| EDITOR AND STILL SUPREME COMMANDER: James W. Moseley
CONTRIBUTING EDITOR:
|
NON-SCHEDULED NEWSLETTER Volume 49, No. 9 November 10th, 2002 |
MAILING ADDRESS: P. 0. Box 1709 Key West, FL 33041 |
We welcome your correspondence, pro or con, well-reasoned or otherwise,
but please keep in mind that while Saucer Smear is on the Dreaded Internet, your humble
editor is NOT! So, if you wish to receive a personal reply to your letter, or wish to
have any chance of seeing it printed on Our Glorious Pages, please print it out, put it in an
envelope, affix a stamp thereto, and SNAIL mail it to:P.O. Box 1709 Key West, FL 33041 It's simple and loads of fun! Ask your grandma if you don't remember how to do it! We thank you! |
|---|
In addition to speaking at the convention on the subject of (guess what?) our new book, we also
lectured the previous evening to the local CSICOP coven, and we gave the Ufologist of the Year
award to John Timmerman, who has worked tirelessly for many years on behalf of CUFOS and the
Ufological Cause in general. (See photo at right.) In a complicated mix-up, John was actually
supposed to receive this award way back in 1985, but the transaction was never officially
performed - or whatever.
Other speakers at this year's conference included Rick Hilberg; computer experts Don Weatherby & Wendy Ban; Jerry Black; Terry Endres; Derrel Sims; Donnie Blessing, political candidate Stephen Bassett, and of course John Timmerman. Of these the most persistently verbose was Mr. Bassett, who has actually gotten onto the ballot in the 8th district of Maryland as a flying saucer candidate! Much less verbose was a local radio personality named Bill Boshears, who showed up not at all, in spite of promises to do so!
Your editor did not mingle with the masses as much as usual, due to bronchitis, from which we were cured by magic (legal) pills kindly provided by the Hilbergs. (See photo of them below.) A researcher who was perhaps the most colorful of all the attendees was not actually on the NUFOC program, but lurked in the hallway thereabouts. He is Bruce Forrester Jr., formerly known as Klark Kent (alias "Man of Steel"). Bruce is selling, among other weird devices, something called the Multi-Wave Oscillator. The propaganda sheet tells us that it is "a remarkable healing and rejuvenation device used primarily on cancer patients". Yet at the bottom of the same page it says in caps: "This device is not for any healing or medical purpose. All persons buying or using this MWO must be in good health." So why buy it? Ask Bruce, at P.O. Box 55, Bellbrook Ohio 45305. Say Jim sent you!...
Moving on - the Fall running of Pat Marcattilio' s twice-yearly conclave took place
on October 12th & 13th, as usual in the in creasingly run-down Days Inn of Bordontown,
New Jersey - near Trenton. This time the event was entitled "The Great UFO & Earth Mysteries
Congress of 2002".
The show was indeed better than usual - with a somewhat larger attendance and better-qualified speakers, at least four of whom have real Ph.D.'s. Drs. David Jacobs and Bruce Maccabee are well known to UFO fiends, but the other two, Ers. Paul LaViolette and Tom Van Flandern are new on the saucer circuit.
LaViolette seems to be saying, among other things, that the signals sent out by pulsars are artificial, which we question; but Van Flandern made a very good case that the notorious Face on Mars, and other markings thereon, really are artificially constructed. But not to worry; it happened over two million years ago, and thus the creatures that did it are long dead, hopefully. And Van Yiandren has no use at all for Richard Hoagland, who (as he stated pointedly) has no doctorate at all! Other new speakers included our olde friend Daniel Cohen, author of countless science books, who gave a fascinating account of his falling-out, many years ago, with CSICOP in general and arch UFO debunker Phil Klass in particular. We were, however, astounded by a story Dan told about your "Smear" editor having asked him to research hybrid babies, back in the 1960s. It never happened, and no one was looking for hybrid babies back in those days'. On the other and, we were pleased to learn that Dan, together with other skeptics and non-skeptics alike, believes that James Randi's "million dollar offer" for proof of the paranormal, is pure bunk, i.e., not sincere!
