C. LTPs: Lunar Transient Phenomena and the Pre-Apollo Top Secret Telescope Program
Anomalous behavior
has been observed about the Moon ever since man first trained
telescopes on it and began keeping accurate records of
observations. One of the strangest facts about the Moon are the
surface features that are there at one time, and not at another, or
which disappear slowly over time, or conversely, emerge over time.
One of the most famous instances is the case of the disappearing
crater named Linne. First observed by the German astronomer Johann
Schroeter in 1843, Linne was estimated to be some six miles in
diameter and approximately 1200 feet deep. During the course of
several years’ observations and careful lunar map-making, Schroeter
eventually saw Linne disappear almost completely.607
Other astronomers
have periodically reported seeing lights in the crater Plato, which
then disappear, only to reappear again some time later. Other such
changing phenomena, called Lunar Transient Phenomena or LTPs for
short, are inexplicable changes in the color of the Moon’s surface,
dark spots that appear and disappear, and so on.
Then came 1953 and
famed astronomer and selenologist Dr. H. P. Wilkins’s, of “domes”
that began to appear on the surface of the Moon. This was not the
only problem. Wilkins also noted
That their number had been increasing rapidly. Similar reports were made by many expert observers. Wilkins could not explain their sudden appearance. Neither could other astronomers, for the newly discovered domes were near the limits of telescopic resolution, and the blurred features prevented positive conclusions. However, something was definitely responsible for the appearance of more then 200 strange domes. 608
Indeed, as author
David Hatcher Childress points out in his book Extraterrestrial Archeology, one of Apollo 15’s
precise mission objectives was for the astronauts to “describe the
domes in the mare material and their probable origin.”609
An Example of a Lunar Dome, Visible just above the Arrow
in the Crater toward the top center of the
picture.
The observation of
these domes and other transient phenomena by such respected
astronomers and Wilkins apparently set off some sort of alarm in
the intelligence corridors of Washington DC, for the Pentagon
shortly thereafter began various programs to have the larger
telescopes, such as at Mount Palomar, photograph the surface of the
Moon in detail. These studies were classified Top Secret.610 Lunar anomalies had
become subject to national security guidelines.611 The year 1953 is
significant, of course, for being the year following the infamous
Washington DC, US Capitol UFO Flap of 1952, in which UFOs were seen
on radar by American military personnel, seen visually over the US
capital city, and chased by scrambled American Air Force fighter
jets. This activity came at the end of a major period of UFO
activity dating from just before the end of World War Two, with the
famous “Foo Fighter” incidents over Nazi Germany in late 1944, to
the period immediately surrounding the Kenneth Arnold and Roswell
episodes of 1947.
Thus, when Lunar
Transient Phenomena suggestive of an artificial origin, like
“domes,” were observed, catalogued, and reported by someone of
Wilkin’s prestige, and confirmed by other reputable astronomers
from all over the world, the American military, nerves already on
edge with endless UFO activity, was bound to sit up and take
notice. Since 1953, as author Daniel Ross observes,
The National Security Agency had been behind the official censorship of information concerning UFOs, and now it was equally necessary for them to clamp down security regarding any proof of alien operations on the Moon. By 1954, the guidelines and restrictions were set, regarding any photographic studies or announcements by the big observatories concerning the Moon.... Planetary studies of the Moon, Mars, and Venus, that had the capability of disproving the uninhabitable theories, were now a matter of national security.612
In other words, any
data or information that indicated that Earth’s closest neighbors
might be inhabited had to be suppressed. But there is more to this
agenda than just this, for it also meant that any data that
suggested planetary environments on Earth’s nearest neighbors even
remotely conducive to habitability had also to be suppressed. And
one must assume that the subsequent recommendations of the
Brookings Report to withhold any evidence of past habitation on
those planets also fell under that 1953 national security
rubric.
Against this backdrop
the strange coded language of some of the Apollo transmissions
previously cited makes sense, for it is indicative of the same
types of security protocols in place on the Apollo missions as were
present in the telescopic studies and mappings of the 1950s. And
that in turn would mean that they did indeed see “something” up
there.
Following the same
line of reasoning, it would perhaps also fall within the brief of
these intelligence agencies to suppress any evidence of an
interplanetary war that once occurred on these planets, for such
evidence would also imply the existence of a technology. And
perhaps this, ultimately, is the reason for the hidden military
presence throughout the space program.