• Miscellaneous Ravings
• Tidbits of Trash
• Ye Olde Book Bag: Ed Walters Smeared Again!
• Sex and Saucers Again
• Letters to Ye Olde Editor

Now, writing in the Nov.-Dec. 1995 issue of "Perceptions", Dr. Richard Boylan gives us his update, in an article called "Birds of a Feather No More". Smear readers will remember Dr. Boylan as the gentleman whose license to practice psychology in the state of California was recently lifted by that state's licensing board. Boylan claims he was treated unfairly because of his unusual UFO beliefs and because present and former U.S. military officers dominate said Board.

Anyhow - here's Dr. Boylan's version of "The Aviary":

• "Blue Jay" is Dr. Christopher Green, associated with the CIA
• "Pelican" is Ron Pandolfi, a CIA Deputy Director
• "Owl" is Hal Puthoff, with the Institute of Advanced Research in Austin, Texas
• "Penguin" is our olde friend Dr. (and/or Colonel) John Alexander of "Non-Lethal Weapons" fame
• "Sea Gull" is none other than Dr. Bruce Maccabee, whose dossier is well known to UFO fans
• "Chickadee" is Commander (and Dr.) G.E. Scott Jones of Naval Intelligence, whose latest book we reviewed briefly in our last issue
• "Condor" is Captain Bob Collins, USAF, Ret., Air Force Office of Special Investigations
• "Falcon" is Sergeant Richard Doty, from the same office as above, now rumored to be working as an Arizona State highway patrolman
• "Mockingbird(?)" is William Moore, who is also described by Boylan as "USAF (Ret.), Special Agent, Air Force Office of Special Investigations".

Smear readers are hopefully familiar with the above-mentioned Bill Moore, who is also co-author of "The Roswell Incident" and prime mover of the semi-defunct "FOCUS" zine.

Your Smear editor tried to join The Aviary as "Buzzard", but they wouldn't let us in!

With all these high-powered spooks lined up against us - not in unison but in various ever-changing combinations, is it any wonder that no rational solution to the UFO mystery is possible??? (Our thanks to Simone Mendez & Tim Beckley for this item.)

• Dr. Thornton Page of Houston, Texas died of a heart attack on January 2nd of this year at the age of 82. At the time of his death, Dr. Page was a retired NASA scientist. About ten years ago, your Smear editor visited Page & wife Lou at their home, and toured the NASA facility with him, and even had the opportunity to meet a real astronaut.

  One of Page's minor claims to fame was the fact that back in 1953, he served on the famous (only to ufologists) Robertson Panel, which was convened & paid for by the CIA to study & make recommendations regarding the flying saucer problem. Page explains this briefly in a letter published in our Dec. 5th, 1995 issue.

  In a letter printed in our Jan. 10th, 1996 issue, Page explains that a 90-minute tape he recently made with NASA's Jim Oberg regarding the Robertson Committee's work, has been cut to two minutes of air time due to a change in format. Page seemed disappointed that most of his effort had been for nothing, or perhaps he was just kidding us about it.

  In any event, Page has passed on. He was a true non-believer regarding UFOs, but a good friend to us and a loyal Smear non-subscriber. We will miss him...

• On January 20th your editor finally attended one of the monthly meetings of the Miami, Florida MUFON organization, currently led by a charming lady named Mary Margaret Zimmer, who is the editor of a monthly UFO zine called SKYSCAM - now in its second year of publication.

  We were originally informed that the MUFON meeting was to be in a bookstore at the far north end of Miami, whereas in reality it took place in a different bookstore at the opposite end of town. Speakers at the 2-hour session included researcher Virgillo Sanchez-Ocejo, who is pushing a forthcoming new book about a deaf-mute contactee. Also on the program was a conservative, very scientifically-oriented man from Uruguary named Milton Hourcade, who told how he used to run a UFO organization in that country. A video was shown of recent close sightings in Mexico, and later there was another video that we could not stay to see.

  We have offered our services as a (free) speaker at a future Miami MUFON meeting, but we fear that our radical ufological views make it highly unlikely the offer will be accepted...

