A press packet including a book of Carlos'teachings, various glossy pictures, and other paraphernalia was sent to key media figures in Australia prior to the arrival of Carlos. This is radio WOOP here in New York. This video shows a New York radio interview with Carlos and one of his Broadway appearances, which all helped to bolster his image as a New Age celebrity in the United States. The well-orchestrated media campaign began as soon as his plane landed with a full-scale press conference. Can you give us any idea of what this event might be?
It will be astronomical in nature. In no time, Carlos and his manager found themselves an overnight success. When the Aussie press tried to debunk Carlos as they did here on a national talk show, Carlos and company abruptly... ended the interview, threw a glass of water at the host, and stormed off the set.
That stunt had all of Sidney talking, and within 60 hours after stepping off the plane, Jose Alvarez had made eight television and numerous radio appearances. appearances and had become headline news. But behind the extraordinary saga of Carlos was another story. On the same airplane that brought Jose Alvarez and his spirit Carlos to Australia was another very important passenger, one James Randi, a magician and skeptic better known as the Amazing Randi.
Unbeknownst to the Australian public and media, Randi would pull the strings in what may be one of the greatest hoaxes ever perpetrated. upon an entire continent. With the backing of an Australian TV show, Randy virtually manufactured a mystical media celebrity.
All we did is we put him in a white robe. We gave him a big synthetic quartz crystal, because he was a synthetic channeler after all, and he ummed and aahed over this thing and screamed and carried on. I am a very old spirit.
Remember that first press conference? Well, take another look. Can you give us any idea about this?
this event might be. It will be astronomical in nature. It will be astronomical in nature.
While Carlos spoke to Sidney's assembled media, Randy spoke to Carlos from a concealed room next door, feeding him all the appropriate answers. The seed for this manipulative media campaign was laid back in Randy's hometown of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where he spends a lot of his time debunking so-called channelers. There, he and Jose gave me a behind-the-scenes look at the making of Carlos.
I insisted that it... if we did this business of creating a channeler, that it would have to be done with an untrained person. As I was talking on the phone, it occurred to me that my friend Jose Alvarez was sitting in the kitchen cleaning an airbrush.
So I said, hold on a second, and I yelled at Jose. I said, Jose, you want to go to Australia? And Carlos was created.
I am Carlos. Well, we figured that we had to show that the media are irresponsible in that if it looks good to them, if it's got the right flavor and the right number of syllables in the words and such. that they'll accept it if they think people want to hear what the message is.
So we created fake newspaper articles. I worked them up on my computer. We printed a 75-page booklet called The Wisdom of Carlos.
We went into station, what is it, WWOR, I guess it is in New York now, and we covered over the call letters on the microphone and put in station WOOP, station whoop. Then we got Penn and Teller, who were on Broadway at the time, and we got the WOOP. We asked them if we could use their theater, and Carlos went out into the middle, pardon me, Jose, went out into the middle of the stage, became Carlos instantaneously, and sat there doing some silly stuff, swaying back and forth.
Staging the media events was just part of their scheme. They needed a gimmick the media could focus on. The pulse-stopping routine fit the bill. The way it's done is very simple. You simply take a rubber ball and put it in your armpit, and then bear down on it, and it cuts off the flow of blood temporarily to the wrist, and they're hunting around, and they can't find the pulse.
All the media had to do to unmask Carlos was to make one phone call to the United States and check any of the claims made in the manufactured press package. No one did. Is there something in us that needs to have something like this? The underlying thing is a need for magic, an appeal to magic.
I want to control nature or know that there's somebody out there who can control nature and perhaps give me some hints on how I can go about it. When we looked into the audience, there were people with tears coming down their face. people clutching crystals and doing this kind of a thing. It was as if a miracle were taking place in front of them.
When all these people were crying, I felt very bothered by the whole thing, but then I thought there are actually people out there doing it for real. The fakes that are out there operating this sort of a scam don't tell anybody there's a fake. They just get fat on the money and they run away with it.
But what they charge these people is not the money they pay to get into the theater. theater. They charge them with their emotional stability, in some cases their health, and in some cases even their lives.
Well, even after the hoax was made public, many in Australia were not upset. The feeling was it was very entertaining while it lasted. Much more to come today on