Aztec and the Radar Bases

The latest proponents of the Aztec incident - namely Scott Ramsey and Linda Moulton Howe -have over the past several years sought to find evidence that would corroborate the story told to Frank Scully by Silas Newton and Dr. Gee (aka Leo Gebauer) and then described by Scully in Behind the Flying Saucers. The best way to do this would be to prove that there was information in Behind the Flying Saucers that neither Scully, Newton nor Gebauer could have known, and which could only have come from a person, or persons, who were "in the loop" about crashed flying saucers.

Ramsey, in my film Aztec 1948, and Moulton Howe, in her paper "UFO Crash Retrievals," presented at the 2004 Crash Retrieval Conference, claim to have found this corroborative evidence. As Moulton Howe describes it:

"Scott Ramsey's curiosity was provoked by tantalizing details in the Bill Steinman book [UFO Crash at Aztec], combined with a reference in Frank Scully's 1950 book, Behind the Flying Saucers. Scully talked about the early detection of an aerial disc by Top Secret radar bases in New Mexico - a dics that was allegedly tracked by radar down through the atmosphere to Aztec, New Mexico... Eventually, Scott and [New Mexico State Representative] Andy [Kissner] confirmed that three powerful radar sites had been built in a triangular configuration to prtect the super secret Los Alamos Laboratory."

The three radar bases Ramsey and Kissner found had been located at Moriarity, New Mexico, which is east of Albuquerque; Continental Divide, New Mexico, west of Albuquerque; and Tierra Amarilla, New Mexico - later named El Vado - which is north of Albuquerque. These bases did indeed exist, were indeed secret, and did in fact form a triangle of sorts around the sensitive sites of Los Alamos, Sandia Nat, and Kirtland Air Force Base.

Unfortunately for the proponents of the Aztec case, things get a bit stickier after that.

The first problem - and it's a big one - is that nowhere in Behind the Flying Saucers is there any mention of secret radar bases. Instead, Dr. Gee explained to Scully, who had apparently asked how the Air Force "stumbled upon these particular ships... [and] know the moment they come in our atmosphere?" that the flying saucer had been tracked by a device he called a "tenescope."

"Dr. Gee replied, ' In the laboratories and also at Alamogordo and Los Alamos and at different parts of the country we have tenescope observers who spend 24 hours a day watching for evidence of objects or ships flying in the sky. Everything that comes within range of these tenescopes is noted. If it is unfamiliar and lands, the Air Force is aware of it almost immediately, and if it presents scientific problems we or other groups are consulted."

According to Dr. Gee, this was how the Aztec ship had been discovered:

"Two tenescopes caught this unidentified ship as it came into our atmosphere. They watched its position and estimated where it would land. Within a few hours after it landed, Air Force officers reached the flying field at Durango, Colorado, and took off in search for the object."

Now, there are many aspects of Behind the Flying Saucers which are patently ridiculous, but this is one of the best. You won't find the word "tenescope" in any dictionary. If you Google it, one entry (that's right - only one) will come up, which states simply that it was a device described only in Behind the Flying Saucers.

Why only one entry? Why no mention in dictionaries? Because there is not now, nor was there ever, such a thing as a "tenescope." Newton and Gebauer made it up.

This is not to say that there was never a mention of radar bases by the con artists. Indeed, a de-classified AFOSI memo from 23 January, 1950, (discussed in more detail in "Leo Gebauer & The Mysterious Dr. Gee") reveals that Newton had been spreading the flying saucer story about to a number of people in Colorado in 1949, including Morley Davies. According to the memo:

"He [Silas Newton] told Davies the flying saucers were landing near Albuquerque, New Mexico, due to the attraction of the radar installation nearby. He presumed that the radar activity had an effect on these saucers since they were powered by a magnetism drawn from the atmosphere."

Apparently, simple radar stations were not exotic enough for Newton and Gebauer, who subsequently invented the "tenescope," which fit in better with their magnetic propulsion stories and allowed them to claim that the devices were even more secret than radar, which was known to the public. As a result, we have Silas Newton telling one story to people like Morley Davies, and then another, later story to Frank Scully, which would be the one that would be printed in Behind the Flying Saucers.

