KISSINGER FLEW PIA WITH FOREIGN PASSPORT
SECRET REVEALED SAIGON
july 18 (AP)
U.S. PRESIDENTIAL adviser Henry Kissinger flew from Pakistan to Peking by commercial airliner under an assumed name and with a foreign passport to conceal his secret trip July 9, informants disclosed Sunday.
In the first revelation of the mechanics of the trip, the informants said Kissinger and three assistants from the American National Security staff traveled by Pakistan International Airways to Mainland China and returned July 11 on the same airline.
They said German-born Kissinger probably used a German passort.
Officials at the Western White House in San Clemente, Calfornia, declined to give any details of the mechanics of Kissinger’s secret trip that arranged the planned visit by President Nixon.
Informants here said Kissinger dared not make the trip in Air Force Two, the White House staff plane, or a Cinese military plane because of the secrecy of the mission. They said this would have revealed the mission to the crewmen and also that radar stations along the way would have picked up military planes and beyond suspicious.
Kissinger’s trip for Nixon was one of the most closely held secrets in U.S. diplomacy.
At the time Kissinger was in China conferring with Premier Chou en-Lai, it was announced that he was recovering from a stomach indisposition in the mountains of Pakistan.
He cancelled a formal dinner with President Agha Yahya Khan scheduled for that evening and was reported to have gone to the Nathiagali Hill station, about 50 miles (80 km) from Rawalpindi, to recover.
He left behind in Pakistan the U.S. Air Force plane assigned to him so that it would be noticed the informants said.
Officials in Washington feel that only Yahya Khan knew at the time that Kissinger in fact flew into Peking.
While Dr. Henry Kissinger was making his recent top-secret trip to Peking, a stand-in looking like Kissinger took part in a motorcade in Nathiagali, Pakistan, to reinforce the deception that Kissinger was there, informants said here Sunday.
Kissinger, Nixon’s special assistant for National Security affairs, new to Peking in the early hours of July 9 to set up Nixon’s forthcoming China visit.
Informants said Kissinger flew in a Pakistan International Airlines Boeing, returning in the same plane to Peshawar airport, about 110 miles (180 km) north-west of here.
Pakistani officials also announced that the chief of staff of the Pakistani Army, Gen. Abdul Hamid Khan, and Defense Secretary Ghiasudden Ahmad met Kissinger for talks in Nathiagali July 9 and 10.
Reference : The Indonesian Observer, 19.07.1971