UNRAVELING the modern Arab mind on its own territory proved a difficult task for the trio of veteran TIME correspondents who reported the bulk of material for this week's cover story on Libyan Strongman Muammar Gaddafi and the complex politics of the Arab world. Fortunately, all three are experienced in the lore and ways of the Middle East.

Beirut Bureau Chief Spencer Davidson, who coordinated the coverage, worked for four years in New York as an associate editor in the World section, where he wrote six cover stories on the region. Davidson adroitly pinned down a vital but elusive Arab source--Ahmed Zaki Yamani, Saudi Arabia's powerful Minister of Oil and Mineral Wealth. Learning that Yamani was to fly from Beirut to Vienna, he bought a ticket for the same flight. "An airplane is a great place for an interview," Davidson says. "You have a captive client."

To describe the Egyptian role, we called on Correspondent Wilton Wynn of our Rome bureau, who began a two-year stint as a journalism instructor at Cairo's American University in 1945; later served as an Associated Press reporter in Beirut and Cairo and wrote a book called Nasser of Egypt: The Search for Dignity, which was published in 1959. Wynn joined TIME in 1962 and has intermittently covered the Middle East ever since. "I find in this younger generation," he says, "a new type of Ara--more sophisticated in political views, but still suffering from the same frustrations and dreaming the same dreams as their uncles and fathers of 28 years before."

The job of reporting on Libya fell to Nairobi Bureau Chief Lee Griggs, who as head of the Beirut bureau from 1964-1968 and again in 1969-1970 had already visited the country several times. On this trip, despite the abrupt and unexplained cancellation of his visa, he was able to spend time in Tripoli and Benghazi before flying to Beirut with a fresh impression of Gaddafi's domain. "It's never been easy covering the Arab Middle East," Griggs says. "But by and large the Arabs are a friendly and charming people who don't blame you personally for U.S. backing of Israel."

Associate Editor William Smith, a World writer for the past three years who has visited most of the Arab countries, drew on his own impressions and, assisted by Reporter-Researchers Ursula Nadasdy and Sara Medina, wrote the story.

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