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The Day After Roswell
A landmark exposé firmly grounded in fact, The Day After Roswell puts a 50 year-old controversy to rest. Since 1947, the mysterious crash of an unidentified aircraft at Roswell, New Mexico, has fueled a firestorm of speculation and controversy with no conclusive evidence of its extraterrestrial origin -- until now.
Colonel Philip J. Corso (Ret.), a member of President Eisenhower's National Security Council and former head of the Foreign Technology Desk at the U.S. Army's Research & Development department, has come forward to tell the whole explosive story. Backed by documents newly declassified through the Freedom of Information Act, Colonel Corso reveals for the first time his personal stewardship of alien artifacts from the crash, and discloses the U.S. government's astonishing role in the Roswell incident: what was found, the cover-up, and how these alien artifacts changed the course of 20th century history.
Colonel Philip J. Corso (Ret.), a member of President Eisenhower's National Security Council and former head of the Foreign Technology Desk at the U.S. Army's Research & Development department, has come forward to tell the whole explosive story. Backed by documents newly declassified through the Freedom of Information Act, Colonel Corso reveals for the first time his personal stewardship of alien artifacts from the crash, and discloses the U.S. government's astonishing role in the Roswell incident: what was found, the cover-up, and how these alien artifacts changed the course of 20th century history.
300 pages, ebook
First published January 1, 1997
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 319 reviews
February 28, 2008
After reading this book one must ask themself, is he lying?
And if he is lying, what is his intention in lying. What does he hope to accomplish? A careful reading of the book makes the likelihood of it being a lie very slim. If indeed it is a lie, it is a carefully crafted lie that Corso put together intertwined with reames of supportive data and evidence that really accomplishes nothing. Seeing as it wasn't published until he was a very old man (he's now passed on)he stood to benefit very little from any publicity gained.
The sensitivity of the positions held by this man in his professional career, working closely with the president, having top secret security clearances, working in the very heart of the pentagon, highly decorated for his military career, make a questioning of his integrity almost inappropriate. This man's testimony would be highly regarded in a court of law.
That leaves us with a few inescapable conclusions. He is mistaken about what he experienced, or he is telling the absolute truth. It seems to me that when the evidence is weighed, and all preconception and prejudice is dropped, he makes a great case. And that is pretty amazing.
And if he is lying, what is his intention in lying. What does he hope to accomplish? A careful reading of the book makes the likelihood of it being a lie very slim. If indeed it is a lie, it is a carefully crafted lie that Corso put together intertwined with reames of supportive data and evidence that really accomplishes nothing. Seeing as it wasn't published until he was a very old man (he's now passed on)he stood to benefit very little from any publicity gained.
The sensitivity of the positions held by this man in his professional career, working closely with the president, having top secret security clearances, working in the very heart of the pentagon, highly decorated for his military career, make a questioning of his integrity almost inappropriate. This man's testimony would be highly regarded in a court of law.
That leaves us with a few inescapable conclusions. He is mistaken about what he experienced, or he is telling the absolute truth. It seems to me that when the evidence is weighed, and all preconception and prejudice is dropped, he makes a great case. And that is pretty amazing.
October 30, 2012
I have never read such gibberish in my life!! I find it hard to believe this was written by a Colonel who wrote official military reports. It is badly written, badly researched, over written, and waffles.
I also find it hard to believe that many technologies we now take for granted such as integrated circuitry, lasers and even stealth technology were spoon fed to large companies and reverse engineered from alien materials while tricking the companies into thinking they had invented the materials themselves. I suppose I am a little sceptical.
I particularly enjoyed this paragraph:
"By the time President Nixon returned from China, having agreed to turn over Vietnam to the Communists, he had effectively turned the Soviets' flank in the Cold War. For the next decade, the Soviets felt caught between the Chinese, with whom they'd fought border wars in the past, and the United States.When President Ronald Reagan demonstrated to Mikhail Gorbachev that the United States was capable of deploying an effective antimissile missile defense and sought Soviet cooperation in turning it against the extraterrestrials, all pretext of the Cold War ended and the great Soviet monolith in Eastern Europe began to crumble."
Of course!! The whole idea of Vietnam was to eventually hand it to the Communists in order to eventually win the Cold War...and attack aliens, if only those poor people who died knew what they were fighting for, sheesh.
This book is full of crazed ideas such as this. If I was a conspiracy nut I would probably enjoy it, but reading it just made me mad.
I also find it hard to believe that many technologies we now take for granted such as integrated circuitry, lasers and even stealth technology were spoon fed to large companies and reverse engineered from alien materials while tricking the companies into thinking they had invented the materials themselves. I suppose I am a little sceptical.
I particularly enjoyed this paragraph:
"By the time President Nixon returned from China, having agreed to turn over Vietnam to the Communists, he had effectively turned the Soviets' flank in the Cold War. For the next decade, the Soviets felt caught between the Chinese, with whom they'd fought border wars in the past, and the United States.When President Ronald Reagan demonstrated to Mikhail Gorbachev that the United States was capable of deploying an effective antimissile missile defense and sought Soviet cooperation in turning it against the extraterrestrials, all pretext of the Cold War ended and the great Soviet monolith in Eastern Europe began to crumble."
Of course!! The whole idea of Vietnam was to eventually hand it to the Communists in order to eventually win the Cold War...and attack aliens, if only those poor people who died knew what they were fighting for, sheesh.
This book is full of crazed ideas such as this. If I was a conspiracy nut I would probably enjoy it, but reading it just made me mad.
September 28, 2015
I really enjoyed this book and it pulled me in. Corso does a good job giving vivid descriptions of the crash scene as well as the bodies. Supposedly there was psychic communication between the dying aliens and some military personnel.
There's a lot here on the start of MJ12. You get a look at the way the various military branches claimed and traded this alien hardware. Night vision is an example used often, and Corso tells how he went to major companies and gave the info away, allowing them to get the patents.
All in all, this is a great read. Is it true? It's hard to believe it's not. I'd pick a copy up from the library like I did and see for yourself.
There's a lot here on the start of MJ12. You get a look at the way the various military branches claimed and traded this alien hardware. Night vision is an example used often, and Corso tells how he went to major companies and gave the info away, allowing them to get the patents.
All in all, this is a great read. Is it true? It's hard to believe it's not. I'd pick a copy up from the library like I did and see for yourself.
June 25, 2014
A great follow-up on the integrity of the author, Col. Philip J. Corso, is this well-reasoned article http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/exo....
This is one helluva story from a guy allegedly at the center of it all.
This is one helluva story from a guy allegedly at the center of it all.
May 24, 2018
This compelling and well-documented memoir covers Corso's military career until he retired in 1963, with primary focus on his involvement in army and government secret programs relating to visits on earth by extraterrestrial beings, code-named "EBE"s (Extraterrestrial Biological Entities.)
The book is consistent with authoritative publications on UFOs (detailed below) and also with my personal experience working in the high tech industry, particularly my three years with a semiconductor company with substantial military contracts. In other words, although it is coarsely written (with help from William Birnes) Corso's material pretty much checks out. Is it 100% accurate? Unlikely, considering the extremely high secrecy requirements and Corso's advanced age and lack of resources. But the general thrust of it all is verified by corroborating material leaked out over the past fifty years by retired military personnel like Bill Uhouse, a former Marine Corps fighter pilot and test pilot who was assigned to build a flight simulator at Area 51/S-4 for reverse-engineered antigravity craft.
