Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Philip Corso and The Day After Roswell, Again


(Blogger’s Note: In the last few days I have been asked about Philip Corso and his tales of seeing the Roswell bodies and of seeding alien technology into American industry. I have updated the information to reflect what we now know. This is my take on the stories Corso told, and once again, I find myself attempting to explain why I don’t accept what he said as real.)

As everyone now knows, Philip Corso burst on the Roswell UFO scene in the summer of 1997 with the publication of his book, The Day After Roswell. It was Corso’s story of his involvement with the flying saucer crash at Roswell, first as an officer at Fort Riley, Kansas, and later as a staff officer in the Pentagon, the Eisenhower White House, and finally on the staff of Lieutenant General Arthur Trudeau. Corso claimed that he had been responsible, under orders from Trudeau, for leaking bits and pieces of alien technology to American industry for reverse engineering, duplication and replication.
There is no doubt that Corso had served as a military officer and rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel. He served in World War II and stayed on active duty until he retired and did work for Trudeau. Although he did say that he had retired as a full colonel, there is no evidence to back up this claim.
It was during his assignment at Fort Riley that Corso was introduced, according to him, to the alien crash at Roswell. Corso, again according to him, was an above average bowler and because of his skill was invited to participate on a Fort Riley team by then Master Sergeant Bill Brown (which is a name nearly as common as John Smith for those who wish to attempt to learn more about this guy). Corso was surprised because enlisted men weren’t supposed to fraternize with officers at that time, but apparently Corso’s skill was such that the master sergeant took a chance and breached military protocol.
The friendship that developed between Corso and the master sergeant, who he now called by the nickname Brownie, would play an important role in what would happen on the evening of July 6, 1947, after the arrival of a “secret” convoy. Corso was assigned as the post duty officer, in charge of security and as he described it, the “human firewall between emergency and disaster.” As he walked his post, checking the security, he failed to find Sergeant Brown where he was supposed to be. Instead, Brown was in the doorway of the veterinary clinic. There was something inside that Corso just had to see.
Forget for the moment that Brown would have had no reason to enter the building unless there was some sort of a disturbance inside, or that the secret convoy of five “deuce and half” (two and a half ton trucks) with its accompanying “Low boy” side by side trailers would have been guarded by the men who brought them to Fort Riley to ensure that the contents were not compromised. Forget also that the best evidence suggests that the material from the crash was shipped by air to its various destinations because it was the quickest and safest way to move it and the 509th Bomb Group had access to a wide range of military aircraft. Corso, in his first-hand account, claimed that the convoy stopped at Fort Riley, and the Military Police assigned to it as guards were all armed, which, of course, they would be so that wasn’t unusual. These guards, once the material was secured in the veterinary clinic, apparently abandoned their posts to leave the guarding of the crates to the local soldiers. These guards would have been no reason to unload the cargo, so there is no reason that it would have been in the veterinary clinic but without this wrinkle Corso’s story collapses.
Those local soldiers, being curious men, began to search the material from the top-secret convoy. What they found so upset them that they risked the wrath of the post duty officer and court martial by telling him that there was something he had to see. Brown told Corso that he had to take a look at what the convoy was transporting. Corso warned Brown that he wasn’t supposed to be there and had better leave. Brown, apparently ignoring this advice, which would actually have the force of a lawful order, said that he would watch the door while Corso snooped.
Inside the building, Corso found the crates but hesitated at prying open any of them, which would have been closed with a seal to expose any tampering. He searched among them until he found one that had apparently already been opened by the Fort Riley soldiers so that the nails were loose. He opened that crate and then looked down inside. In a glass tube containing a blue fluid, floating, suspended, was what Corso thought, at first, was a small child. Then he knew it wasn’t a child, but a human-looking creature with “bizarre-looking four-fingered hands... thin legs and feet, and an oversized incandescent light bulb-shaped head...”
Rifling the crate, Corso found an Army Intelligence document detailing that the creature was from a craft that had crashed outside of Roswell, which also doesn’t make sense. The documents wouldn’t have been stashed in a crate carrying the body. The paperwork appeared to manifest the remains, first to the Air Materiel Command at Wright Field, and then to Walter Reed Hospital for what Corso believed would be autopsy (which is in conflict with data provided by the late and former Brigadier General Arthur Exon). Of course, such a manifest would have been in the hands of the convoy commander rather than stuck in a crate where he wouldn’t have easy access to it. Corso, realizing that he was not supposed to have read the document, seen the creature, opened the crate, or penetrated the security around the cargo, put everything back the way he found it, and hurried outside. He told Brown that he had seen nothing and that he Brown, was to tell no one.
That wasn’t, of course, Corso’s last brush with the Roswell case. It was however, more than a decade before he again saw anything dealing with Roswell. Instead he had a number of military assignments, moving him to Washington, D.C., and then to Fort Bliss, Texas. At Bliss he was trained in anti-aircraft artillery, then assigned as an inspector of training and finally assigned as battalion commander for several weeks before he was reassigned to Europe. While at Bliss, according to Corso, he was assigned as the commander of the White Sands Missile Range. At least that is what he told reporters in the summer of 1997 as he was describing his background for them.
In Germany, in 1957, he was a commander of a Nike battalion. In March, 1959, he became the Special Assistant to the Chief of Staff at the Seventh Army Headquarters. In May 1959, he became an Inspector General at Seventh Army HQ, and continued in that assignment for about a year. In 1960 he returned to the United States. In 1961, he was assigned as a staff officer of the Plans Division in Washington, D.C. and then as a staff officer of the Army’s Foreign Technology Division until April 1961 when he became the Chief of Foreign Technology. Three months later he was reassigned as a staff officer at Plans and less than a year later he retired.
It was during the tour in 1961 that he became involved, once again, with the Roswell case. According to an affidavit prepared by Peter Gersten, and according to Corso, “...In 1961, I came into possession of what I refer to as the ‘Roswell File.’ This file contained field reports, medical autopsy reports and technological debris from the crash of an extraterrestrial vehicle in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947.”
Corso’s job, in 1961, was to parcel the debris into American industry hands for research and development which doesn’t explain why he was exposed to information that was irrelevant to his assignment and in violation of the “Need to Know” rule. The idea here was to suggest to various companies that the small artifact or metal had come from an unknown source, which of course shows that there was no need to provide Corso with the background of a UFO crash. The expertise of the scientists at the companies was supposed to unlock the secrets of the debris. This led, according to Corso, to the creation of the transistor, night vision equipment, fiber optics, lasers, microwave ovens and a host of other recent developments though the scientific papers and history of the times suggests that this is not accurate.
All of this was outlined in Corso’s book which became news in July 1997. He appeared on NBC’s Dateline for an exclusive interview. About a week later he appeared in Roswell for a press conference, a lecture, and a book signing. For three weeks in August, his book appeared on the New York Times bestseller list.
Corso was, in 1997, the highest-ranking officer to write a book about Roswell and to make public claims about the case of what he had seen and done (Colonel Jesse Marcel, Jr. now holds that distinction). According to him, he had been a member of NSC, had worked inside Eisenhower’s White House, and had served with the Army’s Foreign Technology Division. If he could be believed, then here was the truth about the Roswell crash. Finally a witness with impressive credentials had gone on the record.
The stories told by Corso to friends and family are even more impressive than those detailed in his book. In a proposed chapter that was edited out of his book, Corso claimed that in 1957 he had taken command of missiles at Red Canyon, where he trained specialists in the management of sophisticated radar and range finding equipment. It was here that Corso saw a series of radar contacts showing objects that could outperform the best Air Force interceptors.
Corso, according to the details of the missing chapter, had been told to report all unidentifiable sightings and then, finally, was told to forget them. He also claimed that at “times of intense UFO activity during his tenure as commander... he is ordered to turn his targeting radars completely off because, he believes, the craft themselves are in danger from our missiles as well as from our high-energy radars.”
Naturally the claims of Corso were subjected to intense scrutiny. Problems with his book began to arise almost immediately. For example, Corso had claimed to be a member of the NSC in the Eisenhower White House. Herbert L. Pankratz, an archivist at the Eisenhower Library, reported Corso was not a member of the National Security Council or its ancillary agency known as the Operations Coordinating Board. There was nothing to link Corso to the NSC.
Corso, in his book, told of how he had intimidated the CIA director of covert operations after Corso learned the CIA was following him. He told Frank “Wiesner” that he was going to start carrying a gun and if he ever spotted a CIA agent following him, they would find the agent’s body with bullet holes in the head. Corso then noted that Wiesner was found dead in his London hotel room in 1961. Wiesner had killed himself by hanging, which is not to say that Corso’s threat so unhinged Wiesner that he committed suicide.
The problem is that most of the facts used by Corso to support this story, from the claim that he had charged into the Langley Headquarters of the CIA, to the facts surrounding the death of Frank Wisner (note correct spelling) are wrong. Corso couldn’t have charged into the Langley headquarters because they weren’t opened when Corso supposedly entered the building. Corso couldn’t have driven to Wisner’s office as he claimed because, in April 1961, Wisner was, in fact, assigned to the CIA’s London office. Wisner did, eventually commit suicide, but it was with a shotgun, at the family farm, and on October 29, 1965.
In what may be the most telling of the events surrounding the publication of Corso’s book is the Foreword written by Senator Strom Thurmond. Here seems to be an endorsement for Corso’s book from a man who has served in the United States Senate longer than almost anyone. When the book was published, Thurmond, objected, claiming that the Foreword he had written had been for a different book. The publisher, Simon and Schuster issued an apology and pulled the Foreword from future printings of the book.
Corso tried to explain it away, saying that Thurmond’s staff had written the Foreword and that “the old man knew it” and that they hadn’t really known the nature of the book. The whole flap, according to Corso, was a misunderstanding about the nature of the book and who actually authored the Foreword. As a matter of courtesy, given the controversy, Simon and Schuster decided to pull the Foreword.
Karl Pflock, who had been around Washington, D.C. in various capacities, decided to look into the matter himself, believing that his friends and sources inside the Beltway would give him a unique perspective on the matter. Pflock, it turned out, knew the senator’s press secretary, and learned that “Yes, it’s true the foreword was drafted by one of the senator’s staff... It was done at the senator’s direction on the understanding he had from Corso that it was to be for Corso’s memoirs, for which he and his staff were supplied an outline, a document which made no mention of UFOs.” Pflock added, “I know of my own certain knowledge the senator was and is mad as hell about the cheap trick that Corso pulled on him...”
Pflock continued, pointing out that Deputy General Counsel Eric Raymond demanded, “Recall all copies of the first printing - failing that, remove all dust jackets with the senator’s name on them; stop using any reference to the foreword by the senator in promoting the book; do not use the foreword in any subsequent printings of the book; issue a statement acknowledging the truth, ‘to establish for the public record’ that the senator ‘had no intention or desire to write the foreword to The Day After Roswell,’ a ‘project I completely disavow.’”
The apology issued by Simon and Schuster was not as bland as Corso had characterized it but was, in fact, damning in its wording. It was clear that Thurmond did not know the nature of the book and that the outline he had read was for a completely different book. The publisher did remove the foreword from all subsequent editions of the book.
This might seem as if it is an argument over trivia, but it does speak to the general attitude of Corso in constructing his book. If he was willing to mislead a United States Senator, one who Corso considered a friend, why believe that he wouldn’t want to mislead the rest of the country? The evidence is that he played fast and loose with the truth.
For example, it was Corso who said that he had been the commander at the White Sands Missile Range but a check of the Range’s website revealed that, with two exceptions, the Range had been commanded by a general officer. The first exception was Colonel Turner who had been the first commander, and the second was when a full colonel took over temporarily when the commanding general died. Corso’s name did not surface as a commander.
However, as noted, his records indicated that he had been a battalion commander at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas. The two organizations, Fort Bliss and White Sands Missile Range, share some facilities. So, it might be said Corso was a commander at White Sands but not the commander. Clearly Corso was inflating his record when speaking to members of the press.
During those same press conferences, Corso made other statements that were quite revealing. He mentioned the Philadelphia Experiment, a hoax that began in 1956 when a man claimed he had witnessed, during the Second World War, Navy efforts to teleport a destroyer. The story is an admitted hoax, but Corso began telling reporters about the event, claiming that he had read the top-secret files about it.
Research into Corso’s claims showed that they were firmly grounded in the UFO community. Corso had read and reviewed everything that had been printed, published on the Internet, or shown in television documentaries over the last five or six years as it related to the Roswell case. There was nothing new in Corso’s book, except for his claim that he had seen one of the bodies at Fort Riley and then that he was the conduit for the alien technology to American industry. For evidence, he offered nothing more than his claim it happened and documentation offered as some sort of evidence had nothing to do with his claims.
In fact, when Corso came into conflict with other witnesses, or information that was contrary to his point of view, he retreated. He appeared on a radio program with Frank Kaufmann but at every point of disagreement, Corso deferred to Kaufman as if Kaufman was the real authority. Kaufmann’s tales have since been shown to be untrue, a fact which Corso should have known if he had the inside knowledge that he claimed he had.
He was quick to suggest that his information might not have been the best. In other cases, it seemed to have been the worst. The caption over a photograph in his book read, “Lt. Col. Corso was never able to confirm the veracity of the following purported UFO surveillance photos which were in Army Intelligence files as support for material for the R&D project to harvest the Roswell alien technology for military purposes.”
The first of the pictures is of a well-known hoax. The photographer, Guy B. Marquand, Jr. told various UFO researchers, as well as the editors of Look, that he was sorry, but it was a hoax. He had been young and foolish and thought it a great joke. It would seem that if Corso was on the inside as he claimed, he would have been aware that this particular UFO photograph was faked.
Given the information available, given the mistakes in Corso’s book, and given his inflation of his own importance during his military career, it seems that the logical conclusion is that Corso’s claims are of little value. They added nothing to what was already known, and certainly have detracted from the whole of the Roswell case. When his claims break apart, those who know little about Roswell become convinced that the whole case is built on structures similar to those built by Corso.