• A Blast from the Past: We have just received Issue #10 (March,`96) of "Kor's Kosmos: Exploring the Borderlands of Knowledge". This is a 20-page zine published by a researcher we have known slightly for many, many years named Tom Comella, who goes by the pen name of Peter Kor. In dozens of articles in the ufological press, Kor has commented philosophically on the UFO mystery, but always with the annoying habit of not telling the reader just what he is driving at - leading to much frustration.

  We did not know Kor was still publishing after all these years, and we don't know when issues #1 through #9 of "Kor's Kosmos" were released. #10 tells us, in a series of statements that we happen to agree with, just what UFOs are not. Once again he leaves us dangling by not telling us what, if anything, they are. Says Kor:

  "`Kor's Nosmos' cannot be purchased. Circulation is controlled by the writer and is directed primarily towards advanced borderlands intellectuals. Anyone wanting to receive the publication should contact the writer at... 1207 Cordova Road, Mayfield Heights, Ohio 44124."

• The Winter 1995-96 issue of Dr. Gary Posner's "Tampa Bay (Florida) Skeptics Report" informs us that James ("The Amusing") Randi has raised his famed $10,000 offer for proof of the psychic, to an Amazing $500,000 - mostly through pledges from other people. The basic problem remains the same, however, in that Randi himself would be the final judge of what represents a "genuine" psychic phenomenon and what does not. Why not have a panel of several prominent scientists, carefully chosen for their objectivity, which is a quality that Randi seems to totally lack?? Randi could have one vote on the panel, only because a magician's skill at detecting trickery is needed. But the whole offer is nothing more than a publicity stunt, and is in no way intended to lead to proof of anything!

• Just because Smear is now on the World Wide Web (WWW), this does not mean that we are set up to receive E-mail (whatever that is). If you want to write to us, try the old-fashioned way!...

• Among the unfortunate Errors in our last issue are the following: Nellis Air Force Base of interplanetary fame is, of course, in Nevada, not New Mexico. And the semi-mysterious John Alexander has moved to Las Vegas from Santa Fe, New Mexico, rather than from Albuquerque as we stated...

• Two very unusual animal stories have been brought to our attention:
  1. Near Canovanas, Fuerto Rico, a "blood-sucking alien predator" is ravaging animals throughout the countryside. Some people claim that there have been over one thousand deaths of sheep, cows, chickens, pigs, dogs, cats, and even peacocks.
  2. And in England, where even animals conduct themselves with proper dignity, pigeons have been observed taking subway trains from one stop to another, in order to reach their intended destinations. Why don't they just fly there? Ask the editors of "Lo", an offbeat zine published by United Aerial Phenomena Agency, Box 347032, Cleveland, Ohio 44134...

• We are pleased to announce that your humble Smear editor has a long illustrated article in the Spring 1996 issue of Tim Beckley's newsstand magazine "UF0 Universe". The article is entitled "The Dawn of the Flying Saucer Era" and is about just that - the wild things going on, mostly in California, in the early l950s. This was originally written for FATE Magazine, but was turned down for obscure reasons...

• We are reliably informed that the Air Force will soon come out with another statement on the Roswell Incident, this time attempting to deal with the persistent rumors that dead alien bodies were found. We await this report with great interest!...

• Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, in an address in 1992 to the mysterious Bilderbergers group, had this to say:

  "Today Americans would be outraged if United Nations troops entered Los Angeles to restore order; tomorrow they will be grateful! This is especially true if they were told there was an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated (emphasis added), that threatened our very existence. It is then that all peoples of the world will plead with world leaders to deliver them from evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well-being granted to them by their world government...

• Question: Why did "little men" in flying saucers stop crashing on our southwestern desert aifter the early 1950s? Did they learn to fly better? And why were there no abductions in those days? Inquiring minds want to know!...

• It seems that every year there are fewer really meaty UFO sightings at the same time that there are more & more UFO conventions! This year your editor will be attending the "Project Awareness" convention near Gulf Breeze, Florida on the weekend of March l5th-l7th, followed by the MUFON bash in Greensboro, North Carolina on the first weekend of July, followed by our own National UFO Conference (NUFOC) in Minneapolis/St. Paul on the first weekend of October.

