NASA’S AUDIT OF HISTORICAL PROPERTY

Every now and then I get not an article, but a document that someone has found, and today is one of those times, and I simply have to blog about it, because it is, in a word (or two words), a whopper doozie. It was shared by Mr. G.P., and ... well, there's nothing for it but to let you see it:

NASA Office of Inspector General Office of Audits Report No. IG - 19 - 002 A UDIT OF NASA’ S H ISTORIC P ROPERTY

Now, there's a paragraph towards the beginning of this document that leapt out at me, but first, a little context. You might recall a few years ago, Mr. Richard Hoagland broke the story that NASA had actually destroyed some of its Apollo program films and photographs. A NASA insider managed, quite literally, to save some of this. Other films and photos have curiously "gone missing" to the extent that it has fueled justifiable speculations that NASA was "hiding" something by tinkering and tampering with its archival record. With that in mind, consider this paragraph from page three:

NASA’s processes for loaning and disposing of historic personal property have improved over the past 6 decades, but a significant amount of historic personal property has been lost, misplaced, or taken by former employees and contractors due to the Agency’s lack of adequate procedures. Reclaiming this historic property has proven challenging because of the significant effort required to find the property as well as the Agency’s reluctance at times to assert an ownership claim over the items. In addition, past efforts to recover historic personal property have been thwarted by NASA’s poor record keeping and a lack of established processes for timely coordination of recovery efforts. for example, poor record
keeping contributed to the Agency losing possession of a n Apollo 11 lunar collection bag that contained lunar dust particles. In other cases, NASA’s delay or reluctance in asserting ownership of an item has led to missed opportunities to retrieve historical property. For example, a U.S. Air Force historian noticed what he thought was a NASA prototype
Lunar Rover Vehicle in a residential neighborhood in Alabama and reported his sighting to NASA, who then referred the information to the OIG . The OIG contacted the individual in possession of the rover, who expressed interest in returning the vehicle to NASA . The OIG requested NASA assert ownership of the rover and, if appropriate, make plans to accept it
as a donation; however, after waiting more than 4 months for a decision from the Agency , the individual sold the rover to a scrap metal company. NASA officials subsequently offered to buy the rover, but the scrap yard owner refused and, realizing its historical value, sold the vehicle at auction for an undisclosed sum.(Emphasis added)
Now, this may seem the most obvious thing in the world: if one is going to do space exploration, having a thoroughly thought-out archival procedure for identification, and tracking, of "space stuff" would simply seem to be common sense. Yet, the implication of this one paragraph is that in all the meticulous preparation for Apollo and the lead-ups to it - Projects Mercury and Gemini - NASA simply forgot to do so! There simply is no system. At all.
Nothing. Zilch. Nodda.
If you believe that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn for sale, cheap. No checks, no credit cards, no electronic blips or crypto-currencies. Cash and carry only.
As you might imagine, I have some high octane speculation about this, and it's regarding that statement that things were simply taken by former employees and contractors. That speculation can be stated in the form of a simple question: What if the lack of a system was deliberate? A policy designed to allow the archiving of artifacts privately, and corporately, by not having a policy? I suspect, in other words, that what we might be looking at is the ultimate system of hiding things; I've said it before, and I'll say it again: what better way to keep secrets, than to make them proprietary, to make them "intellectual property" by hiding them in corporations?
Let's crawl out further toward the end of the speculation twig: What if this non-system system was not only deliberate, but a quid pro quo with the very contractors that built all the equipment for those programs, both manned and unmanned? "You build this for us, and we'll give you special and exclusive rights to what is found." Indeed, if you followed the controversy surrounding Malin space science systems and the Mars probes of the 1990s, you'll recall that Michael Malin seemed to occupy a curious position: both as a NASA scientist involving the Mars probe (the Mars Orbiter and camera system) and  the Mars Pathfinder project, and the CEO of a company that designed and built the imaging systems. Indeed, during that episode, it was Malin's dual role that gave him and his corporation a virtual monopoly on what to photograph, and what to share with the public.
The bottom line? If you think getting a straight answer from NASA about what is "out there" is difficult, just wait until the space corporations have complete control. In that respect, perhaps the NASA study is a realization - perhaps to late - that contractors are just that, contractors, and that the government needs to reestablish control over its own space archive. Perhaps, in a sense, the study is an admission that things are being hidden, even from it, and its public space program. It's an admission, perhaps, that an essential component of any secret space program is an archive... a secret one.
See you on the flip side.
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Joseph P. Farrell

Joseph P. Farrell has a doctorate in patristics from the University of Oxford, and pursues research in physics, alternative history and science, and "strange stuff". His book The Giza DeathStar, for which the Giza Community is named, was published in the spring of 2002, and was his first venture into "alternative history and science".

6 Comments

  1. anakephalaiosis on October 26, 2018 at 8:26 pm

    Is the paperclip moon an animated entity or a dead object? Perhaps it is both, seen from different aspects.

    What is the difference between father Christmas and winter solstice? One is anticipation, the other is calculation.

    Is a child of less value, than a grown-up? Patristic exegesis is equally deified and quantified. So is the pyramid.

    TRICK OR TREAT 14
    Pawn is greenhorn,
    learning laughter amongst men,
    in beer drinking hall.



    • Tim H on October 28, 2018 at 5:21 pm

      Like your style, A. Trickster-like, you give a lot to think about.



  2. goshawks on October 26, 2018 at 6:56 pm

    https://airandspace.si.edu/research/publications/spies-and-shuttles-nasas-secret-relationships-dod-and-cia
    Spies and Shuttles: NASA’s Secret Relationships with the DoD and CIA (2015) by James E. David
    “In this real life spy saga, James David digs through newly declassified documents to ultimately reveal how NASA became a strange bedfellow to the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Central Intelligence Agency. Beginning with the establishment of NASA in 1958, he follows the agency through its growth, not only in scope but also in complexity, exposing the ties between spaceflight and the intelligence community that have historically remained unexplored.

    David tracks NASA’s early cooperation – supplying cover stories for covert missions, analyzing the Soviet space program, providing weather and other scientific data from its satellites, and monitoring missile tests – and reveals how these extensive interactions eventually devolved into NASA’s reliance on DoD for political and financial support for the Shuttle. This riveting book aptly demonstrates that the hidden connections between these entities were far greater and deeper than previously known.”

    With all the above, anyone who expects NASA to put the public over CIA & DoD interests is gullible in the extreme…



  3. marcos toledo on October 26, 2018 at 6:37 pm

    This report just confirms our worst suspicions about NASA that it’s really a front for the usual suspects who think the universe is their personal property. But then who do they really serve who or what is the real master of this agency.



  4. Robert Barricklow on October 26, 2018 at 6:31 pm

    It’s getting real bad when the pesky public want an agency on the public dime to actually be accountable. It’s all due the silly & expensive façade known as a self-governing democracy called the United States of America. Propping up this propaganda is expensive and some start actually believing it!
    As Catherine Austin Fitts says: Crime that pays; is crime that stays.
    NASA is definitely primed for an exponential growth in private space proprietary stewardship. Like the Banking cartel on Earth; deciding who’ll be rich.
    Socialize the cost$; Privatize the profit$.



  5. WalkingDead on October 26, 2018 at 4:45 pm

    Business as usual, no accountability to the taxpayers for publicly funded programs with the private corporations reaping the benefits of our tax monies.



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