80 comments:

  1. Thanks for putting this together, Kevin!

    Lance

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  2. Do you know what were Corso's motives were for putting out his book, other than the obvious one to make a fast buck?

    I presume he timed it to come out on Roswell's 50th anniversary and to coincide with the big celebrations there.

    But he left it rather late in life (over 80) to publish his great knowledge and make his money, so it is still somewhat of a mystery.

    As to J. Strom Thurmond, am I right that he was in the Senate at the age of 100? Not knowing exactly when he first entered it, I assume he probably holds the record for the longest time served as a congressman or senator.

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  3. What many forget today is that the Roswell book wasn't Corso's first outlandish claim. In 1992 Corso testified that he had secret knowledge of many hundreds of US MIA/POWs held by the Soviets for nefarious purposes. http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/the-case-against-pows/220231.html His evidence for this was exactly equal to his Roswell story, and like it, he was the sole keyholder to the big secret.

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  4. CDA -

    I believe that his motive was simple and that was to show that he had been on the inside of important events. The original title of his book, as I understand it, was I Walked with Giants, about his interaction with these people and his role in these world events. The problem was that no one really cared about his "inside" glimpse. The Roswell book grew out of that, which, with the coming anniversity, someone suggested something like that.

    This fits with Thurmond's claim that he wrote the introduction for another book. With Thurmond's introduction in hand, with the publicity about Roswell, and now Corso's claim that he was on the inside of that, and that he had seen the bodies, publishers were lining up.

    So, the motive wasn't really money, but recognition for his contributions to the world that had gone overlooked. But now he was in the spotlight.

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  5. When I read Corso's book, I knew right away it was all a hoax. How? Every technology development claim he made was conevniently unverifiable. Just a bunch of claims, to sell a book.

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  6. It sticks in my craw that some folks are still promoting the idea that our advanced technology comes from aliens. Take the laser (precursor: maser). The idea of stimulated emission was proposed by Einstein in 1917! It just took us a little longer to make the hardware. :)
    .
    If someone could prove that Einstein was coached by ETs, then I'll buy it, otherwise it's just nonsense.
    .
    All technologies have historical pedigrees; there's no magic involved, just hard work by smart people. That's something the ET theorists might try.

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  8. albertguitar said:

    "All technologies have historical pedigrees; there's no magic involved, just hard work by smart people. That's something the ET theorists might try."

    Hi Albert. Although I agree with you that there is no evidence for reverse engineering ET crafts, etc., I also don't think your conclusions from the quoted phrase are gold.

    If some secretive military/scientific organization has copied some ET technology it still would require a lot of, as you say, "hard work", to figure out the working of even a small unknown part of such ET technology.

    Moreover, you point that all current technologies have some human historical precedents in the past, ergo, this would prove that there is not reverse engineering, etc. I disagree. It would be hard to believe that a fully, 100% new technology would be able to emerge from analyzing ET technology. It seems much more reasonable to expect that the human in charge of a reverse engineering investigation would base his conclusions or predictions basically on human scientific knowledge plus what he believes to be seeing in the ET innovative thing which he is analyzing.

    My point is: even assuming the reverse engineering has really occurred, don't expect "magic" results and don't expect that there won't be "hard work" involved, and don't expect absence of "historical pedigree".

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  9. Another factor involved in just how and why Corso's book came out, as to timing and particularly fraudulent content and Corso's unsubstantiated assertions, was also probably due to the influence and effect of having Corso's co-author, William J. (Bill) Birnes involved in the production and editing of the book.

    Birnes was also the guy who bought out the interests of Don and Vicki Ecker, the former owners and publishers in the U.S. of "UFO Magazine," which then rapidly proceeded to slide even faster downhill under Birnes ownership, in terms of quality, content, and hype. Birnes then went on to produce various other projects regarding the UFO phenomenon, like certain TV shows, books, and other enterprises which generally used info on UFOs that was similarly based on unsubstantiated and false data. Corso made have initiated the hoax, but Birnes was certainly a conscious participant.

    See: http://www.oocities.org/marksrealm/roswell020.html [Brad Sparks' book review] and http://bit.ly/1mz5IBi [Stanton Friedman's book review]

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  10. Steve -

    Neither link seems to work.

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  11. Kevin --

    Well, that's certainly odd, since I just checked both of them when I noticed your comment, and both still work fine for me.

    You might try the two url's again, maybe using a different browser -- I use Google's "Chrome" browser, and it loads those two site without a problem, at least for me.

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  12. I was under the impression Kaufmann was rejected because he falsified documents. That may undermine his credibility but I don't think what was found relates directly to his stories. As for Corso's motives, it seems awful risky to make up Roswell/ET tales to gain recognition. He should've or would've known he'd only end up looking like a charlatan.

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  13. @Don Maor:
    .
    I don't discount the possibility of the existence of ET technology, or even the probability (however small) of the possession of such technology by earthlings.
    .
    I stand by my point, unless you can provide an example of a technology that exists without any theoretical precedent.

    Anything else is pure conjecture.

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  14. Hello albertguitar:

    I think that the use of an advanced technology without a minimum theoretical framework or familiar background, would be both irresponsible and dangerous. No government or corporation would openly use such an untested technology, so don't expect someone here will respond to your requests, they are too exigent, at least for me, a humble theorist of the ETH. Now, this is off-topic I think.

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  15. Albertguitar.com said:

    “I stand by my point, unless you can provide an example of a technology that exists without any theoretical precedent.”

    And Don Maor said:

    “I think that the use of an advanced technology without a minimum theoretical framework or familiar background, would be both irresponsible and dangerous. No government or corporation would openly use such an untested technology…”

    I think you guys are generalizing way beyond the point of prudence.

    The argument can be made that, over human history, the use of technology without an accompanying understanding of the underlying scientific theory was the norm, not the exception. Furthermore, governments—as well as private individuals—have openly used advantageous technology long before its underlying basis or its long term consequences were known (gunpowder, burning of fossil fuels).

    For thousands of years, most humans on the planet used only tools and produced only artifacts that derived from such natural substances as stone, wood, bone, hide, and the like. Although metals are abundant in the Earth’s crust, most metals are pretty reactive and exist mainly as oxidized chemical compounds. Only a handful of metals exist in the reduced state, where their properties of strength, luster, and malleability are apparent. When stone age humans first happened upon naturally occurring deposits of copper, silver, and gold, and meteoritic iron, they realized that those metals could be used to produce useful objects simply by pounding and polishing. This condition persisted for thousands of years, without any scientific understanding of why metals have these properties, until the atomic theory of matter was commonly accepted in the 1800s.

    Similarly, it is clear from the fossil record that early humans were cheerfully creating genetically modified organisms (such as the modern varieties of maize) over thousands of years without any knowledge of the DNA basis of genetics (which did not become accepted until the 1950s).

    The use of solar energy for warming residences, growing plants, drying food, and lighting fires (to name a few) has likewise been going on for thousands of years, even though Fred Hoyle didn’t finally figure out the complete theory of how the Sun and other stars work (nucleosynthesis) until about 1945.

    The list could go on—the magnetic compass, optical quality glass, antibiotics, etc.. It is a quite common and fortunate fact that humans are able to make practical use of accidental discoveries long before there is a complete understanding of the scientific basis of the discovery.

    Finally, I would point out that it was only in 1998 that the Hubble Space Telescope made the observations that led to the consensus position among astrophysicists of the existence of Dark Energy. Nobody knows what Dark Energy is, but it is known that it has the practical effect of warping space, according to General Relativity. Perhaps this will be another example of a technological use preceding scientific understanding?

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  16. Recall the late 1950s 'The Phil Silvers Show' (also sometimes referred to as 'Sgt. Bilko')...

    The series was originally set in Fort Baxter, a sleepy, unremarkable U.S. Army post in the fictional town of Roseville, Kansas, and centered on the soldiers of the Fort Baxter motor pool under Master Sergeant Ernest G. Bilko.

    ..so...a Kansas-based Fort...set in Roseville (Roswell?)... under the unofficial command of Phil (Corso) Silvers?

    Seriously, he played quite a good joke, huh?

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  18. Good Day Kevin,

    I performed a FOIA request for Corso's military records years ago (to date the largest file I've ever received from the NPRC). When all the hub-bub was going on re Corso's resumé back then, I made the argument that Corso was indeed a member of the NSC:

    Did Colonel Philip J. Corso Lie About His Tenure With The NSC? (Redux)

    Cheers,
    Frank

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  19. @Larry:
    .
    Certainly, throughout history, some technologies were discovered by experimenting, without an understanding of how they worked. These histories are well known and undisputed.
    .
    Plant hybridization is not considered GMO.
    .
    Since nobody knows what Dark Energy is, what is the theoretical reasoning for it's existence?
    .
    If space is empty, how can it be warped?
    .
    Hoyles isn't the theory, it is only a theory, like all other theories.
    .
    Consensus has nothing to do with facts; either something is true, or it is false. True science isn't democratic, it is absolute.
    .
    My example of the laser shows that there _is_ an historical provenance for the technology. Perhaps that term is more accurate than 'theoretical precedent', but Einstein had the weight of science behind him, whereas predicting "death rays" (as early predictions of the laser) is the stuff of science fiction.

    Advanced ET technologies would have to be unexplainable by our current understanding of science. Only then could the label 'ET' be seriously considered.
    .
    It's ridiculous to think that lasers, fiber optics, and such have an ET origin.

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  20. Frank -

    Sorry, that doesn't cut it because it is self-reported information about who he claimed to be. It is not proof that he was.

