This week Henry Kissinger's career was unearthed from the political grave. President Bush has appointed the 79- year-old elder statesman with the gravelly voice as chairman of an independent investigation into intelligence failures before September 11th.
The commission will have to inquire into sensitive topics such as the role of Saudi Arabia.
The appointment, first suggested by the Vice President, Dick Cheney, took political Washington by surprise. Kissinger, the architect of pre-emption in Cambodia and Chile, is one of the most polarising figures in American politics, a Nobel Peace Prize winner highly respected by conservatives for the powerful intellect he brought to international affairs, but remembered by critics as the enabler of Nixon's dark side.
The appointment is almost a two-fingered response by Republicans to Christopher Hitchens's polemic The Trial of Henry Kissinger, which accuses Kissinger of war crimes for his role in the secret bombing of Cambodia and in coup attempts against Chile's socialist president Salvador Allende. The Washington-based Hitchens was predictably incandescent.
"Everyone knows the Bush administration does not want a full and objective inquiry and appointing Henry Kissinger is the next best thing to not having such an inquiry," he said He called Kissinger "a proven cover-up artist, a discredited historian, a busted liar and a man who is wanted in many jurisdictions for the vilest of offences". Most Americans however see Kissinger differently.
Sandy Berger, Bill Clinton's national security adviser, citing Kissinger's historical perspective and experience, concluded it was "a very good choice". Nevertheless the official inquiry into the terror attacks on America is now to be conducted by someone who may be arrested if he travels abroad.
In May 2001, Kissinger left Paris after a warrant was served requesting his testimony about French citizens who disappeared after Pinochet's coup in Chile. Magistrates in Chile want to ask Kissinger about Operation Condor, in which a terrorist group killed a Chilean dissident in a car bomb outside the Irish embassy in Washington.
In March this year, Kissinger cancelled a trip to Brazil amid reports a judge there might order his detention. The former Nixon adviser faces a legal challenge at home too in a year-old civil suit for damages filed in Washington by relatives of Chilean General Rene Schneider, killed by CIA-backed right-wing Chilean soldiers in 1970.
Kissinger's lawyer, William Rogers, accuses "a cabal of Hitchens-minded people" of trying to create some notoriety for themselves. "It's show business," he said. "There has never been a credible objective analysis that he has committed an international crime."
Democrats meanwhile appointed their own elder statesman George Mitchell as vice-chairman of the commission, which will report in 18 months.
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One of the main tasks of the Kissinger commission will be to investigate a possible financial link between the Saudi royal family and the September 11th hijackers.
The FBI is investigating whether charitable donations made by Princess Haifa al-Faisal, the wife of the Saudi ambassador to Washington, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, ended up financing two hijackers who were Saudi Arabian nationals. The cigar-smoking Prince Bandar, ambassador since 1983, is as well connected in Washington as the man appointed to investigate the money trail.
In fact the two are friends, which complicates things a bit. Kissinger has been a guest at Prince Bandar's $36 million luxury Aspen compound in Colorado, which boasts a staff of 50 and a faux English pub and cowboy saloon.
The prince's pals include George Bush snr and Gen Norman Schwarzkopf, for whom he organised Saudi bases in the 1991 Gulf War. His dinner table has been graced by such insiders as Dick Cheney, Colin Powell and Bob Woodward and he has recently been photographed relaxing at President Bush's Texas ranch in designer jeans.
Both Barbara Bush and Alma Powell called Princess Haifa at at her Virginia home to offer comfort after Newsweek broke the money story on Monday. They made it clear they regarded any allegations of a connection between the princess and al-Qaeda as preposterous.
However the Saudis have not been overly co-operative with US authorities. In July, the Rand Corporation described Saudi Arabia in a briefing to a Pentagon advisory board as an enemy, "active at every level of the terror chain, from planners to financiers, from cadre to foot-soldier, from ideologist to cheer-leader".
Attempts to follow the Saudi money trail have provoked a fierce behind-the-scenes struggle between two Congressional committees and the Bush White House. The Democratic and Republican leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Robert Graham and Richard Shelby, suspect that the FBI failed to investigate the attacks fully because the US-Saudi relationship is so sensitive, given America's need for Saudi oil and military bases.
Mr Cheney and the Attorney General John Ashcroft have refused to declassify information about the FBI investigation for the senate committee on the grounds of national security.
Henry Kissinger is not the only Republican player to get back into the game after a long spell in the wilderness.
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Several figures from the Iran-Contra affair have been given prominent posts in the Bush administration. John Poindexter, who was convicted of lying to Congress over the illegal transfer of money to Contra rebels in Nicaragua from secret arms sales to Iran, has been put in charge of the Pentagon's Information Awareness Office, a "Big Brother" anti-terrorist operation which will collect electronic data on all Americans.
Poindexter, whose aide Oliver North became notorious for destroying data rather than retrieving it, was sentenced to two years for lying to Congress, though he never went to jail.
Elliott Abrams, who misled Congress and was pardoned by George Bush snr, is now Assistant Secretary of State and Otto Reich, who spread covert pro-Contra propaganda, has been appointed to the same job.
Intriguingly Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia was also a player in that murky operation. In 1985 he pledged $1 a month to help pay for the arms for the Iran-Contra deal. Such favours can't be forgotten lightly.
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President Bush is not a moron and that's official in Canada. "No, no, he's a friend of mine. He's not a moron at all," said Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien. after his chief spokeswoman, Françoise Ducros, was overheard saying "What a moron!" about Bush at the recent NATO summit in Prague. Ms Ducros has since lost her job in the interest of Canadian-US relations.