Maurizio Baiata

This article can be freely reproduced. Thanks for your interest in my work. 

According to Jaime Maussan, this image is the best available in hi-res. On the right, the placard, saying: “Mummified Body of Two Year Old Boy”.

The turning point of the erroneously labeled “Roswell Slides” came quickly. In the less than two weeks since the May 5th event in Mexico City, the long-awaited slides have become a deadly boomerang for the Mexican journalist Jaime Maussan – and for those who have supported and accompanied him on stage at the mammoth Auditorium Nacional in Mexico City. The five-hour long conference was attended by 7,000 spectators and seen via live streaming by an unknown number of people around the world, each of whom paid $19,99 US for the privilege. According to a local newspaper, related internet hits reached around two million as Maussan spoke of a few thousand, this confirmed by the British newspaper, The Mirror. Such an almost- inconceivable discrepancy does not seem worthy of any respectable media service.

The questions which comprise this interview were not planned with Maussan. They all occurred in an impromptu manner, asked and responded to in English via Skype on two separate days – audio only on May 12, and audio with video on May 14.

Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Baiata: Thanks, Jaime, for your quick response to my call. So, where do we start from? I’d rather leave it to you.

Maussan: Let’s start from the fact that what is happening is quite unfair. Everybody is relying on the words that appear on the placard in the display case, and people are taking them as the ultimate proof of a hoax. Let’s get to that in a moment. What really baffles me is that anyone has shown and still shows no interest in the forensic investigation findings: in this body there is a series of significant anomalies that distinguish it from a human body. How these anomalies are explainable? How to explain the presence of six ribs only? Are they typical of a human feature? The expertise of the Mexican anatomy-pathologists soon will be divulged. They have all agreed that the length of the bones, the structure of the knee, the different aspect of the distal femur (next to the knee), along with the joints of the wrist and the elbow, I mean, the whole morphology looks improper for a mammal, with no visible teeth and almost no nose. As result in biomedical terms we were driven to exclude that in the slide we see a human being.

Baiata: So, what do these anomalous pieces of data indicate to you?

Maussan: That they had to be taken into consideration. Because of the writing on the placard, questionably deciphered with a digitizing system used by Frank Warren, some words have surfaced and they spell “Mummy”. On the contrary, the work of our consultants has produced no readable words at all. My opinion is still that the data obtained by Warren and others, and the way they have proposed their results, were biased from scratch and preposterous by one meaning: to render  the slide a mere depiction of a human being and nothing else. What’s all this for? We have to blame those whose fingers never leave the keyboard, who never endure in a field investigation and who live for a moment of celebrity in the Internet. These represent the majority ranting against me. We will finally prove that the letters are not readable.

Baiata: Jaime, why didn’t you ask an analyst like David Rudiak to help you out. Rudiak was so good in deciphering the “Ramey Memo”, the piece of paper, actually a telex that General Ramey had in hand in the photo of him during the infamous ”balloon” press conference in Fort Worth, this following the July 1947 Roswell incident. In that case you actually had something of a genuine quasi smoking gun.

Maussan: We did ask him! But even David was not able to pull out anything from the placard. The same outcome with the photo analysts from the Pentagon, they tried with no avail.

Author’s Note: I’m sorry that I neglected to ask Jaime why the second slide (the blue one) is bleached out and unreadable, and who did it.

Baiata: In light of all the turmoil, you surely have to respond to the hoax accusations via some sort of official statement. This is what the majority of people expect from you. Consider that in Italy, as in the USA, the popular consensus is overwhelmingly that this was some sort of hoax and that you and your American colleagues are accomplices in the scam.

Maussan: An official statement soon will be ready. Tom Carey and Donald Schmitt (are) working on the text and the three of us will undersign it…

Don Schmitt (left) and Tom Carey on stage at the Auditorium Nacional in Mexico City.

Author’s Note: A few hours after this interview, speaking personally Tom Carey released a tempered statement in which he reaffirmed that for him, the evidence seen in the slides indicates that is the body is that of an alien; he is still not convinced that it’s human. On the other hand, on May 14th Don Schmitt moved himself away from the whole affair, earnestly apologizing to his readers and fans, citing that his own excessive zeal which had developed over the three preceding years made him blind to the distinct possibility that the body was that of a mummified human being.

(… Maussan): You must remember that everything we have is Spanish. We are translating and subtitling in English the statements of the doctors of the Instituto Nacional de Medicina Legal y Ciencias Forenses. How anyone can use the placard text as a guilty sentence, just taking it for granted as a final truth, and yet give no attention whatsoever to the work we have produced all these years…

Baiata: Now, do you confirm that Adam Dew is the owner of the slides that he negotiated with John Rao, the boss of Open Minds? Why has Rao refused the offer? Also, what do you say to those who believe as a fact that that is a small human mummy on display in a museum?

Maussan: Adam Dew “officially” is the owner. Rao did not buy the slides because he thinks what they depict is no alien. As for the second question, the “Mummy” is a circumstantial hypothesis, which can be just as valid as any other hypothesis. For instance, the bodies were kept in a hangar, were placed in wooden boxes and later moved elsewhere to be studied, in a military facility. Even the placard constitutes circumstantial evidence and in a courtroom would not be accepted as evidence. What really matters is not the placard, but the body. Way more important is the forensic reconstruction, which was absolutely neutral, has shown that the body has a length of about 120 centimeters. May anyone tell me how a two year old child can be one meter and twenty cm in height if normally a human child stature at that age does not exceed 87 cm average? It is not a child.

Baiata: I would continue with many more questions, but I see you have respond to incoming calls coming by the dozens… so please, promise that you will send me copies of the original slides at the maximum resolution.

Maussan: I promise.

Two days later Jaime Maussan called me again via Skype, this time in video.

Thursday May 14, 2015

Maussan: Maurizio, in light of new information, I’d like to update my statements and point out some important developments.

Baiata: Ok, Jaime, but I have no tape recorder…

Maussan: Tape recorder? You don’t need it, Skype has a in-built recording program. Ok, it doesn’t matter, let’s talk.

Baiata: No problem for me.

Maussan: Ok. The whole history of the “Mummy” to me is part of a disinformation campaign aimed to discredit me and other people. A campaign of such effectiveness that now the vast majority believes that that’s a mummy. The “mummy” definition comes out of the wording on the placard, on the consensus that for a long time it was exhibited in a museum, yet nobody has found any pictures of it. They also said that the mummy was buried many years ago. Of course, this is possible, all over the world there are archaeological and ethnological museums exhibiting mummies.

Baiata: So?

Maussan: I repeat, show me a photo of this mummy. But I think the problem must be sought at the source from which the news of the mummy has sprung, I mean from Anthony Bragalia. Who is Anthony Bragalia? Go ask anyone and you’ll get no answer. Is there a Mr. Anthony Bragalia for real or may be a fictitious name, behind which someone has infiltrated into the UFO community. Who knows? And even if my suggestion is wrong, what moves him? He claims to be an expert on mummies, to have studied about 400. Then why was he the first to have released information on the slides? At that point was not he aware that it was a mummy?

Baiata: In the field he was depicted as a UFO expert, pretty active and well informed. Then, you know, we are both Italians and as “paesano” I thought I could contact him, but then I found nothing on him. I’ m surely going to try again now.

Maussan: Years ago Bragalia got in contact with Don Schmitt and Tom Carey, who belonged to the “Roswell Dream Team” and passed them some classified documents and information from military sources that they used for their book Witness to Roswell and thanked him publicly. Hence, his name began to circulate in the UFO community and pretty soon Bragalia was in the Dream Team. But Schmitt and Carey do not know him personally.

Baiata: How strange is this lack of info about Bragalia.

 (See note 1-2-3 in the statements of Bragalia, Richard Dolan and Stephen Bassett).

Maussan: Exactly. Not even a picture, he is a man with no face in the UFO community. Carey and Schmitt have invited him several times to Roswell, but he declined. Health issues, or fear to fly, where the reasons. With him, only just telephone communications. Nobody knows where he lives. And what about Mexico City? Obviously he was invited, but again, he was invited to the event in Mexico City, he refused. There’s more. Yet, strangely, about the “Mummy”, a few days ago the Spanish journalist and ufologist Jose Antonio Caravaca, received a phone call from Bragalia, who said he had found the museum in which the body had been kept. Caravaca later tried to track the caller’s number, but no chance. 

Iker Jimenez with the reconstruction shown during the Spanish program Cuarto Millenio.

Baiata: Jaime, from the USA to Europe, every day the chorus of critical voices grows, bigger and harsh against you, like that of our British friend, Philip Mantle.

Maussan: At this point I must say what I think of Mantle. Put this on the record, please. I think he’s doing all this just to redeem himself from the disgrace of the Santilli Footage. Just to regain some credibility. But I (would) rather go back to the main point, the “Mummy”. Where is that mummy now? They say that it was buried. Ok, but why they show no evidence of this burial? Nothing. Instead, we have found the evidence of a living eyewitness, Eleazar Benavides, former military who saw the beings in a hangar in Roswell, and to him the similarity between what he saw and the body in the slides is striking.

Miguel Botella, anthropologist of the Granada University, is convinced: that is a mummy of a child.

Baiata: And this is the witness story that drove you to say “Slides of Roswell”… don’t you feel you made a mistake?

