Grandson of the Apollo Hoax Theory

Joan d’Arc Interviews Jarrah White, filmmaker of the MoonFaker series

Australian Jarrah White has carried on the Apollo moon hoax research that began in the 1970s and continued into the 1990s, taking it to video format for the modern generation of YouTubers with documentaries titled, MoonFaker: Carrying The Liar; MoonFaker: Exhibit C; MoonFaker: Rocks & Crocks; and MoonFaker: Radioactive Anomaly. In this interview, which took place in summer of 2009, White proves he’s equal to the task of “the Grandson of the Apollo Hoax Theory.”





Joan d’Arc: Jarrah, thank you for your unflagging duty to carry on the moon hoax research for the next generation. It’s very important that this information remains available. So, who were the grandfathers of the Apollo Hoax Theory? One of them, I presume, was Ralph René, author of the 1994 book NASA Mooned America?

Jarrah White: Yes, Ralph René was indeed one of those grandfathers. It is interesting to note that a lot of people assume I am the grandson of Jack White. In actuality I am known as “The Grandson” because I picked up from were Bill Kaysing left off. Kaysing was known as "The Grandfather of the Apollo Hoax Theory" because he wrote and published the first book on the subject back in 1974.

I guess you could say that I now take on after Ralph too. Ralph was still alive and kicking when I became "The Grandson.” Before he died he had sent me his various research materials. Such as the document that NOAA sent him during the writing of his book, and lawsuit papers from the Kaysing/Lovell trial. It was as though he knew his time was near and he had nominated me to carry on after him.

d’Arc: When did you first meet Ralph and how did you two come to be such close friends?

White: Ralph and I met over the phone many years ago when I first tried to obtain a copy of NASA Mooned America. As he put it, “the post office had done more damage to him than any other government entity” and at first there were some troubles getting it sent. But the delivery problems were soon sorted.

After that he and I maintained communication over both telephone and email. I would often do everything in my power to help him whenever I could; be it digging up information he was in need of, sending video footage that he tried to obtain, or just generally help introduce his book to a wider audience. I always recommended his book to others and not once did I use his research without stating where that research came from.

Before I brought my MoonFaker series out, the only voice Ralph ever had through YouTube was his brief appearance on the Fox special and that disgraceful Penn & Teller episode that tried to portray him as some crackpot. That all changed when I released the MoonFaker series. Ralph had granted me many hours of his time for various over-the-phone interviews, which provided great insight for my videos. I can't stress to you enough how far I would go out of my way just to make his research heard and prove that his points are indeed valid.



If you would like to see some hugely significant videos that Ralph contributed to, I recommend MoonFaker: Carrying The Liar, MoonFaker: Exhibit C, MoonFaker: Rocks & Crocks and MoonFaker: Radioactive Anomaly.

d’Arc: René died by suicide on December 10, 2008. You had spoken to him just the day before? How did he seem at that time? Did his suicide shock you?

White: I had spoken to him over the phone on November 30th. He had stated over email he was dying, but really he meant he was in a lot of pain and knew his time would come sooner or later. As you might already know, Ralph spent many years of his life doing manual labor and subsequently became crippled by arthritis in both knees. He suffered from this pain for the remaining years of his life, simply because there is very poor health care in the United States.

American hospitals are not run like they are in Australia, where a patient simply walks into the clinic and gets the help he needs. In the states, patients are often refused service, be it medication or surgery, and the corrupt health insurance companies do everything in their power to deny people health cover.

Ralph was in desperate need of hip-joint surgery, but the doctors first subjected him to a pre-operation stress test. Basically, if you don't pass the test, you don't get the surgery. As Ralph described it, "It was a test that an Olympic athlete with a sprained ankle couldn't pass, let alone a man on a walker.” The last thing I said to him over the phone was, "Ralph this may sound like a stupid question, but how much longer do you think you have left?" and his exact reply was, "As long as I can hold out."

He continued sending emails in the following days. The last I received from him was on December 9th (Sydney time). After that I didn't hear from him. It wasn't until a week later that I learned that Ralph had committed suicide.

From what I had been told it all started on December 8th. Ralph was driving with his girlfriend when there was a terrible accident and the van flipped. Both were injured but alive. Ralph was taken to hospital but taken home the next day by a neighbour. The crash had worsened Ralph's regular hip pain to the point he became an insomniac. On the morning of December 10, he called up his neighbour to ask where his van was. Later that night he asked his girlfriend to go home early. The next day another neighbour found his body. He also found Ralph's will and a box of goodbye postcards that he had prepared in advance.

My initial reaction was shock and disbelief. Shock because Ralph was a very dear friend to me, and disbelief because he explicitly stated in his book that he was not suicidal. But I guess even the non-suicidal have their limits. I've come to learn that when one is in that much pain and there is no other option, it's no longer suicide but relief through release. At the end of the day it was ultimately the car crash that pushed him over the edge. I strongly believe that had he not had that accident he would most likely still be here today.

d’Arc: Why have you chosen to take on this work? Did you realize at first that you would be the focus of so much anger from the mainstream scientific establishment? Why do you think people get so upset at this research?

White: As a kid I wanted to be the first man on Mars. It was my dream and I spent my life studying astronomy, collecting space books, magazines and newspaper articles, taping documentaries and news reports off the telly. Back then I believed that men had been to the moon.

Later I learned of the Apollo moon landing conspiracy theory, but I took it with a grain of salt. I looked back to everything I had already learned about astronomy, I read the conspiracy material, and of course, I came upon website after website trying to prove that the moon missions were real.

In reading through these pro-NASA websites it quickly became apparent that the webmasters in question were not trying to offer any refuting evidence at all, but rather muddy the waters, lead astray those who are without ready access to the conspiracy research or even the source material, and generally spread false rumors and incite unfounded hatred against anyone who doubts Apollo.

