EDITOR’S NOTE: The following article is based on Behind the Flying Saucers, Scully (1950); Crash at Aztec, A Well Kept Secret, Steinman and Stevens (1986); a lecture by Linda Moulton Howe, Aztec Symposium (2005), and six trips to the symposium by the reviewer.
 

          The Crash-landing of a UFO at Aztec is one of the great stories of 20th century USA. Read on, and see if you agree.
          Columnist Frank Scully was the first writer to alert and inform the public that a disabled flying saucer had landed on a mesa 12 miles northeast of Aztec, N.M. Aztec is a small northern New Mexico town near Farmington.
          In his best-selling book Behind the Flying Saucers (1950), Scully claimed that a saucer had landed and was observed by locals and oil workers on the morning of March 25, 1948. (Aztec was an oil town, like Farmington.) The craft appeared to be intact except for a fracture in one porthole, according to Scully. It was silver in color, circular, and almost 100 ft. in diameter with a dome on top.
          The cabin feature measured 18' in diameter. The craft lay on the mesa, tilted, due to the hump on the bottom. Sixteen bodies -- all dead -- were inside. (Bodies later revised to 14.)
          This was a sensational story and one which many sophisticated folks, who were not there, would find impossible to believe.
          A couple who were at the crash site and lived nearby told locals to stay off the unknown craft, according to Scully. Locals were also told the military had been notified. Later the couple was taken to their nearby home and sworn to secrecy.

Military and Scientific Teams arrive
          Within a short time a helicopter was heard flying overhead. A security team arrived and took charge. Onlookers were divided into groups, sworn to secrecy, names taken and folks ordered away from the area.
          Hours later, a team of scientists arrived. They had flown into Durango, Colo., and had been shuttled to the site, probably by auto. After marveling at the uniqueness of the circular craft, they set about gaining entry. Using a pole, they gained entry by widening a cracked porthole, pushing a button or lever, and a door opened on the side of the craft, according to Scully. Most of this is narration, hearsay and undocumented and sounds like science fiction, doesn’t it?
          Scully reported that he obtained his information from Silas Newton, an oil man and investor, and from a mysterious “Dr. Gee.” He further explained that Dr. Gee was really a composite of eight scientists who were at the crash site, some of whom Scully talked with. Dr. Gee was revealed to be an Arizona magnetics engineer who was an associate of one of the eight scientists, but the other names were never revealed.
          In a strange turn of events, Scully’s story was sought after by a San Francisco journalist by the name of Cahn, who wanted to buy Scully’s story. Scully refused to sell and Cahn turned jealous and vowed to “get” Scully.
          Cahn reported Scully to the FBI and other government agencies. He wrote an article for True Magazine and labeled Scully’s story a hoax.
          Cahn also prevailed upon the Denver D.A. to charge Scully with a crime-fraud. A trial ensued and Newton, Scully and “Dr. Gee” (Lee GeBauer) were convicted by a jury. They paid court costs and received no other penalty.
          The Federal Government declared the whole case a hoax. The case died, just like Roswell died after the army said the crash at Roswell was a weather balloon. The public, including many UFO researchers, accepted the verdict. It was a hoax, people thought; case closed.
          For the record, Newton, GeBauer and Scully maintained for the rest of their lives that they had learned the truth about UFOs and shared it with a public who deserved to know.

UFO Crash at Aztec, A Well Kept Secret
          In 1981, an aerospace engineer by the name of William Steinman decided to take a look at the Aztec case. Steinman described himself as a skeptic, but he had read Scully’s book and it raised questions in his mind. Did anything really happen in that small town?
          Steinman went to Aztec, N.M., and began by interviewing locals who knew about the story. At a yard sale he learned where the crash site was. He went there and observed charred rocks and a heavy concrete slab and he noted the remoteness of the site.
          He listened and asked questions as locals replayed the story for him.
          A UFO had landed or crash-landed at Hart Canyon, was recovered by the military and taken away. The craft was circular, silver in color, 100 ft. in diameter, with a dome on top and bottom. One porthole was fractured. Over a period of three days, the craft was dismantled and hauled at night by large flatbed trucks under tarps to a secure location thought to be Los Alamos. The area was secured by troops for two miles in each direction.
          Steinman also reported that the craft had been detected by three radars operating in the Four Corners area. One of these was of a new type and more powerful than the others. One or more of these radars may have interfered with the ship’s flight mechanism and caused it to pancake down to the mesa, according to Steinman.
          The radar stations notified higher headquarters. A special army unit, the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit (don’t you love that name?), operating out of Camp Hale, Colo., was ordered to the scene. A team of scientists was also assembled and sent to the crash site. The scientists included two of the country’s foremost men of science, Dr. Robert Oppenheimer and Dr. Vanevar Bush, according to Steinman.
          There is some documentation in Steinman’s book for some of these statements. Here is a telex sent from Camp Hale, Colo., to headquarters, Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2 (Army Intelligence), Washington, D.C., at the time of the recovery mission and reproduced on page 45 of Steinman’s book:

“FLYING OBJECT OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN RECOVERED NEAR AZTEC, NM. CRAFT APPROX. 100 FEET DIAMETER, 30 FEET HEIGHT, ONE WINDOW, PORT BLOWN, BODIES ON BOARD. ALL OCCUPANTS DEAD, 4 FT. HEIGHT, OVERSIZED HEADS, CRAFT HAS METALIC SKIN THIN AS NEWSPAPER, BUT TWO TOUGH TO PENETRATE BY CONVENTIONAL TOOLS, PRIVATE PROPERTY WAS PURCHASED FROM LOCALS IN ORDER TO FACILITATE TRANSPORTING OF THE CRAFT TO BASE.”

          There are other documents, exhibits and drawings scattered throughout the Steinman research text relating to more crashed saucers, MJ12 members, medical reports of bodies, Freedom of Information requests, security considerations. On the whole, good documentation but often hard to read, assimilate, and connect up with the text. This is a research book, not a relaxed read.
          The scientist who leaked the whole Aztec crash story to “Dr. Gee” (Leo GeBauer), according to Steinman and Wendelle Stevens (publishers of the book), is named in and pictured in Crash at Aztec. Stevens had also been researching the case.
As readers of The Star Beacon well know, the whole UFO field is complicated and infused with disinformation and secrecy. Much of the story is classified top secret or above and remains classified to this day.
          Steinman wrote to another scientist, Dr. Robert I. Sarbacher, who served on various boards and committees with Dr. Bush and other scientists who were believed to have been at the crash site and participated in the recovery. Steinman sought information from Sarbacher by letter and phone about the crash of 1948, 33 years later. Eventually, Sarbacher responded.
          The crash was real, he told Steinman, and Drs. Bush, Oppenheimer and John Van Neuman, the country’s most famous mathematician and computer designer, were present, he wrote.
Steinman writes that he was thrilled to receive Sarbacher’s letter. It was conformation of years of research. The letter is reproduced on pages 324-325 of the text.
          Eventually Steinman ran out of time and money. He contacted Wendelle Stevens, veteran UFO researcher (now deceased), who agreed to publish Steinman’s research along with his own. This resulted in their privately published book, UFO Crash at Aztec, A Well Kept Secret (1986).
          It is well worth a read and study, but I’ll save you the trouble. In the book, the Aztec story is related as true, although covered up by the government.
          Steinman ended his first research trip to Aztec by reporting on the large black helicopters that followed him as he pursued his research, and flew over his home in California when he returned there.

Linda Moulton Howe Presentation at Aztec
          In March 2005, Linda Moulton Howe, longtime UFO researcher, was a speaker at the Aztec conference. For years a story had circulated among UFO buffs like myself that there had been a huge flyover of UFOs over Farmington in 1950, two years after the alleged crash at Aztec of 1948.
          Howe produced the front page of the Farmington Daily Times for March 18, 1950. She held the newspaper up. The banner headline screamed at the small gathering of the public and researchers, my wife and I included.

HUGE SAUCER ARMADA JOLTS FARMINGTON

          In the story that followed, scores of people in Farmington described the objects in the skies as “silvery disks,” many flying in formation. One observer, Brooks -- a former WWII tail gunner -- said the objects could not be aircraft because of the way they maneuvered, made right-angle turns, and stood on their edges. Howe produced other creditable witnesses who verified these observations, either on tape or in person.
          Howe brought a man named Eaton to the conference from Pennsylvania. Eaton, age 29 at the time of the great Aztec/Farmington flyover, was shocked at what he saw in the skies overhead -- silvery discs, perhaps 100 or more, one a red/orange color, moving fast back and forth over Farmington. Eaton had been in the Navy Air corps and knew his aircraft, he commented. Eaton also spoke of the large cigar-shaped craft he had seen over Farmington traveling with five smaller UFOs. Sounds like a memorial flyover to me, I recall thinking, like a flyover I participated in during my Air Force days.
          Military officers showed up in Farmington, Eaton said; they told witnesses, “They are military experimental aircraft -- forget about them.” “No. they aren’t,” Eaton answered. One military guy said they may be balloons. Eaton said, “I don’t drink and they aren’t balloons.”
          Howe attacked the government policy of silence and denial about UFOs in her talk. Knowledge gives us strength, she said. “We are not alone.”
          Author of at least four books and her documentary “Alien Harvest,” Howe’s Web site is at EarthFiles.com.

          In the next issue (February 2013): Part 2, The Aztec Incident, (2011), authors Scott and Suzanne Ramsey and associates bring this case out of the fog of cover-up and into the clear light of eyewitness testimony and solid research.

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