The Senate Hearings Of 1968

You might know us as a vital participant in the 1968 Senate Hearings on missing astronauts. That is the phrase. It is on the masthead of this printing and it is ours, and the Chief Executive would like to explain where he got it, and would like it back.

Extracted from the stenographer’s record by Cave Johnson, Chief Executive Officer, who has selected the passages. Transcribed by C., who has selected which of his selections to print.

In 1959 this publication carried the President’s complete remarks to a subcommittee on defence procurement, which did not enjoy them. Nine years later a different subcommittee asked him back. It did not enjoy him either, and this time it said so in a report, and the report had the contracts in it, and the contracts left with the report. Here is the part of the record I want you to read. I have read it a great many times.

From The Record

The ChairmanMr. Johnson, the subcommittee has before it the names of a number of men who entered your facility as volunteers under contract to the United States and who are, by your own company’s reckoning, not presently at your facility.

Mr. JohnsonSenator, those men were the best. I want that in the record before anything else is.

The ChairmanIt is in the record. Where are they?

Mr. JohnsonSenator, a man goes in one end. I have never once, in fifteen years of testimony and print, said which end. I am not going to start in front of a microphone.

The ChairmanMr. Johnson, how many men are we discussing?

Mr. JohnsonI’d have to check, Senator.

The ChairmanYou would have to check.

Mr. JohnsonI have gone through the hole eleven times, Senator. I count myself at both ends. I have never once come up short. I would put my count against any man’s in this room.

The ChairmanMr. Johnson, you have been described to this subcommittee by counsel for a competing facility as —

Mr. JohnsonAs a vital participant, Senator. I’d like that in the record.

The ChairmanThat is not what counsel —

Mr. JohnsonIt’s in the record now. Thank you, Senator.

The ChairmanThe witness will confine himself to answering the questions put to him.

Mr. JohnsonSenator, science is not about answering the question put to you. It is about answering the one you wish they’d asked. Why not ask me what the men found. Why not ask me what it cost. Why not ask me who else in this room has been through anything.

The ChairmanThe subcommittee will recess.

The struck line was struck by the Chief Executive, on the copy in this building only. The copy in Washington is intact. The Chief Executive has been told this and has said that he is not responsible for Washington’s filing.

On The Phrase

A vital participant. I put it in the record myself, in front of the Chairman, and the Chairman let it stand, because the Chairman had been in the room for four hours by then and had learned what every man who has ever sat across from me learns, which is that it is faster to let it stand. The report used it. The report used it about the outfit in New Mexico, in a paragraph about their assistance to the subcommittee, and it used a different phrase about us, and I will not print the different phrase, because the different phrase is not ours and the first one is.

It is on the letterhead. It is on the masthead. It is on the sign out front where the word Innovators used to be, and I am told that visitors read it and laugh, and I want the visitors to know that the laugh is fine. The Senator laughed. I had the phrase and he had the laugh and only one of us went home with something he could put on a building.

On What Followed

The contracts went to New Mexico. The astronauts, or what the country calls astronauts now, went to New Mexico. The subcommittee’s counsel went, I am reliably informed, to New Mexico, and is paid there, and has a very good haircut. What stayed here was the hole, and the shafts, and the spheres, and me, and a woman who typed every word of that record from the gallery because she did not trust the stenographer, and was right not to, because the stenographer missed the word vital the first time and had to be asked to put it in.

“Senator, a man goes in one end. I have never once said which end.”

— Cave Johnson, to the subcommittee, 1968

Particulars Of The Hearings

Convened: 1968. Washington. A room with no windows, which the Chief Executive said made him feel at home.
Subject: Certain volunteers engaged under federal contract, and their present whereabouts.
Number of men: Would have to check
Duration of testimony: Four hours, eleven minutes. Eleven. He noted it.
Finding: The subcommittee’s finding, and a paragraph about New Mexico.
Consequence: Withdrawal of federal contracts. Award of same to a facility in New Mexico. Bankruptcy, which the Chief Executive asks be spelled ‘receivership’ and which C. has spelled as he asked, once.
Phrase retained: Vital participant. Ours. On the masthead.
Phrase not retained: The other one.

Verifying personnel file…

Cave JohnsonChief Executive OfficerExtracted 1976 from the 1968 record. Selected, struck, and retained as selected.

Form ASI-76-603. This extract is not the record. The record is in Washington and is intact, and the Chief Executive has been asked not to describe it as “theirs.” He describes it as theirs.

category nine. nine thousand dollars. nine claims. no names. it was nine in 1959. it is still nine. it is not going to stay nine