It's propaganda, which is why I subsequently refer to these individuals as 'propagandists.’ For example, Phil Plait, one of the more popular pro-NASA webmasters, puts words in people’s mouths. On multiple occasions he claimed that Bill Kaysing said, "Any kind of space travel is impossible.” There is no such statement from Kaysing and in fact in his interview on Nardwaur radio, which Plait refers to at times, Kaysing said specifically that "possibly our [unmanned] Surveyor did land on the moon."

Plait clearly knows that what he says is not true. And yes, you can quote me on that! I even sent him an email asking him if he was willing to bet $100,000 that he could prove Kaysing denied the possibility of any kind of space travel, and I never heard back from Plait. I even show this email in my video.

Plait's actions are typical of the level of honesty that propagandists demonstrate. So the bottom line is, if humans did set foot on the moon, why tell so many lies trying to defend these missions? It is impossible for anyone to even engage in an online discussion about the moon hoax without someone directing you to some spurious pro-NASA website. And practically all the websites one pulls up with a simple Google search are these propaganda sites.

I am outraged by the propagandists' dismissal of scientific facts that refute their claims, their misrepresentation of conspiracy arguments and outright defamation. So I finally realized the time had come to debunk the debunkers. And that is what my MoonFaker series is about.

I began work in 2005 and continued well into 2006. It was originally going to be an essay for download off the website www.billkaysing.com. And so I began writing up a long essay refuting virtually every propagandist website. I spent many hours interviewing people, filming experiments, visiting the library for research material. When it was finally finished the essay was the size of a phone book! That, and it also needed to be toned down on certain less than pleasant things I had to say about the propagandists. As I stated in my very first video, "It's going to take a whole lot of one's time and effort to comment on their obnoxious defamation without getting pissed off."

So, instead of releasing it as an essay, I began adapting pieces from it to video, one after another covering a certain subject. Over the production I did more research and acquired more information, and my debunking of the debunkers continues to this day.

Naturally I get mixed responses from people with all sorts of points of view. There are those who still oppose my videos even after their heroes have been exposed. There were people who were once duped by the pro-NASA websites and praised my videos for salvation. Then of course there are fellow conspiracy theorists who already knew the missions were faked and applaud my efforts every step of the way. And interestingly there is a fourth category of people: individuals who do not doubt Apollo, but agree that the propagandists are out of line. And that there is a vast difference between believing in the moon landings and endorsing the smear campaigns these propagandists spread.



d’Arc: So let's talk about René's work, which I'm fairly familiar with since I interviewed him for PARANOIA in 1996. When René began to research the Apollo moon hoax years ago, he read Bill Kaysing’s book, We Never Went to the Moon, among other books. After Kaysing read René’s NASA Mooned America, he said René caught a lot of points that he had missed. Do you know what a few of those points might have been?

White: Well by far one of the most prominent things that Ralph picked up on is radiation in space. Bill Kaysing briefly scratched the surface when he pointed out that in 1963 the Russians could see no immediate way of protecting cosmonauts from the lethal effects of solar radiation. Ralph picked up on the same footnote, but also did so much more research on that subject. He has a whole chapter regarding solar radiation, and a few detailed addenda on the Van Allen radiation belts.

There are so many important points that I feel need mentioning regarding radiation. First of all, during his study on the solar flares Ralph picked up on a 1963 book called Astronautical Engineering & Science, written by various scientists from the Marshall Space Flight Center. In this book they state that minor solar storms can deliver 25 rem/hr depending on how many centimeters of water is used as shielding [rem being the dosage in rads that will cause the same amount of biological injury as one rad of X rays or gamma rays].

The reason this is important is because propagandists claim that all the solar flares during the Apollo flights were minor and thus not lethal. They of course ignore the 25 rem/hr figure that Ralph picked up on. One such flare spurted on April 17 1972, during the Apollo 16 mission, and lasted for three days. At 25 rem/hr, a flare lasting for three days would deliver a whopping dose of 1800 rem. All it takes is 500 rem and you're dead. And that's just for one flare; NOAA's solar records show that there were over 1400 solar storms during all nine moon flights combined. Each is capable of delivering 25 rem/hr.

In addition to denying the hazard posed by minor flares, propagandists like Jay Windley and Phil Plait also claim that there were no major solar storms during the Apollo missions. This is not true. A friend of mine called Rick managed to check NOAA's Comprehensive Flare Index for major flares. It shows that out of all the 1400 flares shared among the Apollo flights, thirty of them were major. Major flares deliver in excess of 100 rem/hr. Ralph had requested NOAA to send him this data and it took sixteen years before Rick and I finally managed to supply him with it. He received this data in the weeks before his death. At least he lived long enough to get what he was looking for.

Jay Windley, in his arrogance, claimed that the Apollo major flares were not hazardous enough to cause harm. Even though some were clearly listed as being more hazardous than the major flares of August 1972—which even propagandists admit could kill an astronaut.



That brings me to another point that Ralph brought up. During his research Ralph received a document from J.A. McKinnon of NOAA. The document is titled "NOAA Technical Memorandum ERL SEL-22" and it's all about the major solar activity of August 1972. It is important to note that these major flares took NOAA totally by surprise: there were no warnings, it was not detected in any of their forecasts, and it wasn't predicted. This is important because propagandists run around claiming that if a major flare were going to happen during an Apollo flight, NASA would have known about it in advance and postponed the mission. Clearly NASA had no way of knowing when these eruptions would occur.

Please read the interview in the new

PARANOIA: The Conspiracy Reader, Volume 1, April 2010

Order here:

http://www.paranoiamagazine.com/