Operation Moonglow

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Operation Moonglow Page 14

by Teasel Muir-Harmony


  After his flight, Glenn wrote to McGeorge Bundy, President Kennedy’s national security advisor, explaining that the Friendship 7’s “fourth orbit” tour “stressed the fact that [the American space program] was not just a propaganda effort before the world, but a well-thought-out scientific program that could eventually benefit all peoples of the world as the scientific exploration it is.” He went on to note that Russian exhibits highlighted personal appearances of cosmonauts, while the United States emphasized scientific information via the capsule’s display. According to Glenn, America’s greatest advantage over the Soviet Union’s space program was “the almost complete freedom to share experiences and new information.” He suggested that the openness of the American program—as represented by the display of the Friendship 7 spacecraft—stood in for the nation and its political ideology: when the Friendship 7 capsule was laid bare before the eyes of people from around the world, it signaled that the United States space program was real, benign, apolitical, and designed for the collective good of all humankind.60

  Children in Cambodia reading about Project Mercury, 1962. (NATIONAL ARCHIVES)

  By displaying technological hardware, US officials had hoped to fuse positive perceptions of the values and strengths of science and technology with American identity and the American political system. As one public diplomat explained, “We are striving to present the view that in an overall sense US scientific accomplishments are second to none and that US science has contributed more to the development of the world and the scientific development of newly emerging nations.”61 What distinguishes this effort is the political use of cultural attitudes about the apolitical nature of science and technology. The ramifications of this tactic were far-reaching: we can observe its impact on the types of engineering programs that the US government funded and in the transformation of artifacts from these programs into symbolic icons employed to sway the world public during the cold war. The spacecraft’s display value was not simply tied to the function for which it was designed: it mattered that the capsule carried Glenn around the Earth, but it also mattered that the capsule was then put before the eyes of the people who came to see it in person.62

  USIA space programming in the early 1960s centered on capsule tours and educational lectures, an approach meant to differentiate the US space program from the Soviet space accomplishments. Many early documents point to a hesitancy on the part of US officials to participate in astronaut tours because they feared it would appear that the United States was simply trying to copy Soviet cosmonaut tours and that it would be another sign that the country’s space program was trailing behind the Soviet Union’s impressive set of firsts.63 But by the mid-1960s, the US revised its previous approach to astronaut tours, reasoning that if the exhibits were primarily scientific in nature, if the astronauts visited nations around the world to share scientific and engineering knowledge, then these tours would come across differently than the Soviet propaganda tours did. Unlike Soviet cosmonauts, the USIA and State Department stressed, the American astronauts would not make mass public appearances unless these were specifically designed to spread scientific information about space, which would ensure that the astronauts did not turn into “the kind of ballyhoo salesmen for space that the Soviet cosmonauts have become.”64 Although officials emphasized that these tours were organized to share scientific and engineering discoveries with the world public, in internal correspondence they were explicit that “the purpose [was] to support American foreign policy in specific situations.”65 Along with scientific information, the astronauts would become the next champions of spaceflight and American leadership abroad.

  6

  “THE NEW EXPLORERS,”

  1963–1967

  From Cape Kennedy not even a white mouse can be launched without the nation and the world learning about it a few minutes later.

  —NEUES OESTERREICH, 1965

  In 1963, when Elton Stepherson Jr. arrived in Tananarive, the capital of Madagascar, he was already well-known, “much liked and respected” there. Born in Houston but raised in Los Angeles, Stepherson received a degree in political science from UCLA before pursuing graduate work in French languages and African studies at the University of Paris. In 1963, at age twenty-nine, he became a career foreign service officer with the USIA based in France. It was not long before the USIA sent him to NASA to train as a space lecturer for French-speaking African nations.1 Much like other African Americans who traveled abroad as part of USIA and State Department programming in the 1960s, giving jazz performances or lectures, Stepherson was sent to African nations to demonstrate racial equality and the universal opportunities of democracy in the United States, in addition to his official duties.2 After he lectured to an audience of Guinean intellectuals and political leaders on American space feats, the governor of Pita commented that Stepherson was living proof that “science is not the reserved domain of members of one race only.”3 This comment was exactly what US foreign affairs officials had hoped to hear when they sent Stepherson and his colleagues to Africa. Later, Stepherson would travel the world with the Apollo astronauts. But in the summer of 1963, he was sent to Malagasy Republic (as Madagascar was then known) because NASA was having trouble setting up a tracking and space communications station there.4

