Bart Winfield Sibrel is a conspiratorialist who claims the Apollo moon landings were faked. He outlines his points in two documentaries, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon and Astronauts Gone Wild. Both are marketed through his website.

Sibrel's claims are strongly questioned by the scientific community, because he lacks particular journalistic, photographic, and scientific training .

As most astronauts refuse to grant him "interviews", he uses ambush tactics to try and get footage of them commenting on the film.

Sibrel was arrested for trespassing on Neil Armstrong's property. In 2002, he lured Buzz Aldrin to a Beverly Hills hotel under the false pretense that he was to be interviewed for a Japanese children's show on space, and accosted him, insisting that he place his hand on a Bible and swear that he walked on the moon. Aldrin punched Sibrel in the jaw: Sibrel's reaction was "Is that on tape?" Sibrel used the tape to try to convince the police that Sibrel rather than Aldrin was the victim of an assault. No charges were brought, as public opinion was overwhelmingly in Aldrin's favor. Aldrin's lawyer, Robert O'Brien, claims Sibrel has been stalking many former Apollo astronauts, including Neil Armstrong, Alan Bean, and Al Worden. Lois Aldrin , referring to an earlier encounter, added, "He said things I can't repeat. He was not a nice man, and it really upset Buzz a lot."

Jim McDade, in the Birmingham News , characterized the film as "full of falsehoods, innuendo, strident accusations, half-truths, flawed logic and premature conclusions", avers that the "only thing new and weird revealed in Sibrel's A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon is his bizarre personal interpretation that the video views of earth were shot through a small hole (template) to give the impression that Apollo 11 was not in low earth orbit", and adds "Bart has misinterpreted things that are immediately obvious to anyone who has extensively read Apollo history and documentation or anyone who has ever been inside an Apollo Command Module or accurate mockup."

Sibrel also participated in Fox TV's special, "Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon?".

External links

• A popular website dedicated to debunking Sibrel http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html
• a critique http://www.thekeyboard.org.uk/Bart%20Sibrel.htm
• Mr. Sibrel's Web site http://www.moonmovie.com
• video of the result of his confrontation with Aldrin http://moonmovie.com/video/agw2.mov
• Listed at Crank.net http://www.crank.net