Henry Kissinger should be tried for crimes against humanity, not put in charge of a commission to investigate the Sept. 11 tragedy.

During his years working for the disgraceful Nixon regime and the unelected Ford administration, Kissinger prosecuted private and illegal wars that cost hundreds of thousands of Cambodian, Vietnamese, Timorese and Chilean lives. He is not independent of the failures of the U.S. military intelligence complex. Rather, he is a party to them.

The Bush administration fought for more than a year to prevent any genuine investigation into the circumstances of Sept. 11, and now — on the advice of Dick Cheney — we get Kissinger. The decision to put him at the head of the investigative commission is an indication that President Bush prefers secrecy and subterfuge to information and knowledge.

As New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd recently wrote, "If you want to get to the bottom of something, you don't appoint Henry Kissinger. If you want to keep others from getting to the bottom of something, you appoint Henry Kissinger."

Last year, journalist Christopher Hitchens recounted Kissinger's crimes in two articles in Harper's magazine titled "The Case Against Henry Kissinger." These articles later became a book, "The Trial of Henry Kissinger."  An 80-minute BBC documentary — "The Trials of Henry Kissinger" — soon followed. Hitchens documents the following about Kissinger:

* He ordered the U.S. military to conduct illegal air raids in Cambodia in 1969 and to misreport the targets as Vietnamese.

* He persuaded President Nixon to order the 1972 "Christmas bombing" of Hanoi, which killed thousands of North Vietnamese civilians.

* He persuaded President Ford to approve arms sales to Indonesian President Suharto in 1975, knowing they would be used illegally in the slaughter of rebels and civilians in East Timor.

* He ordered the CIA to instigate a coup of the democratically elected left-wing Chilean government of Salvador Allende, clearing the way for the murderous right-wing dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. (Chilean Judge Juan Guzman has recently called upon Kissinger to testify in his courtroom regarding his complicity in the disappearance and execution of U.S. filmmaker and journalist Charles Horman in the hours immediately after the coup on Sept. 11, 1973.)

Kissinger's war crimes and depraved realpolitik aren't the only reasons he's a poor choice to lead this investigation. Let's not forget his close ties to this administration. Kissinger was in charge of United States foreign policy from 1969 to 1976. During the last two of those years, Donald Rumsfeld was White House chief of staff, then secretary of defense. When Rumsfeld moved to the Pentagon,  Cheney succeeded him as White House chief of staff. The current president’s father, George Herbert Walker Bush, was head of the CIA.

We're not talking about someone who will be independent. Both Bush and Kissinger are committed to the defense of the U.S. intelligence network, which helped cause and failed to prevent the events of Sept. 11.

Placing Kissinger in a position to investigate the attacks is a return to the bad old days of secret wars, secret wiretaps, secret bombings and secret coups. It also sends a message abroad that Kissinger-era foreign policy is perfectly acceptable to President Bush, who will need the support of the world community to fight the war on terrorism and the war on Iraq.

Kissinger is notorious around the world for his direct role in orchestrating some of the bloodiest interventions carried out by Washington over the past five decades. He has ordered and sanctioned the destruction of civilian populations, the assassination of inconvenient politicians and the kidnapping and disappearance of soldiers, journalists and clerics. That he has eluded punishment for his actions is a testament to how the crimes of the rich and well-connected seldom receive the full application of justice.

If you thought the Warren Report was a sham, just wait until you see the Kissinger Report.

Mike Pope is the letters editor of the Tallahassee Democrat. He can be reached at 599-2173 or mpope@taldem.com