this another one of the falsifications with which his official biographies are studded? The
world must await the opening of the Beijing and Foggy Bottom archives. In the
meantime, we must take a moment to contemplate that gathering of October, 1975 in
Chairman Mao's private villa, secluded behind many courtyards and screens in the
Chungnanhai enclave of Chinese rulers not far from the Great Hall of the People and
Tien An Men, where less than a year later an initial round of pro-democracy
demonstrations would be put down in blood in the wake of the funeral of Zhou En-lai.
Mao, Kissinger, and Bush: has history ever seen a tete-a-tete of such mass murderers?
Mao, identifying himself with Chin Shih Huang, the first emperor of all of China and
founder of the Chin dynasty, who had built the Great Wall, burned the books, and killed
the Confucian scholars-- this Mao had massacred ten per cent of his own people, ravaged
Korea, strangled Tibet. Kissinger's crimes were endless, from the Middle East to
Vietnam, from the oil crisis of 73-74 with the endless death in the Sahel to India-
Pakistan, Chile, and many more. Kissinger, Mao, and Bush had collaborated to install the
Pol Pot Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, which was now approaching the zenith of its
genocidal career. Compared to the other two, Bush may have appeared as an apprentice
of genocide: he had done some filibustering in the Caribbean, had been part of the
cheering section for the Indonesia massacres of 1965, and then he had become a part of
the Kissinger apparatus, sharing in the responsibility for India-Pakistan, the Middle East,
Cambodia. But as Bush advanced through his personal cursus honorum, his power and
his genocidal dexterity were growing, foreshadowing such future triumphs as the
devastation of El Chorillo in Panama in December, 1989, and his later masterwork of
savagery, the Gulf war of 1991. By the time of Bush's administration, Anglo-American
finance and the International Monetary Fund were averaging some 50,000,000 needless
deaths per year in the developing sector.
But Mao, Kissinger, and Bush exchanged pleasantries that day in Mao's sitting room in
Chungnanhai. If the shades of Hitler or Stalin had sought admission to that colloqium,
they might have been denied entrance. Later, in early December, Gerald Ford,
accompanied by his hapless wife and daughter, came to see the moribund Mao for what
amounted to a photo opportunity with a living cadaver. The AP wire issued that day
hyped the fact that Mao had talked with Ford for 1 hour and fifty minutes, nearly twice as
long as the Great Steersman had given to Nixon in 1972. Participants in this meeting
included Kissinger, Bush, Scowcroft, and Winston Lord. Even such Kissingerian heavies
as Undersecretary of State Joseph Sisco, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and
Pacific Affairs, and Richard Solomon of the NSC were not allowed to stay for the
meeting. Bush was now truly a leading Kissinger clone. A joint communique issued after
this session said that Mao and Ford had had "earnest and significant discussions ...on
wide-ranging issues in a friendly atmosphere." At this meeting, Chairman Mao greeted
Bush with the words, "You've been promoted." Mao turned to Ford, and added: "We hate
to see him go." At a private lunch with Vice Premier Deng Xiao-ping, the rising star of
the post-Mao succession, Deng assured Bush that he was considered a friend of the
Chinese Communist hierarchy who would always be welcome in China, "even as head of
the CIA." For, as we will see, this was to be the next stop on Bush's cursus honorum.
Later Kissinger and Bush also met with Qiao Guanhua, still the Foreign Minister.