Gov CRIMES

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This title is misleading. It should be: Senate Concludes the Administration Lied to Take US to War!

This report concludes without saying it, that the lies to take us to the Iraq war we're obviously known by a lot of people during the buildup of the war. Like they didn't know then but we do now. Notice how even now, this article cites postwar intelligence to confuse the issue. They had the correct intel before the war and they lied then. That's the point! The media played right along and are still doing so, in this case implying that this is about politics now, and not the law then. The senate is concluding the country was misled into a war but yet won't do anything about it other than use the lie to get votes.

Compare the senate concluding these Bush lies and doing nothing about it, to the lie that got Clinton impeached when he was check mated with the famous stained blue dress. Measure the crimes and measure the responses and try to rationalize them. You should conclude that market forces have perverted justice and that the news is just porno in disguise designed to help sell it's products.

Forward this email to everyone you know, and tell them, "We told you so, three years and three thousand dead American soldiers ago."

Senate: Hussein Wasn't Allied With Al Qaeda

Iraq rebuffed Bin Laden and wanted to capture Zarqawi, the Intelligence Committee reports, contradicting Bush's argument for invasion.

By Greg Miller, Times Staff Writer

September 9, 2006

WASHINGTON - The Senate Intelligence Committee on Friday said it had found no evidence that Saddam Hussein had ties to Al Qaeda or provided safe harbor to one of its most notorious operatives, Abu Musab Zarqawi - conclusions contradicting claims by the Bush administration before it invaded Iraq.

In a long-awaited report, the committee instead determined that the former Iraqi dictator was wary of Al Qaeda; repeatedly rebuffed requests from its leader, Osama bin Laden, for assistance; and sought to capture Zarqawi when the terrorist turned up in Baghdad.

The findings are the latest in a series of high-profile studies to dispute some of the Bush administration's key arguments for invading Iraq - mainly that the Hussein regime possessed stockpiles of banned weapons and had cultivated ties to terrorist networks. Presenting these since-discredited allegations as fact, President Bush and other high-ranking officials argued that Hussein's government posed an intolerable risk in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.

The 356-page report is certain to fuel the election-season debate over the administration's foreign policy at a time when Bush is seeking to shore up support for the war in Iraq through a series of speeches that cast the conflict as central to winning the larger war on terrorism.

Bush on Thursday again asserted that the battle in Iraq was inextricably linked to Al Qaeda, and disparaged those who considered it a "diversion" from the war on terrorism.

White House spokesman Tony Snow on Friday downplayed the significance of the report, describing it as "nothing new."

"It's kind of relitigating things that happened three years ago," Snow said. "In 2002 and 2003, members of both parties got a good look at the intelligence we had, and they came to the very same conclusions about what was going on."

In one of its main conclusions, the report said that "postwar findings indicate that Saddam Hussein was distrustful of Al Qaeda and viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime, refusing all requests from Al Qaeda to provide material or operational support."

According to the report, Hussein has told U.S. interrogators that "if he wanted to cooperate with the enemies of the U.S., he would have allied with North Korea or China." His former deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, told U.S. interrogators that "Saddam only expressed negative sentiments about Bin Laden."

The report's disclosures include a classified assessment by the CIA last year that Hussein's regime "did not have a relationship, harbor or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi and his associates."

The committee, made up of eight Republicans and seven Democrats, said U.S. intelligence agencies before Sept. 11 "accurately characterized" Bin Laden's intermittent interest in pursuing assistance from Iraq, but were largely wrong about Hussein's attitudes.

The Iraqi leader, according to the report, was so wary of the terrorist network that he "issued a general order that Iraq should not deal with Al Qaeda."

Democrats seized on the findings Friday to accuse the Bush administration of having distorted the threat Iraq posed.

In a speech on the Senate floor, Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, accused the White House of pursuing "a deceptive strategy of using intelligence reporting that the intelligence community had already warned was uncorroborated, unreliable and, in critical instances, fabricated."

The report released Friday is based largely on documents recovered from Iraqi facilities in the aftermath of the U.S. invasion in March 2003, as well as interrogations of Hussein and other Iraqi officials captured by coalition forces.

