James Kauffman

Adding Fuel to theFire: NASA’s CrisisCommunicationsRegarding Apollo 1ABSTRACT: In January 1967, NASA faced its first major crisiswhen a flash fire killed the three-man crew of Apollo 1 during aroutine, preflight test. Unprepared for a fire on the ground anddesperate to manage its image, the space agency respondedpoorly to the crisis: it waited 2 h to report the deaths; it commu-nicated inaccurate, contradictory, and purposefully misleadinginformation to Congress and the media; it lied, and refused torelease information, to congressional committees investigatingthe fire; and it stacked the official board investigating the fire withits own personnel and people who had close ties to the agency.NASA’s poor crisis communications exacerbated the tragedy, tar-nishing its image, hurting its credibility, and prolonging the crisis.This study provides an example of an unsuccessful response to acrisis and demonstrates how much damage can occur when anorganization fails to communicate openly and honestly.

James Kauffman is an associate professor of communica-tion studies at Indiana University Southeast.

At 6:31 p.m. on 27 January 1967, a fire broke out in theApollo 1 capsule during a preflight test at Cape Kennedy, killing the three astro-nauts inside: Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffe. The tragedy stunned thenation. NASA came under the most intense media and congressional scrutiny in its9-year existence. The fire became the cover story of all major American publica-tions and the lead story of television news. Although NASA immediately appointed

Public Relations Review, 25(4):421–432 Copyright © 2000 by Elsevier Science Inc.ISSN: 0363-8111 All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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a review board to investigate the fire, congressional space committees of both theHouse and the Senate decided to launch separate investigations of the tragedy.Gordon Harris, NASA’s director of public affairs at the Kennedy Space Center in1967, called the aftermath of the tragedy “NASA’s hour of greatest trial,” a timewhen the future of America’s manned space flight program “hung in the bal-ance.”1 Similarly, former NASA historian Eugene Emme said the fire “challengedthe integrity of Apollo and NASA.”2

“No government agency,” proposes Amitai Etzioni, “is more adept at publicrelations than the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).”3 Al-though masterfully using public relations to publicize its Mercury and Gemini pro-grams and to create an image of itself as one which could do no wrong,4 NASAresponded poorly to the Apollo 1 crisis. The American Society of Newspaper Editorsblasted NASA’s response to the fire, characterizing the information the agency pro-vided as “late,” “sparse,” “inaccurate,” and “deliberately misleading.”5TechnologyWeek called NASA’s public relations regarding the tragedy “abysmal.”6 Even the spaceagency’s strongest supporters, admits former astronaut James Lovell, had to viewNASA’s “handling” of the fire as a “debacle.”7 Observers did not complain about thespace agency’s scientific investigation of the fire, Lovell recalls. “What the Agencybotched, most people agreed, was the public relations part.”8 This paper proposes thatNASA’s crisis communications regarding the Apollo 1 fire exacerbated the tragedy,hurting the agency’s credibility and tarnishing an image the agency had labored 9 yearsto create.

During a crisis like the Apollo fire, an organization must communicateeffectively with its publics to minimize damage to the organization’s image. Kath-leen Fearn-Banks has defined crisis communications as “communication betweenthe organization and its publics prior to, during, and after the negative occur-rence.”9 Effective communication can not only eliminate a crisis, but it can some-times “bring the organization a more positive reputation than before the crisis.”10

Johnson & Johnson’s handling of the Tylenol poisonings stands as perhaps thebest, recent example of an organization that enhanced its public image through itsdeft handling of a crisis.11 NASA must be especially vigilant in maintaining publictrust and confidence for two reasons. First, the space agency receives the vastmajority of its funding from Congress. Thus, NASA must maintain public andcongressional trust and confidence to maintain funding. Second, NASA must, bylaw, keep Congress and the American public informed regarding its operations.NASA has a more difficult time than businesses or other federal agencies simplyrefusing to provide information about itself, information that might hurt its cred-ibility and threaten its funding.

