By ELIZABETH VALK LONG President

Journalism can be a complicated business, and also very simple. We have long thought that one of the best ways to report what a major newsmaker thinks is one of the most obvious: just ask. With few exceptions (Hitler was otherwise engaged), we've done interviews with almost every Man or Woman of the Year in the past several decades. Some, of course, are easier than others. Our correspondent was expelled from Iran only days after his Man of the Year interview with the Ayatullah Khomeini (1979) was published, and we were able to print an interview with Solidarity leader Lech Walesa (1981) when Poland was under martial law thanks only to a correspondent's ingenuity: he sewed the transcript into the lining of his overcoat and smuggled it out. Except in such obviously dicey situations, we've usually found getting Man of the Year interviews, even under deadline pressure, to be fairly simple. This year we tested that finding. For 1993's Men of the Year issue, we needed to get four interviews -- all four of them with world leaders; all four of them at peak, frantically busy moments in their lives; and all four of them in about a week. On Dec. 7, chief of correspondents Joelle Attinger and managing editor Jim Gaines met over dinner in Oslo, where Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk were to receive their Nobel Peace Prizes three days later, and considered the problem. Mandela's people told Johannesburg bureau chief Scott MacLeod that they might be able to give TIME an hour or so early the next morning, but De Klerk could set aside only 20 minutes in Oslo. Not enough. O.K., then, he would have 90 minutes in Rome the night before seeing the Pope on Monday. Done. Getting Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin was more complicated. They were supposed to meet in Cairo on Dec. 12 or 13, but their schedule (not to mention their peace agreement) was in flux, especially given the violence erupting in the occupied territories. Both sides had consented in theory to give TIME a joint interview in Cairo, which would have been a historic scoop (and convenient under the circumstances), but in case of a hitch there had to be a plan for seeing them separately, at P.L.O. headquarters in Tunis and in Jerusalem. How in the world would all TIME's party -- including the correspondents who cover these leaders, as well as photographer Gregory Heisler, his two assistants and their 350 lbs. of equipment -- ever make it to the right place on time on short notice? The answer was expensive but simple: a chartered jet. Attinger found an eight-seater in London, and she had it flown to Oslo. Next morning Mandela made good on the interview, starting at 7:30, and by 10 a.m. Wednesday there was one down, three to go. Where to next? Cairo seemed like the right staging point. There Cairo bureau chief Dean Fischer advised that Arafat would see TIME in Tunis between Friday and Sunday, unless he didn't; with the chairman, you never knew. But even if not, the joint interview in Cairo was still possible. From Jerusalem bureau chief Lisa Beyer came word that if the Cairo interview didn't happen, Rabin would see us Monday afternoon, the 13th, in Jerusalem. When TIME's pilot, captain Tony Armstrong, asked where he was flying next, he was advised to watch CNN; if the meeting in Cairo and the peace agreement were definitely on, the team might stay put for the joint interview. Otherwise, it looked like Tunisia. After a night of no clear news, there was no point in waiting, and the captain filed a flight plan for Tunis. There was a small problem: no response from the tower there. Armstrong said he wouldn't advise taking off without clearance; he didn't want to risk being mistaken for a military jet in the airspace of the P.L.O.'s host country. That sounded reasonable. Also stuck in the airport, by coincidence, was Dr. Ahmed Tibi, one of Arafat's backstage emissaries to Rabin. He was frantic because he had missed his connection to Tunis, and was sure that Arafat would be furious when he was late for their meeting. Beyer spotted him pacing in the lobby and offered him a ride. ''He rolled his eyes,'' she recalls with a laugh, ''as if he couldn't believe a journalist had anything to offer him.'' When he saw she had a private jet at her disposal, his attitude changed abruptly, and TIME had an important source aboard -- captive all the way to Tunis. Once there, all the team could do was sit and wait for the call from Arafat. It came at midnight Friday; the interview started after 1 a.m. Saturday the 11th and, with time out for photography, went on for more than two hours. During the interview Arafat changed signals on the joint interview: Absolutely not, he said; there would be no time. Apparently the implementation of the peace agreement was in trouble. With two interviews down, it was wheels up for Rome -- this time with cases of photography equipment jamming the plane's only lavatory. The team met with De Klerk in the Grand Hotel Sunday evening -- and then, three down, made a late-night takeoff for Jerusalem, to which Rabin had returned after his meeting in Cairo with Arafat (sure enough, no agreement). At 4:30 Monday afternoon, as furious settlers loudly demonstrated against the peace agreement outside his office -- and six days after that dinner in Oslo -- Rabin gave one of the most relaxed interviews of his life. Sometimes it just comes easy.