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Ron Pine, you're not suggesting the Smithsonian would cover up sensitive cryptid-related info at the behest of the US gvt, are you???

 

Powerful men! Denials! Did Hoover send the MIB?

Anybody wanna invoke the The Freedom of Information Act and demand some disclosure from the "the nation's attic"?  And is that even possible? It's an institution administered by the US (and not an "agency" I suppose).

February 12, 2020

 

Lu Ann Lewellen:  If my memory serves me correctly, you once wrote here in this group that when Sanderson  and Heuvelmans were examining the "Iceman," they accidentally broke the glass covering it and that's what released a decomposing flesh smell.  I just read something though, from a source that some might be inclined to regard as authoritative, that the odor was being released from some insulation apparently involved in sealing the glass case, and there was no mention of any breaking of the case.  Also, if I've correctly interpreted what I read, the Iceman was said to be under multiple sheets of glass.  I'm not saying or implying that what you said was mistaken, this is just a matter that I think is relevant to an issue that I'm very much interested in, so I'm wondering if you recall your source for the breaking of the glass incident.

I recall reading that too. I dont want to say the 'in search of' book that accompanied the tv series ...(in search of myths and monsters in this instance). But i know i read it at that time. (1978)
So one of the bigfoot books around then that was a general survey of reports etc. Monsters among us? Maybe ... Something like that. Green and yellow cover with a shadow bigfoot. Coulda been that. Definitely remember the broken glass and rotting smell. I was 12 im amazed i recall it

Maybe that was just what people said, cuz itz a good explanation that makes it seem realer.

Sanderson is probably the source for the glass being broken on one end of the case. I probably read about the odor in the original article. I had the magazine when it first came out, purchased at a newstand in Portland, Oregon, along with Roger Patterson's book when I was first getting interested in all this. The cracked glass incident is just something I've "always known".

Sanderson's article:

What insulation would smell like decaying flesh?

Moldy insulation certainly could, depending of course on what you assume decaying flesh smells like. It's not an everyday scent.

It was the rotten dog tissue that produced the odor. The odor was just leaking through the insulation and the insulation was absorbing it.

Animals" account is unreliable because everything that I've read that was pubished before it says something different. It's a secondary or tertiary source. As you may recall, when I was a Curator at the Smithsonian, Napier shared with me all of the correspondence between him and Sanderson, J. Edgar Hoover (Director of the FBI), and S. Dillon Ripley, Secretary (Director) of the Smithsonian. (Hoover had been brought into this matter by Ripley after Sanderson got in touch with his old buddy Napier, asking him to start up a Smithsonian investigation.) I had assumed that the smelly material was something that Hansen had built into the model to give it verisimilitude. I see now, from the account by Heuvelmans that this was not the case. I had not realized until some recent rereading, that the smell was apparently so all-pervading that it might put off carnival-goers.

In the correspndence that I read, that Napier shared with me, the FBI did, just as Hansen said, according to Heuvelmans, get in touch with Hansen to see if he had some sort of human that had been the victim of homicide. This led Hansen to admit that the "Iceman" was indeed a fake and that some dog tissue, incorporated into its construction, and which was undergoing some decomposition, was responsible for the odor. This information was given by Hansen to Sanderson, who relayed it to the Smithsonian. I have received some recent information that the Smithsonian has none of the correspondence from Hoover, sent to the others enumerated above. Also, it would appear that the Smithsonian either does not have, or will not share, any of the letters from Sanderson and Ripley or with any letters to them from anyone, except for what appears to be a small portion of Napier's letters to Ripley. No mention of Hoover's name appears in the incomplete selection of Napier's letters.

Based on my memory of the correspondence that I read, Hoover originally took the possibility of the non-bogusness of the Iceman more seruiously than he should have. Hoover was powerful and justifiably feared and he must have told the other persons with whom he was exchanging letters, to minimize his and the FBI's involvement in this business because he thought that public knowledge of his taking it as seriously as he had would be embarassing if the information came out. He also may have had a general policy that all of his and the FBI's corrspondence should be kept secret. He was a man you would not want to cross and so it is understandable that Napier, in his writings, grossly understated Hoover's involvement in the Iceman affair, that none of his correspondence relative to it is in the Smithsonian archives and the FBI denied having gotten in touch with Hansen. All of the Napier correspondence that I have just received, incomplete as it is, however, is in keeping with my memory of events and partially corroborates it.

Ron Pine: Matt Crowley said the "lice eggs" Sanderson saw would have been salt used for the effect. I never got to ask him why the salt didn't dissolve when water was added to the case.

Hansen said a lot of things. It seems he was good at making up cover stories on the spur of the moment. He told H&S he'd had a model made so I don't see why anyone was surprised when one finally showed up. I think I'll go with Heuvelmans although I don't think it was a Neandertal. He was there; those others weren't.

