Posts Tagged ‘aztec’
May 7th, 2013 | 
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Aztec native Shriver debunks UFO crash at Hart Canyon
Farmington Daily Times Last fall, he self-published "It's About Time," a book that questions the research of three books dedicated to the storied UFO crash event – Frank Scully's 1950 book "Behind the Flying Saucers," William Steinman and Wendelle Stevens' 1986 book "UFO … |
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Open Minds UFO Radio: Scott Ramsey began his investigation into an alleged crash of a UFO near Aztec, New Mexico over 25 years ago. Skeptical at first, and assuming he would demonstrate there was nothing to it, compelling bits of information eventually led him to believe the case was worth taking seriously. Ramsey, along with his wife, Suzanne, and with the help of many others, has painstakingly followed every clue. Now in his book, The Aztec Incident: Recovery at Hart Canyon, we can finally read the details of his rigorous investigation.
This book truly is necessary material to review for anyone who is interested in alleged UFO crash cases. You can read more about the book, and get your own copy here: http://www.theaztecincident.com/
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Couple give tour of alleged Aztec UFO crash site
Las Cruces Sun-News After their slide presentation and talk, they took a group of interested attendees in their van 12 miles northeast to Hart Canyon to tour the fabled mesa where they believe the UFO crashed. This month marks the 65th anniversary of Aztec's brush with … |
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Couple give tour of alleged Aztec UFO crash site
Farmington Daily Times After their slide presentation and talk, they took a group of interested attendees in their van 12 miles northeast to Hart Canyon to tour the fabled mesa where they believe the UFO crashed. This month marks the 65th anniversary of Aztec's brush with … |
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Tags: alleged, aztec, couple-, crash, daily, Farmington, give, site, times, tour |
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(Blogger’s Note: The following is reprinted by permission. Given the length of the original article, I have broken it into three parts and will publish all three over the next week. It was written by one-time resident of Aztec, Monte Shriver, and provides an interesting insight into the alleged crash. Again, reprinted by permission of Monte Shriver.)
THE AZTEC INCIDENT -RECOVERY AT HART CANYON
BY SCOTT AND SUZANNE RAMSEY, DR. FRANK THAYER AND FRANK WARREN
In his forward to this book, Stanton Friedman states “In this outstanding new book, Scott and Suzanne Ramsey have done an incredible job of really digging the evidence…and that none of the objections made to the reality of the Aztec Crash story stand up to careful scrutiny”. He concludes by saying “This is a very important book setting new standards for investigation, persistence and the casting of a very wide net to locate witnesses.”. On the contrary, my review of this book has found numerous errors, dubious conclusions and improbable events.
I can find no evidence to support is Mr. Ramsey’s statement on page 27 of -Behind the Flying Saucers - Updated Edition published by Conspiracy Journal in which he states “…Hart Canyon Road used to be the best way to get to Durango, by stage coach….” My research found the following:
William S. Wallace’s “Stage Coaching in Territorial New Mexico” quoting from the New Mexico Historical Review 32 (1957): 207 “1882 – Aztec, S.E. of Durango, Co. 42 Miles by stage.” I seriously doubt if you could reach Aztec in 42 miles by using Hart Canyon.
“San Juan County, New Mexico – A Photographic History: Volume II” on page 33: “…The normal route for supplies took about a month. The route was from Farmington to Aztec, up the river to Animas City, CO…Arrington started the first daily four-horse mail stage between Durango and Farmington on July 1, 1890.…”
Aztec: A Story of Old Aztec from the Anasazi to Statehood by C.V. Koogler and Virginia Koogler Whitney: page 66: Circa 1892 in one of the first meetings of the San Juan County Commission “…The first road matter was the presentation of a petition for a county road leading down the Animas River beginning at the Colorado line and running on the west side of the river to Aztec….” I know that road as the “Ruins Road” and it joins U.S. 550 at Cedar Hill. The book is also full of numerous references of the early settlers going up the Animas River to Animas City, CO for supplies and how one had to cross the Animas River 9 times between Aztec and Trimble Springs, CO.
Report of the Territorial Governor of New Mexico to the Secretary of the Interior (1902), page 580: “…At present, a daily stage line to Durango…place the people of the county in connection with the railroads. Durango, Colorado…is the nearest station on the north, a distance of 38 miles from Aztec…”
The following are either small errors or large errors depending upon your point of view:
Page 18: “…drove 148 miles from Albuquerque airport to Aztec…” Actually, the distance from the airport to Aztec in more like 180 miles or so.
Page 23: “…the Highway Grill was one of the only restaurants in Aztec in 1948…” I thought it was called the Highway Lounge in 1948, but in the July 1-15, 2011 copy of the Talon, Janelle Osburn remembers it being called George’s Bar in 1948 and was owned by George and Thelma Derby. That now sounds correct to me. Sometime later, I believe the bar was purchased by Bill Faverino and Jack Vescovi and the name was probably changed to the Highway Lounge at that time. According to Betty Lawson Waggoner, they didn’t start serving food there until the mid-1990’s.
Page 143: “…in 1945 New Mexico was the fifth largest state by area…” Actually, it was the fourth largest state by area until Alaska was admitted to the Union in 1959.
Page 143: “Kirtland Army Air Field was a large fighter base as well as home of the Eighth Air Force”. I can find no record of the Headquarters of the Eighth Air Force ever having been anywhere in New Mexico.
Page 147: Johnny Hernandez was driving from Regina, NM to Cuba with a truck load of logs and turned onto Highway 44 for “the LONG AND DESOLATE RIDE BACK TO CUBA(emphasis added).” It’s about 3 miles from where the Regina road (NM State Road 96) hits Highway 44 into Cuba. That may be a long and desolate 3 mile ride in North Carolina but it sure isn’t in New Mexico. I should note that it is only about 12 miles from Regina to Highway 44.
