KISSINGER

White House Years

In office he always seemed to be at center stage: the brilliant foreign affairs analyst who never shrank from controversy, the peripatetic statesman who was forever soaring off to distant capitals on secret missions that, when revealed, sent seismic shocks through chancelleries around the world. Even out of power, he remains the subject of intense interest: heads of state seek his counsel, his support on issues is solicited, he is deferred to--even feared--as if he still strode the corridors of the White House and State Department. During his eight years as Richard Nixon's Assistant for National Security Affairs and as Secretary of State to Nixon and Gerald Ford, he helped cast to a remarkable degree the policies, goals and international achievements of the Presidents he served. From the moment he left the Government, it was clear his memoirs could offer an extraordinary look at those turbulent times. Now, Henry Kissinger has completed the first volume of those memoirs, and the work is as discerning, engaging and in ways as controversial as the man himself. TIME will excerpt White House Years (Little, Brown; $22.50, in three parts, beginning on the following pages and continuing for the next two weeks. The book covers a stormy period: from November 1968, when President-elect Nixon began assembling his team, to January 1973, when Kissinger concluded the Viet Nam negotiations that were to win him a Nobel Peace Prize. (The second volume, in preparation now, covers the four years ending in January 1977.) Kissinger's work is much concerned with the calculus of power: when and how it should be applied or withheld; how it affects a nation's conduct; how it must be interwoven with concepts not only of national interest but of national honor. The book offers an unparalleled inside account of the high-stakes bureaucratic battles to control policy and of the forging of new relationships with old enemies. It shows how momentous events are swayed by the personalities of those engaged in them, with the personalities themselves profiled in shrewd, telling vignettes. In this week's excerpts Kissinger describes his unexpected initial summons by Nixon, how the new President's distrust of the State Department led to secret missions to Peking and Moscow and the subtle nuances of conducting simultaneous summitry with the Soviets and Chinese. Included is a section remarkably a propos today: what the U.S. did when the Soviets tried to build a nuclear submarine base in Cuba in 1970. The entire second excerpt concerns what Kissinger caUs the agony of Viet Nam": the unannounced bombing of Cambodia and the attack on the sanctuaries there; the secret negotiations in Paris-how the premature "peace is at hand" statement came to be made; the Christmas bombing; the turmoil caused by antiwar protesters in the U.S.; and the peace agreement. In the final week Kissinger writes of the near confrontation between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. over a crisis in Jordan; the reason for Nixon's famed "tilt" toward Pakistan in its 1971 war with India-and a secret decision to give major aid to Peking if the Soviets threatened China. Throughout all three parts (which, of course represent only a fraction of the full, 1,521-page book), Kissinger offers unusual insights into that remarkable figure, Richard Nixon, "this withdrawn, lonely and tormented man."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.