Yes, UFO's crash-landed near Roswell, NM, in July, 1947, killing all but one extraterrestrial occupant (code-named "EBE" for Extraterrestrial Biological Entity.) Yes, the military initiated a massive cover-up (which continues to this day) overseen by an above-top secret secret 12-member commission appointed by President Truman (initially called Majestic Twelve.) The spacecraft was taken to Area 51/S-4, where it was examined and reverse-engineered under Air Force supervision (Bob Uhouse and physicist/whistleblower Robert Lazar worked on that program.) There have been many subsequent crashes handled in a similar way. EBE bodies went to a military base where they were autopsied. Corso saw the bodies and ten years later read the autopsy when he became responsible for a file containing artifacts from the Roswell crash.
Corso's memoir describes the role he played in all this. He was assigned to President Eisenhower's National Security Council, advising the president on matters relating to Roswell, UFOs and EBEs. Later in charge of the Foreign Technology division of the Army R&D department under General Trudeau, Corso was given a file of artifacts from the Roswell crash and told to examine everything and make sure the hyper-advanced technology represented among the materials got in the hands of military contractors who could best use the technologies evident in those materials, which included semiconductors, fiber-optics, night vision, super-tenacity fibers and lasers.
For maximum benefit, this book should be read in conjunction with three others: Above Top Secret (Timothy Good), Behold a Pale Horse (William Cooper) and Secrets of Antigravity Propulsion (Paul LaViolette.) All but LaViolette are retired military, Good being from Great Britain. Fantastic as it is, Corso's memoir is corroborated and supported by all three highly credible works of nonfiction written by esteemed and highly qualified authors.
Many events in The Day After Roswell are supported by a large body of Youtube.com testimony by highly credible witnesses, including former NASA astronauts Edgar Mitchell and Gordon Cooper, a host of retired military and civilian former workers at Area 51/S-4 (including Robert Lazar, Dan Burisch and Bill Uhouse who are well-known throughout the UFO community.) I have spend hundreds of hours sifting through and culling out the credible testimony from a mountain of disinformation posted on Youtube by various elements who do not want the truth to get out about antigravity propulsion and extraterrestrial life.
Corso's memoir is a door-opener into the greatest event in history, the discovery of exterrestrial life on earth. The book belongs in the library of anyone who wants to know the truth about what happened at Roswell, what we have learned from it and the glowing future that lies ahead because of the secrets Corso helped protect for so long.
The book is consistent with authoritative publications on UFOs (detailed below) and also with my personal experience working in the high tech industry, particularly my three years with a semiconductor company with substantial military contracts. In other words, although it is coarsely written (with help from William Birnes) Corso's material pretty much checks out. Is it 100% accurate? Unlikely, considering the extremely high secrecy requirements and Corso's advanced age and lack of resources. But the general thrust of it all is verified by corroborating material leaked out over the past fifty years by retired military personnel like Bill Uhouse, a former Marine Corps fighter pilot and test pilot who was assigned to build a flight simulator at Area 51/S-4 for reverse-engineered antigravity craft.
Yes, UFO's crash-landed near Roswell, NM, in July, 1947, killing all but one extraterrestrial occupant (code-named "EBE" for Extraterrestrial Biological Entity.) Yes, the military initiated a massive cover-up (which continues to this day) overseen by an above-top secret secret 12-member commission appointed by President Truman (initially called Majestic Twelve.) The spacecraft was taken to Area 51/S-4, where it was examined and reverse-engineered under Air Force supervision (Bob Uhouse and physicist/whistleblower Robert Lazar worked on that program.) There have been many subsequent crashes handled in a similar way. EBE bodies went to a military base where they were autopsied. Corso saw the bodies and ten years later read the autopsy when he became responsible for a file containing artifacts from the Roswell crash.
Corso's memoir describes the role he played in all this. He was assigned to President Eisenhower's National Security Council, advising the president on matters relating to Roswell, UFOs and EBEs. Later in charge of the Foreign Technology division of the Army R&D department under General Trudeau, Corso was given a file of artifacts from the Roswell crash and told to examine everything and make sure the hyper-advanced technology represented among the materials got in the hands of military contractors who could best use the technologies evident in those materials, which included semiconductors, fiber-optics, night vision, super-tenacity fibers and lasers.
For maximum benefit, this book should be read in conjunction with three others: Above Top Secret (Timothy Good), Behold a Pale Horse (William Cooper) and Secrets of Antigravity Propulsion (Paul LaViolette.) All but LaViolette are retired military, Good being from Great Britain. Fantastic as it is, Corso's memoir is corroborated and supported by all three highly credible works of nonfiction written by esteemed and highly qualified authors.
Many events in The Day After Roswell are supported by a large body of Youtube.com testimony by highly credible witnesses, including former NASA astronauts Edgar Mitchell and Gordon Cooper, a host of retired military and civilian former workers at Area 51/S-4 (including Robert Lazar, Dan Burisch and Bill Uhouse who are well-known throughout the UFO community.) I have spend hundreds of hours sifting through and culling out the credible testimony from a mountain of disinformation posted on Youtube by various elements who do not want the truth to get out about antigravity propulsion and extraterrestrial life.
Corso's memoir is a door-opener into the greatest event in history, the discovery of exterrestrial life on earth. The book belongs in the library of anyone who wants to know the truth about what happened at Roswell, what we have learned from it and the glowing future that lies ahead because of the secrets Corso helped protect for so long.
July 27, 2017
What could have been a descent book was rendered completely unenjoyable by the author's constant self aggrandizement. He was pals with everyone and anyone in the power circles of Washington, D. C. Maybe it was true, but the constant name dropping—uuuhhhhhh!
Speaking of self aggrandizement, the author pretty much takes credit for everything from the transistor to fiber optics to the "Star Wars" program; he even played a role in resolving the Cuban Missile Crisis!
Even if the author's claims are true, very little can be verified. It all comes down to if you believe his story. I do not.
Speaking of self aggrandizement, the author pretty much takes credit for everything from the transistor to fiber optics to the "Star Wars" program; he even played a role in resolving the Cuban Missile Crisis!
Even if the author's claims are true, very little can be verified. It all comes down to if you believe his story. I do not.
February 19, 2022
I can't say I'm surprised that an acolyte of Strom Thurmond and Richard Russell would be out of his damn mind, but this guy really took it to a whole new level.
RIP Philip J. Corso, Saviour of Humanity.
RIP Philip J. Corso, Saviour of Humanity.
October 14, 2017
I'm not even going to address the content of this book. I just wish someone had proofread it.
July 23, 2012
Found this one at a yardsale and read it in an afternoon - I really don't know if this guy is lying or is revealing the giant secret of how a lot of our modern technology was reverse-engineered from a crashed UFO (except the propulsion system which according to Corso remains a mystery) - but I found this book immensely interesting & entertaining. It's a lot like listening to Coast To Coast AM, the late night radio show that often specializes in this kind of material. I also hope this guy is not telling the truth, since if a UFO really did crash all those years ago, I don't think I want to be around when their friends come looking for them. I doubt they'll just sue us for patent infringement on their tech.
March 18, 2014
This is the account of the late Philip Corso, colonel in the United States Army and as he tells it, overseer of alien technology. As the title implies, this story has its true beginning with the UFO crash in Roswell, New Mexico of July 1947. Corso tells of the various forms of alien technology and entities that were recovered from the crash site. With the experience of being the head of the Army's Foreign Technology Desk in Research and Development, Corso led the effort to reverse engineer this technology and turn it into night vision goggles, stealth aircraft, fiber optics, integrated circuits, and numerous other technologies that we now take for granted.
I'm sure that Col. Philip Corso was a nice guy. And as with anyone who has worn a uniform and served to protect, he deserves the gratitude and respect of every American.
That said, the account this book puts forth has all the earmarks of a Walter Mitty story. In the famous short story The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, the titular character daydreams of fantastic lives that he will never lead, all of them far more grandiose than his grim reality.