Editor's note: "AA" is no longer a member of the Coalition for Critical Thinking in Bigfoot Research. As such, her comments were no longer available.

Heuvelmans disagreed on the agouti hair. Referring to Sanderson acting on his own and needing a more careful examination of the photographs, Heuvelmans wrote:

"Then, he [Sanderson] wouldn’t have asserted that the hair was of the “agouti” type, with bands of light and dark pigments—a pattern unknown among primates—an appearance created by parallel strings of bubbles within the ice."

Heuvelmans, Bernard.NEANDERTHAL: The Strange Saga of the Minnesota Iceman. Anomalist Books. Kindle Edition.

Lu Ann Lewellen: Heuvelmans was incorrect when he said that agouti hair is unknown in primates. Typical. It is unknown in apes and humans, however. I'll have to go back and read some stuff over again. I got the idea that Sanderson claimed to have seen directly what he thought was agouti hair, by leaning way over very close to the ice, just in one place, and not on the basis of photographs. I wouldn't dispute Sanderson's observation, as Heuvelmans apparently was, on the basis of photographs, and If my memory is correct, I'm not sure how Heuvelmans even knew exactly where Sanderson was looking. Probably Heuvelmans thought that if there was agouti hair in one place, it should be all over, so if he couldn't see it in the parts where he was able to get his best hair photos, he'd figure that it shouldn't be anywhere else on the supposed creature, because usually if an actual creature has agouti fur, it has it all over, and Heuvelmans thought that this was an actual creature.

My understanding, however, is that the dog tissue, presumably dog hide, was in a small amount, perhaps placed on the model by Hansen to make a local repair.

Ron Pine: Heuvelmans may have been thinking of higher primates - or the translator was.

Hansen told so many stories it's difficult to know which ones - if any - were true. He was trying to throw investigators off the scent, remember. If he was transporting a dead body that had been smuggled into the US he had reason to be worried about US and International law. Why have a duplicate made? To pass it off as the original if someone got too close? To use if the original became too decayed to show? Why allow a couple of strangers trained in zoology to examine a model? That makes no sense to me.

Since Heuvelmans was there he might have noted where Sanderson was looking. If Heuvelmans was correct there was no agouti hair - just strings of bubbles.

Travis J Hill Cartoonist: I'm definitely more than just suggesting that the great majority of the on-paper and mailed correspondence and memos that I'm talking about never got into the Smithsonian Archives. The Archives get only what you give to the folks who work there anyway. And then Napier misrepresented some things in a book or books. I don't know if he was still working at the Smithsonian when they were published or not. And Ripley kept mum and Hoover kept mum and Sanderson and Hansen kept some information under wraps. No doubt like in any large organization, certain correspondene is confidential and not made available to the public. I think that Hoover wanted that involving him to be kept under wraps from the very first.

 

I suspect that those paper letters were just all destroyed. The Freedom of Information act can't help you there. Back in those pre-general computer use days, burning paper letters was standard procedure if you wanted some information not to get out. Or maybe Hoover asked for most of the correspondence back and told everyone to make no copies and to keep their mouths shut. That may have been a condition of his getting into the business in the first place. Certainly not every letter or memo that I got or sent when I ws at the Smithsonian got into the archives.

At one time Lloyd Pye talk about viewing the Ice Man in a video of his. It looked to a real dead once’s living being. One wonders if the original one

Or a Nguoi Rung or Yeren, shot sometime during the Vietnam war.

Just because a conspiracy can be imagined does not mean that such a

Toward the end, Hansen convinced Sanderson, the Smithsonian, and the FBI that there was no duplicate to begn with (why would there have been?) and that there was no mysterious "owner" in California.

Rumor has it, a powerful (God-fearing) Hollywood person wanted "proof" of evolution hidden away. And the switch was made, presenting an obvious fake.

I asked Peter Byrne about Jimmy Stewart. He said no, and thought Jimmy would have told him.

"Hansen told Sanderson he knew nothing about the original provenance of his hairy man."

Travis J Hill Cartoonist: Hoover was definitely not a man to be trifled with. You should see some biographical stuff on him. He supposedly was able to hold his office till the day he died because he had amassed so much dirt on everybody from movie stars to presidents that he could stay in office as the price of threats of blackmail. He was also very secretive and may have had a lot to hide. He may have been gay with a lifetime spent in the closet, at a time when the attitude toward gay folks was much less friendly than it is today, and may have been a part black passing for white during Jim Crow days.

In spite of the fact that Hansen admitted it was a fake, in spite of the guy who made it being known, in spite of the iceman being sold to a collector at auction, ya just can’t convince sone people it is what it is; a hoax.

