JFK, November 1963: the memo on space with Moscow (NSAM 271)

The file opens in daylight, in a hall full of delegates. On 20 September 1963, President John F. Kennedy addressed the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York. Archive footage of the speech[jfk-un-video] survives, and it carries the line this whole case hangs on: a proposal for broader cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Union in space, including a joint expedition to the Moon.

Scene · reconstructed from the paperworkPicture it. A president at the rostrum, in the middle of the Cold War, offering to share the most prestigious race of the century with his rival. The file doesn't say how the room reacted, and I won't invent applause. It records what was proposed (the record[jfk-un-video]) and, more importantly, what happened to the proposal afterwards.

Because speeches are easy to forget, and this one was not left as a speech. Seven weeks later it became paper. On 12 November 1963 Kennedy signed National Security Action Memorandum No. 271[frus-d410], Cooperation with the USSR on Outer Space Matters, addressed to the administrator of NASA, James Webb. It turned the idea from the UN hall into an instruction with a deadline.

I want to be clear from the start about what this file is, and is not. The title mentions a memo, and there is a story in circulation about a different Kennedy memo, one said to concern unidentified flying objects, dated the same day. This file is not about that alleged document. It is about the real one: the memo the State Department's historians print in full[frus-d410], and that the Kennedy Library holds in its National Security Files[jfk-nsf-342-015]. The archivist's note[frus-d410] at the top of this file says it in one line: it stays on the paper.

So the opening scene, kept inside the documents, is short:

• 20 September 1963: a proposal at the UN for joint work in space, including the Moon (the record[jfk-un-video]);
• 12 November 1963: the proposal becomes a signed memorandum to NASA (the record[frus-d410]);
• a request for an interim report by 15 December 1963 (the record[frus-d410]).

What I keep coming back to is how plain that sequence is. A speech, a memo, a deadline. Nothing in it is hidden. Nothing in it concerns anything but rockets, research and diplomacy. And yet a memo signed in November 1963 attracts attention for reasons that have nothing to do with its contents, and everything to do with the date on it.

Before we get to that, the memo deserves to be read on its own terms.

Here is the memo, and the papers around it, one at a time.

NSAM 271, 12 November 1963. The full text is printed in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–63, volume XXV, document 410[frus-d410]. Its subject line is plain: cooperation with the USSR on outer space matters. Its central sentence, quoted exactly:

I would like you to assume personally the initiative and central responsibility within the Government for the development of a program of substantive cooperation with the Soviet Union in the field of outer space

That is Kennedy writing to James Webb[frus-d410]. The memo builds on the proposals of the UN speech. Its second page, shown in this file, endorses an existing channel[frus-d410]: talks between NASA's deputy administrator, Hugh Dryden, and the Soviet Academy of Sciences. And it asks for results on a schedule, an interim report by 15 December 1963[frus-d410].

The Kennedy Library folder. The National Security Files at the JFK Library[jfk-nsf-342-015] hold a digitised folder of 47 pages, running from 8 November to 16 December 1963, with copies of NSAM 271 and NASA's response. Our checker could not open the library's page directly; the file keeps the canonical link and points to the FRUS text as the mirror. Reading that folder in full is still on our list.

The LBJ Library scan. The pages shown in this file come from a scan held at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, in its NSAM boxes. The images are US government work. They match the printed text[frus-d410].

After Dallas: Johnson to Bundy, 16 December 1963. The next document in the trail is printed in NASA's documentary history Exploring the Unknown[nasa-sp4407]. By then the government had a different president. Lyndon Johnson wrote to his national security adviser McGeorge Bundy asking for follow-up on the space cooperation programme (the record[nasa-sp4407]).

Webb reports, 31 January 1964. The same volume prints Webb's report to President Johnson[nasa-sp4407] on cooperation with the USSR. The memo's question had an answer on paper, addressed to a different man than the one who had asked it.

So the trail is complete in outline:

• the speech (the record[jfk-un-video]);
• the memo (the record[frus-d410]);
• the folder of drafts and responses (the record[jfk-nsf-342-015]);
• the follow-up from Johnson (the record[nasa-sp4407]);
• the report from Webb (the record[nasa-sp4407]).