Most interesting of the new speakers was psychic Ingo Swann, who rarely makes public appearances. Most of his talk was in the form of answers to questions from the audience; and though we couldn't hear many of the questions in the back of the hall (as no microphone was used for them!), we did like Ingo's answers, which were a sublime mixture of modesty and arrogance. Ingo was on the government's payroll for many years, and he taught the art of Remote Viewing to several selected people. Says Ingo, "I was the original remote viewer, and still the best". No doubt he is right about this (though we doubt if remote viewing is reliable enough to be useful to the military). The funding for Swann's experiments eventually dried up, partly because the government feared they would try testing telepathy, which if really successful, would expose all of their own evil thoughts! Egads!
Other speakers included your "Smear" editor (again pushing The Book), and Chris Styles, speaking on the classic Shag Harbor (Canada) UFO crash, which has never been solved in spite of much effort over the years. Sunday morning featured two New Age speakers named White Eagle and Reverend Jayne Howard, and these we skipped as sleep seemed more important.
In all these years Pat MarCattilio still has not mastered the art of timing his presenters and keeping them on schedule. Thus when Dr. Maccabee hung it up late on Sunday evening, there were barely a dozen people left in the lecture hall. But presumably they were enjoying themselves, and maybe that's all that matters!...
Incidentally, next year's NUFOC (our 40th!) will take place in the Los Angeles area and be hosted by famed New Age and UFO author Ann Rruffel. More details will be provided as the fateful date grows closer. We are hoping to drag William Moore of MJ-12 fame from retirement for this event, and there are likely to be other surprises. Stay tuned!

Their main publication is called "The International UFO Reporter" (IUR), published quarterly. Jerry Clark, a Leading Light in CUFOS, describes IUR as "the best UFO magazine in the English language, with emphasis on sober research and analysis". Yet this same Jerry Clark (or someone else with the same name!) is the author of a 7-page diatribe called "The Trivialist" in a recent issue, passing this off as a serious review of our book "Shockingly Close to the Truth!" Could off-the-wall articles like this be contributing to the public apathy which is causing CUFOS to fade into oblivion? We would like to think so!
John Rimmer, editor of England's delightful "Magonia", has written a full-page editorial in the October 2002 issue, in which he critiques Clark's critique. Rimmer ends by saying:
"Where Clark misses the point is by not realizing that books such as Moseley's will be totally ignored by scientists, who will see it for what it is, a light-hearted ramble by an amusing old codger, adding to the gaity of nations, but not to scientific debate. The books they will take notice of will be those by Serious Ufologists that Clark approves of, such as Hopkins, Mack, Jacobs and Friedman; but he cannot see that it is these authors' books, not Moseley's memoirs, which will prevent ufology from ever becoming the scientific study that Clark so desperately desires."
The UFO then went straight up and disappeared. Now there's a scary story, a bit too late for Halloween!...
The answers to this question are as follows: (1) The Festival marked both the 50th anniversary of the Flatwoods Monster encounter and the 100th anniversary of Flatwoods itself; (2) Artist Frank Feschino had gone to great lengths to mark the Monster moment (but more on that later); (3) Stanton Friedman was present and needed plenty of time to hawk his wares and hear himself talk.
We arrived at the geographic center of West Virginia and checked in at a new, sprawling Day's Inn conference center. A stuffed black bear was on hand to greet us in the lobby, along with a pile of publicity for the Festival - fliers, local papers, and a cover story in West Virginia's "Goldenseal" magazine. I was delighted to see this wave of public attention, and even more delighted to see that the local steakhouse had a Flatwoods Monster platter on its menu.
I left this pocket of Cozy civilization and, accompanied by Camera Eye Digital owner Mike Merchant, headed for the heart of Flatwoods itself. We drove around a bit and saw no signs of a festival other than a number of yard sales. It seems that half of the residents of Flatwoods had adorned their yards with piles of marketable debris, hoping to take advantage of the festival traffic through town (one assumes). But traffic was minimal on Friday. A handful of locals had set up lawn chairs on Main Street and were watching a bluegrass band perform in front of an old general store.