Maussan: Don’t blame me for the name “Roswell Slides”, I did not call them that way, others did. I want to make an important clarification. I refer to what I said two days ago, that we had not been able to decipher anything from the placard. Well, now we have managed to decipher some of the terms and they coincide with those reported by others. We have deciphered these terms: “… BODY OF A TWO YEAR OLD BOY”, but the word “mummified” is still not detectable for us. Now, how is it possible that the mummified body of a 2 year old child, as today the pathologists of the Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences have reiterated. It is impossible because the maximum height of a two year boy is 87 centimeters. Moreover, an Anasazi child would have been even smaller. One last thing. It seems that actually two bodies arrived at the Museum in point. We know about one body. The second body, was rejected by the museum because his physical features were so dreadful to horrify the visitors.

Baiata: Thank you, Jaime.

Maussan: Thank you, Maurizio.

 Notes

1. On April 23, 2015, in reference to the upcoming Mexico City presentation, Bragalia stated to UFO Conjectures: (http://ufocon.blogspot.it/2015/04/jose-antonio-caravaca-and-jaime-maussan.html): “And I was of course invited, but will not be attending because I do not do ‘appearances’ of any kind that do not relate to my professional life”.

Sometime earlier, again related to UFO Conjectures, Bragalia stated: “There are indeed many, many differences between a human/mummy and the humanoid depicted in the slides, perhaps even thirty that anthropologists and forensic specialists have noted. All of these will be detailed at the presentation.”

2. Richard Dolan was amongst the UFO experts on stage in Mexico City. For this, Dolan was heavily attacked by many and, after some days made the decision to “quit” the very uncomfortable situation. This was the exchange between us:

Baiata: Richard, do you know Anthony Bragalia, have you ever met him?

Dolan: As for Tony Bragalia, I had several long phone conversations with him before I made my decision to go to Mexico City. I must say I found him to be very open and engaging. Very sincere, very nice. I do not believe anyone in our field has met him in person. He has a professional job as an executive headhunter – job placement, basically. And he has said that he wants to keep that very separate from his UFO research. What are your thoughts?

Baiata: It would be interesting to know who contacted whom first and who began to spread the word about the slides.

Dolan: In talking about this with Don, as I recall Tony did not get the slides first. Tom and Don were contacted first, before Tony knew about them. Unless I am getting something mixed up. Don and Tom have the complete story on that, which they told me when we were in Mexico.

As I recall the account, a woman whose business was trash removal from private homes acquired the slides in 1998. She went through them and found that the slides were interesting enough to keep. A couple of years later, she discovered the box containing the slides was breaking and that is when she discovered the two body slides. At that point she no longer wanted to keep them, and gave them to her brother. Her brother kept the slides for some time and finally decided to contact UFO researchers to see what might be done with them. The first people he reached out to were Don and Tom. This brother, however, was also friends with Adam Dew. Eventually, as I understand it, he brought Adam into the mix. While Adam was doing his own investigation in Midland Texas, trying to find out more information about Hilda and Bernard Ray, someone apparently either learned about this or overheard a conversation, and sent off a phone call to Nick Redfern. If I am not mistaken, Nick mentioned this to Rich Reynolds of the blog site, and that is how the story leaked. Now, in all of this I am trying to remember how Tony Bragalia got involved. If I remember correctly, it was through conversations with Don or Tom. This happened early on as I recall. That’s the best of my recollection, my friend.

3. I then wanted to have on record the thoughts of Stephen Bassett, the Exopolitics personality and leader of the Paradigm Research Group, Washington, DC.

Baiata: I wonder if you ever met, in person, Anthony Bragalia, since it seems that he was listed among the lecturers in some Exopolitics conferences, did he ever attend one of them?

Bassett: I don’t think so, Maurizio. He was not at any of the X-Conferences as far as I know. The event was educational. The slides were problematic. Don’t expect it to impact the Disclosure process, which is moving forward right now. Hopefully the matter will be resolved soon.

A brief comment by M. Baiata

This article of mine is little more than a stone into the water. It does not add much to what we have learned so far about the “debacle in Mexico City”, or the “scandal of the Roswell Slides”, or “the multi-billion dollar scam of the alien mummy”, and so on. For a well-balanced article about the case, see the site: http://nabbed.unblog.fr/

Pending more data on the Mexican pathologist’s expertise, the Spanish anthropologist Miguel Botella has clearly opted for the “mummy of a child” in the TV program “Cuarto Millenio”, hosted by Iker Jimenez. I had no choice but to contact Anthony Bragalia via email. Bragalia, a third generation Italian, courteously agreed to an interview that will soon appear on these pages. One of the topics will be about the museum of Mesa Verde, where the mummy of the child was on exhibit for many years.

Ahhh … Mesa Verde, a poor village in the middle of nowhere where Rod Steiger and James Coburn blew up the bank in the epic Sergio Leone’s “A Fistful of Dynamite”. When the film’s two heroes open the vault they do not find even a gram of gold, but instead free many good people from prison and then… Revolution it was.

Maurizio Baiata, May 21, 2015