She played segments of a taped interview with Glen Pace, who lived with his family in the area in 1949 and remembers discussions about the crash and a newspaper headline and story recounting it. Howe has searched archives for the newspaper but has come up empty. She fears government agents "sanitized" as many credible accounts as possible.

The Farmington Daily-Times – in those days the weekly Farmington Hustler – has no issue with the headline or story. Perhaps it was from another paper in the region.

"If that headline exists, it’s something of a ‘smoking gun,’" Howe said, and asked for help in searching for it.

The Farmington Armada event was more clearly documented. A banner headline in the March 18, 1950, Daily-Times announced, "Huge ‘Saucer’ Armada Jolts Farmington."

The accompanying article quotes several witnesses who said they saw numerous objects in the sky appearing to "play tag" at unbelievable speeds, changing directions instantaneously.

Johnny Eaton, a real estate and insurance salesman, was 29 at the time. He was one of the witnesses quoted in the 1950 article.

Now a resident of Blanding, Utah, he recounted the event in person Sunday.

"I’ve never seen anything like it in my life," he said. "There were five red objects. They would hover then immediately change directions ... but stay in a group. That was the amazing thing." A few minutes later, a much larger, "cigar-shaped machine" moved rapidly across the sky. The red objects flew toward it, then disappeared. "It looked like they went right into the front part."

Eaton said that a few days later military people came to town to interview witnesses. They told him it was probably a weather balloon.

"I’m not stupid," he said. "I know dang well they weren’t balloons.

"They told me to forget it. ‘Forget it? You can’t forget something that happens once in a lifetime.’"

Howe told the Aztec crowd that the Aztec and Farmington events were "history that is so relevant to where we are sitting. ... We are not alone. Our government has known that for so long."

The concealment is no surprise to Jim Marrs.

With an East Texas drawl, Marrs charmed – and cautioned – the audience of more than 100. "There’s something going on in the skies above us. We’re here trying to find out what it is," he said to open his presentation that would delve into cover-up conspiracies involving far more than UFOs.

Marrs is the author of Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy. His book, Alien Agenda, published in 1997, is a compilation of his UFO investigations.

Two months before his assassination, President Kennedy pressured the CIA to turn over its UFO files to the White House. That may have played a role in his death, Marrs said.

He outlined conspiracies ranging from the assassination and Marilyn Monroe’s death to the war on terrorism, and from fluoridation to high-altitude chemical dosing of the population ("chemtrails").

Marrs warned that the conspiracies, national and international, could have dire consequences for freedoms Americans have taken for granted since independence.

"Folks, we are being scammed," he said. "We are the ‘mushroom people’ – kept in the dark and covered with crap."

Reach the Herald’s Technology Editor Lewis McCool at lewis@durangoherald.com.