As a result, it represents the most thorough comparison to date of prewar suspicions with evidence subsequently collected. Much of the information was unavailable to U.S. intelligence agencies and policymakers before the war.

The report's publication was marked by intense political wrangling within the Republican-controlled Intelligence Committee, with two GOP members - Sens. Olympia J. Snowe of Maine and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska - breaking ranks to vote in favor of conclusions drafted by Democrats.

In a statement, Snowe cited the "obligation of our government to learn from these horrific mistakes" and complained that the intelligence panel, "once noted for its bipartisanship, has become marred by partisan feuding." Hagel was not available for comment.

The dispute put Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), the committee's chairman, in the awkward position of touting the work of his panel while urging the public to ignore some of its conclusions.

"Overall, I am disappointed that some of my colleagues have twisted the facts to reach conclusions that support other agendas," Roberts said. "It is my view that the public should not focus on the conclusions in this report, but rather on the underlying facts."

In particular, Roberts objected to findings that he said overstated the influence of the Iraqi National Congress - an exile group led by Ahmad Chalabi that had close ties to the Bush administration and has been accused of funneling prewar misinformation about Baghdad's weapons programs to U.S. intelligence agencies and news organizations.

The committee devoted 207 pages to an analysis of the INC, concluding that it had "attempted to influence U.S. policy on Iraq by providing false information through defectors."

Another section focused on the erroneous prewar estimates by the CIA and other agencies that Baghdad had stockpiles of chemical and biological munitions and was pursuing the development of nuclear arms.

But the most significant new information in the report focuses on Baghdad's alleged ties to Al Qaeda.

The CIA and other intelligence agencies were generally skeptical that Hussein had significant links to the terrorist group. But Vice President Dick Cheney and other senior administration officials have persistently highlighted isolated intelligence reports suggesting a relationship between Hussein and Bin Laden. The Senate report contradicts many of those assertions.

The report concludes, for instance, that it is true that Zarqawi was in Baghdad for about seven months in 2002. But Hussein was initially unaware of his presence in the country and later ordered his intelligence services to capture Zarqawi, according to the report.

The attempt was unsuccessful, and Zarqawi escaped to Iran. He also hid in areas of northern Iraq beyond Hussein's reach. After Hussein was overthrown, Zarqawi led the deadly insurgency against U.S. forces before he was killed by a U.S. airstrike in June.

Even as administration officials insisted on a Hussein-Al Qaeda link, they steered clear of alleging a direct role by the Iraqi strongman in the Sept. 11 attacks.

And at a news conference last month, Bush said flatly that Hussein had "nothing" to do with the assaults. Still, a CNN poll released this week found that 43% of U.S. residents said they believed Hussein was personally involved in the attacks; 52% said he was not.

The committee's report also dismisses a contention repeatedly cited by Cheney that an Iraqi intelligence agent met with Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta in Prague in April 2001. That claim has bolstered public perceptions that Iraq was somehow linked to the Sept. 11 attacks.

But postwar evidence indicates no such meeting ever occurred, the committee found, citing Atta's travel and cellphone records obtained by the FBI, as well as information from the Iraqi agent alleged to have attended the meeting.

The report casts similar doubt on assertions that Iraq had provided chemical and biological weapons training to Al Qaeda operatives, or allowed terrorist organizations to practice for attacks on aircraft at a facility south of Baghdad known as Salman Pak.

Despite reports of repeated contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda, the committee said, U.S. intelligence has been able to assemble evidence of only a single meeting - a 1995 encounter in Sudan between Bin Laden and Iraqi intelligence officer Faruq Hijazi.

In postwar debriefings, Hijazi said that Hussein had instructed him to "only listen" and not negotiate or offer support to Bin Laden. He said that Bin Laden "requested an office in Iraq, military training for his followers, Chinese sea mines and the broadcast of speeches from an anti-Saudi cleric."

Hijazi said that he "immediately rejected" virtually all of the requests, offering only to consider broadcasting anti-Saudi speeches.

Overall, the document portrays Hussein and his underlings as alarmed by U.S. accusations linking him to Al Qaeda.

