Memorandum on Interagency Coordination for the Recovery of Foreign Materiel, May 1963
- File
- EOP-UAP-D002
- Type
- Document, 1 pages
- Agency
- Executive Office of the President
- Date
- 5/29/63
- Place
- Washington, D.C.
- Released
- Release 7, October 23, 2026
The government's description
This document is an internal National Aeronautics and Space Council (NASC) memorandum from staff member R.W. Hale to Executive Secretary Edward C. Welsh. NASC was a 1958–1973 body within the Executive Office of the President responsible at the time for coordinating U.S. space policy. The memorandum records a May 28, 1963, meeting with Arnold Frutkin, Director of International Programs at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), concerning the development of a coordinated interagency policy for recovering reentering U.S. and Soviet space debris and satellite fragments that might land on foreign soil. This memorandum is associated with a larger body of interagency correspondence included in this collection under the title “USG-UAP-D002.”
The memorandum highlights an interagency policy debate over organizational jurisdiction during the early Space Race. It states that the Department of State and Department of War sought to leverage NASA’s standing as a civilian scientific agency to help facilitate discreet recovery of sensitive space hardware while publicly returning non-sensitive components to the country of origin. As described in the memorandum, the proposed arrangement would have served several purposes: enabling access to adversary technologies, protecting U.S. technologies, preserving diplomatic goodwill, and obscuring the intelligence gathering dimension of technology recovery operations. The memorandum also presents Director Frutkin’s reaction to the proposed arrangement as “very negative.”
Full text
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Page 1
- • Authority: NND 968063 May 29, 1963 MEMORANDUM FOR DR. WELSH Subject: Conference with Frutkin - - Fragments I saw Frutkin (and his assistant Marvin Robinson) for more than an hour in his office on May 28. It was necessary to review the background and course of the meetings held last year because he was away at the time and now is very negative on the project. Frutkin seems to feel that: 1. No public announcement is now needed; 2. An Executive Order or statement from the White House would scare people needlessly; 3. The problem is overseas and State woul d like to be able to point to NASA as the U. S . responsible agency (without a scary public announcement); 4. DOD and AF want to use NASA for a "cover" but have no intention of letting NASA do anything but return some pieces; 5. CIA and NASA get along fine and can do so in the future on this matter; 6. NASA should wait to see what the USIB settles on (and would like to have us pass Frutkin' s comments on the DOD paper to AEC (at staff levels for information); and 7. Although NASA was drafting legislation, they (legal?) would oppose sending anything up to Congress in the foreseeable future because of the harmful debate it would touch off. ~~ R. W . Hal e