Philip Corso's Roswell claims
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🗓️ Event
Contents 8
| Date | 1961 |
|---|---|
| Topics | Crashes & retrievals (topic), Beings & bodies (topic), Secrecy & cover-up (topic) |
| People | Philip J. Corso, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Arthur Trudeau, Stanton Friedman, Brad Sparks |
| Testimony | Shellenberger testimony, p. 64 |
| Year | 1961 in UFO history |
| Timeline | 1961 on the UAP Timeline |
| Sources | 9 |
Philip J. Corso was a U.S. Army intelligence officer who, in his 1997 book The Day After Roswell, claimed that in the early 1960s he had secretly managed a filing cabinet of alien artifacts and autopsy reports from the 1947 Roswell crash and passed the technology to American industry. His military service was real, but his Roswell claims have never been verified and are widely rejected.[1][2]
Military career
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Corso was born in California, Pennsylvania, was drafted into the Army and was commissioned in 1942. He served as an intelligence officer and, by his account, on the National Security Council staff under President Eisenhower. Around 1961–1963 he worked in Army Research and Development under Lieutenant General Arthur Trudeau, including briefly as deputy chief of the Foreign Technology Division. In 1963, after about ten years as a lieutenant colonel without promotion, he left the Army to become a staff assistant to Senator Strom Thurmond.[1][2]
The claims
In The Day After Roswell, ghostwritten by William J. Birnes, Corso said Trudeau had given him a cabinet of Roswell material and that he quietly fed items to defence contractors, seeding developments such as integrated circuits, fibre optics, lasers, night vision and Kevlar. He also said he had seen an alien body in a shipping crate at Fort Riley, Kansas, in 1947. The book spent three weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, and Corso gave many interviews before his death in 1998.[2][3]
Thurmond's foreword
Thurmond had written a foreword praising Corso's career without mentioning UFOs, believing the book was a conventional memoir. When he learned what it claimed he withdrew the foreword and said he knew of no such cover-up.[1][4]
Criticism
Researchers on both sides of the Roswell debate — including Philip Klass, Kevin Randle, Karl Pflock, Stanton Friedman and Brad Sparks — found numerous factual errors and chronological impossibilities, and historians of technology have shown that the inventions Corso credited to alien sources have well-documented human origins. A 2011 UK government memo released by the National Archives dismissed his claims, citing his record of unreliable testimony, and The Guardian listed the book among its top ten literary hoaxes.[1][5][6]
People and topics
- Philip J. Corso — Army officer who claimed in The Day After Roswell that he seeded alien technology into industry.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower — 34th U.S. president, named in the MJ-12 briefing document.
- Foreign Technology Division — The Air Force unit at Wright-Patterson that analysed foreign technology.
- Arthur Trudeau — Head of Army Research and Development in the early 1960s and Philip Corso's boss.
- Roswell incident — The July 1947 recovery of debris near Roswell, New Mexico, announced as a "flying disc" and then explained as a weather balloon.
- The Day After Roswell — The Day After Roswell
- Stanton Friedman — Nuclear physicist and leading Roswell researcher.
- Brad Sparks — UFO analyst known for his catalogue of Blue Book unknowns and work on the CIA lawsuit.
On the Timeline
- Graduate Research Center of the Southwest (1961) — Texas Instruments sets up a research center that hires gravitational physicists.
- John McCormack's doubts about the Air Force (1961) (16 February 1961) — House leader John McCormack says the Air Force isn't sharing all it knows about UFOs.
See every 1961 event on the UAP Timeline →
References
- Philip J. Corso — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- The Day After Roswell — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- "The Day After Roswell", Publishers Weekly · publishersweekly.com · archived copy
- "The senator and the UFOs", Government Executive (Jun 1997) · govexec.com · archived copy
- Brad Sparks, review of The Day After Roswell, Skeptical Inquirer (1998) · cdn.centerforinquiry.org · archived copy
- Stanton Friedman, review of The Day After Roswell · medium.com · archived copy
- The Day After Roswell — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.com · archived copy
- Philip J. Corso case file — The Black Vault · theblackvault.com · archived copy
- archive.org · archive.org · archived copy
Further reading
- 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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