The Trial of Henry Kissinger

What happens when the moral authority of a nation is undermined by the crimes of its most celebrated leaders? In The Trial of Henry Kissinger, Christopher Hitchens poses that unsettling question, arguing that the former U.S. Secretary of State and National Security Advisor should be prosecuted for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and violations of international law. This isn’t a political hit piece or a polemic on ideology—it’s a forensic case built like a prosecutor’s brief, inviting readers to imagine Kissinger not as a respected statesman but as a defendant in the dock at The Hague.

Hitchens’s core argument is both moral and legal: if the principles of Nuremberg are to apply to all, then Henry Kissinger must be held accountable for orchestrating policies that resulted in mass murder—in Indochina, Bangladesh, Chile, East Timor, Cyprus, and beyond. The book’s shocking premise is based not on rhetoric but on declassified memos, diplomatic transcripts, and eyewitness accounts that paint a chilling picture of how decisions taken in Washington unleashed chaos and death across continents. The crimes are not alleged—they are documented; the question is whether the law applies to those who once wrote it.

The Moral Weight of a Legal Argument

Hitchens opens with a simple but devastating question: why should Kissinger, whose policies mirror the actions for which figures like Augusto Pinochet, Slobodan Milošević, or General Yamashita were prosecuted, enjoy global celebrity instead of censure? He contextualizes this through the 1999 arrest of Pinochet in London—a moment that shattered the traditional immunity claimed by world leaders. If Chile’s dictator could face trial, why not the man in Washington who helped bring him to power? This question frames the book’s moral thread. Hitchens insists that true justice demands consistency: the law must bind both the tyrant and the policymaker, the junta general and the Harvard-trained strategist.

He outlines six major charges that could form a prosecutable indictment: mass killing of civilians in Indochina, collusion in genocide in Bangladesh, conspiracy to murder political figures in Chile and Cyprus, enabling genocide in East Timor, and conspiring to kidnap and murder a journalist in Washington, D.C. Each chapter serves as evidence, dissecting one case at a time with meticulous use of official cables, memos, and testimony. It’s less a biography than a legal argument disguised as investigative journalism.

Mosaic of Crimes—and Complicity

Throughout the book, Hitchens draws connections between Kissinger’s violent realpolitik and the broader culture of U.S. impunity. The incidents in Vietnam and Cambodia reveal the cold mechanics of power: secret bombings authorized without congressional approval, the destruction of neutral territories, and deliberate deception of the public. In Bangladesh, Kissinger dismisses genocide as an internal matter while protecting an ally, General Yahya Khan, who exterminated hundreds of thousands. In Chile, he orchestrates the overthrow of a democratically elected government, making possible the shadow war of Operation Condor. In Cyprus, his office ignores explicit intelligence about an impending coup, and in East Timor, he greenlights an invasion that kills a third of the population. The pattern is unmistakable—each episode shows a leader who understood precisely what he was doing and saw legality as an obstacle, not a boundary.

Why This Matters Today

For Hitchens, holding Kissinger accountable isn’t mere revenge—it’s about the integrity of international justice itself. If Western institutions prosecute only the defeated or the powerless, they confirm the cynical belief that morality in global politics is selective. The book becomes a reflection on the credibility of the American experiment, forcing readers to ask: can a nation that crafted the Nuremberg principles ignore them when they implicate its own icons?

Hitchens ends with a note both hopeful and grim. The post–Cold War world has opened cracks in the edifice of sovereign immunity: from the Pinochet ruling to the formation of the International Criminal Court. But he warns that the true test will come only when such laws apply upward—toward the powerful. Kissinger’s impunity, he suggests, is not just a moral failure but a stain on the very idea of justice. In exposing it, Hitchens not only dissects one man’s crimes but demands that you question whether any state, however powerful, can ever be above the law.

Hitchens begins his prosecution with the quagmire that defined an era: Vietnam and the neighboring nations of Cambodia and Laos. The evidence here is brutal and quantitative—measured in tonnage of bombs dropped, villages erased, and civilians killed. Kissinger, as National Security Advisor and later Secretary of State, didn’t inherit an impossible war; he prolonged and expanded it, turning conflict into a tool of statecraft and domestic politics.