On the same trip, Mr. Hernandez saw a bright green light passing over his truck at a tremendous speed and then headed north toward Taylor Mountain. In Herbert E. Ungnade’s 1965 book Guide to New Mexico Mountains, he does not list a “Taylor Mountain”. Perhaps Mr. Ramsey meant Mount Taylor, but that is 80-90 miles southwest of Cuba, not north and Mr. Hernandez certainly would have known where Mount Taylor was located. More about the green lights later.
Page 194 – In 1946, a radar site was built near El Vado Lake. “The lake was built for Los Alamos as a power plant with one single General Electric Hydro Generator to supply power to Los Alamos.” Not true about the dam. Actually, the dam impounding the lake was built in1934-35 and is used for flood control purposes and as storage for the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District. The Los Alamos Utility Department built, owns and operates the 8 MW hydroelectric facility at the dam but it was not put into service until 1988.
Page 199 – In 1948 “… the site was owned by H. D. Dunning or Harold Dunning, as the locals called him….” I never heard anyone, including my Dad, call him anything but “Hy” Dunning. I’m not sure of the spelling of “Hy,” and I didn’t know his first name was Harold until I read it in this book.
Pages 154-5: Five-mile crossing bridge. In checking out the route through Largo Canyon, Mr. Ramsey and Mr. Bill Metzger found a railroad bridge at five-mile crossing that would not have been wide enough to transport the disc. However, during a walking survey of the bridge, they found a nameplate “…showing it to be manufactured long before the flying saucer incident,…” But “Bill’s encyclopedic knowledge of the railroad industry quickly came into play as he realized this was a narrow gauge railroad bridge…Bill had to explain that…the bridge was probably moved from a dismantled rail line and installed across the dry wash…”. Mr. Ramsey then states “To our surprise, we learned through research that, indeed, the old bridge was in fact a frontier narrow gauge railroad bridge from the Bloomfield area that was moved to Largo Canyon in the 1960’s to aid oil field development.”
How good was this “research ” (emphasis added)? It is not very good in my opinion. Here is what the New Mexico State Highway Department has to say about the bridge.
New Mexico Historical Bridge Survey
New Mexico State Highway and Transportation Department
Federal Highway Administration Region 6
1987
Largo Canyon Bridge No. 8118 County Road A-80 near Blanco.
“This bridge was originally constructed in 1928 over the San Juan River at Blanco by the Pueblo Bridge and Construction Company. In 1966 it was relocated about five miles east over Largo Arroyo on a county Road. The Largo Canyon Bridge is a steel through truss and has a total length of 254 feet. Its roadway is only 13 feet wide. A Warren Truss consisting of seven triangular panels was used in its design. The Largo Canyon Bridge is one of the longest truss spans constructed in New Mexico”.
A NARROW GAUGE RAILROAD BRIDGE, INDEED!!!!!!
When the new highway bridge was built over the San Juan River in the late 1950’s or early 1960’s, the old bridge described above was moved a short distance from the new bridge. A high school friend of mine, Bruce Hare, told me that San Juan County hired his two brothers in 1966 to move the old bridge to five-mile crossing. On page 101 of Marilu Waybourn’s book “Images of America – Aztec”, you will find a picture of the old two-way bridge over the Animas River at Aztec noting that in 1929, it too was built by the Pueblo Bridge and Construction Company.
On June 30, 2012, my wife and I visited the bridge and found the following nameplate on it.
INSTALLED AND DEDICATED
PRUITT BRIDGE
OCTOBER 1966
SAN JUAN COUNTY COMMISSION
JAMES M. DURRETT – DISTRICT 1
BERT BARNES CHAIRMAN – DISTRICT 2
LELAND T. SEIDEL – DISTRICT 3
ROAD SUPERINTENDENT
A. L. PRUITT
HIGHWAY ROUTES TO AZTEC
Before I discuss finding the disc, I need to discuss why Mr. Ramsey and Mr. Metzger were in Largo Canyon in the first place. To quote again from Dr. Friedman in the Foreword to the book “Using old maps and their consultant’s expertise, they were able to show…transport of three large segments (of the UFO) was feasible using…existing roads, appropriate maps etc…This was truly research by investigation rather than using the debunker approach of research by proclamation.”
In Chapter Nine, “Moving the Craft”, Mr. Ramsey maintains that his research revealed that today’s Highway 550, old NM 44, is a far different route today that it was in 1948 when the old road turned hard right (north) at Counselors eventually entering Largo Canyon and reaching the Blanco area. He maintains that “When the Chaco Canyon ruins were excavated in the early 1950’s, the State Highway and Transportation Department decided to re-route U.S. Highway 44 so that it would pass close to the ruins…”(Emphasis added.) This re-route and excavation must come as a surprise to both the National Park Service and the New Mexico Highway Department.
My research shows that Mr. Ramsey is dead wrong in his conclusions about the road from Bernalillo through Cuba to Aztec. My conclusion is based on my own personal knowledge having traveled all or part of the road since 1940, discussions with Gerald Williams who traveled the road in 1946 and my review of the Official Road Map of New Mexico issued by the New Mexico State Highway Department for the years 1923, 1925, 1936, 1940 and 1947-1951. The 1936 map shows the road in the same basic configuration as it is today(contrary to Mr. Ramsey’s assertion) with the only major differences being road surface and highway number designation as follows:
1936: The road was designated a primary State Route from Bernalillo to Aztec. It was State Road(SR)44 from Bernalillo to Cuba and SR 55 from Cuba to Aztec. The road was gravel from Bernalillo to about 10 miles south of La Ventana and then was classified as graded the rest of the way to Aztec except for small sections of gravel around Lybrooks and Bloomfield. Interestingly enough, it shows Chaco Canyon National Monument about 25 miles S/SE of the highway just as it is today. I could not find any maps between 1925 and 1936, so I don’t know how long before 1936 the road assumed its present configuration. Also, I think it is worth noting that in the 1936 map, SR 44 reappears as a 3rd class route (the lowest state category) from around Counselors apparently down Largo Canyon to just east of Blanco. This designation and road disappears from all the subsequent maps that I found.
