The Word 12/The Word 12 (Disk 2 of 2).adf/Files/11-ALIEN_AUTOPSY_SCAM3.txt/11-ALIEN_AUTOPSY_SCAM3.txt

Text File | 1992-09-02 | 16.5 KB | 275 lines

 Quite possibly, the most damning evidence against the Santilli film yet
comes  from  the  symbols  on  the I-beam.  Commenting on those symbols,
Cliff  Wallace  of Creature Effects at Pinewood Studios, London, pointed
out  that special-effects people sometimes leave a subtle clue as a kind
of signature to their work.  As could be seen in the British documentary
(though  the  point was ignored by Fox), the clue in this case is hardly
subtle.   The  symbols, supposedly from an alien alphabet, spell out the
words  'VIDEO  O  TV'.   Although  the  'E'  and  the  'T' are disguised
(embedded in a hieroglyph), the outlines of the letters are present.

 In  essence,  six  characters  from  the  Roman  alphabet, four readily
recognizable  and  two  disguised,  correctly spell out two words in the
English  language  -- words that are related to both the subject at hand
and  to  each other.  This is hardly chance.  The difficulty in creating
even  a  remote  resemblance  to  an English word -- any English word --
using  characters  from  an  alphabet derived independently of the Roman
alphabet, such as the Arabic alphabet, illustrates that point.

 With  such  convincing  evidence  for  a  hoax and so much money having
changed hands -- far more than with the hoaxed Hitler Diaries -- one has
to  wonder  why  no  police  agency  has  investigated the alien autopsy
affair.   On  May  31,  1995, I faxed a letter and material on the alien
autopsy  film  to  the Serious Fraud Office of Scotland Yard, presumably
the most appropriate agency to handle such a case.

 In  response,  I  received  a polite letter dated June 19, 1995, from a
Martin  Pinfold at the Serious Fraud Office, stating that this was not a
matter  suitable for investigation by this office.  In a follow-up phone
call, I was told that before they could act, there had to be a victim in
the  U.K.   Astoundingly,  then,  in  the  eyes  of  Scotland Yard, it's
acceptable  to run an operation out of London, victimizing people in the
United States and elsewhere, as long as no British citizen is affected.

The Cameraman -------------

 In  the  1995  Fox  documentary  Alien  Autopsy:   Fact or Fiction, the
interview  with  Ray  Santilli  begins  with  the announcer stating, Ray
Santilli  owns  a  small music and video distribution company in London.
He  was  acquiring  some  1950s  rock  and  roll footage when an elderly
American  cameraman  he  had been dealing with said, `By the way, I have
something  else to show you.' Santilli then continues, And, you know, we
looked  at  it.   It  was  just  the  most incredible piece of film, and
obviously  my  first  impression  is  this  can't  be real.  The program
continues  with  the  announcer  telling about the purchase of the alien
autopsy film and Santilli recounting the cameraman's story.

 In  a  July  1995  email  exchange, Ray Santilli wrote researcher James
Easton,  I  have  spent some time with the cameraman and now have a full
and  detailed  statement which I am sure you will find very interesting.
The  statement,  reportedly  transcribed  by Santilli's secretary from a
recording,  recounts  the same basic story Santilli has told in numerous
interviews, but in more detail.

 Santilli's  detailed  statement, titled The Cameraman's Story, however,
is  inherently  implausible.   The  cameraman told of being stationed in
Washington,  D.C., and being flown by way of Wright Patterson to Roswell
(after  having  been  told  initially that he was to film the crash of a
Russian  spy plane).  Because the trip was a distance of over 1600 miles
-- an all-day trip, even by air, in 1947 -- it would have therefore been
impossible for him to have arrived much sooner than 10 to 12 hours after
the  crash  was  discovered.   Yet  the  cameraman described filming the
initial approach of soldiers to the downed spacecraft and the screams of
the  freak  creatures  that  were lying by the vehicle, screams that got
even  louder as they were approached.  The idea is preposterous that the
military would have waited for a lone cameraman to fly more than halfway
across the country before they made a move or started filming.

