[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] It's absolutely, absolutely that, and feeling that, you know, within this complicated world made some kind of a positive impact and that they recognize that you did make some kind of a positive impact. And, you know, because a lot of times you'd go to a place and really try to do your best, but it might not be what they really appreciated. But, you know, they let you know that they did appreciate what you did.

[Assistant] Yeah. Any plans to go back in the future?

[User] I'd like to go back as often as possible. You know, I live here in the Bay Area. All my family's here in the Bay Area. So it's not a simple task for me to go. I've got to convince others that it's in their interests as well. So, yeah, that's if I have a bit of an issue there, it's that this is my project. It's not something that we all in the family do together. So that means I have limited amount of time I can spend with it because it's individual to me. I was the only one who was a Peace Corps volunteer in Fiji.

[Assistant] Yeah. So is there anything else you want to share? I think we're kind of wrapping up the questions here. Bu any last thoughts or things that you might have remembered while we've been talking that you want to get in here?

[User] You know, I think it's pretty remarkable that somebody who's 66 years old thinks about a place and when I meet new people, I find that the topic comes up relatively soon in conversations. You know, we'll talk about my interest in fishing, my interest in golfing, maybe some work if there happens to be a connection to that person. But invariably, at some point not too long into the conversation, I go, oh no, by the way, I was in Fiji. And suddenly you look at them and they say, oh, well, tell me more about that.

[Assistant] OK. All right. Well, thanks a lot, Paul. I think it was a great interview and this is a conclusion.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I’m very proud that I was able to be the Center Director when the last Shuttle rolled to a stop out there. Means an awful lot to me.

[Assistant] Were there other Centers that had those sort of celebrations like JSC did for that final rollout?

[User] I don’t know. I would think so. I would assume [NASA] Kennedy Space Center, [Florida (KSC)] probably, with Bob [Robert D.] Cabana down there [as Center Director], certainly had something, but I don’t know for sure.

[Assistant] I wanted to ask you about the selection of the Orbiters. Did you have any input with NASA Headquarters to determine where the three Orbiters were going to go?

[User] Not a bit. That’s a sore subject with me.

[Assistant] I hate to bring it up. I had a suspicion it might be. Just curious about that, if Center Directors had any input.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I don’t know. I would think so. I would assume [NASA] Kennedy Space Center, [Florida (KSC)] probably, with Bob [Robert D.] Cabana down there [as Center Director], certainly had something, but I don’t know for sure.

[Assistant] I wanted to ask you about the selection of the Orbiters. Did you have any input with NASA Headquarters to determine where the three Orbiters were going to go?

[User] Not a bit. That’s a sore subject with me.

[Assistant] I hate to bring it up. I had a suspicion it might be. Just curious about that, if Center Directors had any input.

[User] No, that was a political decision that they covered up with some kind of Mickey Mouse analysis. They were not going to send an Orbiter to Texas. It’s funny, because I was scheduled to testify to Congress shortly after that on some other subject, and we had some rehearsals at NASA Headquarters. One of the lawyers said, “Okay, if a congressman asks you if you were upset about where the Orbiters went, what are you going to say?”\n\n I said, “Goddamn right I am.”\n\n They laughed, and Charlie said, “We may want to phrase that a little differently.” It doesn’t make any sense. This is where human spaceflight is run from; this is where the Space Shuttle Program was. It’s the 5th largest city in the United States. Good heavens. We couldn’t put one of the Orbiters here? You’ve got to be kidding me. But they weren’t going to put it in a red [Republican] state.

[Assistant] Did you have any role in bringing the replica that we have now that’s on top of the SCA [Shuttle Carrier Aircraft]? Or was that all Joel Walker’s doing?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] No, I didn’t see that one coming either.

[Assistant] I wanted to ask you about the SAIL [Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory] facility. Of course at the time here at JSC we were disappointed because we didn’t get an Orbiter, but there was some discussion about SAIL. It had a tail number, OV-095. At what point did you make the decision, or did someone else make the decision, to make that a permanent stopping point on the tram for Space Center Houston, thinking it would be a great exhibit and opportunity to tell the Shuttle story?

[User] It was a joint decision, because a lot of people had to contribute money to modify that facility. Of course, I had worked in SAIL for a year or so before the first Shuttle mission, so I was attached to it anyway over there, and I thought, “Hey, this might be a good idea.” So we converted it, and it’s a nice facility. Now, the tram doesn’t stop there anymore.

[Assistant] It doesn’t?

[User] No. They stopped it after a while, so that may not have been the greatest idea in the world. I actually was over there a couple of weeks ago looking at it, and it’s a shame, but I guess it just wasn’t that interesting to people. You have to explain what it is. It’s really a test bed for the Shuttle, all the avionics as realistic as possible. That’s how you test out the software. I guess it just wasn’t that interesting to people.

[Assistant] I think it needs more signage. I haven’t been over there in a couple of years. Last time I was over there, there wasn’t much explanation, maybe that’s it.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] It was a joint decision, because a lot of people had to contribute money to modify that facility. Of course, I had worked in SAIL for a year or so before the first Shuttle mission, so I was attached to it anyway over there, and I thought, “Hey, this might be a good idea.” So we converted it, and it’s a nice facility. Now, the tram doesn’t stop there anymore.

[Assistant] It doesn’t?

[User] No. They stopped it after a while, so that may not have been the greatest idea in the world. I actually was over there a couple of weeks ago looking at it, and it’s a shame, but I guess it just wasn’t that interesting to people. You have to explain what it is. It’s really a test bed for the Shuttle, all the avionics as realistic as possible. That’s how you test out the software. I guess it just wasn’t that interesting to people.

[Assistant] I think it needs more signage. I haven’t been over there in a couple of years. Last time I was over there, there wasn’t much explanation, maybe that’s it.

[User] Maybe so.

[Assistant] Maybe you need to go over there, give a couple of tours.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] No. They stopped it after a while, so that may not have been the greatest idea in the world. I actually was over there a couple of weeks ago looking at it, and it’s a shame, but I guess it just wasn’t that interesting to people. You have to explain what it is. It’s really a test bed for the Shuttle, all the avionics as realistic as possible. That’s how you test out the software. I guess it just wasn’t that interesting to people.

[Assistant] I think it needs more signage. I haven’t been over there in a couple of years. Last time I was over there, there wasn’t much explanation, maybe that’s it.

[User] Maybe so.

[Assistant] Maybe you need to go over there, give a couple of tours.

[User] Yes, there you go, in my spare time.

[Assistant] There is a lot of Shuttle property that is no longer at NASA. Was there discussion that this would be too difficult to dismantle and piece back together elsewhere?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Maybe so.

[Assistant] Maybe you need to go over there, give a couple of tours.

[User] Yes, there you go, in my spare time.

[Assistant] There is a lot of Shuttle property that is no longer at NASA. Was there discussion that this would be too difficult to dismantle and piece back together elsewhere?

[User] Well, it was a combination of who would pay for it and who wants it, who wants it bad enough to pay for it. It came down to nobody wanted it bad enough to pay for it, and we said, “Okay, let’s see if we can use it, get some benefit out of it.” A lot of the Shuttle hardware, people did want it, and we wanted it to get out there, we wanted it to be available for the public to see as much as possible, but it costs money to move things. Some of the museums were anxious to get it and pay for it, but we just didn’t have the money to do a whole lot, I’m afraid.

[Assistant] Was that a difficult time for you, seeing things like the full fuselage trainer and some of the other simulators leave JSC?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Oh yes. As the pilot of the first Discovery mission, and all three of my missions, it meant a lot to me to see Discovery come in out there. That was a big event, really pretty special.

[Assistant] Have you been out to see her since she’s been placed in the museum?

[User] No, no I haven’t. Someday I’ll take the granddaughters out there and tell them I flew that, and they’re going to go, “Wow, you must be really old.”

[Assistant] I think they’ll be really impressed. Speaking of your granddaughters, because I think they have something to do with this, I remember you would always tell people—you’d end a meeting with, “Just keep your heads down and keep coloring.”

[User] I just wanted people to keep doing their job. I kept saying, the best way we can influence the future is to do a great job now, and if we accomplish the missions we’ve been given, we’ll be given a lot more missions in the future. So, just keep doing what you’re doing, keep coloring, it’ll work out. Always does.

[Assistant] We’ve talked about your work with national politicians. Did you have much contact or work much with the mayor of Houston or state government?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] We don’t shovel snow.

[Assistant] That’s true.

[User] And don’t freeze to death too often here.

[Assistant] It is a nice place to live. I can’t complain.

[User] Well, we can always complain.

[Assistant] Well, how about this, it could be worse.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] And don’t freeze to death too often here.

[Assistant] It is a nice place to live. I can’t complain.

[User] Well, we can always complain.

[Assistant] Well, how about this, it could be worse.

[User] It could be worse, that’s right.

[Assistant] When you were Center Director, and I don’t know if this was the case before you came, the federal government was trying to decrease its use of energy and become more efficient. How much of a challenge was it for you as Center Director to cut back on things like water and electricity usage? I know there was some effort to put in sun panels at the child care center, and other efficiencies, but what challenges were there taking a facility built in the early ’60s and bringing it up into 21st century efficiency standards?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] No, actually. They housed this stuff in a particular place. I don’t think there was anything lead-lined, but there was a certain amount of metal and so forth. I think that’s what protected it. We did find of course some base fog, especially on the really fast films that we started using for things. The faster the film, the easier it fogs.

[Assistant] I had one question. I was just thinking about that 8 x 10 Deardorff camera. Who decided to order that? How did you end up with that camera?

[User] We ended up with about six of them. [I think they were ordered by Jack Ottinger, who became the head of the Still Photo Section.]