  Our buddy Tim Beckley will sponsor three conventions in 1996: Denver, Colorado, May 24th-27th; Palm Springs, California, Aug. 2nd-4th; and Phoenix, Arizona, October l8th-2lst. Pat Marcatillio will have his "7th Great UFO/ET Alien & Abduction Congress" at the Days Inn in Bordentown, N.J. on April l9th-2lst; and there are many, many more. Hopefully someone will be abducted from at least one of them, just to jazz things up a little!...

The Salisberrys were flying high in the Florida MUFON hierarchy when they were given a special award for "Meritorious Achievement" at the 1990 MUFON convention in Pensacola (near Gulf Breeze). Thus, when MUFON czar Walt Andrus & others felt it was necessary to re-investigate the Walters case, the Salisberrys were chosen.

The Salisberrys' bias at that time was definitely pro-Walters, which no doubt is one reason for the choice. But in the course of a long and methodical investigation, they became highly skeptical of the case, as they still are today. Naturally their report, completed in 1992, was not acceptable to the MUFON hierarchy, who then found someone else (Art Hufford) to write a report favorable to Walters. The Salisberrys eventually dropped out of the MUFON scene altogether.

There are about 100 pages of text in this treatise, and a similar number of pages devoted to appendices, etc. Hopefully, some publisher such as CSICOP's Prometheus Press can do something with this manuscript, because the ufological public really deserves to see it!

Since 1975, Swiss contactee Billy Meier has been at the center of an intense international controversy both within the UFO community and between UFO believers and skeptics. Mejer claims that he is in direct personal contact with aliens from the star cluster Pleiades, and that he has been aboard a Pleiadean spacecraft with his alien contact called "Semjase", visiting other worlds. "Semjase" is a beautiful woman by Earth standards, remarkably similar in appearance to a Scandinavian model.

Speaking of models - Meier has produced hundreds of UFO photographs, thousands of pages of "contact notes", as well as film footage and Pleiadean rock and metal samples. The aliens allegedly contact Meier at a commune in Switzerland called the Semjase Silver Star Center, which in many ways resembles a religious cult with Meier as the leader.

Intrigued by all this, Korff traveled to Switzerland with a trusted female assistant, where he cleverly went "undercover" inside the Meier camp. The result of this investigation is the book at hand, published by Prometheus Books, the publishing arm of the dreaded PSICOP organization (59 John Glenn Drive, Amherst, N.Y. 14228-2197).

• Our olde pal Jerry Clark is finally out with the third and last volume of his well-known UFO Encyclopedia. Entitled "High Strangeness: UFOs from 1960 through 1979", it runs more than 700 pages and costs a mere $95 retail! Sadly, we are told that there is only one reference to your humble Smear editor in the index, this time. (We did better than that in the other two volumes.) The publisher is Omnigraphics, Inc., of Detroit, Michigan...

• And we hear that some time this Fall, Budd Hopkins is finally bringing forth his long-awaited book on the famed Linda Napolitano (alias Cortile) abduction case - a strange saga that began back in 1987...

• Whitley Strieber of "Communion" fame is bringing out another new book shortly, called "The Secret School". This book contains childhood memories of abduction-related experiences and such. Says Strieber: "I feel that most of us have gone to Secret Schools in our childhoods, and I'm hoping that my new book will unlock the memories of others..."

• Then there is "UFOs: An Insider's View of the Official Quest for Evidence", by Roy Craig, who back in 1953 was an investigator for the Robertson Panel. (See our item on Thornton Page in this issue.) This volume, which can be assumed to be skeptical, is published by the University of North Texas Press...

• Finally, there is "The Anomalist: 3", discussed in the letter from Dennis Stacy in the Letters section of this issue...

