Kissinger bows out of his beltway firm

21 February 2008
Thursday 10:22 PM GMT

Kissinger bows out of his beltway firm

BYLINE: Ben White in New York
LENGTH: 386 words

Henry Kissinger, the former secretary of state and longstanding foreign policy expert, has stepped aside as a principal in the Washington consulting group Kissinger McLarty Associates.
The firm will now be called McLarty Associates and will be run by Thomas “Mack” McLarty, former chief of staff to Bill Clinton when he was president, according to an e-mail sent out by the group.
Mr Kissinger will still serve on the McLarty Associates board of counsellors but his departure from an active role will end an eight-year- old case of strange political bedfellows.
It was not immediately clear if the change meant Mr Kissinger would be taking a less high-profile role in Washington. He continues to run Kissinger Associates, his New York-based consulting group.
Mr Kissinger was travelling in Asia on Thursday and unavailable for comment, according to an official in his office.
The German-born Mr Kissinger, who won the Nobel Peace prize in 1973, served as national security adviser and secretary of state under Republican president Richard Nixon.
He survived the Watergate scandal that led to Mr Nixon’s resignation and went on to serve as secretary of state to president Gerald Ford, Nixon’s successor.
He was a strong opponent of communism but also pushed the policy of detente, which is credited with easing tensions with the Soviet Union in the 1970s.
He helped Nixon “open” China with a summit meeting in 1972.
He has also come under heavy criticism from some human rights groups and journalists for what they say was his complicity in war crimes in Vietnam, Cambodia, Chile and elsewhere.
Mr Kissinger has long cut a high-profile figure in Washington and around the world, attending glamorous social events, often with celebrity friends.
His alliance with Mr McLarty, a prominent Democrat, began eight years ago. While the two have very different political backgrounds, Washington lobby and consulting groups often seek to have senior executives from both sides of the aisle.
Mr McLarty, an Arkansan and longstanding ally of the Clinton family, served as White House chief of staff from 1993 to 1994.
He was replaced by Leon Panetta after chaos engulfed the early days of the Clinton administration.
He went on to serve as a key trade adviser to Mr Clinton, working on treaties such as the North American Free Trade Agreement.

LOAD-DATE: February 22, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
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