Why I can say that Adamski was a liar

By Marc Hallet

There are three types of Adamski fans:
1) The naive and credulous ones who believe all Adamski said, either in his books or in his lectures, without ever questioning it.
2) Those who are afraid to recognize they could have been duped and who find it easier to believe than to deny.
3) Those who know he was a liar and who say the contrary for various reasons that I leave to your imagination.

Here are the events as believed by the Adamski fans:
1) On 11 November 1952 he met a Venusian near Desert Center, California.
2) On 13 December 1952 he took very good pictures of a scout ship from Venus.
3) In the 50s he traveled in space with the space people and was even photographed inside one of their space ships.
4) He met the Pope John XXIII and received from his hands a pure gold Vatican medal of great value.
5) He filmed several space ships but "his" best film was in fact taken by Madeleine Rodeffer.

Adamski told of many other extraordinary things that even some of his believers couldn't swallow: For example, he said he went to Venus (where he met his wife, reincarnated) and on to Saturn. Here follows a short summary of some of the information I published in several books and booklets, written in the French tongue, proving that Adamski was nothing more than a liar.

After the first supposed contact
Let's look first at what Adamski said after his first contact claim in Desert Center. Inside The Space Ships (ITSS) was published the first time in 1955. The book, signed Adamski, was in fact ghost written by Charlotte Blodget on the basis of what she had been told by Adamski. It contained stories of contacts and even travels in space or around our Moon inside gigantic mother ships and saucers.

Adamski and his believers have said that the book contained the descriptions of a phenomenon that only a space traveler could have been able to see: The fireflies which were explained by Adamski as natural little luminous particles flooding space between the planets. According to Adamski's credo, the American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts again described these fireflies during their journeys into space. That is a clear example of a lie that has been repeated hundreds of times. In fact, the particles seen by the astronauts and cosmonauts originated from their capsules and were never described by them as a natural phenomenon.

According to Adamski himself (see in Flying Saucers Farewell in the chapter Answers for the Skeptics), the space people told him of the Van Allen belts in 1953 and he wrote about them in ITSS long before they were discovered by Explorer IV. In fact, if we look at pages 91-92 of ITSS as Adamski clearly referred to, we see that he spoke about an artificial radiation zone created by nuclear explosions and not at all natural radiation belts, as the Van Allen belts really are. In 1963, when he wrote Flying Saucers Farewell, Adamski could believe that Van Allen belts were of an artificial origin, but just the contrary was demonstrated later by discoveries from space probes from Earth.

It is obvious that these two essential "proofs," which have been used so many times by Adamski believers, are based only on their very poor scientific knowledge and their lack of understanding of the writings of Adamski himself. In fact, Inside The Space Ships is nothing more than a pure fiction book and the best proof of that is the fact that it is a perfect "remake" of a science-fiction book entitled Pioneers of Space that Adamski authored in 1949. That book which was ghost written by Lucy McGinnis is now very rare, but you can order it in microfilm from the Library of Congress and compare easily its content with Inside The Space ships.

To your surprise you will discover that the two books give exactly the same descriptions of space (with the fireflies), the Moon (with the snow on the summits, the forests, the lakes, the artificial hangars and even the little animal running) for the scouts (with the great lens in the middle of the cabin and the graphs on the walls), the mother ships (with its skins), and even little details such as the portrait of the Great One in the mother ship, the famous Saturnian badge with the balance etc. You will be pleased also to see that the discourses of the Masters are exactly the same, something that proves that Adamski had a poor imagination and was unable to create new and original philosophical concepts.

His lack of imagination was so great that his book Cosmic Philosophy first edited in 1961 was also mainly based upon texts he had written in the years '30. And as it was necessary to prove that Alice Wells was stupid enough to publish again these old texts in her Cosmic Bulletin after Adamski was dead.

US UFO researcher Richard W. Heiden discovered another clue that Inside The Space Ships was a fiction book. He compared what GA had said about the weather that prevailed the day he described one of his contacts, to the official data registered about meteorological conditions on the same day. They were completely different. It apparently never crossed Adamski's mind that this little detail would be checked for accuracy by anyone.

