Dark Matters: Secret Moon Missions and Disinformation
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 one who has perplexed me for years.
“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. 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.
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http://gralienreport.com/conspiracies/dark-matters-secret-moon-missions-and-disinformation/
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kind Mr. Micah,
my name is Luca Scantamburlo, the Italian freelancer who had contacts with the alleged William Rutledge, who claims to be former Apollo 20 CDR.
Good comments and nice point of view, yours, on this controversial issue.
Regarding Rutledge’s testimony, I just want to point out that he never told me to have partecipated to Apollo 19 as a crew member.
Moreover, if you pay close attention to my interview to him, you will notice that he wrote to me the following words, which I made public, in his answer to my question nr.13:
<>
http://www.angelismarriti.it/ANGELISMARRITI-ENG/REPORTS_ARTICLES/Apollo20-
Interview With WilliamRutledge
by L. Scantamburlo (C), May 2007
And, as the matter of fact, I found later on an official NASA link where there is written that the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (code ASTP, taken place in July 1975) was the Apollo 18, for the Americans.
Here you are the link (look at the bottom of the page):
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/apollo/welcome.html
More news are coming on my website, in the next future.
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My best regards to you and to readers
Luca Scantamburlo
http://www.angelismarriti.it
Comment by italianfreelancer1974 — September 25, 2008 @ 5:18 am
ANSWER TO QUESTION NR: 13
[...] W.R. Apollo 18 was the Apollo-Soyuz project, the honeymoon before a moon landing mission, it was presented as a simple “shaking hands ” mission in 1975. Apollo 19 and 20 were hazardous missions. On long duration flight the helium pressure was too high on the LEM, a security disk had to burst if pressure was going high, but motor was unusable after. So it was changed on Apollo 19 and 20, but not tested in Space before. It was ok, but… in the paper. However, we got no problem with it. It was a long mission, 7 days scheduled on the Moon, every ray of light was used till ascent.
Apollo 19 had a loss of telemetry, a brutal end of mission without data. Now the truth is unknown but it seems that it was a natural phenomenon, a collision with a “quasi-satellite “, like Cruithne, or a meteor (the probability is higher I think). The goal was the same, the landing site was the same, the exploration program was different, they had a big job to do with the ro [...]
from the
Interview to William Rutledge, Apollo 20 CDR
Copyright Luca Scantamburlo, May 2007
http://www.angelismarriti.it
Comment by italianfreelancer1974 — September 25, 2008 @ 5:21 am