In September of 2007, I was sitting in a Billiards room upstairs above Barley’s Taproom in Asheville, North Carolina, having a tasty microbrewery beer with my pal Jim Marrs, one of the most popular conspiracy authors in America. Jim knows, or has at least met or written about most of the notorious figures in modern conspiracy theories, and on that clandestine afternoon I took the opportunity to ask him about a few that has perplexed me for years. It was a wonderful conversation, and it’s a good thing Barley’s has credit card processing as several beers were had over our discussion.

At one point, I recall asking him, “Jim, what do you think about John Lear?”

Jim smiled a broad grin that emerged from under his beard. “Well, I know John,” he replied, telling me he’d met John Lear on a number of occasions.

“This ‘Dark Theory Hypothesis’ thing of his really has me mixed up,” I said. “Part of me… the biggest part of me, doesn’t buy it at all. But somewhere all this horrific shit he talks about, you know, like aliens bathing in ground-up human remains and all this Majestic 12 stuff, almost seems plausible when you look at his record.” Lear, who has been a frequent guest on programs like Coast to Coast AM and is one of the biggest proponents of the theory that our government has “bargained” in shady deals with aliens over the years, also holds every attainable medal in the USAF, which seems to lend greatly to his credibility. Still, many presume Lear may be a disinformation agent, planted with the purpose of “stirring the pot” and creating confusion among the American populace with regard to aliens and UFOs.

“So Jim, do you think he’s telling the truth?” I asked. Jim’s brow wrinkled a bit from beneath the long brim of his fedora, and after a mighty gulp of his brew, he told me, “well, I think he believes what he says.”

It was a telling response, and Jim was right; even if what some of the modern “informants” are saying about UFOs and Ufology isn’t 100% accurate, due to the number of contacts, stories, and personal encounters that people like Lear have gathered over the years, it doesn’t seem unlikely that portions of what they compile must be accurate. The veracity of information is tricky and complicated to understand, although several places on the internet offer the truth upon completion of online credit card processing. Still, these islands of truth may nonetheless float in a dark sea of conjecture and rumor.

Another fellow I’ve begun to look into is William Rutledge, a man claiming to have been working for NASA during the 1970s on three supposed missions to the dark side of the moon, unofficially named Apollo missions 18, 19 and 20. These missions are only alleged to have taken place however, as Apollo missions 18-20 are known to have been cancelled due to budget constraints, though they did receive some level of initial planning (for a complete list of the completed Apollo missions and their purposes see image below). NASA began making its cancellation plans official to the public in January of 1970 with the Apollo 20 mission, and others would soon follow.

This image is excerpted from original NASA documents in a series titled “Apollo Program Summary Report”. As a work of NASA, they are now in the public domain, and are made available by NASA’s history department. To view the entire series of documents, visit http://history.nasa.gov/apsr/apsr.htm.

Still, William Rutledge claims to have worked on at least two missions to the Moon, including the failed Apollo 19, and the Apollo 20, which he says was launched in August of 1976. Both, according to Rutledge, were “classified joint Space missions” resulting from collaborations between U.S. and Soviet governments, and were launched from the Vandenberg Air Force Base located in California.

The purpose of these missions was to investigate a large object on the far side of the moon in the Delporte-Izsak region, allegedly discovered during the Apollo 15 mission. The object, which vaguely resembled an “X-Wing” fighter as seen in the Star Wars films, was supposed to have been a very large alien spacecraft which had crashed or was otherwise abandoned on the Moon in ancient times. Images, and even videos of this alleged craft have appeared all over the web, and have been popularized by researchers like Richard C. Hoagland over the last several years. To view images of this “spacecraft”, follow this link to an article by Italian journalist Luca Scantamburlo featured at the UFO Digest website, and scroll halfway down the page.

Here is where the whole mess gets even weirder; my friend and fellow researcher Patrick Green sent me a link to this video recently (click image below), which allegedly shows a mummified “alien life form” found on board the ancient craft, which was given the name “Mona Lisa.” This is a very bizarre piece of footage, indeed…

Altogether, I think it’s unlikely at best that any secret missions to the Moon followed Apollo 17. However, the number of strange images and videos that are constantly turning up never cease to amaze me, and if nothing else, we can enjoy the various stories and their corresponding arguments, at least until we finally learn the truth; whatever that may end up being! At this point, your guess as to what that “truth” may be is as good as mine, and the UFO Community will no doubt remain separated on these issues as we continue to see more bizarre examples of “alternatives to known history” emerge.