[Assistant] At the beginning, why was that camera chosen?

[User] One of them we set up and used for a copy camera. I think the idea was to use it for a portrait camera, because we were getting into shooting portraits of the astronauts for PAO [Public Affairs Office]. The rest of them, I guess, were just used for regular work or something. But they were large.

[Assistant] It just seemed like an interesting choice at that time to purchase those cameras.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] We ended up with about six of them. [I think they were ordered by Jack Ottinger, who became the head of the Still Photo Section.]

[Assistant] At the beginning, why was that camera chosen?

[User] One of them we set up and used for a copy camera. I think the idea was to use it for a portrait camera, because we were getting into shooting portraits of the astronauts for PAO [Public Affairs Office]. The rest of them, I guess, were just used for regular work or something. But they were large.

[Assistant] It just seemed like an interesting choice at that time to purchase those cameras.

[User] If I could afford the film for it, I wouldn’t mind having one.

[Assistant] Then what did you move into next? Was there a next range of cameras that you started?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] If I could afford the film for it, I wouldn’t mind having one.

[Assistant] Then what did you move into next? Was there a next range of cameras that you started?

[User] We had some 4 x 5 [inch] Speed Graphics, which the news people were still using. It was getting old. We used to go shoot stuff with those. But they’re slow to use, as compared with a 35-[millimeter] or a Hasselblad or something. Then we moved to using Hasselblads for most things. But still we did an awful lot of nuts and bolts photography for engineers and so forth.\n\n We also had 4 x 5 [inch] view cameras. The nice thing about a view camera is you can bend the bellows around and the front lens board to correct for any number of things. If you shoot a picture of something, just a square object or a computer or something, it’s going to be big in the front and narrow toward the back. This you can correct for parallax with a view camera. So we used those a lot. They’re slow. We would go out on a job and take a view camera and a whole bunch of lights and light stands, and we had big dollies to carry all this stuff. It was pretty slow, and dull and unrewarding!

[Assistant] I think sometimes people see NASA photographers as always being the glitz and the glamour. But if you look in the image repository, you’d see suit development, construction, pictures of the chambers. When I’ve seen those I can imagine some of those were challenging because of the tight spaces that you had while they were doing testing. Do you have any memories of any of those that were more challenging than others, with some of those onsite photos that you had to do?

[User] At one time or another I guess I probably worked in every area that there was around NASA. I used to shoot stuff down at the arc jet and down at thermochemical. This was a job down at thermochemical [photo numbers\n\n TS-1\n\n and\n\n TS-2\n\n ]. This was a job for the suit people.

[Assistant] Looks like suits.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] At one time or another I guess I probably worked in every area that there was around NASA. I used to shoot stuff down at the arc jet and down at thermochemical. This was a job down at thermochemical [photo numbers\n\n TS-1\n\n and\n\n TS-2\n\n ]. This was a job for the suit people.

[Assistant] Looks like suits.

[User] Then this picture [photo number\n\n TS-3\n\n ], they told me that if I stuck with NASA I would end up in high places.

[Assistant] There you were. You’re up on a big boom.

[User] Yes. That was in Building 9, I think.\n\n When we first started in the aerial photo section, we had a whole lot older planes than what we have now. We didn’t have the T-38s [Talon airplane].\n\n This is a picture of the Photographic Division [photo number\n\n S76-30674\n\n ], probably when we were about as large as we ever had gotten. These were all just the civil service people. That’s me there. I was looking through here the other day, and I thought, “Oh my goodness, this person is dead, and that person is dead.” A whole lot of them.

[Assistant] What a crew. So who took the picture, if this is the Division?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Then this picture [photo number\n\n TS-3\n\n ], they told me that if I stuck with NASA I would end up in high places.

[Assistant] There you were. You’re up on a big boom.

[User] Yes. That was in Building 9, I think.\n\n When we first started in the aerial photo section, we had a whole lot older planes than what we have now. We didn’t have the T-38s [Talon airplane].\n\n This is a picture of the Photographic Division [photo number\n\n S76-30674\n\n ], probably when we were about as large as we ever had gotten. These were all just the civil service people. That’s me there. I was looking through here the other day, and I thought, “Oh my goodness, this person is dead, and that person is dead.” A whole lot of them.

[Assistant] What a crew. So who took the picture, if this is the Division?

[User] We might have done it remotely. In fact come to think of it, I think we did. We did it remotely, yes.

[Assistant] Did you work on mission photography during the Gemini days as well, or was most of what you started doing for missions during the early Apollo flights?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes. That was in Building 9, I think.\n\n When we first started in the aerial photo section, we had a whole lot older planes than what we have now. We didn’t have the T-38s [Talon airplane].\n\n This is a picture of the Photographic Division [photo number\n\n S76-30674\n\n ], probably when we were about as large as we ever had gotten. These were all just the civil service people. That’s me there. I was looking through here the other day, and I thought, “Oh my goodness, this person is dead, and that person is dead.” A whole lot of them.

[Assistant] What a crew. So who took the picture, if this is the Division?

[User] We might have done it remotely. In fact come to think of it, I think we did. We did it remotely, yes.

[Assistant] Did you work on mission photography during the Gemini days as well, or was most of what you started doing for missions during the early Apollo flights?

[User] Well, yes, during Mercury, Gemini mostly I was working in the lab one place or another.

[Assistant] Hours get any better as you got closer to the Moon?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Well, yes, during Mercury, Gemini mostly I was working in the lab one place or another.

[Assistant] Hours get any better as you got closer to the Moon?

[User] No.

[Assistant] Just continual?

[User] Yes. There was just a huge push to get a man on the Moon. Everybody just worked all the time. It wasn’t until after Apollo and the Apollo-Soyuz that there was a big lull for a long time, until they got the [Space] Shuttle up and running. We used to be able to requisition almost anything or go right down to supply and say, “I need a such-and-such right now,” and you could get it. Well, after Apollo-Soyuz and we got into this big long lull, the people that generated paperwork seem to have gotten ahold of the reins. You couldn’t get anything without paperwork. Then you had to wait and wait and wait until it got delivered. Even if you went down there to pick something up, you still had to have paperwork that they had to process, and then you had to wait and wait.

[Assistant] That’s quite a cultural change.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] No.

[Assistant] Just continual?

[User] Yes. There was just a huge push to get a man on the Moon. Everybody just worked all the time. It wasn’t until after Apollo and the Apollo-Soyuz that there was a big lull for a long time, until they got the [Space] Shuttle up and running. We used to be able to requisition almost anything or go right down to supply and say, “I need a such-and-such right now,” and you could get it. Well, after Apollo-Soyuz and we got into this big long lull, the people that generated paperwork seem to have gotten ahold of the reins. You couldn’t get anything without paperwork. Then you had to wait and wait and wait until it got delivered. Even if you went down there to pick something up, you still had to have paperwork that they had to process, and then you had to wait and wait.

[Assistant] That’s quite a cultural change.

[User] It was. Things really slowed down very rapidly. I remember many years later after that—talk about slowing down—we went home one Friday and came in on Monday, and they had taken the secretaries’ typewriters away. Everybody had a computer on their desk. They didn’t even tell us how to turn the thing on. They sent all the secretaries to school to learn how to do [Microsoft] Word and all these other good things on the computer.\n\n I was fortunate. At the time I was the monitor for the digital film recording laboratory. I’m getting way ahead of myself here, but there was a guy in the office there named Sid Clinton who had had a computer company on the outside before he came to work at NASA. I used to try to do my weekly activity reports on the computer. Every once in a while they used to laugh about it. I said, “Sid, Sid, come here, I know it’s in there somewhere.” He’d come and go [knocks] and there it was.

[Assistant] He’d find it for you.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] It was. Things really slowed down very rapidly. I remember many years later after that—talk about slowing down—we went home one Friday and came in on Monday, and they had taken the secretaries’ typewriters away. Everybody had a computer on their desk. They didn’t even tell us how to turn the thing on. They sent all the secretaries to school to learn how to do [Microsoft] Word and all these other good things on the computer.\n\n I was fortunate. At the time I was the monitor for the digital film recording laboratory. I’m getting way ahead of myself here, but there was a guy in the office there named Sid Clinton who had had a computer company on the outside before he came to work at NASA. I used to try to do my weekly activity reports on the computer. Every once in a while they used to laugh about it. I said, “Sid, Sid, come here, I know it’s in there somewhere.” He’d come and go [knocks] and there it was.

[Assistant] He’d find it for you.

[User] Yes. It took me a while to get to be computer-savvy. Now I’m pretty good on a computer. I make opera CD covers on the computer.

[Assistant] That was quite a technological change across the Center.

[User] Yes, it sure was. The other thing, while we’re on the computer thing, not bragging at all, but I was absolutely the best photo retoucher in the Photo Division. But the way I learned this in school was the old fashioned manual way.

[Assistant] One dab at a time.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes. It took me a while to get to be computer-savvy. Now I’m pretty good on a computer. I make opera CD covers on the computer.

[Assistant] That was quite a technological change across the Center.

[User] Yes, it sure was. The other thing, while we’re on the computer thing, not bragging at all, but I was absolutely the best photo retoucher in the Photo Division. But the way I learned this in school was the old fashioned manual way.

[Assistant] One dab at a time.

[User] One dot at a time. Retouching color photos is a whole lot more difficult than black-and-white, because you have the density and you have the color to deal with too. Now I do all kinds of photo restoration on the computer, and it is just wonderful.

[Assistant] A little less intense maybe.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes, it sure was. The other thing, while we’re on the computer thing, not bragging at all, but I was absolutely the best photo retoucher in the Photo Division. But the way I learned this in school was the old fashioned manual way.