At one point, the report said, Hussein was warned by the director of Iraq's intelligence service "that U.S. intelligence was attempting to fabricate connections between the [Iraqi intelligence services] and Al Qaeda" to justify an invasion.

The Senate report also offers new theories as to why Hussein's regime was unable to convince U.N. inspectors before the U.S. invasion that it no longer had stocks of illegal weapons.

A recent CIA analysis concluded that Hussein was stunned by the aggressiveness of weapons inspections after the 1991 Gulf War, and ordered the covert destruction of undeclared weapons and documents.

In the process, Hussein destroyed the very records U.N. inspectors sought a decade later when putting pressure on Iraq to account for its illicit weapons.

"The result was that Iraq was unable to provide proof when it tried at a later time to establish compliance," the report said, citing the CIA study.

greg.miller@latimes.com

Times staff writer Maura Reynolds contributed to this report.

Begin text of infobox

Prewar claims versus report findings

A report by the Senate Intelligence Committee found no evidence connecting Iraq to weapons of mass destruction and Al Qaeda:

On connections between Iraq and terrorists

"We clearly know that there were in the past and have been contacts between senior Iraqi officials and members of Al Qaeda going back for actually quite a long time."

Condoleezza Rice, Sept. 25, 2002

"We are especially concerned about Iraq because of the developments we see with respect to [Hussein's] weapons of mass destruction, because he has in the past, for example, had a relationship with terrorist organizations, has provided sanctuary in Iraq for terrorist organizations of various kinds."

Vice President Dick Cheney, Sept. 9, 2002

Committee finding:

· "According to debriefs of multiple detainees - including Saddam Hussein and former Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz - and captured documents, Saddam did not trust Al Qaeda or any other radical Islamist group and did not want to cooperate with them. Hussein reportedly believed, however, that Al Qaeda was an effective organization because of its ability to successfully attack U.S. interests."

On Iraq's desire and ability to acquire nuclear weapons

"Saddam Hussein promised the U.N. that he would destroy and cease further development of weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles, and that he would submit to unrestricted inspections. He has flatly broken these pledges, producing chemical and biological weapons, aggressively pursuing a nuclear weapons program and working to develop long-range ballistic missiles."

Vice President Dick Cheney, Sept. 27, 2002

Committee findings:

· "Postwar findings do not support the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) judgment that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. Information obtained after the war supports the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research's (INR) assessment in the NIE that the intelligence community lacked persuasive evidence that Baghdad had launched a coherent effort to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program."

· "Postwar findings do not support the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) assessment that 'Iraq has biological weapons' and that 'All key aspects of Iraq's offensive biological weapons (BW) program are larger and more advanced that before the Gulf War.'

· "The ISG [Iraq Survey Group] uncovered no evidence indicating that Iraq maintained a stockpile of chemical weapons or had been producing chemical weapons. Since the spring of 2003, coalition forces have discovered approximately 500 filled and unfilled degraded chemical munitions. All of the munitions appear to be pre-1991 CW [chemical weapons] and not part of an active weapons stockpile. Postwar inspections of the sites suspected of having a CW role revealed that they were likely used for the production of non-CW dual-use materials, and had a limited capability to restart the manufacture of CW."

On Iraq developing unmanned aerial vehicles for delivering weapons of mass destruction

"We know that he has been working hard on developing a means to disseminate those weapons. We have evidence that he has been looking at aerial vehicles."

Then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, Sept. 8, 2002

Committee finding:

· "Postwar findings do not support the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) assessments that Iraq had a developmental program for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) 'probably intended to deliver biological agents' or that an effort to procure U.S. mapping software 'strongly suggests that Iraq is investigating the use of these UAVs for missions targeting the United States.' Postwar findings support the view of the Air Force, joined by the DIA [Defense Intelligence Agency] and the Army, in an NIE published in January 2003, that Iraq's UAVs were primarily intended for reconnaissance."

