The How 2: The Howening; We Never Went to the Moon pp. 59-67

 Kaysing has promised to explain how the US Government faked the Moon Landing. So far, he’s only explained that sometimes, the government lies. I know, I shudder every time I read that. He gave us a list of things the government lied about claiming that they were faked—when none of them were fake. The closest he gets is the Gulf of Tonkin. He’s going to build on his earlier “work” by explaining what the Defense Intelligence School (DIA) is and it’s relationship to the Apollo Simulation Project (ASP). Conspiracy theorists love acronyms.

In reality the DIA is the military’s intelligence operation. They take Naval Intelligence, Army Intelligence, Airforce, Coast Guard, Space Force (?) reports and evaluate the national military urgency of them. They then report to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and ultimately the president. It’s not a mysterious organization, but most people are unaware that it exists like the National Reconnaissance Office that is in charge of spy satellites.

We also must keep in mind that Kaysing has pulled a conspiracy theorists’ gambit here: he’s made the assumption that the ASP actually exists and now everything that is going to follow is built on that assumption. The most important thing about this gambit is that he’s never proven that the ASP is real. Conspiracy theorists do this frequently when they aren’t lying about news stories they’ve read. The only move they have is to make us forget that it’s an assumption by burying us underneath other things. Kaysing is going to do this by frequently referring to the Manhattan Project, if we remember from last week, this is all based on the single book that he’s (and I) read about the subject.

We begin with secrecy. If the ASP was real, how did they keep it secret. Well, he says, they kept the Manhattan Project secret so they can do this. There’s one significant difference between the two: the Manhattan Project was a wartime project. Everyone in the country, even gangsters, did their part. The ASP is not directly related to war and thus keeping it, a secret might be a little more difficult. The secrecy kind of hinges on this because during wartime we have less rights.

He writes, “after all, in an America which has been sliding towards a police state for years (wire-taps, no-knock, civilian surveillance), it was a relatively simple matter to apply these techniques of cloak and dagger to ASP.”

I include this because it’s a case of the conspiracy theorists’ broken clock. They get somethings correct simply because if you say enough stuff, you’ll accidentally make a hit. Those things exist. It’s a legitimate issue, but none of those things are relevant here. It’s like people arguing that Area 51 houses UFOs because they aren’t allowed on the military base—well no one is allowed there. The existence of secrecy does not make a conspiracy theory true. Just because the government can get a no-knock warrant is not related to the Moon Landing.

There is a long section about an Airforce base near Mercury, Nevada. This town, he claims is a resort city, but that is not the case. Mercury, Nevada has never been anything but a military town. It served as a place to house people necessary for the testing that the military was doing there. In this case, yes, it does make for a good spot to fake a Moon Landing; but there are plenty of remote places in the US to do that. Kaysing provides a picture of Mercury (even though he claims no photographs would make it to the general public) with a caption reading, “Although termed Area 6 by the Atomic Energy Commission, this could be the headquarters of the ASP near Mercury, Nevada.”

Yes, it could be, but is Kaysing saying it is? He’s certainly trying to imply it. Kaysing leans on “could” so hard that I fear it may topple over.

Mercury is only 69 miles from Las Vegas and Kaysing speculates that this was another reason it was chosen—people on the base can take a quick holiday over to Vegas. Also, it is helpful because “Last but far from least, a liason was established with the hidden rulers of Las Vegas, the crime organization chieftains. When needed, services could be exchanged on a mutually beneficial basis, i.e., large sums of money for use of expert “button men.” The Cosa Nostra staff presented no problems for ASP security; they had centuries of practice in remaining silent.”

Another thing about conspiracy theorists is that they always make their assumptions based on movies and popular books. The code of silence in the organized crime is more myth than reality. It’s not until “The Godfather” is released that the silent brooding mafioso enters the culture. It was always a vulgar practice. The idea that there exists some kind of super assassin in the mafia, might be a true thing. During prohibition there was an organized crime sub-group nicknamed “Murder Inc.” that had hitmen on the payroll. I’m not saying paid killers don’t exist. What I am saying is that Kaysing has established the evil powers of the CIA and their willingness to murder and lie; why would they need mafia hitmen to do that job as well?

The ASP still needs to be staffed and Kaysing points out that this would not be as difficult as the regular people think it would be. He claims that salaries of 50k would be provided for minor technicians with near unlimited “rest and relaxation” funds. For 50k a year, I’ll be a minor technician to fake the moon landing. I have to admit that this is a good point. As Kobayashi explains to “The Usual Suspects” that Keyser Soze never worked with the same people twice and they never knew what their job was and this way he could never be betrayed. 50K a year in the 60s? That’s a lot of money to crimp wires or install lightbulbs. There’s plenty of logistical people and technicians that worked on the Manhattan Project that were never told what they were building but were still told, “don’t tell anyone what you are doing.”

We are told that he is going to spare us from learning of the salaries of the higher ups “out of sympathy for the taxpayer who might be reading this chapter.” I think that Kaysing couldn’t find the fight balance between shocking and absurd for that salary.

The Astronauts, well the fake ones anyway, would be recruited based on patriotism and threats. It would be much harder to get these people on board and to this day, none of them came forward even though, at the end of their lives they had nothing to lose by exposing the truth. Therefore, the hiring was an unmitigated success. No one came forward to claim that the ASP existed and the whole thing was faked. We are told about Thomas Baron, but his report was about safety inadequacies and risk before he died in a freak accident. We’re also talked about Buzz Aldrin’s mental breakdown which is attributed to the weight of his conscience. In reality, Aldrin struggled with alcohol addiction, and he frequently quit and returned to drinking. I’ll say that this week’s section is remarkably on point. We’ve gotten both where it was faked and who was involved. This is much more information that we usually get out of these books.