These factors alone are enough to render any further discussion of the "secret radar bases" meaningless. However, it is important to note that even with respect to the radar bases themselves, Moulton Howe and the other Aztec proponents have it all wrong, as an examination of the official record - in this case, the de-classified Special Air Force Historical Study The Air Defense of Atomic Energy Installations: March 1946 - December 1952 - demonstrates.

First, the order from Headquarters USAF to establish an aircraft control and warning system was not issued until 23 April, 1948, with the vital installations to be defended listed as:

"(1) The Air Force Special Weapons Command Facility at Sandia Air Force Base, and Kirtland Air Force Base... ; (2) the Atomic Energy Installation at Los Alamos... ; and (3) the Strategic Air Command's Walker Air Force Base at Roswell, New Mexico."

This was, of course, after the Aztec incident (and the Roswell incident as well) had allegedly occurred.

By July, sites "temporary in nature in that they were in valley locations" for three stations had been selected, at Kirtland AFB, the AEC Installation at Los Alamos, and Walker AFB. In September, 1948,m the 636th AC&W Squadron was transferred from California to Kirtland. In November, 1948, TPS-1B radars were installed at the Kirtland site, which was designated Lashup site 45 (L-45). The Los Alamos site and the Walker station were designated Lashup sites 44 and 46, respectively, in January, 1949, by which time the Kirtland site was operational for "about four hours a day." The Los Alamos early warning site was not active, "because of radar difficulties [and] insufficient manning," until early 1950.

On 5 January, 1950, the new commander of the new active defense area, as the radar sites were called, was ordered to:

"maintain, within the limitations of available equipment, such portions of the Albuquerque Air Defense Area as are required to identify and intercept with unarmed fighters all unauthorised flights within the airspace over the Los Alamos AEC installation in which all flying had been prohibited since January 1948."

As the Historical Study noted, these actions defined the way active air defense operations were to be conducted in the New Mexico area. The problem , however, was that due to:

"the low operational capability of the light equipment assigned the radar stations and the low manning of these organisations... it was not possible to initiate such operations immediately."

By the end of March, 1950, manning and equipping of the three radar stations within the AADA had progressed to the extent that the radar net in that area was capable of operating "twelve hours a day, seven days a week."

Two years after the alleged Aztec incident, the radar stations could still only operate half the time! By July 1950, around the time Behind the Flying Saucers was being released to the public, Headquarters, Western Air Defence Force (which had been organised in late 1949), was studying the problem that the "unsatisfactory radar equipment deployment" in the area was causing. As their report stated:

"The... present radar deployment in the Albuquerque Air Defence Area does not provide adequate sufficient coverage necessary to defend the area."

Needless to say, they were not talking about defending the area from flying saucers, but rather from more "terrestrial" threats.

It was not until mid-January, 1951, that the newly activated AC&W squadrons were moved to the permanent sites, which had been built at El Vado, Moriarity and Gonzales (effectively, Continental Divide). Even then, due to delays in production of the more advanced FPS-3 search radars and FPS-4 height finders (or, in El Vado's case, the FPS-6 height finder), these sites were assigned less effective CPS-5 search radar system and the FPS-5 interim height finder. El Vado was not capable of round the clock operations until February, 1952.

So much for powerful, secret radar bases.

The lessons here?

First, while Scott Ramsey, a friend for whom I have a great deal of respect, is to be commended for diligently tracking down all of this information (he should be able to write an excellent history of the USAF someday, at least as far as the AFOSI and the early defense of North American airspace are concerned), none of it even remotely begins to substantiate the Aztec case. In fact, when you look at the conflicting statements Newton gave people like Davies, compare it with the "tenescopes" described in Behind the Flying Saucers, and then compare both against the real history of the American radar set-up in post-war New Mexico, you end up with further evidence that Aztec was in fact a con by Newton and Gebauer.

Second, when a ufologist - here, Linda Moulton Howe - says something, always check the facts yourself. They may have gotten it wrong, as was the case here.

Third, always remember that truth abhors a vacuum. Perhaps nowhere is that more the case than in the study of the UFO phenomenon, where it's often "the other side of truth" that matters.

