Corso's doubts about autopsy reports (1997)
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🗓️ Event
Contents 8
| Date | 13 January 1997 |
|---|---|
| Topics | Beings & bodies (topic), Disinformation & hoaxes (topic) |
| People | Philip J. Corso, Jacques Vallée |
| Testimony | Shellenberger testimony, p. 127 |
| Year | 1997 in UFO history |
| Timeline | 1997 on the UAP Timeline |
| Sources | 12 |
According to Jacques Vallée's published journals, Philip Corso telephoned Vallée on 13 January 1997, a few months before his book The Day After Roswell came out, and said he was troubled that the alien autopsy analyses from Walter Reed Army Hospital he had seen were very superficial and did not seem right.[1]
Corso
Corso was a retired Army lieutenant colonel who had served on the staff of Lt. Gen. Arthur Trudeau, head of Army research and development, in the early 1960s. In The Day After Roswell (1997), ghostwritten by William J. Birnes, he claimed he had managed artefacts from the 1947 Roswell crash and passed them to industry for reverse-engineering.[2]
Earlier contact
Vallée had interviewed Corso on 3 May 1996, when Corso told him "we had autopsy reports from Walter Reed". A separate interview in April 1996 was conducted by Hal Puthoff and John Alexander.[1]
Significance
Corso's book presented the Walter Reed material as genuine. The January 1997 phone call, as Vallée recorded it, suggests Corso himself had doubts about the reports' quality. The journal entry describes doubts rather than an explicit claim of disinformation.[1]
Reception
The book was a bestseller, but critics including pro-Roswell researchers found many errors in it, and Senator Strom Thurmond asked for his foreword to be withdrawn. Corso died in 1998.[2][3][4]
People and topics
- Philip J. Corso — Army officer who claimed in The Day After Roswell that he seeded alien technology into industry.
- Jacques Vallée — Computer scientist and astronomer, author of the Forbidden Science journals and a central figure in UFO research.
- Disinformation — False information spread deliberately to mislead.
- The Day After Roswell — The Day After Roswell
- Alien autopsy film — A 1995 film of an alleged alien autopsy, admitted in 2006 to have been staged.
- Roswell — The New Mexico town at the center of the 1947 crash story.
On the Timeline
- Dan Sherman's Project Preserve Destiny recruitment (1 January 1997) — Sherman says the NSA recruited him into Project Preserve Destiny.
- Jonathan Weygandt's Peru crash claim (March 1997) — Marine Jonathan Weygandt says he guarded a crashed craft in a cliffside.
See every 1997 event on the UAP Timeline →
References
- Keith Basterfield, "An alleged 2001 National Institute for Discovery Science memo…", UFOs – scientific research (June 2019) · ufos-scientificresearch.blogspot.com · archived copy
- The Day After Roswell — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Brad Sparks, review of The Day After Roswell, Skeptical Inquirer (PDF) · cdn.centerforinquiry.org · archived copy
- "The senator and the UFOs", Government Executive (June 1997) · govexec.com · archived copy
- The Day After Roswell — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.com · archived copy
- Stanton Friedman's review of The Day After Roswell · medium.com · archived copy
- Philip J. Corso case file — The Black Vault · theblackvault.com · archived copy
- Forbidden Science — the journals of Jacques Vallée (Anomaly Archives) · anomalyarchives.org · archived copy
- Forbidden Science series — Anomalist Books · anomalistbooks.com · archived copy
- The Day After Roswell — Publishers Weekly review · publishersweekly.com · archived copy
- Review of Forbidden Science 6 — SFCrowsnest · sfcrowsnest.info · archived copy
- Forbidden Science Dispatches — Tanner Boyle (journal summaries) · tannerfboyle.substack.com · archived copy
Further reading
- Jacques Vallée — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Philip J. Corso — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
This page was last edited on 29 October 2026. Articles are written in our own words from the sources listed under References; disputed claims are attributed to the people who made them.
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