Did Henry Kissinger say this about forced vaccinations?

Question

I found a quote online in the form of a photo from what looks like some newspaper:

The photo contains an alleged quote from Henry Kissinger's speech to the WHO Council on Eugenics on February 25, 2009, and it reads:

Once the herd accepts mandatory vaccinations, it's game over. They will accept anything - forcible blood or organ donation - "for the greater good". We can genetically modify children and sterilize them --- "for the greater good". Control sheep minds and you control the herd. Vaccine makers stand to make billions. It's a big win-win. We thin out the herd and the herd pays us for extermination services.

I highly doubt the authenticity of this quote not only based on its contents but also the phrasing of it. But just to be sure: Is there any authenticity to this quote? Not necessarily in this exact wording but is any of it authentic, or did Kissinger say at least anything similar that was simply misconstrued / exaggerated?

I'd have thought the fairly obvious signs of manipulation to the text would be enough to torpedo any credibility of this. — motosubatsu, Apr 13 '22 at 08:37
I wonder if any old fool can write this about gun control, abortions, or similar, and show it back to the kinds of people who show this to everyone... how would they respond — user253751, Apr 13 '22 at 15:10
Is this recent? The text is from a 2-year-old FaceBook post, but there's no newspaper aspect. I'm wondering if this person saw it and made it look newspapery. We may be seeing more of these. — Owen Reynolds, Apr 14 '22 at 00:50
@motosubatsu The only fairly obvious sign of manipulation to the text I see is where someone hand-wrote "...speech to the...". That seems pretty tame and I suspect that manipulation was not done maliciously. I think that was done because the ink was wearing out as can be seen in the letter "b" of the word "February" in the next line. Per the debunking done in the answer to this question, I think it's more likely it was originally printed with false information. — Cave Johnson, Apr 14 '22 at 03:07
@bob : it also requires a fair amount of doublethink: believing both that it's been said "officially, publicly, openly" and that it's kept in secret, at the same time. Such claims always start with "The WHO (or Bill Gates) **officially admitted** xyz", and when they are confronted why those admissions are only in random social media posts and not in their official publications or at least on their own page, the answer is inevitably "because they want to keep it a secret". — vsz, Apr 14 '22 at 07:31
I appreciate what we do here on Skeptics, but sometimes I cannot help but shudder while thinking of all the time and energy which was just spent to debunk this _obviously fabricated attempt at doublespeak conspiracy theory madness_. For gods sake. — fgysin, Apr 22 '22 at 09:56
@fgysin I'd not assume something to be obvious to most people just because it is for you. Effort like this is effort well spent imo. Even if I personally wasn't convinced by this questionable quote it's good to have it properly debunked as done here for others to see who might search for it. Most of the bits floating through the interwebs are IMHO more wasteful than this. — csstudent1418, Apr 22 '22 at 10:30

score 90 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 14 '22 at 10:10

90

No, there is no evidence this is an actual quote

Reuters has investigated this issue and came to conclusion:

Henry Kissinger’s speeches are archived on his website and only two are listed for 2009 ( here ). The first was given to the Trilateral Commission Tokyo Plenary Meeting on April 26, 2009 ( here ). The second was a speech on October 14, 2009, for the 35th Anniversary of the International Energy Agency in Paris, France ( here ). Neither presentation included the quote in this claim. In 2009, Kissinger did not speak at a World Health Organization (WHO) event.

False. There is no evidence that shows Kissinger ever said this quote about mandatory vaccinations.

Aap has also looked into same or very similar claim:

AAP FactCheck found the forum where Dr Kissinger was alleged to have made the statement – the World Health Organization Council on Eugenics – did not exist.

Snopes agrees with prior ones:

False

Links to full transcripts are well presented in sources above.

