_Live From Cape Canaveral_ - Jay Barbree [102]
“I was sitting here wondering what’s going on down at headquarters this morning. Especially with senior management on the fourth floor?”
“I know what they’re doing,” Sam grunted. “They’re running around, pointing fingers, protecting their asses.”
“Most likely,” I laughed, quickly adding, “Why don’t you go down there and check it out?”
“I could,” he smiled. “I still have a senior management badge.”
“You want a job?”
“Doing what?”
“Working for NBC News as a news analyst.”
“That sounds good. It’d keep me outta the pool halls.”
“It would at that,” I said, laughing. “Take a drive down to the fourth floor, check out what all your old buddies are talking about, and swing by the press site. If you’ll work for us through the Challenger coverage, I’ll clear it with Don Browne.”
“Who’s he?”
“Our Miami bureau chief. He’s in charge.”
“I’ll think about it, Jay, and I’ll take a drive by my old office.”
“Do that, Sam. Keep in touch.”
I put the phone down, suddenly feeling I was making progress. This just could work!
For the next twenty-four hours Sam Beddingfield parked himself in the executive offices at NASA headquarters, visiting old friends, listening to everything being learned about the accident. Most of the NASA managers simply thought Sam was still on the job and in the middle of the afternoon, January 30, 1986, two days after Challenger disintegrated nine miles above the Atlantic surf, Sam called me.
“I’ve got it,” he said flatly.
“The cause of the failure?” I asked anxiously.
“A rupture in a field joint splice.”
“An O-ring leak?”
“Right.”
“That’s for sure?”
“For sure.”
“How do they know?”
“They have pictures.”
“Whatta you mean?” I asked, my heart now racing.
“Pictures of the leak,” Sam explained. “They can see the flame blowing out of the sucker like a blowtorch.”
“Where did the pictures come from?”
“From a fixed engineering camera north of the pad.”
“Away from our cameras? Where we couldn’t see?” I asked.
“That’s it.”
“What did the torch do, burn into the tank?”
“Yep,” he said. “They think it burned through the insulation and everything blew.”
“We can’t see it on our launch tape?”
“No way.”
“Can you get your hands on a copy of that tape?”
Sam laughed. “You trying to get me shot?”
“This is great, Sam,” I told him. “Great work.”
I asked Sam to educate me on the booster segments, on the O-rings and the booster joints called “field joint splices,” and he told me how they were stacked here in the Vehicle Assembly Building. Once I was comfortable with what I needed to know, I thanked Sam again and told him to come by the NBC building when he could.
I phoned a confidential source at the Marshall Space Flight Center, and he confirmed what Sam had said. This was what we call in journalism a firm, second source, and I looked at my watch. It was 4:00 P.M. Eastern time, two-and-a-half hours to my buddy Tom Brokaw’s Nightly News, and suddenly I was playing mind games. I wanted Tom to have the story, but the next NBC newscast was the 5:00 P.M. radio network hourly, and, dammit, I thought, should I go with it now, before someone else breaks the story?
I was obviously sitting on the biggest story of my life, and I knew I had to dump it in Don Browne’s lap.
I left my office and went in to see Don. He sat talking on the phone, pretty obviously just chatting, and I held a finger before his eyes.
Annoyed, he looked up. “Just a minute, Jay.”
Not now, play big shit another time, Don, I thought to myself, and moved right into his face. “Now,” I said. “Get off the phone.”
Don Browne was temporarily in shock. He couldn’t believe I had spoken to him in that manner. He scanned my face, suddenly realizing I had something important to tell him. “I’ll call you back later,” he said, hanging up the phone.
I moved to within a foot of his face. “I got it.”
“Got what?”
“The story, the cause of the blowup, dammit.”
Don took a deep breath. “Let’s go somewhere else to talk,” he ordered, standing up and heading for the door.
Outside, I laid it out for him. “Let’s go into the radio booth and lock the door,” Don said.