"You are... a boil on the ass of ufology"

-JOHN KEEL, writing in the March 25th, 1977 issue of "Saucer Glues" (one of the former names of "Saucer Smear)

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OFFICIAL PUBLICATION OF THE SAUCER & UNEXPLAINED CELESTIAL EVENTS RESEARCH SOCIETY

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EDITOR AND STILL SUPREME COMMANDER: James W. Moseley CONTRIBUTING EDITOR: Karl T. Pflock

NON-SCHEDULED NEWSLETTER Volume 46, No. 5 May 5th, 1999

MAILING ADDRESS: P. 0. Box 1709 Key West, FL 33041

• Update On This Year's National UFO Conference
• Tidbits of Trash
• The "Saucer Smear" Enemies List
• Re-Hash of the "Philadelphia Experiment
• Books To Keep Your Bonfire Burning Brightly
• Pflock Ptalk - Further Musings on the Current State of Ufology
• Letters To Ye Olde Editor

Speakers will include MUFON czar Walt Andrus, famed UFO & abduction researcher Kevin Randle, and there will be a special guest appearance by the one & only Whitley Strieber. Computer whiz Joe Firmage has just come aboard, as well! Other speakers include Karl Pflock, Patrick Huyghe, Tom Dewley, Constance Clare, Linda Corley, and of course your humble "Smear" editor, who will also act as Master of Ceremonies. Other noted experts are still being lined up as we go to press.

For more information, write to Dennis Stacy at: P.O. Box 12434, San Antonio, Texas 78212. This is one convention that is shaping up to be quite a bit different from any of the others, so you will surely want to be there if you possibly can!

• We apologize for the very poor quality of the photo of Walt Andrus, on the front page of our last issue. The excessive darkness and lack of detail was not done on purpose...

• As predicted in our Feb. 15th issue, Budd Hopkins' Intruders Foundation hosted a one-day convention in New York City last April 10th, featuring talks by Stanton Friedman, Jerome Clark, Carol Rainey (Hopkins' current wife), Hopkins himself, and David Jacobs. Clark was to be the moderator, but instead that task went to someone named Greg Sandow. As mentioned in "Smear" at the time, Kevin Randle was pointedly not invited, though he is one of the co-authors of a moderate abduction book that is just about to come off the press.

  This conference attracted about 300 people, and was quite successful, according to our information....

• We are reliably informed that the president of James Randi's Educational Foundation is a computer millionaire named Richard Adams. This organization is devoted to exposing psychic fraud, just as Randi does as an individual; but for some strange reason Randi does not want us to know who this guy really is.

  Adams might be considered the psychic (or anti-psychic) opposite of Joe Firmage, the computer millionaire who has recently entered the pro-UFO movement with great gusto...

• As we have mentioned previously, MUFON has decided to sponsor a "Ballot Initiative" in next year's elections, in which voters will be asked to agree to proclaim the year 2000 to be "The Year of UFO Awareness". Spurred on by zealots such as Larry Bryant and Peter Gersten, MUFON will work through its many state chapters to try to bring this about. We wish them luck, as they will need all the luck they can get - plus a lot of very hard work!

• Long-time "Smear" fans know that we rarely print sightings; but here's one that "takes the cake", if indeed it really happened. Allegedly the daytime abduction of an elk by a flying saucer was witnessed by no less than fourteen forestry workers in Washington State last February 25th. They watched as one elk from a herd was slowly sucked up into the lower part of a low-flying UFO, which eventually disappeared from view presumably with the animal still inside it. The only fishy part of this story is that the forestry people were working on a contract for a "large corporation" which, at their request, cannot be named. We wonder why not?? ...

• One of the lesser known fringe characters in the UFO field is "Dr." Harley Byrd, who purports to be a nephew of the late polar explorer Admiral Richard E. Byrd. (Actually, it has been prover. that Harley is unrelated to the Admiral.)

  Byrd has recently sent us a hand-typed News Release stating that he is involved in establishing a Memorial Museum which will show documentaries about the Admiral's various expeditions. One of these expeditions, to the South Pole, allegedly involved the discovery of a "hole in the pole" that is a gateway to the Inner Earth. Thus Harley's other interest is in promoting the Inner Earth fantasy...

