Michael McClellan and Matt Graeber
Magonia 89, August 2005
The 1948 Aztec, NM downed UFO retrieval story is one of saucerdom’s legends that seems to have defied all the attempts to explain it away as a clumsy and very obvious hoax. However, the many “resurrections” of this story, in various forms, is just about as remarkable and interesting as the original tale itself. In fact, one fellow on the Internet describes it as the “Dracula” of saucerdom which simply will not die no matter how may stakes are driven through its heart.
First touted by two con men who actually were convicted of their fraudulent schemes (perpetrated in connection with the alleged UFO incident, reversed ET engineering devices, and the rediscovery of the Rangely Oil Fields in Colorado), the story has been revised, fine-tuned and sporadically presented to an unsuspecting American public and uncautious media people.
Like the Roswell, NM, UFO incident, The city of Aztec now has its own festival celebrating the non-incident’s anniversary; and has even managed to build a brand new library (costing 1.9 million dollars) from the tourist monies spent at the nation’s other alleged place of alien demise. As one sceptical Texan* aptly put it, “Yeah, that’s mighty big bucks in those crash sites of imagination…mighty big bucks indeed!”
Interestingly, rumours on the Internet proclaim that plans are underway to memorialise the Carbondale, PA saucer crash of 1974 at a “Mysteries Museum” to be established somewhere in Lackawanna County, PA. The Carbondale crash doesn’t boast of alien bodies but, it reportedly has lots of saucers flitting in and out of inter-dimensional gateways (or vortexes) in the area.
As one realises, memories fade quickly in normal life, and even more quickly in the land of the UFO subculture. The question is whether or not the faded memories are genuine, or if they are “conveniently selective” to the numerous “hucksters” of the Aztec story.
It would not serve us well to simply name the individuals involved in the present-day rehashing of this continuing UFO myth. Nor, would it be overly enlightening to revisit the original 1950 Frank Scully book on the incident and show how distorted even it has become. This article is dedicated to the memory and researches of Michael McClellan who spent a great deal of time investigating the Aztec incident as it was presented in 1974 by Robert Spencer Carr, a retired professor of mass communications at the University of Southern Florida. So, I will not whip out my ol’ aerosol can of agent orange and attempt to defoliate the dense forest of UFOOLogy that IS the Aztec story of today.
Rather, I will take you back 30 years, to a time when my dear departed friend Mike McClellan methodically investigated the then 27 year old Aztec downed saucer yarn. Mike had written several articles for magazines and the APRO (Aerial Phenomena Research Center) journal during the mid-seventies on the Aztec case and I’m happy that this draft from one of those essays has survived for Magonia’s readers to peruse and enjoy..
So, here’s what Mike had to say (unedited and unabridged) regarding his inquiry into the Aztec, New Mexico flying saucer retrieval story and the charlatan who was then bandying it about the country. Mike was a member of both APRO and UFORIC at the time. (Commentaries in italics are mine, M.G.)
Aztec, Michael McClellan. 1975
The obituary columns of our daily newspapers alphabetically list the demise of individuals who, unless celebrities, are noteworthy of no more than an inch or so of space declaring that their existence of being had departed its mortal shell. The shell decays and disappears. For a brief moment in time, lives are disrupted – however, soon return to normal. Death temporarily takes a back seat. Mortal matters take precedence over memories.
Probably the most famous and remembered death is that of Jesus Christ’s. From that point historians may argue over the second most important death in the world. Most likely they would never be in agreement. Or is it possible that the second to the thirteenth important and historical deaths may have occurred very recently? Even in our century? In fact, could they have occurred twenty-seven years ago? According to Robert Spencer Carr, a retired professor, they may have.
At a press conference in 1974, Carr revealed information which either surpasses all other news of our day or is the fantasy of an imaginative mind comparable to Isaac Asimov or Gene Rodenberry (Star Trek).
My primary encounter with Carr’s story was while I was stirring coffee and listening to an excited secretary tell about a spaceship which had reportedly crashed in a desert area. Lifeless alien occupants had been removed from the craft and preserved. She had heard the story on the radio and, while not sure of the details, thought that it recently occurred.
