and how to order at Special Reduced Web
Site Prices
 Guest Appearance and
Lecture Schedule
Stan Friedman's
Biography
My Challenge to the
Air Force ... I will debate the Air Force's best
ANY TIME and ANY PLACE.
The UFO Challenge
... Flying saucers are real, the debunker's tactics,
and the problem with the media.
... and more of my
Latest Online Articles
|
|
|
|
A Review of Col. Philip J. Corso's Book
"The Day After Roswell"
December 1997
By Stanton Friedman
Over the past few months I have been asked over and over again what I
thought about this book. I had done some preliminary checking on Corso a
few years back when I first heard of him via the Army History Institute.
Now, before actually obtaining the book, I checked with the Eisenhower
Library. There certainly seems to be no doubt that Corso was with the
NSC about , and that he served under General Arthur Trudeau in
the Pentagon 1961-63. He was also very active in trying to obtain the
release of POWs, some of whom he claimed had been taken away by the
Soviets from the far east, while the US government did nothing. So, he
is a real person with a solid military background.
Unfortunately, I find the book most unsatisfactory even though it
includes many claims with which I agree. Corso is in his 80s. Co-author
William Birnes has written and packaged many other books, so I suspect
he should get most of the blame for this exploitation of the great
public interest in what I call Roswell fever. There is no index, no
table of contents, no references, not even the promised newly released
classified government documents. There is the almost 40 year old Army
Project Horizon study about a base on the moon, available for years from
the Army Archives. Corso had written there for technical reports years
ago.
The first part of the book, with the exception of the strange Ft. Riley,
Kansas warehouse scene with an alien body being observed by Corso on
July 6, seems to have nothing to do with him. He admits he wasn't
involved at all in the recovery, investigation, or evaluation of what
happened near Roswell. It is almost certainly based on the many Roswell
books already published by Randle and Schmitt, Moore and Berlitz, and
Don Berliner and myself, but with no attempt to validate or critically
evaluate anything and no credits being given.
Birnes told me during a radio show that he felt the public didn't know
enough about Roswell to provide a context for the claims in the book,
hence the need for the introduction. Even though they did little
original research, Mantle and Hesemann, and Kal Korff at least
referenced the above mentioned sources in their books.
In the second half of the book Corso seems to be taking credit for the
single handed introduction of a whole host of new technologies into
American industry. All this is supposedly derived from the filing
cabinet of Roswell wreckage over which he was given control by General
Trudeau. He is very vague about details, and there is no substantiation
for any of the claims on fiber optics, Kevlar, laser weapons,
microcircuits, etc. I intend to spend some library time (I haven't had
any time for this the past few months what with all my traveling)
checking on his version of technological history. In TOP SECRET/MAJIC
there is an entire chapter dealing with how alien technology might be
quietly introduced through industry without informing the recipient that
the stimulus was Alien as opposed to Soviet, or other foreign
technology.
Corso speaks of a control group having, not surprisingly, the same
membership as Operation Majestic 12. Apparently he expects the reader to
believe this all-star cast did absolutely nothing between 1947 and 1960.
He is definitely NOT a scientist, but the implication is that in less
than 3 years he could change the world's technology, and they
couldn't??? Not very likely in my opinion.
On a radio show, where we had friendly rather than adversarial
discussions (we had all met in Roswell for the 50th anniversary), I
asked how he knew the Kansas date was July 6, and how was it he knew the
names of all the control group guys. Was it notes, a diary? He was
evasive. He knew when he reported to Ft. Riley that there were at least
a dozen boards and committees connected with the NSC while he was there.
He said he was definitely not a member of MJ-12. For me the simplest
explanation is that the names and background descriptions came from
Crash at Corona or TOP SECRET/MAJIC.
The bodies from the Plains might have been picked up by July 6, but
wouldn't they far more likely have gone to one of the nearby military
bases, and either been studied there or flown out? Kansas and New Mexico
are very hot in the summer time. No refrigeration or dry ice is
mentioned. July 6 was the date that Mac Brazel went to the Sheriff's
office at Roswell. No bodies there yet. Certainly recent evidence
concerning the falsity of testimony by Frank Kaufmann about the mythical
Corn Ranch site from which bodies were supposedly extracted on July 5,
rules out the new wisdom as reported in The Truth about the UFO Crash at
Roswell.
I personally don't understand why the body would have been sent by truck
(without a 24-hour guard) rather than plane, and why it came from Ft.
Bliss which is Southwest of Roswell though it was HQ for the rocket
scientists at White Sands Missile Range. Corso spoke of Rte. 40 being
the only major EW highway in 1947. But Ft. Riley is West of Manhattan,
Kansas, and well North of Highway 40, and not on the most direct route
to Wright Field.
Certainly there are some ethical questions about the use of an
introduction by Senator Strom Thurmond, now in his 90s, written earlier
for a memoirs book that had definitely been planned by Corso. Thurmond's
office has basically disowned the book. Press coverage of this
undoubtedly provided a great deal of incentive for people to buy the
book, sort of the way banning a book in Boston used to help sales
elsewhere.
Time will tell, but one of my main concerns is that the book will go
down as a fraud, probably after making a small fortune as a movie.
People will then say that proves Roswell was also a fraud. The science
editor of the San Francisco Examiner already has used this false logic.
He claimed that Don Schmitt giving himself false credentials and denying
being a postman to Kevin Randle therefore meant that Roswell was a
fraud.
Stanton Friedman
|