[Assistant] One dab at a time.

[User] One dot at a time. Retouching color photos is a whole lot more difficult than black-and-white, because you have the density and you have the color to deal with too. Now I do all kinds of photo restoration on the computer, and it is just wonderful.

[Assistant] A little less intense maybe.

[User] Yes. I’ve done a whole lot of genealogy stuff. So I’ve gotten these old, old, old pictures. Some of them have been torn in pieces. I’ve put them back together and fixed them all. You would never know that anything was ever wrong with them. That was just a really major step forward!

[Assistant] It would have been quite different in the mid ’60s to have had that type of technology. You talked about the thin base film, and that was a big change when that came through. Were there other major changes of that type of technology during the same time that you were trying to keep up with all that there was to do during the first days of the space race? We always laugh that every time we get good on our computer software now they change it, so you’re always in a learning curve. Did you experience a lot of the technological learning curves back then, or did that stay pretty standard?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Right now.

[Assistant] That was your deadline? Right now?

[User] Yes. If it was some kind of a test going on, some kind of an important test that was really time-critical, we would put that on first and run it. Then if it was something else that maybe wasn’t as time-critical, that would go on later. Sometimes a lot of it was just duplication. Making dupes of other PAO films or who knows what.

[Assistant] I’m curious about your dealings with the astronauts. Did you train them at all, or did you work with them after they got back with the flight film?

[User] Yes, way back we used to do some training with the astronauts. Then that was taken over by some group. I think these were contractors, they had something to do with the Astronaut Office. I’m not sure what directorate they were in. We knew these people and used to interface with them. They did the training. Of course, we would bring up pointers also, and things that we found out from pictures that had already been done, and say, “Well, if you can do this instead of that,” or, “Don’t do this anymore.”\n\n Then, after the mission pictures had been processed, we interfaced with the astronauts a lot. They would pick out certain pictures from their missions that they thought were the most salient features of the mission. We would put together press packages and motion picture. They would have a motion picture of the whole mission. I guess they still do that.

[Assistant] Did you have to catalog? Did you have to put the captions on the photos as well? Was that part of your duties?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes. If it was some kind of a test going on, some kind of an important test that was really time-critical, we would put that on first and run it. Then if it was something else that maybe wasn’t as time-critical, that would go on later. Sometimes a lot of it was just duplication. Making dupes of other PAO films or who knows what.

[Assistant] I’m curious about your dealings with the astronauts. Did you train them at all, or did you work with them after they got back with the flight film?

[User] Yes, way back we used to do some training with the astronauts. Then that was taken over by some group. I think these were contractors, they had something to do with the Astronaut Office. I’m not sure what directorate they were in. We knew these people and used to interface with them. They did the training. Of course, we would bring up pointers also, and things that we found out from pictures that had already been done, and say, “Well, if you can do this instead of that,” or, “Don’t do this anymore.”\n\n Then, after the mission pictures had been processed, we interfaced with the astronauts a lot. They would pick out certain pictures from their missions that they thought were the most salient features of the mission. We would put together press packages and motion picture. They would have a motion picture of the whole mission. I guess they still do that.

[Assistant] Did you have to catalog? Did you have to put the captions on the photos as well? Was that part of your duties?

[User] No, PAO did that. They printed all the stuff on the back of the pictures with those old mimeograph machines. They were blurry.

[Assistant] Tell us about those days in preparation for the first Moon landing, of what that you did in the lab. Was there anything different you did preparing for the flight films to come back?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes, way back we used to do some training with the astronauts. Then that was taken over by some group. I think these were contractors, they had something to do with the Astronaut Office. I’m not sure what directorate they were in. We knew these people and used to interface with them. They did the training. Of course, we would bring up pointers also, and things that we found out from pictures that had already been done, and say, “Well, if you can do this instead of that,” or, “Don’t do this anymore.”\n\n Then, after the mission pictures had been processed, we interfaced with the astronauts a lot. They would pick out certain pictures from their missions that they thought were the most salient features of the mission. We would put together press packages and motion picture. They would have a motion picture of the whole mission. I guess they still do that.

[Assistant] Did you have to catalog? Did you have to put the captions on the photos as well? Was that part of your duties?

[User] No, PAO did that. They printed all the stuff on the back of the pictures with those old mimeograph machines. They were blurry.

[Assistant] Tell us about those days in preparation for the first Moon landing, of what that you did in the lab. Was there anything different you did preparing for the flight films to come back?

[User] Yes, I did. Now do you want to take this chronologically?

[Assistant] Yes, let’s do that.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes.\n\n [The following discussion also refers to photo numbers\n\n S69-62291\n\n ,\n\n S69-60424\n\n ,\n\n S69-60426\n\n ,\n\n S69-62292\n\n ] These are just some pictures from Pete [Charles P.] Conrad and “Flash” Gordon—Dick [Richard F.] Gordon.

[Assistant] Now this is the Apollo 12 crew. Did you take on the same role during that mission as well?

[User] I was there for Apollo 11, Apollo 12, and Apollo 13, for which we still went into quarantine, and then they cut it short because they didn’t land on the Moon. Apollo 14 was our last one with Al [Alan B.] Shepard. This is Pete Conrad and Dick Gordon playing with some of the Moon rocks [photo number\n\n S69-62293\n\n ]. Right before we got out of quarantine, I would shoot a picture [photo number\n\n S69-63056\n\n ]. I’m never in any of the pictures because I’m the one who shoots it. That’s what my wife was saying. She says, “Well, where are you?” I said, “I’m not in there. I’m the guy they call in the newspaper NASA Photo!”

[Assistant] Behind the camera.

[User] Yes. So anyway here’s Al [Alan] Bean and all the crew [photo number\n\n S69-63056\n\n ]. This is Dr. Clarence [A.] Jernigan. I’m in touch with him too.

[Assistant] That’s quite a crew.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes, up close and personal. He says, “Well, I need to get in some close formation practice,” or something like that. Then we came back from that trip, and I was over in Building 8 going down the stairs one day. His wife Beverly was coming up the stairs. She saw me, she started laughing already. She says, “Vance told me about what you said.”

[Assistant] So do you have another series of photos? Let’s see what else you got over there.

[User] We’re going to whiz through all this stuff here I hope. Let’s see.

[Assistant] How many years were you with NASA?

[User] When I retired I had 34½ years, and three years of that was military time. So 31½.

[Assistant] You went in ’62 I think. Is that correct?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] We’re going to whiz through all this stuff here I hope. Let’s see.

[Assistant] How many years were you with NASA?

[User] When I retired I had 34½ years, and three years of that was military time. So 31½.

[Assistant] You went in ’62 I think. Is that correct?

[User] I don’t remember if it was ’61 or ’62. Somewhere around there. I think this picture is out at White Sands [photo number\n\n S82-29273\n\n ]. We were at Edwards expecting the Shuttle landing, of which flight I don’t remember. I got to be in charge of the photo effort at White Sands. As it turned out, the weather was so bad that they decided to go in and land at White Sands. There are some pictures from White Sands.

[Assistant] Anna [L.] Fisher [M.D.]


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] When I retired I had 34½ years, and three years of that was military time. So 31½.

[Assistant] You went in ’62 I think. Is that correct?

[User] I don’t remember if it was ’61 or ’62. Somewhere around there. I think this picture is out at White Sands [photo number\n\n S82-29273\n\n ]. We were at Edwards expecting the Shuttle landing, of which flight I don’t remember. I got to be in charge of the photo effort at White Sands. As it turned out, the weather was so bad that they decided to go in and land at White Sands. There are some pictures from White Sands.

[Assistant] Anna [L.] Fisher [M.D.]

[User] There’s a picture with Anna Fisher [photo number\n\n TS-6\n\n ]. I got an award for the photographic effort at White Sands. As it turned out, not only was it the first landing, it was the only landing at White Sands.

[Assistant] So it surely was a unique experience, because that was it, wasn’t it?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I don’t remember if it was ’61 or ’62. Somewhere around there. I think this picture is out at White Sands [photo number\n\n S82-29273\n\n ]. We were at Edwards expecting the Shuttle landing, of which flight I don’t remember. I got to be in charge of the photo effort at White Sands. As it turned out, the weather was so bad that they decided to go in and land at White Sands. There are some pictures from White Sands.

[Assistant] Anna [L.] Fisher [M.D.]

[User] There’s a picture with Anna Fisher [photo number\n\n TS-6\n\n ]. I got an award for the photographic effort at White Sands. As it turned out, not only was it the first landing, it was the only landing at White Sands.

[Assistant] So it surely was a unique experience, because that was it, wasn’t it?

[User] Yes. I have so many of these awards. I could probably paper a room with them. I pulled out a couple that actually meant something. This was the idea that I came up with of using this old Kodak blanket for processing thin base film. That was a special award that they gave me for that.\n\n My other big big job was as a permanent party on the zero-gravity plane [KC-135] for 18½ years and had a lot of really fun experiences on there. I think I was on the zero-g plane every time we had a fire or a rapid decompression or an explosion.

[Assistant] Any kind of event.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes. Got to be pretty good friends with [Margaret] Rhea Seddon and some of the girls. I became really close with the European astronauts. There’s Ulf Merbold, and Ernst Messerschmid, and Wubbo [J.] Ockels, who’s from the Netherlands, and Reinhard Furrer [photo number\n\n S84-47139\n\n ]. Since I speak German, I used to interface with them quite a bit. This was a gal, Stephie Wells [photo number\n\n S87-31871\n\n ], who was Bob [Robert J.] Williams’s assistant in the Zero-G Office for a while. She was in the National Guard and was a C-5A pilot [Galaxy airplane], the biggest airplane that we have.

