'I think we have a very unhappy colleague-on-leave tonight.'

( This is the second of a two-part feature about a group of distinguished senior faculty members-most former presidential advisors-who went to Washington, D. C., May 8, to lobby against the war. When last seen. Our Heroes were crossing Lafayette Park toward the White House for a meeting with their once-and-future Harvard colleague-and special assistant to the President for National Security Affairs-Henry Kissinger. )

FRANCIS BATOR leaned back in his Littauer Center office a few days after the excursion to Washington. "You might ask me," he suggested. "Why not get an appointment with the President?" I obliged.

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. But now my fear is that Nixon may believe that Eisenhower ended the Korean war by making a nuclear threat. It's the fear of the process, rather than of the discrete decision, that forces myself and these others to break these two rules."

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 that we regard this latest act [the invasion of Cambodia] as a disastrously bad foreign policy decision even on its own terms. "

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's 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. Bator said it was especially painful for him since he had held part of the same pertfolio Kissinger now handles, back in 1965 through 1967. 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 him 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 Khrushchev 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?"

According to one of the group, Richard Neustadt (expert on the Presidency) then added, "What this is going to signal to American senior military officers-and the Saigon government-is that, if you put enough pressure on Nixon by emphasizing that American boys are dying, you can get the President to do very discontinuous things. And this makes his whole promise of withdrawal open to question. It's not that we doubt his intention; it's just that we're unsure of the pressure available to field commanders."

"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, professor 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 President 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.

"Bator muttered something about the interaction of means and ends, and how he doubted whether with even the best of intentions Nixon and Kissinger could control the process Johnson and Bundy couldn't. Schelling ["Wisely, I think," Bator said later] told him to be quiet and let Henry go on. But there wasn't much else to say.

"So afterwards we all got up and shook hands, with a sense of sadness. It was painful for us, but it wasn't a personal thing. It was an impersonal visit-to try to save the country. I think Henry fully understood the gravity of what we were talking about."

Back in their headquarters-a room in the Hay-Adams Hotel across Lafayette Park from the White House-the professors discussed their confrontation lunch with Kissinger.

Holton said, "It was not exactly what I would call a love-feast. He said that he was moved by our visit, that he felt that it's all a tragic situation. But he refused to speak on the record, and we refused to go off, so we had an hour-and-a-half of presenting views."

Bloch said, "Kissinger told us When you come back a year from now you will find your concerns are unwarranted. "Holton: "But he doesn't understand that the end-justifies-the-means philosophy is exactly the problem, and what is antagonizing the large part of the population. Kissinger just did not realize that we'd crossed the threshhold. He said our concerns would be brought to attention upstairs."

Westheimer: "He said the invasion of Cambodia will not affect the withdrawal of troops from Southeast Asia, that Nixon's withdrawal schedules will eventually be met. Someday that statement will be true like the stopped clock which is true twice a day."

Schelling said, 'We had a very painful hour and a half with Henry, persuading him we were all horrified not just about the Cambodia decision, but what it implied about the way the President makes up his mind. It was a small gain to be had at enormous political risk. He refused to reply on-the-record, therefore he had our sentiments heaped upon him, sat in pained silence, and just listened."

"He did just right with his response, actually," Bator commented. "He could have done two other things that would have scared me more: He could have said things on-the-record that he shouldn't have said, or he could have given us a canned war briefing, which would have demeaned whatever relation we have with him. If he'd tried to dissociate himself with the policy. I would have walked out. But he behaver with great grace and dignity and courage under intense emotional pressure from his peer group."

Seymour Martin Lipset, professor of Government and Social Relations, said, "I think we have a very unhappy colleague-on-leave tonight."

Schelling added, "I hope so." Then, as with a flushing of toilets and a straightening of ties the professors swirled out of the room to catch cabs for the Pentagon and a meeting with Undersecretary of State David Packard, he turned back into the room and perspired, "You know, this is hard work."

ONE OF THE purposes of the Harvard professors' trip to Washington was to get publicity for the anti-war campaigning then going on. But the kind of publicity they got was not what they expected. The first person to pick up the story (besides the CRIMSON, which had it a day and a half earlier) was Mary McGrory of the Washington Star. McGrory wrote Friday that the professors were "descending" on the White House "with blood in their eyes" to tell Henry Kissinger that "if he doesn't quit soon-or reverse policy-Harvard will never have him back again." The same story was reprinted in McGrory's syndicated column, and appeared in Saturday's Boston Globe. Last week's Time magazine improvised further on the same theme. Time had Kissinger replying to this threat, "quietly" (if somewhat disingenuously): "I want you to understand that I hear you."

