[Kissinger is having an extended birthday month. It has also been
a month of outstanding watchdog reporting — including new
revelations about previously untold mass killings Kissinger was
responsible for in Cambodia.]
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I CRASHED HENRY KISSINGER’S 100TH-BIRTHDAY PARTY: THE ELITE LOVE
HIM BUT FOR SOME REASON WON’T SAY WHY.  
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Jonathan Guyer
June 8, 2023
New York Magazine
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_ Kissinger is having an extended birthday month. It has also been a
month of outstanding watchdog reporting — including new revelations
about previously untold mass killings Kissinger was responsible for in
Cambodia. _

, Photograph Source: The White House – Public Domain

 

On Monday evening at the New York Public Library’s 42nd Street
entrance, several men were on their knees meticulously installing a
red carpet over the stone steps as a half-dozen security guards in
suits looked out from behind the velvet rope.

I was there to crash the 100th-birthday party of Henry Kissinger
[[link removed]], the former secretary of State
to Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford who historians and journalists say is
responsible for countless atrocities. He prolonged and expanded the
Vietnam War with the bombing of Cambodia and Laos, killing hundreds of
thousands, perhaps millions, of innocent people. He helped empower
genocidal militaries in Pakistan and Indonesia. He enabled juntas that
overthrew democracies in Chile and Argentina. He’s often called a
war criminal
[[link removed]],
and the long-running social-media joke
[[link removed]] is
that he’s still alive while so many better humans are dead.

And he’s been having a lot of birthday parties.

When I heard that there was one happening in Manhattan with a secret
guest list and that he would be attending in person, I decided to go
as well. I would stake out the scene and document the guests for
history’s sake — or at least for what’s left of Twitter.

I knew about it only from a cryptic line on Secretary of State Antony
Blinken
[[link removed]]’s
schedule: “7:30 p.m. Secretary Blinken attends a celebration in
honor of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in New York City,
New York. (CLOSED PRESS COVERAGE).” You can’t really close press
coverage when the event is taking place in Bryant Park, though, and I
wanted to ask Blinken what he was doing there. It seemed peculiar that
Kissinger was such a cherished statesman to a certain smart set yet no
one wanted to talk about celebrating him.

A library spokesperson reiterated that it was a private party and
handed me over to the office of event planner David Monn, who had also
thrown Kissinger’s 90th-birthday celebration. “We are unable to
share details,” a business manager told me.

When I showed up at the library, another Monn underling spotted me
immediately. “We know who you are,” she said, “and you were told
not to come.”

Around the corner, I met a gentleman in a tuxedo with a cane and a
sensible pair of black Samuel Hubbard slip-ons. It was former
ambassador Dick Viets, who represented the U.S. in Jordan and
Tanzania. He told me he had known and admired Kissinger since he was a
young man in the foreign service. Kissinger’s New York friends would
be here, he said, “a lot of whom want to give him a toast.” He
also told me Wall Street titan Henry Kravis, co-founder of the
investment giant KKR, was the host. (Monn’s staff denies this, and
KKR declined to comment.)

Dick Viets. Photo: Jonathan Guyer

Viets walked toward the red carpet and began chatting with Graham
Allison, a Harvard scholar of international relations and a serial
corporate board member
[[link removed]] who
studied under Kissinger at Harvard in the ’60s. “I was introduced
at an event recently as his oldest — and slowest — continuously
learning student,” he told me. “Which statesman of the 20th
century will people remember 100 years from now?”

I write about foreign policy, and this was my first time covering a
red carpet. But here I was, not asking, “Who are you wearing?” but
instead inquiring as to what about Kissinger merits celebrating.
Luckily, years of reporting on foreign affairs had trained me well in
recognizing senior citizens in black tie. I introduced myself to David
Petraeus (who rushed by, even though we sometimes email — _General,
please get back to me!_) and Larry Summers
[[link removed]] (who
had no interest in chatting).

Graham Allison. Photo: Jonathan Guyer

Then arrived Jane Harman, who once served as the senior Democrat on
the House Intelligence Committee. What’s Kissinger’s legacy?
“Everything, everywhere, all at once,” she said. She posed for me
to snap a photo and then got checked in by a guard.

William J. Burns, the CIA director, crossed the sidewalk with a
tough-looking entourage. Then came more guests in black Escalades and
Audis and a couple of green Bentleys. The security guards kept
reminding me to stay away, an instruction I politely ignored, and a
crowd of Israeli tourists asked me what was going on. The former New
York schools chancellor Joel Klein walked in, and Diane von
Furstenberg
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to have snuck by me.

Jane Harman. Photo: Jonathan Guyer

And then there was Bill, a friendly 20-something in a polo. Bill was
testing my patience, angling for selfies with the A-listers as I tried
to ask Mike Bloomberg about his new appointment to President Biden’s
Defense Innovation Board. But then Bill, who declined to share his
full name or any other personal details, spotted George H.W. Bush’s
secretary of State James Baker, himself a spritely 93-year-old, and
secured a selfie. Now he was my ally. “Archbishop Dolan, will you
take a picture with me?” he said, greeting New York’s Catholic
luminary. I would never have recognized either man.

Some people didn’t show up. Kissinger had served on the board of the
now disgraced and thoroughly fraudulent Theranos, and its founder,
Elizabeth Holmes, is in prison, somewhere a lot of people would
apparently like to see Kissinger. Hillary Clinton, who had with her
husband, Bill, attended Kissinger’s 90th
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also didn’t appear.

