Some more commentary on the affair with George Koehler, the Denver fellow and Scully's subsequent book about the "saucer downed at a radar station in the southwest".
This is an interesting read --> https://www.physics.smu.edu/~pseudo/UFOs/Scully/
Couple of comments. First, a tentative timeline.
Whatever happened at Roswell in 1947, there was a sensational news report at first. The sensation was played down by the USAF, but people would have heard about it and talked about it. My take is that the people who hoaxed Scully (Newton and Gebauer) were aware of the 1947 report and built their hoax of crashed saucers around that tale. Scully played it up in his book and apparently never bothered to check if their claims held water. Later, Keyhoe looked into the claims by Koehler and decided the affair was fake (kudos to Keyhoe). But the notion of a crashed saucer in the southwest had taken root, and exploded into public consciousness in the 1970s re: Roswell.
So, while I think the initial Roswell reports seeded the hoax of Newton and Gebauer, the Roswell affair had a life of its own that was demonstrated by statements made decades later by people who had some or other connection with whatever happened there in 1947. IOW, the Koehler-Newton-Gebauer-Scully bit was a sideshow. That makes one wonder, though. Keyhoe was fairly detailed in mentioning reports of the early years -- so why did he not mention the report that came out of Roswell in 1947 ? That is at best an odd omission on his part.
The other comment regards the article I pointed out above with the URL. The "reporter" mentioned, "J. P. Cahn" went to a LOT of trouble to unravel the hoax. And I would say, he went to TOO much trouble to unravel the hoax, if one assumes his only motivation was journalism. For starters, he had to travel a bit to interview these people, and even took the trouble of learning the techniques of magicians so that he could steal an artefact from Newton to submit for analysis at no less a distinguished laboratory than the Stanford Research Institute.
I mean, who was this guy Cahn, and why was he so determined to expose a hoax ? The travel, the work hours, the analysis of the metal disk ... all that added up to a fair amount of money. Was Cahn working on his own initiative, and, if not, who directed (and apparently funded) his investigation ... an investigation more like that of a very competent private detective versus that of someone writing copy for the San Francisco Examiner ? And that bit about Cahn getting access to the telephone records of Newton ... isn't that something that usually requires a search warrant ? "A checkup revealed he phoned often to ..." ... um, just WHO provided Cahn that information in such an apparently casual manner ?
I don't doubt that Cahn uncovered a hoax, but I find his own motives at best questionable. In fact, Cahn went further after exposing the hoax in that he found victims of swindles by Newton and Gebauer:
Wow! This Cahn guy is not only a reporter, he is some kind of crime fighter to boot! Again: who was paying him to do this investigation, and why ?
Lotsa questions about this one.
This is an interesting read --> https://www.physics.smu.edu/~pseudo/UFOs/Scully/
Couple of comments. First, a tentative timeline.
Whatever happened at Roswell in 1947, there was a sensational news report at first. The sensation was played down by the USAF, but people would have heard about it and talked about it. My take is that the people who hoaxed Scully (Newton and Gebauer) were aware of the 1947 report and built their hoax of crashed saucers around that tale. Scully played it up in his book and apparently never bothered to check if their claims held water. Later, Keyhoe looked into the claims by Koehler and decided the affair was fake (kudos to Keyhoe). But the notion of a crashed saucer in the southwest had taken root, and exploded into public consciousness in the 1970s re: Roswell.
So, while I think the initial Roswell reports seeded the hoax of Newton and Gebauer, the Roswell affair had a life of its own that was demonstrated by statements made decades later by people who had some or other connection with whatever happened there in 1947. IOW, the Koehler-Newton-Gebauer-Scully bit was a sideshow. That makes one wonder, though. Keyhoe was fairly detailed in mentioning reports of the early years -- so why did he not mention the report that came out of Roswell in 1947 ? That is at best an odd omission on his part.
The other comment regards the article I pointed out above with the URL. The "reporter" mentioned, "J. P. Cahn" went to a LOT of trouble to unravel the hoax. And I would say, he went to TOO much trouble to unravel the hoax, if one assumes his only motivation was journalism. For starters, he had to travel a bit to interview these people, and even took the trouble of learning the techniques of magicians so that he could steal an artefact from Newton to submit for analysis at no less a distinguished laboratory than the Stanford Research Institute.
I mean, who was this guy Cahn, and why was he so determined to expose a hoax ? The travel, the work hours, the analysis of the metal disk ... all that added up to a fair amount of money. Was Cahn working on his own initiative, and, if not, who directed (and apparently funded) his investigation ... an investigation more like that of a very competent private detective versus that of someone writing copy for the San Francisco Examiner ? And that bit about Cahn getting access to the telephone records of Newton ... isn't that something that usually requires a search warrant ? "A checkup revealed he phoned often to ..." ... um, just WHO provided Cahn that information in such an apparently casual manner ?
I don't doubt that Cahn uncovered a hoax, but I find his own motives at best questionable. In fact, Cahn went further after exposing the hoax in that he found victims of swindles by Newton and Gebauer:
Quote:The rest of the article details Cahn's efforts at finding people who had been swindled by Newton and GeBauer. He was trying to find a victim for whom the 3-year statute of limitations had not run; such an individual could file charges and get the swindlers prosecuted. Herman Flader was just that person; Newton and GeBauer had taken him for $231,432.30, which was a LOT of money in 1950. Cahn went on to describe the details of the swindle, the filing of charges, the arrest of the two, and the trial in Denver.
Wow! This Cahn guy is not only a reporter, he is some kind of crime fighter to boot! Again: who was paying him to do this investigation, and why ?
Lotsa questions about this one.
Fire In The Hole