Flying Saucers from the Kremlin Read online

  Could the U.S. Air Force have constructed its very own equivalent of Jasper Maskelyne’s clunking device that struck terror into the hearts of Italian village folk during the Second World War? Possibly. The story was revealed in Maskelyne’s book in 1949 and was shared with the Air Force one year later, thanks to Jean M. Hungerford. The Flatwoods Monster appeared – seemingly out of nowhere – in 1952, two years later. That would have been ample time for the Air Force to have created its own version of Maskelyne’s monster. And to unleash it too, and have the people of Flatwoods believe it was an extraterrestrial creature.

  And, finally, we should not overlook the major significance of the title of Jean M. Hungerford’s paper: The Exploitation of Superstitions for Purposes of Psychological Warfare. The fact is that psychological warfare is at the heart of practically all of the cases under the microscope in this book. With that all said, it’s now time to meet a man who claimed to have met aliens and who the FBI kept a close watch on. The motivation for the surveillance? That man’s apparent love of Russia and communism. His name was George Adamski.

  6. “Powerful images become permanent fast-breeders”

  Born in Poland in 1891, George Adamski – of Flying Saucers Have Landed notoriety - was the ultimate “contactee,” regardless of what you may or may not think of him and his tales. He defined what it meant in the 1950s to have interactions with beings from other worlds; creatures very much like us and who wished us nothing but goodwill. Adamski’s primary visitor from the great beyond was Orthon. Adamski’s forays into the world of the supernatural, however, did not begin when the flying saucer phenomenon was at its height. Adamski had been involved in matters of a metaphysical type for years. For example, in April 1934, the Los Angeles Times ran a feature on the man himself with a headline that succinctly read as follows: “Shamanistic Order to be Established Here.” In part, it states:

  “The 10-foot trumpets of faraway Lhasa, perched among perpetual snows in the Himalayan Mountains in Tibet, will shortly have their echo on the sedate hills of Southern California’s Laguna Beach. Already the Royal Order of Tibet has acquired acreage on the placid hills that bathe their Sunkist feet in the purling Pacific and before long, the walls, temples, turrets and dungeons of a Lama monastery will serrate the skyline. It will be the first Tibetan monastery in America and in course of time, the trained disciples of the cult will filter through its glittering gates to spread ‘the ancient truths’ among all who care to listen. The central figure in the new movement is Prof. George Adamski.”

  It’s important to note that Adamski was never a professor. Of anything. But, he most certainly didn’t mind the suggestion that he was a professor. He told the Los Angeles Times, in what was an undeniably pompous fashion: “I learned great truths up there on the roof of the world, or rather the trick of applying age-old knowledge to daily life, to cure the body and the mind, and to win mastery over self and soul. I do not bring to Laguna the weird rites and bestial superstition in which the old Lamaism is steeped, but the scientific portions of the religion.”

  Adam Gorightly and Greg Bishop say in their “A” is for Adamski book that: “During Prohibition, The Royal Order of Tibet secured a special license to produce wine, which some suggest was Adamski’s main motivation for starting his mystical order to begin with.” Old George was definitely well-known for his particular fondness for the grape. Now, it’s time to head to 1952, when Adamski’s involvement in Ufology really took off. Maybe literally. At least, for those who bought, and still buy, into his stories.

  It was early on the morning of November 20, 1952. Adamski and his faithful secretary Lucy McGinnis drove to Blythe, California. This was not your average road-trip, however. Adamski, when telling the story to whoever would listen, claimed that the reason for hitting the road to Blythe had an astonishing purpose behind it: aliens dearly wanted to meet with the professor-who-wasn’t. The pair soon met up with other characters in 1950s-era Ufology. They included UFO enthusiasts Al and Betty Bailey, and George Hunt Williamson. The latter was a controversial contactee who crossed paths with the FBI on several occasions, most seriously in 1962. That was when Williamson was suspected by the Bureau of smuggling priceless Mexican artifacts of an historic and archaeological significance into the United States.

