SPACE SCIENCE, APPLICATIONS, AND ADVANCED RESEARCH, 1963-69 233 



Webb offered to bring the Hilburn report to Karth personally, 

 with the understanding that it would not be left with the committee. 

 In a last-ditch effort to head off or soften the sharp effects of the 

 hearings, Webb added in his letter to Karth : 



I hope you will keep in mind that the timing of these subcommittee hearings is 

 unfortunate in that the factors of morale and program execution are both deeply 

 involved and there are very real dangers that both may be seriously affected. Never- 

 theless, I can assure you that NASA officials will cooperate fully in the hearings and 

 provide the best answers we have to your subcommittee. 



When Karth opened the hearings on April 27, he read Webb's 

 letter in its entirety. He took exception to Webb's statement that 

 "the Ranger VI report should not become a basis for either conclusion 

 or action by the subcommittee." Karth commented: 



I think that all of the reports, or all of the investigations, regardless of who has 

 conducted the investigation, should be a matter for this subcommittee's considera- 

 tion, and could become a basis for conclusion or action by the subcommittee. 



Karth also resented the statement by Webb that the timing of his 

 subcommittee hearings was "unfortunate." He dealt with this ob- 

 servation with the following public statement: 



I would like to point out to the members of the subcommittee and to the NASA 

 people here represented that while Mr. Webb may feel that these subcommittee 

 hearings are unfortunate, the action that precipitated these hearings, in all prob- 

 ability, are the letters addressed to * * * Chairman Miller. 



I might further state that, subsequent to the Ranger VI failure, I did have an 

 opportunity of discussing it with Chairman Miller, and that we both recognized that 

 Ranger had had some difficulties in the past and that certain technological difficulties 

 in a program of this magnitude were something that might be expected. For those 

 reasons, we did not expect that the Oversight Committee would be asked to make a 

 review of the program. However, after the Webb letter, it was hardly reasonable to 

 expect that, with the kind of criticism contained in the letter, a congressional in- 

 vestigation was not in the best interests of the country and the Congress. 



Hechler immediately added: 



I would simply like to support the remarks made by the acting chairman of this 

 subcommittee. It seems to me that the timing of these hearings is highly propitious, 

 and I am certain they are going to fulfill a constructive purpose to carry out the 

 responsibilities of Congress and of this committee. 



In the comprehensive hearings which followed, the Karth sub- 

 committee probed into relationships between NASA and JPL, and also 

 called RCA and Northrop Corp. representatives who had worked on 

 Ranger. During the hearings, Karth observed to Webb that "NASA 

 is the contracting agency of the Government; (it) should be, in fact, 

 the boss of the program. NASA provides the money, and therefore 

 should have more to say about how this work is to be done, and by 

 whom it should be done." Karth added that NASA, in light of the re- 

 peated Ranger failures, should have installed a strong technical team at 