Inside the general store, inflatable green aliens ($2) were stacked up in front of a window, flanked by issues of "Goldenseal" ($5), Flatwoods Monster lanterns ($25), and "I Survived the 50th Birthday of the Flatwoods Monster" T-shirts ($7). Around the corner from all of this commerce was a smaller room wherein Frank Feschino had set up a Flatwoods Monster museum - a series of wall displays on posterboard (blown-up copies of Project Blue Book reports, maps of area sightings, clippings about the Flatwoods monster encounter, and Frank's own rendering of the Monster as described by star witness Kathleen May), tacked to the walls. Yellow "caution" tape ran parallel to the displays, presumably to keep the crowds away from the art. Merchant gave Frank credit for putting a great deal of effort into the "museum", while I commented that the whole thing looked like a junior high school science fair project. When he was done laughing, Merchant said, "I sure hope he gets an A!"
Meanwhile, things were getting tense outside. The bluegrassers had commandeered the stage and weren't surrendering the microphones to the square dance band. The controversy appeared to be more significant than any debate about the Monster. We took in some old time Appalachian music, then retired to the hotel (where we watched "The Night America Panicked", an old made-for-TV movie about Orson Welles' famous 1938 broadcast of "War of the Worlds".)
Saturday morning brought rain, which was troubling because we had come all this way to view the Flatwoods parade and damn if we wanted anyone to rain on it! In the meantime, we strolled through the museum again, only this time Frank Feschino and Stanton Friedman were on hand, along with Kathleen May and a film/photography crew who ran around acting like they were from CNN and had just landed the hottest scoop on the planet. Merchant was casually filming the affair when he was ordered by one particularly pretentious prick to turn his camera off!
Bad vibes began to build up; then Stanton Friedman started regaling a local woman with statements about his extreme credibility as a saucer researcher. "I can handle skeptics", he said, and "I can see them coming. I have answered 40,000 questions in the course of my career..." blah blah blah... We pictured Stanton hitting on women at the Days Inn lounge ("Hey, babe, have I shown you my MJ-12?") and any plan I had to chat with Friedman at length was cut short by his absurd self-adoration, along with the fact that he had the nerve to sell photocopies of Project Blue Book Report #14 for a mere $23! (Friedman lectured on Thursday evening, and was apparently the only out-of-town speaker - Editor.)
In contrast to Stanton was the well-intentioned folklore geek Frank Feschino, who stated that his research into the Flatwoods Monster had unearthed some startling new evidence, but the only outcome of these revelations seemed to be Frank's own paintings (limited edition, $20). There was no new evidence about the objective existence of the Monster itself. Instead, Frank had re-interviewed key witnesses and came up with his own notion that the "monster" was actually a ship of some sort. Fascinating. Several locals scoffed at the museum display, apparently still convinced that Ms. May actually saw a barn owl on that 1952 night, while an all-too-open-minded woman took in Frank's paintings and exclaimed, "Seeing really is believing". I can't imagine what she thought she saw, or what she walked away with in terms of a Belief.
The rain stopped and the festival climaxed with a parade - a marching band, the local baseball team, antique cars, bikers, honking trucks, and, at the head of the parade, Frank Feschino in a trailer with Kathleen May, his own life-sized painting of the Flatwoods Monster, and a bevy of kids in alien costumes. Everyone loves a parade, it seems, and my favorite parade offering was this bit of literature thrown at me by the occupants of the Flatwoods Baptist Church float: "Fifty years ago, some claim they saw a flying saucer land in Flatwoods. Others say it was a meteor, still others say it was nothing at all. But this one thing I know, that one day soon, coming in the clouds, Jesus Christ will call his children home." It seems we all have our pet myths to promote, eh?
Though the festival was fun and cheery in a very quaint way, there was something a bit sad about it. Maybe it's the sagging urgency of UFO lore or folklore in general; maybe it was the low attendance; maybe it's that feeling you can't avoid in West Virginia - that here is a beautiful land forgotten by both time and economics...maybe it was Stanton Friedman! Oi vey!
