So let's not overstep the boundaries of this meeting of ours," said Nikita Khrushchev. "I have my arguments, you have your views. You don't agree with me, but all the more so I don't agree with you. If you start throwing hedgehogs under me, I will throw a couple of porcupines under you." At that point last week, with the Chairman of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics replying to a particularly pointed question put to him by an American capitalist, TIME found itself making as well as reporting news.

The encounter with Chairman Khrushchev that became the subject of headlines around the world was part of a unique project that began last summer, when we decided to sponsor a news tour of Europe for a select group of leading U.S. businessmen. The aim: to give them a firsthand impression of journalists at work and bring them into direct contact with important sources and places of news.

The 21 men who finally signed up to take the trip, as concerned citizens traveling at their own expense, made a most impressive group from among the busiest corporation executives in the world. Together they employ some 875,000 people and account for annual sales of more than $16 billion of products ranging from outer-space missiles to soft drinks. The group, traveling with a TIME contingent headed by Time Inc. President James A. Linen, included:

J. L. Atwood, president, North American Aviation, Inc.

J. Paul Austin, president, Coca-Cola Co.

Eugene N. Beesley, president, Eli Lilly & Co.

James H. Binger, president, Honeywell Regulator Co.

Edgar M. Bronfman, president, Joseph E. Seagram & Sons

Chauncey W. Cook, president, General Foods Corp.

Morgan J. Cramer, president, P. Lorillard Co.

Russell R. De Young, president, Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.

G. Keith Funston, president, New York Stock Exchange

John D. Harper, president, Aluminum Co. of America

James P. Lewis, president, J. P. Lewis Co.

Norman B. Obbard, executive vice president, U.S. Steel Corp.

Robert S. Oelman, president, National Cash Register Co.

Rudolph A. Peterson, president, Bank of America

Henry R. Roberts, president, Connecticut General Life Insurance Co.

Colonel Willard F. Rockwell, chair man, Rockwell-Standard Corp. and Rockwell Manufacturing Co.

Dr. John E. Sawyer, president, Williams College

Leo H. Schoenhofen Jr., president, Container Corp. of America

Walter H. Wheeler Jr., chairman, Pitney-Bowes, Inc.

Albert L. Williams, president, International Business Machines

Kendrick R. Wilson Jr., chairman, Avco Corp.

First stop on the trip was Washington, where President John F. Kennedy gave the group a 35-minute background briefing on Europe as seen from the standpoint of U.S. interest, and Secretary of State Dean Rusk, over lunch, conducted a candid tour of the diplomatic horizons the tour would cross. By the next night the businessmen-turned-journalists were in London, where at a late-hour briefing four of TIME'S key European correspondents--Robert T. Elson (London), Curtis Prendergast (Paris), James Bell (Bonn) and Israel Shenker (Moscow)--filled them in on the people they would see and the situations in the countries they would visit.

London provided an opportunity to observe at firsthand the political leaders of Great Britain arguing bitterly against each other in preparation for a national election. On the Conservative side the American business leaders talked with Foreign Secretary Rab Butler, Board of Trade President Edward Heath and Chancellor of the Exchequer Reginald Maudling; in Labor's camp they interviewed Party Leader Harold Wilson and Deputy George Brown.

When they headed for Moscow everyone was uncertain about the reception they might receive there--the Soviets, typically, had agreed to no advance appointments. But at the Moscow Airport there were instant signs that the Kremlin was deeply interested in the visit. The businessmen were told that Chairman Khrushchev had agreed to a meeting the next day, and the airport was crowded with greeters, waitresses serving Russian brandy and champagne, and aides ready to whisk the group through the airport bureaucracy with unheard-of courtesy and efficiency. And it was immediately clear the Russians thought that since these were businessmen traveling, they must have come to do business. Trade--that was the subject on the Soviet minds. Russian reporters asked: "Have they brought any actual agreements with them?"

Late into the night before the interview with Khrushchev, the group held intensive discussions on what subjects they hoped to cover. Khrushchev greeted them at the door of the Oval Hall in the Kremlin, shook hands with each, and after much picture taking, cracked: "You think the Communists are in control here, but you see the photographers are in control." He did not wait long to tell the party that "capitalism is a dirty word" in Russia, but he spoke with a smiling, bantering kind of informality.

At the end of that three-hour session, which ranged over a vast area of issues and propaganda (see THE WORLD), Khrushchev was told that we proposed to report fully on the meeting and assumed that he had no objection. That was quite an assumption, considering the usual Soviet practice, but he replied: "That is your right. You are certainly free to use it." A TIME working contingent spent the next seven hours preparing a verbatim transcript, for we had decided that this unique interview should be shared directly with the press of the world. We released the complete text to the entire Western press corps and, to the considerable surprise of old Moscow press hands, there was no effort by the Soviet authorities to edit or expurgate it. It was this text that was the basis of front-page stories around the world.

In two other later encounters with the TIME group Khrushchev maintained the same jocularly tough mood. When the conversation at a reception turned to food, he indicated that he was wor ried about a common executive problem. "I weighed myself today," he confided, "and I weighed 96 kilos (212 Ibs.). But I used to weigh 97, so things are not so bad." Characteristically, he could not resist a little needling. "We want you to be fat," he said, "because that's unhealthy. We shall become thin, and that's good for us, anyway."

When TIME President Jim Linen asked him when he might let our product circulate freely in Russia, Khrushchev replied in a vein that did not offer us much hope. "Well, it will have to depend on the quality of the product," he said. "The most important thing for a producer is to adapt his product to the taste of the consumer."

From Moscow, the TIME group flew on to Germany, bound also for Belgium and France, for visits with more key news sources as well as a look at such important news sites as the Berlin Wall. There was no doubt that the whole trip would be useful, fascinating and instructive. When the group landed in West Berlin from Moscow, Major General James H. Polk, American Military Commandant, greeted them with: "Welcome to the free world." The travelers burst into heartfelt applause.

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