Sources: U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Times research

Los Angeles times

________________________________________________________________

Posted on Fri, Sep. 08, 2006

U.S. count of Baghdad deaths excludes car bombs, mortar attacks

By Mark Brunswick and Zaineb Obeid

McClatchy Newspapers

BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. officials, seeking a way to measure the results of a program aimed at decreasing violence in Baghdad, aren't counting scores of dead killed in car bombings and mortar attacks as victims of the country's sectarian violence.

In a distinction previously undisclosed, U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Barry Johnson said Friday that the United States is including in its tabulations of sectarian violence only deaths of individuals killed in drive-by shootings or by torture and execution.

That has allowed U.S. officials to boast that the number of deaths from sectarian violence in Baghdad declined by more than 52 percent in August over July.

But it eliminates from tabulation huge numbers of people whose deaths are certainly part of the ongoing conflict between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. Not included, for example, are scores of people who died in a highly coordinated bombing that leveled an entire apartment building in eastern Baghdad, a stronghold of rebel Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Johnson declined to provide an actual number for the U.S. tally of August deaths or for July, when the Baghdad city morgue counted a record 1,855 violent deaths.

Violent deaths for August, a morgue official told McClatchy Newspapers on Friday, totaled 1,526, a 17.7 percent decline from July and about the same as died violently in June.

The dispute is an important one. With Baghdad violence reaching record levels in July, U.S. commanders warned that the country was tipping toward civil war. They then ordered 8,000 U.S. troops and 3,000 Iraqis to conduct house-by-house searches of Baghdad's neighborhoods in an effort to root out insurgent gunmen and militia death squads in Operation Together Forward.

The program, which began in earnest Aug. 7, included bringing in thousands of American troops from other parts of Iraq in what was seen by many as a last-ditch effort to head off a civil war that many Iraqis say has already begun.

Within weeks of the kickoff of the Baghdad security plan, the U.S. military's top spokesman, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell, boasted that the murder rate in Baghdad had fallen by 46 percent and attributed most of the fall to the new security sweeps.

On Thursday, Caldwell revised the figures, posting a statement on the website of the Multi-National Force-Iraq that the murder rate had dropped even more - by 52 percent from July.

That claim was immediately contradicted by the morgue figures, which trickled out in accounts by various news organizations citing unnamed officials.

Johnson said he couldn't comment on morgue figures and declined to release the raw numbers on which Caldwell's claim was based. He said the numbers were classified and that releasing them might help "our enemy" adjust their tactics.

"We attempt to strike the right balance, being as open and transparent as possible without providing information that places our troops or Iraqi civilians at undo risk by the enemy adjusting their tactics for greater impact," he said, in explaining the decision not to release the figures.

Johnson said the numbers more accurately reflect the impact of Operation Together Forward's mission: targeting operations of shadowy sectarian death squads, who often use drive-by shootings, torture and executions as tactics for terror, rather than suicide bombings or rocket or mortar attacks.

He said the figures quoted by Caldwell reflect a "cautious optimism" that the situation is improving in Iraq.

But whether the violence is truly improving is far from clear. The morgue numbers made public this week reflect only deaths in Baghdad and figures compiled by the Ministry of Health for August violent deaths throughout Iraq won't be released until later this month.

Car bombs daily claim tens of victims, and tit-for-tat exchanges of mortar fire are nightly occurrences. Every morning bodies are discovered, many with their hands and feet bound.

The distinction in the way those people die is lost on victims' relatives, some of whom suggest the true numbers are higher.

"If you want the truth, even when we hear or see the scenes of explosions, assassinations, or number of dead on TV, we don't really care anymore, our feelings are dead," said Dhiya Ahmed, whose 17-year-old nephew was killed on Aug. 11. The young man was walking with a friend near his house when gunmen approached and shot them both dead.

"The numbers are not quite true," said Ahmed. "I bet the actual number is much more."

The family's tragedy has been intense. Last year the victim's father was killed in a similar fashion.

Even while touting the successes, Caldwell on Thursday warned on the coalition Web site about possible increases in violence from insurgent and terrorist attacks that he said would be used to divert attention from the Baghdad security initiative.

"It should not be a surprise if we witness brief up ticks in violence in the near future," he wrote.

