|
Source:
Michael Hesemann, Nexus Magazine, 1996
From
'Alien Autopsy Update', by Philip Mantle
September
22, 2001
In 1995 London based businessman Ray
Santilli caused what has been arguably the biggest
controversy in the entire history of UFO research when
he launched his 'Alien Autopsy' film across the front
pages of magazines and via the TV screen in over 20
different countries. By far the most popular TV
documentary made at the time was the Fox Network's
'Alien Autopsy - Fact or Fiction?' which has often been
repeated on numerous cable and satellite stations.
RECAP
For those who are unaware of this
controversial film, a brief recap might be in order.
London video producer Ray Santilli claimed that in l992
he was in Cleveland, Ohio in the USA looking for vintage
film clips of rock-n-roll performers from the l950's.
People like Elvis Presley and Pat Boone were at the top
of his list. Santilli claimed that he met an elderly
gentleman from who he purchased a rare clip of the late
Elvis live on stage. The elderly chap had filmed the
piece himself while working as a freelance cameraman in
l950's. Shortly before returning home Santilli was
contacted by this elderly cameraman again who this time
had something different to offer. The story he told was
that prior to being a freelance cameraman he was a
cameraman with the US Army and in l947 he had been flown
to Roswell, New Mexico on a special assignment.
Initially he was informed that he was to film the crash
of a Soviet spy plane but on arrival it became clear
that this was no Russian plane. Instead he claimed to
have filmed the UFO crash at Roswell in l947 and not
only that, but the actual autopsy of 2 of the dead
aliens.
Quite naturally Santilli was more than
interested and at a later date he visited the cameraman
at his home to view this other footage. To his amazement
it did indeed appear to show the autopsy of an alien.
Santilli immediately agreed to buy the film for cash,
the only other condition being that he was never to
reveal the identify of the cameraman himself. Santilli,
not having the amount of money involved, reported to be
around $150,000, but never confirmed, eventually turned
to his German business partner Volker Spielberg for
assistance. Over the next couple of years Santilli
purchased the film and transported it to the UK where it
was transferred to video. In l993 Santilli contacted
myself to see if I might be able to assist in the making
of a UFO documentary. Eventually he told me of the film
he had purchased and his plans to commercialise it. It
was not until early l995 that I first saw any of the
film. My wife Sue and I visited Santilli's offices in
London on several occasions to view the film. At the
time I was the conference organiser for the British UFO
Research Association (BUFORA) and already had a
conference planned for August l995. I asked Santilli if
he would show the film at the conference and he agreed
to do so.
In the meantime, after a private
screening organised by Santilli in London to an invited
audience only, he set about selling the rights to the
film to a wide variety of publishers and TV companies
around the world. First to publish stills from the film
was VSD in France and soon copies were flying around the
world via the internet. The day after our conference in
August l995 saw the film broadcast on TV around the
world. And the rest, they say, is history.
-------------------------------------
From: The Alien Autopsy Film: Facts vs Armchair
Research
Michael Hesemann, Nexus Magazine, Volume 3,
#6 (Oct-Nov '96)
THE 'ROSWELL FOOTAGE' RELEASE
About a year and a half ago, on 5th May 1995,
the London-based film producer Ray Santilli for the
first time presented his alleged alien autopsy footage
to an audience of invited media representatives and UFO
researchers at the London Museum. Even before that date,
a very emotional debate had already started. Angry
ufologists had challenged Santilli to shut up or work
together with them, while others had claimed from the
very beginning that the film is a hoax just because it
doesn't fit into their concept of what happened in New
Mexico in the summer of 1947.
Santilli's
marketing policy, his commercial exploitation of the
film, his ignorance in the UFO field and his violation
of all the unwritten protocols of the UFO community
didn't find many friends among ufologists, and quite
soon many screamed "Hoax!" without being able to prove
anything. One researcher even concluded, "There is no
[16 mm] film and no cameraman", after quoting page after
page of all the rumours, second- and third-hand
information and inconsistencies among Santilli's claims
(or alleged claims), to prove that he was right from the
very beginning when he suspected a scam, because the
being on the autopsy table looked "too humanoid to be an
extraterrestrial", yet ignoring that this is exactly how
most eyewitnesses describe crashed ufonauts.1
Unfortunately, those who searched for the truth,
wherever it might be, were few in number. Willing to
listen to Santilli first, before they judged and checked
out the information they could get before asking for
more, were mainly Philip Mantle (UK), Bob Shell (USA)
and Michael Hesemann (Germany)-the International
Research Team (IRT)-joined by Maurizio Baiata and
Roberto Pinotti (Italy), Johannes Baron of Buttlar
(Germany), Odd-Gunnar Roed (Norway), Hanspeter Wachter
(Switzerland), Col. Colman VonKeviczky, Dr Bruce
Maccabee, Joe Stefula, Lt. Col. W. C. Stevens, Ted
Loman, Robert Morning Sky, Llewellyan Wykel and Dennis
Murphy (USA), and others.