• You Science fans out there will be interested to learn that two teams of scientists, working independently of each other, have discovered three giant planets orbiting around a star that is a mere 44 light years away from Earth. Although about 20 other planets have been discovered in recent years, this is the first time that more than one have been found associated with a single star. It is believed that more planets, orbiting other stars, will be found soon, as our equipment gets better.

  All this adds to the overwhelming probability that Life is common throughout the universe. (However, it does nothing to prove that intelligent beings are visiting our insignificant planet currently!) ...

• New Jersey researcher Pat Marcattiiio is doing his bit to help spread PANIC regarding the Y2K Menace. He passes along to us the rumor that the federal government has just printed fifty billion dollars in new currency, and some banks are already limiting cash withdrawals: Ominously, the Canadian government has hired 60,000 new Royal Mounted Police to patrol the border. Coincidence? Hardly!

  Pat will be holding a UFO convention on the weekend of June 5th and 6th, at the Days Inn in Bordentown, New Jersey. Speakers, if any, will be announced later. You can reach Pat Marcattilio at: 221 Joan Terrace, Trenton, N.J. 08629.

Campbell's list was of those whom he considered to be enemies, and it was updated with explanations of why new people were added or old people taken off. Our list is a little different. After some 46 years in ufology, your editor has attracted the permanent wrath of relatively few people in spite of our skeptical/negative style. Yet, there are these few. These, then, are the people who consider us to be The Enemy, apparently:

First & foremost is Budd Hopkins, who is very emotional and defensive about his abduction research. A few years ago we blasted him repeatedly in regard to the famed Linda Napolitano abduction case, which he still persists in calling the Linda Cortille case. "Smear" was the first to print Linda's real name, and that did not go over well with Budd.

This weird abduction incident is alleged to have occurred in Manhattan, near the Brooklyn Bridge. In a contemporary issue of the International UFO Reporter (IUR), a grave geographical mistake was made, in which it was implied that the Brooklyn Bridge crosses the Hudson River to New Jersey, rather than crossing the East River to (guess where?) Brooklyn. This mistake gave rise to what we modestly admit was "Smear's" greatest headline ever: "How Can Budd Hopkins Sell Us the Brooklyn Bridge When He Doesn't Even Know Where It Is?"

Moving on - there is Jerry Clark, another emotional person and a close friend of Hopkins, although Clark admits that his own views about abductions are much more moderate. Let us just say that Clark does not like to be criticized. We admire him as an ace ufological historian, but our personalities do clash!

Next, famed author John Keel comes to mind. Although he was kindly disposed toward our late mutual friend Gray Barker, who was known for his levity regarding UFOS, Keel really doesn't like us - and accuses us, for instance, of having been in on Ed Waiters' Gulf Breeze capers. (This is absurd!) The last straw in our relationship with Keel was when we "accused" him on the phone of being a Ufologist. He considers himself to be a Fortean, though the two fields obviously overlap. We haven't spoken since.

Then there is Richard ("Dick") Hall, formerly an assistant to the late Major Donald Keyhoe of NICAP. In those days our zine "Saucer News" attacked NICAP repeatedly for what we considered legitimate reasons. Hall is still mad, after more than thirty years!

And, Lucius Farish of the UFO Newsclipping Service dislikes us apparently because we refuse to take Billy Meier's claims & photographs seriously. Farish won't even send us advance information about his annual UFO conferences in Arkansas, and we have never been to one.

Don Ecker, on the staff of "UFO Magazine", seems to have a chip on his shoulder about everybody and everything. He phoned us once, literally screaming about negative remarks we had printed, which were made about Ecker by Militia sympathizer Bill Cooper. We never did get a word in edgewise in that conversation!

Finally there is James Randi, who is an anti-psychic researcher rather than a ufologist. Several years ago "Smear" criticized Randi severely for such things as his hypocrisy in lying about the sex problems of a psychic researcher named Eldon Byrd (as was proven in court), while his own sex habits could well be considered unsavory. Central to all this is the so-called "Blackmail Tape", in which Randi admittedly solicits teenaged males for sex. Randi's story is that he made the tape in order to entrap these young men who were trying to blackmail him. Some day this Tape, of which we have the transcript, may yet be printed in "Smear". (Long story here. Details are in several of our back issues.)

Randi is the only person who has ever made a serious attempt to sue us.

