THE MOON LANDING: FACT OR FICTION - PART TWO

Those who believe the Moon landings were faked offer several theories about the motives of NASA and the United States government. The three main theories are:

SPACE RACE: Motivation for the United States to engage the Soviet Union in a Space Race can be traced to the Cold War. Landing on the Moon was viewed as a national and technological accomplishment that would generate world-wide acclaim. But going to the Moon would be risky and expensive, as exemplified by President John F. Kennedy famously stating in a 1962 speech that the United States chose to go because it was hard. The Soviets had been sending uncrewed spacecraft to the Moon since 1959, and "during 1962, deep space tracking facilities were introduced at IP-15 in Ussuriisk and IP-16 in Evpatoria (Crimean Peninsula), while Saturn communication stations were added to IP-3, 4 and 14,"the last of which having a 100 million km (62 million mi) range.The Soviet Union tracked the Apollo missions at the Space Transmissions Corps, which was "fully equipped with the latest intelligence-gathering and surveillance equipment." Vasily Mishin, in an interview for the article "The Moon Programme That Faltered," describes how the Soviet Moon program dwindled after the Apollo landings.

NASA funding and prestige: Conspiracy theorists claim that NASA faked the landings to avoid humiliation and to ensure that it continued to get funding. NASA raised "about US$30 billion" to go to the Moon, and Kaysing claimed in his book that this could have been used to "pay off" many people. Since most conspiracists believe that sending men to the Moon was impossible at the time, they argue that landings had to be faked to fulfill Kennedy's 1961 goal, "before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth." In fact, NASA accounted for the cost of Apollo to the US Congress in 1973, totaling US$25.4 billion.

Vietnam War: The American Patriot Friends Network claimed in 2009 that the landings helped the United States government distract public attention from the unpopular Vietnam War, and so crewed landings suddenly ended about the same time that the United States ended its involvement in the war. In fact, the ending of the landings was not "sudden". The war was one of several federal budget items with which NASA had to compete; NASA's budget peaked in 1966, and fell by 42% by 1972. This was the reason the final flights were cut, along with plans for even more ambitious follow-on programs such as a permanent space station and crewed flight to Mars.

The main argument againt the moon landing conspriracy is that for the lie to work, thousands and thousands of people would have to be involved. To organize such a hoax on the American people would take probably as much work as America just landing on the moon. I recently watched a documentary on this topic, and I used to say that we 100% landed on the moon, but the documentary showed some compelling evidence that we did not land on the moon. Now I am not as certain. What do you think? Have we ever been to the moon or was the moon landing just another government lie?

THE MOON LANDING: FACT OR FICTION - PART ONE

My teenage son makes fun of most of the conspriracy theories that I subscribe too like my belief in the government cover up of UFOS and aliens, but one conspriracy that he believes in that I do not (or have doubts about) is the belief that we never landed on the moon. Moon landing conspiracy theories claim that some or all elements of the Apollo program and the associated Moon landings were hoaxes staged by NASA, possibly with the aid of other organizations. The most notable claim of these conspiracy theories is that the six crewed landings (1969–1972) were faked and that twelve Apollo astronauts did not actually land on the Moon. Various groups and individuals have made claims since the mid-1970s that NASA and others knowingly misled the public into believing the landings happened, by manufacturing, tampering with, or destroying evidence including photos, telemetry tapes, radio and TV transmissions, and Moon rock samples.

Much third-party evidence for the landings exists, and detailed rebuttals to the hoax claims have been made. Since the late 2000s, high-definition photos taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) of the Apollo landing sites have captured the Lunar Module descent stages and the tracks left by the astronauts. In 2012, images were released showing five of the six Apollo missions' American flags erected on the Moon still standing. The exception is that of Apollo 11, which has lain on the lunar surface since being blown over by the Lunar Module Ascent Propulsion System.

Reputable experts in science and astronomy regard the claims as pseudoscience and demonstrably false. Opinion polls taken in various locations between 1994 and 2009 have shown that between 6% and 20% of Americans, 25% of Britons, and 28% of Russians surveyed believe that the crewed landings were faked. Even as late as 2001, the Fox television network documentary Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon? claimed NASA faked the first landing in 1969 to win the Space Race.

