Martin Edwin Andersen

His century-old mortal remainswerebarely room temperaturewhenanoften-fawningU.S. Establishment press producedartful verbal gymnastics, even bythe 21stcentury elite’scopyboystandards, about thedeath of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. As a result, though accusedaround the worldof myriad war crimes resulting from theclandestine policieshe orchestrated, his public support for vile and vicious dictatorships, and variousofficial“green light� benedictions for violations by the U.S. and its supposed allies of theinternational law set down in the post-World War II Nuremberg trials, Kissinger’slarger-than-life impunitylivesonto haunt the United States at home,as well ashis victims and those of their communities abroad.The headline in his New York Intelligencerobituary addressed thatimmunity, “Henry Kissinger, the Devil at the Dinner Party; His final act—after Harvard and D.C. and Cambodia—was spent at New York’s more rarified tables.� Hislegacy, Choire Sichareminded, includes “dead children and the mass displacement of human beings from Bangladesh to Chile.�Nothing cries outin the mainstream media mulling over the now-defunct Kissinger quite like the virtual absenceof coverage abouthisown role inthe much-touted but still misunderstoodWatergate public corruption scandal that brought down President Richard M. Nixon.Instead, a faux legend persists, perhaps best encapsulated in a riff entitled “Dark Legacy of Latin America haunts Kissinger,� published more than two decades ago: “For his admirers, Kissinger was the man who singlehandedly kept American foreign policy on the rails as Watergate engulfed the Nixon presidency.�The post-mortem gulch (still not, clearly, an Establishment-admitted glitch) is a powerful dearth, not backed by evidence,and directly linked to Kissinger’s own role in what was called in the last century“America’s back yard�—Latin America. Key to missing analyses, so relevant to that Kissinger claimof engulfing teutonic singlehandedness, were his staff, sources, and methods of operation domestically and their ties to criminal wrongdoing overseas.

A Contracorriente (Estados Unidos)