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Disinformation

The first time I heard about the existence of UFO investigators in México was in the late 80's and early 90's. A very popular show called "Y usted…¿qué opina? con Nino Canún" (which translated means: "what is your opinión? + the name of the host") became an instant hit when the show (mostly devoted to address political issues) started to devote a lot of time to the paranormal and UFO subjects.

The dynamic of the show was very appealing. They had a panel of at least 10 guests. Half of the panel were hardcore skeptics and half UFO investigators. The debates kept everybody widely awake from 10 PM to the next morning (around 7 AM).

I always looked forward to those shows. I even recorded on VHS one of them in December 1993 (just a few days prior to that huge devaluation of the peso).

That day, they had some interesting guests like Amaury Rivera Toro and Jorge Marti (from Puerto Rico) among others.

The most interesting part of that specific show turned out to be when Jaime Maussan announced that he was in the process of investigating a very important case. One that he considered to be the most important case after Billy Meier (oh God!). Anyway, I thought the pictures and videos being shown were interesting. At some point (I think around midnight) the contactee (sitting in the audience) asked Maussan to allow him to show his face on national television for the first time to talk about his own experiences. His name: Carlos Díaz (from Tepoztlán).

Carlos seemed to be a humble, nice and a soft spoken individual. Years later, his case was taken over by German investigator Michael Hesemann. And, although a lot of controversy surrounded his case, I never found any complete investigation showing the reasons why should be considered a hoax.

Eventually that epic show went off the air, but one person remained as a constant presence on TV: Jaime Maussan.

Aside from all his awards as a journalist, I personally think that the event that really defined his stardom was the famous solar eclipse in 1991. He got the biggest collection of videos from people who filmed what seemed to be a strange object of silver / metallic appearance in the sky.

With that came his own TV show "Third Millenium" and lectures around the country (of which I remember attending about 4 or 5) and eventually the world.

As his fame grew, so did my disappointment.

Everything started while watching a late night show in 1997. Maussan and his colleague Rodolfo Garrido were talking about an ongoing investigation that involved a computer….a computer that seemed to be "haunted" or "possessed" because of the strange nature of its abilities. It didn't surprise me that he was the victim of such a prank. What it really surprised me and disappointed me was his lack of better judgment and common sense by making such outrageous claim on national TV.

The next morning, I called the offices of Maussan Productions. One of the producers of his Third Millennium show (don't remember his name) answered the phone. I told him about the show the prior night and told him about the program "Lisa" and how it worked. He sort of pretended like they had already solved that mystery by themselves before my call but a few days later he called me to thank me and let me know that indeed the program worked as I described it to him.

Years later, I see Maussan in another famous late night show (Otro Rollo). Although he was a regular guest, this time he was promoting a case so important that he was "willing to put his reputation on the line" (explicitly said!). The name of the experiencer: Jonathan Reed.

Yes! Another guy with outrageous claims and more than questionable videos! Maussan never ceases to amaze me! But this time was different. Maussan was so "allegedly" convinced that he took Reed's case to the next level. He invited all radio and TV networks in México to talk about this case and they showed, for the first on "Otro Rollo," Reed's infamous link bracelet.

During that period of time, I happened to met Daniel Muñoz (UFO investigator that used to work with Maussan) at the Chicago O'Hare airport. He was coming from England and his pictures of the crop circles were impressive.

I asked Daniel about Reed's case and he said that according to all the investigations they had conducted they believed to have enough evidence to claim that his experience was real. I paused in disbelief!

Jaime Maussan made the "promise" of proving the authenticity of Reed's bracelet by making a public demonstration….in the near future. After that, days, weeks, months and years went by and we never heard from him again.

All of the sudden, Maussan emerges like nothing happened. We were all waiting for him to "at least" have some guts and be truthful to people by providing a brief explanation. Needless to say, that never took place.

Well, I thought that maybe he was too embarrassed to admit defeat. Nevertheless, I still had the idea that he was an honest person, just maybe too naïve.

