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Frank StantonFrank Stanton
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But the science advisor leaned across the table and reminded me, he said: “You know the trouble we had with one of your people on getting inside of the first missile launch.” I didn't say I knew what he was talking about or didn't, because I didn't know. I knew we were doing the program. I think it was called “Biography of a Missile”. In those days this was very much on everybody's mind because Russia had launched a small satellite and we hadn't and it looked like maybe we were behind the curve. But when the science advisor made this remark it reminded me that I knew we were doing such a program, and in fact I believe I had seen some of the rushes on it in the weeks before this particular meeting in Washington.

So I came back from Washington and got a hold of the producer and said: “I thought that I had seen pictures taken from inside the block house where you could watch the missile take off, and yet I was told by no less authority than the science advisor to the President that this had been denied. I don't want to wake up Sunday morning and find that we violated the instructions from the President about what we could or could not do.” What the producer wanted to do, and what the newsman wanted to do, was to be in the block house describing the take-off and show the thing going up through the slot in the block house. This is back in the very early days of lift off. Now it's nothing, but in those days it was highly classified.

I said to the producer, “How do you explain the President's decision not to let you get in there,” because they took it right to the President, “how do you explain that when what I saw in the rushes, I thought I saw the camera in the block house.” “Well,” he said, “nothing to worry about. We weren't in the block house at lift-off. We had the camera in there, but no CBS people were in that block house.” I said, “Well, how did you get the sound and the pictures cleared through censorship,” because the Atomic Energy Commission and I believe





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