Thanks, I hadn't seen these videos.

I guess the opening question has got to be, what can somebody do to check up on whether this guy really was what he claims, or is just delivering technogarble spiels to amuse an audience and himself?

Like, was he ever a test pilot or a pilot of any kind? Aside from his own say-so, is there any checkable documentation?

Like, whether he really is a "Dr." of some recognized academic program, or just bought a certificate of a non-existent institution from some post office box in Colorado, or something?

Like, whether he ever really was in charge of the Apollo photo archives with the authority to purge them of unwanted images? How old would he have been then and what work/education background would have justified his selection?

He called the Lunar Module at the Smithsonian "LTA-8" and said he had thousands of hours testing it, including in vacuum chambers. Are there any on-line historical documents that corroborate this claim? What is the designation of the Lunar Module that the Smithsonian claims it has -- is it consistent with Johnston's description?

Johnston claims the lunar modules landing on the moon had four probes deployed beneath each landing leg. What does NASA claim in this regard? Four probes, one beneath each leg, as Johnston states?

Johnston claims that the images of Armstrong descending to the lunar surface were actually made by a 16-mm camera in the LM co-pilot's window. Is that true? If so, how were they received in real time on Earth?

Johnston describes the Apollo module post-launch dance as "While we were still in earth orbit we had to separate from the Saturn V, take this spacecraft and turn it around, and come back and dock to the lunar module and then extract the lunar module out of a shroud where it was protected during ascent." How accurate is this description?

Johnston says that on Apollo-11 the lunar module was 'Eagle' and the command module' was 'Snoopy'. Who believes him, by now?

Isn't it reasonable, before being bluffed by bafflegarb, to make some straightforward 'reality checks' before jumping to any conclusion about the credibility of his amazing story about Thornton Page?

Or would this doubting -- and attempting corroboration -- be seen as some sort of unfair and reprehensible 'personal attack'?

It's fun and easy just to believe his story. How much of the story on these two videos departs significantly from verifiable historical facts?

I'm not sure bringing Mike Bara into this conversation casts any light on the issues, but perhaps it does, since he was one of the main mythmakers about Johnston's career. Despite the sound and fury at the link Shrike (AKA skeptical ed, and a good friend) posted, Bara (and you can verify this) was forced to remove some of his phony 'credentials' for Johnston between editions of his book -- mainly that Johnston had been a Marine jet pilot in Vietnam. Johnston's own military records, obtained through FOIA, showed he flunked out of flight school. So he never was a pilot of any kind, 'test pilot' especially (his OWN claim in the video).

Johnston performed honorable military service as a flight line electronics tech, and later carried out important work as Lunar Module simulator tester (never a test PILOT, nor an astronaut instructor -- his coworkers jokingly referred to themselves as 'switch monkeys'), and then as a lunar sample shipping clerk in Houston.

He was on the team that made human history.

But the claim he had authority to purge the entire Apollo photo archives of unwanted images, when all he had authority over were the reference image binders in his own room, binders he had been given by the REAL photo archive office -- that's the kind of 'importance inflation' all too common in 'war stories'. As to those photos, he did keep a set and later give them to his alma mater, where they lost track of them ('maybe professor P took them home when he retired' was what I was told).

Also, Bara helpfully posted the alleged 'diploma' (Bara spelled it 'deploma') for Johnston's claimed 'PhD', which was a certificate from a fake 'seminary' in Denver [I talked to the guy who signed it, it was a business that got shut down by the state's attorney general] that sold such 'degrees' by mail. It was probably Johnston's use of this bogus educational credential on the NASA bio website that understandably peeved the NASA educational program he had been a volunteer for. When they asked him about it, HE quit [later whining he had been 'forced' to do so -- what's wrong with using NASA's website to flaunt one's fake PhD's anyway?].

The bigger question remains: before accepting somebody's claims that other people are venomous liars, it's usually reasonable to see if their OWN claims can be verified (or refuted) by independent documentation.

