According to a number of sources, in 2019, a site known for its revelations published a video depicting completely earthly footage of the Apollo 11 lunar landing. We checked whether WikiLeaks really shared such sensational news.

Strictly speaking, the news can be divided into two. Firstly, this is an announcement of upcoming revelations. It said following:

“The WikiLeaks portal, which in recent years has been in the news mainly in connection with the arrest of Julian Assange, whose extradition the United States is demanding, has again loudly announced itself. Exclusive classified materials have made WikiLeaks famous as a source of irrefutable sensational information. This time we are talking about documents that should confirm long-standing rumors that the government of the United States of America and NASA hid the truth about the Apollo program and the moon landings. <…> The documents were allegedly given to Assange by a senior NASA official who was tired of enduring the lies that the United States had been feeding humanity for half a century. The video that circled the entire planet was actually filmed on Earth. The role of the Moon was played by the desert in Nevada. And allegedly part of the filming was done in the studio pavilion where Stanley Kubrick created his “A Space Odyssey.” But only a few people knew about it. And in July 1969, more than half a billion people watched this supposed documentary.”

Julian Assange himself was also quoted as saying: “These documents reveal the true nature of the Apollo program deception.” This is how the information was disseminated by the TV channel. "TV Center", news agency Live24, as well as portals "Around.TV", Dni24.com, "Glas.ru".

The second type of information is a sensational video itself. It is curious that in the Russian-language segment of the network, the main surge in replication of the announcement occurred in June 2021, although the video itself was actively circulating on the RuNet in 2019, shortly after Assange’s arrest (VK, "Reporter", "Peekaboo"). Which, however, did not stop him from gaining popularity again two years later (Trendymen, Planet Today).

Conspiracy theories surrounding the first landing of man on the Moon are not new, but they are rarely addressed by sources with some authority in declassifying information. A striking example of the latter is the WikiLeaks resource, whose creator Julian Assange even was considered as a real contender for the Nobel Peace Prize. However, you should not even try to find the said video or any mention of it on the official website WikiLeaks or in associated social networks. They are not there.

The sensational announcement with the “Assange quote” first appeared on the satirical news site World News Daily Report back in 2016. And, as often happens with fictional stories, he lived a separate life in quite serious media. But the video - supposedly WikiLeaks' response to Assange's arrest - was received walking on the Internet back in March 2019, before the Australian was taken into custody. At that time, the video did not yet contain the WikiLeaks logo, which subsequently did not save it from being removed from YouTube. However, in volume or otherwise The video version can still be found today.

What are these videos? First of all, cutting a variety of documentary footage, namely:

•         training astronauts for weightlessness in an airplane;
•         preparing for the launch of the Apollo 11 crew;
•         the stage of separation of the lunar module from the command Apollo 11;
•         planting a flag on the Moon by the crew of Apollo 14;
•         test ride on the lunar vehicle LRV of the Apollo 16 crew;
•         television broadcast of the flag planting by the Apollo 11 crew;
•         factory floors for the production of the Apollo command module;
•         astronaut training in the hydro laboratory;
•         the moment of launch of Apollo 14;
•         animation that was used during the television broadcast of the Apollo landing when there was no direct signal from the ship.

Moreover, all moments from the set and field filming are borrowed from the 1978 science fiction film "Capricorn-1" and documentary personnel about his filming. This film also talks about simulating a manned flight (in this case to Mars), so the footage from it is very suitable for modern conspiracy theorists. However, the resulting video has a very indirect relation to reality, and is not connected with WikiLeaks at all.