Category THE RACE

Although science adviser Wiesner attended some of the meetings Johnson called, at no time during this review was the President’s Science Advisory Committee (PSAC) as a body consulted about the wisdom of what was being recommended. Wiesner, reflecting the conclusions of the PSAC report that had been presented to President Eisenhower in December 1960, viewed the decision to accelerate the space program with a lunar landing mission as a central undertaking as “a political, not a technical issue. It was not an issue of scientific versus non-scientific issues; it was a use of technological means for political ends. It was on these considerations that I did not involve PSAC.” Wiesner did tell the president that PSAC “would never accept this kind of expenditure on scientific grounds.” Kennedy accepted this and in turn promised Wiesner that he would never justify the lunar mission in terms of its scientific payoffs.21

Somewhat surprisingly, there was another key individual who was some­what skeptical of the push for a major acceleration of the space program, with landing on the Moon before the Soviet Union as its central feature—NASA administrator James Webb. Webb described himself as “a relatively cautious person. I think when you decide you’re going to do something and put the prestige of the United States government behind it, you’d better be doggone well be able to do it.”22 Webb was reluctant to commit himself to a lunar landing effort until he was convinced that it was technologically sound, that NASA had the capability to execute it, and that it “did not go beyond what I thought Kennedy was willing to approve.” Webb wrote Wiesner on May 2, noting that the budget figures that had accompanied NASA’s April 22 presentation to the vice president had been put together “in a great hurry” and did not represent the results “of a careful study of the technological bottlenecks or difficulties.” Webb asked Wiesner to join him in insuring that the program to be recommended to the president “has real value and validity and from which solid additions to knowledge can be made, even if every case of the specific so-called ‘spectacular’ flights or events are done after they have been accomplished by the Russians.”23 By acting to emphasize his con­cern with the underlying validity of the accelerated program, Webb hoped both to maintain his good working relationship with Wiesner and, through Wiesner, the scientific community, and to influence the program recom­mendations so that if necessary he could later defend the program against charges that it was aimed only at prestige and was fundamentally distorted and unsound. Webb, in essence, “wanted to contain and shape the decision to reflect favorably on NASA, the nation, and himself.”24

The burden of White House oversight of NASA and its plans for implement­ing the lunar landing program and the other activities that were part of the accelerated space effort thus fell on various members of the White House staff and those career bureaucrats supporting them.9 Although most of those individuals have been mentioned previously, it may be useful to depict the structure of White House decision-making for space before discussing the specific actions taken during the June 1961 to December 1962 period.

The recommendation that President Kennedy approved in accelerating the U. S. space program suggested that the prestige associated with space achievements was “part of the battle along the fluid front of the Cold War.” Kennedy defined the lunar landing program primarily as a national security effort, and that meant that his special assistant for national security affairs, McGeorge Bundy, played an increasingly important role in space policy discussions between 1961 and 1963. Bundy’s deputy, Harvard economist Carl Kaysen, and National Security Council career staff member Charles E. Johnson played key roles in supporting Bundy on space issues; Kaysen also had a direct personal relationship with the president, particularly on arms control issues, and on occasion reported directly to Kennedy rather than through Bundy. On technical issues, Kennedy relied on his special assis­tant for science and technology, Jerome Wiesner, and various panels of the President’s Science Advisory Committee (PSAC). From the start of 1962, Wiesner’s principal staff assistant on space matters was Nicholas Golovin, a physicist who had left NASA at the end of 1961 on less than harmonious terms. Another of Wiesner’s staffers, Eugene Skolnikoff, dealt with the inter­national aspects of the space effort. In August 1961 Wiesner was designated the White House official (instead of Welsh, the Space Council executive secretary) “to review and consult with relevant agencies of the Federal gov­ernment on organizational planning for the expanded space activities of the Federal government.”10 As planning for the accelerated space program moved forward, the president became increasingly concerned with its expo­nentially increasing costs. He leaned heavily on his director of BOB, David Bell, for careful assessments of the budgetary implications of the fast-paced space program. Bell’s deputy, Elmer Staats, and especially career BOB senior staffer Willis Shapley were deeply involved in space matters. Shapley was cen­tral to framing policy and budget issues as he drafted various policy papers for presidential review and decision.

Kennedy’s top adviser on most domestic policy matters, in addition to his duties as Kennedy’s speechwriter, was special counsel Theodore C. Sorensen. Kennedy in April 1961 had asked Sorensen to organize the review of the space program that was carried out by Vice President Johnson. Sorensen remained involved in space policy decisions as the president’s alter ego on most policy matters, but he seldom got directly involved with NASA over­sight as the Moon program evolved. On politically sensitive matters, such as the allocation of NASA contracts and the location of NASA’s facilities, Kennedy’s special assistant Kenneth O’Donnell became involved. Although he was the president’s closest confidant on most policy and political matters, Kennedy’s brother Robert seemingly had only limited involvement on space issues, although it is impossible to know how frequently space matters were discussed between the two brothers. It thus fell to Bundy, Wiesner, and Bell and their staff to be the primary points of contact between the White House and NASA as the U. S. space effort took its first steps toward a landing on the Moon.

Bilateral U. S.-U. S.S. R. cooperation was thus the preferred alternative to cooperating through the United Nations, and active discussion of this pos­sibility had begun soon after the president’s January 30 speech. Philip Farley, special assistant to the secretary of state for atomic energy and outer space, told Secretary Rusk on February 9 that he had been meeting with Wiesner and acting NASA administrator Dryden and had found “a good deal of uncertainty and diversity of expert opinion as to what makes technical and practical sense in the three areas mentioned in the President’s State of the Union message. . . as well as other possible areas of space cooperation.” To address this situation, the White House set up a “Task Force on International Cooperation in Space” in early February. The group was composed of both non-governmental people, particularly members of and consultants to the President’s Science Advisory Committee (PSAC), and officials from NASA, the Department of State, and the White House science office. The task force was charged both with identifying “the full range of possibilities for coop­erative efforts” and describing “the optimum shape of possible international cooperation in outer space. . . on the basis of pooling or even merging of efforts in a world-wide venture. . . Such a description of optimum interna­tional cooperation in space activities would be an important contribution to re-examination of U. S. objectives and programs in outer space.”11 The group was chaired by Bruno Rossi, a professor of physics at MIT, who had been a member of the Wiesner transition panel on outer space.