That's why I listed some specific issues with 'facts' claimed by Johnston in the interesting new video.

True, for some folks, checking up on somebody's delicious accusation that others are lying, to see if THEY are being careless with the truth [forgetful, deliberate, or pathological -- that may be harder to determine], is considered 'character assassination' and 'personal attacks' by many who prefer to believe the original claimer's accusations, maybe because it makes the eager-believers feel smarter or better informed.

Has anybody else EVER checked up on ANY claim Johnston EVER made about ANYTHING?

If not, why not?

I think we can put this thread to bed. Unless all of the interested parties are on travel for the holidays, it might be postulated that nobody wants to check up -- or defend -- Johnston's claims. Shocker.

Yo ho ho.

LIFE says he was "former Manager of the Data and Photo Control Division at NASA's Lunar Receiving Laboratory"

Originally posted by amari
(snip)
When I can see Moon photos with my own eyes it is a fact to me and may not be to you because you probably have not seen these anomalies yet and I have. So dispute all you want fact is fact. As far a Johnston I was not there he claimed to be part of the Apollo program, but I personally have seen hundreds and hundreds of Moon photos and I see what I see and Johnston claims to have seen what he saw from Moon photos. ^Y^

edit on 24-12-2010 by amari because: (no reason given)

I beg to differ with you. You make the usual claims devoid of any evidence, as seems to be the norm here. How about you put your money where your mouth is and show just one photo showing something on a NASA photo of the lunar surface that is not a natural feature. And, please, do not use those awful colorized versions that are prevalent in this forum and all over the web. And strive to offer a decent resolution photo, not those blurry, overpixelated ones that seem to be the only photos where the mentally-challenged see what they want others to see. And stay away from anything offered by John Lear 'cause they don't show anything but fantasies.

You sound like you can do it. I look forward to such a reply. Yawn!

BTW, you most definitely will receive extra Brownie points if you were able to find one of those altered photos that Ken Johnston claims he saw or even an unaltered one. Anything!

Originally posted by The_Zomar
LIFE says he was "former Manager of the Data and Photo Control Division at NASA's Lunar Receiving Laboratory"

So you say. Where can anyone verify this? LIFE magazine, you say? When did they stop publishing?

Johnston has indeed said he was in such a position, but no phone books or org charts from that era even show the existence of such a 'Division'. It would be helpful if anyone could find ANY documentary evidence that such a division even existed, beyond Johnston's say-so.

The reason I suggest his simple say-so shouldn't be adequate proof is the record, in the video posted by the OP at the top, of him making one bogus assertion after another about Apollo history. If he can't get documented history right, how can he be trusted for stuff for which he provides NO documentation?

How hard is that to understand?

Here's what I found out happened to the extra set of moon pix Johnston saved:

"... [H]e eventually decided to donate the rest to his alma mater, Oklahoma City University, where the data quietly resided -- out of NASA’s oversight -- for over thirty years...”

It was trivially easy to determine that this statement, as so many others, is false.
I called Christina Wolf, OCU Archivist and Special Collections librarian (located via internet search in 2 minutes), and she was familiar with the material -- "about two cubic feet, but way before my time...”
It was never donated to the Dulaney-Browne Library's 'spacial collections', but directly to the science department in Loeffler Hall.
"But when they renovated the building in 1988, a professor took it home with him. When he died, we never got them back. The materials are presumed lost.”
She added that Ken Johnston has been in contact with her trying to locate the material, so far without success.
So -- the box sat in a professor's office for fifteen years, and was never missed when he took it home -- where it presumably ended up in the trash after his death.
Is there anything that has been claimed about Johnston's experiences that has actually checked out to be true?

