Jay Weidner made quite a splash with his documentary Kubrick's Odyssey, in which he argued that Stanley Kubrick was shanghaied by NASA to help create a cinematic and photographic simulation of the Apollo missions for public consumption.
Weidner argues that 2001: A Space Odyssey was essentially Kubrick's R&D project for a much bigger-budget production set to be filmed within the gates of Nellis AFB's Area 51 and that his wildly unfaithful adaptation of Stephen King's novel The Shining was his cinematic mea culpa, confessing to the con.
Contrary to what some have assumed, Weidner is not arguing that the NASA did not land men on the Moon, but that the Apollo missions were a cover for a secret space program. Having reviewed a lot of Apollo skeptics' arguments I have to say I find them all pretty compelling on one level; the footage and the photos are problematic, to say the very least.
The Establishment's response to Weidner and the more radical skeptics who insist that human spacecraft have never left low-earth orbit has been weak; the usual mix of of outrage, dismissal and ridicule. I found it particularly rich that The New York Times lambasted Weidner for his conspiracy theorizing, given that their own conspiracy theorizing helped start the Iraq War.
But looking at the Apollo hardware I can't shake the feeling it's all Hollywood. I can't imagine three adult men spending any amount of time in that flimsy looking stuff, never mind all the life-support gear and moon buggies and all of the rest of it.
And given the highly specialized and regimented nature of a giant bureaucracy like NASA, the only people who needed to be in on the scam would be the high echelon in Mission Control and the astronauts themselves.
We all know there is a secret space program; the only question is how deep it all goes. My assumption has always been that there were two missions, showtime with the Apollo and a real mission, using much more serious military hardware that's a lot bigger, heavier and much less telegenic. I doubt very much that the real mission involved much golf playing or picture taking.
One of the most dangerous myths of our time is that the government can't keep secrets. The whole notion that the government can't keep secrets is a comforting conceit for delusional folks who still believe we live in an open society. Having grown up with a grandfather who worked as an engineer for MITRE I know that the government can in fact keep secrets, and has a whole kitbag of punishments for people who can't.
Besides, a lot of people seem to feel that the Apollo 1 fire and the subsequent deaths of other astronauts and NASA personnel was a pretty good motivator for any potential whistleblowers to keep their concerns to themselves.
THEY'RE WATCHING US
But there is a major stumbling block for Apollo skeptics; this was during the Cold War. The Russians and the Chinese were watching NASA's every move, and had the expertise, the technology and most certainly the motivation to call bullshit on any chicanery.
I have no doubt that every intelligence agency in the world was poring over every frame of imagery being released from these missions, since the idea of establishing missile bases on the Moon had a lot of currency at the time.
Exposing a faked Moonshot would be a propaganda coup like no other, especially given the fact that all of this was going on during the height of an extremely unpopular war that was in danger of making the USA an international pariah. Add the assassinations, the race riots and the general civil unrest, and a scandal over a faked Apollo mission might well have been a tipping point for a revolution in this country.
And yet, most people who aren't totally beholden to whatever received authority wants them to think (meaning non-skepdicks) can at least look at all of the evidence gathered by the Apollo debunkers and think there might something to it all, right? If that's so, then what would have motivated the Soviets et al to go along with the charade?
To try to answer that question, I want to return to 2001: A Space Odyssey and share with you again my interpretation of what Kubrick is putting onscreen. I realize there has been a parade of writers telling us what Kubrick was "really trying to say" in the film. But as before I'm going to stick as close as I can to the actual narrative of the film itself, since what's actually onscreen is a lot more subversive than any symbolic rendering of the text.
Well, with one major exception, that is. And that's where we'll start.
THE DAWN OF ROSWELL
Weidner's thesis is that Kubrick's technical acumen in dealing with military hardware in his 1964 antiwar satire Dr Strangelove Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb first brought him to NASA's attention. From a review by Andrew Griffin:
Dr. Strangelove, notes Weidner, “made fun of the Pentagon, the generals and their various war plans” and while this irritated the Defense Department, they were more amazed that Kubrick had pieced together what a B-52 looked like on the inside by looking at pictures in military magazines.Weidner himself argued in 2009 that JFK's race to the moon was inspired less by Sputnik and more by shall we say more exotic technology:
Because the U.S. Government, through NASA, was hellbent to get a man on the Moon before the end of the 1960’s, as President Kennedy had promised, and because they wanted to prove to the Soviet Union that the U.S. was going to win the space race, they had to have some insurance – a way to prove, at least to the public and the world – that the U.S. had the technology and wherewithal to get to the Moon.
That’s where Kubrick comes in. Impressed with his work on Dr. Strangelove, Weidner speculates that Kubrick made a deal with the U.S. Government to fake the Apollo Moon landings – with Apollo 11 ultimately being the first one to land in July 1969.
Soon after seeing the flying saucer technology JFK made his famous speech asking NASA to land a man on the moon before the decade was out. Many insiders believed that this was a ploy by JFK to get NASA and the secret government to release their saucer technologies.
Since it was obvious to everyone that standard rocket technology could not get man to the moon and back, JFK may have thought that NASA would be forced to release the knowledge of the flying saucers in order to get to the moon by the end of the 1960's. JFK's ploy was therefore intended to free this advanced technology from the insidious hands of the shadow government.
Adding yet another log into our wacked-out conspiracy theories undergirded by inconvenient facts bonfire, I'll point to this 2011 bombshell.Was JFK killed because of his interest in aliens? Secret memo shows president demanded UFO files 10 days before deathNow Weidner argues that Kubrick was essentially given the keys to the candy store when he made 2001: A Space Odyssey. His writing partner was of course Arthur C. Clarke, (original author of the story the film was ostensibly based on) who was plugged into all kinds of spooky networks- science, military, intelligence, you name it. Weidner also claims that Kubrick and Clarke were given access to the NASA inner circle-- including the Paperclip boys-- and told all kinds of interesting stories.
An uncovered letter written by John F Kennedy to the head of the CIA shows that the president demanded to be shown highly confidential documents about UFOs 10 days before his assassination.
The secret memo is one of two letters written by JFK asking for information about the paranormal on November 12 1963, which have been released by the CIA for the first time.Author William Lester said the CIA released the documents to him under the Freedom of Information Act after he made a request while researching his new book 'A Celebration of Freedom: JFK and the New Frontier.'
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