In a plush conference room at the International Motel at J.F.K. Airport last March, and again in a second floor White House meeting room in late June, high ranking members of the Johnson Administration debated some of their "moderate" student critics.

The "J.F.K. meeting," as the conference at the Airport is known by those who were close to it, was perhaps one of the most significant intellectual confrontations known to have taken place between the Administration and its "dove" critics. Because of its previous highly secret nature, participants were later reluctant to talk about it, but one said a few weeks ago, preferring to remain anonymous, "the President's stand was defeated in an honest intellectual debate."

The following account of these two meetings, until now closely-guarded secrets, is drawn from conversations with some of the student participants.

But although the confrontations were the most dramatic points in the ten-month organized life of the student moderates, they were not the group's only contact with the Administration.

The student leaders' group was organized at the 1966 NSA Congress at the University of Illinois as an ad hoc committee to draft a letter to President Johnson stating "moderate" students objections to the War.

The First Letter

The committee met several times during the fall to draft the letter. Their letter appeared on the front page of the nation's newspapers on December 30.

It noted "contradictions" in official pronouncements, expressed doubts that American interests in Vietnam justified the country's growing commitment there, and repeated that the U.S. might soon find its "most loyal and courageous young people choosing to go to jail rather than to bear their country's arms."

From Time to the Boston Globe the moderate students received the publicity they wanted. One of Johnson's aides summoned one of the students advisors, and questioned him about the students plans. The White House, according to official sources, was worried that the group might become the catalyst for a more broad-based opposition.

Secretary of State Dean Rusk invited a group of 40 to an informal talk with him at the State Department in late January. The group who meet with Rusk were hardly veteran "doves"; one commented as he went in, "The Secretary has only to say a few things, and I'll be persuaded."

Stunned

Gregory B. Craig '67, the moderator of the Rusk meeting and one of the leaders of the moderate students' wrote afterward, "the group came out of the meeting quite literally stunned. There had been virtually no communication; the Secretary did not seem to understand our questions, and his responses seemed hopelessly rigid. In 90 minutes of discussion, the Secretary had succeeded in disaffecting even the most moderate members of our group."

This was the prelude to the meeting at the Airport.

Billed as an informal discussion on Vietnam and the draft, the first verbal duel was arranged by Yale President Kingman Brewster Jr. through his contacts with Yale alumni like Burke Marshall, the former assistant attorney general for civil rights; fellow university presidents; and student contacts.

The 22 met in a cavernous, thickly carpeted room around a U-shaped table configuration on the unusually warm afternoon of March 31, 1967.