[meteorite-list] How an Intern Stole NASA's Moon Rocks

From: Pete Pete <rsvp321_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sat, 9 May 2009 06:57:48 -0400
Message-ID: <BAY141-W31A1D6320F0787D6E1B267F8650_at_phx.gbl>

 
 
Thieves.....I hate them!

----------------------------------------
> From: cynapse at charter.net
> To: meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
> Date: Fri, 8 May 2009 23:30:00 -0500
> Subject: [meteorite-list] How an Intern Stole NASA's Moon Rocks
>
> http://gizmodo.com/5242736/how-an-intern-stole-nasas-moon-rocks
>
> How an Intern Stole NASA's Moon Rocks
> By Carmel Hagen, 4:00 PM on Wed May 6 2009
>
> In 2002, rogue NASA interns stole millions of dollars in moon rocks. This is the
> untold story of how they did it.
>
> Building 31 North's white halls are empty, because it is the middle of the
> night. NASA interns Thad Roberts and Tiffany duck inside a bathroom, and tear
> off their clothing. Then they change into the contents of their duffel bags?2mm
> thick neoprene bodysuits. Like in a bad movie, the suits will help Thad and
> Tiffany avoid heat sensors armed to feel out threatening climate changes inside
> a vault. The adrenaline, their attraction, the smell of rubber suits and the
> fear of failure is almost overwhelming. After pulling on the thermally shielded
> gear, Tiffany and Thad step back into the corridor, moving toward the turnstile
> lock that guards their target: NASA's prized stash of moon rocks.
>
> ********
>
> Building 31 North, which sits on the grounds of Houston's Johnson Space Center,
> is where NASA keeps all 600 pounds of the moon rocks it has secured. They are
> the sole property of the government, collected over six lunar missions and
> protected with the dramatic intensity of national treasures. Building 31 North
> is one of the few buildings on earth constructed under Class 100 standards?it is
> a structure that can withstand 1000 years of water submersion, among other
> durability metrics that should not be tested this side of Armageddon.
>
> Breaking into it is designed to be impossible for normal people. But not harder
> than building a shuttle, or figuring out how to put a rover on Mars. The agency
> hires people with the ability to find solutions for intimidatingly large
> problems exactly like this one. In this regard, Roberts was your typical NASA
> intern. The 25-year-old was pursuing multiple degrees in Physics, Geology and
> Anthropology. But while Thad was school smart, he also has an almost
> unquencheable adrenaline-seeking side, and was consumed with a strange Excel
> spreadsheet of personal goals that read like he was trying to prove himself to
> Evel Knievel and a rocket scientist at the same time: Experience zero gravity,
> check; experience severe dehydration, check; find dinosaur tracks, no problem.
> The list was long, and as he checked off one after another, maybe Thad's ego
> began to believe anything was possible.
>
> But Thad wasn't in this alone. He was on his way to a divorce fueled by an
> affair he was having with fellow intern Tiffany Fowler. Tiffany was equally
> dynamic?a firecracker and former cheerleader who spoke French in bed and
> conducted stem cell research on NASA's behalf. Thad wanted her, so when Tiffany
> begged to hear his idea to liberate the moon rocks, he told her. And when she
> wanted to follow through with the plan, the romantic and exciting thing was to
> start hatching a plan as if it were yet another science problem at work. One
> that would could make them very rich, or ruin their lives.
>
> Soon one more curious co-op, the 19-year-old Shae Saur, had joined in on the
> heist. After months of preparation, they found themselves embarking on their
> unauthorized mission, driving for Building 31 North after dark with intel on
> every security device?and plans to get around them.
>
> When it comes to Thad's story, it is worth noting several things. I was not
> allowed to quote him directly from my interviews, and the others involved in the
> crime declined to verify his facts. This is his story as he told it to me. And
> in the time since, he's written a novel about the heist, which was "based on
> truth, but it's embellished." So, take the tale for what it's worth.
>
> The Space Center had been under 24-hour supervision since the 9/11 attacks, but
> the guards planted at each entryway are not in the habit of stopping NASA's
> carefully selected interns?who are always working?from entering after hours.
>
> The guard said, "You get a new car?"
>
> Thad replied, "No, sir. Borrowed it to help a friend move."
>
> So with a wave of a hand, Shae, Tiffany and Thad were granted access. Thad
> guided the Jeep Cherokee on the short journey past Rocket Park?an open sky
> cemetery of former rockets and spacecraft?then parked near the entryway of
> Building 31.
