Did Henry Kissinger call ‘depopulation’ a priority?

Depopulation KissingerQuote Check:

Attributed to former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger:

“Depopulation should be the highest priority of foreign policy towards the third world, because the US economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad, especially from less developed countries.”

 

Overview

We found no good evidence to support attributing the above quotation to Kissinger.

 

The Facts

On Facebook, we ran across a post consisting of a photo of Henry Kissinger, secretary of state in the administration of President Richard M. Nixon. The photo of Kissinger was accompanied by a supposed quotation:

Depopulation should be the highest priority of foreign policy towards the third world, because the US economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad, especially from less developed countries.

 

The graphic carried the logo of azquotes.com, one of a number of websites that offer collections of quotations. A Google search for the quotation resulted in a number of hits attributing it to Kissinger.

We found the quotation suspicious because “depopulation” does not often occur as a policy recommendation compared to concepts like limiting population growth.

Sifting the Evidence

To find the origins or the original context of a quotation, we start with searches for the full quotation. From the search results, we look to see whether the quotation is attributed to more than one person. We also look for the speech or document where the statement originated. If the sites making up the search hits do not seem reliable, we restrict the search to .gov and .edu domains.

We did not find an attribution for the whole quotation. But when we broke the quotation into pieces we found a big hunk in NSSM 200, also known as “Implications of Worldwide Population Growth For U.S. Security and Overseas Interests (THE KISSINGER REPORT).” NSSM stands for “National Security Study Memorandum.” The government document was published in 1974 and made public in 1980.

Whatever may be done to guard against interruptions of supply and to develop domestic alternatives, the U.S. economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad, especially from less developed countries. That fact gives the U.S. enhanced interest in the political, economic, and social stability of the supplying countries. Wherever a lessening of population pressures through reduced birth rates can increase the prospects for such stability, population policy becomes relevant to resource supplies and to the economic interests  of the United States.

 

NSSM 200 has no “depopulation” proposals. It does outline how population pressures may lead to disruption of supplies of minerals, leading in turn to economic problems in the United States and elsewhere.

With the latter half of the quotation pinned down, we tried to find the origin of the first half.

The first half of the quotation starts appearing in the year 2000 on the Internet, at least from what our searches can tell us. Websites come and go, plus the quotation might have appeared in hard copy before it ever appeared on the Internet.

Black activist Louis Farrakhan specifically attributed both parts of the quotation to NSSM 200 on a Web page listing its last update in 2007:

In a national security memo dated April 24, 1974 titled, “Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for the United States Security and Overseas Interest,” Henry Kissinger, the Secretary of State under Richard Nixon, indicated: “Depopulation should be the highest priority of foreign policy towards the Third World.” Depopulation—to depopulate something means: “To ravage, to ruin, to reduce the population of, especially by violence, disease, etc.” Mr. Kissinger continued, “The United States economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad, especially from less developed countries”—this means they are going to destroy the population of mainly Third World countries.

 

Anti-nuclear activist Leuren Moret made similar statements during a 2007 interview with Press TV of Iran:

Dr. Henry Kissinger proposed in his memorandum to the NSC that ‘depopulation should be the highest priority of US foreign policy towards the third world.’ He cited reasons of national security, and because the US economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad, especially from less developed countries… wherever a lessening of population can increase the prospects for such stability, population policy becomes relevant to resources, supplies and to the economic interests of the US.

Implications of world wide population growth for US security & overseas interests”, national security memo 200, April 24, 1974

 

The original quote mashup may have come from Farrakhan or Moret, or another source entirely. Unless the two are using an entirely different version of NSSM 200, we don’t see how attributing the first part of the quotation to Kissinger is the least bit justified. The first part of Kissinger’s supposed statement simply does not occur in NSSM 200. Not even taken as a loose paraphrase.

Summary

Though we cannot absolutely prove Kissinger never said the words attributed to him by Farrakhan and Moret, among others, the available evidence offers no support for the idea that the first part of the quotation came from Kissinger.

We note that WikiQuote.org reached a similar conclusion.