Robert Spencer Carr was a kindly old gent who looked very much like a Kentucky Colonel. He had the ability to tell his story so convincingly that he appeared on numerous syndicated radio and TV talk shows. He also lectured at quite a number of universities throughout the country and caused something of a stir in the UFO community too.
With the intention of reaching the crux of the story, I began an investigation. If there was any hint of truth to the account it must be the news story of the century. This, according to Carr, who has known of the incident for some twenty-five years during which time he been an undercover investigator for the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP).
Fearing possible ridicule, embarrassment, and loss of credibility with students and associates which would jeopardise his position, he decided to remain silent until he recently retired as professor of mass communications at the University of South Florida. Carr says the year was 1948, the month February, the day probably the 13th.
Three radar stations were tracking an unknown at 90,000 feet altitude. The stations were located at Edwards Air Force Base, California, Colorado, and Northern Colorado. The object was making 18,000 knots per hour which is really quite fast even in those days. It stopped at about 10,000 feet where it went out of control, circled, and fluttered helplessly to the ground.
Because three radar stations were involved, triangulation was possible and showed that the object had touched down three miles west of Aztec, New Mexico, south of the Colorado line. The landing was a soft one, the craft being on automatic pilot. A tripod extended from the craft and the extraterrestrial ship came to rest on the desert.
Law enforcement officers, including local sheriffs, rushed to the scene.(According to Carr, the old timers there remember the incident very well.) The lawmen, guns drawn, approached the thirty foot saucer-shaped disc and looked inside the craft. That moment could have only been electrifying as the officers saw through a hole the size of a thumb in the dome of the craft. Twelve little men slumped over their instruments.
The aliens had died from decompression, probably due to the hole; a death probably similar to that of the recent Russian cosmonaut’s misfortune. Shortly after the landing, military aircraft began appearing in the area. The roads to the area were cordoned off by air police. Residents from as far as Farmington, New Mexico journeyed to the area, their curiously aroused by the unusual number of planes.
As one can immediately see, this story has elements quite similar to that of the Roswell UFO Incident which, at the time of Mike’s writing, were not yet revealed to Stanton Friedman by Retired Major Jesse Marcel who was the Intelligence Officer at the Roswell Army Air Force base in 1947.
Officials managed to get the door of the spacecraft open and the twelve bodies were removed. They were all males, their weight ranging from eighty to ninety pounds. Their build was fairly muscular and solid. They had light hair of varying shades, their eyes were blue. They all wore the same dress, a blue uniform with no insignia .
Carr’s descriptions of the aliens is not a carbon or should I say Xerox copy of the Roswell extraterrestrial cadavers, but there are some similarities.
The alien bodies were loaded aboard an aeroplane and flown to Edwards Air Force Base as was their saucer. They were later moved to Wright Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton,Ohio where Carr alleges they remain. One of the bodies was selected for autopsy and six surgeons were flown in from Washington, D.C. A middle range specimen was chosen and his organs laid out on a table.
This senario also has Roswell similarities which include the unexplained ability of the military to load a spacecraft that is reportedly wider in diameter than the opening of any then-existing aircraft’s side, rear cargo, or bomb-bay doors.
The blood type was “O” and the genes and chromosomes would have matched with those of Earth women. Verification of the incident is offered by Carr. He was at his job in Florida some years back when he overheard a biologist (who was a member of an elite inner circle of knowledgables) read a report to Carr’s chief describing characterististics of the aliens. The biologist, incidentally, is now deceased.
Carr has spoken personally with an officer who was present in Aztec when the extraterrestrial bodies were removed from their vehicle. The officer assisted with the measuring, weighing, and loading of the little men.
A military nurse who was present at the autopsy told Carr when he spoke with her that she knew of no reason why she should take the secret to her grave. She was seventy-three years old when she made her revelation to Carr. Unfortunately, Carr is unable to reveal the names of the people with whom he had spoken. Their identities cannot be revealed, since doing so would cause them irreparable damage.
The introduction of the mysterious nurse in Carr’s story predates the report of a similar person in the Roswell “star-eyewitness” Glenn Dennis’ story..
Luckily, Carr was a security guard who spent three or six months of his service guarding hanger #18 at Wright Patterson. (On one radio interview Carr stated three months. He told me six months.)
Carr told Mike that his sergeant’s name at Wright Patterson was Arthur Bray.
Bray is a retired master sergeant; he was with the Air Police prior to to his retirement in 1970 and was an eyewitness to the storage of the bodies. Carr related that Bray “Had the key to the (hanger) door and let people in and out.”
Bray fled to Canada and subsequently returned to a Midwest State. Unluckily, the only Arthur Bray there turned out to be an Army man who retired in 1940. He had no knowledge of the incident and was never stationed at Wright Patterson.
Mike spent quite a bit of time and money on this investigation and I even came across an Arthur Bray of Canada in late 1974 who was a UFO researcher. When I asked him about being a sergeant at Wright Patterson he just laughed and said he was unaware of Carr’s usage of the name Arthur Bray in his saucer story. The Canadian Mr.Bray and I shared investigative data on a UFO/Pickup truck pursuit case that reportedly occurred in Ottawa on the night of Nov. 8th,1973. The case received wide publicity in the U.S. and Canada. Mr.Bray was the first researcher to interview the witnesses.
In addition, says Carr, there are several hundred other people who have the inside information. They consist of academic men, anthropologists, aeronautical engineers, Army intelligence officers, electronics experts, metallurgists. and so the list goes. Again, no names are available and Mr. Carr is the only individual who has dared to surface with the incredible story.
Truman was most assuredly informed of the incident but, according to Carr, never came to see the space craft or its occupants. What he actually knew is moot, since he is no longer available for comment. Moreover, Carr stated that Eisenhower saw the ship and its occupants in April after his inauguration. As Carr relates, Eisenhower was at Palm Springs, California. Using a golf outing as a ploy, he boarded a helicopter and was flown to view the remains.
The president decided the American public was not yet ready for a disclosure of such gravity and the discovery remained top secret.
This, too, smacks of the Roswellian folklore that many have come to know and embrace as fact. But, in one account, Truman did view the craft and the alien bodies; and Eisenhower was the one who feigned a golf outing and disappeared for 12 hours to not only see the aliens, he allegedly made a deal with living extraterrestrials at nearby Muroc, Air Force Base. His alleged twelve-hour absence from the prying eyes of reporters was attributed to a bogus emergency visit to a dentist’s office.
Carr advises that forty reporters knew of Eisenhower’s flight and were there to see him leave in the helicopter. Apparently, he feels that the presence of the reporters and their witnessing of his departure lends credibility to his yarn. The names of the reporters have not yet been revealed. Even if they are we have proof that Ike took a ride in a helicopter, nothing more. The bodies are now in cryogenic suspension, a sophisticated form of freezing, somewhere in Wright Patterson.
Where did Carr acquire his original information? As he explained, he received a manuscript of a book prior to publication from Frank Scully. Scully was a writer for a magazine “Variety” and devoted an entire chapter of his book, Behind the Flying Saucers (published in 1950 by Henry Holt and Company) to the incident. By his own words, Carr says the Frank Scully story is true. Let us briefly examine Scully’s story.
In 1949 Scully relates that he had learned of a man whom he elects to call “Dr.Gee”. The name is a pseudonym the reason for which we shall later learn. Dr.Gee was a government scientist engaged in magnetic research. His credentials consisted of several degrees from higher institutions among which were Armour Institute, University of Berlin, and Creighton University.
Dr.Gee told Scully the story of the first flying saucer to land in the United States. (One had landed in the Sahara Desert before this.) He knew firsthand because he was called upon by the government and assigned to go to the crash site and examine the space craft, together with several other magnetic scientists.
The UFO had been detected by two telescopes , its position determined, and its touch-down site estimated. It was found east of Aztec, New Mexico in a high-plains area which was very rocky.
The scientists decided to observe first and watch for two days. Nothing appeared to happen inside the craft, and the men felt that approach was safe for further investigation. No door was apparent, and the outer skin had no markings. There was, however, a broken porthole. The porthole appeared to be glass, but when the scientists examined it closely, it was different from any other glass known in this country.
