Bart Sibrel

Bart Winfield Sibrel (born ) is an American conspiracy theorist who has written, produced, and directed films arguing that the Apollo Moon landings between 1969 and 1972 were staged by NASA under the control of the CIA. outside the Luxe Hotel in Beverly Hills, the interaction resulted in Aldrin punching Sibrel, which brought him significant publicity. However, no criminal charges were filed against Aldrin.

Background Sibrel has been a director of TV commercials and is sometimes identified as a maker of "documentaries" with respect to his self-released Moon landing denial films, though other sources point out the personal distribution, limited release, and style and content call into question placing Sibrel's work in this genre of filmmaking (e.g., with the St. Petersburg Times and The New York Times placing the word documentary in quotation marks in some of their reports). This concern relates in part to Sibrel's record of misrepresenting his identity to the subjects he attempts to interview, notably repeated attempts involving former astronauts including Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, Alan Bean, Eugene Cernan, and Edgar Mitchell (where Sibrel posed as filmmaker associated with the History Channel). and describes the work in this way: "It mashed up moon footage with ominous shots from the Soviet Union and Vietnam, was narrated by a severe British woman and was sold on a [personal] website called MoonMovie.com."

Moon landing denial

In a July 2019 HBO interview, Sibrel stated the following main reasons that he believed the Apollo missions were a fake: Apollo's achievement with its 50-year-old technology cannot be reproduced in 2019 by any nation in the world, including the United States (only now is modern technology capable of faking the Moon landings). The shadows appearing in one of the Apollo 11 photographs are not parallel, and therefore must have been taken in a studio with multiple light sources (in fact this is consistent with reflection from the lunar surface and inconsistent with the existence of only one shadow per object). The Van Allen radiation belt that exists around the Earth does not allow humans to pass through it due to its extreme radiation (the Apollo 11 crew were within the belts for under two hours so would have been exposed to an estimated 18 rads – well within safe limits).

All the common Moon landing denial theories, including Sibrel's and others, have been repeatedly debunked. Sibrel refers, in post hoc interviews, to two confrontations with Aldrin prior to the one that resulted in his being punched.

On the day following the altercation, a statement from a lawyer for Aldrin described the "6-foot-2, 250-pound [1.88 m, 113 kg] Sibrel forc[ing] Aldrin up against a wall and refus[ing] to let him leave", thus making the case for self-defense.

Filmography

Regarding the Apollo program Year Film Director Producer Writer Run time (minutes) 2001 A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon 47 2004 Astronauts Gone Wild: An Investigation Into the Authenticity of the Moon Landings 53 Apollo 11 Monkey Business: False Photography Unedited 108 Apollo 11 Post-Flight Press Conference 83