These are our principal living enemies. On the plus side, there is one man who has an excellent excuse to dislike us, but apparently doesn't. He is contactee & New Age researcher Col. Wendelle Stevens (Ret.). ln the late 1980s, Stevens served five years in an Arizona state prison for having had sex with underaged girls. The court documents on this matter were sent to us indirectly by Kal K. Korff. We checked them out for veracity and then printed a summary - perhaps our most extreme "exclusive" in the history of "Smear". But we spent quite a lot of time with Stevens at a UFO convention just last year, and he seemed to hold no grudge. Now, there's a gentleman!

There are many other leading ufologists who have fallen victim to our acid pen over the years but still remain at least superficially friendly. And, there are still others in the UFO field whom we truly consider to be friends. We hesitate to print this list, however, for fear that half the people on it might write in asking to be taken off the list!

According to the article, the USS Eldridge legend was started in 1955 by a book called "The Case for the UFO", written by the late Morris K. Jessup. We knew Jessup slightly, and we also had the rare pleasure many years ago of meeting Carlos Miguel Allende (alias Karl Allen), who claimed that he witnessed the Eldridge become invisible.

Allende stated, among other things, that some of the Eldridge crew were driven insane by the experiment, and whether this is true or not, there is no doubt that Allende himself was a severe mental case, We listened for hours while he tape-recorded a long rant for the late Gray Barker, which was later sold to Barker's UFO fans.

Said one of the crew at the recent reunion, "The only part of the book I think is true is the part about the crew being a little crazy". He meant this merely as good-natured humor, we trust.

The legend of the Philadelphia Experiment is kept alive today by a lecturer named Al Bielek, who claims to be a time-traveler, and to have first-hand knowledge of the scientific details of the experiment. Somehow, Albert Einstein himself was involved in it, according to Bielek, a fascinating man whom we have met and listened to. But he too seems to have been affected mentally!

William Moore also co-authored a book on this subject. Strange!

• We have here a rather strange volume called "Alfred Loedding & The Great Flying Saucer Wave of 1947". Researcher Jan Aldrich, who has done a vast amount of research on 1947 sightings, was of great help to the authors, whose names are Michael Hall and Wendy Conners. The book is published by Rose Press of Albuquerque, N.M., contains about 190 softcover pages, and sells for $21.95.

  So - one might ask, who is Alfred Loedding? Certainly it is not a name familiar to most UFO fans. He was, we are told, a civilian aeronautical engineer who worked at the Army Air Force Labs at Wright Field in the late 1940s. He was a brilliant man, who designed various state-of-the-art aircraft, including flying wings, jets, and even saucer-shaped craft. However, these were mere drawings, apparently.

  Loedding was put in charge of Project Sign, the first official Air Force UFO investigation. In fact, he may have "inspired" the name Sign. He rapidly formulated the hypothesis that some UFOs are interplanetary, long before this became a popular notion.

  However, by going off onto that way of thinking, he alienated higher-ups in the military, and according to the authors, Loedding was "purged from UFO investigations by 1949 and from Wright-Patterson entirely by 1951!". Nothing is said about what happened to his career after that.

  The peculiar thing is that this is about all the information there is about Loedding in the whole book. Thus the book is really not about him at all, though the authors interviewed his brother and his son. The main thrust of this tome is a detailed chronology of important UFO sightings from 1947 and 1948 - and especially from the peak period, said to be June 24th (the date of the Kenneth Arnold sighting) through July 11th of 1947.

  The book is detailed and well written, but the authors have goofed when it comes to the infamous Roswell Incident. More care, plus a reading of the works of Karl Pflock, Charles Moore, Robert Todd, Phil Klass and Kal K. Korff would have been of great help. The authors reject the Mogul Baloon explanation for several invalid reasons, one of which is, no doubt, a desire to preserve the mystery!

  Other than the unexplained emphasis on Loedding, this seems to be a very worthwhile book, with interesting appendices, a very good bibliography, and a mediocre index. (No, dear friends, we are not mentioned in the index; but then again, why should we be?)

  In short, this tome is much better than average, taking into account how distressingly poor most UFO books are, at least in our opinion.

  Incidentally, a much shorter version of this same rant appears in the Winter 1998 issue of the International UFO Reporter, edited by Jerry Clark...