Edit: 14.4.2022: User Nzall has done further digging and comments:

I took it a step further: I checked every single speech on Henry Kissinger's website, as well as an archived document of the Ford Library containing many of Kissinger's older speeches. He has never even used the word "vaccine" or any derivative thereof, or even any word that starts with "vac" other than "vacuum" in the context of nature abhorring a vacuum.

edited Apr 14 '22 at 10:10

Nzall

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answered Apr 13 '22 at 06:21

pinegulf

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The claim is that he _said_ something, possibly in private or even secretly. That there are no written records is a hint, rating that as a strict "No" is a far leap. "Improbable" would be more appropriate. – Haukinger Apr 13 '22 at 06:45
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@Haukinger Maybe. Yet, if it's said in private enough that there are no transcripts, how could it be printed in papers as shown by OP? – pinegulf Apr 13 '22 at 06:50
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It may have been declassified or leaked, we just don't know, at least not enough to vote "No". – Haukinger Apr 13 '22 at 07:03
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@Haukinger: Yes we **do** know that a "WHO Council on Eugenics" (think about that for a second!) *does not exist* (as this answer shows), and that Kissinger did not speak at the WHO in 2009 in *any* way or form (as this answer shows). Dithering about with an "improbable" would lend far too much credibility to an utterly ludicrous claim. **"No"** is absolutely correct here. – DevSolar Apr 13 '22 at 07:59
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@Haukinger did you actually look at the photo in the question? It says that this is a quote _from a speech_, not that he said it privately or secretly. This answer very convincingly debunks that claim. – Dan Romik Apr 13 '22 at 08:00
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@Haukinger: Unless you mean to imply "WHO Council on Eugenics" is some secret committee they have, which would have secret meetings, "no (evidence)" is the correct answer. – Fizz Apr 13 '22 at 12:46
Devils advocate: could it not be read as 'talking to Un Counsel about eugenics'? – pinegulf Apr 13 '22 at 12:50
@pinegulf That isn't what the article is saying and even if that was the case there is still no evidence. – Joe W Apr 13 '22 at 13:50
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'Eugenics' is a word with very negative connotations. Is (or was in 2009) there any official (by-the-state/country or international) body or organization concerned with eugenics at all? – Pablo H Apr 13 '22 at 14:40
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I took it a step further: I checked every single speech on Henry Kissinger's website, as well as a archived document of the Ford Library containing many of Kissinger's older speeches. He has never even used the word "vaccine" or any derivative thereof, or even any word that starts with "vac" other than "vacuum" in the context of nature abhorring a vacuum. – Nzall Apr 13 '22 at 14:57
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@Nzall, why don't you post this comment as an answer? It adds useful information (and comments are ephemeral) – Ben Bolker Apr 13 '22 at 15:48
@Haukinger, WHO has provisions for public and private meetings, but none for “declassification” of private meeting records. Private meetings are concerned with (1) private information of persons, e.g, Rule 23 on validation of credentials; (2) bureaucratic procedural/budgetary stuff, e.g. Rule 32, and (3) “exceptional circumstances” for plenary meetings, Rule 20. The agenda of private meetings and their decisions are public, only proceedings are private. The rules don't define any sort of completely secret sessions that would leave no public trace. A boring database: https://apps.who.int/iris/ – kkm inactive - support strike Apr 13 '22 at 16:31
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And how many newspapers use a sans-serif typeface? – Michael Kay Apr 13 '22 at 19:18
@bob and "speech to the" looks almost entirely *hand written* – Michael Apr 13 '22 at 19:58
@Nzall Added your contribution. Good work. – pinegulf Apr 14 '22 at 06:14
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@BenBolker I did not post it as an answer because of the rules on original research. To the best of my understanding, this stack wants everything to be sourced to a third party source and doesn't like it when answers do not include any sources and instead only provide original research of the claim in the article. I know the research I did was a Google Search followed by a bunch of control-F in the page text and as such would be easily verifiable by other users, but I erred on the side of caution. – Nzall Apr 14 '22 at 09:32
@Nzall: As you saying there was one linkable database with all of Kissinger's speeches in it, and a (repeatable) word search revealed no mention of vaccines? I think that would be acceptable. – Oddthinking Apr 20 '22 at 01:28
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@Oddthinking I don't think those are ALL of Kissinger's speeches. The archive on his site only goes to around 2007, and the older document only covers speeches from I believe the 70s or 80s. So I wasn't entirely ready to say Kissinger NEVER said anything about vaccines, only that none of the speeches I looked up contained that word. – Nzall Apr 20 '22 at 08:22

