NOTICE: The page below has been permenently FROZEN as of January 2000. Due to resource limitations, this section of our website is no longer maintained, so some links may not work and some information may be out of date. We have retained this page for archive reference only, and we cannot vouch for its accuracy. Broken links will not be repaired, and minor errors will not be corrected. You are responsible for independently verifying any information you may find here.

NOTE: Former webmaster Glenn Campbell has two new websites, active in 2007: FamilyCourtChronicles.com and RoamingPhotos.com. Check them out!

Hillary Evans Review of Corso's Book

[Original source unknown. Via Francisco Lopez <d005734c@dc.seflin.org>]

Date: Thu, 11 Sep 1997 12:13:42 -0400
To: OVNI Brasil <ovnibr-l@listbox.com>
From: Victor Lourenco <lourenco@interlog.com>
Subject: Corso, a European view

Here's Hilary Evans comments on Corso's book.

Philip J Corso, with Wiliam J Birnes, The Day after Roswell
Pocket Books, 1997

Most authors who seek to persuade us that Earth is being visited by
otherworldly beings are armchair theorists or amateur investigators
who claim to have arrived by one path or another at the truth.  Corso
is a professional : he didn't go seeking the truth, he had it thrust
upon him. Where other accounts are founded on personal speculation or
reasoning, his purports to be authoritative, factual, objective
because founded on known facts.

His claim is that an alien spacecraft did indeed crash at Roswell in
July 1947, and that the US Government has been well aware of this from
that day to this, and indeed has gained substantially from it, by
back-engineering the debris of the crash to accelerate the progress of
technological research.  The laser, micro-circuits, fibre optics and
night-vision devices are just four of the applications the author
mentions.

Much of this thesis is not new ; what is new is that Corso presents it
quoting chapter and verse, naming names and dates.  For if we can
accept his claim, he was the individual primarily responsible for
making these developments possible.  But for Corso, indeed, the
computer industry as we know it could still be floundering in its
primitive early phases.  In his final paragraph, he writes :
Sometimes, once in a very long while, you get the chance to save your
country, your planet, and even your species at the same time. (273)
This, no less than this, is what Corso claims to have done.

Who is Corso ?

I have no means of checking whether he is what he claims to be.  He
tells us he had a very distinguished career in the army.  He helped to
clear the Germans from North Africa; he master-minded security in Rome
after the fall of Italy (helping 1000s of Jews to make their way to
Palestine) and was in charge of important security operations in
post-war Germany ; he worked in the White House during the Eisenhower
administration ; and so on.  Much of this must be a matter of
checkable fact.  However, the photos in the book somewhat undermine
this picture, because while they undoubtedly show (or purport to show)
the author on various occasions during his military career, they do
not show him in any of the contexts which bear on his claims.  One
photo, captioned "Lt.Col.Corso exchanges formalities with base
officers' is wholly meaningless since neither place nor date are
given.  If these five photos are the best visual confirmation he can
provide for so outstanding a career, maybe it wasn't quite as
outstanding as he would like us to believe ?

Some general considerations

Corso asks us to accept, first, that the US Government has possessed,
since July 1947,  absolute proof that alien life exists.  And second,
that it has successfully concealed this knowledge partly in order to
obtain technological advantages as against a perceived Soviet threat ;
and partly to avoid panicking the American people as Welles panicked
them in 1938.

These considerations  - the first selfish and opportunistic, the
second conjectural at best - have been allowed to outweigh the
advantages that might have accrued by releasing the information to
space scientists and others who might have benefited from the
knowledge, not to mention what some might consider the right of
humankind to be told so momentous a fact about their place in the
universe.

On the face of it, this is too absurd to be credible.  However, in the
context of a collective paranoia on the part of America's political
and military leaders, it just might be true.  And it just might be the
case that loyalty, commitment and fear have prevented any credible
whistle-blower speaking out until now.

