“I was angry at Kerry, not at Winston,” Kissinger told NEWSWEEK. “Winston is my friend.” Still, there are growing signs–and even more cocktail-party talk– of a cooling between Kissinger and some of his adopted family of former advisers. As nationalsecurity adviser and secretary of state, Kissinger nurtured a remarkable succession of proteges who went on to become leading foreign-policy figures in both parties and every administration since then. They include Bush’s NSC adviser Brent Scowcroft, Acting Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger and top Clinton adviser Anthony Lake. Lord, for one, split with Kissinger on China after Tiananmen Square.
Now, the publication of Walter Isaacson’s new biography, “Kissinger,” has added to the tension. The book portrays Kissinger as a masterful and farsighted diplomat, but also as a manipulative, deceitful and paranoid bureaucratic infighter. Isaacson, a top Time magazine editor, clearly got many of his anecdotes from Kissinger proteges. New York Times columnist Leslie Gelb, who studied under Kissinger at Harvard and says his first foray at book-writing was sabotaged by Kissinger, has an explanation. “I’ve never known a man so admired and distrusted at the same time,” Gelb says. “Over time, the admiration has waned, and people are left with their Kissinger scars. When Walter scratched the scabs, they started to bleed.”
A close associate says Kissinger believes that many of the most damning stories in the book come from some former NSC aides who split with him bitterly over the Vietnam War and charges of wiretap ping. Kissinger has stayed close to most of his other aides though. But most of this group talked to Isaacson, too, and apparently couldn’t help telling some of the stories of ego and deceptiveness that they had only swapped privately among themselves for year (The former girlfriend of one aide recalls, “We could be in the most romantic setting, and suddenly he’d want to talk about what Kissinger did in 1970.”) Now many of these friends are telling Kissinger, “Isaacson didn’t use any of the positive things I told him.” It’s “a tough time for Henry,” says one friend. “He feels betrayed.”
Kissinger has refrained from discussing the book publicly. But friends have heard an earful. “He is insane over this book,” says one former associate. William Hyland, the recently retired editor of the prestigious Foreign Affairs journal and a longtime Kissinger friend, published a brief review praising the Isaacson book for its “balanced objectivity.” After an angry phone call to Hyland, Kissinger made his feelings public: he did not attend the journal’s 70th-birthday gala-which was also being held to honor Hyland’s retirement–even though he had been scheduled as the kickoff speaker. (Kissinger cited a scheduling conflict.)
Most of the acolytes still believe history will judge Kissinger a great figure. “This isn’t anything for Henry to be upset about,” said one. “This is just a long-overdue correction to his Superman image.” But for Kissinger, who has nurtured that image both in and out of power for a quarter century, it’s a correction he could have done without.
