Henry Kissinger, the West Wing playboy, dies: his incredible intimate life while he controlled the world

Henry Kissinger He died this Wednesday at the age of one hundred at his home in Connecticut. A Holocaust survivor and Harvard professor, he reshaped diplomacy and geopolitics while becoming a pop culture icon. Loved by his admirers and hated by his detractors, the controversial Nobel Peace Prize winner and American Secretary of State with Richard Nixon (and Ford) was, with his lights and shadows, a master manipulator and an essential politician to understand the last third of the last century, the Cold War or the reestablishment of US relations with China or the USSR.

Mastermind of the détente policy with the Soviet Union, he helped tear down the diplomatic wall that isolated communist China for two and a half decades. He was the strategist who marked the foreign policy of the first power in those years. He achieved a stoppage in the Vietnam War and also promoted dictatorships in Chile or Argentina and supported the late Franco regime. But he was also a pop icon and an unrepentant womanizer for at least a decade.

The White House Playboy

He divorced his first wife, Ann Fleischer, in 1964, with whom he had two children. And in those years of the first miniskirts and the rhythm of the Beatles that of Simon y Gartfunkel became a playboy of the North American administration, with permission of the president John F. Kennedy; with one very notable difference: Kissinger was not attractive like the president assassinated in Dallas 60 years ago. But, as he repeated: “Power is the best aphrodisiac.” After a decade of fury and passion, in 1974 he married Nancy Maginess, then collaborator of the governor of New York Nelson Rockefeller. 50 years later, Nancy Kissinger is the widow mourning her death.

Kissinger married fellow German Jewish émigré Ann Fleischer in 1949 and they had two children, Elizabeth and David, before divorcing in 1964. The same year, he began dating Nancy Maginnes, former Harvard student who was hired by Rockefeller on Kissinger’s recommendation. Before marrying in 1974, Kissinger had a reputation as a hustler.

He was known as “the sex symbol of the Nixon administration” and “the playboy of the West Wing.” Actresses are on his list of romances Jill St. John, Candice Bergen, Shirley MacLaine (below, together in 1975) y Life Ullman and the former Nixon aide turned journalist, Diana Sawyer. In the photograph of that second wedding, on March 30, 1974, in northern Virginia, it is seen that Maginnes, eleven years younger than Kissinger, was much taller.

Active until a few days ago at the age of one hundred

A controversial man until very recently, Kissinger was on the board of directors of Theranos Inc. de Elizabeth Holmes before the blood testing company collapsed in 2018 amid fraud allegations. Another board member was George Shultz, Kissinger’s colleague in the Nixon administration, whose grandson worked at Theranos and turned out to be a key whistleblower against Holmes.

He was criticized for suggesting in May 2022 that Ukraine should cede some land to Russia to achieve a peace agreement. Those comments came three months after Russian forces invaded Ukraine. Later, speaking by video conference in January 2023 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Kissinger said that Russia must be given the opportunity to one day rejoin the international system following any peace deal in Ukraine and that The dialogue with the country must continue.

He praised Don Juan Carlos’s ability to pilot the Transition and warned of the “danger” of legalizing the PP

Kissinger visited Spain several times. Two years before the dictator’s death, on December 19, 1973, he was received in Madrid by Francisco Franco and held meetings with the then prince Juan Carlos de Borbón. During the Transition he warned of the dangers of the legalization of the Communist Party. Of today’s Emeritus, he said that he had “the Bourbons’ capacity for self-destruction.” He said it when Don Juan Carlos had been on the throne for less than three weeks after the death of Francisco Franco in November 1975.

Kissinger served in advisory roles in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations and became a top adviser to moderate Republican billionaire Nelson Rockefeller before the 1968 presidential campaign.

Just before the Republican National Convention that year, Kissinger said, “Richard Nixon is the most dangerous of all the men running to be president.” But after Nixon won the nomination over Rockefeller and Michigan Governor George Romney and defeated Democrat Hubert Humphrey in the election, he named Kissinger national security adviser in 1969.

In an attempt to free itself from Vietnam during the first year of the Nixon administration, the United States carried out a secret bombing campaign against Cambodia to clear North Vietnamese and Viet Cong staging areas. In 1970, the United States carried out a “raid” into Cambodia, sparking huge anti-war protests in the United States.

Watergate

“My predominant concern during Watergate They were not the investigations that made the headlines of the day. It was to maintain the credibility of the United States as a major power,” Kissinger wrote in his memoirs published in 1982.

Kissinger negotiated the United States’ exit from the disastrous Vietnam War and shared the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize with North Vietnam’s Le Duc Tho for a ceasefire agreement that year. Nearly two years later, Nixon’s self-styled “peace with honor” collapsed with the fall of Saigon to the Viet Cong during the administration of President Gerald Ford.

Three months after the Watergate break on June 17, 1972, Nixon’s national security adviser was confirmed as his secretary of state, becoming the first foreign-born head of that Cabinet department. He continued to serve as national security adviser until three months after Nixon’s resignation in August 1974, and remained as secretary of state until Ford left office in 1977.

A Jew born in Germany in 1923, his name was actually Heinz Alfred Kissinger. He arrived in the United States in 1938, fleeing the Nazi regime with his family. Brilliant, intelligent, arrogant and with a tremendous sense of humor, he was a student of international relations. After 17 years in the Harvard University, He entered the Administration with Richard Nixon, who first appointed him National Security Advisor and then Secretary of State.

Even days ago, he remained active, gave public speeches and not long ago traveled to Beijing to discuss the nuclear threat from North Korea. It was his consulting firm, Kissinger Associates, that reported that the funeral would be a “private family service” and added that “later” there will be a commemoration in New York City, according to a statement collected by CNN.

The cause of death has not been revealed but one of the most controversial American figures of the 20th century had reached his century of life in May. Kissinger was the greatest exponent of North American international policy, especially in the last third of the last century. He combined the normalization of relations with communist countries such as the Soviet Union or China while combating leftist movements in Latin America, not to mention his own policies in Cambodia and Vietnam.

The former Republican diplomat served as White House National Security Advisor and Secretary of State during the Administration Nixon and, after his resignation due to the Watergate scandal, he continued his career with the former president Gerald Ford.

During his mandate, he played a fundamental role in improving relations with China, in the negotiations to end the Yom Kippur War in the Middle East, in the United States’ exit from the Vietnam War and in the signing of the agreements on arms control with the Soviets.

The impact of Kissinger’s policies is the reason why he is considered the main architect of the geopolitical scenario after the Second World War with the United States at the head of it, which is why he has even been consulted by numerous American presidents, both Democrats. as republicans.

In addition to winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973, Kissinger was awarded numerous awards and recognitions such as the United States Army Bronze Star, the Presidential Medal of Freedom or the Medal of Freedom. Last May 27 he celebrated his centenary.

The Chinese ambassador to the United States, Xie Feng, has offered his condolences to the family of the former diplomat: “I have been deeply shocked and saddened by the news of Kissinger’s death at the age of 100. My deepest condolences to Nancy (Kissinger, su esposa) and his family. It is a tremendous loss for our two countries and for the world,” the head of the Chinese legation has published on his X account, formerly Twitter.