The Wit & Wisdom of James W. Moseley, Vol. IV

After many years of studying not just UFOs, but the people who study UFOs, Jim Moseley has opinions about most of them. Here are some of the more interesting ones, for good or ill, as found in his book Shockingly Close to the Truth.

Paul Kimball

Donald Keyhoe
I felt - correctly, I still believe - that Keyhoe routinely made too much of too little, at least in part just to sell books. After all, he was a professional writer, who got his start in the pulp magazines of the 1920s and 1930s. I suppose that is where he picked up a literary device he used in his saucer books and which I hated, and still do: fictitious characters and fictitious "reconstructions" of fictitious conversations dramatizing UFO cases and Keyhoe's own musings on the Significance of It All. (p. 45)

James "The Amazing" Randi
In September, 1964, I made my first guest appearance on James "The Amazing / Amusing" Randi's all night radio talk show... At the time, Randi was relatively open-minded about saucers and other weirdness. We became friends, and I was a regular on his show until he was somewhat mysteriously fired in January 1966. As time passed, Randi's cautious open-mindedness dissolved, and eventually he went well beyond thoughtful skepticism and off the deep end into dogmatic debunkery. His "colorful" statements about spoon-bending psychic Uri Geller led to costly legal battles and have generated much controversy. Because of what I consider to be Randi's hypocrisy, arrogance, and philosophical extremism, I eventually became disillusioned with him, ending what had been an interesting freindship. (p. 189)

Stan Friedman
I think Stan semisecretly yearns to be considered Hynek's successor as ufologys' leading statesman. However, he lacks a Ph.D and has never held an academic or research position of the sort required to gain a real-science stature anything like that enjoyed by Hynek. He also comes across as too glib and too hucksterish, while at the same time exuding evangelical true believerism, nothing at all like Hynek's low-key, tweedy-academic style... While Stan is an excellent speaker, like any aging comedian, he really needs some new material. (p. 202)

Jerry Clark
... Today the leading historian of ufology... As many in The Field know, over the years, Jerry and I have clashed frequently, mainly because I rather unkindly enjoy pushing his buttons to bring out the worst in him - a quick temper and harshly opinionated views. However, I do respect him as a Leading Authority, and there is no question he has made many important contributions to ufology. (pp. 178 - 179)

Coral Lorenzen
Coral was opinionated, prejudiced, and just not a very nice person - but she was a hoot to drink with, and once matched me martini for martini, although she claimed she only got drunk at saucercons. It is amazing to me that Coral was the head of a major UFO organization for such a long time (maybe it was her capacity for martinis that made the difference). (p. 223

Dick Hall
Sometime in 1958 or 1959, Hall and I had a telephone conversation concerning my "attacks" on NICAP. Almost before we began, he asked me if I was taping our chat. I truthfully told him I wasn't and that I didn't own a tape recorder (I still don't). He kept coming back to this, alleging he could hear clicks on the line and so on. I kept denying it. Finally, Hall practically shouted into the phone that I was lying, that he knew I was taping the call. I saw red, yelled "Paranoid!" into the phone, and slammed down the receiver. Things haven't been the same between the suspicious, ill-tempered, and very full of himself Dick Hall and me since." (p. 131)

Linda Moulton Howe
In her career, she has covered the ufologcial waterfront, and claims to have established links between animal mutilations, UFO landings, little-green men sightings, and even abductions. She has also been an important second-string player in the crashed saucer saga (including as a booster of the seemingly immortal Aztec case). Somehow, she's managed to bring all these things together in a way that make her and her many fans happy, and I think she genuinely believes what she says and writes, at least at the time she says and writes it. (pp. 255 - 256)

William Moore
I've had enough "quality time" with Bill that I should be able to figure him out, yet he remains an enigma. I do remember that he once told me his religious beliefs are consistent with the idea that there are humanoid beings from other planets visiting here and the notion that Jesus was one of them. Did he invent MJ-12 and the Aviary and misconstrue Roswell to confirm his own religious beliefs? Or were his motivations more down-to-earth, mere fame and fortune? Or was the whole thing a semiclever ploy to get the government to release The Truth by making up and promoting stuff that Moore considered shockingly close to the truth?... Bill Moore, an enigma wrapped in a questionable maybe-classified document, perched in an aviary from which all his birds have flown. (pp. 267 - 268)

George Adamski
I felt, and still do, that although Adamski's claims were absurd in many provable and almost-provable ways, and despite the anti-Semitic overtones of the "agent of Wall Street" slur [against Moseley - PK], his "philosophy" was harmless, and that therefore he represented no threat to society and wasn't all that bad a guy. My rather base motivation for the expose [of Adamski in Saucer News - PK] was that, if he could build his reputation on mythical interactions with spacemen, I had an equal right to build mine by exposing his con. One is as kosher as the other. Adamski was fair game, and I think I treated him fairly. If he were still with us, I suspect that he would agree that I did." (p. 70)