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Frank StantonFrank Stanton
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Session:         Page of 755

could just flesh it out a little bit.

Stanton:

How was what decision made? To go to the moon?

Q:

The decision to go to the moon.

Stanton:

I don't know, because -- You see, I think we met on the second floor of the White House, and I don't know who carried the message to Kennedy, but I have to assume it was Johnson and Jerry Weisner. I never made any inquiry about how it was processed, but I know later, when Kennedy made a major speech in which he said “We're going to the moon,” I knew damn well the antecedents for that speech, which came out of this particular meeting that was held. But, how the Defense Department was represented in the meeting --

Q:

That was part of what I was wondering, yes.

Stanton:

I don't recall that State was represented, but certainly Defense was represented. But, I was the only -- I can't say I was the only outsider, because Don Cook was certainly an outsider, but I was the only one from anything even close to journalism. Nobody, including Johnson, no one said “this is just in this room.” Once you got into that kind of a meeting, you were pretty well respected for keeping your nose clean and not talking. That didn't apply to people from the Hill as much as it did people who were in lesser positions, in staff jobs, but you didn't get into that meeting unless they knew they could trust you. So, it was interesting, and it was a tough thing for me, too, because I remember one night having a small dinner with Ike, something he did quite frequently, I guess, in his first term. He had a group of business people (I think they were almost all business), maybe there were a dozen of





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