An early and influential book about the subject of a Moon-landing conspiracy, We Never Went to the Moon: America's Thirty Billion Dollar Swindle, was self-published in 1976 by Bill Kaysing, a former US Navy officer with a Bachelor of Arts in English. Despite having no knowledge of rockets or technical writing, Kaysing was hired as a senior technical writer in 1956 by Rocketdyne, the company that built the F-1 engines used on the Saturn V rocket.He served as head of the technical publications unit at the company's Propulsion Field Laboratory until 1963. The many allegations in Kaysing's book effectively began discussion of the Moon landings being faked.The book claims that the chance of a successful crewed landing on the Moon was calculated to be 0.0017%, and that despite close monitoring by the USSR, it would have been easier for NASA to fake the Moon landings than to really go there.

In 1980, the Flat Earth Society accused NASA of faking the landings, arguing that they were staged by Hollywood with Walt Disney sponsorship, based on a script by Arthur C. Clarke and directed by Stanley Kubrick. Folklorist Linda Dégh suggests that writer-director Peter Hyams' film Capricorn One (1978), which shows a hoaxed journey to Mars in a spacecraft that looks identical to the Apollo craft, might have given a boost to the hoax theory's popularity in the post-Vietnam War era. Dégh sees a parallel with other attitudes during the post-Watergate era, when the American public were inclined to distrust official accounts. Dégh writes: "The mass media catapult these half-truths into a kind of twilight zone where people can make their guesses sound as truths. Mass media have a terrible impact on people who lack guidance." In A Man on the Moon, first published in 1994, Andrew Chaikin mentions that at the time of Apollo 8's lunar-orbit mission in December 1968, similar conspiracy ideas were already in circulation....

TO BE CONTINUED...

UFOS - THE AGE OF DISCLOSURE

For many years, Americans have sought answers to various unnatural phenomena in the last century. One of the most awaited approvals that citizens desire from the government is the truth behind aliens.

The government has not provided answers to the people of the U.S. and the world regarding the secrets it holds, despite testimonies from several officials affirming that aliens do exist.

However, an upcoming documentary, "The Age of Disclosure," promises to disrupt decades of secrecy surrounding Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP). Set to premiere during the opening weekend of the SXSW Film Festival at Austin’s historic Paramount Theater, the film, directed and produced by Dan Farah, aims to unveil an 80-year cover-up regarding non-human intelligence and the covert efforts by major global powers to reverse-engineer extraterrestrial technology.

The documentary features testimonies from 34 senior members of the U.S. government, military, and intelligence communities, all of whom claim direct knowledge of UAPs.

Among them are high-ranking officials such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Mike Rounds, and Jim Clapper, the former Director of National Intelligence.

The documentary also includes comments from former Department of Defense officials, NASA researchers, and military eyewitnesses, offering new perspectives.

Experts featured in the film make definitive statements asserting the existence of non-human intelligence and the presence of unidentified craft that defy known human technology.

Lue Elizondo, a former Pentagon’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) member, stated in the trailer, "Humanity is not the only intelligence in the universe."

Similar declarations came from astrophysicist Eric Davis, quantum physicist Hal Puthoff, and CIA veterans, further backing the documentary’s central claims.

According to the documentary, the U.S. government has conducted a secretive technological arms race with rival nations to recover and exploit non-human craft.

"We learned that the U.S. government was involved in a long-running secret war with other nations to collect and reverse-engineer vehicles not made by humans," one expert said.

Another warned of the geopolitical consequences: "The first country that cracks the code on this technology will be the leader for years to come."

Beyond the military and strategic implications, "The Age of Disclosure" addresses the ethical concerns of removing such knowledge from the public. Several figures in the documentary highlight the dangers of an unchecked governmental apparatus that withholds paradigm-shifting discoveries.

"It’s not acceptable to have secret parts of government that no one ever sees," one official said.