The task force carried out its examination between February 17 and mid-March.12 It came up with twenty-two specific proposals for U. S.-Soviet space cooperation, ranging from projects involving only data exchanges or coordination of separate projects, to intimate cooperation in ambitious proj­ects for the human exploration of the Moon and the robotic exploration of the planets, particularly Mars. At the first meeting on February 17, one of the members of the task force, Richard Porter of General Electric, submit­ted a memorandum suggesting a U. S.-Soviet “Rendezvous on the Moon” project to establish an international base on the surface of the Moon, along the lines of scientific bases in the Antarctic. Porter suggested that “if agree­ment could be reached on this major project between the United States and the USSR, all other bilateral and multilateral cooperative projects involving the USSR would become feasible and operative”; the group found this pro­posal intriguing. The thought was that if the United States and the Soviet Union agreed to cooperate in lunar exploration, they would then invite other nations to join in.13

As the Rossi task force was completing its examination, senior govern­ment officials were also discussing U. S.-Soviet space cooperation. On March 8, Rusk met with new NASA administrator Webb and deputy administra­tor Dryden. Rusk told the NASA officials that there was “keen interest in the possibility of a productive approach to the Soviet Union for outer space cooperation.” Webb’s reaction was that, given the current uncertainty regarding the Kennedy administration’s approach to space, a “decision on approaches to the Soviets was secondary to deciding what the United States wanted to do in space.” Webb spoke of the opportunities for foreign rela­tions inherent in the space program, and told Rusk that in his three weeks since becoming NASA administrator he had concluded that there was a need for acceleration of the NASA program and increased funding “by a substantial amount.” Rusk in reply wondered “what the purpose was of activities in space on this major scale. Should not the objectives be clearly identified and undertaken not competitively but on behalf of the human race as a whole.”14 State Department leadership remained throughout the Apollo program a source of skepticism of the value of a unilateral large-scale space effort.

The Rossi task force submitted its final report to Wiesner on March 20. The report noted that “a cooperative enterprise in this new and bold ven­ture would stimulate constructive thinking on the part of people all over the world and help reduce world tensions,” and that “it is vitally important for the avoidance of future conflicts to establish early cooperation in such fields where unchecked competition is likely to produce a dangerous situa­tion” such as “meteorological activities that might eventually lead to weather control, and large scale exploration of the moon and planets.” The report suggested that the United States should “give preference to projects that avoid the difficulties connected with a high degree of [Soviet] involvement or else to projects that are sufficiently bold and dramatic to sweep aside these difficulties.” Wiesner told Rossi that the task force had done a “superb” job in providing “the essential scientific judgment that is prerequisite for any political action that may follow.”15

The task force report was next reviewed and revised by several of the government agencies involved in the space program. An April 4 draft report of this second review set out the political rationale for expanded U. S.-Soviet space cooperation: “ The objectives are to confirm concretely the U. S. pref­erence for a cooperative rather than competitive approach to space explora­tion, to contribute to reduction of Cold War tensions by demonstrating the possibility of cooperative enterprise between the U. S. and the USSR in a field of major public concern, and to achieve the substantive advantages of cooperation that in major projects would impose more of a strain on eco­nomic and manpower resources if carried out unilaterally.”16

Interestingly, this paragraph was missing in an April 13 draft of the report, perhaps reflecting a shift in White House thinking toward a more competitive stance in space in the wake of Yuri Gagarin’s April 12 orbital flight. Three categories of cooperative proposals were suggested in that draft: (1) use of existing or easily attainable ground facilities for the exchange of information and services; (2) coordination of independently launched satel­lite experiments; and (3) “coordination or cooperation in ambitious projects for the manned exploration of the moon and the unmanned exploration of the planets.” With regard to the third category, the document suggested “as a first step in non-limited cooperative effort, the U. S. and the USSR would each undertake to place a small party (about 3) of men on the moon.” Such an undertaking would have the “greatest potential for matching the President’s theme that ‘Both nations would help themselves as well as other nations by removing these endeavors from the bitter and wasteful competi­tion of the Cold War.’ ”17

An early start on U. S.-Soviet space cooperation was not in the cards, how­ever. Even as the task force began its work, President Kennedy was receiv­ing initial indications that the Soviet Union was unlikely to be receptive to the kind of initiatives he had in mind. On February 13, he congratulated Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev on the launching of a Soviet scientific probe to Venus. In his reply, Khrushchev took note of Kennedy’s coopera­tive overtures in his inaugural address and State of the Union speech, but indicated that the creation of “favorable conditions” for space cooperation would require “settlement of the problem of disarmament.”18 This repeated the Soviet policy line of several years standing, linking cooperation in vari­ous areas, including space, to a U. S.-Soviet disarmament agreement, and did not auger well for the Kennedy approach of isolating areas of common U. S.- Soviet interest for cooperation even if tensions remained in the two coun­tries’ security relationship. Even so, as he met with new NASA administrator James Webb on March 22, the president stressed to Webb “his desire that we try to work out as many ideas as possible for utilization in the proposed conference with the Russians [a hoped-for Kennedy-Khrushchev summit meeting] for international cooperation. He said he hoped we would give this very high level attention.”19

A combination of factors—the increasing costs of Apollo, emerging Congressional opposition to those rapid increases, growing critiques of Apollo from leaders of the scientific and liberal communities, the uncer­tainty of whether the Soviet Union was in fact racing the United States to the Moon, and suggestions, coming primarily from the Republican opposi­tion, that there needed to be additional emphasis on the national security uses of space—led to President Kennedy’s asking several times during 1963 whether the original justifications for keeping Project Apollo on its planned schedule—and indeed, for the project itself—were still valid. In addition, the successful outcome of the Cuban missile crisis, the easing of tensions over Berlin, the signing of the Limited Test Ban Treaty, and Kennedy’s over­all desire to reach out to the Soviet Union with a new “strategy of peace” may have suggested to Kennedy that demonstrating U. S. technological and managerial superiority vis-a-vis the Soviet Union through a spectacular space achievement had lost some of its urgency.

President Kennedy’s rationale regarding the reasons why he had decided to accelerate the U. S. space program matured in the course of 1963. In November 1962 he had disagreed with James Webb, who had argued that the goal of the acceleration was preeminence in all areas of space activity; in response, Kennedy had insisted that “everything we do ought really to be tied to getting on the Moon ahead of the Russians,” and that he was “not that interested” in being the leader in other areas of space activity. Webb won his point; from mid-1963 on, Kennedy justified the fast-paced space pro­gram primarily in terms of its overall contribution to national power rather than as a race to the Moon. For example, in his July 17 press conference following reports that the Soviet Union did not in fact have a lunar land­ing program, Kennedy said: “The point of the matter always has been not only of our excitement or interest in being on the moon, but the capacity to dominate space, which would be demonstrated by a moon flight, I believe is essential to the United States as a leading free world power. That is why I

am interested in it and that is why I think we should continue.” Again in his October 31 press conference, Kennedy had said: “In my opinion the space program we have is essential to the security of the United States, because as I have said many times before it is not a question of going to the moon. It is a question of having the competence to master this environment.”1

It is important to realize that Kennedy’s decision to go to the Moon was not made once and for all time in April and May 1961. By mid-1961, Kennedy began questioning the costs associated with Apollo, and several times in 1962 and again, more intensely, in 1963 there were in-depth reviews of Apollo’s cost and schedule, asking each time whether the benefits of going ahead as planned justified the very high costs involved. In 1963, Kennedy saw an opportunity to cooperate with the Soviet Union in going to the Moon as a means of reducing U. S. costs while achieving other important strategic objectives; if the Soviet Union had responded positively, it certainly would have changed the character of Project Apollo.