McGrory called Neustadt at the Hay-Adams Thursday night with this interpretation already uppermost in her mind. Neustadt told her that the group was talking to Kissinger purely as a surrogate for the President, and that his relation to Harvard would not enter the discussion at all. Unsure that he had communicated this to her, he had Bator call her back again with the same story. Then Yarmolinsky called her too, for good measure. After this final phone call, Yarmolinsky told the group, "Mary's message is that no one else needs to call her."

"But she printed the story exactly the way she wanted to anyhow," Bator said.

The story was picked up by the Montreal Star, and following his return from Washington Bator received an incensed phone call at his home from a professor at McGill University. "He asked if we had lost our wits, and if we had no respect for academic freedom," Bator said. Then the Washington editor of the (London) Sunday Time, a friend of Bator and Neustadt, called Bator at 11:45 Monday night to say he had heard that at a lunch Sunday at the home of Katherine Graham (publisher of the Washington Post and Newsweek magazine), someone had alleged that the Harvard group had arrived at Kissinger's office Friday with a taperecorder.

"Imagine myself and Dick Neustadt and all the others arriving at the basement of the White House with a tape recorder!" Bator sputtered. "It's grotesque! It's incredible how utterly grotesque paranoid rumors circulate as reality. Reston's column Monday suggested that in the end we protected Henry's confidences. But there were no confidences! The idea that this has to do with Kissinger's relation to Harvard is grotesque on its face."

THE PROFESSORS returned to the Hay-Adams from their meeting with Packard-barely an hour after they'd left-in a highly agitated state. William Capron, associate dean of the Kennedy School and former assistant director of the Budget, complained, "He gave us the straightforward party line-he sounded just like John Foster Dulles. It was nothing like Kissinger in terms of emotional content. We gave it to him very hard and he said to please wait six weeks and we'd see that everything will turn out all right. He said he understood our concern, but asked for our forebearance! In six weeks, he said, we'll be out and it will be a great victory! We were just talking past each other."

Neustadt (author of Presidential Power ): "Mr. Packard heard us out, then responded in a perfectly canned way that we should be patient. His explanation was irrelevant to our concern. It was a matter of our reporting our feelings to him and hearing no attempt at exchange. Perhaps we underestimated the credibility gap. Ghastly. The President's credibility is hopeless. And nobody can call us radicals, either. The purpose of giving our views was precisely that. We're not voicing our concern because of Harvard or the domestic impact. We were offering our professional judgment as former advisors to Presidents that it was a horrendous act of foreign policy.

"We said to Henry, we said to Mr. Packard, that the military-civilian imbalance today is the greatest threat to the Presidency since McCarthy's challenge to Johnson in 1968. I myself don't see anything that can restore military credibility."

Bator said, "From Packard we got a canned speech-a casual pat speech about his administration and Vietnamization and wiping out a few bases. He said it would all please us in just another six weeks. He seemed very aware of our campus origins. We reacted quite strongly."

Konrad Bloch, Higgins Profesor of Biochemistry, said. "It was the straight-forward drivel. It's like leaving the radio on. He coldly misinterpreted what we had to say. It was hard to know how to explain our position, although Schelling put on a great performance with his Monster Speech when Packard was finally through. Later Packard started talking about Stanford-he said it is infiltrated by a hard core that will have to be climinated. He said tension in this country will have to come to a head some day, and it might as well be now."

Walzer commented, "It's one of the most frightening things we head all day."

A bellhop brought Pepsi and Michelob for the overheated professors. Bator had iced coffee. The phone rang. Bator answered it.

"Hello. Averili!" He smiled. "Well hello governor! Yes governor, I'm here. This is Francis." As Bator talked to Harriman, Yarmolinsky dashed to the extension phone in the bathroom to listen. "Yes governor, well Scotty said. . ." When Bator finished, Yarmolinsky started talking on the bathroom extension. Neustadt quickly established possession of the bedroom phone. Alarmed to discover the conversation wasn't over, Bator scurried to the bathroom to listen in when Yarmolinsky was finished. Finally they all said goodbye and hung up. "That was averill," Bator explained. The professors nodded appreciately, put on their coats, and poured back out of the room for their meeting with Undersecretary of State Eliot Richardson, muttering at McGrory in the Star over each other's shoulders.

