Conspiracies: The Facts * the Theories * the Evidence (16 page)

provided a blow to the collective feeling of trust in authority – one that has never satisfactorily healed. With so many complexities

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and connivances having been dramatical y exposed in just one

small area when placed under the microscope, suddenly nothing

felt reliable or secure any more.

This growing unease would be exacerbated further by the

disclosure of the Iran–Contra affair – ‘Irangate’ – in 1986, which saw US weapons being illegal y sold to Iran by Colonel Oliver

North and other Reagan administration staff secretly to fund an

unsound group of Nicaraguan rebels. But the new era of doubt

had already been set by the mid-1970s, which would in turn lead

enquiring minds to re-evaluate many other fixtures of the times,

and give rise to some of the best-known conspiracy theories of al , where even the supposedly greatest achievements of humankind

have been called into question.

ii) The Moon lanDings

Man on the Moon?

One of the most iconic moments of modern times took place on

21 July 1969, when President Nixon made what official y remains

the most long-distance phone call in history. With humanity’s

envoys Neil Armstrong and Edwin ‘Buzz’ Aldrin, NASA astronauts

from Apollo 11, standing on the surface of another planetary body for the very first time, Nixon’s voice addressed them from across the gulf of space:

Hel o, Neil and Buzz. I’m talking to you by telephone from

the Oval Room at the White House. And this certainly has

to be the most historic telephone call ever made. I just can’t
tell you how proud we all are of what you’ve done. For every

American, this has to be the proudest day of our lives. And

for people all over the world, I am sure they too join with

Americans in recognizing what an immense feat this is.

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Because of what you have done, the heavens have become

a part of Man’s world. And as you talk to us from the Sea

of Tranquil ity, it inspires us to redouble our efforts to bring
peace and tranquil ity to Earth. For one priceless moment in

the whole history of Man, all the people on this Earth are

truly one: one in their pride in what you have done, and one

in our prayers that you will return safely to Earth.1

At this, the world breathed in with pride. Much of it, anyway.

With Vietnam raging at that moment, with death and mutilation

at hand, the line about bringing ‘peace and tranquillity to Earth’

ran hollow to some. Just a few years later, as Nixon fell into

disgrace and the USA faced the hard reality that power does

indeed corrupt, the context of the entire speech began to be seen through rather different filters, as even civilization’s noblest feat became fair game for reassessment.

A tiny minority, unable to accept the magnitude of the Moon

landings, had already sought reasons to doubt NASA’s claims,

citing apparent glimpses of Coke bottles rolling across the sup-

posedly lunar landscape, and flags waving in wind that shouldn’t

exist in a vacuum. But the holders of such extreme views had

been written off, literal y, as lunatics. With the huge psychological blow that Watergate inflicted, however, many new conspiracy

theories were born (as rumours of Paul McCartney’s death had

similarly gone viral when the Vietnam conflict spiralled), and the Moon landings were one of the first targets.

Given the dramatic monetary costs of the ongoing Vietnamese

situation, aside from the toll in lives, the new sense of global

consciousness that had been forged in the heady days of ‘flower

power’ ensured that the financial drains alone of the preposterously expensive Apollo missions were suddenly cause for concern in a

world of famine and poverty. How had such a frivolous and risky

venture been afforded primary status when people were still dying for want of basic needs? Other, more cynical, misgivings also began 94

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to creep in: had the ‘Moon Shot’ programme, far from being ‘one

giant leap for mankind’, actual y been more about scoring points

over the Soviet Union, as yet another strategy in the ongoing Cold War, the already absurd but perilous stand-off which by now had

the whole planet in perpetual fear of nuclear destruction?

Yet the lunar missions had effectively been sparked by John F

Kennedy’s famous speech of 1961, in which he declared America’s

intent of ‘landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to

the Earth’ by the end of the decade.2 With the outpouring of grief over the iconic president’s tragic death, what true patriot would not want to see those intentions fulfilled, and avoid a nation’s

humiliation over the ‘space race’? (It is clear, though, that scientists working for both the Soviets and the USA – many of them cribbed

from the same pool of quietly pardoned Nazi rocket pioneers –

covertly shared more space science with each other than was ever

admitted at the time.)

Thus, for some, the six Moon missions between 1969 and 1972

were a brief beacon of hope for the human race, an example of the positive things that could be attained with a united and peaceful planet. For others, they began to be seen as just another US flag-waving exercise and a convenient distraction from the horrors of

the time. Had it, in fact, all been too good to be true? This thought soon began to solidify into what has become one of the best

known, most ridiculed, and most persistent conspiracy theories

of all time: the question of whether the Apollo missions real y

happened at al .

Is it real y possible that the lunar expeditions, as some contend and a surprisingly large percentage of people believe, could have been an elaborate face-saving hoax, faked in a studio to cover for scientific inadequacies that simply could not guarantee success at the time? Worse, could it have been one huge staged psy-ops stunt in the first place, intended simply to hypnotize the masses with false images of US grandeur, enabling public excitement to fill coffers that were in truth siphoned off for black budget military space

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programmes that would never otherwise have been sanctioned?

Or did NASA somehow make it to the Moon, but fail to bring

back enough convincing evidence, with photographs blurred by

x-rays and temperature extremes, a problem never solved in any

of the six missions, requiring extensive augmentation or restaging to convince the world that it
had
been there?