• Researcher ROBERT TODD writes as follows regarding the most recent issue of his "KowPflop Quarterly" newsletter:

  "I thought I made it clear that Jesse Marcel was indeed promoted to lieutenant colonel in the Air Force Reserve in Dec. 1947 - not after his retirement as you stated. The promotion only applied to his Reserve rank and had no effect whatsoever on his active-duty rank. His active-duty rank remained major, and never rose above major. When he left active duty, his separate, Reserve rank was still It. colonel. When he was in the War Room at AFO-AT-1, his rank was major, and nobody addressed him as `colonel'.

  "Furthermore, Marcel did NOT retire from the Air Force. He left active duty as a major in 1950, but was still a It. colonel in the Air Force Reserve into the late 1950s, when the Air Force discharged him because he failed to qualify. He didn't earn enough points to qualify him for the Air Force Reserve. In fact, the file shows that the Air Force attempted to elicit some kind of response from Marcel concerning his intentions with respect to his status in the Air Force Reserve, indicating that a failure to respond would result in his being discharged. The file furnished to me contained no such response from Marcel, suggesting apathy on his part; and the Air Force made good on their word and discharged him from the Air Force Reserve. He was discharged. He did NOT retire, and was NOT entitled to a pension...

• Our friend DENNIS STACY, Editor of "The Mutual UFO Network UFO Journal" (a horrible title), writes as follows:

  "Dear Commander Jim!
  "We hereby humbly submit the latest issue of "The Anomalist" for your perusal, also soliciting your usual effusive review. Please note that we've expanded to 176 pages (from 160) while at the same time actually lowering the price - to $9.95! So - that's $9.95 plus $2.5O postage & handling, checks payable to Dennis Stacy, Box 12434, San Antonio, Texas 78212.

  "Hey, your Web page is great! Kudos to the guy behind it. We put your address up on the MUFON Web page, too. Patrick Huyghe and I also have one for `The Anomalist' at: http://www.cloud9.net/~patrick/anomalist.

  "Stay warm, Jim, and keep up the good work!...

  "The Anomalist: 3 - Winter 1995-96" contains articles by Patrick Huyghe, Hilary Evans, Michael Grosso, Martin Kottmeyer, Peter Jordan, and others whom we have not heard of. Give it a read! - Editor.

• STEVE MANSEE, the gentleman who kindly put Smear on the WWW, writes:

  "...The on-line version of Saucer Smear continues to draw a steady stream of visitors, averaging between one and two hundred a day. Either you have an audience of thousands, or a hundred or so fanatically devoted readers...

  "I can truly say that working with `Saucer Smear' has been one of the highlights of my year (1995)."

• MARK AUSMUS (a real person, not a made-up name!) writes:

  Saucer Smear is wonderful. I am interested in obtaining as many back issues as possible. From your recent letter, it sounds as if you might have about fifty back issues available. Enclosed is a check for fifty dollars. Please send as many back issues as this will allow..."

• Roswell luminary KEVIN RANDLE writes:

  "Let's see if I have this straight: Originally it was 38 false claims made by Randle and Schmitt. Now I've inherited them all, even if they were comments that I didn't make. So, I guess the number is smaller than the 38 claimed by Stanton Friedman. That would seem to make his claim of 38 false claims by Kevin Randle a false claim!"

• TIM BRIGHAM, Editor of "The Devil's Advocate" (Box 10853, Pensacola, Florida 32524), writes as follows:

  "Regarding your `Cold War' UFO theory, I wouldn't doubt it. As you may know, it's my opinion that the Gulf Breeze red light may have been a military attempt to fake UFOs in order to perform some psychological research, or possibly even test psychological warfare...

  "Think of the psychological and propaganda applications that would exist if you could fool other nations into thinking that we're either buddies with aliens, or that aliens are coming to get them!...

• And, MONTY CANTSIN writes:

  "...The phone in the alien autopsy film proved the authenticity of the film. We all remember the 1950s as a decade of stylistic modernism, in phones as in other aspects of interior design. All of these futuristic designs were in fact modeled after the furniture taken from the Roswell UFO, including the phone seen in the film. The `5Os were an obvious example of the influence of alien culture on earthling culture, the largest such explosion of influence, in fact, since the pyramids!...