    Instead, here is what Herbert L. Pankratz, an archivist at the Eisenhower Library wrote on June 5, 1998:

    According to the information found in our files, Col. Philip J. Corso was not a member of the National Security Council or its ancillary agency the Operations Coordinating Board during the Eisenhower Administration... We have not located any evidence that he ever attended an actual NSC meeting...'

    I too, have sections of his military file and I find nothing in it to substantiate the claim he served with the NSC. His list of assignments is complete and there is nothing there about the NSC.

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  21. Mornin' Kevin,

    You wrote:

    Sorry, that doesn't cut it because it is self-reported information about who he claimed to be. It is not proof that he was.

    I presume that you're referring to the "contents page"
    of the The Hearings Before The Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs that refers to Corso as having served as a staff member to the NSC.

    I submit that this is a possibility (as stated in te piece); however, not a known fact that this is "self-reported information." If you have something to support this dogma, let's see it.

    Separately, the 1965 Jones/DeLoach FBI memo that states, "Philip Corso then assigned to "Operations Coordinating Board (OCB), National Security Council..." wasn't self-reported.

    As I stated in the piece:

    I think this is a clear case of I say, “tow-may-tow” and you say, “tow-mah-tow.” I believe during Eisenhower’s reign, the NSC had evolved into a large confederation, and many, although not part of the “core council” (as in Truman’s era) considered themselves part of the NSC, and as described in the” History of the National Security Council, 1947-1997” at the White House’s web-site, the “NSC system.”

    Finally, as is often the case there will be those that will look at what is presented, and it won’t matter, as “their minds are made up,” but clearly, in my view, Corso could righteously say he was a member of the NSC; this is a non-issue.

    The irony of it all is that the NSC statement and all the hub-bub sits along side the other declarations about being on the receiving end of technology from another world.


    Cheers,
    Frank

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  22. Kevin,

    Additionally, in the piece I wrote:

    In addition to that in the “History of the National Security Council, 1947-1997” at the "White House’s web-site,” the OCB is described as such:

    President Eisenhower created the Operations Coordinating Board (OCB) to follow up on all NSC decisions. The OCB met regularly on Wednesday afternoons at the Department of State, and was composed of the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Deputy Secretary of Defense, the Directors of CIA, USIA, and ICA, and the Special Assistants to the President for National Security Affairs and Security Operations Coordination.

    "The OCB was the coordinating and implementing arm of the NSC for all aspects of the implementation of national security policy."

    NSC action papers were assigned to a team from the OCB for follow-up. More than 40 interagency working groups were established with experts for various countries and subjects. This 24-person staff of the OCB supported these working groups in which officials from various agencies met each other for the first time.


    Corso's record show him being a member of the "Intelligence Staff" of the OCB from '54 to '56.

    Cheers,
    Frank

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  23. Kevin,

    Also:

    During the Hearings Before The Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs Corso was asked, "what does OCB mean?" (Pertaining to a memo Corso wrote).

    Corso replied, "Operations Coordinating Board. It's part of the National Security Council."

    Later in the proceedings he (Corso) stated, "Upon my return to the United States, I was assigned to the Operations Coordinating Board [OCB] of the White House National Security Council and handled virtually all projects on UNited States prisoners of War."

    Those testifying be the committee were sworn in and the statements are a matter of official record.

    Again, him being part of the NSC doesn't validate his other claims in my view.

    Cheers,
    Frank

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  24. Here we are, down in the weeds again. The point is that whether Corso was part of the NSC or not, his book is pure unverifiable B.S. THAT is the point.

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  25. Frank -

    We are engaged in a matter of semantics. According to Pankratz, Corso served on the staff of the Psychological Strategy Board which, appearing evolved into the Operations Coordinating Board which is described as an anchillary agency to the NSC... which doesn't put Corso on the NSC and it is clear that no evidence has surfaced that showed he attended any meetings of the NSC.

    This sounds more like resume embellishment than an out and out lie... but the truth is that many of Corso's claims are fiction. I'm not sure what your point here is. Corso was clearly not exactly who he claimed to be and the evidence is that most of what he said couldn't be trusted.

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  26. Jeff,

    My point, or what I was addressing was statement(s) made in Kevin's piece, (which is the gist of this thread), specifically:

    "According to him, he had been a member of NSC, had worked inside Eisenhower’s White House, and had served with the Army’s Foreign Technology Division. If he could be believed, then here was the truth about the Roswell crash."

    and

    "...Corso had claimed to be a member of the NSC in the Eisenhower White House. Herbert L. Pankratz, an archivist at the Eisenhower Library, reported Corso was not a member of the National Security Council or its ancillary agency known as the Operations Coordinating Board."

    It states in his service record that he was "Intelligence Staff O" with the OCB (Operations Coordinating Board)from '54 to '56. Not to mention the FBI memo and The Hearings Before The Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs cited above.

    His book (or Birnes') is another animal.

    Cheers,
    Frank

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  27. I hope all is going well for you and yours.

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  28. Kevin,

    My only point is that Corso served on the Operations Coordinating Board, part of the NSC as he stated and as verified by his service record and the other items listed above; he didn't lie about that.

    You wrote: "There was nothing to link Corso to the NSC."

    This is incorrect.

    Cheers,
    Frank

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  29. Frank

    The Operations Coordinating Board reported to the NSC. While Corso served on that, he did not serve with the NSC. This is a matter of semantics... Corso was caught in all sorts of embellishments, this being one of them.

    I ammend my last statement to read, "There is nothing to show that Corso was a member of the NSC." Link him to it by way of the OCB, but that is not the same as serving on the NSC.

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  30. Kevin,

    When this (the NSC issue) was brought up the last time, almost ten years ago, the notion was that Corso was claiming to be part of the original group of the NSC; although this was thrown around, the fact is Corso never said that; as he stated under oath:

    "I was assigned to the Operations Coordinating Board [OCB] of the White House National Security Council"

    As previously stated above and in my article (from 10 years ago):

    "...in the “History of the National Security Council, 1947-1997” at the 'White House’s web-site,' the OCB is described as such:

    ...'THE OCB WAS THE COORDINATING AND IMPLEMENTING ARM OF THE NSC (my emphasis) for all aspects of the implementation of national security policy.'"...


    Again, Corso could righteously say, and did–he served on the NSC (a large organization by that time); this is a non-issue.

    Cheers,
    Frank

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  32. I'll gently note here, regardless of how "associated" Corso may or may not have been, or how connected to the OCB &/or NSC may have been, the primary issue, as Jeff Thompson stated above, is that "...his book is pure unverifiable B.S. THAT is the point."

    The real question in my mind is just how did Corso's claims of being (analogous to Woody Allen's "Zelig" character, who seemed to be involved one the periphery of a variety of remarkably historic events, or so Zelig claimed) somehow supposedly become involved in and/or associated with the Roswell incident in the first place, or just how that claim gestated or originated.

    Was he telling friends "tales out of school," as it were, to friends and associates in his later years (somewhat like Jesse Marcel, Sr. was doing with ham radio buddies and other friends or acquaintances, like the radio station guy who relayed to Stanton Friedman, after an interview or presentation Friedman had done, some of what Marcel had been claiming, leading Friedman to get in direct contact with Marcel sometime originally in 1978 - ?), and that then through some chain of contact or "the telephone game," Bill Birnes eventually heard about it, and/or either Birnes made contact with Corso (or maybe vice versa?), and that it was that initial direct contact (however it originated, which is what I was curious about) between Corso and Birnes that eventually led to the all the very largely specious claims made by Corso in "The Day After Roswell"? I'm always curious about the "provenance" or how things like this first get started, in other words.

    Regardless, as "JT" notes, in his pointed "BS" statement, Corso's claims about lasers, fiber optics, and one other thing I find particularly bogus, the issue of how the transistor was developed and first came into being, which I done some research about, are all inventions which were created by clever scientists and engineers, with long discovery processes and development curves over time, and in the case of the transistor, I'd have to say there was no "alien tech" promoted, used, or as a source for that incredibly important invention, and the basis for all modern computers / microprocessors, etc.

    That specifically, and completely, discredited Corso's book in my opinion, let alone all the "hi-tech horse-pucky" alleged to have come from a Roswell crash (which I'm personally "agnostic" about, in general), and that, in turn, leads to the other point I mentioned above: after Birnes and Corso got together, however that may have occurred, since Corso was by then rather elderly (in his late 70's, if I recall correctly), what role, motives, prodding, mutual decisions or other either direct or indirect influence did Birnes have on just how Corso's book came out, in terms of content and the alleged claims?

    That might be a clue as to just how the book was written, as to the claims in it, at least to some extent. Birnes advocacy, as a kind of "believer" in the "old school" nuts 'n bolts old theories about UFOs/ETs may have been or had either a conscious or maybe even sub-conscious role in the mix of info from Corso, that I suspect was to some unknown degree enhanced or massaged by Birnes, with/by Corso, in the course of developing the book. I'm sure pecuniary interests, as to its potential sales, given how sensational it was, may have also been a... consideration.

    Anyone knowledgeable here have any knowledge about these kind of matters they'd care to share here?

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  34. Steve S:

    I have always assumed that the idea of 'back engineering' the wreckage found at Roswell (i.e. leading to the 'discovery' of lasers, fiber optics and transistors in the late 1940s to 1950s) was first postulated by the nuclear physicist Stanton T. Friedman in his various papers on Roswell, and later in his book CRASH AT CORONA, co-authored with Don Berliner (1992).

    Therefore Corso, and maybe Birnes, got the idea from STF's writings.

    Having said this, I cannot now find the quote or quotes in the Friedman/Berliner book referred to above.

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  35. "Albert" wrote:
    Consensus has nothing to do with facts; either something is true, or it is false. True science isn't democratic, it is absolute.

    Pretty simplistic view of how scientific truths are actually arrived at, which in reality is messy and ALL about arriving at STRONG consensus. Scientific "facts" are not written on stone tablets by the hand of God. Unlike mathematical proofs, scientific proofs can never be 100% absolute, since future discoveries can force modification of previous widely accepted truths. In fact, this has happened many times in the history of science.

    Science is done by scientists, who are human and arrive at different interpretations of evidence. Sometimes evidence is overwhelmingly one-sided, in which case there are no more arguments and it slips into the category of established fact. The Earth is round, it revolves around the sun, it is billions of years old, continents move around, life evolves, etc. But it took a long time to establish all of these as "facts" after a lot of bitter argumentation.

    My example of the laser shows that there _is_ an historical provenance for the technology. Perhaps that term is more accurate than 'theoretical precedent', but Einstein had the weight of science behind him, whereas predicting "death rays" (as early predictions of the laser) is the stuff of science fiction.

    Advanced ET technologies would have to be unexplainable by our current understanding of science. Only then could the label 'ET' be seriously considered.


    So, hypothetically, if an ET laser was discovered at Roswell, it couldn't be ET in origin because Einstein proposed the basic theory of how lasers work 20 years before?

    THEORETICAL provenance by itself proves nothing unless R&D of the ENGINEERED technology clearly precedes the alleged ET event. We can safely deduce that Roswell had nothing to do with the development of radio, radar, or the A-bomb. But there was no laser research or an engineered laser before Roswell. Einstein proposing the bare-bones theory is not the same as making an actual laser. Thus there is no strong historical provenance for laser technology before Roswell, just as there was no strong provenance for engineered radio technology 20 years after Maxwell and his equations predicted EM waves.