Here's what I was able to find out about the non-existent 'division' Johnston claimed to be head of:



The first item posted under 'A Question of Credentials - 3', references Dr. Jeffrey Warner, whose task Mr. Johnston took over beginning with Apollo-14.
Johnston has described his task as being in charge of all Apollo mission imagery (a status that supposedly gave him 'insider' access to unique Apollo imagery, as well as the power to delete imagery from the master archives -- Rich's question). Press reports based on Dark_Mission press releases describe Johnston as 'director of Apollo photo archives'.
Warner does not remember it that way. In an email to me recently, he wrote:
"I was part of the Curator's office during all the Apollo missions. Over the years I had different assignments. During Apollo 11 and 12, among other things, I was in charge of lunar sample photographs in the Lunar Receiving Laboratory (LRL). BRN [JEO: Johnston's employer] technicians took photographs of lunar rocks, the photographs were processed in the JSC photo lab, and the prints came to me. A BRN employee technician named Marion (I disremember his last name, but it must be in the records) was my assistant in dealing with rock photographs. I did this as part of my duties as Associate Curator - there was no special or identified office.
For Apollo 14-17, dealing with photographs became quite routine, and was handled by the Curatorial BRN support staff... [JEO: I think Warner is referring to Johnston and his co-workers here] "There never was an 'office of Apollo mission photography' in the LRL. As you know, mission photographs went directly to the JSC photo lab where they were processed and where prints were made. Mission photographs were never curated in the LRL. The only mission photographs we had in the LRL were copies of prints that we used to document specific rocks on the lunar surface.”
JimO resumes comment: It seems that there has been major misrepresentation and deliberate confusion regarding Mr. Johnston's duties and responsibilities regarding lunar photographs.
He reports having received a number of sets of Apollo imagery, clearly from the office responsible for it in another building. Once the LRL stopped receiving new Apollo samples, it went through a major down-sizing and consolidation of records and elimination of duplicative (and no longer useful) mutli-copy material. It was under those circumstances, apparently, that Johnston was directed to clean out the cabinets and trash the images.
I don't know why he would have been told he couldn't keep them -- perhaps there were regulations that material generated for NASA internal use was not for public release, and public access to lunar photos would be through the public information office. In any case, I've seen no indications that the LRL photo sets that Johnston seems to have been custodian of (but not originator of) were different in any substantive way from the master files, which have always been fully accessible to researchers (and the press) at depositories such as the Lunar Science Institute.

Originally posted by JimOberg
Here's what I found out happened to the extra set of moon pix Johnston saved:

"... [H]e eventually decided to donate the rest to his alma mater, Oklahoma City University, where the data quietly resided -- out of NASA’s oversight -- for over thirty years...”

It was trivially easy to determine that this statement, as so many others, is false.
I called Christina Wolf, OCU Archivist and Special Collections librarian (located via internet search in 2 minutes), and she was familiar with the material -- "about two cubic feet, but way before my time...”
It was never donated to the Dulaney-Browne Library's 'spacial collections', but directly to the science department in Loeffler Hall.
"But when they renovated the building in 1988, a professor took it home with him. When he died, we never got them back. The materials are presumed lost.”
She added that Ken Johnston has been in contact with her trying to locate the material, so far without success.
So -- the box sat in a professor's office for fifteen years, and was never missed when he took it home -- where it presumably ended up in the trash after his death.
Is there anything that has been claimed about Johnston's experiences that has actually checked out to be true?

edit on 25-12-2010 by JimOberg because: distraction

here are a few examples of lunar photos which 'talm' had purchased from an auction house.... apparently belonging to a dead general....

AS10-31-4527

the anomaly which is visible in the above pic @ bottom left..... has obviously been edited out in the below nasa version.....

So again, "change the subject" is the response when simple, obvious questions are raised about the believability of statements made by Ken Johnston. This avoidance reflex may reflect attempts to hide -- or suppress -- doubts about unsupported claims by folks who tell listeners what they enjoy hearing, true or not.

The phenomenon, and the genuinely baffling aspects of it, IMHO deserves better.