NASA Pirtle, Joe - June 3, 1999
Interview with Joe Pirtle
Interviewer: Gabriel Head
Date of Interview: June 3, 1999
Location: Pirtle’s law office, Nassau Bay, Texas
Head: This is Gabriel Head and I am interviewing Mr. Joe Pirtle. It is 3:15 [p.m.], we’re in Mr. Pirtle’s law office on NASA Road 1 and we’d like to begin with a little background. If you could tell me a little about yourself . . .
Pirtle: I’m a graduate of the University of Central Arkansas, frequently known as Scottie Pippen U. since he is our most prominent graduate. I have a law degree from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Actually, it was called the Arkansas Law School when I went there.
I went to work for the federal government in 1952 [telephone ringing] doing background investigations for the government, and it included NASA [telephone ringing] and the Atomic Energy Commission and several other agencies. I once did the background investigation for an attorney general of the United States in that capacity.
Don Blume (that is B-L-U-M-E by the way) was head of security for what was then the Space Task Group (STG) up in Virginia [and] attended our annual conference of investigators up in Dallas. I had met Don during my first month with the Civil Service Commission in St. Louis at that time. He offered me a job with NASA and a month later I was with NASA. This was in 1961. I believe it was October, and by November twenty-sixth I reported to, I guess it was November twenty-sixth of 1961 was my first day on the job.
Whether that was the day I began traveling or the day I arrived at Langley [Air Force Base, Virginia] I’m not sure. I know that exactly a month later, the twenty-sixth of December. I left Langley to come down here [Houston]. They [NASA] had intended for me to stay up there six months because things were just staring off down here. But they started so fast, I came down and arrived on January eighth, 1962 in Houston and stayed until, I guess it was, June the eleventh 1981.
My first job was personnel security specialist. Since I had done background investigation before, it was my job here to cause investigations to be made and to evaluate the results for security clearances at NASA. I worked in that job for a few months and I became the head of that organization and continued to do that until October of 1967. During that period of time we ran somewhere over ten thousand background investigations including background investigations for six or seven classes of astronauts beginning with the second group.
In that situation, Blume and I together developed the special investigation techniques to be used and questions to be asked because we were going far beyond anything we’d ever done before. We were not just checking on suitability for government employment or resolving security questions, we were determining everything we could about those people because it was known if they were selected they were going to be right in the public eye. We wanted to know if we had the kind of people that could handle that sort of thing.
So I personally did the review of those. Generally, there would be thirty to forty [astronauts] in a class and we’d end up with as few as the Original Seven to fifteen or sixteen in a group. Frequently, I was the first person the astronaut applicants met when they came here because I would meet them at the airport or even had some come by train, if you can believe that. So I continued on that job until I sort of worked my way out of a job.
Head: How is that?
Pirtle: See we got everybody on board. See when I came on board there were probably less than five hundred people employed both here and at Langley and we got up as high as eight thousand people before I left over there. Maybe higher than that. I know there were eight thousand, but after we got everybody on board and they stop hiring (except for occasional, you know, to replace somebody, attrition and that sort of thing) we did not have many investigations to do anymore.
Head: It must have been a great deal of work setting up the entire institution from a security standpoint.
Pirtle: Oh it was! But I only dealt with personnel security. There was a fellow named Frank Hickey, who by the way is still in the area and who by the way is a lawyer too. Frank was head of physical security. In that capacity, he was responsible for fences around the place and setting up the first contract for guards. We did that actually when we were still scattered around downtown [Houston].
[Walter M.] “Wally” Schirra [Jr.] names that ditch that goes through NASA, if you notice it when you go there, that was “Hickey’s moat” according to Wally, a pretty funny man. Charlie Buckley was head of industrial security, so it was his responsibility to see that all the contractors and their employees had adequate clearances and that they observed all the regulations, security regulations.
Understand, at that time we were in a race with Russia [Soviet Union] for space and to get the Moon so we really had some security questions then. We were trying to protect every bit of information that we had and keep it from the Russians. They gave-up somewhere during the sixties about the time I guess we arrived at the Moon. So things changed a little bit after that. In October of [19]67 I moved over and became a contract specialist. And then after a few years . . . as a contract specialist I negotiated contracts, and then I became a contracting officer. Meaning, I signed contracts and supervised a few people. I did that up until I left NASA in 1981.
Head: What sort of security process did you have to set up yourself? As far as the criteria, you said [it] was a little different for the astronauts. Was this a process that you had to come up with?
Pirtle: No, only the special investigations for the astronauts. The security system came out of headquarters [NASA headquarters in Washington D.C.] and it was already in place when I got here. We did certain things, like we came up with a card system where we could get all the pertinent information for our purposes and then with a final space for to put their security clearance down. If they were cleared for confidential, secret, or top secret. So other than organizing the work force. . .
And when I came on board there were a couple girls in the office. Then we came down here [Houston], none of them came, so we had to start all over again. At one time I had eleven girls, or secretarial help. I should refer to them, not as girls. And I believe we had four security specialists at that time.