Didnt you say "Just because a conspiracy can be imagined does not mean that such a conspiracy ever existed. "?...in regards to my suggestion of a cover up? I was mainly being facetious about the missing FBI/Smithsonian documents (the BF coverup is a big part of lore... And I wanted to see if Ron was truly suggesting something shady there).

There has never been any solid indication that there were two versions. Hansen told a lot of odd stories and pulled a few tricks in his day. That's what explains it for me anyway.

Wouldnt the same be true of supposed shenanigans on Hansen's part? A conspiracy can be imagined, sure.
Seems like without solid evidence, it's all theories and conjecture.

I would hope zoologists would be able to make determinations on authenticity of something right in front of them (compared to a 16mm film of a distant subject) or be able to know if a subject has been swapped out for a new one. But I wasnt aware of Sanderson's reported propensity to exaggerate until recently.

Both versions? Or just the one sitting in the Museum of the Weird in Austin?

So we have a he said he said on the dog tissue. It was, of course, never produced or analyzed.

Nor was the Iceman ever authenticated by any scientist's being allowed to examine it out of the ice.

Yep. S&H should have really violated the gentleman's agreement and hauled the damned thing out of there.

I'm merely saying that the fact that the dog tissue hasn't been authenticated as existing, which you apparently brought up as an argument against it ever having existed, can also be applied, with at least equal force, against an actual creature ever existing, because that was never authenticated as being the case owing to any actual examination by anyone who had physical access to it.

Lu Ann Lewellen: Thanks enormously. The only source that I had at hand when I put the post here was the Argosy article. I believe that the "Hidden

"Rumor has it," as in... another tall tale, among many widely-varying versions of the story that the carny con told about this gaff.

No. All things are not equal. Heuvelmans, too. Both were crypto outsiders with a cause.

Heuvelmans mentioned it in his book: "A revealing incident occurred during my photography session. At one point, while the high-power lamp was just above the glass cover of the coffin, there was a sharp cracking sound: the heat from the lamp had cracked the glass."

 

"The specimen appeared to be in a remarkable state of preservation. Where blood was visible, it had retained the bright hue of its liquid state, and the face still had a reasonably healthy complexion. However, this appearance of freshness was only an illusion, as I was soon to discover. From the corner of the icy coffin closest to the left foot emanated the nauseating smell of a rotting corpse; the seals in that corner were obviously not airtight. Hansen seemed surprised when Ivan mentioned this to him the next morning. He started by claiming that this was impossible, that the specimen had always been kept at a temperature below 5oF, or -14oC (which, by the way, was not cold enough to ensure its long-term preservation!). Nevertheless, when we pointed out where the smell was coming from, he had to yield to the evidence and appeared quite upset. A careful examination of the specimen was soon to reveal that the fifth toe of the right foot was of a suspicious grey color. When I mentioned this to Hansen, he said he had also noticed it but had not thought this to be of any importance. It was actually possible that the toe had already become grayish before the death of the creature. I already mentioned that the position of the right foot seemed to suggest some disability or even a wound. The grayish appearance of the little toe might have been caused by a gangrenous festering wound."

Heuvelmans, Bernard. NEANDERTHAL: The Strange Saga of the Minnesota Iceman. Anomalist Books. Kindle Edition.

 

Heuvelmans mentioned four sheets of glass for the cover in the caption on one of his diagrams. It appears the leaky seals and broken glass were independent of each other. I was under the impression the odor was released when the glass broke but apparently that was not the case. My bad. I've only had the English translation since May 23, 2017 so I must have read about the cracked glass and odor somewhere else.

 

I haven't read this book but it gives the impression the rotting flesh odor and broken glass were connected:

"AA": I had not read the account that you just posted before I wrote my comment above. I regard Coleman and Clark's account as unreliable, just as I do Newton's, because it is apparently uncorroborated by Heuvelmans's and Sanderson's original accounts. These secondary and tertiary acounts may have just been copying from each other.

As I've noted before, and I think that Napier also took note of this in his writings, it's very interesting that in Sanderson's account he mentions hair that appears to be agouti-type (banded). No apes or humans have agouti hair, although some breeds of dogs do. According to some available information, the Iceman was constructed of rubber into which bear hairs had been inserted. I know of no bears that have agouti fur but I've seen some hints in the literature that some may. I'm assuming that, for some reason, some dog hide took part in some local portion of the model--put there as a repair, maybe? And then the hide started to decompose and that's what was responsible for the odor.

Coleman has disagreed with me in regard to some matters. I thought that he said that this was owing to his seeng some Smithsonian archives, but I don't know exactly what he was taking exception to. Anyway, he wasn't there when I was reading the correspondence and being kept abreast of what was actually going on.

 show was a so called rock ape from SE Asia .

conspiracy ever existed. Plus, the argument that a lack of evidence indicates the presence of a coverup is a ludicrous and fallacious argument.