Inside The Space Ships had a postscript in which Adamski explained he had been photographed in a mother ship from a scout. Four pictures depicted what seemed a black area flooded with an irregular beam of light in which five black portholes were visible. Behind two of these portholes were what seemed to be two white heads: The one of Adamski himself and the one of a space friend. Technically, these pictures are gross impossibilities. Adamski explained the mother ships were made of at least two walls or "skins" with different kind of "machinery" between them. Due to that particular structure of the mother ships, Adamski explained that each porthole was in fact a long tube with a "glass" at each end. Adamski also said that in the middle of these tubes was a lens that permitted a person to enlarge what was being looked at outside the ship. Suppose Adamski told the truth. At the time the pictures were made from the little saucer, he was consequently behind at least three "windows" separated from each other by several meters. Now, remember what is going on when you take a picture with a flash on the front of a window: The things behind the window are completely masked by the light that is reflected by the window itself. And that's why the pictures presented by Adamski in ITSS are, strictly on a technical point of view, gross impossibilities. In fact, these pictures seems to have been made just like many were made a long time ago by poor photo- portraitists: Two figures were simply photographed behind a black scene-painting in which holes had been cut.

For sure, after the first supposed contact in the Desert, Adamski told marvelous stories about new contacts but everything was pure invention. Another proof of that is that none of his space friends told him that the famous Straith Letter was a joke perpetrated by a well-known UFO researcher. That extraordinary story has now been published in the United States and I do not find it useful to speak more about that in this article.

The Vatican medal and the famous Rodeffer film
Of course there are the Vatican medal and the famous Rodeffer film that seems to prove that Adamski was in any and every case the ambassador of the space people. Let's look at those two "proofs." According to May Morlet-Flitcroft and Lou Zinsstag's testimony, it was on the 13 May 1963 that Adamski met Pope John XXIII. On St Peter place, Rome, Adamski asked his two friends May Morlet and Lou Zinsstag to stay there and wait for him. Then, he crossed through the crowd of tourists and disappeared behind a distant door.

More or less thirty minutes afterward, he reappeared and said to the two women that he had seen John XXIII who was ill, for sure, but who had a pink carnation, and not the olive one that cancerous peoples have when they are agonizing. He said also that through the windows of the papal room he had seen the famous Vatican gardens. Contrary to what Adamski said to his two female friends and later to Dr. Perego, John XXIII was agonizing. Three days later he was dead. Many testimonies as to the Pope's long agony have been published and one knows for sure that the papal room was on the front of St. Peter place, just the opposite of the gardens.

As to the notorious "pure gold Vatican medal", the Adamski believers have only the expertise of Lou Zinsstag who could speak with authority, she told them, because she was the daughter of a jeweler. I have made an inquiry on that subject, and thanks to a Roman expert numismatist, I have discovered that the famous object has very little value because it is nothing more than a "tourist souvenir" made by a commercial society from Milan! I am sure that Adamski believers will be very embarrassed to prove the contrary by a written statement from the Medagliere della Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana! On that day, Adamski did exactly the same as he had done in the Desert in 1952: He asked his friends to stay where they were and wait for him, went into the distance, disappeared, and came again later saying that something very important had taken place. That method is based upon the same psychological means used by jugglers who give their audience the impression that something extraordinary is taking place when, in fact, something very ordinary actually happened.

And now, to the famous Rodeffer film. I recall the time when my friend May Morlet-Flitcroft told me, with assurance, that a film like that couldn't be faked. She was so sure that she gave me her personal copy (received directly from Adamski) and asked for an expert evaluation. What an error! The film was shown to an expert who directed my attention to some interesting clues that were very strange, in particular the movements of the camera. Some days later (it was in 1976) I put the film under a professional microscope in order to examine some very important shots. In a very short sequence, the Venusian scout seemed to move in the distance and pass behind the branch of a tree. I focused on that branch and discovered that the density of the emulsion's particles were denser, exactly at the section point, between the scout and the branch. In other words, the two objects were superimposed and, to tell it crudely, it was the unquestionable proof that the film was a trick obtained by a double exposure. I have published the microphotograph for the first time in my book "George Adamski" published in France in 1983 (Michel Moutet Editor) and I did it again in January 2000 in a monograph entitled "Biographie d'un escroc" (Biography of a sharper) privately printed for French UFO specialists. I defy the Adamski believers to find another explanation other than that of a double exposure.

Of course, some of the Adamski believers will say immediately that the scout is changing shape constantly, something impossible to do with a little model. They have sung that credo for many years. None of them seem aware that something can easily seem to change shape when its image is filmed in a distorting mirror or with a distorting lens. And no one seems to know that a little model can change shape if it is made of several free parts held on an axis. If you have a video copy of the famous Rodeffer film, look at it and you will see that the vertical axis of the scout always remains totally steady.

