Showing posts with label Jaime Maussan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jaime Maussan. Show all posts

Monday, October 2, 2017

Hocus Pocus: The Roswell Slides Return


A mainstream media piece by The Guardian from the UK is worth a look for it's portrayal of one of ufology's biggest embarrassments. The Curious Case Of The Alien In The Photo And A Mystery That Took Years To SolveWritten by Les Carpenter, a sports journalist, it sympathetically presents the Roswell Slides story from the POV of the promoter of the events, Adam Dew. There, Dew finally names and discloses the role of his silent partner, Joseph Beason. I'm not sure just why the story was newsworthy at this late date, but it does contain a few new bits, chiefly quotes from the perpetrators, and is the first interview with Dew since the events.  It's a nice piece, but there are a few things that need to be clarified, and a few errors that need to be corrected. 
Slidebox Media: Joseph Beason & Adam Dew

I was struck by the lack citation of sources in the article, or links to the source material, but the narrative is more accurate than not. The coverage of the deblurring of the Slides is shortchanged and there’s a only a brief mention of the Roswell Slides Research Group and Nab Lator (who is called Neb). Instead, the story is all about how Adam Dew was drawn into the circus, and how two Roswell ufologists let belief lead their investigation.


Hocus Pocus?

The ufologists in the story, Tom Carey and Donald Schmitt, look bad, making unsubstantiated accusations that they were victims. “It was a very sophisticated hoax,” Carey says. “Dew manipulated the slides. The one clue we couldn’t figure out was the placard, but they played hocus pocus with the placard. We were given something that had been altered.” The story says, “Humiliated, Carey and Schmitt apologized to the Roswell Slides debunkers.” No. RSRG member Tim Printy responded on Facebook, saying, 
“It states that Carey and Schmitt apologized to the Roswell slides debunkers. I don't remember that apology. If it was given, it was some vague comment they made with little meaning. I also see that Carey and Schmitt still believe that the slides were altered by Dew. This is a lie and they are just fooling themselves. Rudiak claimed he could deblur his placard and we know that we could deblur Bragalia's. The problem with Carey and Schmitt is they believe they were too smart to not figure it out. Instead, they were just stupid UFOlogists stuck in the will to believe in the myth they created.”
Printy is correct. Carey and Schmitt’s claim that they received deceptive, manipulated versions of the scans is false. On the April 20, 2015, KGRA show, Fade to Black, a few weeks before BeWitness, Tom Carey said he was sent a high resolution version of the two Slides, and he describes both pictures in detail, the placard and the man and woman seen behind the body. (In other words, the museum setting was pictured.)

Video: "Ep. 241 FADE to BLACK Jimmy Church w/ Tom Carey, UFO Roswell Slides LIVE on air" 
Carey, on receiving the Slides by email: 131:30, describing Slides images: 137 and 140.



Portions of those same scans were sent to David Rudiak and Anthony Bragalia in an attempt to read the placard. After the RSRG deblurred the placard, those scans were made public, and they could be deblurred and read just as easily. The charges of digital manipulation of the slides against Dew and Beason are false. However Dew pleads admits to exploitation being "guilty of not discouraging the talk [of it being alien]. It was good for the project.”

 Accusations, Trolls and Rewriting History

Beason's accusations of the RSRG faking the deblurring with Photoshop. 


The story confirms that after the deblurring, it was Beason who the RSRG was corresponding with, not Dew and Beason who posted at Slidebox Media the RSRG were "internet UFO Trolls" hoaxing the placard. It was later toned down, and proven to be false, but no apology from Beason was offered. The Slidebox site, http://www.slideboxmedia.com, is now dead, but the YouTube account remains. It's reported that "Beason has moved on."

BeWitness, Dew's clip of the Nov. 2013 meeting in Chicago
The most glaring distortion in the Guardian itself is the claim that the show was a last-minute 2015 decision made as a last resort: 
"By early 2015, Beason and Dew knew they had no choice but to reveal the slides. The pressure to do so was extreme and Dew needed money to fund his documentary... The only appealing proposal came from Jamie Maussan, an investigative journalist based in Mexico City."
This is inaccurate. At BeWitness, Dew showed a clip documenting how the deal  deal was brokered in November 2013, with Carey, Schmitt and Maussan traveling to Chicago for the signing the partnership arrangement.