While Corso's account is not to this magnitude, there does seem to be a larger than necessary amount of chest puffing. We are regaled with paragraphs explaining how "I was in charge of this" and "I was one of only a few people who knew that" and "I met the Pope" (not making that one up) and so forth. He was military brass. We get the picture. So why do we need the photo of him getting a medal pinned to his chest? What does that have to do with Roswell?
Then there is the matter of the "reverse engineering." We get the impression from Corso's account that damn near any advancement in technology in the past 60 years or so has its roots in alien hardware found at the Roswell crash. That just does not sit right with me. For one, this notion gives the same short shrift to human ingenuity that the "ancient aliens" crowd does. Secondly, a few of the technologies Corso mentions were actually around before Roswell happened, at least in conceptual forms. For example, Tesla and other scientists had thought of lasers and the Germans were experimenting with early forms of stealth and night vision. The stealth aspect leads to further questioning. If these UFOs are so stealthy, why did they register on radar during several sightings, most notably the Washington D.C. mass sighting of 1952?
That point is just one of the apparent inconsistencies in the book. Corso claims that we shot a UFO down over Rammstein Air Force Base in the late 1970s. How could we manage that with our comparatively less sophisticated missile systems? Corso asserts that he saw an alien body encased in a "goo" inside a crate at an army base in Kansas. The crates were supposedly on trucks from Roswell. Why would the military fly the wreckage of the craft out of Roswell but not the bodies? After all, the bodies are going decompose. The UFO material logically should not. It just makes me wonder.
There are other, similar allegations that made me sit up and ask "how could he possibly know that?" Much of this may come from co-author Bill Birnes. Birnes is the chief editor of UFO Magazine and the former host of UFO Hunters. I like Bill a lot. However, he has a flare for the dramatic. I have to question how much of this might have been amplified for dramatic effect.
Most of all, the book offers precious little in the way of evidence to back up the claims. There are appendices with a few intra-governmental memos and detailed plans for a hypothetical military base on the Moon, but nothing that really supports Corso's accounts. While I don't expect classified documents to be published along with the story, in the absence of evidence I am still forced to call it just that: one man's story.
Though grievously flawed, this book does have its merits. Corso neatly explains just how a cover-up can be implemented by the government. It's all about compartmentalization and "seeding" the military-industrial complex with the alien technology in isolated sectors. For example, highly trained engineers may be given fiber optics and asked to work them into military applications. The engineers might say, "Wow! Where did you get this?" and the reply can be, "Dunno, it's something the boys in R&D came up with." Additionally, Corso confirms the existence of Majestic-12 and even goes into the theory that the "aliens" are actually biomechanical constructs or even time travelers.
In short, The Day After Roswell can only be one of two things: 1) One of the most important books ever published or 2) One man's musings based upon a small kernel of fact.
Unfortunately, I must place my money on the latter.
I'm sure that Col. Philip Corso was a nice guy. And as with anyone who has worn a uniform and served to protect, he deserves the gratitude and respect of every American.
That said, the account this book puts forth has all the earmarks of a Walter Mitty story. In the famous short story The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, the titular character daydreams of fantastic lives that he will never lead, all of them far more grandiose than his grim reality.
While Corso's account is not to this magnitude, there does seem to be a larger than necessary amount of chest puffing. We are regaled with paragraphs explaining how "I was in charge of this" and "I was one of only a few people who knew that" and "I met the Pope" (not making that one up) and so forth. He was military brass. We get the picture. So why do we need the photo of him getting a medal pinned to his chest? What does that have to do with Roswell?
Then there is the matter of the "reverse engineering." We get the impression from Corso's account that damn near any advancement in technology in the past 60 years or so has its roots in alien hardware found at the Roswell crash. That just does not sit right with me. For one, this notion gives the same short shrift to human ingenuity that the "ancient aliens" crowd does. Secondly, a few of the technologies Corso mentions were actually around before Roswell happened, at least in conceptual forms. For example, Tesla and other scientists had thought of lasers and the Germans were experimenting with early forms of stealth and night vision. The stealth aspect leads to further questioning. If these UFOs are so stealthy, why did they register on radar during several sightings, most notably the Washington D.C. mass sighting of 1952?
That point is just one of the apparent inconsistencies in the book. Corso claims that we shot a UFO down over Rammstein Air Force Base in the late 1970s. How could we manage that with our comparatively less sophisticated missile systems? Corso asserts that he saw an alien body encased in a "goo" inside a crate at an army base in Kansas. The crates were supposedly on trucks from Roswell. Why would the military fly the wreckage of the craft out of Roswell but not the bodies? After all, the bodies are going decompose. The UFO material logically should not. It just makes me wonder.
There are other, similar allegations that made me sit up and ask "how could he possibly know that?" Much of this may come from co-author Bill Birnes. Birnes is the chief editor of UFO Magazine and the former host of UFO Hunters. I like Bill a lot. However, he has a flare for the dramatic. I have to question how much of this might have been amplified for dramatic effect.
Most of all, the book offers precious little in the way of evidence to back up the claims. There are appendices with a few intra-governmental memos and detailed plans for a hypothetical military base on the Moon, but nothing that really supports Corso's accounts. While I don't expect classified documents to be published along with the story, in the absence of evidence I am still forced to call it just that: one man's story.
Though grievously flawed, this book does have its merits. Corso neatly explains just how a cover-up can be implemented by the government. It's all about compartmentalization and "seeding" the military-industrial complex with the alien technology in isolated sectors. For example, highly trained engineers may be given fiber optics and asked to work them into military applications. The engineers might say, "Wow! Where did you get this?" and the reply can be, "Dunno, it's something the boys in R&D came up with." Additionally, Corso confirms the existence of Majestic-12 and even goes into the theory that the "aliens" are actually biomechanical constructs or even time travelers.
In short, The Day After Roswell can only be one of two things: 1) One of the most important books ever published or 2) One man's musings based upon a small kernel of fact.
Unfortunately, I must place my money on the latter.
August 18, 2015
Great book full of truth! Not made up bs like most of the books related to the subject. Corso is to be trusted he worked in army R&D and Foreign technology. Recommend this book to anyone that wants truth not made up so called eyewitness stories.
June 25, 2017
I am just not buying into this account. Supposedly revealing the facts behind Roswell fifty years after the event. In just a few days it will mark seventy years since the event. The book claims that various people know of and have seen the vehicle reportedly recovered from the Roswell site, as well as other UFO modes of transport from crash sites or somehow captured. Allegedly these people include various elected officials who have the need to know, so of course we must assume the top elected official. Are you kidding? By now the entire world would be aware of it through tweets. Not to mention all the secret documents released by the likes of WikiLeaks, and various other leakers, including the Leaker in Chief. Granted I do not watch much TV but I do stay abreast of the news, so how could I not have heard of this? Claims of some of the technology in today’s modern technological era originating from reverse engineering items recovered from the crash could have merit. That the technology was invented by people here on our own planet also has merit. So too the incidents of mutilated cattle, regarding the precision of the methodology, hinting at laser surgical operations. Through the years numerous claims have been made of UFO sightings, many by reputable sources, alien abductions claims have also been offered, the abducted claiming to have been examined with a probing light source. Some people see apparitions, who knows? That these UFOs can go from hover mode to exceed 7,000 MPH in seconds seems remote. Do they not break the sound barrier? That we are still being visited and probed by extraterrestrials would indicate to me that the search for life from other planets or solar systems is over. Is anybody out there? A lot of names are dropped in the telling of this story, far too many people involved for me to believe someone hasn’t whispered through the grapevine. I certainly do not believe the information disseminated to the public by the various governing agencies involved in the Roswell incident. I also wonder how many young people. 30 years old and younger even know about the incident. In these days of fake news this one merits headlines
December 10, 2017
very interesting, would highly recommend to anyone interested in government secrets.