1940: SR 44 is now paved all the way from Bernalillo to Cuba. SR 55 is gravel from Cuba to Bloomfield and graded from Bloomfield to Aztec.
1947: The road is now designated SR 44 all the way from Bernalillo to Aztec and is paved all the way except where it is gravel from about 10 miles south of Bloomfield to Aztec.
1948: The road is now paved all the way to Aztec. At page 152, the Ramsey book states “The 1948 road was improved road for the most part, meaning paved or at least gravel packed with heavy sand”. Of course, he had the road going down Largo Canyon from Counselors.
I hope the history of the Bernalillo-Aztec road will dispel the assertion that in 1948 the main road was down Largo Canyon from Counselors to Blanco. I should note that the 1925 Road Map shows the Haynes Trading Post 37 miles NW of Cuba with two roads going northwest, one apparently down Largo to Aztec and the other to Farmington. As best I can tell from the Legend on the map these two unnumbered roads were classified by the New Mexico Highway Department as “Second Class – Under maintenance and all year roads except after continuous rains.” According to the 1954 book Wild, Woolly and Wonderful by Jim and Ann Counselor, the Hayne’s Trading Post was closed sometime in the late 1920’s — before the Counselor’s built their trading post (circa 1930) where it is located today. I stopped at the trading post recently and they have early pictures of the post taken in either the 1930’s or 1940’s.
According to the Photographic History of San Juan County – Volume II on page 33 “A trip to Albuquerque meant wagon roads either to Blanco, through Largo Canyon and Wash to the settlement of Haynes, to Cuba and beyond or all the way to Shiprock through Gallup and then to Albuquerque”. On page 25, there is a 1927 picture of the ferry across the San Juan River at Blanco looking east, 1927 and page 24 notes “The main route from Albuquerque was following Largo Canyon to the river, taking the ferry, and proceeding to Blanco and beyond…”. The ferry was obviously replaced by the bridge which was built in 1928. No later than 1936, SR 44 replaced this route as the road was moved to the west to its present configuration, now designated U.S. 550.
In all the years I have traveled the road, I can recall only three road relocations. The road immediately south of Bloomfield used to run slightly west of where it is today. I suspect it was moved to its present location when the road was paved in 1948. The next relocation was from Cuba to La Ventana where the road was moved west out of the foothills to where it is today. As one drives north from La Ventana today, the old road is visible coming down the hill on the right. The next relocation was about 10 miles south of La Ventana where the road was moved slightly east for a few miles. I hope some of my classmates from the class of 1952 can help my memory in this regard.
I was stunned to hear the allegation that the road had been re-routed because of excavations at Chaco. During 1940-41, my Dad accompanied by me would haul coal from Durango, Colorado to Chaco for the National Park Service. We would take the road from Bloomfield to Huerfano Trading Post (now abandoned), turn to the SW and go by the Otis Trading Post(shown on the 1947 and 1948 maps) and then drive 25 miles to Chaco. In 1961 or 1962, my wife and I turned off SR 44 at Blanco Trading Post en route to Crownpoint via Chaco. We never went in through Nageezi because it was past Blanco Trading Post. The Nageezi and Blanco Trading Post entrances are now closed so you must enter about 5 miles SE of the old Nageezi entrance. The archaeologist at Chaco Canyon National Monument told me that there had been no reroute of SR44 in the 1950’s because of excavations at Chaco. In fact, the 1936 official state road map and all subsequent road maps show the Monument to be approximately 25 miles S/SW of SR 44, now US 550.
What is really important to note here is that in 1948 NM 44 (now U.S. 550) was not just the way from Cuba to Aztec. Rather, it was the main route to the San Juan Basin from Albuquerque, Santa Fe and the Rio Grande Valley down to El Paso not mention most of eastern New Mexico. NM 17 (now U.S. 64) was considered a third class route (dirt) from Dulce to a few miles east of Blanco where it became a secondary state route on into Bloomfield. The only other paved route from the south was from Gallup to Shiprock to Farmington and Aztec but that route would normally only be used by people from the far western side of the state.
FINDING THE DISC
In reading the Ramsey book, I got the impression that most of his direct information about the crash and the crash site came from Doug Noland and Ken Farley. However, at page 200, Mr. Ramsey states that “The story was told to me directly by oilfield workers, particularly Doug Noland…”. I can’t find anywhere in his book where he named any oilfield workers other that Doug Noland.
As related in Chapter One, “Eight Months After Roswell”, there is a summary of the story told to Mr. Ramsey some 50 years after fact by Doug Noland, a 19 year-old man working for the El Paso Oil Company (I wonder if he means El Paso Natural Gas Company?). The time line of events really seems questionable to me. Doug arrives in the predawn hours. (Sunrise was
6:08 a.m. local time.) He arrived at the home of his supervisor, Bill Ferguson at 5:00 a.m.. Unfortunately, we have no idea where Bill Ferguson lived, but for Doug to drive from Mancos, Colorado must have taken at least an hour which means he left his home around 4:00 a.m. I would think that would mean that Doug had to be up by at least 3:30 a.m. To work this schedule five days a week seems a little fishy to me. I base my hour estimate of Doug’s travel time on the fact that during the summer of 1956, I was a tool dresser for John Pool and we were drilling a top-to-bottom hole near the old Fort Lewis College at Hesperus, CO. It took us at least an hour to get from Aztec to the rig.
