Details
An excerpt of a tape recording of a 73-minute White House meeting that took place on November 21, 1962 during which President Kennedy made clear his administration’s priority that the United States land on the moon before the Soviet Union.
The tape is particularly noteworthy for the window it provides into presidential decision making. Faced with the option of directing federal funds more generally across the entire space program, President Kennedy argued with James Webb, the head of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), for a more focused approach toward the lunar landing. Having such a goal, the President argued, would carry the country’s entire space effort forward and have the same outcome NASA was seeking. Unlike many of the presidential recordings from the Kennedy Library archives, the quality and clarity of the tape recording are also exceptional.
The entire tape is of a meeting that took place in the Cabinet Room on November 21, 1962. The identified participants are: President John F. Kennedy; James E. Webb, Administrator, NASA; Jerome Wiesner, Special Assistant to the President; Edward Welch, Executive Secretary, NASA; David E. Bell, Director, Bureau of the Budget; Vice President Lyndon Johnson; Hugh Dryden, Deputy Administrator, NASA; Dr. Brainard Holmes, Director of Manned Space Flight, NASA; Robert Seamans, Deputy Administrator, NASA; Elmer Staats, Deputy Director, Bureau of the Budget; Willis H. Shapley, Deputy Division Chief, Military Division, Bureau of the Budget. The tape is declassified in full and there are no excisions.
At the meeting, the President and his staff were discussing a supplemental budget for NASA and the effect the increased money would have on expediting the scheduled orbital flights and the Apollo Space Program. There is a disagreement among the staff over whether or not the increased budget will change the target dates for the Apollo Program, including the lunar landing scheduled for 1967.
James Webb, Administrator of NASA, and Robert Seamans, Deputy Administrator for NASA, explain to the President that they do not believe that the timetable for Apollo can be expedited. NASA’s Apollo Space Program sought to develop man’s capability to work in the lunar environment, to carry out a program of scientific exploration of the moon, and to establish the technology to meet other national interests in space.
In the course of the discussion, an animated exchange between the President and Webb took place over the priority of the lunar landing program. Webb, in a spirited and fearless exchange with President Kennedy, argued that the lunar program was “one” of the top priority programs of NASA. The President wanted it made clear that it was “the” priority program — not only for NASA but for the entire government — with the desired result being that the United States would beat the Russians to the moon.
Other subjects covered in this meeting were the rising costs of governmental contracts, the target dates for the lunar landing, the political importance of John Glenn’s orbital flight on February 20, 1962, and the game plan for approaching congressional leaders regarding increased NASA support. Researchers should be aware that after the meeting ends and the President departs, staff discussions continue for a portion of the tape.
Transcript
Excerpt of 11/21/62 White House meeting on space program- White House Tape #63
Please note that this is a partial transcript of the attached recording. If reading this transcript along with the attached audio clip, there are sections for which transcribed remarks are not provided.
PRESIDENT KENNEDY: ...Do you put this program... Do you think this program is the top priority program of the agency ?
JAMES WEBB (Administrator of NASA): No sir, I do not. I think it is one of the top priority programs, but I think it's very important to recognize here that as you have found what you could do with the rocket, as you found how you could get out beyond the Earth's atmosphere and into space and make measurements, several scientific disciplines that are very powerful have - begin to converge on this area...
PRESIDENT KENNEDY: Jim, I think it is a top priority. I think we ought to have that very clear. You... Some of these other programs can slip six months or nine months and nothing (unintelligible) going to happen that's going to make it... But this is important for political reasons, international political reasons, and for... This is -- whether we like it or not an intense a race. If we get second to the moon, it's nice, but it's like being second anytime. So, that ... if you're second by six months because you didn't give it the kind of priority then, of course, that would be very serious. So I think we have to take the view this is the top priority of NASA …
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WEBB: Number one, there are real unknowns as to whether man can live under the weightless condition and you'd ever make the lunar landing. This is one kind of political vulnerability I'd like to avoid such a flat commitment to -- but the scientists in the nuclear field have penetrated right into the most minute areas, the nucleus and the sub-particles of the nucleus. Now here, out in the universe, you've got the same general kind of a structure, but you can do it on a massive, universal scale...
PRESIDENT KENNEDY: Now the point... I agree that we're interested in this, but we can wait six months (unintelligible)
WEBB: But you have to use that information to do these things...
PRESIDENT KENNEDY: I see what you're saying, yeah, but only when that information directly applies to the program... Jim, I think we've got to have that…
WIESNER: May I say one word, Mr. President? We don't know a damn thing about the surface of the moon and we're making the wildest guesses about how we're going to land on the moon and we could get a terrible disaster from putting something down on the surface of the moon that's very different than we think it is and the scientific programs that find us that information have to have the highest priority. But they are associated with the lunar program. The scientific programs that aren't associated with the lunar program can then be any priority we please to give 'em.
PRESIDENT KENNEDY: Yeah. The only thing is I would certainly not favor spending six or seven billion dollars to find out about space, no matter how... On the schedule we're doing... I'd spell it out over a five, ten year period. But we could spend it on... Why are we spending seven million dollars on getting fresh water from salt water when we're spending seven billion dollars finding out about space ? So obviously, you wouldn't put it on that priority because, except for the defense implications behind that and the second point is the, the, the fact that the Soviet Union has made this a test of the system. So that's why we're doing it. So I think we've got to take the view that this is the key program, the rest of it we can find out about but there's a lot of things we want to find out about...cancer and everything else…
WEBB: When you talk about this, it's very hard to draw a line with what, between what...
PRESIDENT KENNEDY: Everything that we do ought to really be tied in to getting onto the moon ahead of the Russians.
WEBB: Why can't it be tied to preeminence in space, which are your own words...
PRESIDENT KENNEDY: Because, by God, we've been telling everyone we're preeminent in space for five years and nobody believes it because they have the booster and the satellite. (edit pause) …But I do think we ought to get it, you know, really clear that the policy ought to be that this is the top priority program of the agency and one of the two, except for defense, the top priority of the United States government. I think that that's the position we ought to take. Now, this may not change anything about that schedule, but at least we ought to be clear, otherwise we shouldn't be spending this kind of money because I'm not that interested in space. I think it's good. I think we ought to know about it. We're ready to spend reasonable amounts of money, but we're talking about fantastic expenditures which wreck our budget and all these other domestic programs and the only justification for it, in my opinion, is to do it (unintelligible) is because we hope to beat them and demonstrate that starting behind as we did by a couple of years, by God, we passed 'em.