Poor handling of a crisis can ruin the credibility of an organization and ruinthe public confidence and trust an organization had worked years to create. Poorcommunication can exacerbate a crisis.12 Organizations facing a crisis should atleast do the following: 1) respond quickly; 2) tell the truth; and 3) provide aconstant flow of information, especially to key publics. NASA did none of thesethings. The space agency did not report the deaths of the three astronauts for 2 h;it provided inaccurate, contradictory, and purposefully misleading information to

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the media and to Congress; it lied, tried to cover up questionable practices, andrefused to release information; and it appointed a board consisting mostly of NASAofficials and people with close ties to NASA to investigate the tragedy, thus creat-ing questions about NASA’s openness and the objectivity of the investigation.

NASA public affairs officials involved in the handling the fire in 1967 differin their assessments of NASA’s preparedness for the crisis. Interviewed 6 monthsafter the fire, Julian Scheer, NASA’s assistant administrator for public affairs, ex-plained that NASA “had a contingency plan for any emergency of this kind.”NASA put it into effect “immediately,” and it “worked fairly well on an internalbasis.” However, the inability of NASA headquarters to gain “all the facts gave thepublic, by way of the press, a somewhat confused notion of NASA’s response to thecrisis.”13 In contrast, Gordon Harris proposed that NASA had not anticipated orprepared for a fire on the ground. In anticipating possible emergencies, Harrisrecalled, NASA planners considered only what might occur in space or during alaunch. “All of us in the public affairs organization,” he confessed, “failed toconsider the kind of catastrophe which occurred.”14

NASA delayed responding to the crisis for 2 h. It reacted immediately byimposing a news blackout. NASA waited 1 h and 20 min to make its first an-nouncement of a flash fire and loss of life. NASA did not disclose the deaths of threeastronauts until 8:30 p.m., 2 h after the tragedy. NASA officials attributed thedelay to difficulty in notifying the family members of the astronauts. As GordonHarris recalls, NASA followed a general rule of notifying next-of-kin before mak-ing any announcements about a death.15 Julian Scheer not only attributed thedelay to the inability to locate one of the astronauts’ spouses for an hour, but healso added other reasons: “Efforts were also made to keep the press from pesteringthe hell out of the three spouses of the astronauts. There were some slip-upstoo.”16 NASA’s response to a mishap before the Apollo fire suggests NASA mayhave relied on news blackouts when dealing with crises. When Scott Carpenterovershot his landing spot on Mercury 7, NASA’s public relations people “pan-icked” and imposed a news blackout for 2 h, although it knew of Carpenter’slocation in less time.17

Although NASA may have had honorable intentions in trying to ensure theastronauts’ families would receive notification from the agency, the news blackoutcreated unnecessary suspicion among the media and created the impression of acover-up. In the aftermath of the Apollo fire, NASA realized the inadequacy of itsplan to disseminate information in light of a crisis and crafted a new one. Accordingto Paul Haney, director of public affairs for the Manned Spacecraft Center inHouston in 1967, “All the information interests in the Agency agreed to a newpolicy and recommended its adoption.” NASA “formulated” it approximately 2weeks after the tragedy, and Haney “drafted it for the group.”18 Haney recountedthe gist of the new policy:

If a major accident occurred in any field installation, the senior informationofficer would make an attempt to contact the head of the installation and makesure he was aware of it and hopefully to contact his functional counterpart at

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NASA Headquarters. But in any case, if it involved the loss of life of a promi-nent person like an astronaut, the senior information officer would release ageneral statement outlining what had occurred, but without identifying thedead until next-of-kin had been notified. In other words, within 20 minutes ofhis learning of it, the information officer is expected to make a general state-ment saying that an accident had occurred, that people had been killed and theywill be identified—just a general kind of alert. This would be followed upwithin an hour or two with specific identification and as much detail as isobvious and relates to the accident. It isn’t necessary to get into speculation onwhy the explosion occurred or why the airplane crashed but simply indicate anairplane crashed—the weather conditions prevailing, the ceiling was such andsuch, the wind direction and velocity and certain other natural details thatwould be of interest to a reporter in trying to write a story.

