Bart Sibrel

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Bartholomew Winfield Sibrel is a Nashville, Tennessee-based amateur filmmaker who claims that the six Apollo moon landings between 1969 and 1972 were hoaxes. He has filmed two documentaries on the subject: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon and Astronauts Gone Wild.

Most astronauts have refused to grant him interviews due to his questionable tactics used in attempts to obtain footage of them confessing to being conspirators in a hoax. The most infamous incident involved Apollo 11 crew member Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon. According to Aldrin, he was lured to a Beverly Hills hotel under the pretext of an interview on space for a Japanese children's television show. When he arrived, Aldrin claims Sibrel was there demanding that he swear on a Bible that he had walked on the moon.

When Aldrin refused, Sibrel called him a coward, a liar, and a thief. [1] An exasperated Aldrin punched Sibrel in the jaw, which was recorded. Sibrel's reaction was to ask, "Did you get that on camera?" Sibrel later attempted to use the tape to convince police and prosecutors that he was the victim of an assault. However, it was decided that Aldrin had been provoked, and (based on Sibrel's unfazed, nearly instant reaction to his camera man) did not actually injure Sibrel, and no charges were filed. Many talk show hosts aired the clip, making Sibrel the butt of jokes.

Bart Sibrel also participated in the controversial Fox Television Network special, Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon? In it, Sibrel stated that, "I'd bet my life that we never went to the moon." Interestingly, while Sibrel is interviewed for the Fox special, he does not appear in his own film; British stage actress Anne Tonelson narrates the documentary.

1 Criticism
2 Moon Hoax documentary films
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] Criticism

Sibrel's claims of a lunar landing hoax have been widely dismissed by the scientific and space science communities.

Jim McDade, writing in the Birmingham News, characterized A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon as "full of falsehoods, innuendo, strident accusations, half-truths, flawed logic and premature conclusions." According to McDade, the "only thing new and weird" in the 47-minute film is that the claim that video views of Earth was actually filmed through a small hole to give the impression that Apollo 11 was not in low earth orbit. "Bart has misinterpreted things that are immediately obvious to anyone who has extensively read Apollo history and documentation or anyone who has ever been inside an Apollo Command Module or accurate mockup," says McDade.

Aldrin's attorney, Robert O'Brien, says that Sibrel has a history of stalking other former astronauts, including Neil Armstrong, Alan Bean, and Al Worden. Buzz Aldrin's wife, Lois summed up her feelings about Bart Sibrel: "He said things I can't repeat. He was not a nice man, and it really upset Buzz a lot."

A recent pro-NASA YouTube documentary entitled Lunar Legacy also challenges Sibrel's primary argument from his A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon DVD. The documentary shows evidence that Sibrel omitted a key piece of NASA footage from his film which invalidated his assertion of trickery by the Apollo 11 crew. In the scene, taken by the Apollo 11 crew at 30:28GET, Earth is shown from several thousand miles beyond the Van Allen radiation belts, contradicting Sibrel's insistence that Apollo 11 never left Earth orbit. The visual evidence is important, due to the fact that the command module window and interior are clearly seen in the same shot, disproving the popular pro-hoax notion that Earth had been photographed through a round porthole, or that a photographic transparency of Earth had been taped to a window.

[edit] Moon Hoax documentary films

What Happened on the Moon?, David Percy/Aulis.com, 2000; Run time: 222 minutes.
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon, January 18, 2001; Run time: 47 minutes
Astronauts Gone Wild, June 14, 2004; Run time: 53 minutes
Apollo 11 Monkey Business, December 9, 2004; Run time: 108 minutes
Apollo 11 Post-Flight Press Conference, December 9, 2004; Run time: 83 minutes