    IF an ET laser was back-engineered, it would be because it WASN’T too far beyond our theoretical understanding, not the other way around—it was unexplainable by our current understanding. Also it would require the current scientific/engineering know-how to examine it properly and reproduce how it works. A hundred years before, there were no Maxwell equations and no quantum mechanics, both essential for understanding even what light was and how a laser might work. There were no electron microscopes, no mass spectrometers, etc., with which to examine it. 19th century scientists/engineers would have gotten nowhere. But 100 years later, our scientific understanding and technology had advanced to a point where back-engineering might be feasible.

    This hardly proves Roswell had anything to do with the later development of the laser, but it is certainly conceivable the insights gained from such a hypothetical ET laser could have inspired such research and eventually led to the laser's development. Humans would still have to figure out how to back-engineer such a device. The provenance would seem to be 100% human, even if it wasn't, and we would probably never know the full story.

    One of the Manhattan Project physicists (Rabi?) once commented that the only real secret of the A-bomb was that it could be built. Everybody already understood the basic physics, but knowing that something can be successfully engineered is something else again. To the Russians, it meant that if they threw enough money and intellectual manpower into it, they too would eventually have the bomb. Knowing that something is actually possible provides a powerful incentive to try to reproduce it with R&D.

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  36. Frank -

    Semantics... Corso said he was a colonel but he was in reality a lieutenant colonel... Saying he was a colonel was accurate but wasn't the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

    I have a document with Corso saying that he was with the NSC and he doesn't mention the OCB... so saying he was NSC is the truth, but not the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

    It would be like me saying that I worked for the CIA and I even have a document proving that... but the truth is, I was coordinating the protection of our section of the base at BIAP. So saying I worked with the CIA is the truth, but it is not the whole truth and nothing but the truth. My interaction with them revolved around guarding the perimeter because I had 600 soldiers at my disposal and they didn't.

    All -

    This was about Corso and what he claimed and what the truth about that was. We move into the weeds when we begin to talk about the evolution of various technologies. There is so much else that he said that was wrong that we really don't need to talk about that. We just have to know that Corso was spinning tales.

    For those interested, I brought all this up because I received, recently, several emails about Corso and thought this would be the best way to answer them.

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    Replies
    1. I was always under the impression that you WERE a member of the CIA......

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  37. When I read Corso, I thought there was a great deal of BS in the book, but some of the criticisms of him amount to little more than semantic nitpicks. I don't find them very convincing.

    What I found more interesting about the book were Corso's claims about how back-engineering of alien technology was hidden in plain sight as "foreign" technology and surreptitiously inserted into private industry for development. If the technology was only a little bit beyond what we already had, this would be a very feasible and plausible way of handling the situation. You could claim, e.g., that something was "Russian" and hand it over to Bell Labs, or whomever, for analysis, to see if they can make anything of it. Some insights gained from such analysis might spark human developments along that line.

    You don't even necessarily need an "alien hubcap" in hand. Just observing how UFOs physically interact with the environment might inspire such R&D. E.g., the well-publicized car stallings in Nov. 1957 at Levalland, Texas, and elsewhere MAY have led to efforts to reproduce the effect as a weapon. In the late 1990s, the AF Scientific Advisory Board put out a whitepaper on their vision of a 21st century Air Force, which included high-power radio frequency weapons to stall internal combustion engines, rendering them sitting ducks for bombing. I can only presume that since they brought up the topic, prototypes already existed.

    You could argue that humans developed this all on their own without recourse to examining alien technology and I couldn't prove otherwise. On the other hand, I think a very decent argument could be made that the IDEA for such a weapon came from technical evaluation of UFO reports, and it was only a little bit beyond what we were already capable of already, therefore back-engineering was successful.

    AF Reg. 200-2 put out in 1953 and 1954 stated explicitly that UFOs were to be studied for national security reasons and for their "technical aspects," this being one very good example of where the "technical aspects" of the study may have paid off.

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  38. David -

    The problem is that the Japanese, during WW II did experiments along those lines with no hint of even seeing alien technology. In my upcoming book on what can be found in the Government Files I wrote:

    Griggs did find, according to the government files, some information about this electromagnetic “ray” technology. The ray was something primitive, but “[They could] stop the engines at short range… and one massive device could kill a rabbit…” The document is somewhat difficult to decipher, but it might have suggested that the ray killed the rabbit at a distance of about three feet. Apparently the device was discovered and capture, complete with its thirty-four foot dish. According to Swords, the dish and its equipment were shipped to the US, but there is no record of it arriving and there seems to be no follow up into what happened to it.

    Griggs was, of course an American scientist who had been sent into the Pacific Theater to investigate the Foo Fighers there and Swords is, of couse, Michael Swords and his big book on UFOs and the Government.

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  39. Kevin, I'm a bit perplexed. Why would Griggs (whom I've never heard of before) be sent to the Pacific to investigate Foo Fighters if the Japanese were unaware of them? Remember that Leonard Stringfield reported his first UFO encounter enroute to Japan and near Iwo Jima at the end of the war when "foo fighters" or whatever stalled the engines of his plane and they almost ended up ditching. I find it difficult to believe that Stringfield's experience was the first of its kind in that part of the world. The Japanese may have picked up on it and experimented trying to replicate the effect. (Pure speculation, of course) In any case, interesting that the Japanese were experimenting along these lines as well, UFOs or no UFOs.

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  40. @David

    You said:
    "So, hypothetically, if an ET laser was discovered at Roswell, it couldn't be ET in origin because Einstein proposed the basic theory of how lasers work 20 years before?"

    Please explain your 'logic'.



    Corso claimed to have introduced alien technologies into the US R & D system. I'm saying he didn't.

    Furthermore, there is no way to prove he did, whereas there is abundant documentation that shows very clear timelines in R & D of, for example, lasers. (read the wiki on the maser)

    The theoretical underpinnings of laser technology have been in place since 1917.

    As far as the alleged Roswell-ET- technology connection, one is required to:

    1. Believe an ET craft crashed in Roswell.
    2. Believe such a craft had laser equipment.
    3. Believe that the military could recognize such advanced technology.
    4. Believe that they would distribute such to civilian corporations.
    5. Believe that scientists could recognize the purpose and function of any alien device, let alone back-engineer it.
    6. Believe that hundreds of scientists engaged in a coverup to keep the ET origins secret.

    I can't strain my credulity that far.

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  41. Albert:

    1. To repeat, saying some basic principle was THEORETICALLY described decades before does NOT somehow translate into an ENGINEERING provenance for the device. Newton's laws of motion (particularly action/reaction) do not define the engineering provenance of rocketry. Maxwell's equations do not define an engineering provenance for the radio. Einstein's theory of relativity (E=mc^2) does not provide the engineering provenance of the A-bomb. And Einstein's 1917 theory of stimulated emission does not define the engineering development of the maser or laser.

    One could argue, as you seem to be doing, that all the engineering developments were ultimately based in the earlier theories, but this doesn't really define physical provenance for the actual practical devices.

    2. The Wikipedia article on the maser does NOT define a clear pre-1947 ENGINEERING provenance for the maser or laser, as you insinuate. There is only one non-detailed, unreferenced mention of a Russian experiment from 1946, but all other engineering and theoretical developments post-date 1947. The principles of the maser were theoretically described in 1952 and the first working maser built in 1953.

    3. The Wiki article on the laser provides slightly more pre-1947 EXPERIMENTAL demonstrations for the principle of amplification by stimulated emission, but nothing like an actual engineered maser or laser device, both of which well post-date 1947.

    Does this somehow prove an alien laser was found at Roswell and later back-engineered? No, of course not. What I did argue, however, was that there was not a pre-1947 engineering provenance for the device, therefore Corso's story about the laser (or integrated circuits or night-vision goggles, etc.) being back-engineered alien technology cannot be 100% excluded. I also argued that successful back-engineering of such devices would require them being not too far beyond what we were already capable of analyzing and understanding. There would have been no hope of back-engineering the hypothetical alien laser diode at Roswell without the understanding of the principles of light from Maxwell's equations and quantum mechanics, plus necessary analytic techniques to examine a physical artifact to try to see what makes it tick.

    And finally, it might be very hard to determine if back-engineering of alien technology had anything to do with our own post-1947 technological developments. Even understanding that such a device could be built would still require humans to figure out how to do it (again assuming it wasn't way, way beyond our capacity for understanding it). A prototype can provide clues for R&D but cannot provide a clear road map for building one.

    Also no grand conspiracy of silence by hundreds of scientists is needed. Only a few, small, well-trusted groups need have access to an artifact. (And despite what skeptics claim, compartmentalized, classified secrets are in fact kept for many, many decades.) They also don't need to be told where the artifact really comes from (though they might guess, but wouldn't have any real proof). If they make progress, more and more scientists/engineers become involved without knowing anything about original source through the usual ways of paper publication, conferences, letters, private conversations, competitive commercial back-engineering, etc.

    I don't see any clear evidence of current technological developments based in back-engineered alien technology, but I do think an argument can be made that back-engineering may have sped up development of various technologies humans would have eventually figured out on their own anyway, that were already in their baby stages.

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  42. Rudiak said:

    "There would have been no hope of back-engineering the hypothetical alien laser diode at Roswell without the understanding of the principles of light from Maxwell's equations and quantum mechanics, plus necessary analytic techniques to examine a physical artifact to try to see what makes it tick."

    Agreed. I expressed similar views in my previous messages.

    Larry had some objections on this idea. He gave the example of practical utilization of basic metallurgy and the powder by old human civilizations, which at their time off course did not have the scientific knowledge to understand the working of the powder and/or metallurgy.

    I would reject the applicability of the examples given by Larry. The usage of powder and metallurgy were/are techniques, basically, recipes; not so different from grandma's Sunday pie, which she learned and improved from her mom's teaching, etc. Aditionally, those ancient techniques mentioned by Larry required probably hundred of years to be mastered by successive generations of humans.

    Modern technology is a different animal than ancient techniques. Think about transistors, chips, supersonic airplanes, maglev trains, cell phones, satellites, etc. All of them require scientific understanding to be effective, replicable and trustworthy.

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  43. Albert,

    The conspiracists believe your 6 points and go way beyond them.

    They have to also believe that there was some means to keep this vast conspiracy under a very special form of magical secrecy.

    This special kind of secrecy isn't really secret. The believers can find tons of witnesses to talk about the conspiracy. Apparently everyone at Roswell, from cooks to secretaries was in on it (except, hilariously, the base intelligence officer: he had no knowledge of it! How this gets reconciled in the minds of the buffs is wondrous!).

    But under this kind of magical secrecy, the only thing that is really secret is any sort of hard evidence: a document, a piece of debris, etc. The participants in the conspiracy are apparently free to discuss it and righteously expose it but not one of them was smart enough to hold onto something concrete.

    And nothing has ever surfaced.

    In a recent podcast, Kevin lamented that every lead that he has followed towards a piece of tangible evidence falls short. Kevin has done as much as he can, I think. And he did it in an admirable way. In the process he helped create a real and powerful myth, a myth that permeates society.

    But it is just a myth.

    And Kevin is smart enough to realize that. I wouldn't be surprised if, at some point, he changed his mind about the reality of Roswell.

    Some of these other guys will hold onto it forever, though. It has become a religion for them.

    It's a perfectly unfalsifiable theory. There is literally no form of evidence, confirming or disconfirming, that affects it in any way. It must be so beautiful when you can see it.

    Lance



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  44. Gentlemen,

    I never used the word 'conspiracy'. I reserve that word for illegal activities.

    While I am not a 'conspiracy theorist', I do not believe that some things are impossible, only that some things are highly improbable.

    I'll add another item:

    7. Believe that historical coincidence can be used to support a theory, or increase probability.

    As for the Corso/Birnes issue, are we to believe that Corso was the _only_ person involved in these 'technology transfers'? Surely _someone_ has researched his former colleagues, and corporate contacts, or is it just not worth the trouble, because there's nothing there?

    I gotta go...

