The New Yorker:

Despite his controversial record, the former Secretary of State never fell out of the good graces of the D.C. establishment.

By Isaac Chotiner

Henry Kissinger, the former national-security adviser and Secretary of State who served in the Nixon and Ford Administrations and became the most famous American diplomat of the twentieth century, died this week, at the age of a hundred. Kissinger’s legacy remains one of the most debated and contentious artifacts of the Cold War era. Although he has been excoriated, and sometimes called a war criminal, by writers such as Seymour Hersh and Christopher Hitchens, he remained in the good graces of Administrations of both parties well after his time in government, was a frequent presence on the party and social circuit in New York and Washington, D.C., consulted with a wide range of governments and appeared on corporate boards, and published best-selling books. All the while, his critics accused him of a catastrophic record in countries from Vietnam to Chile to Argentina.

To talk about this divide, and Kissinger’s legacy, I spoke by phone with Richard Haass, the president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, who served as the head of that organization for two decades, until earlier this year. A former diplomat who worked on peace in Northern Ireland and served in Colin Powell’s State Department during the George W. Bush Administration, Haass is one of the most recognizable figures in the foreign-policy establishment, and he knew Kissinger well and interviewed him at length. During our conversation, the transcript for which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed how Kissinger should be remembered, his role in extending the Vietnam War, and whether Washington élites were too forgiving of Kissinger’s mistakes.

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