Sabotaging Peace to Reach Power

The first crime, Hitchens argues, occurred even before Kissinger entered office. In 1968, during the Paris peace talks, Kissinger—then an adviser to the Rockefeller campaign—acted as an informant, secretly funneling intelligence about the negotiations to Nixon’s team. This espionage allowed Nixon’s operatives, through intermediaries like Anna Chennault, to sabotage peace by persuading South Vietnamese leaders to boycott the talks with the promise of a better deal. The result: four more years of war, twenty thousand more American dead, and a still greater slaughter of Vietnamese civilians. Kissinger’s payoff came swiftly: Nixon appointed him National Security Advisor in January 1969.

Secret Wars Across Borders

Once in power, Kissinger ordered the secret bombing of Cambodia and Laos—massive air assaults coded as “Operation Breakfast,” “Lunch,” and “Dinner.” These attacks wiped out villages, displaced millions, and killed an untold number of civilians. The bombing campaigns were conducted without congressional approval, falsified in official records, and later intensified despite internal warnings of illegality. Even Defense Secretary Melvin Laird questioned whether Kissinger’s actions violated international norms; Kissinger simply ignored him. By the end of the Indochina conflict, the U.S. had dropped more tonnage of bombs there than in all of World War II—nearly 4.5 million tons.

As Hitchens details, journalists such as Fred Branfman and Kevin Buckley uncovered atrocities like Operation Speedy Express, where thousands of unarmed civilians were killed in the Mekong Delta. But under Kissinger’s doctrine of “credibility,” these deaths were politically useful—they ensured that America appeared strong while buying time before a strategically timed withdrawal that coincided with the 1972 election.

The Legal Standard: War Crimes by Any Measure

To drive the argument home, Hitchens invokes General Telford Taylor, chief prosecutor at Nuremberg. Taylor asserted that if U.S. officials were held to the standards applied to Axis leaders, many—including Kissinger—would face the gallows for Indochina. The deliberate bombing of neutral nations and the targeting of civilians violate the Geneva Conventions’ bans on collective punishment and disproportionate force. Furthermore, as Hitchens shows through taped meetings and memos, Kissinger was fully aware of the human toll yet continued, fearing that withdrawal before the 1972 election would harm Nixon politically.

Kissinger’s America and the Politics of Death

When Cambodia and Vietnam finally collapsed in 1975, Kissinger’s justification was “peace with honor.” The real legacy was 3 million civilian dead, a region destabilized for generations, and the rise of genocides like that of the Khmer Rouge. Hitchens’ analysis forces you to confront an uncomfortable truth: this was not madness or accident—it was the cold calculus of political survival. Kissinger had measured credibility in lives, and by those metrics, he succeeded at enormous cost. His fingerprints, Hitchens concludes, remain on the bomb craters of Indochina.

In 1971, while the world watched the birth of Bangladesh, Henry Kissinger saw an inconvenience. The United States’ key Cold War ally, Pakistan’s General Yahya Khan, had launched a campaign of mass murder against the Bengali population. Yet Kissinger shielded him, suppressing reports of genocide to preserve diplomatic back channels to China. Hitchens considers this episode Kissinger’s most direct complicity in mass atrocity.

The Blood Telegram

American diplomats on the ground saw the horrors firsthand. In what became known as the “Blood Telegram,” Consul General Archer Blood and his staff denounced their own government’s silence, calling U.S. complicity “moral bankruptcy.” Kissinger’s response was swift: the dissenters were recalled, their careers ruined. He later praised Yahya Khan for his “delicacy and tact.” Hitchens argues that this wasn’t bureaucratic inertia—it was deliberate policy, shielding a butcher because he was useful.

When Realpolitik Becomes Real Death

Hitchens shows how Kissinger’s theory of power—borrowed from Bismarck but stripped of morality—translated into catastrophic practice. The Pakistani army killed hundreds of thousands, torched villages, and raped women systematically. Ten million refugees fled into India, creating instability that could have ignited a regional war. Instead of restraint, Kissinger dismissed the crisis as an “internal matter.” His reasoning was chilling: Pakistan was the secret courier for Nixon’s opening to China, and keeping that channel open outweighed any number of Bengali lives. The logic of the Cold War—maintain access to Beijing, counter Moscow—became an alibi for genocide.

