Buzz Aldrin service. His father and father's close friend General Jimmy Doolittle attended the formal retirement ceremony. Aldrin's autobiographies "Return to Earth," (1973) and "Magnificent Desolation" (2009), recounted his struggles with clinical depression and alcoholism in the years after leaving NASA. On September 9, 2002, Aldrin was lured to a Beverly Hills hotel on the pretext of being interviewed for a Japanese children's television show on the subject of space. When he arrived, Moon landing conspiracy theorist Bart Sibrel accosted him with a film crew and demanded he swear on a Bible that the Moon landings were not faked. After a brief
Buzz Aldrin confrontation, during which Sibrel followed Aldrin despite being told to leave him alone, and called him "thief, liar and coward", the 72-year-old Aldrin punched Sibrel in the jaw, which was caught on camera by Sibrel's film crew. Aldrin stated that he had acted to defend himself and his stepdaughter. Witnesses stated that Sibrel had aggressively poked Aldrin with a Bible. Additional mitigating factors were that Sibrel sustained no visible injury and did not seek medical attention, and that Aldrin had no criminal record; the police declined to press charges against Aldrin. In 2005, while being interviewed for a documentary titled