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THE CORSO CONUNDRUM

Curiouser and curiouser!

—LEWIS CARROLL, ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND

Of all the books concerning UFOs, The Day After Roswell, by retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Phillip Corso, was the best seller. It was, without a doubt, the single book that had the most impact on the field in recent decades. The book was purported to be the quintessential insider’s revelation of information that the U.S. Government did retrieve a UFO at Roswell, New Mexico. Corso also confirmed that alien bodies were found and provided unprecedented information about what they termed extrabiological entities or EBEs. Further, it was stated in the book that the unique material recovered at the crash site was used to assist American technological advances. Then, on the dark side, Corso claimed that there was actually an ongoing war between Earthlings and the alien invaders. Highly successful, when released contiguous to the fiftieth anniversary of the famous Roswell incident, the book sold more than 250,000 hardcover copies, and reignited interest in this most intriguing mystery. This was, after all, one of the few first-person accounts to come out in many years. A former government official was admitting what many people around the world suspected—there was indeed a cover-up by the U.S. Government. Unfortunately, few of the extraordinary claims had any truth to them.

There is far more to this story than is generally known. For the record I must state that Phil Corso was a personal friend. Even though we disagreed about many of his statements I tried unsuccessfully to help him get a movie deal. In addition, I was with Phil at his home in Florida between his two heart attacks that occurred less than a month apart. That visit was on July 2, 1998, which was just two weeks before his death. A few UFO enthusiasts who have heard my comments have accused me of speaking ill of the dead as Corso cannot defend himself. While many of my observations may seem devastating, there is nothing included here that I didn’t say directly to him. In fact, a copy of a letter I sent to him following the publication of his book is located in Appendix A. There is one fact that is generally agreed upon regarding Phil Corso: almost everybody that knew him, including me, thought he was a consummate gentleman and basically a great guy.

Discovering Corso

Thanks to George Knapp, a seasoned Las Vegas television investigative reporter, Phil Corso came to the attention of those of us at the National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS) long before his book was published. NIDS had been established by a local real estate developer, Robert Bigelow, to examine scientifically two specific anomalous areas. One was the continuation of consciousness beyond physical death, and the other was UFOs. George Knapp had a long-standing interest in the area of UFOs, and at one point relinquished a coveted anchor position on the local CBS affiliate, KLAS-TV, in order to pursue a national television documentary on UFOs. Since then he has returned to KLAS-TV and, in 2008, won a highly prized Peabody Award for exposing nefarious relationships between water, power, and politics in Nevada. Knapp is a popular and highly regarded part-time weekend host on the late-night radio program Coast to Coast AM. He is also well known to UFO enthusiasts for his role in questioning activities at the infamous Area 51. In 1989 George made headlines in the UFO community by bringing forth the contentious story of Bob Lazar and his mythical experiences in the desert into the public domain.

What is not known by the public is that years prior to the publication of The Day After Roswell, it was George Knapp who had an agreement with Corso to be the one to pull the book together. Unfortunately for Knapp, that deal fell through and Bill Burns became Corso’s coauthor. As a veteran investigative reporter, Knapp acquires information from many confidential sources for a reason shared by few reporters—he is trusted. This was the case with Corso, and George had kept the secret until it became clear that assistance in getting the book out was necessary.

While we were skeptical of the basic story, in March 1996 George made arrangements with Corso to have a small group visit him. With Corso’s permission, Hal Puthoff, George Knapp, and I traveled to Stuart, Florida, and spent a couple of days listening to him describe his extraordinary experiences. Arriving one evening, we drove to the home of Phil Corso, Jr., and met with his father. At first, there was considerable difficulty in getting a complete story as young Corso seemed extremely skeptical of us, and kept insisting that his father not divulge the details of his exploits. It took most of the next day, but Phil, Sr., opened up and told us about the basic incidents that are described in the book. Most striking to me was the consistency of his detailed information. That would continue to be true over the next few years. It was almost as if the speech was recorded. At any given time he would begin talking about specific events, and the details never changed.