Seeds of Future Treachery

Ironically, this amoral calculus fueled future instability. By condoning Pakistan’s military dictatorship, Kissinger ensured that democracy in the region began its postcolonial years soaked in blood. He later derided Bangladesh as a “basket case,” ignoring that he had helped make it one. Hitchens connects these dots to a broader theme: when the United States betrays its own ideals in pursuit of expediency, the long-term result is moral and strategic failure. The United States lost credibility in South Asia, and millions learned that American ideals of freedom stopped where convenience began.

For Hitchens, Bangladesh epitomizes Kissinger’s worldview: no atrocity was too large, provided it served a higher geopolitical purpose. The crime was not merely silence in the face of slaughter—it was collaboration with it.

Of all Kissinger’s interventions, none better demonstrates his disdain for democratic self-determination than Chile. In 1970, when Salvador Allende—a socialist elected by popular vote—posed no direct threat to the United States, Kissinger still declared that the U.S. could not tolerate “a country going Marxist because its people are irresponsible.” Hitchens reconstructs the hidden operations that turned Chile’s fragile democracy into a dictatorship.

Track Two: Subversion and Assassination

Through the CIA’s “Track Two” program, Kissinger orchestrated covert plans to prevent Allende’s inauguration. The plan involved bribing Chilean officers, disseminating propaganda, and kidnapping Commander-in-Chief René Schneider, whose constitutionalism blocked a coup. Supplied with CIA tear gas and “sterile” submachine guns, conspirators murdered Schneider on October 22, 1970. Hitchens shows that Kissinger was informed at every step, that he micromanaged the flow of weapons, and that his office subsequently paid the assassins hush money. This was not plausible deniability—it was command responsibility.

From Coup to Condor

Three years later, Kissinger’s efforts bore fruit. The 1973 coup that overthrew Allende installed General Augusto Pinochet, initiating a reign of torture, disappearances, and terror known as Operation Condor. Documents reveal that Kissinger not only knew of these crimes but reassured Pinochet directly. In a declassified memorandum from 1976, Kissinger told the dictator: “We welcomed the overthrow of the Communist-inclined government… We are not out to weaken your position.” Weeks later, Pinochet’s agents detonated a car bomb in Washington, D.C., murdering Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt—an act of international terrorism on American soil enabled by Kissinger’s indulgence.

The Blueprint for Impunity

In Chile’s agony, Hitchens sees the condensation of Kissinger’s model for intervention everywhere: create chaos, sponsor repression, and deny accountability. Each memo and meeting shows the same cold refrain—stability over liberty, loyalty over legality. The irony, Hitchens notes, is that every regime Kissinger installed—Pinochet’s Chile, Suharto’s Indonesia, the Greek junta—later collapsed in disgrace. Yet Kissinger emerged unscathed, transformed into a figure of the establishment elite and handsomely rewarded by corporations that profited from those very regimes. The Chilean coup, then, was not only the murder of democracy but also the blueprint for the privatization of American foreign policy that followed.

Hitchens next turns to the 1974 crisis in Cyprus—another case where Kissinger’s duplicity and passivity in the face of violence blur into complicity. When Greece’s U.S.-backed military junta plotted a coup against President Archbishop Makarios, Kissinger had explicit intelligence that the action would provoke Turkish invasion. He did nothing to prevent it, perhaps believing partition would serve American strategic needs.

Foreknowledge and Silence

Diplomatic cables warned that Greek dictator Dimitrios Ioannides was planning to remove Makarios and annex Cyprus—actions that violated treaties and threatened NATO unity. Kissinger acknowledged the risk but declined to intervene, citing “non-interference in internal affairs.” Within weeks, Makarios was overthrown; Turkish troops invaded, killing thousands and displacing 200,000 civilians. As British intelligence and even U.S. senators urged response, Kissinger’s focus remained on optics, not intervention. He referred to Makarios himself as “the proximate cause” of tension—as if a democratically elected leader had invited his own assassination.