Haney reported that he drafted the policy and sent it to Washington, D.C.,and “we’ve not heard of it since. That was February 1967.” The document becamethe basis for NASA’s crisis communications plan. It was in place, although notfollowed, during the Challenger explosion 19 years later.19

In response to NASA’s news blackout, the media immediately assumed acover-up and pushed harder than ever for information. Without NASA officials tocomment on the tragedy, the media sought information wherever they could getit. Rumors began to circulate; the media became irritated. In Chariots for Apollo: AHistory of Manned Lunar Spacecraft, historians Courtney Brooks, James Grim-wood, and Loyd Swenson attest to the media’s behavior in the aftermath of fire:“News media representatives swarmed in to cover the story, and their officialinvestigations and semifactual innuendoes filled newsprint and airwaves through-out the following weeks.”20 When NASA did finally begin talking, the mediawould take an adversarial and suspicious posture.

Not only did NASA take too long to respond, but when it did respond itprovided inaccurate or contradictory information. NASA made a number of mis-takes in its initial communications with the media. In its first news release, it stated“There has been a fatality.” Later, NASA’s public affairs office revised and resub-mitted the release, stating “there has been fatality.” The first release led one tobelieve a single fatality occurred; the revised release suggested multiple deaths.Whether an attempt to mislead the public purposefully, an attempt to soften theblow of a future announcement of multiple deaths, a typographical error, or aninability to ascertain the facts, NASA’s initial release caused suspicion and broughtinto doubt NASA’s credibility from the start.21 Additionally, NASA officials madecontradictory statements regarding the power source by which the Apollo capsuleran during the tragedy. On the evening of the fire, Major General Samuel Phillips,Apollo program director, characterized the capsule as running on internal power.The next day, NASA officials at Cape Kennedy characterized the capsule as runningon external power. The power source actually had no bearing on the tragedy.However, the inconsistency gave observers the impression NASA either was tryingto hide something or did not know what it was doing. In a memo from JulianScheer to Paul Haney, one can see NASA’s concern for the impression the con-

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tradiction had created. Scheer called attention to a United Press Internationalstory, the “first of a number of attempts to split our statements on the 204accident.” He instructed Haney, “Your comment from here on out is simply: ‘Nocomment.’” Scheer explained that the review board, through Jack King, KennedySpace Center news chief, would release any information about the capsule’s powersource. “There will be no statements from anyone in NASA on this subject,”Scheer added.22

NASA reported that the astronauts died immediately while sitting in theirseats and that they said nothing. Yet, 4 days after the tragedy, the New York Timesand the Washington Star published articles challenging both contentions.23 Thepapers stated that the astronauts lived for 15 s or more after the fire began.Moreover, they did not die in their seats as NASA had originally reported. Two ofthe astronauts had left their seats and tried to exit the capsule. Finally, the news-papers pointed to the existence of audio tapes from the capsule that proved theastronauts had cried out for help. The space agency had no comment on thearticles. The media and Congress attacked NASA.

The Houston Chronicle chastised NASA for “deliberately withholding factsfrom the public.” The Chicago Tribune said NASA’s actions suggest “a consciouseffort to conceal unpleasant facts or at least withhold them until they can be fittedtogether in a manner most favorable to NASA and the moon program.”24 Repre-sentative Delbert Latta (R., OH), attacked NASA and the Johnson administrationon the House floor for their attempts to manage the news. In the aftermath of thefire, Latta railed, NASA “attempted to manage the news concerning the time lapseinside that capsule after fire was first discovered and the last sound that washeard—and did a terrible job of it.”25

Julian Scheer explained the confusion regarding the final utterances of theastronauts. NASA’s public affairs office in Washington, D.C., typically had a liaisonofficial in the Apollo blockhouse during preflight tests. During the Apollo 1 test,Jack King served as the liaison. He occupied the console in the blockhouse andmade a tape of the communications during the test. Scheer explained that nobodyrealized the tape existed, and NASA officials did not replay the tape until hoursafter the tragedy. Scheer blamed the Cape Kennedy people for failing to informAdministrator Webb or himself “of the existence of a tape recording of the lastseconds of communication with the Astronauts until sometime after the firstNASA statement to the press had been made.”26

NASA’s 2-h delay in disclosing the deaths of the astronauts, coupled withthe inaccurate and contradictory information the agency released after the fire,hurt NASA’s credibility and created the impression of a NASA cover-up. NASAfurther courted the wrath and suspicion of observers when it appointed a reviewboard to investigate the fire.

