As Woodward and Bernstein, describes it in their book, “On the night before he announced his resignation as president, Richard Nixon retired alone to the Lincoln Sitting Room upstairs in the White House. Then he summoned Henry Kissinger, his secretary of state.”

In a masterfully journalistic style, Woodward and Bernstein set the scene at the White House. Quoting Kissinger, they described the president, sitting in his chair, as Kissinger had often seen him. The two men sat together and reminisced about events, travels, and shared decisions.

“The president was drinking. He said he was resigning,” Woodward and Bernstein wrote. “It would be better for everyone. They talked quietly — history, the resignation decision, foreign affairs. Then Nixon said he wasn’t sure he would be able to resign. Could he be the first president to quit office? Kissinger responded by listing the president’s contributions, especially in diplomacy.

“Will history treat me more kindly than my contemporaries?” Nixon asked, tears flooding to his eyes. Certainly, definitively, Kissinger said, when this will be over, the president would be remembered for the peace he had achieved.

“The president broke down and sobbed.”

According to Woodward and Bernstein, Kissinger kept talking, trying to turn the conversation back to all the good things, all the accomplishment. Nixon wouldn’t hear of it. He was hysterical.

“Henry,” he said. “You are not a very orthodox Jew, and I am not an orthodox Quaker, but we need to pray.”

“Nixon got down on his knees. Kissinger felt he had no alternative but to kneel, too. The president prayed out laud, asking for help, rest, peace and love. How could such a thing tear apart a president and a country?” he cried out.

This was Kissinger’s most vivid memory about the end of the Nixon presidency.

Significantly, Kissinger’s inauguration as chancellor of the College of William & Mary in 2001 also produced a crisis, questioning his historic role in international politics.

Christopher Hitchens, a controversial journalist who authored an article for the Harper’s magazine titled, “The Case Against Henry Kissinger,” was invited by a group of William & Mary students, to be the star-attraction at a “teach-in,” prior to Kissinger’s inauguration.

The student’s group opposed the selection of Kissinger as the next chancellor of the college.

Hitchens was accusing Kissinger of “war crimes” for his involvement in “conspiracies to commit murder, kidnapping, and torturing.” Hitchens, lived up to his reputation to be inflammatory and arousing passion. The student group opposing Kissinger’s selection as chancellor, counted on that Hitchens’s “lecture” would inspire the student body to demonstrate next day, against Kissinger’s inauguration.

Indeed, Hitchens, was holding his audience in the palm of his hands. Then he volunteered to answer questions from the audience. The questions from students didn’t ask for verification of his accusations against Kissinger.

William Walker, at that time, head of the public relations department at William & Mary, was sitting next to me. He said, considering that you are a Holocaust survivor, are you aware of the fact that Hitchens, a British citizen, is a Holocaust denier?

Indeed, I was aware of Hitchens’s proclamation, “The Holocaust never happened.” Edward Jay Epstein, the author of the book, “Dossier: The Secret History of Armand Hammer,” was present when Hitchens, at a New York dinner party, made his views known.

I raised my hand and asked to be heard. I asked Hitchens, how could the students trust his words about his accusation against Kissinger, when he is a Holocaust denier?

Hitchens, retorted, “How can I be a Holocaust denier, when my own mother is of Jewish origins?” I told him, “That doesn’t prove anything. The first anti-Jewish laws in Hungary, were introduced by Prime Minister Bela Imredy, who lost his job when it was revealed that he had Jewish background.”

After this verbal exchange, the atmosphere in the lecture hall had changed. Students, started to ask pointed questions. The planned, mass demonstration for next day, against the inauguration of Kissinger, as chancellor, fizzled out.

When I met Kissinger the following day at the Reves Center for International Studies, where he visited with students, he thanked me.

(Frank Shatz is a former resident of Lake Placid and a current resident of Williamsburg, Virginia. He is the author of “Reports from a Distant Place,” a compilation of his columns. This column is used with permission by the Virginia Gazette.)