William Safire, one of Richard Nixon's speechwriters, had prepared a statement to be delivered by the President in the event the Apollo 11 mission had failed. NASA White House Liaison, astronaut Frank Borman, suggested to Safire that the President should be prepared to address a catastrophic mishap with the mission. Since the most dangerous parts of the mission were the landing and take-off, a mishap most likely meant the astronauts would either crash on the moon or be unable to depart; in either case left stranded there. Safire wrote a short speech titled "In the event of moon disaster" for such a contingency, but did not deliver it to Nixon. After the success of the mission, Safire quietly entered the speech into the presidential records where it remained until it was de-classified and released to the public in 1999. The first line of the speech reads: "Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace."

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