Saucer Smear

History

James W. Moseley started Saucer News in 1954 and kept publishing, under various titles, for nearly six decades. The newsletter evolved through several incarnations: Saucer News (1954 to 1968), then the Non-Scheduled Newsletter, and finally Saucer Smear, which ran from 1984 until Moseley's death in November 2012. Throughout all its iterations, the newsletter was Moseley's personal vehicle: typed, edited, opinionated, and distributed from his home, first in Fort Lee, New Jersey, and later from Key West, Florida.

Moseley occupied a position in UFO research that nobody else could have filled. He was not a believer in the strict sense, nor a debunker. He attended every major UFO conference for fifty years, knew every significant figure in the field personally, and reported on the community with a mixture of affection, amusement, and merciless honesty. He feuded publicly with Philip Klass, traded barbs with Gray Barker, needled MUFON's leadership, and printed gossip that more respectable publications would never touch.

The newsletter's full title was the "Official Publication of the Saucer and Unexplained Celestial Events Research Society," a name Moseley chose specifically so that the acronym spelled SAUCERS. This kind of deliberate absurdity was characteristic. Moseley took the phenomenon seriously while refusing to take the UFO community's self-importance seriously. His editorial columns mixed legitimate case discussion with accounts of interpersonal feuds, conference gossip, and pointed commentary on the egos and rivalries that defined the field.

Saucer Smear was distributed free of charge in its later years, funded by Moseley's personal means. The subscriber list included virtually everyone of significance in the UFO research community, from committed investigators to hardcore sceptics. Klass subscribed. Friedman subscribed. Vallee received copies. The newsletter functioned as the field's back channel: the place where people said what they actually thought, rather than what they were willing to put in a journal article.