One day, I happened to find a website (in Spanish) called alcione.org

The website is dedicated to list all of the hoaxes that Jaime Maussan has promoted over the years as the real deal. That is a LONG (well researched) list. I remember writing to the creator of the site: Capt. Franz, because I couldn't really understand his fixation with him. Capt. Franz was kind enough to write me back. He explained to me that he fell compelled to share with people all the disinformation that Maussan has been spreading. I applaud his endeavor.

Years later, on November 24th, 2008, I started watching a new show called "UFOs over Earth: Mass sightings in México." This show had James Carrion (International Director of MUFON) and Rubén Uriarte as the lead investigators.

A lot of sightings were taking place in México everyday and MUFON was very interested in taking a closer look at some those cases. And who better than the most famous UFO investigator in México (Jaime Maussan) to ask for his assistance right?

Jaime Maussan provided MUFON with some of his best and most recent cases. The first case is about the pictures taken by a guy named Carlos Avila from Nayarit. Carlos took a sequence of about 5 pictures with his cell phone camera of what seemed to be a very clear (disk shape) unidentified flying object.

Maussan starts by saying that Carlos is a very honest guy and that he believes him. For Maussan, there was no doubt about the authenticity of his sighting. He continues to say that, at first, Carlos was hesitant to talk about it because he is such a humble guy with no interest in getting famous at all (I want to cry already!).

James and Rubén started by interviewing the witness and continued later with the analysis of the images. A basic test in one of them using (I think) Adobe Photoshop showed something that made me feel more embarrassment than Maussan, himself: "a well defined rectangle around the shape of the flying object."

For any person that has had a minimum exposure to Photoshop (like me) would know that, when you copy part of one image and paste it to another one, even if both backgrounds seemed to be the same, you can still see the difference because the image that was originally copied can have a slightly different color. Sometimes when that happens I usually apply some blur to the edges (depending on the case).

James Carrión talked to the guy that also analyzed the pictures (from Maussan's team) and he dared to say the images were not faked and that maybe the aliens (being so advanced in nature) where the ones that caused that rectangle around the image.

At this point, I am in shock and about to faint! I didn't want to hear anything else about it!

Moving on….next stop: the Arturo Robles Gil residence.

Arturo has been the key person that has provided most of the UFO videos for Jaime Maussan. MUFON was very interested in learning more about his technique and applied criteria at the moment of his sightings. But before arriving to his residence MUFON decides to conduct an experiment by releasing a group of concatenated balloons (without letting Arturo know).

James starts interviewing Arturo. After a few minutes, Arturo sees the group of balloons (previously released by MUFON) in the sky and practically screams: "UFO" and with camera on hand he starts filming. At the same time the Discovery Channel showed the clear images of the group of balloons floating in the sky.

Now, let's move on the third and last case: "UFO in Mezcala"

The UFO in Mezcala has been called one of the most important sightings in México by some investigators. The whole town saw a bright light over the mountains for about 3 days (started December 31st, 2007 until January 2nd, 2008). MUFON conducted a brief investigation and they took a different approach (which I really liked). Their results were controversial, but very valid in my personal opinion.

When the time came for MUFON to show the results of their investigations to Jaime Maussan, starting by the fake picture of Carlos Avila, Maussan was in complete denial. I just couldn't believe it myself. I was beyond disappointed. The last straw!

Sorry, but this time "I don't want to believe."

After a few weeks, I stumbled upon what I call: "Jaime Maussan's hate campaign against MUFON."

Unfortunately, Maussan is only one example among many and his actions have many implications.

I've been trying to attend some conventions about UFOs lately. But I always look at their websites and read the brief description about the speaker and the topics to be presented. Investigators keep promoting and talking about cases that were already explicitly proven to be hoaxes! Unbelievable, but true!

I have written to the people in charge of organizing these events and their responses make my stomach turn. They basically don't care if the material to be presented by the speaker is real or not. They just want to give an open forum for everybody to say whatever they want.

In the professional world, as far as I know, the investigations to be presented by a speaker are rigorously evaluated. I thought that was supposed to be a general rule for all conventions, but sadly, is not.

I can keep writing and writing about this topic forever but this one of my points: If you, as an investigator, are aware that a case is not authentic "you have the responsibility to inform the people about it. Disclose the information and stop spreading disinformation, we want to know the truth!" ... wait ... am I writing about the dark side of the government? I am lost already.


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