On the evening of the fire, Webb met with President Lyndon Johnson toconvince him to allow NASA to appoint its own review board to investigate the fireand its causes. Such a committee, Webb argued, would allow for the quickestevaluation of what NASA must do to get the moon project back on schedule.Johnson agreed. One observer has called Johnson’s act “one of the crucial political

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decisions of the Apollo years.”27 NASA announced the appointment of a Board ofReview on the evening of the fire. At 9:00 a.m. on January 28, NASA announcedthe chair of the committee, Dr. Floyd L. Thompson, director of NASA’s LangleyResearch Center and four other members of the committee, all NASA officials.Over the next few days, NASA announced the names of other committee mem-bers. It quickly became clear that NASA officials would constitute the large ma-jority of the committee members. The press and Congress attacked the committee,citing conflict of interest.28 How could one expect an impartial investigation fromNASA itself? As former astronaut James Lovell recalls, “This was an Agency in crisisin which grave errors were made by Agency officials, and Agency men were beingassigned to investigate it.”29

Once NASA established the Apollo 204 Board of Review on the evening ofthe fire, the space agency immediately impounded all information and physicalevidence concerning the fire.30 It instructed all personnel to withhold commentabout the fire until the board completed its investigation. The decision amountedto a complete news blackout. Critics of the internal investigation complained thatthe board allowed NASA to delay responding to questions about the fire. Someobservers questioned whether the facts would ever come to light. Additionally,because of the board’s composition, NASA ran the risk that Congress and theAmerican public would dismiss the board’s findings no matter what the boarddiscovered.

Although NASA attempted not to release any information about the fireuntil the investigation was completed, the public, Congress, and the media clam-ored so loudly for information that NASA relented. For example, NASA initiallywould not allow the media to examine the charred Apollo capsule. When the mediacomplained, NASA ultimately agreed to allow one reporter to view the capsule.The media unanimously selected reporter George Alexander to examine the cap-sule. As Julian Scheer recalled, “NASA realized it could not remain silent up untilthe time of the conclusion of the investigations. It didn’t. Facts were released asthey came along.”31 Yet NASA still tried to manage its image. During their April27 meeting, Webb had promised President Johnson that Robert Seamans, NASA’sdeputy administrator, would provide a weekly report about the investigation to theWhite House and to the House and Senate committees that authorized the spaceagency’s budget. “These reports,” Wayne Biddle explains, “were spoon-fed to thepress as the official version of events.”32

NASA’s actions, even after the board completed its investigation, suggest anobsession regarding its image. Apparently at Webb’s instruction, Paul Haneyrecounts, NASA officials instructed public relations officers not to release anyinformation about the fire—even after the board completed its work. “After theinvestigation was completed,” Haney explains, “we still had a frightfully tight lidclamped on NASA insofar as any mention of the fire was concerned.” He ques-tioned the need for such restrictions. He called the holds on information“clamped” down on the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston “extraordinarilyrestrictive,” the “most restrictive period in public information that I have ever seenin NASA.” He recounts that Robert Gilruth, director of the Manned Spaceflight

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Center, frequently commented, “‘We’ve got to make people stop thinking aboutthis fire.’” Haney did not find Gilruth’s attitude “very constructive.” Haney be-lieved that in the aftermath of a tragedy, people naturally will think about thetragedy until they tire of it, “until they find something more constructive to do.”33

Restricting information about a tragedy did not make the tragedy, or the public’sfeelings about it, go away.

Attempting to respond to criticism of secrecy, NASA released the findings ofthe Apollo 204 Board of Review investigations simultaneously to Webb, the me-dia, and Congress on April 9. NASA hoped that its report, consisting of 14booklets and filling nearly 3000 pages, would quiet critics and help to restoreNASA’s credibility. However, as the House and Senate began their respectiveinvestigations of the fire, space committee members exposed some skeletons inNASA’s closet, skeletons that might make NASA appear culpable for the fire.

