> Even if the CIA did provide extensive information to NASA about Soviet circumlunar plans, that does not necessarily mean that, as the memo indicates, the NASA

> Even if the CIA did provide extensive information to NASA about Soviet circumlunar plans, that does not necessarily mean that, as the memo indicates, the NASA decision was a “result” of CIA information. Only the NASA officials who made the Apollo 8 decision knew what factors influenced them most. That was primarily George Low, whose records point to the Apollo schedule being the primary influence. The drive to get Apollo 8 up and around the moon (as well as the intentions of the rest of the Apollo flights) may not have been explicitly called out in mission documents as having the purpose of directly competing with Russia, but I'm not sure that really matters in the grand scheme of things. Even if the intentions of the program managers and engineers that put Apollo in space really were just sticking to their planned schedule without concern of the other side's progress, the funding, fast track bureaucracy, and schedule timeline that allowed NASA to do the things they did certainly was motivated by political interests. That, to me, makes the issue of whether or not they based it on CIA info less profound, if not moot.