If so, we are confronted by the fact that Corso, albeit (according to
his own unsubstantiated account) a major player in the game, has
chosen to go it alone in revealing, solely on his own initiative,
facts which have been concealed for 50 years by a succession of
administrations and military leaders - concealed for reasons which he
evidently thoroughly approved and agreed with.  Even as a retired
officer, considerations of loyalty would surely outweigh any
individual impulse to make a unilateral decision to tell the public
what so many people (whom he obviously respects) have gone to so much
trouble to conceal for so long.  On this ground alone it is
unthinkable - even if it is not physically impossible - that he would
have done this. Our astonishment is the greater since he gives no
indication of having been authorised to reveal these uniquely
important facts, and provides no explanation why they are being
revealed in this form, at this time, and by this author.

Even more extraordinary is the fact that this revelation, which if
true is perhaps the most important revelation ever made to humanity,
is made in the unofficial form of a trade book, ghost written, and
presented with no other endorsement than that of a politician for whom
Corso formerly worked in a field unrelated to the subject of this
book.

Some further implications of Corso's thesis :

* We must accept that the US Government allowed substantial funding of
SETI and other costly astronomical research, while knowing that the
search was already over and the research futile.

* We must accept that the alien spacecraft and the various artifacts
were "shared' between the various military forces, who each jealously
guarded their own hoard and conducted research in isolation from the
others.  The alien bodies were similarly dispersed and, presumably,
autopsied and anaysed independently, no findings being shared.
Indeed, we are led to believe that the various organisations entrusted
with this incalculably precious material deliberately avoided any kind
of joint co-operation out of mutual jealousy, suspicion and
possessiveness.  In partial explanation, we are asked to believe that
one reason for concealing the facts was to prevent those departments
of government sympathetic to Communism (many, it seems, even at the
height of the Cold War, were so) from leaking the truth to America's=
enemy.

It seems beyond belief that a responsible government would permit such
a state of affairs.  We are told that the "Majestic' committee was a=
reality and that they had supreme authority : if so, surely they would
have overridden narrow vested interests, and insisted on a joint,
national research undertaking transcending the various individual
services ? On page 108+ we realise that each of the artifacts was
evaluated independently not only of any other possibly relevant debris
(eg party A might have retrieved an item which makes sense only if
combined with an item in the possession of party B), but more
bizarrely still, independently of the spacecraft itself. (Indeed,
Corso admits (p 100) that though many others have seen the spacecraft
at Norton, he himself, though he more than almost anyone should have
had access to the spacecraft, has never actually seen it )  Yet
presumably some, at least, of the debris would make sense only if
considered in the physical context of the spacecraft as a whole ?

* It is not easy to accept that, believing it knew best what was good
for the American people, the American government committed itself to a
massive and costly disinformation programme (including the setting up
of such organisations as Blue Book, the Condon Committee etc)
dedicated to telling the public that what they (correctly) believed to
be the truth was not the truth.  It becomes even harder to accept it,
when we reflect that the government didn't really know all that much
about UFOs and needed all the information it could get.  With so many
eager ufologists only too willing to voluntarily gather such
information at their own expense, it made no sense at all to rubbish
the very people who were in the best position to provide the
government with vitally important information.  We know that
governments can do stupid things, but this stupid ?

Comments on specific passages

pages 10 and 56

Corso tells us that Marcel was at the crash site and very much in the
know; we learn that the base was crawling with security people, and
that the decision to conceal the truth was made immediately.  If so
total a security blanket was in force, it seems inconceivable that the
commanding officer at Roswell Field, Col Blanchard, would on his own
initiative have authorised, or been allowed to authorise, Lt Haut to
reveal to the media that a flying saucer had crashed.

While it is just conceivably possible that this was a deliberate ploy,
giving the incident worldwide publicity in order that it could be
denied with equal publicity, this seems unlikely, for by attracting
attention to the event, they laid themselves open to the possibility
that some enterprising journalist might find a witness, or a piece of
evidence, that would destroy their cover story.  Far and away their
best ploy would be to keep the entire matter under total wraps, as
Corso suggests they did apart from this one lapse, compelling
witnesses under dire threats to deny everything. But how did that one
lapse come about, in the conditions that Corso describes ?

p 52

Corso suggests that the Northrop YB49 owed its design to the Roswell
spacecraft.  But is it likely that a terrestrial, conventionally
powered aircraft would be modelled on a spacecraft whose purpose and
specification presumably differed in just about every possible way ?