• Next we have two new outpourin s from the bowels of IllumiNet Press (P.O. Box 2808, Lilburn, Georgia 300@8). The first, written by famed conspiracy buff Jim Keith, is called "Saucers of the Illuminati", and purports to seek "the truth behind stories of alien invasion, secret underground bases, and (of course! - Ed.) the secret plans of the New World Order".

  There is also a little therein about mind control, saucer abductions, cattle mutilation, government anti-gravity testing, and MORE! A mere $12.95 will get you this 128 page tome! ...

• The second offering from IllumiNet isn't about UFOs at all, but we received a free copy and feel obliged to review it. The book is called "Spies, Traitors and Moles", and was written by one Peter Kross.

  A pea green cover with incoherent lettering on it masks this voyage into the shadowy world of spy and counter-spy. Actually, the format of the book is quite good. It is in the form of a quiz, with each question answered briefly, followed by an interesting explanatory page or two. The author seems to know what he's talking about, and we can only hope that he does.

  $14.95 for this 248 page paperback.

Last time, I regaled you with a few of my thoughts on what was wrong with ufology today. This time, a few rays of hope.

While it still continues to flog Roswell with occasional silly International UFO Reporter articles by Tom Carey and my fellow Ufologist of the Year Robert Galganski, the Center for UFO Studies (2457 West Peterson Ave., Chicago, Il. 60659) remains The Field's premiere research organization. Despite bouts of Roswell fever, IUR, CUFOS' quarterly magazine, consistently publishes important and interesting articles and commentary. In addition, there's the Center's Journal of UFO Studies, ufology's only peer-reviewed journal, presenting the results of work by top people in the field.

The Fund for UFO Research (P.O. Box 277, Mt. Rainier (!) Maryland 20712), despite its Roswell blind spot, continues to support other solid research and publish excellent collections of important historical material. For example, "Project 1947: A Preliminary Report on the 1947 UFO Sighting Wave"; "Spaceships or Mirages Over Washington National Airport, 1952?"; and, most recently, "Project 'SIGN' Air Force Documents, 1948-1949". The Fund's book titles (yawn) could use some help, but production quality and, most important, content are outstanding.

Both CUFOS and the Fund operate on (frayed) shoestring budgets with all-volunteer management. A knowledgeable and unimpeachable source has confirmed to me that rumors of a financial crisis at CUFOS are true. The Center, founded by the late, great J. Allen Hynek in i973, desperately needs an infusion of cash. Fellow non-subscribers, both CUFOS and the Fund deserve our support. Subscribe, buy, make tax-deductible contributions - but not, of course, with the $$ you've earmarked for your "Smear" love offerings.

Barry Greenwood, until recently the brains and powerplant of Citizens Against UFO Secrecy (CAUS), independently carries on his ufological work with his excellent UFO Historical Revue ($15 per year, P.O. Box 176, Stoneham, Ma. 02180). In his most recent issue, Barry exposed "the" Fatal Flaw in one of the key "new" MJ-12 papers.

UFO historian Loren Gross also quietly continues his efforts. His delightfully written "UFOS: A History" is the source for material gleaned from contemporaneous accounts of UFO events. A work in progress now done in conjunction with Project 1947 (P.O. Box 391, Canterbury, Ct. 06331), this collection of booklets is a year-by-year saucer history, up to September 1958 so far.

Less quietly, Jan Aldrich and his Project 1947 associates continue to gather thousands of saucer stories from newspaper morgues, concentrating rich historical ore for fellow ufologists to mine. And... aagh! Out of Space again...

• WILLIAM MOORE again takes typewriter in hand to write:

  "...I really feel that your bringing up that eleven-year-old National Archives report on the Cutler Memo was a CHEAP SHOT, especially since every point made therein has already been effectively dealt with long since. Unless you can offer some alternative explanation for the fact that the typewriter it was written on appears (on more than 30 distinct points) to have been identical to one of the four typewriters used in Cutler's office at the time, you really have no cause for argument here.

  "As for Cutler's having been out of town and the memos having no signature, I believe we effectively demonstrated that the same thing occurred in other memos on other occasions and was not particularly uncommon - especially in the case of a carbon, wherein only the original copy would bear the signature of the secretary or aide who typed it, and the carbon (without signature) would be retained for file as appears to have been the case here ...

