The Old Politician Kissinger Came Back to Washington

The former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (79), who is the one of the people who left most noticeable footsteps in the modern US diplomacy, came back to Washington.

The US President George W. Bush signed the bill for forming the 10-People Special Committee, which would investigate the truth of the 9.11 terror, and appointed the former Secretary of State Kissinger as the Chair. The Special Committee formed with 5 members each from the Republican Party and the Democratic Party exercises an independent power to call anybody in the administration and investigate, and it will investigate why America could not stop the 9.11 terror and what needs to be done to prevent any similar incident from happening for next one and a half years.

The former Secretary Kissinger said, “I am proud be appointed as the Chair of the supra partisan committee that investigate the circumstances and truth of the tragedy of 9.11,” and “we will go wherever the truth leads us.” He appeared on the New York promotion ad with the former Mayor of New York Rudolph W. Giuliani after the number of visitors to New York had drastically reduced right after the 9.11 Terror.

His career makes an indivisible blended weave with the US diplomacy during the transition from the Cold War to Détente. He started to get spotlight as a famous diplomacy and security expert since the end of the 50`s, when he was involved in the US CFR as a Professor of the Harvard University. He had worked as an advisor of the National Security Committee and the Department of Defense under the Presidents Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson and worked as the Secretary of State under the Presidents Richard Nixon and Jerald Ford from 1973 to 1977. From 1973 to 1975 he also held the position of the National Security Advisor.

He won the Nobel Peace Prize for his service to draw the end of the war agreement of the Vietnam War with the Vietnamese delegate Le Duc Tho in 1973. He also opened the relationship between America and China, and he was deeply involved in the Middle East peace negotiation. However, he often had frictions with people around him because of his ambitious personality, and in relation to the bombing of Cambodia, he was criticized as a `war criminal.`

He was born in a Jewish middle class family in Germany, but immigrated to America with his family avoiding the oppression of the Nazi. He graduated from Harvard as the Suma Cum Laude, earned the master`s and doctorate degree from this University, and he definitely contributed to the normalization of diplomatic relationship between America and China during the Nixon Administration.

Ki-Heung Han eligius@donga.com