Conspiracy Encyclopedia

In a television program about the hoax allegations, Fox Entertainment Group listed the deaths of ten astronauts and of two civilians related to the manned spaceflight program as having possibly been killed as part of a cover-up.

• Ted Freeman (T-38 crash, 1964)
• Elliott See and Charlie Bassett (T-38 accident, 1966)
• Virgil Ivan “Gus” Grissom (Apollo 1 fire, January 1967). His son Scott Grissom said the accident was a murder.[76] Bill Kaysing also makes this claim, p. 41
• Edward Higgins “Ed” White (Apollo 1 fire, January 1967)
• Roger Chaffee (Apollo 1 fire, January 1967)
• Edward “Ed” Givens (car accident, 1967)
• Clifton “C. C.” Williams (T-38 accident, October 1967)
• X-15 pilot Michael J. “Mike” Adams (the only X-15 pilot killed during the X-15 flight test program in November 1967 – not a NASA astronaut, but had flown X-15 above 50 miles).
• Robert Henry Lawrence, Jr., scheduled to be an Air Force Manned Orbiting Laboratory pilot, who died in a jet crash in December 1967, shortly after reporting for duty to that (later canceled) program.
• NASA worker Thomas Baron (automobile collision with train, 1967 shortly after making accusations before Congress about the cause of the Apollo 1 fire, after which he was fired). Ruled as suicide. Baron was a quality control inspector who wrote a report critical of the Apollo program and was an outspoken critic after the Apollo 1 fire. Baron and his family were killed as their car was struck by a train at a train crossing.
• Lee Gelvani said he almost convinced James Irwin, an Apollo 15 astronaut whom Gelvani referred to as an “informant,” to confess about a cover-up having occurred. Irwin was supposedly going to contact Gelvani about it; however he died of a heart attack in 1991, before any such telephone call occurred.

All but one of the astronaut deaths (Irwin’s) were directly related to their job with NASA or the Air Force. Two of the astronauts, Mike Adams and Robert Lawrence, had no connection with the civilian manned space program. Astronaut James Irwin had suffered several heart attacks in the years prior to his death. There is no independent confirmation of Gelvani’s claim that Irwin was about to come forward. All but one of the deaths occurred at least one or two years before Apollo 11 and the subsequent flights.