ᴅɪᴅ ᴛʜᴇ sᴏᴠɪᴇᴛ ᴜɴɪᴏɴ ᴅᴇsᴛʀᴏʏ ᴀ sᴇᴄʀᴇᴛ ᴜs ʙᴀsᴇ ᴏɴ ᴛʜᴇ ᴍᴏᴏɴ?
For more than four years, a Wikileaks document in its “Global Intelligence Archives” has sparked much controversy. This record, listed as coming from the State Department’s Office of European and Eurasian Affairs, had the title: Report that the USSR destroyed a secret US base on the Moon.
But no digital copy could be downloaded as an electronic version was not available. Now, two years after our colleagues at The Black Vault filed the first Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, the actual document has been officially released in its entirety.
Since this record was first published in the Wikileaks database and discovered by those who browse the site, much speculation has circulated about what it really meant – especially considering that there was indeed a project to nuclear bomb the Moon. -. However, now that we can see the document, it reveals that it was simply a letter in response to a 1979 investigation by then-member of the House of Representatives Samuel Devine.
According to the reply letter, sent by Douglas J. Bennett, Jr., Undersecretary for Congressional Relations with the State Department, the rumor that the Soviet Union “destroyed a secret United States base on the Moon in 1977 was not true. ». Clearly, Devine had received a letter from an elector named Ceyd Quentin Arbogast, who asked him about what he called the “Battle of the Harvest Moon.”
The FOIA request was first sent to the State Department in 2019 (case F-2020-01231). After a while, it was recommended that it be archived at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), where the document was most likely to be kept given the time period it came from. After a new case was filed (case # 21-49400), it was found, reviewed, and submitted to The Black Vault in its entirety on September 8, 2021.
