Truth and Lies

As those of us in the Roswell Slides Research Group worked toward finding out the truth about the so-called "Roswell Slides," some of us were subjected to smear campaigns by the most vociferous Slides promoter, Anthony Bragalia.

Here's an example about me, alluded to in a post at Kevin Randle's blog yesterday when Randle wrote, "Paul Kimball, who has been recently and unjustly vilified for his anti-slides stance." It comes from an e-mail that Bragalia sent to my RSRG colleague Tim Printy (and my understanding is that this claim was made to others):

You have allowed your team member Kimball to call Dr. Edgar Mitchell at home out of the blue to disturb him.. You have no moral compass, no filter- you have become desperate.  Kimball urged Mitchell not to attend the event and your reputation  -such as it is- will suffer immensely. You will personally be called out as a harasser and antagonizer who works with a mentally unstable alcoholic to derail other people's hard work.  How could you do this? What is wrong with you? When the world finds out how you operate, that you have no scruples and will stress-out and attack elderly people to get your way- no one  will ever want anything to do with you. My god, Tim, this is over-the-top and you have finally revealed yourself as a repellent nut. Btw, your foul attempt did not work..

To be clear, the claim that I contacted Mitchell was a lie. To be clear, I am not an alcoholic. That claim was also a lie. Either one of them would be grounds for legal action were I to pursue it further. Fortunately for Mr. Bragalia, I am not so inclined. I've got better things to do, and Mr. Bragalia, like his fellow Slides promoters, is now irrelevant.

But I want to let you know that this is what we were up against, folks. These are the people we were dealing with. Secretive, abusive, deceitful, and very, very angry when you challenged their claims, right up to Adam Dew accusing us yesterday of photo-shopping the placard research - another lie. 

For our part, while we skeptics can wield sharp elbows from time to time, and also have been known to pull a good-natured prank or two at the expense of self-important con men and true believers, our research itself was above board, peer-reviewed, factual... and open-sourced for everyone to look at. 

Finally, we had no financial stake in the story. Our only interest was in getting to the truth of the matter.

And that's the fundamental difference between the Slides Promoters and the rest of us.

Paul Kimball

The Roswell Slides placard

Adam Dew and Anthony Bragalia are claiming that the image from which we derived the proof that the "alien" body is actually a human mummified child is a fake - that it was photoshopped. I believe Jaime Maussan has said the same thing.

This is categorically untrue. The only change made was an increase in the contrast to accentuate the actual letters on the page (which were deblurred using simple commercially available software). Nothing was added.

I think we all know who the fakers are in this.

Paul Kimball

The Roswell Slides, Part D'uh

Told you so.

Paul Kimball

The Roswell Slides

Told you so.

Paul Kimball

Stanton Friedman - UFO frauds: Bob Lazar and Philip J. Corso

In this excerpt from an interview I conducted with Stan Friedman in 2001, he discusses frauds in UFO research, and focuses on two of the most egregious examples in the past thirty years - Robert Lazar, and Philip J. Corso.

Paul Kimball

Wilbert Smith and Otis Carr

One of the more imaginative and successful con-men in flying saucer history was Otis T. Carr, who managed to dupe more than a few people in the 1950s with his claims of free energy technology, until he was finally convicted in 1961 of "the crime of selling securities without registering the same" in Oklahoma (he eventually served 14 months in prison). Carr passed away in 1982, and although he is largely forgotten today, he still has a few acolytes - while speaking at the 2007 Retro-Con at the Integratron in Landers, California, I shared the bill with Ralph Ring, who once worked with Carr and still professes to believe that Carr was a genius, or something like that.

Wilbert Smith, like many others within the Contactee movement in the 1950s, took Carr seriously, at least for a time. Eventually, however, Smith soured on Carr when he realized that what Carr was selling was nothing but a load of hot air. Here is just a glimpse of the interaction between the two - Carr was clearly interested in using Smith's connections and credibility as a real engineer in order to bolster his own claims, in much the same way as Steven Greer would later appear on the same stage as men like Stan Friedman or John Mack, and look for a similar "rub of authenticity".

The correspondence after the failed Carr test is with contactee David Middleton, with whom Smith maintained a regular correspondence.

Smith was certainly open-minded, but while he was willing to give Carr the benefit of the doubt at first, even he could see through Carr's bogus claims when he had a closer look at them.

None of this stopped him from making his own claims of contact with the "boys topside". So then the question remains - was he just a Canadian version of Otis Carr, was he delusional, or was there possibly something real going on with him?

Paul Kimball

Kevin Randle - Improving Ufology

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In this excerpt from an interview I conducted with Kevin Randle on 9 September, 2001, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, for the documentary Stanton T. Friedman is Real, Kevin discusses frauds within ufology, Steven Greer (whose “disclosure movement” was still relatively new at the time), relations with the media, and whether or not UFO researchers will ever be able to find common cause with each other and present a unified front.

Paul Kimball