The White House Gets Involved

As the STG effort moved toward its conclusion, President Richard Nixon and his inner circle of advisors were focused on capitalizing on, for broader policy and political purposes, the excitement surrounding the successful Apollo 11 mission. Nixon purposely avoided saying anything about future space efforts in the many remarks he made both in the United States and during his around – the-world trip following the Apollo 11 splash down. However, Nixon could not help but be aware of Vice President Agnew’s call for a human mission to Mars, given his regular reading of his daily news summaries. He had talked about the space program with both Tom Paine and, separately, with Frank Borman on the trip to the Apollo 11 landing, and he had indicated his interest in foreign astronaut participation in U. S. space flights, an interest that Paine either misinterpreted or amplified without the president’s approval to include non-U. S. hardware contributions to post-Apollo space system development. Nixon in his conversation with Paine did not share his broader views on the future in space, nor did he refer to the STG deliberations.

At lower levels in the White House hierarchy, however, there was grow­ing attention being given to the debates within the STG and to what options would be presented for presidential decision. As noted in chapter 2, Assistant to the President Peter Flanigan had since April been assigned the space portfolio; following space issues for Flanigan on a day-by-day basis was his 30-year-old assistant Tom Whitehead, who had the technical background that most others on the White House staff lacked.40 As he began to familiarize himself with NASA’s planning for its future, Whitehead quickly had become concerned that the process was heading towards an outcome that was not in President Nixon’s interests. On June 25, he alerted Flanigan to his “uneasiness” regard­ing the STG review. His main concern was that “NASA and others will use the enthusiasm generated by a success of Apollo 11 to create very strong pressures on the President to commit him[self] and the Nation prematurely to a large and continuing space budget.” Whitehead suggested that “a strong case can be made for constraining the NASA budget to its present level or slightly lower, while at the same time permitting the United States to maintain a strong space program, including manned space flight.” He looked to Fiscal Year (FY) 1971 budget deliberations later in 1969 as providing “an opportunity to review sig­nificantly different alternative levels of spending so that the President will have meaningful options to consider.” In order to create such options, Whitehead suggested “Bob Mayo has to be reassured that the President’s interests would be served and the President is personally interested in a serious evaluation of several alternative NASA budget levels including one in the vicinity of $2.5 to $3 billion”; such a budget level would reflect a significant reduction from NASA’s FY1970 budget of almost $4 billion. Whitehead also suggested that “the President should be informed that NASA is making very strong public statements about future commitments,” creating the possibility that he “may find himself in a very difficult situation in the next few months” unless he insisted on such budget options as a way of countering “pressure being gen­erated by NASA in the press and on the Hill.” Whitehead was “not arguing here for a reduced NASA budget,” but rather suggesting that there should be “a serious analysis of a $2.5 to $3 billion level in space programs, including its costs and potential accomplishments.” In his judgment, there were “signifi­cant budgetary, scientific, and political factors that suggest that this could be a desirable alternative for the President.” Whitehead also suggested that either he or Flanigan “call Bob Mayo to emphasize the importance of including at least three major options in the fiscal year 1971 budget review process.” He also suggested that Flanigan write a memorandum to the president “suggest­ing that NASA be calmed down during the enthusiasm of Apollo 11.”41

Whitehead’s views obviously ran very counter to what NASA was hoping to achieve by having its future plans evaluated in the context of Apollo H excitement. Had they become known to NASA, they might have raised a warning flag about the path that NASA was pursuing, but apparently they were not communicated except to the BOB, and then not until late August. On August 20, Whitehead discussed budget options with Schlesinger, the BOB deputy director. Whitehead told Schlesinger that “the President is not eager to proceed with an expanded space program, and in fact would like to see it significantly reduced in the near future.” Whitehead also claimed that he had discussed such a posture with “other White House people” and found “none who indicated any real problem with significant reductions in the space program.” He asked Schlesinger to make sure that a $2.5 billion option was included in both the STG report and the guidance being given to NASA as it prepared its FY1971 budget proposal. The head of the BOB unit in charge of the NASA budget, Don Crabill, who was also part of the STG Staff Directors Committee, asked whether Whitehead had spoken directly with the president; Schlesinger “thought not.” Thus there is no evidence one way or the other regarding whether Whitehead was representing Richard Nixon’s actual views, or rather using the president’s name as a justification for his own skeptical perspective, a frequent practice among the Nixon White House staff. Crabill told Schlesinger that he and other NASA budget exam­iners thought that a $2.5 billion NASA budget for FY1971 was “equivalent to a no-manned-space-flight position.”42

In an August 22 conversation with Schlesinger, Crabill learned that Flanigan, likely in response to Whitehead’s suggestion, had at some point “telephoned Dr. Paine and instructed him to stop public advocacy of early manned Mars activity because it was causing trouble in Congress and restrict­ing Presidential options.” Flanigan, saying that he had discussed the issue with the president, had suggested to Scheslinger that Nixon “would like options even lower than $2.5 billion.” Following this guidance, Schlesinger asked Crabill to prepare an additional budget option to “define a $1.5 billion per year space program.”43

These White House conversations were taking place as NASA was push­ing the STG to recommend its Program B, which called for a 1983 launch of a mission to Mars and a NASA budget during the later 1970s of almost $8 billion per year. NASA was insisting that at an annual budget of $4 bil­lion it could not carry out a viable program of human space flight during the 1970s. Even NASA’s Program C had a budget increasing to almost $6 billion by the mid-1970s. The alliance between Vice President Agnew and Tom Paine was plowing ahead toward a sure confrontation with the Nixon White House, with the content of the STG report the immediate focus of that confrontation.