For a quarter century, Ted Koppel hosted “Nightline,” one of the most popular newscasts in the United States. Famous for his interviews, Koppel covered a broad range of domestic and international topics and won numerous Emmy Awards. Since leaving the show, in 2005, Koppel, who is eighty-three years old, has become a contributor to CBS’s “Sunday Morning.”
One of Koppel’s most frequent guests on “Nightline” was Henry Kissinger, who celebrated his hundredth birthday in May. That month, Koppel did a long interview with Kissinger, whom he has called a friend, for CBS. Although Koppel very briefly noted the controversies surrounding some of Kissinger’s policies when he served as national-security adviser and Secretary of State in the Nixon and Ford Administrations—which include, but are not limited to, bombing Vietnam and Cambodia, supporting genocidal policy in Bangladesh, and overthrowing a democratic government in Chile—the conversation mostly served as a celebration of Kissinger’s long career.
I recently spoke by phone with Koppel to discuss his friendship with Kissinger, and how he balances it with his role as a journalist. Our conversation, edited for length and clarity, is below.
When you were hosting “Nightline,” you had a reputation of being a tough interviewer. What did you try to accomplish in interviews, and how did you see your role?
Well, I saw my role as being—insofar as humanly possible—an impartial arbiter of information. Quite frankly, forty or fifty years ago, we didn’t think that much about whether someone was on the left or on the right. We have become much more conscious of that over the past twenty years.
I saw my role as being not only an arbiter but someone who would try to extract as much objective information as I could. It sounds a little bit romantic now, but I think many of us in those days grew up believing that was our job.
You feel like that’s less true now for journalists?
Well, clearly it is less true in the sense that you’ve got progressive outlets and you’ve got right-wing outlets that are each catering to a partisan mind-set and have less interest in presenting things objectively than they do in appealing to the predisposition of the viewers or listeners.
One criticism of the previous era was that, although it may not have had the same partisanship, there was a permanent establishment, made up of both parties, that was cozy with the media. What do you think of that critique?
I think that’s a fair criticism. Depending on who was in the White House or who represented the majority in the House or in the Senate, those were the people we reached out to in the perhaps mistaken belief that by getting those people on the air, we were getting a sense of the direction that the country was taking. But I think it’s a fair criticism. Sure.
I wanted to talk about Henry Kissinger, the subject of your most recent interview. What does Henry Kissinger mean to America, and how did you become friends with him?
Well, let me take the second one first. The friendship has always been a sort of arm’s-length friendship, as long as I was still anchoring “Nightline.” We have become friends in a less arm’s-length fashion in the years since then.
You once said, “I’m proud to be a friend of Henry Kissinger. He is an extraordinary man. This country has lost a lot by not having him in a position of influence and authority.” I know he was a frequent guest on “Nightline,” but you’re saying since that time you’ve become closer friends?
Yes. Because I’m no longer on the air on a regular basis, yes, we have. We talk every few weeks on the phone.
I think it’s a good lesson that if you’re a journalist covering someone and you want to be friends with them, you should wait until you’re in a different position to become good friends with them.
Yeah. I’m not sure I would describe us as being especially tight, but we talk. I find him one of the most interesting people I’ve known over the years.
What do you think he’s meant to the country? What do you think his legacy is?
Let me come at that in a slightly different fashion. I was particularly disappointed the other day with the Washington Post. It’s my home-town newspaper, and when Kissinger turned a hundred, I thought, “Well, maybe they’ll feel the need to do something special.” What they did to at least give him some kind of halfway-favorable coverage was to let his son write an op-ed. And then the next day they had a piece in which they sort of highlighted how despised he is on the Internet.
There is no question that Kissinger has done things that are worthy of opprobrium. There is no doubt about that. However, if you look back at a career, a public career, that began in effect when he was a young professor at Harvard, he was the first to point out that in the event of a major threat to the interests of the United States, the only available option to us was something that would effectively lead to the destruction of mankind. And it wasn’t until he raised that issue that policy with regard to the use of nuclear weapons changed.
So, you have a career that has included the opening to China, a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, a normalizing of relations between Israel and Syria, a career that has included the strategic-arms-limitation talks and treaties that the United States reached with the Soviet Union. It has been an extraordinary career. And, yes, it has been marked by not just these episodes but actions that have led to untold human suffering. Were those justified by the responsibilities that he had at that time? I’ll leave it to others to judge that.