Government leaders seem to be bracing for more bodies. A meeting was held recently between officials in the Health Ministry to talk about importing refrigerators for the morgue. The idea was to set them up in an empty building nearby.

But the discussion quickly broke down over what kind of freezers they would use: ones with sliding doors or a single large freezing room. More talks are scheduled.

In Baghdad on Friday, three civilians were killed and three others wounded when a bomb targeting the convoy of the Karrada neighborhood police commander exploded. Three police officers also were wounded.

Police also discovered 14 bodies in a western portion of the city.

Drew Brown in Washington contributed to this report.

__________________________________________________________

rape (rp)

1. The crime of forcing another person to submit to sex acts, especially sexual intercourse.

2. The act of seizing and carrying off by force; abduction.

3. Abusive or improper treatment; violation: a rape of justice.

Just because you have a lawyer that tells you rape is legal, doesn't mean that it is. When you say rape is no longer your policy and you will no longer rape, you still broke the law. Just because you pay puppet news people to convince the victims and witnesses that this is OK, doesn't mean you have to believe them. You should not believe them, you should think for yourself.

Care to rebut?

Posted on Wed, Sep. 06, 2006

Pentagon spells out new rules for questioning detainees

By Drew Brown

McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon issued a new interrogation manual Wednesday that specifically bans some techniques that led to abuse scandals in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The banned techniques include forcing detainees to strip naked, perform sexual acts or pose in a sexual manner, according to Lt. Gen. John F. Kimmons, the Army's deputy chief of staff for intelligence. Interrogators also may not place hoods or sacks over detainees' heads, put duct tape over their eyes, or beat, shock with electricity or burn detainees.

The manual also bans water-boarding, which simulates the sensation of drowning, and prohibits interrogators from exposing detainees to cold temperatures or to treatment that can lead to heat injuries. Mock executions also are prohibited, and detainees can't be deprived of food, water and medical care. Dogs can't be used in any aspect of interrogations, Kimmons said.

"We have used straightforward language in the field manual for use by soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines," Kimmons said, briefing reporters at the Pentagon. "It is not written for lawyers."

The new manual, drafted in response to concerns that the old manual, written in 1992, dealt only with prisoners taken in a conventional war, applies only to prisoners in U.S. military custody. Bush administration officials declined to answer what rules guide CIA officers and others who might interrogate prisoners. A CIA spokesman who declined to be named said only that there are no prisoners currently in CIA custody.

The new manual was scheduled for release last spring, but was delayed as officials battled over whether to keep some authorized techniques secret.

In the end, however, the Pentagon made the entire manual public. "We . . . felt that even classified techniques, once you use them on the battlefield over time, become increasingly known to your enemies, some of whom are going to be released in due course," Kimmons said. "And so, on balance, in consultation with our combatant commanders, we decided to go this route. We're very comfortable with it; so are our combatant commanders."

The manual authorizes 18 interrogation techniques, 16 of which were permitted under the 1992 manual, plus two new ones, Kimmons said. The new ones are "Mutt and Jeff," or good cop/bad cop, and "false flag," in which an interrogator can pose as someone other than an American to gain information.

The manual also includes a technique called "separation," which can be used only on "unlawful enemy combatants" - the term the Bush administration uses to describe captured terror suspects. The technique allows interrogators to keep terror suspects apart from each other so they can't coordinate their stories.

"It's for the same reason that police keep murder suspects separated while they're questioning them, although this is within an interrogation context," Kimmons said.

The new manual's release was accompanied by a seven-page Defense Department directive that prohibits a long list of acts: "cruel, inhumane treatment or punishment; outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment; murder, torture, corporal punishment, mutilation, the taking of hostages, collective punishment, execution without proper trial or authority; threats or acts of violence, including rape or forced prostitution; assault and theft, public curiosity, bodily injury and reprisals."

Under the directive, prisoners can't be subjected to medical or scientific experiments or sensory deprivation. The directive was signed Tuesday by Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England.

Several of the directive's requirements appeared designed to address problems that surfaced during investigations into prison practices in Iraq, where the Central Intelligence Agency was alleged to have hidden "ghost detainees" from Red Cross officials during their visits to Abu Ghraib and other prisons. The new directive requires that all prisoners be registered and allowed access to Red Cross representatives.