Let me point out that
we found Ray Santilli always very friendly, helpful and
cooperative although sometimes limited in his actions by
agreements with his business partners and the cameraman.
I wonder if any 'major international media corporation'
would ever have been even nearly as open to any
reasonable research approach as Mr Santilli indeed was.
The following is a summary of results from the IRT's
first year of investigation.
THE CAMERAMAN
Yes, there is a cameraman. We located people,
besides Santilli, who had spoken to him over the phone:
Gary Shoefield of Polygram, Philip Mantle, John Purdie
of Channel Four (UK) and the secretary of David Roehring
of Fox Network, USA. He is American, an old man, and
lives in Florida. He was in hospital when Gary Shoefield
wanted to meet him, and was coughing when Philip Mantle
had him on the phone. According to his story he had
polio as a child.2 Polio victims at that time mostly
walked with a limp. He could not have had a bad hand,
otherwise he could not have worked as a cameraman, but
maybe he had a bad leg. The movement of the cameraman in
the film indicates this, since he doesn't move smoothly.
Bob Shell enquired among senior US military cameramen if
they could remember a colleague from the 1940s with a
bad leg. They knew one. His name is Jack "X", and he is
exactly the age claimed for the Santilli cameraman:
eighty-six.3
The cameraman is not Jack Barnett-a
name used originally by Santilli to protect the identity
of the true cameraman. Jack Barnett worked for Universal
News, filmed Elvis Presley at a high-school concert in
1955 and died in 1969. Jack X did not work for
Universal, but filmed Elvis at another concert, an
open-air one, when the Universal cameramen were on
strike.4 The cameraman agreed to be interviewed by a
major US TV network.5
In April 1996 Bob Shell
was contacted by the US Air Force following an enquiry
from President Clinton's scientific adviser, Dr John
Gibbons. The USAF Captain told Shell that they had
located footage from the same stock in their archives
and verified that at least part of the Santilli material
is genuine, and shows no dummy and no human. They knew
the cameraman's name-Jack X-but asked Shell to forward
an address, since the military records building in St
Louis had had a fire and many records had been lost. A
search would be time-consuming and expensive.6
When we asked for details about the crash site,
we became convinced that the cameraman indeed has an
excellent knowledge of the area in question. With Ray
Santilli as the intermediary-and Santilli did not know
anything about the area in question and insisted on
calling Socorro "Sorocco"-he even described a ruined
bridge that we could locate only on our third visit to
the area. He knew exactly what he was talking about.
Although some have criticised the cameraman's
technique in the autopsy film, other military cameraman
think this is exactly the way they, too, would have
filmed it.
"The cameraman keeps moving to get
out of the way of the surgeon and keeps trying to get
the best perspective. The job of an army cameraman is to
record a procedure on film, not to deliver beautiful
pictures. And that, here, is an adequate filmic
protocol," said Dr Roderick Ryan, US Navy cameraman
during the '40s and '50s who filmed many secret
government projects including the atomic tests on Bikini
Atoll.7
"Among these circumstances, no one could
have made a better job...he was not only a well-educated
and experienced movie man, but, additionally, in full
knowledge of editing and production of documentaries.
Evidence: filming the autopsy activities from various
view angles," said Col. Colman VonKeviczky, who studied
at the UFA Film Academy in Berlin Babelsberg, was head
of the audiovisual division of the Royal Hungarian
General Staff, cameraman and director of the 3rd US Army
at Heidelberg and member of the audiovisual department
of the United Nations in New York.8
THE FILM
STOCK
Careful study of stills made from the
original film and high-quality Betacam copies confirmed
that the film was indeed shot on 16-mm material. The
camera handling seen on the autopsy film indicates the
use of a small, lightweight camera with fixed lenses
(therefore, the out-of-focus close-ups), like the 16-mm
Bell & Howell Filmo Camera used by US military
cameramen in the '40s-the camera the cameraman claims he
used.9
Leaders of 16 mm film were sent to Kodak
Hollywood, London and Copenhagen and turned out to bear
the symbols (a square and a triangle) used by Kodak
either in 1947 or in 1967.10
Two segments with
three frames each, one clearly showing the autopsy room,
were given to Bob Shell, editor of Shutterbug magazine
and also a phototechnical consultant for the FBI and the
US courts. After a careful physical analysis, Shell
confirmed the segments to be pre-1956 16-mm film. In
1956 Kodak changed its film-base from acetate-propionate
to triacetate, and the samples were clearly on
acetate-propionate film. The film type was Super
XX-Panchromatic Safety Film, a high-speed film used for
indoor filming but which had a life-span of no more than
two years, when cosmic radiation would cause a 'fogging'
of the material. Shell is sure the film was exposed and
developed within two years. This, at least, dates the
film as pre-1958.11
THE EQUIPMENT & OBJECTS
IN THE AUTOPSY ROOM
Everything in the film dates
to the time in question. The telephone is an AT&
model from 1946,12 and spiral cables had been optional
since 1938 and standard for US Army telephones.13 The
wall clock is a model on the market since 1938,14 and
the microphone is a 1946 Sheer Bros mike.15 The table
with the instruments was standard equipment for a
pathologist, as confirmed by Prof. Cyril Wecht,
ex-President of the American Academy of Forensic
Sciences.16 The bone hammer was not unusual; nor was the
Bunsen burner which, in autopsies, served the purpose of
burning away body fat.
