Abstract
In the months following the beginning of Ronald Reagan’s second term as president in January 1985, there were many significant changes in Reagan’s White House staff, including those individuals dealing with the space program. In addition, by the end of 1985 the two top officials at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration had left their positions. As a result, few of the people who had shaped space policy and program decisions during the first Reagan term remained in place. Their replacements were in general of lesser quality. No individual was able to take the lead in reestablishing in the post-Challenger period the forward momentum that had characterized space policy decisions during the first Reagan term, and Ronald Reagan himself both had to struggle to counter the aftermath of a major White House scandal and gave policy priority to dealing with broad issues in the U.S.-Soviet strategic relationship. The result, in the space realm as well as in many other policy areas, was a second Reagan term of limited accomplishments.
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- 1.
Peggy Noonan, What I Saw at the Revolution: A Political Life in the Reagan Era (New York: Random House, 1990), 213–214.
- 2.
Leslie Maitland Werner, “Senate Approves Meese to Become Attorney General,” NYT, February 24, 1985, https://www.nytimes.com/1985/02/24/us/senate-approves-meese-to-become-attorney-general.html.
- 3.
Michael Deaver, A Different Drummer: My Thirty Years with Ronald Reagan (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2001), 200–201.
- 4.
Chris Whipple, The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency (New York: Crown Publishers, 2017), 105, 113, 132–133. Donald T. Regan, For the Record: From Wall Street to Washington (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988), 227. Douglas Brinkley, The Reagan Diaries (New York: Harper Collins, 2007), 292. Jack Nelson, “Regan, Baker to Trade Jobs as Reagan Aides,” The Los Angeles Times, January 9, 1985, http://articles.latimes.com/1985-01-09/news/mn-11927_1_treasury-secretary.
- 5.
Whipple, The Gatekeepers, 134–136.
- 6.
Regan, For the Record, 235. Ronald Reagan: “Statement on the Establishment of the Economic Policy Council and the Domestic Policy Council,” April 11, 1985. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, APP, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=38462.
- 7.
Whipple, The Gatekeepers, 135. Lou Cannon, President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime (New York: Public Affairs Press, 2000), 495.
- 8.
Whipple, The Gatekeepers, 135. Noonan, What I Saw at the Revolution, 76.
- 9.
Steven F. Hayward, The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution, 1980–1989 (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2009), 406–407.
- 10.
“Keyworth Quits White House Post,” Science, December 13, 1985, 1249.
- 11.
John P. Burke, Honest Broker? The National Security Adviser and Presidential Decision Making (College Station, TX: Texas A&M Press, 2009), 216–217.
- 12.
Ibid., 218.
- 13.
Joseph J. Trento, Prescription for Disaster: From the Glory Days of Apollo to the Betrayal of the Shuttle (New York: Crown Publishers, 1987), 252. Trento is an investigative journalist with a reputation for not always being historically balanced or accurate. However, his book is based on a series of contemporary interviews with those involved, and is the only published account of these events, and thus I have chosen to use it as a source in this study.
- 14.
Interview with Hans Mark, October 16, 1991. A copy of the interview, most likely conducted by T.A. Heppenheimer, is in NHRC.
- 15.
Most of this account is drawn from Trento, Prescription for Disaster, 253–263. On Graham’s confirmation hearing, see “Washington Roundup,” AWST, October 7, 1985, 15.
- 16.
Trento, Prescription for Disaster, 263–270. Trento reports Beggs as being convinced that William Graham “was part of a setup to get him out of NASA” and knew of the pending indictment as he refused to drop his quest for the NASA job. There is no evidence available to support Trento’s report. See also Thomas O’Toole, “NASA Chief Takes Leave to Fight Fraud Charges,” WP, December 5, 1985, A3 and Michael Dornheim, “Beggs, General Dynamics Named in Federal Fraud Indictment,” AWST, December 9, 1985, 24. The Speakes announcement is at Office of the Press Secretary, The White House, “Statement by the Principal Deputy Press Secretary,” December 4, 1985, Folder 12781, NHRC. Reagan’s comment is at Ronald Reagan: “Remarks Announcing the Resignation of Robert C. McFarlane as Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and the Appointment of John M. Poindexter,” December 4, 1985. Online by Peters and Woolley, APP, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=38114.
- 17.
“General Dynamics, Beggs Cleared of Fraud Charges,” AWST, June 29, 1987, 25–26. Letter from Edwin Meese III to James Beggs, June 29, 1987, Box 10, Papers of James Fletcher, NARA.
- 18.
Trento, Prescription for Disaster, 272–273.
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Logsdon, J.M. (2019). Changing of the Guard. In: Ronald Reagan and the Space Frontier. Palgrave Studies in the History of Science and Technology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98962-4_16
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98962-4_16
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