Posted on 10/27/2002 7:03:39 AM PST by PJ-Comix
One of things I often do is flip idly through books at the library. Okay, call me a bookworm gathering bits of useless information. However, one of the bits of information that seems to stick out in my mind was something in a book written by a close personal friend of the Hubert Humphrey after his death. I remember that the author, who was also a doctor, had a whole chapter in the book in which he puts Walter Mondale over the coals for betraying Hubert Humphrey. I believe it had to do with either the 1992 or 1996 election in which Humphrey begged Mondale for his support but Mondale refused to lift a finger to help Humphrey despite the fact that Humphrey was the one who was instrumental in getting Mondale into politics.
I did some searching on the web and it turns out that this book is called The Triumph and the Tragedy of the Humphrey I Knew by Edgar Berman. I tried to find this book on the local Broward County online library catalog but, unfortunately, the system is currently down. More than likely this book should be available in Minnesota libraries so could you MN Freepers check it out of the library if you see it (many large libraries now open on Sundays)? When you see the chapter I am referring to, please post the details here.
A lot of people have asked me why I wrote Children of Apollo to begin with. Aside from a desire to make money on royalties, my desire was to answer two of the most haunting questions of the last century. Why didn’t the Apollo Program lead to a space faring civilization, with people living on other worlds, and space craft voyaging further and further out to the planets and hence the stars? The second question stems from the first. Could things have turned out different?
The answer to the first question is that the Apollo Program, born of the Cold War politics of the early 1960s, perished of the Vietnam era politics of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Neil Armstrong had barely lifted his foot from the surface of the Moon when people began to decide that we now needed to spend more money on social programs and less on space adventures. We had beaten the Soviets, now it was time to help the poor, clean the environment, and so on. Liberal politicians and the media encouraged the attitude. Some did that because they believed the proposition that every dollar spent on space was food taken from the mouths of the hungry. Others, with more sinister motives, saw an irresistible issue. Then Senator Walter Mondale expressed the latter very well, in the wake of the Apollo Fire, when he said, “I don’t give a hoot in hell for the program or your future. I intend to ride this thing for all the political advantage I can get.”
WOW! Can you get another source for that? Was this info also in the video?
Story: On January 27, 1967, the fledgling Apollo program suffers its first setback, a disaster which almost ends the American space program. During a seemingly innocuous ground test of the Apollo capsule's ability to function independently, a fire begins in the vehicle and burns out of control in the highly-pressurized, all-oxygen atmosphere. Astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee die when the life support systems of their sealed pressure suits are infiltrated by toxic smoke. In the already highly-politicized atmosphere of the space race, the finger-pointing begins immediately. An internal NASA review board begins an intense investigation of the charred Apollo capsule, as well as North American Aviation, the manufacturer contracted to build it. To make matters worse, Senator Walter Mondale sees the hotly-debated and very public accident as an opportunity to further his goal of ending the space program in favor of more Earthbound concerns. Before NASA can continue its quest for the moon, it will have to win back not only public opinion, but the confidence of the government.
Then Senator Walter Mondale expressed the latter very well, in the wake of the Apollo Fire, when he said, “I don’t give a hoot in hell for the program or your future. I intend to ride this thing for all the political advantage I can get.”
The Apollo 1 fire ignited a wave of skepticism in Congress that almost ended the Apollo program. Indeed, critics like Representative William Ryan (D-NY) and Senator Walter F. Mondale (D-MN) were so opposed to the federal government spending U.S. taxpayer money on space programs that they launched a campaign to stop all funding of manned space flight. Both members used the Apollo 1 fire to support their claims that NASA was inefficient, cut costs at the expense of safety, and used contractors that performed shoddy work. In the end, Astronaut Frank Borman, who participated in NASA’s review group of the Apollo 1 fire, and others who testified before Congress in 1967, successfully defended Apollo 1 as an accident not worthy of condemning all manned activities in space. Indeed, Ryan’s and Mondale’s efforts backfired as Congress as a whole gave its support to the Apollo program and to sending a man to the moon. See, “Apollo 204 Accident,” Report of the Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences, United State Senate, January 30, 1968, 90th session, 2nd Session, report number 956 , Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. 1968; “The Phillips Report’s Tortured Trail – The Congress Should Resume the Apollo Hearings,” Congressional Record, July 25, 1967, page H9317; Chariots for Apollo: A History of Manned Lunar Spacecraft, NASA SP-4205 (Washington, 1979), pp.214-17; and Charles D. Benson and William Barnaby Faherty, Moonport: A History of Apollo Launch Facilities and Operations, NASA SP-4204 (Washington, 1978), pp. 390-94.
Saturday, October 26, 2002
It looks more and more as if the Democrats are going to task Walter Mondale to replace the late Paul Wellstone as their candidate for the US Senate in Minnesota. There are two reasons that Mondale is the choice. First, Democrats think that he'll win. Second, unlike younger, more independent minded pols like Tim Penny, Mondale is reliably liberal. And therein lies the problem.