That reminds me of an interview where you once said that from an ethical point of view he had something to answer for, but that “that’s between him and his Maker.” Isn’t that for journalists like you or me to look into rather than for God?
Well, obviously we—
You said you’d “leave it to others” just now.
Obviously we can and we do, and that’s one of the things you’re doing right now. But, if I may, let me offer a historical perspective. Imagine that a hundred years from now, historians are looking back at the careers of Henry Kissinger, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump. Trump will be perceived by historians as a thoroughly despicable human being who accomplished effectively nothing while he was in office. I think George W. Bush is a very pleasant person to be around, but the invasion of Iraq never needed to take place and resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of Iraqis—thousands of young Americans. What do you think history will have to say a hundred years from now as you compare Henry Kissinger to two of his contemporaries who also held great power?
Why not include Attila the Hun, too?
Those are examples, I think, of careers and actions that were uniformly unfortunate at the very least. In Kissinger’s case, I think he deserved to be seen through a larger lens.
In your recent interview with Kissinger, you said, “There are people at our broadcast who are questioning the legitimacy of even doing an interview with you. They feel that strongly about what they consider—I’ll put it in language they would use—your criminality.” Why did you phrase it this way?
Because that’s exactly the way it was presented to me. I got the word that some of my colleagues on the program felt that because they consider him to be a war criminal, he should not have been interviewed.
And you don’t consider him that?
No, I not only don’t think that, but the question was once raised, “If you had a chance to interview Osama bin Laden, would you do so?” And I said, “Absolutely, without any hesitation.”
What’s the connection between this and whether Kissinger’s a war criminal? Sorry, I was just a little confused.
I thought the thrust of your question was, Let’s say for the sake of argument that there are actions that he has taken over the years which meet that standard. Would it be appropriate to interview him? I put it in the context of some of my colleagues at “Sunday Morning” taking the position that you shouldn’t even interview this guy.
I actually meant it somewhat differently. I absolutely agree that Henry Kissinger should be interviewed. I was more wondering about the tone of the interview. For example, the way you phrased that question by putting it in other people’s language.
Here’s another example. You play a clip in which Kissinger, back when he was Secretary of State, said that he would resign if foreign-policy decisions were being made for political reasons. You are the interview expert here, but I might say, “Mr. Kissinger, is it true that you played some part in sabotaging the Paris peace talks, which led to South Vietnam pulling out of them right before the 1968 election, which led to the Vietnam War going on for five more years?” [This was orchestrated by the Nixon campaign, with Kissinger’s help, to prevent then President Lyndon B. Johnson from striking a deal that would have presumably helped Nixon’s opponent, Hubert Humphrey.] I might say, “Oh, that’s a good opportunity to ask him a question like that.”
Yes. Look, first of all, I don’t know that to be the case, and I’m not sure you do, either. Do you?
Well, it’s been extensively reported by multiple biographers of Nixon and Kissinger.
Yeah, I understand. But I’m not sure that that is the case. Can we at least acknowledge that the whole point of that interview was to look back on the life of a man who was just about to turn a hundred? There are occasions when I agree with you, Isaac, that that kind of hard-edged interviewing is called for. And there are other times when I think you have to ease up just a little bit, don’t you?
No, not really with public, political figures.
Really?
No.
You’re a tougher guy than I am. Not even for a hundredth birthday?
No, especially if you’ve been involved in bombing Cambodia and overthrowing democratically elected governments. He’s a figure who has made an impact in the world, and he should be interviewed about that, and asked serious questions, regardless of his age.
O.K. Well, then, clearly you consider my interview to have been a failure, right?
I guess I’m interested in your feeling that that’s not necessarily what needs to happen.
No, not on that occasion—I really don’t. I arranged the interview on the basis of “You’ve got a hundredth birthday coming up. That is worthy of note, and I’d like to interview you with that in mind.”
So, we touched on his achievements, his accomplishments, and, as you correctly point out, I touched on the charges of his criminality.
Briefly, yes.
Yes, absolutely. And if I had to do it all over again, I would do it the same way, I must confess. I do think it makes a difference what the basis of the interview was. The basis of this interview was that the man’s turning a hundred. That’s a fairly extraordinary event.