In 1965, Apollo Program Director Major General Samuel Phillips con-ducted a review of the North American Aviation, prime contractor of the Apollocapsule. The internal NASA document harshly criticized North American Avia-tion’s management. Phillips sent a letter, with nearly 20 pages of notes laying outthe criticisms, to the company’s president, J. L. Atwood, in 1965. As congressionalinquiry began in early 1967, members of the House and Senate spacecommittees—most notably Representative William Ryan (D., NY) and SenatorWalter Mondale (D., MN)—raised questions about the Phillips report.34 NASAmade a crucial mistake by initially denying the report’s existence. Julian Scheer hasargued NASA never attempted to “cover up” the Phillips report.35 Yet, the factscontradict his view.

Members of both the House and the Senate committees investigating thefire did not accept NASA’s position on the Phillips report. In House hearings,Representative Ryan pressed NASA for a copy of the report. It appears that NorthAmerican President J. L. Atwood assisted NASA in trying to suppress the report.Questioned in the House about the report, Atwood responded evasively. Whenpressed, he said he had heard of the report, but had not been given a copy of it.36

Under pressure, NASA officials finally admitted Phillips had reviewed North Amer-ican Aviation and ultimately provided a summary of Phillips’s criticism. Not satis-fied, Representative Ryan continued to press for a copy, which AdministratorJames Webb refused to supply. Webb and Phillips persuaded Olin Teague (D.,TX), chair of the House Committee of Science and Astronautics, to help themsuppress the public release of the report.37 Ryan ultimately obtained a copy of thereport from an undisclosed source and threatened to release it if NASA did not doso. NASA would not budge, so Representative Ryan held a press conference onApril 30, 1967, and released the report.

The media attacked NASA for lying about the report and trying to suppressit. The Boston Globe criticized NASA’s secrecy and said that the nation deserved fulldisclosure of any documents related to the fire.38 The New York Times editorial-ized that NASA could not afford to create suspicion that it had covered up infor-mation related to the tragedy. “Mr. Webb certainly does not want to reinforce theview of cynics,” the paper added, “who insist that NASA actually stands for ‘Never

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A Straight Answer.’”39 In another editorial, the paper went further, saying it was“hard to escape the conviction that the only basis for hiding this highly criticaldocument was NASA’s desire to cover up errors by itself and its contractor whichcontributed to the fiery death of three astronauts.”40

Surprisingly, even after Representative Ryan released the report, NASA stilltried to withhold the document from the Senate committee investigating the fireand to justify its obfuscation regarding the report in Senate hearings monthsearlier.41 Senator Mondale, whom NASA had told in a February 27 hearing that noPhillips report existed, announced at the committee hearing on May 9 that he hadobtained a copy of Phillips’s comments “through the underground.”42 When heasked NASA officials about the report this time, NASA admitted that Phillips hadcriticized North American Aviation’s work in 1965. Yet, they proposed that Phil-lips had not written a “formal report.” He had attached a series of “notes” to aletter he sent to J. L. Atwood. Senator Mondale criticized Phillips for engaging in“a semantic waltz.” Mondale said it did not matter whether Phillips called hiscritical comments of North American a “report,” “document,” or “notes.” NASA“knew” what Senate committee members had been “getting at.”43 Phillips con-tinued to deny that he had created a “report” or that he ever referred to hiscomments as a “report.” Webb attempted to support Phillips’s distinction, won-dering whether legally one could make a significant distinction between “notes”and other documents in regard to a “company’s proprietary information,” andwhether a company had to reveal “notes.”44

NASA, caught trying to mislead Congress about its criticism of NorthAmerican Aviation, tried to defend itself semantically and legally. Neither Con-gress nor the press accepted the defense. The New York Times attacked NASA for“evasiveness” and for ignoring the “pointed questions” about its “competence” to“manage” and “supervise” the Apollo program.45 Nation wrote that creation of apresidential commission to review NASA was “very much in order.”46 Represen-tative H. R. Gross (Republican, IA) went further, proposing that Webb should befired.47

