Hillary and Henry: Accused War Criminal Kissinger Applauded Clinton's Hawkish Foreign Policy in a Handwritten Message

(Credit: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst)

By Ben Norton and Jared Flanery
“I greatly admire the skill and aplomb with which you conduct our foreign policy,” wrote Henry Kissinger in a 2012 letter to “the Honorable Hillary Rodham Clinton.” The compliment was included as a handwritten postscript added to the printed letter.

The Feb. 7 letter, which was released in a batch of emails from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, is a request that she help declassify documents from Kissinger’s time as secretary of state, which he says constitute “a unique record of a critical period in American foreign policy.”

(A scanned copy of Kissinger’s printed message to Clinton)

Critics say Kissinger helped carry out egregious war crimes in this critical period, during which he served as secretary of state under presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.

The late journalist Christopher Hitchens devoted an entire book to detailing the war crimes overseen by Kissinger, who infamously declared “The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer.”

In “The Trial of Henry Kissinger,” Hitchens argues the former secretary of state should be tried “for war crimes, for crimes against humanity, and for offenses against common or customary or international law, including conspiracy to commit murder, kidnap and torture.”

Hitchens described Kissinger as a master of “depraved realpolitik” with “a callous indifference to human life and human rights,” who was behind U.S.-backed atrocities in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, East Timor, Chile, Bangladesh, Cyprus, Kurdish Iraq, Iran, South Africa, Angola and more.

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