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A few days after the first airship sightings hit the San Francisco newspapers, Collins told reporters that he had met the inventor of the craft and that he knew all about the airship. Reporters were unable to locate the mystery man. However, he soon visited an even better-known legal adviser, one William Henry Harrison Hart, who had once run for the office of state attorney general. Soon after the flap peaked, a statement signed by Hart appeared on page 1 of the San Francisco Call (Sunday, November 29, 1896): I have not seen it [the airship] personally but have talked with the man who claims to be the inventor. I have spent several hours with him. He has shown me drawings and diagrams of his invention, and I am convinced that they are more adapted for the purpose for which he claims them than any other invention making such claims that I have ever seen. . . . lasked the gentleman who claims to be the inventor what his desires were in regard to carrying on the business, and he stated that he did not desire any money; that he didn’t ask or want anyone to invest in it; that he was not a citizen of California, and that he had come here to perfect and test his airship. . . . I will admit that this is the first time to my knowledge that anybody had anything in California in which he did not want anybody to invest money. According to Hart, the invention operated on gas and electricity, and the inventor expressed interest in using his machine to fly to Cuba and drive out the Spaniards. Some of the local newspapers apparently mis- quoted both Collins and Hart badly, and this probably led to Hart’s issuance of a signed statement. By the end of November, Collins was so disgusted that he refused to see reporters or discuss the matter further. The mysterious inventor had managed to single out two of the most respected men in California. They had, in good faith, served as his spokesmen, and their reports were widely circulated. The flap of that Thanksgiving week supported their stories, but the inventor never came forward to enjoy his triumph. He simply vanished after the sightings subsided. The description of the mystery man—dark-complexioned, dark-eyed, slight in stature—bears a remarkable resemblance to the numerous de- scriptions of the airship occupants as published five months later during the wave of April 1897. Also, witnesses to some of the 1897 landings claimed that the occupants discussed the situation in Cuba. Some of the minor discrepancies in the published stories of Hart and Collins may have been journalistic errors or may have been based on understandable 84 / Operation Trojan Horse