Bill tells Doug that a brush fire is burning in Hart Canyon near one of the company’s drip tanks and that they had to get out there fast (There is no mention of how or when Ferguson was notified, how far they had to travel or how long it took them to get there). Upon arrival, they found oil field workers (never identified) already there who told them that the fire was on top of the mesa and that something strange was sitting on top of the hill. I found nothing to indicate the fire was started by the craft. This means someone saw the fire on the mesa around 4:00 a.m. The Dunnings apparently didn’t know about the fire and 4:00 a.m. is a bit too early for oilfield workers to go to work since it is still dark. And, it would have to have been one hell of fire if it was seen from Highway 550! I think the illogical time sequences puts the whole story in doubt.
Anyway, they found the disc in the pre-dawn light and when the sun came up they were able to see inside the disc. Soon “others” started arriving on the Mesa including local ranchers. No mention of how all these other people heard about the disc. After the ranchers arrived, a law enforcement office from Cuba arrived stating that he had followed the disc from Cuba (more about this improbable happening to follow). Now, even more people show up including a law enforcement officer from Aztec whose name Doug had forgotten.
At page 4 of Chapter 1, Mr. Ramsey states that “Doug was living in Mancos, Colorado at the time and was familiar with all the Aztec people, as well as county law enforcement, being that the town is also the San Juan County seat.” I find this comment hard to believe. I grew up in Aztec and other than Mims Lane, I didn’t know any of the county law enforcement except for the name of the sheriff. How would a young man, living in Mancos, Colorado who drove 50 miles one-way just to reach his supervisor’s house in the pre-dawn hours and worked in the oil patch all day ever have the opportunity to be “familiar with all the Aztec people as well as county law enforcement”? Mr. Ramsey also states at page 201 that Doug Noland “…lived in Mancos, CO before making Aztec his home, where he worked day and night in the oil patch as well as for the community of Aztec (emphasis added).” On June 29-30, 2012 I attended my 60th high school reunion in Aztec along with the class of 1951. Almost all of the attendees spent their entire lives in Aztec. Some of them spent their careers with El Paso Natural Gas Company and some were in business there. Not a single person I talked to remembered a Doug Noland ever living in Aztec, much less working for the community of Aztec.
It is impossible to determine who the local law enforcement officer mentioned was. In 1948, I believe J. C. McKinsie was the Aztec Town Marshall. I remember him walking around the downtown area with his flashlight checking businesses at night. Gerald Williams remembers him patrolling the alleys at night in his Studebaker car. Since he worked at night, I doubt if he would have visited the site. Who would have notified him? State Policeman Andy Andrews lived in Farmington so his presence is doubtful. That would leave the Sheriff’s office in Aztec but in Steinman’s book on page 213 in apparently reprinting an article by Mike McClellan, it was reported by Sheriff Dan Sullivan that “His own father was sheriff at the time and had no recollection of a crash, aircraft being in the area or anything that would support Carr’s claims.”
Next we have Ken Farley who was driving to Cedar Hill, New Mexico from Durango, Colorado to pick up a friend (unidentified) and drive to San Diego, California. Before I go further, I need to give you, dear reader, some distances. It is 4.4 miles from Aztec to the Hart Canyon entrance and 5.7 miles from the old store in Cedar Hill to the Hart Canyon entrance. Due to the nature of the terrain, it is impossible to see the entrance to Hart Canyon from either Cedar Hill or Aztec until you are effectively at the entrance to the Canyon. With that in mind, let’s go back to Ken Farley. Upon arriving to pick his friend up at Cedar Hill ( we have no idea what time he arrived to pickup his friend), Ken is told “…there was a lot of activity just south of their pick-up point near an old dirt road…” There is no mention of how his friend knew this. He would have to have been at the entrance to Hart Canyon to see the activity. But the story gets better. The friend then tells Ken that “..there had been some vehicles, including a police car going in that direction…”. And by the time they got to the entrance to Hart Canyon, they were able to follow the dirt and dust clouds the other cars and trucks were making to arrive at the crash site. It must have been quite a caravan charging up Hart Canyon. Anyone having any doubts about the sequence of events yet?
Well, here is one more event for you to ponder. A preacher, living in Aztec, on his way to his new church in Mancos, also saw the commotion and headed up the canyon. One would have to conclude that with all the commotion and dust and vehicles going up Hart Canyon, half of Aztec must have been there. Why didn’t people in Aztec know about this event? I think there are two possibilities: 1) The story is true and the government people on site swore everyone to secrecy and told them never to reveal the event to anyone, or 2) It never happened and the secrecy story makes good cover as to why no one knew about it.
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(Blogger’s Note: This review was written by Jerome Clark and appeared in a slightly different form in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, 26, 3 (Fall 2012) pp. 707 – 714. Reprinted with permission. And a thank you to Jerry Clark as well.)
Reviewed by Jerome Clark
The Aztec Incident: Recovery at Hart Canyon by Scott and Suzanne Ramsey, Dr. Frank Thayer and Frank Warren. Mooresville, N.C.: Aztec 48 Productions, 2012. 217 pp. .95 (paperback). ISBN 978-0-9850046-0-6.