These questions, bitterly attacked by astronomers and scientists, needless to say, would at first seem to exhibit the most insane

form of denial, a mistrust in authority taken to the maximum.

However, the staying power of this theory may be explained by the unsettling reality that at least some of the evidence presented by the lunar conspiracy believers is hard to dismiss entirely.

Opinions on the Lunar Hoax Hypothesis

As the 1970s progressed, a series of booklets on the Moon

landings began to appear in American fringe circles, general y self-published and with political disil usionment well to the fore. They promoted the extraordinary hypothesis that the Apollo missions

were elaborate hoaxes; they picked apart the details and challenged NASA to provide more evidence that astronauts real y did stand on the Moon. As time went by, these doubts found increased public

attention, and more-professional publications appeared, taking

the allegations further. The eventual explosion of the internet in the 1990s provided a much wider voice for ‘minority views’, freed from the shackles of having to seek publishers or meet print costs, and the lunar questioners gained one of the biggest conspiracy

platforms. By 1999, a Gal up poll showed that a not insubstantial 6 per cent of US citizens (almost double the percentage of American vegetarians, for instance) believed that the Moon landings had

been faked, with a further 5 per cent saying they were ‘undecided’.

Ten years on, for the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, a 2009 poll conducted by the magazine
Engineering and Technology
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demonstrated that by then an astonishing
25 per cent
of British people no longer had any faith in the official story.3

Mainstream responses to such polls are fairly predictable. The

academic world reacts, as we saw in chapter 1, by pontificating

on profound psychological reasons for such a widespread

state of denial, while popular astronomers tend to abandon

any decorum and rant about the general ignorance of the

population, claiming that better ‘education’ is needed. But is this a fair position? ‘Educating’ usually translates as debunking the

fringe, but this strategy invariably falls into the trap of attacking the straw man theories, which are indeed easily dealt with (stars would
not
be visible in the lunar photos because of camera exposure levels, flags ‘flew’ straight because they were wired,

etc.), while failing to address the more serious issues, some of

which are explored below.

So is every person who challenges the NASA record – some

of whom are themselves academics, qualified engineers and

photography experts – simply in need of re-education or

psychological therapy? Or could it more straightforwardly be

that there are a number of fundamental anomalies in the official

evidence that genuinely require some better explanations than

those routinely (if resentful y) offered?

The Physical Evidence

The evidence that cal s aspects of the Apollo missions into

question is often technical and complex, and is extensively

available elsewhere, but the basics can be summarized.

Of the three levels of available proof to show that NASA went

to the Moon, only one real y has any verifiable currency. The

first, the testimony of the astronauts, is written off by conspiracy theorists as unreliable because of the long history of military

personnel fronting false stories (Gulf of Tonkin, etc.) under

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orders, oath or threat. Military is what the astronauts were, for al NASA’s pretence of being a civilian outfit. Curious inconsistencies in these pioneers’ claims appear to be mutual y exclusive. Some

say the stars were bright and brilliant when seen from space, while others say they were disappointing and barely visible. Some affect tones of wonder at having stood on another sphere, while others

seem subdued and oddly reticent about their experiences (the late Neil Armstrong, especial y). Simple differences in personality? Or something more suspicious? Either way, words do not constitute

proof – several early mountaineers, for example, were later found to have lied about their claimed conquests.

The second level of proof cited is the rock supposedly gathered

by astronauts. But, if a rock is claimed to be from the Moon,

how many people, in truth, would know the difference? Some of

the samples donated for lab analysis or exhibition have turned

out to be rather more terrestrial, in any case. Astrobiologist

Andrew Steele, of the University of Portsmouth, having final y

obtained permission to examine what was claimed to be lunar

soil, was disconcerted to find that it in fact exhibited very earthly contaminants (Teflon, remains of microorganisms, etc.) which

should not have infiltrated closely guarded samples kept in sterile conditions. Meanwhile, the Dutch Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam

was irritated to find that a piece of ‘Moon rock’ donated by a

visiting US dignitary in 1969 was, on closer analysis 40 years later, merely petrified wood. Were these rare procedural slip-ups, or

something more conniving? Aside from these controversies, real

lunar material might have been obtained using unmanned probes

(as Russia did), and it is said to have fallen to Earth as meteorites in quite substantial quantities over the aeons, so the possession of Moon rock does not prove definitively that astronauts retrieved it and cannot be used as a reliable criterion.

With the weaknesses of these areas in mind, what we are real y

left with as the most overt evidence that NASA visited the Moon

is the photographic record, which at first glance seems to be

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glorious and substantial, with colourful and pin-sharp portraits of conditions on another world. Yet the photographs have been the

most assailed aspect of al .

The Photographic Evidence

Recent satellite images, purporting to put to rest the lunar hoax theory, claim to show the remains of the lunar landers and ‘rover’

tracks, etc., as interesting dots and smudges. But in an age where even the most basic pictures are routinely manipulated with easily available software, a photograph – especial y one taken by NASA

itself – is no longer enough to constitute proof of anything. Even if the aerial shots are genuine, and objects are indeed up there on the Moon, which they may well be, this does not unequivocal y