He answered, "Well, my strong view is that in the Oval Office one is the guest of the President and he conducts the conversation. And the discourtesy involved in trying to override his management of the conversation is too much when dealing with the President of the United States. So you see for our purposes Henry Kissinger wasn't second-best. He was the absolute best we could have done-he was the closest we could get to the President without having to feel like guests. But even in our meeting with Kissinger there was nothing harsh, but rather the tone was muted and painful. You see we broke two long-standing rules: First, one doesn't announce such a meeting in the papers ahead of time. (I feel this especially strongly given that I too was special assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. I won't dissociate myself with Johnson's Vietnam policy even though I wasn't on that particular area. It wasn't even my part of the world-it was Rostow's. But I knew what was happening, so I won't dissociate myself.) And second, the fact that we were thinking seriously about Congressional restraints. I had always thought of Congress as at best a nuisance, sometimes an adversary, often the enemy...."

Thomas Schelling, professor of Economics and organizer of the group, said at dinner that night in Washington, "Not that all our other meetings weren't helpful, but the crucial purpose in coming here was really to communicate something important to Henry Kissinger. I would guess that Henry's boss will hear of this meeting with a group that has affected him so much. We have all known Henry and-to the extent that this is possible-loved him. That's the one that mattered and that went as well as it could have gone."

According to the participants, the meeting with Kissinger was one of intense emotions painfully suppressed. "We made it clear to Henry from the beginning," Schelling said, "that we weren't here lunching with him as old friends, but were talking to him solely in his capacity to communicate to the President."

As reported by one member of the group, Schelling then turned to Dean May, who had flown down especially for the Kissinger confrontation and would have to return immediately afterwards, for a comment. May is a professor of History at Harvard and has worked as a military historian for the Defense Department. "Ernest told Henry, "You're tearing the country apart domestically.' He said this would have long-term consequences for foreign policy, as tomorrow's foreign policy is based on today domestic situation.

"Then Bator and Westheimer [Frank H. Westheimer, Morris Loeb Professor of Chemistry] chimed in with an explanation of how difficult it was for us to have Henry read in the newspapers beforchand of our coming. But despite that, they explained, we felt that the only way we could shock him into realizing how we felt was not to just give them marginal advice. We wanted to shock him into realizing that this latest decision was appallingly bad foreign policy in the short run.

"At this point Henry got called out to see the President. He asked to have someone explain to him when he returned what short-term mistake the Nixon policy made. We decided to let Tom do it, as he was the one who organized us and he was Henry's closest academic colleague in the group. So when Henry returned after a few minutes, Schelling gave him the Monster Speech."

SCHELLING'S Monster Speech was one he used frequently during that day. It's a metaphorical analysis similar to those he uses frequently in his undergraduate course on game theory and decision-making, Ec 135. The speech goes something like this: "It's one of those problems where you look out the window, and you see a monster. And you turn to the guy standing next to you at the very same window, and say, 'Look, there's a monster.' He then looks out the window-and doesn't see a monster at all. How do you explain to him that there really is a monster?

"As we see it, there are two possibilities: Either one, the President didn't understand when he went into Cambodia that he was invading another country; or two, he did understand. We just don't know which one is scarier. And he seems to have done this without consultation with the Secretary of Defense or the Secretary of State, or with leaders of the Senate and House. We are deeply worried about the scale of the operation, as compared with the process of decision."

Bator reportedly continued, "We are full of anxiety about what more things Nixon could do. And if we're scared, then the people in London, Paris, Moscow and Bonn that we care about must really be concerned. It's a scary situation-that's the foreign policy consequence. The hawks in Moscow can now say that the Americans occasionally go nuts. What does that mean for the SALT talks?" Bator gave two explanations of Nixon's behavior. The first he called the "Kennedy-Vienna syndrome." When President Kennedy returned from his Vienna talks with Krushchev in 1961, Bator said he was afraid he had given Khrushchev the impression he was soft. ("Some say this is the explanation of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962," Bator now says, "but I doubt it.)" Bator said, "Maybe Nixon is also afraid of appearing weak."

But the more likely explanation of the sudden invasion of Cambodia, Bator said, is the enormous leverage the military field commander has over the President. "The field commander can tell the President that he will be carrying the blood of American soldiers on his conscience unless he backs him. And if pressure from the field commanders can create an invasion of Cambodia in 10 days-well then, what next?"

"Each of us spoke to Henry at least once," the member reported. "Michael Walzer [professor of Government], told him that as an old dove, he was impressed by the intensity of the concern of us old government boys. Gerry Holton [professor of Physics] talked generally about the lack of restraint in Nixon's policies. Adam [Yarmolinsky, profesor of Law] questioned the credibility in Saigon of the withdrawal strategy.

"When we were all through, Henry asked if he could go off the record. We said no. Schelling said one reason we had brought non-ex-government types like Walzer was to keep us honest. Henry replied that the nature of his job as an advisor to the Preisdent was such that he never spoke on the record."

KISSINGER did tell his colleagues three things.

"First, he told us that he understood what we were saying, and the gravity of our concern. Second, he said that if he could go off the record he could explain the President's action to our satisfaction. And third, he said that since we wouldn't let him go off the record, all he could do was assure us that the President had not lost sight of his original objective or gone off his timetable for withdrawal.

"There was not much else any of us could say.