[Assistant] She’s a little bitty thing for a big airplane.

[User] She’s about five-foot-four, maybe. Over the years, we had every imaginable kind of experiment. Things that you would never even dream of. People would come up with some of the craziest experiments.

[Assistant] Is this a video camera [photo number\n\n S86-36599\n\n ]? Did you go to video?

[User] Yes, that’s a video camera.

[Assistant] So you kept moving from one medium to another.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] She’s about five-foot-four, maybe. Over the years, we had every imaginable kind of experiment. Things that you would never even dream of. People would come up with some of the craziest experiments.

[Assistant] Is this a video camera [photo number\n\n S86-36599\n\n ]? Did you go to video?

[User] Yes, that’s a video camera.

[Assistant] So you kept moving from one medium to another.

[User] Yes I did everything, stills, motion picture, video.

[Assistant] Did you train yourself, or did you have some type of training when the new equipment came in?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes, that’s a video camera.

[Assistant] So you kept moving from one medium to another.

[User] Yes I did everything, stills, motion picture, video.

[Assistant] Did you train yourself, or did you have some type of training when the new equipment came in?

[User] No, I just read the book.

[Assistant] Just experimented and figured out how to make it work?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] No, I just read the book.

[Assistant] Just experimented and figured out how to make it work?

[User] Yes. This is just horsing around [photo number\n\n S84-43036\n\n ].

[Assistant] That’s fun.

[User] This was, I think if I remember correctly, a sled that they used on the ESA experiments, the European Space Agency [photo number\n\n S89-37526\n\n and\n\n S89-37528\n\n ].

[Assistant] Did you find yourself being an experiment as well? Did they test things on you, since you’d gone so many times?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes. This is just horsing around [photo number\n\n S84-43036\n\n ].

[Assistant] That’s fun.

[User] This was, I think if I remember correctly, a sled that they used on the ESA experiments, the European Space Agency [photo number\n\n S89-37526\n\n and\n\n S89-37528\n\n ].

[Assistant] Did you find yourself being an experiment as well? Did they test things on you, since you’d gone so many times?

[User] Yes. In fact the people from the Navy had a big ongoing vestibular study. They used to bring these people over I think from Marshall [Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama]. They got different people to experiment on. They would bring guys that were from a seminary, because they didn’t drink or smoke, so it didn’t affect their baseline data.\n\n They had a spin chair in addition to a bunch of other tortures that they had. Some of these guys—we’d do two or three parabolas, and they’d be just sicker than a dog. Some of them were really susceptible. Why they even subjected themselves to this I have no idea. They must have paid them pretty well. There were a couple guys that were so sick, and of course we didn’t stop. We would do our 40 parabolas no matter what. A couple of the guys were so violently ill that after we landed, we had to open the cargo bay door, and we had to take them off in a forklift. They couldn’t even go down the ladder. One guy I remember, he just barfed all over himself, and oh jeez it was awful.

[Assistant] But you adapted okay to all the aircraft work that you did?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] They’re Millikens, which we ran at 400 fps [frames per second].

[Assistant] The other thing that I find interesting is—we’ve taken a tour of this aircraft. It’s not a cool plane to be in. So I imagine setting up took a while before you ever left the ground as well. Did you have to go out there hours before you were going to take off and set all this up?

[User] Oh yes, sometimes, if we had some really complicated things, we would go out and set up stuff the day before, or maybe the Friday before we were going to start flying on Monday.\n\n I don’t think that most people appreciated how much work there was involved. Every week it was a whole new world. People would come with different experiments and different requirements, and we had to build something all the time and make it work. Just all the electronics involved was daunting.

[Assistant] And the lighting, because you had some restricted lighting.

[User] Yes. See, we have extra lighting here [referring to photo]. It was very challenging every week. It was interesting though. It never got boring, that’s for sure. For this reason I really did enjoy flying on the zero-g plane. I didn’t tell anybody that because I thought they’d probably take me off of it if I did.\n\n Here’s [S.] Christa McAuliffe and—

[Assistant] Barbara [R.] Morgan.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Oh yes, sometimes, if we had some really complicated things, we would go out and set up stuff the day before, or maybe the Friday before we were going to start flying on Monday.\n\n I don’t think that most people appreciated how much work there was involved. Every week it was a whole new world. People would come with different experiments and different requirements, and we had to build something all the time and make it work. Just all the electronics involved was daunting.

[Assistant] And the lighting, because you had some restricted lighting.

[User] Yes. See, we have extra lighting here [referring to photo]. It was very challenging every week. It was interesting though. It never got boring, that’s for sure. For this reason I really did enjoy flying on the zero-g plane. I didn’t tell anybody that because I thought they’d probably take me off of it if I did.\n\n Here’s [S.] Christa McAuliffe and—

[Assistant] Barbara [R.] Morgan.

[User] Barbara Morgan [photo numbers\n\n S85-44833\n\n and\n\n S85-42475\n\n ]. I’m back here reloading the camera.\n\n [The following discussion also refers to photo numbers\n\n S78-31714\n\n ,\n\n S78-31715\n\n ,\n\n S78-31716\n\n ,\n\n S78-31717\n\n ,\n\n S78-31718\n\n ,\n\n S78-31719\n\n ] Here’s my friend Marsha [S.] Ivins. These are different experiments that we were doing. This was some kind of a boot that they had with suction cups on it. We were trying that so you could, maybe, secure yourself somewhere in zero-g to perform different activities. This was an experiment with fire extinguishers for zero gravity. That’s some more of the shoe.

[Assistant] Looks like putting on skates. Oh, the suction cups. I see them.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes. See, we have extra lighting here [referring to photo]. It was very challenging every week. It was interesting though. It never got boring, that’s for sure. For this reason I really did enjoy flying on the zero-g plane. I didn’t tell anybody that because I thought they’d probably take me off of it if I did.\n\n Here’s [S.] Christa McAuliffe and—

[Assistant] Barbara [R.] Morgan.

[User] Barbara Morgan [photo numbers\n\n S85-44833\n\n and\n\n S85-42475\n\n ]. I’m back here reloading the camera.\n\n [The following discussion also refers to photo numbers\n\n S78-31714\n\n ,\n\n S78-31715\n\n ,\n\n S78-31716\n\n ,\n\n S78-31717\n\n ,\n\n S78-31718\n\n ,\n\n S78-31719\n\n ] Here’s my friend Marsha [S.] Ivins. These are different experiments that we were doing. This was some kind of a boot that they had with suction cups on it. We were trying that so you could, maybe, secure yourself somewhere in zero-g to perform different activities. This was an experiment with fire extinguishers for zero gravity. That’s some more of the shoe.

[Assistant] Looks like putting on skates. Oh, the suction cups. I see them.

[User] Then here are some with extensions on it so you could reach places that were too high.

[Assistant] Look at that.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Barbara Morgan [photo numbers\n\n S85-44833\n\n and\n\n S85-42475\n\n ]. I’m back here reloading the camera.\n\n [The following discussion also refers to photo numbers\n\n S78-31714\n\n ,\n\n S78-31715\n\n ,\n\n S78-31716\n\n ,\n\n S78-31717\n\n ,\n\n S78-31718\n\n ,\n\n S78-31719\n\n ] Here’s my friend Marsha [S.] Ivins. These are different experiments that we were doing. This was some kind of a boot that they had with suction cups on it. We were trying that so you could, maybe, secure yourself somewhere in zero-g to perform different activities. This was an experiment with fire extinguishers for zero gravity. That’s some more of the shoe.

[Assistant] Looks like putting on skates. Oh, the suction cups. I see them.

[User] Then here are some with extensions on it so you could reach places that were too high.

[Assistant] Look at that.

[User] Great picture of Marsha.

[Assistant] That is great.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Then here are some with extensions on it so you could reach places that were too high.

[Assistant] Look at that.

[User] Great picture of Marsha.

[Assistant] That is great.

[User] Let’s see. This is just a picture—we’re loading some Milliken cameras on the plane. This is an old zero-g picture [photo number\n\n S79-36845\n\n ]. Here’s Pinky [George D.] Nelson. This was one of these things where instead of doing 40 parabolas, we did 62 of them. Once in a while when we would do a whole bunch, we would shoot a picture of it like this. This is Don Griggs, who was the head of the Zero-G Office at that time. Then some years later, Bob Williams took over [photo number\n\n S79-35212\n\n ].\n\n I had a lot of interface with the European astronauts and also the Canadians. These are the Canadian astronauts, and this is some of the European crew here from one of our flights [photo number\n\n S85-44652\n\n ]. In fact Bobby Gray and I—the other guy that flew most of the time with me on the zero-g plane—we were the only ones invited to the Canadians’ splashdown party after the first Canadian astronaut, [Marc Garneau] the only one that flew.\n\n This was actually a quality increase [QI] [referring to award]. This isn’t the paper your wall kind. This was a QI for the zero-g support in 1978. I had logged, just for 1978, 103 flight hours on the zero-g plane alone. That isn’t taking into consideration the other aircraft we had and the T-38s. I logged 1,431 parabolas, and that was just for one year. I remember when I retired, somebody got out the old log, and they told me how many parabolas that I had done and how much zero-g time I had. They told me that I had more zero-g time than most of the astronauts that were running around.

[Assistant] I can see that, adding that together.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] No.

[Assistant] No.

[User] In fact, I asked my staff when I was leaving . . . I said, "Look, the one thing I would like as a parting gift would be whatever President Obama signed to make me the ISOO Director." And apparently, what they found was a checkbox of some sort, just a [LAUGHS] . . . . So I'm still waiting to get a copy of that checkbox. But no. I was expecting at least a letter or some type of something.