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  45. @David Rudiak [and others too if you are willing to look at an unbiasedevaluation of the effects of UFOs by a engineer who spent a lifetime working with electromagnetics]

    Please read over this document: http://ufoh.blogspot.com/2014/01/gaines-m-crook-on-ufos-and.html
    It w
    as written by my late father in 1990. MUFON decided not to publish it. [I believe because it conflicted with their belief in ETH]. It was recently published by UFO Iconoclasts on one of their blogs.

    The subject is an analysis of "electromagnetic effects" as described in various sources by an expert in electromagnetics. Most of what has been described as EM effects has nothing to do with what human science and engineering calls electromagnetics...

    The author's resume can be found in the second half of this post: http://ufocon.blogspot.com/2014/01/an-interesting-take-on-ufo-phenomenon.html

    The problems with Skeptics is they are too lazy to do the hard part of Science which is the heavy lifting of observation, measurement, evaluation, postulation, and testing. Instead the repeated refrain is "That's impossible because... well because you are seeing things... or some such. If the scientific method gets in the way of the conclusion they have already drawn then Science and the truth is the loser.

    On the other hand, the problem with ETH believers is real science Science gets in the way of their belief. If the scientific method gets in the way of the conclusion they have already drawn then Science and the truth is the loser.

    regards to you all,

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  46. Lance wrote:

    “They have to also believe that there was some means to keep this vast conspiracy under a very special form of magical secrecy. …”

    Except for your snarky and gratuitous use of the word “magical”, there WAS a very special form of secrecy. There were two, or three actually, depending on how you want to count them.

    One was a continuation of the practices and policies that were initiated under the Manhattan Project, which succeeded in clandestinely developing nuclear weapons while employing tens of thousands of civilians who didn’t know what they were working on and while informing only about 3 or 4 officials in the Executive and Legislative branches of government. This secrecy apparatus was set in place by the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 and was in full force in January of 1947. It is also entirely outside the control of the President of the US (POTUS).

    The second was a continuation and extension of Special Access Projects within those agencies that ARE under the control of the POTUS (such as the Army, Navy, State Dept., etc.).

    The third was the invention of the combination of the National Security Council and the CIA, which is partially under the control of the POTUS and partially not. The NSC conceives and initiates clandestine activities which the CIA executes, usually but not necessarily with the knowledge of the POTUS. It was deliberately set up that way in order to give the POTUS “plausible deniability” for clandestine activities which, if discovered, might be viewed as prosecutable war crimes.

    These second and third “special secrecy” machines were designed along the lines of practices that the military and the OSS had brought to a high level of development during WWII, and were set in their current form in the National Security Act of 1947, which came into effect a couple of months after the Roswell Incident (whatever that incident was).

    The combination of the Atomic Energy Act and the National Security Act provided all the apparatus—authority, responsibility, funding channels, personnel, and facilities—to conduct multibillion-dollar-per-year clandestine programs out of sight of 99+% of the population (those without sufficiently high security clearance) more or less in perpetuity.

    If you think that hiding an effort to reverse engineer a crashed saucer (if that’s what it was) requires “magic”, you are an ignoramus. It would only require 1 or 2 % of the attention span of the US national security apparatus.

    I will close with a quote from a recent (November, 2013) report from the Federation of American Scientists’ Secrecy Project:

    “Department of Defense special access programs (SAPs) will normally remain classified for at least 40 years, according to newly issued DoD SAP marking guidance.

    SAPs are established to protect particularly sensitive government information by imposing access requirements that exceed those for other classified information.

    "SAP documents, dated prior to January 1, 1982, shall be declassified on December 31, 2021," the DoD marking guidance said. "SAP documents dated after January 1, 1982, shall be declassified on December 31 of the 40th year after the date of the document, unless it is reviewed and submitted for another extension." See Special Access Program (SAP) Security Manual: Marking, DoD Manual 5205.07, vol. 4, October 10, 2013…”

    In other words, Special Access Projects that occurred in 1947 are STILL classified and will not even be considered for declassification until 2021.

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  47. @Larry:

    "If you think that hiding an effort to reverse engineer a crashed saucer (if that’s what it was) requires “magic”, you are an ignoramus. It would only require 1 or 2 % of the attention span of the US national security apparatus."

    This makes the *very, very big assumption* that we can even understand what it is "They" do to make their technology work. If the government actually has reverse engineered "alien technology" then where exactly is it? None of the things I have heard spouted as 'alien' are actually technologies that suddenly appeared from no where...

    This is the real weakness of ETH and most of the conspiracy theories-- it makes the assumption that "They" are understandable... even the Jewish Bible had the sense to put a warning in God's mouth: "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, saith the Lord." to warn of the presumption of believing you understand the incomprehensible.

    If we [the U.S.] are so smart but we could not keep nuclear weapons from the Soviets then why aren't we actually seeing 'UFO' technology from other countries? Why isn't the U.S. stunning its opponents around the world with "ultra fast" stealth technology forcing them to submit to our political will? If we have it why are we using it? Why is the F35 a turbojet instead of an truly "alien craft"? So look again at those black budgets and tell us with a straight face the reason the government has not used "what they know" to subdue the purported enemies of the state.

    On the other hand:
    Which is more likely if the Aliens are *truly* Alien: The government is hiding a reverse engineered stolen technology but the government is not using it for some unexplained reason? or that the government is scared to "the point of irregularity" that it will get out that it does not or cannot understand the Aliens and their technology?

    It should be a given by now that regardless of which party is in control the government has nothing of value to tell us about the subject of UFOs or Aliens. The belief of an all powerful government conspiracy that is somehow hiding they have alien technology is a straw man-- it's a lazy man's way of actually avoiding doing real thinking.

    The way I see it is that the real issue is why have we spent 67 years not actually measuring, observing, calculating, and predicting how "They" do what "They" do. You don't need the government to do that nor do you need the government to do it for you. Why hasn't somebody done a kick-starter for a real science based "Institute of Advanced Technology" that is actually looking at the science of unusual phenomena? An institute without a preconceived notion of where "they" come from... what is more important is how they do what they do. But this has not happened simply because it appears it is more "fun" to argue and have pissing contests about the irrelevant [are they really aliens or are they just "star trek" aliens?] and the unscientific sideshows like Corso and the other tale spinners.

    My father spent many years "chasing lights in places where there should have been none" and documenting landing sites, and communicating with Hynek, Vallee, and others. He did not have the support of MUFON or NICAP since they apparently were not actually interested in doing science. He paid for his research and measuring equipment out of his own pocket.

    Governments don't do science they do politics. Corso isn't science it's a side show and not worth the effort. Roswell is not like to be proven to be Science unless the "samples" magically turn up and they actually are of non-terestrial origin.

    If the horse is dead, get off it.

    BTW, you might want to put ithis in perspective: Ad Hominum attacks are bad form.

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  48. gishzida said

    "None of the things I have heard spouted as 'alien' are actually technologies that suddenly appeared from no where..."

    Geesh! gish, you might want to read all the previous posts discussing this apparent paradox. You are not the first smart guy proposing it.

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  49. After Snowden, this idea of a perfect conspiracy of secrecy looks particularly ill-conceived. But even back to the Manhattan Project (which is trotted out religiously by conspiracists) the existence was known, secrecy was broken, and documents were stolen (witness the Rosenbergs).

    Compare this to the perfect secrecy of the Roswell myth, where tons of participants can TALK about it but can produce nothing tangible to support the idea. Not a single document or any contemporaneous item can be produced. This does perhaps cross over into the realm of magical thinking even if the believers bristle at the idea (as they bristle at any criticism).

    And if Roswell has proven one thing, it is that talk is cheap. Witness after witness has been shown as mistaken or lying. All of the first hand witnesses to the more amazing stuff like bodies are now discarded.

    Adding humor to the story is how inept this monolithic secret cabal seems to be in every other way. How many witnesses are there who have stumbled into rooms where the aliens were stored or lifted up tarps to see the spacecraft?

    Indeed, one could say that this is one of the worst kept deep secrets of any government since so many of the participants told their families or acquaintances about it at will and then blabbed about it ceaselessly to every UFOlogist who came their way. Some even kept parts of the craft, etc which have now disappeared, naturally.

    And yet somehow the conspiracists reconcile the perfect magical properties of the idea. It works for them and must provide comfort.

    Marcel, the first witness, really provided us with some of the most compelling evidence that the whole story is sham. While cooks and sergeants and secretaries, civilian firemen and undertakers, etc. were busy cordoning off huge areas around the crash site, moving spaceships, rolling around alien bodies, and picking up debris, Marcel, the base intelligence officer, was never told anything about the this huge coverup!

    Really?

    Additionally, we do have real formerly secret documents from the highest level that emphatically state that nothing was recovered in 1947.

    How can this be?

    This reveals another magical property of the secret cabal: it apparently bends reality around even those participating in it and makes them write documents, even to each other, that say the opposite of what they mean!

    Please.

    Some things are absurd on the face of them.

    Lance




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  50. @Don

    I don't really consider myself a "UFO expert" nor do I have the technical competence required to claim to be one [sorry if that steps on toes but the way I look at it is if you are not scientifically trained or technically competent to "do science" then how can one pontificate on what is obviously a technical subject].

    Nor do I particularly want to get in the middle of a long standing pissing contest which results in no advancement of our understanding the cause of the unknown source of the phenomena that has been called "UFO" or "ETs". I'm not a believer in ETH since no one is actually making the effort to show scientifically that the ETH is the only valid hypothesis.

    And no I don't agree that most "unexplained phenomena" are the result of "trained observers" mistaking lights in the sky or in the night for natural or man-made phenomena. As an example: When I was 12 [48 years ago!] I saw with other members of my family what appear to be the lights of a "human vehicle" driving up the side of the foothills of a mountain outside of Mojave, CA... where there were no roads... nor did the vehicle leave any tracks of any kind. There was no way it was Venus [this was the south facing side of the Tehachapis Mountains or balloons or the result an off-road vehicle [in 1966?] capable of leaving no tracjs in sandy soil.

    I can't call seeing this kind of thing and others like it as validation for ETH. Science is something a bit more rigorous than saying "I saw a light where it should not be therefore it came from space".

    My father was an expert in his field - electromagnetics - and in reviewing the fragments of his work that I have I felt releasing them for 'public consumption' was / is the best course of action. I am sure that 'non-experts' or those with 'specific agendas' will either discount and/or dislike his analysis... Yet what I learned from my father was that Science is progressive. For it to progress, it requires scientific method which is not the skeptic's systematic '[un]scientific' denials which attempt [pedantically!] to explain away anything that appears to be impossible to current science nor is it scientific method to name a certain hypothesis the "only answer" but then failing to make any attempt to test or prove the hypothesis. Claiming that you could prove it if you had [fill in your choice of evidence] is not scientific... its called wishful thinking. The sooner we stop with wishful thinking [i.e. that we can explain these phenomena away or that only one unproven hypothesis is the answer] the sooner we'll get some kind of forward motion in explaining and possibly duplicating these things as human engineering.

    Half the challenge of accomplishing something is believing it can be done.

    Our science is not "their science" nor is it likely we have in the past or even in the present possessed or reverse engineered such technology... if we had then by now we would have used it to push back against other nations in the world-- We have not done so, so Q.E.D. we don't have the technology to do so.

    I'm not say ETH is wrong but I am saying it is not actually proven as a scientific certainty

    regards,

    Gz

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  51. It is with some hesitation that I reenter this discussion, but I do want to make a few points regarding the most recent comment additions here.

    @Lance:

    "After Snowden, this idea of a perfect conspiracy of secrecy looks particularly ill-conceived."

    Yes, but prior to early June of last year, or "before Snowden," no one in "the public" had any real, in-depth idea of just how incredibly pervasive and "down deep" the NSA's both foreign and particularly domestic surveillance was, Lance.