The directive also orders Defense Department personnel to report possible or suspected mistreatment of prisoners.

Human rights groups and Bush administration critics welcomed the new interrogation rules.

"If the administration had listened to its military lawyers several years ago, much of the damage done to our credibility caused by detainee mistreatment in Afghanistan, Guantanamo and at Abu Ghraib might have been avoided," said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee. He said the guidelines outlined in the field manual would also help ensure proper treatment of U.S. troops if they're taken prisoner.

Hina Shamsi, a lawyer with Human Rights First, said the new rules on interrogation bring "some real welcome specificity" to detainee treatment, though she expressed concern about the manual's authorization of separation for terror suspects.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

As our nation's media attempts to provoke your emotions five years later, they will completely ignore the movie made by American college kids that is playing in a dozen other countries that implies 911 was an inside job. Be sure to consider the deeds by our government that have been justified solely by this attack.

Watch the movie:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7866929448192753501&hl=en

Watch the debate:

http://democracynow.org/streampage.pl

--------------------

Also of note, here are the international television stations which will be broadcasting LC2E on or near 9/11:

Planete France,

BNN Holland and Zembla Holland

VRT Belgium

TV2 Norway

TV4 Fakta Sweden

Canal Plus Poland

History Channel Australia

RTP Portugal

Exa TV Mexico

Noga TV Israel

Geo TV Pakistan

MBC Middle East

___________________________________________________________

Maybe you missed this story last month that should've been reported in the eighties. They say they've lost the original master tapes that were recorded from three different locations. All the originals are gone and they only have crappy copies. That's less likely than losing Kennedy's brain!

Not to mention the next moon landing is supposedly being planned and they say it's going to take 18 years and billions of dollars. And you believe they did this with 1960's technology. You need to re-evaluate your reality. They've been lying to us all since before you were born! - CC

------------My original note to self from August.

Interesting that this is news now. They would've transfered this 'hi res' version decades ago, if they had it. Note there's no explanation of how they have stills but no tapes, hundreds of missing tapes from different cities. They only copied the lo res tapes and not the good ones . There's so many implausible excuses offered in this story you know they're lying. And nobody is responsible. They just didn't keep good enough records. It's so far fetched it's shameful, how embarrassing for those who must maintain the lie. Even suggesting they taped over them to save money. Amazing! And notice the Russians can't find their tapes either. Ha ha! People just weren't as concerned back then I guess they would like everybody to believe.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Sleuths search for missing Apollo tapes

by Leonard David

SPACE.com Senior Space Writer

posted: August 14, 2006

Back in July 1969, the first moonwalks by Apollo 11's Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin are frozen forever moments in the history books. But it turns out that millions of riveted spectators back on Earth were on the receiving end of substantially degraded television showing the epic event.

The highest-quality television signal from Apollo 11's touchdown zone in the moon's Sea of Tranquility - from an antenna mounted atop the Eagle lunar lander - was recorded on telemetry tapes at three tracking stations on Earth: Goldstone in California and Honeysuckle Creek and Parkes in Australia.

Scads of the tapes were produced - and now a search is on to locate them. And if recovered and given a 21st century digital makeover, they could yield a far sharper view of that momentous day, compared to what was broadcast around the globe.

But Apollo 11 is a memory rewind - now over 37 years old. Nobody is quite sure just how much longer the original slow-scan tapes will last... that is, if they haven't already been erased.

Handled and archived

"I would simply like to clarify that the tapes are not lost as such, which implies they were badly handled, misplaced and are now gone forever. That is not the case," explained John Sarkissian, operations scientist at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization's (CSIRO) Parkes Radio Observatory in Parkes, Australia.

Sarkissian said the tapes were appropriately handled and archived in the mid 1970's after the hectic activity of the Apollo lunar landing era was over. "We are confident that they are stored at [NASA's] Goddard Space Flight Center [in Greenbelt, Maryland]... we just don't know where precisely," he told SPACE.com. It is important to note, Sarkissian added, that there is no inference of wrong-doing, incompetence or negligence on the part of NASA or its employees.