[Assistant] Yeah.

[User] It's a checkbox, you know [LAUGHS]. So it's funny sometimes the way that works. I mean, the bigger the appointment, the less the recognition for it!

[Assistant] Yeah. Very little fanfare. Yeah [LAUGHS]. Interesting. Did you have to go to the White House when you became an SESer?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] In fact, I asked my staff when I was leaving . . . I said, "Look, the one thing I would like as a parting gift would be whatever President Obama signed to make me the ISOO Director." And apparently, what they found was a checkbox of some sort, just a [LAUGHS] . . . . So I'm still waiting to get a copy of that checkbox. But no. I was expecting at least a letter or some type of something.

[Assistant] Yeah.

[User] It's a checkbox, you know [LAUGHS]. So it's funny sometimes the way that works. I mean, the bigger the appointment, the less the recognition for it!

[Assistant] Yeah. Very little fanfare. Yeah [LAUGHS]. Interesting. Did you have to go to the White House when you became an SESer?

[User] No, I was an SESer at the DOJ. That career appointment travels with you from agency to agency.

[Assistant] Okay. Interesting. Yeah, that's too bad. I would have liked that also, to have something from the President saying that you were approved.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] No, I was an SESer at the DOJ. That career appointment travels with you from agency to agency.

[Assistant] Okay. Interesting. Yeah, that's too bad. I would have liked that also, to have something from the President saying that you were approved.

[User] Checkbox. [LAUGHING]

[Assistant] Interesting.

[User] Yeah. Right.

[Assistant] So when you first started at the National Archives, what were your first impressions?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yeah. Right.

[Assistant] So when you first started at the National Archives, what were your first impressions?

[User] Well, it was the smallest agency I'd ever worked for. And I have to admit, I was stunned by just looking at ISOO—this was the insider's view—of how little technology we had and how stretched we were. I mean, we were a relatively small office and all the responsibilities . . . . It was funny, too. And I don't mean this to sound snarky at all, but when I got over there, we had to take a lot of training. And it's like, "Look, most of this training is not germane to ISOO and what we do." But I understand the need to get assimilated and understand what the agency does. But I'm trying to figure out how an archivist double wraps something. It's like, you know, I don't . . . . [LAUGHS]

[Assistant] Mhm.

[User] “Okay. All right. Fine, fine.” [LAUGHS] So yeah. It was a bit of a culture shock. I mean, at DOJ, I had three computers on my desk that were classified. I had my own classified phone. At ISOO, we had one classified terminal up in the SCIF [sensitive compartmented information facility] for the whole staff and one classified phone for the entire staff. So I went from living in a Manhattan penthouse to more of, I guess, a regular government place. But yeah, I think the biggest adjustment was just like, whoa. I mean, we are a small agency, and our budget reflects that.

[Assistant] Mhm. It must have been quite a shock.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Well, it was the smallest agency I'd ever worked for. And I have to admit, I was stunned by just looking at ISOO—this was the insider's view—of how little technology we had and how stretched we were. I mean, we were a relatively small office and all the responsibilities . . . . It was funny, too. And I don't mean this to sound snarky at all, but when I got over there, we had to take a lot of training. And it's like, "Look, most of this training is not germane to ISOO and what we do." But I understand the need to get assimilated and understand what the agency does. But I'm trying to figure out how an archivist double wraps something. It's like, you know, I don't . . . . [LAUGHS]

[Assistant] Mhm.

[User] “Okay. All right. Fine, fine.” [LAUGHS] So yeah. It was a bit of a culture shock. I mean, at DOJ, I had three computers on my desk that were classified. I had my own classified phone. At ISOO, we had one classified terminal up in the SCIF [sensitive compartmented information facility] for the whole staff and one classified phone for the entire staff. So I went from living in a Manhattan penthouse to more of, I guess, a regular government place. But yeah, I think the biggest adjustment was just like, whoa. I mean, we are a small agency, and our budget reflects that.

[Assistant] Mhm. It must have been quite a shock.

[User] Quite, yeah. Another thing, too . . . I mean, at the DOJ, we had secure video conferencing in 2000. And after 9/11, we were using it extensively. We still don't have it at AI. We still don't have it at ISOO. Yeah. [THROWS HANDS UP] It's 2024 now! You know, I mean . . . .

[Assistant] Do you think [it's] because there's just not enough resources? Not enough . . .


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] “Okay. All right. Fine, fine.” [LAUGHS] So yeah. It was a bit of a culture shock. I mean, at DOJ, I had three computers on my desk that were classified. I had my own classified phone. At ISOO, we had one classified terminal up in the SCIF [sensitive compartmented information facility] for the whole staff and one classified phone for the entire staff. So I went from living in a Manhattan penthouse to more of, I guess, a regular government place. But yeah, I think the biggest adjustment was just like, whoa. I mean, we are a small agency, and our budget reflects that.

[Assistant] Mhm. It must have been quite a shock.

[User] Quite, yeah. Another thing, too . . . I mean, at the DOJ, we had secure video conferencing in 2000. And after 9/11, we were using it extensively. We still don't have it at AI. We still don't have it at ISOO. Yeah. [THROWS HANDS UP] It's 2024 now! You know, I mean . . . .

[Assistant] Do you think [it's] because there's just not enough resources? Not enough . . .

[User] Yeah.

[Assistant] . . . money or something? Yeah.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Quite, yeah. Another thing, too . . . I mean, at the DOJ, we had secure video conferencing in 2000. And after 9/11, we were using it extensively. We still don't have it at AI. We still don't have it at ISOO. Yeah. [THROWS HANDS UP] It's 2024 now! You know, I mean . . . .

[Assistant] Do you think [it's] because there's just not enough resources? Not enough . . .

[User] Yeah.

[Assistant] . . . money or something? Yeah.

[User] Exactly.

[Assistant] Okay. Well, before we get too far down the road, can you talk about what ISOO's mission is and why it's important?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Right. It was always a challenge. Now, again, I always thought when I got to ISOO, it was an interesting place. We had a small, small staff, but it was balkanized in a very unusual way. It was balkanized by the way it was set up. For instance, . . . the controlled unclassified information people had very little to do with the classified people or had anything to do with the Public Interest Declassification Board. So ISOO was a small office that was almost three or four offices in one. And that created some friction among people, like, "My work's more important than yours," or "I need more resources than you do." And then, frankly, we had some people, I thought, who had been there too long. They were disgruntled. I would say, "Well, okay, this is a big government. Why don't you go look for another job?" "Well, I'm too comfortable." "But I mean, if you're going to chronically complain and not help to fix things, please go work somewhere else. We are too busy to constantly deal with your complaints. We can help you find something else." So it was necessary in a way, to have some attrition to get some people out. I always said I'd rather have 10 really good ones than I would 20 who are going to be a problem.

[Assistant] Right.

[User] And in 2020, we finally got 100 percent on the EVS, 100-percent job satisfaction.

[Assistant] Oh.

[User] Yeah. It worked [CROSS-TALKING].

[Assistant] That's extremely hard to do.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] And in 2020, we finally got 100 percent on the EVS, 100-percent job satisfaction.

[Assistant] Oh.

[User] Yeah. It worked [CROSS-TALKING].

[Assistant] That's extremely hard to do.

[User] Yeah, but I don't miss that part of the job at all.

[Assistant] Yeah. Always a fun time of year, right? [LAUGHS]


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yeah. It worked [CROSS-TALKING].

[Assistant] That's extremely hard to do.

[User] Yeah, but I don't miss that part of the job at all.

[Assistant] Yeah. Always a fun time of year, right? [LAUGHS]

[User] Yeah.

[Assistant] So you said that the office was part of NARA beginning somewhere probably around the mid-1980s. Today, do you think that NARA is the appropriate agency for this office?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] The biggest stick I had was my annual report to the President on the health of the classification/declassification system, and we could call people out in that report and say, "Look, 25 of these agencies are doing the right thing. This one over here refuses even to pick up the phone." You know, so you're called out publicly. And that report actually was cited by the Washington Post, the LA [Los Angeles] Times. I mean, it could get traction. But, you know, I think it would be better to have a more direct impact than having to go through reports cited by the press where you're publicly embarrassed. There should be an easier way to do that.

[Assistant] Do you think that the office doesn't have enough authority, that it's not been given enough authority to really act upon these things?

[User] It's got authority. But the authority, again, it's mostly . . . how can I put it? I had to go to the National Security Advisor or the President to actually get things if I really had an issue. That's the route I had to go. And the problem with that is just the bandwidth. If the National Security Advisor is over in Israel or somewhere else, is he really going to care that the DoD [Department of Defense], for instance, hypothetically, is not marking its documents correctly? I mean, it's too high up for me to have to go to.

[Assistant] That's a very good point. Yeah. If they've got so many other things on their plate, then what does this one agency not doing something right, where does that fall within their priorities?

[User] Right.

[Assistant] You almost need that middle man.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Right.

[Assistant] You almost need that middle man.

[User] I could write a letter to the Secretary of Defense and hope he or she or they does what they're supposed to do. But again, I mean, I'm mostly left to the goodwill of people to do what they should do. As I think if we've seen anything over the last few years, it's that this system that we have here in the classified, declassified, and all the rest, relies a lot on people following the rules and doing the right thing. That doesn't mean that they necessarily will, you know. And if they don't, then where are we? . . . I know when I left in June, the NSC was just getting back to beginning to reworking 13526, the executive order that governs classification and declassification. And among the topics were going to be exactly what we're talking about: where ISOO should be, what its authority should be, should some of its duties be scaled back? I mean, do you really need it to be in charge of this, or should it really focus on a few things that it can do really well? There are all sorts of philosophical, even existential questions in a way, about what this office should be. What happened over time was its responsibilities grew by accretion, like, "We have a new program. Okay. Who are we going to put in charge of it? Oh, okay. ISOO!" I mean, there wasn't a whole lot of thought sometimes given to what that meant in terms of resourcing and staffing.