August 8, 2018
Corso brings it home. All of it. Every last bit of alien detail. His motivation? He has no axe to grind. He wasn't in it for the money. The book was published a year before his death at the age of 83. I found myself putting down the book every other page and picking up my smart phone to do some quick research. Corso lays down a painstaking timeline of details, the who, why, where and when. In today's climate where it takes ten seconds and ten words to create a conspiracy, Corso blows the doors open with the play-by-play on what went down. Like a Trump-Russia meeting, there's simply too much info to ignore. This is no late-night AM Radio schlock-jock. Corso was a Lieutenant Colonel with security clearance to see it all. ... The Day After Roswell peels back the layers on all the "foreign technology" -- the night-time vision goggles, the laser, the particle beam, the integrated circuit chips and more that the aliens dropped in our laps after a bolt of lightning knocked them out of the sky that summer night back in 1947. Mini-spoiler: there was NO engine on the alien ship. How did our science grow by leaps and bounds immediately following the crash? Some lucky breaks ... or reverse engineering? This book will make you rethink your take on alien life. A must read for those who want to keep pace with intergalactic society.
December 25, 2015
I got 20% done and quit. A file cabinet of important alien spacecraft artifacts doesn't seem believable if kept in the office of one person and given to another person, especially without proper introduction.
As a project manager and manager of information I just couldn't read any further despite being super excited about the premise of the book and the interesting introduction I got from a friend.
The writing was void of supporting documentation overall.
I think the author hour had a big ego.
If aliens wanted to attack us, it seemed it would have happened long ago given the advanced technology they would have if able to traverse the galaxy or beyond.
As a project manager and manager of information I just couldn't read any further despite being super excited about the premise of the book and the interesting introduction I got from a friend.
The writing was void of supporting documentation overall.
I think the author hour had a big ego.
If aliens wanted to attack us, it seemed it would have happened long ago given the advanced technology they would have if able to traverse the galaxy or beyond.
January 19, 2017
It's quite difficult to evaluate this book. From a purely technical standpoint, the writing is reasonably proficient, though Colonel Corso takes some odd digressions into want-to-be-artsy writing in a couple of places. None the less, the prose is readable. It's organized by topic, rather than chronologically, which may confuse some readers.
As far as the subject matter... that's a tough question. One of my problems with the whole "we've captured alien spacecraft!" crowd is that the conspiracy would have to be gigantic. Gigantic conspiracies plus long times equal failures of the conspiracy. So at some point, someone would break silence, and that appears to have been exactly what Colonel Corso did by writing this book.
But... it also seems to me that many of the space alien conspiracy believers are a bit schizophrenic. They seem to believe that there's a very powerful government conspiracy which isn't afraid to kill people and ruin lives to keep the secret, and simultaneously believe that people who write books and go on speaking tours about the secret are somehow missed by those Men in Black. And that's a problem, because I really don't think that Colonel Corso could have done the background research he mentions doing without coming to the attention of people who are looking for folks digging into such secrets, if in fact such secrets exist.
Colonel Corso presents a fascinating narrative, and one which is plausible on its face. He claims that many of the scientific advancements of the last half of the twentieth century came from projects started by the "foreign technology" desk of Army R&D, and that most of them were given substantial boosts by being able to look at bits and pieces of alien tech which did the thing the Army was asking their development partners to do.
I have speculated in the past that, if you were an alien intelligence, and wanted to boost a species without destroying it, one means would be to find a way to get researchers to look in particular directions and do their own work to follow those directions. And Colonel Corso has some interesting speculation about the aliens having seeded us with the basis of silicon life, and where that might be going.
Here, however, is my basic problem; the thing which keeps me from buying into the Colonel's story: Colonel Corso was a career Intelligence Officer. He tells an anecdote in the book about the people who want to keep secrets, and how each time the location of the secret is discovered, they sacrifice a minor secret or two, while moving the rest to another place. I can't help feeling that this is what the Colonel is doing: disinformation, maskirovka.
What is the Colonel distracting attention from? I don't know. Who is the disinformation directed at? I don't know. But I have a very strong feeling that this is what's going on with this book.
But I'm willing to be wrong.
As far as the subject matter... that's a tough question. One of my problems with the whole "we've captured alien spacecraft!" crowd is that the conspiracy would have to be gigantic. Gigantic conspiracies plus long times equal failures of the conspiracy. So at some point, someone would break silence, and that appears to have been exactly what Colonel Corso did by writing this book.
But... it also seems to me that many of the space alien conspiracy believers are a bit schizophrenic. They seem to believe that there's a very powerful government conspiracy which isn't afraid to kill people and ruin lives to keep the secret, and simultaneously believe that people who write books and go on speaking tours about the secret are somehow missed by those Men in Black. And that's a problem, because I really don't think that Colonel Corso could have done the background research he mentions doing without coming to the attention of people who are looking for folks digging into such secrets, if in fact such secrets exist.
Colonel Corso presents a fascinating narrative, and one which is plausible on its face. He claims that many of the scientific advancements of the last half of the twentieth century came from projects started by the "foreign technology" desk of Army R&D, and that most of them were given substantial boosts by being able to look at bits and pieces of alien tech which did the thing the Army was asking their development partners to do.
I have speculated in the past that, if you were an alien intelligence, and wanted to boost a species without destroying it, one means would be to find a way to get researchers to look in particular directions and do their own work to follow those directions. And Colonel Corso has some interesting speculation about the aliens having seeded us with the basis of silicon life, and where that might be going.
Here, however, is my basic problem; the thing which keeps me from buying into the Colonel's story: Colonel Corso was a career Intelligence Officer. He tells an anecdote in the book about the people who want to keep secrets, and how each time the location of the secret is discovered, they sacrifice a minor secret or two, while moving the rest to another place. I can't help feeling that this is what the Colonel is doing: disinformation, maskirovka.
What is the Colonel distracting attention from? I don't know. Who is the disinformation directed at? I don't know. But I have a very strong feeling that this is what's going on with this book.
But I'm willing to be wrong.
August 8, 2019
Do you believe in UFOs? Whether you do or don't, this book is worth reading. I do believe in them, or I should say that I know they exist. When I was a teenager, I saw one one night out of our living room window. It just hovered for the longest time, completely soundless, until all at once it went straight up and out of sight. I might add, that I was with my parents and two brothers at the time who also all saw the same thing. I learned of this book and the author while watching a documentary on UFOs on one of the science channels, so decided to read it. This book was completely believable and totally mind blowing. The author, Lieutenant Colonel Philip Corso was a well respected career Army person who for a while worked at the Pentagon in the Research and Development Dept. While there, he learned of the details of Roswell, and was assigned to get many Roswell artifacts reversed engineered and into production if they were of value. Now, this book was written in 1967, some twenty years after the Roswell incident, when the author was retired and very old, and felt it was time that the truth that he knew should be shared, that is exactly what he did. Some people think that his writing style was lacking, although I did not find a problem with it. You have to keep in mind that the point of this book is not the writing style but rather the information. Others may feel that the process used by the Army and other services of getting reverse engineering done was not very professional, unlike how big business would run their R & D. You must keep in mind that we are talking about the Government, and they have never really been accused of being totally efficient. Others just don't believe it........or don't want to believe it? So the millions of people who say they have witnessed UFOs are lying, and the thousands of people who claim to have been abducted are lying, and the various ex-govt. officials from around the world who have shared information are lying? And, the US Govt who released a couple videos of UFOs spotted by the Navy is lying? This book should be read with an open mind.
