Roster / The early years

Frank Scully

Variety columnist and author · 1892 to 1964

His 1950 book was the first to describe a recovered craft, the case later tied to Aztec.

Scully wrote a long-running column for Variety. His 1950 bestseller Behind the Flying Saucers was the first book to say the US government had recovered crashed craft and their crews in the Southwest, based on accounts from two men who said they had inside knowledge.

In 1952 journalist J. P. Cahn, writing in True magazine, called the story a hoax, and in 1953 Scully's two sources were convicted of fraud over oil-prospecting devices sold to investors. For decades the book was set aside. Later research, above all by Scott and Suzanne Ramsey, revisited the case and connected it to Hart Canyon near Aztec, New Mexico.

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