 

Reference List

NSSM 200 Implications of Worldwide Population Growth For U.S. Security and Overseas Interests (THE KISSINGER REPORT).” USaid.gov. U.S. Department of State, 10 Dec. 1974. Web. 15 Feb. 2016.

Quotes › Authors › H › Henry A. Kissinger › Depopulation Should Be the Highest Priority…AZQuotes.com. AZQuotes.com, n.d. Web. 15 Feb. 2016.

Treacher, Jim. “The White Man Created Ebola To Kill Black People, Says Noted Scientist Louis Farrakhan.” The Daily Caller. The Daily Caller, 02 Oct. 2014. Web. 15 Feb. 2016.

Farrakhan, Louis. “Justifiable Homicide: Black Youth in Peril, ‘An Executive Decision’ -Part 2 Continued.” The Final Call. FCN Publishing, FinalCall.com News, 30 Sept. 2014. Web. 15 Feb. 2016.

Ostovar, Afsaneh. “Wall Street Czars Depopulating the World.” Whale.to. Whale.to, 25 Oct. 2007. Web. 15 Feb. 2016.

Ostovar, Afsaneh. “Wall Street Czars Depopulating the World.” Press TV, Press TV, 25 Oct. 2007. Web. 15 Feb. 2016.

Talk:Henry Kissinger.” Wikiuote.com. Wikimedia, n.d. Web. 15 Feb. 2016.

6 Comments

  1. word bird

    You’ve lumped to 2 separate statements into 1, in order to make the claim that “We found no good evidence to support attributing the above quotation to Kissinger”. There’s lots of good evidence proving henry said “Depopulation should be the highest priority of foreign policy towards the third world.” period.

    Your hasbara is showing.

    Reply
    1. Bryan W. White (Post author)

      **There’s lots of good evidence proving henry said “Depopulation should be the highest priority of foreign policy towards the third world.” period.**

      Where?

      As the article notes, “The first part of Kissinger’s supposed statement simply does not occur in NSSM 200. Not even taken as a loose paraphrase.”

      Good evidence supporting Kissinger uttering (or writing) the first part of the quotation would come from primary sources at the time it was said, or at the very least from reliable witnesses (secondhand). Lacking that, your claim is wrong.

      Finding the quotation from any number of quote-o-matic websites, well-known for collecting dubious quotations along with reliable ones without distinguishing between the relative reliability, won’t cut it.

      Edit to add:

      https://www.google.ca/search?as_q=&as_epq=Depopulation+should+be+the+highest+priority&as_oq=&as_eq=&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&lr=&cr=&as_qdr=all&as_sitesearch=.gov&as_occt=any&safe=images&as_filetype=&tbs=

      Reply
  2. Jim S Smith

    Uh,

    WHY do we still use GOOGLE to search for anything?

    Hasn’t GOOGLE already been exposed as actively filtering SERP’s on its platforms that “it” doesn’t “like”?

    I call that a FAIL, as well as using ANYTHING coming from Wiki-??? anything as a primary research source.

    Not a great way to answer an argument in my book.

    Reply
    1. Bryan W. White (Post author)

      Hi Jim.

      Google remains the world’s most popular search engine, unless that Chinese rival has overtaken it. These days I use DuckDuckGo as often as anything–even though it doesn’t index this site. But Google (Advanced) has some valuable tools for customizing searches, and so far I’m not aware of anybody that has anything comparable.

      If you review the investigation, it does not rely on any Wiki source for backing information. It notes the kinds of things that are available via search and notes that Wikiquote reached the same conclusion we did. That doesn’t mean we reached our conclusion based on what was as Wikiquote.

      Reply
  3. misterkel

    The point with Google is not that it is bad at what it does. It’s that google culls many results, so if the quote in question existed somewhere, then it might be scrubbed from the google serps.
    Most likely it was altered from the source doc, though which called for
    reduction of population growth.
    That is different from depopulation, to be sure.
    Kissinger is, no doubt, a Machiavellian extremist, but we should point that out with truth.

    Reply
    1. Bryan W. White (Post author)

      “Most likely it was altered from the source doc, though which called for
      reduction of population growth.”

      Agreed.

      Reply

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