Nice.
It continues to amaze me how this case is all but written off by the UFO community.
Doug has put forward all kinds of history.
I've put my 2 cents in with that as well.
The similarities you just put forth.
The various eye witnesses that did come forward.
The exhaustive research on the photo's and the primer which to this day no one has been able to prove false.
This case has a lot better evidence than most cases YET it is still ignored and written off by most.
Sad.
Thanks Dan,
A few points that I have noticed about this case in answer to your comments.
1. Nobody likes being lied to. For some people who really believed in this case, the revelation of the lie came when it was proven that the "Raj" images came from Campbell, not Capitola as claimed. For others more sceptical, being convinced of a lie came much earlier when photo experts chimed in with their opinions.
2. Throw the baby out with the bathwater. There is so much information today that filtering is a necessity to carry on day-to-day. So, any questionable cases like this one must be discarded in favour of concentrating on new cases that are possibly more real.
3. Like all paranormal cases, not one bit of physical evidence has been presented. Where is the working alien artefact? What was the address of CARET? Notice how all presented reports lead to dead ends.
4. Too many odd things must be considered true if this case is to be real, i.e MIBs, supernatural, gov't coverup, mind control, gravity control, visibility control, crop circle patterns, etc. . But only one thing has to be true if the case is a hoax, i.e. a devious mind must have foisted this on us.
Faced with all these issues, the average person cannot function with so many unanswered questions and suspended beliefs. And, I am convinced that many UFO investigators rely on others for qualification of validity (ex. MUFONs reasons for closing the case, and it is explicitly MUFONs rule to reject a case submitted anonymously).
I think it is more sad that the person(s) submitting the images did not stick around long enough to provide any traceable lead. Even in all the original submissions, each email was so carefully crafted that it could never be traced, i.e. hotmail and yahoo untraceable addresses, no contact information, misleading location information, unregistered "real names". That in itself is not proof of a hoax, but it is a mighty big blow to the reality of the case.
People will not to tell their secret until they are ready. Whoever knows what is going on in this case will have to come forward in their own good time, and I am convinced that there is nothing we can do to hurry that process ... right "Isaac"?