Kissinger (mentioned in Vineland)

[Doug Millison]

http://www.counterpunch.org/
June 27, 2001
Hitchens v. Kissinger
Don't Sue Henry!
[...]"In the wake of Hitchens's two articles in Harper's on Kissinger's war
crimes, magistrates in three countries -- Chile, Argentina, and France --
have summoned Kissinger to answer questions. Le Monde reported earlier this
month that when French Judge Roger Le Loire had a summons served on
Kissinger on May 31 at the Ritz Hotel in Paris, Kissinger fled Paris. The
judge wanted to ask Kissinger about his knowledge of Operation Condor, the
scheme evolved by Pinochet and other Latin American proconsuls of the
American Empire to kill or "disappear" their opponents."



>From a long round-table discussion worth reading at
http://www.harpers.org/online/kissinger_forum/, 
this may have some significance wtr the time in which Pynchon was composing
GR, quoting Hitchens:

"The
first is the election of 1968 in these United States. If I can make a claim
to-not to originality, perhaps, but to a certain synthesis in what I've
written-it would be this: I think that I can say that Harper's has published
for the first time the summation of all the available evidence of how that
election was undermined, distorted, and fixed by a most appalling piece of
cynicism by Richard Nixon and others, who negotiated secretly with a foreign
military dictatorship to undermine the position of the United States
government and its legal and visible negotiators in Paris. They made an
illegal and immoral pact that this foreign military dictatorship would get a
better deal from an incoming Republican administration. And in making this
pact they took out what one might euphemistically describe as a mortgage or
lease on another four years of an already proven immoral and atrocious war.
The combination of the subversion of that election and the extension of that
war is the price of the bargain, which qualifies, I think, to be termed,
without any other statement, the single wickedest act in the history of this
republic. And it may be doubted whether it quite qualifies under the
tradition of a democratic, peaceful, and orderly transition. Of the four
people who concerted that policy-Richard Nixon, Attorney General John
Mitchell, Vice President Spiro Agnew, and Henry Kissinger-only one has
escaped any kind of indictment so far. John Mitchell was the first attorney
general to go to jail. Richard Nixon had to accept a pardon in order to
avoid indictment and impeachment. And Spiro Agnew had to publicly resign.
There's only one unindicted co-conspirator still on the loose. I suggest
that's a reproach to a country that considers itself to be bound by law and
bound by justice."


----
Richard Fiero:
The mud that is being slung is very serious stuff. Hitchens has 
been after Kissinger for a very  long time. If even a fraction 
of the mud sticks a major war criminal will be in deep shit.