There was thus not a single decision to aim at a lunar landing, but rather a series of decisions, each time with alternative paths being considered and each time with the resulting choice being to proceed with the program to land Americans on the Moon “before this decade is out,” either as a uni­lateral undertaking or cooperatively. Only at the very end of the Kennedy administration was serious consideration given to slipping the end of the decade schedule, and even then the decision made was to reject such slippage and to stay with the planned schedule.

Kennedy’s consistently reiterated commitment to Apollo can be best understood in terms of how he carried out his presidency overall. Theodore Sorensen, as he prepared Columbia University lectures which were later pub­lished as his book Decision-Making in the White House, asked national secu­rity adviser McGeorge Bundy for suggestions on what to say. Bundy replied that “the modes of Presidential decision are enormously varied,” that “deci­sions are made through the ceaseless process by which, if an administration is lively, recommendations and proposals are ground forward,” and that in a sense “the entire presidential existence is. . . a process of decision.” Viewing JFK’s commitment to Apollo in these terms is particularly useful. Bundy suggested that “the president’s larger policies: an open door to Moscow, an open door to all underdog Americans, an open door to intelligence and hope, honor to bravery, equal sense of past and future, gallantry to beauty, and pride in politics” were “colors of a permanent palette” and were reflected “in the small as well as the large decisions, drawn from in a hundred ways.”9 Policies in the space arena were indeed a reflection of Kennedy’s broader objectives as president. As Sorensen suggests, reflecting the multiple facets of Kennedy’s space strategy: [4]

addition, our relations with the Soviets, following the Cuban missile crisis and the test ban treaty, were much improved—so the President felt that, without harming any of those three goals, we now were in a position to ask the Soviets to join us and make it efficient and economical for both countries.

President Kennedy himself explained the subtlety of his space strategy as he wrote Congressman Albert Thomas in the aftermath of his September 20, 1963, proposal at the United Nations that the journey to the Moon become a cooperative undertaking: “This great national effort and this steadily stated readiness to cooperate with others are not in conflict. They are mutually supporting elements of a single policy.” Kennedy added: “If cooperation is possible, we mean to cooperate, and we shall do so from a position made strong and solid by our national effort in space. If coop­eration is not possible—and as realists we must plan for this contingency too—then the same strong national effort will serve all free men’s inter­est in space, and protect us also against possible hazards to our national security.”

One analyst of the Kennedy presidency correctly comments that “there would have been no race to the moon without the Cold War; the space pro­gram became as much a part of that conflict as Cuba, Berlin, and Laos.”10 Whatever President Kennedy, Vice President Johnson, and NASA admin­istrator Webb said about the purposes of Project Apollo in their public rhetoric, from the time that Kennedy asked Johnson to identify “a space program that promises dramatic results in which we could win,” it was well understood within the government that the primary objective of Apollo was winning a Cold War-inspired competition to be first to the Moon. To those more focused on the totality of the U. S. space program than was John Kennedy, it was also clear from 1961 on that a program aimed at sending Americans to the Moon could serve as a focal point for the develop­ment of space capabilities of strategic value for the United States. By 1963, President Kennedy had seemingly also embraced that view. The November 1963 “Special Space Report” recommending proceeding with Apollo on its then-planned schedule clearly stated that “principal purposes” of the lunar landing program were (1) “demonstrating an important space achievement ahead of the USSR”; (2) “serving as a focus for technological developments necessary for other space objectives and having potential significance for national defense”; and (3) “acquiring useful scientific and other data to the extent feasible.” These were the reasons John F. Kennedy decided in 1961 to go to the Moon, and they remained the objectives of Apollo at the time of his death.

This stability in the actual reasons for the lunar race served as the politi­cal foundation for White House decisions to allocate the massive resources required for Apollo’s success, even after Kennedy’s assassination. It is perhaps his willingness to stay the course in the face of increasing criticisms of the path in space that he had chosen that most indicates the quality and strength of John F. Kennedy’s original decision to go to the Moon.

Th, s book has had an extremely long gestation period. Understanding its evolution is important to an appreciation of its character and intent.

My involvement with President John F. Kennedy’s role in the race to the Moon began as I prepared my doctoral dissertation in political science at New York University in the late 1960s, even as I began my academic career in Washington, DC, at The Catholic University of America in September 1966. I actually signed a contract to publish the dissertation before I defended it. As I moved from Catholic to The George Washington University in 1970, the MIT Press brought out a hardcover edition of the dissertation as The Decision to Go to the Moon: Project Apollo and the National Interest. The University of Chicago Press published a paperback edition in 1976. (As a side note, working on the study of the Apollo decision provided an opportunity to be present at the July 16, 1969, launch of the Apollo 11 mission, and also the Apollo 14 and Apollo 17 launches. Those experiences alone were worth the effort that went into research and writing the dissertation and subse­quent book.)

My detailed study of the decision-making process by which President Kennedy became convinced that it was in the national interest for the United States to enter, with the intent of winning, the space race with the Soviet Union has been described as “classic” and “powerful and seminal” by lead­ing space historian Roger Launius.1 Such an assessment is, of course, very gratifying. But as the years passed, I became increasingly dissatisfied with the completeness of the study’s narrative elements. The basic story stood the test of time, but because my research for the book was carried out even before Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin reached the Moon, only a very lim­ited base of primary documents on which to base the study was available. The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library had not yet opened, and Lyndon B. Johnson was still president. That meant the narrative lacked the fullness made possible only by using the documentary record; also, many oral histo­ries discussing the Kennedy presidency were not yet available. The flip side of this situation was that the events and considerations that led to the deci­sion to go to the Moon were still fresh in the minds of the key participants in that decision, and I was fortunate enough to be able to interview most of them. Of those involved with the decision to go to the Moon, only Robert McNamara and President Johnson declined interview requests; of course, by that time both John and Robert Kennedy had been assassinated. Early on,

NASA chief historian Gene Emme and through him NASA administrator James Webb became convinced that I was trying to prepare an unbiased account of the decision process, and their support greatly facilitated my research. Thus the 1970 book was based primarily on my interviews with participants in the decision process and the secondary literature, although I was able to gain access to a few key documents. That meant that the story of JFK’s lunar landing decision was not complete.

I also came to realize that I had totally missed an important theme in President Kennedy’s thinking in the January—May 1961 period. His first instinct on coming to the White House had been to seek cooperation in space with the Soviet Union, not competition. Even after he announced his decision to send Americans to the Moon on May 25, 1961, Kennedy had suggested to Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, as they met face-to-face for the only time ten days later in Vienna, that the United States and the Soviet Union should go to the Moon together. Khrushchev responded negatively, and at least for the time being, the cooperative alternative was foreclosed. There was no mention of this alternative path in the 1970 book.