p 73

Corso suggests that the Nazis also enjoyed pre-1939 the benefit of
alien technology ("We had always wondered how the Germans were able
to= incorporate such advanced technology into their weapons
development in so short a time').  But if so, they must have had to
resort to just the same kind of cover-up agenda as the U.S. Government
in 1947 ; incredibly, they must have been equally successful in
concealing the truth, even after the collapse of Germany when many of
those in the know might understandably have felt free to reveal their
knowledge.  Yet so far as I know, not a single German has uttered a
whisper of the matter.

p 78

"When reporters were actually given truthful descriptions of alien
encounters".'  Corso implies that the authorities, as part of their
policy of concealing the existence of alien spacecraft, permitted some
genuine stories to reach the media, knowing that reporters would
either "fall on the floor laughing or sell the story to the tabloids'
thereby rubbishing the case.  It seems improbable that such a risky
course would be taken, running the danger  that investigators might
discover that the true case was really true !

"Flying saucers did truly buzz over Washington, D.C., in 1952' - it's
interesting to find Corso claiming as a true UFO event a case which
most serious ufologists have long ago discounted.

p 92

"The overriding concern with all of the Roswell artifacts' was to
"learn from them so that man can travel in space'.  Again, we come up
against the short-term, opportunistic approach : the crashed
spacecraft with its debris and occupants were valued not for what they
might tell us about other worlds in space, but how they can help us
with our mundane objectives.  Are military minds really so limited ?
Maybe so, since (p 99) Corso seems delighted that this astonishing
evidence that we are not alone in the universe - arguably the most
important piece of information humanity has ever been given - can be
harnessed "as user-input devices for personal computer games' !

p 116

Corso includes Canadian engineer Wilbert Smith on his list of top
scientists who should be approached regarding the artifacts.  But
Smith was a radio engineer of no great stature, and his involvement
with the UFO phenomenon was dubious, to put it kindly.  Clearly,
before adding Smith's name to his list, Corso would have carried out a
thorough check on the man : he could not have failed to find that
Smith was a firm believer in space brothers and a cosmic police force
and so on (see his The boys from topside).  Perhaps this explains why
Smith was never actually recruited : but it's surprising that Corso
risks his own reputation by admitting that Smith was even so much as
short-listed.

p 123

"The real story behind the vast missile arsenals" was the threat to
the aliens that if they occupied a portion of our planet, we had the
firepower to obliterate them'.  This is the first of several passages
in which Corso makes the extraordinary claim that our terrestrial
achievements give us the capability to resist any attack the aliens
might make. (p 124) "We were able to upgrade our ability to defend our
airspace so that we could amass large numbers of inceterceptors
against the EBE's limited resources and pose a real threat to them.
They backed off"' (p 142) "We were gaining parity with the EBEs""  We
were gaining on the aliens"  No matter how hostile the aliens'
intentions were, they didn't have the raw power to launch a global war
against us"  We held the upper hand. (p 157)' We continued and
persevered.  Ultimately, we reached the moon and sent enough manned
expeditions to explore the lunar surface that they effectively
challenged the EBEs for control"' (p 268) "The EBEs knew and we knew
they knew that we had our defence of our planet in place"  (p 269)
'Now that the war is just about over and we defend our beachhead "we
prevailed.  We pulled the crashed space vehicle out of the desert and
harvested its parts just like the inhabitants of that vehicle wanted
to harvest us"'

One cannot but admire such supreme, sublime confidence - yet I fear it
is misplaced.  For what did anyone - Corso, Majestic or the generals -
know about the aliens other than what they had been able to learn from
the Roswell spacecraft ?  This single vehicle, with its not very
scrutable contents and not-able-to-be-communicated-with occupants,
represented the entire sum of knowledge possessed by humans about the
other occupants of space (if we set aside the UFO allegedly downed at
Ramsten AFB, Germany, in May 1974, p 127)

In the light - or darkness - of such ignorance,  it is absurd to set
any limits to the powers the aliens might deploy : indeed, their
achievement in reaching our planet by whatever technological means,
and the performance of their space vehicles in our airspace, suggest a
potential which far exceeds anything that humans could manage.  Such
evidence as there is suggests that the aliens could do pretty well
anything they want : the supposition that thanks to American know-how
humanity can successfully resist the aliens is so na=EFve, one can
hardly believe that this is what Corso is saying.  But it is.

