Reply #10: Kissing up to KissingerThe reporters who loved Henry and what they said. [View All]

By Jack Shafer
Posted Monday, Oct. 4, 2004, at 5:23 PM PT



Henry Kissinger

During his years as national security adviser and secretary of state, Henry Kissinger wooed the Washington press corps with the flowers and chocolate of flattery and access. As Walter Isaacson writes in his 1992 biography, Kissinger, opinion columnists and the reporters who covered the State Department or the White House grew especially captivated by his charms.

Journalists took priority over matters of state for Kissinger, or at least that's how it looked to his colleagues. CIA Director Richard Helms tells Isaacson of the time Kissinger made him wait as he sorted though his message slips, placed reporters' messages at the top of the pile, and returned their calls. Kissinger speechwriter John Andrews remembers that when they were working on a speech together and a high-status columnist like Joseph Kraft or Joseph Alsop telephoned, Kissinger would pause their labors "and do an incredible snow job with me listening in. He'd pour syrup all over the guy." John Ehrlichman tells Isaacson a similar story about Kissinger stroking reporters over the phone. "I could not help hearing Henry's blandishments and his self-congratulation," Ehrlichman says.

....

The most devoted members of the Kissinger press cult, based on the phone transcripts, were CBS News Chief Diplomatic Correspondent Marvin Kalb, former New York Times Washington editor and columnist James "Scotty" Reston, and Time magazine's Hugh Sidey. But other figures tossed kisses to Kissinger from afar, including political columnist Stewart Alsop, former Los Angeles Times Publisher Otis Chandler, William Randolph Hearst Jr., and former Washington Star owner—and soon to be ex-Riggs Bank proprietor—Joseph L. Albritton.

Kalb sends an FTD-sized bouquet down the line to Kissinger on the evening of Sept. 22, 1973, the day he became secretary of state.

... I did wish you well from the bottom of my heart, the wisdom and the grace and the tolerance that are going to be so necessary to success because I very much have the feeling in the long sweep of history perhaps that your tenure is going to prove to be larger than simply something that has to do with diplomacy. There's a human and a psychological component here which has to be vindicated in a major way and I feel that very strongly and I wish you towering good luck.

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http://slate.msn.com/id/2107745/