THE meeting with Richardson was long, but uninspiring. It began at 5:30 and the professors did not return to the Hay-Adams until ten minutes of 8 p. m. All the professors except Yarmolinsky, Lipset and Neustadt were trying to catch a 9 p. m. plane. These three had promised to appear at a meeting of Everett Mendelschn's larger Harvard student-Faculty delegation-the Peace Action Strike-at the Cleveland Park Congregational Church that evening. So the professors washed up, took their messages (Max Frankel of the New York Times for Yarmolinsky; National Educational Television, which wanted Schelling to debate Herb Klein on T. V. about the strategic implications of the invasion), and rushed down to dinner as Bator reserved a cab to take them to the airport. A sign in the elevator warned guests that all the hotel's vital functions would be shut down and guards placed at every door in preparation for the huge anti-war demonstration Saturday. Over double martinis for most and Caesar Salad (the quickest thing on the menu), they summed up the day.

"Richardson was different from Packard because many of us knew him." Bator said. Richardson '43 is former Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts. "But he was different from Kissinger because no one knew him really well, and we didn't regard him as a stand-in for the President."

Schelling said, "I used my lugubrious pitch-words like 'horror' and 'monster.' I think he felt we were overreacting, therefore he felt he could go back and try to convince us that the foreign policy was not wrong, but maybe merely mistaken. It was late in the day; perhaps we did get carried away. But he was his usual urbane, deft, intelligent self-a fine human being. He can disguise his pain."

Capron: "We all share the impression that he seized on the ground rules of not talking about domestic consequences. This was clear. He talked about acties of battle. Packard had talked about the problems of liberals'-as if he were going to end the war to do you a favor."

"I found our meeting with Kissinger deeply moving. It went better than I could have hoped for. It must have impressed him deeply-it did me. Did it make any difference? I don't know." Schelling said.

Bator continued, "In the executive branch we've shot the bolt today. From now on we just have to work on Congress. If these guys get us all out of Vietnam in 90 days, we'll have the biggest crow dinner-and we'll all vote for Richard Nixon in 1972." Nervous laughter all around.

Bater flew out the door with a cheery "Goodbye, Gentlemen." Others followed, including Schelling, who instructed Neustadt to take care of the bill, saying they would straighten out the finances Monday. Yarmolinsky left for the church.

Neustadt and Lipset relaxed briefly over strawberries and cream.

"You know," Neustadt said, "one of the most remarkable developments of going public like this-this is the first time in years that I've come to Washington and stayed at the Hay-Adams and had to pay the bill out of my own pocket."

He continued, "Eliot Richardson told us this afternoon, 'I'm still a rational man.' I wanted to say, 'But so was McGeorge Bundy.'

"Many of us will now have to decide whether we will resign from all our consulting positions with the government. It's sort of silly. I have some on which I haven't been consulted for two years. But it's hard after a thing like today to keep operating in the executive branch. Doris Kearns [assistant professor of Government, who taught Neustadt's course on the Presidency this year], who's been down here with Everett Mendelsohn's group, resigned today from the White House Fellows Commission, despite the fact that final selections are this weekend and she had considered her appointment a great honor. People whose advise was being asked on a number of issues have now cut themselves off by announcing that they're going to the Hill to lobby. But there's so much disaffection within government that us academics resigning will be no big deal. That's why we put so much emphasis today on those of us who were ex-officials of government. We were trying to distinguish ourselves-today at least-from those who are 'merely' professors."

Lipset said, "Packard today dismissed us as 'professors' and 'liberals' -same thing." He shrugged.

THEY asked me to call the CRIMSON to find out what was happening in Cambridge. I returned to report that a group of 500 had left the stadium meeting and had trashed the CFIA, and was now heading for the Square.

Lipset, a CFIA associate, sighed. "I don't leave anything important there anymore. I just hope Schelling remembered to take his stuff out before he came down here yesterday."

They paid their bill, and caught a cab to the Cleveland Park Congregational Church, to continue the fight against the war in the best way they know how.