The scientists rammed a hole through the defective porthole and looked inside. They counted sixteen bodies. They ranged in height from thirty -six to forty-two inches. As the scientists probed and prodded, they touched a knob which caused the ship’s door to spring open. The little bodies were removed and laid out on the ground. One scientist remarked that their dress was similar to the 1890′s style.
The bodies were perfectly normal, not being midgets. Their skin, however, was charred a dark colour , resembling that of chocolate. The bodies must have been burned, speculated Gee, by air rushing in through the defective porthole or by some other propulsion or pressure malfunction . They were killed by burns or the bends. Dr.Gee said that the point in space at which the little men met their fate had not been determined.
Gee thought the little men probably came from Venus. That was more likely than Mars because inhabitants of Mars would probably be three or four times larger than humans. He said that some of them had been dissected and, except for their size, they appeared to be perfectly normal human beings. Age was judged to be thirty-five to forty years, according to Earth standards. Their teeth were in perfect condition with no cavities or fillings.
Their clothing was dark blue with metal buttons. There were no insignias on the sleeves or caps. Food wafers were found in the ship and given to guinea pigs. The animals seemed to thrive on them. Water was also found, however, it was twice as heavy as normal water. The doctors noted that some water in Norway was similar.
Dr.Gee was not yet through with his astounding revelations. Not only was an alien space ship recovered but, rather, three! There was even a fourth, but that one got away before the scientists could even photograph it. The second space ship which landed in nearly the same condition as the first had its door open. The sixteen little bodies inside were not charred or burned. Medical opinion was that these bodies, when found, had not been dead for much more than two or three hours.
It had landed near a proving ground in Arizona. It was smaller than the first, being only seventy-two feet in diameter. (The first was ninety-nine and 99/100 feet in diameter.) The third ship landed in Paradise Valley above Phoenix, Arizona. There were only two crew members inside. One humanoid was halfway out the door and the other was seated within. Again, both were dead. This ship was thirty-six feet in diameter.
Enter Silas Mason Newton.
Newton was a close associate of Dr.Gee’s (an oil millionaire, according to Robert Carr) who wanted to see the ships. Alas, by this time government secrecy had intervened and Newton was out of luck. Dr.Gee had, however, secured a tubeless radio, some small discs, gears, and other assorted devices which had been taken from the the space ships.
The story now takes on elements of “Reversed Engineering Possibilities”, which clearly predate the Col. Philip Corso’s “Reversed Engineering” claims that captured the imaginations of many Roswellian UFOlogists more than three decades later.
The ratio of the gears was an enigma to earth engineers, defying more than 150 tests to break down their metal. There was no play in the gears and they did not appear to be lubricated. Dr.Gee constructed an antenna for the radio and was able to receive a sort of high “C” hourly, at fifteen minutes past the hour.
The Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper carried an article on page four of its July 28th, 1952 issue describing more details on the Scully story which it received from True Magazine. On March 8th, 1950, according to the Inquirer, Newton spoke to an elementary science class at the University of Denver. Half the class apparently believed the story by Newton of Dr.Gee’s discoveries. The story was out.
At one of Newton’s con game appearances on campus, his talk was suddenly cut short by Dr.Gee who excitedly pointed to his wrist watch and bellowed, “Great Scott, we’ve got to get to the airport!” Newton hurriedly gathered his papers and dashed out the door as students and faculty looked on. Some would-be investor in the auditorium asked, “What was that fellows name”, and another person replied,”I think it was Scott something”.Interestingly, with the advent of the Internet, this and many other UFO crash stories have grown into something of a sub-cultural cottage industry. I discovered that “aztec, nm. ufo crash” produced 128 pages of postings to examine, while Roswell had 644. Carbondale, PA. had a scant 10, as did Spitsbergen, Norway. While Kingman, Arizona was represented by 28 pages to scroll upon. Curiously, Kecksberg, PA displayed just 3 pages even though it had received national exposure on TV’s very popular “Unsolved Mysteries” program. The date of my very cursory internet survey was May 13,2005.
