INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFI< COOPERATION, 1959 415 



provide a statement on these developments for the record. I firmly believe that v 

 cooperate with the Soviets in the areas we have under discussion without prejudicing 

 any of our vital national interests. 



Obviously, NASA did not want to get into an imbroglio before the 

 committee until the delicate negotiations had proceeded a little 

 farther. Only Symington raised the issue and received a rather low-key 

 response from Dr. Low as to the state of the negotiations with the 

 Soviet Union. 



Arnold W. Frutkin, NASA's Assistant Administrator for Inter- 

 national Affairs, finally bit the bullet and gave the Subcommittee on 

 International Cooperation, on May 18, 1971, a comprehensive review 

 of the progress of negotiations with the Soviet Union. His reception 

 before the Fuqua subcommittee was friendly and cooperative. Only 

 Congressman Murphy expressed a generally negative reaction, that 

 perhaps we were "giving and not getting anything in return." 



PROGRESS OF NEGOTIATIONS 1972 



On June 30, 1971, following the deaths of three Russian cosmo- 

 nauts upon their return from space, Miller and Fulton piloted through 

 the House a resolution of sympathy "to their wives, families and to 

 the Russian people." Fulton in addressing the House on the resolution, 

 praised the cooperative effort toward "working out joint docking 

 procedures." On March 2, 1972, Christopher C. Kraft, Jr. gave the 

 Manned Space Flight Subcommittee an extended account of the prog- 

 ress of Apollo-Soyuz negotiations. Fuqua asked Kraft: 



Are our astronauts going to have to be fluent in Russian or will the Russians be 

 fluent in English? How will we solve the problem of communicating, so each one 

 understands the other? 



Kraft sidestepped the question by pointing out that when the 

 Houston group had visited Moscow, they studied Russian, but soon 

 discovered that the only people who could understand their version 

 of Russian were the people from Houston; hence they labeled this new 

 language "Rouston." 



Representative Robert Price (Republican of Texas) was the most 

 outspoken opponent of the joint mission. "I would rather not dock 

 with them at all, as far as I am concerned," he bluntly remarked during 

 a hearing of the Manned Space Flight Subcommittee. Teague was 

 equally blunt in private. He called a subcommittee meeting for May 31, 

 1972, at which NASA officials laid out the entire history of the negotia- 

 tions and also answered questions from members of the full committee 

 Teague bombarded NASA witnesses with a barrage of questions: 



Who is in command? Suppose you have to do something quickly and you have 

 to make a decision quickly. Who is in command? You can't have two bosses when you 

 get into a situation like that. 