Paul Kimball

More "Aztec & The Radar Bases"

Rich Reynolds, king of the RRR Group blog (www.rrrgroup.blogspot.com), asked a very good question in a comment to my most recent post re: radar bases. He wrote:

"Paul: Where did the idea generate that radar installations, secret radar installations, were established to protect New Mexico's nuclear infrastructure? Frank Warren and Scott Ramsey couldn't have come to their belief that such facilities existed from nothing could they?"

No, they didn't just cook up the radar base idea out of thin air. It comes - as does everything else with Aztec - from good old Silas Newton, and the stories he spread around the southwest back in the late 1940s.

I explained most of this a little while ago at my blog "Aztec and the Radar Bases" (http://redstarfilms.blogspot.com/2005/03/aztec-and-radar-bases.html). In Behind the Flying Saucers, there is no reference to "radar bases" but rather to "tenescope observers" who, according to Dr. Gee (aka Leo Gebauer, see my blog "The Aztec Incident & The Mysterious Dr. Gee, http://redstarfilms.blogspot.com/2005/03/aztec-incident-mysterious-dr-gee.html), worked 24/7 watching the sky for "evidence of objects or ships" (Behind the Flying Saucers, p. 121); when they saw one, they supposedly alerted the Air Force immediately to any flying saucer which crashed or landed.

So, by the time Behind the Flying Saucers had come out, the radar bases were out, and the tenescopes were in, presumably because they were (a) more exotic sounding and (b) harder to refute, as one could always claim that they were so super secret, nobody knew about them (you hear that excuse a lot in ufology, alas).

But, the radar bases had been part of the original con story, before it got refined (as all good cons usually do). That these stories can all be traced back to Silas Newton is shown in my blog "Aztec and the Radar Bases," which refers to an AFOSI memo that shows this to be the case.

For good measure, however, here's another, even more outlandish, radar base story, from another AFOSI memo, written in January, 1950. Here is the relevant text of that memo:

"Following information furnished from newspaper article appearing in Wyandotte Ehco, Kansas City, 6 January 1950... Two weeks ago, [Rudy Fick], well know Kansas City auto dealer stopped in Denver returning from Ogden, Utah. While there he called on the Manager of the Ford Agency [Jack M. Murphy, who got his information from Morley Davies, who got it from George Koehler, who got it from Silas Newton]. Their conversation was interrupted by some engineers arriving for a meeting. One of these arrivals, a man named [Koehler] revealed some startling information. According to the story told by [Koehler], he "crashed the gate" at a radar station near the New Mexico and Arizona borders. While there he saw two of the highly secret "flying saucers". One was badly damaged, the other almost perfectly intact. They consisted of two parts, a cockpit or cabin about six feet diameter and a ring eighteen feet across and two feet thick surrounded the cabin. The cabin was constructed of a metal resembling aluminium, but the actual make of the metal has defied analysis. [Koehler] had a portion of this metal in his possession and gave it to the Ford man to send to the Dearborne Plant to analyze it. Each of the ships had a crew of two. In the damaged ship the bodies were charred; the other ship's occupants were in a perfect state of preservation although dead... According to the information given [Koehler] there are around fifty of these craft that have been found in the United States in a period of two years. Forty of these are in the U.S. Research Bureau in Los Angeles." [Emphasis added]

Needless to say, neither the AFOSI nor the editor of the Kansas City Star, to whom the story was also told, took this seriously. The AFOSI memo identified the informant as "Coulter" but this was simply an improper (phonetic) spelling of "Koehler" - who got the story from Newton.

So, again, all of the radar station stories can ultimately be traced back to one man - Silas Newton!

Incidentally, Koehler is an interesting, often overlooked, piece of the puzzle. He was the guy who arranged Newton's "Scientist X" lecture at the University of Denver, and was a close pal of Newton. How close? Koehler was married to Newton's former nurse, and the two were living in a Denver house rented by Newton, which was filled with Newton's golfing trophies.

