The UFO Book Corner

[Carol Nistri]

lol! Yes and if I may why did Alexander feel the need to ask Corso these questions,after all he considers himself an insider and should have other sources to verify Corsos claims.Actually the part that gave me pause was the same one you just mentioned Dr.Wu,that the government actually sat on these artifacts for years,that just doesnt make sense.

[dr wu23]

Originally Posted by Carol Nistri

lol! Yes and if I may why did Alexander feel the need to ask Corso these questions,after all he considers himself an insider and should have other sources to verify Corsos claims.Actually the part that gave me pause was the same one you just mentioned Dr.Wu,that the government actually sat on these artifacts for years,that just doesnt make sense.

As I pointed out to you on another thread post which you must have missed, no one on the inside knows everything that goes on and Alexander had many questions he wished to ask Corso (they were friends before Corso died..) and sent them to him via the mail but Corso never bothered to reply. My guess is that Corso simply didn't have any good answers to them. And it's also been explained, if you read the book, that Alexander tried to find out some truth about any secret ufo group and was unable to.
That means that there was no such formal group or they hide very well even from insiders...or Alexander is lying. People are going to believe what they want based on their position bias.

Corso clearly says in his book that nothing was done with these artifacts for quite some time until he was given the go ahead by Trudeau to farm them out to various govt sponsored civilian corps. He mentioned that the secret ufo group (which he says existed) didn't seem in a big hurry in working out their meaning and that the Air Force via Trudeau's office had control of most of them and eventually they asked Corso to take them around. Why Corso of all the intel people around. Why not let it flow through the secret group and one of their people? Surely Gen Trudeau must have been part of the group or in contact with them. He even claims that he had more access than the secret group to these artifacts. Why weren't they in the hands of the group from the beginning after the crash since that was the purpose of the group to begin with?
Many unanswered questions that Corso never bothered to clear up. IMO this tale by him is fishy and maybe he knew something but there are a lot of things here that don't add up.

[Carol Nistri]

I actually agree that there some things in Corsos book that dont add up,didnt Trudeau have something to say about his being mentioned in Corsos book?

[dr wu23]

Originally Posted by Carol Nistri

I actually agree that there some things in Corsos book that dont add up,didnt Trudeau have something to say about his being mentioned in Corsos book?

I am not aware of anything Trudeau said but here's a wiki link.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Trudeau

The General is connected to the Roswell Incident as he headed the committee responsible for the Pentagon's files and u.f.o. items recovered in New Mexico. According to his immediate subordinate, Philip J. Corso, who is the author of a book called "The Day after Roswell", Trudeau actually managed a covert mission to disseminate recovered alien technology to major industries in the U.S. during the 1950s and 1960s. Corso's book recounts how he allegedly helped Trudeau share this gleaned ufology information with others so that they could use it to advance technology. Consequently, Corso claims, our world has experienced great technology and information revolutions within the last 50 years.

[dr wu23]

This is an interesting piece written some time ago when the book came out....it supports his case..for the most part, and has an interview with Birnes who co wrote it with Corso.
http://www.v-j-enterprises.com/corso.html

A blurb from the Birnes interview about Corso which also claims the govt sat on this material. Does that really make sense?

"
WB: Yes. Said artifacts were part of the Roswell debris delivered to the Pentagon from Wright Field and were stored in R&D files for over ten years before anyone tried to harvest them. Corso handled some of these artifacts, especially the cracker-sized IC wafers, a fiber-optic harness, and some kind of metallic headband, and tried to determine what use they had. "

[Carol Nistri]

Maybe if they truely had these artifacts the problem may have been as to what to do with them,where to send them,as a matter of fact I can easily see how even having those artifacts would require that very careful consideration had to be given to them and who was to get them.Ill say John Alexander knew Corso for a long long time,here this is from l997,can you listen to this.

http://www.coasttocoastam.com/show/2006/04/09

[Jimmy]

Originally Posted by dr wu23

I am not aware of anything Trudeau said but here's a wiki link.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Trudeau

The General is connected to the Roswell Incident as he headed the committee responsible for the Pentagon's files and u.f.o. items recovered in New Mexico.

Trudeau died in 1991, after something of a checkered career. He was a genuine hero of the Korean War and Chief of Army Intelligence 1953-5, when he shot himself in the foot by making an unsanctioned approach to Adenauer, got across Allen Dulles, and was shipped to the Far East. There are (parts of) a Trudeau memoir on Google Books, and a Goggle on "general trudeau intelligence" will get that and (parts of) a book that covers the Adenauer affair, entitled "Partners at the Creation." (The URLs for these things are insane.) The problem with others not speaking up in support of Corso is that by 1997, when the book came out, most of those with the rank to be in a position to know were probably dead.

Judging by Strom Thurmond's reaction, what Corso did was to write his actual memoirs, find that no one wanted to publish them, and then punch them up with a lot of war stories about mysterious items and the Roswell crash. Corso's son may have had something to do with this; he seems to have been determined to make a buck off Dad, and probably had heard those war stories before. (And allegedly messed up a Hollywood movie deal.) Thurmond wrote an introduction to the book, and would say that he'd written it for that Roswell-free memoir and make the publishers remove it from later editions.

