Socorro Solution - A Hoax?

In the last several days, there has been something of a controversy raging about the Socorro UFO landing. Although it started a couple of years ago when Ben Moss and Tony Angiola began a new investigation, the controversy exploded with the publication of my book, Encounter in the Desert and then Tony Bragalia’s web posting that he had solved the case, though the new information presented there wasn’t all that new or dramatic and the solution didn’t really answer the major questions. You can read his take on Socorro here:

www.UFOExplorations.com

To fully understand all of this, let’s take a look at the history of the Socorro case with an eye on the hoax explanations which is Bragalia’s “new” explanation. Dr. Donald Menzel, the Harvard astronomer who wrote a number of books explaining all UFOs as hoaxes, illusions, delusions, misidentifications and confabulations was quick to point to students as the culprits in this alleged hoax. On September 10, 1964, just over four months after the landing report, Menzel wrote to Dr. J. Allen Hynek, the Air Force consultant on UFOs, “It certainly sounds to me like a hoax or, perhaps a hallucination.” And then in a letter on February 19, 1965, to Hynek, Menzel and his partner Lyle Boyd suggested that high school students who didn’t like Zamora because he issued them speeding tickets, “planned the whole business to ‘get’ Zamora.”

Hynek responded, "Opal Grinder [owner of a gas station on the edge of Socorro] does have a high school student working for him, and I talked with him at length [meaning, of course, the teenager working for Grinder]. Teenagers generally hate Zamora’s guts, but it was added that they hate all ‘fuzz’ and that if they wanted to get even with Zamora, they would simply beat him up or do something more direct, like letting the air out of his tires or something with immediate results rather than resort to an involved hoax."

It does seem that such an elaborate hoax would have been beyond the capabilities of high school students no matter how bright and how clever they might be. It should also be noted that while Hynek was not thinking in terms of high school students, he did ask “My old friend, Dr. Jack Whotman, President of the New Mexico School of Mines (sic) [which is in Socorro], who said he knew of no geophysical or other types of experiments going on in the area at the time. He, as the rest of the townspeople, were puzzled by the event…”

That, of course, was not the end of it because in a new round of investigations suggested students at New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology were now identified as the real perpetrators of the hoax. Tony Bragalia found a letter to Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling dated 1968 saying that the event was a hoax, but it should be noted that Pauling is only the recipient of the letter so his name here means very little in this context. In other words, that it was sent to Pauling is of little real note.

The letter, however, was written by Stirling Colgate, who was a reputable scientist, was at one time the president of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology following Whotman in that position, who said the case is a hoax and was a person of note. We don’t know what he really knew about the landing for certain and since he wasn’t there in 1964, he might not know of anything special. It might just be his opinion that the whole thing was a hoax because, well, it couldn’t be the landing of an alien spacecraft. He talked of pranks and unidentified students, and even that he knew who the pranksters were but we have nothing solid to corroborate this allegation. He wouldn’t release names, though so many years after the event, when he was in communication with Bragalia, I’m not sure what harm it would have done to the former students, their reputations, or the reputation of the school. It certainly wouldn’t do the belief that something alien had landed anything good, but the allegation is often enough in something like this.

Bragalia located another source, Dave Collis, who, as a freshman in 1965, or a year after the landing, had heard some stories from fellow students. He provided what some, at the time, have considered new evidence of a hoax. According to Bragalia:

Dave Collis was a freshman at New Mexico Tech in 1965, a year after the Socorro UFO incident. Collis went on to become a published scientist helping to lead the Energetic Materials Research and Testing Center at NM Tech. He is considered a world expert in researching blast effects and explosives. Collis explained that he himself enjoyed planning pranks when he was a student at Tech. In 1965, he and his friends had planned a "paranormal" prank and shared the plan with one of his trusted Professors. The Professor (who had been with Tech for years) told him that NM Tech had a long history of pranking- and that one of them was especially noteworthy. Collis then said that the Professor (whose name he does not remember or does not wish to offer) had "confidentially told me that the UFO sighting by the town cop was a hoax done by Techie students." Collis did not want to press the Professor on who did it - or how. Collis says, "he was telling me this in confidence, so I didn't ask for the details and he didn't offer."

When asked if the Professor could have been making up the hoax story, Collis replied that in the context of his conversation with him - there was no reason for him to lie. The Professor had told him the truth about the hoax, of that he was sure. Collis, when told about Stirling Colgate's confirmation that it was a hoax said, "Colgate is a brilliant man and he was a great College President. From what I was told by my Professor, it was a hoax. And if Colgate also says it was a hoax, it was." Collis (who is a pyrotechnics expert and often directed NM Tech's July 4 Fireworks) said that it always has surprised him that people didn't seem to realize just how "terrestrial" the reported Zamora UFO seemed to be in the first place.[i]

Finally, there are names attached to people who supposedly had some inside knowledge of the hoax but who weren’t involved themselves, weren’t part of the prank and therefore had no first-hand knowledge. They had heard about it from someone else who still isn’t named but was there (or might have been there) who believed it to be a hoax with no reason to lie, according to them and Bragalia. We then go back to Colgate who reaffirmed that it was a hoax, but again, it is from others that he heard this and he supplied no names of the perpetrators. More importantly, there are no details on how they pulled this off which is an important consideration.

Bragalia, in his new, 2017 article about this, does up the ante slightly. He interviewed a man who was apparently part of the hoax or claimed that he was. He offers this as further proof. Bragalia wrote:

This author [meaning Bragalia] has found and spoken to an involved perpetrator of the Socorro UFO hoax, a student at New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in 1964… 

There is also major disappointment over what was not shared and what cannot be shared. I cannot tell you with 100% assurance exactly how the hoax was performed… And I am unable, due to the requested anonymity, to tell you the names of involved people. But what I did learn is perhaps equally as important, just as enlightening.

I will step in here to say that I do understand this. Bill Brazel, he of Roswell fame, told me that since his name had been released in 1980, he periodically received telephone calls from strangers, often late at night wanting know if he had been quoted accurately. During the Roswell investigation we (that is Don Schmitt, Tom Carey and me) were asked by some to keep their names out of it. Given the world we live in, especially today, I get this, but also note that anonymous testimony must be taken much more lightly than testimony of a source whose credentials can be checked. But an anonymous source who provided no names and no details is hardly “just as enlightening.”

Bragalia continued: 

The individual did not reach out to me – I contacted him by phone. Retired and in his 70s, he is a man of accomplishment. Though he never denied being a perpetrator, he also does not want his name associated with the event. How many of us would want to recount our youthful follies to our children? Who amongst us would wish our names on the net, revisiting embarrassing moments during our late teens or early twenties? Where are those of us who will come forward to publicly explain our tricks and lies from college?

Again, I step in to point out that many of those who were pranksters in their teens and early twenties have long ago owned up to their pranks. And if the students did pull this off, would it be embarrassing to them today? Since he is an older man, of accomplishment, it would seem that he had little to fear by revealing the pertinent information about the hoax even if he was involved in it. Without that information we have just another unverified rumor.

I once asked Dr. James van Allen, whom I was interviewing about UFOs, if such a discussion would be harmful to his reputation. He didn’t think so because his body of scientific discoveries and his work was impressive enough that he could express his opinion without fear of it damaging him. At that late date in his career he didn’t have much to fear. But I digress. Back to Bragalia:

As he pointed out, there is a ‘damned if you do or don’t’ dynamic to admitting publicly to the hoax. When one asks, how was it propelled and navigated? How many were involved? What were their roles? – no answer that a perpetrator may provide will ever be sufficient. They will be victimized as liars. They will be told that they must reunite on camera and reenact the prank. They will be forced to play the ‘20 questions’ game – a game that they do not need or want to play for us. They would be demanded to show physical proof. They think instead, “Why do I need to show proof of anything to anyone?”

Well, that answer should be self-evident. If they pulled off a prank, then how they did it would be important information and while there are always those who will not let go of a prime UFO case, even when good evidence is presented, there are more of us willing to embrace a solid answer when it is provided. So, yes, we do need a name and we do need to know how it was done and to suggest that “no answer that a perpetrator may provide will ever be sufficient,” is just a cop out because there are no answers at this point. 

In fact, he thinks about the event so much less than many of us do, that I got the sense that, although he knows of the continued interest in the case all these years on, he was not aware of Dr. Colgate’s statements on the hoax. That is how I got him to say anything about the event of substance. When I told him Colgate said it was a balloon, he agreed, “Yes, it was.” When I said Colgate knew it to be students that were involved, he said, “Well, yes, of course, but that is all I am about to say any further on any of this.” I was not to get from him details on who or how many were involved, what balloon was sent up, how it was powered and controlled, how they hid from Lonnie, etc. He was clearly not going to offer up the identities of the others, nor the details of what they did. All he really wanted to say was how only grief would come to him were he to do so. 

Robert Sheaffer, over at Bad UFOs, has looked at all this evidence. He, I believe, comes into the discussion as nearly neutral as possible. Though he is known as a skeptic, he seems to be quite reasonable in his skepticism, which is always a good sign and something that you don’t always fine in skeptics. You can read his analysis here:

http://badufos.blogspot.com/2017/12/socorro-student-hoax-tempest-in.html

Early hot air balloon showing the flame and
the people standing near it.

Sheaffer did mention that I had rejected the hot air balloon because I believed that it was a non-starter. Here’s the reasons I believe that, which I think too many have ignored. The flame in a hot air balloon points up, not down. There were other witnesses who called the police station as the object passed overhead. It was moving against the wind. Once it had landed, the roar stopped, but in such a case, a hot air balloon begins to lose heat and the balloon envelop begins to deflate. Once the two occupants saw Zamora they ran around behind and there was the sound of a hatch closing. The object began to rise, but the flame was apparently pointed down rather than up, at least to one way of thinking. I looked at a whole bunch of hot air balloon pictures, starting with some of the very first and didn’t see any where the flame would have been pointed down (which is to say that I didn’t see any as opposed that there are absolutely none). A flame pointing down would have burned the riders or set the basket on fire. Finally, Sergeant Sam Chavez of the New Mexico State Police arrived at the landing site about two minutes after the object took off, but there was no balloon seen in the sky. It had disappeared, according to Zamora, lifting off and then flying against a rather strong wind before shooting up at high speed.

This leads to another point, which isn’t exactly relevant to this discussion but one I think needs to be made. Nick Redfern wrote a review of Encounter in the Desert. You can read that review here:

http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2017/10/encounter-in-the-desert-reviewed/

Redfern suggests that there is much in the book that has nothing to do with the Socorro case. He views it as padding. I believe that majority of those reading the book would not be as well versed in the history of the UFO phenomenon as Redfern or me, and that this other information was supplied for context. It helps to understand the importance of the Socorro case by contrasting it to other, similar cases, showing an Air Force attitude about Socorro that wasn’t present in those other cases. And, importantly, it shows that the Socorro case was not stand alone but there were other, similar sightings in New Mexico in the hours and days that followed. That suggests something more than a hot air balloon and while it might be argued that such a balloon might not be recognized as such given the timing of the sightings, those who were flying it around would have been aware of the interest in their flights. Oddly, they never came forward and the Air Force investigation failed to find them and according to Hector Quintanilla, who was the chief of Blue Book at the time, he tried very hard to find a terrestrial explanation.

There is one other thing that Bragalia brought up as a way of validating his new theory and that was Lonnie Zamora drank too much. A closed web site set up by Dave Thomas who is described as an employee of New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, and President of New Mexicans for Science and Reason, to solicit comments from those who had some association with the school. Many of the comments were anonymous and few had a first name and last initial, suggesting that Zamora drank. This seems to be the cheapest of shots because, on the night of April 24, 1964, Zamora was questioned by Captain Richard Holder and Arthur Byrnes, an FBI agent. There is nothing in the official Blue Book file to suggest that Zamora had been drinking before going on duty or while he was on duty which they would have mentioned if he had been. I’d say, “So what?”  to that. Zamora drank sometimes but that does not make him out to be a drunk nor does it suggest that alcohol consumption had anything to do with the sighting. It is a red herring without merit.

 

And then there is this used as further proof. Bragalia points to a picture that is labeled,

The picture used by Bragalia
to illustrate his theory.

“The Small Figures in White Coveralls: New Mexico Tech Physics Department in the mid-1960s.” But the figures are not in New Mexico. They are actually students from UC Davis, according to information found by French skeptic Gilles Fernandez. The photograph was taken during a visit to Intel. Bragalia sent out a note saying that the caption was wrong and blamed his web master, but as of December 1, 2017, the incorrect caption is still there. And, Bragalia had been using this as further proof of a hoax for several years, sending it to me with the same indication about who were the students in the picture.

 

All this argues against it being a hoax. We have flawed information, poorly sourced information, an interview filled with leading questions, and a solution that can be rejected by a careful study of the facts. There should have been some evidence left behind by the perpetrators but that there wasn’t doesn’t tell us that it was not a hoax; only that they found no evidence of it which is not exactly the same thing but is an important observation.

The only part that is impressive are the opinions of Sergeant Chavez and FBI agent Byrnes. There were others who drove to the landing site right away and who were later interviewed by Coral and Jim Lorenzen, Ray Stanford and, of course, Hynek. To make the hoax viable, they all had to be in on it at some point or at some level and, of course, the FBI wouldn’t engage in a dirty trick of this nature (please note the qualification here). There is nothing to be gained by either the Army or the FBI by participation.

Hynek finally does suggest the real problem with the hoax idea. He wrote, "If the hoax comes off well, perpetrators like to gloat abit (sic), and there would have been no point in getting even with Zamora if they couldn’t have gotten some kudos for it."

Or, they would have exposed the hoax after they learned of Zamora’s reaction to the sighting and his sudden world fame as a way of making him look gullible. What better way to get even than to point out he was the victim of a hoax and overacted in a very unprofessional manner? What better way to make him look bad by showing how he had been fooled by a student hoax.

Hynek finally wrote, "Both Quintanilla and I find it impossible to dismiss it as a hoax unless we have some evidence that there was a hoax." Note here, they were looking for evidence of a hoax within days of the sighting and that they found none. Unlike many of those who offered opinions, at least Hynek had been to Socorro.

Even those who came at this from the skeptical side of the house have rejected the student hoax idea. In an article for Skeptical Inquirer, and later posted to “New Mexicans for Science and Reason,” David E. Thomas wrote, "Yet another hypothesis is that physics students with a little too much extra time played a trick on the town, but that rumor doesn't have much credible support."

This does two things for any analysis. It again points out that this hoax idea has been floating around for decades because the Skeptical Inquirer article is from the July 2001 issue and the Internet posting is from May 2006. And, it suggests that the idea doesn’t have much support even with the skeptics who often embrace any explanation to avoid the idea that the case has no terrestrial solution. Maybe the hoax was the students taking credit for the landing but had nothing to do with it. That, at least, would make a little more sense.

The real point here is that the hoax explanation has not been established, the evidence for it is weak at best, including a letter to Linus Pauling and an anonymous source who would provide no real information, and didn’t even make a solid case for his participation. This is just another explanation that really goes nowhere and while it should be a footnote to the case, that’s all it should be – a footnote.

(Note: For those interested in the whole Socorro story or for more information about what is discussed here, please read my book found at:

https://www.amazon.com/Encounter-Desert-Randle-Kevin-ebook/dp/B072MQGD9K/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1512420046&sr=1-1&keywords=encounter+in+the+desert

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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.

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Dr. Thomas "Eddie" Bullard

Dr. Thomas Eddie Bullard

This week I had the chance to interview Dr. Thomas “Eddie” Bullard. I had thought that we could talk about his academic study of alien abductions but we began with questions about the Great Airship of 1897. We did get to abductions eventually. You can listen to the whole interview here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/13408421

I had heard, a couple of weeks ago, about the Alexander Hamilton calf-knapping, which might be the first recorded case of an animal mutilation. Well, I mean that I knew about the case and thought that it had been explained years ago by a letter that Hamilton had sent to a local newspaper. I had heard that the newspaper article might not exist explaining the case but Eddie had some interesting insights into that.

From there we switched over to the Aurora, Texas, UFO crash which is also part of the 1897 airship wave. I have been to Aurora, Texas, interviewed some of the people who said they were alive at the time, given I was there in the early 1970s, which meant those I interviewed were in their early 80’s, so it could have been true. I have reported on that, including pictures from the Aurora cemetery, which you can find here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2005/03/aurora-texas-story-that-wont-die.html

and here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2013/09/ufo-crashes-fifty-years-before-

roswell.html

and here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2010/06/ufos-youngsters-and-geezers.html

The last part of the show dealt with Eddie’s study of alien abduction, based on his analysis of those stories. He provided some interesting comments on abductions, and we did get into a few specifics. I think that the conclusions we draw will surprise a few people.

Next week’s show: Adam Dew (Yes, that Adam Dew).

Topic: The Roswell Slides

The Curse of Oak Island and an Explanation for Smith's Cove

Here’s something that I found interesting. It is an explanation for the artificial nature of Smith’s Cove and it is something that would have been done hundreds of years before any of the Europeans got near the New World, with the possible exception of the Vikings.

First, let me remind all of you that Joy Steele, in her book The Mystery of Oak Island Solved, provides an interesting theory about the origin of the Money Pit and it has nothing to do with buried treasure. You can read about it here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-mystery-of-oak-island-solved-by-joy.html

and for those of you who don’t really want to read about it, you can listen to my interview with her here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIwY6yiuN1w

Now I find an explanation for the beach in Smith’s Cove which again doesn’t mention pirates or treasure but does explain, nicely, I think this part of the mystery. The video is short and you’ll need to listen to a little bit of a recap of the Laginas’ search for treasure, but the end is worth the wait. You can see it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0E5bqazgjSQ

I won’t say anything more about this now. I think the video is self-explanatory. It might depress some, but we are, after all, searching for a solution to the mystery, and this might just give us one more piece of the puzzle.

Curse of Oak Island - Episode One, Season Five

Like many of you, I have been sucked into another season of The Curse of Oak Island, and I did, of course, watch the season opener. And, of course, was

Yes, it's the same picture that I have
used in the past.

disappointed in the way that we are teased about important discoveries that somehow never seem to be quite as important as the commercials and teasers suggest.

Yes, I thought that the “pirate’s chest” that had been mentioned would be something found on the island. There seemed to be a hint that this was going to prove that there was money in the Money Pit. But, no. What we learned was that James Anderson, who seemed to be a real pirate, though I wasn’t sure if he was only a privateer which isn’t quite the same thing, had lived on Oak Island in the middle of the 18^th century. Could he be the man responsible for the Money Pit?

Well, that is an interesting coincidence. A real live pirate on Oak Island. Could it be (as the narrator would say), that Anderson had bought his property on the island so that he might be able to watch over his treasure? And if so, would he have had the engineering background and the labor force to create something as elaborate as the Money Pit with all the booby traps and false leads?

The Laginas boys, or rather their relatives, travel some fifty miles from the island to visit with a direct descendant of Anderson. He had Anderson’s chest in a back room of his house. We get to see it, and hey, it looked like a real pirate chest, just as we see in all the movies. When it is opened, we don’t see treasure, but letters and records and other rather mundane items… which, I should point out, are literally a couple of hundred years old. It doesn’t tell us much about the Money Pit, but it gives us some clues about Anderson.

And, we’re back digging holes around the site of the original pit, wherever it might have been. They hit water (what a surprise?) but it floods one of the bore holes they had dug last year. Could it be that they hit one of the original booby traps that has caused so much trouble in the past? Or could it be that the water table of the island is so high that they tapped into one of the many natural channels that seem to run under the island? I don’t know, but my guess is that they didn’t hit anything man-made.

They also continue their assault with metal detectors and find an old Spanish coin that seemed to have been cut. This, we’re told, is something that was done back in the 17^th and 18^th century and is just one more proof that something, or someone, has been on the island for hundreds of years… but we already knew that. History has proven that. James Anderson was there before the boys began digging and starting the rumors of a treasure. History has shown a presence of British soldiers on the island before the boys got there. We all get it. People have been screwing around on the island for hundreds of years.

The thing that really bothers me here is that there are big promises about what they’re going to find, but so far, all those promises have turned out just as those before. Remember the sword they found that might have suggested a Roman presence near the island that turned out to be a modern replica? Or the constant showing of the video made in Bore Hole 10X that seemed to show a box, a tool and human remains that turned out to be images created by the poor quality of the video and an overly enthusiastic interpretation of the images.

But none of that proved, and none of these new finds prove, there is a treasure hidden there… and remember, descendants of those who dug the original hole that would become the Money Pit, told us that the boys had found three chests with treasure. Even will all that working against them, the Laginas are there with some really big machines digging up more of this island.

I had hoped we’d get an answer about the Money Pit when the series started and I think we already have it. There is no treasure there and the only money to be found is in the production of the show. I hate to be so pessimistic, but I think we’re in for another season of disappointment as they attempt to sink the island with dozens of new holes that penetrate into the water under the island… and yes, I’ll be there to watch it all.

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Michael Horn

This time I reached out to Michael Horn even though he had initiated a campaign against me alleging cowardice, incompetence, a lack of investigative ability (my translation of his words), poor research and other shortcomings. I thought it would be interesting to ask some questions about the Meier claims of alien contact and what I saw as a lack of evidence other than all those photographs and testimony and a rather biased examination of alleged alien metal that has since disappeared. Naturally Horn disagreed with my assessment.

You can listen to the interview here:

https://youtu.be/-Ldwrnh3mmc

And you can read Horn’s take on much of this here:

www.theyfly.com

We started out talking about how Horn had become the “Authorized American Media Representative” for Meier, and then ran from there. I had asked Horn a couple of weeks ago about how one of the champions of the Meier claims had been

Alejandro Rojos.

vetted and instead received a link to a video with an interview of Jim Dilettoso by Alejandro Rojos. Dilettoso has been cited as an expert in photo analysis, and I wondered if Horn believed him to be a credible source… never got an answer to the question.

However, we did begin a discussion of the photographic evidence and the lack of reputable examination of it. I have touched on the subject before, including a posting that follows this one. Rather than go into that, I’ll let those who are interested in following up on it, read that post.

Although we really didn’t quite finish that discussion, I wanted to move onto the predictions that Meier had made over the years. Horn brought up the ozone depletion example and then, to prove that Meier had predicted it long before any terrestrial scientist, mentioned a letter Meier had written in 1951. My response to that argument, briefly, was that no copy of the letter had surfaced until 2004 or 2005 so it wasn’t actually proof of accuracy. That argument is made in a post following this one as well.

Horn also brought up a newspaper article that had been written in 1964 that mentioned Meier’s 80 UFO photographs. Of course, the reporter had taken down what Meier had claimed, apparently saw some of the photographs but had done nothing to verify the accuracy of the information. I mentioned that I knew how some of those photographs had been created using an enlarger. Horn said that Meier, walking around India didn’t carry an enlarger in his backpack, which, of course is not what I said. I did mention that there must have been a photographer enlarger somewhere on the subcontinent, but I think my words just sailed right on by.

Thomas "Eddie" Bullard

I doubt seriously that any minds were changed during the conversation. Horn laughed at explanations, called me names, and seemed to be annoyed by the questions. Though I hate to admit it, I have some fun.

Next week: Thomas Eddie Bullard

Topic: UFO abductions and his book, The Myth and Mysteries of UFOs.

PS: This will be the last posting about Billy Meier, Michael Horn, and all of this rather unpleasant episode.

Meier Photographs - An Extensive Analysis

Billy Meier, during his contacts with the alien creatures who reside in the open star cluster known as the Pleiades, has had the opportunity to travel around the cosmos on their beamships. Over the decades he has taken hundreds, if not thousands of photographs showing a wide variety of subjects, all presented to validate his claims of space travel. These have been tested, examined, studied,

Billy Meier

scrutinized, reviewed and subjected to many efforts to either authenticate or disprove them. It is clear that they are real photographs which means simply there are images on film. The real question is if there has been some sort of trickery involved or if they actually show what Meier claims they show.

 The most cited study was carried out by Jim Dilettoso at the request of Wendelle Stevens and sounded as if it was competent, scientific and definitive. Stevens published and updated versions of this study from the point of its completion until his death years later. There are, however, problems with it that suggest the vetting of the Meier photographs was not as complete as it should have been and the study might not be as conclusive as it could have been.

The first thing to be said is that 230 of the photographs taken by Meier, or allegedly taken by Meier, are faked. These range from those taken on other planets, of satellites in orbit around Earth and pictures of dinosaurs suggesting either time travel or that there is a planet on which the dinosaurs still roam. Originally, the photographs were declared authentic and were promoted for years by those who believe Meier. Once it was established by others that the photographs were images from books, NASA video and television shows, the Meier camp agreed… then claimed that these 230 photographs were not taken by Meier but were added to his photographic collection by the Men in Black in an attempt to discredit him. The take away should have been that there were 230 photographs once claimed to be real that were now admitted to be faked and not that they have been slipped into the Meier collection by a mythical group.

But there were all those hundreds of others that had not been faked, at least according to the photo analysis that had been done by experts consulted by the Meier camp. Stevens said De Anza Systems, a San Jose company, was credited with providing the computers to do the analyses of some of the photographs. Here was a reputable company that had no known ties to Meier or his champions in the US, Stevens and Dilettoso. The suggestion was that they authenticated the pictures which proved the Meier tales were true.

Tony Ortega, reporting in the Phoenix New Times, wrote:

“They came to De Anza under the pretext of wanting to buy our equipment. We demonstrated it, and they snapped many pictures and left. We made no data interpretations whatsoever," Dinwiddie told [Kal] Korff in the presence of two other investigators.

What about the captions which appear in the [Meier] book under each photo? Are they correct?" Korff asked Dinwiddie.

“Those are their interpretations, not ours. Nothing we did would have defined what those results meant,” [Dinwiddie explained].

It was clear to Dinwiddie, Korff writes, that Dilettoso and Stevens dreamed up the impressive-sounding captions despite that they had nothing to do with demonstrations De Anza had performed.

Korff showed Dinwiddie a caption below a Meier photo that purports to show a hovering spacecraft: "Thermogram--color density separations--low frequencies properties of light/time of day are correct; light values on ground are reflected in craft bottom; eliminates double exposures and paste-ups."

"No, we put those colors in the photo!" Dinwiddie exclaimed. "Jim [Dilettoso] said, 'Can you make the bottom of the object appear to reflect the ground below?' I said yes, and we performed the operations that they asked for."

The Korff in this statement, the one apparently conducting the interview, is Kal K. Korff who has thoroughly discredited himself with tales of being a high-ranking counter intelligence officer, an expert on terrorism, the author with a contract to write 500 books and a man who had been involved in some very shady activities. All of that would be enough for me, as well as nearly everyone else in the world, to ignore his work if there wasn’t something else to be said about it.

But Korff does not stand alone on this. Ortega took the next and proper journalistic step. He wrote, “New Times [meaning Ortega] did talk to Ken Dinwiddie last week, and he remembers things the way Korff describes them.”

It is not required to accept Korff’s writing on this then. Ortega confirmed the information by talking to the same man at the same organization and what we learn is that Stevens and Dilettoso misrepresented what had taken place when they visited with there. De Anza Systems did not analyze, study, or examine the photographs taken by Meier. They were demonstrating the capabilities of their computer systems to two men who claimed they were interested in purchasing a system. In other words, this didn’t do anything but provide some impressive looking photographs that did nothing to suggest the authenticity of the flying saucers, the beamships, photographed and add the name of a computer company to the body of evidence. It did not rule out hoax, but instead suggested that manipulation of the situation to provide some authority for a claim the photographs were real which, in itself, is indicative of a hoax.

An independent study of the photographs was undertaken by Neil Davis at Design Technology in Poway, California. This study has been suggested as supporting, if not endorsing, the authenticity of the Meier photographs, or rather, some of them. Davis wrote, “Nothing was found in the examination of the print which would cause me to believe that the object in the photos is anything other than a large object photographed a distance from the camera.”

But the important part of his report, which is often ignored tells us something else. Davis also noted, “These results are preliminary and qualitative in nature because of the unknown processing history of the print, and its presumed inferior quality to the original negative. A more detailed, quantitative analysis of this photo can only properly be made on the original film. It is most desirable that all 6 photos be examined. It is possible to optically or digitally superimpose the several images of the object resulting in an image with increased resolution.”

Those of us who have been involved in questioned document research, that is, reviewing everything relevant about such examinations, know that you simply can’t draw conclusions about something that is not the original. Here we have a second-generation photograph. To do a proper analysis, as Davis reported, he needed to have the negative. While nothing indicative of a hoax appeared on the photographic print, such evidence might have surfaced on the negative. This then, is not supportive of the Meier photographs as being of a real craft, but only that on this second-generation photograph there was nothing that shouted it was a hoax.

At the far end of the spectrum, Dilettoso told Alejandro Rojos during a recorded interview that a great deal can be learned from such second-generation photographs. While that might be true, Davis made it clear that you needed to examine the original negative to draw any real conclusions. The negative would reveal flaws not visible on prints made from that negative. To suggest otherwise is to be disingenuous.

Those at the now defunct Ground Saucer Watch, an independent group founded in 1957 and made up of scientists and engineers, among others, examined twenty-five of the Meier photographs in 1977. Their conclusion was not ambiguous. They said, “It is our opinion that all of the analyzed photographs are hoaxes, both crude and grandiose, and that they should not be considered evidence of an extraordinary flying craft.”

Wendelle Stevens labored very hard to belittle the work done by Ground Saucer Watch, suggesting that they had worked from polaroid prints of Meier’s photographs and using a video camera to create a file that could then be fed into a computer. According to Stevens, they were using software and equipment used to search for cracks in jet engines. To him, this didn’t suggest good science and he eventually contacted Jim Dilettoso to get better information. Had Ground Saucer Watch been the only organization to reject the pictures as hoaxes, that argument would have been quite persuasive, but, GSW was not alone in its conclusions and Stevens had done nothing to prove their conclusions were in error.

In 1980 Colman S. VonKeviczky, Major (Ret), Director of ICUFON Inc. (Intercontinental UFO Galactic Spacecraft Research and Analytic Network), wrote a report titled ‘The Eduard “Billy” Meier fraud‘. In the report, he analyzed some of Meier’s photos received from German UFO researcher Ilse Von Jacobi and ex-FIGU member Hans Jacob. Together, with Hans Jacob, VonKeviczky even visited a site were Meier made some of his photos. The tone of the report is cynical and as the title already implies VonKeviczky concludes the pictures and videos are fake and the case is a hoax. On June 9, 1980, the report was forwarded to Wendelle Stevens and Tom Welch of the Genesis III team who were working on the side of Meier.

Having been associated with the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization off and on for a number of years before its demise in the mid-1980s, I was curious about the reaction of the Lorenzen’s to Meier’s claims and photographs. They had been at the forefront of research into UFO occupant sightings and provided groundbreaking research into alien abductions. If there was one organization that would be open and supportive of a collection of UFO photographs that were suggestive of alien visitation, APRO would be that organization.

According to a letter published in the August 1979 issue of the A.P.R.O. Bulletin, Jim Lorenzen provided a detailed explanation about his apparent endorsement of a book of photographs by Billy Meier. Lorenzen wrote that his statement, written at the request of Wendelle Stevens “describes the Meier photos as art [emphasis in the original].”

He said that, “My current inclination is (and always has been) that the case is an elaborate hoax.” This is the same conclusion that he communicated to me as we discussed UFO photographic evidence many years ago.

Then Lorenzen noted, “A pertinent fact that was omitted is that Meier builds UFO models and that they have the appearance and proportions of some of those in the photos claimed to be authentic craft, and further [and importantly], that Meier has been caught in at least one attempt to destroy evidence of the existence of such models.”

The counterclaim, by the Meier camp, is that he was building models of the spacecraft he had seen for his children. The models came after the sightings and were not part of the pictures that he had taken but there is no way to validate Meier’s claim. What can be said is that Meier built models and attempted to destroy some of them.

Lorenzen does provide other information that might negate that claim and the authenticity of the photos. He wrote:

Your brief mention of the UFO which flew around the tree does not do that incident justice. Why did you not include some of the photos? Would it be because the photos show the disc penetrating the tree limbs to the point that the rim apparently touches the trunk? A skeptical view might be the rim to the trunk of a small model tethered by the rim to the trunk of a miniature tree, and supported by the limbs, super imposed again normal landscape…

The rest of the story is that there is no sign of a tree at the position that this one appears to be. How does Meier explain this troublesome fact? Why, the tree, damaged by radiation from the space ship, just pined (sorry!) away for a couple of weeks and then disappeared without a trace over a period of three days. Meier is supported in this statement by two witnesses from among his disciples, one of whom now claims that he was hypnotized into giving false testimony.

There are other problems with this incident. The changing cloud background suggests that the photos were taken over a much longer period than would be required for the circumnavigation of the tree by a technically advanced vehicle. Stevens counters this objection with the statement that clouds change quickly in that area, but no supporting documentation is furnished and apparently no one bothered to check the winds aloft for the time in question.

In a somewhat similar vein, Gabrielle Pickard provided additional evidence. In a story at the Top Secret Writers website, she provides a compelling case showing the Meier photographs are faked. Their website can be found here:

http://www.topsecretwriters.com/2015/11/billy-meier-ufo-research-group-keeps-the-fraud-under-wraps/

When asked about what she found most compelling about the evidence that Meier was lying about his space encounters, she said:

Undoubtedly, the 50+ fake space and time travel pictures which Meier even to this day publishes and promotes as being verified by the ETs as genuine. If you want me to pick one example, I would choose the Universal Barrier or Tunnel photo.

Meier claimed that while he was onboard a spacecraft at the “boundary” of our universe, he photographed a huge tunnel that connects our universe with a parallel universe, somewhere between July 17-22, 1975. Skeptics, in the 1970’s, have pointed to an identical looking painting of Gerard O’Neill’s Island III design cylindrical space colony, made by the artist named Rick Guidice, published in Smithsonian magazine in February 1976, as evidence that Meier simply copied from it.

Meier and the alleged ETs in return claimed that Meier didn’t copy it since he first photographed his picture in July 1975, which is 7 months before the illustration was published in Smithsonian magazine. They even went further and claimed that the artist Rick Guidice has indeed copied his illustration from Meier’s photograph.

To settle this issue, I have directly contacted the artist Rick Guidice, NASA archivist and also filed a NASA FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request. As it turns out, Rick Guidice had already finished his painting before May 27, 1975 and that this painting was also first disseminated to the media and public through NASA press releases on June 16, 1975, several weeks before Meier allegedly photographed the Universal Barrier somewhere between July 17 and 22.

In other words, they were saying that they had uncovered yet another example of Meier photographing something not while traveling in space, but that had been published on Earth before he had made his alleged trip. The source of the photograph was not something Meier had seen in space, but something published prior to Meier’s photograph surfacing.

To the Meier colleagues, all of these negative results can be discarded simply because those who have made the negative comments have some unstated but compelling reason to reject the Meier story, at least according to those residing in the Meier camp. According to Meier and his followers, his critics refuse to look at the evidence, that they are afraid of what the Meier contacts really mean, or that they are somehow worried that this will cut into their own profits from the UFO research field. Instead, the only true and important analysis of the Meier evidence, in this case the photographs, was made by Jim Dilettoso, at least according to Wendelle Stevens.

The question now is if Dilettoso’s work was scientific and accurate. Although some of the following deals with his analysis of other UFO cases including the Phoenix Lights and the Oliver’s Castle Crop Circle, it does provide an insight into the value of his work. But the real trouble seems to grow out of some of the claims he has made about his background which is always problematic when studying questioned photographs. Michael Kieffer supplied some of that information. He wrote:

Jim Dilettoso's bio is a tangled circuit board of fact and fiction, disputed achievements, inventions and connections that can't be documented, others he won't talk about. He claims he has a Ph.D: in biomedical engineering from McGill University in Montreal, but the registrar's office there never heard of him. He claims an undergraduate degree from the University of Hartford, but its records show he took a single math course there.

When confronted with these apparent fabrications, he first admits he'd never have the patience to sit through so many years of classes… Then he just digs in deeper and deliberately raises more questions. On another occasion, he offers that these are notions put forth by others, left uncorrected, until by some logic, they become true.

A University of Hartford professor who served as Dilettoso's mentor simply says, "it's part of his being exceptional that all of the columns don't add up."…

His invention of colorization is disputed as well. American Film Technologies, the company that holds the patent on the process, claims that his work was "a failed R&D attempt," while Dilettoso swears his technology was ripped off and he was paid mostly in worthless stock. However, the company executive who fired Dilettoso from the project confirms the importance of his contribution-though he stops short of confirming the allegations of theft for fear of legal retribution.

One of the consequences of life on the borderline is that neither side claims you as its own. One JPL scientist on the Voyager project scoffingly asked how anyone could take Dilettoso, seriously if he believed in UFOs and other such New Age claptrap. Yet Dilettoso claims that JPL sent him to work on analysis of the Shroud of Turin. And it's unclear whether he became embroiled in UFO research because NASA asked him to or because the UFO underground sought him out for his JPL contacts.

I could go on in this vein, providing both praise for Dilettoso’s genius, and his lack of understanding some of the science that he spouts so often. We do see here that Dilettoso falls into the same trap as many others in this field which is resume inflation and unverifiable claims of important work and invention. The real evidence for us as it relates to the Meier photos is in his analysis of other UFO sightings and what has been found about them.

Dilettoso was involved in the analysis of what is known as Oliver’s Castle Crop Circle. This video supposedly showed a crop circle being formed as two balls of light flashed over them. I found information at:

http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/ilyes/ilyes4.html

According to the analysis of the video found there and the work done by Dilettoso, there was no question that the video was real. They wrote:

There is absolutely NO evidence of tampering on the Oliver's Castle Videotape.

I've spoken twice with Jim Dilettoso about his findings. Jim is the president of a company which, in addition to other clients, does work for government labs. It has a state-of-the-art lab with top-of-the-line equipment, including a Cray 6400 computer.

Jim's main responsibility is setting up supercomputer networks. He uses a supercomputer to analyze video footage when he deems it necessary. [The Cray, however, was not used to evaluate the OC videotape.] His work also entails very advanced image processing. He is the 'expert' analyst the national television programs *Sightings* and *Unsolved Mysteries*, among others, call upon to verify the 'purity' of, in particular, UFO tapes and photos. He's been doing this work for twenty years.

Jim made it clear to me that while it might be possible for a team of people with the experience, the appropriate equipment, *and the time* to come up with a *similar* video, he stated emphatically that THIS tape showed no signs of computer enhancement, splicing, depth cueing, or fields-per-frame anomalies. He used terms like 'subcarrier' and 'blanking pulse' to describe facets of his analysis. He said the Balls Of Light (BOLs) were NOT spherical but were appropriately distorted (as actual movement would distort them as opposed to animation-generated movement). [Patrick's evaluation of the BOLs (below) not only agrees with Jim's, but goes even further - see his startling analysis on his website!]

Jim also noted, as I did early on but before I mentioned the fact to him, that (especially) the central Circle can be seen to 'open' because the crop goes down blazingly quickly IN SPIRALS around the centre of it. Some have claimed that the crop movement appears to be 'animated' and seems to 'jump forward' in the quadrant nearest the camera. Such is NOT the case, both according to what I've seen, and what Jim's observed. He was especially impressed by the 'action' documented in the main Circle.

When I questioned Jim about the 'shadows' at the far bases of the Circles, he immediately replied that they were most probably an artifact, the result of a camcorder technical phenomenon called 'blooming'.

A final spontaneous point Jim offered, which I too had independently noticed somewhere around my 30th time of viewing the clip, was that after the Lights leave, the crop (especially) in the largest Circle can be seen to be 'twitching'. This residual effect of the Energies was first noted many years ago, and was witnessed in 1993 by a group of visitors to the early-morning addition to a UK Formation known as the Overton Oval. The tuft in the newest Arrival (the Circle highest on the hillside on which the rest of the Formation had arrived the previous morning) had been standing when the first witness saw it. It subsequently underwent two phases of 'collapsing', or settling, over the next hour or so, during which time there were additional visitors in that Circle who noted the changes to the tuft. This same type of settling can clearly be seen on John's tape. I'm delighted that Jim commented on it.

He told me that creating the BOLs and their flight paths would not be difficult to do on computer by a computer animation person with the right equipment. (Remember, while Jim said it is *possible* to achieve a *similar* effect using computer, he found no computer enhancements on the OCVid tape itself.) He wasn't so sure about how one might go about computerising the 'laying' of the Formation itself, for he thought it would be an especially complex, highly technical (if not impossible), time-consuming procedure.

But the Oliver’s Castle footage is a fake. Other investigators had questions. Even Colin Andrews, one of those who had researched crop circles for years, had trouble with it. You can read his analysis here:

http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/CPRI/wabe99.html

The highlighted parts of the interview, meaning the important parts of that interview said:

Coincidental to your comments about Michael Glickman still putting out the Oliver’s Castle video as real, I have just viewed the confession interview by John Wabe.

It is clear by what I have witnessed in this filmed interview, that his confession was made as a direct result of my own findings. As you know, two years ago, my investigations uncovered his real name, and the studio where he works as “First Cut” studios in Bristol, England.

I have been in close contact with the owners of this film for some while and recently agreed to have it flown to my offices in the USA. Wabe says why he did it and how. Two versions of the events were prepared to cover the film as authentic (the original story) and later the second version, when it as obvious I have found him out…

This filmed confession with other material it contains, plus additional information I discovered in England during August this year, confirms all my earlier findings, those being that the Oliver’s Castle video is a fraud.

What this demonstrates, in this particular instance, is that Dilettoso’s conclusions about the film are incorrect. He applied his expertise, using his expensive computers and modified software to examine the film and came to a conclusion that was later found to be inaccurate.

But, as they say, we all can make mistakes. The real question is if the methods used by Dilettoso to gauge the authenticity of film or photographs can be used to do that. If the methodology is flawed, then the conclusions reached are equally flawed and the analysis must be rejected.

This leads us to the Phoenix Lights and the work that Dilettoso did on the footage, specifically on the video made at 10:00 p.m. as the lights seemed to hover and then fade out over the Sierra Estrella Mountains in Phoenix. He said that the lights over the mountains did not match the composition of videos of known flares. According to Tony Ortega:

He shows similar frames with similar line segments cutting through streetlights, the known flares captured by Channel 12, and the 10 p.m. lights of March 13.

Each results in a different graph.

It's rather obvious that the graphs are simply measurements of pixel brightness in the cross-sections he's taken.

But Dilettoso claims that the graphs show much more. To him, they represent the frequencies of light making up each of the images. He claims he's doing spectral analysis, measuring the actual properties of the light sources themselves, and can show intrinsic differences between video images of streetlights, flares, and whatever caused the 10 p.m. lights.

Because the graph of a known flare is different than one of the 10 p.m. lights, Dilettoso concludes that they cannot be the same kinds of objects.

In fact, Dilettoso claims that the graphs of the 10 p.m. Phoenix Lights show that they are like no known light produced by mankind.

The fallacy in Dilettoso's analysis is easily demonstrated. When he's asked to compare the graph of one known flare to another one in the same frame, he gladly does so. But he admits that the two flares will produce different graphs.

In fact, Dilettoso admits, when he looks at different slices of the same flare image, he never gets the same graph twice. And when he produces some of those graphs on demand, many of them look identical to the graphs of the 10 p.m. lights.

When he's asked to produce an average graph for a flare, or anything that he could show as a model that he uses to distinguish flares from other sources, he can't, saying that he knows a flare's graph when he sees it.

It's an evasive answer which hints at the truth: Dilettoso is only measuring the way distant lights happen to excite the electronic chip in camcorders (which is affected by atmospheric conditions, camera movement and other factors), and not any real properties of the sources of lights themselves.

Met with skepticism, Dilettoso reacts by claiming that his methods have been lauded by experts.

For those interested in the whole analysis of Dilettoso’s take on the Phoenix Lights, you can read Ortega’s article here:

http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/the-hack-and-the-quack-6445593

Dilettoso was aware of the criticisms of his work and again, according to Ortega, what Dilettoso said is not exactly what he claimed. Ortega wrote:

"Dr. Richard Powell at the University of Arizona believes that my [Dilettoso] techniques are not merely valid but advanced to the degree where there was nothing more that they could add," he says.

Powell, the U of A's director of optical sciences, confirms that he spoke with Dilettoso. "He called here and I talked to him, and I could not, for the life of me, understand him," Powell says.

"I don't know how you take a photograph or a videotape after the fact and analyze it and get that information out. We didn't say that his method was valid, we said we didn't have any other way that was any better," Powell says.

Hearing that Powell denies calling his techniques "advanced," Dilettoso claims that Media Cybernetics, the company which sells Image Pro Plus, told him that the software package would do the kind of spectral analysis he does.

Jeff Knipe of Media Cybernetics disagrees. "All he's simply doing is drawing a line profile through that point of light and looking at the histogram of the red, green and blue. And that's really the extent of Image Pro. . . . Spectroscopy is a different field."

What this means, in the long run, is that Dilettoso’s analysis of the Phoenix Lights was flawed and the techniques that authenticated the Meier films and photographs was equally flawed. There is no independent analysis of Meier’s photographs and films that that argue for authenticity. The consensus among those who have offered an independent conclusion is that the Meier contacts are an elaborate fraud.

Here's where we are today. Of the independent analyses done of the Meier photographs, all have grave reservations about the authenticity of them. As I have noted, these analyses were not done on the original negatives but on prints from those negatives and that reduces the information that can be gleaned from them. Without an examination of the negatives, all they can say with authority is that there is no evidence of a hoax on the prints.

That, however, isn’t the end of it. It is clear, and it has been admitted that 230 of the photographs are fake. It is claimed that these were not taken by Meier but slipped into packages or albums of the real photographs in an attempt to discredit Meier. Either governmental intelligence agencies or the Men in Black have done that. The explanation is weak at best, especially since Meier had originally claimed they were his pictures. We have to take that into consideration simply because 230 photographs have been exposed as hoaxes and all of them came from the Meier camp.

This is an interesting dodge because it covers the exposure of any other photographs as faked. It wasn’t taken by Meier as claimed, but substituted at some point by some mysterious agency without Meier being aware of the fake. It would seem that at some point he would notice that some of the photographs were not taken by him. Rather than wait for others to expose the fakes, Meier should be able to do that himself, but to date, that hasn’t happened.

At the other end of the spectrum are those analyses that suggest there is no evidence of a hoax and that the pictures are authentic. But the analyses were done by those who believe Meier is in contact with an alien race so there is a built-in bias, and, as we have seen, the most cited of those analyses was completed by a man whose credentials are in dispute and whose science is shaky at best. In any other arena, that analysis would be rejected, especially in the light of the faked photographs and the independent examinations of the photographs that have been discovered.

The best that can be said is that evidence of a hoax was not found on most of the photographs. The worse that can be said, based on the various studies, the contradictory stories, and the lack of other evidence, is, as Jim Lorenzen said so many years ago, “… an elaborate hoax.”