Every one of those documents is about space cooperation. None of them is about anything else. That is worth saying because of what came later.

The turn in this file does not happen in 1963. It happens in what was written about 1963, decades later.

The memo was signed ten days before Kennedy was killed in Dallas, and the follow-up papers[nasa-sp4407] show the programme passing to a new president. A memo signed so close to an assassination draws attention. In later years, some authors linked NSAM 271 to an alleged Kennedy UFO memo dated 12 November 1963. The story, broadly, is that the space memo had a stranger companion.

The trouble is the paper. The alleged UFO memo is not the document printed by the State Department's historians[frus-d410]. It is not what the Kennedy Library's folder[jfk-nsf-342-015] is described as holding. The official NSAM 271 text concerns space cooperation only (the record[frus-d410]).

There is a second thing worth getting exactly right, because it is easy to get wrong. The alleged JFK memo tends to travel alongside the so-called MJ-12 papers, documents said to describe a secret UFO committee. The FBI's Vault file on Majestic 12[fbi-mj12] records that the Air Force Office of Special Investigations told the Bureau those papers were fabricated, or bogus. And the GAO's 1995 Roswell records search[gao-1995-mj12] found no evidence the MJ-12 papers are genuine government documents.

But read the note on those sources carefully. The bogus finding and the GAO conclusion concern the MJ-12 papers and the Eisenhower Briefing Document. They are not a ruling on the alleged Kennedy memo, and I won't use them as one. What the file can say is narrower and firmer: no such memo appears in the official record we cite, and the real memo of that date[frus-d410] says nothing about UFOs.

So where did the story bend? Not in the archive. The archive is consistent from the UN speech[jfk-un-video] to Webb's January report[nasa-sp4407]. The bend happened in the space between a famous date and an unfamiliar document. A young president, a sudden death, a memo about the sky: it is easy to see why stories gathered there.

That is the mainstream reading, and it is also this file's Finding: confirmed, for the memo that exists (the record[frus-d410]). What the record does not show is any order to review UFO files.

The real open question in this case is smaller, and it is about space, not saucers.

This file is closed on its core claim: NSAM 271 is genuine, published, and about space cooperation with the Soviet Union (the record[frus-d410]). But a closed file can still have a loose thread, and this one does.

The question the dossier keeps open is this: how far did NASA's response get before the plan stalled after Dallas?

Here is what the documents do not yet settle for us:

• The Kennedy Library folder. Forty-seven pages[jfk-nsf-342-015], from 8 November to 16 December 1963, including NASA's response. We have not read that folder directly; our checker was refused at the library page. Until we do, the detail of NASA's first answer stays thin in this file.
• The interim report. The memo asked for one by 15 December 1963[frus-d410]. The file does not yet show what arrived by that date.
• The follow-up. Johnson's note to Bundy of 16 December 1963 and Webb's report of 31 January 1964[nasa-sp4407] are printed in NASA's documentary history. Their page numbers are still to be checked.
• The Dryden channel. What the talks between NASA and the Soviet Academy of Sciences carried in those weeks is not something the memo[frus-d410] can tell us; it only endorses the channel.
• The lore. Where exactly the alleged UFO memo first appeared, and who first tied it to this date, is not documented in this file. Sources for that history are on our list to verify. The FBI's MJ-12 file[fbi-mj12] and the GAO report[gao-1995-mj12] concern the MJ-12 papers, not that memo, and stay labelled that way.

And here is what the file shows without hedging. On 12 November 1963 Kennedy ordered concrete planning for space cooperation with the USSR (the record[frus-d410]). That is the whole of what this memo is.

I find that more interesting than the legend, if I am honest. A Cold War president, seven weeks after a speech most people took for a gesture, putting it in writing with a deadline. Then the deadline arriving in a different government (the record[nasa-sp4407]).

The memo, its two pages, the follow-up and the timeline are below. The memo asked a question about the Moon. The archive is still waiting for the full reply.