Let me spell it out for you. Don’t forget I wrote the book on this stuff. Mr. Suharto, General Pinochet, General Papadopoulos, the Brigadiers of Bangladesh (I can’t be expected to remember every tinpot dictator’s name), Margaret Thatcher, Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin, and any budding despots: I would suggest you take notes.

Rule # 1: Do It in the Road.
First of all, you don’t hide any of this stuff. There’s nothing covert about anything Kissinger did (that’s what I call myself, "Kissinger"). None of that sneaky, Ollie North/CIA business. That’s the genius of it! It was all right there in the open.

Rule # 2: Hide the Evidence in Plain Sight.
Did I try to conceal the evidence against me? No! Sometimes I even surprise myself. I gave it all to the friggin' Library of Congress. All the phone transcripts of all my involvement in all the atrocities—it’s all there. So nobody can say Kissinger deleted files—that moron, Ollie!—or destroyed documents, or got Rosemary Wood to contort herself in Kama Sutra-like postures to erase tapes. Of course, nobody gets to see any of it until five years after my death. The only one who gets to go into the stacks and read all this juicy stuff is me. For my memoirs, you know. And in those memoirs—for which I got a pile of dough—do I delve into stuff like how Tricky Dick and I subverted the American elections in both ’68 and ’72? Nah.

Rule # 3: Involve Everybody in Your Crime.
The President, the Pentagon, the CIA, Congress—why do you think they didn’t try and nail Richard Nixon for the "secret" bombing of Laos? Because it wasn’t all that secret, baby. They’re never gonna nail me, either, because there aren’t enough jail cells to put ’em all in. The beauty of my plan is that you’d have to put the whole federal bureaucracy in the clink.

Rule # 4: Become the Pusher to the Press.
The way you subvert the press is by judicious leaking of privileged information. You get those little piss-ants off your back by throwing them juicy crumbs. Hell, guys made their reputation from my stuff. Henry the Leaker, they called me. I leaked like the Exxon Valdez. Get ’em on the drip and they keep coming back to score.

Rule # 5: Blame It on Some Historical Abstraction.
The Cold War was my hot ticket. Just find some Big Concept involving the balance of power, mutually assured destruction, and scary stuff like that. I used it only recently on Jim Lehrer. If PBS buys this stuff, you’re in business, dude. Throw around expressions like, "It was to protect our national interests." They eat this shit up.

Rule # 6: Win the Nobel Prize.
I know this seems like a tough one but, hey, I did it, and I defy any of you to claim a bigger body count then Kissinger. Just make peace in Israel or Ireland, and hire a media whore to whisper your name into some dozy old Swede’s ear. He’ll think you’re famous for something, you know, the old dodo knows he’s heard your name somewhere.

Rule # 7: Teach at Avuncular University.
Learn to: smoke a pipe, fly fish, pontificate. Dick Cheney went there.

Rule # 8: Double Jeopardy.
I’ll take Famous Cop-Outs for $ 1,000. But I’m too smart to pull the "I was only taking orders" ploy." Hey, I learned something from the Nuremberg trials—don’t get caught! Nixon, Mitchell, Haldemann paid the price. After Nixon got toppled and they threw all those guys in golf jail, people figured that Tricky Dick picked up the tab.

Rule # 9: Check Out the Prop Shop.
Thick glasses and a German accent will do wonders for you. Why do you think I once said, "Ich sprache keine Sprache ohne accent" ("I speak no language without an accent")? Accents lend inscrutability and authority. That’s what they mean when they talk about the Kissinger mystique. Listen, I’ll let you in on something: I got my whole act from Dr. Strangelove. The pop-bottle glasses and the Cherman accent. I just got rid of the wheelchair and the Hitler salute. In public, anyway—Nixon loved that shit. "Henry, do that thing you do again, for Erlichman?"

Rule # 10: Become a Star.
In the USA, if you’re a celebrity, you can get away with anything. Look at Charlie Manson, look at Timothy McVeigh. I’m indispensable, babe. Ted Koppel loves my ass. Get on TV and exploit the talking-head circuit for all its worth. They’ve got a thousand idiots with talk shows now, and even the ones who hate my guts would die to get me on their show.

There you go. If you can just master these simple rules, you, too, can become a War Criminal and retire to a big old mansion in Connecticut.