 One almost humorous aspect of the American cameraman's story is that it
was  told  in  British  English.   While  the nuances may not be readily
apparent  to  those  who  speak  the King's English (the language would,
naturally, seem normal to them), they are obvious to Americans.  Certain
expressions  are a dead giveaway, such as 'I joined the forces', 'I fast
learnt',  'Assistant  Chief  of Air Staff' (a Royal Air Force term), 'no
messing',  'the  decision  was  taken',  'a  flattop',  'a further three
weeks', etc.

 Apparently,  Santilli's  cameraman  really got around.  Not only did he
film  the  monumental  recovery operation at Roswell, he also claimed to
have  filmed  the  first atomic bomb (Trinity) test.  Also, according to
his  statement,  just  prior to being called to Roswell, he had not long
returned  (more British English) from St.  Louis, Missouri, where he had
filmed  the  McDonnell  Aircraft  Company's  new  ramjet helicopter, the
XH-20,  nicknamed  Little Henry.  Unfortunately, there's a major problem
for  the  cameraman  here.  On October 16, 1995, Nicolas Maillard of TF1
received  a  faxed  letter  from  the  public  relations  department  at
McDonnell   Douglas  (successor  of  the  McDonnell  Aircraft  Company),
confirming  that  McDonnell  used  their  own  employees  , not military
cameramen,  to  film  all  tests,  including  those  of the XH-20 ramjet
helicopter,  Little  Henry.   The  letter  gave  the  names  of  the two
McDonnell  employees  who  would  have  shot  the  Little Henry tests --
Chester Turk, who shot motion, and Bill Schmitt, who shot stills.

 Santilli  has  given  the  name  of  the cameraman as Jack Barnett.  In
January  1995,  he  confided the name to Philip Mantle, Reg Presley, and
Colin  Andrews.   On  June 22, 1995, Philip Mantle, by prior arrangement
with Santilli, received a telephone call from the alleged cameraman, who
identified himself as Jack Barnett.

 Ray  Santilli  promised  TF1  that  they  would receive a call from the
cameraman,  Jack  Barnett,  in  early September 1995, but the call never
came.   Santilli  did,  however, agree to relay a list of questions from
TF1  to  the cameraman.  On September 14, 1995, approximately three days
after  the list was submitted, TF1 received a fax from Ray Santilli with
the  answers  from  the  supposed cameraman.  Two of the answers were of
particular interest.  TF1 asked, What tests of the ramjet `Little Henry'
did   you  film  in  St.   Louis  in  May  1947?   The  answer,  Initial
experimental  tests, reiterated the cameraman's claim that he had filmed
McDonnell   Aircraft  Company's  testing  of  its  Little  Henry  ramjet
helicopter  --  a  claim  that we now know is impossible since McDonnell
used its own employees to film such tests.

 The  cameraman's  answer to a question by TF1 as to why the army didn't
use  color  film  for  such an event was also very telling.  I was given
instructions to leave immediately to film an aviation crash of a Russian
spy  plane.   I  did  not have time to order either colour film stock or
special  camera  equipment.   I  used  standard  issue  film stock and a
standard  issue  Bell  and Howell.  Hypothetically, such an answer could
explain  why  the  cameraman  didn't use color film at the initial crash
scene.   However,  such  an  answer in no way explains why he didn't use
color film for the autopsies -- which he claims took place a month later
in July in Fort Worth, Texas.

The Sting ---------

 It  is  important  to keep in mind that in television interviews, radio
interviews, personal interviews, and Internet postings, Ray Santilli has
repeatedly  told  of  how the cameraman, after having shown Santilli the
Elvis  film, announced that he had something else to show him -- the now
-famous   alien   autopsy   footage.    Santilli   has   repeatedly  and
unequivocally  claimed that the cameraman from whom he acquired the 1955
Elvis  footage  was  the same cameraman from whom he purchased the alien
autopsy footage.