Old Dogs, Old Tricks

The best quote in the Guardian story is how the investigation went off the rails. The pictures looked alien to them, and after pursuing details on Hilda Blair Ray's past, Dew said, “You start to fill in the blanks." Those blanks were filled with wishful thinking instead of evidence.

BeWitness promoter Jaime Maussan didn't get much coverage in the article, and it’s almost sad that "World-famous researcher" Anthony Bragalia who dreamed up much of the Slides narrative was not even mentioned.
If at first you don't succeed...
Jaime Maussan has never given up on the Slides and continues to promote them, and has since used some of the same “experts” to promote a series of Peruvian mummies as alien bodies. The enterprise was was heavily promoted and exploited by the subscription-based video service Gaia, that bills itself as “a member-supported conscious media company.” For further details, see The Atlantic's article, The Racism Behind Alien Mummy Hoaxes by Christopher Heaney, Aug. 1, 2017

The new Guardian piece closes by saying that Dew intends to complete his documentary, Kodachrome, but otherwise life goes on. Of Carey and Schmitt, Dew says, “They got their hopes up,” but “will never get the answers they are looking for.”


There’s an interesting question that may not have been asked. Let’s assume Beason was sincere in approaching Carey and Schmitt,  asking “I want you to help verify” the Slides. If so, doesn’t  Slidebox Media, LLC have a case against Carey and Schmitt for failure to perform the contracted duty? None of the evidence produced in support of the Slides as alien turned out to be accurate.

- - -



For an insider's look of the story of the investigation and exposure of the BeWitness fiasco, there's my  essay on the Roswell Slides Research Group in UFOs: Reframing the Debate, "What's Wrong With This Picture?"Further details on that in a previous article, UFOs: Reframing the Roswell Slides Fiasco.

Friday, October 16, 2015

The Roswell Slides Return: a Book and a Conference

Jaime Maussan was an honored guest at the annual MUFON Symposium. There was considerable controversy about his inclusion, and in June he was invited on their KGRA program with Erica Lukes to deflect some of the criticism and to defend BeWitness and the Roswell Slides.




MUFON Executive director,  Jan Harzan on how and why Maussan was welcome:
Another long time UFO Speaker and Journalist is Jaime Maussan fresh from the “Roswell Slide” controversy. Several people have asked me why he is speaking at the MUFON Symposium and my answer is pretty simple. I invited him at the beginning of 2015, well before the slide discussion, and my reason for doing so is because he has some of the best UFO video footage I have ever seen. Being involved in UFOs over the past 40 years, and owning his own television station and TV show in Mexico, Jaime has tens of thousands of people from all over the world sending him their UFO videos. He has narrowed these down to the 100 best videos you will ever see in this field.  I have had the good fortune to see his presentation twice in the past year, and I can tell you it is quite impressive. So much so that I am looking forward to seeing it a third time! I might also add that right after Jaime speaks on Sunday... we hold a Panel on “Making Ufology Respectable” with the idea being that if there was ever an event or breakthrough in Ufology how would or should we as Ufologists go about announcing it to the world. He proposed using the “Roswell Slide” experience as an example to learn from. 
Harzan and Maussan at the 2015 MUFON Symposium

Leading up to the Symposium, Maussan had been silent for months on the Slides, but during his presentation of UFO video clips a segment was devoted to the Roswell Slides. He claims that the body in the Slides is not the body pictured and described in the National Park Service documents, or the placard identifying it. Here's video of the presentation:

The Roswell Slides portion begins at 47:59

Making Ufology Respectable

Afterwards, there was the panel, “Making Ufology Respectable." From the advertisement:

With Stanton Friedman, Robert Wood, Jaime Maussan, Marc d'Antonio, and Cheryl Jones. This panel asks the question what IF the UFO community were presented with the smoking gun evidence that would end the debate on UFOs permanently. How should we go about substantiating that evidence and presenting it to the scientific community and general public in a credible way that ends the debate on UFOs permanently? Is this even possible? Would anyone listen? The "Roswell Slide" announcement will be used as one example and lessons learned discussed about what went right and what went wrong, and how can we do even better next time.
“Making Ufology Respectable"

Lee Spiegel joined the panel, and provided the only criticism of the Slides fiasco. He said that he avoided the story, and that if you are trying to present a smoking gun, don't hype it before you have finished your investigation. 
MC John Greenewald seemed to give him a pass, saying that Maussan had brought a lot of attention to ufology, and that he shouldn't be blamed for trying.

Most of the other discussion was hypothetical, panelists saying what kind of evidence they would try to present as proof or how they'd do it. Maussan 
asserted that he had done tried to do everything right, but it was rejected by critics and disbelieved since it happened in Mexico instead of the USA. He said the case is not closed and that experts in Mexico are still studying the evidence. Maussan left he panel early, and no solid conclusion was reached on how to make 
Ufology respectable.



Maussan heavily advertises his participation in the MUFON Symposium, using it to enhance his status. He offers a replay of it to his paid subscribers at Tercer Milenio

It's not over yet

Maussan Productions has a new book out, available through iTunes for $19.99.
It's listed as BeWitness, detrás del caso Roswell by Tomas J. Carey, Donald R. Schmitt & Jaime Maussan. The ad and excerpt don't mention the Slides, it just alludes to "new evidence." At present, the book is only available in Spanish.



There's also a show...

Maussan had promised a scientific examination of the evidence, but that was postponed from June due to the release of the National Park Service documents conclusively identifying the body. Now, he's announced this for Oct. 26 at 12 PM, "ANALISIS DE UN CUERPO NO HUMANO":



Dr. Miguel Angel and Maussan
There's a video on YouTube...

beWITNESS, El Análisis y Debate / 
BeWITNESS the Analysis and debate



(Since removed)


It's part of a series of videos at Tercer Milenio
Se Pospone el Debate beWITNESS, Recompensa beWITNESS, 
Dos posibles Seres No Humanos, Comparación Forense del Cuerpo de beWITNESS and Comparación del Ser de beWITNESS.



The presentation is listed as an analysis and debate, but only Dr. Miguel Angel and his INACIFO associates are mentioned. The participation of the Tom Carey, Don Schmitt, Adam Dew and other financial partners is unknown. This event is free to attend, although there is no mention of the free streaming of this event as previously advertised.

There's been no mention of the event outside of Tercer Milenio, nothing on their Twitter or Facebook accounts or the personal ones for Jaime Maussan. It's almost as if they are avoiding international exposure for this. To the jaded eye, it would appear that Maussan is staging this event in an attempt to salvage a wedge of doubt that the Slides show an unusual body.

Maussan has been through this kind of thing before. He has a long history of holding on to and promoting discredited UFO and alien stories.

The Metepec Creature: author confess hoax


The BeWitness fiasco stink seems to have landed on Carey and Schmitt. For Maussan, business goes on as usual.








Thursday, June 18, 2015

Dr. Richard O’Connor on Putting Away the Roswell Slides


Dr. Richard O’Connor was a guest on an episode of The MUFON UFO Radio show on KGRA 
guest-hosted by Erica Lukes. The topic was the controversy over the Roswell Slides. 

KGRA's MUFON show, courtesy of Race Hobbs. Click to listen.


Dr. Richard O’Connor had written a letter to Linda Moulton Howe shortly after the placard was read, where he said although he had personally confirmed the deblurring of the Slides placard, he felt it did not accurately describe the body in the pictures. He went on to describe features that looked unusual.
On May 24, Jaime Maussan interviewed Dr. O’Connor by Skype where he discussed his views on the body in the Slides. The full interview was posted on YouTubeWhitley Strieber’s Unknown Country used the video as part of this article, “Doctors Agree: Roswell Slides Show a Nonhuman Body

Although Dr. O’Connor did not participate in the BeWitness event, but he became associated with it after the fact. This was in large part due to him being one of the few people discussing the case that was knowledgeable in medicine and spoke English.  