Editor's Footnote: Good ole Stan Friedman! He is the best there is at what he does best: He is a saucer salesman! Kind of like a vacuum cleaner salesman, and as such, he has no equal. His roles as saucer researcher and (former) nuclear physicist are secondary!

We begin with a consideration of what Kenneth Arnold, The Man Who Started It All (damn/bless him!), repeatedly told press and public about the shape of (his) saucers.
Even the greenest saucerer knows Arnold didn't coin the term "flying saucer". As he told the "Missoula (Montana) Sentinel" on March 9th, 1950 (reported on March llth), "When military officials asked me how they flew, I told them that they seemed to be bouncing around...like a saucer skimmed across the water. The press started calling them flying saucers."
So it was that the public had an almost instant mind's eye image of the shape of saucers: They were round, disk shaped, or close to it. Saucer scoffers have made much of this, asserting this bit of journalistic hyperbole caused people to see things as disk shaped when they weren't, creating a bogus mystery phenomenon. I don't buy this, but that's a matter for another column.
For his part, Arnold made it very clear his saucers weren't round. From the "East 0regonian", July 17th, 1947: "In describing the discs, Arnold maintained that they aren't circular. he ones he saw were semi-circular with a shallow V-shaped trailing edge."
And then there was his April 7th, 1950, interview with famed radio-TV newsman Edward R. Murrow (from a transcript published by CUFOS in 1984):
"MURROW: Here's how the name 'flying saucer' was born.
"ARNOLD: These objects more or less fluttered like they were, oh, I'd say, boats on very rough water.... and when I described how they flew, I said that they flew like they take a saucer and throw it across the water. Most of the newspapers misunderstood and misquoted that, too. They said that I said that they were saucer-like; I said that they flew in a saucer-like fashion.
"MURROw: That was an historic misquote..."
You can say that again, Ed! Now we turn to a mystery that's shockingly close to home:
On the night of April 27th, 1950, one of the Classic sightings took place high in the air over Indiana. Aboard their DC-3, TWA pilots Robert Adickes and Robert Manning encountered a huge saucer, glowing like molten steel. After zooming up from behind, the UFO flew formation with their airliner and performed various amazing maneuvers. The stewardess and most of the 19 passengers also saw the saucer before it sped away into the night!
Donald Keyhoe interviewed many of the witnesses (see his "Flying Saucers from Outer Space" and article in "True", August, 1950), but five of the passengers, their addresses and first names unknown, remained in the shadows - among them a man named Moseley!
Smearmeister Jim Moseley interviewed Adickes in 1953 (see our "Shockingly Close to the Truth!") But did he know more about the case himself than he's ever revealed, to Adickes, to me, or even to Gray Barker?
When are you going to come clean, Jim Moseley?
There is nothing "brand new" to the crop circle theory you mention as coming from Arcturus Books (in your issue of 15 Sept. 2002) but it has indeed been ignored for a long time. It was first presented by French researchers at an open meeting of the Society for Scientific Exploration at Stanford University in the 1980s, and was featured in a New Age magazine called Amargi (VøI.IV, no.ll) in September 1991 in an article inspired by someone calling himself "Jacob the Iconoclast" and by Otter G'ZelI. I am including a copy of the piece, which has been studiously swept under the rug by ufologists of every stripe.More recently, I developed the argument again as an entry posted on the NIDS webske, which I am also enclosing. I take the liberty of calling your special attention to the amusing little incident of the hovering cylindrical mirror, reported to me by an Oxford physics professor. I am told that so far this article has been downloaded over 2,100 times, so there may be hope of starting a serious debate about the whole issue. I am glad that Arcturus has courageously picked up the story as well.
While on the subject of books and the web, I am informed that a site called Audible.com has now posted the audio version of my novel Fastwalker and is making it available through the Internet.
One more thing of possible interest: While in Montreal this week I read a rather shocking item about the Raelians in. the local newpaper (also enclosed). It seems the followers of Rael in Canada are now burning crosses in public, presumably as a sign of rejection of Catholic beliefs. How I long for a return to the innocent days ofology described in your book!
