Canaveral Revisited

In the tense hours before the first U.S. satellite took off for outer space, no missile-beat newsman was under greater strain than Major General Donald N. (for Norton) Yates, U.S.A.F., handsome, gregarious commander of Florida's Air Force Missile Test Center. For it was Meteorologist Yates, 48, who established the uniquely personal working relationship with Cape Canaveral newsmen which last week averted the ballyhoo and garbledy-gook that witlessly inflated the first Vanguard flop into a propaganda debacle for the U.S. As it turned out, last week's detailed, accurate coverage of the U.S. Army's satellite triumph--after the event --not only vindicated General Yates's patient diplomacy, but mollified news editors, who had become increasingly restive under the harness of a voluntary peacetime censorship that has descended ever Canaveral.

Ingrained Misgivings. Seventeen days before the Army's satellite shoot, West Pointer Yates grinned expansively at wary newsmen before outlining the missile beat's first set of ground rules. In future, said he, Cape Canaveral correspondents would 1) be briefed off the record each week before scheduled missile firings, 2) get a detailed on-record fill-in on the outcome of some major shoots, 3) cover the tests from vantage points (7,900 ft. from the launching pads) that had previously been off limits to the press. In return for these and other concessions, said Yates, newsmen would have to agree to 1) withhold stories based on his briefings until after each firing, 2) avoid pinpointing firing times in advance, and 3) keep "completely quiet" about some "off-record firings [that] will not be newsworthy in the truest sense but would give aid to the enemy if covered in depth."*

Without exception, all 70 reporters and photographers who were accredited at Cape Canaveral for the satellite launching accepted Yates's terms and committed their papers, agencies or magazines to them. Many correspondents had ingrained misgivings about the experiment, if only because it might hobble their reporting. Nevertheless, Yates's code worked without a hitch until Jan. 22, when International News Service Correspondent Darrell Garwood reported that a Vanguard would be ready for firing between Jan. 23 and 25. Under pressure from New York headquarters, the United Press's Charles Taylor followed up with a story saying that a missile firing--"possibly a second Vanguard" --was imminent.

Bragging Rights. Despite such minor frictions, most newsmen hoped that the Yates pact would continue in force (though the A.P. complained that it created an "in-between shadowland"). While Airman Yates (who also has a master of science degree from Caltech) had previously proved more adept at dodging newsmen than dealing with them--notably as General Eisenhower's top U.S. weatherman through the Normandy landings--he had clearly succeeded in bringing cooperation out of chaos at Canaveral. Already well liked by the press, the Maine-born general won new popularity at week's end by giving newsmen handsomely inscribed certificates of membership in The Galactic Order of Missileers, with unlimited bragging rights based on their "vast and detailed knowledge of all types of missiles."

*A precaution intended to conceal the exact number of times any missile has been tested.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.