THE BODY
The
corpse on the autopsy table has been the subject of many
disputes as to whether it is a dummy, a girl with a
genetic disorder or, indeed, an alien. Nearly all
special effects (FX) experts concluded that it is
certainly possible to fake footage of a
realistic-looking autopsy. There have been many concerns
about 'snuff' movies and the origin of the corpses used
in them. South America had been named as a possible
origin, but reports from there have indicated the use of
very realistic dummies. However, no one has found any
evidence of special effects being used in this autopsy
film-although today, unquestionably, nearly everything
can be faked with the latest state-of-the-art FX
techniques.17
On the other hand, pathologists
and physicians from all over the world who saw the film
were pretty sure the body was not a dummy, but actually
a corpse-human or humanoid.
It is indisputable
that some of the characteristics of different genetic
disorders can be found in the being on the autopsy
table-mostly disorders such as Turner's syndrome or
progeria, combined with polydactylism (which is not a
typical element of Turner's syndrome, although possible
in combination with it) and other anomalies. This
prompted a German dermatologist, Dr T. Jansen of the
Policlinic of the University of Munich, to publish a
study in a medical journal, trying to prove that the
body is that of a girl who died from a rare form of
progeria.18 On the other hand, he forgot to explain why
there could be two girls with identical symptoms
including polydactylism, when progeria is so rare that
there are only 20 cases worldwide. Unfortunately, the
only case of Turner's syndrome twins, although obviously
documented on film, was never published in the medical
literature.
Indeed, Dr Jansen's 'findings' do
not explain the extreme precautions taken when the
autopsy was performed, i.e., why would the team have
worn bio-hazard protection suits if the body had a
genetic disorder, and why would the being have been
fitted with black eye-lenses? Although Dr Jansen
diagnosed a stroke (common for progeria patients) as the
cause of death, this does not explain the damaged right
leg, the broken and swollen left leg, the cut-off right
hand and a bruise at the left temple with a possible
bullet wound. Should we assume that our creature broke
its legs, cut its right hand and shot a bullet in its
head before it died from a stroke?
More than
that, Jansen's explanation for the missing navel
couldn't convince us, either. To quote Dr Jansen, "It's
like if you put up an umbrella: the unevenness
disappears."19
On the other hand, quite a number
of pathologists concluded that the being was not human
at all, since its inner organs were like nothing they
had ever seen:
Prof. Christopher Milroy, Home
Office Pathologist, University of Sheffield, UK:
"Although a close-up of the brain was shown, it was
again out of focus. However, the appearance was not that
of a human brain."20
Prof. Mihatsch, University
of Basle, Switzerland: "As for the organs removed, they
could not be tallied with any human organs."21
Prof. Cyril Wecht, Ex-President, American
Academy of Forensic Sciences, USA: "I can't place these
structures in an abdominal context... I find it
difficult to bring in any connection with the human body
as I know it. The structure that must be the brain, if
it were a human being, does not look like a brain...it
does not seem to be a human being."22
Dr Carsten
Nygren, Oslo, Norway: "This is not a human brain. It
is...much too dark."23
Prof. Pierluigi Baima
Bollone, University of Turin, Italy: "When we look at
the inner organs of the body we find no single organ
that in any way resembles any human organ. The main
organ, which could be the liver, has neither the shape
nor the location of a human liver. The face of the
alleged extraterrestrial shows surprising anatomical
features: very big ocular orbits, a very flat nasal
pyramid, a mouth somehow wide open...nevertheless, the
face is flat, there is no evidence of facial musculature
which is present in human beings and is responsible for
the large variety of facial expressions of the human
species... My overall impression is that we are dealing
with a creature that seems to belong to our species but
is so clearly different from us that it seems absurd to
speculate about the similarity."24
There was not
a single physician or pathologist who, after watching
the full film, concluded it was a hoax or that the being
on the table was a dummy. They all agreed the corpse was
of a living, biological entity-human or not.
