I took a deep breath and headed to the office of George Low, the NASA deputy administrator. I had always seen George as a friend. I began to explain to him what had happened. But he didn’t care. “We are a clean organization,” he told me icily, “and you did something bad. We are going to show the world that we’re getting rid of you. You need to go back to the air force.”
I was ready to leave his office when George stopped me. “One other thing,” he added. “I made sure to add enough bad remarks in your air force file that you will never be promoted again.”
That parting shot almost broke me. I was devastated. I sure as hell wasn’t going back to the air force now. If NASA had helped me make the move, I probably would have gone quietly. But George had just deliberately killed my career stone dead. So why do what he wanted me to do? I grew more stubborn.
After making more careful notes about my meeting with George, I headed for a meeting with Jim Fletcher, the NASA administrator. Like Kraft, he was relatively new to his position. Jim, at least, was polite with me. But he sidestepped my questions. “What’s wrong with returning to the air force?” he asked me. “You’ll be fine. Go on back.”
There was nowhere else to turn, I thought. I was in a most ironic of circumstances. I loved NASA. And despite the humiliation poured on me by its leaders, I was fighting to stay.
Jim Irwin received the same treatment, but he didn’t need anything more than a word from Deke and he was gone. Jim already planned to retire when Apollo 17 was over. So when Deke asked him to move his retirement date up, Jim had no problem doing it. With Jim leaving, we were all pulled from Apollo 17 duties and three other astronauts were assigned to replace us.
It was quite clear I needed to get the hell out of Houston. But NASA was where I felt at home. If I had to work my way through a lot of antagonism and mean-spirited comments to stay, I was prepared for that. However, I was running out of people to talk to.
I considered Dale Myers, the associate administrator for Manned Space Flight, to be a friend. But then I had thought that about George Low, too. I requested a meeting with Dale and steeled myself for another humiliating lecture.
To my immense relief, when we met on May 31, Dale was friendly and sympathetic. “You need to get out of Houston,” he agreed. “I’ll see if I can find you a job at another NASA center and hide you there. Where would you like to go? Huntsville? The Cape? Langley?”
I could have wept, I felt so grateful for this act of kindness. We talked about the different centers and settled on the Ames Research Center in California. They did a lot of flying there, and it was far enough from Houston and NASA Headquarters that I could evade the witch hunters. “Go and talk to the director out there, and I’ll arrange the rest,” Dale told me.
I flew out to Ames, south of San Francisco. It’s a beautiful part of the country, not far from hills covered in redwood forests, and I mentally crossed my fingers that the job interview would go well. I hit it off with Hans Mark, the director of Ames, immediately. He took me around and showed me the hypersonic wind tunnel they used to test space shuttle designs, and the space medical studies. Of most interest to me was their airborne science division. They had a whole fleet of aircraft used to perform in-flight scientific experiments. It looked great to me, as it was similar to the research I had carried out in lunar orbit. We agreed that I would start work there in September.
In the meantime, I was still in Houston and wondering why I had fought so hard to stay. I was a pariah in the office. None of my fellow astronauts wanted to talk to me. They were mostly polite, but reserved and distant. It was clear I wasn’t welcome at the weekly astronaut meetings, so I stopped going. I was toxic, tainted. But I understood the deal. This is what had happened to others before me. It was as if I were a pilot who had brought dishonor to his squadron. My colleagues were just protecting themselves and their careers. They couldn’t be associated with me.
Even Dave, whom I expected to talk with me, no longer dropped by. That hurt me. Dave had been an incredible mission commander and was always in charge. Even after the flight, on our world tour, he had made it very clear that we were to follow his orders. With such command, I figured, came responsibility. Dave had led me into the covers deal with Eiermann and had told me it would be fine. I hoped he would now tell my superiors what had happened and sort out the mess. But he wasn’t even talking to me.
My parents, on the other hand, stayed very supportive when I discussed it with them. They felt sad for me, coming so soon after the parades and celebrations. But they were also realistic and stoic types. It happened, it’s over and done with, and now you have to move on, they told me. Don’t brood over it, pick up the pieces of your life, and move on. When I thought about the many tough times in their lives, and how they had kept plowing forward, I realized it was good advice. I needed to persevere and I would come out the other end alright. There would be—there had to be—brighter days ahead.
First, however, my world grew darker. Before I could make the move to California, I was informed that Dave, Jim, and I would be required to appear before a Senate committee in Washington, D.C., on August 3, to testify about the covers. Members of the Senate Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences had seen newspaper reports about the covers and began to question Jim Fletcher. The Justice Department started to investigate, too. Stories swirled in the press that listed varying numbers of covers, incorrect details, and wildly speculative amounts of money that were supposed to have changed hands. NASA statements to the press gave differing cover numbers, too. No wonder the committee wanted to ask questions of us directly.
On July 11, a few weeks before the hearing, NASA publicly issued a reprimand declaring that the three of us had “exercised poor judgment in their action.” I couldn’t argue with that. The next day, news reports stated that I would be “reassigned from the astronaut corps to another position within the space agency,” effective August 1. It seemed that my bosses were backing down; I was spared further public humiliation. Two days later, John Donnelly, a NASA spokesperson, officially told the press that “there is no evidence at all” that I profited in any way from my arrangement with Herrick. I was grateful for the partial vindication.
On July 26, the anniversary of our flight, Dave moved into a desk job. It was a prestigious position: technical assistant to the manager of the Apollo spacecraft program. Nevertheless, when reporters asked NASA spokesperson Jack Riley if Dave had no choice about remaining an astronaut, he responded “That’s right,” adding “It was decided he would be transferred from the astronaut office.” The press pounced on these often-contradictory stories from different NASA sources. It was chaos.
We began to hear more details about the forthcoming Washington hearings. As well as the Apollo 15 crew, the committee would call Jim Fletcher, George Low, Dale Myers, Chris Kraft, and Deke to testify. Legal matters would be addressed by Neil Hosenball of NASA’s legal counsel. This was going to be interesting.
Deke was pissed that he had to go before Congress about this issue. Years later, Wally Schirra gave me a copy of a letter Deke wrote to him a couple of weeks before the hearings. Deke was sending his copy of each mission’s PPK lists back to their respective commanders. In the accompanying letter, Deke told Wally that the authorities were leaning on him.
“Demanding I release all lists for Senate hearings next week, and I’m refusing. My position is the lists as well as contents are crew property and not my prerogative to release. Legal people tell me if NASA doesn’t fire me in the meantime, Senate could get me for contempt. My solution is to turn lists over to crew commanders so there’s no way they can force them out of me. You can burn, use in bathroom or whatever. Possible someone may come to you for them but it’s your property and your choice. Only way I would release is to get each crewman’s permission and haven’t got time for that before they put gun to my head.”