I also came to realize that I had told only one part of the story of John F. Kennedy and the lunar landing program. Achieving large-scale objectives through government action has two requirements. One is a well-crafted decision on what objective to pursue. I believe that JFK’s lunar landing decision was indeed an example of choosing a course of action only after careful thought and examination of possible alternatives. But turning a decision into action, and carrying that action through to completion, is also needed for success. While there have been a number of studies of Project Apollo that examined its technical and management elements, surprisingly I found that there had been no focused attention paid to the actions and decisions of President Kennedy and his White House associates from May 1961 through November 1963 that generated the political will needed to mobilize the financial and human resources which made the lunar landing program possible.

This recognition led me in 1998 to propose to the NASA Headquarters History Office a comprehensive study of John F. Kennedy and the U. S. space program. Then NASA administrator Dan Goldin and his associate admin­istrator for policy and plans Lori Garver (now NASA deputy administra­tor) gave top-level support to my request, and NASA’s chief historian Roger Launius approved a modest contract to help me get started. Over the next several years, I carried out a first round of gathering primary documents and other material from the Kennedy Library and the NASA Historical Reference Collection at NASA’s headquarters, and drafted a few parts of the book. But my duties as professor and director of the Space Policy Institute of George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs, plus a seemingly unquenchable appetite for international travel, took me away from sustained writing.

I never lost my interest in finishing the study, however. As I prepared to leave GW’s active teaching faculty in June 2008, once again it was Roger

Launius, by now senior curator in the Space History Department at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, who suggested that I apply for the museum’s most senior fellowship, the Charles A. Lindbergh Chair in Aerospace History. I was awarded that position, and from September 2008 through August 2009, I was in residence at the museum, finishing another round of research in the Kennedy Library and the NASA archives and get­ting most of the writing of a first draft completed. As I finished a chapter draft, both Mike Neufeld, chair of the museum’s space history department and Wernher von Braun biographer, and Roger Launius provided very useful comments. I returned to GW’s Space Policy Institute as professor emeritus in September 2009, and finished my research and drafting of the manuscript there.

The current study is thus much more than a warmed-over version of my 1970 book. It adds a great deal of new material to the account of the initial decision-making process in that study, providing a fuller understanding of the factors at play as Kennedy made his choice. In addition, the MIT Press graciously provided its permission to incorporate as much of the contents of the earlier book into the new manuscript as I wished, and I have drawn upon many text passages and used almost all of the earlier interview material in crafting this narrative. In doing so, I have tried not lose any of the quali­ties that have made The Decision to Go to the Moon the standard account of that decision. The earlier book ended with President Kennedy’s speech to a joint session of Congress on May 25, 1961, in which he announced: “We should go to the Moon.” This new study carries the story until the tragic day in Dallas when Kennedy’s presidency was so abruptly terminated. Even on November 22, 1963, John Kennedy was intending to speak in positive terms about the future of the U. S. space program.

I have attempted to maintain throughout this study a focus on the deci­sions and actions of President John F. Kennedy, his inner circle of advisers who made decisions and took actions on behalf of the president, the career executive office staff who supported the Kennedy presidency, and the agency heads with whom the president interacted. Kennedy before he was inaugu­rated assigned a lead role in space policy to his vice president-elect, Lyndon B. Johnson, and I have also characterized Johnson’s role with respect to space decisions during the Kennedy administration. What I have not done, except when it was necessary to understand deliberations at the White House level, is give much attention to the technical and management aspects of Project Apollo itself. There is a very large literature on those topics.2

This study is not a complete account of John F. Kennedy and the American space program. Providing such an account was my original aspiration, but the realities of time and page count led to a decision to focus only on Kennedy and the race to the Moon, since that is the singular space achievement with which Kennedy will forever be associated. John Kennedy personally had only limited involvement in the steps taken during his administration to bring communication satellites into early use. But he was deeply involved in mak­ing sure that there were no international restrictions placed on the ability

of the United States to operate photoreconnaissance satellites, in limiting the spread of military conflict into the new environment of outer space, and in banning tests of nuclear weapons beyond the atmosphere. In his annual address to the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1961 and 1962, he laid out the principles that became the basis of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. Kennedy also became personally involved with all seven Mercury astro­nauts and particularly friendly with the first American to orbit the Earth, John Glenn. The astronauts represented a personality type quite attractive to Kennedy and about which he had written about in his book Profiles in Courage—individuals who had responded successfully to challenging cir­cumstances. So there is more to be written about Kennedy and space than is contained in this study.

While this narrative draws on what is available in the documentary record and has the benefit of interviews and oral histories that took place close to the events being discussed, it can never be really complete. One cannot know which of the many memoranda addressed to President Kennedy he actually read, and of those he read, to what issues and views he gave most attention. Kennedy enjoyed discussing policy issues with his advisers and associates; few of those conversations can be re-created. (A fascinating exception is the tape recording of a November 21, 1962, cabinet room meeting during which Kennedy and James Webb debated Apollo’s priority. What Kennedy said in this private meeting, including the phrase “I’m not that interested in space,” is rather different than his public rhetoric.) John Kennedy’s brother Robert was his closest confidant, but there is a very limited record of their discus­sions about the U. S. space program. So inevitably this study is a reconstruc­tion of history based on extensive, but still partial, evidence.

Given the more than a decade over which I have been working on this book, there are many people to thank, and I am bound to have forgotten to mention some who deserve recognition. It is obvious that I owe multiple expressions of gratitude to Roger Launius, and it is only fitting that this book is part of the Palgrave Studies in the History of Science and Technology series of which Roger is co-editor. At NASA, in addition to the original sup­port provided by Lori Garver and Dan Goldin, I want to thank archivist Jane Odom and Colin Fries and Liz Suchow of the NASA History Office for their responsiveness in helping me locate key documents and other research mate­rial. The research staff of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library has been supportive during my many visits to the library; Maryrose Grossman was particularly helpful in digging through the photo archives to locate several of the images included in this book. (I must add my frustration in not being able to access a still unreleased audio tape of a meeting between President Kennedy and NASA administrator James Webb on September 18, 1963, during which Kennedy told Webb of his plans to invite the Soviet Union to join the United States in sending people to the Moon as he addressed the United Nations General Assembly two days later.) I had a very productive visit to the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library in March 2010; the staff there was also very helpful.

I, of course, have to express thanks to the Smithsonian Institution for the offer of the Lindbergh Chair; without that year to focus on my writing, I might still be procrastinating. Mike Neufeld and his colleagues in the Department of Space History at the National Air and Space Museum were welcoming; I felt quite comfortable working in their midst.

George Washington students Krystal Brun and Megan Ansdell and MIT student Teasel Muir-Harmony provided occasional but valuable research assistance. My colleague Dwayne Day read the draft manuscript and pro­vided useful comments while also catching my many typos. My successor as director of the Space Policy Institute, Professor Scott Pace, welcomed me back to GW after my year at the museum. I am proud of having created the Space Policy Institute in 1987 and of the accomplishments of the many students who have learned about space policy there, my first students dur­ing my years at Catholic University four decades ago, and the young people from many countries I encounter during my continuing involvement with International Space University; these students, together with what I have written through the years, are my lasting heritage, and it is to them that this book is dedicated.