NASA’s lying and stonewalling with regard to the report hurt the agency’salready battered image. One may speculate that Webb tried to suppress the Phillipsreport because the findings would correlate with the Board of Review findings andshow NASA culpable for the fire. However, there appeared little or no correlationbetween the findings of the Phillips report and that of the Apollo 204 Board ofReview.48 Former Representative Ken Hechler (D., WV), a member of the HouseCommittee on Science and Astronautics in 1967, speculated that Webb resistedreleasing the report for fear it would undermine confidence in the ability andcompetence of the North American Aviation and undermine confidence inNASA’s ability to administer America’s space program. He also points out thatWebb may have feared the criticisms would come back to hurt the agency because,as congressional space committees had discovered in the hearings, NASA’s selec-tion of North American Aviation deviated from standard practice. Regardless ofNASA’s motive, the space agency “bungled” its “public relations” regarding thePhillips report.49 NASA’s actions in congressional hearings regarding the report

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further tarnished its image, raised questions about its truthfulness, and prolongedthe crisis.

During hearings, Senator Margaret Chase Smith (R., ME) caught Webblying about the selection of North American Aviation as the prime contractor forthe Apollo capsule. At the Senate Space Committee hearing on April 17, Smithasked Webb whether NASA’s Source Evaluation Board had selected North Amer-ican Aviation as its first choice for the prime contractor for the Apollo capsule.Webb said “yes,” calling North American Aviation the “recommended compa-ny.”50 However, at a hearing 3 weeks later, when Smith asked Webb the samequestion, Webb admitted that NASA’s Source Evaluation Board gave the MartinMarieta Company the highest rating and North American Aviation the secondhighest rating. Webb went on to explain that NASA administrators Dr. HughDryden, Dr. Robert Seamans, Dr. Robert Gilruth, and he overrode the SourceEvaluation Board and selected North American Aviation instead of Martin Marietabecause of North American Aviation’s lower bid and its experience.

The media attacked Webb and NASA not only for the irregularity, but alsofor lying to try to cover up the irregularity. The Boston Globe said that Webb’scontradictory statements raised questions of “possible influence peddling in highplaces.”51 The New York Times questioned NASA’s trustworthiness. CallingWebb’s contradictions bad enough in isolation, the paper pointed out that NASA’spoor “record” during the months of investigation into the Apollo fire “stronglysupports” the belief that NASA has not treated Congress or the American peoplewith “full candor” in its reporting of what is going on in the American spaceprogram.52

Even before the Senate had concluded its hearings on the Apollo accident,NASA tried to refocus the attention of Congress and the American public awayfrom the accident and toward its greatest asset: the astronauts and their flights.“With all of the trappings of a Madison avenue public relations campaign,” re-ported the Boston Globe, NASA announced plans for a three-man space flight inearly 1968 and a moon landing possibly by 1969. The paper questioned the spaceagency’s publicity campaign to sell the new astronauts and their flight: “A clearpurpose of these carefully contrived gimmicks could be to damp down congres-sional inquiries into the deaths of the three astronauts last January as a consequenceof NASA’s and the North American Aviation co.’s mismanagement and derelic-tion.” The editorial concluded NASA had no business going forward with newflights until all questions about its “past deficiencies (and maybe worse) have beencleared up.”53

NASA’s crisis communications regarding the Apollo fire exacerbated thetragedy, hurt the agency’s credibility, and tarnished its image. Specifically, NASAresponded too slowly to the fire, angering the media and allowing rumors tocirculate about NASA’s possible culpability; it communicated inaccurate, contra-dictory, and purposefully misleading information; it lied to Congress and themedia; it refused to release information to congressional investigators, creating theimpression that NASA was trying to cover up questionable practices; and it ap-pointed a committee that consisted mainly of NASA officials or people closely

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connected to NASA to investigate the fire, prompting criticism of NASA’s open-ness and raising questions about the objectivity and value of the investigation. Bythe time NASA repaired the Apollo spacecraft and readied a new crew to fly, recallsJames Lovell, NASA discovered that “it had squandered most of the public rela-tions capital it had accumulated over a decade.”54

The consequence of NASA’s poor response to the Apollo 1 tragedy dem-onstrates the importance of effective crisis communications. If NASA had re-sponded quickly to the fire and communicated openly and honestly with its public,it undoubtedly would have lessened the damage done to its image and credibility.Johnson & Johnson’s experience with the Tylenol poisonings suggests that out-standing crisis communications can enhance an organization’s image and credibil-ity. The Apollo 1 experience taught NASA’s public affairs officials importantlessons about responding to a crisis, lessons they put to good use 3 years later whenresponding to the Apollo 13 crisis.

