Truman Bethurum Nevada desert contact claims

The FBI records on Truman Bethurum concern a planned lecture, not the desert encounter itself. According to an FBI report, Thomas Eickhoff, a Cincinnati beauty salon operator, told the Bureau on June 7, 1954 that a June 3 newspaper advertisement announced a June 11 program at the Taft Auditorium on "the real flying saucer story." The advertisement named no sponsor. Eickhoff traced it to Henry Maday, who said he was acting for Bethurum and George Hunt Williamson.

Eickhoff brought two issues of the magazine "Valor" to identify Bethurum. Issue 15, dated February 6, 1954, carried an article describing Bethurum as a truck driver from Redondo Beach, California. It cited a December 31, 1953 article in the Redondo Beach "Daily Breeze" that allegedly described his encounter with a crew of assumed space explorers under a woman commandant in the Nevada desert. The article said he had been aboard flying saucers on eleven occasions. A handwritten line, which Eickhoff said was Bethurum's, read that it was a true story. The same account appears in a June 8, 1954 letter to the Director.

Eickhoff said he went first to Lieutenant Colonel John O'Mara at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base on June 6. By his account, O'Mara denied that flying saucers existed but said the Air Force could take no action regarding Bethurum or Williamson. Eickhoff said Bethurum, Williamson and a Mr. Manspeaker told him at a June 7 luncheon that they were not afraid of an investigation and that the story was factual. He also said that if the story was untrue, the meeting would be a fraud on the public.

The report also recorded that Williamson and Manspeaker were tied to "Valor," which the FBI said was published by William Dudley Pelley at Noblesville, Indiana. On July 2, 1954, Eickhoff reported no progress toward a Cincinnati meeting and said Bethurum had returned to California. The pages given contain no FBI finding on the Nevada encounter.