Foreign Relations of the United States, 1917–1972, Volume VIII, Public Diplomacy, 1969-1972

25. Memorandum From the Office of Policy and Plans, Apollo 11 Operations Center, United States Information Agency to the Director (Shakespeare)¹

Washington, June 6, 1969

SUBJECT

• Weekly Report—June 6, 1969

Status of Agency Projects. The Science Advisor has briefed the NASA and USIA officers who will operate the European Apollo News Center, which will open in Paris on June 13. He also informed interested Department of State officials of Agency plans in support of Apollo 11, who seemed impressed by the magnitude of the effort.

Field posts were given additional guidelines urging that the posts respect the serious, scientific nature of the Apollo 11 program; to recognize that the mission could be postponed, aborted or fail, and not to assume its success until the astronauts were safely back and the mission completed; encouraging them to concentrate during these pre-launch weeks on explaining what the moon landing is about and on enabling the largest number of people possible to watch the event by community TV viewing arrangements. They were informed of the dates on which various media products will be shipped from Washington and given a detailed time schedule sequence of events of the Apollo 11 mission itself, plus the schedule of television newscasts from the moon.

The media have assigned top priority to Apollo 11 projects.

IPS has completed editorial work on a two-page photo insert of Apollo 10 pictures for the Man on the Moon pamphlet and is preparing a leaflet with excerpts from articles by Archibald McLeish, Pearl Buck and John Dos Passos on the human significance of lunar exploration for insertion in various Agency and other publications. The Dos Passos article will also be distributed for press placement. IPS is arranging to reprint or adapt three NASA pamphlets now in preparation for use after splashdown.

VOA reports that its give-away offer, made in English language broadcasts only, has already brought a flood of 14,000 letters. Coverage plans for the Apollo 11 mission are the most extensive ever attempted by VOA. They include the use of Astronaut Walter Schirra as a commentator at Houston—a role Schirra has tentatively accepted.

IMV is on schedule with the production of the Frank Borman film videotaped in Houston last month which is for pre-launch television distribution. The English version has been approved, the Spanish, Arabic, Portuguese, and French versions are at Technicolor Laboratories in California, and all prints will be shipped late this month. NASA has promised to deliver to IMV today the 16mm film on Apollo 10,² which covers both that mission and the impending Apollo 11. Revisions for Agency use will be made immediately, and several of the language versions should be in the hands of posts prior to the Apollo 11 launch. Work has begun on a feature-length 65mm film on Apollo 11, scheduled for completion in December.

ICS is shipping the large number of exhibit items ordered for posts and developing a new design for an Apollo 11 button. It expects to design a walk-through exhibit based on NASA material (recently excerpted in Look) juxtaposing passages and illustrations from Jules Verne’s Journey Around the Moon³ with actual Apollo 8⁴ photographs.

Post Activities. SOVEXPORTFILM has asked our Moscow Embassy to screen the Apollo 9⁵ film with a view to distributing it in the Soviet Union.

USIS Seoul and Manila are working on ambitious plans to enable masses of people to view the Apollo 11 mission on screens set up in public squares.

USIS Caracas has proposed an imaginative scheme for the use of military aircraft to speed videotapes and kinescopes of the mission from ground stations to nearby countries which do not have them. We are looking into whether this would be compatible with our policy of not competing with American commercial networks.

USIS Paris has issued a special “space” issue of its Informations et Documents for the Air Show. One of its captions describes the LEM on the moon as seen “by earthlight” (“au clair de la Terre”).

The Foreign Impact of Apollo Still Growing. A typical message from USIS Santiago, Chile, reports that Apollo 10 generated more TV coverage than any other single event in the history of Chilean television; and radio made heavy use of USIS and VOA material.

Several of the enthusiastic comments on Apollo 10 in the foreign press stressed the absence of American gloating over their space victory. The London Sunday Telegraph, for example, commented that the mission was “not only a triumph of the American scientists, but also a strong dose of the American way of life”. Still, the paper continued, “we have been spared any trace of propaganda”.

More media correspondents from abroad have asked for NASA accreditation to cover the Apollo 11 launch than ever before, and they will be joined at the Cape⁶ by a very large number of VIPs. The latter includes 150 very prominent Belgians from all walks of life. We are trying to respond to USIS posts’ requests for facilitative assistance but have had to warn the field that hotel reservations are already impossible to obtain within convenient distance of the Cape.

1. Source: National Archives, RG 306, Office of Research and Evaluation, Office of the Associate Director, Program Files, 1969–1978, Entry P–119, INF Apollo Project 1969. No classification marking. Bardos initialed the “from” line of the memorandum. Ryan sent a copy of the memorandum to all USIA agency heads and USIS posts under a June 6 covering memorandum, indicating that the memorandum was the “first in a series of special weekly reports” concerning USIA’s Apollo 11 coverage. Ryan also noted that USIA had established an Apollo 11 Operations Center to coordinate the USIA effort. Earlier, in a June 2 memorandum to all elements, Loomis stated that Shakespeare had “assigned the highest priority to the Agency’s coverage and support of the Apollo-11 moon landing project” and accordingly, both the Operations Center and an intra-agency Apollo 11 task force had been established effective June 2. (Ibid.)
2. Apollo 10, commanded by Thomas P. Stafford, launched on May 18 and returned to Earth on May 26.
3. Presumable reference to Verne’s Around the Moon, published in 1870, the sequel to From Earth to the Moon (1865).
4. Apollo 8, commanded by Frank Borman, launched on December 21, 1968. It was the first manned spacecraft to leave the Earth’s orbit and orbit around the moon.
5. Apollo 9, commanded by James McDivitt, launched on March 3, 1969, and returned to Earth on March 12.
6. The Apollo 11 mission launched from Cape Canaveral at 9:32 a.m. on July 16, 1969, with astronauts Neil A. Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin.