Don Schmitt, Adam Dew and the Roswell Slides

Adam Dew

In the last several weeks, I have been asked if Don Schmitt had ever said anything about the interview I had conducted with Adam Dew in November 2017 on the X-Zone Broadcast Network. Since I interviewed Don a couple of times, I thought that those interested could figure out on their own what his reaction might be. Listen to what Don said and what Adam said, compare the two and decide who is telling the truth and who is not. For those interested, you can listen to the interviews, starting with Dew, here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/13469927

And Don Schmitt here:

https://youtu.be/t1GAupYNIIw

and here:

https://youtu.be/fo-gK4nwZ_k 

And you can read my somewhat short analyses of the shows, again starting with Dew, here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2017/11/x-zone-broadcast-network-adam-dew-and.html

Don Schmitt. Photo copyright
by Kevin Randle

And Don Schmitt here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2017/08/xzone-broadcast-network-don-schmitt.html

And here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2016/09/x-zone-broadcast-network-don-schmitt.html

This, I think, will provide the information necessary to form an opinion about the veracity of the various tales. I did ask Don if he had listened to Adam’s interview. He emailed me that:

These were what we relied on as provided by [Joe] Beason for attempted analysis by Rudiak and others. We were never allowed possession of either slide or any slides for that matter for dating, examination, or independent testing. We relied strictly on scans provided by Beason [the man who had the slides originally] throughout our association. The second slide was only a tight shot of the body which did not enable us to see what was clearly a museum setting in the background. When I confronted [Jaime] Maussan in his office in Mexico City the day after the presentation, I demanded to see the image of the entire second slide. Placard withstanding, it was indeed a museum. Now, reexamine the placard image as provided by Beason and tell me that what you see is not undecipherable script writing - not the block lettering which truly is in the originals. You will also recall that after Mexico City I confronted Dew and demanded that they publicly release the slides to end any final dispute. He declined stating "What good would that do? They have been tested enough." I persisted and believe my wait will be infinite.

Placard scans supplied to Don Schmitt.

He did include a copy of the scan that had been supplied to both Tom Carey and him, which was supplied to David Rudiak to see if David might be able to draw out something of significance. They don’t supply much in the way of information and are only of the placard and not of the whole display.

As I have said, I’ll let both men, Don and Adam, speak for themselves on this. I believe that each of us can infer from their statements where the truth lies. I will say, however, that it seems to me, when we find ourselves in these sorts of situations, the truth is usually found somewhere between the two opposing camps. Though I don’t solicit comments but let those who wish to comment do so, in this case, I would be interested in anything anyone has to say about all of this. I have my own bias which, naturally, will color what I believe to be the truth, though I try to be as objective as possible.

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Adam Dew and the Not Roswell Slides

Adam Dew and camera.

This week I talked with Adam Dew, he of the Not Roswell Slides fame. I had a long list of questions for him from how did the slides come into his possession to his reaction when the placard was deblurred within hours of the BeWitness program in Mexico City. You can hear the interview here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/13469927

As you can imagine, some of the things he said disagree with things that others have said. This is a result of the different perspectives (yeah, I said that on purpose) of those involved. One of the big controversies was who saw the slides and when. According to Adam, the slides, rather than scans, were seen by Don Schmitt and Tom Carey and they had noticed the museum setting of the slides. This is in conflict with what both Don and Tom have said. You can listen to my interview with Don about this here:

https://youtu.be/fo-gK4nwZ_k

and there was another interview about Roswell and the like with Don here:

https://youtu.be/t1GAupYNIIw

I was interested in why they all thought the image on the slides might be some sort of alien creature. Adam said that it didn’t look like any of the mummies they had seen online. The way the body looked, and their (his and Joe Beason) over estimating the size seemed to be the reason. He did describe the features that caused him to think of it as alien.

He also said that he wasn’t completely convinced that the image was a mummy, though the deblurring of the placard by the Roswell Slides Research Group and the subsequent findings suggest that is the answer. I pointed out that we know this has nothing to do with Roswell because the museum where the mummy had been displayed was identified and that it had been moved in May 1947.

From about February 2015, I posted many articles about the investigation and news about the Not Roswell Slides. You can search the blog easily for all those articles, too numerous to note here. Just click on 2015 on the left side of the blog and it will list all the articles published at that time; then just click on February. You can then follow the progression through March, April and into May. There were other articles published after the reveal in Mexico City in May.