Another warned, "You better be careful about a government that doesn’t trust its people because there’s no telling what they’ll pull on you."

The documentary also explores the potential benefits of disclosing such knowledge.Technology derived from non-human sources could revolutionize clean energy and fundamentally alter the trajectory of human civilization.

"You had information being locked away that could change the trajectory for species," one scientist remarked, while another said, "It has so many beneficial impacts, including clean energy."

The release of "The Age of Disclosure" coincides with recent legislative efforts in the U.S. Senate to declassify government-held UAP knowledge. The UAP Disclosure Act was designed to compel the public release of such information. However, the act has faced significant resistance from vested interests and concerns over societal preparedness.

"The American public has a right to learn about technologies of unknown origins, non-human intelligence, and unexplainable phenomena," an expert argued.

"The Age of Disclosure" challenges the status quo of governmental secrecy regarding extraterrestrial phenomena by compiling the testimonies of high-ranking officials, intelligence operatives, and scientific experts. As the trailer concludes, "The time has come."

THE SMILEY FACE MURDER THEORY

In the previous blog entry we spotlighted the disappearance and unfortunate death of Dakota James from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of the theories is that James was part of the Smiley face murder theory. The smiley face murder theory (also known as the smiley face murders, smiley face killings, and smiley face gang) is a theory advanced by retired New York City detectives Kevin Gannon and Anthony Duarte, as well as Dr. Lee Gilbertson, a criminal justice professor and gang expert at St. Cloud State University. It alleges that 45 young men found dead in bodies of water across several Midwestern American states from the late 1990s to the 2010s did not accidentally drown, as concluded by law enforcement agencies, but were victims of one or multiple serial killers.

The term "smiley face" became connected to the alleged murders when it was made public that the police had discovered graffiti depicting a smiley face near locations where they think the killer dumped the bodies in at least a dozen of the cases. Gannon wrote a textbook case study on the subject titled "Case Studies in Drowning Forensics."The response of law enforcement investigators and other experts has been largely skeptical.

Gannon and Duarte have theorized that the young men were all murdered, either by an individual or by an organized group of killers. The term "smiley face" became connected to the alleged murders when it was made public that Gannon and Duarte had discovered graffiti depicting a smiley face near locations where they think the killer had dumped the bodies in at least a dozen of the cases. Furthermore, Gannon and Gilbertson claim to have found other types of graffiti symbols associated with the suspicious deaths, but have not disseminated these other images outside a few trusted law enforcement contacts for fear of inspiring copycat graffiti or alerting suspects.

In respone to the theory the FBI has issued a statement:

The FBI has reviewed the information about the victims provided by two retired police detectives, who have dubbed these incidents the "Smiley Face Murders," and interviewed an individual who provided information to the detectives. To date, we have not developed any evidence to support links between these tragic deaths or any evidence substantiating the theory that these deaths are the work of a serial killer or killers. The vast majority of these instances appear to be alcohol-related drownings. The FBI will continue to work with the local police in the affected areas to provide support as requested.

Is it just a coincidence that so many young college aged men are disappearing, and a victim of a drowning? If you have any information please reach out to me or your local authority...

THE DISAPPEARANCE AND DEATH OF DAKOTA JAMES

On January 25, 2017, Duquesne University graduate student Dakota James disappeared from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The “smart, outgoing” 23-year-old had been walking back to his apartment after a night out drinking with friends, and his last known sighting was caught on a surveillance camera in the downtown area. The recording captured Dakota entering an alleyway while looking down at his phone, and that was the last time he was seen alive.

Forty days after his disappearance, Dakota's body was found floating in the Ohio River, about 10 miles from where he was last sighted. Police believed Dakota had fallen into the river while crossing a bridge near the city center, and the medical examiner ruled his death an accidental drowning. But Dakota's parents, Jeff and Pamela James, did not believe that Dakota, an athlete and swim team captain, could have drowned. They told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 2017 that Dakota was not an inexperienced drinker, and there is no way he would have been so intoxicated that he accidentally fell into the river.