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| SILAS NEWTON |
Interestingly, when Scully’s book was published, all of the principals in chapter twelve seemed to mysteriously drop out of sight. J. P. Cahn of the San Francisco Chronicle on an assignment for True magazine decided to put Newton’s lecture to the test. He found that Scully and Newton were acquainted and were, in fact, friends. Scully admitted that all of his information was second- hand, but he did seem to sincerely believe Newton.
A meeting was set up and the three – Scully, Newton, and Cahn – met at Scully’s home. After what may have been small talk, Newton produced a handkerchief and dumped from it some metal objects. Two of the objects were gears. Two were what appeared to be small metal discs. The gears were not similar, although the discs matched. They were unmarked with the exception of surface scratches.
Before the meeting was over, Newton briefly showed Cahn a photograph of an object which had a resemblance of an umbrella lying on its side. He hinted that people would pay a good deal of money to see something like that. Newton refused to part with the objects he had shown Cahn and further refused to reveal Dr.Gee’s true identity.
Cahn investigated Newton’s background and, as far as he could determine, the whole Newton Oil Company was two small offices connected by a waiting room. Newton had boasted of rediscovering the Rangely oil fields in Colorado. When Cahn researched this misinformation with Richard D. White, Exploration Superintendent for a subsidiary of Standard Oil Company of California, he was told that Newton brought a lot of people out in big cars. With regard to rediscovering Rangely, it was so much baloney.
More background checks found Newton with a record for larceny in New York. The complaint had been discharged. However, in another case, Newton was discovered to have been involved with shady stock practices. Now more determined to get to the bottom of the entire story, Cahn arranged a meeting with Newton and told him that $10,000.00 had been authorised to be put in escrow with another $25,000.00 to be paid upon publication of Newton’s story as soon as reasonable proof was produced. Cahn had, beforehand, counterfeited a disc similar to those Newton had shown to him and was able to make a switch. Newton didn’t know the difference when, after appearing to examine them, Cahn handed them back to Newton.
The discs were reported to have been subjected to 10,000 degrees heat in Dr.Gee’s laboratory without melting. The metal disc kidnapped by Cahn was taken to Stanford University for an analysis. It was plain aluminium , 99.5 percent pure, and the type used in making nothing more than pots and pans. It, incidentally, melted at the Stanford University at 657 degrees Fahrenheit.
Scully finally admitted to Cahn that the mysterious Dr.Gee was none other than Dr. Leo A. Gebauer, with whom he had been in telephone contact a number of times. Not yet completely satisfied, Cahn took a trip to Arizona where he confronted Mr. Gebauer. Cahn discovered that instead of holding the alleged degrees mentioned by Scully, he held only an electrical engineering degree from Louis Institute of Technology in Chicago.
In addition, Cahn found that from 1943 to 1945 when Dr.Gee was supposed to have been heading 1,700 scientists on secret government work (according to Scully in his book) he was actually chief of AiResearch Co. in Phoenix and Los Angeles. His job was to keep the lab machinery going as a kind of maintenance man.
The discrepancies between Scully’s story and Carr’s are numerous and obvious. While Scully says that the Aztec bodies were charred and burnt, Professor Carr implies that they were fairly fresh. Scully clearly says in his book that there were thirty-four little bodies; while Carr recognises that there was another crashed ship besides the one in Aztec. He says there were only burned remains in the other crash and no entire life forms. Were there thirty-four bodies? Or, were there twelve?
Coral Lorenzen, Aerial Phenomenon Research Organisation (APRO) spoke with Sheriff Dan Sullivan of Aztec, New Mexico recently. According to Mrs. Lorenzen, “I personally talked to … Sullivan …and he told me that since the story broke, he’s had deputies out combing the area for any information which would prove or disprove Carr’s claims. His own father was sheriff at the time and had no recollection of a crash, aircraft being in the area, or anything else that would support Carr’s claims”. Nothing has been found.
This writer interviewed several highly reliable “old-timers” from Aztec. Deputy Sheriff Bruce Sullivan, Dan Sullivan’s brother, also works out of Aztec. Bruce Sullivan would have been seventeen or eighteen years old and attending the Aztec High School during this alleged incident. He has lived in Aztec all his life and “Never knew or heard anything about it”.