Read
March 7, 2018At first The Day After Roswell perplexed me. Most crackpot books are written by faceless weirdos making claims that by their nature can't be disproven. This one, on the other hand, has both an author (Col. Philip J. Corso) and a central assertion (that much of the 20th century's greatest technology was not invented by humans but actually discovered in an alien spacecraft that crashed at Roswell) that are readily investigable. How could Corso write this thing without destroying his reputation?
I discovered the answer about halfway into the book, when it becomes clear that Phil Corso is a delusional paranoid and a living embodiment of Dr. Strangelove's lead nutbar Gen. Jack Ripper. Col. Phil doesn't claim that Communists contaminated our vital bodily fluids through fluoridated water, but he does believe that the US intentionally lost the Korean War; that as early as 1962 we needed an army base on the moon to defend ourselves from an ongoing invasion of extraterrestrials; that an orbiting particle beam deployed by Ronald Reagan is the only deterrent keeping our planet from being invaded; and, most ridiculously, that readers want to see eight pages of glossy photos of him. Clearly the colonel's public image wasn't his primary concern.
If you're looking for good alien crackpottery, you can find many books filled with crap much more interesting than anything in this one -- with one exception. An appendix in The Day After Roswell includes the original and now declassified report recommending the above-mentioned moonbase. It's an terrific example of Cold War paranoia exposed through remarkable half-assery.
I discovered the answer about halfway into the book, when it becomes clear that Phil Corso is a delusional paranoid and a living embodiment of Dr. Strangelove's lead nutbar Gen. Jack Ripper. Col. Phil doesn't claim that Communists contaminated our vital bodily fluids through fluoridated water, but he does believe that the US intentionally lost the Korean War; that as early as 1962 we needed an army base on the moon to defend ourselves from an ongoing invasion of extraterrestrials; that an orbiting particle beam deployed by Ronald Reagan is the only deterrent keeping our planet from being invaded; and, most ridiculously, that readers want to see eight pages of glossy photos of him. Clearly the colonel's public image wasn't his primary concern.
If you're looking for good alien crackpottery, you can find many books filled with crap much more interesting than anything in this one -- with one exception. An appendix in The Day After Roswell includes the original and now declassified report recommending the above-mentioned moonbase. It's an terrific example of Cold War paranoia exposed through remarkable half-assery.
March 19, 2020
I'll be perfectly honest with you, more than anything this book is just incredibly boring. I only read the first 50 pages so take my review with a grain of salt but most of the book boils down to the following: him naming random old men in the military, and then him giving a lengthy description of something they did or some report they wrote. Most of the alien stuff is just in the first two or three chapters. I'm not here to say whether or not this book is legitimate, but I can say it's very boring.
December 29, 2017
Fun fact: did you know the aliens in the Roswell crash had a flaky pastry with fruit in the middle? If not for them we wouldn't have Pop Tarts.
Filing this book in my "nut file."
Filing this book in my "nut file."
June 16, 2024
This book did more to damage my belief in extraterrestrial intelligence visiting humanity in the 20th Century than anything before or since. The stories told within are interesting, even engaging, until they start to unravel in a way that runs counter to almost everything known to be factual about the Cold War, technological development, and scientific theory.
I offer a simple rebuttal: Technology leapt forward after 1945 because of two things, one of which I won’t discuss because I don’t like acknowledging it. The one I will discuss is, once we split the atom and figured out we were fearless enough to risk splitting reality into its component parts, we were able to leap forward in wondrous and monstrous ways.
The modern world is simply a byproduct of the horror show that made streaming television possible.
I offer a simple rebuttal: Technology leapt forward after 1945 because of two things, one of which I won’t discuss because I don’t like acknowledging it. The one I will discuss is, once we split the atom and figured out we were fearless enough to risk splitting reality into its component parts, we were able to leap forward in wondrous and monstrous ways.
The modern world is simply a byproduct of the horror show that made streaming television possible.
February 13, 2026
This is another not-the-usual-sort-of-thing-I'm-interested-in book, but I saw it at the local library and couldn't resist. Admittedly, this is a topic on which I'm almost totally ignorant. I've read a bit more about "cryptids" than I have UFOs, although I admit that it's a fascinating subject. Studying the people who study the phenomenon is just as fascinating as reading about UFOs themselves.
There have been some wild stories about UFOs which have surfaced over the years, some of which are far more credible than others. Perhaps the most famous and well-known account is that that of the "Travis Walton Incident," which involved a reported alien abduction of a forestry worker back in 1975.
On Nov. 5, '75, Walton and some fellow crew members reported that they saw a strange light in the distance one evening while driving back from a remote area where they had been thinning trees on a job Walton's friend had hired him for, after winning a federal contract for work in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest. The crew reportedly saw an odd, glowing, distant light, but, upon approaching closer, they stated that they saw a large metallic object hovering mere inches above the ground in a clearing.
Multiple members of the crew stated that for some inexplicable reason, Walton got out of the pickup and ran toward the object, which then shined a blinding light on him. Walton himself later recounted that he was "zapped" somehow, and that he believed that an electric shock, or whatever it was, had not been intentional - that he had just got too close to the object.
The other members of the crew fled in terror after seeing Walton seemingly becoming incapacitated, but they returned about 15 minutes later, to find both Walton and the object gone. When they got back to town, one of the men called the sheriff to report what had happened. Some of the crew refused to return to the site, but two others agreed to go back with the sheriff to search.
Six days later, Walton reappeared, having placed a collect call to his sister's home. Walton appeared dazed, incoherent and highly distressed when he was found. A media circus ensued, but it was clear that the crew members had NOT murdered Walton, a crime of which they had been accused by police, even though they all passed polygraph tests, other than a single man for which the test proved "inconclusive."
Walton has adhered to his story for decades. Several books were written, but the account is perhaps best known from the 1993 motion picture "Fire in the Sky." It should be noted, however, that the movie version is a highly embellished account of what Walton himself has stated actually occurred. Almost all the scenes aboard the "spacecraft" are fabricated. He has no memory of being tested on by aliens, so it's more of an "inspired by" account than a faithful one to Walton's story.
The Roswell Incident predates this one by almost thirty years.
For the uninitiated: the subject of this lengthy, detailed book was the discovery of some strange debris on a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico, in early July, 1947. Although accounts have differed over the years, the material was reportedly first discovered by W.W. "Mac" Brazel on his ranch, where he discovered metallic and other lightweight debris scattered across several acres of his property.
The official story is that the US had, in June of that year, launched thousands of top-secret spy balloons carrying listening devices which were being used to detect potential Soviet atomic tests, as the USSR had not yet, at least publicly, demonstrated that they possessed or had tested an atomic device. This operation was termed Project Mogul. On June 4, a series of these balloons were reportedly released at Alamogordo Army Air Field, but the base lost contact with them some 17 miles from Brazel's ranch. It is postulated that what Brazel found was actually the remains of a top-secret American spy balloon.
After he found the debris, however, Brazel drove to Roswell and first informed a sheriff, George Wilcox, about what he had discovered. The sheriff, suspecting that the material was military in nature, subsequently called the Roswell Army Air Field, the home of the 509th Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force, which just so happened to be the only unit at the time capable of delivering a nuclear payload. The base assigned some personnel to go retrieve the material from the ranch.
And here's where it gets interesting: on July 8, for some inexplicable reason, but perhaps to throw off public perception about top-secret and classified experimental spy balloons, RAAF public information officer Walter Haut issued a press release stating that the military had recovered a "flying disc" near Roswell. Then, an RAAF flight engineer who assisted loading what he was "told was a flying saucer" onto a flight bound for Fort Worth Army Air Field in Texas, described the material as something totally unfamiliar.
