Did James Webb personally know of, direct, or enable the dismissal of federal employees for being gay or suspected of being gay, during his State Department tenure (1949-1952) and as NASA Administrator (1961-1968), the question behind the 2021-2023 petition to rename the James Webb Space Telescope?

NASA's 2021 and a further 2022 investigation, covering more than 50,000 documents, found no direct evidence Webb personally directed the dismissals scientists call the Lavender Scare, and historian David K. Johnson concluded there is no evidence he led or instigated any persecution. The documentary record from the period is nonetheless incomplete, and some scientists and historians who signed the original renaming petition maintain the question cannot be conclusively closed either way by an agency-run investigation alone.