Interestingly, Adam mentioned that some of the recent publicity about this whole affair had sparked renewed interest in his documentary. Up to that point, it had been set firmly on the back burner. The renewed interest might not be enough to induce him to finish it. As it stands right now, the fate of the documentary seems to be left up in the air.

On a side note, and for those interested, I am bothered by this whole thing because we all seem to get tied up in the discussion of the mummy and forget that it was a human child who died very young. I have refrained from publishing any pictures, though they would certainly prove the case. It’s a matter of personal taste rather than anything else and for those who wish to see them, they are available on many websites.

Tom Carey's Fourteen Points or The Roswell Slides Revisited

Tom Carey, who seems set on keeping the Roswell Slides controversy alive, contacted Rob McConnell to say that he had thought of several things that he, Carey, should have mentioned during his last interview. He had a list this time. Fourteen items that he wanted to say, though I confess I don’t know what difference it makes at this late date. You can listen to it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0oNhTsaf3M

We were treated with some of the same things that we’ve all heard in the past. We learned about Joe Beason who contracted Carey to alert him to the slides but this time Carey said that Beason had some sort of IT company which should have been

Tom Carey

a red flag for them. Then Adam Dew appeared on the scene and it was Dew, without Carey or Don Schmitt, who went to Kodak to validate the age of the film. As I have mentioned in the past, Dew, at least according to Carey, told them that the code on the side of the film was the code used by Kodak in 1947… but, of course, had Carey asked me, I would have told him that the code was for motion picture film and was rarely if ever used on slide film.

There are other things in the interview, such as them being fooled by the age and importance of other slides (or maybe Carey still believes that the photographer, that is Bernard or Hilda Ray, were pals with the Eisenhowers). This connection suggested the Rays might have been allowed to see the top secret alien bodies and to photograph them because they knew the Eisenhowers. This really makes no sense, when you think about it, but that connection to Eisenhower, because the Rays had pictures of Ike on the back of a train, seemed to suggest some sort of relationship.

But all of this has been discussed before. The interesting points come near the end of the interview. Carey said that Beason had originally contacted Stan Friedman, but Friedman was too busy to get involved in the investigation of the slides. This, as I have said, makes no sense because Friedman, who sees himself as the first Roswell investigator, has been told about the possibility of the definitive proof for the alien nature of the Roswell crash, but he’s too busy to pursue it. Instead, he said to hand this possible smoking gun over to Carey… And at no time did Carey or Schmitt ever mention any of this to Friedman even after nearly everyone in the world knew something about the slides… It is important to point out that Rob McConnell had asked Friedman about this and Friedman denied that he had ever been approached about it by Beason.

The other revelation, which also came toward the end, was that while Carey and Schmitt and those working with them had done everything they could to read the placard, it simply couldn’t be done. But Carey tells us here that there is a third slide that Dew and Beason kept to themselves. Remember, as I pointed out once we had seen the slides, they were numbers 9 and 11, and I wondered what was shown on slide number 10. Maybe there was something there that would have made reading the placard easier or revealed exactly what had been photographed.

And this is what Carey claimed. He said that while in Mexico City for the Great Reveal, there was another slide that had been shown to, or given to, Jaime Maussan. This was slide number 10, and when Richard Dolan asked for a copy of one of the slides to email to colleagues, Maussan accidentally gave him slide number 10 so that deblurring, or reading the placard, was done quickly. Well, I suppose this could be true, but the fact remains that the placard, using the proper program, could have been read prior to the Great Reveal. But Carey has confirmed that there was a third slide and that the placard seemed to be clearer in that slide which makes you wonder about them not pursuing this.

At the end, Carey seemed to accept the idea that the image was of a human child… but he sort of talked around it, so I’m not sure that if he isn’t holding out some hope that the image might not be human. He concedes that the image photographed by the Rays in the 1940s is the same as the image in photographs made in the late 19^th century and again in the 1930s. But he doesn’t seem to rule out completely the idea that it might be an alien creature that had died sometime earlier and had been interred by the native peoples. Though it seems that the answer is no, it also seems that this might be the last gasp in this sad tale.

