So Nekitamo, just to clarify, what exactly do you believe is the significance of the coincidence that Lev's email was traced back to Cochran GA, which is now known to be the location of the deliberately falsified Birmingham AL sighting?
Do you believe Lev made those photos, and therefore hoaxed the Mr Smith sighting in order to become a part of this drama? Although I've always felt that photo was remarkably different than the others it still appears to be higher quality than what I've come to expect from Lev.
Well, after admitting that he already did it once ("tripod" case), I have no problem believing that he did it more than once and I find the coincidence that both Lev and "Mr. Smith" were traced to the same, relatively small town quite enough to consider it more than just a coincidence. I believe the PIs would call this "a solid lead" and connect the dots the same way I did without thinking twice. I mean, it's good to keep an open mind, but you also have to reach some conclusions every now and then in order to make some progress.
But it's not just that - both "Alabama" and "tripod" images are of similar, quite low resolution in order to hide imperfections - more than 10x lower than i.e. Raj's 2 megapixel images. Even so, IMO they practically scream "fake" from the first sight, whereas it took all kinds of sophisticated analysis to find flaws in Raj's case. I'd say that's two orders of magnitude difference in quality - or better said, completely out of the league.
And, if Lev did hoax that sighting, it would invalidate the points that majicbar and onthefence brought up. ie: The proximity of Cochran GA to WRAFB (just a coincidence), and the other witness testimony identifying the Birmingham AL photo (Simple misidentification in both cases? Lev is also the other witnesses?).
Actually, no one so far identified the "Alabama" drone as the exact thing they saw - each witness just noted that it was closer to what he saw than the rest of the drones. So it was basically something simpler than the original drones, but not exactly like one from "Alabama" - and IMO that's not enough to let it stick any more, not after this recent developments. As for the AFB - probably just a coincidence, I assume such bases are evenly distributed throughout the country.
By the way, it seems that the "construction site" element from Mr. Smiths story was real ("I was looking at some new construction..."). Here's a look at the poles location in Cochran, GA using Google Earth's "historic view" feature between Nov 7, 2005 and Dec 11, 2007:
You can notice that one of the trees (circled) behind the poles is missing in later image, and also one much bigger difference - the building behind the poles was obviously completely rebuilt in the meantime. I looked for the purpose of this building and found it to be a part of the Middle Georgia College campus (nr. 6 on
this map) which was finished
July 31, 2007. I didn't find when the construction started, but if it was later than May 2006 that's another dent in Mr. Smith's story... not to mention that, judging by the date when it was finished, it could have easily happened in May 2007, after the first mention of the drones.