One scarcely knows where to begin. Perhaps with this quote from a June 19, 1951, letter – reprinted in these pages (90-91) – written by San Francisco Chronicle editor Paul G. Smith to Varietyentertainment columnist and author Frank Scully: “Frankly, I recall that when I first saw your book I thought you were merely having fun with your readers.” The book, the already notorious Behind the Flying Saucers, which Henry Holt had issued the previous September, was a marketplace success but a disaster in every quarter that did not involve commerce. Even so prominent an early UFO proponent as Maj. Donald Keyhoe, the first outsider to investigate Scully’s claims of a 1948 saucer recovery near Aztec, New Mexico, rejected them as absurd and fanciful. When I read Scully’s book in junior high school, my impression – even as a naive adolescent — was the same.
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| Scott Ramsey Photo courtesy Paul Kimball |
In fact, though they circulated freely through the larger society, because of the Scully taint rumors of UFO crashes were spurned by mainstream ufologists until the late 1970s. Around that time, a respected colleague, the late Leonard H. Stringfield, began collecting what he called “crash/retrieval reports” from mostly anonymous sources with whom he privately communicated.[1] In 1980 the first major book on the subject, The Roswell Incident by Charles Berlitz and William L. Moore, saw print. Other books, mostly though not exclusively focused on Roswell, followed (and an Air Force refutation followed them in the late 1990s, succeeded by refutations of the refutation, and so on in continuing loop to the present).
Inevitably, Scully’s tale – at least in a cleaned-up version that did not incorporate the dead Venusians of the original – would get a second look. The first book-length treatment was William S. Steinman and Wendelle C. Stevens’s UFO Crash at Aztec (1987), a work notable only for its levels of paranoia (high) and coherence (low). The second is the new The Aztec Incident, based on what we are told is a 0,000 investment in research expenses and more than two decades’ worth of inquiry.
First, so that future authorial references will be clear, the crowded by-line is courtesy of a writing novice’s error that no experienced author would have committed. There is only one author – Scott Ramsey – who refers to himself in the first person throughout. The other three, who participated in one way or another in accumulating the material that made the book possible, ought to have been cited in the credits, and not represented as co-authors. Thus, in what follows, I refer to the real author in the singular.
Since there is much to pan and little to praise in the comments that follow, let’s start on the most positive note circumstances render available. Aztec Incident reprints some of the private correspondence, never before seen as far as I know, of the principal figures in the episode. As one who has written at length on the history of the UFO controversy in all its dimensions, including its less lucid moments, I like that. The off-stage voices, I have found, are illuminating.
Here, however, the revelations are modest. One never imagines for a moment that Scully appreciated the efforts of investigative reporter J. P. Cahn (who memorably uncovered the confidence swindle behind Behind in a couple of hard-hitting, entertainingly documented True articles[2]), but it is interesting to read this record of his personal complaints about Cahn’s hard-charging approach. And who can blame Scully? Though as late as 1984 Cahn observed that he had always liked Scully personally, clearly the affection was not destined to be reciprocal. At the end of the job, Cahn had exposed Scully as — in the most charitable interpretation — a fool.
Unfortunately, one thing Incident does not address – cannot address by its very purpose, which is to turn dross into gold – is to what degree Scully was a party to the hoax. To his death in 1964, Scully professed his confidence in what his informants, whose probity he endorsed in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence, had told him about the crash in New Mexico along with others, less detailed, in Arizona, Maine, and elsewhere in the late 1940s.[3] My supposition, for which I make no larger truth claim than I can glean from observation of his behavior over the years, is that Scully was initially gulled into acceptance of the yarns, then grew eventually to perceive that he’d been bamboozled. By that time, he was sufficiently invested in the bamboozlement that he felt he could not disown his silly book and the attendant controversy; if it took whopper-forging to sustain his otherwise untenable position, then smalltime grifter Leo A. GeBauer – top magnetic authority “Dr. Gee” in BFS – would become, years later, a composite figure representing not GeBauer but some of the leading magnetic scientists in America. (In reality, a waitress had given GeBauer the nickname “Dr. Gee,” according to GeBauer’s widow, and Scully merely borrowed it for the book.) In other words, Scully was complicit in the hoax. The only remaining question is if that complicity happened sooner or later.
Obligingly, Ramsey devotes an eye-glazing chapter (4: Dr. Gee and the Mystery Men) to profiles of eight leading magnetism-studying scientists of mid-century America. “Without a doubt,” he insists (p. 51), “they possibly knew or worked with Silas Newton, a man of science himself.” Only a book as rhetorically hapless as Incidentcould cram “without a doubt” and “possibly” into the same pronouncement without betraying the faintest cognitive dissonance, and then proceed to characterize lifelong swindler Newton not only as a “man of science” but as a major one at that, sharing his purported colleagues’ access to the U.S. Government’s classified extraterrestrial bodies and technology. Having declared as much, Ramsey feels no obligation to provide a fragment of actual evidence that links these eminent scientists to Newton. For that matter, he fails even to document his repeated assertion that Newton was an imposing figure in the oil industry.
It is Newton who was the intellectual author, if that’s the phrase, of the Aztec legend. His stories would almost certainly have been forgotten months after their concoction if not for Scully. In the consensus-reality version, here highly condensed and necessarily incomplete, is how BFScame to be:
The print record – no prior press references to the described event, said to have taken place on March 25, 1948, have ever been located and are almost certainly nonexistent – begins with Scully’s Variety column of October 12, 1949, where he reports having learned from unnamed “scientists” of two saucer retrievals, one in the Mohave Desert, the other in the Sahara. The latter vanishes from the story hereafter, but in Scully’s account the scientists examined the American ship (intact but for a small hole in a port window), presumed to be from Venus and housing 16 humanlike midgets – all dead and “charred black” – clad in 1890s-style clothing. The ship, it turned out, flew along “magnetic waves.” All of its dimensions are divisible by nine.