At Palgrave Macmillan, Chris Chappell has been enthusiastic about this study, and I have appreciated his guidance in getting the manuscript into print. Sarah Whalen and Heather Faulls have been very helpful in shepherd­ing the manuscript through the production process. I also welcomed the very useful comments by several anonymous reviewers of my book proposal.

It goes without saying that I am responsible for any errors in this account and for the interpretations of all the actions and decisions detailed herein.

In 1970, I dedicated The Decision to Go to the Moon to my wife Roslyn. Forty-one years later, she is still my wife and still a constant source of sup­port and encouragement. She deserves in gratitude much more than a book dedication.

During the transition, Ted Sorensen and David Bell, the Harvard economist whom Kennedy had chosen to be his budget director, met several times with BOB deputy director Elmer Staats. Among the many issues discussed, they agreed that the Space Council was not needed and that legislation abolishing it should be reintroduced in the new Congress. As late as December 17, an action to “abolish the National Aeronautics and Space Council” appeared on a “Preliminary Check-List of Organizational Issues” prepared for the transi­tion team by Richard Neustadt.48

However, by mid-December, when Kennedy and Johnson met in Palm Beach to discuss the new administration’s legislative program, Kennedy had decided to assign the vice president-elect lead responsibility within his admin­istration for space issues. To signify this, Kennedy announced on December 20 that the vice president would replace the president as chair of the National Aeronautics and Space Council.49

The precise sequence of events surrounding this announcement remains unclear. On December 17, in preparation for Johnson’s meetings with Kennedy, Kenneth Belieu, who was the staff director of the Senate Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences that Johnson had chaired, sent a memo to Johnson on “Government Organization for Space Issues.” In it, Belieu suggested that Johnson urge Kennedy to “reactivate the Space Council.” But he did not suggest that Johnson ask Kennedy to make him the council’s chair; rather, he said, “While the law would necessarily need to be changed to include the Vice President as a formal member of the Council, the President could invite the Vice President to attend and preside over the Council meetings in his absence, pending a change in the law.” Belieu also told Johnson that “at NASA there has been a continuing lack of leadership and competence” and that “the Air Force can be expected—and apparently already has started—to make a basic power play to grab the entire Space program. This would involve eliminating NASA.”50

The Space Council assignment was a logical one for Johnson. Beginning soon after the launch of Sputnik 1, he had played a prominent role in shaping the Congressional response to the Soviet space achievements. An October 17, 1957, memorandum from one of his top advisers, George Reedy, pointed out to Johnson that the Soviet achievement “could be one of the great divid­ing lines in American and world history, the whole history of humanity” and suggested that it offered the Democrats, and specifically Johnson, an oppor­tunity to present themselves as being more in tune with such a development. Following Reedy’s advice, Johnson chaired the twenty days of hearings on “satellite and missile programs” held by his Preparedness Subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee between November 1957 and January 1958. As Johnson addressed the Senate’s Democratic caucus on January 7, 1958, in an address Reedy characterized as having “compelling power,” he claimed that “control of space means control of the world.”51 As the Senate organized itself to deal with space issues, Johnson named himself chairman of the new Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences, even as he main­tained his position as majority leader.

In a 1969 interview with veteran television journalist Walter Cronkite on the occasion of the launch of the Apollo 11 mission to the Moon, Lyndon Johnson told Cronkite that president-elect Kennedy had asked him whether there was anything “that I thought I could be helpful to the Administration on.” Johnson replied that “I would like to work in the field of space,” and that Kennedy had replied that “a President had all a person could do and the Law provided that the President would be Chairman of the Space Council.” Kennedy told Johnson that if he were “willing to assume that obligation, he would ask the Congress to amend that statue.”52

Two days after the decision to make Lyndon Johnson chair of the Space Council was announced, Belieu wrote a follow-up memorandum on “Space Problems” that focused on the potential Air Force “power grab.” He told Johnson that the NASA-Air Force conflict was “why I have been so firmly convinced that the Space Council needs to be resurrected and reestablished,” since “only someone with your force and vigor and understanding can sepa­rate the men from the boys. With President’s backing and a man you could trust running NASA, and with close liaison and affinity to the Pentagon at the higher civilian levels, the problem can be licked.”53

Even after the announcement of the space role for Johnson, Richard Neustadt on December 23 sent Kennedy a “memo on space problems for you to use with Lyndon Johnson.” Neustadt in a cover letter said that his memo­randum was a response to Kennedy for a suggestion, which seemingly must have come before December 20, “on something you could give him to work on and worry about”; he called the memorandum a “quickie,” one that “was worked up today in collaboration with the Budget staff, and no doubt could be vastly improved. But the main thing was to get you something to use.” The Neustadt memorandum noted that “the ‘space’ program, both civil and mili­tary, raises problems of great difficulty” that were “essentially. . . problems of policy direction.” The memo noted that “an opportunity now exists to revi­talize the National Aeronautics and Space Council under the Chairmanship of the Vice President” in order “to have it operate selectively on the high priority policy issues.”54 Whether the suggestion to make Johnson the Space Council chair came from the Johnson camp or the Kennedy camp is not totally clear. There is, as the preceding paragraphs show, even suggestive evidence that the initiative may have come from Lyndon Johnson himself.

Johnson returned to Palm Beach to meet with Kennedy on December 26, this time accompanied by Oklahoma senator Robert Kerr, who was LBJ’s choice as his successor as chairman of the Senate space committee. To make Robert Kerr the new chairman meant bypassing several senators on the com­mittee more senior than Kerr. Of them, only Senator Clinton Anderson of New Mexico was potentially interested in the chairmanship. Anderson was persuaded not to stand in Kerr’s way and instead to accept the chairmanship of another committee during a phone call from Kerr as he met with Johnson and Kennedy on December 26; Kerr told Anderson on the telephone that the two men wanted Kerr to have the chairmanship, and that he hoped Anderson would agree. Anderson immediately accepted this request.55 Until he became committee chair, Kerr had shown little interest in space; his friendship with Lyndon Johnson and his stature as a leading senator were his prime qualifications for the chairmanship. In Kerr, Johnson knew he had a close and powerful ally who would help him push the new administration to propose a larger space program and who would be sympathetic to the politi­cal (and pork-barrel) uses of that larger program.

After Kennedy’s meeting with Johnson and Kerr, The New York Times reported that the three had agreed “on plans to expand the United States’ exploration of space… reflecting Mr. Kennedy’s serious concern over the Soviet lead in this field and his oft-repeated campaign argument that United States prestige had slipped abroad as a result.”56 Whether this was, in fact, what the men had agreed upon was not immediately clear. It was not until four months later, in April 1961, that the Space Council was activated and Lyndon Johnson as its chairman given the task of proposing a way for the United States to enter and win the space race.