While Wellstone's liberalism stemmed from the radical politics of the 1960s, Mondale's brand stems from more ancient roots, dating back to the New Deal. It is not too much to say that Mondale is a dinosaur whose ideas have very little relevence in the 21st Century. Indeed, Mondale was a dinosaur in 1984, when President Reagan whipped him from one end of the country to the other. He has not been a Senator from Minnesota since 1977, a quarter of a century ago.
The worse thing about Mondale is his unrelenting, unbending opposition to the exploration of space. This opposition was dramatized in the wonderful HBO series on the Apollo Program when Mondale pops up as a charector making political hay after the Apollo Fire. While he did not openly oppose the Apollo Program, it being a done deal by the time he entered the Senate, Mondale's views on human space flight were no secret, even then. After Apollo 11 he helped to lead fights against any and all efforts to expand human presence in space. The crippling of the human space program can in part be laid at his door.
Why such opposition? An analysis of Mondale's speaches and writings would lead one to believe that the once and possibly future Senator believes that federal funds spent on space exploration should better be spent on social programs. Indeed this is the view which had largely pervailed until recently, despite clear evidence of the utter failure of the sort of welfare spending which Mondale has championed and the utility of space exploration to improve the human condition here on Earth. How much Mondale's stated beliefs stemmed from personal conviction and how much stemmed from political calculation can be examined in an incident described in a book about the Challenger disaster, Prescription for Disaster by Joseph Trento published in 1987.The book describes an incident which took place during the Congressional hearings in the wake of the Apollo Fire when then Senator Mondale was accusing then NASA Administrator James Webb of covering up the findings of a document on the Fire called the Phillips Report, which at the time of the accusation Webb had never heard of. Webb went to Mondale's office for a meeting.
A Webb aid remembers him (Webb) asking Mondale, "In all due humility, Senator, what have we done wrong? Why are you so down on us?" Webb wanted to know why Mondale was upset and what he could do to rectify the situation. He and other visitors from NASA were standing in front of Mondale's desk. The Senator leaned back in his chair and instructed Webb, "I intend to ride this for every nickle's worth of political power I can get out of it. I don't give a hoot in hell about the space program or your future," a NASA official with Webb recalls Mondale saying.
It is amazing to me that a United States Senator would use the tragic deaths of three astronaut heroes as a means to enhance his own political position. It is beyond belief that the same Senator would boast openly about this cynical and cold blooded act of political expediency. It is bad enough that Mondale would stand in the way of human expansion into space and cry halt. It is horrible that he would do so out of a quest for political power.
This is the man Minnesota Democrats propose to chose to be their candidate for the Senate.
posted by Mark at 10:09 PM
Friday, October 25, 2002
In another tragedy unsullied by political considerations, Richard Harris has died. This will make seeing Harry Potter next month a bitter sweet experience indeed. posted by Mark at 1:46 PM
Senator Paul Wellstone is dead. The best that can be said of him is that his ideas stemmed from deeply held princibles, unsullied by political strategy or any kind of personal quirk. Unfortunately those princibles were at best pernicious, at worse dangerous. He advocated socialism at home and appeasement abroad. His death is surely a tragedy for the man and his friends, however.
Now, of course, arises the question of what happens next. Here's my scenario. The Democrats decline to choose a new candidate, hoping that a big sympathy win for the dead Wellstone will persuade Governor Jesse "the body" Ventura to choose a good liberal Democrat to serve out his term; a Humphrey or a Mondale kid for instance. Instead Governor Ventura picks his soul mate (presuming that he is not elected governor) Tim Penny, a former Democrat and fiscal conservative. Then let the howling begin.
Update: Fox is raising the name of one Walter F. Mondale as a replacement for Wellstone. This is a possibility which fills me with fear and loathing. Mondale has been one of the most virulent opponents of space exploration in the history of the United States.
posted by Mark at 1:07 PM
Joseph Trento has been an investigative reporter since 1968, when he joined the staff of the legendary journalist Jack Anderson. He is the author of Widows, the bestseller about the KGB's crippling of American intelligence, and Prescription for Disaster, an investigation into the Challenger explosion. He has worked for CNN's investigative unit; consulted for 60 Minutes, Nightline, Prime Time Live, and others; and appeared on numerous national shows, such as Meet the Press, CBS Morning News, Good Morning America, and NPR. Currently, Mr. Trento is president of the Public Education Center, a nonprofit national security news service. He lives in Virginia.
This is an AMAZING quote but WHO were the other sources and can they confirm it? Webb was there and so was his aide who witnessed this scene. What about the other visitors from NASA?
HERE'S WHAT TOM SHALES SAID IN THE WASHINGTON POST, "Among facts some of us may have forgotten: Walter Mondale, then a senator from Minnesota, was a virulent enemy of the space program, a real Luddite from Hell."
