UFOs Tonite! with Bob Shell, 9/2/95

Interview with Bob Shell on UFOs Tonite!

September 2nd '95, Radio Show hosted by Don Ecker
Published on Encounters Forum, CompuServe, UFO Magazine Lib

This is the transcript of a radio interview with Bob Shell, who is a photographer that has been investigating the Roswell Film. Don Ecker is a journalist and UFO researcher, who has a weekly radio show out of Southern California, called "UFOs Tonite!". He is also the publisher of UFO magazine. This transcript was found in the Encounters Forum on Compuserve in the UFO Magazine Library. You can access this Forum if you are a Compuserve member by typing in GO ENCOUNTERS. Or you can visit the ENCOUNTERS home page at:
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/erikf.
ILLINOIS

UFOs Tonite!

Hosted by Don Ecker
Joining in studio is Dwight Schultz.
Special guest tonight is Bob Shell.
September 2nd, 1995

Don: Welcome to UFOs Tonite! with our very special guest, Mr. Bob Shell. Bob, you were interviewed extensively for this just broadcast FOX Special, which incidentally ladies and gentleman, will be re-aired this coming Monday and according to the press, there's going to be some additional footage that's going to be included this week. Bob, you weren't on the program, do you have any idea why?
Bob: Oh yeah, of course. I wasn't able to give 100% yet, that the film is 1947. I was only willing to give 95%.
Don: And they wanted an absolute total 100% guarantee that this was the "Real McCoy?"
Bob: Well they want that, plus they want Kodak on record.
Don: Well, you know we had the producer of that on the show several times going back several months ago and his name, of course, is Bob Kiviat. I have personally worked with Kiviat in the past on a number of episodes of Encounters and Kiviat assured us that this was going to be an absolutely legitimate, right down the line, journalistic effort to determine if it was real or not. Evidently that wasn't the case.
Bob: Well, I'm not going to be too hard on Kiviat at this point, I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt because I know he's working on a second program.
Don: [laugh] UFO Autopsy Fact or Fiction Part 2?
Bob: [laugh] Something like that, yes.
Don: [laugh] Okay.
Bob: In which they're hoping to be able to say that their private detective "found the cameraman."
Don: Well, that's a load of crap too isn't it?
Bob: Well, the cameraman, I don't think, is that hard to find. If I wanted to find him I could do it very quickly.
Don: Well, now would it be safe to say that you've got a real good idea who this gentleman is?
Bob: It would be safe to say that, yes. [laugh]
Don: Okay, and would it also be pretty safe to say that FOX also pretty much knows who this gentleman is?
Bob: Well, I would hope so. If they didn't they haven't been paying attention.
Don: Well, you know originally that's what Kiviat wanted me to do for them. So the bottom line is that this whole private investigation thing was just a sham.
Bob: Well, you could say that, yeah.
Don: Okay I will...it was a sham.
Bob: Anybody who went to the trouble to monitor COMPUSERVE for the last several months and some of the other online services, all the information necessary to find the cameraman has been on there at one time or another, including his real name, so it's just a matter of putting it all together and going, looking.
Dwight: Well, let's just say this too, that Bob Kiviat told us, Don and I, when we met with him when all this was being put together, he said "No, no, no FOX was never going to pay for this film until they knew who the cameraman was", which I thought was a very intelligent thing to do. So I assumed, as soon as I found out, which was very, very late in the day, that in fact FOX had bought the film and that there was a special, that they knew who the cameraman was and I think now we have a pretty good idea that they know who the cameraman is.
Bob: Well, Bob Kiviat or one of his people, I'm not sure whether it was him personally, but one of them spoke to the cameraman on the telephone. It was a brief conversation because the cameraman became suspicious and thought they were trying to trace the call and hung up.
Dwight: Well this may be the Mantel conversation. I know Phil Mantel supposedly talked to someone who he was told was the cameraman.
Bob: No, this is separate altogether.
Dwight: This is separate altogether, okay.
Bob: This is a phone call that Ray Santilli arranged from the cameraman to FOX.
Don: Okay, let's talk about something else. Now Bob, I realize that you're not in the UFO research arena, that's not what you do.
Bob: No
Don: And I also realize that from a statement you put up on yourself you have had, over the years, an interest in this subject.
Bob: Oh yes, definitely.
Don: Okay, a number of weeks ago, from somebody in the United Kingdom sent me allegedly the cameraman's statement, which along with some facsimiles that were allegedly the film labels. Now a number of weeks ago I read this entire statement verbatim on the air and I think this is somewhat telling in itself...now this is purportedly this gentleman's actual statement and I think it's very safe to say that although the information in this statement may be the information he originally gave Ray Santilli, this is not the way an American former service man would ever describe himself.
Bob: What you have is probably the first version of that.
Don: Yeah, and what I'm saying is this was passed off as his actual statement by Santilli originally and I think it's very safe to say, that just ain't so. Okay it was passed off deceptively. Do you know what I'm trying to say?
Bob: Well, yeah but I think you have to understand what exactly happened. The cameraman made a taped statement. The tape was mailed to Santilli. Santilli had one of his secretaries transcribe it. The secretary is British.
Don: Okay
Bob: So quite a bit of British got into the transcription.
Don: Okay, exactly
Bob: I have gone over and re-transcribed it and posted it this week on COMPUSERVE's Library.
Don: From the actual tape? You had a copy of the tape?
Bob: Yes
Don: Okay, now some of the items in here are rather telling: the first thing let's take a look at and see what background you may have on this. Many people have initially assumed that this film was of the actual Roswell event and I think it's also very safe to say that whatever this ultimately ends up being, it wasn't the Roswell event.
Bob: No it has nothing to do with the Roswell event.
Don: Although it may have happened in the same general geographic location.
Bob: Right, that was the biggest gripe I had with FOX, is that they attempt to tie it into the Roswell incident in their program, because it has nothing to do with that.
Dwight: Well, of course we have been told that the cameraman, given cover stories, explanations where the cameraman has referred to Roswell, and the event, and to the Brazel Ranch, and to the debris field. So then are we then to suppose that these alleged comments given to us by Santilli and others...that these comments are false?
Bob: I have heard nothing from anyone that I consider a reliable source quoting the cameraman making any of these references except saying that he worked out of Roswell during the recovery operation, the basic operation.
Dwight: The story we were given, the question was of course how did the Army Air force fail to retrieve these canisters of film that you have and he basically said when he was down there to film the autopsy, to film the crash, Mac Brazel found this debris and all hell broke lose and that in the ensuing melee the Army Air force forgot to retrieve these canisters of film. That was the official story we got from Santilli.
Bob: I've never heard that story before.
Don: I think that of the entire story that seems to be the most unlikely...
Bob: That's the weak link.
Don: That the military would have forgotten to pick up these canisters.
Bob: That's the thing I question most about the entire episode is the cameraman's explanation of how he had this film in his possession...
Dwight: Indeed
Bob: I think it's more likely he knew this film would someday be worth something and stole it.
Dwight: Yes, that makes so much sense, but even that seems incredible. I mean we can't get the story straight as to whether there is negatives...that Santilli has the negatives.
Bob: There's no negatives
Dwight: There's no negatives? Well we were told...