p 124

"Stories of abductions" some were true, and this caused great
consternation' Corso treats with surprising lightness the subject
which has come to dominate the perceived public image of the alien
presence.  Yet the implications of "real' abductions should have been
very alarming for the official forces who smugly believed they were
successfully containing the alien threat.

p 124-6

We learn that many of the malfunctions, jammed transmissions and other
hiccups of our space exploration projects can be blamed on
extraterrestrial interference.  But if the aliens were seriously
concerned to prevent our efforts, they could sabotage them far more
drastically.  Why do so little ?

p 145

"We didn't want to see Khrushchev gain so much unchallenged power in
space that the extraterrestrials would readily agree to some kind of
accommodation with him guaranteeing both of them a degree of freedom
to dominate the political affairs of our planet' That Corso could
seriously consider the possibility (1) that the Russians were in a
position to contact the aliens ; or (2)  if so, that the aliens would
be willing to make a treaty with one human power against another ; or
(3) that the aliens even understand such concepts as "treaties' which
they would be bound to "honour', makes na=EFve and anthropomorphic
assumptions that show him either simple-minded, closed-minded or just
plain stupid"

p 146

"All of us in the military services who had come in contact with the
Roswell file believed that we were already under some form of attack'
The idea that the aliens are hostile has no foundation in any alleged
facts cited by Corso, and the Roswell find does not support it in any
way.  True, many cases he mentions such as overflights of bases and
interference with space projects have been interpreted by Corso and
others as evidence of hostility, but they fall a long way short of
outright aggression such as bombing a base or destroying one of our
spacecraft, and "some form of attack' is a gross overstatement.

photo section

The photos of Corso himself have already been commented on : the
others are, if anything, more bizarre still.  Here again, it is the
photos which are not here, as much as those that are, that weaken the
author's credibility : Artifacts :  There are no photos whatever of
the artifacts which are the main subject of much of the book.  Yet it
would surely have been possible to include photos of them which would
not have given away any information of potential scientific value to
others who he might fear would seize upon them and adapt them to their
own selfish uses instead of for the greater glory of the U.S.
military.  Their absence - whatever interpretation we put on it - is
somewhat suspicious. UFOs : although credited to "National Archives'
the photos are familiar to UFO researchers.  Not one of the more
interesting photos he claims to have found among the Roswell files,
nothing which would substantiate his story to have had access to
privileged material.

Comments on Corso/Birnes' methodology

The book is reasonably well written, clear and lucid, seemingly
factual. However, we must suppose that no precise record exists of
dialogue which often occurred in private one-to-one conversations.  So
we must question how authoritative is the attribution of dialogue to
the protagonists : eg (p 75)

"It will be,' General Twining said, "a case where the cover-up is the
disclosure and the disclosure is the cover-up.  Deny everything, but
let the public sentiment take its course.' This may be a verbatim
statement ; or it may be a fair paraphrase of something he said ; or
it may be pure invention.  How can we know ?

p 102

Corso describes in dramatic terms the presentation of his report to
Trudeau, and we can all empathise with his feeling the need for a
"clean, crisp shirt' in which to perform this historic task.  What a
cute human touch ! But how was the historic document actually made,
physically ?  It must have been a very substantial document.  Did
Corso himself sit down and type it out ? Does this talented fellow
include  "clean, crisp' typing among his many and various
accomplishments ?  Or was there a typist there to do it for him ?
Surely he would mention him/her if someone else had been there with
him, working beside him through the long, lonely hours of the night ?

Conclusion

Unlike many UFO books, this is rooted firmly in fact.  Names, dates,
places proliferate.  The claims are specific and concrete, even though
much of the information is necessarily concealed.  There is virtually
no speculation of the "what if"?' kind.  We must believe these things
happened, and this is how they happened, and where and when and why.
Consequently, the author must either be telling the truth or
deliberately not doing so.  In the light of my comments, I find it
impossible to believe either that this is the truth, or that he
himself believes it to be the truth.  Consequently I must conclude
that this is a cunningly contrived fiction, concocted with a generous
seasoning of verifiable fact to give it vraisemblance.


==========================

Distribuado por UFOVNI
http://www.interlog.com/~lourenco/ufovni.html

Index: Philip Corso
Index: Hillary Evans