[Assistant] Mhm.

[User] And that's the government. It's the nature of it. Things have to be done, and some of them are great, and some of them are like, "Oh Christ."

[Assistant] So it's just these new teams or councils or whatever. They create it, and they just throw it on ISOO's plate.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] And that's the government. It's the nature of it. Things have to be done, and some of them are great, and some of them are like, "Oh Christ."

[Assistant] So it's just these new teams or councils or whatever. They create it, and they just throw it on ISOO's plate.

[User] That's right. And the worst thing you can have in the government is an unfunded mandate, where you get more responsibilities, but you're not given the money by Congress to carry it out.

[Assistant] Mhm.

[User] And that was a classic case. We were constantly afflicted by that where we'd get some congressman, you know . . . God almighty! I mean, after having worked on the Hill and seen how legislation is done, I realized how dangerous it can be sometimes when some staffer does this. And it's like, "Wait a minute. You just gave us this, and you didn't give us any funding at all to be able to implement this. And that means that we've got to rob Peter to pay Paul, or just not do some things that we're supposed to be doing, because now we have to do this." And so it's fascinating, really. I mean, now that I'm six, seven months away from it, you get more of a perspective on this stuff. And I have a hell of a lot of respect for ISOO and its people and also the National Archives for having all this stuff to do, and it's so poorly funded and, just, it's ridiculous. It's really absurd.

[Assistant] So what would you see as your primary responsibility that should be kept as ISOO's mission? And what else would you get rid of, I guess, in an ideal world?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] And so it didn't take much to fail because of all the exemptions that were written into the executive order. I always thought they should be much more circumscribed. And also, too, there was a big argument that was going on when I left—and it's one that has to be held—is, okay, if we've got X number of people and X number of dollars devoted to this stuff, and that's all we're going to get, shouldn't we have prioritization? Shouldn't we prioritize which documents we think should be declassified first because they are the most important, whatever that is? The automatic declassification system is expensive, and it was also declassifying a lot of stuff that no one wants or certainly the public at large isn’t interested in. But then the question became: If we're going to have a prioritization system, who should be the one prioritizing? Should it be the agencies? Should it be the public interest groups? Should it be the National Archives? The American Historical Society? So that was a question that, to my knowledge, is still left hanging. I don't know exactly what this administration, if any, is going to come up with. But I think the two ways out of this morass, it seems to me, is prioritization and then the application eventually of some type of artificial intelligence which can go through this stuff a lot faster than we can by hand. But I don't know given how much all this is likely going to cost whether applying AI [artificial intelligence] to this is realistic or not.

[Assistant] Some people think it's going to fix everything. [LAUGHS]

[User] We'll see. Right?

[Assistant] Right. Exactly. That's going to take a while. [LAUGHS]

[User] Yes it will.

[Assistant] So in terms of the executive order with the automatic declassification and some of these other executive orders, does ISOO work on these orders, on the language? Do they have input on the language?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] We'll see. Right?

[Assistant] Right. Exactly. That's going to take a while. [LAUGHS]

[User] Yes it will.

[Assistant] So in terms of the executive order with the automatic declassification and some of these other executive orders, does ISOO work on these orders, on the language? Do they have input on the language?

[User] Oh, yes. We have a lot of impact on it. In fact, when I was the Director—and I assume it's still going on now—we were invited to all the NSC’s meetings that were drafting these, redrafting these orders or reconsidering them. Ellen Knight, who I guess is still running the NSC's reformation processes, is an ISOO veteran. She worked for me for a while, and long before I got there, she worked at ISOO. So there's a very close working relationship between ISOO and the National Security Council on this.

[Assistant] Now, I know you said that ISOO doesn't really have a stick in terms of when you are trying to force agencies to implement some of these things.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes it will.

[Assistant] So in terms of the executive order with the automatic declassification and some of these other executive orders, does ISOO work on these orders, on the language? Do they have input on the language?

[User] Oh, yes. We have a lot of impact on it. In fact, when I was the Director—and I assume it's still going on now—we were invited to all the NSC’s meetings that were drafting these, redrafting these orders or reconsidering them. Ellen Knight, who I guess is still running the NSC's reformation processes, is an ISOO veteran. She worked for me for a while, and long before I got there, she worked at ISOO. So there's a very close working relationship between ISOO and the National Security Council on this.

[Assistant] Now, I know you said that ISOO doesn't really have a stick in terms of when you are trying to force agencies to implement some of these things.

[User] Right.

[Assistant] In an executive order, do you see that there's room for improvement there? Or is there something that would make that better, that would improve that process so that you would have a stick?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Sure.

[Assistant] And it's hard to make them do something. Right? So . . . very difficult to get that stick, I guess, in our field [too].

[User] Especially if you are from an underfunded agency. Yeah.

[Assistant] Yes, exactly.

[User] Yeah.

[Assistant] So, let's see here. What was your role in the Public Interest Declassification Board? Can you talk about that a little bit?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I don't want to speak about President Trump’s legal case. But we are aware that this has been a problem in the government where high-ranking officials take government records they shouldn't. And, again, I think most of this could be solved by a robust training program, and also when people leave, going in and reminding them that "you signed a non-disclosure agreement and that this stuff that's not yours stays here." But that's resources. You know, that's people going out and actually sitting down with these folks and going through it with them, and it's hands-on stuff.

[Assistant] Right. That's one thing that we always stress, too, in our records management inspections, doing 1: the training so everyone knows what their responsibilities are, and then 2: those exit briefings. So I wonder then if those aren't being conducted, say at the White House level, the EOP [Executive Office of the President] level, or what?

[User] I'd be damned surprised, but some White Houses are better at this than others. I mean, you get the sense of having junior staffers packing up a lot of stuff and this and that, and whether they know what they're doing or . . . . One gets the sense it's kind of chaotic at the end of an administration.

[Assistant] Right.

[User] You know, but it's something that should be formalized, and it's something that should be stressed. And when people come in and go to something like the White House to work, no matter whether you're sitting in the Oval Office itself or whether you're a staffer far removed from the circles of power, as long as you have access to classified information, it comes with rules and with regulations. And, again, it goes back to what I was saying earlier about the executive orders. I mean, they apply to everybody, you know, or they don't apply at all.

[Assistant] Yeah. So when these things happen, when you get word that classified records were found in somebody's papers . . . so that's not about necessarily changing policy that ISOO is putting out, because [the requirements are] already in policy. It's just they're not implementing them.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I'd be damned surprised, but some White Houses are better at this than others. I mean, you get the sense of having junior staffers packing up a lot of stuff and this and that, and whether they know what they're doing or . . . . One gets the sense it's kind of chaotic at the end of an administration.

[Assistant] Right.

[User] You know, but it's something that should be formalized, and it's something that should be stressed. And when people come in and go to something like the White House to work, no matter whether you're sitting in the Oval Office itself or whether you're a staffer far removed from the circles of power, as long as you have access to classified information, it comes with rules and with regulations. And, again, it goes back to what I was saying earlier about the executive orders. I mean, they apply to everybody, you know, or they don't apply at all.

[Assistant] Yeah. So when these things happen, when you get word that classified records were found in somebody's papers . . . so that's not about necessarily changing policy that ISOO is putting out, because [the requirements are] already in policy. It's just they're not implementing them.

[User] Well, the good news is we have had a robust training program in ISOO with librarians and archivists in various places, for instance, the Hoover Institution, Yale, places like that. They're very much aware of the implementing regulations and what they're supposed to do if they get things they shouldn't have. I mean, our best defense right now, until we can get a wider training program in place and people are going to actually attend the training and abide by it, is to alert the other side that, "Hey, if classified material comes your way . . ." we can handle this. I mean, it's not the end of the world. We just want it back.

[Assistant] Right. Yeah. Just give it back to us.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] You know, but it's something that should be formalized, and it's something that should be stressed. And when people come in and go to something like the White House to work, no matter whether you're sitting in the Oval Office itself or whether you're a staffer far removed from the circles of power, as long as you have access to classified information, it comes with rules and with regulations. And, again, it goes back to what I was saying earlier about the executive orders. I mean, they apply to everybody, you know, or they don't apply at all.

[Assistant] Yeah. So when these things happen, when you get word that classified records were found in somebody's papers . . . so that's not about necessarily changing policy that ISOO is putting out, because [the requirements are] already in policy. It's just they're not implementing them.

[User] Well, the good news is we have had a robust training program in ISOO with librarians and archivists in various places, for instance, the Hoover Institution, Yale, places like that. They're very much aware of the implementing regulations and what they're supposed to do if they get things they shouldn't have. I mean, our best defense right now, until we can get a wider training program in place and people are going to actually attend the training and abide by it, is to alert the other side that, "Hey, if classified material comes your way . . ." we can handle this. I mean, it's not the end of the world. We just want it back.

[Assistant] Right. Yeah. Just give it back to us.

[User] Right.

[Assistant] ISOO does have some sort of training out there?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Well, the good news is we have had a robust training program in ISOO with librarians and archivists in various places, for instance, the Hoover Institution, Yale, places like that. They're very much aware of the implementing regulations and what they're supposed to do if they get things they shouldn't have. I mean, our best defense right now, until we can get a wider training program in place and people are going to actually attend the training and abide by it, is to alert the other side that, "Hey, if classified material comes your way . . ." we can handle this. I mean, it's not the end of the world. We just want it back.

