Good as Gold

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by Joseph Heller


  He lied about peace and lied about war; he lied in Paris when he announced "peace was at hand" just before the Presidential elections and he lied again afterward by blaming North Vietnam for bad faith when all his hondling went mechuleh.

  KISSINGER CHARGES UNTRUE, HANOI AIDE IN PARIS SAYS

  Hanoi was correct and Kissinger was not.

  Q. What concessions did the United States make to get this agreement?

  A. What concessions did the United States make? The United States made the concessions that are described in the agreement. There are no secret side agreements of any kind.

  There were secret side agreements. (Jews, by reputa­tion, made much better bargains.) The lonesome cowboy was ba-kokt again, and it was his allies in South Vietnam who would not accept the tsedreydt mishmosh

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  of a truce he had ungerpotchket. So, Moisheh Kapoyer, the North was bombed to placate the South and salve the hurt feelings of the mieskeit and his umgliks, and not, as Kissinger falsely indicated, to force new conces­sions. Authority for this lay again in Anthony Lewis of The New York Times, without fail a more honorable source of information about Kissinger than Kissinger:

  The real purpose of the Christmas bombing, we now know, was to persuade South Vietnam to accept the truce. General Alexander Haig, then Mr. Kissinger's assistant, had gone to Saigon and promised to show that the United States was ready, in General Haig's elegant phrase, to "brutalize" the North.

  Ai-yi-yi—another metzieh, that General Alexander Haig, with his brain of a golem's, a gantsa k'nocker under Nixon and Kissinger whose goyisha kup divined some "sinister force" behind the erasure of that eighteen and a half minutes from the incriminating Watergate tapes. Kissinger was an ingrate to his benefactors ("Kissinger bad mouths practically every­body he knows, Presidents included") and could funpheh like a gonif when pressed for the truth:

  Thus, while the White House regarded him as a wholehearted supporter of the Christmas bombing of North Vietnam, he led reporters and legislators—by nods and grimaces, by innuendo against Nixon, and by stressing the human catastrophe of the decision—to believe that he was opposed to it.

  Twisting and turning like a worm or a snake, the vontz was nisht aheyn, nisht aher on issues igniting the fiercest controversy. The chuchem hut gezugt:

  I have always considered the U.S. involvement in Indochina to have been a disaster.

  And er hut gezugt:

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  No, I have never been against the war in Vietnam.

  When confronted head-on by biographers Kalb about discreet hints, spread, as was his wont, by himself, that he disagreed with Nixon's bombing policy, he confessed:

  I was in favor of attacking the North. It was an agony for me. . . .

  Oh, that shlemiel. To him it was an agony, that Chaim Yankel. He was never altogether comfortable with Congress and was said to prefer a dictatorship without any parliamentary body to restrain him:

  "What Fve been trying to tell him," said Rep. John Brademas, the deputy majority whip, "is that foreign policy must conform to the law, but I don't think I've been getting through."

  No Jew Gold could think of suffered this same handicap of comprehension. Gold saw the strangest contrasts preserved between the ridiculous aura of success and knowledge that surrounded the self-satisfied behayma and the legacy of diplomatic wreck­age and tsuris he had left in his wake. For Gold, his vaunted intelligence and brilliance remained as apocry­phal and elusive as Nixon's grasp of fundamentals and Spiro Agnew's high IQ: no distinctive sign of any existed. A farzayenisht to his detractors, he was a ceaseless mechaieh to a biographer like Gold. Every Montik and Donershtik the scampering lummox was in the papers again with some new mishegoss like a shmegegge from Chelm. On Monday in the New York Post was a photograph of Kissinger looking like a simpering shlemazel in the sash and star-shaped medal of the Grand Cross First Class of the Order of Merit, one of "West Germany's highest decorations." On Tuesday Gold found this:

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  NAZI SCANDAL IN BONN ARMY

  German army lieutenants staged a symbolic "burning of Jews" at the West German Armed Forces University in Munich. Nazi "Sieg Heil" salutes were exchanged as the young officers set fire to pieces of paper scribbled with the word "Juden" [Jews] and burned them in wastebaskets. Said a spokesman from the Defense Ministry, "The participants did not have a basically anti-Semitic point of view."

