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Sun 16 Apr, 2006 02:21 pm
It's too bad that it was a hoax. Everybody wants to believe. I'm still convinced that the whole Roswell thing was more than just a crashed weather balloon.
Max Headroom creator made Roswell alien
THE creator of Max Headroom, a 1980s television cyber-presenter, has claimed he was one of the hoaxers behind the Roswell film, the grainy black and white footage supposedly showing a dead alien being dissected by American government scientists after a UFO crash.
Alien Autopsy, a movie about the footage, is currently on release across Britain. It stars real-life television presenters Ant and Dec.
John Humphreys, a sculptor and consultant on Alien Autopsy who has also worked on special effects for Doctor Who, said it was he who made the models for the alien dissected in the original fake footage.
His confession, 11 years after the Roswell footage was first shown, will raise questions about the role of Channel 4, which unleashed Max Headroom on the world in the 1980s and bought the UK rights to screen the Roswell footage in Britain.
The footage was first exposed as a fake by The Sunday Times, but an estimated billion people still watched it around the world.
Rather than being shot in 1947 near Roswell in the New Mexico desert as previously claimed, the film was actually made at a flat in Camden, north London, in 1995.
Philip Mantle, a UFO researcher and author who has been investigating the Roswell hoax for 10 years, said Humphreys had been a prime suspect but had never before admitted involvement.
Mantle, who next month will deliver a lecture at Glasgow University on the Roswell story, said: "I didn't think it would take so long, but I am delighted this hoax has finally been exposed and the mystery has been solved."
Humphreys, who is based in Manchester, says he also appeared in the Roswell film as the chief surgeon. The bug-eyed alien models were filled with sheep brains, chicken entrails and knuckle joints bought from Smithfield meat market. After filming, the dummies were cut up and dumped in bins across London.
For a few short weeks the world held its breath after the 91-minute silent film was unveiled by Ray Santilli, a London-based video distributor. He claimed to have bought the footage, shot on 14 reels, from a retired American military cameramen.
Humphreys said the Roswell film was shot by himself, Santilli and three others. He said he spent four weeks fashioning the models from latex using clay sculptures.
Humphreys, a graduate of the Royal Academy who has also created special effects for the film Charlie and the Chocolate Factory starring Johnny Depp, says he only told his wife about the hoax when he was hired to work on Alien Autopsy.
"It was a very, very strange feeling to know that I had played a key part in it," he said.
Santilli, who is played by Declan Donnelly in Alien Autopsy, insists he was trying to "re-create" a real Roswell incident. He claims he bought genuine footage that was badly damaged when it was exposed to the air after 48 years in a can. "John was given very precise images to work with and what he did was sheer genius," he said.
I have read similar exposes before. There are just too many elements to the aliens story that can't hold water.
Yet... It is the stories that surfaced some 30 to 40 years later, conflicting though they are, that have riveted the attention of the public. These tales have been buttressed by accusations of a massive Government Conspiracy to account for contradictions with the initial reports.
http://www.roswellfiles.com/
Here is another site.
Thanks for that. It led me to
THIS. Click on"ROSWELL: 52 YEARS OF UNANSWERED QUESTIONS" Makes for interesting reading.
I think there is more to this whole business than meets the eye.
What's your stand on the basic facts behind the Roswell crash?
I think that if there is one fact that has emerged from all of the Roswell discussions it is that Max Headroom is fake.
All indications from this Best Evidence- Mac Brazel's interview with the Roswell Daily Record; J.B. Johnson's photographs; Press reports from early July, 1947... all point to a simple case of mistaken identity. Papers obtained through the Freedom of Information Act that date from this time period are consistent with the explanation that a Mogul Balloon with a radar reflector was what Mac Brazel found.
This statement taken from the site I indicated pretty much says it all for me.
From the link I gave above, here are some of the important questions that the gov't still needs to answer:
What type of balloon and instrument package could scatter debris over an area three-quarters of a mile long and create a 500-foot long/10-foot wide gouge in the tough high desert country of New Mexico which consists of little topsoil and mostly shale and slate stone?
What type of balloon would fill Marcel's 1942 Buick convertible, and Cavitt's jeep carryall truck and still require 50 to 60 troops with wheelbarrows and trucks two days to complete the cleanup?
Why did the military check the site for possible radiation if the downed object was nothing more than a common weather/Mogul balloon? After he was found at the home of Walt Whitmore Sr., majority owner of radio station KGFL in Roswell, on the morning of Tuesday, July 8, why was Brazel held in detention at the base for another seven days? According to Brazel, he was not allowed to place any outside calls, not even to his wife. He was also forced to undergo a physical examination.
Why did the Secretary of the Federal Communications Commission, a Mr. Slowie in Washington, D.C., personally call Whitmore at KGFL and threaten removal of his broadcasting license if the station continued airing reports of the incident? Why would the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Senator Dennis Chavez of New Mexico, also call Whitmore and persuade him to comply with the FCC order?
Why the need for extreme security measures at the crash site of a downed meteorological instrument? Measures such as: armed guards surrounding the inner gouge area, another cordon around the perimeter, riflemen posted on the surrounding hills, and MPs stationed on the outlying roads from Saturday, July 5, through at least Thursday, the 10th.
Why was Bud Payne, a hired hand on one of the neighboring ranches, physically removed from the Brazel ranch during the military occupation of the site? As Payne was attempting to round up a stray cow, a military jeep roared up to him and MPs physically forced him off the ranch.
Why were there seven confirmed (possibly eight) flights to transport the remains of a balloon? Most of the wreckage was flown out under high security July 5-10 . . . rather extreme treatment even within the confines of the top security base in the world at that time.
