Up for a few days and already a classic! Still puts a smile on my face after the twentieth viewing or so.

William Jasper - Nov. 8th, 2010

A just-released transcript of a meeting between Henry Kissinger and a Turkish Foreign Minister 35 years ago provides a bombshell quote that will go a long way toward solidifying the former Secretary of State’s reputation as one of the most Machiavellian insiders of American politics and diplomacy in the 20th century.

During a secret meeting on March 10, 1975 in the Turkish Capital of Ankara with Mehli Esenbel, Turkey’s Foreign Minister, Kissinger, then Secretary of State and Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, told Esenbel:

Before the Freedom of Information Act, I used to say at meetings, “The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer.” [laughter] But since the Freedom of Information Act, I’m afraid to say things like that.

Ironically, it was a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request that finally pried loose the transcripts of the meeting, albeit three and a half decades later. The transcripts were posted November 5 on the website of the National Security Archive, a research institute and library located at the George Washington University.

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Yada yada.

Read the evil geezer’s latest, if you can stomach it.

(at around 2:44 - 2:50)

Robert Parry - December 28, 2008

The recent release of 40-year-old tape recordings of President Lyndon Johnson complaining about “treason” by Richard Nixon’s campaign for sabotaging Vietnam peace talks in 1968 also reflects darkly on one of Washington’s enduring Wise Men, a person whose views are still sought and respected: former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

It was Kissinger, who – while serving as a peace-talk adviser to the Johnson administration – made obstruction of the peace talks possible by secretly contacting people working for Nixon, according to Seymour Hersh’s 1983 book, The Price of Power.

“It is certain,” Hersh wrote, “that the Nixon campaign, alerted by Kissinger to the impending success of the peace talks, was able to get a series of messages to the Thieu government [in Saigon] making it clear that a Nixon presidency would have different views on the peace negotiations.”

The newly released tapes show that Johnson had caught on to the Nixon campaign’s back-channel dealings with South Vietnamese President Nguyen van Thieu. In late October and early November 1968, Johnson protested to Republican Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen and eventually to Nixon himself about the sabotage.

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From August Review

North American Group

Richard L. Armitage, President, Armitage International LLC, Washington, DC; former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State

James L. Balsillie, Co-Chief Executive Officer, Research in Motion, Ltd., Waterloo, ON

Alan R. Batkin, Vice Chairman, Eton Park Capital Management, New York, NY

Nani Beccalli-Falco, President and Chief Executive Officer, GE International, Brussels, Belgium

*C. Fred Bergsten, Director, Peterson Institute for International Economics, Washington, DC; former U.S. Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs

Catherine Bertini, Professor of Public Administration, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY; Senior Fellow, Agricultural Development, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; former Under Secretary-General for Management, United Nations; former Executive Director, UN World Food Program.

Robert D. Blackwill, President, BGR International, Washington, DC; former Deputy Assistant to President George W. Bush and Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Planning; former Ambassador to India

Adm. Dennis C. Blair, U.S. Navy (retired), John M. Shalikashvili Chair in National Security Studies, National Bureau of Asian Research; Omar Bradley Chair of Strategic Leadership, Army War College and Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA; former Commander in Chief, U.S. Pacific Command

Herminio Blanco Mendoza, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Soluciones Estratégicas, Mexico City, NL; former Mexican Secretary of Commerce and Industrial Development

David G. Bradley, Chairman, Atlantic Media Company, Washington, DC

Lael Brainard, Vice President and Founding Director, Global Economy and Development Center, The Brookings Institution, Washington, DC

Harold Brown, Counselor and Trustee, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, DC; former General Partner, Warburg Pincus & Company, New York, NY; former U.S. Secretary of Defense

*Zbigniew Brzezinski, Counselor and Trustee, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, DC; Robert Osgood Professor of American Foreign Affairs, Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University; former U.S. Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs

[...]

Full list

Steve Watson - Sept 26, 2008

A Council on Foreign Relations member and former policy planner under prominent Bilderberger Henry Kissinger has penned a piece in the Financial Times of London calling for a “new global monetary authority” that would have the power to monitor all national financial authorities and all large global financial companies.

“Even if the US’s massive financial rescue operation succeeds, it should be followed by something even more far-reaching – the establishment of a Global Monetary Authority to oversee markets that have become borderless,” writes Jeffrey Garten, also a former managing director of Lehman Brothers.

Garten, now a professor of business at Yale, served on the policy planning staff of Kissinger during his time as Secretary of State. He also served on the White House Council on International Economic Policy under the Nixon administration and went on to become the Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade under Bill Clinton.

Citing “globalization”, A “clash of philosophies” and the “vacuum at the centre” of the current global institutional apparatus, Garten describes his vision for a new monolithic world authority to oversee all financial activity around the globe.

Full story

News.com.au | Sep 24, 2008 (via Aftermath News)

By Stefanie Balogh in New York

REPUBLICAN vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin is to take her first tentative steps on to the world stage, at UN talks with the leaders of Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.

John McCain’s selection of Ms Palin has been criticised due to her lack of foreign affairs experience.

The Alaskan Governor, who describes herself as a hockey mum and a pit bull with lipstick, has argued that she is ready for the world’s second most powerful job, despite never having met a foreign head of state before today.

She got her first passport last year.

Ms Palin defended her national security credentials in a television interview this month, during which she said she had insight into Russia because “you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska”.

Today, Ms Palin will receive a crash course in international affairs from Henry Kissinger, the former US Secretary of State to Republican presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.

(more…)