Bob: This is reversal film, it processes directly to a positive. There never were any negatives.
Don: Well you know now that was a bone of much contention. When we originally were researching this and we called the people at Kodak, Lawrence Kate, whom I'm sure you've spoken to...
Bob: No I haven't actually, I've been dealing with the people in Rochester. I know who he is though.
Don: Okay, well we initially spoke to Lawrence Kate out here in Los Angeles, and while we were talking to him about the piece of leader that he had observed, he said, "oh and by the way there was one part about this that I didn't mention. And that was the fact that on the edge it said, Kodak Safety Film, which I don't think they made until about 1950 or there about." Well that of course immediately peaked my interest so we called up Rochester, we ended up speaking to a gentleman by the name of Amato.
Bob: Right, Tony.
Don: Tony Amato...
Bob: Tony's a friend of mine
Don: Okay, who was out here in Los Angeles and prior to speaking to him however, we had talked to the people in Rochester and they said, "Yeah that film was not manufactured until 1951." Well when I heard that, now I knew I was talking about 16mm. I made the wrong assumption that they knew I was talking about 16mm, when in fact they were talking about 35mm. So we had a period of confusion there. I called up Santilli and I asked him about that. I said, "Look, there's obviously a four year gap. If this film was not manufactured until 51' how do you explain the 1947 date?" I said, "Do you or does the cameraman have a negative that he could have made another copy?" And he said, "No." I said, "You don't have a negative?" He said, "No, I don't have one." I said, "Well, who does?" He said, "Well, I assume the military does." So basically what he was saying was that he did not have anything. But what is it he does have?
Bob: Well, let me try to clarify a little bit of that. I just wanted to go back over that little bit of history there so that we all understand it. I was talking to Kodak roughly the same time you were and someone, I don't know who it was, lead us all astray because someone was contacting Kodak fairly regularly insisting that this was 35mm film. And totally confused the issue because then when you called them they thought you were talking about 35mm and when I called them that's what they thought I was talking about and then they gave us erroneous information.
Don: Well, it was Tony Amato that set us straight, and it was the same day, we found out later that same day that there was confusion on the 35mm film.
Bob: Right. I would still like to know who it was that was trying to convince them of that. Maybe some disinformation agent from the government, whatever.
Dwight: Interesting.
Bob: The film itself is called a Kodak Super XX, which is a high speed type of film. The film was introduced in the early '40s and was discontinued in 1957. Now we know from the edge code, which is a geometric code, using two geometric symbols to the note year of manufacture. In this case we have a square and a triangle. A square and a triangle would indicate 1927, 1947, or 1967. They changed that code later so it wouldn't indicate 1987. Since the film was not introduced in 1927 that rules out '27. The film was discontinued in '57 so that rules out anything except '47 if the film in fact really is Kodak Super XX as claimed. Now how do we establish if it really is Kodak Super XX film? Well first of all we look at the image on the film see if it's consistent with that type of film, and it is. It's the right amount of graininess and the other characteristics, the contrast and so forth do look the same. The other thing is that the film base, the plastic material that the film emulsion is coded onto has changed at different times. In 1927 the film base would have been a cellulose nitrate material, which was highly combustible and was later replaced with what's called Safety Film because the Safety Film didn't burn as easily. In 1947 they used an acetate, I forget the exact name of the acetate. They used a particular acetate proprianate base in '47. In '67 they were already using the more modern base, called tri-acetate. So the actual material of the film was different in '47.
Don: So you were able to zero in specifically that year.
Bob: Right, this material that this film sample I have is the acetate proprianate so this is a sample of film from 1947 manufactured. There's no question in my mind of that.
Don: Now did not Santilli send you another piece of film that you were to have received for testing purposes?
Bob: Well, there have been several samples of film and some very strange occurrences with some of these samples of film. The first sample of film that was sent to me which was two separate strips of film was waylaid by FOX.
Don: What do you mean "waylaid?"
Bob: Well, I have to say "shanghaied" at JFK Airport and carried off to Los Angeles.
Don: Now how could they do that if it was sent to you?
Dwight: Yeah how's that possible?
Bob: Well, I guess the best thing I would say here is that by assurances from someone at the FOX Production Company they managed to get hold of the film at JFK as my agent.
Don: Did they then release the film to you?
Bob: No, they have not at this point. They still have the film.
Don: Did you ask them for it?
Bob: Repeatedly.
Don: And what are they telling you?
Bob: I was repeatedly promised that the film would be sent to me.
Don: Oh, so it sounds like they're game playing.
Bob: The only interpretation I could put on this was it was an attempt to delay my testing.
Don: For what reason?
Bob: Well I assume that the first broadcast of the program on the 28th, if the testing could have been delayed until after that then if it went against them the program would still air and still get its giant audience and everything would be fine. That's my assumption. But anyway that film vanished into the mall of the production company and has yet to resurface on the east coast in the US where it's supposed to be.
Don: Well it seems like there might be some laws broken.
Dwight: Yes I was gonna say, by what means, what courier company sent this film? I don't wanna ever use them. [laugh]
Bob: Well, let's not go into all the gory details, let's just say the argument on their part was that they had paid Ray Santilli this very large amount of money for the use of the film and they considered that any film that came into the US was their property.
Dwight: I see.
Bob: That was their take on all this. My take was somewhat different but that's beside the point. So we had to have additional samples taken off of the role and sent over to me, which took some time.
Dwight: I understand
Bob: And one of those samples vanished in the hands of the courier company for a week, and couldn't be accounted for. Their computer tracking system just couldn't find it for a week.
Don: That does sound rather suspicious.
Bob: Then it turned up again.
Dwight: This sounds familiar, also.
Bob: [laugh]
Don: Well, you've had experience, Bob, in the past with doing work for various government agencies, among others the FBI and I'm presuming some of the intelligence agencies, is that correct?
Bob: That's correct. Let's just say that I know from personal experience that they wanted to waylay the film and duplicate it for their own purposes, or even substitute a duplicate. It would have been child's play to do it. Now whether that was done or not I don't know, but If that particular piece of film tests out strangely I'm gonna be suspicious of it. It's pedigree.
Don: Well, that is rather amazing. The fact that...
Bob: There have been some rather bizarre turns in all of this.
Don: Well the fact that this situation from the very beginning has been handled in a dog and pony show fashion, I don't think would be arguable, would you?
Bob: No, no.
Don: Well the people in London, now I've said this before and I would like to get your reaction to it, but I think that if in fact this is the real genuine article, it is one of the most important stories ever and I have yet to see one newspaper around the country do anything on this. That's a whole other subject we might look at but the bottom line is what Santilli did and what the people in London did was unconscionable. Do you argue with that?
Bob: I don't really argue with it, I say it was done from naivety rather than from any malice.
Don: Naivety or greed?
Bob: Well there of course is the financial motivation, because that's the only motivation that Ray's financial backers have in this thing.
Dwight: And he's admitted that.
Bob: Oh yeah, they put up the money to buy the film and they want their return investment, they don't care anything beyond that, and that's fairly normal in a business transaction. If someone invests money all they care about is getting a return on their investment.
Don: Well Bob, if UFOs and aliens, for the sake of argument, are real and if our government, the United States Government, the military, the various intelligence agencies that would of course by necessity have an interest in this...if they recognize that it was real and if there is a special operating group detailed with keeping track of this, then you and I both know that they have no doubt who the cameraman is.
Bob: Oh yeah, I mean one of the first things I did when I was ask by Ray to get involved and date this film, was to call some old friends of mine in the intelligence community and ask them how much personal risk I would be getting myself into if I got involved with this project. And the answer they gave me was, "Well if the Black Operations people wanted this covered up, the cameraman and Santilli would both been dead weeks ago."
Don: [laugh]
Dwight: [laugh]
Bob: So, you don't have anything to worry about."
Don: So in other words what you're suggesting is that our guys still play rough on occasion.
Bob: I'm sure they do, yeah, I'm sure they do, if something they consider that important. There's two possibilities I see as one of them that this got out without them knowing it and they think it's too far gone to try and recover it or the other one is maybe they wanted it out.
Don: Or someone did.
Bob: Yeah, and if they wanted it out, then that's one of the strongest arguments for it being a fake.
Dwight: Yes, absolutely. This is of course, the scuttlebutt that we were just talking about before we came into the studio tonight. And of course we have to take into consideration that the polls, are now 52% believe in it, so the polls have changed.
Bob: Yeah, well I'm still unconvinced one way or the other. It looks damn real. I mean speaking as a biologist looking at the dissection this looks like a real something being dissected and it sure ain't a human. So that part argues in my mind that it's the real thing and the other part of my mind, which is the more pragmatic part, argues well be careful. You've been fooled before.
Don: Well, yeah I think we all have. Let me ask you this, one of the big rumors from the very get go of this Bob, had to do with the fact that President Harry Truman was visible in some of these sequences. Now I saw the whole 23 or so minutes that FOX had a number of weeks ago and of course Truman was not there.
Bob: No Truman
Don: And Santilli himself indicated that Truman was visible. Incidentally, let me add, this was another deception or I guess as some people might say, another lie that Santilli put out about Harry Truman. There is nothing with Truman on it. I do have a facsimile of a canister label here with Truman's name on it. What's this story on that? Do you know?
Bob: I honestly don't really know, I mean the original thing that I saw that mentioned Truman was this thing Reg Presley put out where he said he saw Truman on the film.
Dwight: And he said it was so clear you could read his lips.
Bob: Yeah, and obviously he hadn't seen the same [laugh] film I've seen because I haven't seen any faces on there much less any lips I could read or any Harry Truman.
Dwight: You see, this is why I go back to the question I asked you earlier about who has seen this film. Because you know in this special FOX, Santilli said that the old man, the old photographer ran the film for him on the wall, ran it.
Bob: He ran part of it.
Dwight: Ran part of it but even a part of it, that I have yet to talk to anybody who has actually said, "Yes I have actually seen the film run."
Bob: No one else has, I don't think
Dwight: And this is, again one of the red flags. Everyone is looking at video and talking to some people who saw this show in England they were so, they didn't even know they were looking at video on a big screen, they didn't even know it was a video projector, they thought they were looking at the 16mm film being projected. And I was astounded to find out that's what they thought when in fact I know it was a video shown there.
Bob: Right. Well it wouldn't have made that much difference because if they had projected the film it wouldn't have been the original film, it would have been a copy.
Dwight: It would have been a copy, that's right, but it's the idea that this elusive...it's just...everything is just out of reach, you know and that's what sends up my red flags even though it is stunning deception if it is.
Bob: Right. I'm concerned about the statements that were made early on about Truman. I'm concerned about the vanished first autopsy and the vanished rest of the tent scene and so forth. Those things need to be brought back out if they in fact exist so that we can look at them.
Dwight: I have talked to someone in England, who now I have no question that this person saw this, saw this with his wife to be, saw a tent scene with skin being removed, piece by piece and they said it went on for quite awhile.
Don: That was one of the sequences that we observed down in Kiviat's office a number of weeks ago but it was of such poor quality that almost nothing was discernable.
Dwight: And what my friends saw was a very good quality.
Bob: There's the thing. There's two parts of that same film. What Bob Kiviat had is a two minute segment in the beginning of that sequence which is poor quality. What your friends saw is the rest of the sequence which is about 14 minutes long.
Dwight: YES! That's exactly it and they said it was so boring it had to be real! [laugh]
Bob: It's very high quality and apparently in this one the faces of the doctors are quite visible.
Dwight: YES! That's exactly what I was told.
Bob: Philip Mantle has seen it, the crop circle guy, Colin Andrews, has seen it and quite a few others have seen it, so it unquestionably exists.
Dwight: Well, why hasn't it been shown?
Bob: Because this mysterious collector bought it and has spoiled it away somewhere and will probably try about a year from now and sell it to the tv networks.
Dwight: Well, this is news. [laugh] Thank you Bob. [laugh]
Don: Bob, I no sooner said we were going to open the phone lines and they immediately jammed right up.
Bob: I was afraid of that
Don: [laugh] So, as soon as they tell me who's on the line we're going to start taking some calls. I've gotta know who I'm talking to. But, what you're saying is that a mysterious, if you will mysterious, we don't know who it is, somebody, an investor picked up this sequence from Santilli. Now...
Bob: He has both the rest of the tent sequence and the other autopsy.
Don: Okay so he has another autopsy also. It was my understanding that Santilli, in order to make some of this film more authentic, had 1947 imprinted on it which in fact ruined from a historical perspective and from a the perspective of analyzing this film, and the cover story he had put out the reason why he wasn't showing it was because he had sold to somebody but in fact he had imprinted it with that date. Do you know anything about that?
Bob: That's a total screw up of communications from several different people. What he had done was imprinted the video. There would be no easy way to imprint the film itself and it would be absolutely no earth reason to do so. What he was doing was putting a date marker type thing in the corner of the frame on the video, on the early parts of the video had that.
Don: Okay
Bob: So the film itself would not have been damaged by doing that and as I understand it the film is not damaged. The first autopsy which again Philip Mantle and several other people have seen, is stated to be much better quality than the one we've seen. But it's currently in a bank vault in some quote neutral country.
Don: Like Switzerland
Bob: Probably Switzerland or someplace like that or down the Jersey someplace that has no laws to deal with nobody.
Dwight: And of course instead of a mysterious collector one could say because their were faces clearly visible that perhaps someone said "oops, these people can be traced".
Bob: Who knows, who knows. I mean, that it me as strikes somewhat curious that there are no faces visible in any of the stuff we have and are told there are faces visible in the stuff we don't have. That's one of the arguments against the film. In the first autopsy the doctors are not wearing these white outfits they're just wearing surgical masks.
Dwight: That's right, that's what I was told.
Bob: And we know the name of one of the doctors in the first autopsy.
Don: And how was that determined, was that from the cameraman?
Bob: No, no apparently there's a clipboard held up at the beginning of the autopsy, said the autopsy performed by Dr. Detlive Bronk.
Dwight: And that has been checked out?
Bob: Detlive Bronk really existed.
Don and Dwight: Yes he did.
Bob: He's dead now so we can't ask him.
Don: As a matter of fact, he's a rather mythological figure, if you will, in the UFO arena.
Bob: Yes he was in the MJ-12 thing too, I understand
Don: Yes exactly well we're gonna start taking some calls, I've got the names up here Bob, so I'm gonna go to Encino first. We've got Jonathan calling in from Century...Jonathan?
Jonathan: Good evening Don how you doin'?
Don: Just fine
Jonathon: Something I forgot to ask at lunch today was that every time I hear about this alien autopsy is the only thing I've ever seen is what's on FOX, I always think about the article you guys did on PSYOPS and it was about psychological operations performed by the US government.
Don: Right
Jonathan: Isn't this just kind of typical, they promise you something and then the really juicy stuff just ends up being rumors, the stuff we've seen...
Don: It's called a dangle.
Jonathan: [laugh]
Dwight: Well in this case however I mean even though we haven't seen it all, in fact the 14 minutes that I saw, the two people said it was the most boring film that you've ever seen so it must be real. We have kind of seen the juicy stuff in that case, but it's certainly does, because there's so many unanswered questions , smack of strange governmental fooling's around, but that's sort of conspiratorial, you know thinking.
Jonathan: And with the doctors performing the autopsy in the toxic suits or radiations suits, were we that aware in 1947, of the dangers of radiation, I mean wasn't this the same time they were doing nuclear testing?
Don: Oh sure.
Jonathan: You know like kids and mom sitting around in a radiation area and so for me it's either the government was aware of something they didn't let the people know about or 1995 or 1990 perspective about radiation was influenced on...
Don: They definitely knew, Jonathan that radiation was not good for you and I think there were still at that time quite a few Japanese in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki that could have told them that also.
Dwight: They did carry the plutonium in the back of a sedan to the test sight and it was getting hot as they were going there so there was quite a bit not known, but I understand the suits are authentic as we know some of the other elements in that autopsy room have been authenticated, but Bob Shell, from what you know...
Bob: They were not radiation suits
Dwight: No, that's what I was going to say they were not radiation suits...
Bob: They're pressed into use as biohazard suits but they appear to be the kind of suits that were worn for re-fueling aircraft.
Don: But the question Bob, that would crop up is if there was a biological hazard these suits were not self contained nor did they have oxygen.
Bob: No they weren't really very good, apparently they had no such thing as a biological suit in those days and they just grabbed something, better than nothing.
Don: Well, in the cameraman's statement there was a suggestion that there was some type of possible recognized threat. Do you have any additional information on that from a biological standpoint?
Bob: The only thing I'm aware of is in the first autopsy they didn't wear these suits and in the second autopsy they did. He says that between the two autopsies they became aware that there was a medical hazard. He doesn't specify what the medical hazard was.
Don: Whether somebody experienced an adverse reaction or whatever.
Bob: Its curious to me that about this same time there was at the Roswell base and the town surrounding it there was an outbreak of flu that was restricted just to that area.
Don: June, July?
Bob: Yeah, and it apparently didn't go anywhere else but maybe what happened that it was some kind of a biological hazard but not a very serious one.
Don: Now that's extraordinarily interesting okay, well Jonathan we gotta move along but I want to thank you for your call...we're gonna go to Joe in Irving Texas, who is joining us on Paragon...Joe, good evening.
Joe: Howdy from Texas. I have a question and an observation and the question is to Don, you and Mr. Shell who are more familiar with the tape and the actual film and that is was the quality of what you saw the same as what they showed the other night on television show?
Don: Okay let me answer that first because Bob can give you a much more complete explanation. No, what I saw at the offices of the executive producer, Bob Kiviat the overall quality of that particular footage was horrible. The white suits which you saw the two technicians or doctors whatever they were wearing continuously washed out the picture in Kiviat's office what we saw on television was really cleaned up it was extraordinary.
Joe: Well, that's what I was getting to. It looked enhanced to me.
Bob: I don't think it was enhanced so much as just that FOX picked the very best of the footage and possibly did some tweaking of the contrast and so forth to make it look a little better on screen.
Joe: My impression was that it was made to look older than it was.
Bob: No they didn't alter that appearance.
Joe: Not at all?
Bob: The film itself varies considerably in quality throughout the roles of the autopsy. This is partially because the film that we see of the autopsy film had to be hand processed by the cameraman and with hand processing it's not as uniform as machine processing so there's density variation throughout the film. It gets darker and lighter and darker and lighter in various places.
Don: Bob I talked in the last couple of weeks to a number of former combat photographers from the second world war era and one of the things we found out was that they did have some type of a processing small lab.
Bob: They used a large oval tank that they cranked the film from reel to reel inside the tank while it's being processed.
Don: Okay so they didn't need a complete lab in order to process this stuff is that correct?
Bob: No, no it could be done in a small office or anywhere else as long as you have running water.
Don: Out in the field, so to speak.
Bob: Hard to do in the field because you need temperature control. Anyplace where you have hot and cold running water and a good thermometer you could do it. The hard part was drying the film once you processed it. You had to either stretch it out to full hundred foot length and hang it up or put it on some kind of rack that wouldn't leave marks on it.
Joe: Again, my impression was it looked enhanced to me and it didn't look like something from 1947.
Bob: I say don't make your judgement based on what you saw on FOX.
Joe: That's why I called to ask. Okay how much of that was really credible as far as what you've seen first hand or from the video you've seen.
Bob: You only saw something of the order of 5 or 6 minutes on what FOX broadcasted there's a hell of a lot more film.
Don: Joe I want to thank you for your call, keep those eyes pointed up. We're going to go to Ociolo Iowa...Scott.
Scott: Hello, great show as always guys. Something about this sounded familiar to me when you guys first started talking about it so I started digging around and I found in November of 1994 Omni Magazine an article about Steven Spielberg and how he had acquired a film on Roswell with the military cleaning up the debris and he was going to use this to make a movie called Project X and he was going to debut it in '97 to correlate it with the 50th anniversary. I was wondering if you guys had heard anything about that and my second question was if this film is proven to be real, what are the after effects is the government gonna come clean or what's going to happen?
Don: Well let me answer your first question first and then I'll let Bob give his idea and Dwight. Have you seen anything in the National Press either print or electronic media this past week since this program aired?
Scott: Not a thing. That shocked me. I figured I'd hear about it somewhere.
Don: Neither have we so that I think pretty much...as a matter of fact and Dwight knows this particular gentleman too, whom I will not name and a very good friend of Dwight back east and a gentleman I have recently met, who is a very well known author took this story and one of the photographs down to an associate of his at Newsweek Magazine...
Dwight: Assistant editor of Newsweek Magazine, and let me just say that he wanted to do a story for several national magazines on this subject and he's quite a well-known journalist and novelist and took this to an assistant editor at Newsweek Magazine and the assistant editor told him "Uh, look I'm gonna pretend this conversation never took place okay, I'm gonna pretend this never took place and let me give you some advice, you just stay away from this, stay away from it and get as far away from it as you can." And when he asked him why he said..."but if this is real...." "Even if this is proved to be true nobody cares because it's old news." And that to me of course is a crock because we all saw that cover of Iceman I mean this is nonsense but it says something about the mentality and maybe the fears of people who don't want to be ridiculed.
Scott: Right. If Spielberg brings something like that to the forefront would that be what it takes to bring it over the top?
Don: Well, Scott that whole story was erroneous. Okay? Spielberg's office was contacted they disclaimed no knowledge of any of this now Bob I'm sure has some additional information on this what I was told by a very good informant was when this was originally began circulating the story was the people in London had some public relations individuals circulating this story in order to build excitement about it...Bob?
Bob: My take on that is a little bit different. One of the people, one of the financiers who put up the money to purchase the film from the cameraman is named Spielburg, Volker Spielburg is his name. And I think this was a case of confusion. Someone heard the name Spielburg buying this film and just automatically assumed it was a different Spielberg.
Dwight: [laugh]
Bob: But in fact it was a German guy who is not even related to Steven and I think that's where all that came from.
Scott: So it's the same film just wrong person.
Bob: And Omni was up to their usual journalistic standards...
Dwight: [laugh] That's why their not a magazine anymore.
Bob: Yeah that's why their gone, so anyway that's how that story came about at least that's my take on it.
Don: Okay, Scott I wanna thank you for your call, keep those eyes pointed up. We're gonna go to Albuquerque New Mexico. We've got Brian joining us, Brian? Good evening.
Brian: Hello gentlemen. I appreciate your show every week...
Don: Thank you.
Brian: It's always interesting. I went to a seminar last night with a man by the name of Bill Nell and I heard him on the radio and he promised a lot of things and I went to the seminar and it was a kind of overrated.
Don: [laugh] That's one way to say it. You're being very nice.
Brian: He said on the radio that he had a picture of a hand that this so called three star general had found at Roswell at one of the on the three crash sites here in New Mexico. And it was hand that the general kept it all these years in a box and he said he's got a picture of a hand with six fingers on it and he wouldn't release the general's name but he said he was going to right away and I've seen a picture of the hand and I counted only had five fingers on it and he said, "well, over here was where the thumb was, it's a nub that was burn off." I really felt ripped off and I think that kind of goes to Vickie's Landing Pad, what she said. You know I'm really interested in this subject and it seems like I can't any good information except from this program. I noticed he was just out there trying to make money, the whole thing. I really felt ripped off. I really believe the film is real. I'm one of the 52% so I have a gut feeling that what we're seeing is real.
Don: What we're trying to do Brian, we're striving to try make sense out of many times, what appears to be an nonsensical subject. Other than something like the intelligence operations of nations around the world, there's probably no more confused subject than this and so many people regard this entire phenomenon as absolute nonsense anyway, don't confuse me with what you claim to be facts about it about it and so we're actually fighting against a double edged sword. So we tried to wade through the malarkey and we're not shy about speaking our mind about what we feel about it. So the only thing we can all try to do is to ultimately get to the truth.
Brian: Do you know anything about this hand he's talking about?
Don: Not a thing
Dwight: Nothing
Brian: I didn't think so. I appreciate your show.
Don: Okay Brian, thanks so much. We're going to go to West Virginia we have Vincent calling in from Gilbert West Virginia. Vincent, good evening.
Vincent: Good evening. How's everybody?
Don: We're fine
Dwight: Good how are you?
Vincent: I have statement I'd like to say about the autopsy tapes.
Don: All right.
Vincent: Myself I believe it's real and one reason I believe it's real is because the way it's been brung out because the reason it's been brung out the way it is because that's only way it could be brung out. Because I believe that the government wouldn't let them bring it out no other way that's why it ain't been on the news or hasn't been in any newspaper or anything because the government, I believe has control of the newspaper and pretty well decide what they want to put on national tv and what's on the printed newspaper. So I believe they made people stay away from this story so this is the reason why it's been brung out the way it is.
Don: You mean you think that someone within the government have kept the various news organizations from reporting it? Bob do you think that's feasible?
Bob: No. [chuckle] We've have too much in independent press in this country I don't think that's the situation.
Dwight: Bob, let me ask you. Didn't you ask a friend in the government what would happen if you got involved with this? Was there a little trepidation on your part?
Bob: Oh yes, I was a little bit worried about it when I first heard about it because I thought if this is real and it's coming out against the government's wishes that they might do some nasty things.
Dwight: Well considering the fact that journalist have been ridiculed soundly and some scientists have been ridiculed to death for supporting this subject wouldn't you say that in some way just the threat of ridicule for someone....
Bob: The threat of ridicule is far greater threat than doing any harm to them I think.
Dwight: That's what I mean. I mean after all it was almost a year ago on the 16th of September that Brod wrote an article that was almost, you could've said written in the office of the Air Force about this very subject, in which almost every fact about this case was wrong and the New York Times has never, ever printed one single rebuttle although hundreds have been written to it so there is some strange quality to this. In other words, this story, even if they wanted to ridicule this story in the newspaper to say "Hoax on FOX" or whatever, "is clearly a joke."
Bob: They've mostly just ignored it although one major newspaper is working on a story.
Dwight: Oh. Which one is that do you know?
Bob: They've asked me not to say. They're interviewing me for it so I know that they're working on it.
Dwight: Okay
Don: Back in the east coast Bob?
Bob: Yeah
Dwight: Well, that's good to know.
Bob: And of course overseas has gotten very good press coverage and very detailed press coverage.
Dwight: Yes it has and why is that?
Bob: Almost every country except the US.
Dwight: It's true.
Don: Well you know, for several years there have been extensive and dramatic UFO happenings down in Mexico especially in Mexico city. One of the largest cities on the planet and there have been virtually no coverage whatsoever up here north of the border. None and we're talking about literally thousands of witnesses and God knows how many camcorders. Vince, we're gonna have to move along, the lines are filled up. I want to thank you for your call, please keep those eyes pointed up.
Don: We've got Erik and Laura from Encounters, the Encounters Forum. Erik's back in North Carolina and Laura is in California. They're doing a conference call, the must wanna talk. Hello Laura! Erik!
Laura: Hello Don!
Erik: Hi Don! We've got a couple of questions for Bob. Laura go ahead.
Laura: Well, the question was Don is that all of us on the forum have assumed this whole entire time that this was the Roswell film and now we're hearing it's not.
Bob: The film has nothing to do with the quote "Traditional Roswell Incident."
Dwight: And it should be noted that from the beginning one of the strange aspects of this film was that it was dated June of '47 and everyone knows that the Roswell Incident was in July so this is something that was known early on and it was puzzling.
Bob: The other point is that the crash site given by the cameraman is about 10 miles SW of Socorro about 160 miles from Roswell. It's quite a distance from Roswell and very unlikely the two incidents are related.
Don: Now that's something that we were discussing, I was discussing with Dwight earlier. Now it would appear, Bob, I don't know if you might have any insight into this, it would appear that there were several instances of something going down. Now if in fact these were truly extraterrestrial craft that would not seem to make sense that they were having these technological failures. Do you have any sight into this?
Bob: I don't have any secret insight into it this but there's been a lot of speculation. One speculation is that two of them collided and one of them wasn't found for a month. The other speculation, they shot each other down. Who knows. There's been all kind of strange speculation. Personally I think that what's going to happen, if it does turn out this film is the real thing, if it turns out it is the "smoking gun" we're going to find that the traditional Roswell Incident has been reconstructed for all these years, is a phantom, smoke.
Don: It might have been a disinformation operation?
Bob: It could have been that or it could just be a total misinterpretation of information from this...
Don: Well if in fact the Roswell incident, the classic one that we are aware of, if in fact that happened, it seemed to...the 509th which originally reported as recovering an actual disk they seemed to be out of the loop. In other words...
Bob: They knew nothing about this one
Don: But there was a military group that seemed to have a tremendous amount of information about this. Okay, Erik, Laura?
Erik and Laura: We're here.
Laura: The other question I have Don, is that through all this film has anybody seen the actual craft?
Don: Okay that's an excellent question. I have not although I did see one room which appeared to be filled with debris. Bob, I know that you've seen that. FOX did not run that which tells me that may make it to Alien Autopsy Part 2, 3 and 4.
Dwight: Well the reason I think they didn't show that was they had Jesse Marcel, Jr. on the program and the purported hieroglyphics that were on the film of the wreckage does not comport with his memory at all.
Bob: Well, you know in the traditional Roswell incident you have three things. You have eye beams that look like they're made out of balsa wood with this violet writing on them...
Dwight: Right
Bob: You have the foil that crumbles and uncrumbles and then you have this stuff that looks like fishing line. The debris from this wreck you have none of that. What you have is metal plates, metal eye beams, quite large eye beams not the skinny little things that Marcel talks about, then you have these panels with hand imprints in them. So you have wreckage that looks nothing like the wreckage described in the other Roswell incident and I think that's the reason FOX didn't show it, because if they showed that they'd have to explain why it didn't look like what everybody else was describing.
Don: Well, this wreckage actually could be described as much coarser.
Bob: Yeah it's not part of the crash itself as the cameraman makes clear it's part of a secondary dish that was mounted on the bottom of the craft and was torn of during the crash. The crash itself was intact.
Don: Now that would have been worth a million dollars if they would have had some actual footage of the actual craft.
Dwight: Well, I imagine the Army, Air Force would have asked, "Uh excuse me? Where is the craft?" [laugh]
Bob: Yeah he shot something like over 200 rolls of film, we only have 22 rolls.
Erik: The other question that we had Bob, is there any anticipated overleaf of the film into mainstream media or onto quick time or digitized media.
Bob: There is a CD ROM in preparation and there will be other forms released later on, depending on who asks for it and what demand there is.
Dwight: Let me say right now that I was I'm sure one of the first people in the United States to respond to the Santilli flyer. I sent away my $59,00 to the British government and to Ray Santilli and was promised that I would have this tape, and guess who doesn't have it?
ALL: No one does.
Dwight: That's right no one does and I knew ahead of time I may never get it and I knew it may be a hoax but I'd love to have that hoax on my shelf if it was and I didn't care. But I do care that I get something and again here's another promise that wasn't fulfilled.
Bob: I think I can shed some light on that because as of two days ago when I talked to Ray at some length they were still negotiating with the man who has the first autopsy and the rest of the tent sequence to get permission to include that on the video. That's the reason for the delay.
Don: Okay, well we're gonna move along, Laura, Erik I want to thank you for your call. Hey you guys keep looking up.
Dwight: This is my first forum conference for me.
Don: Yes sir. We're going to go to Grand Prairie Texas. We've got Bill joining us. Bill good evening.
Bill: Hello Don, Dwight, Bob. I got a couple of questions here. One thing that really upsets me is this interception of this film by FOX and I'm real curious if this film was addressed to Bob Shell why he hasn't reported this to the authorities?
Bob: Well, there's a number of reasons for that. The first one being that I'm still trying to stay at least on speaking terms with the people at FOX because they are the only people who have a legitimate outlet for the film here in the states and I think it's important for me to stay in touch with them and try to at least as much as I can, to input information to them to try to make sure their programs at least have a little bit of factual content about what's going on. And without going into all the details here I was dooped in this process and I blame myself largely for it, I don't blame FOX 100%. I shouldn't have believed things that were told to me. I had been warned by friends of mine in Hollywood not to believe anything that a Hollywood Producer said to me and I should have taken that in.
Don: You learn the hard way too, Bob?
Bob: Exactly, exactly. I should have listened.
Dwight: Well, if it's any comfort to you I was told by this producer of this special not to go to Sheffield. I was invited to go to Sheffield to see this film and to take part in a conference and I was told, "No, don't go, don't go, you'll see it next week, you'll see it next week, I promise you, I promise you, you be seeing it next week, you're wasting your time. I promise you!"
Bob: [laugh] Wonderful imitation.
Dwight: And guess who didn't go and guess who hasn't seen the film. So it's typical folks, it's typical and you know we are, we're naive we believe people but I think there's something nice about it sometimes when you give yourself away and you trust people but you do learn. I know I do learn. I trust somebody once and when the trust is broken I never trust them again. So that is a lesson you learn. We can all be taken.
Don: Did you have another question Bill?
Bill: Yes another thought I had is the cameraman's testimony is really can amount to prove the film to be genuine and I know Bob Shell knows who the man is and I'm curious if he's met him face to face or if it's been only over the phone.
Bob: I have not met him face to face yet. I'm supposed to do so in a matter of a week or so.
Bill: Okay, I also hear that he wants a letter signed by president Clinton giving him total amnesty from any violation of government oaths or any other possible violation.
Bob: He has said he will not go public with his name unless he gets something like that either from Clinton or from a high enough government executive who has the right to grant such.
Dwight: Michael Isner
Don: Isner could do it. I want to ask you something Bob, this guy has crossed the line. Let's face it. Whatever security oaths he swore 50 years ago he broke them. If this material is real, he sold this for profit, stuff that was not his to sell that was by rights property of the United States government. He broke his oath about keeping this thing secret. The bottom line is he crossed the line, he's got nothing coming. And if he's worried about the IRS hey, how tough is he going to be to find. So what do you feel about that? This guy, the only thing he has left to do is to go public. It's the only protection he has.
Bob: I think he will be forced to, ultimately. Because his name is going to come out whether he wants it or not because he's not that hard to find.
Dwight: [laugh]
Don: Okay. Bill I want to thank you. We're going to go to Tucson Arizona. We've got Brent on the line. Brent, good evening.
Brent: Good evening Don and Dwight and Bob. Dwight I promise you if FOX feels free to abscond with autopsy film on its way to Bob then they are burning the midnight oil trying to figure out how they can add some profit to the tapes that are going to be coming over here from England that they feel they really own.
Dwight: I bet you're right. Well if in fact if FOX is getting a piece Santilli's film. That's something I'm not aware of. But Santilli did promise that we'd get them. In other words by the 28th they would be mailed out so we would get them. That was a promise.
Brent: Are we agreed then that the creature that appears on the autopsy film we saw on FOX is not related to the Randle book on Roswell?
Don: No
Brent: So the discrepancies about four fingers instead of six?
Don: Now remember the story about the 4 fingers came from one source, Glen Dennis, who back in those days was the mortician. He didn't see it but his mysterious girlfriend, who incidentally her name was Naomi Sipes allegedly, who was a nurse at the Roswell army hospital is what she allegedly told him, then she mysteriously disappeared. Nobody's ever found her, they have no idea what happened to her. Dennis claims that she was reported killed a short time after this in a plane crash in Europe. Bottom line is nobody knows, but who knows about the fours fingers? What we have here is what appears to be a creature or a humanoid figure with a six fingers on each hand, six toes on each foot. As a matter of fact Dwight talked to a physician today and a microbiologist and Dwight you had asked them about this condition polydactyl...
Dwight: Yes, polydactylism, and I had been told that it was a trait and should not have been considered necessarily a genetic deformation but rather a trait and was relatively common. And by trait he meant to say it was something which could not be determined as to whether it was...in other words it's in the genes as opposed to being a gene gone crazy. For what it's worth, I'm not quite sure how far you take that but it's just an interesting tidbit. But you're right, there are discrepancies.
Brent: I thought a couple of callers ago, it's been pretty well agreed that what was talking about in that book and in the movie that was put out by Showtime that there's probably a different crash but let me ask something that's going in my mind and that is what does super sleuth Phil Klass, what have they been saying about this.
Don and Dwight: Nothing
Brent: That's interesting isn't it? I have an intuition, personally I find the autopsy film rather believable and secondly I think the government is somehow involved in this and I think that's why were not hearing too much on this.
Dwight: Remember the government came out, which is also very unusual, the government came out very early and said this is a hoax, it's not real, which is very unusual because usually they don't come out one way or the other.
Don: Remember the United States Air Force had not commented publicly on any UFO case since 1969 at the Publication of the Common Committee Report, they officially got out of the business of UFOs until September of last year, just a year ago on the 8th when they stated they had lied about Roswell. It was not a weather balloon it was a secret project mogul balloon. But the bottom line is even though project mogul was a top secret operation there was nothing physically with this balloon array that was secret. It was neoprene, it was balsa wood, it was cable it was an instrument package but nothing that people would not have identified.
Brent: I just want to say I don't think their involvement in this is for disinformation, I think they're taking advantage of the popularity of the topic of Roswell lately from the book and the film on Showtime. I think they're taking advantage of it. I don't think their involvement in this, given the autopsy film, if there is an involvement, I don't think it's for disinformation purposes. At least not overtly.
Don: Okay, Brent I want to thank you for your call. We're gonna go to Green Valley, California we have Roy calling in, Roy good evening.
Roy: Hey how you doing tonight.
Don: Just fine.
Roy: Hey, I've got a question for you. During the autopsy film I noticed that right around the part where they were peeling the eyeballs off that the alien blinked.
Don: No. Bob?
Bob: [laugh] I have heard this story so many times. There's a splice in the film there and if you look at it single frame you can see the jagged splice across the film. That's all it is, the alien doesn't blink. They're not that hard to kill.
Don: [laugh]
Roy: [laugh] I was wondering about that.
Dwight: I thought I saw "sex" written across his chest, sorry. I saw the head move a few times.
Bob: [laugh] By the way, we found Naomi Sipes, did you know that? One of the three people in the room during the autopsy is a woman.
Don: Oh, as a matter of fact my wife pointed that out when we were down in Kiviat's office. She said, "That one technician looks like they have breasts," and we looked and sure enough, of course it's really of hard to tell...
Bob: She has long fingernails too in the glove if you look at that closely.
Dwight: However it can't be Naomi Sipes because this autopsy took place in Texas.
Bob: Yeah but it took place in July, late July.
Dwight: No, I'm saying the film that we're seeing this supposedly took place in Texas, according to the cameraman, according to FOX.
Bob: Yeah, she was at Roswell before that.
Dwight: Did Naomi go from Roswell to Texas?
Bob: She might have.
Dwight: Well, that seems unlikely according to Mr. Dennis, because right after that it said she went out, disappeared.
Bob: I'm being facetious here. [laugh]
Dwight: I know you are. [laugh]
Don: [laugh]
Dwight: In fact I don't think I ever remember Dennis ever saying it was female nurse, it could have been a male nurse. [laugh]
Bob: One of the people under the smocks is a woman. That part is not facetious. You can quite clearly see the breasts a couple of times and you can also seen the longer fingernails under the glove.
Dwight: You know what's unusual to me that no one has commented on at all, even the autopsy reports that I've seen by the physician in Britain, no one has commented on the fact that the right hand appears to have been almost severed.
Bob: Yeah it seems to be ignored for some reason.
Dwight: It's very strange.
Don: Did the cameraman give any explanation on what may have caused that tremendous gaping wound on the thigh?
Bob: There's no mention in anything I have heard from him so far. The wound goes all the way through. On one sequence which is being shot from the other side of the thigh you the entrance wound and the other side you see this enormous gaping, what appears to be an exit wound. It looks like a sharp metal wound.
Don: Yeah I was gonna say now, as a police officer I have been to a number of autopsies, I've seen gunshots, I've seen knife wounds and that type of thing but this appeared more of an explosion.
Bob: I think something exploded nearby. There's also a smaller wound in the right armpit.
Don: Yes, yes there is, absolutely.
Dwight: And searing, so there seems to have been a great deal of heat. A wound and then cauterization.
Don: Because in that one sequence the physician or the technician appears to be trimming away at the wound with a pair of scissors, do you know what I'm referring to?
Bob: They take a sample of the burned tissue from the edge of the wound.
Don: Right. Okay, Roy, thank you so much for your call, we're gonna go to Burbank. We've got Ernie calling in, Ernie good evening.
Ernie: How ya doing Don, Dwight, Bob? I've got what I think may be a little bit of somewhat late breaking information. In yesterday's addition of the Hollywood Reporter they ran an add on the front page reporting on the results of the airing of the show on FOX and they said that due to, now I don't have this verbatim because I don't have the article in front of me, but they said something to the effect that due to national record breaking ratings that they're gonna show the show again on Monday and that another company is going to rush release an extended version including the wreckage and the panel.
Don: Oh, is that right? Did they mention what company it was.
Ernie: Yes they did. I have it at the office and I can fax that to you.
Don: Oh okay.
Ernie: Yeah I can fax it, but I don't have it in front of me so I don't remember exactly what the company was.
Don: All right. That's very interesting and thank you for that information Ernie.
Ernie: Sure. One more quick question I was just kind of curious to the fact that nothing more and nothing at all was commented at all by the two pathologist on the show about the lack of the scale being present in the autopsy. I'll just hangup and listen to the comment.
Don: Okay sure. Bob, I think that perhaps you may go along with my reasoning as opposed to an autopsy this appears to be more of a dissection. It's as if they already knew what the heck they were dealing with and they were attempting to preserve specimen.
Bob: Absolutely. That's what they're doing. An autopsy is to determine the cause of death and that's not what their trying to do here. Their trying to very quickly get the organs out and get them into a preservative situation because according to the cameraman, these things decay very rapidly once they die.
Don: Is that right?
Bob: Much more rapidly than humans do.
Don: Is that what would perhaps cause the tremendously distended stomach?
Bob: That's a very odd artifact and I have been trying to figure that out because the body is obviously fresh because when it's cut it bleeds, so that's like a couple of hours.
Don: Right and the being was obviously not pregnant now it does appear to be female, it does appear to have female genitalia.
Bob: They all appear to be female. We assume it's basically sexless because it has no nipples...
Don: Yes there were nipples.
Bob: Again what some people are saying are nipples other people are saying are bruises. In my current interpretation from still framing it and looking at it very carefully we're not seeing nipples we're seeing bruises.
Don: Do you think it's conceivable that we might be looking at a creature, of course there's no way any of us would know this, it would be the purest speculation, but a cloned organism.
Bob: There's no naval so we're not looking at a mammal, we're looking at something that was reproduced in some other way. There were no internal sex organs, no ovaries.
Don: That we're aware of.
Bob: You can look in the hole pretty easily when the stomach's opened and there's nothing in there that looks like those things. I think we're dealing with an asexual creature.
Dwight: Well, there was, and this is something I found curious, there seemed to be, according to Don and to others who saw the full film, that there was a crystal of some sort removed from the abdomen.
Bob: Well, crystal is not really necessarily the right word for it. It's a hard, solid transparent something.
Dwight: Well it was Bob Kiviat who said crystal to me before I saw it and yet they did not show that on FOX. I found that, since it was such an extraordinary startling moment for so many people I found that interesting...
Bob: They're saving it for later, probably.
Dwight: Yes.
Don: Bob, let's go to Dallas, Texas we've got John calling in. John, good evening.
John: Good evening gentleman. Just one quick thing. The local Dallas Fort Worth Fox affiliate here is doing a follow up on this Monday. They're supposedly going to be talking with a NASA UFO expert if there is one that'll come out...
Don: Jim Oberg? It wouldn't be my old buddy Jim Oberg would it?
John: They didn't give a name. It was like just a brief 15 second ad for it.
Dwight: Well, sometimes he wears a beard to cover his identity but you can recognize him.
John: Yes I know. I've seen him in quite a few of NASA specials. I know who you're talking about but it's on 9:00 on Monday. They said they're going to talk to a UFO expert at NASA and I think they said the supposed private investigator looking for the cameraman.
Don: Oh Yeah, Mr. Dear. Well you know Jim Oberg and I squared off against each other on Larry King. Then I tried to get him to come on this show and he told me at one point he would but then he could never find the time. Now the last time anybody tried to really pin Jim down he said he'd be happy to go on tv for money, so you know.
John: Well we'll see. I don't know if this is going to be an investigative type of report or what but it's kind of interesting that they're putting it on after an hour of the second showing of this.
Dwight: And please call next week and let us know what it was.
John: I'll record it and see what they all have to say. Now about the film, of course I haven't gotten my video yet and I'm curious from you two gentlemen who have seen the entire thing, have you noticed, well, I was watching the camera move back and forth you could see reflections of the clock on that side of the room in that glass, was there any other time that you saw the camera moved around in that autopsy area there any reflections from the other side of the room?
Don: Bob?
Bob: Well you can see the clock quite clearly a number of times you can also actually see the cameraman himself at one point reflected in the glass. There's a couple of times you can see the far side of the room reflected but there's not much there. A very small room.
John: Okay I was just curious cuz a lot of times I've seen plenty of episodes of Star Trek in particular and they've missed reflections in various things so I was just curious if anyone had noticed anything that might give away the authenticity or not.
Don: Okay, John I want to thank you for your call. How long you been listening to the show?
John: About 6 to 9 months.
Don: Well, I'll tell you what make sure you don't miss the program where we gonna have doctor Sirowack. We're gonna go to Milwaukee, we have Jim calling in. Jim, good evening.
Jim: Good evening Don, Dwight and Bob. Very interesting show. I have a question for Bob and after that an observation and the question is was there one cameraman and one camera used to take these pictures?
Bob: Okay the film that we have is 16mm film was shot by one cameraman. There was also a still photographer mentioned by the cameraman who was taking still photos between rolls. The cameraman who's shooting the 16mm had to pause at the end of each, roughly two minutes and forty five seconds to reload the camera and while he was down reloading the camera there was a still photographer who moved in and took still images. We have the cameraman's word for this only, he does not have any of the still images but if they were in fact taken I'm sure they're archived somewhere.
Don: They would have to be wouldn't they? I mean this is a historical event that they...
Bob: They would have been the important record actually. The motion picture was just to get sort of an overall view of what was going on. The still pictures would have been to get the details.
Jim: Now, the observation. They showed a closeup of the scalpel cutting the alien from his neck toward his stomach. Now that was from the right side.
Don: No, the left side.
Jim: Right, the left side, and the very next scene after that they showed the very same scene from a distance but shot from the bottom of the corpse of the alien being cut with a scalpel from the neck to the stomach again.
Dwight: I know what you're referring to.
Jim: Okay, now that would indicate two cameras or two cameramen and that the film was spliced together.
Dwight: Unless the closeup, and this is a question for Bob, I pointed this out to my wife, unless they blew a frame up in order to give you a closer vantage point because the clarity was very, very bad. And sometimes they do that if they don't have a close up they'll blow it up to make it look like a closeup. I would suggest that's what we're seeing but I'm not sure but I know exactly what you're talking about.
Jim: Okay but the angles were different. One was shot from the up the leg and the other one was shot from the side.
Don: Well Jim let me say this because we're going to have to move along. When my wife and I were down in Kiviat's office viewing this, there was one segment there where the cameraman was following the surgeon or pathologist around right as he was getting ready to do the cutting, and he would only go so far, then he seemed to break away and there was a question about whether there was something back in the corner and Kiviat pointed this out to us, that they did not want to show up on the sequence. Now of course that's only speculation. We don't know but it was certainly something worth considering and if you get the chance to see the entire footage, the entire 23 minutes or whatever it is now, keep your eye on that. We've got to move along because we're running short on time. We're going to go to Anthony in Vista, California.
Anthony: Good evening. I was wondering maybe the reason that there's no one's able to see the actual film itself is because they're putting the video, what we've been seeing on the film right now.
Don: In other words what you're saying Anthony is maybe they're saving it to sell it on a video?
Anthony: No what I mean is maybe they're taking the stuff that's on the video right now and they're putting it on film from 1947 or whatever.
Bob: [laugh] That's too ridiculous to even comment on.
Don: Okay, thanks for your call Anthony we're gonna go to New York, John from Oxford New York, John?
John: I know I gotta make this one fast. Hi guys, one thing I noticed, I imagine this was probably the second or third or whatever autopsy...
Bob: This is the second.
John: Okay because when they remove the eye it seems like the surgeon knew what he was doing and if it was the first time he would have been very cautious or something but it seemed like "Oh I've done this before, it's nothing."
Bob: There's two possibilities on the eye covering, that something naturally been put there by the aliens or that something may be put on there by one of our technicians to keep the eyes from drying out prior to the autopsy.
Don: Or it could be a lens perhaps to filter out something like ultra violet light.
Bob: It could be sunglasses.
John: But they would have had them before we did right? Only now do we know the problems of ultra violet. Was this film hand processed?
Bob: Yes
John: Then the reals I understand were held back because...
Bob: These were held back because they needed special processing.
Don: Okay, we've got to run John thanks so much. Bob, I want to thank you so much.
Bob: You're welcome.
Dwight: Good night America
Don: Ladies and gentleman that's it for another week we will be back again in a week with another edition of UFOs Tonite! My name is Don Ecker and Dwight Schultz joining me as he does almost every week. Remember keep those eyes to the skies!