The deputy said that his department has received many phone calls about the alleged incident but he personally knows nothing about it. His father was sheriff at the time and never mentioned it. If it had happened, he knows that his father would have mentioned it. This may lead to a little confusion as to what sheriffs went out to the craft and examined it with drawn guns.
Lyle McWilliams has been around Aztec for a good number of years. He has been in business, according to his own testimony, “Ever since I’ve been old enough” and was about thirty-two years old in 1948. He recalls nothing of the incident except for the original claim and has always treated it as a joke. He feels that the story may have been revived for “ulterior motives”. Bruce Sullivan and Lyle McWilliams are neither believers nor disbelievers in UFOs.
Marguerite Knowlton has lived near Hart Canyon (the alleged scene of the crash) since 1946 and is sixty years old. Nothing to her knowledge transpired in the canyon. Mrs. Knowlton suggested that I talk with George Brown who owned the Aztec Newspaper in 1948. From my conversation with him, he impressed me as someone who must have been a colourful individual. He recalled a tongue-in-cheek article he had written for the newspaper years ago describing his abduction by little green men from space.
Brown had been in Aztec for seventy years. He ran the paper for forty-four years. “Nobody could have gotten in there and out (Hart Canyon) without attracting a lot of attention. It’s rough country and there’s only one nsrsid16528600 highway in there”. Brown stated emphatically that the road had never been travelled by anyone. He became intoxicated enough with the story to speak with what he estimates to be over one hundred people including cowboys, indeed, lawmen, and ranchers. None of them recalls the UFO landing or subsequent military movement.
If anyone had motive to make good use of the Aztec story, Mr. Brown would head the list. Instead, no sensational accounts of the landing appeared in the paper. Had the story been true, no newsman worth his salt would have passed such an opportunity.
The Robert Spencer Carr story parallels that of a very old, thinly worn, tattered shoe. It has been kicked around for years. Every so often, someone takes this old shoe out of a dark corner in the closet. He dyes it a new colour, waxes and buffs it to a high gloss. New heels and soles are added. Bright new shoestrings once again tie it together. The old shoe becomes a new version to fit the present modern-day style. More usage is gotten from it. It is used until it is worn out. After it has served its purpose, it returns to the closet until someone again decides the time has come for a new version.
While our present-day “throw-away” society probably wouldn’t go through the bother and expense of refurbishing an old pair of shoes, back when Mike wrote this article it was a common, but declining, practice to do so. Nevertheless, the analogy is ” absolutely correct” in regard to the sporadic refurbishing of the Aztec story over the years by Robert Spencer Carr (1973-74), Willian Steinman and Wendelle Stevens(1986), Linda Mouton Howe and Art Bell (1998), and most recently by Stanton Friedman, whom for an additional twenty-five dollars above the cost of his DVD on the case, will personally autograph your copy of it. Of course, there are numerous additional offerings of the story on the ever Wild and Wacky Web.
Those who have seen or talked with Carr must be impressed with his fatherly-like patience. He appears to be a kindly man with a purity of purpose. He would have us believe his motives are no more than to make contact with the superior intelligences frequenting our Earthly air space.
He abhors the “lurid sensationalism – the vulgar sensationalism” that the media has afforded him. Yet, he is lecturing frequently at Florida universities and has appeared, according to his own statistics, on 144 radio shows, 33 television appearances, and 50 newspaper interviews; in addition to a well-attended symposium he recently held in Florida. His new book on UFOs is near completion and is forthcoming. He employs an agent to book his lectures.
Carr’s brainchild is a plan to lure the UFOs to a safe landing place in New Mexico close to Los Alamos. He plans to do this using decoy flying saucers, signal images, and other devices to coax the extraterrestrials to an Earthly visit. He wants presidential initiative aimed at setting up an official meeting with the aliens on a mountain top to find out what they want.
Modern-day UFO coaxers like Dr. Steven Greer’s group also attempt to lure UFOs with light signals and telepathy – while famed abductee Betty Hill had a property ringed with lights to attract UFOs to a landing. Of course, the sci-fi motion picture “Close Encounter of the Third Kind” (1977) featured contact with aliens on a mountain top in the state of Wyoming.
