of the victims will at last be heard.