The Straith Letter
Frequent contactee George Adamski (see chapter twelve) inadvertently convinced many within and without the UFO community that his accounts of hobnobbing with Nordic Space Brothers were hoaxes. Although Adamski remained resolute and stood by his stories, he failed to convince UFOlogists Gray Barker and Jim Moseley.
Late in 1957, the pair concocted a letter to Adamski that they typed on what appeared to be U.S. State Department stationery. The letter, which arrived with a Washington, D.C., postmark, came from R. E. Straith, a functionary with the State Department’s “Cultural Exchange Committee.” The letter began “Dear Professor Adamski,” perpetuating the ill-educated Adamski’s fantasy of being an academic. The note was brief, but to Adamski it was bracing acknowledgment of his existence, and more. Based on “a great deal of confirmatory evidence,” the letter said, the State Department had concluded that Adamski’s accounts were factual. However, the letter included a caveat: “While certainly the Department cannot publicly confirm your experiences, it can, I believe, with propriety, encourage your work.” Adamski was quick to share his vindication with followers and doubters alike.
His fans were as exhilarated as he, and some elected not to pursue the matter of the letter’s veracity. But when people who had doubted Adamski from the start contacted the State Department, they were told there was no Cultural Exchange Committee and certainly no R. E. Straith. Adamski’s supporters finally jumped in, and had no more success in uncovering the elusive administrator. Adamski and his fans concluded that the secret nature of the Cultural Exchange Committee caused the State Department to insulate Straith beneath layers of bureaucracy. Mr. Straith was at State, all right, but Washington kept him beyond the reach of the public.
One Adamskiphobe, Lonzo Dove, smelled a practical joke, and suspected Gray Barker, a fellow known for having an antic sense of humor. Barker always denied having had anything to do with the Straith letter—and anyway, people just couldn’t pick up State Department stationery at the five and dime.
Dove persisted, spreading his claim throughout the UFO community and finally preparing an exposé that he submitted to Jim Moseley at Saucer News magazine. Moseley declined to publish the piece, disingenuously telling Dove that the thesis was unpersuasive. After Gray Barker died in 1984, Jim Moseley finally admitted that he and Barker had created the letter. A Barker friend, who obtained stationery from a relative working at State, had capped the joke.
George Adamski passed away in 1965 and was spared Moseley’s long-delayed confession. As hoaxes go, the Straith Letter was adroit but basic, and did nothing to refute (or confirm) Adamski’s claims. FBI agents who informed Adamski that the letter was a fake managed only to provide him with the “secrets and conspiracy” lever he had always wanted. R. E. Straith was a fiction, but for all Barker and Moseley knew, the State Department was full of Straiths, working with files containing precisely the confirmation Adamski longed for.