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Ken Johnston Nasa Moon Photo Manager

Ken Johnston was not the director of the Apollo photo archives as he has claimed. While Johnston handled photographs of lunar rocks and samples as part of his duties working in the Lunar Receiving Laboratory, the actual Apollo photographs were processed and stored in the photo lab in a different building. There was no dedicated "office of Apollo mission photography" and Johnston's role was to distribute lunar samples and photos to scientists, not manage or have power over the complete photo collection.

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628 views2 pages

Ken Johnston Nasa Moon Photo Manager

Ken Johnston was not the director of the Apollo photo archives as he has claimed. While Johnston handled photographs of lunar rocks and samples as part of his duties working in the Lunar Receiving Laboratory, the actual Apollo photographs were processed and stored in the photo lab in a different building. There was no dedicated "office of Apollo mission photography" and Johnston's role was to distribute lunar samples and photos to scientists, not manage or have power over the complete photo collection.

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juniormiranda
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Was Ken Johnston EVER NASA Photo Manager?

Johnston has described his task as being in charge of all Apollo mission imagery, (a
status that supposedly gave him 'insider' access to unique Apollo imagery, as well as the
power to delete imagery from the master archives. Press reports based on the book
Dark Mission publicity releases describe Johnston as 'director of Apollo photo
archives'.

Dr. Jeffrey Warner, whom some sites present as authenticating Johnstons claim, does
not actually remember it that way. In an email to me, he wrote:

"I was part of the Curator's office during all the Apollo missions. Over the years I had
different assignments. During Apollo 11 and 12 [1969-1970], among other things, I was
in charge of lunar sample photographs in the Lunar Receiving Laboratory (LRL). BRN
[JEO: Johnston's employer] technicians took photographs of lunar rocks, the
photographs were processed in the JSC photo lab, and the prints came to me. A BRN
employee technician named Marion (I disremember his last name, but it must be in the
records) was my assistant in dealing with rock photographs. I did this as part of my
duties as Associate Curator - there was no special or identified office.

For Apollo 14-17 [1971-1973], dealing with photographs became quite routine, and was
handled by the Curatorial BRN support staff... [JEO: I think Warner is referring to
Johnston and his co-workers here] "There never was an 'office of Apollo mission
photography' in the LRL [JEO Building 31].

Warner: As you know, mission photographs went directly to the JSC photo lab [JEO
Bldg 8] where they were processed and where prints were made. Mission photographs
were never curated in the LRL. The only mission photographs we had in the LRL were
copies of prints that we used to document specific rocks on the lunar surface.

JimO resumes comment: It seems that there has been major misrepresentation and
deliberate confusion regarding Mr. Johnston's duties and responsibilities regarding lunar
photographs.

He reports having received a number of sets of Apollo imagery, clearly from the office
responsible for it, in another building. Then, in 1973, once the LRL stopped receiving
new Apollo samples, it went through a major down-sizing and consolidation of records
and elimination of duplicative (and no longer useful) multi-copy material. It was under
those circumstances, apparently, that Johnston was directed to clean out the cabinets
and trash the images.

I don't know why he would have been told he couldn't keep them -- perhaps there were
regulations that material generated for NASA internal use was not for public release,
and public access to lunar photos would be through the public information office.

In any case, I've seen no indications that the LRL photo sets that Johnston seems to have
been given, and was custodian of (but not originator or controller of), were different in
any substantive way from the master files, which have always been fully accessible to
researchers (and the press) at depositories such as the Lunar Science Institute [later the
Lunar and Planetary Science Institute].

Johnstons function, an important one like all the others, was a shipping clerk for
sending out lunar samples and photographs of them to scientists all over the world.

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