Kissinger Conspired With Soviets To Keep Secretary Of State In The Dark

National Security Archives:

Then-national security adviser Henry A. Kissinger colluded with Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin to keep the U.S. Secretary of State in the dark about ongoing secret discussions between the Soviets and the Nixon White House, according to newly released Soviet-era documents, released last week by the Department of State.

In February 1972, with the Moscow summit approaching, Kissinger met with Soviet ambassador Dobrynin, who was scheduled to meet with Secretary of State William Rogers, to talk about what the Secretary knew and did not know about "the state of U.S.-Soviet relations." Commenting on the meeting in his memorandum of conversation forwarded to Moscow, Dobrynin observed that it was a "unique situation when the Special Assistant to the President secretly informs a foreign ambassador about what the Secretary of State knows and does not know." This memorandum appears for the first time in an extraordinary State Department collection of U.S. and Soviet documents on the Dobrynin-Kissinger meetings, produced through a U.S.-Russian cooperative effort, with selections posted on-line today by the National Security Archive.

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