BFS, published 10 months later, mentions two Arizona crashes but provides few details beyond the allegation that the bodies were identical to those found at Aztec and that the alien mathematics appeared nine-based.
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| Hart Canyon Crash Site Photo Courtesy Paul Kimball |
It developed that Newton and GeBauer had imparted these tales on to Scully in August 1949. GeBauer had shown Scully parts from the saucer, among them a tubeless “magnetic radio.” It is generally assumed that the location for the story has its origins in a trip GeBauer took early that same month to Hart Canyon near Aztec – a small town in the northwestern Four Corners part of the state – to demonstrate his alleged oil-detection device (the sort of thing known derisively in the industry as a “doodlebug”) to locals. Hart Canyon would evolve into the location where the ship came down and was recovered.
As Cahn and – much later and in considerably more detail – ufologist William L. Moore[4] would determine, Newton and GeBauer had devoted their lives (the smart and polished Newton more lucratively than the relatively slow-witted GeBauer) to various confidence scams, many involving oil-finding schemes. Characterized wryly by Moore as “the type of character best avoided by anyone with money in his pocket,” Newton got into trouble in the 1930s in New York, Kansas, and California for assorted shady dealings. “Newton’s tactic in every case was to suck in additional investors,” Moore wrote, “and pay off the complaining party with the money raised – in exchange, of course, for the dropping of charges against him.” When he died in Los Angeles in 1972, Newton had 40 legal claims filed against him based primarily in fraudulent oil and mining schemes. Two years earlier, he had been indicted for grand theft.
The saucer story was intended to draw the interest of the well-heeled, who would soon learn that GeBauer’s doodlebug (the “magnetic radio”), in reality made up of ordinary mechanical parts (as Cahn determined), as a product of extraterrestrial technology. In other words, if not for Scully’s broadcasting the story to a national and international audience, it would have been no more than another of Newton/GeBauer’s ephemeral efforts to separate fools from their hard-earned.
In attempting to rehabilitate the Aztec “case,” Ramsey falls into the fatal tactical error of defending the indefensible, namely Scully, Newton, and GeBauer, rather than conceding their manifest flaws and drawing up an Aztec episode that is not so fundamentally dependent upon their being who they clearly weren’t.. From one way of viewing it, Ramsey’s approach is ill considered. From another, his book wouldn’t exist without BFS and all it brought into the world. There’s little else outside Scully’s pages, and even there, there isn’t much. One thinks of Woody Guthrie’s famous words: “That stew was so thin even a politician could have seen through it.”
Ramsey’s defense is unlikely to sway any but guile-free readers. To any critics Ramsey responds with the self-serving, unverified words of Scully, Newton, and GeBauer, presented as the equivalent of divine revelation standing unshaken against the darkly driven contrary assertions of Cahn, portrayed relentlessly as pursuing a “petty vendetta” motivated by pure “envy,” or else – and what else? – doing the dirty work of some sinister official agency. To any sensible observer, Cahn emerges as an old-fashioned, aggressive shoe-leather reporter of a type sorely missed in this era of celebrity journalism. If Moore is mentioned, it is so briefly that I missed it in the extensive notes I took during multiple readings of Incident. The back pages that should have been devoted to an index are taken up with irrelevant photographs of historic Aztec.
Affirmation of unswerving faith in Scully’s severely flawed sources is not quite all of Ramsey’s book, however. After half a million dollars and more than two decades, he has his own evidence to put forward. That evidence, he, he boasts, makes the Aztec recovery “true beyond argument.” Or maybe not.
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| Aztec, New Mexico Photo Courtesy Paul Kimball |
First, however, it must be stressed that for as long as they have been interviewed on the subject, Aztec residents have with virtually one voice denied that anything like a UFO retrieval happened there on March 25, 1948, or any other date. That includes the man who was newspaper editor during the period, the 1948 county sheriff, the son who succeeded him in that office (all of whom actively sought out local informants without success), the family that owned the property, and other longtime residents.[5] They first heard of an extraordinary UFO incident through the publicity surrounding Scully’s claims or its revival in subsequent decades. This contrasts tellingly with residents of another New Mexico town, Roswell, to whom an incident many tied to the crash of an unknown object – however conflictingly interpreted — was widely known. No one has to prove that something happened in the Roswell area in July 1947.
The book opens with Ramsey’s two claimants to first-person experience at the site. Both contradict the original – Scully – account in notable ways. Newton’s drawing of the craft, shown to a University of Denver class to whom he lectured sensationally on March 8, 1950, depicts, in researcher Joel Carpenter’s words, “a bizarre contraption that … resembled a can on top of a [spinning] saucer.”[6] The alleged witnesses, on the other hand, speak of a disc with a dome on top and a corresponding one on the bottom. In Scully’s account as related by Dr. Gee, it took a team of scientists two days to break into the craft, where as in Ramsey’s version it took a few hours for locals to gain entry well before the arrival of official personnel. (In both stories a pole poked through a small porthole opening manages to push a door handle, exposing the craft’s interior.)
There are two, and only two, named persons who tell the story from what is supposed to be first-hand experience One, Doug Noland, was interviewed by Ramsey after a “series of strokes.” The other, Ken Farley, since deceased, was “dying of a respiratory disease.” Ramsey has their alleged experiences occurring on the Scully-approved date of March 25, 1948, without ever explaining how they remembered it with such precision decades after the alleged fact. One can only suspect an editorial insertion into the narrative, hardly the first one.