"The archiving of the tapes was simply a lower priority during the Apollo era. It should be remembered, that at the time, NASA was totally focused on meeting its goal of putting a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth. No sooner had they done that, than they had to repeat it again a few months later, and then do it again, repeating it for a total of seven lunar landing missions... including Apollo 13," Sarkissian pointed out.

Making it tough to track down the whereabouts of the data, many of those involved in the archiving of the tapes have since moved on, retired or passed away, "taking their corporate memory of where the tapes are with them," Sarkissian said.

It is important not to exaggerate the quality of the images being sought, Sarkissian added. "The SSTV was not like modern high definition TV and nor was it even equal in quality to the normal broadcast TV we are accustomed to viewing," he said.

Still, the SSTV was better than the scan-converted images that were broadcast at the time - which is the only version currently available, Sarkissian concluded.

Paper trail

A small independent group of Australian and U.S. Apollo tracking station veterans have embarked on a new search for the Apollo 11 tapes.

The group is hot on a cold paper trail regarding the location of the data. They're also on the lookout for anyone involved in the management, disposition and storage of the Apollo tapes at NASA Goddard - or any other NASA or NASA-utilized facility where they may have been shipped.

Technical spokesman for the group is Bill Wood, a retired Apollo tracking station engineer in Barstow, California. He supported all of the Apollo missions at Goldstone - part of NASA's worldwide network of deep space antennas run by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.

Wood hasn't been happy of late with some reports saying that they are looking for "missing Apollo videotapes" - as well as tabloid claims that NASA had somehow bungled a task.

"That's the furthest thing from the truth," Wood told SPACE.com. "There are no lost Apollo video tapes," he emphasized.

Never-before-seen view

For the last three or four years, the private group has been searching for special raw data recordings that contain unconverted slow-scan television (SSTV), recorded as a backup in case of an equipment glitch or a video circuit outage during the historic moon strolls of Armstrong and Aldrin.

Since there were no problems converting the slow-scan signals to National Television System Committee video standards, there was no need to use the backup telemetry recordings. Hundreds of boxes of Apollo-era magnetic tapes were subsequently shipped to NASA Goddard, later to be likely turned over to the National Record Center in Suitland, Maryland, Wood said.

Most of the Apollo tapes were later returned to NASA Goddard, including the raw Apollo 11 SSTV tapes. However, what happened to the tapes is not known. Because the SSTV was of superior quality to the scan-converted pictures broadcast out to the world at large, the hope is to recover them and give the public a higher-quality, never-before-seen view of the first human expedition sent to the Moon. Along with video, vintage Apollo 11 telemetry is also being sought.

Wood said he doubts the tapes have been trashed. On the other hand, there's a 50/50 chance they were recycled.

"Since telemetry recording tapes back then cost $90 to $100 a reel... well, that was back when $100 dollars was $100 dollars," Wood said. A magnetic rehab center at Goddard, he said, may have wiped the tapes clean - a budget-saving measure for reuse of the recording tapes.

"What we're hoping, though, is that somebody, maybe, might have saved some of them," Wood added. "We want to interest people to see something better than it happened at the time."

Range of formats

Meanwhile, at the Goddard Space Flight Center, the search is on.

"Hopefully, if we can find one set of tapes we can find them all," said Dave Williams of the National Space Science Data Center (NSSDC) at the NASA field center. "We still have some possibilities we're looking into, so I'd say the tapes might be found and depending on how they have been stored may well be readable," he told SPACE.com.

Williams and several colleagues are engaged in the Lunar Data Project - a different effort to take relevant, scientifically important Apollo data archived at NSSDC - analog data, microfilm, microfiche, photographic film, or hard copy documents and digitize that range of formats.

If the data were more readily available and usable in today's data rich and readable world, restoring Apollo data could provide a wealth of information for scientific studies and planning for future lunar exploration.

Migration of data

"There's a lot of old data that we don't seem to have," suggested Philip Stooke, Associate Professor at the University of Western Ontario's Department of Geography in London, Ontario, Canada. "I think more Apollo-era science data is missing too."