Acquiring an expanded role with respect to space was just one element in Lyndon Johnson’s early push for influence within the Kennedy administra­tion. His ambition was apparently to serve as the president’s alter ego with respect to all areas of national security policy, not just the space program. Many prior vice presidents who had served under Democratic presidents, such as John Nance Garner, Harry Truman, and Alben Barkley, were not informed about or involved in national security matters, and Johnson did not want to repeat that pattern.

To achieve this objective, a few days after the inauguration Bill Moyers of Johnson’s staff drafted an executive order for President Kennedy’s sig­nature that would have given the vice president authority “at all times” for “continuing surveillance and review with respect to domestic, foreign and military policies relating to the national security” and would have allowed the vice president to chair the National Security Council in the president’s absence. To exercise this responsibility, the vice president would be “autho­rized to obtain pertinent information concerning the policies and operations of the Department of State, the Department of Defense, the Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Bureau of the Budget and other departments and agencies affected [sic] with a national security interest.” The reasons for such an expanded role, suggested Moyers, included that “the nature of our times requires that the Vice President be adequately informed on vital matters” and that “the possibility of immedi­ate succession to the number one job, however remote and however dis­tasteful to think about from the President’s viewpoint,” would require a fully informed vice president. Even as he prepared the draft order, Moyers recognized that it would likely be opposed by many of JFK’s advisers, and suggested to Johnson that “a better way to achieve your objective, perhaps, is for the President simply to issue a directive to you, instructing you to play a greater role in national security.”2

While the new president and his White House staff were indeed resistant to the kind of publicly visible executive order that Moyers had drafted, they did accept the suggestion of a nonpublic presidential directive. On January 28,

Kennedy signed a letter to Johnson that had been drafted by Moyers, asking Johnson to review policies relating to the national security so that Kennedy could “have the full benefit of your endeavors and of your judgment” and to “maintain close liaison” with “departments and agencies affected with a national security interest.” In this letter, NASA was added to, and the BOB deleted from, the list of agencies subject to vice presidential review that had been in the draft executive order. Copies of the letter were sent to heads of all agencies involved in national security matters.3

These attempts at the start of the Kennedy administration to give Lyndon Johnson an expanded policy role were not successful. John Kennedy had needed Johnson to attract enough Southern voters to get elected, but Kennedy, and particularly his top aides, had no intention of making Johnson a major player in national security affairs. This quickly became evident. The weeks following the inauguration “were ones of despair for Johnson,” according to one of his biographers; “He felt trapped, useless, ridiculed.”4

The next step in Vice President Johnson’s review was to consult key congres­sional leaders to ensure that they would indeed be willing to support the kind of accelerated program that the president was likely to recommend. The original plan was to meet with the chairman, Overton Brooks, and ranking minority member, James Fulton, of the House Committee on Science and Astronautics on May 1, and the chairman, Robert Kerr, and ranking minor­ity member, Styles Bridges, of the Senate Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences on May 2. However, the May 1 meeting had to be postponed so that Johnson could participate in a National Security Council discussion of policy toward Viet Nam. Brooks was unhappy at this turn of events and with Johnson’s suggestion that Brooks submit a memorandum on his views in lieu of a face-to-face meeting.25 The meeting with the two senators and their staff actually took place on May 3. Webb and Dryden from NASA, John Rubel from DOD, Edward Welsh, representatives from the Atomic Energy Commission, the Department of State, and the BOB, and George Brown, Frank Stanton, and Donald Cook were also present.

The two senators whom Johnson invited to the meeting, Kerr and Bridges, were present not only because of their committee positions but also because they were two of the small number of veteran legislators who, together with Johnson, had controlled the Senate during the Eisenhower years. Johnson believed that their support would suffice to carry the rest of the Senate with them. Johnson opened the meeting by saying that “I believe it is the position of every patriotic and knowledgeable American that past policies and perfor­mances in space have not been enough to give this country leadership.” He noted that “the President has made it clear that he is determined that the United States move into ‘its proper place in the space race.’ That can only mean leadership. There is no other proper place for our country.” Johnson told those at the meeting that “we are here to discuss not whether, but how— not when, but now.”26 This strident view of American exceptionalism was a pervasive aspect of LBJ’s space review.

Robert Kerr told the others that “we need some cold-blooded deci­sions, but the Senate can be counted on in the end to face up to whatever is required.” Styles Bridges agreed, saying, “it certainly is necessary to attain the highest possible scientific use and to maintain the glory of the United States and its prestige, but basic to the whole matter is the security of the United States.” James Webb continued his cautious approach, telling the group that “there is a great deal that must be done before the vice president will be in a position to make the recommendations and the president be ready to go to the Congress and ask for the large sums that will be necessary, so we’ve got to be very careful now.” Johnson reacted negatively to Webb’s caution, saying “do you feel that you will not be prepared to give me answers for a month? . . . I am not trying to rush you. But you must not wait a month or Congress will have gone home.” He added: ““We’ll wait for a month if necessary for people [clearly meaning Webb] to get the guts enough to make solid recommendations.” Frank Stanton from CBS added an elitist perspec­tive: “We don’t have to be concerned about national support if wise men have decided upon the action necessary in the national interest.”27

Johnson completed his canvas of Congressional support by telephon­ing Overton Brooks and James Fulton to inquire whether the House of Representatives would also support an accelerated space effort. Given what these two men had been saying in their recent committee hearings about the need for a faster-paced program, their responses were not surprising. Fulton told Johnson, after checking with some other House Republicans, that he thought Republican support for an accelerated program would be almost unanimous.28 After the vice president’s call, Brooks submitted a ten-page memorandum of recommendations for the space program. Brooks said that he and his committee believed that “the United States must do whatever is necessary to gain unequivocal leadership in Space Exploration" He recommended an immediate acceleration of programs for communications, television, weather, and navigation satellites. He said that his committee was “committed to a forceful and stepped-up long range endeavor” and that “we cannot concede the Moon to the Soviets, since it is conceivable that the nation that controls the Moon may well control the Earth.”29

According to Webb, by the end of the May 3 meeting Lyndon Johnson “was close to demanding” from NASA a specific recommendation on a lunar landing program, not additional study of its requirements. Based on all information available to him, Webb felt that the lunar landing was “the first project we could assure the president that we could do and do ahead of the Russians, or at least had a reasonable chance to do.” Johnson pushed Webb, saying that “are you willing to undertake this? Are you ready to undertake it?” Webb replied that he was ready, “but there’s got to be political support over a long period of time, like ten years, and you and the President have to recognize that we can’t do this kind of thing without that continuing support.”30 The next day Webb wrote to the vice president, telling him that “my main effort yesterday was to be certain that you and the Senators were under no illusions whatever as to the magnitude of the problems involved in carrying out this decision and the absolute necessity, in my opinion, for a decision to back Secretary McNamara and myself to the limit.” Six years later, Webb, as he complained to the president about cuts in the NASA bud­get, was still reminding Lyndon Johnson that he had been “quite reluctant to undertake the responsibility of building a transportation system to the moon” and that Johnson “had almost to drive me to make the recommenda­tion which you sent on to President Kennedy.”31

