Roswell

Santilli Alien Film

Santilli Alien Film
by George Wingfield ©
FSR Director and Consultant

GW Bulletin 11
October 1st 1995

Everyone by now has seen either the FOX TV special in the U.S. or the Channel 4 Roswell documentary in the U.K. and no one is much the wiser. The mystery of what this footage shows and whether it really depicts the autopsy of an extraterrestrial is still an open question. But there is much reason for suspicion.

The most important conclusion that one can draw from the FOX segment is that both the leading pathologists consulted, Dr Christopher Milroy and Dr Cyril Wecht, seemed clearly of the opinion that this was a dead body rather than a special effects dummy. This impression was reinforced by the Hollywood special effects experts who watched the footage. Top creature designer Stan Winston, who made some of the "Jurassic Park" dinosaurs and the extraterrestrial predators of "Alien", said: "Nothing about this thing feels phony. If you came to me and said you'd created this illusion, you'd be working here ... [snaps his fingers] like that". It would be pretty incredible if this were a built prop and the cost of it would run to many many multiple thousands of dollars.

If the corpse is flesh and blood, the possibilities of it being a human freak of some kind should clearly be examined. The pathologists discussed various genetic defects which produce Turner's Syndrome, hexadactylism, etc., which could account for some of the creature's unusual characteristics. But the likelihood of finding them all together in one human being seems to be a vanishingly remote possibility. Dr Wecht had not come across any corpse even closely resembling this one in any of the 40,000 autopsies which he had performed or supervised. And it should be remembered that a second different corpse of entirely similar description appears in a further autopsy sequence. Quite apart from this the creature has no navel which is unknown with humans. Dr Wecht clearly says that what he has seen here does not appear to be a human being - he prefers to call it a humanoid, but not a member of the human race.

I have been pressed very hard to say whether I really think this is the autopsy of an alien or not. It is a very difficult question to answer. On the one hand there are the compelling reasons, which are touched on above, for believing that the creature is neither a dummy nor a human, particularly as regards its internal organs; on the other hand there are the highly suspicious circumstances under which the footage was presented to the public together with a most unsatisfactory account of how the pictures came to be taken by the elusive unidentified cameraman. Additionally there is no firm evidence to tie the footage to the Roswell crash apart from the supposed date of the film stock used (1947) and the claim that the name "Dr Bronk" can be made out at the top of the surgeon's autopsy document. There remains a very strong whiff of deception.

In view of all these unsatisfactory aspects, I obviously cannot make any declaration that I believe the film is genuine. Far more detective work needs to be done first. The cameraman must be positively identified and interviewed (if indeed he is still alive). The original film - at least a portion with images of the alien on it - should also be thoroughly and exhaustively tested to determine its age. So far as I know this has not yet been done. If it were, a verdict might be possible but, without it, the balance of opinion is inevitably negative. At present the possibility that the footage could be genuine is still marginally viable and therefore it would be premature to reject the whole business as no more than a hugely elaborate hoax.

A Failure to Deliver

Having said that, the credibility of the film footage has been struck an extremely damaging blow by the failure of Ray Santilli's company to deliver what was promised in its "Roswell" video, which was shipped sometime after August 26th. The video was advertised as "the original uncut raw footage", containing "all the viewable material taken from the reels of film we received from the man we believed was the Roswell cameraman". What was delivered fell far short of this promise.

The video contained the (second) autopsy sequence, which was first publicly shown on May 5th, and the sequence showing the 'alien' symbols and the six-finger hand impression panels. With this was some background material on the Roswell events and interviews with Ray Santilli and Philip Mantle. Sequences never shown in public, such as the first alien autopsy and the so-called tent sequence are missing, although these definitely do exist and have been seen by quite a few people.

Weeks earlier Ray Santilli talked about the "debris field" footage and told Reg Presley and Philip Mantle, separately, that there was film of a crashed disk and debris, the crane used in the recovery and military personnel at the scene. What became of this? He also spoke of footage showing President Truman which, of course, has never materialised.

The failure now to deliver at least 50% of the known footage seriously damages Ray Santilli's credibility and surely casts doubt on the authenticity of the whole thing. I am told that only 400 videos were ordered in advance in the UK and all these have now been sent out free of charge. Orders from abroad, from the U.S. in particular, don't appear to have been met. An offer to refund money to those who are dissatisfied was made by Santilli and should prevent charges of misrepresentation. But many will infer that the easy explanation for this failure to deliver is that Santilli wished to avoid being charged with fraud.