  Gold wasn't all that sure. A fair man, he understood that even to juxtapose such items in print in this most coincidental relationship was a reprehensible action to be perpetrated only by someone like Gold lacking all decency and compassion for shallow, socialite warmon­gers like Kissinger. But surely, the dope was at least in part responsible for the close sequence by pushing in front of every camera that bright and thirsting punim that only a gentile machetaynesta could love. And Gold had the headlines to prove that Kissinger had been willing sycophant to anti-Semites in the past:

  WOODWARD & BERNSTEIN: KISSINGER'S VIEW OF NIXON

  Anti-Semitic, Second Rate And a Nuclear Warmonger

  Gold had many more items of derogatory informa­tion but desired to avoid giving to his text even the faintest hue of any personal animus. If his thesis were sustained, he would become the country's first Jewish Secretary of State—if he became Secretary of State. He would even include the one or two complimentary things he'd found. In the Kalb biography, for example, there was praise for Kissinger as a Harvard student by a contemporary who described him as "extraordinarily able":

  But what a son of a bitch! A prima donna, self-serving, self-centered. You were either Elliott's protege or Carl

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  Friedrich's. Kissinger managed to be on excellent terms with both.

  In Professor William Yandell Elliott, another chuchem at Harvard, Kissinger found, he says, not merely an academic patron but a friend and an inspiration:

  On many Sundays we took long walks. He spoke of the power of love, and said that the only truly unforgivable sin is to use people as if they were objects.

  Kissinger urged sending B-52's against Cambodia, supported dictatorships in Chile^ Greece, and the Philippines, was dedicated to the perpetuation of racist minority rule in Africa, and contributed to the reelec­tion of Richard Nixon. He had been kissed on the face by an Arab who detested Jews and handed a flower by the Chancellor of West Germany. Gold had a title he liked. He would call his book The Little Prussian.

  He did not think that Kissinger would mind. As a gentleman with indisputable cravings for money and prominence he could scarcely advocate the suppression of these aspirations in others. And he was known to enjoy a good joke, for he was always trying to make one:

  Kissinger, who enjoyed a reputation as a swinger, was asked to explain his often-quoted remark that "power is the ultimate aphrodisiac." "Well, that was a joke," he said.

  Probably, he was closer to the bull's-eye of humor when asked by reporters how he preferred to be addressed:

  "I don't stand on protocol," he answered. "If you will just call me 'Excellency' it will be okay."

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  There was laughter all around.

  "Your Excellency," wrote General Mustafa Barzani, the Kurdish rebel leader, in a final, pathetic message to Henry Kissinger after all aid abruptly was ended for an insurrection against Iraqi rule fomented and financed by the U.S. Government. "Our movement and people are being destroyed in an unbelievable way with silence from everyone. Our hearts bleed to see the destruction of our defenseless people in an unprecedented manner. We feel, your Excellency, that the United States has a moral and political responsibility towards our people who have committed themselves to your country's policy. Mr. Secretary, we are anxiously awaiting your quick response."

  The only response to this betrayal of an ethnic group was a profound silence, although his Excellency, a fellow of sensitive nature who showed he could kvetch and krechtz like a kronkeh bubbeh when his tender feelings were hurt, defended himself more loquaciously in London lat
er against accusations of something squalid and obscene in the usurious passion with which he appeared to be exploiting his former government positions for money:

  In his view, said Henry A. Kissinger, it's okay for him to make millions. "I think one has to consider that I was deeply in debt when I left office as a result of my public service."

  Oy-oy-oy, crooned Gold to himself disapprovingly, for the words did not smell kosher. From such a meshiach the public needed service like a luch in kup. He very much doubted the koorveh had lived better as a Harvard professor than since. Yet, Gold now found himself in mysterious sympathy with the mercenary longings of the chozzer.