Rob McConnell Interviews Tom Carey

Rob McConnell, on the X-Zone Broadcast Network interviewed Tom Carey about the Roswell Slides, and Carey said some very interesting things. You can hear the interview here: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQ0V-Xuzzp0

Tom Carey

We learn from Carey (at about 04:15 into the interview) that it was Joe Beason who contacted him after Beason had attempted to interest Stan Friedman in the slides. Friedman, according to Carey, was too busy to follow the lead and suggested Carey to Beason. This bothers me because it would seem that Stan, who has been very protective of his leads about Roswell, handed to Carey what could have been the most important evidence of the Roswell case. I wonder if there was something in that communication between Stan and Beason that suggested to Stan that he be wary. 

At the 5:24 (all times approximate) point, Carey said that he received an email with the scan of two slides in it. 

At 6:31, according to Carey, Beason suggested that the slides were related to Roswell. 

At 11:57, Carey said that when he first saw the slides, he thought the image matched the descriptions of the aliens that he had received from various witnesses who had claimed to have seen the bodies. 

At 15:46, in what is an important point, Carey said that Beason told him that the codes on the edge of the film matched that used by Kodak in 1947. The problem is that that code was used for motion picture film and that slide film had a different coding system (though there seems to be some suggestion that some of the slide film might have had the motion picture code on it). The problem is that when we were all shown the whole frame from one of the slides, there is no coding on it. That coding didn’t appear on every slide, but was spread out through the length of the roll of film. 

I had noticed that the slides in play were number 9 and number 11, but number 10 was missing. Carey mentioned this as well (at 17:51), but said that Beason claimed that slide number 10 was lost. Carey mentioned that this seemed to be a problem, but clearly it wasn’t a big one for him. I wondered, of course, if what was seen on number 10 wouldn’t have clearly identified the image. 

At 20:36, Carey talked about the anthropologists that he attempted to get to review the slide. He said that he sent it to the smartest anthropologist he knew and that man told him the image was not of a human. 

Screen Grab for the documentary. This is close to the

image that Tom Carey shared with anthropologists.

Rob asked, if he had permission because of the non-disclosure agreements he and Don Schmitt had signed. Carey said that Adam Dew, who had partnered with Beason, had produced a trailer of a documentary he planned, and in that documentary, the image on the slide was revealed, possibly by mistake. This image was seen at an angle on a computer screen so that those outside the inner circle now had a poor image with which to work. This lousy image is what Carey was sharing with those anthropologists whose opinion he wanted. He said that the idea of UFOs and Roswell was toxic so that the anthropologists wouldn’t discuss it with him. He gave the impression that these anthropologists refused to even look at the image. 

At 29:00 he mentioned that MUFON has an anthropologist as one of its consultants and the consultant thought it was a genetically deformed human. Then Carey mentioned that some of the anthropologists provided opinions off the record which, of course, is not the same thing as refusing to even look at the slide which is what he had claimed. They too seemed to believe in some sort of genetic deformity but according to Carey, no one said that it was a mummy (which is strange because that was the thought that most of us had even looking at the poor image captured from the documentary trailer). Of course, the real problem is that he was giving them the poor image and not the best resolution scans he had which might contributed to the lack of cooperation. 

In a big revelation, found at 36:28, Carey is talking about the logistics of the situation with everyone involved scattered over two countries. The five principals, however, met in Chicago long before the great reveal in Mexico City. At this meeting, according to Carey, they were shown the slides to prove that slides actually existed. This brings up lots of questions, especially about how clear those slides were and if they were projected on a screen… which would provide a better look at the background, meaning it should have been obvious that it was a museum setting, and if the placard which became so critical to the story could be read. Two or three minutes later, Carey again addressed the problem of reading the placard and how no one could do it at that time. 

At 40:07, after Rob McConnell asked him about the image and the identity, Carey explained that although the placard does suggest it was a child, Carey didn’t believe that the image on the slide was a two-year-old child, because it was too tall. He doesn’t believe that it is a 900-year-old mummy but something that had died more recently. He doesn’t believe it was the child found by Palmer in 1898, though it resembles it. He seemed to base this belief on the size of the mummy, but he, like everyone else is working off the image on the slide so the analysis of the size of the image can be disputed and given the documentation that exists, it is clear to nearly everyone else that the image is of a child. No measurements on the mummy can be made because the remains have been returned to the native peoples, as, of course, they should have been. 

At 57:03, Carey makes the statement that the mummy in the museum is “Not our guy.” 

This is a very interesting interview with Tom Carey providing his take on how this fiasco developed. You can read more about it on this blog beginning in 2015 or head over to Rich Reynolds UFO Conjectures to review his take on much of this. Just look for Roswell Slides in the search engine provided. 