As Lyndon Johnson was gauging Congressional support for an acceler­ated space effort, Kennedy was also independently consulting key members of Congress with respect to what type of enhanced space program would be politically acceptable. In particular, according to Webb, there was “little doubt in my mind” that Kennedy consulted Houston-area Congressman Albert Thomas, who chaired the House subcommittee controlling NASA’s appropriations. Thomas’s relationship with fellow Texan Lyndon Johnson was “not close,” but Kennedy “paid a very great deal of attention to what Thomas told him could be done and what he, Thomas, was prepared to do.” Kennedy also needed support from Thomas in other areas of his legislative agenda, and it is likely that Thomas alerted Kennedy to his desire to have an accelerated space program benefit his Houston Congressional district. Webb later recalled that Lyndon Johnson “had more weight in bringing President Kennedy to his decision than the staff around the White House was or is yet willing to recognize. . . In the end he [Kennedy] was, I believe, as strongly influenced by Johnson and Thomas as by any other two people. Once he felt he had to move ahead, he could proceed vigorously because he knew that these men could maintain a base of support that would give him a chance to succeed.”32

While James Webb might have wanted more time to have his staff carry out a fuller study of the requirements for sending Americans to the Moon, that was not to be. On May 4, a Thursday, Lyndon Johnson was asked by President Kennedy to embark the following Monday on a tour of Southeast Asia to provide a first-hand assessment of the situation there with respect to Communist-supported insurgencies. The next day, Johnson called Webb and Secretary of Defense McNamara and asked them to “prepare both a program for the President to send to Congress and a message for the President to use in the transmission of the message.” The vice president wanted to submit these papers to the president on the following Monday, before he left on his trip.33

The same day, Friday, May 5, the first U. S. astronaut, Alan Shepard, was launched on a 15-minute suborbital flight to the lower edge of outer space. Success in that flight was a critical factor in any decision that might follow.

It was clear to NASA managers that as part of the decision to start a rapid space buildup, NASA would have to quickly create several large new facili­ties. The decision on what kind of facilities to build and, politically more important, where to locate them, was thus a high priority issue in the months immediately following President Kennedy’s May 1961 speech. Although a formal announcement of facility decisions could not be made until August 1961, after the Congress had actually appropriated the increased FY1962 budget that the president had proposed, planning for the facility buildup began in earnest even before the speech. While most decisions with respect to launch vehicle production, testing, and launch were made without signifi­cant White House involvement, such was not the case with respect to locat­ing the new NASA “field center” which would train the men who would go to the Moon and oversee the development and operation of the spacecraft that would carry them there.11

Well before President Kennedy’s approval of the lunar landing mission, it had been clear to the NASA leadership that, if there was to be a follow-on

effort to Project Mercury, the Space Task Group, which was managing Mercury, needed to be moved from its location at the Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. This move was necessary because human space flight required engineering development, flight operations, and especially project management skills, not the engineering research-oriented approach that was characteristic of Langley.

As early as NASA’s creation in 1958, there was a specific view on where to locate the next new NASA installation; that view came from a politically

powerful source. Soon after NASA opened its doors for business on October 1, 1958, Administrator Glennan heard from Congressman Albert Thomas, whose district included Houston, Texas. Thomas was chairman of the House of Representatives appropriations subcommittee that controlled NASA’s fund­ing. Glennan learned that Thomas “was anxious that his district. . . should benefit from the space program.” Thomas suggested that Houston’s Rice University was willing to give NASA 1,000 acres of land as a location for a new NASA “laboratory.” Glennan told him that NASA was “not about to build any new laboratory facilities beyond the one already authorized and on which con­struction had begun.” (This would become the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.) Thomas responded “somewhat peevishly” that the decision to locate the new facility in Maryland “had gone through without his sanction since he had been absent” from Washington. Thomas persisted in his advocacy. He made several more calls to Glennan in late 1958 and finally told the NASA administrator: “Now look here, Dr., let’s cut the bull. Your budget calls for $14 million for Beltsville [actually Greenbelt], and I am telling you that you won’t get a god-damned cent of it unless the laboratory is moved to Houston.” Glennan was able to fend off this threat, but when it became evi­dent in 1961 that there would be a new NASA installation for human space flight and that many locations in the United States would compete for host­ing it, Glennan, who by then was back at Case Institute of Technology in Cleveland, Ohio, advised Ohio state officials not to waste their time in that competition because “Houston would be the site chosen.”12

In late April 1961, as it was becoming clear that President Kennedy was likely to approve a major acceleration of the NASA human space flight program, NASA administrator Webb recognized that a separate, new NASA center would indeed be needed to manage the effort, and instructed his staff to begin the site selection process. He put $60 million in the NASA budget estimates being prepared for the White House as a down payment on constructing the new center. The site selection team considered locations in Florida and California, but was also well aware of Representative Thomas’s long-standing interest in having a new NASA installation in Houston. Thus NASA representatives visited Houston on May 16, even before the presi­dent’s announcement of the lunar landing goal. They were met there by George Brown of the Houston-based Brown & Root construction company, a Lyndon Johnson ally who had been consulted by the vice president dur­ing Johnson’s recent space review, and by a representative of the Houston Chamber of Commerce.13 But this turned out to be a false start in the site selection process; it was not restarted in earnest until August 7, when the Congress passed the appropriations bill that included the $60 million in funding for the new center.

As it became widely known in May that the president was going to propose a major acceleration of the NASA program, Representative Thomas made it clear to NASA administrator James Webb that the 1958 Houston offer, and the implied threat of problems for the NASA budget if it were not accepted, still stood. On May 23, Webb reported to Vice President Lyndon Johnson that Thomas had “made it very clear” that he was “extremely interested” in Houston being selected as the location for the new manned spacecraft center that clearly was going to be needed to manage the lunar landing program.14 In 1961, being the location for this center was a much more attractive proposition than it had been earlier, since the demands of Apollo would clearly require a major facility with many jobs created and thus a sig­nificant demand for housing and services in the areas adjacent to the new NASA installation. Rice University was still prepared to donate to NASA a sizeable plot of land some thirty miles south of downtown Houston as the location for the new center; Houston construction, real estate, and other business interests recognized that the facility would generate a wide variety of economic opportunities for the area. Humble Oil, the Houston corpo­ration that had donated the land to Rice now to be transferred to NASA, still owned most of the surrounding property, and realized that its value would increase substantially if a major new government facility were located on the university’s land. George Brown’s construction company, Brown & Root, hoped to get the contract to build the new NASA installation. Brown was chairman of the Rice Board of Trustees, had been a major contributor to Lyndon Johnson’s senatorial campaigns, and was also closely allied with Albert Thomas. Securing NASA’s agreement to locate its new center in the Houston area thus became a political issue of the first order.15

The opportunities presented by the decision to develop a new NASA center of course did not go unnoticed in other parts of the country, and both the White House and NASA were bombarded after the president’s May 25 speech by communications from members of Congress and state and local officials suggesting that the area they represented would be an ideal location for the new installation. Pressing the case for California was Representative George Miller, who was the acting chairman of the House Committee on Science and Astronautics after Overton Brooks fell ill. Missouri directed its advocacy through powerful Senator Stuart Symington. Making the case for Texas in addition to Thomas were Representative Olin “Tiger” Teague, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Manned Space Flight, and Representative Joe Kilgore; in addition, Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn and Vice President Lyndon Johnson advocated the Texas cause. Johnson and Albert Thomas were not political allies within the fractious Texas Democratic Party, but they were united on this issue.

