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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 10/30/07 - 1 E-Mail: mikebara@darkmission.net Contact Phone: (310) 701-3152
NASA Cover-Ups Continue… NASA Dismisses Former Apollo Photo and Data Manager from JPL Educational Program Missing Apollo Data to be Shown at National Press Club Briefing Today, Oct. 30, 2007
Dr. Ken Johnston, former Manager of the Data and Photo Control Department at NASA’s Lunar Receiving Laboratory during NASA’s manned Apollo Lunar Program, was abruptly terminated Tuesday morning, October 23rd, from JPL’s prestigious “Solar System Ambassador” (SSA) Program. All evidence of Dr. Johnston’s exemplary 4-year participation in the NASA outreach effort to “communicate the importance of NASA aerospace programs to the public around the world” has been scrubbed from the official JPL SSA website, without formal notification of Dr. Johnston as to cause. Johnston is a key participant in today's Enterprise Mission press briefing at the National Press Club in Washington, DC (Zenger Room, 9:00 AM). At that time, Johnston will reveal how NASA ordered him to destroy key Apollo lunar images and data more than 40 years ago, rather than allow them to be preserved for academic and public study. Johnston will testify how he disobeyed these NASA orders, secretly preserving the critical Apollo images—and the never-officially-published lunar discoveries recorded on them. According to AP, NASA is currently embroiled in a similar controversy with Congress because of the agency’s planned destruction of supporting data from a recent aviation safety study. Johnston’s startling Apollo allegations have recently appeared in a new book, “Dark Mission: the Secret History of NASA,” co-authored by former NASA consultant and CBS Science Advisor, Richard C. Hoagland and Mike Bara, an aerospace engineering consultant. According to Kay Ferrari, JPL Director of the SSA Program (in a phone call to Johnston last week), it was Johnston “being quoted [as] criticizing NASA in Hoagland’s new book, ‘Dark Mission,’” that prompted her to ask for Johnston’s resignation from the SSA Program. When Johnston refused, citing First Amendment protections of free speech afforded all NASA employees, even those at JPL, Ferrari apparently decided to remove him arbitrarily from the SSA Program this week -- without cause. JPL’s ultimate decision to fire Dr. Johnston was initiated, according to Ferrari’s phone call, “by an initial inquiry to JPL from James Oberg, of NBC News.” Oberg is a former NASA contractor and a colleague of Johnston’s at NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center during the Apollo Program in the 1970’s. According to Ferrari, Oberg, in his e-mails, raised “serious issues regarding Johnston’s credentials” and his “crackpot accusations” against the agency. Oberg’s NASA contractor history begs ethical questions regarding his efforts to get Johnston terminated, based on Johnston’s testimony in “Dark Mission” and intention to present further “missing” Apollo images and data at the National Press Club. Dr. Johnston will present documentation of his claims, credentials and key role at NASA in today's briefing. - 0 -
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 10/22/07 - 1 E-Mail: mikebara@darkmission.net Contact Phone: (310) 701-3152 Dear Colleague, My name is Cheryll Jones, former news anchor at CNN. I have a news alert I think you, as a member of fourth estate in these very troubled times, will appreciate. Think of it as a “heads up” on what might become one of the most important stories of the coming months. At The subject: Why is NASA Determined
to Launch Space Shuttle “Discovery” October 23rd, Despite
NASA Engineering and Has NASA Learned NOTHING from the Previous Schedule-Driven Disasters of Challenger and Columbia? Are Classified NASA Lunar Findings
Secretly Pressuring the Aging Shuttle Program to Completion by 2010,
to Japan is currently in lunar orbit with
the most sophisticated
lunar mission since Apollo. China is about
to launch a major unmanned lunar mission, on October 24th.
In April, 2008 All this on the heels of President George W. Bush’s own “Vision for Space Exploration” (VSE) – his sudden decision to “return Americans to manned lunar exploration” … made inexplicably, in the middle of his war. Why this abrupt international focus on a 21st Century Moon Program -- after over 30 years of the Moon being totally ignored? Did Apollo find “something” of major importance on the Moon, which NASA just forgot to tell the rest of us? And is this somehow connected with NASA’s inexplicable urgency to launch Discovery “on schedule,” despite the safety issues? The October 30th NPC briefing will present startling answers to these major public policy questions – which could significantly affect the future of the VSE and NASA. Leading the briefing will be Richard
C. Hoagland: former NASA consultant; CBS News Science Advisor during
the Apollo lunar missions; co-author of “Dark
Mission: The Secret History of NASA” (currently #1 on Amazon’s
list for “Astronomy,” and “Space Science”); and head of The According to The Enterprise Mission: This is an era of increasing concern for ever more government secrecy and expanding classification. Hoagland and Johnston will demonstrate that this “less than forthright NASA decision-making” actually began a long time ago. Citing specifics from the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958, Hoagland will present startling evidence that, contrary to assumptions made by politicians, members of the press and public for almost half a century, NASA is NOT a “civilian” space agency, but is in fact “a defense agency of the United States”. As a tax-supported federal institution, NASA’s 1958 Congressional charter specifically instructs “Sec. 205 … (d) no [NASA] information which has been classified for reasons of national security shall be included in any [NASA] report made under this section [of the Act] …” [Emphasis added]. So, what criteria does NASA apply to classifying its scientific or engineering information? And, what major NASA discoveries have never been reported – either to the Congress, the American people or the press -- because of NASA’s legal ability to lie? And why could these now be politically significant …? Says Hoagland “the evidence that NASA is something other than the ‘benevolent civilian science institution’ it has pretended to be for 50 years, is as overwhelming now as it is disturbing. It is this ‘dark mission,’ allowing the president to legally classify NASA’s most important scientific and technological findings without even other NASA scientists or engineers, or Congress, the press or the American people becoming aware, which we contend is now impelling this new 21st Century Space Race. A Race whose outcome – unlike the first US/USSR race for ‘mere’ political prestige 50 years ago -- will literally shape the life of every human being now alive on Earth, through the startling technological discoveries we have evidence that NASA made on the Moon during Apollo … brought back to Earth … and then successfully kept secret for more than a generation.” Supporting Hoagland’s highly controversial data and analysis, Ken Johnston, former LRL manager of NASA’s photographic lunar archive in the early 1970’s, will give a first-hand account of how he was specifically instructed by his NASA managers toward the end of the Apollo Program to destroy unique Apollo records of what the astronauts actually recorded on the Moon, rather than donate them to a university, high school or other public archive. Hoagland and Johnston – using these 30-year-old original Apollo images that Johnston, in disobeying that direct order, personally preserved – will illustrate exactly what NASA hoped would never become known: the apparent remains of extensive lunar ruins on the Moon, one of the key projected discoveries cited by a pre-Apollo NASA/Brookings study as “capable of destroying civilization.” Hoagland and Johnston will then compare
this 30-year-old data with current Apollo images being posted
on official NASA websites around the world – revealing total confirmation
of Richard C. Hoagland and Ken Johnston
will be available for interviews immediately following the briefing
- - which will last from Hope to see you at the Press Club: Tuesday, October 30th, -0- E-Mail: mikebara@darkmission.net Contact Phone: (310) 701-3152 |