The story had not yet gained major traction in the US, although when the news broke over a Roswell radio station, KSWS, that a flying disc had been recovered in the remote desert, which was subsequently relayed to the Associated Press - within a matter of hours, media outlets from all over the world began calling about it.
Who is directly responsible for starting rumors that the debris was from a crashed flying saucer is unclear. The press release from Haut stated that "rumors regarding the flying disc became reality when the intelligence office of the 509th Bomb Group... was fortunate enough to gain possession of a disc through the cooperation of one of the local ranchers and the sheriff's office... the flying object landed on a ranch near Roswell some time last week. Not having phone facilities, the rancher stored the disc until such time as he was able to contact the sheriff's office..." Apparently, at least, not all of that was accurate, even then.
Upon recovery, the weather officer at the base identified the material as the remains of a weather balloon. Admittedly, on July 9, the Roswell Daily Record newspaper stated that no engine or metal parts had been found in the wreckage, but that it had consisted largely of ordinary materials, such as rubber strips, tin foil, paper, tape and wood sticks. Brazel, however, allegedly told reporters that "I am sure that what I found was not any weather observation balloon," but he was not aware of the top-secret spy balloon project.
It seems that UFO conspiracy theories did not gain major traction until several decades later. The town became a household name after about 1978, when a "ufologist" named Stanton Friedman interviewed one Jesse Marcel, who claimed that he had accompanied some of the debris from the ranch site to a Fort Worth press conference. Marcel claimed that the "weather balloon" (note: no one said anything about a secret spy balloon project) account was a cover story, so he now believed that the material was extraterrestrial in nature.
No explanation = aliens.
Not exactly what I'd call convincing.
In December of 1979, more than THIRTY YEARS after the event, Marcel was interviewed by the National Enquirer (you see where this is all going), whose story brought large-scale publicity (read "notoriety") to the event... and the rest is history. Therein, Marcel described some weird type of metallic foil that could be crumpled, but then popped right back into shape when it was released.
Then, Marcel's son joined the fray. Marcel, Jr., M.D. said that when he was ten, his father showed him flying saucer debris recovered from the Roswell site, including "a small beam with purple-hued hieroglyphics on it," but, reportedly, the symbols matched those on an adhesive tape that Project Mogul allegedly sourced from a New York toy manufacturer.
That wasn't satisfactory for hard-core UFO enthusiasts. "Ufologist" Friedman then collaborated with childhood friend Bill Moore, who in turn contacted paranormal researcher and author Charles Berlitz, of Bermuda Triangle and Philadelphia Experiment fame. Moore and Berlitz co-authored a crazy popular book entitled "The Roswell Incident," where much-embellished material claimed the discovery of actual alien bodies, which were found 150 miles west of the original debris site, and that a former teletype operator at an Albuquerque radio station was ordered to halt her story about a crashed saucer by the military.
The author of "The Roswell Incident" essentially claims that a lightning strike (how in hell would anyone know that?) killed the genetically-engineered alien (or time-traveler - the jury's still out) crew of a craft sent to observe American nuclear tests (!), and that the US government subsequently engaged in a widespread cover-up to prevent the mass panic that the author of this book cites, a la the "War of the Worlds" broadcast in the 1930s. That's a pretty tall order to prove.
The rancher himself, Brazel, who owned the property on which the debris was discovered, died in 1963, but his children have sure got in on the action. Brazel, Jr. claimed that the military had actually arrested his father and swore him to secrecy, although this account is contradicted by multiple (much-more credible) people who reported seeing Brazel, Sr. in Roswell, where he gave an interview to the local radio station.
At a 1989 MUFON conference, Moore confessed that he had intentionally fed fake evidence of aliens to UFO researchers, and many fabricated documents have been uncovered regarding the incident. There are so many competing versions of this story that the truth will likely never be known... so it's curious that a high-ranking military official wishes to jump into the fray with this rather detailed, if inconsistent and questionably-researched book.
For example, it starts out with the author's candid (but refreshing) admission: "I wasn't in Roswell in 1947, nor had I heard any details about the crash at the time because it was kept so tightly under wraps, even within the military." He goes on to state that "because I wasn't there, I've had to rely on reports of others, even within the military itself. Through the years, I've heard versions of the Roswell story in which campers, an archeological team or rancher Mac Brazel found the wreckage. I've read military reports about different crashes in different locations in some proximity to the army air field at Roswell... all of the reports were classified, and I did not copy them or retain them for my own records after I left the army."
He also notes that there is much disagreement over simple and basic facts such as dates, persons involved, and the sequence of events. The author claims that his involvement began when he "came into the possession" of the "top-secret file of Roswell information" in 1961 when he took over the Foreign Technology desk at Army Research and Development.
You can see clearly the problems with credulity.
It's a curious read, if you take everything with a grain of salt. It's also pretty dry reading and kind of boring - I read it chapter by chapter to get all the way through it. I kind of treated it like a work of faux-non-fiction, ala the "Blair Witch Project" or something. It also helps if you know the "Roswell pedigree" to some degree, in terms of the origins of some of the more outlandish rumors and claims, most of which stem to the late 1970s with the entry of the two major players, Moore and Berliz.
Bear in mind that legitimate researchers have concluded that only a handful of individuals actually saw ANY actual, physical evidence of debris, although hundreds have claimed to have handled the remains of whatever it was that was found on a remote New Mexico ranch, way back in 1947. As noted, it's fairly conclusively been proven, over the course of several decades, that there is no possible way that the number of people who have claimed to have handled the wreckage could possibly have done so. There is so much overlap in their stories, that in some cases, there would have had to have been dozens of people present at the same time, in the same place - but no one ever states that any of the other purported participants were, in fact, present.
Personally, I don't believe that aliens crashed in the New Mexico desert in 1947, based on the evidence I've seen. However, the topic is a fascinating study in human psychology. In fact, I've long wondered whether the event was possibly a carefully orchestrated operation whereby military officials sought to determine the degree to which a major development could be kept secret from the general public, but, if the story were leaked, it could be used to determine how many people were involved, and where the trail of leaks lead.
Hence, the people involved were NOT lying or making anything up, per se. They were indeed either reporting what they saw, or thought they saw, recounted what they were told and led to believe, or what they had read in "official" (actually fabricated) military documents. SO, it wasn't entirely a "hoax," but potentially a carefully-orchestrated operation designed to determine to what degree something could be kept secret - and how leaks occurred and perpetuated themselves, in a kind of elaborate "telephone game" of unauthorized disclosure of "classified" information.
Thus, it's curious to consider whether there were elements of the story that were actually factual, whereby a very few top brass concocted the UFO story and led subordinates to actually believe that there WAS a real flying saucer or alien spaceship, perhaps complete with fake alien bodies, to see if the story could be contained, and for how long. That seems more plausible than there being an actual alien spacecraft having crashed in the New Mexico desert... but who knows for certain. Do your own research, if you're so inclined, and judge for yourself.
There have been some wild stories about UFOs which have surfaced over the years, some of which are far more credible than others. Perhaps the most famous and well-known account is that that of the "Travis Walton Incident," which involved a reported alien abduction of a forestry worker back in 1975.
On Nov. 5, '75, Walton and some fellow crew members reported that they saw a strange light in the distance one evening while driving back from a remote area where they had been thinning trees on a job Walton's friend had hired him for, after winning a federal contract for work in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest. The crew reportedly saw an odd, glowing, distant light, but, upon approaching closer, they stated that they saw a large metallic object hovering mere inches above the ground in a clearing.