If the object was nothing more than a weather balloon, or even a Project Mogul device, why would Colonel Blanchard set up operations at the recovery site? As the commanding officer of the 509th Bomb Group, Blanchard would have had more important duties.
Why was the debris of a weather balloon, as identified by Warrant Officer Irving Newton, displayed in Brigadier General Roger Ramey's office different from that of a Mogul balloon device? The new Air Force theory describes painted floral symbols on masking tape used to reinforce the radar kite in an effort to explain hieroglyphic-like characters on I-beam structures as portrayed by witnesses. Even under high magnification none are evident in the photographs taken in Ramey's office at Fort Worth (Carswell) Army Air Field in Texas.
Why did Ramey's Chief of Staff Colonel Thomas J. DuBose (who is pictured with Ramey in two of the weather balloon photos) sign a sworn affidavit in 1990 attesting to switching the balloon wreckage for the genuine material? "It was a cover story . . . to get the press off of Ramey's back."
Why did a special photo team from Washington, D.C., under the command of Col. Anton Hansen, arrive at Roswell to photograph the recovery and record the subsequent events? Against standard operating procedure, the 3rd Photo Lab at the Roswell base was never called in to photograph the crash site or the material.
Why were two Secret Service agents by the names McCann and Devinnes dispatched from Washington to represent the president in Roswell during the incident?
If the recovery was of nothing more unusual that a Mogul balloon, photographed in Ramey's office by the news media on July 8, why did the military, on July 9, tour the various news media in Roswell retrieving copies of Walter Haut's press release? If there was nothing to the story, why did the military search radio station KGFL, taking everything that related to the crash, including the documents that newsman Frank Joyce tried to hide?
Why did the U.S. military, like a scene from a 1950's sci-fi movie, surround the Roswell Sheriff s Office just to retrieve a small box of debris that Brazel had left there days earlier?
Secrecy oaths would not have been required for the recovery of a weather balloon, or any other conventional device, unless it was a highly classified subject. Why were the men involved taken into a conference room in groups of 10-12 and verbally sworn to protect the truth concerning what actually happened? Others at Roswell and Fort Worth were ordered not to discuss it, or ever bring it up again.
Neighbors of Mac Brazel, including Loretta Proctor and her son Norris, reported that Brazel returned from his detention driving a new pick-up truck. According to Norris Proctor, Brazel, who had been "dirt poor," suddenly had money to buy a new house in Tularosa, a meat locker in Las Cruces, and property in Colorado. Robert Wolf, also a good friend of Brazel, recounted how he observed him with a new truck at the Mitchell Feed and Granary in Roswell within months of the incident. Was Brazel paid the reward for the physical evidence of a flying saucer?
The daughter of Melvin Brown reported that her father, who had seen the bodies the day they were recovered, along with the MPs at the crash site, were paid off. She said that a special trust account was established in Roswell for the guards. Why would there be payoffs to maintain secrecy of a weather balloon? A handwritten note with the account number was supplied by Brown just days before he died. Attempts to locate such a fund have been unsuccessful.
There are two, possibly three sites involved with the crash at Roswell. First is the debris field. Thirty miles to the southeast where the remains of the craft and crew were located is the second. A few miles to the northwest of the debris site was apparently a touchdown point of baked soil and fused sand which was first seen by Chaves County deputies and then by Lewis R. Rickett and Dr. Lincoln LaPaz. How is it possible that a balloon and array train could be responsible for sites such as these?
Pieces of small wreckage Brazel's son Bill Jr. had managed to collect were confiscated by the military in 1949. Why was the military still monitoring the situation two years later? This was almost two years after Mogul had been declassified. Why were search teams still dispatched from the base at Roswell through the end of 1947, through 1948, and into 1949 to recover remaining debris at the sites specifically after heavy rainfalls as described by Major Charles McGee?
If the Roswell device was nothing more than a weather balloon, why bring in LaPaz, a noted expert in the discovery and recovery of meteorites? LaPaz had worked on dozens of classified government projects, including the ultra-classified Manhattan Project. If it was nothing more unusual than a balloon, why would the Pentagon assign him to determine the speed and trajectory of the downed device two months after the crash?
If there was nothing to the Roswell case other than a misidentification of a weather balloon, why have witnesses, on their deathbeds, denied that? Melvin E. Brown spent the last four days of his life telling his family that it wasn't a weather balloon. Why was the dying archaeologist/geologist at St. Petersburg Hospital in Florida telling the nurses she had seen the bodies and then warning them about government reprisal? Roswell base Provost Marshal Edwin Easley, base Adjutant Patrick Saunders, and 393 Squadron pilot O.W. "Pappy" Henderson also gave deathbed testimony confirming the "flying saucer" crash and the recovery of bodies. And there are others more recent.
And if Mogul was as highly classified as the Air Force maintains, which evidently led to the misidentification in Roswell, how is it that they invited the press to photograph this missing, top-secret balloon in Ramey's office and promote the publication of seven different pictures in practically every major newspaper throughout the country? And why would they blow the entire project (with pictures) in the Alamogordo News of July 10, 1947?
Why would the United States military resort to gross civil-rights violations, i.e., physical intimidation and death threats to such civilians as Frankie Rowe, Tommy Thomson, Frank Joyce, Judd Roberts, Walt Whitmore Sr., Pete and Ruben Anaya, John McBoyle, and George Wilcox? And why were their threats extended to even the witness's children to insure their silence about the recovery of simply a weather balloon? Project Mogul was declassified within two days of the reported balloon explanation on July 10, 1947; still the threats continued for years after the incident.
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