• JEROME CLARK, Editor of "The International UFO Reporter", writes:

  "Dear Supreme Commander:
  "I thought I had heard of every form of human depravity, but the revelations about Jesse Marcel, Sr., have shaken me to my toenails! Never in my wildest nightmares would I have imagined that someone could sink so low as to puff up his resume or exaggerate his military record. Where would we be if Smear wasn't out there to alert us to the presence of such hideously evil souls?

  "Sadly, cynics out there will say that your revelations were never meant to be taken seriously, (and) that they were intended to satirize the comic lengths to which the anti-Roswell forces will go to prop up a feeble case! Other spoilsports will note that Marcel was far from the only witness to characterize the Roswell ceckage as extremely strange, and they wl1l argue that therefore the allegations about his background are relevant to precisely nothing...

  This is a weird point of view! - Editor.

• Parapsychologist GEORGE HANSEN takes an opposing position, as follows:

  " The latest revelations by Robert Todd concerning Jesse Marcel are truly wonderful! Todd effectively discredits nearly all the earlier researchers, and he deserves exceptional praise! His work is yet another, more powerful example of why the primary subject matter of ufology should be gullibility, hoaxes, and myth. Of course MUFON, CUFOS, and FUROR will never admit this, and their continuing antics will provide much amusement. Smear remains the foremost chronicle of the real UFO phenomena!"

• Former New Jersey MUFON State Director TOM BENSON writes:

  "Mention in Saucer Smear of Robert Todd's continuing, scholarly research efforts indicates a dire need for training in basic research techniques for present-day alleged UFO researchers! To conduct a background check of the primary witness is essential in all high strangenss cases. Todd is the first person to point out the many testimony discrepancies regarding Major Marcel's military work history and college attendance. This also raises many questions about the research abilities of several well-known researchers involved with this case, as well as others. UFO research organizations should be more careful in the future in funding these fast-talking alleged researchers who lead us down the primrose trail! It's time that the Boards of these organizations address this issue, or more competent people be appointed!"

• Researcher JERRY LUCCI writes as follows:

  "...I have just finished reading Robert Todd's piece on Major Marcel, and once again he proves that he dares go where no other investigator will go. ... The problem, however, is the fact that no matter how much evidence is put forth that talks against a UFO crash, the Field itself (which, like the Roswell witnesses, is getting clder by the day!) cannot give the case up. Roswell represents for many the only hope of solving a mystery that many individuals have dedicated their lives to solving. Without Roswell, it's back to Lights in the Sky and other assorted oddities.

  "As I told you many years ago, just prior to the start of the Roswell investigation, I gradually arrived at the conclusion that UFOs probably represent some piece of a broad spectrum of events that are generally categorized as Fortean phenomena. As the evidence against Roswell mounts, I am once again developing an opinion that this is probably the case - an opinion you also share; see `UFO Universe'..."

• Researcher HERBERT TAYLOR writes:

  "...I have come to regard Saucer Smear with a certain affection, and the realization that a publication of this type is not out of order in this woeful field. Unlike the more `mainstream' publications (e.g. MUFON Journal and IUR) you seem to have no sacred cows, and anyone who has erred may come under fire, and their misdeeds exposed for all to see. May Smear continue to thrive, and readership enlarge!.."

  Taylor makes some specific points about Don Schmitt and Jesse Marcel, which Space does not permit us to print. - Editor.

• Famed French UFO author & researcher JEAN SIDER writes:

  "...We are living in strange times. While honest ufologists are trying to understand UFO incidents in the USA and elsewhere, other so-called researchers are trying to prove that some well-known witnesses and ufologists have lied about their career. And when they succeed in proving it, they claim the UFO incidents in which the `culprits' are involved, are hoaxes. It is as if Communist agents were busy proving that some priests and reverends have lied about themselves, in order to show that God doesn't exist! In France, some of these people don't hesitate to claim that witnesses are drunkards and have other kinds of bad habits. Some claim that there are NO true UFO reports! Others have extended this strange opinion to include ALL paranormal events!...

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