Jim Palmer/AP
- Richard Nixon once set Henry Kissinger up with prominent socialite Zsa Zsa Gabor.
- As Kissinger went in for a kiss, Nixon interrupted him, according to the socialite's autobiography.
- "Henry, come back immediately. I need you," Nixon said, according to the book.
Richard Nixon once set Henry Kissinger up with prominent Hungarian-American socialite Zsa Zsa Gabor.
But right when Kissinger — Nixon's national security advisor at the time — was about to kiss her, he was interrupted by the president, Gabor wrote in her 1991 autobiography, "One Lifetime Is Not Enough."
The tidbit from Gabor's autobiography was highlighted in a Washington Post story about Kissinger's dating life, published after his death this week.
Gabor, who died in 2016, wrote that she and Kissinger hit it off while sitting next to each other at a White House state dinner in 1970 and that Kissinger drove her home after.
Kissinger then asked Gabor if he could come inside for a drink and was "showing signs of making an amorous approach to me," the book said.
He was about to lean in for a kiss when his beeper went off, the book said.
It was Nixon, Gabor wrote. "Henry, come back immediately," the president said, according to the book. "I need you."
Kissinger hustled to drop Gabor off and booked it out of her driveway.
He was in such a rush that his car hit some of the electronic gates at Gabor's house, she wrote in the book.
"Oh my god," Kissinger said, according to the book. "This is President Nixon's car!"
Kissinger died Wednesday at his home in Connecticut. He was 100 years old.
He was one of the US's most controversial statesmen and shaped foreign policy for decades.
Kissinger has also been sharply criticized for his policies in Southeast Asia.
"How do you justify receiving the Nobel Peace Prize when you were the architect of, with Richard Nixon, of killing four million southeast Asians during the Vietnam War?" one audience member asked Kissinger during a 2012 appearance at Harvard University. "Do you deny these war crimes? Basically, how do you sleep with yourself at night?"
"Just study who did what, not people who live off proving their country is evil, and their leaders are criminal," Kissinger replied.