Of course, in addition to just reviewing these [people], when we found discrepancies or falsifications [telephone ringing], then we would have to confront the employee and hold interviews. During the period of time that I was out [telephone ringing] there [NASA] I suppose we must have secured resignations from something over two hundred people. I guess around two hundred people. This was for a variety of things. Some people claimed all kinds of degrees. We had a guy in here once who was very much like Fred Demara, the great impostor. He had had six weeks in a college or junior college taking a course in interstate regulations for a trucking company that he worked for. He claimed all kinds of degrees [and] we ran down in our investigations that he had never been near these colleges. He had actually gotten the form from Cal Tech at San Louis Obispo [laughter] and filled in all the courses and everything and put a fictitious signature on it, but he’d never been there. And yet when he was confronted with this, he made no fuss about it. He’d been caught again [laughter]. He just resigned and left. The people whom he had worked for as a technical writer never forgave me for that [laughter]. He was a really very good at it. He was just one of those unusual people that can do any number of things.
If you remember Demara, he was the guy who had been . . . had taught, well they made a movie with Tony Curtis. This guy had actually performed some surgery, an appendectomy. And, he had taught in a college in Ohio. He taught people studying for the priesthood, the seminary [laughter]. He gave organ recital, but this was that kind of a guy.
But we found some that were not at all talented. That were just liars and cheats and we had to get rid of them. At that time, it is not true now, but at that time anyone who was homosexual was considered a security risk and we uncovered a number of those. And again, we ran off some of our better employees. But that was the rules we were working with at the time.
Just a large number of things. People with criminal histories. People who had credit problems so bad that they were considered security risks because of their great need for money. Like one guy who took bankruptcy three times in a period of eight years by moving to different districts, that is federal court districts. Your not supposed to be able to take bankruptcy more often than, I believe it is every five years. They would just move to different places and take bankruptcy again. So he had to go.
Another guy was suspected of murdering his wife, although, we were never able to establish that. I guess we didn’t really try to, but he left. I guess because he didn’t want us going into it anymore.
We had a couple, both of them worked here, who had given away their baby [for adoption]. When we discovered that, and I don’t know if that makes people a security clearance or not. I just know that after her boss found out it . . . (he and his wife had been unable to have children and attempted to adopt children) he found out he had somebody working for him that gave away their own child for adoption [laughing], he made it so unpleasant for her that she left. So you discover all kinds of personal things about people.
Head: Between the time that you came to Houston, and even started working for the Space Task Group, by 1969 and we’ve landed a person on the Moon. You’ve seen a great deal of expansion within NASA. How did your job change with the massive growth of people that were coming in?
Pirtle: You see that was what my job was all about, was the growth. It would have been a routine job if we were just dealing with replacements or attrition, but we were hiring going from a few hundred to almost ten thousand, eight to ten thousand. So I am having to keep up with that. The personnel security office probably would not have rated more than two secretaries, but I had eight at one time. I believe it was eight. I had them all in a building out at NASA, out at Ellington Field [Air Force Base, Houston]. There were all very young, just out of high school, and they [NASA] referred to it as ‘Pirtle’s Playpen’ [laughter] because of the youth out there. But we got lots of work done.
Most of the people that worked for me as security specialists were former investigators. Like myself. Who had worked on the investigative end and then switched over to the review end. So they always knew when we had an inadequate investigation because they had many years of experience doing that.
Let’s see, I know I had four people at one time in that office. Bill Larsen worked there very briefly when he first came in. That was his, I believe his first job was as a personnel security specialist. But he moved on to a different job in security. Then off to other things.
Head: Being on a . . . having a separate job as far as security and most of the focus is on the engineering aspect at NASA, the science, did you feel the same amount of pressure and drive that is synonymous with the institution during the space race?
Pirtle: Well, probably not. We had the pressure to keep up because we had this awful pressure I guess that was laid on us by [President John F.] Kennedy in 1962 when he made that speech over at Rice [University, Houston, Texas] and said, “before the end of the decade we will go to the Moon and return a man safely.” I know I was down there and heard that speech that night.
Head: Oh Yeah?
Pirtle: I look around and people were looking at each other. We hadn’t planned on anything that fast. But we had to get people on board and get these clearances.
During this period of time there was a program handed to us by [Vice President] Lyndon Johnson. A camera program of very high classification. My boss called me in one day and said, “I’m going to take Glenn Brice,” this fellow that worked for me, “I’ve got a job for him and I’m not going to tell you what it is.” “It is not that I don’t want to tell you,” he was very respectful, “but I’m just not going tell you and I’m not going to discuss it with you.”
And then later on, Glenn was doing that for a while, and that was the camera program. Everything was done directly with the CIA. Somewhere along the line, Glenn got a better job offer and he left. Then, he [my boss] had to tell me about it because I had to do it after that.
But, we made no decisions within NASA on the clearances. We did the background investigations, and I did the briefs on all of them, and they were forwarded, and all those decisions were made on a higher level.
Some of our original astronauts had to have background investigations. Some of the Original Seven because they had never been investigated before they came in the program. We only started the investigative program with the second group.
Head: Oh Really?
