Finally, at Bundy's prodding. Kissinger was no longer used as a consultant. Embarrassed by the rebuff, he did not make it widely known that he had been dropped from Bundy's staff. According to one observer. Kissinger's falling out with the White House became common knowledge only after federal custodians had been seen carrying his security-classified safe out of the Center for International Affairs.

Kissinger learned well from the encounter; no longer would he be a pushy young man with advice, and never again would he conduct his infighting with a campaign on the outside. Subsequently "saved" as a White House consultant by two close friends-Carl Kaysen and Arthur Schlesinger-he became a State Department advisor on Vietnam in 1965 and latter supervised secret talks with the North Vietnamese which ultimately led to the negotiations of 1968. "It was a good performance," one collegue said of his Vietnam consultations. "His ego was under control."

WITH all his activity in the outside world, Professor Kissinger was very much a man unto himself. He saw very little of students, and much of his attachment to teaching seems to have sprung from the simple joy of intellectual exchange, the ego-feeding process of articulate, witty repartee. He taught one lecture course for undergraduates, contributed to a graduate seminar on Western Europe, and conducted another seminar on defense policy, full of government employees who were studying at Harvard and studded with guest speakers from the highest ranks of government. One Faculty member later called Kissinger's seminar "essentially a show. In a way, it was impressive just to see who he would bring." Secretary McNamara and the Joint Chiefs, for example, were among the visitors to the seminar. And the magic name of Harvard was their drawing card.

Contrary to popular legend, however, it was undergraduates rather than graduate students to whom Kissinger was most attracted. And it was a striking fondness, borne of the fact that undergraduates were intelligent and creative young people whose minds and interests were as yet unformed, not the graspy, greedy things who needed his association and friendship for the sake of their careers. Kissinger spent more time with undergraduates and, for a period, lunched with a group of them regularly. But by the late '60's, his non-Cambridge interests so dominated him that he saw little of academic life.

At the last stretch of his teaching career. Kissinger became Nelson Rockefeller's chief foreign policy advisor during the 1968 RepublicanPresidential campaign. During the campaign, Kissinger had made a number of highly caustic remarks about Richard Nixon; in Miami, he went so far as to declare that he doubted Nixon's fitness to be President. It must have later been a shock to many people that Nixon would have appointed this man to a top foreign policy post; Kissinger had been a Rockefeller man from way back, and he had publicly scorned the President-elect. And yet even as he continued to question Nixon's ability, he let it be known privately that he was willing to consider an offer from the winning camp.

BUT WHY had Kissinger placed such high hopes in Governor Rockefeller? Not because he was necessarily more "liberal," but because he was more intimately familiar with the nature of American interests-and more willing to overlook popular opinion in order to pursue them. For Rockefeller was one of that elitist milieu which was steadfast in its convictions and highly contemptuous of public will whenever it intruded on those convictions.

Kissinger's fear of Nixon stemmed from the belief that he was so deeply involved in the popular political process that he might give in to the transitory whims of public opinion rather than follow a course of action which was manifestly correct. Rockefeller was an interventionist in principle, a far more dedicated cold warrior and alliance-builder than Nixon, with his earthbound, contingent claims to popularity, could ever have been. And it was only after receiving assurances from Nixon that he would occupy a pivotol post in the new administration-that he would have a truly significant measure of control over policy decisions-that he consented to move from one salon to another, from the Rockefeller-funded drawing rooms in Cambridge to Nixon's Washington.