Multiple members of the crew stated that for some inexplicable reason, Walton got out of the pickup and ran toward the object, which then shined a blinding light on him. Walton himself later recounted that he was "zapped" somehow, and that he believed that an electric shock, or whatever it was, had not been intentional - that he had just got too close to the object.
The other members of the crew fled in terror after seeing Walton seemingly becoming incapacitated, but they returned about 15 minutes later, to find both Walton and the object gone. When they got back to town, one of the men called the sheriff to report what had happened. Some of the crew refused to return to the site, but two others agreed to go back with the sheriff to search.
Six days later, Walton reappeared, having placed a collect call to his sister's home. Walton appeared dazed, incoherent and highly distressed when he was found. A media circus ensued, but it was clear that the crew members had NOT murdered Walton, a crime of which they had been accused by police, even though they all passed polygraph tests, other than a single man for which the test proved "inconclusive."
Walton has adhered to his story for decades. Several books were written, but the account is perhaps best known from the 1993 motion picture "Fire in the Sky." It should be noted, however, that the movie version is a highly embellished account of what Walton himself has stated actually occurred. Almost all the scenes aboard the "spacecraft" are fabricated. He has no memory of being tested on by aliens, so it's more of an "inspired by" account than a faithful one to Walton's story.
The Roswell Incident predates this one by almost thirty years.
For the uninitiated: the subject of this lengthy, detailed book was the discovery of some strange debris on a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico, in early July, 1947. Although accounts have differed over the years, the material was reportedly first discovered by W.W. "Mac" Brazel on his ranch, where he discovered metallic and other lightweight debris scattered across several acres of his property.
The official story is that the US had, in June of that year, launched thousands of top-secret spy balloons carrying listening devices which were being used to detect potential Soviet atomic tests, as the USSR had not yet, at least publicly, demonstrated that they possessed or had tested an atomic device. This operation was termed Project Mogul. On June 4, a series of these balloons were reportedly released at Alamogordo Army Air Field, but the base lost contact with them some 17 miles from Brazel's ranch. It is postulated that what Brazel found was actually the remains of a top-secret American spy balloon.
After he found the debris, however, Brazel drove to Roswell and first informed a sheriff, George Wilcox, about what he had discovered. The sheriff, suspecting that the material was military in nature, subsequently called the Roswell Army Air Field, the home of the 509th Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force, which just so happened to be the only unit at the time capable of delivering a nuclear payload. The base assigned some personnel to go retrieve the material from the ranch.
And here's where it gets interesting: on July 8, for some inexplicable reason, but perhaps to throw off public perception about top-secret and classified experimental spy balloons, RAAF public information officer Walter Haut issued a press release stating that the military had recovered a "flying disc" near Roswell. Then, an RAAF flight engineer who assisted loading what he was "told was a flying saucer" onto a flight bound for Fort Worth Army Air Field in Texas, described the material as something totally unfamiliar.
The story had not yet gained major traction in the US, although when the news broke over a Roswell radio station, KSWS, that a flying disc had been recovered in the remote desert, which was subsequently relayed to the Associated Press - within a matter of hours, media outlets from all over the world began calling about it.
Who is directly responsible for starting rumors that the debris was from a crashed flying saucer is unclear. The press release from Haut stated that "rumors regarding the flying disc became reality when the intelligence office of the 509th Bomb Group... was fortunate enough to gain possession of a disc through the cooperation of one of the local ranchers and the sheriff's office... the flying object landed on a ranch near Roswell some time last week. Not having phone facilities, the rancher stored the disc until such time as he was able to contact the sheriff's office..." Apparently, at least, not all of that was accurate, even then.
Upon recovery, the weather officer at the base identified the material as the remains of a weather balloon. Admittedly, on July 9, the Roswell Daily Record newspaper stated that no engine or metal parts had been found in the wreckage, but that it had consisted largely of ordinary materials, such as rubber strips, tin foil, paper, tape and wood sticks. Brazel, however, allegedly told reporters that "I am sure that what I found was not any weather observation balloon," but he was not aware of the top-secret spy balloon project.
It seems that UFO conspiracy theories did not gain major traction until several decades later. The town became a household name after about 1978, when a "ufologist" named Stanton Friedman interviewed one Jesse Marcel, who claimed that he had accompanied some of the debris from the ranch site to a Fort Worth press conference. Marcel claimed that the "weather balloon" (note: no one said anything about a secret spy balloon project) account was a cover story, so he now believed that the material was extraterrestrial in nature.
No explanation = aliens.
Not exactly what I'd call convincing.
In December of 1979, more than THIRTY YEARS after the event, Marcel was interviewed by the National Enquirer (you see where this is all going), whose story brought large-scale publicity (read "notoriety") to the event... and the rest is history. Therein, Marcel described some weird type of metallic foil that could be crumpled, but then popped right back into shape when it was released.
Then, Marcel's son joined the fray. Marcel, Jr., M.D. said that when he was ten, his father showed him flying saucer debris recovered from the Roswell site, including "a small beam with purple-hued hieroglyphics on it," but, reportedly, the symbols matched those on an adhesive tape that Project Mogul allegedly sourced from a New York toy manufacturer.
That wasn't satisfactory for hard-core UFO enthusiasts. "Ufologist" Friedman then collaborated with childhood friend Bill Moore, who in turn contacted paranormal researcher and author Charles Berlitz, of Bermuda Triangle and Philadelphia Experiment fame. Moore and Berlitz co-authored a crazy popular book entitled "The Roswell Incident," where much-embellished material claimed the discovery of actual alien bodies, which were found 150 miles west of the original debris site, and that a former teletype operator at an Albuquerque radio station was ordered to halt her story about a crashed saucer by the military.
The author of "The Roswell Incident" essentially claims that a lightning strike (how in hell would anyone know that?) killed the genetically-engineered alien (or time-traveler - the jury's still out) crew of a craft sent to observe American nuclear tests (!), and that the US government subsequently engaged in a widespread cover-up to prevent the mass panic that the author of this book cites, a la the "War of the Worlds" broadcast in the 1930s. That's a pretty tall order to prove.
The rancher himself, Brazel, who owned the property on which the debris was discovered, died in 1963, but his children have sure got in on the action. Brazel, Jr. claimed that the military had actually arrested his father and swore him to secrecy, although this account is contradicted by multiple (much-more credible) people who reported seeing Brazel, Sr. in Roswell, where he gave an interview to the local radio station.
At a 1989 MUFON conference, Moore confessed that he had intentionally fed fake evidence of aliens to UFO researchers, and many fabricated documents have been uncovered regarding the incident. There are so many competing versions of this story that the truth will likely never be known... so it's curious that a high-ranking military official wishes to jump into the fray with this rather detailed, if inconsistent and questionably-researched book.
For example, it starts out with the author's candid (but refreshing) admission: "I wasn't in Roswell in 1947, nor had I heard any details about the crash at the time because it was kept so tightly under wraps, even within the military." He goes on to state that "because I wasn't there, I've had to rely on reports of others, even within the military itself. Through the years, I've heard versions of the Roswell story in which campers, an archeological team or rancher Mac Brazel found the wreckage. I've read military reports about different crashes in different locations in some proximity to the army air field at Roswell... all of the reports were classified, and I did not copy them or retain them for my own records after I left the army."
He also notes that there is much disagreement over simple and basic facts such as dates, persons involved, and the sequence of events. The author claims that his involvement began when he "came into the possession" of the "top-secret file of Roswell information" in 1961 when he took over the Foreign Technology desk at Army Research and Development.
You can see clearly the problems with credulity.