Pirtle: Before that I guess they assumed their period of time in the program or in the military was enough. We had some inexperienced people at the top of NASA, well I guess at the top in Washington, but particularly here. Inexperienced as far as security requirements were concerned. They had to sort of be beaten and pushed into recognizing that this was a necessary ingredient. So when the CIA got involved, they said no way are we going to give Alan [Barret] Shepard [Jr.] or [Donald Kent] “Deke” Slayton a clearance without a background investigation. Which we did. So they got their clearances.
But that program [the camera program] got dropped somewhere along the way. Dropped from NASA being involved with it because it was a military program and we were touting the peaceful uses of space. Down where I worked people didn’t tell me all those things. But the story I picked up was that they decided that it would be bad for the program if people became aware that we were operating a military program. What I understand from the stories I hear is that those high-resolution cameras that were developed, beginning with that program, can, flying over here at a hundred miles up, can read a license plate. I’m sure you’ve heard the same kind of stories. You see it in the hi-tech movies but that was what we were doing for a short period of time.
Head: Being involved with security and the high profile, or at least the popularity of the astronauts, what was it like when they were first coming down to Houston with that parade and the barbecue?
Pirtle: I left that weekend [laughing].
Head: You did?
Pirtle: I came here from Tulsa [Oklahoma] and I went back up to Tulsa to visit. I think my boss got somewhat irritated with me. I missed that. But I was involved with the astronauts coming here.
One of the things that happened was the chamber of commerce had a dinner for the astronauts. Myself and one other guy went along. I guess it was Frank Hickey. Among the members of the chamber of commerce was Lloyd Benson. He had been in Congress [representative from Texas] and then dropped out and was in the insurance business here in Houston. As I understand making his fortune so he could go back to Congress. I met him on that occasion.
The whole area here, it was just unbelievable how open everybody was you know. Frank Sharp, of the Sharpstown scandal and the community, wanted to give all the seven astronauts a house. And that was not permitted.
So one of the jobs I had was that during the flights, even though this was not a normal job for someone in personnel security, was to go to the homes of the astronauts and stay with the family and see that they were protected during that period of time. And then another thing, we traveled some with them afterwards. After Gordon [Leroy “Gordo”] Cooper’s [Jr.] flight, which was I guess the first multi-orbital flight, so that he was up overnight. John [H] Glenn [Jr.] just made one [three] orbit[s]. Cooper was the first one to go up and make several orbits. But he was up for a day-and-a-half I guess. [Telephone ringing]
I went to Hawaii . . . I stayed at his house with his family. I took his wife and children to Hawaii, I say I took them, I accompanied them, there. Then we had a parade there. We flew back to Cape Kennedy [in Cape Canaveral, Florida] nonstop from Hawaii and had a parade there. And then we went to Washington [D.C.]. We only had a motorcade in Washington from the White House to the Capitol because Cooper addressed a joint-session and he was given an award of some kind by the President [Kennedy] in the Rose Garden. Then we flew to New York where we had a parade down Broadway, which I understand was the fourth largest parade in the history of New York, based on turnout. There had been [Charles] Lindburgh, [General Douglas] McArthur, and John Glenn before him. That was my first trip to New York. The next day we had a motorcade out to Newark where the plane was. The NASA plane. Then we came back here and had a parade here. So in about six days we had six parades. As Gordon Cooper said, “the flight was easy, it was the next week that almost did me in.”
I did such things during that period, before we got a protocol officer or someone. (By the way, Frank Hickey became the protocol officer. He moved over from security and took over that job). I made trips to Salt Lake City, [Utah] with [Edward H.] Ed White [II]. Ed was killed in the Apollo [pad] fire. He went out for the Days of Forty-Eight celebration, I guess. That [is] the celebration the Mormon’s have because that the year they arrived in that area of Salt Lake. And then I went to San Antonio with Ed White after he had done the space walk. [He was] the first person to do a spacewalk. They tried to send everybody back to their hometown. Well Ed didn’t have a hometown, he was an Army brat, so he chose San Antonio. So I went back there as sort of an advance man for that.
Then I went to Tecumseh, Oklahoma with Cooper and his family. In fact, these pictures up there [pointing to the wall across from him], one on the end with me carrying the purse. That’s in Hawaii. That by the way is Frank Hickey right behind me. Down below is his (Cooper) homecoming to Tecumseh, Oklahoma with his wife.
Head: When these kind of adverse situations came about, such as the Apollo fire, Apollo 13, and the death of astronauts such as [Theodore “Ted” C.] Freeman in the car crash and the airplane crashes. How did that change your job? What did you have to deal with?
Pirtle: Well first, Freeman was the first astronaut killed and that was a plane crash too. A goose flew into one of his engines just as he was about to land at Ellington. He was coming down for a landing and it just nosedived. Although he ejected, the plane had turned over so he ejected himself into the ground. It was really a hard death.
Of course I went directly there and we set up a cordon [telephone ringing] around the place to keep people away from the plane. One thing we did not know [telephone ringing] [was if] there were rockets on board and the gas tank had not exploded [telephone ringing] and we were supposed to keep everybody away for safety. We had a real bad time with the press about my activities out there that day keeping the press away.
Then after the Apollo fire, I get a call, from Bill Larsen by the way, telling me to go to Ed White’s house – this is at night. And I said, “for what?’ He said, “ I can’t tell you. Just get over there. You’ll know about it soon enough.”