 The  big  break  in the investigation of the alien autopsy film came at
the  end  of September, 1995, when TF1 reporter Nicolas Maillard located
Cleveland,  Ohio,  disc jockey Bill Randle, the real source of the early
Elvis  Presley  footage  -- footage which Santilli said had been sold to
him  by the cameraman during a trip to the United States in 1993.  As it
turns  out,  the  purchase of the Elvis film actually took place in Bill
Randle's  office on July 4, 1992, in the presence of Gary Shoefield.  In
a  November  28,  1995,  phone conversation, Bill Randle told me that as
soon  as  Santilli  purchased the film (after hours of negotiations), he
immediately  turned  around  and  sold  it  to  Gary  Shoefield, who was
representing  the  British  film company Polygram.  The transaction took
place right in Randle's office.

 The footage, to which Santilli purchased the rights, is the first-known
film  of Elvis Presley live on stage and is part of a larger documentary
that  was  a  joint effort between Bill Randle and Universal Pictures in
1955.   The  footage  sold  to Santilli is relatively short and includes
segments  from  two  concerts -- an afternoon performance at a Cleveland
high  school  and an evening show at a local Cleveland auditorium.  Both
performances  took  place  on  Thursday, July 20, 1955, and featured the
Four  Lads,  Bill  Haley and the Comets, Pat Boone, and the then-unknown
Elvis   Presley.    Both   performances   were  filmed  by  a  freelance
photographer  who  had been hired by Bill Randle -- a photographer named
Jack Barnett.

 We  now  know  the origin of the name Jack Barnett -- the name Santilli
told  to  Philip  Mantle,  Reg  Presley,  and  others as the name of his
alleged cameraman.  The real Jack Barnett was born of Russian parents on
January 1, 1906, and died in 1967.  Although he was a newsreel cameraman
on the Italian front during WWII, he was never in the U.S.  military.

 Armed  with  this new and very telling information, the plan of TF1 was
to  confront  Santilli  during a live interview on the October 23, 1995,
Jacques  Pradel  special.   While  every  effort  was  made  to keep the
discovery of Bill Randle confidential, Santilli may have been tipped off
prior  to  the  show.   He  seemed  relatively  poised after a pre-taped
interview  of  Randle was played, and immediately offered a new story --
fundamentally  different  from what he had told previously.  His initial
remark  was  reminiscent  of  the classic I'm so glad you asked response
politicians  give  when  they  are asked the question they least want to
hear.   Santilli  opened  with, Well, firstly, I'm very pleased that you
have  found  Bill  Randle....  (If Santilli was so pleased, why did Bill
Randle have to be found in the first place?)

 At  that  point, Santilli described a new and changed scenario in which
the  person  from whom he had purchased the Elvis footage was not really
the  military  cameraman  after all.  He now claimed that he had met the
real  cameraman  after he purchased the rights to the Elvis footage from
Bill  Randle in Cleveland during the summer of 1992 (previously Santilli
had  given  the  year  as  1993).  Everyone, including the host, Jacques
Pradel,  seemed  incredulous.  With time running out, the show then went
into its concluding segment, playing the Volker Spielberg tape, at which
point Santilli, as previously mentioned, became noticeably upset.

Three Real Military Cameramen -----------------------------

 Among  the unsung heroes of the innumerable battles of this century are
the  men who recorded those battles for posterity, the combat cameramen.
As  the  pictures  they took reveal, whether at the front lines with the
soldiers  or marines, on the decks of ships amidst sailors manning guns,
or  in  high-flying  aircraft with the pilots and bombardiers, they were
right  alongside  those  whose actions they recorded -- often taking the
same  risks  and  suffering  the  same  high casualty rates.  During the
course  of  investigating this film, I was fortunate enough to be put in
touch with three such men, Joe Longo, Bill Gibson, and Dan McGovern, all
former  WWII  combat  cameramen, and all of whom have remained active in
the  professional  photography  business to this day.  Additionally, all
three  have  been  extremely  helpful and accommodating in the effort to
investigate the Santilli film.

