Do you remember Watergate? Do you remember reading the book and seeing movie "All The President Men"? Do you remember how the US Government tried to suppress the information coming out of the Washington Post about the Nixon Administration's coverups and wrongdoing? Well guess what? There is another type of Watergate going on, and another kind of coverup, and its being done by NASA. They are covering up, that evidence for life on Mars was found 24 years ago. Why?

In 1976 the twin NASA Viking Lander biology experiments tested the soil of Mars numerous times in two different locations on opposite sides of the planet. The first initial reports were that Viking might have found life on Mars. Then later as the data were analyzed and reports being published, a discrepency developed - or did it? NASA's Viking biology experiment package found two things - 1) that something in the soil was consuming nutrients fed to it by the Viking biology instrument called the Labeled Release. 2) A second Viking biology instrument known as the Viking Pyrolytic Release found that in seven out of nine Martian soil tests, that organic matter was present.

So, how does this amount to a NASA Watergate or coverup? Another experiment onboard the Viking spacecraft was called the GCMS. This instrument was designed to look for organic material in the soil of Mars. It was not a biology instrument. The GCMS had many problems in pre-flight testing of organic material on Earth, and yet was sent to Mars anyway - after all, it cost $55 million dollars of tax payer money to build, and there were two of them flown to Mars. Perhaps NASA did not want to inform the public that $55 million dollars of tax payer money was wasted on a device that didn't even work properly on Earth. As the story goes, the GCMS instrument reported that there were no organic materials on Mars. NASA then embraced this data and then used it to render the verdict that no life on Mars was discovered. Some scientists agreed beforehand that if no organic material could be found on Mars with the GCMS, then life was unlikely. So rather than review the Viking biology data separately, whcih indicated the presence of microbial life, the entire Martian life issue was settled by the GCMS results alone. However, if you recall what I said about the Viking Pyrolytic Release biology experiment in the previous paragraph, you will note that it indeed found organic material in the Martian soil. So why didn't anyone at NASA check to see why there was such a discrepency between the GCMS and Pyrolytic Release data? Good question! And one that remains unanswered until now.

Why is the issue of whether Viking found microbial life on Mars over 24 years ago so important? Because no life sciences experiments have ever been sent back to Mars by NASA to find out if Viking found life or not. Intentional? Instead, NASA tells the American public that no life was found, and that no life can survive at the surface of Mars. They tell this to the media, they publish it in their reports. The Space Studies Board (SSB) of the National Research Council (NRC) even endorses all their claims. Yet, NASA, the SSB and NRC all ignore the scientifically peer reviewed journals that indicate (from the Viking mission) that microbial life may have been detected on Mars.

But why would NASA conveniently side-step information about a discovery so important as life on Mars? Wouldn't such as discovery teach us much about our own origins and settle that age old question "are we alone in the universe"? Why NASA would do this is a difficult question to answer in many respects, but it may have a lot to do with their plans to return Martian soil samples to the Earth at four year intervals begining in 2007. Perhaps NASA does not want the American public to fear the dreadful possibility of a Martian plague caused by alien viruses. All it would take is for one simple human error to crop up and the Mars Sample Return capsule might become lost in Earth's oceans, or come down in another country lkie China. Recall what recently happened to the Mars Climate Orbiter and Mars Polar Lander, both were lost due to incompetent engineering errors. In the case of Mars Sample Return, would the accidental release of organisms from Mars trigger a world war in such a scenario?

Futhermore, the 6 billion residents of planet Earth never voted to take the risk of extinction that NASA is so willing to do, so why is this project even proceeding one might ask? Who is really behind this effort? The most disturbing aspect of this whole set of circumstances, is that NASA, the SSB, and NRC are all publishing in their offical reports, that the chances of Mars having harmful life is nearly zero - but yet is not zero. Since we are talking about the possibility of planetary extinction here, why is "nearly zero risk" even being considered by NASA?

There is one more aspect to this that might have political ties. That is the fantasy NASA has been selling the public about manned mission to Mars is possible within the next 10 to 20 years. Millions of dollars are spent on this to fuel the imaginations of the "Star Trek generation" in hopes it will secure funding for future Mars missions. NASA and others like the Mars Society talk about setting up colonies on Mars as the next step for mankind. But the sad truth of it is (and NASA surely must know it), if there are Martian microbes on Mars, then a long series of studies on the surface of Mars need to be conducted there before we can ever send humans there. To do so would be to needlessly risk the lives of the astronauts being sent.

So the question here remains: If there is viable scientific evidence published in peer reviewed scientitifc literature that the Viking biology instruments found microbial life and organic material, then why is NASA so bent on returning samples of Mars to Earth? Why are they not sending any other probes with life detection experiments on them? And whats more, why are they intentionally ignoring data showing evidecne for microbes on Mars in all of the published reports concerning the safety of bringing home samples from Mars? Whenever scientific data is ignored to favor a political decision (to return samples from Mars), it is then the responsibility of the nation to ask why and demand a public inquiry.

Sincerely,