It's a curious read, if you take everything with a grain of salt. It's also pretty dry reading and kind of boring - I read it chapter by chapter to get all the way through it. I kind of treated it like a work of faux-non-fiction, ala the "Blair Witch Project" or something. It also helps if you know the "Roswell pedigree" to some degree, in terms of the origins of some of the more outlandish rumors and claims, most of which stem to the late 1970s with the entry of the two major players, Moore and Berliz.
Bear in mind that legitimate researchers have concluded that only a handful of individuals actually saw ANY actual, physical evidence of debris, although hundreds have claimed to have handled the remains of whatever it was that was found on a remote New Mexico ranch, way back in 1947. As noted, it's fairly conclusively been proven, over the course of several decades, that there is no possible way that the number of people who have claimed to have handled the wreckage could possibly have done so. There is so much overlap in their stories, that in some cases, there would have had to have been dozens of people present at the same time, in the same place - but no one ever states that any of the other purported participants were, in fact, present.
Personally, I don't believe that aliens crashed in the New Mexico desert in 1947, based on the evidence I've seen. However, the topic is a fascinating study in human psychology. In fact, I've long wondered whether the event was possibly a carefully orchestrated operation whereby military officials sought to determine the degree to which a major development could be kept secret from the general public, but, if the story were leaked, it could be used to determine how many people were involved, and where the trail of leaks lead.
Hence, the people involved were NOT lying or making anything up, per se. They were indeed either reporting what they saw, or thought they saw, recounted what they were told and led to believe, or what they had read in "official" (actually fabricated) military documents. SO, it wasn't entirely a "hoax," but potentially a carefully-orchestrated operation designed to determine to what degree something could be kept secret - and how leaks occurred and perpetuated themselves, in a kind of elaborate "telephone game" of unauthorized disclosure of "classified" information.
Thus, it's curious to consider whether there were elements of the story that were actually factual, whereby a very few top brass concocted the UFO story and led subordinates to actually believe that there WAS a real flying saucer or alien spaceship, perhaps complete with fake alien bodies, to see if the story could be contained, and for how long. That seems more plausible than there being an actual alien spacecraft having crashed in the New Mexico desert... but who knows for certain. Do your own research, if you're so inclined, and judge for yourself.
June 28, 2017
I started this book several years ago, but only got halfway through it before putting it down. I figured I would finish it at some point. This weekend was that point, I suppose. The book is by Philip Corso, who served the US Army from 1942-1963 in various capacities, including at the Pentagon, the White House, and as an advisor to Senator Strom Thurmond. He claims, in this text, to have been on the front lines of a war between humans, led by the US, and hostile EBE forces. EBE is UFOspeak for Extraterrestrial Biological Entity, or "aliens" to you and me. The catalyst for the book is the alleged crash landing in Roswell, New Mexico, of an extraterrestrial scout craft. This craft was found by the Army and recovered, along with several (four, if I recall correctly) EBEs. Corso then says that the whole thing was covered up by the government, as it remains to this day. He writes further that he was placed in charge of an ultra-top-secret division of Army R&D, and that it was his work with several alien technologies, found in the Roswell craft, that led to the development of Kevlar, lasers, accelerated particle beams, and the microchip (among others). He suggests that he was the reason that President Kennedy stood down the Soviets in the Cuban Missile Crisis, and asserts that he and his team single-handedly saved the world from extraterrestrial invasion by reverse-engineering the alien technology. Oh, and that is what ended the Cold War.
There are a lot of claims made in this book. Most of them, in my opinion, are complete rubbish. There are some tidbits of truth that are scattered throughout, ostensibly to bolster a rotten foundation with twigs of accuracy. For example, he mentions the very interesting and completely factual Project Horizon, which was a US plan to build a base on the moon. Yet he intermixes this truth with the absurd claim that there is an alien base on the moon already. That is just one example. There is one or more foolish claim on just about every page of the book. If it had been marketed as historical fiction, or alternative history, I would have been perfectly happy.
There are a lot of claims made in this book. Most of them, in my opinion, are complete rubbish. There are some tidbits of truth that are scattered throughout, ostensibly to bolster a rotten foundation with twigs of accuracy. For example, he mentions the very interesting and completely factual Project Horizon, which was a US plan to build a base on the moon. Yet he intermixes this truth with the absurd claim that there is an alien base on the moon already. That is just one example. There is one or more foolish claim on just about every page of the book. If it had been marketed as historical fiction, or alternative history, I would have been perfectly happy.
October 8, 2007
Corso's writing is a bit brittle - and even so, he appears to be at least partially ghost-written - but his story makes up for any stiffness in his prose. Unlike so many others who have written about the U.S. government's cover-up of the real story about UFOs, but didn't in fact know the real story themselves, Corso was one of those government officials who was perpetuating the cover-up, passing technological treasures from the Roswell crash to various corporations, who would then turn the technology into new products, and take credit for developing that technology themselves. This way, "we the people" and our economy got the benefit of these breakthroughs, without having to know where they really came from. Was the Cold War actually just a ruse, which enabled the Eastern Communists and the Western Capitalists to pretend to be threatening each other, when they were really building up armaments to dissuade hostile alien forces? Don't answer now - read the book, and then see what you think!
December 29, 2023
When you’re a Hammer, everything looks like a Nail. This book is definitely written by a blunt tool.
More than shining a light on what happened in 1947, it shines a bigger light on the arrogance and hostility of all men in uniforms.
It admits to the depth of deceit and lies they use against the public to benefit the military. When your business is creating weapons of death, the discovery of advanced technology is now used to create even bigger weapons of death to use against perceived enemies of the US.
The scariest part of this story is not that EBEs are admitted to being real, it is the US war machine has declared war on the rest of the universe with no questions asked (of the visitors - on behalf of the entire human race). It virtually puts an end to our advancing as a civilised species outside of our own tiny spec of a planet.
More than shining a light on what happened in 1947, it shines a bigger light on the arrogance and hostility of all men in uniforms.
It admits to the depth of deceit and lies they use against the public to benefit the military. When your business is creating weapons of death, the discovery of advanced technology is now used to create even bigger weapons of death to use against perceived enemies of the US.
The scariest part of this story is not that EBEs are admitted to being real, it is the US war machine has declared war on the rest of the universe with no questions asked (of the visitors - on behalf of the entire human race). It virtually puts an end to our advancing as a civilised species outside of our own tiny spec of a planet.
February 2, 2018
Little green men in white coats: Pant Y Wacco, according to John Lloyd and Douglas Adams, in the wonderful Meaning of Liff, is the state of mind of retired Lieutenant Colonels before the men in white coats come to take them away. Or, pay your retired spooks and gooks a decent pension or they’ll do this to you. This stuff is superior schlock and it’s fascinating in terms of Cold War paranoia, and American exceptionalism. Did the aliens give us microwave ovens so that we might enjoy Kevlar heated for dinner in a moment? I’m still doubtful, even if I’ll get in so much trouble for this, and anyway the iowaska beckons. I’ll be barking at the moon....
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November 27, 2009Wow, does Corso have the politics in Washington DC pegged down. It's worth reading just to understand how the United States is not really a united country, but just a bunch of autonomous organizations vying for power with each other. Forget the UFOs. The book is worth reading just to get this perspective. In the book, Corso states the various US spook organizations spend more time spying on each other, than all the other countries put together. And after working in Washington DC, particularly within the Department of Homeland Security, I believe him!
July 4, 2020
It blew my mind, and a lot of it, went over my head. The funny thing is that it matches with lots of other technology and how bureaucracy in Washington functions to make me feel that it's truthful story. I am putting this book on my re-read list, just because of density of information to acquire and understand.
June 8, 2017
What do you want? It's summer reading season! And I for sure ain't gonna be reading Moby Dick on the beach.
July 14, 2017
Fact or fiction... this was an interesting read.
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