When I phoned General Sory Smith, his voice sounded a little peculiar. “I called Wright Field,” he said. “But they said you wouldn’t find anything of value out there.”
“You mean they refused to let me see their files?”
“No, I didn’t say that. But they’re short of personnel. They don’t want to take people off other jobs to look up the records.”
“I won’t need any help,” I said. “Major Boggs said each case had a separate book. If they’d just show me the shelves, I could do the job in two days.”
There was a long silence.
“I’ll ask them again,” the General said finally. “Call me sometime next week.”
I said I would, and hung up. The message from Wright Field hadn’t surprised me. But Smith’s changed manner did. He had sounded oddly disturbed.
While I was waiting for Wright Field’s answer, Ken Purdy phoned. He told me that staff men from Time and Life magazines were seriously checking on the “little men” story. Both Purdy and I were sure this was a colossal hoax, but there was just a faint chance that someone had been on the fringe of a real happening and had made up the rest of the story.
They key man in the story seemed to be one George Koehler, of Denver, Colorado. The morning after Purdy called, I took a plane to Denver. During the flight I went over the “little men” story again. It had been printed in over a hundred papers.
According to the usual version, George Koehler had accidentally learned of two crashed saucers at a radar station on our southwest border. The ships were made of some strange metal. The cabin was stationary, placed within a large rotating ring.