  By the 1960s, the psychological battlefield of the cold war had moved from the fronts of Western Europe to the newly independent nations in the developing world. The USIA increasingly targeted African, Asian, and Latin American audiences in its programming as part of America’s broader cold war strategy. The USIA budget for programming in Africa doubled between 1960 and 1964.5 But public diplomats often encountered pushback. Newly independent nations that had just thrown off the yokes of colonialism had little interest in trading one foreign power for another. Questions about a NASA tracking station’s military associations raised skepticism and even hostility. The current US reputation of racial injustice only made matters worse.6 Nonetheless, the United States needed countries like the Malagasy Republic to fulfill its global ambitions. NASA’s human spaceflight program—a primary basis of American prestige abroad—required a global tracking system. Without the cooperation of countries like the Malagasy Republic, the United States would not be able to accomplish Kennedy’s moon landing challenge, with severe consequences for America’s standing abroad. Given the dynamics set in place by the cold war, with two superpowers competing for the “hearts and minds” of the world, foreign governments and publics both constrained and extended America’s power. So in places like Tananarive, the United States government relied on the work and expertise of African American diplomats such as Stepherson to sell the benefits of a NASA tracking station to local leaders and the public.

  In 1960 the US government made an agreement with the United Kingdom to locate a NASA tracking station in Zanzibar, a British protectorate of islands off the coast of Tanganyika (as mainland Tanzania was then known). NASA also signed a lease with the government of the sultan of Zanzibar to establish two stations in Tunguu and Chwaka. These agreements would be short-lived. Like many nations throughout Africa in this period, the islands gained independence from Great Britain in 1963. Just one year later a revolution overturned the government of Zanzibar, and Zanzibar merged with Tanganyika to eventually become the United Republic of Tanzania. NASA was forced to quickly evacuate the tracking station personnel before any injury or loss of life, and it made arrangements with the government of the nearby Malagasy Republic to relocate the tracking facility to a site near Tananarive.7

  Although the Malagasy government had already given its support to the station, the general public still needed to be won over, much like in the early stages of tracking-station establishment in the 1950s. During their first year of independence from European colonial rule, many Malagasy were rightfully suspicious of the buildup of US government presence in their country. When a US Air Force plane carrying electronic gear for the tracking station landed in Tananarive, USIA officials faced their first challe
nge. To disassociate the station with American military interests and thwart any suspicion of secretive activity, USIA officials decided to play up the arrival with a two-day “press party.” The staff invited local press to visit the airport, explore the inside of the plane, and visit the tracking site. As one USIA staff member observed, “It was all completely open, informative, impressive. (And we got a lot of other good talk in during the waiting periods between unloading moves, about everything from the meaning of freedom to why American automobiles are so big!).” Stepherson arrived in the Malagasy Republic shortly after the electronic equipment.8

  In preparation for Stepherson’s visit, USIS staff had gathered space models, displays, and pamphlets. With Stepherson’s help they arranged a space-themed exhibit in the Tananarive Chamber of Commerce called “Les Engins Spatiaux” (“The Space Machines”). They selected this location because they hoped to attract the attention of government officials in addition to teachers and students. To promote the exhibit, and in turn support the presence of the tracking station, USIS staff blanketed the city with six hundred promotional posters in French and Malagasy, Stepherson gave interviews on the radio and to newspapers, the American ambassador invited two hundred local leaders to an opening reception, and the USIS screened a French version of the film America in Space. During its seventeen-day run the exhibit attracted more than thirty thousand visitors, 75 percent of whom were considered “target individuals.” As a report enthusiastically observed, the location of the exhibit minimized the attendance of people considered less politically influential yet it was still within easy access of government functionaries, businessmen, teachers, and students.9

  Following the opening of the “space machines” exhibit, the American ambassador led President Philibert Tsiranana and his entourage around the tracking facility, along with a full complement of press, radio, and newsreel staff. At the station, NASA had President Tsiranana use the radio-telephone facility to speak with the Malagasy ambassador in Washington. “The result,” USIS staff reported, “was not only abundant news media coverage but strong reassurance that here was something which the Malagasy could derive great pride and satisfaction to be participating in.”10 US government officials expected that this public demonstration would ensure that the Malagasy people would not only accept the tracking facility but also interpret it as an important factor in the progress and development of their country. This tracking station, US officials tried to make clear, not only served American interests; it also served Malagasy interests. Cooperation with the United States in general was good for their nation.11

  For the next few weeks Stepherson gave lectures twice a day to groups of students, officers in the Malagasy Army, and government officials.12 “He also did much toward enhancing the general U.S. image in such non-space-science aspects as education, race relations, cultural life and the like,” commented one USIS staff member, “which in turn made his space science ‘message’ more meaningful.”13 Stepherson began the lectures at the exhibit, where he would explain how the NASA station functioned, using models and photos, and then he escorted the group onto a bus to take them to the tracking station. After touring the group around the facility, he would bring them to the USIS cultural center for a screening of a film on space exploration, such as America in Space, Project Telstar, and Ranger VII. When the group left the screening, USIS staff handed them pamphlets on space exploration and the upcoming US election. This pairing of pamphlets may seem incongruous, but it was standard USIA practice to co-opt the popularity of the space program to disseminate information about other areas of US politics, economics, and culture.14