Well, you’ve interviewed him many times in his career, including when he was not a hundred.
Absolutely. No, you’re absolutely correct. And I’d like to think I’ve asked him some tough questions over the years.
In 2003, the State Department released transcripts of calls between you and Kissinger, back when you were covering the State Department, in which you said things to him like “I didn’t want to call you last week. It has been an extraordinary three years for me, and I have enjoyed it immensely. You are an intriguing man, and if I had had a teacher like you earlier, I might not be quite so cynical.” Do you regret, in hindsight, talking to someone you were covering that way, or not so much? I don’t know if you guys were friends at this point or not.
Let me ask you something in return. When you set up an interview or when you are talking to someone that you want to interview, do you try to make them feel good?
That’s a good question.
Do you at least give them the impression that you’re interested in them, that you perhaps even admire them in some way? I think that’s a fairly common thing that journalists do. We all do it. If every setup conversation that you have had over the years with people you’ve interviewed were played back to you—I’m not sure that that’s something that’s all that obnoxious, but clearly you disagree.
I wouldn’t interview my friends if they were political figures, and certainly would acknowledge that up front in the interview if I somehow did.
Just consider the fact that at the age of about ninety-seven or ninety-eight, he became so absorbed in the subject of artificial intelligence that he ended up writing a book with two others on the subject. And it’s a pretty good book. I think The Economist listed it as one of the top five books on A.I.
Wow.
I’m kind of impressed by that—that a man who is ninety-eight years old is still capable of exerting that kind of energy in finding and becoming something of an expert in a totally unfamiliar subject. I think he has an extraordinary mind, Isaac; whether you like him or hate him, I think you have to acknowledge that.
Last question—
Does that mean that you’re not acknowledging it? I’m just interested.
I think the claims about him being some genius are overstated. I’ve not read the A.I. book, but I’m sure he is a smart guy. It’s impressive to write a book at ninety-eight. It sort of pales in comparison to bombing Cambodia. But I agree that, on the other side of the ledger, it’s there.
Yeah. I am the first to acknowledge that what flowed out of the bombing of Cambodia was absolutely horrific.
You mean the Khmer Rouge and so on? Is that what you were referring to?
Oh, yes. I was in Cambodia. I have no illusions about what happened in Cambodia, but I find it sort of curious that nothing is made of the fact that the North Vietnamese, instead of coming down through North Vietnam and to South Vietnam, came down through Laos. They came down through Cambodia. Nobody ever points the finger at them and says that they were indirectly responsible for bringing Cambodia into the war. Is that not a reasonable point to make?
I think the point would be that America shouldn’t have been at war in Vietnam in the first place, and shouldn’t have been bombing Vietnam in the first place. And so the responsibility for the deaths that resulted from, say, American bombing, should lie primarily with the people dropping the bombs and ordering the dropping of bombs. I think that would be the answer.
Yeah. Well, if you want me to agree with you on the fact that we never should have gone into Vietnam in the first place, we are in total agreement.
I understand that he’s a smart, strategic thinker and has written interesting things about diplomacy and nuclear weapons. I would just say that, in the case of Vietnam, the war continued under Nixon and Kissinger for five years. We left on the terms that were offered in 1968, which Nixon and Kissinger did their best to make sure we didn’t accept, at the cost of an uncountable number of lives in multiple countries. And the reasons for it were always, like, “Oh, we can’t show weakness,” or whatever else.
Yeah. Well, I think that’s a perfectly fair point to make.
Let me just ask you one last question, on a personal level. Reading about things like Kissinger’s support for the Pakistani military during genocide in Bangladesh, reading about him telling torturers in Argentina to hurry up their work—I don’t know, it would just be hard for me to be friends with him. Is that something you talk about with him personally, or do you just feel differently than I do?
No, I think that’s a fair point to make, Isaac, and let me think about that a little bit more. I’ve been covering the man for fifty years, and I find him a particularly interesting diplomat, statesman, a man who has shaped the foreign policy of this country in ways many of which I think are positive. I don’t think either one of us has a purely one-dimensional view of Henry Kissinger. I certainly don’t. But you seem to be more fixated on the . . . [long pause] negative. Seems like too weak a term, doesn’t it? ♦