With warm personal regards,
Jacques Vallee
In an enclosed article Vallee explains his theory of crop circle formation:
It is tempting to jump to the conclusion that some sort of space-based weapon is being developed. I am reluctant to assume this because of the cost involved. Even if satellites represent the ultimate platform for such a weapon, which does not seem obvious to me, the calibration tests can be carded out far more cheaply from a conventional aircraft. In those cases when witnesses on the ground have seen formations in the process of being created, they have described a reddish glow at ground level, with the vegetation bent over in a matter of minutes. This would be consistent with a beam directed at the field from a hovering dirigible, painting a figure very much in the same way as an electron beam "paints" a digital image on a computer screen. From conversations I have had with the investigators involved, the beam would be unlikely to be a simple infrared beam. Instead a combination of laser and microwave transmitters may be involved, or a form of maser. Perhaps the increasingly sophisticated tests are designed, precisely, to discover optimal combinations.
"Project Mogul flight 4 was launched from Alamogordo, N.M. on June 4th, 1947, but was never recovered. Skeptics have long believed it to be the source of debris found by rancher Mack Brazel, and thus the genesis of the Roswell myth."About seven years ago, Professor C.B. Moore, who was the Mogul project engineer in 1947, published a reconstruction of the flight path of Flight 4 from launch to touchdown. Using wind reports and data from other Mogul flights, he concluded that the array landed on the Foster ranch where Brazel found the debris. Many consider Moore's reconstruction the most persuasive evidence in favor of the Mogul explanation for Roswell.
"Unfortunately for Moore and the Mogulists, physicists David Rudiak and Brad Sparks have published a lengthy and rigorous engineering analysis of Moore's reconstruction. They demonstrate that he 'cooked the books' by altering almost every parameter to artificially produce the Foster landing site.
"Using legitimate data, Rudiak and Sparks found that Flight 4 would have touched down 70 to 100 miles northeast of the ranch."
We don't know Rudiak, and all we really know about Brad Sparks is that he helped Todd Zechel run up a $2,000 phone bill when Zechel was freeloading with us back in 1977. Your "Smear" editor has a long memory indeed! - Editor.
"It was nice to see (in the Oct. 5th 'Smear') that Chris Allan trusts the FBI, CIA, and modeled after the FBI: USAF AFOSI! I would be glad to provide Mr. Allan a copy of AFOSI regulations, which state that they do not confirm the authenticity of 'Leaked' information or documents'. I guess this reference in my article eluded him or perhaps all of Great Britain? He asks, 'How do we know it was a retype?' Because I have authentic AFOSI teletypes in my files. I do research based on facts, not on 'proclaimation', as Stanton Friedman would say with wisdom!! What gets me is that I made a good case that said document was NOT authentic, and Allan goes ballistic on Bill Moore! He has moved on - What is your problem?"
"...(I don't like George W. Bush) but I'd like to emphasize that I don't go so far as to throw myself behind the theories of those such as the conspiracy-theorist David Icke, who believe that the world's ruling elites, including the Bush family, are actually extraterrestrial reptilians in disguise! This belief is currently quite tenacious in the conspiracy underground. The structure of this belief is the same as old anti-Semitic conspiracy theories - the usual suspects such as the Rothschilds and Rockefellers keep coming up - and can be traced to Bill Cooper's 'Behold a Pale Horse', to the Scientologist William Bramley's 'Gods of Eden', through George Hunt Williamson's 'Other Tongues - Other Flesh', all the way back to the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion'."Ufology seems to be slow lately, except for the upcoming cable mini-series by Steven Spielberg on the abduction phenomenon, titled 'Taken'. As usual, True Believers call any such media event Proof that the media are conditioning us to the reality of alien presence, while any period when such media events are lacking is Proof that the media are conspiring in a cover-up. See - there's just Proof all around us!..."