Kissinger is having an extended birthday month. Two weeks earlier, I
had successfully invited myself to another birthday party hosted by
the Economic Club in New York
[[link removed]].
They made me sit up on the mezzanine of the Yale Club ballroom,
admiring the food from afar, but at least they let me in. There was
also Kissinger’s lengthy interview
[[link removed]] with _The
Economist_ and “centennial celebrations” in London and his
hometown of Fürth, Germany, according
[[link removed]] to
his son. It has also been a month of outstanding watchdog reporting
— from new revelations
[[link removed]] about
previously untold mass killings Kissinger was responsible for in
Cambodia, to the grilling
[[link removed]] of
Ted Koppel for giving his old friend Kissinger the softball treatment
on CBS.

But none of these events seemed to carry as much star power as a
black-tie event in midtown.

By now, I was posting a running tweet thread of the A-listers as they
arrived, and it seemed as if the whole broken Twitterverse was
contributing a riff. Robert Kraft, the owner of the New England
Patriots, climbed down from an SUV in a pair of glittery Nikes and a
tux. Menswear commentator Derek Guy wrote
[[link removed]],
“kissinger may have bombed cambodia but you bombed this outfit.”
Gripping a gift box with a Patriots logo, Kraft pointed out that
Kissinger had fled the Nazis to come to the U.S. “He shows all the
values of America,” he told me.

Robert Kraft. Photo: Jonathan Guyer

Then came Samantha Power, the USAID administrator and human-rights
celebrity, with her husband, the lawyer Cass Sunstein. Two decades
ago, she was working as a journalist and wrote the iconic book on
genocide, _A Problem From Hell_, in which she described the U.S.’s
long-standing complicity in mass murder. She detailed the backstory
behind the more than 1 million Bengalis murdered by the Pakistani
military while Nixon’s team “did not protest,” thereby enabling
the killing. On the U.S. carpet-bombing of Southeast Asia, she wrote
bluntly,_ _“Kissinger had bloodied Cambodia and blackened his own
reputation.”

If these people love Kissinger so much, why won’t they say so
openly? The secrecy of the event implied a sense of shame, or at least
sheer protectiveness, even though at this point, Kissinger’s own
problems from hell are not really contested.

At the top of the stairs, I glimpsed Eric Schmidt, the billionaire
former Google CEO who co-authored a book on artificial intelligence
[[link removed]] with
Kissinger. I asked him what it was like to collaborate with Dr. K, but
he turned back inside.

Now, it was just me and the guards, the NYPD, and the diplomatic
details, all of whom were getting a little sick of me but were maybe
also becoming my friends. Asked who his favorite celebrity sighting of
the night was, one of the library guards replied, “I’m just here
to get paid.” Peeking past him, I could make out a green monogram of
“HK” at the ballroom’s entrance, and the staff brought out giant
glass urns in which they lit candles as the sun set over Fifth Avenue.

Another guard cut me a break and told me Blinken had entered through
the service entrance. I decided to wait to see if I could catch him
coming out.

Blinken had interviewed
[[link removed]] Kissinger
for his senior thesis at Harvard in the ’80s and favorably discussed
the economic component of détente with the Soviets in his 1987
book _Ally Versus Ally_ at a time when not a lot of young people
were praising him.

Soon, Tom Sullivan, Blinken’s deputy chief of staff, was speed
walking down the red carpet toward an SUV. I know advance work when I
see it, and I made out some grumblings into earpieces that they needed
to prepare for a 9:15 p.m. exit. “We’re set for departure,” the
NYPD honcho said into a microphone coming out of his shirt as police
cars seemed to be performing a ballet of security theater.

Samantha Power and Cass Sunstein. Photo: Jonathan Guyer

“You’re not going to be able to ask the secretary any
questions,” the diplomatic security said, adding that it would be a
misdemeanor if I got any closer. By now, they knew my deal. “We’re
going to need you to go stand over there,” he instructed me again,
back behind the light post, actually beyond the garbage can. “A
little further back, behind that pole, please.”

So I needed a question, one I could yell from 20 feet away before
Blinken’s SUV flew down 42nd Street. I had interviewed Blinken
before, and I’ve written
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his consulting firm, for which he advised
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military contractors, and big tech, much like Kissinger
[[link removed]] has
lucratively done over the past four decades.

The sirens blared, a bunch more guys blocked the sidewalk, and at 9:25
p.m., Blinken appeared in a tux, a long black tie, and patent leather
shoes as he rushed down the stairs.

“Mr. Secretary!” I called out. “What is there to celebrate about
Henry Kissinger?”

He didn’t answer.

But there was a second chance the next day. The Washington _Post_’s
John Hudson put this question to the State Department spokesperson in
the briefing room with just enough bite. “What does Secretary
Blinken _like_ about Henry Kissinger?” Spokesperson Vedant Patel
said there’s an “important perspective to be gained through those
conversations with predecessors” but declined to speak further. It
was a private event, he emphasized. Blinken was by then in Saudi
Arabia, where he would meet Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who,
according to the CIA, had ordered the murder of _Post _columnist
Jamal Khashoggi. Blinken’s visit might be called a Kissingerian
move.

I called the event planners the morning after to ask if they would
share photos or toasts, but I was told no. “You need to respect the
privacy of all those participants,” they said. “You were
specifically given instructions that there would be no information,
yet we see you’ve been firing up Twitter.”

Later in the week, I caught up by phone with Summers to ask the same
question of what there is to celebrate about Kissinger. “His insight
and wisdom is unlike anything I’ve ever seen,” he told me, and he
emphasized how much Kissinger has accomplished between the ages of 90
and 100.

For someone so beloved by the New York elite, where were the fancy
portraits and sentimental tributes? And what about the allegations
that Kissinger is a war criminal? “I’m just not going to go
there,” Summers told me. “I’m gonna leave it at the one quote I
just gave you.”

* Henry Kissinger
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* Genocide
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* Vietnam
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* Cambodia
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* Pakistan
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* Indonesia
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* Chile
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* Argentina
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*
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*
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*
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