 An  entire  volume  could  be written about the exploits of these three
retired  combat  cameramen.  Joe Longo is president of the International
Combat Camera Association, an organization consisting of several hundred
former  combat  cameramen  from  throughout  the  world.  He served as a
combat  cameraman  for the Air Force in the Pacific theater during WWII,
then  again  during  the Korean Conflict.  After leaving the military in
1956,  he  went to work as a cameraman at the Lookout Mountain Air Force
Station  in  Southern  California.   In  his  job  there,  he  worked on
classified  research projects with the Atomic Energy Commission, as well
as  the  X-15  project.  In the early 1960s, he shot the famous scene of
test pilot Scott Crossfield's X-15 falling away from under the wing of a
B-52  bomber,  firing its rocket engine, on its way into space, 50 miles
up.

 Bill  Gibson  has  the  unusual background of having served as a combat
cameraman  in  all three branches of the armed services.  In April 1942,
he  photographed  the  launching  of 16 B-25s on their way to the famous
Doolittle  Raid  over  Tokyo.   The  scene  of the heavily laden bombers
lumbering  off the deck of the aircraft carrier Hornet, barely making it
airborne,  is  one  of  the  more famous of WWII.  Years later, he would
photograph another famous launching, that of Apollo 11 on its way to the
moon.

 Not  long after the Doolittle Raid, Bill Gibson's ship, the Hornet, was
torpedoed  and  sunk.   Gibson along with other survivors was rescued by
another  American  ship,  the  USS  Hughes  .   After  the  war,  Gibson
photographed  the early American V-2 launches at White Sands, as well as
the  balloon  launches and recovery operations of Project Mogul.  In the
late  1940s, he worked on two Air Force classified UFO-related projects,
Grudge  and Twinkle.  In the late 1960s, he was a consultant to NASA for
designing  the camera that brought us man's first steps on the moon.  As
if  all  that were not enough, he was assigned to the White House for an
eight  -month  period  during  which  he  covered  President Truman.  No
stranger  to  world  figures,  Bill  Gibson's  assignments also included
Presidents  Franklin  Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, and George Bush, as well
as  Winston  Churchill,  Albert  Schweitzer, and Wernher von Braun, with
whom he became close personal friends.

 Retired  Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Daniel A.  McGovern served during
WWII  with  the Eighth Air Force in the European theater, where he was a
combat  cameraman  on B-17 bombers flying highly dangerous missions over
Germany.   He  shot  much  of  the  footage  used  in the famous wartime
documentary   Memphis   Belle.    On  one  mission,  flak  (antiaircraft
artillery) blew a hole in the B-17 at his station, only moments after he
had  stepped away.  Another time he survived a crash landing in southern
England, after his aircraft had been downed by flak.

 After  the  Japanese  surrender  in August 1945, McGovern was the first
American  military cameraman to photograph the devastation on the ground
at  both Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Just four weeks after the atomic bombs
had  been  dropped,  McGovern  was on the scene at both cities, where he
shot  thousands  of feet of 16mm color film.  The historical footage was
classified  shortly  after it was shot.  Much of it has still never been
seen by the public.

 Like  Bill Gibson, in the late 1940s, McGovern worked on the classified
projects  Twinkle  and  Grudge, where he was the project officer.  For a
six-month  period, the Air Force, using cameras on the ground and aboard
jet   aircraft,  attempted  to  capture  on  film  the  UFOs  that  were
frequenting  an  area  of  New Mexico between Kirtland AFB and the White
Sands  Missile  Range.   Although  no UFOs were successfully recorded on
film,  a  number  were  sighted visually, including several by McGovern.
According  to  a  written  statement by Colonel McGovern, ...the objects
came  from  below  the  horizon,  at  high speed, at an angle of some 45
degrees  and at an altitude of some 70,000 or 80,000 feet, changed their
direction  from a vertical climb to horizontal, then the brilliant white
light emitted from the UFOs disappeared in the skies.


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