    So Snowden's multitude of revelations, as documented by Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald in particular, among others, were quite revealing and even shocking.

    Oh, yeah, one who follows this area of intelligence community operations (like I have for almost 40 years, since the Watergate scandal and the subsequent Church, Pike, and Rockefeller committees investigations) already knew about things like the foreign surveillance networks like Echelon, and Echelon II, etc., but the domestic surveillance and collection of data, and not just metadata, by the NSA, ostensibly our agency for crypto breaking and making, and foreign sigint/comint/masint etc., was supposedly directed at hostile foreign countries, and not vast, wholesale domestic collection of both telephone metadata (which provides factual context, not "content"), and the recording and storage of both domestic and allied email, SMS, IM, and several other forms of content.

    The NSA argument is "subtle," in that Gen. Keith Alexander, departing head of the NSA and Cyber Command (and DNI Clapper denied this in sworn testimony before Congress, which is technically a felony, perjury, yet nothing has happened to Clapper) has stated that unless some actionable intelligence is found, after the fact, such domestic stored/copied data is not "inspected" or analyzed by actual human intelligence operatives, and so it's thus legal to record in vast data repositories. Two judges in appellate court decisions, on the other hand, have ruled it "probably unconstitutional." YMMV.

    After 9/11, and the implementation by the Bush administration (in complete secrecy) of the warrantless domestic telephone and digital surveillance programs first revealed by the NY Times in 2005 (and the NYT sat on the info for a year, in consultation with the government, before this program was revealed, btw), this was all unknown to the public, although it involved thousands of "read in" intelligence personnel in various three-letter agencies.

    So, I'd suggest the idea, at least, of a "perfect conspiracy" is a red herring, as no such "conspiracy" is perfect (elements were known even before 9/11, if you do the research), and such a "conspiracy" or "cover-up" of a much older and potentially much more significant effort to keep aspects of the UFO phenomenon that involve national security issues is not, in fact, actually either "ill-conceived" or impossible. It remains a distinct possibility, although I would concede there is no direct evidence of such, only "circumstantial." The possibility cannot be simply "dismissed" out of hand.

    Also: "Additionally, we do have real formerly secret documents from the highest level that emphatically state that nothing was recovered in 1947."

    Interesting. Citations, Lance?

    Are you referring to "formerly secret documents" that were contemporaneous to the 1947 era? Or, the mid-90's USAF Roswell incident investigations, which endorsed the C.B. Moore "Mogul" explanation, and that selectively avoided interviewing some potentially significant "witnesses"?

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  52. Never a dull moment here.

    @Gz,

    You said:
    "Our science is not "their science" nor is it likely we have in the past or even in the present possessed or reverse engineered such technology... if we had then by now we would have used it to push back against other nations in the world-- We have not done so, so Q.E.D. we don't have the technology to do so."

    While I agree that it's highly unlikely we possess ET technology, the lack of evidence of the use of such doesn't imply that we don't have it.

    One would assume advanced ET technology to be subject to top secret, compartmentalized research programs, some of which might even be unknown to the President. Any operation, even a covert one, would need to be planned and executed by top-level military personnel.

    Thankfully, our military leaders tend be conservative when it comes to offensive action. Only if standard methods failed would such technology be considered, IMO.

    BTW, there are lots folks out there who believe our gov't/military _is_ hiding ET technology. Some black projects are super-advanced, but not likely ET in origin.

    You also said:
    "Why hasn't somebody done a kick-starter for a real science based "Institute of Advanced Technology" that is actually looking at the science of unusual phenomena?...."

    It's a good idea. Back in 1947, it might have been possible, today, it's highly unlikely.

    The educational/research establishment now fully fossilized into a rigid bureaucracy which, in effect, dictates what research can be done, the MSM treats ALL UFO subjects as joke filler (even serious copy can be marginalized by those brainless talking heads), all 'serious' UFOlogists are painted with the same brush (nut case).

    [ The General Manager of a company I worked for once asked me: "Do you believe in UFOs?". This is what we're up against :)]

    Scientists cannot afford to associate in any way with the subject (unless they are professional skepti-bunkers); it would be career suicide.

    I don't blame them one bit.

    I gotta go...

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  53. @albertguitar

    I have to agree with you there. My father did not "rock the boat" even after he left the aerospace / space science in the early 1970s.

    It also leads to the problem of finding the line between legitimate "fringe Science" [example: plate tectonics] versus "unprovable, non-science"

    I suppose what a scientist can get away with follows "Clarke's First Law" -- "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong." which leads to Clarke's Second law: "The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible."

    Considering the number of folks who claim science is on their side when they loudly proclaim "That's impossible!" one may wonder if they are aware of Clarke's Laws... and the likelihood that their declaration is untrue.

    I would not say the 'research establishment has fossilized' it is more appropriate to say they know which side the bread is buttered on and who signs the paychecks.... which goes a long way to explain some folks reactions to climate change and the UFO phenomena. Or even the insistence of some on ETH being the only possible answer to the question "What is the source of this phenomena?"

    One may wonder why organization like MUFON continues to collect information and sitings without actually doing any science with the data collected or refuse to accept any alternative hypothesis to ETH.

    Of all of the sitings and data collections that MUFON has done the only one that I am aware of that has the possibility of having some real scientific value was a 1992 Gulf Breeze event in which a magnetic anomaly was measured. Unfortunately the person who reported the results of that event has some 'taint' from the 1987 to 1990 Gulf Breeze sitings making the reported findings questionable.

    In criminal investigation [as in any other kind of investigation] there is a standard used for the "quality" of admissible evidence called "the chain of evidence". The chain of evidence is the linking of observed facts together without the possibility of those facts having been tainted or altered by either the investigator or the investigated. The only way to prove 'a fact' is have a clean chain of evedence. My father wrote some speculations [at this point unpublished] about the 1992 Gulf Breeze magnetic anomaly as reported... but without a clean "chain of evidence" i.e. the MUFON investigators and the witness were shown to be telling the truth, those speculations cannot be investigated further simply because the basis for those speculations [and its hypothesis] have a tainted chain of evidence.

    What can be made of the "chain of evidence" for any observation of UFO phenomena when both the proponents and opponents settle down into a nice comfortable contest of calling each other liars or hoaxers? For example the lights I saw where there should have been no lights -- The actual observation may not have changed -- what has changed is that my observation of an event is considered invalid by both skeptics and believers since I do not accept their 'religious view' of Science or 'their hypothesis of facts'.

    To make matters worse the two sides seem to consistently hoax or misconstrue facts or observations while blanketing the common discourse of the subject with noise to the point one cannot hear the signal.

    The Hoaxers make money by leading the gullible around in circles and the Skeptics gain fame and fortune by exposing the hoax... which makes this the perfect perpetual money making scheme... The only loser in this war is whatever the actual truth may be... This is the problem with Roswell and a number of other events. The signal has been lost in the noise.

    regards,

    Gz

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  54. @Gz

    Clarkes quote is one of my favorites.

    Here's another, from Petr Beckmann:

    "If I have seen further than others, it is because I peeked past the giants who were blocking the light." - Einstein Plus Two

    I gotta go...

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  55. Hello gishzida:

    I have read the article wrote by G. M. Crook.

    I found it interesting, as a technical report from someone with technical knowledge about electromagnetic interference. In my view, the criticisms made by Crook to McCambell's conclusions are valid to some extent, but the manners were too harsh.

    From a technical view, Crook might have a point when saying that some effects might/are not be related to electromagnetic causes.

    However, the technical issues discussed do not permit us to know what is the origin and ultimate nature of the UFOs. So the author's conclusion that UFO's are unlikely to be ET in origin, is a Non Sequitur.

    On the contrary, other aspects of ufology base its assertion that some UFOs are extraterrestrial in origin on other other sources of evidence, notably, the encounters of the third kind.

    The author expressed his belief that those "UFO organizations" may not even know what an "electrical equipment" is. What is the author's evidence for this belief?

    The author should have written a less emotive paper, presenting only his technical conclusions, not his beliefs. I think that it would have been a great paper, with moderate possibilities of being published in mainstream journals of electrical engineering.

    Regrettably, in my honest opinion, the author included attacks to McCambell, and even to Richard Hall. That was not very wise. Of course, criticisms are valid,and always happen in scientific papers and papers from other non-scientific disciplines, but if an author is a newcomer to a field, his criticisms should be polite.

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  56. @Don Maor

    Thanks for taking a look and your comments.

    I never said my father was a nice guy. He had the typical 'produce or perish" engineer's disdain for people he perceived as standing in the way of getting the job done. He was also the kind of guy that if you asked for his opinion he'd tell you what he thought with our "filters".

    I am not sure you could call him a "newcomer" to publishing scientific papers. He listed 14 in his resume... many of those were in The Journal of Geophysical Research or IEEE Transactions. RR has a copy of the resume posted. So you can decide if he was a newcomer based on that resume.

    He was 67 years of age in 1990. Most of the items I have given to RR were written between 1990 and 1996... so yes the "Senior Scientist" law does apply and it may be that things beyond his area of expertise can be questioned but in regards to what was known of EM and what it could or could not do, its effects and limitations in 1990 he was an expert.

    His conclusion was that to call something an EM effect without proof isn't science. He was perfectly happy to allow the events described had actually happened as long as you did not attribute to them a cause without proof or demonstrating that some kind of Electromagnetic technology is responsible. This is probably what led him to believe "those organizations" did not know what EM is, what it does, or how it works.

    If he was guilty of anything it was that he thought he could actually "beard the lion in his den" and tell the lion he wasn't really doing science.

    A general rule of a real science publication "peer review" requirement to determine if the assertions of a paper is actually science or not. One might consider this paper a peer review of the idea that all the odd effects ascribed to UFOs are in one shape or another EM effects or caused by interference with EM fields. I've never heard MUFON actually peer reviewed their papers except maybe in this case where it flew in the face of their preferred theory.

    If you read the letters published by RR entitled "Gaines M Crook's rejected MUFON article on UFOs and Electromagnetism " from 1/29/2014 You will see my father thought McCambell's objections were not much more than another "pissing contest". [I intentionally gave those letters to RR to show that yes there are always two sides to the coin.]

    So no I don't feel you got his opinions wrong but I do question your saying, "The author should have written a less emotive paper, presenting only his technical conclusions, not his beliefs. " when it appears that "emotive" was the operational rule rather than the exception in MUFON's publications.

    I do have 'fragments' of the same paper that apparently were intended for publication in one of the IEEE journals [he was a senior lifetime member of the IEEE] or in the JSE but ultimately it appears he decided not to publish a revised version.

    regards,

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  57. Well, again a discussion between believers having NOTHING as scientific evidence to present/offer like ONE or a SIMPLE one extraordinary scientific evidence in order to proove an extraordinary (E.T.) things.

    Nada.

    Something new in ufology? It seems not!

    Regards,

    Gilles.

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  58. I too have just read Gaines M. Crook's EM analysis of UFO reports and largely concur with Don Maor's comments. (Incidentally "gishzida" is Crook's son Joel.)

    Crook's does acknowledge that James McCampbell did try to make scientific/engineering sense of UFO physics out of a confusing mass of UFO data. (McCampbell had been a NASA and nuclear engineer, so wasn't some amateur.) McCampbell felt that a great deal of the physical phenomena reported around UFOs could be explained with microwave technology. Crook's disagrees in specific instances. I'm not sure I agree with all his reasons.

