According to a Technical Report prepared by the Air Force’s flying saucer study, Project Grudge, in August 1949: “Upon eliminating several additional incidents due to vagueness and duplication, there remain 228 incidents, which are considered in this report. Thirty of these could not be explained, because there was found to be insufficient evidence on which to base a conclusion.” Arguably, however, the most important and intriguing entry in the document appears in the Recommendations section. It’s one that many UFO researchers have not appreciated the significance of. It states: “That Psychological Warfare Division and other governmental agencies interested in psychological warfare be informed of the results of this study.”
The Department of Defense’s definition of psychological warfare is: “The planned use of propaganda and other psychological actions having the primary purpose of influencing the opinions, emotions, attitudes, and behavior of hostile foreign groups in such a way as to support the achievement of national objectives.”
Thus, there’s a very good argument to be made that, ever since its earliest years, the UFO phenomenon has been used at an official level as a tool to fool, confuse and alarm the enemy – as well as to confuse the true nature of the UFO phenomenon, too, of course.
I’m on a bit of a crashed UFO kick right now: my previous post here at Mysterious Universe dealt with the way in which the infamous Spitsbergen “Crashed UFO” event of 1952 may have had its origins in a psychological-warfare operation. But, there’s an even earlier one I want to bring to your attention that may fall into precisely this same realm.
Next to the so-called Roswell Incident of July 1947, certainly the most talked-about “UFO crash” of all is that which is alleged to have occurred in the vicinity of Aztec, New Mexico, in 1948. According to information related to the author Frank Scully in the late 1940s (and subsequently published in his best-selling 1950 book, Behind the Flying Saucers), as a result of a number of separate incidents in 1947 and 1948, the wreckage of four alien spacecraft, and no fewer than 34 alien bodies, had been recovered by American authorities, and were being studied under cover of the utmost secrecy at defense establishments in the United States.
As Scully reported, the majority of his data came from two individuals: Silas Mason Newton (described in a 1941 FBI report as a “wholly unethical businessman”) and one “Dr. Gee,” the name given to protect eight scientists, all of whom had supposedly divulged various details of the crashes to Newton and Scully. According to Scully’s sources one such UFO was found in Hart Canyon, near the town of Aztec, in March 1948.
Although the Aztec affair has attracted the attention of numerous UFO researchers over the years, it’s a fascinating piece of documentary evidence relative to the Aztec case that surfaced in the late 1990s I wish to bring to your attention. It came thanks to the late, investigative author and former CIA employee, Karl Pflock, and it is one that may ultimately shed more important light on the psychological warfare angle of the crashed UFO mystery.
