THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | NOVEMBER 2024 59 Fletcher M. Burton, a retired Foreign Service officer and former ambassador, served several tours in Germany, including in divided and united Berlin, in Bonn when it was the capital, and in Leipzig as consul general. Before joining the Foreign Service, he was a Fulbright scholar at the University of Bonn. A control officer reflects on his experience with the former Secretary of State and their time in Berlin. BY FLETCHER M. BURTON Controlling Kissinger To my generation of Foreign Service officers, Henry Kissinger was an intimidating figure, some combination of Metternich, Machiavelli, and Mephistopheles. My chance to take the measure of the man came in the last week of March 2000, when he traveled to Berlin on one of his periodic visits to take the German pulse. Kissinger was then 76. Some 30 years his junior, I was a mid-level diplomat at the U.S. embassy. The plum assignment to serve as his control officer fell my way—a designation grandiose in any FEATURE circumstance and especially so with the former Secretary of State. Yet I wondered if the plum was really a sour apple. Kissinger was intrigued by the shape-shifting city. United but not uni ed, like the country itself, Berlin had by then reclaimed the seat of the German government. Kissinger knew its past, its complexity, its signi cance through history. e city was as multifaceted as was Kissinger himself. As a statesman, historian, and native German, he wanted to plumb its many dimensions. He was keen to explore. For several days I accompanied Kissinger as he made the rounds in Berlin. A control o cer does not have the authority of, say, a jockey over a horse; I was more of a stable-hand, helping the real rider into the saddle. ere was, however, considerable interest for me in the time in between, especially during long talks in the car or back at his hotel near the Brandenburg Gate. Kissinger spoke openly of his impressions of Berlin as a city, the leadership style of Germans and Americans, his memories of Germany as a boy in Fürth and as an American GI in Hannover, and his own approach to writing history.
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