    E.g., with regards to paralysis of humans by UFOs, he states, "We know of no electromagnetic interaction that can cause a person to be paralyzed at a distance." Well, I worked for several years in magnetic stimulation of the brain and peripheral nervous system and I can tell you for a fact that nerves (particularly peripheral motor nerves) CAN be stimulated remotely with small coils using intense magnetic pulsed fields on the order of .5 to 2 Tesla in strength (or at least 1000 times greater than Earth's magnetic field). Some estimates of magnetic fields generated by UFOs (based on scientific analysis of such things as polarized Faraday rings around them) have place the intensity of UFO generated magnetic fields at roughly 100 Tesla. If a "flying saucer" is assumed to be a large magnetic coil with pulsed fields of 100 Tesla (which might also possibly explain one means of propulsion using magnetohydrodynamics), then one could theoretically REMOTELY create nerve block and incapacitation of people from tens or maybe even hundreds of meters.

    This isn't much different than "tasing" people, although tasers shoot wires into people to induce muscle convulsion and incapacitation. I have read of one device (don't know if it was ever developed) which would have eliminated the wires by creating an ionization path in air to carry the electrical current, creating something like a miniature artificial lightning bolt. So this might be another means to REMOTELY paralyze people by EM means.

    My point is that Gaines Crook's opinions are also subject to criticism and his son Joel should not automatically assume his father's criticisms of others are perfect or that others were necessarily being "unscientific" in their analyses because he disagreed with their opinion.

    Incidentally, Joel claims that the ETH is "unscientific" because it can't be tested. I totally disagree for a number of reasons I could go into at length in another post. (For one thing, get your hands on genuine alien technology or a body and you would have your "proof".) Alternate hypotheses he proposes, such as the simulation hypothesis (our reality is just some vast computer simulation) or that UFOs are an intrusion from some other reality or universe could similarly be criticized as "unscientific", probably much more so that the ETH, in that there is no way to test them and falsify them, nor have they ever been rigorously defined.

    The computer simulation hypothesis is little different than the God hypothesis, just substituting computers and programmers for the creator who can do anything. Good luck testing it scientifically. And intrusions from some alternate universe/reality could not happen unless they could logically exist within the physical law framework of our own reality. In other words, this is just a bigger statement of the ETH, except extending it beyond our own universe to an alternate universe that normally is causally disconnected from our own, but otherwise probably identical in physical law. (Otherwise they couldn't exist here, just as a character from Super Mario Brothers cannot "invade" the universe of Grand Theft Auto because of incompatible data structures.)

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  59. Gilles wrote:

    Well, again a discussion between believers having NOTHING as scientific evidence to present/offer like ONE or a SIMPLE one extraordinary scientific evidence in order to proove an extraordinary (E.T.) things.

    Amusing, Gilles usual fatuous, hypocritical, snarky comments. Hypocritical because Gilles doesn't remotely hold himself to the same standards of evidence he demands of the "believers." Instead, he proposes totally speculative, untestable, psychosocial "explanations" for UFOs, such as Roswell is all lying and distortions of memory by hundreds of witnesses, and is instead "explained" by a balloon flight that never existed. That Gilles calls "scientific".

    I've been asking Gilles and other debunkers for years for actual documentation to support that Mogul Flight #4 ever existed, the bare minimum threshold of evidence that it could have somehow provoked the "Roswell Incident". And what do I get?

    Nada.

    Yep, Nada. Instead the REAL documentation states the flight was cancelled, it was totally written out of the Mogul summaries (just like the other cancelled flights), and official USAF/NASA histories of flight ALL list the real, fully-documented Flight #5 as the actual first N.M. Mogul flight.

    Something new in ufology? It seems not!

    Something new in Deboonkery? It seems not!

    If Gilles wants good, SCIENTIFIC investigations of UFO cases that clearly demonstrate that UFOs aren't just in people's minds but are a true inexplicable physical phenomena, perhaps even extraterrestrial, he need look no further than his home country's official UFO investigation GEPAN/SEPRA/GEIPAN that has been ongoing since 1977 under the French space agency CNES.

    The current GEIPAN has an FAQ page (English translation): http://tinyurl.com/mel4ado

    Here they state that fully 22% of some 6000 cases scientifically studied do not have a conventional explanation. This is not due to lack of sufficient information, because such cases are placed in an entirely different category and make up 41% of all cases.

    They further state they can neither prove nor disprove the ETH. Their official position is neutrality; they are to investigate and determine facts for other scientists, not to state their opinion. But they also state their Steering Committee does not discount the ETH as a possibility. All three directors of GEPAN/SEPRA/GEIPAN have publicly stated they DO think the ETH is the best explanation for some fraction of the 22% inexplicable category. (Obviously, they never considered cancelled, totally undocumented balloon flights.)

    The 22% unknowns was also the result of another large SCIENTIFIC study of 3200 cases by the Battelle Memorial Institute for the USAF. In this case, the panel of four scientists ALL had to agree there was no conventional explanation for the cases listed as unexplained, whereas only two had to agree on an explanation for an "identified". The point here is the criteria for something to be unidentified was much more stringent than for something to be categorized as identified.

    So that's just two SCIENTIFIC studies of large numbers of cases, both arriving at large percentages of unknowns which seem to have no conventional explanation. That debunkers like Gilles would continue with the refrain that there is no "scientific" evidence for UFOs either shows an astonishing amount of ignorance or deliberately nurtured disingenuousness.

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  60. Gents,

    Even in the early history of UFO research, with Ruppelt, Keyhoe, et al, scientific data was sought. Paul Hill, NASA scientist also called for scientific investigations, especially high-energy particles and rays, such as gamma. James McDonald called for science in his testimony before Congress. Ray Stanford ran Starlight international with an array of EM, gravity detectors, cameras and lasers. Wilbert Smith also operated a detector in Canada. Francis Ridge used his MADAR network in the midwest (Indiana? Still does, I think), which also has EM detection apparatus. Peter Davenport is still trying to implement his passive radar technology. Doug Trumbull has his UFOtog mobile units. Robert Schroeder thinks UFOs create micro black holes, which should be detectable through high-energy emissions.

    Today, with cell phones having so many types of accessories like compasses, cameras, instant net access, Ridge writes that a large network of enthusiasts could track magnetic anomalies across the US, shared data from which bring to bear more sophisticated instument on anomalous aerial objects. I would add that if smart phones were to also collect alpha beta, x-ray and gamma data, and there was a sufficiently large sample from numerous individual sources, all pooled into a real-time data collection and processing site that could also send alerts to members in the path of the UFOs, then I'd say we'd have a beginning towards understanding the phenomenon. Don't count on official sources for anything. This is going to have to be a grass-roots type effort.


    Right now, whether the ETH or IDH, or both plus some other unknown phenomena best reflects the collected data, is really a moot point.

    guyx

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  61. Hello gishzida,

    I called your father a "newcomer" with respect to the UFO field, as He tried to get his paper published by a UFO institution.

    Trying to publish a paper in a field where nobody knows you is a difficult task, you have to bring up something really important, your supportive arguments must be solid as rock, and again, you have to be friendly and cooperative.

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  62. @ Don

    Thanks for the clarification...

    I suppose that he was under the mistaken impression that the copy of his resume that he sent to Walt Andrus [See the letters RR posted] was enough to establish his bona fides as an expert in the field of Electromagnetics for an article that was to appear in a non-peer reviewed magazine. We can see how that turned out. Hind-sight is always 20-20.

    Ultimately, it is my impression that he felt MUFON was more focused on their own preferred "solution" to UFO events than a rational discussion based on solid scientific evidence.

    As I said before: we've spent 67 years chasing our own tail and still do not have a explanation to a significant number of UFO related events. We can deny the existence of the events or call the observers crazy or we can take them at face value and investigate further.

    As an example my area of work for quite a number of years was computers. I regularly get the panicked emails from poorly informed users of "SOME TERRIBLE VIRUS" id on the loose. I take the time to reassure the user and explain the contents of the email is a kind of mimetic virus designed to waste the time of both the recipient and the person that provides their technical support BUT just because these emails are false alarms does not mean I in anyway believe that all viruses are "impossible", "unlikely", or the "delusions of a stupid end user" which seems to be the tenor of many of the "skeptics". Knee-jerk skeptics are... less than scientific.


    regards,

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  63. Somewhat surprised by the extent of the discussion of Corso's claims. In terms of his book it falls into the category 'bought it, read it, binned it'.

    Overall there seems no clear evidence for any concrete results of attempts to reverse engineer ET technology. This is perhaps most self evident in aviation. Conversely we know from the Smith memo (and from Ruppelt) that attempts to understand the modus operandi of UFOs were underway by 1950 at the latest. This could simply be attempts to draw conclusions from sighting reports or could potentially include study of actual debris.

    Do the above remarks present a contradiction? There is often a assumption that we would be successful in such reverse engineering attempts. Imagine a little thought experiment in which a modern stealth aircraft was presented to the very best engineers ancient Rome could gather together. Whilst they might be able to make some inferences I doubt they would get very far in actually reverse engineering it.

    Astrobiological considerations suggest that potentially habitable planets have been in existence for billions of years prior to the formation of the earth. A recent paper by Loeb that is available on the arXiv suggests that the ambient temperature of the CMB may have been suitable for the formation of life just 17 million years after the big bang. Whilst I have some questions about that (not least the level of metallicity available so early on)a very conservative view would be that potentially habitable environments were in existence 10 billion years ago.

    Potentially habitable is not the same as actually inhabited, and inhabited is not the same as an ETC that is also interested in earth. The point however, is that the odds favour any ETCs being very dramatically in advance of ourselves. We know there are fundamental gaps in our current understanding of physics. It strains credulity to assume that a civilisation millions or even billions of years ahead of us technologically would be using technology that we could reverse engineer at this time.

    What could be very useful however is inferential reasoning along the lines used by, for example, Hill and Puthoff - if they can do X then that may suggest Y is possible. There are risks - as we are limited by what we can currently imagine, but that could inform experimental programmes.

    Overall though, going beyond the documentary evidence referred to above represents a 'premature question' at this stage. We'd be better off staying with things we can test.

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  64. (part 1 of 2)
    Some alien technology could be inconceivably advanced and well-beyond our current technology; some might not be.

    We do know, e.g., proposals or actual attempts to engineer saucer-shaped aircraft in the 1950s, particularly by Canadian AVRO. It is also indisputable that these attempts were definitely inspired by the reported shapes of flying saucers. Lockheed's Kelly Johnson also wrote in his memoirs that their initial attempts at stealth aircraft design included saucers because of their natural stealthiness to radar, but they didn't know how to make them aerodynamically stable.

    There has also been the claim that the canted vertical tail stabilizers that started appearing on our aircraft in the 1960s (such as the SR-71 Blackbird) were also inspired by the saucers. This too increases radar stealthiness and in some cases improves aircraft stability.

    I'm not going to argue whether this is true or not, only that some improvements in technology would not necessarily require physics or engineering well beyond our own, but modest observations of simple things like form. Sometimes form is optimal and cannot be improved on no matter how old it is. Ski's and ski poles have not changed much in basic design for many hundreds of years. Most changes have been in materials, not form, with wood being replaced largely by fiberglass, e.g. If an alien ski pole had been found at Roswell, we still could have replicated the form, even if it was made of some exotic material we had no idea how to manufacture.

    Forget about throwing some modern technology back to Roman times to make it largely incomprehensible. A century alone will often suffice. I have sometimes done the thought experiment of taking the first 747 from 1969 and transporting it back in time to 1869. Scientists and engineers would be largely flummoxed by it, though might deduce a few things. E.g., they could figure out the metal was largely aluminum, but there would have been no way to duplicate an aluminum aircraft back then. Aluminum could only be produced in tiny amounts and was considered a precious metal. The first airplane would probably still have been built from wood and cloth, not aluminum and plastics and modern composites. But it might have given engineers back then an idea for a workable form for a flying aircraft. The first working aircraft might have looked quite different from that of the Wright brothers.