NOTES

1. Gordon Harris, Selling Uncle Sam (Hicksville, NY: Exposition, 1976), p. 36.2. Eugene Emme, “Presidents and Space,” in Frederick C. Durant III (ed.), Between

Sputnik and the Shuttle (San Diego, CA: American Astronautical Society, 1981), p.90.

3. Amitai Etzioni, “Feeding a Fantasy: NASA Out of Orbit,” The New Leader (April 16,1990), p. 12.

4. See, for, example, William Hines, “NASA: The Image Misfires,” Nation (April 24,1967), p. 517; James A. Skardon, “The Apollo Story: What the Watchdogs Missed,”Columbia Journalism Review (Fall 1967), pp. 11–15; and “The Apollo DisasterReshapes NASA’s Image,” Washington Star (May 14, 1967), p. C1. See also James A.Skardon, “The Apollo Story: The Concealed Patterns,” Columbia Journalism Review(Winter 1967/1968), pp. 34–39; and Jules Bergman, “NASA & the Press: TheWhole Truth,” Columbia Journalism Review (Summer 1968), pp. 58–61.

5. “Editors Criticize Johnson News Policy but Back War Decisions,” New York Times(April 27, 1967), p. 22.

6. William Coughlin, “On Tragedy,” Technology Week (February 6, 1967), p. 50.7. Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger, Lost Moon (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1994), p.

196.8. Ibid.9. Kathleen Fearn-Banks, Crisis Communications: A Casebook Approach (Mahwah, NJ:

Lawrence Erlbaum 1996.), p. ix.10. Fearn-Banks, op. cit., p. 2.11. See, for example, Scott Cutlip, Allen Center, and Glen Broom, Effective Public

Relations (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1994), p. 59; and Fern-Banks, op.cit., pp. 148–49. For a different assessment, see David M. Berg and Stephen Robb,“Crisis Management and the ‘Paradigm Case,’” in Elizabeth Toth and Robert L.Heath (eds.), Rhetorical and Critical Approaches to Public Relations (Hillsdale, NJ:Lawrence Erlbaum, 1992), pp. 93–110.

12. Fearn-Banks, op. cit., p. ix. Also see, for example, James Kauffman, “Crisis in Space:

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NASA’s PR Efforts Regarding the Hubble Space Telescope,” Public Relations Review23 (Spring 1997), pp. 1–10.

13. “Notes on Seminar Discourse of Mr. Julian Scheer, July 26, 1967,” Dr. Eugene E.Emme, Johnson Space Center History Archive, Woodson Research Center, RiceUniversity, Box 068, 44.

14. Harris, op. cit., p. 35. Also see comments of Mel Snyder in Frank Murray, “ReportersOff, Tight Security Held on Apollo Tragedy,” Editor and Publisher (February 4,1967), p. 9.

15. Harris, op. cit., pp. 42–43.16. “Notes on Seminar,” op. cit., p. 1.17. Eric Bergast, Murder on Pad 34 (New York: Putnam), p. 81. William Hines called the

misinformation that Carpenter was lost for fifty minutes “one of the sleaziest hoaxesever perpetuated by a public relations man.” “NASA: The Image Misfires,” p. 519.

18. “Interview with Paul Haney,” by Bob Merrifield, Manned Spaceflight Center, 8April, 1968, p. 24, NASA History Office, Washington, D.C.

19. “Interview with Paul Haney,” op. cit., pp. 24–25.20. Courtney Brooks, James Grimwood, and Loyd Swenson Jr., Chariots for Apollo: A

History of Manned Lunar Spacecraft (Washington, D.C.: NASA, 1979), p. 219.21. See Murray, op. cit., p. 10, and “Review Board Pushes for Investigation at Cape,”

Technology Week 6 February 1967, p. 17.22. “Memorandum to Paul Haney,” from Julian Scheer, January 30, 1967, NASA His-

tory Office, Washington, D.C.23. John Noble Wilford, “3 Astronauts’ Tape Ended With ‘Get Us Out of Here!” New

York Times (January 31, 1967), p. 1.; “Reporters Say Spacemen Did Not Die Instant-ly,” Washington Star (January 31, 1967), A3.