A Cloak of Immunity

After the coup, Kissinger tacitly recognized the puppet regime of journalist-turned-gunman Nicos Sampson, instructing U.S. diplomats to treat his ministers as legitimate. Only when Makarios reemerged alive and appealed to the United Nations did Kissinger grudgingly receive him as “Archbishop,” refusing to say “President.” Hitchens highlights this as moral absurdity: the United States, custodian of NATO’s southern flank, backed the forces that shattered it. Kissinger’s later claim—that Watergate distracted him—is undermined by evidence that he micromanaged every related intelligence cable. The Turkish invasion that followed produced war crimes later documented by the European Commission on Human Rights: dispossession, rape, and massacre—all foreseen, none prevented.

Hitchens argues that Cyprus reveals Kissinger’s deeper pathology: the belief that deception itself is a form of strategy. By denying responsibility and claiming ignorance, he made betrayal look like pragmatism. The cost, as always, was borne by civilians on foreign soil.

Perhaps the most glaring example of Kissinger’s realpolitik unleashed is East Timor. On December 6, 1975, Kissinger and President Gerald Ford visited Indonesia to meet with dictator General Suharto. The next day, Indonesia invaded East Timor, slaughtering a third of the population. Declassified U.S. documents confirm what Hitchens calls Kissinger’s signature crime: the invasion was discussed, approved, and armed from Washington.

Diplomacy as License to Kill

At the meeting with Suharto, Kissinger and Ford assured the general that they understood Indonesia’s “position.” Hours later, Indonesian paratroopers descended on Dili, turning the capital into a killing field. Within weeks, reports of mass executions, rape, and famine emerged—but Washington doubled its military aid to Suharto’s regime. When State Department lawyers protested that U.S. weapons were being used illegally for aggression, Kissinger berated them, warning that written objections might leak. “It will come out that Kissinger overruled his pristine bureaucrats and violated the law,” he fumed. Indeed, that is exactly what happened years later when the memos surfaced.

The Denial and the Truth

Decades later, confronted publicly about East Timor, Kissinger lied that the invasion wasn’t discussed until “at the airport.” Journalist Allan Nairn then read from declassified minutes proving otherwise. Hitchens captures this confrontation as emblematic: a powerful man cornered by his own record, retreating into denial. Yet the evidence is devastating: U.S. weapons, U.S. approvals, and U.S. silence after 100,000 deaths. Kissinger’s justification—that Indonesia’s stability mattered more than Timor’s freedom—translates, Hitchens notes, to the doctrine of might over right, a moral nihilism disguised as strategy.

After Suharto’s fall, Indonesia’s archives confirmed Hitchens’s argument: East Timor’s annexation was planned in coordination with Washington. For Hitchens, the episode completes a macabre symmetry—from Indochina to Chile, the same fingerprints: secret meetings, covert approvals, and a paper trail soaked in blood.

In his final chapter, Hitchens expands the focus beyond Kissinger to the future of international justice. He believes that the 20th century’s moral architecture—from Nuremberg to The Hague—demands accountability even for the victors. The age when leaders could hide behind “sovereign immunity,” he argues, is ending. The Pinochet precedent made it conceivable that a Henry Kissinger could be subpoenaed abroad or sued under U.S. law—and that matters more than any single conviction.

Four Pillars of Accountability

Hitchens outlines four frameworks of law that could apply to Kissinger: international human rights law (which limits state power over individuals), the law of armed conflict (restricting how wars are fought), international criminal law (defining genocide and crimes against humanity), and domestic legal remedies like the U.S. Alien Tort Claims Act. Under these principles, ordering bombings of civilian populations, orchestrating coups, or conspiring in assassination are not policy options—they are prosecutable crimes.

Cracks in the Wall of Immunity

Cases against Latin American dictators, Bosnian warlords, and even Chinese officials prove that accountability is no longer theoretical. Judges like Spain’s Baltasar Garzón, who pursued Pinochet, and global statutes recognizing universal jurisdiction, have torn holes in the old order. Even U.S. allies have begun examining American complicity in Cold War crimes. Hitchens argues that sooner or later, the principle must reach Washington—the place where impunity was perfected.

He challenges American lawyers, journalists, and citizens to confront that reality. Failure to do so, he warns, would confirm a moral double standard: justice for the weak, immunity for the powerful. The title The Trial of Henry Kissinger is thus both literal and symbolic. It is an invitation—to history, to conscience, to law—to finish what Nuremberg began.

“If laws are like cobwebs,” Hitchens writes, “then they catch only the small insects while the strong fly free. Justice requires that even the largest wings can be caught.”