So I got there. And there had been one doctor that had preceded me there. He was a Canadian. I have forgotten his name now but he was on the staff over here [NASA]. He had gotten there first and told Mrs. White about that. Also, I spent the next two or three days, most of the time, there just . . .
She was overwhelmed with well-wishers, the press. Everybody wanted to come in and she just had to have some protection from all this until the family members could get here. And even then we had to have some protection. You know, well-meaning people will do you in. She was probably the . . . I don’t think I’ve seen very many people effected by the death of a spouse as much as she was. I’m not sure, but I think she remarried. But I also understand that she was a suicide eventually. She was really destroyed by his death.
Of course the other things, Charlie Bassett and – what was his name, Elliot [M.] See [Jr.] where the second deaths. That was, oh, about a month after Freeman. I remember during the Freeman funeral, which was in the Methodist church down in Seabrook [Texas], the press actually tried to come in with cameras. And [Charles A.] “Charlie” Bassett [II] was so enraged that we almost had to control him. He felt that was improper. We got caught in the middle of something in that. We were supposed to help the families, but we were government employees and when we start interfering with the press . . . But we did plenty of it anyway. And then, a month later, we were back in the same church with Charlie Basset’s funeral. So those were really bad times.
When we came here, we were in Houston for two years before we were out here [the current Johnson Space Center (JSC) location]. As I say, I came in January of [19]62 and the first contingent came down here in September of ‘61. And then we moved out here [JSC] in March of ‘64. Others may have come a little bit sooner but that was when we moved our shop out here. Some were downtown [Houston] in various locations. It was more fun during that period of time than it ever was again [laughing]. They got us all together, got us regimented, and we became a bureaucracy. And it wasn’t nearly as much fun anymore.
Head: I understand that you met your own wife [Sherrie Pirtle] while working here in Houston. How did that come about?
Pirtle: Well, when I came here I came from Tulsa [telephone ringing] and I had a friend who was a disc jockey in the [telephone ringing] pre rock and roll days. He came down here and became the disc jockey on KPRC. The leading station in town. He had a show called “Music Over Houston." It was a late-night show. But I came down and looked Bill [Lowery] up. It had just been a few months since he’d left Tulsa and he invited me to a beach party in Galveston. I had never been around the ocean very much, and he had even gotten me a date. His date is now my wife. [Laughter] But, it was very cold down there, so we came back to my apartment. I had gotten a large apartment because my boss was going to come down and share the apartment with me, because his wife was a school teacher and they weren’t coming down until school was out and he had a child in school up there.
On that particular night, we were all having this party in the apartment and the personnel officer for NASA, Stuart Clark, came down. He said, “Don [Blume] said I could use his bedroom." So he came in. A couple of days later, he called me into his office. We were all in the same building, the Lane Wells Building downtown. He said, “I need some girls for the office.” I said, “You got a personnel office here. Why are you asking me?” He says, “Well, those girls over at your apartment the other night.” He says, “Can we hire some of them?” I said, “Well, I don’t know?” He said, “I like the tall red head.” By the way, that’s my wife at the time we got married that same year [pointing to picture on the wall]. I said, “I don’t know. I’ll see if I can find her.” I only knew her name. So, he said, “There is a couple of those girls. We’d like to hire them.
They were hiring on an emergency basis without going through the usual civil service rigmarole. So I called Bill Lowery and asked him how I could get in touch with Sherrie. And he didn’t like that very much. I said, “Look, she can get a job at NASA.” And the one she had right now I think was with the Academy of Radio that trained radio announcers. And so anyway, he thought, “Well that’s a good idea.” So he gave me her telephone number and I called her for Stuart Clark and asked her if she was interested. She came in for the interview and she was hired.
I really didn’t know her very well at that time. But we worked in the same building for quite some time. And about two years later we were married. By the way, that picture up there, the group picture. That was our security softball team.
Head: Where’s that?
Pirtle: The group picture right here?
Head: Ohh. Okay, and what year was that?
Pirtle: That would be about 1964.
Head: What other kind of activities went on around NASA, because this was an extremely high stress environment?
Pirtle: I guess most of the activities people did they did on their own. When we first came down there were frequent things like dances, and what have you, that were held at various places around. People were always pushing NASA employees to come to various things. We would get tickets constantly to the basketball game. Not the basketball games, but the football games.
[Flipping through a photo album] That’s one of the dances. That’s Sherrie and I at one of the dances. This is a picture in Hawaii after the Gordon Cooper flight. Lets see, I don’t know where Gordon is, someplace up on the stand. There are his two daughters. There’s Gordon right there, and his wife, and his two daughters. That is me. That is Frank Hickey. This is Lloyd Yorker [telephone ringing]. That was after we had finished a parade in which we ran a large part of it alongside the cars.
People . . . it was overwhelming how people would want to come out and touch the astronauts or shake hands with them. Which was dangerous because they are sitting on the back of a convertible and it is easy to pull them off. So we actually. . . I know in Denver [Colorado] I had to actually throw a block and knock a guy loose from Scott Carpenter.