Was Koehler in on the con? It's quite possible, given his close relationship with Newton, his propensity for spreading Newton's stories, and the fact that he skipped town shortly after the whole thing unraveled, moving to the West Coast. Or maybe he was just another of Newton's suckers.

Either way, can one take the claims noted above seriously? That there were super secret radar bases in 1947, but that Koehler could just "crash the gate," rummage around, and walk off with parts of a flying saucer? Or that fifty flying saucers had crashed within a two year period?

Of course not - unless the "will to believe" has won out over the pursuit of the truth.

Paul Kimball

Fred Reed & Aztec: A Red Flag

Lately, over at UFO Updates (www.virtuallystrange,net/ufo/updates) Frank Warren and I have been discussing the Aztec case, in particular, the accounts of various "witnesses".

The correspondence can be found at, from beginning to end, at:

My original: www.virtuallystrange.net/ufo/updates/2005/mar/m16-003.shtml

Frank responds: www.virtuallystrange.net/ufo/updates/2005/mar/m16-010.shtml

My response: www.virtuallystrange.net/ufo/updates/2005/mar/m17-001.shtml

Frank's response: www.virtuallystrange.net/ufo/updates/2005/mar/m22-009.shtml

My response: www.virtuallystrange.net/ufo/updates/2005/mar/m23-014.shtml

Frank's response: www.virtuallystrange.net/ufo/updates/2005/mar/m30-015.shtml

My response: www.virtuallystrange.net/ufo/updates/2005/mar/m31-014.shtml

One of these "witnesses" - Fred Reed - is of particular interest, because we have a record of both what he told Scott Ramsey, and what Reed said one week prior to his interview with Scott. The differences are telling, and should sound a note of caution about the Aztec "witnesses" in general, and Scott and Frank's credulous approach to them.

Here, according to Scott, is what Reed told him in 1999 (you can find the original text at www.frankwarren.blogspot.com, at "'Flying Saucer' Recovery at Hart Canyon (Part Three) - The Witnesses"):

"Witness No. 3

While working for the O.S.S. (Office of Strategic Services), Fred Reed and his group were sent to Aztec, New Mexico to 'clean up the crash site,' early in April of 1948. [Reed didn't work for the O.S.S. - he worked for another clandestine organization of the military. Thi is an 'uncorrected error' that was missed in final editing by Scott - Frank Warren added this note]. Shortly after they arrived, it was apparent to them that something very large had been removed from the site. Their specialty was to make an area appear as if nothing had transpired there.

Fred revisited the crash site in 1999; I was able to interview him one week later.

In 1948 they were ordered to collect any foreign items they found and then bury them eighteen inches deep; to 'soft landscape' any areas where heavy equipment tracks were visible and to do an extensive survey on the entire mesa. He noted a newly cut road and an out-of-place, large concrete pad in the freshly altered and siltey soil, during the cleanup. Reed recalled thinking that they must have poured it to support a heavy structure, like a crane, used to move a large object.

At the time of the cleanup, his group was informed that it was simply a crash site. The entire cleanup was done in the usual quiet manner that they were accustomed to in the O.S.S. [O.S.S. is incorrect - Frank Warren added this note]. Years later, one of Reed's former Senior Officers would explain to him that it was not an aircraft crash, but that of a large metallic 'flying disc.'

In my interview with Reed, he commented on how the crash site today looked as they had left it when they had finished. He recalled that the tops of the trees were broken and was fascinated with how they had weathered time."

Both Frank and Scott proudly trumpet Reed as one of the best witnesses to the Aztec case, to the point where Scott included him as one of five he referenced in his 2004 MUFON article, as well as in my film Aztec 1948.

But what really makes Reed such a valuable example of the Aztec "witnesses" is that we have an account from him that predates his interview with Scott by a week. Better yet, he put it into writing, to the editor of a local Aztec area newspaper. Here is the entire text of that letter, presented in public, as far as I know, for the first time:

"Dear Sir,

Today, my wife and I took advantage of the big celebration and went out to the site of the UFO crash of late 1948 in Hart Canyon. The workers who dedicated their time to this presentation of an important part of New Mexico history are to be commended. The road signs to guide the visitors were strategically placed, and the plaque marking the spot was in the right place. The aliens had built stone cairns marking the path from the oil field road to the crash site. These cairns are still in place today. The trees around the crash site open to the south, which is a typical distress signal for extraterrestrials.

