Few people would have ever heard of Philip J. Corso before this book was released. Unless you were involved with the military, at the highest of levels, you would not have crossed paths with him. He was a military officer during World War 2, an Army Intelligence Officer under General Douglas MacArthur during the Korean War, worked as a Lt. Colonel for four years as a member of President Eisenhower's National Security Council, was "Head of Foreign Technology" in Army Research and Development at the Pentagon in the early 1960's and retired from the Army in 1963 with nineteen medals and ribbons. Very impressive.
To UFO researchers, his personal recollections of seeing an extraterrestrial body in storage at Fort Riley in Texas in 1947 are even more impressive.
Later on, when in the Army R. and D. in the early sixties, under General Trudeau, he was given sole responsibility for the implementation of a plan to reverse engineer various kinds of mysterious artifacts that had been recovered earlier at the Roswell crash site in 1947.
The list of strange artifacts and their properties is quite extensive and would certainly confuse most people unfamiliar with it. It appears that by Corso's account, for security reasons, Nathan Twining divided up the remnants and passed them on to only a few of the heads of the various military services and left them to decide how best they should deal with it. The Army received mainly items regarded as having implications relevant to it such as weapons technology, communications technology etc.
One of the first items that was passed on to research scientists were flexible membranes which enhanced night vision. These dark coloured membranes, much like contact lenses, led apparently to a break-through in night vision technology.
There was apparently no wiring on board the crashed craft, but there was a substance resembling fishing line. It was later discovered to have the ability to direct light around corners! This was the beginning of fibre optics.
There was also a type of headband which, when worn by researchers, made some dizzy, some sick, and others saw lights and their vision was affected. The research scientists later determined that these headbands acted as an interface between thoughts and the vehicle's guidance system, an idea which has only recently begun to be used in aircraft using stealth technology.
Corso reveals many of the things that UFO researchers have only speculated about for decades. One of these is the direct connection between extraterrestrials and cattle mutilation cases. According to Corso, he heard about these gruesome events in the pentagon in the early sixties. These were not made public, but Corso knew they could only have been carried out by our extraterrestrial friends because the technology required was non existent to man except for one small, powerful hand held laser scalpel which was located in Corso's filing cabinet, along with other artifacts recovered from Roswell.
Some researchers are very wary of anyone who makes the types of claims made in this book and some have harshly criticised it. One point made by Stanton Friedman is that the book lacks a table of contents, an index, a bibliography and has no notes or references. This may be only a type of "form criticism" but it does explain why some critics have said that the book is more like a novel than a historical, biographical account. Another thing raised by Friedman is where Corso explains that when he began in the pentagon, the "nut" file was handed on to him by Trudeau. Friedman asks why are expected to believe that no one had done anything with the artifacts in the intervening 14 or so years. It is possible that others in other services such as the Navy, or the Airforce may have. Corso restricts his account to what he knows or was told in the Army, and rightly so.
The reason why Corso is going to be put through the grinder is because although he is an impeccable character, is highly decorated with an impressive military record, and states it how it was, he has upset the many conservatives who DO NOT WANT TO ACCEPT THE ACTUAL REALITY OF THE PRESENCE OF EXTRATERRESTRIALS.
To quote one famous Harvard University Professor and alien abduction researcher John Mack, ''it's not my fault that the real experience "ain't supposed to be!"
John Mack went through hell and was nearly fired from his professorship at Harvard for daring to suggest that there might actually be something real and not imagined in all this "Alien abduction" stuff. Philip Corso can expect to go through a similar ordeal, even from respected UFO researchers because not all of them have accepted the reality of the Roswell event and will not be happy about having to change their precious ideas.
The only weakness that is apparent to me in the book is the fact that we are left to accept Corso's word as there is no way he can prove any of it. Even so, it's amazing how Corso's version of the events both makes sense and fills in many of the gaps.
I wouldn't expect any of today's officials to admit that Corso is right and has "Spilled the cosmic beans" because they tend to believe their own preposterous explanations, such as the latest being that the entire Roswell case is explained by the military dropping dummies from Aircraft 8 or 9 years after the incident occurred. If you can make sense of that one don't hesitate to contact me and explain it to me.
To sum up this book, this is Roswell straight from the horse's mouth. It would be great if we could interview Twining or Hillenkoetter, or Trudeau, but these men are long departed. Corso was younger than these men and knew and understood their thinking, and explains the events in a way that no amount of detective work would ever uncover. Time will tell, and as time passes, more and more of the truth will come to the surface. This book will be a major catalyst in the uncovering of these real and historic events.
I also recommend you have a listen to the Corso interview on the Art Bell radio show, available on the Internet. You can hear the man himself answering questions.
One final note, I've just heard that the FILM RIGHTS to this book have just been settled! It doesn't take long these days, does it.

Last Updated: January, 1999
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