This is Gordon up in his hometown. [Pointing to a picture of the airplane called the Super Guppy] I was never quite sure why nobody wanted it, but I had the job of buying that thing.
Head: What were the reasons that they didn’t want it?
Pirtle: I was never quite sure why they didn’t want [it]. I think they just didn’t want to bother with it. Since it didn’t ever come out of their [NASA’s] budget [laughing] I never quite understood it. But I had a battle with George Abbey over that. In fact, he and I had sort of a confrontation, which I was told later, you don’t confront George Abbey. But, I was getting ready to retire anyway and sure enough, at my retirement luncheon George showed up uninvited and made a nice little speech, and said nice things about me. Which, since he hardly knew me at all, I thought that was very unusual.
Head: You were showing me the pictures with yourself working security with the different astronauts. Was there any one particular astronaut maybe that was more popular with the crowds than others, that made security extremely tough?
Pirtle: Well I wouldn’t say that caused any. They were all very popular. Scott Carpenter and his wife Maureen, both of whom I like very much. I like Scott much more than some of the others. And Maureen was, we used to say, a real kick in the head because she would get everything her way.
But during this period of time, we had a lot of pressure on us because they had a contract with LIFE Magazine. They, the astronauts. And they were trying to stay away from the rest of the press and we got caught in the middle of protecting them from the press. Which created a lot of bad press. But during Scott’s flight, his one flight in the Mercury Program. Maureen was hiding out down at Cape Kennedy [telephone ringing]. Not on site, writing her impressions [telephone ringing]. Writing and probably giving her impressions like I am to you to somebody [telephone ringing] from LIFE Magazine. I know I got called in by Dr. [Robert] Gilruth and Walt Williams, who was the launch director before Chris Kraft. In fact, [pointing to the wall of pictures] that’s him on the lower right there.
I got called in and was told that they were afraid that at the last minute before the flight that she was going to come on site. I said, “well . . .,” they wanted to know where she was; and I didn’t know. Frank Hickey was with her and we kept in touch by telephone when he called me. They really didn’t believe that I didn’t know. But they said, “We don’t want her to come on site.” I said, “I’ll do what I can to keep her off.” And I’m not sure if it was [Walt] Williams or Gilruth who said to me [pause] “I don’t think you heard me. We don’t want her on site.”
At that point I got the message and said that she won’t be on site. So she didn’t come on site. That didn’t really have anything to do with me. I guess she didn’t want to come on site. I didn’t even know where she was. I did get the message over to Hickey.
These were very unusual things. There had never been a government program before where people in government employee and in the program had made a private contract with a particular news entity and would only talk to them. And so that made it very difficult for us.
Head: What do you consider to be the most challenging aspect of your career as a security officer and then as a contract officer?
Pirtle: I don’t know. I guess I never really thought about it. I guess just keeping up in the security business was difficult. More of the challenging things came from outside my work. Things I was called on to do like going to various places with astronauts. Sometimes the information that we would receive that was derogatory came on some very high-level people. That, uhmm, sometimes they want to kill the messenger.
I remember one of the astronaut applicants that had a whole bunch of little things that rubbed people the wrong. And so it ended up about two pages in the brief, all these things. So I get a called in by the selection committee and they say, “You really don’t like this guy.” And I said, “I don’t know him, never saw him. [They asked,] “Well what are you trying to do here?” I said, “I’m just trying to give you the information.”
And one time there was an astronaut which had been charged with a DWI [driving while intoxicated]. And oh, Michael Collins was the one who approached me about it and said, “You're not telling me that they got to be kept out of the astronaut program because he got a DWI.” And I said, “I don’t make those decisions. That’s your decision. I’m just telling you about it. He had a DWI. He answered the question about convictions that he’d never had any.” [Collins said,] “Well if that’s your point; that he lied, Okay.” [Laughter]
If you’ve ever read Tom Wolfe’s book about The Right Stuff. There is that phrase ‘drinking and driving, driving and drinking.” Astronauts do drink and they do drive. And I’m pretty sure plenty of them could have had DWI’s on a number of occasions. But most of them didn’t. The problem there, the difficulty was, whether it was on an important person or an unimportant person, you still had to present the evidence. Somebody else made the decision. I could recommend clearances but I couldn’t grant clearances. Nobody in NASA could deny a clearance except the administrator in Washington. So when you decided [telephone ringing] to take that step, to deny somebody a clearance, you certainly wanted to be prepared to make your case.
Actually, most of the people, then the pressure was put on me. [They would say], “Get rid of these people. Figure out some way to get them to leave.” Glenn Brice, who worked with me, he and I got very expert at getting people to see that it was in their best interest to resign and go somewhere else. Don’t wait to be fired. So we had a number of cases like that. I say we got about two hundred resignations.
Head: Hmmm. And these were just for various reasons?
Pirtle: Various, various reasons. Generally, just for lying on their applications or on their security clearance questionnaire.
Head: Was there ever a point in time where you felt the security you were trying to provide was being compromised?