Hard at work on an atlas of lunar exploration, Stooke told SPACE.com that he was personally looking for images of the Moon taken by Explorer 49, a NASA radio astronomy mission that settled into lunar orbit in 1973. The probe carried a panoramic camera to monitor the deployment of its booms.

"It seems that the science data were preserved... but not those images," Stooke said.

The entire lunar data hide and seek saga that's alive and well here in the U.S. is being repeated in Russia too. "I work with people in Moscow who are trying to recover old lunar data," Stooke added.

The worry that old Apollo tapes can deteriorate is a valid concern, Stooke said. "Migration of data to new media is essential in digital archiving... and it's an ongoing problem."

What about the CD-ROMs of today? Are they going to be readable in 50 years?

"Don't count on it," Stooke responded.

For details regarding the search for the Apollo 11 Slow- Scan Television Tapes, cast your eyes on these sites:

· Apollo 11 Tape Search Flyer

· Apollo 11 SSTV Search Report

---------------------------------

Aug 15, 2006 6:15 pm US/Eastern

NASA: Original Moon Landing Tapes Lost

First Moonwalk Seen By Millions On TV

Took Place July 20, 1969

(CBS4 News) WASHINGTON NASA, we have a problem. A historic film, depicting man's first steps on the Moon, has been lost, including the original recording of astronaut Neil Armstrong's famous "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind".

According to a NASA spokesman, the famous moonwalk seen by millions of viewers on July 20, 1969, is among the transmissions that NASA has had trouble finding for the last year.

Spokesman Grey Hautaluoma says they've been searching for the past year for the original, high-quality recording of the Apollo 11 Moon landing but they simply haven't turned up.

Keith Cowing, editor of the website NASA Watch, tells U.K. newspaper, The Telegraph. "It's not malicious or intentional..." For all we know, it's sitting somewhere in a nice, cool dry place, exactly where it should be, but someone's mislabeled a routing slip. I can't imagine they'd throw this stuff out."

The tapes also contain data about the health of the astronauts and the condition of the spacecraft.

In all, some 700 boxes of transmissions from the Apollo lunar missions are missing, according to NASA.

"I wouldn't say we're worried - we've got all the data. Everything on the tapes we have in one form or another," Hautaluoma said.

NASA has retained copies of the television broadcasts and offers several clips on its website.

But those images are of lower quality than the originals stored on the missing magnetic tapes.

Because NASA's equipment was not compatible with TV technology of the day, the original transmissions had to be displayed on a monitor and re-shot by a TV camera for broadcast.

Hautaluoma said it was possible the tapes would be unplayable even if they were found, because they had degraded significantly over the years - a problem common to magnetic tape and other types of recordable media.

The material was held by the National Archives but returned to NASA sometime in the late 1970s, he said.

"We're looking for paperwork to see where they last were," he said.

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NASA Moon Landing Films Missing

Aug 14th - 6:29am

The original film footage of astronaut Neil Armstrong's first steps on the moon, one of the most important artifacts of the 20th century, has been lost.

The television broadcast seen by about 600 million people in July 1969 is preserved for posterity, but the original tapes from which the footage was taken have been mislaid, most likely in NASA's vast archives at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, reports the London Daily Telegraph.

Rather than prizing the tapes as vital recordings, NASA simply filed them away. As personnel retired or died, the location of the tapes was forgotten. Such problems are not unique to NASA, according to the tabloid.

"I just think this is what happens when you have a large government bureaucracy that functions for decade after decade," said Keith Cowing, editor of the Web site NASAWatch.com. "It's not malicious or intentional, but I think it's unfortunate that NASA doesn't have maybe just one more person whose job it is to look back at its history."

A spokesman for the space agency said: "We're trying to track them down through the paperwork created at the time. But it's 35 years ago, so it's a challenge."

Mr. Cowing said: "For all we know, it's sitting somewhere in a nice, cool dry place, exactly where it should be, but someone's mislabeled a routing slip. I can't imagine they'd throw this stuff out."

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Information from:

The London Daily Telegraph - One giant cock-up for mankind