I am proud of the United States of American and I am proud of my service as a Senior Special Agent (Special Agent) with NASA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG), but I am not proud about how Cyprus has been treated by the United States and NASA over its yet to be received four-billion-year-old piece of history, the Cyprus Apollo 17 Goodwill Moon Rock.
In the 1990s as a Special Agent with NASA I led a nine agency federal task force investigation that resulted in the largest count indictment and conviction in NASA history against Omniplan Corporation and six related companies.
I investigated Lockheed Martin, Boeing, United Space Alliance and Rockwell, and my investigations netted millions of dollars in recoveries for NASA and the United States government. I investigated the Russian Mir Space station fire and collision.
I arrested astronaut and CIA impersonator Jerry Alan Whittredge who talked his way into NASA Mission Control during a mission and I led and went undercover in Operation Lunar Eclipse to recover the Honduras Goodwill Moon Rock, a moon rock that had been offered to me in my undercover capacity for 5 million dollars. When my team and I recovered it, it made history, as it was the first successful sting operation of its kind.
In 2000 I hung up my gun and handcuffs and retired from NASA and then opened up my own law firm. I subsequently began teaching undergraduate criminal justice classes for Alvin Community College and graduate criminal justice classes at the University of Phoenix (Phoenix). At Phoenix I was encouraged to draw upon my rather unique law enforcement background to make the learning process special for my students, and I came up with the Moon Rock Project, a project which I have assigned off and on for eight years to 1,000 graduate students.
The idea behind the project was to teach investigative skills by having my students track down the 135 Apollo 11 moon rocks President Nixon gave the nations of the world in 1969 and 1970 and the 135 Apollo 17 Goodwill Moon Rocks Presidents Nixon and Ford gave the nations of the world in 1973 and 1974.
My students have done wonders over the years, and have documented that most of the moon rocks the Nixon Administration gave to the nations of the world are unaccounted for, missing, stolen and destroyed, as are several the Nixon Administration gave to the states. Thanks to my students efforts three Apollo 17 Goodwill Moon Rocks given to three states were found to have been taken, and in each case it was discerned that three former governors, Governor John Vanderhoof of Colorado, Governor Arch Moore, Jr. of West Virginia and Governor Kit Bond of Missouri took them when they left office, over 35 years ago.
All three of these very valuable moon rocks have since been recovered by the states, and my graduate student Sandra Shelton actually received a reward from the governor of West Virginia for her efforts.
In 2002, I first assigned students the task of hunting down the Cyprus Apollo 17 Goodwill Moon Rock and it was then that I first learned that the Cyprus Apollo 17 Goodwill Moon Rock was missing and possibly destroyed in the 1974 coup and Turkish invasion that also resulted in the assassination of America’s ambassador to Cyprus, Roger P Davies, in August of that year. It was due to this unrest and the ransacking of the American Embassy and Cyprus government buildings that caused history to become blurry, with both Cyprus and America both believing that Cyprus had received the Cyprus Apollo 17 Goodwill Moon Rock, a rock that all but one believed was either lost, destroyed or stolen by a Cyprus citizen. The one person who knew different was the son of an American diplomat who kept it.
Then in 2003 that diplomat’s kid inquired about selling it, and for the first time NASA was informed about the truth, a truth they concealed from the public and Cyprus for six more years. In 2009 the Associated Press had picked up on my Moon Rock Project and started a worldwide search for moon rocks, and the Cyprus Mail began a search of its own for the Cyprus Apollo 17 Goodwill Moon Rock. As a result of those stories I was contacted by a friend and for the first time learned the truth behind the Cyprus Goodwill Moon Rock and decided to go public with the information.
Predicated on that publicity the diplomat’s son who had the moon rock began negotiating with NASA and did so for five months until he finally turned it over. In May 2010 I was advised that NASA OIG had recovered it. However, that is when a happy ending gets redirected. Rather than NASA doing the right thing and giving Cyprus its sovereign property it opted to keep it indefinitely, and they have now kept it for well over a year. I suspect that returning the Cyprus Goodwill Moon Rock to its rightful owner doesn’t fit the carefully written script that NASA likes to associate with its missions.
As in this case the story line would recount the many mistakes made in this, the longest journey for a moon rock. Bad script or not the Cyprus Apollo 17 Goodwill Moon Rock is the sovereign property of Cyprus, and when I teach my criminal justice classes I advise students that when you take another’s property and keep it, that is a crime.
It is time to end this last manned mission to and from the moon. It is time for the Cyprus Goodwill Moon Rock to go home.
Joseph Richard Gutheinz Jr., JD is a retired NASA OIG Senior Special Agent
