Turning up in the right place at the right time and sounding out those who make the news is a fundamental part of journalism's mandate. For 16 days last month TIME met that mandate in singular fashion as it escorted 32 top U.S. businessmen and leaders on a Newstour of Eastern Europe and the Persian Gulf. From a lunch in Warsaw with General Wojciech Jaruzelski, just after he had been named the head of Poland's Communist Party, to an hour-long question-and-answer session with Egypt's new President Hosni Mubarak, the Newstour was where the breaking news was happening.

The 17,000-mile nine-nation journey, the seventh such tour sponsored by TIME in the past 18 years, was designed to give U.S. executives a journalist's view of the personalities and issues shaping events in two critical areas of the world. Making the trip, accompanied by 16 TIME editors, correspondents and company officers, were Robert Anderson, Chairman, Rockwell International Corp.; John R. Beckett, Chairman, Transamerica Corp.; James F. Bere, Chairman, Borg-Warner Corp.; Theodore F Brophy, Chairman, General Telephone & Electronics Corp.; Philip Caldwell, Chairman, Ford Motor Co.; Albert V. Casey, Chairman, American Airlines Inc.; Richard P. Cooley, Chairman, Wells Fargo & Co.; Donald W. Davis, Chairman, Stanley Works; Edwin D. Dodd, Chairman, Owens-Illinois Inc.; Myron DuBain, Chairman, Fireman's Fund Insurance Companies; Alexander Heard, Chancellor, Vanderbilt University; Henry J. Heinz II, Chairman, H.J. Heinz Co.; Matina S. Horner, President, Radcliffe College; T. Lawrence Jones, President, American Insurance Association; Vernon E. Jordan Jr., President, National Urban League Inc.; Robert E. Kirby, Chairman, Westinghouse Electric Corp.; William E. LaMothe, Chairman, Kellogg Co.; Sol M. Linowitz, Senior Partner, Coudert Bros.; William S. Litwin, President, Kero-Sun Inc.; Stewart G. Long, Vice President, Trans World Airlines Inc.; Henry Luce III, President, Henry Luce Foundation Inc.; Robert H. Malott, Chairman, EMC Corp.; Gerald C. Meyers, Chairman, American Motors Corp.; John J. Nevin, Chairman, Firestone Tire & Rubber Co.; Frank Pace Jr., President, International Executive Service Corps; Donald S. Perkins, Chairman, Jewel Companies Inc.; Paul C. Sheeline, Chairman, Inter-Continental Hotels Corp.; Forrest N. Shumway, Chairman, Signal Companies Inc.; John G. Smale, President, Procter & Gamble Co.; Thomas J. Watson Jr., Chairman emeritus, International Business Machines Corp.; George Weissman, Chairman, Philip Morris Inc.; and L. Stanton Williams, Chairman, PPG Industries Inc.

The tour's first stop, after briefings in Washington, was in France, where Lech Walesa, the head of Poland's Solidarity trade union, came to Charles de Gaulle Airport for breakfast with the group. He was questioned closely about Solidarity's program for economic and political renewal. "If things were managed logically," Walesa said, "there would be a quick recovery, because labor understands what it is all about."

That morning the group flew to Gdansk, Poland, where Solidarity was born only a year ago. They learned that General Jaruzelski, the country's Premier and Defense Minister, had replaced Stanislaw Kania as party leader. The Newstour participants flew to the Polish capital the next day, where Jaruzelski admitted that "errors have been committed."

The group next spent two days in Moscow, the only stop on the trip where the official reception was distinctly and deliberately chilly--in keeping, explained the Soviet hosts, with the current state of U.S.-Soviet relations. In meetings with Soviet officials, including Georgi Arbatov, Director of the Institute for the Study of the U.S.A. and Canada, and First Vice Premier Ivan Arkhipov, the Americans were lectured repeatedly that the U.S. was solely to blame for the superpower confrontation.

In Yugoslavia and Hungary, the Newstour had a chance to study two Communist nations that have pointed their economies away from the inefficient Soviet model. The group questioned managers and employees at a petrochemical plant about the Yugoslav system of "workers self-management." In Budapest, officials described their successful effort to introduce competitive market forces into a socialist economy.

Departing Eastern Europe for the Persian Gulf, the group visited Kuwait, where they were warned by Abdul Latif al Hamad, Minister of Finance and Development, that the U.S. should not be "turning its back" on Third World economic development. At the next stop, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the Newstour was ushered into the sumptuous palace of Prince Abdullah ibn Abdul Aziz on the day the Senate in Washington was voting on the sale of AWACS planes to the Saudis. At that moment, Abdullah was the ranking member of the royal family, since his half-brother King Khalid was ill and Crown Prince Fahd was out of the country. Abdullah's unexpected and outspoken message was that he actually hoped the AWACS sale would be disapproved, so that the American people would realize "U.S. policy is being made from Tel Aviv." The group subsequently traveled by Royal Saudi Air Force C-130 transport 230 miles north to Jubail to see a new $80 billion industrial city rising from the desert sand--the largest civil-engineering project in history.

At the next stop, in the pro-Western sultanate of Oman, the Newstour took an even more unorthodox plane ride. An Omani air force passenger jet gave the visitors a closeup look at the Strait of Hormuz, the vulnerable choke point of the tanker lanes to and from the Persian Gulf. The jet skimmed along a few hundred feet above the water as it made two passes at a Soviet patrol boat so that passengers could get a close look.

The final evening, the Newstour was received by the ruler of Oman, Sultan Qaboos bin Said, at a garden party on the grounds of his lavish palace. The Sultan and his ministers circulated among the guests, discussing regional security and the Middle East peace process with candor--and sympathy for the U.S. position.

After leaving Oman at dawn, the homeward-bound group stopped in Cairo for its meeting with President Mubarak, who had succeeded the assassinated Anwar Sadat only three weeks before. Mubarak stressed his determination to rebuild relations with his estranged Arab brothers, and appealed for more U.S. investment in Egypt's troubled economy.

The Newstour changed some long-held preconceptions. Firestone's Nevin found himself surprised at "the diversity of the four Communist countries. I had thought of them as much more monolithic." Inter-Continental Hotels' Sheeline said, "We're always told that Arabs are all brothers, with one point of view. But they have totally different points of view on many issues." The participants came away deeply concerned about the difficulties the U.S. faces. John Beckett of Transamerica deplored the lack of a "decent export policy." Former Diplomat Sol Linowitz recommended that the U.S. "get its priorities about the Soviet Union reorganized." Summed up IBM's Watson: "It's pretty hard to sell democracy. While Soviet ideas are very hollow, they can be sold very quickly to people who have nothing more than camels and goats."

Bound into the centerfold of this week's issue is Waldenbooks' 32-page holiday gift catalogue, the largest single-product ad ever to appear in a national consumer magazine. The four-color catalogue features 364 hard-cover books, paperbacks and calendars. TIME's only larger insert was a corporate ad for Gulf & Western in 1979, a 64-page annual report.

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