  After refueling their vehicles and their stomachs, the gang then headed out to Parker, Arizona – where, Adamski said, he was absolutely sure that aliens were soon to put in an appearance. So the tale goes, that’s exactly what happened. A huge, “cigar”-shaped UFO loomed into view, high in the skies above Parker. The amazed crew hit a dirt-road in hot pursuit of the mighty craft. Adamski and company were not the only ones who were looking for a close encounter. Adamski claimed that a squadron of U.S. Air Force planes was also after the aliens. The people from the stars almost effortlessly made a quick escape from the pursuing pilots.

  It wasn’t long before a much smaller flying saucer made its appearance before the astonished group. In an almost Old Testament-style fashion, the gleaming craft landed on a nearby mountain, awaiting the disciple-like Adamski to come forward and meet his superior. He somehow knew that the aliens had come for him. Adamski approached the craft, while the rest – their mouths no doubt agape – looked on. An extremely-human-looking extraterrestrial exited the futuristic craft, just as Michael Rennie’s character of Klaatu did in the classic 1951 movie, The Day the Earth Stood Still. Unlike Klaatu, though, Adamski’s alien – who announced himself as Orthon – had long hair of the kind that just about any and every 1980s-era “hair-metal” rock band would have been proud to sport.

  Orthon announced to Adamski that he came from Venus - and that he came in peace, too. In no time at all, Orthon began lecturing Adamski on why we, the human race, needed to ditch our atomic weapons. If we didn’t, the only outcome would be overwhelming, worldwide destruction. Not only that, Orthon wanted Adamski to be one of the key figures in the plan to save the Earth and its people. In an instant, Adamski was up for the challenge. Orthon, seemingly happy with the outcome, returned to his flying saucer and shot off into the skies. An alien had come and gone, and for Adamski a new life had just begun. It was a life that both Russia and communism played a significant role in, which we will get to in the next chapter. But before we do so, let’s take a closer look at Adamski, the man and the contactee combined.

  There’s no doubt that George Adamski was at the height of his fame from the early-to-mid 1950s, with the absolute peak year being 1953. That was when his book, Flying Saucers Have Landed, was published. It sold more than 100,000 copies in the process. The book was curious not just because of its content – controversial encounters with human-like aliens – but also because of how it was written. And by whom. It was credited to Adamski and an Irish writer named Desmond Leslie. That’s not entirely wrong; but it’s important to note that it’s not precisely correct, either. It so happens that in the same time-fame that Adamski was toiling on his book, Leslie was working on a publication on strange phenomena in the skies: UFOs. Leslie got his hands on sixty pages of a manuscript on Adamski’s claimed encounters that he, Adamski, had cobbled together in somewhat chaotic fashion. An agreement was made to combine the two works-in-progress and fuse them into one, which is exactly what happened. The reality, though, is that those sixty pages were not written by Adamski at all. They were actually ghost-written by Adamski’s secretary, Lucy McGinnis. Adamski dictated the story to McGinnis, who made the whole thing readable, if not particularly believable.

  On this issue of believability, or of a significant lack of it, we need to return to the words of the Gorightly-Bishop team: “Flying Saucers Have Landed wasn’t Adamski’s first stab at literary immortality. In the 1940s, he submitted a science-fiction yarn called ‘Pioneers of Space’ to Amazing Stories that featured an extraterrestrial messianic figure who comes to Earth bearing a message of peace and love. Adamski later self-published a book version of Pioneers of Space that fell by the wayside un
til debunkers rediscovered the work and pointed to it as an early fictional account of his Orthon encounter.”

  To fully understand the mindset of George Adamski, his motivations, and how he ultimately became a figure of concern and controversy to the FBI, we have to turn our attentions to Colin Bennett. He was the author of an excellent, illuminating biography on Adamski, Looking for Orthon. I also interviewed him on Adamski, his motivations, and his claims of alien encounters. Bennett shared the following thoughts and observations with me. They collectively suggest Adamski may actually have had some genuine alien encounters, but chose to combine the nature of those encounters with his personal admiration for communism and the Russians. Not a good idea.