The area looked essentially as it had in 1948 when the OSS sent our group there. We were to make a detailed survey of the area and report back to them, which we did. We were then reassigned elsewhere. We were never told what the OSS was looking for.

But a traveling survey crew like that eats in cafes, sleeps in motels, has no close family, and knows intimately only the men they work with. So, of course, we spect many long nights trying to figure out just what did happen in Hart Canyon.

We had heard rumors that a UFO had crashed there. But it did not look like a crash site. And we had heard that army personnel had rushed in there and cleaned up the site. But it did not look like a clean-up site either. One thing did stand out. There appeared to be some heavy traffic - not on any graded road - leading through the large rock slides to the canyon northwest of the site.

So what it boiled down to was this: No UFO crash. Instead, the UFO landed there for some specific intent to place (bury?) some instrument or thing there. They they got into their saucer and flew away. All of the other stories were put out by the government to cover up what they knew about the event or to cover up what they did not know about it. I guess the answer might be found in the old files of the OSS. But not in my time.

Yours truly,

Fred Reed."

Now, let us compare the original testimony to that which came out after the interview with Scott.

Are there significant discrepancies?

Yes.

1. Reed, in his letter, specifically states that nothing crashed on the mesa. Instead, the "rumour" that he heard was that a flying saucer had landed, planted a device, and then flown away - NO recovery! After his interview with Scott, this had changed to "a crashed flying saucer" that had been recovered by the military.

2. Reed, in his letter, refers to several stone cairns which the aliens had left in place to mark the road from the oil road to the "crash site" (note the contradictory statement even within this letter - "crash site" vs. "landing site"). After his interview with Scott, we now have the "out of place, large concrete pad" that had been poured to aid in the recovery.

3. Reed, in his letter, states that the "clean-up" operation occurred in late 1948. After his interview withe Scott, this date has been "corrected" back to April, 1948.

4. Reed, in his letter, talks about how the trees around the crash site open to the south, which is a "typical distress signal for the aliens." This ridiculous statement, which shows more than anything else that Reed is blowing smoke (but which Michael Salla would no doubt accept at face value), is nowhere to be found after his interview with Scott.

5. Reed, in his letter, states that his group was sent to the site to make a "detailed survey of the area" and "report back" to the O.S.S. After the interview with Scott, this has morphed into a "cleanup" operation, depsite the fact that in his letter, Reed stated that "We had heard that army personnel had rushed in there and cleaned up the site."

Five MAJOR discrepancies, plus one MAJOR mistake that is made in both accounts by Reed - the identification by Reed himself, not Scott, despite what Frank claims, of his unit as O.S.S., which was impossible, given that the O.S.S. ceased to exist on 1 October, 1945, by virtue of Executive Order 9621 (see www.cia.gov/cia/publications/oss/art10.htm). It was later effectively replaced by the Central Intelligence Group, and then, in 1947, with the passing of the National Security Act, the Central Intelligence Agency.

What does this tell us about the Aztec case?

First, it tells us that Reed's testimony is absolutely worthless. The historical inaccuracies (the O.S.S.??!!), and the inconsistent statements, within a week of each other, indicate he was a guy spinning a story that simply was not true.

Why?

To gain himself a small piece of the growing Aztec limelight. Call it the "Anderson - Kaufmann Syndrome." As I keep trying to tell people in ufology, not every "witness" is telling the truth.

More important, however, is the fact that it calls into question both Scott's methodology and his objectivity. It is clear from the "compare and contrast" exercise above that Reed changed his account when interviewed by Scott, possibly the result of leading questions (we won't know until Scott releases the detailed transcripts), but no doubt because Reed wanted to tell Scott what he figured Scott wanted to hear. Like Kaiser Wilhelm II, he wanted his "place in the sun."

