The administrator who organized Apollo
After the Apollo 1 fire, he pressed President Johnson to let NASA lead the investigation and recovery.
James Webb was an American public administrator, not a scientist or engineer, who organized large-scale public work. As NASA administrator, he joined stable funding and political support for Apollo to a centralized system coordinating research centers, industry, and universities. While pursuing a crewed lunar landing, he also protected planetary programs such as Mariner and Pioneer and backed space-telescope research. After the Apollo 1 fire, he directed the agency’s response and defended its accountability before Congress while preserving the program’s continuity.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1928Graduated from the University of North Carolina
- 1936Earned a law degree and joined the District of Columbia bar
- 1936–1944Personnel director, secretary-treasurer, and vice president of Sperry Gyroscope
- 1946–1949Director of the U.S. Bureau of the Budget
- 1949–1952Undersecretary of State
- 1961–1968Administrator of NASA
- 1969Received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and published Space Age Management
Related historical events
- 1950–1953The Korean WarUndersecretary shaping the U.S. responseAfter the Korean War began, he and Acheson formulated three recommendations, including a response through the UN.
- 1957–1965The Soviet Space Programadministrator of the Apollo programAs NASA Administrator, he centrally managed Apollo, contrasting with the fragmented Soviet design bureau competition analyzed in the closing section.
Pre-NASA career: from New Deal staff work to the State Department
Before he ran NASA, James Webb spent some three decades in the administrative work of the New Deal, wartime mobilization, and Cold War state-building, and became a manager of large organizations. He entered public service in Washington as secretary to Representative Edward W. Pou of North Carolina from 1932 to 1934, helping Pou, the Rules Committee chairman, push through the first New Deal legislation of Franklin D. Roosevelt's term. From 1934 to 1936 he worked as an assistant in the law office of former North Carolina governor Oliver Max Gardner, which allowed him to finish law school.
Hired by Sperry Gyroscope as personnel director in 1936, Webb became assistant to its president Thomas Morgan, then secretary-treasurer and finally vice president. During his tenure Sperry grew from 800 employees to more than 33,000 and became a major supplier of navigation equipment and airborne radar in World War II. Webb wished to re-enlist in the Marines at the start of the war, but he was deferred because of the importance of his work at Sperry; he reentered the Corps in February 1944 and commanded Marine Air Warning Group One of the 9th Marine Aircraft Wing. He prepared a radar program for the invasion of the Japanese mainland but did not see combat, as Japan surrendered before he shipped out.
After the war Webb briefly served as executive assistant to Gardner, by then Undersecretary of the Treasury, then was named director of the Bureau of the Budget in the Office of the President and held the post until 1949. Truman appointed him on the recommendation of Gardner and Treasury Secretary John Snyder; Webb prepared the President's proposed annual budget in line with Truman's aim of balancing the budget after the large wartime expenditures.
Appointed Undersecretary of State in January 1949, Webb was given his first assignment by Secretary Dean Acheson: to reorganize the department, adding twelve new presidential appointees, reducing the power of subordinate officers, and consolidating the flow of foreign policy information and intelligence through the secretariat. When Truman signed the reorganization bill on May 26, 1949, the department, which had been losing influence to the military, strengthened its ties to the President. The central question of Webb's time there was whether the Soviet Union could be contained by diplomatic means alone. When Policy Planning director Paul Nitze wrote the classified memo NSC 68 arguing for a military build-up of NATO forces and Secretary of Defense Louis A. Johnson opposed a higher Defense budget, Webb got Truman to persuade Johnson to accept the NSC 68 recommendations.
When the Korean War began on June 25, 1950, Webb and Acheson devised three recommendations: involve the United Nations, send the Pacific Fleet into the Yellow Sea, and authorize an Air Force strike on Korean tanks. Truman implemented the first two immediately but delayed the use of force by several days; when Johnson tried to blame Acheson for the lack of preparedness, Webb worked with his congressional contacts to convince Truman to replace Johnson, and the retired George C. Marshall returned as Secretary of Defense. That same year Webb established an alliance with university scientists, Project Troy, to bolster U.S. psychological warfare capabilities, notably studying how to circumvent Soviet jamming of Voice of America broadcasts. As the Korean War absorbed the department's attention, however, Nitze rose as Acheson's principal adviser; amid their friction Nitze publicly called for Webb's resignation. Suffering from migraines, Webb left the department in 1952 for the Kerr-McGee Oil Corp. in Oklahoma City, but remained active in government circles, serving on the Draper Committee in 1958.