Pirtle: No. I’ll tell you why. We had security at levels here that, that nobody else did anywhere I guess. For instance, on a security clearance a person didn’t necessarily have to have access to secret information to get a secret clearance. Because, there had been a ruling in NASA that substantial access to confidential, which is a lower level, that is as important as secret. So you’ve got to give them a secret clearance. Of course, every level is harder to obtain. We had some top-secret clearances. But we had those three levels.
There was one occasion, when an FBI agent who was assigned mostly to work with us, came to me with a story about someone who had called from a pay phone. And called the Russian [Soviet] Embassy. Well of course we had everything. I’m sure the FBI or CIA or whoever, the FBI since it’s inside the country, had all the lines wired. So they had heard this conversation. But the guy obviously didn’t give his name and told the Russians he had some information he wanted to, uhh . . . He never offered to sell it. He said he had some information that they would be interested in and they kept asking him about what it was, but they wouldn’t commit either way, because they knew they were being listened to.
So he [the FBI agent] came to me and told me this story and said, “Can you imagine anybody that that might be?” (And I used to have a memory for names you wouldn’t believe. It has since slipped away from me. After I left over there [NASA], they used to call me from the personnel office and describe somebody to me. “You remember who this person was?” I’d tell them). I had remembered a guy just a short time before that had left. He was very mad. He didn’t get a promotion or something. And when he checked . . . everybody had to check out with me and turn in any classified information and sign some sheets agreeing not to reveal information. And so I remember this guy was very upset. So I thought about it a day or so and we went through some card files and came up with his name. So, I gave it to the FBI agent, who called him on the phone and pretended to be a telemarketer and recorded the conversation. They got a voice match, however they do that with the machine.
He had not done anything they could charge him with. Because all they had was an illegally tapped line and he had not offered to sale anything or even mention any specific information. But the outcome of that was that this guy had secured a job at Brown and Root to go to Vietnam. Which that was at that period of time, that Vietnam was very hot and they managed to block him from going to Vietnam.
But you never knew when somebody, some disgruntled person, or somebody, who has allowed their finances to get in bad shape and needed money real bad, would decide to do something like that. But I never, I know I got taken to task a few times.
We had an astronaut that was selected one time, that was in the first scientist group. I don’t remember his name, but he was a doctor. Shortly after he was selected, he disappeared. And I got called to bring in the file. I went to, I was taken up to the eighth floor where Dr. Gilruth and George Low, who was the assistant director at the time, they were waiting, and my boss ushered me in. I don’t think he wanted to testify all that. And I handed it to him and I said, “If I can be of any help, I’ll wait around.” And they said, “We don’t need ya.” I didn’t know what it was all about. I was just called and [told] bring this file.
It had appeared that during the investigation the investigators had failed to turn up the fact that he and his wife were in the process of a divorce. And I got reamed a little bit about not finding this out. And of course we turn these things over to the Civil Service Commission and I couldn’t run their investigations for them. I managed to defend myself because I had found that some of our people at NASA who were interviewed about him, because he knew some of our doctors, had known about this and had not told about it when they were questioned. So he was dropped from the program.
And we always got a kick out of the interview with his wife when she said, “Oh yes, I’ll be happy for my husband to go to the Moon.” [Laughing] We wondered if she wanted him to come back. But we had a few things like that.
Another similar instance. I got a call one day to bring the file of Charles Whitman. And Whitman was in the tower that day at UT [University of Texas at Austin] shooting people. He had been a summer employee with us.
Head: Really?
Pirtle: And uhh, his background was perfectly clear. I fact until he just broke apart, no one knew just how sick he was. We didn’t find out about it here. But we did a full background investigation even though he just worked for the summer.
But that is why we did so many investigations. There were people coming and going. People that were over here for just short periods of time. So we actually had more [investigations] than we had people over that period of time.
But I guess nobody held me responsible for Whitman because he’d been gone for a year-and-a-half when this happened and nobody knew about it. Everybody was surprised.
Head: Hmmm. Well dealing with all these sensitive issues, I mean peoples personal lives, are there instances where if you could go back now you would run things differently? Or a process that you would set up differently?
Pirtle: No, I don’t think so.
Head: Really?
Pirtle: You know, if I was at the highest levels of government, I might make decisions that we didn’t have to follow some of the rules. I always felt, in having gotten a large number of resignations from people whose only sin was to be homosexual [that] almost invariably, they were outstanding employees and I never liked that. I didn’t like doing it. I didn’t like being a part of it. But I didn’t make the rules. And later on, that was changed. After I left that job. I think during the [President] Jimmy Carter Administration. That was, they removed homosexuality as a qualifier for a security clearance. The reason for that was that the idea that people could be blackmailed if they were gay.
And it reminds me of our famous, ahh, lady astronaut applicant that was not selected named Gerri Cobb. I guess I would be violating the rules if I talked about what I know of a specific individual. So I better not get into that one. But that was something that I dealt with as an investigator before I came to NASA. And I had to deal with after I came here, one of my own investigations.
You know it is hard to know as a lawyer, and I do a lot of criminal defense and I’m a very strong believer in civil rights and people having all their rights, and I see them abused on a daily basis by prosecutors and a lot of the things we did could only be justified on the basis that . . . well these people had all the rights that everybody else does but they don’t have a right to this job.
Head: Hmmm.