Getting back to the KGRA show, Dr.  O’Connor was the first guest. He recapped his analysis, but stressed that it was made from (what amounts to) a single picture, a blurry image shot through glass, taken at an angle to the body.

The interviewer mentioned the consequences of the  NPS material released due to the FOIA request by Shepherd Johnson, to which Dr. O’Connor replied, 
“Yeah, I’ve just, over the past 48 hours more or less, been looking at that, and it seems to me like it's drawing us toward the conclusion that in fact is this photograph probably does represent a native American child. There were some, a couple of photographs in the last pages of that set of documents, one of them in particular on page 176, and in my opinion it really does show a different photograph of what is very likely the same child.”


Tom Carey on life after the Slides


Maussan interviewing Carey prior to BeWitness 

Tom Carey had been on another KGRA show June 2 with Don Schmitt, and at that time he was challenging the reading of the placard, and all that it meant. On this show, Tom Carey appeared to have absorbed and accepted, or is in the process of accepting the facts. He was not asked about whether he’s changed his mind on the Slides, but in the discussion it sounds like he's come to the realization that the Slides are not "what we believed we had..." He talks about things in the past tense. 

In talking about the material gathered for the BeWitness presentation, “that was our conclusion... what we knew up to that point..” Of the placard being read he says, “a day or two later, this bombshell hits about it being a mummified two-year-old boy. Well, talk about a right cross, or a left hook. He also seems to feel betrayed by two of the people who he’d asked to help with the placard have since “joined our critics.” Of the critics, he said he’d have worked with them, “had they been civil. In the opening, he mentioned having plenty to keep him busy, a new book coming out with Don Schmitt, and another one planned beyond that, but first up is their appearance at the annual Roswell Festival. Perhaps he’s putting the Slides behind him, returning to fundamental Roswell research.


Jaime Maussan from BeWitness

To finish discussing the show, I should mention that Jamie Maussan was the featured guest, and the last hour was devoted solely to him. He maintains that the Slides are genuine and the other photos do not seem to match it, and even if they do, the body is abnormal, possibly the that of an alien being, one of the “Sky People” of native American legend. He rejects the new evidence, and continues to defend the Slides.

Call with Dr. Richard O'Connor, Wednesday, June 17 

After the show, I was interested in finding more about about Dr. O’Connor’s change of position on the topic. I found his information at the Jesse A. Marcel Library and sent him a note, and to my surprise he invited me to call him instead. I found Dr. O’Connor to friendly, knowledgable, and  was impressed with his candor and swift willingness to revise his conclusions in the face of more information and evidence.

Dr. Richard O’Connor

He told me that looking at a photograph is fraught with pitfalls, and mentioned the fact that the quality of the Slides photograph was not very good, the details were not clear due to the blurry photograph, which was taken at an angle from the body (and possibly distorted by the glass in the case). 

There were some characteristics that he still didn't quite understand, like the condition of the chest cavity, but it occurred to him that the terraced cliffs of Montezuma Castle must have caused the deaths of a number of children from falling off the ledges. He wondered if that could have accounted for the injuries to the child's body, particularly the damage to the head and the fractured femur. I pointed out the the shallow grave may have accounted for some of this, particularly the loss of the lower leg. (I thought later that the excavation by amateur archeologists could also be a factor.) 


The cliff dwellings of Montezuma Castle


He stated that after he looked photo in the National Park Service FOIA documents, that the  “there’s no way that’s not the same being,” and that the body in the Slides was a Native American child,  the “only conclusion.” He thinks that this absolutely proves that the Slides had nothing to do with Roswell and that that the matter is closed. 

“there’s no way that’s not the same being”

He thinks the lesson is to be learned from this, that if you have some extraordinary evidence, that putting it out for an open-source examination was the way to get results In this instance, it didn't take long for many people working together to determine the truth, and that by sharing information it's a more efficient means of reaching the truth.