[Assistant] Right. Yeah. Just give it back to us.

[User] Right.

[Assistant] ISOO does have some sort of training out there?

[User] Yeah.

[Assistant] Okay. Yeah. You said you just needed more robust training that people could attend?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yeah.

[Assistant] Okay. Yeah. You said you just needed more robust training that people could attend?

[User] That would certainly be one important step. I don't know whether that's the only step.

[Assistant] Okay.

[User] I mean, for instance, you know, when you're an original classification authority, you're supposed to have annual training. . . . I mean, you go back to the things like the Clinton emails and stuff. Did she have—I mean, that was before my time. But I mean, look, how many times have you heard somebody say, "I'm either too important for the training or I don't have time for it? What are they going to do to me? I'm Secretary of X." So yeah.

[Assistant] Or it could be something where, you know, they just have to keep hitting the next button through the training until they hit the [end] or something.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I mean, for instance, you know, when you're an original classification authority, you're supposed to have annual training. . . . I mean, you go back to the things like the Clinton emails and stuff. Did she have—I mean, that was before my time. But I mean, look, how many times have you heard somebody say, "I'm either too important for the training or I don't have time for it? What are they going to do to me? I'm Secretary of X." So yeah.

[Assistant] Or it could be something where, you know, they just have to keep hitting the next button through the training until they hit the [end] or something.

[User] Yeah. “You're done.” And that's the end of it. I mean, I suppose hope springs eternal. But if one good thing comes out of all the stuff that we've been through the last year or even two years, it's more of a spotlight on this issue. And perhaps there'll be a movement to take all this much more seriously than it has been heretofore, that new administrations coming in, that this type of responsibility and training will be integral to their operation. We can get away from some of this ambiguity—"This doesn't apply to me," or "I'm not going to get to this." No, no, you are going to do it. And it's just the way it is. So we'll see. I mean, you know, often the history lesson in all this is it's a big issue for a year or two, and then that's the end of it. You don't hear about it. It just drops off. Right?

[Assistant] Mhm.

[User] So we shall see.

[Assistant] Yeah, because there were three instances that were very high profile, right, with the Presidents, and the Vice President, having all three of them come out at once [indicating] essentially that this was an issue, I think people really understood that this was more widespread than they had thought. It wasn't just one person or one office or something like that. It was a bigger issue. So, we'll see if the training helps or . . . yeah.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Well said. It's not an easy task. I look back on my career, and I wouldn't change much of it, but I do leave with a sense of frustration and just kind of . . . I'm not sure how this fight is going to end in terms of whether or not we can recapture some of the trust and faith that's been lost in the government and especially by trying to better educate our citizens and get this stuff out and just kind of, what they say, "Sunlight is the best disinfectant," right? And so I don't know whether we're going to get there or not, especially the way so much classified information is being generated now. There is already so much out there. And I really worry that if the fight isn't already over, it's getting close to it, because we've neglected this system for so long.

[Assistant] Yeah, it's kind of scary to think about how far it's gone the other way.

[User] Yeah. Right. And so, again, there may be a magic bullet of some sort with AI or maybe things that we can't even think of now that we're going to use to revolutionize how we classify and declassify national security information. I hope so. But until it becomes part of these agencies' missions to educate people, I don't think we're going to reach it. I think a lot of it's just you need to have the will to do it. You need to even have a strong stomach for it, too. Some of this stuff may be quite unpleasant, quite embarrassing, things that you wish hadn't happened, but here it is. We did this. We did that, and shouldn't have done that, but we did this. This went really well. This one was awful. Let's just deal with it.

[Assistant] Yeah. I mean, it's not going away. So the sooner that you deal with it, you can move on, but . . .

[User] Right, right. Yeah.

[Assistant] I have a question about, and I know that you've mentioned this already, but just being the chair of the National Industrial Security Program Policy Advisory Committee.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yeah. Right. And so, again, there may be a magic bullet of some sort with AI or maybe things that we can't even think of now that we're going to use to revolutionize how we classify and declassify national security information. I hope so. But until it becomes part of these agencies' missions to educate people, I don't think we're going to reach it. I think a lot of it's just you need to have the will to do it. You need to even have a strong stomach for it, too. Some of this stuff may be quite unpleasant, quite embarrassing, things that you wish hadn't happened, but here it is. We did this. We did that, and shouldn't have done that, but we did this. This went really well. This one was awful. Let's just deal with it.

[Assistant] Yeah. I mean, it's not going away. So the sooner that you deal with it, you can move on, but . . .

[User] Right, right. Yeah.

[Assistant] I have a question about, and I know that you've mentioned this already, but just being the chair of the National Industrial Security Program Policy Advisory Committee.

[User] Right. The NISPPAC.

[Assistant] I was wondering . . . I'm sorry?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Right. The NISPPAC.

[Assistant] I was wondering . . . I'm sorry?

[User] Yeah. The NISPPAC.

[Assistant] Okay.

[User] That's the acronym for it.

[Assistant] Okay. So I'm wondering, what is the national industrial base? What does that even mean?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Right.

[Assistant] It's also covering these private companies that are also doing business with the government?

[User] What it does is, it mostly is trying to help the Department of Defense, who was the executive agent, administer that Industrial Security Program. We were in an advisory capacity. And so we would say, "Look, you need this, this, and this," or "We think this could help you." They would come to us and say, "Okay, we need you to issue an ISOO Notice on what kind of SCIFs or what kind of containers or things that they need to use” and stuff like that. But . . . industrial security was becoming more and more important as time was going by. But again, it goes to show what you and I were talking about when we first started, about how many responsibilities ISOO has. I mean, I could spend a career on industrial security challenges, much less on the rest of it. Now, again, there's some overlap between the . . . executive orders on national classification/declassification, industrial security. But there are also some nuances in that stuff that aren't. And so I had, I think, two people working on that. And then finally at the end—one. I mean, that's what we had. And so, it's another one of these questions. What should ISOO's role be in that? And so should it be taken away from us, because we can only dedicate X number of resources to it? Should it be expanded? Should that be one of our key missions? I don't know, but those are the kind of things that should be discussed.

[Assistant] Right.

[User] But when that order was written, ISOO was put in, but there was no real thought about resources or staff or what this means. And if that executive order is going to be overhauled, which in my view it must be, it's going to be a heavy lift to do that. How many people can we dedicate to help DoD and the White House rewrite that order?

[Assistant] Yeah. There's a lot that ISOO is responsible for and not near enough people and resources to do that mission, to do all of that.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yeah, it is. It's funny. And you know this yourself after being in government: you have very little time to be reflective on things and sit back and say, "Okay, wait a minute. Does this really make sense?” Nobody says, "Time out. I mean, this is a bridge too far." It's like a race car, you know. We designed it, but now that we actually took it out on the track and are driving it, the damn thing doesn't work or its wheels are wobbling . . . not what we thought they were going to do. But it just takes a lot to push it off the track and say, "You know what? This needs a serious overhaul."

[Assistant] Right.

[User] So it just keeps going and going.

[Assistant] Yeah. Instead of taking the off-ramp, you just keep going straight, even though you know it's not working, but . . .

[User] Right. Somehow, some way, it'll fix itself, you know? [RAISES HANDS AND LAUGHS] It's not the way it works. Yeah. That's not the way it works.

[Assistant] In terms of your last day, I think you said you retired June 30th of 2023?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] So it just keeps going and going.

[Assistant] Yeah. Instead of taking the off-ramp, you just keep going straight, even though you know it's not working, but . . .

[User] Right. Somehow, some way, it'll fix itself, you know? [RAISES HANDS AND LAUGHS] It's not the way it works. Yeah. That's not the way it works.

[Assistant] In terms of your last day, I think you said you retired June 30th of 2023?

[User] 2023. Yeah. I've been retired for, what, six months now? Six-and-a-half months? Something like that. Yeah.

[Assistant] Yeah. All right, so do you remember your last days there? Did they throw a party or do anything for you?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] 2023. Yeah. I've been retired for, what, six months now? Six-and-a-half months? Something like that. Yeah.

[Assistant] Yeah. All right, so do you remember your last days there? Did they throw a party or do anything for you?

[User] I specifically did not want any of that stuff, you know?

[Assistant] Okay.

[User] It's kind of like a cremation, you know [LAUGHS]. Just be done with it.

[Assistant] [LAUGHS] Make a clean break.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] So, I'm working on a third book, and I go to the gym six days a week.

[Assistant] Oh really? Another one?

[User] Yeah, yeah.

[Assistant] Good for you! Yeah. That's great!

[User] Yeah. Yeah. So . . .

[Assistant] And what kind of book are you working on?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yeah, yeah.

[Assistant] Good for you! Yeah. That's great!

[User] Yeah. Yeah. So . . .

[Assistant] And what kind of book are you working on?

[User] This one is a double murder committed by the Ku Klux Klan in Louisiana in 1922.

[Assistant] Ooh. That's gotta be interesting.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yeah. Yeah. So . . .

[Assistant] And what kind of book are you working on?

[User] This one is a double murder committed by the Ku Klux Klan in Louisiana in 1922.

[Assistant] Ooh. That's gotta be interesting.

[User] Yeah. The one before was a triple murder in the coal fields of Pennsylvania in 1969. I got a master's at Oxford, and I have a law degree. I'm a lawyer. So I try to do books that have an interest in both fields.

[Assistant] Wow, that's really interesting. I'll have to look that up and get a copy.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] This one is a double murder committed by the Ku Klux Klan in Louisiana in 1922.

[Assistant] Ooh. That's gotta be interesting.