The first meeting was sufficient to get our collective attention. In April 1996 Bigelow extended an invitation for Corso to come to Las Vegas and discuss the issues in more detail. Corso agreed to come for three days. To support this debriefing, both Hal Puthoff and well-known UFO investigator Jacques Vallee flew in to join us. Corso’s story never wavered, but contained both plausible and troubling information. Plausibility came from his reported assignments supported by documentation. Troubling were topics that ran counter to the known history of technological developments.

This was not Corso’s first major exposé of sensitive material. In November 1992, Corso had appeared before a Congressional panel investigating the fate of American servicemembers declared missing in action (MIAs) and prisoners of war (POWs). At the time he described a shooting war that had taken place between the former Soviet Union and the United States for a number of years. Except for a limited number of people in the Intelligence Community, almost no one knew about these incidents. While the world had heard about the downing of Gary Powers in his U-2 spy plane, very few were aware that over the past decades there had been numerous other events in which our planes were shot down. Even the families of the crews involved were told that their loved ones had died in training accidents. Many of the details were very ugly, including the fact that some crew members had been captured alive, exploited, and then killed. Unlike spies who were caught and traded on a bridge in the middle of the night, officially these aircrews didn’t exist, so therefore an exchange was impossible.

Corso also reported on the extremely sensitive issue of POWs still missing in North Korea. He had served as the head of the Special Projects Branch/Intelligence Division/Far East Command under the tenures of three highly esteemed generals, General Douglas MacArthur, General Matthew Ridgeway, and General Mark Clark. To military personnel, what he stated was at least as shocking as the presence of aliens. Corso presented testimony, which was supported by others, that nearly 900 American POWs had been left behind in North Korea after the exchange took place. He stated that about 300 sick prisoners had been within 10 miles of the repatriation site at Panmunjom, yet never made it to the site, and were never accounted for. For political expediency, and counter to our most precious American values, the U.S. Government forsook its own soldiers and left them condemned to die in North Korea and elsewhere.

Following our meeting in Las Vegas, I spent a week in Washington checking Phil’s background and included a trip to the Army War College, located at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. It was clear from our discussions that Corso had indeed had many high-level connections while on active duty and beyond. He was credited with being a military advisor to President Eisenhower, and later served supporting the Warren Commission as it investigated the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Among Corso’s closest allies was Lieutenant General Arthur Trudeau. It must be said that they had an extraordinary relationship given their rank differential. Lieutenant General Trudeau was a legendary visionary for the Army in research and development. In the early 1970s the Army initiated an oral history project that included only eight former generals. Trudeau was one of those selected for a series of in-depth interviews that would continue over the span of a year. When those interviews took place, some ten years after the retirement of both officers, Corso was found in Trudeau’s kitchen. As part of Trudeau’s history, Corso also was formally interviewed as part of the project.

However, when it comes to Corso’s past, little is easy to follow. The basic reported path seemed accurate, with a fair amount of fluff involved. For example, at the end of World War II, as a captain he had been assigned to Rome. As he stated, he did have contacts at the Vatican. He appears to have been involved in obtaining passage for 10,000 Jews to Palestine. But then his memoirs state that he “was handed the responsibility for intelligence and security of Rome.” He then goes on to claim that he personally “restored law and order” to a city he said was in chaos. However, when reading the awards he received for his service in Italy, they are commensurate with what would be expected of an Army captain doing an excellent job, but nothing as truly extraordinary as the claims. Obviously, and as would be expected, there were more senior officers that held the responsibilities described in his writings.

Discrepancies Quickly Emerged

There is an office in the Pentagon that holds all of the phone books that ever existed there. Amazingly, I found a woman who was the longest serving civilian in the Pentagon; she had arrived in 1942 before the building had been completed and was still there in 1996. She had a remarkable memory and actually remembered both Lieutenant Colonel Corso and Lieutenant General Trudeau. Considering the tens of thousands of midlevel officers who had been assigned to the Pentagon during her employment, accurately remembering two of them was quite a feat.