As for Scott's objectivity, and his competence to draw conclusions from his considerable research, one must wonder. The O.S.S. statement alone should have raised a major red flag as to Reed's credibility back in 1999, and yet this clearly false statement was repeated by Scott right up until the present day. The same mistaken assumptions can be seen in his analysis of the radar bases he discovered, and in his acceptance of Frank Scully's claim that Dr. Gee was really "eight scientists" instead of Leo Gebauer (there are earlier posts here that deal with each of these issues).

We continue to hear from Scott and Frank that there really was a crash recovery of an alien spacecraft at Aztec in 1948. But if they bought Fred Reed's hogwash, should we place any faith in their overall approach to the Aztec case, and the evidence that so convincingly shows that there was no spaceship, no crash, and no story, other than the one cooked up by Silas Newton and Leo Gebauer?

Paul Kimball

Crashed Flying Saucers and Radar

Proponents of alien crashed flying saucers at Roswell and Aztec, such as Stan Friedman, have speculated that perhaps advanced radar systems brought the spacecraft down. Indeed, in this clip from the doc I made about the so-called Aztec incident, Aztec 1948, both Stan and Scott Ramsey talk about that possibility, while Karl Pflock offers a much more reasonable and sensible analysis.



You can view my deconstruction of the silly "radar brought the flying saucers down" claims here.

Fact vs. fiction in New Mexico. Unfortunately, the ufologists supplied the fiction, the same kind you will find with Frank Feschino's wild claims of an air war in the 1950s between the USAF and aliens, which have been "shot down" by more sensible UFO researchers like Jerry Clark and Dick Hall.

Paul Kimball

Early Canadian - US Continental Radar Plan

The Canadian-United States Military Co-Operation Committee (MCC) devised this plan in 1946 for the air defense of North America. Each country was represented by the military and diplomatic members of the Permanent Joint Board on Defence, including representatives of the various armed services and, in Canada's case, the secretary of the Cabinet Defence Committee. The two civilian chairmen of the PJBD were exluded. The plan (not terribly well thought out at this stage, but still an important indicator of governmental thinking and policy) shows that US and Canadian concerns in the immediate postwar years were centered solely on Soviet attack.

Canadian member of the MCC E. W. Gill, secretary to the Cabinet Defence Committee and a staffer in the Privy Council Office, wrote:

"I have regarded the Committee as the drafting group whose members reflect the views of the chiefs of Staff in the drawing up of their plans. There is evidence that this consultation between planners and chiefs takes place on the U.S. side, but is entirely absent on the Canadian side. I think it is safe to say that at no time since the planning started have the planners... received any guidance from their chiefs as to how they should proceed on each phase of the plan. As a result, the planners have a free rein and are producing plans which must be "sold" to their superiors. The committee has thus become a pressure group in which the services combine to put up as strong a case as possible to their respective chiefs and Governments. In this rather doubtful role we are subject to the machinations of the U.S.... The obvious intention of the U.S. services [is] to use the plans... as a basis for securing appropriations from their government." [Memo from Gill to A.D.P. Heeney, Report on MCC Meeting at Trenton, 22 - 25 July 1947. Privy Council Office Records, Public Archives of Canada, RG 2/18, vol. 74]

The Canadian government concluded that the MCC proposals, with their JCS imprimatur, and without any disagreement from the State Department's representative on the MCC, reflected U.S. policy - despite the fact that it was absurd to think that the Truman administration, in the midst of demobilisation and still committed to rapidly reducing defence budgets, would suddenly reverse course and create Fortress America by 1950.

Why would the JCS go along with such a grandiose plan? According to historian Joseph Jockel, "Mostly because they were not paying much attention. The entire military establishment in Washington was in turmoil as it coped with demobilization and internecine struggle. There was no overall strategic plan." General Guy Henry, the senior US Army member of the PJBD, later complained that "It took considerable work on my part to obtain actual concrete comments... from the Commanding General of AAF and the Plans and Operations Division of the War Department." As Jockel correctly notes, the "AAF Air Defense Command was making the same complaints about plans and pleas it was submitting to Washington."

Of particular relevance to the Aztec case (and Roswell, too) are two points:

1. The disarray in military thinking about continental air defense in the late 1940s; and
2. The fact that, in those plans which were drafted in 1946 to 1949, no specific thought was given to the defense of American atomic energy installations; rather, the concern was with creating a de facto "picket line" around the continent, which could detect Soviet attacks.

