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→Image and reputation
Kissinger was loathed by some liberals who viewed him as a war criminal<ref>http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0611-03.htm</ref> and criticized by hardliners for [[detente]]. Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973 for pulling the United States out of Vietnam.
Kissinger was loathed by some liberals who viewed him as a war criminal<ref>http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0611-03.htm</ref> and criticized by hardliners for [[detente]]. Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973 for pulling the United States out of Vietnam.
Kissinger was a Machiavellian figure, skilled at manipulating people around him and currying favor in the media. At one point he admitted allowing secret wiretapping of his own aides' conversations.<ref>http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,907332,00.html?promoid=googlep</ref> When he testified before Congress, he would benefit from extraordinary exclusion of the press so that the American public would not hear his thick German accent. The aura of Kissinger's influence was due partly to a cultivated image of high intelligence, including a PhD degree from Harvard University.
Kissinger was a Machiavellian figure, skilled at manipulating people around him and currying favor in the media. At one point he admitted allowing secret wiretapping of his own aides' conversations.<ref>http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,907332,00.html?promoid=googlep</ref> The aura of Kissinger's influence was due partly to a cultivated image of high intelligence, including a PhD degree from Harvard University.
===Major Controversies===
Kissinger advised both the Johnson administration and the Nixon campaign during the hotly contested 1968 Presidential election. He gave detailed analysis to both sides, without revealing to Johnson his contacts in the Nixon team. Johnson's prefered candidate, [[Hubert Humphrey]], used the possibility of a peace accord in Vietnam to gain a short-lived boost in the polls. The Nixon campaign told the South Vietnamese "''hold on, we're going to win,''" according to the FBI, indicating that they should refrain from consenting to the accords because a Nixon White House could offer them a better deal. Although Kissinger did not play a direct role in relaying this message, his critics charge that the inside knowledge he shared with the Nixon team informed them as to the very real possibility of a settlement in Vietnam--a settlement that might have proven politically problematic. The South Vietnamese, of course, rejected the proposal, which would have amounted to a six-month armistice before the North renewed its invasion. But critics claim that without Nixon, egged on by Kissinger, egging them on; they might have acquiseced to surrender.<ref>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7slAt9PIH0&feature=fvw Link on Youtube to the relevant part of BBC's cheap propaganda "documentary" ''The Trials of Henry Kissinger.''</ref>
Kissinger was also accused of intentionally abandoning South Vietnam to Communist forces, the accusation which probably hurts him most today. He responded to this charge as follows:
<blockquote>
When Nixon came into office, there were more than 500,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam, and the number was still increasing. The official position of the Johnson administration had been that American withdrawal would only start six months after a North Vietnamese withdrawal. The "dove" platform of Sens. Robert Kennedy and George McGovern, which was rejected by the Democratic National Convention of 1968, advocated mutual withdrawal. No significant group at that time advocated unilateral withdrawal.
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
A diplomatic alternative did not exist. Hanoi insisted that to obtain a cease-fire the United States had to meet two preconditions: First, it had to overthrow the South Vietnamese government, disband its police and army, and replace it with a Communist-dominated government. Second, the United States had to establish an unconditional timetable for withdrawal of its forces, to be carried out regardless of what happened in subsequent negotiations or how long these might last. The presence of North Vietnamese troops in Laos and Cambodia was declared not an appropriate subject for negotiations.
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
Given the horrors that occurred when the Communists took over Indochina in 1975, it must be said that Nixon correctly summed up the choices before him when he rejected the 1969 terms.</blockquote>
<blockquote>
When negotiations stalemated, the Nixon administration moved to implement what could be done unilaterally without undermining the political structure of South Vietnam. Between 1969 and 1972, it withdrew 515,000 American troops, ended American ground combat in 1971 and reduced American casualties by nearly 90 percent.
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
In Vietnam, a breakthrough occurred in 1972 because the administration's strategic design finally came together in its retaliation for the all-out North Vietnamese spring offensive. When the United States mined North Vietnam's harbors, Hanoi found itself isolated because, as a result of the opening to China in 1971 and the summit in 1972, Beijing and the Soviet Union stood aside. Hanoi's offensive was defeated on the ground entirely by South Vietnamese forces assisted by U.S. air power.
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
Faced with a military setback and diplomatic isolation, Le Duc Tho, Hanoi's principal negotiator, abandoned Hanoi's 1969 terms in October 1972. He accepted conditions publicly put forward by President Nixon in January 1972 - and decried as unachievable in the American domestic debate. He said that "this new proposal is exactly what President Nixon has himself proposed: cease-fire, end of the war, release of the prisoners and troop withdrawal . and we propose a number of principles on political problems. You have also proposed this. And we shall leave to the South Vietnamese parties the settlement of these questions."
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
American disunity was the major factor in dashing these hopes.<ref>http://www.henryakissinger.com/articles/wp061107.html</ref>
</blockquote>
==Evaluation==
==Evaluation==