As for the Slides and the BeWitness show, he personally does not feel it was a scam, and that the people involved were sincerely acting on the information they had available to them at the time.  We discussed how the limitations imposed by the Slidebox Media non-disclosure agreement had prevented the sharing of the information. He said by holding back the information, it hindered the discovery of the truth.

He went on to say that the Maussan had made a good presentation in other respects than the Slides, and felt there was value to the discussion of the historical Roswell case and presentation of witness statements.  About the Roswell Slides, he also said the evidence shows it was an archaeological finding. Unless there’s a body can be examined, the case is completed. Otherwise, it is just speculation from a photograph alone. He won't say a negative word against Maussan or anyone involved, but can't figure why Jaime is hanging on in the face of overwhelming evidence.


Facing the Future

Dr. O’Connor thinks this is finished, but that he’s still optimistic about the study of UFOs and the Roswell case. O’Connor worked alongside Jesse Marcel Junior for a great number of years and was convinced by the experiences that he shared, as well as the testimony of other witnesses. He’s sure of the reality of the Roswell event  and that UFOs are visitors from outside our planet, and that they are worthy of study.


He’d like the reputation of the UFO topic to improve so that more scientists would be attracted and become involved. He also thinks that the average person is unaware of the genuine nature of things, and that with better education on the topic, support could be given to properly fund the scientific investigation of UFOs. He’s convinced that would to some conclusions and developments to help answer the questions and provide some understanding.

Friday, June 12, 2015

The Smoking Gun: RIP to the Roswell Slides

I'm trying to get out of the Roswell Slides business, but as long as the promoters keep pushing the false claims and making accusations there's some unfinished business.




Most of it is silly, but there are a few points to clear up.

The placard was handwritten in cursive script, how can it deblur into text? 

Tom Carey on the placard from the March 22, 2015 Contacto show with Jaime Maussan: 
“It’s handwritten, it's not typed like it would be in a museum; you know, a museum would have a professional display placard identifying what it is that’s there in the background behind it. This is hand written as though it was written- with just- put together fairly quickly, perhaps for a limited viewing. It's not in the museum, it’s in a indoor location- where we don't know, but it's obviously to us, for a limited viewing, that’s temporary construction.And on the plaque, there is writing, and we have been actively researching, trying to quote unquote “read” what's on the placard for three years and we’ve only recently come into contact with some experts in this sort of thing. We tried reading it on her own, we’ve used several outside people, some of whom, one of whom had done some work on the famous Ramey memo from General Ramey in 1947 and we are now able to read a few of the words, based on what the experts are telling us, and the debunkers who have been debunking this are going to be disappointed, I can tell you that."

Well, that's a curious claim, but let's focus on the "handwriting" for now.

Dr. David Rudiak was one of the experts recruited by Carey and Schmitt to decipher the placard. After Nab Lator deblurred the placard and the RSRG published the results, Rudiak was one of many who was able to duplicate the process:
  "...the motion blur, which was 'boomerang-shaped', jerked horizontally right then diagonally upward to the right (or vice versa). This probably resulted in the printed text having a hand-written script-like appearance.
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=11558306&postID=8159526343263081173 
Dr. David Rudiak on SmartDeblur of the placard

Why did previous attempts fail but the RSRG and others succeed? 

David Rudiak (in the same statement from above) explains:  
I think the failure to deblur the image previously had nothing to do with the scans provided and had everything to do with the blur being complex in nature (both simple focus and two directions of motion blur), which most deblurring software cannot handle (at least the deblurring software I tried). E.g., to handle motion blur, most packages require you hand-set the direction of blur, which wasn't known here, plus having two directions to deal with. 
It might have helped had we been provided the high resolution scans of the entire slide, which showed the nature of the motion blur.”
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=11558306&postID=8159526343263081173 
A demonstration by Fin Handley of the "handwriting" to text.

The New News: Laying the story to rest

Below are two stories by RSRG team member S. Miles Lewis, first an excellent history of the whole Slides story (well, except for the missing pieces that still remain hidden).

