When word leaked that Henry Kissinger was flirting with the notion of running for Governor of New York, it was almost as disorienting as if William ("the Refrigerator") Perry were to announce he was switching from football to tennis. For almost two decades Kissinger and foreign affairs have been synonymous, and it was hard to imagine Candidate Henry working the boardwalk at Coney Island or milking a cow at the state fair. So it was scarcely surprising when he announced last week that he had decided to stick to the global path rather than explore the campaign trail.
Nine years out of office, Kissinger has maintained a luster rarely matched by any former Secretary of State since Martin Van Buren made the leap to the White House in 1837. Even without his Air Force jet, Kissinger travels with the aura of power. He alerts the embassies. Bodyguards watch over him. The maid at London's posh Claridge's covers the floor with towels because Kissinger, she says, does not like to walk barefoot on hotel carpets. Arriving in Paris, Kissinger is invited to the Elysee Palace for a chat with President Francois Mitterrand; in Peking, Deng Xiaoping suggests a talk over tea. Back in New York City, the famous face and graveled accent cause a stir even at the Four Seasons, Manhattan's power-lunch emporium.
The expertise and access gained in years of power are carefully nurtured, valuable commodities, to be marketed now through Kissinger Associates, his international consulting firm. It is widely regarded as the Tiffany of that arcane new business known as corporate risk analysis, a growth industry in today's turbulent world. His firm consists of only nine advisers and researchers, a far cry from the 12,000 under his command at the State Department. The senior members are longtime Kissinger colleagues -- and proteges -- who bring their own distinction: former Under Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger and retired General Brent Scowcroft, who was Kissinger's deputy and then successor as National Security Adviser. But what sets this firm apart from others is Kissinger, who retains his clout even though he was frozen out by the Reagan Administration. Kissinger is sole owner of the firm, which grosses an estimated $5 million a year.
In his Park Avenue office, Kissinger works at a desk covered with precise rows of labeled folders, suggesting a world tidier than it is. Gone are the old trappings of office -- the direct phone link to the President, the reams of classified documents. But he dismisses secret papers as too short-range to be useful now. Experience enables his team to glean much from press reports. He is out more than in, meeting clients in corporate boardrooms, making more than 50 speeches a year for a minimum of $20,000 each, cultivating new contacts as old ones phase out.
Kissinger Associates' selected clientele of international conglomerates and financial institutions is as top secret as the papers Kissinger once dealt with, but like all such secrets the names tend to leak: Volvo, Fiat, Atlantic Richfield, Fluor Corp., H.J. Heinz Co., S.G. Warburg investment bank in Britain. Foreign governments, however, need not apply. "We are not lobbyists," Kissinger says sternly. "We do not deal with the U.S. Government on behalf of any client."