  Bennett said: “Many Orthons have appeared throughout history. The equivalents to Adamski’s Venusian ‘space brother’ have appeared on mountain tops, in deserts, and have appeared to walk on water, or fly in the sky. Their sole function is to sow seeds in the head; just as a farmer grows a particular crop. These seeds act on the imagination, which replicates and amplifies whatever story-technology is around at the time. People such as Adamski and the rest of the contactees were, and still are, like psychic lightning-rods for certain brands of information. Undoubtedly, rich or poor, clever or dumb, they are possessed by a kind of higher cerebral disturbance, and, like Moses, they are as prepared for the ‘visitation’ as they anxiously await for a new product brand.

  “Contactees are host-nutrients for whatever cultural sales lines are on offer from visions conjured up by clouds, sea or sand. The message is ‘consumed’ and thoroughly processed exactly as a viral product is absorbed. The incomprehensibility of the received stories is irrelevant. They represent a heavily codified branch of postmodern intellectual consumerism. In receiving ‘messages’ at all, Contactees are bar coded as it were, and elements of the induced story-technology are ready to crystallize out into that final alchemical stage called the mechanical real. But we must be careful here. As the alchemist said to his apprentice, ‘The game may be rigged, but it’s the only game in town.’

  “Deception and all its ramifications is the key to this whole business. This does not burst the bubble of the mystery however, for manipulative levels of faction may well be our first clue as to how a possible alien mind might work. If the levels of deception of all kinds in human culture are anything to go by, the range of such within an alien culture must be both multiple and profound.

  “The ‘space-folk’ are sculptured by wars between rival viral memes competing for prime-time belief. It may be that, as an independent form of non-organic life, memes as active viral information can display an Orthon entity at a drop of a hat. They come complete with sets of cultural agendas. After they have rung the doorbell as it were, and the goods are sold, these metaphysical salesmen disappear like the traditional Men in Black, no doubt traveling on to seed other dreams in other towns and other heads. The goods we have unwittingly bought are half-formed memories of having met someone from another world.

  “Over a half-century later, we can no more erase the legendary Contactees from our heads than we can erase Elvis Presley or Marilyn Monroe. Once induced by mere transient suggestion, these powerful images become permanent fast-breeders, turning out scripts and performances in all our heads – for no one can escape – even as we sleep. It might come as a disappointment to extraterrestrial nut-and-bolters, but as [Jacques] Vallee says in Passport to Magonia, Orthon and his brood may be a form of ‘alien’ life that has been with us for a long time. Such ethereal beings are part of the structure of that much-despised and rather unfashionable idea described by the phrase mystical experience.

  “A man says he has seen a fairy being. Another man says that is impossible, because fairy beings do not exist. When we subtract the two beliefs we do not get zero as an answer. We have the thinnest of belief-tissue remaining, but perhaps mechanical quantity is irrelevant. The smallest part of an HTML address contains the whole address, rather like a fractal. These creatures, though seen and photographed, leave no trace of fights, no food swath, no blood, no sweat. They appear as partially formed displays rather than flesh and blood as we know it. As soon as we are into display we are into Media. It is somewhat chilling to think that if an Orthon or even perhaps a Jesus can appear in this manner, then so can many things else, including objects and even situations. In this it is possible that we are host-receptors of skunk-smoke from life forms not yet known to us.

  “There is no doubt that Contactee claims allow access to a refreshing world which includes humor, and inspired absurdity. They allow humanity to breathe and access a Matrix world in which anything that can be imagined can happen. It might be denied by social-scientific left, but the truth is that dreams, fantasies, and mystical experiences of all kinds play an absolutely essential part in all human mental operations.

  “George Adamski played a significant part in establishing New Age thinking. It might be well to remember that the entire body of our moral philosophy and spiritual life is formed by visions and inspirations. It does not come from science or technology. Those who thoughtlessly dismiss mystical experience cut themselves off from all art, literature, and no small part of all thought and philosophy. As mystics and prophets know, when desert light strikes the retina, anything that can be imagined can happen. The greatest tribute that can be paid to Adamski is that through both foul means and fair, he helped to create one of the very few routes to the unconscious that we have.”

