As Henry Kissinger’s friends gather Thursday for a memorial service for him, I will be summoning my own memories — including the day in 1970 when, as I trudged to the White House through blustery weather, I felt like a dead man walking. For several months, Kissinger, my boss, and President Nixon had been concerned with leaks of sensitive information pouring out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, chaired by Senator Fulbright. 

White House concern with the leaks had become a paranoia that would lead to setting up of the “plumbers” under John Ehrlichman. The week before I had participated in a discussion dinner sponsored by the Foreign Service Association. In my innocence I believed the pledge from my hosts that everything said would be off the record. So I had lamented the hemorrhage of classified documents provided to the Foreign Relations Committee.

Next morning a headline in the Post bruited, “Kissinger Aide Accuses Fulbright of Leaking.” The senator was furious, though the State Department loved it. Kissinger and his staff had become highly unpopular with the foreign service establishment, and they were delighted to see one of us step on our crank. When Nixon was told about it, Bryce Harlow told me, he exclaimed, “Good for Lehman, give him a raise.”

Knowing that Kissinger was determined to try to keep good relations with Fulbright, I was sure that I was about to be defenestrated. In the event, though, General Haig, then Kissinger’s deputy, called me over to his office to tell me that Secretary of State Rogers had made the recommendation to the president. “And what was Henry’s response?” I asked. Haig said, “Henry told State to stick it in their ear.”

That flap had barely settled down when I really fell in the soup. I lived in a town house in Georgetown with two good friends. We cohosted a party that was black-tie sans pantalons, continuing an old tradition from my Cambridge days. There was a person at the door checking the men’s trousers, and everyone wore outrageous shorts. It was all quite proper, with no lewd or saucy behavior, but someone stole the guest list.

It turned out to include some prominent names, and the thief gave it to the Washington Post’s gossip columnist, Maxine Cheshire. Her headline read “Black Tie, but No Pants.” The column was syndicated all over the world, and the White House was deluged with outraged letters decrying the moral decay and carnality. William Loeb denounced me in a boxed editorial on the front page of the famed Manchester, New Hampshire, Union Leader.

On Saturday morning I got the inevitable call from Haig. “Henry wants to see you.” Once again I marched across West Executive Avenue, certain it would be my last meeting with Kissinger. Haig waved me into Kissinger’s office with a stony face. Without cracking a smile, he said, “Lehman, you are going to have to make a hard choice.” Long pause. “You are going to have to either keep your mouth shut or your pants on. You don’t have to do both.”

Kissinger had carefully picked his staff of about 30 policy professionals, about half from government and half from academia and business. The overall cast was basically centrist to conservative, but the president’s men considered us a fifth column of unreliable professionals and we were therefore all kicked out of the prestigious White House mess and kept from the rest of the White House staff. That suited Henry just fine. 

Kissinger was a tough taskmaster and had a habit of losing his temper. Such outbursts drove some to leave the staff. Many are the times Kissinger called me an idiot and worse as he threw my work-product to the floor. The storm was always over quickly, though, and often was followed by a bit of sly humor. “Do you really think that’s what we should do?” he’d say, ordering his underling to get on with it.

When once he was admonished for the harsh language he used when he blew his top, Kissinger replied, “Since English is my second language, I didn’t know that ‘maniac’ and ‘fool’ were not terms of endearment.” When Henry later moved to the State Department in 1974, he complained to Haig that his office was too big. At the White House when he would burst out of his office in a rage there were always people to scream at. 

Once in 1975, I happened to be in Henry’s office when his close friend Nelson Rockefeller, newly sworn in as Vice-president, stopped by. I got up to leave but Rockefeller bid me to stay. He told Henry that he was looking for a national security staffer, and “since all the world says that you have the brightest staff ever assembled I would really like to get your advice.” Henry replied, “Many people say that, but it’s not really true.”

“Look,” he added, “at Lehman here — an Irishman with a Jewish name. If it were the other way round, I would really have something.”

After Kissinger moved to State, he sent me to Vienna as a delegate to the mutual balanced force reduction negotiations between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Warsaw Pact. Then he nominated me to be deputy director of the Arms Control Agency, which oversaw all negotiations with the Soviets. The job required Senate confirmation and plunged me into yet another harrowing struggle, as the Democrats controlled the Senate.

I was well known there as a hawk and Kissinger loyalist. The Foreign Relations Committee had jurisdiction over my confirmation. After a three-month trial by ordeal of four long hearings, the vote count was going against me. So I went to see a freshman, Senator Biden. We were the same age and Mr. Biden promised that he would not only vote for me but lobby some of his colleagues. “John,” he said, “I pledge my support.”

Mr. Biden added, “we need to get rid of all these geezers and bring more guys our age into the government. I promise you my vote.” Four days later was the first preliminary vote. When it came to Mr. Biden, I learned a lesson in Washington I will never forget. The senator stood up next to a window, threw open the sash and proclaimed, “Mr. Chairman, I would rather jump out this window than vote for John Lehman.”  

At the time, Kissinger was in the middle of his history-changing shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East, which ultimately resulted in the peace agreements between Israel, Egypt, and Syria. He had nevertheless been following my own little ordeal. From Cairo he sent to Chairman Sparkman a blast of support for my nomination. That turned the tide. I was confirmed eight to seven, and learned a lesson about Kissinger.

It is what I will be thinking about as the memorial service gathers this week. In my eight years working for Henry Kissinger, I disagreed with him on a few things, notably cruise missiles and SALT negotiations, but never anything of fundamental policy and national security. What stands out for me is his true character and moral compass and his loyalty up and loyalty down, and they will always be an inspiration to me.