She quickly located both a phone book and an organizational chart for the Army Headquarters at that time in question. What was found only partially supported Corso’s claims concerning his assignment. Corso stated that he had been transferred back to the Pentagon under Trudeau, and a division had been created for him called Foreign Technology Division (FTD). This is not to be confused with the large Foreign Technology Division of the U.S. Air Force at Wright-Patterson, Ohio. It was learned that the Army FTD was formed as Corso stated, and then disappeared shortly after his retirement. However, while Lieutenant Colonel Corso is listed as assigned to that office, he was not named as the director, as he had claimed. Rather, it was a Colonel T. H. Spengler who was listed as the head of the FTD in room 2D343 of the Pentagon. On several occasions, and in his writing, Corso specifically claimed to be the director of FTD when multiple documents did not support that assertion. When Corso was asked about the incongruence, he could only say he did not know Colonel Spengler. One of many conundrums.

The investigation went further. Corso recommended that we talk with General George Sammet who then lived in Orlando, Florida. At this juncture we brought in Lieutenant General Gordon Sumner with whom I had worked while at Los Alamos. General Sumner had been fired by President Jimmy Carter when he testified before Congress that the plan to relinquish the Panama Canal on short order was a bad one. After President Carter left office, President Ronald Reagan recalled General Sumner and appointed him as a Special Assistant to the Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs with the personal rank of ambassador. Having traveled with Gordon in Panama, I knew he was revered by many Panamanians and had a great breadth of knowledge about the area. Importantly, he was open to my discussions of unusual topics, knew General Sammet, and was willing to go with me to make the introduction.

General Sammet had a unique background and had held several positions from which he had direct knowledge of the topics addressed by my questions. When Corso was at FTD, then Colonel Sammet had been Lieutenant General Trudeau’s chief of staff—meaning he would have had access to most of the information about major projects being conducted in that office. Although we had not specified the topic for discussion for our meeting he came prepared with a packet of information about Corso. He confirmed that Corso and Trudeau often had long, intense conversations about strange topics. However, when it came to UFO material retrieved from Roswell, he stated he had no direct knowledge of the topic. Interestingly, Sammet continued his career and eventually took over as chief of the Office of Research and Development, the position previously held by Trudeau. Therefore he was asked if in that position he ever encountered projects related to the Roswell material or UFOs. General Sammet again stated he had not.

This lack of programmatic continuity would have been very strange. Programs and projects normally are passed down from one chief to the next who assumes that position. If there were projects as important to technological developments as Corso claimed, certainly there would be a record of them. The logical person to have inherited the UFO program, if it existed, would have been General Sammet, and yet he denied ever knowing about it. This apparent discrepancy was pointed out to him with the comment, “Therefore we shouldn’t believe Corso?” He responded, “I didn’t say that.” Institutionally, this lack of continuity for a significant research project does not make sense. The responsibility for monitoring progress should have been constant.

Errors Abound—Both Minor and Egregious

When The Day After Roswell was published I sent Corso a seven-page letter addressing the errors that I found in the book. Again, that letter can be found in Appendix A. My observations ran from simple mistakes, such as it is Adelphi, not Adelphia, Maryland, to glaring errors including the assertion that the Cold War was a cover for fighting ET; that the United States and Soviet Union were always cooperating in that war; and that we had an established relationship with ET. In my view, these statements are preposterous.

At the time of our early meetings, Corso arranged for us to be provided with a copy of his original manuscript. From a quick read, it was obvious that he desperately needed a coauthor, as much of the material rambled on, sometimes almost incoherently. Also, Phil was not computer-literate. There were pages and pages of handwritten material, some of which had been later typed, and even a few drawings. Importantly, there are very significant differences between the original handwritten manuscript, and the published version of the book. The discrepancies start at the beginning of the book. Phil’s original manuscript never included the whole first chapter called “The Roswell Desert.” That chapter includes first-person descriptions of the event that, if authentic, could only have been written by a person present in Roswell, New Mexico, at the time of the recovery. Phil never made a claim that he was ever at Roswell during the time of the incident. Later, this rough manuscript was posted on the Internet.

Corso’s most fundamentally important claim was that ET technology assisted in many of our scientific and engineering advances. This assertion is fatally flawed. According to the story we heard from Corso, some of the material from the Roswell crash was held in the Pentagon. More specifically, some of the pieces were held in his personal safe. From this office, key research and development staff members, including Corso, kept track of advanced projects ongoing in laboratories across many areas of the civilian sector. Then, once a project had demonstrated a certain level of maturity, ET material would be covertly slipped to the private company under a cover story that it was really advanced Soviet R & D that we had acquired. In other words, the scientists involved in continuing the research would not be knowledgeable of the true provenance of the items they received. The intent of this operation, Corso stated, was to enhance the American lead in various technologies while protecting knowledge of the source.

