The firm was founded in 1982 by Henry Kissinger. In 1999 Mack McLarty joined Kissinger to open Kissinger McLarty Associates, the firm's office on Eighteenth and Pennsylvania streets in Washington, D.C.[1] McLarty was White House Chief of Staff under Bill Clinton. Kissinger McLarty is a corporate member of the Council of the Americas, the New York-based business organization established by David Rockefeller in 1965.[1] As of January 2008, the two firms have separated and McLarty Associates, headed by Mack McLarty, is an independent firm based in Washington.[2][3]
Kissinger Associates is located in River House on Park Avenue at Fifty-first Street, in a building also occupied by Peter Peterson's Blackstone Group.[4] It was established in July 1982 after loans had been secured from Goldman Sachs and a consortium of three other banks. These loans were repaid in two years; by 1987 annual revenues had reached $5 million.[4]
Kissinger Associates does not disclose its list of corporate clients, and reportedly bars clients from acknowledging the relationship.[17] However, over time details from proxy statements and the tendency of senior businessmen to talk about their relationship with Kissinger have leaked out and a number of major corporate clients have been identified.[19]
The secrecy of their corporate client list has caused problems where Kissinger or a member of his staff were called to public service. In 1989, George H. W. Bush nominated Lawrence Eagleburger as his Deputy Secretary of State. Congress required that Eagleburger disclose the names of 16 clients, some of which were his through his Kissinger Associates affiliation.[20] Later, Kissinger himself was appointed chairman of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United StatesbyGeorge W. Bush. Congressional Democrats insisted that Kissinger disclose the names of clients. Kissinger and President Bush claimed that such disclosures were not necessary, but Kissinger ultimately stepped down, citing conflicts of interest.
A selected list of the more notable companies (from over two dozen in total) since 1982;[19] his directorships where applicable; and some countries where known advice/contacts were used:
^Schwartz, Mattathias (June 27, 2018). "A Spymaster Steps Out of the Shadows". The New York Times. Now Brennan was out, having traded world-bestriding power for a handful of gigs: adviser on world events for clients of Kissinger Associates, visiting scholar at Fordham University and the University of Texas, commentator on breaking news for MSNBC.
^Chellel, Kit; Wild, Franz; Stringer, David (July 13, 2018). "When Rio Tinto Met China's Iron Hand". Bloomberg News. Archived from the original on July 16, 2018. Late that year, Albanese and Mivil Deschenes, a former Canadian military officer who was Rio's head of security, sat down in the New York office of one of the few people in the world with direct access to the highest levels of Chinese government: Henry Kissinger. The former U.S. secretary of state told the Rio executives he couldn't do anything about the four people in jail, but Albanese and Deschenes hired him anyway, paying what Australian media reported was at least $5 million.
Bibliography
Niall Ferguson, Kissinger: 1923-1968, New York: Penguin Press, 2015.
Walter Isaacson, Kissinger: A Biography, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992, updated 2005.