Ray Santilli has said that he sold the first autopsy sequence independently to a German "collector of rare 16mm film" in order to finance other parts of his business. Other reports say Volker Spielberg made this sale. Santilli has also said that, although he was satisfied with the authenticity of the (second) autopsy sequence, he was not satisfied with that of the tent footage. He implied that it made the whole thing look bad and so he was not going to include it.

The Tent Footage

To those who have not seen any of this missing footage, the rationale for withdrawing it is hard to fathom since its removal has ostensibly torpedoed the launch of the video. However an answer may lie in what was put out on the Internet by someone who did attend an early screening of the tent footage. Two doctors are seen beside what appears to be an alien body laid out on some kind of table. Neither is wearing an anti-contamination suit, gloves or surgical mask. They seem either to be applying medical procedures to the body, which is partly covered by a white sheet, or perhaps even be performing a rudimentary autopsy. They appear to be putting their hands under the sheet and pulling pieces out from the body, holding them up to the light and then putting them in a box. It has been suggested these pieces are either organs or body tissue. (The more charitable suggestion that the pieces were surgical dressings did not find much support.) Was it this strange and possibly gruesome behaviour which made Ray withdraw the tent footage? If the film is a fake surely no one would dream up quite such a bizarre scenario ? It makes no sense at all.

There is another, possibly more damning, explanation. A small number of people including Reg Presley were shown the tent footage at the screening referred to above, which was held well before May 5th. This piece of footage had a green cast to it and no registration errors were apparent, which one tends to get with old 16 mm cine film. Also it was said to display no flecks of dirt, scratches, or bubbles which one might have expected with film of that age. Although this was meant to be a video transfer of the original film, one would expect some of these defects to appear in the copy. Two of those who saw it said they got the strong impression it must have been filmed using a video camera in the first place!

An odd footnote to the tent footage story is that a minute and a half's worth of it can be seen as part of a new video called "Penetrating the Web, Part 2" which is made and marketed by Trans Video Productions (of Linslade, Buckinghamshire, U.K.). I am told that this shortened copy of the tent footage has scratches and age marks almost almost as if they had been added to the footage shown earlier! The copy was supplied to Bruce Barlow of Trans Video, the producer, by someone he knew on condition that the person's name was not made public.

The Search for Cameraman Jack

In an Internet posting of September 20 John Ratcliff revealed that the name of the mystery cameraman is "Jack Barrett" and that he is 82 and lives in Florida. Ray Santilli apparently mistyped the name as "Jack Barnett" in a private E-mailing which got posted publicly by mistake. Appalled at his blunder he has continued to use this pseudonym for the cameraman ever since.

That, at least, is Ray's story and is what he has told a number of people in confidence. Whether this really is the cameraman's name, or, indeed, whether there is such a man with the description which Ray Santilli has presented, continues to be the subject of great controversy.

Word from a number of sources is that the only "Jack Barrett" who fits the service profile in "The Cameraman's Story" (see Bulletin No. 10) is a man who would by now be 85. This man is also reported to have died on August 3 1995. Curiously that was almost exactly the time that John Purdie (who made the Channel 4 Roswell documentary) was in the U.S. attempting to set up a meeting with the cameraman. Apparently he only succeeded in talking to him on the telephone. It is hardly possible that he could have spoken to the man who died on August 3.

Various researchers - not least of whom is private investigator William C Dear, who appeared in the FOX program - are in hot pursuit of the elusive cameraman. One person has identified a promising potential candidate with a name which is certainly not Barrett. Bob Shell, despite an Internet posting (not his) to the contrary, denies that he has found the cameraman or is in contact with him. He says that he has never spoken to him directly - only via Ray Santilli.

If the profile information given in "The Cameraman's Story" is correct, it should not take that long to positively identify our man. However I did predict several months ago that this man, whether real or fictional, would most likely suffer an early demise.

Verification of the film date

Photographic expert Bob Shell has physically examined a piece of the original film and says that he is 95% certain that it is from the era in question, i.e. roughly the late 1940s. However he has not carried out any chemical tests which are not his field of expertise.

The story of how the sample eventually reached Bob is also unusual. The section sent to him was intercepted by FOX network people claiming (falsely) that they represented Bob. That section was sent to Robert Nathan at JPL in California who returned it stating that he could do nothing with it.

Then Bob Shell got sent another section of film via express courier. It disappeared and was untraceable for a week before suddenly showing up. That film, if it is from the actual film, did not show an alien body but just the autopsy room before the body was brought in. Bob dated that as pretty much definitely 1947 for a number of compelling reasons.

