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Frank StantonFrank Stanton
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pushing, or, for the guys pushing the White House, clear to the President, to get the right to be in the blockhouse, down some place in Alabama. This was in the very early days of missile launching. I knew that we had the broadcast scheduled, and I also knew that yes, I had screened some of the footage, because it was a very sensitive broadcast and I wanted to know what was going to be on the air. I saw the setup where we had a camera in the blockhouse. There was no question that we were inside the place where Kistiakowsky said Eisenhower ruled we couldn't be. So, that put the fear of God into me, because we were going to do the broadcast on the Tuesday following this meeting, and I think this meeting was an all-day Thursday meeting. I came back and called the producer in and said: “Did I see this, and if I saw it, how did they get in there to get this clearance?” “Oh,” he said, “that was simple. The White House wouldn't let us go in, so we got a GI to put the camera in there and we didn't record anything we were told we couldn't record, but we had the camera in there.” I said: “Were you or any CBS employee in there?” No, not at all. The deal was that as soon as they were going to fire, we were in a motor scooter and we tore out. So, we technically were not there. I said: “But I heard the launch.” “Oh, yes, because we recorded the sound.” I said: “How did you get through,” I think it was a Navy clearance. “How did you get through the Navy clearance?” “Well, we took the sound that went to Jacksonville, to clear the sound, and the sound meant nothing to them. We took the picture and sent that to somebody else for clearance, and that meant nothing to them. We married the two back here in New York.” Well, that's why you have to have eyes in the back of your head! I was certain that, come Tuesday night at midnight, I would get a call from the Associated Press, or somebody in our shop would get it, saying we had violated security. So, I called Kistiakowsky and told him what had happened and how the thing had been done; that the office of Naval intelligence didn't catch it because the sound didn't mean anything to them, and the pictures didn't mean anything to -- I think the pictures were cleared by the Army, so they took two different





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