Tape: JFK fretted moon plan a hard sell

BOSTON -- After setting a soaring vision to land a man on the moon, President John F. Kennedy struggled with how to sell the public on a costly space program he worried had "lost its glamour" and had scant political benefits, according to a newly released tape.

Kennedy and NASA Administrator James Webb hashed out how to strengthen public backing for the mission, such as by highlighting its technological benefits and military uses.

The two worried about preserving funding amid what Webb calls a "driving desire to cut the budget," according to the tape recorded two months before Kennedy was assassinated.

"It's become a political struggle now," Kennedy says, near the end of the 46-minute tape. "We've got to hold this thing, goddamn it." The Sept. 18, 1963, conversation is among 260 hours of White House tapes that Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum researchers have been transcribing.

Its release today comes on the 50th anniversary of Kennedy's May 25, 1961, speech in which he made his famous call to reach the moon by decade's end. That speech is remembered for its ambition, but it also included a caveat that "no single space project in this period . . . will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish." -- AP