This runs contrary to the claims of Aztec proponents that there were Top Secret radar bases in place as early as 1946 to protect AEC installations in New Mexico.

See Joseph Jockel, No Boundaries Upstairs: Canada, the United States, and the Origins of North American Air Defence, 1945 - 1958 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1987), perhaps the best study out there of the subject.

The Hottel Memo

I weigh in on the ufological story du jour in a piece I was interviewed for in today's International Business Times.

The Hottel Memo: Why Some Believe It

By Jesse Emspak

April 12, 2011 11:19 PM GMT

A memo written sixty years ago has created a minor storm as some take it as proof that the government is covering up the existence of aliens. To some, it's more interesting in the way it shows why people believe things.

The saucer prop used in the 1951 film "The Day The Earth Stood Still" is pictured here. A recently publicized memo from the FBI is seen by some as proof of alien visitations.

The memo was written by Guy Hottel, special agent in charge of the Washington field office. It describes an "air force investigator" who said another person reported finding a crashed spacecraft in New Mexico. The informant (whose name is redacted) also said that alien bodies were found in it. The informant says that the craft was disabled by "high powered radar" in the area.

Paul Kimball, a Halifax, Nova Scotia-based documentary filmmaker who has done extensive research on the UFO phenomenon, calls the furor surrounding the memo - billed by news outlets such as the Daily Mail as proof of a government cover-up - as interesting to sociologists as it is to people interested in aliens.

He says one reason that such documents from the 1950s engender such interest is precisely that people were afraid at that time. "It was a fearful society," he said. "The cold war was just beginning."

Another reason people tend to believe in government conspiracies, he said, is that in the years since there have been very real instances of the U.S. government attempting to cover things up, or fool the public. The Gulf of Tonkin incident, which precipitated the Vietnam War, is just one example. The Watergate break-in and subsequent revelations only served to make such paranoia seem even more reasonable.

Kimball added that this does not mean that governments don't cover things up or engage in conspiracies - just that they are usually much less elaborate than in popular depictions.

The Hottel memo, he said, is probably the result of a hoax. The memo itself surfaced decades ago, in 1977. But the hoax began decades earlier.

The Hottel memo was the end of a long chain of tale-telling. The memo repeats a story from the Wyandotte Echo, a legal newspaper in Kansas City, Kansas in January of 1950. An Air Force investigator read the story (and pasted into a memo himself. Such practices were common in the days before scanning documents was possible and memos had to be typed out). He then sent it on to Hottel.

The news story draws from the account of a Rudy Fick, a local used car dealer. Fick got the story from a two men, I. J. Van Horn and Jack Murphy, who said they got the story from a man named "Coulter" -- actually a radio station advertising manager named George Koehler. Koehler got the story from Silas Newton. Kimball said that a combination of his own research and others has established pretty well that the unnamed informant is Newton himself.

Silas Newton was a con man, who had a partner, Leo A. Gebauer. Newton and Gebauer were peddling "doodlebugs" -- devices that could supposedly find oil, gas, gold, or anything else that the target of the con was interested in finding. The two claimed that their doodlebugs were based on alien technology.

Ben Bradford, a New Mexico-based researcher who writes for the Skeptical Inquirer, also said the informant was probably Newton, who told his story to as many people as he could. He said the big question that arises, assuming the alien story was true, is where the spaceships or alien bodies are. "A conspiracy theorist will always say they covered it up," he said. "But you have to figure out what to do with three 50-foot long spaceships."

When the original scam was hatched, Newton and Gebauer went to someone who was predisposed to believe the story, a gossip columnist named Frank Scully. "You wouldn't go to Edward R. Murrow with something like this," Kimball said. Kimball studied Scully's background, and found he was a man with a strong distrust of government generally. A conspiracy story would naturally attract him - and it did, resulting in a book.

Kimball adds that there really are UFO cases worth investigating. But they are often drowned out by hoaxes like the one that resulted in the Hottel memo.

