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Knee-Capped By Kissinger

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from: Bonnie Goldstein

Posted Friday, Nov. 2, 2007, at 3:42 PM ET

During the Nixon presidency, National Security Adviser (and, later, Secretary of State) Henry Kissinger and Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin held regularly scheduled secret meetings and frequent phone conversations outside normal diplomatic channels. For Kissinger, a major reason to keep the talks secret was that he didn't want his bureaucratic rival, Secretary of State William Rogers, to butt in. Over the past decade, records of these once-classified "back channel" meetings have been released by the U.S. government. Last month, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs returned the favor and, in collaboration with our State Department, released Dobrynin's side of the story in a bound and footnoted volume of English translations of the ambassador's cables home under the title, Soviet American Relations, The Détente Years 1969 – 1972.

One of Dobrynin's memos illustrates the strenuous lengths that Kissinger went to in order to keep Rogers out of the loop. Prior to an anticipated 1972 summit between President Richard Nixon and Premier Leonid Brezhnev, Rogers scheduled a meeting with Dobrynin. According to Dobrynin's translated memo (see below and the following page), a worried Kissinger met with Dobrynin beforehand to warn him that Rogers should be told no more than was necessary. According to Dobrynin, Kissinger asked the Soviet ambassador not to discuss the summit agenda with Rogers and not to tip Rogers off to their "confidential conversations on the Middle East." To ensure that Dobrynin didn't breach the veil of Rogers' ignorance, Kissinger walked Dobrynin carefully through what Rogers did and didn't know about U.S.-Soviet relations. As Dobrynin dutifully reported back to his Moscow superiors, it is a "unique situation when the Special Assistant to the President secretly informs a foreign ambassador about what the Secretary of State knows and does not know" (Page 2).

Thanks to the National Security Archive at George Washington University for providing the document.

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hot document
entries
12
from: Bonnie Goldstein

Posted Friday, Nov. 2, 2007, at 3:42 PM ET
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Bonnie Goldstein is a former special investigator to the U.S. Senate and investigative producer for ABC News.
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