24. “Space Program Goes Underground,” Houston Chronicle (February 3, 1967), p. 10;“A Second Space Test Tragedy,” Chicago Tribune (February 1, 1967), p. 3; also see,“NASA Criticized for New Handling on Apollo Deaths,” Philadelphia Inquirer(February 1, 1967), p. 5; Coughlin, op. cit., p. 50.

25. Congressional Record, (February 1, 196 7), p. H2148.26. “Notes on Seminar,” op. cit., p. 1.27. Wayne Biddle, “Two Faces of Catastrophe,” Air & Space (August/September 1990),

p. 47.28. See, for example, Brooks et al., op. cit, p. 219; Ken Hechler, The Endless Space

Frontier (San Diego, CA: American Astronautical Society, 1982), p. 188; Karl Abra-ham, “Scientist Asks Johnson for Separate Probe,” Philadelphia Bulletin (February 8,1967), p. 1; “Haste in Space,” Wall Street Journal (February 20, 1967), p. 12;William Hines, “NASA Probe Value Doubtful,” Washington Star (February 9, 1967),p. A8.

29. Lovell and Kluger, op. cit., p. 197.30. Initially, NASA did not refer to the mission as Apollo 1, but referred to the capsule

and rocket, Apollo-Saturn 204, usually abbreviated as Apollo 204.31. “Notes on Seminar Discourse,” op. cit., p. 2.32. Biddle, op. cit., p. 47.33. “Interview with Paul Haney,” op. cit., 24.34. Hechler, op. cit., p. 189.35. “Notes of Seminar Discourse,” op. cit., p. 1.36. See, for example, U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Aeronautical and Space

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Sciences, Apollo Accident. 98th Cong., 2nd Sess., Part 6, (May 9, 1967), p. 527; andHechler, op. cit., p. 190.

37. Hechler, op. cit., p. 189–90. Hechler adds that “Webb instructed his subordinates tostonewall requests for the report.”

38. “Full Disclosure is Imperative,” Boston Globe (April 19, 1967), p. 20.39. “Reticent NASA,” New York Times (April 19, 1967), p. 44. See also “Full Disclo-

sure,” op. cit., p. 20. See also “The Hoopla Begins Again,” Boston Globe (May 12,1967), p. 16, and “NASA Candor Needed,” New York Times (May 11, 1967), p. 46,and William Ryan, Congressional Record (April 26, 1967), pp. H10886–10888.

40. “Suppressed Report,” New York Times (April 28, 1967), p. 40.41. U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences, Apollo Ac-

cident. 98th Cong., 1st. Sess., Part 2, (February 27, 1967), pp. 126–131.42. Apollo Accident, Part 6, p. 527.43. Apollo Accident, Part 6, p. 532.44. Apollo Accident, Part 6, p. 533.45. “Needless Gamble in Space,” New York Times (May 10, 1967), p. 46.46. “NASA and the Media,” Nation (May 29, 1967), p. 678.47. Congressional Record (May 11, 196 7), p. H12360.48. Hechler, op. cit., p. 191. “Report on Apollo Released by Ryan,” New York Times

(April 30, 1967), p. 44.49. Hechler, op. cit., p. 189.50. U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences, Apollo Ac-

cident. 98th Cong., 1st Sess., Part 4, (April 13 and 17, 1967), p. 352.51. “The Hoopla Begins,” op. cit., p. 16.52. “NASA Candor,” op. cit., p. 46. See also “NASA and the Media,” op. cit., p. 678.53. “The Hoopla Begins,” op. cit., p. 16. NASA did its best to exploit the hero worship

of the astronauts. It introduced the new three-man team—Wally Schirra, DonnEisele, and Walt Cunningham—at a televised news conference. Also, Life provided itsusual flattering, pictorial coverage of the astronauts. See “Schirra’s Team Carries onfor Apollo,” Life (May 19, 1967), pp. 32–39.

54. Lovell and Kluger, op. cit., p. 197.

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