Pirtle: And I suppose that was the philosophy and I didn’t really have a choice about it. I could either do something else or follow that philosophy. We did a lot of good to because a lot of the people that we got rid of had nothing to do with security. They were just incompetent people. And people who had lied about their backgrounds and qualifications. We caught up with them and frequently the people they worked for knew that there was something wrong. That these people weren’t qualified to do the job.
But no, I don’t think I would change anything. As far as procurement is concerned. I would just stay away from it. [Laughter] I did not like the years I spent in procurement. [telephone ringing] But by the time I got there, I was on the downhill slide to retirement and so I put up with a few years of it. Some of it was pretty good. A negotiation is a lot like trying a case, a civil or criminal case, that you prepare for and then you go do the battle.
The only problem that I, well one of the many problems, was that you had to write a lengthy dissertation, (I forgot what we called it), justifying everything you’d done. Frequently the only justification was that this was the best deal that I could make [telephone ringing]. But you had to come up with some reasons to support this and it was pure fiction. And we used to do something called a determination in findings as to why you should negotiate rather than just have a fixed price. And I never saw a determination in findings that wasn’t fiction. I didn’t know why they bothered to do that. Just management decided that we want to negotiation this contract because this is the best contractor. We ought to pick this one. They have more skills and that probably could have been justified. We did lots of things that I didn’t care about. I’m not unhappy that I’m not with the government anymore. I’m kind of surprised that I managed to stay with them as long as I did.
Head: Well overall did you consider it a good job?
Pirtle: Oh yeah, it was a good job [telephone ringing]. I was treated very fairly. They didn’t fire me [telephone ringing] when on several occasions they should have probably. I know I had what was almost a fistfight, when I was out in Boulder, Colorado with Scott Carpenter after his flight, with some headquarters type who was a PR [public relations] type. We had our instructions. They had their instructions. But we had to . . . you know, I had to follow mine.
This guy grabbed me one day, like this [grabbing his coat lapels], and as if he were my boss and ripped a button off my coat. He outranked me by a number of ranks. He was from Washington and I slammed him up against the door and we came to an understanding very quickly that he didn’t do that anymore. So I expected to have all kinds of problems with it. I let my boss know right away. I called him in Houston [and] not a word was ever said from Washington. And I don’t know why, but he probably knew he was out of line and couldn’t do anything about it.
I think one of the most interesting things that ever happened [was] when I was assigned the job of being at [Gordon] Cooper’s house. I uh, my boss says “Why don’t you go up and talk to Paul Percer,” and Paul was the assistant to Dr. Gilruth the director at that time, about just what you’re supposed to do there. And this was the first time we were assigned to stay at a house for several days. So I went to talk to Paul, and he said, “I don’t know what the hell you people do. Do what you do. I don’t care.” And so I did.
And there was big television coverage when she [Mrs. Cooper] came outside the house after he had landed. I had managed to locate a couple deputies with the big cowboy hats, kind of sheriffs' deputies, and had them standing off to the side behind her. And I thought here we were, I was new to Texas too, and I thought national television would like this. Then I got to talk to Percer and he didn’t like having those guys with guns around.
But the part of that, the thing about that particular thing, then I was assigned to go to California, I mean to Hawaii with her. And because Percer would give me no information, I went and talked to Gordon Cooper before the flight. And I said, “look Gordon, nobody will tell me what I am supposed to do at your house, Why don’t you tell me.” He said, “well I don’t want people driving my wife crazy like they have some of the others. I don’t want her going outside of the house to talk to the press until I am safely down. And if I don’t come down safely, then she doesn’t come out.
And so we did that, and that created a lot of problems. See he was up there. This went on for two or three days. And they kept wanting her to come out and she was really very shy and didn’t want to come out at all. I talked her into coming out, tied a rope across two trees, across the driveway and wouldn’t let the press go beyond that. And they didn’t think that was very appropriate for me, a government employee, to tell them where they could go. Finally I convinced them that it was private property, that she could either come out or not come out and so they agreed. In fact, it worked so well that the press gave me a box of cigars as a result of that.
So we went to California, and when we stopped in California on the way to Hawaii, in Los Angeles, there were some PR people there wanting her to give a press conference. And she did not want to do this. So they wanted, the PR people wanted to meet with her and talk to her. And they said, do you want to be in this meeting. And I said, “no." And that was a mistake. I should have gone in.
So then they called me in when they were through and she said, “I’ve agreed to read a statement that they're preparing for me. But I don’t want to take any questions." And so we went out to the auditorium there at the airport, they have just like a regular theater. She was up on the stage, so she was seated up front with her daughters. One on each side. And I just took a seat back behind, several feet behind. She read the statement then everybody started yelling questions at her. And she turned around and looked at me in panic. And so I got up and walked over and held out my arm, and she took my arm and we marched off the stage on [laughing] NBC, ABC, and CBS. So that was another time that I thought we were going to have problems.