>
> Once they were in range, the three set about linking and looping the cameras
> inside Building 31, a system that they had previously taped between shifts of
> employees responsible for watching the cameras. It is unknown how Thad and
> company received the intel required to do such a thing, even if the idea itself
> is straight out of a heist flick. But Shae stayed in the car to monitor the
> rewired cameras, to warn Tiffany and Thad if anything went wrong. While they
> prepped, they watched for the presence of fellow late night co-workers, but Thad
> timed their arrival well and they are alone. So far so good. Thad and Tiffany
> crawled out of the Jeep, grabbed their duffel bags, and headed for the entryway.
> Getting inside the front door was easy?a former coworker had simply emailed Thad
> the code that would allow them access. Inside jobs are often like this, but NASA
> doesn't make it easy to steal moon rocks?the puzzle was only starting to get
> complicated.
>
> Inside the building, an unassuming university-like structure formed by blocks
> and filled with sterile white walls, Thad and Tiffany walked down well-lit
> hallways. The milky corridors, warmed by picture shrines to missions past, form
> the passageway between the offices of full time NASA employees, as well as the
> route to the inner sanctum of Building 31 North. They stopped to prepare.
>
> In the bathroom, when Thad and Tiffany put on their wetsuits, they also stopped
> to check their breathing apparatus. The moon rocks were in a chamber devoid of
> oxygen in order to keep the rocks from rotting by oxidation. They would have 15
> minutes of air supplied from their tanks once they entered the nitrogen-filled
> chamber, past the airlock.
>
> If the interior of Building 31 can be described as white, then the interior of
> Building 31 North can be described as bleached?immaculate and bloodless in a
> wash of round-the-clock sterility. During the day, the single lab inside the
> pearly building buzzes with the movement of white jackets occupied by some of
> the biggest brains in the world. But at night, once the scientists have passed
> through the clean room that guards their entries and exits, the lab is nothing
> but white surfaces, cold metal, glass panels and the unearthly presence of
> nitrogen tanks. Thad and Tiffany's path took them straight through clean room
> and across the empty laboratory, leaving them at the edge of a short hall that
> dead-ended at the door to the vault.
>
> Breaking into the actual vault required a complex series of codes, some of which
> were cracked using a dusting of calcite, fluorite and gypsum powder. The mix of
> the three glows under blacklight, and by paying careful attention to the
> absorption of the powder it is possible to tell which finger came down first and
> so forth. It doesn't quite make sense that Thad could use this trick to figure
> out the exact sequence for all the codes, based off such rudimentary
> information. But once Thad had eventually thrown his whole weight against the
> vault door, the two were inside.
>
> The vault itself was much like the laboratory, a big room in which core samples
> and moon rocks are encased in glass and metal, numbered by mission. But they
> hadn't the time to admire their surroundings. To stay on track?or more
> importantly, to stay alive?Thad and Tiffany had only 3 minutes to crack the
> safe, or they wouldn't have enough air to get back outside.
>
> As the seconds crept onward, Thad continued to struggle with the code, so he
> quickly moved to plan B, which involved unbolting the heavy safe from the
> ground, loading it on to a small dolly and carting it back out to the car. It
> wasn't easy, but within the remaining time allotted to them, the two managed to
> slip out of the vault, through the laboratory, down the hallways, past the
> rooms, through the doors and out of the grounds undetected?all while dragging
> over a quarter ton of rocks and metal. No small feat, and I'm unsure of how,
> even on a dolly, a man and a woman could have moved it all.
>
> NASA didn't realize the safe was gone for two days. A list of suspects was
> slowly put together. There were no clues left behind?not a fingerprint, a piece
> of hair, nothing?so the resulting set of names (which was void of that of the
> actual culprits) looked more like a compiled NASA shitlist than anything else.
>
> The samples they took were from every Apollo mission, ever. Sometime between the
> heist and its resolution, Tiffany and Thad arranged the moon rocks on a bed?and
> had sex amongst them.
>
> ********
>
> Typically, the life of NASA terrestrial moon rocks is dull. After reams of
> paperwork get approved, a small fragment of the rock makes its way out of this
> building and into the hands of a researcher, who for a period of time can coax
> the moon to give up its secrets. However, when the researcher's time is up, the
> rock must be returned to the safekeeping of its disaster-proof home, but now
> permanently compromised by the prods and chemical dousings that so rarely result
> in something worth talking about.
>
> By this point, the rock is considered too tainted for further use, but is
> subjected nonetheless to the same eager security as the rest of the contents of
> 31 North. The rocks, never to be touched again, go in the safe that Thad stole,
> which is kept inside the same vault where the untested moon rocks rest behind
> glass panels in a heavily monitored, oxygen-free climate to simulate the moon.
>
> It is worth noting that at any point in the vault, Thad or Tiffany could have
> used glasscutters to get to the untouched moon rocks behind a panel, but stole
> the much more difficult to carry safe instead. Why?