[User] Yeah. The one before was a triple murder in the coal fields of Pennsylvania in 1969. I got a master's at Oxford, and I have a law degree. I'm a lawyer. So I try to do books that have an interest in both fields.

[Assistant] Wow, that's really interesting. I'll have to look that up and get a copy.

[User] Blood Runs Coal. C-O-A-L.

[Assistant] Yeah, that sounds really interesting.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yeah. The one before was a triple murder in the coal fields of Pennsylvania in 1969. I got a master's at Oxford, and I have a law degree. I'm a lawyer. So I try to do books that have an interest in both fields.

[Assistant] Wow, that's really interesting. I'll have to look that up and get a copy.

[User] Blood Runs Coal. C-O-A-L.

[Assistant] Yeah, that sounds really interesting.

[User] That's how I spend my days. I mean, now I'm fighting the FBI over FOIA stuff, you know? So it's like I'm part of the problem now, although none of this stuff is classified. [LAUGHS] Yeah. Right.

[Assistant] Well, it sounds like you're keeping yourself very busy, so that's good to hear.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Blood Runs Coal. C-O-A-L.

[Assistant] Yeah, that sounds really interesting.

[User] That's how I spend my days. I mean, now I'm fighting the FBI over FOIA stuff, you know? So it's like I'm part of the problem now, although none of this stuff is classified. [LAUGHS] Yeah. Right.

[Assistant] Well, it sounds like you're keeping yourself very busy, so that's good to hear.

[User] Yeah, again, I don't miss some of the inter-agency fighting and some of the bureaucratic stuff. I mean, I meant what I said if Moynihan were to come back today, it would take me about five minutes to brief him up since we were working on this same stuff in the late 90s. So . . . [LAUGHS] Yeah.

[Assistant] Yeah, that's pretty sad to have the same issue that you've had for decades. So, yeah. Was there anything else that you wanted to talk about or bring up that we haven't covered so far?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] That's crazy. I mean, it's absolutely insane. It's dangerous to the country, and it just doesn't make any sense. But on we go. Now we're possibly expanding the war in the Middle East. We've got all sorts of other issues that supersede some of this stuff. So . . .

[Assistant] Yeah, priorities.

[User] It always gets put back on the back burner.

[Assistant] Yeah.

[User] And I don't know what it's going to take. I mean, perhaps some of this legal attention that's been focused on this system will highlight some of the things that need to be done, but I'll believe it when I see it. Yeah, let's just leave it at that. Right?

[Assistant] Yeah, people can say anything, but the actual implementation part is completely different.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] It always gets put back on the back burner.

[Assistant] Yeah.

[User] And I don't know what it's going to take. I mean, perhaps some of this legal attention that's been focused on this system will highlight some of the things that need to be done, but I'll believe it when I see it. Yeah, let's just leave it at that. Right?

[Assistant] Yeah, people can say anything, but the actual implementation part is completely different.

[User] It's actually the money that it's going to take to overhaul this stuff and try to get it where it needs to be. But, you know, like I say, I'm just retired. You know? [LAUGHS]

[Assistant] [LAUGHS] You don't have to worry about it.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] And I don't know what it's going to take. I mean, perhaps some of this legal attention that's been focused on this system will highlight some of the things that need to be done, but I'll believe it when I see it. Yeah, let's just leave it at that. Right?

[Assistant] Yeah, people can say anything, but the actual implementation part is completely different.

[User] It's actually the money that it's going to take to overhaul this stuff and try to get it where it needs to be. But, you know, like I say, I'm just retired. You know? [LAUGHS]

[Assistant] [LAUGHS] You don't have to worry about it.

[User] Yeah, yeah. That's right. Exactly. Yeah. I've got the Shreveport Journal here from 1922. So that's what I'm working on today. So, you know [LAUGHS].

[Assistant] Fun! [LAUGHS] Okay. Well, hey, I'm going to go ahead and stop the recording now. I just want to thank you for doing this interview with us today. Super interesting! I'm going to go ahead and stop the recording, and then if you could just hang on for one moment, I'll tell you about the rest of the process.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Sure, go ahead. Anybody?

[Assistant] You mentioned that in your early career as a test subject you went through some anomalies and some close calls. What close calls if you could say happened in the NASA development of suits?

[User] I think there was an incident when Jim [James C.] LeBlanc was in an altitude chamber when a hose connector disconnected from a chamber ECS [Environmental Control System].\n\n Close calls at NASA that I was aware of, I think I wouldn’t really call it a close call but Bob Crippen lost suit pressure in a water tank. I can’t think of any other. Well, we did have a test subject in our lab was buttoned up in a suit, and he got hypoxia from breathing hard because he was confined in a small place, small volume, and it was an anxious time. We had to actually physically remove him from the suit. I won’t mention his name but we all know who he is. It was not an astronaut, it was a test subject. I can’t think of any others unless anybody else might know of one.

[Assistant] [Was there an incident where] they ripped a suit coming back in or going back to the back on orbit?

[User] I don’t recall that. They might have ripped the outside cover layer, but I wouldn’t call that a close call. That was in Gemini I believe.

[Assistant] There was the Apollo 1 fire, but that’s not really a suit thing.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I think there was an incident when Jim [James C.] LeBlanc was in an altitude chamber when a hose connector disconnected from a chamber ECS [Environmental Control System].\n\n Close calls at NASA that I was aware of, I think I wouldn’t really call it a close call but Bob Crippen lost suit pressure in a water tank. I can’t think of any other. Well, we did have a test subject in our lab was buttoned up in a suit, and he got hypoxia from breathing hard because he was confined in a small place, small volume, and it was an anxious time. We had to actually physically remove him from the suit. I won’t mention his name but we all know who he is. It was not an astronaut, it was a test subject. I can’t think of any others unless anybody else might know of one.

[Assistant] [Was there an incident where] they ripped a suit coming back in or going back to the back on orbit?

[User] I don’t recall that. They might have ripped the outside cover layer, but I wouldn’t call that a close call. That was in Gemini I believe.

[Assistant] There was the Apollo 1 fire, but that’s not really a suit thing.

[User] Yeah, the suits were part of the fire in Apollo 1 but they didn’t cause the fire. They didn’t provide protection either. I think those were the close calls that I can remember.

[Assistant]
Other questions?

Jim, I wanted to see if you could share some information about the legacy of the CO2 removal systems in the life support when the suits were developed. Some of the thoughts that were going into why we chose certain things to go into the portable life support system, particularly if you remember anything associated with the CO2 removal systems.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I don’t recall that. They might have ripped the outside cover layer, but I wouldn’t call that a close call. That was in Gemini I believe.

[Assistant] There was the Apollo 1 fire, but that’s not really a suit thing.

[User] Yeah, the suits were part of the fire in Apollo 1 but they didn’t cause the fire. They didn’t provide protection either. I think those were the close calls that I can remember.

[Assistant]
Other questions?

Jim, I wanted to see if you could share some information about the legacy of the CO2 removal systems in the life support when the suits were developed. Some of the thoughts that were going into why we chose certain things to go into the portable life support system, particularly if you remember anything associated with the CO2 removal systems.

[User] CO2 removal? I think the technology that existed at the time for CO2 removal was lithium hydroxide [LiOH]. That was pretty prevalent throughout industry. It was used successfully in submarines before they went to an electrolysis system. I think it was just in the early part of the program that was the experienced technology that people were familiar with and had confidence in. I didn’t work life support that heavily. I won’t call myself an expert in that field in other words, but the use of lithium hydroxide in the Apollo system required the use of a special grade of lithium hydroxide that provided the life capability of the cartridge that we used in the Apollo PLSS. There was a lot of work and involvement to establish the criteria for acceptance of drums of LiOH that came from the contractor that made it before it was used not only in the suit ECS but also in the Command Module and the LM. Pretty much used all the same life support system specifications for lithium hydroxide.

[Assistant] Could you comment on the contrast between the US suits and Russian suits? Maybe even Chinese suits?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I wasn’t involved in any of the politics of that. I knew they were working on it. NASA knew they were working on doing a space walk. I’m sure at the higher levels there was concern about who would be first. But you’ve got to recognize we were so busy just doing what we were doing to fly the first flight when we did and developing the suit when we did that that wasn’t a factor in our work really. Not until we were told, “You’ve got a new job. We’re going to make this and we’re going to do it quick and we’re going to keep it restricted info,” did it become apparent to us that we were in a contest. But the contest was over. They’d already done their space walk with [Alexey] Leonov. So at the working level I don’t think it was much of a factor. I’m sure the managers were concerned about it because it didn’t look good to the world, I don’t think.

[Assistant] But the call to do it on that particular flight. Were we positioned either not to do it or to do it and then there was a go?

[User] I wasn’t privy to those conversations. I’m sorry. I was just a working level section head at the time.

[Assistant] Busy working section head.

[User] Oh yeah, very busy. I was balancing the contractor’s work and our internal work and budgets and schedule and performance management of the people, all that stuff.

[Assistant] A lot going on those years of Gemini.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I wasn’t privy to those conversations. I’m sorry. I was just a working level section head at the time.

[Assistant] Busy working section head.

[User] Oh yeah, very busy. I was balancing the contractor’s work and our internal work and budgets and schedule and performance management of the people, all that stuff.

[Assistant] A lot going on those years of Gemini.

[User] Yeah, and raising a family at the same time.

[Assistant]
Well, if we don’t have any other questions—there’s one.

I understand that you’ve done numerous presentations and given numerous interviews sharing the information about the suit with the public. You even met with the queen of England during her first visit here at JSC. What kind of impact do you think it would make today, sharing this information with people outside the space industry?