Even as these narratives would have us believe that dozens of civilians congregated at the site, independent testimony to that effect is hard to come by. Ramsey’s rhetoric is slippery enough to mislead a careless reader, one who notices other names appearing in the testimony and is lulled into thinking they amount to verification. A police officer said to be present has “since been identified as Manuel Sandoval” – even in the absence of any testimony from Sandoval (presumably dead or otherwise unavailable; clearly, he was never interviewed) pertaining to the event. Noland’s friend Bill Ferguson “died long before we got involved in our research” (p. 5). Later (p. 201) Ramsey casually remarks that Ferguson “revealed his Aztec knowledge to very few people” while offering no reason, in the first instance but for Noland’s testimony, that Ferguson possessed such “knowledge” and, in the second, that Ferguson told anybody at all.
Two other informants claim to have participated in aspects of the recovery operation. One is identified only as “George,” for whom Ramsey vouches, which – all else considered – does not reassure. In any event, his story of a large operation run out of Roswell’s Walker Air Force Base lacks any supporting evidence. Such supporting evidence, Ramsey notwithstanding, certainly does not come from Fred Reed.
He writes that in April 1948 – take notice of the date – Reed’s military “team was dispatched for a ‘crash clean-up’ as Fred would describe it to me years later [in 1999].” The clean-up, at the Hart Canyon site, was to be of anything tied to the craft (which he later learned was a UFO) and to a subsequent military presence at the site. But this was not the story – as Ramsey does not inform his readers – that Reed provided in a strikingly different account just a few days before he faced questions, perhaps seriously leading ones, from the “investigator.” Here are Reed’s words as expressed in a March 27, 1999, letter to the Aztec newspaper:
Today, my wife and I … went out to the site of UFO crash in late 1948 [note: not March 25] in Hart Canyon….. 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 basically as it had in 1948 when the OSS [Office of Strategic Services, which disbanded in 1945] sent our group there…. 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….
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. Then they got into their saucer and flew away.
While failing to mention that his “witness” (whose eccentric beliefs about aliens and their ways also go missing) had flagrantly contradicted the testimony he solicited from him, Ramsey effects his own (unacknowledged) clean-up. Knowing, one infers, the OSS reference to be unsupportable, he revises Reed’s resume so that “he had worked for the OSS … back in the early 1940s, [and] was now working for the military.” In Incident everything that fails to serve the narrative either undergoes revision or gets dropped into the memory hole.
Among other reported witnesses is a pastor who allegedly confided to a church officer and his son that he had witnessed dead aliens and a saucer at Hart Canyon on (Ramsey would have it, again without justification) on March 25, 1948. Ramsey located the minister son’s, also a pastor, who remarked that he had never heard his father talk about such an experience, though he had expressed interest in press accounts of the Roswell event at the time. An Air Force man who supposedly participated in the Aztec cover-up in 1948 confided it to a fellow Air Force member, an Aztec native, in England in the 1960s. The informant, Donald “Sam” Bass, cannot be found. Experienced investigator Kevin D. Randle learned that the claim related here that Bass was killed in an accident while serving in Vietnam cannot be verified in military records.
In Ramsey’s judgment of his own work, he has established that an Aztec recovery occurred and nobody can any longer argue otherwise, unless I suppose on the payroll of a sinister intelligence agency. Ramsey’s credulity is awesome and bottomless. In a passing aside (p. 203), he outs himself as a member of that small army of far-right cranks who discern a conspiracy to conceal President Obama’s birth certificate, apparently to protect his true identity as a Kenya- born socialist Islamic jihadist. In fairness, Ramsey is not always impossible to take seriously. Earlier in the book (p. 31) he acknowledges that in high school he “was never a superior student” and that he has always been “disappointed in how history is taught.” To those assertions, if to no others, The Aztec Incident offers compelling testimony.
I would like thank Kevin Randle and Joel Carpenter for their generous assistance in the research on which this review draws.
JEROME CLARK
Canby, Minnesota
[1] Stringfield died without ever revealing their identities. To the extent that subsequent investigations were possible, none seemed to lead anywhere, leaving only speculation about the informants’ motives.
[2] “The Flying Saucers and the Mysterious Little Men” and “Flying Saucer Swindlers,” September 1952 and August 1956 issues respectively.
[3] A secret diary/memoir allegedly composed by Scully informant Silas Newton professes uncertainty about Scully’s true attitude. The late ufologist Karl T. Pflock claimed to have examined it under peculiar circumstances, though no one else has seen or been able to verify its existence. See Pflock’s “What’s Really Behind the Flying Saucers? A New Twist on Aztec.” The Anomalist 8 (Spring 2000): 137-161.
[4] See Moore’s “Crashed Saucers: Evidence in Search of Proof,” esp. pages 133-154, in Walter H. Andrus Jr. and Richard H. Hall, eds. MUFON 1985 UFO Symposium Proceedings. Seguin, TX: Mutual UFO Network, 1985.
[5] See Moore, p. 147-148. Also Mike McClellan, “The UFO Crash of 1948 Is a Hoax,” Official UFO, October 1975, pp. 36-37,60-64, and William E. Jones and Rebecca D. Minshall, “Aztec, New Mexico – A Crash Story Reexamined,” International UFO Reporter, September/October 1991, pp. 11-15,23. Ramsey says that the son of the owners of the Hart Canyon property in 1948 refused to speak with him (p. 199), but in 1991 that man, Jack Dunning, told Jones and Minshall that, in their paraphrase, “his father [the now-deceased Harold] knows nothing about such a crash, though they are both aware of the rumors, having met [Aztec crash advocate William] Steinman when he came to Aztec” (p. 15).
[6] See Cahn, 1952, p. 19, for the similar drawing Newton later provided for the True writer.