  "Make money!" his father had exhorted maniacally throughout his lifetime. "That's the only good thing I ever learned from the Christians!"

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  Kissinger already had such saychel, as did, according to this paragraph in Newsweek, several of his confeder­ates and nuchshleppers:

  A number of his top aides also will be leaving. Several, including Deputy Secretary Charles Robinson, Under Secretary William D. Rogers, and Director of Policy Planning Winston Lord are wealthy men. Other aides, like Deputy Undersecretary of State Lawrence Eagle-burger, are looking for a chance to make some money in private industry.

  Gold identified with them all, deeply relieved by proof that his was not the only heart in the land roused to a stronger beat by the lovely nearness of money or his the only ears to whom the word itself was as blithesome a sound as could be heard in the language. Gold had good reason for his favorable inclination toward Deputy-Under Eagleburger (Gold could have been a Deputy-Under also had he been willing to settle for so little):

  It is reported that Lawrence Eagleburger, one of Kissinger's close associates, has the ability to say, "Henry, you're full of shit."

  And Gold was indebted to reporters Robert Wood­ward and Carl Bernstein for acquainting him with William Watts, a Kissinger assistant who quit in protest over the invasion of Cambodia:

  Watts then had a show-down talk with General Alexan­der Haig. "You've just had an order from your Commander in Chief," Haig said. "You can't resign." "Fuck you, Al," Watts said. "I just did."

  Gold was entranced.

  "Fuck you, Al"?

  "Henry, you're full of shit"?

  Azoy zugt men to such machers as a General and a

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  Secretary? The boys from Brooklyn could have han­dled that. With mother's milk they'd imbibed the good sense to think so realistically of such momzehrem in government from Tsar Nikolai in St. Petersburg to the chozzerem in City Hall and the scutzem in the social establishment in Washington, D.C. Gold wondered where in his book to put the letter from young Henry to that impressive German exile Fritz Kraemer, who arrived at the military base in Louisiana in a dazzling blaze of exotic authority to talk to the troops of the need for fighting fascism. The prose in the letter was spare:

  I heard you speak yesterday. This is how it should be done. Can I help you somehow? Pvt. Kissinger.

  It was Kraemer who helped; and the fleet-footed momzer was elevated from infantryman to German-speaking interpreter for the commanding general. When the division moved overseas in the closing months of the war, he took quite naturally to the many alluring privileges arid responsibilities of military gov­ernment and was promoted to run the district of Bergstrasse in the state of Hess. His powers were extensive—including the power to arrest without ques­tions.

  "When it came to Nazis," Kraemer recalls, "Kissinger showed human understanding."

  There is good in the worst of us. Outside of government he continued "Teuton his own horn." Reminded of charges of "duplicity" and "immorality" and even that he was a "war criminal" in Vietnam, he defended himself lamely, and er hut boorrrchet:

  "I got the troops and prisoners home."

  A nechtiger tog! More credit for that belonged even to Gold, who had at least gone on one peace march.

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  Nor was Henry quick to grab blame for the 20,492 dead Americans or hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese who were killed in the years he was fucking around merrily with his diplomatic hijinks and vulgar arriviste playboy partying. He admits to a weakness!

  KISSINGER ADMITS TO A WEAKNESS

  "It was in the field of international economics that I had my greatest weakness/' Kissinger told a reporter who dined with him in Aeap«,: • -ecently. "The worst errors the U.S. committed against its North Atlantic allies and against the undeveloped nations were in this field."

  Moisheh Pupik was as good as Gold when it came to finance and economics. Bat azoy:

  KISSINGER IS JOINING COMMITTEE AT CHASE

  Henry A. Kissinger will join the Chase Manhattan Bank first as vice chairman of its international advisory committee and later as the panel's chairman. The spokesman for Chase declined to say how much he will be paid. David Rockefeller, chairman of Chase, ex­pressed delight that a person of Mr. Kissinger's stature and achievements had agreed to lend his considerable expertise to Chase.

