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Hello Phil,

I saw your entry for Feb 15 2009.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/02/15/uk-tabloids-compete-for-fish-wrappery/

I couldn’t help noticing you praise Jay Windley’s web page regarding Brian O’Leary. You wrote: “Ellam also quotes astronaut Brian O’Leary as saying it’s possible the landings weren’t real. That quotation — unattributed in the article, for shame — comes from the wretched Fox TV show back in 2001, and O’Leary claims he was taken out of context, in fact now saying quite succinctly that the landings were real.”

Since strangely none of my Youtube comments on your channel seem to be coming through, I thought perhaps I’d contact you through here. I obtained your email from one of your Q&BA videos
It might interest you to know that the “letter” that Jay Windley quotes is a forgery. I’ve been in contact with Dr. O’Leary and he not only told me that he is not 100% sure that Apollo landed on the moon, he also told me that he never got in touch with anyone called Jay Windley.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmTLzTJ4TuU
My emails from O’Leary are featured in context in this video, and used with his permission. The video was posted the day before you posted your blog.
Would you be so kind as to explain why Jay Windley lied about Dr. O’Leary and retract your erroneous section of your blog?

Speaking of which; I have noticed in the aforementioned entry, and in various other entries, you claim that “[Bill] Kaysing had some pretty crazy ideas, like that any kind of space travel is impossible”

Would you be so kind as to provide citation for Kaysing’s alleged claim that all space travel was impossible? I hold both editions of his book, I have a wide collection of personal letters and papers from the man himself, I have watched god only knows how many interviews with Bill Kaysing and never have I heard one claim from him that “any kind of space travel is impossible”. In fact; in the very interview in which he states the Challenger was intentionally blown up, Bill Kaysing says: “I will concede that certain unmanned vehicles might have made it to the moon. The Russians are supposed to have sent some unmanned vehicles to the moon. And possibly our Surveyor did land on the moon.”
http://www.nardwuar.com/vs/bill_kaysing/index.html

The Surveyor was by all means a form of space travel and Bill Kaysing deemed it as possible. Interestingly, in your blog regarding Kaysing’s death, you refer to this very interview in question: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2005/06/27/moon-hoax-originator-has-died/

You wrote: “But he was still wrong, and made claims that are sickening (NASA killed the Apollo 1 astronauts to keep them quiet; NASA blew up Challenger on purpose to keep the astronauts quiet about the “fact” that space travel is impossible”

Where in his interview does Kaysing state that the Challenger was blown up to keep astronauts quiet about all space travel being impossible? I am hard-pressed to find any such statement from Bill Kaysing. Instead, he states that the Challenger was blown up because Christa McAulliffe wouldn’t keep quiet about the stars, not because all space travel was impossible.

Incidentally, Bill Kaysing was merely echoing what Ralph Rene stated in his book. Rene believed that the shuttle was blown up because McAulliffe wouldn’t keep quiet about the stars that one can see on the daylight side of earth. And neither did Rene deny that all space travel was impossible. As he states right at the beginning of his book: “Our shuttles routinely blast off to orbit the Earth. There is not a single doubt that man is in space!”

As you stated yourself; quoting out of context is basically lying and truly awful. I would hate to think what your readers and followers would say if it turned out that you were putting words in Bill Kaysing’s mouth. That being said: are you willing to bet $100,000 that you can prove that Kaysing stated that all space travel is impossible?
If so kindly provide any source in which Kaysing made such a statement. Where did he make the statement? On radio? TV? Newspaper? Magazine? Anywhere? Otherwise please kindly retract this statement.

Scinerely,
Jarrah White

PS: Do you have any comments regarding “Operation: Dirty Trick”?

‘I READ your article regarding the moon landing in 1969 with a mixture of satisfaction and amusement. I was then, and still am now, a hoax believer. Most of the photographs gave rise to the hoax theory, but one that blew the whole thing out of the water was when the module was coming down to land (???) – not only was there no dust disturbance but, more to the point, who the hell was down on the surface in the first place to record it coming down? – Chris Grogan, Skelmersale, Lancs.’

I think this sums up the intelligence of the average Mirror/Sun/Mail/Telegraph reader. Never again will I buy these papers. Do these people not realise that the physics on the moon are different from that on the earth? That dust will behave differently in a vacuum and at 1/6th gravity than on earth? That stars will not appear in the sky because in order to expose those stars would overexpose the shots of the astronauts.

The fact that they only printed one letter – and from a hoax believer – speaks volumes about where the editorial direction of the newspaper – sorry Tabloid – is pointed…

Let’s build that 100m mirror and prove once and for all that the Apollo missions happened, and shut these idiots up forever.