When you fake a film by mean of a double exposure with non-professional material, some bad sequences are generated with poor contrast and light quality that will have to be eliminated. In 1978, Madeleine Rodeffer explained to Timothy Good how she had been disappointed when she had seen the film for the first time, the film that Adamski had taken, and that she had agreed to the endorsement as if it had been taken by her (in order to be more credible). The film looked so strange that it couldn't be the original one, Madeleine Rodeffer said to Timothy Good. She explained that it looked so evidently faked that it was found impossible to show it in that state. Adamski himself seemed disappointed. He explained, said Madeline Rodeffer, that maybe he had filmed the shadow of the scout and not the scout itself. Of course, that sounds completely foolish as if the scout seemed to be a shadow and not a material thing. It probably looked that way because of the double exposure. Madeleine, who knew nothing about cinema and the camera, believed Adamski, who finally suggested that government agents in the developing laboratory had used a copy of his original and inserted fraudulent images in it to discredit himself. So, with Fred Steckling, he eliminated the so-called "inserted images" and obtained what was called "the Rodeffer film". I take these testimonies from "George Adamski The Untold Story" by Lou Zinsstag and Timothy Good, chapter 16, but of course I have explained them in a way different than they were explained in the book. Now, we can go back to 1952.

The photos of the Venusian scout ship
According to what he said, Adamski took his best telescopic saucer pictures on 13 December 1952. For the Adamski believers, things are very clear because the photographic expert Pev Marley has said these pictures couldn't be faked. In fact, the problem is more complex than that. First of all, Pev Marley who was a Hollywood cameraman was not at all an expert in telescopic pictures. Moreover he was not an expert in telescopic pictures taken with the unusual material used by Adamski. Pev Marley's testimony can be found in an appendix of Flying Saucers Have Landed where he is quoted as having said that the shadows of the saucer and the shadows on the ground were perfectly corresponding. Alas! The ground is never visible on the Adamski telescopic pictures. Pev Marley was apparently misquoted. When speaking about the shadow of a saucer he was not speaking about the Adamski pictures. Should he have done it, he would have made a fool of himself.

My Friend Michel Monnerie, who is an expert in ufology and a skilled amateur astronomer, has studied the problem of these pictures for me in great detail. I give you a summary of his study. First, let me tell you that the telescope and the camera used by Adamski were not at all designed to take good telescopic pictures. Let me explain the different manipulations Adamski was obliged to do in order to take telescopic pictures of an object not nearly as far away as the celestial bodies.

First, he had to find the object with the little telescopic viewfinder and after that he had to obtain a sharp image of it in the middle of the eyepiece. With an object close and not very far away, it was not easy. After that, because he used a camera that was an old type, he had to do many separate manipulations to photograph each picture. The sequence for each picture was as follows:

1) Obtain a sharp image on the depolished glass at the back of the camera.
2) Extract the depolished glass.
3) Insert the glass photographic plate with its protective cover.
4) Extract the protective cover.
5) Open the shutter.
6) Shut the shutter.
7) Replace the protective cover on the photographic plate.
8) Extract the photographic plate with its protective cover.
9) Replace the depolished glass.

Each one of these manipulations could generate vibrations that would not only destroy the sharpness of the picture but also affect the framework around each picture. So, after each picture, Adamski was obliged to verify and make sure the object was always in the middle of his eyepiece, something that required new manipulations.

I have counted more or less 35 different precise manipulations required to take four pictures. And all these manipulations would have been done in very limited time during the short stay of the Venusian scout above the valley. Well for sure, old Adamski was more rapid than young Lee Harvey Oswald when the latter shot President Kennedy!

Now, let's look at Adamski testimony. In Flying Saucers Have Landed he said he "quickly" took two shots and then, realizing that the ship was too large to get entirely in the picture, turned the camera on the eyepiece and took another shot while the scout was still hovering. He took a fourth shot when the ship was beginning to move again. Now, look at the four shots shown by Adamski. Only one shows the profile of the ship that is cut, and three show the whole Venusian craft. One of these third shots is blurred: it is the last one taken by Adamski. Compare the pictures and the testimony: It is clear that what Adamski said does not match with what he showed. But here is another important fact: Adamski has always said he took four shots, but in his archives there was a fifth picture that showed a saucer with something like a bump right on the middle of its outer flange. Strange indeed of course, but quite embarrassing for Adamski believers. That fifth shot was unknown since it was not published until 1990 by Mr. Hesseman, a German Adamski believer who had probably received it from Fred Steckling, then the leader of the George Adamski Foundation. That fifth shot is the unquestionable proof that what Adamski wrote was not at all the truth. Moreover, we are now obliged to count at last 45 precise manipulations with the telescope and the camera in a very limited space of time.

