The Kissinger Tapes: Inside His Secretly Recorded Phone Conversations

A richly detailed collection of transcripts of Henry Kissinger’s secretly recorded phone conversations from his time in the Nixon administration that touch on every important issue of Kissinger’s day and provide a sweeping view of his era.

Henry Kissinger is unquestionably one of the most consequential foreign policy makers in American history. A remarkably influential academic during his long tenure at Harvard, Kissinger became Richard Nixon’s National Security Advisor in 1969 and Secretary of State in 1973.

Like Nixon, Kissinger left a trail of secretly recorded evidence in his wake. Kissinger began taping in 1969, two years before Nixon did in 1971, and he continued taping for over three years after Nixon’s recording system was dismantled in 1973. In The Kissinger Tapes, Tom Wells draws on his expertise in the Nixon era to provide carefully selected, edited, and annotated transcripts of Kissinger’s phone conversations, which chronologically highlight the most momentous crises and controversies of the era. They not only provide context and many revelations on Kissinger’s role in numerous events but also throw his personality, character, and checkered record into sharp relief.

The conversations cover a wide range of issues, including the Vietnam War, the India-Pakistan conflict, the opening to China, the Middle East, the Greek coup in Cyprus, the Nixon administration’s illegal wiretapping, and the Watergate scandal. The transcripts reveal Kissinger’s opinions and attitudes on important policy matters and his complex relationship with President Nixon, as well as the many battles he fought with other administration officials and his subtle manipulations of well-known journalists.

A richly detailed collection of Kissinger’s transcripts and commentary, this book provides a novel window into the Nixon administration and offers a genuinely unique perspective on one of the most important figures in modern American history.

Tom Wells is the author of three previous books: The War Within: America’s Battle over Vietnam, Wild Man: The Life and Times of Daniel Ellsberg, and (with Richard A. Leo) The Wrong Guys: Murder, False Confessions, and the Norfolk Four. He has also contributed articles to books on the Vietnam War and the 1960s. He has received fellowships and grants from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, the Open Society Institute, the Institute for the Study of World Politics, the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, the Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation, the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, Columbia University, and the University of California, Berkeley.