  Now, we have the words of the late Jim Moseley, who was a long-time observer of the UFO phenomenon. He was also someone who had the opportunity to chat, in person, with Adamski in 1953 about his claimed encounters: “When I met him,” Moseley told me, “Adamski was in his guru mode. You could go to him at Palomar without an appointment and he would be sitting there, holding court, and talking to all the people that came in. He seemed like a pleasant sort. He couldn’t prove anything; you had the choice of believing him or not. Now, whether he was genuine or not, he did have a background with the Royal Order of Tibet. Then, he wrote his science-fiction story, Pioneers from Space, which turned out to be very similar to his later UFO book. I don’t think he literally believed everything he said. But, I think what he said was in-line with a personal philosophy that he may very well have taken seriously [italics mine]. I think with Adamski it was like this: if I say ‘I’m Jim Moseley, and I believe in world peace, love, and saving the environment,’ people won’t care. But, if I say that a spaceman called Orthon told me that we should love each other, well, that certainly gives it more meaning.

  “I think this is one of the big things behind the Contactee movement: they believed in what they were saying, but they needed a higher authority to get it across. Like in religion, you need God. Adamski needed Orthon. Adamski and the Contactees represented an early hippie philosophy of the time – a 1950s version of what came later in the Sixties with flower-power protests. A lot of what they were saying merged into the mainstream of liberal thinking at that time. So, in that way, it was a very significant movement.”

  7. “Russia Will Dominate the World”

  Having studied how George Adamski was elevated to astonishing levels of fame, infamy and notoriety, it’s now time to address the matter of why, exactly, the FBI came to suspect that Adamski was not only a closet communist, but possibly even someone who was being used by the Russians in a strange psychological warfare-based operation. Just maybe, Adamski was an unwitting player in this strange and sinister game. In a worst-case scenario, though, Adamski was a knowing and entirely complicit figure. Certainly, the FBI wanted answers and, as a result, they dug very deeply into the man’s life. As evidence of this, close to 400-pages of FBI documentation on Adamski have now been declassified. An FBI document of May 28, 1952 reveals that Bureau agents had a credible source who, back in 1950 – no less than three years before Flying Saucers Have Landed was published - had shared with them certain disturbing data on Adamski. The FBI took – and to thi
s day continues to take – careful steps to ensure that its source’s name would not be compromised.

  What we do know is that the FBI’s informant claimed to have seen Adamski in the presence of a group of Russians in downtown Los Angeles, California, on several occasions in 1950. Discussing politics, no less. Unfortunately, the available censored papers don’t specify where exactly in L.A. the meetings occurred, or under what particular circumstances. Nor do we know who was responsible for the source of the story. Also, we have to wonder how the source was so absolutely certain that the group were Russians. Was he or she conversant in Russian? Did the source recognize the accent? Were they themselves Russian, too? If so, what were they doing in Los Angeles? On this specific part of the story, a lot of questions remain frustratingly and tantalizingly unanswered. I have to wonder if the Bureau’s source may have slightly embellished this part of the story, as a means to try and justify further, deeper surveillance of Adamski. I should stress, though, that there is not a shred of evidence to suggest that the source exaggerated the story in the slightest; it’s just a theory on my part. Also, lying to the FBI would have been a very stupid and reckless thing to do. We only have to take a look at certain events surrounding the undeniable Russian meddling of the past few years to see how lying to the Feds will get a person into deep, deep trouble. And even a significant number of years in the slammer. Minus your hair-dye, as per Paul Manafort.

  With that said, let’s now take a careful look at the contents of the most important portion of that inflammatory document, which makes it very clear that Adamski and communism went together, hand-in-glove.

  On September 5, 1950, [source] advised the San Diego Office that he first met Adamski about three months ago at the café which is named the Palomar Gardens Café, owned and operated by Adamski, at the road junction, five miles East of Rincon, California, at a point where the highway branches off leading to Mount Palomar Observatory. [Source] advised that Adamski has four or five women working in the café and according to [source] business does not warrant the employment of four or five persons. [Source] stated that on August 20, 1950, the occasion of his last visit to Adamski’s café, he [source] and a [deleted] of San Diego, became involved in a lengthy conversation with Adamski during which Adamski told them at great length of his findings of flying saucers and so forth. He told them of a space ship which he said he saw between the earth and the moon, which he estimated to be approximately three miles in length, which was flying so fast that he had to take about eighty photographs before he could get three of them to turn out.