Moon landing Hoax assassinations
Apollo Astronaut Was Murdered, Son
Charges
Christopher Ruddy
February 11, 1999
Virgil I. "Gus” Grissom, the astronaut slated to be the first man to walk on the
moon, was murdered, his son has charged in the Feb. 16 edition of Star
magazine.
In another stunning development, a lead NASA investigator has charged that the
agency engaged in a cover-up of the true cause of the catastrophe that killed
Grissom and two other astronauts.
The tabloid exclusive by Steve Herz reports that Scott Grissom, 48, has gone
public with the family’s long-held belief that their father was purposefully
killed during Apollo I.
The Jan. 27, 1967, Apollo I mission was a simulated launch in preparation for an
actual lunar flight.
NASA concluded that the Apollo I deaths of Grissom, as well as astronauts Edward
H. White and Roger Chafee, were the result of an explosive fire that burst from
the pure oxygen atmosphere of the space capsule. NASA investigators could not
identify what caused the spark, but wrote the catastrophe off as an accident.
"My father’s death was no accident. He was murdered,” Grissom, a commercial
pilot, told Star.
Grissom said he recently was granted access to the charred capsule and
discovered a "fabricated” metal plate located behind a control panel switch. The
switch controlled the capsules’ electrical power source from an outside source
to the ship’s batteries. Grissom argues that the placement of the metal plate
was an act of sabotage. When one of the astronauts toggled the switch to
transfer power to the ship’s batteries, a spark was created that ignited a
fireball.
Clark Mac Donald, a McDonnell-Douglas engineer hired by NASA to investigate the
fire, offered corroborating evidence. Breaking more than three decades of
silence, Mac Donald says he determined that an electrical short caused by the
changeover to battery power had sparked the fire.
He says that NASA destroyed his report and interview tapes in an effort to stem
public criticism of the space program.
"I have agonized for 31 years about revealing the truth, but I didn’t want to
hurt NASA’s image or cause trouble,” Mac Donald told the paper. "But I can’t let
one more day go by without the truth being known.”
Grissom’s widow, Betty, now 71, told Star she agrees with her son’s claim that
her husband had been murdered.
"I believe Scott has found the key piece of evidence to prove NASA knew all
along what really happened but covered up to protect funding for the race to the
moon.”
Scott Grissom told Star that the motive for his father’s killing may have been
related to NASA’s desire not have his father be the first man to walk on the
moon because of criticism leveled at Grissom in 1961 after his Mercury capsule,
Liberty 7, sunk in the Atlantic.
Critics of Grissom, including novelist Tom Wolfe, have claimed the astronaut
panicked when his space capsule landed in the ocean, and he prematurely pulled
an explosive charge to open the ship’s hatch, causing it to sink.
Fellow astronauts, however, gave Grissom the benefit of the doubt for several
reasons. Grissom was a decorated Korean War pilot who had flown nearly 100
combat missions. He was a courageous man not known to panic.
There was also evidence that the explosive device on the hatch could
accidentally blow without being pulled -- a fact that led NASA to remove such
devices from future spacecraft.
Also, had Grissom pulled the explosive release on the hatch, his hand or arm
should have had powder and bruise marks. Neither were found.
Grissom, one of the original Mercury seven, was the senior astronaut when the
Apollo missions began.
Among the astronauts, Grissom was the most critical of the problem-plagued
Apollo program, and the main Apollo contractor, North American Aviation.
Shortly before his death, Grissom had taken a large lemon and hung it around the
space capsule as the press looked on. He had suggested publicly that the project
could never be accomplished on time.
The Associated Press reported, "‘Pretty slim’ was the way [Grissom] put his
Apollo’s chances of meeting its mission requirements.”
The Grissom family had reason to doubt the official NASA ruling from the
beginning. Even before Apollo I, Grissom had received death threats which his
family believed emanated from within the space program.
The threats were serious enough that he was put under Secret Service protection
and had been moved from his home to a secure safehouse.
According to his wife, Grissom had warned her that "if there is ever a serious
accident in the space program, it’s likely to be me.”
The Apollo I disaster led to a series of congressional hearings into the
incident and NASA. During the hearings, one launch pad inspector, Thomas Baron,
sharply criticized NASA's handling of the incident and testified that the
astronauts attempted to escape the capsule earlier than officially claimed.
Baron was fired soon after giving the testimony, and died, along with his wife,
when his car was struck by a train. Authorities ruled the deaths as suicide.
During the congressional hearings, Sen. Walter Mondale questioned the efficacy
of manned space programs. Manned space flights were opposed by many of the
leading space scientists at the time, including Drs. James Van Allen and Thomas
Gold.
http://www.newsmax.com/articles/?a=1999/2/11/00539