It was with great sadness that Callist and I learned about the passing of Henry Kissinger.

Henry been a good friend for many, many years.

He was always a source of life and excitement and enthusiasm.

Had a remarkable career.

There's so many things you could say about him. He was almost certainly the

greatest diplomat America ever produced. His achievements in ending the Vietnam

war and opening up the relation with China and helping Israel

survive the surprise attack on Yam Kapoor in 1974 and balancing off the Russians

again and again Kissinger was in balancing off the Russians.

Again and again, Kissinger was a master of thinking through

how to develop a strategy and how to implement it.

And he was superb at having personal relationships.

The last couple of times I talked with Henry,

he was still annually having dinner with Jizin Ping in China and with Putin in Russia.

And it just was part of the life he had developed.

He managed from the time he stepped down in 1977. He managed to remain relevant to virtually everything going on around the world, consulting

with presidents, consulting with foreign leaders, having written a whole series of books.

He was just a remarkable human being, a man who had been born into Germany in the late 1920s,

who was nine years old when Adolf Hitler became the leader of Germany,

migrated to the United States with his parents when he was 15, joined the US Army,

became an American citizen, served in Europe and World War II, and because he was fluent in German and very, very bright, ended up as an interrogator for the Gestapo and others, and actually ran several towns as mayor during the Dennots

vacation parade.

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