• Ace cartoonist MATT GRAEBER writes as follows:

  "Just in case Walt Andrus gets upset about my letter and drawings on the Ledonia alien, here is my ufological apology to him:

  "I was saddened to learn that several individuals found my analysis of the Ledonia, Texas alien (?) skeleton to be incorrect, offensive and downright disparaging towards Walt Andrus and the MUFON organization in general.

  "Please note that I wish to publicly retract my previous comments (and forensic sketches) on the matter. I no longer believe that the so-called mythical creature's remains are those of Marvin the Martian or any other ill-fated Martianius that may have accidentally flown into a windmill in 1897.

  "Hopefully, this apology will quell all the controversy that I unintentionally started when I sent you my analysis of the alien skeleton, which I now feel is none other than the remains of Marvin's first cousin 'Vinnie the Venusian'. Sorry about that!"

  Apology accepted! - Editor.

• Researcher CHRIS ROTH writes as follows;

  "...Your report on Walt Andrus' latest paleontological boner makes me glad I don't subscribe to the MUFON Journal anymore. Someone should tell Walt: If you're going to be credulous and sensationalistic, at least do it in style like Tim Beckley!

  "That's sad that Keel may get shafted just as 'The Mothman Prophecies' starts getting the attention it deserves. It's a great book and deserves a great treatment that benefits its author...

  Skeptic MICHAEL DENNETT writes:

  "Another great issue of 'Smear': I loved the 'confidential' cartoon or forensic sketch of the 1897 Ladonia, Texas remains. If you write more articles about Walt Andrus you may lose your J.S. (Journal Subscriber) status.

  "I also noted that you had a letter from John Ford. Is he your only non-subscriber who is in jail?"

  Ford is the only one who admits it! - Editor.

  Faithful non-subscriber DENIS COREY (not in jail) writes:

  " ... Ol' Walt Andrus certainly looks like quite the dork in his photo, doesn't he? Whatta hoot! Actually, the Aurora UFO crash has interested me since I first read about it in the early '70s. From what I've read since, it seems to have been a notorious case of 'yellow journalism'.

  "No one knows whether or not it's even a real skeleton, do they? I didn't know the space people carried swords. Gee, just like in the Buck Rogers serials!...

  "I enjoyed Karl Pflock's article and look forward to the conclusion in the next issue. I disagree with including TV as a reason for ufology's slump, however. Most of the programs I've seen in the past few years have been very good, on Discovery, Learning Channel, History Channel, etc. FOX is always the exception, of course ..."

  Radar engineer HAL RUSSELL writes as follows:

  "I look forward to receiving each 'Smear', and avidly read it through and through. February's was a breath of fresh air, especially considering what I've recently been through with Mr. Peter Gersten of CAUS. UGH! ...

  "A short while after signing up for the CAUS updates, I contacted Mr. Gersten with an offer to assist him with his FOIA requests with respect to military/governmental lingo. I was up-front about who I work for, but his first response to me stated his absolute aversion to ALL governmental/military secrecy. Since I have a security clearance and am still employed by the DOD, it would be dangerous for me to be associated with such a group, so I withdrew my offer of support.

  "The next response from him was scathing - I was the enemy! ... Such vehemence from Gersten and then from several of his loyal troop!..."

Michael Pallant, 36, a singer, and Danielle Minns, 35, a reflexologist, entered the branch of Sainsbury in north Kensington giggling and laughing March 6. Minns jumped into a trolley and Pallant pushed her to a refigerator. A short while later, a security guard hear muffled screams coming from the aisle, and found Pallant lying on Minns in the dairy display surrounded by crushed tubs of cream and margarine. When the guard demanded to know what they were doing, Pallant replied: "Chilling out." Pallant and Minns told the court they had been very drunk at the time.

"This is bloody ridiculous," said Israel's leading New Testament historian, Father Jerome Murphy-O'Connor.
- [API] 2 Feb; D. Telegraph, 3 Feb 1999.

CASH-LANDRUM UFO INCIDENT

Three Texans are injured during an encounter with a UFO and Military Helicopters by John F. Schuessler, 323 page softcover book now available from MUFON, 103 Oldtowne Rd., Seguin, TX 78155 for $19.95 plus $2 for postage and handling.