He (Carr) envisions Kissinger sitting at a card table with intergalactic envoys lashing out agreement details. Carr, who is without a doctorate and yet advertises himself as “Dr.Carr” at his symposium, remind me of a space age, one man medicine show peddling his miracle cure-all bottle of elixir with the aid of electronic communication.
Although he claims to be a NICAP investigator, the director tells me that while he may have been in years past, he is now a only a member. A ten dollar bill will purchase annual membership for anyone. At the time I spoke with the director, he told me that a letter was being prepared to Carr warning him to stop the use of NICAP’s name in connection with his “Little Men” story. The director reminded me that Carr’s membership is also revocable and excommunication the next step if deemed necessary. As one New England* Ufologist aptly put it, “That sounds kinda serious!”
In the final analysis, I may be found to have been too harsh on Carr. Perhaps he subscribes to “the end justifies the means” philosophy which unfortunately requires building a solid house on a foundation of silt and sand. There is a heavy moral here. UFOs are an unknown phenomena. They do exist. Files of investigative organisations are bursting with evidence of UFOs. Reliable witnesses, photographs, physical evidence, burn marks, and landing impressions bear mute testimony to their existence.
Whether they be Klass-type plasmas or Menzolian temperature inversions. Whether they are from an unknown dimension or hallucinations of Jungian minds conjuring round, flattened, illuminated objects projected by the mind’s eye into space. Or, whether they are real, tangible, solid objects controlled by intelligent minds who have developed a mode on galactic travel technologically-advanced that the embryonic Earthly mind of science cannot even begin to conceive of their workings. The UFO phenomenon exists! It is real and apparently does not prefer to go away.
Without qualification, no real “rally ’round the flag” kind of scientific study has ever been mustered. APRO has existed for nearly a quarter of a century; and for that same period, the founders have painstakingly devoted their lives to resolve this enigma. Other organisations have devoted endless hours of research – still no answer.
Why no answer? No money! The civilian organisations have attempted to function by means of membership dues and subscriptions. Their entire income is a mere pittance compared to recent funding by the U.S. government to study the antics of Frisbees or research butterflies.
At the time of this article’s writing, many UFO groups were attempting to chide and instigate a re-evaluation of the UFO situation by the federal government. The U.S. Air Force’s Project Blue Book (1951-1969) program was believed to be riddled with errors and the Condon Committee’s efforts (1966-1968) were suspected of negative bias, too.
Every government subsidised programme for the research of UFOs has been one with a negative mind to start. The researchers began the study already knowing the answer: “Insufficient Evidence”. Insufficient evidence to continue the study. But the evidence continues to rear its head and cry out, “I am here!”
Young organisations such as UFORIC attempt new studies with new ideas. Good ideas. The result? The necessary scientific minds and the funds with which to complete the work and the project are not there. The point is, the federal government must be the one to initiate the study. But, the committee, if one is ever to exist, must be free and unshackled from political pressures whether Democrat or Republican, Army or Navy.
Of course, there will be those who will remind us of the poverty and starvation which needs to be first resolved; and their ancestors in Spain where finances were made available to Christopher Columbus and the prudish decried the foolish waste of funds to send sailors and ships to their doom at the edge of the flat Earth.
Everyone knew no more continents existed. But the queen possessed two very valuable and perhaps rare conditions of mind, wisdom, and foresight. Would that our leaders would learn from our four hundred year old history lesson.