Now eight years after his disappearance, Jeff and Pamela are still convinced foul play had something to do with their son's death.

"[It] doesn't make any sense to me — never has…” Pamela told “Once we learned that the case was closed, it was very disappointing. I don't feel that they ever wanted to look further into the possibility that there could be foul play. I knew 100 percent in my heart that someone did something to Dakota."

Former NYPD detectives and “The Hunt for Justice” hosts Kevin Gannon and Anthony Duarte agreed. Along with retired NYPD detective Michael Donovan and professor of criminal justice Dr. Lee Gilbertson, the team has concluded that Dakota could be a potential victim of the Smiley Face Killers, a possible interstate gang of serial killers that abducts and murders college-aged men before dumping their remains into local waterways and painting smiley face graffiti near the body recovery sites.

With the hope of changing Dakota's cause of death from accidental drowning to homicide, the “Hunt for Justice" team pushed Allegheny County law enforcement to release a copy of Dakota's autopsy report, which had never before been seen by the James family. While local police initially declined them access to the case files, District Attorney Stephen Zappala later agreed to have an off-camera meeting with Pamela to discuss Dakota's case and provide her with the documents.

Gannon and the team were then able to review the official police reports along with Dakota's autopsy and recovery photographs. In one of the photographs of Dakota's neck, Gannon noticed "suspicious marks," which had not been noted anywhere in the written autopsy report.

Gannon and Dr. Gilbertson brought the documents to consulting forensic pathologist to the late Dr. Cyril Wecht to see if he could discern what caused the injuries on Dakota's neck. Dr. Wecht concluded the marks were "strongly suggestive of and entirely consistent with a ligature having been applied around the neck. This death may have been due to ligature strangulation." Dr. Wetch also noted a "distinct difference in the coloration of the fingernail beds of the fourth and fifth fingers on both the right and left hands," which "certainly would be consistent with someone reaching up and trying to release the pressure from a ligature that is being applied around their neck."

After reviewing the files and examining the findings with Dr. Wetch, Gannon and Pamela requested a meeting with the district attorney's office to further discuss Dakota's case.

Gannon told Pamela, "The good news is, when we speak to the DA ... we have some really good facts about Dakota's case. There's human intervention. So he didn't do that falling into the water. You know, whether it's one person, two people or ... a gang ... that's insignificant at this point. We believe it's connected to Smiley Face killers, but it doesn't matter. The main thing is, somebody murdered him, and they have to reinvestigate."

On October 3, 2018, Gannon and Pamela had another off-camera meeting with Zappala as well as an unidentified FBI agent and Secret Service agent. Gannon and Pamela presented their findings to Zappala and the two agents, who reportedly agreed the injuries to Dakota's neck and fingernail beds could be the result of strangulation.

Pamela later told Duarte, "[Zappala] specifically said, 'I want you to know I'm not going to the police for them to do this investigation. I'm using my homicide investigators.'"

At this time, the district attorney's office cannot move its investigation forward without the medical examiner "concurring with our assessment," said Gannon. The Allegheny County Medical Examiner's office has not reopened Dakota's case, but it has agreed to review additional evidence related to Dakota's death.

I interviewed some of the people involved in the search party, and there were a lot of odd occurances. For example, the police were getting phone tips that Dakota was held captive in the North Hills of Pittsburgh as well, and that his death had something to do with him being a homosexual.

If you have any clues or tips regarding the disappearance and murder of Dakota James, please reach out to me or the Pittsburgh police...

NEWS BREAK: PRESIDENT TRUMP RELEASED JFK FILES

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump released material related to the 1963 assassination of former President John F. Kennedy on Tuesday, seeking to honor his campaign promise to provide more transparency about the shock event in Texas.

An initial tranche of electronic copies of papers flooded into the National Archives website in the evening with a total of more than 80,000 expected to be published after Justice Department lawyers spent hours scouring them.

The digital documents, including PDFs of previously classified memos, offers a window into the climate of fear at the time surrounding U.S. relations with the Soviet Union shortly after the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 nearly led to a nuclear war.