My friend Michel Monnerie told me another interesting thing: At the time Adamski took his telescopic pictures, photographic plates did not exceed a rating of 200 ASA, something too weak to take "instantaneous" telescopic pictures as Adamski seemed to do. Time exposure would be necessary in all likelihood. In Flying Saucers Have Landed, Adamski published another picture that had been taken, he said, by Sgt. Jerrold E. Baker. It seemed to prove that on that famous 13 December Adamski was not alone in seeing the Venusian scout passing over his home. Alas for Adamski as in January 1955, Baker retracted himself in the UFO review Nexus. In fact, he had played the same role as Madeleine Rodeffer played in 1963: He had endorsed a shot that Adamski had made himself. Baker said also that Adamski had made other shots that he had asked Lucy McGinnis to destroy. And Baker concluded by saying he had never seen something like the pseudo-Venusian scout except one day when he and Karl Hunrath (who lived also on Alice Wells property) saw an artifact behind the quarters occupied by Adamski, an artifact that Adamski explained as an antenna prototype for television!

Adamski believers will say that English engineer Cramp has demonstrated the pictures depicted exactly the same ship as the one photographed by the young Stephen Darbishire. This is untrue. The same result has been obtained with another picture that is known to be a forgery. This is because orthographic projections are not at all a reliable way to make that kind of comparison. Also, British UFO experts are now convinced that the young Darbishire and his father were joking. You can find some interesting information about that on the web.

In the desert
I could stop here with my exposé of George Adamski because the facts are overwhelming. But I don't want to leave the smallest chance for the George Adamski Foundation to try and explain away the proof I have presented in this article. So I must further explain about the "pseudo-writing from another planet" and the shoe prints left by the Venusian.

Many years ago, Adamski believers learned that an archaeologist had found strange signs in Bolivia that were completely identical to those of the mysterious "writing from another planet" supposedly received by Adamski from his Venusian friend. Suffice to say that in my book "George Adamski" I gave the unquestionable proof that the testimony of the archaeologist couldn't be accepted as true. Contrary to what he had seemed to tell at the beginning, he had read the book about Adamski before publishing his own, and it was totally incredible that he brought together in a same drawing, various signs such as those he published, and stated he had found them in several places. The evidence is that he tried to attract attention to his books by a "mystery" he created himself.

In the 70s, a Belgian UFO researcher tried to prove that the shoes of the Venusian were extraordinary clues of a technology unknown on Earth. That poor enthusiast made a fool of himself and convinced only the naïve. He had forgotten one thing: The sand prints could have been easily done by Adamski himself with a pair of sand-shoes that he could have easily hidden in his jacket. In 1963 Jerrold Baker explained also he had been ordered by Adamski to buy plaster for making casts of impressions, if such should become necessary at some future time...

The Adamski believers will say there are written testimonies of those who were with Adamski in the Desert. Yes, there are. But read them! They say that the story told by Adamski is true. Nothing more. And for them, it was the truth, as for May Morlet- Flitcroft and Lou Zinsstag it was true that Adamski entered the Vatican to see John XXIII... In fact, apart from Alice Wells, none of the "witnesses" saw the Venusian. While Adamski didn't write that, the witnesses said that later. In the bulletin of the Cosmic Brotherhood Association, George Hunt Williamson added that none saw the scout ship and that the mother ship they had believed they saw, before the supposed contact, was probably only a target for anti-missile maneuvers.

I would like to conclude by something amusing. In September 1940, Science Fiction Stories published a story signed Oscar J. Friend, entitled Kid from Mars. There, the author described a beautiful blond young spaceman. His garment was close fitting at the neck, at the wrists and at the ankles. At his waist was a large belt... Remember nothing? Yes, the drawing made by Alice Wells in the Desert! Alice who was the only one that day to see the Venusian with her own eyes, and who, after Adamski's death, became the leader of the George Adamski Foundation before Fred Steckling took it over.

Other publications by Marc Hallet:
George Adamski, Michel Moutet Editeur, Regusse, France, 1983
Les sectaires d'Adamski, Privately printed, Liège, Belgium, 1984 and 1988
George Adamski - Dernière synthèse, Privately printed, Liège, Belgium, 1994
Biographie d'un escroc, Privately printed, Liège, Belgium, 2000
The chapter Adamski and His Believers in UFO 1947-1997 edited by Hilary Evvans and Dennis Stacy, J. Brown Publ., London, 1997