We went on to Hawaii from there, In fact, some of the people said some rather nasty things to me. The PR people about, you know, “my job was,” . . . “that’s it for you guy.” And I said, “Well I had a job when I got this one.” And so we went on to Hawaii and when we got off the plane in Hawaii, Shorty Powers, who was head of public relations for Johnson Space Center. [Pointing to the picture wall] And he is the little guy beneath the light switch. I told him what had happened and he said, “I saw it.” And I said, “Well I’m sorry that it happened but that is what she wanted and that is the instructions that I have." And he said, “Ahhh don’t worry about it." And the only thing that I recall that ever came up about that. I’ve told you about going on this trip all around. . .
Head: UmmHmm.
Pirtle: We were flying back from Newark to Houston and Paul, something or other who was the PR man for NASA at that time, or for Johnson Space Center, was on the plane. And right beside, Gordon was standing in the aisle, and Paul came up and Gordon jumped on him in this manner, “That if you guys don’t leave my family alone, I can make them totally unavailable.” And that, “Joe Pirtle did what I wanted him to do, and what I told him to do. And if anybody gets on him about this, they are going to have to deal with me.”
Nobody ever got on me about it. But it was kind of an unusual situation. But at that time these guys were like Michael Jordan is now. Everybody wanted a piece of them, they wanted to touch them, they wanted to see them, they wanted to talk to them. And wherever they went there were big crowds. And actually I don’t think they were ever in danger in the since that somebody wanted to hurt them. But just like when somebody [was] hanging onto when Gordon, when Scott Carpenter made the mistake of shaking hands with some guy in Denver who wouldn’t turn loose his hand and the car is moving away. That’s the one I threw the block at and knocked him loose. But people can get hurt in those situations. And that is what we were supposed to prevent doing. So we did that for several years and then it all became Frank’s [Hickey] job.
Head: I guess my last question would be, that you’ve gone on and done other things since NASA. What . . . is there something that you have taken with you that has helped you with your career afterwards.
Pirtle: Well I had a political career. And I was mayor of Seabrook [Texas] and served on the city council down there. And one of the things that I took along was some knowledge of how the press worked. Which I was able to use to my advantage. Mainly by not saying things I didn’t want printed. Because I knew you don’t do that sort of thing and I was careful about what I said.
By working in procurement I learned a lot about budgeting and overhead and all the costs of doing business. And when I got involved in local politics, I found I was way ahead of most of the other people that I was dealing with city councilmen, mayors, and others. City managers, which we did not have a city manager at that time, they usually know all that sort of thing but it was very helpful to me.
But I even used my investigative background a couple of times. We almost hired a police chief that the rest of the city council decided I could go do a background investigation [on]. And boy, we didn’t want him. So in that respect, yes. But in my law practice I don’t think there is really anything that I learned at NASA that has helped me particularly.
Except that any experience with human beings is a maturing experience to some extent. And certainly going into people’s personal lives, I found out that there are all kinds of people out there. Some of them you wouldn’t want to have for friends. And I deal with a lot of those now in practicing criminal law. People may be my clients, but they are not necessarily somebody that I would want to get any closer to then the courtroom.
I learned lots about people both as an investigator and at that particular job I also learned that there are some very unpleasant things that you have to do at jobs. And you either have to do it, or get in some other business.
Head: Well is there anything that you would like to add?
Pirtle: Well I think that the first five years that I was at NASA were probably as exciting a time as I ever had in my life. Even though I didn’t really had any feel for space exploration. It was fun to be a part of it. The whole country's attention was centered. We probably never had anything happen in this country that had, not complete support, but as great a majority of the people supporting as we had in the Space Program. And that was sort of comforting to be in a situation like that. I know we had a few senators and congressman, some of whom I agreed with, who thought that we were wasting a lot of money in this program. But generally the people supported it. It was an exciting time. It was fun to be there.
I went into Nagasaki, Japan about a month after the atom bomb was dropped and that was a pretty exciting time too. Wasn’t nearly as much fun as the Space Program. But I feel that I have been very privileged being involved with the dawn of the Atomic Age and then coming here with the Space Program. So, I had a lot of fun. I think I have more fun now than I had then though.
Head: Really? How come?
Pirtle: I’m probably in something I’m better equipped for. I grew up during the Depression. When I got out of college, if you got a job, you got a job. You know we weren’t as career minded as people are these days. You were surviving. And in the process of just making a living for myself, I got to do some exciting things. But now I’m doing what I like to do. What I probably should have done . . . A couple years before I came to NASA, I had an offer to become an assistant district attorney in Little Rock [Arkansas]. And I probably should have taken that. From the financial standpoint I’m sure my life would have been much better that it has been.
I like what I am doing now. I’m a municipal judge in two cities [Seabrook and Nassau Bay], and I’ve been vice president of the Texas Municipal Court Association. I’m vice president now. And I have a law practice, which keeps me busy without keeping me too busy, because I just don’t allow myself too busy anymore.
I’m seventy-three, I’ve got a grandchild that I am very happy with, I have a son I’m very proud of. And my wife and I have a fairly easy time as things go. And at seventy-three I have all my teeth and don’t take any medication. So I eat and drink what I want to.
Head: Well thanks a lot. I’ve enjoyed it.
Pirtle: Well thanks for letting me talk. It is probably the thing that I do best; is talk. But it was an exciting time and I guess we all were privileged to be a part of it.