And, for a differing take on this given by the other participant, you can listen to my interview with Don Schmitt. You can hear it here: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fo-gK4nwZ_k 

Finally, for those who would like a more concise review, a long, heavily footnoted chapter in Roswell in the 21^st Century details this information and also notes some of the arrogance by those who had seen the slides before the big reveal in Mexico City.

New Defector from the Roswell Slides

Mesa Verde

Once again I’m dragged back into the nonsense that is the Roswell Slides. It should be clear to everyone who is able to think at all that the slides show the image of an unfortunate child who died hundreds of years ago. No one has ever offered an explanation of how we got from the image of what is clearly a mummy to the idea that it was the body of an alien creature. How did they make that first incredibly dumb leap of logic?

This is the latest development, and by latest I mean one that first appeared on Curt Collins blog last week though Jaime Maussan has now produced another document about why the body in the slide is different from the one the rest of us believe to be the same. With Maussan’s latest, Curt’s posting becomes even more important. The post can be found here:

http://www.blueblurrylines.com/2015/06/dr-richard-oconnor-on-putting-away.html

One of the experts who was defending the idea that the slides showed an alien creature was Dr. Richard O’Connor, who, as you’ll see at Curt’s site, wrote to Linda Moulton Howe that he had been able to confirm the deblurring of the placard to his satisfaction but that the statement on the placard “cannot be correct.”

O’Connor joined the alien body team after the great May 5^th fiasco. Jaime Maussan interviewed O’Connor via Skype because he had solid medical credentials and he spoke English. It was used as part of an article that claimed, “Doctors Agree: Roswell Slides Show a Nonhuman Body.”

This interview that was posted to YouTube would be of some value in supporting that idea of “two bodies” as Maussan claims, but all that has changed. O’Connor, having seen the FOIA material recovered by Shepherd Johnson, said, “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.”

So, one of those who had once suggested the body was alien, though based solely on an examination of the slide, had now reversed himself. After seeing the available documentation, he changed his mind.

Curt, in fact, sent an email to O’Connor and was surprised to get a response and an invitation to give him a telephone call. According to Curt, at his Blue Blurry Lines website:

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 shallow grave may have accounted for some of this, particularly the loss of the lower leg. (I [Curt Collins] thought later that the excavation by amateur archeologists could also be a factor.) 

Interestingly, Tom Carey was interviewed on June 2 on a KGRA show about all of this. According to what Curt reported, “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.’ [Though I have to wonder about some of the less civil things that Tom had said in his comments about the placard and how quickly it was read… the data had been there, if the proper investigation had taken place] 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.”

Here’s the thing. Someone in on the beginning of the investigation had to know the truth. The slide placard was deblurred so quickly that any alibi about the failure to do so prior to May 5^th falls onto those making the investigation. They should have been able to do that three years ago rather than get caught up in this sideshow. Basic research and a demand to see the original slides probably would have ended this long before we get to Mexico City. A simple question about the sequence of the slides, such as “Where is number ten?” might have done it. (I note here that according to some, the slides shown were number 9 and number 11, which left the question of “Where is number 10?)

If Adam Dew and his pal, Joe Beason, had any thoughts of proving how credulous UFO investigators are for some kind of a documentary, they failed at that. This wouldn’t have worked had they provided high quality scans of all of the slides to researchers. Given that, those researchers would have been able to read the placard in a matter of hours. How do I know? Because within hours of a high resolution scan appearing on Dew’s website, the placard was read.

I’ll throw one other thing out here. I believe that the mystery caller who told Nick Redfern about all this, the man who allegedly overheard a conversation in Midland, Texas, was probably either Beason, Dew or a pal of theirs. The idea that someone in Midland overheard this conversation, heard enough to understand so much of what was going on including the nondisclosure agreements, and then knew Nick Redfern, is just too much of a coincidence. It had to be arranged so that the story would get out and the hype could begin. And the hype did begin right there.

This should have never happened. It was a combination of the secrecy imposed by Dew and Beason and the enthusiasm of the Roswell investigators for the final “smoking gun” evidence. Had anyone looked at all the red flags and asked some very basic questions, this would have been seen for what it was. The majority of the blame probably belongs to Dew and Beason, but there is plenty to be shared by the others who participated in the long investigation and the program in Mexico City. We should all learn from this and change the way we do business.