Dark Mission

   Authors: Richard C. Hoagland and Mike Bara

reviewed by Theresa Welsh

Has the American space agency, with its fine legacy of putting a man on the moon, been lying to us about just about everything? Does its mission have a darker purpose than pure science and has it made potentially explosive discoveries in its exploration of the solar system?

Hoagland: Champion of the Face on Mars
I've been interested in Richard Hoagland's work for a number of years, since he took on the cause of the "Face on Mars," for which he has received a great deal of ridicule. I've spent time at his website ( enterprisemission.com) exploring his theory of hyperdimensional physics and his idea that NASA is obsessed with ancient Egyptian rituals, along with his theories about the ruins of civilization in the Cydonia region of Mars.

OK, I know Hoagland sounds like a nut. But his theories are all based on real information, the man has an authentic background in the science of space, and he presents his case in a very professional manner. Along with colleague Mike Bara, he has finally put it all together in this book, which persuasively argues that NASA is not quite what it seems to be. Every chapter has a picture section that supports the arguments in the chapter.

Ruins on the Moon?
Let's get right to what Hoagland alleges in this book. While he's best known for his theories about Mars, Hoagland also tackles NASA's missions to the moon. He claims that the astronauts found ruins on the moon, specifically evidence of domes that once covered large portions of the surface. He backs this up with photos showing strange lines and markings in the sky over portions of the moon in photos from a number of sources. He contends that NASA generally "sanitizes" the images it releases, but lately new sources of images from the Apollo flights have become available. A major source for Hoagland has been a former NASA employee, Ken Johnston, who had worked at NASA as a test pilot and later was in charge of cataloging and storing photos from the moon flights. Johnston was shocked to be told by his superiors to destroy "all the copies of the original lunar photography" from the Apollo program. Instead, Johnston kept a set of the photos. He later contacted Hoagland and showed him the prints. These are important, since the images NASA releases are often (Hoagland contends) not the the originals. In the case of the Apollo photos, these would be film photos taken by the astronauts with a Hasselblad camera. It is not clear to me who (if anyone) has the negatives, or if Johnston's prints might contain lines or markings from scratches on the negatives (although this is not likely; certainly NASA would have handled and stored the negatives with care).

Many of the other images (all of the Mars pictures) are digital, and the arguments about the "raw data" are highly technical. The arguments as to the validity of these photos relates to the types of processes and manipulation you can perform with digital images, but it comes down to this: it is fairly easy, with the aid of good photo editing software, to alter images to remove anything you don't want anyone to see. Is that what NASA has done with its Mars images?

What About the Astronauts?
I kept thinking that if our astronauts had found evidence of previous visitations and habitation on the moon, wouldn't someone eventually say something? Hoagland contends that there have been hints from the men who went to the moon, but that NASA would have many means of keeping them loyal - and quiet. He cites the Brookings Report, which was written for NASA by the conservative Brookings Institution and presented on November 1960, to comment on the implications of exploring space. This report claims there is a near-certainty that such exploration will find intelligent life. The report recommended that such findings should be kept from the public, to avoid disruption to society. The thinking here is that a government discovering evidence of intelligent life on other worlds should take measures to make sure the knowledge is kept secret, and Hoagland contends that that is what NASA has done. He even states that the astronauts were hypnotized when they got back to earth to help erase the memory of some of what they saw on the moon.

Several of the astronauts got involved in decidedly "alternative" types of projects in their post-astronaut lives. Edgar Mitchell runs the Noetic Institute, which studies psychic phenomena. Gordon Cooper (see my review of his book, Leap of Faith) had seen a UFO during his military career and, post-NASA, got involved with people who wanted to replicate the work of Nikola Tesla. Alan Bean, who walked on the moon, is an artist who makes beautiful pictures of the moon that look nothing like the dead place we see in the NASA-released photos. But none of the Apollo astronauts has ever confirmed that they saw any artificial constructions on the moon.

Ancient Astronauts Had a Base on the Moon? Actually, Hoagland is not the first to suggest that the moon could have been a base for a previous civilization. I have a small paperback book first published in 1968 (one year before Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the moon) and translated from the French. This book is The Moon:Outpost of the Gods by Jean Sendy. The author claims that the astronauts going to the moon will find ruins of a civilization that built an outpost there about 23,000 years ago. He says that the moon's synchronous rotation, which means one side of the moon is always pointed away from Earth (the dark side of the moon), Is odd. He calls it "a baffling enigma for scientists." He proposes that intelligent beings visited Earth 23,000 years ago during the WURM III glaciation and "stabilized" the moon so they could have a hidden outpost there. They colonized earth and mated with the primitive bipeds they found. The ideas are similar to those of Zechariah Sitchen. Sendy is the author of a number of books promoting the "ancient astronauts" idea. He says the truth is in the Bible story of the Elohim who mated with the "daughters of men." Sendy also claims that the Soviets had taken this notion of ancient visitation seriously, and he tells us that once man has visited and mapped the moon, we will know if this theory is correct because we will find ruins on the dark side of the moon. So… did we?