THE
PATHOLOGISTS
According to the cameraman the
autopsy was performed by "Dr Bronk" and "Dr Williams".
Prof. Dr Detlev Bronk (1897-1975) was no
surprise, since his name already appeared in the
controversial "Majestic 12" documents. He was Chairman
of the National Research Council, America's leading
biophysicist and a member of the Advisory Committee of
the Army, Air Force and of the Atomic Energy
Commission-certainly a person to whom the supervision of
an autopsy of this relevance could have been entrusted.
After his death, all his papers and documents were
preserved at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical
Research, of which he was President from 1953.25
Dr Bronk was a very methodical person, kept
detailed diaries and all his correspondence, notes and
dates. But when Bob Shell wanted to look through his
papers and diaries for 1947, he learnt that,
mysteriously enough, this is the only year for which all
the records are missing. None of the friendly librarians
could tell him what had happened to them or why they are
still missing.26
Dr Williams might have been Dr
Robert Parvin Williams (1891-1967), who was Special
Assistant to the Surgeon General of the Army at Fort
Monroe, Virginia. He was a Lt. Col. in 1947 and was
promoted to Brig. General in 1949.27 Alone, the naming
of Dr Williams-who was the right man in the right place
for the task-indicates the cameraman had some inside
knowledge.
[...]
According to the
cameraman, four living aliens were found at the crash
site. One did not survive the recovery operation, the
second and third died about four weeks later, and the
fourth survived until May 1949.
We do not know
anything about the autopsy of the first creature, and it
might very well have been that it was subjected to a
'big' scientific autopsy.
The cameraman filmed
the second and third autopsies on 1st and 3rd July 1947,
when the main concern might have been to find out the
cause of their sudden deaths in order to find a way to
keep alien no. 4 alive-unless they could establish
communication and find out why these visitors had come
to Earth. This was surely of a higher interest for the
national defence forces than a scientific study of an
alien life-form. Nevertheless, we assume that organs
were taken for further study during the dissection.
Furthermore, according to the cameraman, the
fourth alien was autopsied scientifically in a medical
theatre in Washington, DC, in the presence of leading
scientists from the US, England and France.34
ROSWELL OR SOCORRO?
Ray Santilli's claim
that the film was "the Roswell footage" caused a lot of
controversy, since none of the witnesses to the July
1947 UFO crash/retrieval event had confirmed either the
bodies or the debris. Indeed, the corpses found in
Roswell were smaller, more slender, and had four or five
fingers, according to eyewitnesses.51 None ever
mentioned six fingers. In any case, if the film were a
fake, why did those responsible for it not care to read
at least one of the many books on this subject or see
the excellent TV mini-series, Roswell, by Paul Davies,
as shown on Showtime?
The very first information
I got from Santilli about the source of the film made me
wonder if it actually had anything to do with Roswell at
all. Ray already insisted on 5th May 1995 that the
autopsies had been filmed on 1st and 2nd July 1947, and
that the recovery had taken place "in the beginning of
June"-one month too early for Roswell.
When I
went to Roswell on 30th June 1995 to confront the
eyewitnesses (including Robert Shirkey, Glenn Dennis and
Frank Kaufmann) with the just-released stills from the
film, I asked Santilli for details about the crash site.
He could only tell me it was "about four-and-a-half
hours away", "close to White Sands test site" and "an
Apache reservation", and "at the northern shore of a
small dry lake at the end of a small canyon". I asked
him to call the cameraman to obtain more detailed
instructions, which, indeed, he did. He said the crash
site was "between Socorro" (Ray said "Sorocco") "and
Magdalena".
By the end of July 1995, Santilli
released the full story of the cameraman who confirmed
he had learnt of the crash on 1st June 1947-which dates
the event back to the late hours of 31st May 1947. Date,
location and everything we see on the film didn't fit
with Roswell. Conclusion: it was a different event.
The fact that the cameraman had been flown into
Roswell and brought to the crash site by car, caused him
to believe he'd been involved in "the Roswell incident"
that he'd heard about-and Santilli believed him.
CONCLUSION
While nobody has been able to
present any proof that the Santilli autopsy footage was
faked, we have some convincing indications that the film
might very well be genuine. If it is a hoax, it is
definitely the most ingenious fake of the century.
Instead of continuing the polemic of the last
year or so, serious UFO researchers should continue to
evaluate the evidence and search for the truth, in what
might turn out to be the most provocative proof yet that
we are not alone in the Universe.
|
