Letter by Dr. E.H. Haimoff of "Global Science Productions" to the "My Hero" website where an account of Ilyushin’s space mission by Mr Paul Tsarinsky was recently posted.
The publication on-line of the account triggered a barrage of criticism by the usual "space experts". This is Dr. Haimoff’s reply to the critics.

Dear Sir/Madam:

We are a PBS-TV production company, and Paul Tsarinsky worked for us as an intern on our TV documentary project dealing with Ilyushin, which is how he got a hold of this story and was able to present it in such a detailed manner that few or no other people could have had any knowledge of. We have just recently finished a one-hour documentary for a new TV series that dealt with this whole issue.

We have spent five years working on this story, collecting evidence, interviewing Western reporters who were in Russia at the time and originally covered this story, tracking down Russian individuals who were involved in this event, and we have gone to Russia and interviewed Ilyushin himself. Ilyushin is still alive and well and living in Moscow, but he was very difficult to locate and get a hold of. He turned out to be a very unassuming, quiet, shy man, who lives a quiet life as a retired general but still dabbles in fighter jet designs. The story IS TRUE, and Ilyushin told us his story even though he's still scared to death to tell it on camera, but let us film him anyways. We had even interviewed a western journalist who recently had access to the Kremlin archives and saw internal memos and documents (never intended to be seen by Westerners at the time they were written in 1961) confirming the fact that Ilyushin went up into space first.

I am just disgusted with all of your doubters and "James Oberg"-type clones who have just been duped for the last 40 years, and are just expressing their 'sour grapes' over not being able to root out this story first, or hold up books and articles of 40 years of Russian propaganda and tell the world that this is the truth beyond any shadow of a doubt. Most people don't seem to understand that the whole nature of the Soviet empire was to be top secret, so it was relatively easy to cover-up such an event. In addition, our documentary also covered all of the circumstantial evidence that backed up Ilyushin's story, that looking at them in the cold light of hindsight, makes this story absolutely believable and credible, which doubters and so-called Russian space experts failed to piece together.

I would be most happy to send you or anyone else a copy of our TV documentary program to put to rest the issue of who went into space first, or we would be eager to argue this issue with anyone who may claim to know about this subject more than this production company (there obviously is no one who can even hope to claim to be anywhere near as versed in this whole matter as we are). Any person who just pooh-poohs this as a myth or a fraud, is in reality a fraud themselves who can only be considered a puppet to Russian propaganda. I am fully aware that we are having to break the image of almost 40 years of history, and every history book encyclopedia, etc. will ultimately have to be changed. However, we are confident that it will be noted in the history books that the other so-called Russian space experts will be remembered as having perpetuated the myth and fraud of Gagarin themselves, and Paul Tsarinsky will be remembered as being one of the first to turn on the lights to the truth.

We encourage the light of scrutiny and investigation into this matter and the opportunity to bring out our findings out into the open, and we will let the history books of the future decide who scurries for cover like roaches and holds up 40 year old Russian propaganda as their way of thinking that they know the truth about this issue and not being called an ignorant idiot. I very much look forward to any input you or your colleagues or so-called Russian space experts may wish to offer.