Kissinger’s Statements to Jewish Intellectuals Inaccurately Reported

A news report in the Washington Post Feb. 9 that Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger had described King Faisal of Saudi Arabia as a “religious fanatic” at a meeting with seven Jewish writers and Harvard professors more than two months ago has been branded untrue and inaccurate by those who were there. At the same time, deep suspicion has arisen within parts of the Jewish leadership in New York and Washington that detailed information about a private, off the record meeting with Kissinger Dec. 6 at the State Department was made available for publication in Washington long after the gathering had been reported in numerous journals, for the purpose of embarrassing Kissinger on the eve of two major international conferences directly concerned with the Middle East oil embargo, production cutbacks and hoisted prices. Foreign Ministers from Western Europe, Canada and Japan are meeting in Washington today in a special 13-nation conference on energy called by President Nixon at which Kissinger is to preside. On Feb. 14, the Arab oil producing nations are to meet in Tripoli to discuss the Washington parley and their own course in which King Faisal is indisputably the central figure.

Harvard sociology Prof. Seymour M. Lipset, one of the participants at the State Department gathering, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency last night that it is the consensus of the people present that Kissinger did not make the remark. While the reported reference to the Saudi Arabian monarch was not made by the Secretary, Lipset said, such words may have been used by some other-person present. Lipset, who made his comments in a telephone interview initiated by the JTA, also said that the group as a whole never made a report on the meeting nor has it met again as a group since Dec. 6. Some of those who had attended wrote personal notes about it from memory afterwards and presumably circulated them to friends, he said, but none took notes at the meeting itself and no recorder was used.

The Washington Post, in an article by staff writer Marilyn Berger under an eight-column headline reading “Kissinger Remarks To U.S. Jews Leaked In Report” referred to a nine-page report it said was drafted by a participant from his recollections in which, according to the Post, Kissinger had also called European leaders “craven” and “contemptible.” The Post also reported that Kissinger had said that if another war broke out in the Middle East, the chances were 2-1 against his bringing another airlift into being to aid Israel. The Post, however, also said that another participant had recalled that Kissinger had put the odds at three to two. Yesterday the Post ran a correction, saying that Kissinger had not said the chances were 2-1 against another airlift but 2-1 another would be put into operation. To compound matters, a reliable source told JTA that the Post’s first 2-1 version was correct and the correction was wrong.

Lipset who spoke with JTA from his home in Belmont, Mass., said that he had read the Post’s article and without entering on a point by point discussion of it he thought various things in it were accurate and different things inaccurate. He was emphatic and specific, however, that Kissinger did not make the remark about King Faisal. The Post itself quoted Kissinger as saying that the remarks it had attributed to him were “inaccurate” and “out of context.” The meeting, the Post observed, took place at a time when many American Jews and Israelis felt that the United States, about to take the initiative for a Middle East settlement, might pressure Israel into negotiations with the Arab states on a basis that would jeopardize Israel’s very survival.

Neither Lipset nor others interviewed by JTA could or would pin-point why the report on the meeting appeared with such prominence more than two months after it had taken place and after it had been reported long ago in numerous publications. Lipset thought the timing in the Post was peculiar and another commented that obviously someone unfriendly to Kissinger had deliberately planted it. Lipset confirmed that present at the meeting besides Kissinger and an aide were New York attorney Rita Hauser who had served as a U.S. representative to the United Nations; Henry Dostoevsky, dean of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences; Irving Howe, editor of “Dissent”; Norman Podhoretz, editor of the monthly magazine “Commentary”; and Harvard professors Michael Walzer, Kenneth Arrow and David Landes. (By Joseph Polakoff.)