  Gold was astounded that a person of Kissinger's low stature and despicable achievements would be allowed into a respectable house, even the White House, but into a house of finance? It was time to put money in mattresses and in Italian banks. Such a geshrei should go up if he ever went near the pishkeh. But nuch a mul:

  GOLDMAN, SACHS HIRES KISSINGER AS INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS ADVISER

  Goldman, Sachs & Company, a leading investment banking and brokerage firm, announced that it has retained Henry A. Kissinger as a part-time adviser and consultant. The amount of compensation to be paid Dr. Kissinger was not disclosed.

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  Und nuch mer:

  In the first contract of its kind a former Secretary of State has agreed to serve as adviser and consultant to a television network for five years at a reported price of $1 million.

  Und vus nuch? In mit'n d'rinnen the slippery prick was shoyn a Trustee for the Metropolitan Museum of Art because of "his known commitment to the value of cultural exchange." Here Gold had a good joke:

  In 1974 when Henry Kissinger visited Mr. Carter in the Georgia governor's office, the then Secretary of State gazed admiringly on a Butler Brown oil painting and said, "I didn't know you collected Andrew Wyeths."

  Zayer klieg, that grubba naar, but he was probably making more in undisclosed compensations than Gold earned in salary, even without any under-the-counter shtupping he might still be getting from the Rockefel­lers. People knew what Kissinger had received from the Rockefellers: cash, sponsorship, jobs, wedding parties, the use of apartments and private planes, of the main swimming pool at the Rockefeller estate for a flop-eared hound named Tyler, and of private vaults in which to conceal government papers from bona fide historians and other competing writers.

  KISSINGER'S PHONE TRANSCRIPTS MOVED FROM ROCKEFELLER ESTATE

  The State Department said today that Henry A. Kissinger had stored the transcripts of his telephone conversations at the private New York estate of Vice President Rockefeller. After a reporters' group said it would sue to gain access to the transcripts, Mr. Kissinger changed his mind and included them in the grant to the Library of Congress of his papers and official documents. According to a State Department press officer, the

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  transcripts were "kept in government-approved storage areas in Pocantico Hills, N.Y." Under questioning by reporters, he acknowledged he meant the Rockefeller estate. Mr. Kissinger and Mr. Rockefeller have close ties. ____________________

  REMEMBER THE NEEDIEST!

  But what did the Rockefellers get from Kissinger? Harvard professors could be purchased more easily, but a loser like Nelson might not know that. He stoops for coins in paid advertisements!

  Henry Kissinger creates a unique history of American leadership, in precious metal. . .

  PORTRAITS OF GREATNESS

  There was a photo of Kissinger in vest and shirt­sleeves captioned:

  After selection of the subjects by Dr. Kissinger (top), the portraits are meticulously sculptu
red (left), and the metals are then minted, one by one, in special hand-fed coining presses.

  And a coupon stating:

  Please enter my subscription for Portraits of Greatness, consisting of fifty finely sculptured portrait medals honoring the great Americans who have guided our nation in its rise to world leadership—as personally chosen by Dr. Henry Kissinger. No payment is required at this time.

  Even Belle thought this contemptible. A society in which such a blithering hypocrite was lionized as a celebrity instead of shunned and despised was a society not worth its salt, and Gold promised he would say so when he outlined to Pomoroy his plans for The Little

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  Prussian. He swore he could not understand why anyone but a book reviewer would want to read the laundered memoirs of a man whose actions of moment were already on the record in glaring condemnation, or why anyone but an obsequious clod would spend a dime to own a copy; while if every tenth person with a distaste for Kissinger bought a copy of Gold's book, he would outsell his rival by millions.

  Pomoroy was undecided about the commercial ex­pectations in Gold's presentation but agreed to accept a book on Kissinger in place of one on the Jewish experience in America, since the research was practi­cally complete. When Gold had trouble reconciling himself to the incredible situation of hustling a book while awaiting a call to high office, he remembered that Kissinger was doing exactly the same. In a novel no one would believe it.

 

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