First Man: The Life of Neil Armstrong, by James R. Hansen

Bart Sibrel and Neil Armstrong, Moon Hoax theories, James Olberg, from First Man: The Life of Neil Armstrong, by James R. Hansen:

Even during the time of Apollo 11, some believed that the Moon landings never really took
place—that they were a fraud foisted upon the world for political reasons by the U.S.
government. The Flat Earth Society maintained an active membership. But the idea of a
Moon hoax picked up greatly in 1978 because of Capricorn One, a Hollywood conspiracy
fantasy, not about the Moon landing, but about the first manned mission to Mars. In the
tale, NASA attempted to cover for a highly defective spacecraft by forcing its astronauts
before cameras in a desert film studio to act out the journey and trick the world into
believing they made the trip. Though a mediocre movie, Capricorn One ’s notion of a
government conspiracy never fell out of favor with a small number of skeptics.

Inevitably, there were people who not only chose to believe in some version of the lunar
conspiracy theory, but who saw a way to profit from it. In 1999, Fox TV broadcast a
“documentary” entitled Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon? The program was
based largely on a low-budget commercial video produced by a self-proclaimed
“investigative reporter” from Nashville, Tennessee. Called A Funny Thing Happened on the
Way to the Moon, it speculated that the Moon landings were an ingenious ploy of the U.S.
government to win the Cold War and stimulate the collapse of Soviet communism by forcing
the Kremlin into investing massive sums of money on its own lunar program, thereby
ruining the Russian economy and provoking the internal downfall of the government.
No matter that every piece of “evidence” raised by the sensationalistic program was
parroting the same uninformed arguments about Apollo that had been around for over two
decades—i.e., that the American flag planted by Apollo 11 appears to be waving in a place
where there can be no wind; that there are no stars in any of the photographs taken on the
lunar surface; that the photographs taken by the Apollo astronauts are simply “too good” to
be true; that the 200-degree-plus Moon surface temperatures would have baked the
camera film; that the force of the LM’s descent engine should have created a crater under
the module; that no one can travel safely through the “killer radiation” of the Van Allen
Belts; and more. Some members of the TV viewing audience succumbed to the trickery,others to
its darker legacy.

On his seventieth birthday in August 2000, Armstrong received a birthday card containing
belligerent typewritten letter from a teacher charging that the Moon landing was a hoax and
inviting Neil to review the “evidence” on the Internet.

"Dear Mr. Armstrong:

The least I could do was send a card for your 70th birthday, however over 30 years on
from the pathetic TV broadcast when you fooled everyone by claiming to have walked
upon the Moon, I would like to point out that you, and the other astronauts, are making
yourselfs [sic] a worldwide laughing stock, thanks to the Internet.

Perhaps you are totally unaware of all the evidence circulating the globe via the Internet.
Everyone now knows the whole saga was faked, and the evidence is there for all to see.
We know the pictures have pasted backgrounds, who composed the pictures, and how the
lunar landing and Moon walks were simulated at Langley Research Centre, in addition to
why NASA faked Apollo.

Maybe you are one of those pensioners who do not surf the Internet, because you know
precious little about how it works. May I suggest you visit [Web site withheld by author] to
see for yourself how ridiculous the Moon landing claim looks 30 years on.

As a teacher of young children, I have a duty to tell them history as it truly happened,
and not a pack of lies and deceit."

Armstrong sent the birthday card and letter on to NASA’s associate administrator for policy
and plans. “Has NASA ever refuted the allegations or assembled information to be used in
rebuttal? I occasionally am asked questions in public forums and feel I don’t do as good a
job as I might with more complete information,” said Neil. Subsequently, in 2002, NASA
commissioned distinguished space writer and veteran UFO debunker James Oberg to write a
30,000-word monograph refuting the notion that the Apollo program was a hoax. After
news of the plan for Oberg’s book hit the papers, however, NASA quickly reversed course,
judging that not even a judicious, well-argued refutation could successfully achieve its
intended effect.

To all inquiries about the Moon hoax, Vivian White sends out the following letter:

"Dear ___:

I am responding on behalf of Mr. Armstrong to your recent letter regarding the reality of
the Apollo program flights.

The flights are undisputed in the scientific and technical worlds. All of the reputable
scientific societies affirm the flights and their results.

The crews were observed to enter their spacecraft in Florida and observed to be recovered
in the Pacific Ocean. The flights were tracked by radars in a number of countries thoughout
their flight to the Moon and return. The crew sent television pictures of the voyage including
flying over the lunar landscape and on the surface, pictures of lunar scenes previously unknown
and now confirmed. The crews returned samples from the lunar surface including some minerals
never found on Earth. Mr. Armstrong believes that the only thing more difficult to achieve than
the lunar flights would be to successfully fake them.