"I have read your book with great pleasure and interest. It is a very good book for those who are concerned by the way ufology has developed into a kind of mythical or legendazy belief."I have worked with close friends of George Adamski in the 1970s, before discovering that Adamski was a 'professional liar'. Tou may be interested to read my own expose on my web site http://www.marc-hallet.be.tf - There you will also find an expose about the so-called Belgian UFO wave..."
"In your Sept. 15th issue of 'Smear', in your "Tidbits of Trash' column, you wrote: 'Followers of George Adamski would not like the "Signs" movie'. I assume that you mean the aliens were not about peace and love. Well, I did not like it for another reason: It was an updated version of 1950s style 'invaders from space' movies that strengthen public consciousness not to take the paranormal seriously; it's all science fiction, and not worth supporting any scientific-oriented research efforts. A movie portraying the phenomenon's paraphysical and inter-dimensional aspects would be far closer to the truth."You referenced the NIIB recent report on the 'black triangles' that are a lighter-than-air blimp style craft powered by 'electrokinetic drive'. This conclusion is not a new idea. In the summer of 1991 I wrote the lead article in 'The New Jersey Chronicle', a MUFON state newsletter (July/Aug. 1991 issue), that covered some government-sponsored experimental airframes and platforms; research and development efforts that included eye-witness reports, drawings, photographs, and patents..."
I buzzed into the first New Mexico MUFON meeting to be held in several years. There were 23 in attendance; including many True Believers from the Holy City of UFO non-crash sites. The meeting was hosted by State Director, Don "I Can Read The Ramey Message" Burleson.David Perkins, a knowledgeable paranormal researcher, gave a thought-provoking slide show and tell) presentatiøn. He exceeded his allotted time slot by about 20 minutes causing the Roswellian True Believers tø twitch and twiddle like first graders in a senior economics class; however, they were soon in UFOOLOGY HEAVEN when Carol Syska, former Director of Roswell's International UFO Museum and Research Center, stepped up to the podium. She gave (her less than honky-tonk) quality presentation of why she believes in UFO's. One of her extraneous reasons was the conversations she had had with Clifford Stone, who claims to have seen the bodies of deceased (extraterrestrial) aliens during his stint in the military. Lots of uuuhs, ooohs and aaahs from the supercurious Roswellians! Hummmmmm, That kinda puts things into a Roswell perspective.
SD Burleson wrapped up the meeting with his hopes of gathering new New Mexico members into the fold and plans to have the next statewide meeting in Roswell (Whee!) and possibly in Socorro after that (Double Whee! Will Lonnie Zamora be there? Stay Tuned).
As MUFONIANS began to vacate the premises, I realized my time would have been better spent in the field, buzzing a meadow muffin.
Agent Buzz
| PULLING BY PLONKER: Two martial arts experts in Taiwan have set a world record by pulling an 11 ton lorry 12in (30cm), using their penises. The masters of Chi Kung performed the test of strength before a large crowd in preparation for their attempt to pull an aeroplane by the same method. A week later, the masters were joined by four others, and they used their penises to pull the truck 3ft (1m) with 80 people on board. Metro, 23+30 Oct; Brisbane Courier Mail, 31 Oct 2000. | FANTASY ISLANDS: The New Zealand government may have to recognise the Jedi (the movement that leads the struggle against the Empire in Star Wars) as an official religion. Fans have launched an email campaign to encourage people to claim Jedi as their religion on the country's latest census form. If 8,000 people back the campaign, officials must recognise it. Sunday Times, 11 Mar 2001. |

We guarantee that every dollar you donate to "Smear" will forever remain out of the hands of terrorists, anarchists, Free Thinkers, and other Undesirables! Every cent of your Donation will go to our own personal use, for necessities such as Scotch, Gin, Rum, and Coca-Cola. Make your check or money order out to the editor personally. Two E's in Moseley, please, though one will do!
Saucer Smear Index
|
![]() Please note that letters for Smear editor James Moseley should be snail-mailed to PO Box 1709, Key West, FL 33041, insofar as Cdr. Moseley is proudly computer-illiterate and determined to stay that way. |
Own a genuine artifact of ufological history!
Line your birdcage for pennies a sheet!
Back issues available for the last 46 years!