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After my book, Crash – When UFOs Fall from the Sky was published, Scott Ramsey told one radio show host that he wanted to debate with me about the Aztec UFO crash. I declined, but only because I hadn’t read his book so I wasn’t aware of what Ramsey might have learned. I try to keep an open mind, although the Aztec crash seemed to have been proved a hoax more than once long ago.
Since that time, I have seen Ramsey’s book, spoken with him twice, and exchanged emails with him. I didn’t want to review the book because it seemed to be filled with errors, some minor and some egregious. I suggested that it was a fun little book, which it is in a distorted, perverted sort of way, but it is also a dishonest book, leaving out information that would underscore the false nature of the Aztec case.
There is the story of Fred Reed (although he is identified as Art Reed in, at least, one place on page 198). Reed, according to Ramsey was a former OSS member (the OSS being the Office of Strategic Services, a World War II organization that gathered information about the Axis and operated behind enemy lines), who was sent into Aztec to clean up after the saucer either crashed or landed, depending on which interpretation of the event you chose to believe.
According to Ramsey, in a 1999 interview with Reed, he learned that Reed and his team “…were dispatched to aircraft crash sites from time to time, especially when they were prototype aircraft of something secret…”
Fair enough. Nothing too outrageous here.
Reed said that they were brought in to make it look as if nothing had ever happened. He said that one of those times was “in the area northeast of Aztec, something big had been removed. I can tell you that.”
He talked about seeing large equipment tracks, areas where trees had been damaged and the like. They were told to pick up everything from cigarette butts, c-ration cans, or whatever and bury them 18 inches deep, which doesn’t seem all that deep to me and which would leave the evidence on site for others to find. In fact, had I been in charge, I would have had them remove anything like that rather than leave it behind, but then, that’s just me.
Reed said that he had cleaned up a lot of places over the years. He suggested that some of these were just experimental craft and they wanted nothing left for enemy agents (well, that’s my interpretation of it) to find.
But then Reed told Ramsey, “You have a bunch of young guys traveling and living in motel or hotel rooms, and at night we would talk. We never heard the word Flying Saucer or Flying Disc, but years later I ran into my old C.O. and asked him what the hell crashed up in Aztec back years ago. He responded it was no aircraft, but he hinted to a flying disc.”
Okay, we now have a hint about it, but Ramsey asked Reed to be more specific and according to Ramsey, Reed said, “My. C. O. said it was no aircraft – nothing as far as the U.S. was concerned. He alluded that it was one of those flying discs.”
Overlooking the fact that it seems strange that the C.O. would share classified information with Reed (which does happen after so many years), this is very good information from a first-hand witness… Or is it?
It seems that in the days prior to Ramsey’s interview with Reed, Reed wrote a letter to Aztec Local News. In the March 27, 1999 letter, Reed wrote:
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 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
Note also that he is not ambivalent about the object that crashed. It is alien, and the trees on the south side of the site are open which is “typical” of an extraterrestrial distress signal.
He also wrote, “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.” That observation is missing in his interview with Ramsey about a week later.
Although the letter was written in 1999, it would seem that a document, created prior to the first interview would be valuable. It would suggest that the investigator had not contaminated the witness… except in this case, the story changed radically. The letter should raise red flags about the importance and the reliability of the witness. Such radical alterations suggest that the witness is not being candid with the interviewer and is taking his cues from him.
Paul Kimball, who produced and directed a documentary about the Aztec UFO crash noted on his blog:
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, 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, despite the fact that in his letter, Reed stated that “We had heard that army personnel had rushed in there and cleaned up the site.”
This should drive a stake into the heart of this testimony. Given this letter, written days before the Ramsey interview, it is clear that Reed’s story evolved quickly and drastically. Since Ramsey had a copy of the letter, he should have reported on these problems but did not.
Yes, we all have been caught by “witnesses” who were spinning tales. Frank Kaufmann and Gerald Anderson spring to mind. But in those cases, neither had presented a story that was so clearly changed from the beginning so quickly. Anderson began to adjust his tale, adding information to cover discrepancies, but not within a week of his original interviews. Kaufmann was able to produce documents to support his stories because he had a stash of old military letterhead and a couple of vintage typewriters.
But the other side of that coin is that when I learn that a witness has fabricated some of his testimony, inflated his credentials by claiming military rank and awards that were unearned, or made other statements that can’t be verified, I expose them myself. Here we have a case in which the testimony is at odds with what was written just days earlier, but there is no indication in subsequent reporting that the man has radically altered his statements.
And yes, I know that the telling of a tale from memory often has little twists and turns and that is expected. But this goes far beyond that. While I could accept the OSS statement if the guy had served with them during the war and continued with them through their various permutations, the other changes are just too much. It should have raised red flags, as Paul Kimball suggested, but those seem to have been ignored.
Karl Pflock, to his credit, had made it clear that he couldn’t name the source for the Newton diary and he couldn’t prove there was a diary. He thought the information should be published, probably with the hope that someone else, with similar knowledge would come forward to prove the case. Here, we just have the contradictory information ignored, but it should also be published.
What this means, simply, is that we have a compelling reason to reject the Reed testimony. The story is inaccurate, it is contradictory, and it detracts from the case for the Aztec crash. It should be published so that those who wish to judge the reality of the Aztec crash for themselves will have access to all information available. It shouldn’t be forgotten or ignored by the new primary investigator on the case.
And as an aside, I should make it clear that I do not believe there was a crash, landing, touch down, or anything else involving an alien craft near Aztec in 1948. The story is clearly the invention of a con man who hoped that the idea of alien technology would create interest in his oil finding (doodlebugs) gadgets. That the story survives until today is a testament to the lack of research capabilities of some of those in the UFO field.
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