Mr. Armstrong accepts that individuals may believe whatever they wish. He was, however,
substantially offended by the FOX program’s implication that his fellow Apollo crewmen
were possible accomplices in the murder of his very good friends, Grissom, White, and
Chaffee, and he has indicated his displeasure to FOX.

We appreciate your inquiry and send best wishes.

Sincerely,
Vivian White
Administrative Aide"

Neil understands the impulse of the conspiracy theorists, even if it is totally alien to his own
rational mind. “One, people love conspiracy theories. They are very attracted to them. Asrecall,
after Franklin D. Roosevelt died, there were people saying that he was still alive someplace. And, of
course, ‘Elvis lives!’ There is always going to be that fringe element on every subject, and I put
this in that category. It doesn’t bother me. It will all pass in time. Generally, it’s almost
unnoticeable except for the peaks that occur when somebody writesbook or puts out an article in a
magazine or shows something on television.”

Armstrong has also experienced one man’s attempt to turn Armstrong’s personal life into a
television event of the stranger’s own devising.

At the annual meeting of EDO Corporation stockholders in New York City in 2001, the man
who made A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon showed up with a video
camera-carrying assistant. EDO president James Smith recalls the scene: “This guy shows
up with a Bible and shouts out, ‘Neil Armstrong, will you swear on this Bible that you went
to the Moon?’ Well, the audience immediately started booing the intruder very loud, but he
went right on, ‘Everybody else in the world knows you didn’t, so why don’t you just admit
it?!’ It quickly turned into a kind of pushy-shovy thing, so and I and a few other men got
the guy out of there. Subsequent to that, we never had a meeting where we didn’t hire
special security.”

“Had I the opportunity to run that episode over in my life,” Armstrong comments, “I
wouldn’t have allowed my company people to usher me out of the room. I would have just
talked to the crowd and said, ‘This person believes that the United States government has
committed fraud on all of you, and simultaneously he wants to exercise his right protected
by the U.S. government to state his opinions freely to you.’”

A few months after the EDO meeting, on September 9, 2002, the same man with Bible in
hand confronted Buzz Aldrin outside of a Beverly Hills hotel. A resident of the Los Angeles
area, Buzz had arrived at the hotel thinking he was to be interviewed by a Japanese
educational television network. At first Aldrin, his stepdaughter in tow, tried to answer the
man’s questions, then did his best to get away from him. But the insistent independent
filmmaker dogged him out of the hotel and kept directing his assistant to keep the camera
running, while shouting at Buzz, “You are a coward and a liar.” Harassed to the point of
complete exasperation, the seventy-two-year-old Aldrin, all 160 pounds of him, decked the
thirty-seven-year-old 250-pounder with a quick left hook to the jaw. The man from Nashville
filed a police report but, after watching the accuser’s own tape of the incident, L.A. County
District Attorney rather forcefully declined to file charges.

As the self-proclaimed “victim” later told reporters, “If I walked on the Moon and some guy
said swear on a Bible, I’d swear on a stack of Bibles.”

Even before the EDO and Aldrin incidents, the same individual entered uninvited into the
Armstrongs’ suburban Cincinnati home. Neil’s second wife Carol relates what happened:
“Neil was at the office. This guy knocked at the door and there was a big dog with him, and
he had a package. I opened the outside door while leaving the screen door shut, and the
man said, ‘Is Neil here?’ I said, ‘No, he’s not. May I help you?’ He opened the screen door
and just walked in, bringing along his dog. He said, ‘I want him to sign this,’ and I said, ‘Neil
doesn’t sign things anymore.’ ‘He’ll sign this,’ he uttered, and then he left.

“It sort of hit me three minutes later. All of a sudden I felt shaky.”  In the following weeks,
the interloper started putting letters and other things in the Armstrongs’ mailbox. Some of the
materials had religious overtones and most were about the Moon landing being faked. The local
police department responded, “It’s probably nothing, but why don’t you just bring the tapes and
letters and we’ll take a look at them,” until a call to the ABC TV station in Nashville revealed
that he had never worked there, but instead was an independent filmmaker who had operated a business
called ABC Video.

A few weeks later, Carol received a phone call from her neighbor: “Carol, there’s this car
parked out here and it’s been out here for a long time.” When the neighbor went out to
investigate, she saw a lot of camera equipment in the backseat. The siege continued for
three days, culminating in a car chase involving the Armstrongs, the intruder, and the
police.