Those are all interesting ideas, but they fly in the face of the known history of technology developments, which are extremely well documented. From the beginning of our discussions with Corso we explored each of the major technological areas that he indicated had benefited from this ET infusion. When it came to integrated circuitry, Jacques Vallee was very well versed in the topic and stated Corso’s assertions did not fit the historically documented facts. Similar evaluations were done for developments in lasers and fiber optics. The scientific advances in all areas ran in a linear fashion and no step functions, or unexpected leaps, were noted. We studied the established time lines provided for each technology as they are meticulously recorded and even prizes awarded in some instances. Even the most generous suggestion is that if ET technology was surreptitiously interjected, it did not do much good.

One area that I had direct access to was that of night vision. According to Corso, the concept for new image-intensifying night vision equipment came from the autopsy of alien eyes. That is simply not true. During World War II considerable effort went into the development of infrared (IR) sensors. The problem with the old IR vision equipment was that it required an emitting source. When illuminating a target, the source could easily be identified and attacked by the enemy. When photomultipliers came along, the game changed. They took existing ambient light and amplified it and by the Vietnam War we already had first-generation devices in the field. The PVS-2 we had at Ba Xaoi, my Special Forces camp in the Mekong Delta, was one of our most prized possessions. We also had a Flashy team assigned, which consisted of a searchlight with an IR filter. They were big, fixed to their location, and sent out a beam that could have been spotted miles away. For those of us who fought at night, the new ambient amplification system was a giant leap forward—but one that the genealogy of was totally accounted for.

During my time at INSCOM I had worked with what was then known as the Night Vision Laboratory on several occasions. Located at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, they had constructed some very special equipment for me and I had become friends with the director, Dr. Lou Cameron. In fact, Cameron had actually built the Night Vision Laboratory (NVL) many years before, and had intimate knowledge of the developments there. By the time we met Corso, Cameron had retired, but I was able to locate him and discuss the assertion. Lou flatly denied any involvement of alien eye coverings in the development of any night vision system, and he would have known.

In 1996 the NVL director was Dr. Rudy Buser. I had also known Rudy from my INSCOM days and arranged to go to the lab and discuss Corso’s claims. Like Lou Cameron, he knew that I played in some strange areas. After listening intently to the claims, he resisted laughter, but did state that he knew nothing about anything I mentioned. He offered me a written copy of the history of night vision that was quite detailed. In these documents was another problematic issue. One of Corso’s specific claims was that Trudeau had sent him to the Night Vision Laboratory with a five-million-dollar check in his pocket. The notion was that Corso, a nonscientist, was to evaluate the technical progress of the laboratory, and if he approved, Corso would hand them the check. As a former senior staff officer who had been involved in many financial transactions to boost technology, that simply did not make any sense to me. That was not the way business is conducted. Government money, when approved for transfer, is moved electronically, not by check, and certainly not “carried in my back pocket.” Given that five million dollars was a substantial sum at that time, it was extremely unlikely that a nontechnical lieutenant colonel would be allowed to make such an arbitrary decision. The facts support this assertion. The published history of NVL does mention the five-million-dollar increase for their research at that time. It included the name of the person who had approved that transfer. That name was not Corso.

The Published Book Was at Variance with the Manuscript

In the original manuscript there are episodes that are even more incredulous. These do coincide with the versions of incidents that Phil verbally relayed to us on several occasions. One included an encounter with an alien while he was assigned at White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) in New Mexico. Interestingly, this site is not far from the original Roswell site. For those not familiar with the area, WSMR encompasses a huge amount of land, almost 3,200 square miles not counting Fort Bliss, which is located immediately to the south. It is the largest military installation in the United States. Generally remote, on the northern end is Trinity Site, the spot where the first atomic bomb was detonated.