Kimball notes that the combination of a fearful society, and the need for an ordered world, is partly what drives both believers and non-believers. (He says he is neither). Conspiracy theorists, he said, need to have some way of ordering the world. He likens it to the 9/11 truth movement, which posits conspiracies that would require thousands of people to all keep silent. "They are the kind of folks who can't believe that bad things happen to good people," he said. "So there has to be a conspiracy."

The Aztec hoax - Ufology's Dracula.

If there is an afterlife, I have no doubt that Silas Newton is having a good laugh at it all.

Paul Kimball

Blast From The Past, Vol. II - Time Magazine's Review of Behind the Flying Saucers

Excerpts from Time Magazine, 25 September 1950, re: Behind the Flying Saucers.

"For several months the lists of bestselling books have offered multiple proof of man's incurable yearning for marvels. Near the top of the 'nonfiction' section stood Immanuel Velikovsky's scientifically preposterous Worlds in Collision (astromony based on hashed-up mythology). Close below was L. Ron Hubbard's Dianetics (psychiatric home-treatment practiced as a sort of parlor game).

Last week both books were threatened by a new rival in the science-fantasy field. Frank Scully's Behind the Flying Saucers was amazing its staid publisher with steadily mounting sales. Scully... is a Hollywood columnist for Variety, show business' smart-cracking trade sheet. On nearly every page of his solemn book is proof that he may not know much about science but that he is, as they say in show business, an 'operator.'

Author Scully short-circuits his critics in advance by an inverted appeal to 'military-security.' Flying Saucers are real, he states, and of non-earthly origin; at least three flying saucers have been captured in the southwest, along with their scorched crews of extraterrestrial midgets. But all the 'scientists' who examined the craft have been silenced, Author Scully says, by threats from the Government, egged on by the Air Force. 'You've got to believe me,' says Scully in effect, 'all informed denials are official lies.'

Scully got his start as a flying-saucer expert by association with talented Oilman Silas M. Newton of Denver, who, he says, locates oil deposits by their microwaves (microwaves do not penetrate rock). Through Newton, Scully met a mysterious 'Dr. Gee,' who does similar feets by detecting 'magnetic waves' (which do not exist) with a magnetron (a radio transmitter tube, not a detection device). Flying saucers, says Dr. Gee (quoted by Scully), travel among the planets by magnetism...

Measured for scientific credibility, Scully's science ranks below the comic books. Rival 'operators,' including Variety's Joe Laurie, Jr., who reviewed Behind the Flying Saucers, suspect that Scully may be kidding. In any case, his book's quick success is an interesting comment on the public's dazed state of mind toward recent scientific wonders. After accepting atomic energy, radar, etc., presumably the public could swallow anything. Why not believe Dr. Gee's saucer-borne midgets flying in from the depths of space?

The present-day effectiveness of 'military security' (e.g., during construction of the atomic bomb) has made the public suspicious of all official denials. What sort of new, fantastic wonders may be concealed behind the denials? Modern air engines (turbojets, ramjets, rockets) are powerful enough to make almost anything fly. Disc-shaped helicopters with ramjets on their rotor edges are not impossible. They are not midget-manned space ships but their test flights might have provided a base for flying saucer reports.

Theoretically, of course, invading space ships are not imposible. The point is that neither Scully nor any other purveyor of flying-saucer tales has yet produced evidence that they exist. There are no convincing photographs of them. Scully says he has handled metals they are made of (harder than diamond, with a melting point above 10,000 degrees), but no such miraculous stuff has yet been reported by any reputable laboratory.

Last week the Air Force, in a rather tired voice, denied once again that it has ever found any evidence of any space ships or that it is concealing any of its own. Once again, flying-saucer enthusiasts were unconvinced."

Against all logic, both Dianetics and Behind the Flying Saucers continue to have their adherents to this day.

Perhaps Tom Cruise is also an Aztec proponent. Given the story's Hollywood connections, it would only be fitting.

Paul Kimball

And Still More on "Aztec & The Radar Bases"

For more information, here's a good website to check out:

http://www.radomes.org/museum/scripts/acwlashup.cgi

Paul Kimball