APOLLO 1 - HEROES REMEMBERED
It was a crisp , by Florida standards, January 27th when 40 years ago Virgil, "Gus," Grissom second American in space and veteran of Mercury and Gemini flights, Ed White, Gemini veteran and first man to walk in space and Roger Chaffee the rookie, were lifted to the top of the powerful Saturn V rocket and entered the first Apollo space capsule for a test launch simulation to prepare for their upcoming flight which would usher in NASA's quest for the moon. The Apollo capsule was new technology in 1967 and far advanced of the previous Gemini and Mercury systems which had launched America's manned space program. It was also built by a new contractor to NASA, North American Aviation, and had proven to be a complicated night mare that had numerous minor cliches that had shown in previous system tests but none of which was considered enough of a problem to cancel the mission and the manned launch simulation designed to test the performance of the Command Module operating on internal power for the first time. If successful the launch was scheduled for February 21 and a two week orbit around the earth as the first phase in the eventual flights to the moon.Grissom, White and Chaffee entered the Command Module at 1PM expecting a short countdown and launch simulation but problems immediately began to surface. The first delay until 2:20PM was caused by a sour smell in Grissom's suit, finally at 2:45 the hatch was sealed and pure oxygen was pumped into the craft. Further problems developed from oxygen sensor alarms to continual communication problems backing the test up until 5:40 PM when it was put on hold. Most of the countdown procedures had been completed by 6:20 PM but the count was held a T - minus 10 minutes at 6:30 to again fix communication problems.
At 6:31 PM Roger Chaffee's voice was heard over COM link, "We've got fire in the cockpit." A few seconds later the transmission ended with cries of pain. Ed White was seen on monitors attempting to open the hatch but because of several hatch bolts it could not be opened quickly. The hatch also opened inwardly in order to create a stronger seal in the cockpit and because of the hot gases from the fire the hatch was impossible to open. Within seconds the pressure was so high it eventually ruptured the capsule. Because of the fire and the need to extinguish the flames it took an additional five minutes for the ground crew to open the hatch and by that time the three crew members had sucommed the fire. Though their suits had melted to the point that Grissom's and White's suit had fused together and they each had extensive burns it was determined that they had died from smoke inhalation.
Their sacrifice caused a redesign of the internal systems of the Apollo Command Module correcting numerous flaws in both the working systems in the craft and the design of the interior making it more accessible to the crew. These three brave American's who gave of themselves in the exploration of space paved the way for the success of future flights and the eventual landing on the moon by Apollo 11 in July of 1969. Astronauts in the Apollo program consider their success to be on the shoulders of the crew of Apollo 1 and each successive flight paid tribute to the bravery and sacrifice of , "Gus, "Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee, American heroes.
Ken Taylor
posted by The Liberal Lie The Conservative Truth | 1:19 PM
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Lawrence Wilkerson http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/08/19/powell.un/index.html
Top Secretary of State Advisor - Bogus evidence
Former aide: Powell WMD speech 'lowest point in my life'
(CNN) -- A former top aide to Colin Powell says his involvement in the former secretary of state's presentation to the United Nations on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was "the lowest point" in his life.
"I wish I had not been involved in it," says Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, a longtime Powell adviser who served as his chief of staff from 2002 through 2005. "I look back on it, and I still say it was the lowest point in my life."
Wilkerson is one of several insiders interviewed for the CNN Presents documentary "Dead Wrong -- Inside an Intelligence Meltdown." The program pieced together the events leading up to the mistaken WMD intelligence that was presented to the public. A presidential commission that investigated the pre-war WMD intelligence found much of it to be "dead wrong."
Powell's speech, delivered on February 5, 2003, made the case for the war by presenting U.S. intelligence that purported to prove that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Wilkerson says the information in Powell's presentation initially came from a document he described as "sort of a Chinese menu" that was provided by the White House.
"(Powell) came through the door ... and he had in his hands a sheaf of papers, and he said, 'This is what I've got to present at the United Nations according to the White House, and you need to look at it,'" Wilkerson says in the program. "It was anything but an intelligence document. It was, as some people characterized it later, sort of a Chinese menu from which you could pick and choose."
Wilkerson and Powell spent four days and nights in a CIA conference room with then-Director George Tenet and other top officials trying to ensure the accuracy of the presentation, Wilkerson says.
"There was no way the Secretary of State was going to read off a script about serious matters of intelligence that could lead to war when the script was basically un-sourced," Wilkerson says.
In one dramatic accusation in his speech, Powell showed slides alleging that Saddam had bioweapons labs mounted on trucks that would be almost impossible to find.
"In fact, Secretary Powell was not told that one of the sources he was given as a source of this information had indeed been flagged by the Defense Intelligence Agency as a liar, a fabricator," says David Kay, who served as the CIA's chief weapons inspector in Iraq after the fall of Saddam. That source, an Iraqi defector who had never been debriefed by the CIA, was known within the intelligence community as "Curveball."
After searching Iraq for several months across the summer of 2003, Kay began e-mailing Tenet to tell him the WMD evidence was falling apart. At one point, Wilkerson says, Tenet called Powell to tell him the claims about mobile bioweapons labs were apparently not true.
"George actually did call the Secretary, and said, 'I'm really sorry to have to tell you. We don't believe there were any mobile labs for making biological weapons,'" Wilkerson says in the documentary. "This was the third or fourth telephone call. And I think it's fair to say the Secretary and Mr. Tenet, at that point, ceased being close. I mean, you can be sincere and you can be honest and you can believe what you're telling the Secretary. But three or four times on substantive issues like that? It's difficult to maintain any warm feelings."
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