The incident took place in 1957, prior to Corso’s assignments in Washington. He was stationed at White Sands Missile Range, and frequently traveled across the remote areas. Corso told us that one day he had been driving alone over a desolate area in the intense desert heat. Spotting a cave—actually an abandoned mine—and seeking a place to cool down, he decided to enter it. While resting there, he said he had a face-to-face, fully conscious encounter with an alien from outer space. According to Corso, the UFOs of the time had problems navigating through our radar systems. While these UFOs were capable of traveling through the extreme radiation found in outer space, human radar systems could interrupt their propulsion systems, leading to crashes.

Corso states he and the alien had an exchange. He indicated that no words were spoken but rather information was transferred mentally. The alien then said he wanted to leave but was concerned about the radar interference. The alien asked Corso to order the radars covering White Sands Missile Range to be shut down for a brief period. Corso asked the alien what he would give him if he complied. The reported response was, “A new world if you can take it.” Corso told that story frequently, and said he often contemplated what the alien meant by that statement but was never quite sure he understood. The original manuscript included drawings of the alien that Corso made after this encounter.

There were other events omitted as well from the final text. One incident included what Corso believed to be evidence for time travel. In another he reported that a chapel had disappeared from White Sands Missile Range with no rational explanation. He indicated that since the evidence to support these unusual events was so scant he made a conscious decision not to make any official reports at the time they occurred. That was probably a prudent move from a career perspective, but does leave others wondering about the veracity of those tales.

Questions Unanswered

There are conflicting stories about the editing of The Day After Roswell. Corso stated that he had only twenty-four hours to complete the editing of the entire book. From personal experience a single day would be an impossibly short time for any adequate review. Other people involved in the process say that was not the case and that the manuscript had been gone over page by page. However the poor editing came about really doesn’t matter; the book is replete with errors as are noted in Appendix A. During our last meeting, just before his second and massive fatal heart attack, Phil and I spent most of a day together at his son’s new home. We enjoyed a lengthy conversation and a leisurely lunch at a local Chinese restaurant. Both my son Mark and wife, Victoria, accompanied us for the entire period. In discussing the book, he admitted there were many mistakes that he had spotted too late in the process of publication. Phil mentioned that he was already engaged in writing another book to set the record straight. To support that statement he showed us the new handwritten manuscript that he had begun compiling.

The conundrums are obvious. There is no doubt that Lieutenant Colonel Corso was involved in various high-level positions and was assigned where he said he was. There are critics who have parsed Corso’s assignments rather finely, and then extrapolated from minor nitpicks to calling him a fraud. Despite where his office might have fit organizationally at the time, my investigation of his background did put him as a staff officer very close to the White House. There is no doubt that he had some powerful friends, including Senator Strom Thurmond, who wrote the first foreword to Phil’s book. Later Thurmond retracted that foreword as controversy began to rise.

The one question I could never answer was, “Why would he make up these stories?” One thing that did impress me during our many conversations was the continuity of his narratives. Usually when someone has made up a story from whole cloth, they get tripped up when retelling the story over time. With Phil, it was almost as if the incidents were recorded on tape and you could push the start button at any time and hear the identical report. Phil was very likable and seemed to be generally a credible man with an outstanding career. Unfortunately he was contradicted by the facts.

Corso had contemplated other books based on his life. One was to be The Day After Rome, describing in more detail his exploits with the Vatican, arranging for safe passage for 10,000 Jewish refugees to the British Mandate of Palestine, and helping establish security in post–World War II Rome while confronting the communist movement emerging there. Then there was to be The Day After Dallas, in which he planned to address his investigation of the JFK assassination.

Summary

Phil Corso’s book is significant if only for the number of copies sold and the influence it has had on the UFO field. Even a few senior government officials not associated with UFOs came to believe his story. There is no doubt that he had an illustrious military career, which brought him into contact with many people of historical record. However, in The Day After Roswell, Corso made many extraordinary claims, especially regarding the use of crashed UFO material in the development of American advanced technology. Unfortunately, none of those claims have been substantiated, and most are directly refuted by known facts. It is also unfortunate that he did not live long enough to produce his response to the multitude of questions raised about the veracity of his statements.

The gulf between the public’s opinion about UFOs and what most scientists believe regarding them is cavernous. The next chapter explains how that came to pass. Inauspiciously, it is a story of scientific deceit and a harbinger of the distrust that now permeates debates on momentous issues such as climate change and evolution.