Lyndon Johnson: “It is now possible to take this important step in meeting one of the pressing problems of mankind.”

This program, sponsored by the World Meteorological Organization, constitutes one of the largest and most complex scientific and technological undertakings ever attempted as an international effort.

Your reward--and it is coming--will be seen in the faces of children who will come down the road that you have helped to open.

I believe deeply in your cause and I believe in you.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this twentieth day of January in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and sixty-nine and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and ninety-third.