LET'S TALK, NOW ABOUT THAT SENATE HEARING -- THE ONE WHERE MONDALE SPRUNG THE "PHILLIPS REPORT" ON YOU. WHAT WERE YOU EXPECTING WHEN YOU WALKED INTO THAT HEARING?
Well that's a good question and I don't know that I could actually answer that exactly what we expected. We expected we were going to have to give a full report on what we knew about the accident up to then and what we were going to do about it and we knew were going to be in for some mighty tough questioning. And Mondale being the junior Senator he came in last, if I remember it. And it was a long, long session, and so by the time he came along, I won't say we were waning, but we'd been through quite a bit already. And when he brought this up, my recollection was. He said, "Was there a report that had been written about North American that indicated that they were not doing an exemplary job?" And Mr. Webb referred that to George Mueller that question. George said, "No there was no such report." And "Isn't that right, Sam?" And Sam said, "No, no report."
At that point, I had the sense that Mondale wasn't just asking this on an exploratory basis that he knew about SOMETHING and the question was: What it was. I felt that it probably had to do with this Tiger Team effort we'd had a month or two before. And so I introduced the thought that we did periodically carry out extensive reviews of our contractors and he might be referring to the results of one of those reviews. And that's sort of the way it ended up.
I remember it so clearly as I left there Mr. Webb nailing me on the floor there of the hearing room saying: "I want you to come with me" and as soon as we got in the car ... it had a window in it that you could crank up between the driver and the back seat and he cranked that window up and he really turned on me, he said, "There's really no excuse for you volunteering information at that hearing." he said, "We're dealing here with matters that can result in millions and millions of dollars of lawsuit and this is not like the kind of friendly hearing that you're used to."
HOW DO YOU THINK MONDALE -- OF ALL PEOPLE -- ENDED UP WITH THOSE NOTES? I'M WONDERING LESS ABOUT WHO LEAKED IT. WHAT I'M GETTING AT IS: SOMEONE LEAKED IT. THAT PERSON HAD AN AGENDA. AND THAT PERSON CHOSE MONDALE AS THE BEST PERSON TO PUT FORWARD THEIR AGENDA. WHY MONDALE?
I have no idea why it would be Mondale. If somebody perhaps maybe they went to some of the others and they weren't interested in it and only the Junior Senator felt he had something to gain by delving into it. I have no idea.
WAS HE KNOWN AS AN OPPONENT OF APOLLO? OR WAS HE KNOWN AS AN OPPONENT OF NORTH AMERICAN?
No - he. No! Not that I know not to my knowledge.
I'D LIKE YOUR GUT REACTION TO SOMETHING I LEARNED YESTERDAY: DID YOU KNOW THAT WHEN MONDALE ASKED YOU ABOUT THE PHILLIPS REPORT, HE HAD NO IDEA THAT THE REPORT EXISTED?
I sort of assumed his staff had a copy. I didn't really assume he had it sittin' right in front of him.
As they delved deeper into the reasons behind the tragedy, NASA officials were confronted by some "skeletons in their closet." Senator Walter F. Mondale raised the question of negligence on the part of management and the prime contractor by introducing the "Phillips report" of 1965-1966. The implication was that NASA had been thinking of replacing North American. But the charges were vague; and, for the next several weeks, no one seemed to know exactly what the Phillips report was. In fact, Webb at first denied that there was such a report. Mondale also alluded to a document (The Baron Report) by a North American employee, Thomas R. Baron, that was critical of the contractor's operations at the Cape.
Baron was a rank and file inspector at Kennedy from September 1965 until November 1966, when he asked for and received a leave of absence. He had made observations; had collected gossip, rumor, and critical comments from his fellow employees; and had written a set of condemnatory notes. He had detailed, but not documented, difficulties with persons, parts, equipment, and procedures. Baron had observed the faults of a large-scale organization and apparently had performed his job as a quality inspector with a vengeance. He noted poor workmanship, spacecraft 012 contamination, discrepancies with installations, problems in the environmental control system, and many infractions of cleanliness and safety rules.
Baron passed on these and other criticisms to his superiors and friends; then he deliberately let his findings leak out to newsmen. North American considered his actions irresponsible and discharged him on 5 January 1967. The company then analyzed and refuted each of Baron's charges and allegations. In the rebuttal, North American denied anything but partial validity to Baron's wide-ranging accusations, although some company officials later testified before Congress that about half of the charges were well-grounded. When the tragedy occurred, Baron was apparently in the process of expanding his 55-page paper into a 500-page report.
When his indictments were finally aired before Teague's subcommittee, during a meeting at the Cape on 21 April, Baron's credibility was impaired by one of his alleged informants, a fellow North American employee named Mervin Holmburg. Holmburg denied knowing anything about the cause of the accident, although Baron had told the committee that Holmburg "knew exactly what caused the fire." Holmburg testified that Baron "gets all his information from anonymous phone calls, people calling him and people dropping him a word here and there. That is what he tells me." Ironically, Baron and all his family died in a car-train crash only a week after this exposure to congressional questioning.
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