Let's Talk About Mars
Ok, so there might be ruins on the moon. What about Mars? Did NASA find little green men there? No, but Hoagland contends that the Cydonia region is full of artificial constructions, and he provides photo evidence and has some pretty smart people backing him up on the argument for artificiality. The Face is the best-known of the constructions, but is certainly not the only piece of evidence. And, of course, NASA has done everything it can to dissuade the public from the idea that it is actually a face. They have always dismissed it as "a trick of light and shadow." I well remember when NASA released what Hoagland calls "the catbox" image of the Face, which they presented in a distorted, flat version that looked nothing like a face. I remember the chuckles of the anchors on the local news as the image went up on the TV screen for all to see. A humiliating moment for Richard Hoagland, who had told us it was an artifical construction of a face that was part human and part feline. But wait… was it just another NASA deception? The book gives us the particulars on how the raw data of the Face was manipulated to make that image. It was a public relations defeat for the Face, but not the end of the story.

We now have pictures of Mars from a number of successful robot journeys to the Red Planet, and we have more photos of Cydonia and the Face, and the newer pictures tend to confirm the earlier hypotheses that these constructions are artificial. Many of the shapes, and the geometry of their placement, mimic monuments on Earth; pyramids, for example. This book does not get into speculation as to who built the Martian monuments or how long ago that might have been. But Hoagland's earlier book, The Monuments of Mars, does speculate about connections between those monuments and ancient ruins on Earth. Another excellent book about Mars that examines the possibility of a Mars-Earth link is Graham Hancock's book, The Mars Mystery. Hancock is one of my favorite authors who, in his many fascinating books, engages in intelligent musings about the possibility of a previous high civilization on Earth. Could the ancient Martians have been us - could human beings have come to Earth from a dying planet, Mars? Interesting stuff, to be sure.

The JFK Assassination: Part of the Story?
But getting back to Earth, Hoagland gives us yet another theory about the assasination of President John F. Kennedy, who initiated the program to send men to the moon. There is solid evidence that Kennedy wanted to work with the Soviets on a space program. While the popular story is that the "space race" pitted the US against our cold war enemy, the Soviet Union, that may not have been what Kennedy intended. JFK did not live to see his dream fulfilled, and the US won the race to the moon, but could the idea of working with what President Reagan years later called "the evil empire" have been sufficient motivation for someone to kill JFK? Perhaps the inclusion of this material on the Kennedy assasination will simply lead to more ridicule for Hoagland's overall theories, but it seems to me it is at least as good a motive as the others that have been suggested (the Mafia, the Cubans, the CIA, etc.)

I was a huge JFK fan, so I am not offended by Hoagland's new picture of him as the inspiring leader who wanted peace, not war. I can believe that. But I have a little more trouble with his notion that NASA is obsessed with rituals dating back to ancient civilizations and kept alive by secret societies. Are we really to make something out of the fact that many top NASA officials have been Masons (as were many astronauts, including Buzz Aldrin who brought a masonic flag to the moon)? How about the influence of Nazis, people like Werner Von Braun (and the book builds a case that he WAS a Nazi)? Does NASA really time its launches to coincide with ritual dates? I can't say they don't, but it does sound a bit crazy.

Should We Believe It?
I enjoyed reading this book, even though it left me back where I started from - thinking Richard Hoagland has some interesting ideas that are worth a serious look, but not being totally convinced either. I wish the book had an index so I could quickly find information I want to check with other sources.

I do firmly believe we need people who question the obvious answers, and probe a little deeper. It is very sad to me that people are questioning whether the moon landings ever actually happened. That is sheer ignorance, but might serve NASA's purposes as disinformation in case too much comes out about what they really found on the lunar surface. Denying we went to the moon is like denying the Holocaust. As a generation that has no memory of those events take their place as world leaders, such ignorance can be easily spread. It totally stops the REAL questions we should be asking. Like these: Why haven't we gone back to the moon? Is NASA giving us the real photos from Mars? And the real zinger: Who put glass domes over the craters of the moon?