Kissinger is no more. Aged 100.
A lot of the mystique around Kissenger, especially relative to his love life, came from an early 70s book entitled, "Kissenger...The Adventures of Super-Kraut." The book's author, a guy named Chuck Ashman, was one of most notorious con men/maniacs of his day. He falsely claimed to be a law school (University of Tennessee) graduate and to have studied at Oxford (or was it Cambridge?. He installed himself as Dean of an unaccredited law school. He was found guilty of fraud for a check kiting scheme, and later spent a couple years confined in a mental institution. He had the uncanny ability to talk himself into a number high profile jobs he was unqualified for, only to get fired when his employers discovered he was a lunatic.
Not long after "Super-kraut" was published, he somehow convinced the management at St. Louis' KMOX radio, a very respectable 50K watt station that pioneered talk radio, to put him on the air as a talk host. The guy was out of his mind, a fact evident to even a 16 year old Duke. He lasted only a couple months. For the next several years he wrote a series of sensational (as in a "National Enquirer" way) books. Amazingly, in the late 80s, one of his books was instrumental in exposing former UN Secretary General and Austrian President Kurt Waldheim's SS role against Jews in WW2.
If Ashman is still alive, he'd be around 90. He'd be a hoot to talk to.