IMSoP · Answer 2 · 2022-04-16T07:49:33.317

This image is not of a newspaper. It is, rather bizarrely: a photo of a black-and-white printout, of a low-quality photo, of a glossy printout, of a screenshot, of a Facebook "meme" image post. (Actually, the images we have of both photos appear to be screenshots taken of a phone displaying the photo, rather than the photo itself, which I find amusing, but isn't particularly relevant.)

Here is the original image from Facebook (scaled down slightly, but otherwise unedited); note the very tight cropping under the last line of text:

Here is a screenshot taken from a fact-checking site which mentioned it. Note how the Facebook UI has placed a black border above and below, which is visible in subsequent versions of the image, running very close to the text because of the tight cropping on the original:

Next, the colour photo of a glossy printout posted on Twitter; I've cropped off some large black borders caused by someone taking a screenshot of their phone. Note the text visible to the side and the end of a blue ".co.nz" URL below, which must have been other content on the same page; note also the shadow at bottom left and the reflected light obscuring parts of the image and first two lines of text:

Finally, here is the image from the question for comparison, again with the phone UI cropped off. Note that the hand-written letters on the first line are where the reflection in the colour photo made it hard to read, and how the cut-off text on the left now ends at a black line rather than actually being the edge of the image or paper:

That post is from May 2020, and was investigated by Reuters, who found no evidence of such a speech. However, the quote was doing the rounds at least a year earlier - significantly, before the Covid-19 pandemic. For instance this post from May 2019, which was investigated and rated as false by both Snopes and PolitiFact.

This version has slightly different wording, notably ending with an extra sentence "Now, what's for lunch, huh?" Although I can't confirm the date is genuine, this blog post dated March 2019 is the earliest version of the quote I've found; it contains odd punctuation and a couple of spelling errors, but matches the wording of the more polished May 2019 image including the "what's for lunch" sign-off. Interestingly, this blog makes no reference to the WHO, but instead labels it:

Apparently…
Just A Casual Lunch Convo Between Investors.

Elsewhere on that page, there are references to a 2001 book by Christopher Hitchens titled The Trial of Henry Kissinger, so perhaps the implication is that it comes from that book? I looked up the book on Google Books and searched for various words in the alleged quote. Unsurprisingly, there was nothing remotely similar.

If it was a speech, as the Facebook posts claim, it surely would have been found by at least one of the fact-checking sites that examined it. If it was a private conversation, as the blog post claims, it's harder to disprove - but there's also no apparent reason this blogger would know about such a conversation, as they give no source at all.

Sure there is a screenshot from a phone in there as well but overall the image in question is a newspaper article. Everything I see in the picture indicates that it is a newspaper article that we are reviewing and it being in a screen shot doesn't change that. — Joe W, Apr 15 '22 at 19:49
If you have an image that shows it is fake you should include the image in your post not expect people to figure out what link it is they need to click to determine what you are trying to say. From what I can see it is a picture of a newspaper article and evidence that you have to say otherwise should be included in your answer instead of having to click a link to get to it. — Joe W, Apr 15 '22 at 20:02
@JoeW Fair enough, I have added a sequence of four images, showing how artefacts accumulate from one to another. Believe me now? — IMSoP, Apr 15 '22 at 20:24
Thank you for that update! I now understand what you are stating with your answer and it makes a lot of sense. — Joe W, Apr 15 '22 at 20:57

Did Henry Kissinger say this about forced vaccinations?

2 Answers2