>
> There is significant frustration among NASA employees regarding the tested
> rocks. Tainted as they may be, many feel they deserve to be at least on display.
> Perhaps most irritatingly, they present an obvious answer to NASA's funding
> issues. Science's trash can be a collector's treasure, and the price on a piece
> of the moon, chemical-laden or otherwise, mirrors that of any other
> intergalactic relic. For these reasons, conversations about these stored rocks
> are as common on the grounds of the Johnson Space Center as the solving of more
> everyday astronautical problems. And NASA employees like to solve problems. To
> Thad Roberts, the problem of the underutilized-but-valuable moon rocks had a
> simple answer. He told me that if they were useless to science, he saw no harm
> in stealing them. And the fact he stole the safe, not the more easily taken
> fresh rocks, seems to back this up.
>
> On the other hand, the FBI's case files contradicts this notion:
>
> ...they also contaminated them?making them virtually useless to the
> scientific community. They also destroyed three decades worth of handwritten
> research notes by a NASA scientist that had been locked in the safe.
>
> Who do you trust less, a convicted thief, or the US government?
>
> The story, however, does not end here.
>
> ********
>
> Gordon McWhorter, a friend of Thad's who was largely unaware of the magnitude of
> the heist, had helped to find a buyer for the rocks, across the internet.
>
> Greetings.
>
> My name is Orb Robinson from Tampa, Fla. I have in my possession a rare and
> multi-karat moon rock I'm trying to find a buyer for. The laws surrounding this
> type of exchange are known, so I will be straightforward and nonchalant about
> wanting to find a private buyer. If you, or someone you know would be interested
> in such an exchange, please let me know.
>
> Thanks.
>
> A Belgian amateur mineralogist by the name of Axel Emmermann had been coveting
> moon rocks as an addition to his unusual collection. Emmermann wanted the rocks
> if the price was right, and Thad had priced a quarter pound of moon far, far
> under NASA's post-crime estimate of over $30 million. The price was so right, in
> fact, that Emmermann grew suspicious, and worried that the deal might be less
> black and white than it seemed.
>
> On July 20, 2002?exactly 33 years to the day after the day that Armstrong first
> stepped on the moon?"Emmermann" met Thad in a Florida restaurant. They chatted,
> then headed for a hotel where the official swap was to take place. They all
> stepped out of the car. The Orlando Sentinel reported that Roberts joked, "I'm
> just hoping you don't have a wire on you." He was. The person Thad thought was
> Emmermann was actually an FBI agent.
> In moments, 40 agents, 40 guns and the sound of a helicopter overhead surrounded
> them. The freeway had even been shut down in case of escape. They'd been made.
>
> Tiffany and Thad were in a holding cell together for 24 hours, but that was the
> last time they'd be together until the sentencing date.
>
> In court, Thad looked back at her from his seat in the courtroom; Tiffany looked
> down at her feet.
>
> The punishments were doled out in unfair, interesting packages. Both of the
> girls were simply handed probation, but the boys were both dealt several years.
> Gordon was served nearly as harshly as Thad, who received 100 months for his
> planning, execution of the crime (a sentence that was later reduced). As if all
> of this wasn't enough, Thad was also brought up on charges of stealing dinosaur
> fossils from a dig site in Utah. The case was folded into this one.
>
> Thad spent his time in prison doing things befitting of an ex-NASA co-op, like
> teaching his inmates about quantum physics, but also spent a good deal of time
> mourning the loss of Tiffany. On August 4th, 2008, when his sentence was
> finished, he was dismayed to learn she had moved on. By that point, however, he
> had another thing in his possession, a completed book entitled Einstein's
> Intuition: Visualizing an Eleven-Dimensional Framework of Nature, An
> Introduction to Quantum Space Theory. That says that the book covers Einstein's
> theories of truth, the rational complete form of nature, and the interplay of
> the seen and the unseen. It has yet to be published.
>
> There are rumors of unsolved mysteries. Supposedly, two significant pieces of
> NASA history went missing during the time of the crime, and have not been
> recovered: The original video tapes of the 1969 Lunar Landing, and six folders
> of more mysterious content that were supposedly stored in the safe. Thad claims
> to have never seen them.
>
> Carmel Hagen serves as editor at realtime search engine OneRiot, where she
> guzzles Bawls energy drink and chucks empty bottles at PCs. In her spare time
> she sleeps, explores San Francisco, and writes for a solid mix of urban culture,
> trendsetting and tech publications.
> ______________________________________________
> http://www.meteoritecentral.com
> Meteorite-list mailing list
> Meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
> http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
_________________________________________________________________
Create a cool, new character for your Windows Live? Messenger.
http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9656621
Received on Sat 09 May 2009 06:57:48 AM PDT