I might point out that the book begins with an account of the Roswell crash, supposedly derived from the Secret Files, that trashes the testimony of just about every major witness to the case except "Steve Arnold," who is probably one of the avatars of Frank Kauffman. Kauffman was taken to be a really pivotal witness by Randle and Schmitt, at least, and in a sorry example of just how well the Roswell case has been investigated, his story (which appeared in three or six variations, I forget) depended on his discharge papers, which he'd never let investigators examine closely while he was alive. Then he died, and -- who'd a thunk it? -- they turned out to be crude forgeries.

Corso was a technological blindworm -- he gets a whole lot of things he should have known wrong -- and thus an odd choice for an R&D man, and his technology transfer claims are bunk; most of the examples he gives were being worked on, and even worked out (patents for integrated circuits were issued in 1959) before he ever showed up with his "Roswell debris." Key developments in some fields (notably fiber optics) were made outside the US. The whole R&D episode of his career has the flavor of Trudeau creating a niche for Corso and trying to get him promoted to full colonel (the 90 days for which he headed up Foreign Technology were just enough to get him rated in the position), so that he could avoid being retired on "up or out," or maybe just retire in a nicer pay grade.

Since the technology transfer claims are the heart of the book, I can't see a reason to put any stock in anything Corso says that can't be verified from other sources, not counting the plain old mistakes. I don't believe he was the secret pivot man of the Cuban missile crisis or that he once waved his pistol around the office of a CIA officer, either. I don't think he saw an alien body from Roswell and I don't think he ever saw any secret reports on that case; his story of the crash sounds a lot more as if it came from Roswell witnesses accessible in the 90s. All in all it's part of a depressing latter-day trend in UFOlogy: It's a hoax, and it's not even a very good one. Nonetheless it gets some traction because Corso's an "insider" and he's propping up both Roswell and the government cover-up theory.

[Carol Nistri]

Wow Jimmy,it sure sounds like you did some homework.

[dr wu23]

Originally Posted by Jimmy

Trudeau died in 1991, after something of a checkered career. He was a genuine hero of the Korean War and Chief of Army Intelligence 1953-5, when he shot himself in the foot by making an unsanctioned approach to Adenauer, got across Allen Dulles, and was shipped to the Far East. There are (parts of) a Trudeau memoir on Google Books, and a Goggle on "general trudeau intelligence" will get that and (parts of) a book that covers the Adenauer affair, entitled "Partners at the Creation." (The URLs for these things are insane.) The problem with others not speaking up in support of Corso is that by 1997, when the book came out, most of those with the rank to be in a position to know were probably dead.

Judging by Strom Thurmond's reaction, what Corso did was to write his actual memoirs, find that no one wanted to publish them, and then punch them up with a lot of war stories about mysterious items and the Roswell crash. Corso's son may have had something to do with this; he seems to have been determined to make a buck off Dad, and probably had heard those war stories before. (And allegedly messed up a Hollywood movie deal.) Thurmond wrote an introduction to the book, and would say that he'd written it for that Roswell-free memoir and make the publishers remove it from later editions.

I might point out that the book begins with an account of the Roswell crash, supposedly derived from the Secret Files, that trashes the testimony of just about every major witness to the case except "Steve Arnold," who is probably one of the avatars of Frank Kauffman. Kauffman was taken to be a really pivotal witness by Randle and Schmitt, at least, and in a sorry example of just how well the Roswell case has been investigated, his story (which appeared in three or six variations, I forget) depended on his discharge papers, which he'd never let investigators examine closely while he was alive. Then he died, and -- who'd a thunk it? -- they turned out to be crude forgeries.

Corso was a technological blindworm -- he gets a whole lot of things he should have known wrong -- and thus an odd choice for an R&D man, and his technology transfer claims are bunk; most of the examples he gives were being worked on, and even worked out (patents for integrated circuits were issued in 1959) before he ever showed up with his "Roswell debris." Key developments in some fields (notably fiber optics) were made outside the US. The whole R&D episode of his career has the flavor of Trudeau creating a niche for Corso and trying to get him promoted to full colonel (the 90 days for which he headed up Foreign Technology were just enough to get him rated in the position), so that he could avoid being retired on "up or out," or maybe just retire in a nicer pay grade.

Since the technology transfer claims are the heart of the book, I can't see a reason to put any stock in anything Corso says that can't be verified from other sources, not counting the plain old mistakes. I don't believe he was the secret pivot man of the Cuban missile crisis or that he once waved his pistol around the office of a CIA officer, either. I don't think he saw an alien body from Roswell and I don't think he ever saw any secret reports on that case; his story of the crash sounds a lot more as if it came from Roswell witnesses accessible in the 90s. All in all it's part of a depressing latter-day trend in UFOlogy: It's a hoax, and it's not even a very good one. Nonetheless it gets some traction because Corso's an "insider" and he's propping up both Roswell and the government cover-up theory.

I tend to think what you say is true being suspicious of his tale...... though we have no way to know for certain.
BTW you have probably read Alexander's book and he mentions many of the same things (lists some in the book) and had about 75 points he wanted to ask Corso about his tale but Corso never replied to them.

[Jimmy]

I read the book when it first came out, and most of that is adapted from things I wrote then, and that was, my God, fifteen years ago. What really got me about it then (and now) was that Tale of Roswell, supposedly assembled from the secret files, and how much it clashed with what had been published elsewhere about Jesse Marcel's testimony, for instance. If you believe Corso, then ol' Jesse not only had to have lied, he had to have been pretty creative about it. But Corso at least seems to go on to say that Marcel didn't lie but came clean. And yet Corso's book is liked in some quarters because it "supports Roswell." This never made any sense to me.