The (NOT) Roswell Slides Saga…


And finally, the Smoking Gun



The second story is new and important. It covers the recent discovery of an independent photo of the child mummy, one photographed in 1956 at the Montezuma Castle museum in Arizona.
Believe it or not, it's another slide.

Breaking News on the (NOT) Roswell “Alien” Slides


Wait, what about all the claims of anomalies in the body in the photos?

First, I'd note that the people making these claims have not examined the body, not even the slides themselves, only digital copies. The best evidence presented for the case that the photos depict an alien, are the same pictures that include details of the museum where it was displayed, and the label that was placed on the body by people who actually saw and handled the body.  They can be considered the real experts, and they were confident enough put their testimony in writing:
"MUMMIFIED BODY OF TWO YEAR OLD BOY"




Thursday, May 21, 2015

The Roswell Slides: the Anthropologist from Canada



A lot of questions about the Roswell Slides fiasco remain, but no one is talking except Jaime Maussan. To get some answers of how it all came together, we have to start examining the statements made by the players before the event.

Tom Carey had been waiting for a "smoking gun" on the Roswell case for decades. Describing when he first saw the image in the slides, he said, "a chill ran down my spine...and he knew it was genuine. On March 1, 2015, Tercer Milenio TV aired the program "Contacto Con Jaime Maussan." In the second hour of the show,  Tom Carey joined the program via a Skype interview to promote BeWitness and talk about the Roswell Slides.


Tom Carey on the man from Toronto


Tom Carey on Contacto

"I contacted one of my fellow graduate students when I was in the University of Toronto years ago, and I confess he was, and remains, a friend of mine, but he will tell me the truth. I respect his opinion more than anyone on anything relating to Anthropology. He’s that bright of a fellow, he still is. So, I sent him a copy of this fuzzy image that’s going around I did not send him one of the originals. 
I sent him the one that’s going around that someone has enhanced up.  So, I had him look at it.


Leaked "enhanced up" image
By Narrenschiffer 


I didn’t tell him what it was, I told him, ‘look at this, and you tell me what you think it is. Well, most Anthropologists that we talked to, that will talk to us, most of them run away, as you know, they do not want to get involved in anything related to UFOs or Roswell, they run away as fast as they can, but we do have a number of them who did go on the record.
But, my friend up in Toronto, he looked at this, and he did ask me a few questions about it, when it was taken, where it was, which we don’t know exactly where it was taken. And he went a step further. Most of the Anthropologists will tell us what it is not. It’s not a non-human primate, it’s not a child, it’s not a human child, it’s not a deformed child, stuff like that. Well, my friend up in Toronto went a step further. His final conclusion was-  'I said, what is your final conclusion?' And he emailed me back, he said, “This critter (that’s what he called it) the critter, this being is not from this planet. That was his conclusion.” He wouldn’t tell me what it is, he just said, whatever it is, it’s not from this planet. So, I received this yesterday, and I thanked him for his honest opinion.”

It seems strange that Carey would send the leaked slide image for analysis, as it has been widely disparaged by the slides promoters. Jaime Maussan said of it, 

"It is a picture that they took and with which they wanted to base all the research. It is a figure that is not very clear , it’s something they stretched , then modified and adjusted . I say it is more like the canary Tweety from the cartoons, the one who is always against the cat and well ... it looks more like Tweety than reality."

We now know that the former Toronto classmate that Carey was describing is Richard Doble. As the only English speaking expert featured in BeWitness, a lot of attention was focused on Doble's opinion. So far, nothing has been presented to show if he was allowed to see the original images of the slides before offering his dramatic conclusions.

"It's nothing like us, we can see that his feet, his legs appear to be a reptile, could have evolved from something like a gecko..." Richard Doble

Richard Doble


Richard Doble presented video analysis of the alien in BeWitness.

Richard Doble's written report



Update: Richard Doble responds to exposure of the placard revealing the body to be a mummy. 

Jaime Maussan's interview with "anthropologist" Richard Doble