Mike and I had several discussions concerning funding matters and it was agreed that government funding would probably never be realised without some sort of strings being attached in one way or another. Of course, the raising of privately-donated research funds using an aggressive Internet campaign was completely unimaginable in 1974.Interestingly, the FUFOR (Fund for UFO Research) group which had depended on private contributions for it’s survival, recently made an urgent appeal for contributions to avoid bankruptcy. A portion of the group’s notice appeared in Jim Moseley’s “Saucer Smear” newsletter recently (Vol.52 No.4, May 1,2005). It read, “The dearth of serious interest in UFOs on the part of the public, the press, and the scientific community deepens; as does the financial bind in which the Fund finds itself.The long-term, near-total absence of the subject in the major news media cannot help give the impression that either UFOs are no longer being seen or that the mystery of their nature has been solved. Neither conclusion is even close to correct. The stack of genuinely baffling, unexplained cases continues to grow.The source of major funding have faded away, and so individuals will have to carry a larger part of the load. Barring an unexpected influx of funds, we will soon be on the brink of bankruptcy…(Of course, it might also be a fact that the number of baby-boomer “Nuts and Bolts” enthusiasts are dwindling, while the new age “Abduction Buffs” believe they already know what UFOs are, who’s flying them, and why they’re visiting our planet… So, what’s to fund?)
Robert Spencer Carr’s story, from the first press release to the mass communication interviews, smells of hoax. Mr.Carr may be absolutely sincere in his gospel of the twelve little bodies. Be that as it may, Professor Carr managed to focus national attention on himself and his space elixir, proving a very valuable point.
He has proven that many years of diligent efforts by sincere and dedicated UFO researchers continue to go unnoticed by both the news media and the scientific community in general. On the other hand, a sensational, unfounded, unproven, and undocumented, fabricated new version of an old fairy tale hoax demands attention.
The public, with the unwitting aide of the media, is bilked and exploited. The elusive dignity and serious interest which the subject requires and deserves loses ground to the carnival atmosphere of the latest side-show story. Still, the phenomenon remains and nsrsid16528600 continues to require dignified attention. Perhaps proper attention may be purchased with constant unending pressure on key, high-position, elected representatives beginning with our President.
World Wars, Korea, Viet-Nam, and Middle East Crises will appear and fade. The UFOs patiently remain, quietly going about their unknown business almost as if they are waiting for mankind to say with a united voice, “Who are you? Why are you here?” Because we are man, our very nature insatiably, but respectfully, demands an answer! “We will know why!”
In the 1800′s, William Stanley Jevons wrote, “True science will not deny the existence of things because they cannot be weighed and measured. It will, rather, lead us to believe that the wonders and subtleties of possible existence surpass all that our mortal powers allow us to clearly perceive. We must ignore no existence whatever. We may variously interpret or explain its meaning and origin; but, if a phenomena does exist, it demands some kind of explanation.
Jevons’ (A leading English economist and logician) quote was Mike’s choice of a philosophy to embrace regarding his investigations of the UFO phenomena. Mike did so for for a number of years as both an APRO and UFORIC field investigator. He left both UFO groups about a year and a half after writing this paper.Jim Moseley’s Saucer Smear Vol.45, No.5 June 5th, 1998 informs us that, “In 1984 your ‘Smear’ editor, together with two friends, interviewed Carr at his luxurious retirement house in Clearwater, Florida. By that time Carr had quieted down about Aztec, but was claiming that spaceships were frequently landing on the water right in front of his oceanfront home, and that the occupants came inside his home to chat with him.Few people know about this story, as he only told it privately. He asked us not to print it until after his death, and we kept our promise…nsrsid6498786A nurse who accompanied us at our 1984 Carr interview felt that he was hallucinating because of a specific physical disability. However, the more likely answer came from Carr’s son, who contacted us by mail shorty after his father’s death, in about 1996. In essence, the son said that his father had a lifetime habit of making up stories in order to get attention and to be more interesting. This indeed seems to have been the case.Regarding, Mike McClellan; he had also assisted me (unofficially) with several investigations of UFO incidents and one crop circle report in 1992. I believe that this article was published in 1975 under the title, “The UFO Crash of 1948 was a Hoax”. Mike McClellan has certainly left us a valuable and persuasive contribution towards a better understanding of how (in UFOlogy) a bad seed planted in 1950 can bear bitter fruit fifty-five years after the root of that plant should have died up and simply blown away.. But, then again, those New Mexican desert plants are a very hearty species, indeed.
*All quotes in this article identified with an asterisk were actually statements uttered by one or more of my multiple personalities, and not by anyone presently residing in Texas or New England. I figure, why the UFO crash experts should be the only ones to have colourful “anonymous informants” at their beck and call.