The impression that this is film from the 1940s/1950s persists and seems to eliminate the theory that it is all a modern hoax made, say, during the last ten years. Stanton Friedman says he was told by a former USAF OSI man that he saw the footage in 1981 and it was considered at the time to be fraudulent. Possibly it was made for disinformation purposes or as a "psy op" to deceive the Soviets as was suggested in Bulletin 9. During the late 1940s/early 1950s many senior military men both in the U.S. and the Soviet Union clearly believed -- rightly or wrongly -- in the reality of extraterrestrial craft visiting earth and it is not inconceivable such footage could have been made by some government intelligence agency to hoodwink the Soviets into believing that the USAF had captured such a craft.

Revisions and corrections

Some versions of my last bulletin (Bulletin No. 10) contained errors in the appended footnotes. Amendments and additional information to these footnotes (using the same footnote numbers as in Bulletin 10) follow :-

[4] "McDonald" refers to Brig. General George C McDonald who was Director of Intelligence of the US Army Air Forces and was later first Director of Intelligence for the USAF. (The previous version erroneously identified this as McDonnell of the McDonnell Aircraft Corporation of St Louis, Mo.)

[5] In the earlier footnote I put that the cameraman was reported to have said that the crash was on June 1st 1947 and that on June 2nd he was ordered by General McMullen to go at once to the site. Bob Shell now tells me that the story is that the crash was on May 31st 1947 and that McMullen gave the cameraman his orders on the following day, June 1st.

Quite independently a number of eye witnesses have given evidence that an immensely bright object crossed the sky and appeared to fall in the region near Socorro on the evening of May 31st. This would appear to corroborate, at least, the cameraman's time frame of events.

[6] If the crash site was near Socorro, it seems highly probable that Barney Barnett did come across the crashed disc at this place despite the usual version that he was in the Plains of San Agustin 50 miles further west beyond Magdalena. Curiously, Chester Barton, who was on the final clean-up crew at the other site, which he says was only 45 minutes from Roswell AAF, also specifically mentioned a group of archaeologists having arrived at the crash site. Two groups of archaeologists arriving at two differernt flying saucer crash sites ??? Surely not! Was New Mexico thick, not only with crashed saucers, but also archaeologists in 1947 ?

[7] "Tooey". This was the nickname of General Spaatz, Chief of Staff of the US Army Air Forces. Only his closest friends called him Tooey but the nickname was most probably common knowledge.

[10] There is considerable disagreement on how long it would have taken to drive the 150 miles or so from Roswell to the crash site near Socorro over poor roads in military vehicles in 1947. I had suggested 7 hours. Maybe quite a bit less?

[12] The cameraman says that the strange panels with the six- digit hand impression controls ARE the "boxes" referred to by him, to which the surviving aliens had clung.

[14] I am told that the cameraman has never said the autopsies were done in a hospital at all. Bob Shell says there was no need for a hospital to be involved and many reasons for one not to be. He suggests that the autopsy room has all the appearances of a newly constructed or newly modified room and it may have been taken over and set up just for this purpose.

In any case the FOX TV segment states that the autopsies were carried out at Carswell Army Air Field, Fort Worth. Certainly we were told at one point by Santilli that President Truman had flown to Dallas in order to see the alien bodies, presumably on July 1-3, a month after the crash, when the autopsies were supposedly done. Why the corpses should have been taken to Fort Worth (or Dallas) for autopsy is unclear since all other crash material was said to have been taken to Wright Field.

[18] In a separate statement to Ray Santilli, cameraman Jack has said that the surviving alien lived in "custody" for two years, and even though they do not communicate verbally, some form of communication was eventually established. He does not know why the creature died.

The FOX documentary has now laid to rest the potential anachronisms in the autopsy sequence that were suggested in my first Bulletin as possible reasons for believing the footage could not have been filmed in 1947. The wall-mounted telephone with the coiled handset cable is a Bell Standard model available in the U.S. from 1937. The electric clock on the wall is a model made by General Electric (which can be seen written on it) and available in the 1940s. Not mentioned by FOX is what appears to be a ballpoint pen used to write up the autopsy notes. The first American version of the biro, or ballpoint, went on sale priced at $12.50 at Gimbel's of New York on 29 October 1945 (it was reported that nearly 10,000 had been sold before closing time!).

In Bulletin No 9 I suggested that well known circlefakers John Lundberg and Rod Dickinson might have been responsible for the hoax photos of a six-digit dummy under construction, which were sent to the Fortean Times in August purporting to show the alien body in the Santilli film. John Lundberg wishes it to be known that he strongly denies that they were involved in any way in this spoof.

(Perhaps this denial should be weighed against the fact that recently Lundberg also flatly denied involvement in the making - with others - of a large crop circle formation near Froxfield in Wiltshire on the night of August 3/4 1994. There is no possible doubt about his participation in that hoax.

Gordon Creighton (Editor FSR)

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