In New York magazine, Joe Hagan meets Henry Kissinger at 83.
A great story and portrait that starts like this:
The elevator doors open onto Henry Kissinger’s offices to reveal a bulletproof bank teller’s window.
The carpets are worn, the walls in need of fresh paint, the wing chairs stained by the hands of a thousand waiting dignitaries.
In a corner sits a large planter holding the dried stumps of a long-dead bamboo tree.
A Ronald Reagan commemorative album and a picture book of Israel collect dust on a shelf next to a replica of an ancient Greek bust with a missing nose.
Across from Kissinger’s door his hundreds of contacts—presidents, prime ministers, diplomats, and corporate titans—are catalogued in eight flywheel Rolodexes on his secretary’s desk.
And then you hear it: The Voice, a low rumble from around the corner, like heavy construction on the street outside.
When he finally appears, Kissinger—architect of the Vietnam War’s tortured end, Nixon confidant and enabler, alleged war criminal, and Manhattan bon vivant—is smaller than expected: stooped and portly, dressed in a starched white shirt and pants hoisted by suspenders, peering gravely through his iconic glasses.
He’s almost cute.
At 83, Kissinger has had heart surgery twice, wears two hearing aids, and is blind in one eye.
His once-black hair has turned snowy white.
But his presence is startling nonetheless, his Germanic timber so low and gravelly everyone else sounds weak by comparison.
He starts our conversation on this late-October morning by placing a silver tape recorder on the coffee table.
“I want a record,” he says.
A fascinating portrait of the man that according Seymour Hersh “lies like most people breathe.”
Read here the full piece.