The Quarter-Century Obsession [UFO Crash Outside Aztec, N.M]

Saturday, June 30, 2012

The Quarter-Century Obsession [UFO Crash Outside Aztec, N.M]

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUBtqrSdc60gR00-75BgQCU5VXZsu2oKC_lU7i20VXDlPMcTCgt5Y4ltK7ifZisQjn3vP-z0vtjv2bVj_0uuxumAJnPvNod_DONwk-312IBgniN-moLADnB_RXUcxRZTrifup4/s1600/Aztec+Crash+Site+3+%2528Edt%2529+%2528ILL%2529+%2528HDR%2529.jpg

By Billy Cox
De Void
6-28-12

De Void never invested much time into the alleged UFO crash outside Aztec, N.M., in March 1948. Part of the reason was because it had been roundly dismissed 60 years ago as a con. The other part, well, here’s Scott Ramsey:

“How is it that these (ETs) are supposed to be smarter than us, they have huge technology, and they wind up wadding themselves in the desert? Twice within a year?”

←First reported on by Frank Scully in 1950, the so-called Aztec Incident is being exhumed from its tomb of mythology by researcher Scott Ramsey

Well yeah. Ramsey, of course, is alluding to the July 1947 crash of a UFO in Roswell, N.M., some 300 miles from Aztec, just eight months earlier. Ramsey was certain the Aztec story had been rolled into Roswell; after all, both accounts were pretty much the same. A flying saucer cracks up in the New Mexico outback, its crew is wasted, the military quarantines the site, hauls away the booty and tells everybody who saw it to stuff a sock in their pie-holes.

Yet, after he began giving it a second look in 1987, the Mooresville, N.C., entrepreneur has resurrected the controversy with a self-published book, The Aztec Incident: Recovery at Hart Canyon. He came out the other side convinced the crash/recovery really happened. As you’d expect, it’s being rigorously debated and puts longtime researchers like Dennis Balthaser (“a must read and leaves no doubt that a craft came down in Hart Canyon”) and Kevin Randle (“a dishonest book”) at loggerheads. Randle’s blog hosts some lively and contentious threads that are probably worth a look.

Put the ET stuff aside, however, and The Aztec Incident, in essence, is a familiar kerfuffle dressed in pride, vanity, deceit, oil wealth and power. And while you can disagree with Ramsey’s conclusions, The Aztec Incident also offers a cautionary tale about the assumptions of conventional wisdom when held to a microscope. Because what started as mild curiosity snowballed into a maddening, quarter-century, $500,000-plus, 27-state, FIOA-driven, 50,000-document accounting of relationships between human beings, most of whom are long dead.

For Ramsey, the chase would become a lifestyle (“it’s definitely not for the money”) culminating in marriage to Suzanne Ramsey, his co-author, who writes: “The Aztec incident has been discussed every day since we have been married. Although the project has been challenging and sometimes frustrating, it has nourished us as well as energized our relationship. The opportunity to support each other on the journey can only be termed a pleasure.” So, hats off to spousal support.

De Void always wonders what ignites these obsessions. Scott Ramsey, a magnetic wire producer and race-car driver, says he can’t attribute it to a single trigger. What he does volunteer is that, as a child growing up in Pittsburgh, he and his godmother witnessed what would become known as the Kecksburg Incident in 1965. That one also involved an alleged UFO crash and a military cleanup team.

“We saw this thing shooting across the sky and watched it do a 90-degree turn, a real dogleg,” Ramsey recalls. He informed his dad, who “wound up laughing at us.” Later in the evening, Ramsey’s father offered a sort-of apology. “He said, ‘It’s all over the news.’”

In the month since publication, Ramsey says his book has already generated new leads. But he doesn’t expect to wrap his fingers around the smoking gun. “It’s made me appreciate history one hell of a lot more,” he says. “And when our government wants to keep a secret, they can keep a secret.”

. . . More