Moseley is best known as the editor of Saucer News and its successor Saucer Smear, the former a magazine, the latter a newsletter, specializing in controversy, gossip, and even— once in a while— serious investigation. Together the two periodicals comprise an invaluable record of an evolving social movement based on beliefs about UFOs and flying saucers.
Jerome Clark, The UFO Encyclopedia Vol. 2, 254-255
Jim Moseley got started in the UFO business with the intent to co-author a book with Ken Krippine. Jim had invested much time and effort and had travelled cross country meeting prominent UFO figures. The plan was for Jim to do all the work and put Krippine’s name on it, but things fell through. Jim’s interest in the flying saucer field deepened during his research and he met many new friends, but he also came to a realization.
“In short, I had discovered I wasn’t cut out to be a Serious Ufologist, unless of course one was to count the work I did exposing Adamski and, as time went on, certain other fakers and frauds.”
Shockingly Close to the Truth! page 119
George Adamski became a major flying saucer celebrity after the release of his 1953 book, Flying Saucers Have Landed, where he told the story of encountering and communicating with Orthon, the pilot of a landed extraterrestrial spaceship. Better still, he had an abundance of evidence: multiple witnesses, physical traces and photographs! He later took movies of the saucer and continued to have contact and adventures with the visitors from space and share their message of peace and love with the people of Earth.
Not everyone swallowed the stories. Upstart flying saucer magazine publisher James W. Moseley had interviewed Adamski in 1953, and while he found the “Professor” interesting and charismatic, had not been convinced. He published critical articles in Saucer News, and in Oct. 1957 published a “Special Adamski Expose Issue” that collected articles by Moseley, Irma Baker and Lonzo Dove. It included correspondence with some of Adamski’s supporting witnesses, who admitted that Adamski’s story and photographs were untrue.
Link to the historic October 1957 Special Adamski Exposé” Issue of Saucer News.
Saucer News Oct. 1957, the George Adamski exposé issue.
Jerome Clark again on Moseley’s work on the Adamski case:
“But the first serious investigation by a critic of Adamski’s claims was conducted by James W. Moseley in the mid- 1950s and published as a special issue of his magazine Saucer News (Moseley, 1957). Moseley found that the “witnesses” to the first contact were close associates and that, moreover, at least one, Alfred Bailey, had retracted his testimony, saying he had seen neither spaceship nor spaceman and doubted any of the others had either. Jerrold Baker, a young man who had lived at Palomar Gardens between November 1952 and January 1953, told Moseley he had heard a tape recording of “what was to transpire in the desert, who was to go, etc., several days before the party left Palomar Gardens” for the celebrated contact.”
“Moseley’s debunking of Adamski’s claims remains the definitive one, but in subsequent years further negative evidence would come to light.”
Jerome Clark, The UFO Encyclopedia Vol. 2, page 6
Still, Adamski had his followers and many of them chose to ignore the data that disproved their beliefs. A letter of support arrived just in time from an unlikely source. See: The Straith Letter Saga: George Adamski, R.E. Straith and the Seven Letters of Mischief
NOTE: A special thanks goes to Lance Moody for providing the copy of the original Saucer News issue.