Of particular political concern to President Kennedy and his top political assistant Kenneth O’Donnell was continuing pressure from the governor of Massachusetts, John Volpe, to locate the new center at Hingham Air Force Base near Boston. Volpe wrote Kennedy on July 19, before the site selection process had formally begun, saying that “as one Bay Stater to another,” he wanted to call the advantages of the Massachusetts location to the president’s attention. By this time, NASA had made public its preliminary criteria for deciding on the location for the new center, and Volpe outlined the ways in which the Hingham location met those criteria, conveniently omitting the requirement set by NASA for “a mild climate permitting year-round, ice-free, water transportation; and permitting out-of-door work for most of the year.” Volpe closed his letter by saying to Kennedy, “may I urge your help in bringing this project to Massachusetts.”16 In the succeeding two months, O’Donnell and NASA’s Webb had a series of interactions reflecting Volpe’s hope that Boston would be chosen as the location for the new center.

The final criteria for site selection, including both eight “essential crite­ria” and four “desirable criteria,” were approved by top NASA managers in mid-August. Before that approval, conscious of the Massachusetts interest, Administrator Webb had reviewed and specifically reiterated the “mild cli­mate” requirement as being essential. In a September 14 memorandum to the president discussing the site selection process, Webb provided five justi­fications for the climate requirement, concluding that “selection of a site in an area meeting the stated climate criterion will minimize both the cost and the time required for this project” and noting the many ways in which the Boston area failed to meet the requirement.

Upon an initial assessment by the NASA site selection team, nine potential sites, notably not including Houston, met all or most criteria, and arrange­ments were made by the team to visit those areas. While visiting the original nine locations, an additional fourteen sites were brought to the attention of the team; the Rice University site favored by Representative Thomas was one of those additions to the list. In all, the site selection team visited twenty- three potential sites; they were located in Florida (2), Louisiana (3), Texas (9), Missouri (4), and California (5). At each site, the routine was similar: an afternoon arrival and greeting by state and local dignitaries, a meeting to explain the selection criteria, a breakfast meeting with local representatives, and a visit to the proposed site and a nearby college or university. The site selection team “felt that locations north of the freezing line were unlikely to meet the requirements” and thus did not originally plan to visit any such site.

Delegations representing sites in Virginia and Rhode Island not being considered by the selection team pleaded their case in presentations directly to NASA’s James Webb and Hugh Dryden. Also, on September 1, a Massachusetts delegation headed by Governor Volpe and Senator Benjamin Smith, John Kennedy’s former college roommate who had been appointed in December 1960 to fill JFK’s Senate seat, met with the two NASA leaders to argue for consideration of the Hingham site and to ask that the site selec­tion team at least visit Massachusetts. A large meeting of Boston business interests sponsored by the leading local newspaper, The Boston Globe, also called upon the president to select the Massachusetts site. On September 8, Governor Volpe called James Webb, again asking whether the team would visit Massachusetts. The phone conversation was described by Webb’s biog­rapher as “acrimonious.”17 Volpe told Webb that “great political pressure was building up” for such a visit. Webb responded that “it was most difficult to promise this without doing so in many other cases,” but told Volpe that he could make public his intervention with Webb in order to relieve some of the political pressure on the governor. Webb told President Kennedy in a somewhat self-congratulatory way that he believed that “it was an eminently fair proposal for me to have put to him.” Then, on September 13, without notifying Volpe or any other Massachusetts official, the site selection team did visit the Hingham site “for an inspection of the terrain and existing buildings.” The only other site visited on the basis of political intervention was in St. Louis, to satisfy Senator Symington’s request.

John F. Kennedy followed this process closely, and Webb kept him informed and then on September 11 briefed him on the likely outcome. According to Webb’s public statements at the time of the site selection, Kennedy told the NASA administrator then that even though there had been pressures on him to intervene in the process, he expected Webb “to make this decision in the light of the national interest.” Webb noted that Kennedy had “intervened in no way to try to favor his own state of Massachusetts, or to rule it out of the game.” Rather, the president wanted NASA to have full responsibility for the site selection decision. Webb later revised this account of the selection process, saying that Kennedy had at some point called Albert Thomas to seek his support for several bills before the House of Representatives. Thomas had been vague about his willingness to support the bills until Kennedy told him: “Now, you know Jim Webb is thinking about putting this center down in Houston.” From that point on, Thomas supported the three bills and “felt that he had a commitment from Kennedy” about the location of the new center.18

The site selection team reported its findings and recommendations in the second week of September. The team’s first choice, flying in the face of the political pressures from Texas interests, was MacDill Air Force Base near Tampa, Florida, which was scheduled for closure as a Strategic Air Command airfield. It is interesting to speculate whether Webb and Dryden would have accepted this recommendation, given their broader perspective and the need to consider political factors. But at the last minute the Air Force changed its mind about closing MacDill, and the team’s second preference, the Houston site associated with Rice University, became the top-ranked choice of the site selection group.19

Webb and Dryden met on the evening of September 13 and again on the morning of September 14 to review the site selection team report and hear the results of its last minute visit to Massachusetts. That visit did not change their assessment of the team’s ranking, and Webb and Dryden decided that “this laboratory should be located at Houston, Texas, in close association with Rice University and the other educational institutions there and in that region.” The new installation was designated the Manned Spacecraft Center. (It was renamed the Johnson Space Center after Lyndon Johnson’s death in 1973, even though it was Albert Thomas, not Johnson, who had the greater influence on the decision to locate the center in Houston.)

Webb informed the president of this decision in a September 14 mem­orandum, noting that “a press release has been prepared announcing this decision, and we are holding it for issue after the White House notification of those who your staff feels should have advance information.”20 Kenneth

O’Donnell remembered President Kennedy as saying, after reading Webb’s two September 14 memos, “It’s a good decision. Let’s go through with it.” The public announcement of the selection of the Houston location came on September 19. With that announcement and the choice of sites in Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi for launch-related facilities, the arc of new NASA installations along the Gulf of Mexico coast in the southeastern region of the United States that James Webb had advocated in his May 23 memorandum to Vice President Johnson had come into being.