  After this series of information programs ended, the USIS staff concluded that “it is safe to say that… no one in Madagascar who reads the papers, listens to the radio or goes to the movies was unaware of the fact that the United States has an excellent space-exploration program going, that the nature of this program is scientific, peaceful and beneficial to all, that Madagascar in making its geography available is contributing importantly to the success of the program—and in the process stands to gain substantially both economically and in terms of technical and scientific know-how.” Coverage of the NASA facility in the Communist press cut back on “sniping at NASA” and instead gave factual reports. The USIS considered this change in tone to be “the best kind of evidence of the effectiveness of all concerned.”15

  From Tananarive, Stepherson traveled to Burundi, a small, landlocked country in east-central Africa that had gained independence from Belgium in 1962. The US initiated diplomatic relations with the country in June of that year and established an embassy in Bujumbura, a city on the shore of Lake Tanganyika.16 The embassy had arranged a big “kickoff” event on November 22, 1963, Stepherson’s first day in Bujumbura. Just as Stepherson finished his lecture on the space program and was about to take questions, one of the staff members nicknamed Doe rushed into the room and spoke to the ambassador. He announced that there was an emergency, that the program was ending early. Once the audience left, the ambassador gathered the American staff together and shared the news: President Kennedy had been assassinated.17

  That afternoon Kennedy had been shot while riding in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas. Almost immediately, the Voice of America spread the news around the world. In Burundi, Doe had been listening to the radio when the story came over the airwaves. US Foreign Service staff—including Stepherson—stayed up all night listening to the radio, waiting for more news. Later that day Lyndon Johnson assumed the presidency.18

  In the coming months Johnson would shoulder and modify many of the programs and policies that Kennedy had set in motion during his abbreviated term in office, including Project Apollo and US information efforts. Like Kennedy, Johnson believed that the image of America abroad was critical to the nation’s geopolitical standing and political alliances. Also like Kennedy, Johnson appreciated the space program’s role in enhancing the nation’s image. But in Lyndon Johnson’s hands, space exploration became an even more multifaceted political instrument. In addition to enhancing prestige and supporting national security, Johnson’s advocacy for space exploration was tied to his faith in liberal internationalism; he expected that a robust space program would contribute to global economic and social progress.19 In his memoirs, Johnson reflected that “space was the platform from which the social revolution of the 1960s was launched. We broke out of far more than the atmosphere with our space program.… If we could send a man to the moon, we knew we should be able to send a poor boy to school and to provide decent medical care for the aged. In hundreds of other forms, the space program had an impact on our lives.”20

  Johnson’s commitment to the broader applications of the space program, as well as science and technology more generally, had roots in his experience with New Deal development projects. When he was elected to the House of Representatives in 1937, Johnson pushed for federal funds to dam the Colorado River to supply power to central Texas. His dedication to the political value of science and technology carried through his tenure as the Senate majority leader, as the vice president, and then as the president. Programs that could both support US national security and improve the standard of living were of particular interest to him.21 During his presidency, Johnson enthusiastically supported exporting the New Deal model for the Tennessee Valley Authority to the Mekong Valley in Vietnam. In Johnson’s view the development project provided justification for the US presence in Vietnam. Much to Johnson’s surprise, North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh rejected the offer.22

  Johnson and other government officials folded space exploration into the administration’s larger project of building the Great Society. As Vice President Hubert Humphrey articulated, “An adequately funded, well-directed space program is an integral part of our nation’s commitment to its future, to its greatness.” He added that “we can put a man on the moon at the same time as we help to put a man on his feet,” stressing that the space program was consistent with civil rights and social concerns,
not in opposition to them.23 Spaceflight, officials hoped, could symbolize civil rights progress, counter the nation’s growing warmongering image after the further Americanization of the Vietnam War, and serve as a much-needed positive arm of US foreign relations.

  But for some US public diplomats working in the field, this expectation seemed too optimistic. Spaceflight, and its popularity among foreign audiences, could only do so much. Polls showed that negative impressions of American race relations and militarism dominated America’s overseas image in 1964. Although the Johnson administration made progress with the passage of the Civil Rights Act in July, calls for US withdrawal from Vietnam grew louder around the world.24 When NASA attempted to build up additional tracking facilities to support the upcoming Project Gemini spaceflights, American personnel experienced opposition. As the USIS Tananarive explained in a secret field message, “Just as an attempt to chrome-plate corroded metal would come to nothing, so would a good job of publicizing the specifics of the U.S. space effort be of little use if the general image of the U.S. itself were a tarnished one.” The willingness of the Malagasy government and people to cooperate with the United States, to support an expansion of US tracking activity in the country, required confidence in America as “a worthy leader of the free world.” It was not just a matter of promoting and heralding the American space program. Space achievements could not “chrome-plate” over more-general impressions of American politics and race relations.25

 

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