Staff Director : Inquiry’s Keel Thorough, Has Had Swift Rise

As a boy, Alton G. Keel Jr. spent his days going to air shows with his dad and dreaming of becoming a pilot. But poor eyesight kept him out of the cockpit, and he became an aerospace engineer, testing models of the orbiters that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration would one day fly and wishing one day to ride one himself.

Now, he has the delicate job of serving President Reagan’s commission to investigate why the shuttle Challenger blew up. Keel, who was named executive director to the commission this week, must hire and manage a commission staff that, in the end, will be responsible for ensuring public faith in the commission’s findings.

To Take Full 120 Days

Keel, 42, is known for his insistence on gathering reams of information and thoroughly examining an issue before making a decision, and his approach on the commission is expected to be no different. He expects the panel to need the entire 120 days it has been given to pinpoint the cause of the disaster.

“Absolutely,” the bearded, bespectacled Keel said. “I don’t see how an investigation of this magnitude and this importance can take less than that.”

It is not a job Keel sought. He was offered the post late last Friday, accepted it Monday morning and attended his first commission meeting a few hours later. “I was convinced to take that job--that’s the best way to put it,” Keel said.

Promoted by Tower

The Virginia-born Keel has moved swiftly up the government ranks since becoming an adviser to the Senate Armed Services subcommittee on tactical air power in 1977. He was promoted to senior adviser to the full committee at the request of former Sen. John G. Tower (R-Tex.), and associates recall that Keel was instrumental in justifying increases in defense spending.

In 1981, Keel was chosen by the White House to be an assistant secretary of the Air Force and later became one of two candidates for the post of Air Force secretary. In 1982, the White House moved him to the Office of Management and Budget, where he regularly attended Cabinet meetings and had responsibility for national defense, foreign policy and international economic and financial policy.

At the OMB, associates say, he displayed an ability with numbers equal to that of his boss, former OMB Director David A. Stockman, and was considered as a possible successor when Stockman resigned. “In some sense, he is almost like a clone of Stockman in the way he deals with numbers,” said an OMB official, who noted that Keel helped prepare current OMB Director James C. Miller III for his budget presentations to Reagan.

Isn’t ‘Real Shy’

“He’s pretty tough at dragging the information out of the bureaucracy, whether it is good or bad . . . “ Tidal W. McCoy, an assistant secretary of the Air Force, said. “He’s reasonably quiet, but he isn’t the real shy scientific type who can’t speak up or doesn’t have personality.”

Keel, who will be paid at the rate of about $60,000 a year, the same as his OMB salary, said he does not know what he will do when the commission disbands.

When asked if he received assurances from the White House of another key Administration post, he said: “There is no such assurance. Obviously, if you are highly regarded, which one hopes is the case, and if you do a good job, you certainly expect the opportunity will come up down the road, but certainly there are never any guarantees.”

Rumors Discounted

At least one of his friends is pushing Keel for the job of NASA administrator, and rumors that he is a candidate are floating around OMB offices. But Keel strongly discounted those rumors as “inappropriate,” calling the job “the furthest thing from my mind.”

Keel said he will work to ensure that the commission is independent of NASA because he and the commissioners are concerned about criticism that the panel is too close to the space agency. Although the commission staff is paid out of the NASA budget, Keel is now shopping for office space outside NASA headquarters and will hire an independent commission staff of up to 12.

Plans Closed Meetings

He said the commission will continue to hold some closed meetings, usually when the subject is either very complex and detailed or involves a business’s proprietary interests. He added that NASA officials responded candidly and cooperatively in the first closed meeting this week.

Keel started his career at the Naval Surface Weapons Center in Maryland, where he did testing on orbiter models.

Charles Bernard, the former director of the lab, recalls him as “very careful to make sure he is taken seriously. He is not a frivolous person. He wouldn’t say, for example, that the shuttle went boom. He would describe it in very technical terms.”

As the commission’s executive director, Bernard said, Keel “will understand that they can’t come up with a political answer that isn’t a correct (scientific) answer because, far and beyond politics, they won’t be able to shoot another one off if anything is overlooked.”

Keel received a bachelor of aerospace engineering degree and a Ph.D in engineering physics from the University of Virginia. He is a racket-ball player who works out on exercise equipment and lives in Arlington, Va., with his wife, Franmarie Kennedy-Keel, who holds a presidential appointment as chief of staff to the undersecretary of education. They have a daughter, Kristen, 19, who attends the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.