Thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, the Department of State is releasing a steady stream of documents from the days when Henry Kissinger ruled the roost. Among the latest batch to be made public are transcripts of Kissinger’s conversations with leading statesmen all over the world.

Here, in a December 21, 1976 record of a telephone conversation between Kissinger and Israeli ambassador Simcha Dinitz, is a sample of diplomacy as it was conducted at the highest levels by America’s most adroit Secretary of State:

D: How are you Mr. Secretary?

K: Okay.

D: I have difficulty in getting flights on Thursday. I can change my flight from 8:30 to 12:30.

K: The trouble is I will be in Boston.

D: I know that. I thought of two possibilities. Ah, maybe you can . . . when are you leaving?

K: Tomorrow morning.

D: Would you like me to stop in this evening or early tomorrow morning?

K: No, I am tied up all evening.

D: If you think it can wait until I come back.

K: It is something that should be dealt with. I can’t discuss it on the phone. I have to see you before my people here begin leaking against you.

D: The other possibility is for me to see you . . .

K: Why don’t we do it early tomorrow morning?

D: That would be fine.

K: Okay, why don’t you come in at 8:00.

D: 8:00 would be fine. Thank you Mr. Secretary.

What does this document reveal? We already knew that Kissinger lived in constant fear of leaks. The shocking revelation here is the fact that the mighty Kissinger kept his own calendar.

As I noted some years back in reviewing a memoir by the East German spy, Markus Wolf, “not everything kept hidden during the cold war was significant. . . . The larger and more important truth . . . is that few genuinely significant things were kept secret for long.”