Epilogue

U. S. ambassador to the United Nations Adlai Stevenson was scheduled to make a speech to the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space on November 27, and the speech was already in preparation in early November. Recognizing NASA’s reluctance to move out aggressively in sup­port of Kennedy’s proposal, Schlesinger suggested to Bundy that “it might help the current State Department-NASA debate” over the seriousness of the president’s offer if Bundy were to send a message to the State Department saying “I trust that Governor Stevenson’s speech. . . will include an adequate follow-up of the President’s moon proposal.”60

Drafts of Stevenson’s speech prepared prior to November 22 had indeed included such a reiteration. The senior State Department official on U. N. mat­ters, Harlan Cleveland, in a lengthy November 21 memorandum had devel­oped a reasoned justification for continuing to push the cooperative effort. He noted Nikita Khrushchev’s “somewhat erratic” statements on accepting Kennedy’s proposal, which, thought Cleveland, “no doubt reflect internal differences in the Soviet leadership over the desirability of cooperation with the U. S. They may also reflect financial difficulties.” Further, “by postulat­ing that it takes two to make a race. . . Khrushchev has put himself in the best position available in the circumstances—unless it can be demonstrated that it is he who is declining international cooperation.” Thus, “if the U. S. were to go silent on a dialogue initiated by the President, the conclusion no doubt will be drawn that the President has given in to advocates of non-cooperation.” Cleveland noted that “it is assumed that the Soviet Union has much more dif­ficulty with the mere thought of cooperation than we do and that they will have more serious ‘security problems’ at any realistic level of cooperation than we will have.” Thus, the United States would be “safe in shooting for the maximum amount of cooperation that the Soviets can be talked into yield­ing”; the United States should “egg on the Russians to cooperate in an open forum where the maximum influence of the on-looking world community can be brought to bear.” Cleveland opposed integrating the two programs, so that the United States would not have to “weld a U. S. capsule on a Russian rocket, or to mate a clean-cut American astronaut with a chubby cosmonette, or to compromise the security of either state, or to make progress of one national program dependent upon the progress in the other.” Rather, “the point is to put a largely symbolic umbrella over both national programs, plus the contributions of other countries, and to create the image of a mutually cooperative world program to put men on the moon as ‘representatives of all our countries’ regardless of the nationality of the first arrivals.”61

In the aftermath of President Kennedy’s assassination, Cleveland noted in a November 23 memorandum that “the entire world will be watching every Administration statement in the days ahead for hints of a change in policies enunciated by President Kennedy.” Cleveland reported that after a November 23 Cabinet meeting, Ambassador Stevenson had raised with new President Lyndon B. Johnson the question of what he should say about President Kennedy’s proposal. Stevenson understood Johnson’s response to be that “he did not want to retreat an inch from the idea of international cooperation in the lunar program.” To make sure that this was indeed the case, Cleveland suggested that President Johnson be asked to review and con­cur with the specific language on this issue in the final draft of Stevenson’s speech. Secretary of State Rusk sent the draft speech to the White House on the next day for presidential review.62

The White House did change the speech draft. Originally the draft said with respect to Kennedy’s proposal: “that offer stands.” The revised version said: “President Johnson has instructed me to reaffirm that offer today.” It also said: “If giant strides cannot be taken at once, we hope that shorter steps can. We believe that there are areas of work—short of integrating the two national programs—from which all could benefit. We should explore the opportunities for practical cooperation, beginning with small steps and hopefully leading to larger matters.” Stevenson included those words in his speech, which was actually delivered on December 2. Although Webb apparently would have preferred that Stevenson not mention space in his speech, he was reported “resigned thereto and will not raise the same with the President.” Frutkin was reported as “very pleased” with the revised text, which reflected the NASA approach to cooperation.63

According to Harvey and Ciccoritti, President Johnson “wanted to keep his options open with respect to cooperation with the Russians, but he wanted to do so in a way that would end controversy at home. . . He was pre­pared to keep faith with the Kennedy lunar offer provided that the Russians came through with something worthwhile on their side.” But as the United States waited for a Soviet offer, “he wanted to get the lunar issue off the front burner. Emphasis for the moment needed to be shifted back to small first steps that were compatible with existing political realities.”64

James Webb on January 31, 1964, transmitted to President Johnson the report that had been prepared in response to JFK’s November 12 request. In his transmittal letter, Webb proposed guidelines to govern negotiations with the Soviet Union on space cooperation: “substantive rather than propaganda objectives alone; well-defined and comparable obligations for both sides; freedom to take independent action; protection of military and national security interests; opportunity for participation by friendly nations; and open dissemination of scientific results.” These guidelines severely limited the scope of potential cooperation. Webb suggested that “on balance, the most realistic and constructive group of proposals which might be advanced to the Soviet Union. . . relates to a joint program of unmanned flight projects to support a manned lunar landing. These projects should be linked so far as possible to a step-by-step approach, ranging from exchange of data already obtained to joint planning of lunar flight missions.” Webb also suggested that “no new high-level US initiative is recommended until the Soviet Union has had a further opportunity (possibly three months) to discharge its cur­rent obligations under the existing NASA-USSR Academy agreement or, in the alternative, until the Soviets respond affirmatively to the proposal you have already made in the UN.”65

The January 31 Webb report was a return to exactly the step-by-step approach the space agency preferred; it reflected “a considerable lowering of sights for cooperation in the lunar area.”66 It certainly did not represent the kind of dramatic approach to space cooperation that had led John F. Kennedy to make such cooperation a continuing element in his strategy for reducing tensions in the U. S.-Soviet relationships.

Whatever the U. S. approach, it was made irrelevant by the lack of a for­mal Soviet response to President Kennedy’s September 20 proposal or to its reiteration by the Johnson administration. Indeed, the Soviet Union did not fully honor even the agreements on limited cooperation that had been reached in 1962, even though some modest U. S.-Soviet cooperation did eventually take place, especially in the biomedical area. As the months passed, President Johnson turned his attention to his ambitious agenda for the Great Society. The United States was of course first to the Moon, and the Soviet Union experienced a series of failures in its lunar program. The opportunity to test whether dramatic space cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Union could serve as a counterweight to their Cold War rivalry had passed.