Henry Kissinger is certainly not the only architect of the American empire with blood on his hands, but he may be the only one to have worn that blood so proudly. Few leaders in this day and age still think of world affairs as a game of Risk, describing other countries as spaces on a board to be occupied by plastic game pieces. Yet Kissinger was willing to justify US human rights abuses by appealing to the value of “strategic real estate,” as he did to justify US support for the shah’s brutal regime in Iran.

It seems evidence for Kissinger’s villainy rested, in part, on his own tongue.

He once told a horrified Congressional committee that “covert action should not be confused with missionary work.” He was also known to use a variation of that phrase: “one should not confuse undercover action with social work.” By the time Kissinger said these words in the late 1960s, the CIA’s pattern of using covert action to overthrow democratically elected governments, back authoritarian regimes, and provide cover for massacres and genocides had come under popular scrutiny. With mass movements against the war in Vietnam tying domestic racism and repression to American imperialism, the CIA was for the first time put on the defensive, and elected officials had to at least feign concern.