For a quarter of a century, Ted Koppel hosted Nightline, one of the most popular news programs in the United States. Known for his interviews, Koppel covers a wide range of local and international topics and has won multiple Emmy Awards. After leaving the show in 2005, Koppel, who is eighty-three years old, became a CBS “Sunday Morning” contributor.
One of Koppel’s most frequent guests on “Nightline” was Henry Kissinger, who celebrated his 100th birthday in May. That month, Koppel gave a lengthy interview to CBS with Kissinger, whom he calls a friend. Although Koppel very briefly noted the controversy surrounding some of Kissinger’s policies when he was national security adviser and secretary of state in the Nixon and Ford administrations—which included, but were not limited to, bombing Vietnam and Cambodia, supporting genocidal policies in Bangladesh, and the overthrow of a democratic government in Chile – the conversation served mostly as a celebration of Kissinger’s long career.
I recently spoke with Koppel on the phone to discuss his friendship with Kissinger and how he balances it with his role as a journalist. Our conversation, edited for length and clarity, is below.
When you hosted “Nightline,” you had a reputation as a difficult interviewer. What were you trying to achieve in the interviews and how did you see your role?
Well, I saw my role as—as far as humanly possible—an impartial arbiter of information. To be honest, forty or fifty years ago we didn’t think so much about whether someone was on the left or the right. We have become much more aware of this in the last twenty years.
I saw my role not only as an arbiter, but also as someone who would try to extract as much objective information as possible. It sounds a little romantic now, but I think a lot of us in those days grew up believing that was our job.
Do you feel this is any less true for journalists?
Well, it’s obviously less true in the sense that you have progressive outlets and you have right-wing outlets that cater to partisan thinking and are less interested in presenting things objectively than they are in appealing to the predispositions of viewers or listeners.
One criticism of the previous era was that while there may not have been the same partisanship, there was a permanent structure made up of both parties that was convenient for the media. What do you think of this criticism?
I think that’s a fair criticism. Depending on who was in the White House or who was the majority in the House or the Senate, those were the people we reached out to in the perhaps misguided belief that by putting those people on the air, we were getting a sense of the direction it took the country. But I think that’s a fair criticism. Sure.
I wanted to talk about Henry Kissinger, the subject of your last interview. What did Henry Kissinger mean to America and how did you become friends with him?
Well, let me take the second one first. Friendship was always kind of an arm’s length friendship while I was still hosting Nightline. In the years since then, we’ve become more casual friends.
You once said, “I am proud to be a friend of Henry Kissinger. He is an extraordinary man. This country has lost much from his lack of influence and authority. I know you were a frequent guest on “Nightline,” but you say you’ve become closer friends since then?
yes Since I’m no longer on the air regularly, yes we had. We talk on the phone every few weeks.
I think it’s a good lesson that if you’re a journalist covering someone and you want to be friends with them, you should wait until you’re in a different position to become good friends with them.
yes I’m not sure I’d describe us as particularly tight-knit, but we do talk. I find him one of the most interesting people I have known over the years.
What do you think he means to the country? What do you think his legacy is?
Let me come at this in a slightly different way. I was particularly disappointed in Washington that day Publish. This is my hometown paper, and when Kissinger turned a hundred years old, I thought, “Well, maybe they’ll feel the need to do something special.” What they did to give him at least some half-favorable coverage was to allow to his son to write a post. And then the next day they had a feature highlighting how despised he is on the Internet.
There is no doubt that Kissinger did things that were reprehensible. There is no doubt about that. However, if you look back at a career, a public career that began actually when he was a young professor at Harvard, he was the first to point out that in the event of a major threat to the interests of the United States, the only option available to us was something that would effectively lead to the destruction of humanity. And it wasn’t until he raised this issue that the policy regarding the use of nuclear weapons changed.
So you have a career that includes an opening to China, a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, normalization of relations between Israel and Syria, a career that includes the strategic arms limitation negotiations and the treaties that the United States reached with the Soviet Union. It was an extraordinary career. And, yes, it was marked not only by these episodes, but also by actions that led to untold human suffering. Were they justified by the responsibilities he had at the time? I’ll let others judge that.
This reminds me of an interview where you once said that ethically he has something to answer for, but that “that’s between him and his Maker.” Isn’t this more about journalists like you or me than about God?
Well, obviously we-
You said you would “leave it to others” just now.
Obviously we can and we do, and that’s one of the things you’re doing right now. But, if you’ll allow me, let me offer some historical perspective. Imagine a hundred years from now, historians looking back on the careers of Henry Kissinger, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump. Trump will be seen by historians as a thoroughly despicable human being who accomplished virtually nothing while in office. I think George W. Bush is a very nice man, but the invasion of Iraq should never have happened, and it resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of Iraqis — thousands of young Americans. What do you think history will have to say a hundred years from now as you compare Henry Kissinger to two of his contemporaries who also wielded great power?