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Originally Posted by tbzep
If that's not some cool history, I don't know what is. Thanks!
It has put me in the mood to build one of my Skydart II's in Pan Am livery. 
It hasn't put me in the mood to do any sanding, though. 
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You also reminded me--William Roy Shelton's 1967 book ("American Space Exploration: The First Decade") and L.B. Taylor's 1968 book "Liftoff! The Story of America's Spaceport" cover the early years of the Atlantic Missile Range, and Pan American's responsibilities in providing security, catering, and other services on the range, at Cape Canaveral and at the downrange tracking (and telemetry reception) stations. Also:
Shelton's accounts of the 1958 USAF Thor-Able Pioneer Moon probe shots include how Pan Am catering trucks would bring sandwiches, coffee, and soft drinks for the launch crews and reporters during the long, often late-night countdowns. He also described how those working on the Pioneer payloads at the top level of the gantry had to sign in with a Pan Am security guard posted there before donning surgical smocks to work on them (they had two probes--one was a back-up; they sterilized the probes' parts with an ultraviolet light [and, if memory serves, with disinfectant on the outside, too], to prevent false positives if later missions discovered microbes on the Moon), and:
The Pan American security guards, as these books recount, also kept the "birdwatchers" (reporters who tried to scope out what was going on at the Cape launch complexes) at respectable distances. In the early, pre-NASA days, there was a cloak of security over all Cape launches (except--at least partially--Project Vanguard; but even with it, expected launch times weren't usually announced in advance, forcing reporters to watch the vehicles [when first stage LOX venting stopped, liftoff was imminent]), because they were conducted by and for the Army, Navy, and Air Force, and were missiles, but:
Even so, the secret-keeping wasn't terribly effective (most reporters had private sources--project engineers, sympathetic military officers, etc.--who quietly informed them about when various launches were scheduled, and the reporters--who had honor and integrity as well as being patriotic, back then--returned the favors by keeping quiet before launches, protecting their sources, and pretending to be surprised at having fortuitously "caught" the launches). But the Pan American guards were effective in forcing the birdwatchers to observe the Cape from a distance (the beaches to the south [this was long before the Saturn and Titan III pads were built on and beyond the northern end of the Cape]), using high-powered telescopes and telescope-mounted cameras. But:
Things loosened up a bit, though, after the Vanguard TV-3 launch failure on December 6, 1957 (it was just a launch vehicle test carrying a tiny test satellite, as "TV"--Test Vehicle--stood for, but pre-launch news coverage had built it up to "America's answer to Sputnik," which made its fiery fall from just four feet altitude so humiliating). When Wernher von Braun's ABMA--Army Ballistic Missile Agency--team in Huntsville, Alabama was finally given permission to try to orbit a satellite using their Juno I (a four-stage Jupiter-C, using a "stretched" Redstone first stage burning Hydyne and LOX), the Army, not wanting to repeat the Vanguard TV-3 "Kaputnik" fiasco, took the Cape reporters into confidence, offering full disclosure as events transpired *IF* they would keep their information confidential until ^after^ a successful launch. The reporters, American and foreign (the BBC and other press agencies were involved, too), kept their word (something that would be doubtful today, except for a few stalwart journalists), and they brought the full story of Explorer I to the American public and to the world at large, once it was safely in orbit and confirmed to be functioning normally.