The release is nonetheless likely to intrigue people who have long been fascinated with a dramatic period in history, with the assassination and with Kennedy himself.

Many of the documents reflected the work by investigators to learn more about assassin Lee Harvey Oswald's time in the Soviet Union and track his movements in the months leading up to Kennedy's assassination in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.

An initial review of the papers did not show deviations from the central narrative.

Trump's secretary of health and human services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a son of Robert Kennedy and nephew of John F. Kennedy, has said he believes the Central Intelligence Agency was involved in his uncle's death, an allegation the agency has described as baseless. Kennedy Jr. declined comment when contacted by Reuters on Tuesday.

One document with the heading "secret" was a typed account with handwritten notes of a 1964 interview by a Warren Commission researcher who questioned Lee Wigren, a CIA employee, about inconsistencies in material provided to the commission by the State Department and the CIA about marriages between Soviet women and American men. Oswald was married to a Soviet woman, Marina Oswald, at the time of the shooting.

Department of Defense documents from 1963 covered the Cold War of the early 1960s and the U.S. involvement in Latin America, trying to thwart Cuban leader Fidel Castro's support of communist forces in other countries.The documents suggest that Castro would not go so far as to provoke a war with the United States or escalate to the point "that would seriously and immediately endanger the Castro regime."

"It appears more likely that Castro might intensify his support of subversive forces in Latin America," the document reads.

One document released from January 1962 reveals details of a top secret project called "Operation Mongoose," or simply "the Cuban Project," which was a CIA-led campaign of covert operations and sabotage against Cuba, authorized by Kennedy in 1961, aimed at removing the Castro regime.

Trump signed an order shortly after taking office in January related to the documents release, prompting the Federal Bureau of Investigation to find thousands of new documents related to the Kennedy assassination in Dallas.

Alice L. George, a historian whose books, including The Assassination of John F. Kennedy, explore modern America, said American's curiosity about assassinations and questions about government transparency add "to a sense that there must be important evidence hidden away in these files."

But she said government records were unlikely to resolve questions people still have.

"I think there may continue to be more record releases," she said. "I seriously doubt that any will include great revelations. The Warren Commission report was done well, but it was done when many of the key players were alive. It's much harder to find the truth when most of the people involved are dead."

Kennedy's murder has been attributed to a sole gunman, Oswald. The Justice Department and other federal government bodies have reaffirmed that conclusion in the intervening decades. But polls show many Americans still believe his death was a result of a conspiracy.

Trump has also promised to release documents on the assassinations of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and Senator Robert Kennedy, both of whom were killed in 1968.

Trump has allowed more time to come up with a plan for those releases.

THE MOST UFO SIGHTINGS: PENNSYLVANIA

When pilot Kenneth Arnold took off from Chehalis, Washington, in his single-engine airplane one afternoon in June 1947, he was looking for a lost military aircraft that had crashed. But what he found was something completely different—something that would set off a cultural obsession in the U.S. that persists today. While flying around Mount Rainier, Arnold reportedly encountered nine curious, wingless objects speeding through the sky at 1,200 mph, faster than any plane at the time could. Arnold spent years afterward trying to describe what he had seen, reportedly using a term that has been ingrained in the American lexicon ever since: "flying saucer."

Since then, Americans have been uniquely fixated on the idea that aliens are somewhere in the sky above us—and the number who believe that to be true is growing. In 2019, a Gallup survey found that 33% of Americans believed some UFOs were alien spacecrafts, while 60% felt they could all be explained by human activity or some natural phenomenon. Just two years later, in 2021, 41% of respondents said they believed at least some UFOs were alien-related compared to 50% who were confident any sightings could be explained by human behavior or scientific events.

Pennsylvania has had it's share of UFO sightings through the years. Of course this interests me, because Pennsylvania is my home state. Here is a ranking (as of 2024) of the Pennsylvania cities with the most UFO sightings:

10.      West Chester
9.        Easton

8.        Harrisburg

7.        Lancaster

6.        York

5.        Erie

4.        Allentown

3.        Reading

2.        Pittsburgh

1.        Philadelphia