The night Christopher Hitchens failed to ambush Henry Kissinger
When Christopher Hitchens was in Pittsburgh in 2004 to host a documentary based on his Kissinger book, he jumped at the chance to crash a lecture Kissinger was giving around the corner.
Henry Kissinger turned 100 on May 27, 2023, proving that the good do not die young. Here’s a piece by his fans at the Guardian that explains why he should be ashamed to be seen in public.
Ånd let’s not forget what Anthony Bourdain said about him in his 2001 book, ‘A Cook’s Tour’:
“Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking. Witness what Henry did in Cambodia – the fruits of his genius for statesmanship – and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milošević.”
In honor of Hank’s 100th, here is the account of my adventures with Christopher Hitchens when he came to Pittsburgh in 2004 to try and spoil one of Kissinger’s well-paid ‘lectures.’
A close encounter of the Hitchens kind
Pittsburgh, 2004
When Christopher Hitchens saw my pair of tickets to the Henry Kissinger speech, his sleepy eyes lit up half a block of Liberty Avenue.
Of course he'd walk ‘round to Heinz Hall.
Of course he'd try to publicly ask Kissinger why he refuses to answer questions about the crimes against humanity that Hitchens and others believe the former secretary of state is morally if not legally responsible for in Indochina, Chile and East Timor.
He was the Christopher Hitchens, journalist-provocateur extraordinaire. He had 80 minutes before he had to return to talk to the moviegoers at the Harris Theater.
And the French documentary film crew he had recruited — led by European superstar philosopher-journalist Bernard Henri-Levy — had already launched its raid on Heinz Hall, where Kissinger was opening Robert Morris University's 2004-05 speakers series.
You've probably seen Hitchens being interrupted on TV by Chris Matthews.
The brilliant, permanently rumpled Brit has made his fame and fortune working in America's swelling punditry sector, writing regular columns for The Nation and Vanity Fair and books like "The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice.”
Hitchens, 55, until recently was the darling bad-boy of the American left. But the events of 9/11, and the creepy "America-kind-of-deserved-it” reaction it drew from his old comrades, have turned him into a hawk on Iraq and supporter of President Bush's global war on "Islamic fascism.”
Hitchens still dislikes Kissinger, however, which is why he was happy to fly into town on Tuesday to host "The Other Kissinger Event.”
A clever piece of agitprop dreamed up by the City Paper's departing editor Andy Newman, it "counter-programmed” Kissinger's speech at Heinz Hall by concurrently showing the 2002 documentary film "The Trials of Henry Kissinger” at the Harris Theater.
At 8:30 Hitchens introduced the movie, which was based on his book "The Trial of Henry Kissinger.” As about 140 patrons watched it, he and I hot-footed it around the corner to Heinz Hall, where the French video crew had already learned that in America you don't just rudely barge into a public venue, even a taxpayer-subsidized one, with cameras blazing.
When Hitchens and I arrived Heinz Hall security forces and a city cop were insisting that the French journalists (in America for Levi’s multimedia project retracing de Tocqueville's 1831 travels) had to turn over their videotape or erase their footage.
American Citizen-to-be Hitch put up a fight, arguing that this act of thuggish censorship was despicable and probably unconstitutional. It was futile, and the incident ended civilly and without bloodshed, as most fights do when the French are involved. The videotape of Kissinger's nearly indecipherable mumblings on stage was erased.
Despite everyone's darkest suspicions, however, the erasing of the tape had nothing to do with the Patriot Act or Kissinger's residual evil powers but with the anti-videotaping prohibitions of Robert Morris' contract with the speakers bureau that provided Kissinger.
Meanwhile, Hitchens' hopes of ambushing Kissinger with a few tough questions also were dashed: All queries asked on stage were to be culled from those submitted earlier in writing by the audience.
We middle-aged troublemakers didn't stick around for question time. But it's a sure bet no one got to ask what Hitchens said he would have:
"Sir, why won't you answer the requests of magistrates in democratic countries to assist them in their hunt for the missing and tortured and the disappeared that took place on your watch? They're not asking to indict you. They only want you as a witness. What would it hurt, just to help them as a witness?”
My 2017 history book 30 Days a Black Man retells the amazing, forgotten and true story of Pittsburgh Post-Gazette star reporter Ray Sprigle's undercover mission through the Jim Crow South in 1948. My 2013 true nonfiction book Dogging Steinbeck exposed the truth about the fictions and fibs in Travels With Charley and celebrated Flyover America and its people. In 2022 I self-published Grandpa Bear Goes to Washington, a satirical kids book for all ages that all polar bears and lovers of freedom will like.
... and Hitch has been gone almost a decade, while Kissinger is still breathing at almost 98