    Same with the jet engines. They might have been able to eventually deduce how they worked but would not have been able to reproduce a practical working model. For one thing, you need modern metal alloys to do that which can withstand the high temperatures and physical strain. You still need to figure out how to make such alloys. Jet aircraft only became abundant and practical post-WWII as the materials improved.

    Electronics, like radio and radar, would have probably bewildered them as well, even if they could have figured out to power them up. On the other hand, they could have probably figured out how to back-engineer a light bulb from the plane and thus beat out Edison. Maybe the gyroscope navigation system would have given them ideas for better navigation on ships. When Maxwell came out with his EM equations a few years later, they might have gotten the idea that radio and radar utilized EM waves and figured out that vacuum tubes (basically light bulbs with electrodes to control current) were electrical amplifiers. Maybe the development of radio, radar, and other electronics would have been sped up somewhat.

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  65. (part 2 of 2)

    But totally back-engineering an entire 747 probably would not have been sped up that much, just bits and pieces of it. Back-engineering UFO technology might be similar. Some things we might figure out how to duplicate to a point, put would still have to develop our own manufacturing techniques.

    E.g., suppose integrated circuits were found at Roswell, as Corso claimed. We would still have to figure out how to purify silicon and etch the circuits, as we do now. Larry and I privately discussed how metallic debris described by Roswell witnesses resembles in properties modern "liquid" or amorphous metals. I certainly cannot prove that Roswell led to the development of such metallic alloys, but it is not beyond reason that research into trying to replicate such materials led to their development, but we still had to figure out how to fabricate them on our own. But analyzing the alloy mix of the original metals or composites might have given us the necessary clues of how to make our own alloys with similar properties.

    So we can't prove that back-engineering alien technology led to any modern technology, but it is conceivable, as long as it inspired research into some aspects of the technology and was not too far beyond our present capabilities.

    That is basically what Corso was saying: Roswell alien technology inspired SOME modern developments in technology that we could replicate. Corso did not go so far to say that we could replicate everything, just some things.

    Of course, anybody can SAY that. The question is whether Corso actually knew this to be true from personal experience, as he claimed. And we’ll have to leave it at that.

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  66. @David

    You said:

    "That is basically what Corso was saying: Roswell alien technology inspired SOME modern developments in technology that we could replicate. Corso did not go so far to say that we could replicate everything, just some things."

    Basically, what Corso was saying was that HE provided alien technology to US labs to reverse engineer and develop things like "...the transistor, night vision equipment, fiber optics, lasers, microwave ovens..." (Randle)

    Basically, it's a load of bull, even if there really was an alien craft crash at Roswell with alien bodies and wreckage.

    If US scientists didn't know the provenance of the alleged artifacts, they could still testify that the artifacts were of an unusual and unknown technology.

    No such testimony is forthcoming.

    Kevin said: "Corso’s job, in 1961, was to parcel the debris into American industry hands..."

    Maser; First working prototype in 1953.
    Transistor; First working prototype in 1957.
    Fiber optics; A Gastroscope in 1954.
    Night vision; Devices in use by Germany & Allies in WWII.
    Microwave oven; Radarange", it was first sold in 1947.

    I gotta go...

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  67. Part 1 of 2:

    OK, so yeah: the conclusion that can determined by this discussion of Corso's claims is that they are nearly absolute bullshit, since a review of the facts, as "albertguitar" just reiterated about prior-to-1961 technological developments alleged by Corso & Birnes is that those claims are, essentially, horse pucky.

    Glad we settled that. Perhaps now we can move on to other issues.

    A greater and more general question about the Roswell incident is whether, if anything crashed back in 1947, whether anyone sincerely thinks that any actual ET bodies supposedly found would be so very anthropomorphic in nature. I don't.

    Unless you believe in some exotically abstruse form of "convergent evolution," from another distant star system, if "humanoid" bodies were found (and I'm rather dubious), the only explanation that makes any kind of sense is that they were forms of biogenetic or other forms of a "simulant" organism, like humans, but different enough to be clearly recognized as not actual humans.

    Why would that be, just for the sake of a conjectured argument? And by that I mean, if we temporarily stick to the ETH proposition, rather than the IDH, TTH, CTH, etc., hypotheses, I would suggest that while such might inspire a kind of "cognitive dissonance" to some degree, an anthopomorphic organism of the kind alleged to have been found at Roswell, would have been "synthesized" as a kind of informational interface, or semi-familiar form that would not inspire xenophobic fear, but that would suggest "they" are maybe "kind of like us," only "more advanced."

    But not "too advanced," or so strange (or so similar that the "uncanny valley" syndrome is triggered -- don't want your fabricated "aliens" to be too beautiful or superior in appearance, either) and anomalous in form that such would potentially generate fear or hysteria on some observers part, both at Roswell and other alleged CE III/IV incidents reported over time.

    The purpose of such should be obvious, if there's actually any basis to the "alien" entities supposedly witnessed over time, and which vary within, usually, an anthropomorphic/centric range of form: it's a self-deniable form that those who encounter "them" can, in ways, "relate to," and without panic or xenophobic reactions.

    I suspect the stereotypical or archetypal "grays," with the large black ovoid eyes, "lightbulb" baldish head, small body, etc. are most likely a kind of either "projection" or confabulation by the witness(es), based on cultural sub-rosa conditioning, or if actually externally "real," simply used to further confuse the issue, in a "relatable" way, almost child-like, or foetal, like the "star child" in Kubrick's "2001," and which triggers other fundamental, innate human psychological responses, like "empathy" or the opposite of fear, which could be very "useful" for other reasons I'll leave to others to contemplate.

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  68. Part 2 of 2:

    This obviously does, however, raise three further points: 1) it could be part of a plausibly deniable "conditioning" process, that does have definite, recursive cultural and conceptual impact, and even if "secondary" (the child-like beings are not real, but representations for our "benefit" and consumption, psychologically speaking), 2) would be evidence for some kind of "advanced non-human intelligence" [ANHI] or consciousness, if not via human "agency," manipulating our perceptions and understanding of those or that ("it") which may be behind the "curtain" (like in the Wizard of Oz), or involved in such CE III/IV sightings, whether ET or not, and 3) raises the issue of just what really might be the actual origin, nature, form, and other particulars of what kind of "ANHI" we might be dealing with, especially if there is more than one such "it" or "other" involved, or as Vallee has referred to it, a deeper than "first level" consideration of the issues so raised by the anthropomorphic form(s) of "the other."

    As Churchill once famously said, about Russian intent in 1939, it is "...a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key...". Could the "key" be the same kind of "self-interest" Churchill referred to, only from an unknown non-human source? Your guess is as good as mine -- I do not know. But, there are "clues" within the noise, a signal, only what to make of it is still very questionable, or only one kind of "unknown unknowns," as per Rumsfeld, only in this case the UFO mystery is the true unknown. So far.

    However, if there is any truth to such "sightings," the extrapolation I would surmise is that, still, they would provide some "evidence" of an ET presence, or other ANHI source, only not as they actually are, and for some of the reasons cited above.

    Perhaps, whether real or not, as a "kick" to the evolution of both our consciousness expansion, and our related development of technologies of investigation and biogenetic human intelligence enhancement. Maybe we are subconsciously "doing it" to ourselves, as all the known existential crises we face become more and more obvious and potentially dire.

    Does anybody else here think, or seriously consider these questions and ideas as a genuine possibility? It may seem "off-topic," but these points are indirectly related to the issues Corso's book both brings up and denies the actuality of, in terms of Corso's simplistic, anthropocentric claims, simultaneously. Weird, huh? 8^}

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  69. Oh for God's sake, Steve -

    How do you get from a posting about Corso's lack of credibility to a discussion about evolution on another planet? This isn't topic drift, this is an attempt to hijack the discussion into something that is irrelevant here. Did Corso color the truth? Did Corso make up his connection to the Roswell case? Did Corso see an alien body in a wooden crate at Fort Riley, KS? Not would aliens evolve into humanoid creatures. I'm tempted to take this down because it is so off topic... but I will take down anything else that goes this far astray.

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  70. Returning to the Corso's case, what about his manuscript "The dawn of a new age" ??. It has been claimed that it contains the original notes from the colonel Corso, and not the distorted ones from the book The Day After Roswell

    The book can be found here:

    http://www.openminds.tv/dawn-of-a-new-age-the-philip-corso-manuscript/3661

    Is this book also a hoax?

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  71. (part 1 of 3)
    First of all, I want to say that I understand people's skepticism about Corso's claims, having many reservations myself. That said, many misstatements have been made about what Corso's book supposedly says and what it really says:

    Albert wrote:
    Basically, what Corso was saying was that HE provided alien technology to US labs to reverse engineer and develop things like "...the transistor, night vision equipment, fiber optics, lasers, microwave
    ovens..." (Randle)


    Corso NEVER said he was alone responsible for development or research into all these things. In fact, he goes into the history of some things like lasers, transistors, integrated circuits, microwave ovens that PRECEDED when he arrived at the Foreign Technology Office at the Pentagon in 1961.

    He DID say if you already know something CAN be done, it is a powerful incentive to pour R&D dollars into trying to duplicate it. This is what he claimed happened with such things as solid state electronics research and integrated circuits, the maser/laser, night vision goggles, fiber optics, etc. Pushing the technologies with military dollars sped up their development considerably, since private industry in the U.S. was generally reluctant to put their own money into basic research that had no clear payoff.

    Further, Corso DID say was that he and his superior Gen. Treudieu wanted further specific military R&D into some aspects of these technologies, which he said were found in the Roswell craft, and for which PREVIOUS back-engineering attempts had already been undertaken with some success.

    E.g., the first continuous beam laser dates from 1960, and it was Corso's belief and those of experts he consulted, that military applications would include laser ranging, navigation, communications, targeting, perhaps weapons (high energy beams) and medical (scalpels for high precision cutting and cauterizing, which Corso said were believed used in public unreported cattle mutilations). However, all these potential APPLICATIONS of the laser had to be engineered, and it was his job to get the ball rolling.

    Corso said the plan was to get various corporations and academia doing R&D on these specific military applications, if necessary, introducing them to recovered fragments of the shattered equipment to inspire ideas and using the cover that it was foreign technology, such as Russian, French, etc.

    Ideally, the plan was that those receiving access to such technology would have no idea where it came from. Furthermore, if they already had some early research along these lines, it was even more ideal, because it would provide some provenance for the technology instead of having it suddenly introduced out of nowhere, which might raise questions.

    So the point was to try to instigate specific R&D projects as quietly and innocently as possible, hiding the ultimate source of the technological inspiration behind the guise of acquired foreign technology, and fade into the background.

    As I've tried to point out in previous posts, you can only reverse-engineer technology if it is NOT too far beyond your own technological stream, and Corso was saying basically the same thing. Some things they started he wasn’t sure if they ever succeeded. E.g., he said the hull of the Roswell craft was some sort of high-tenacity fiber like spider silk which he thought might be woven around it. Besides tremendous strength and lightness, it also had stealth properties. Other applications would be improved body armor. Although improved high-tenacity fibers did eventually come out of this research, like Kevlar (developed in the late 1960s), he didn’t believe they ever managed to duplicate the actual fiber used in the Roswell craft.

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  72. (Part 2 of 3)
    Basically, it's a load of bull, even if there really was an alien craft crash at Roswell with alien bodies and wreckage.

    If there really was such a crash, then there necessarily WOULD have been back-engineering efforts. The question is how would this have been carried out. Corso's book is mainly how he claimed it was carried out, which I don't consider implausible at all. In fact, it is the only thing out there I know of describing such a back-engineering program in any detail. That is not the same as saying Corso was telling the truth, which can't be proven one way or the other. But critics of Corso as a pure fantasist and liar, who also think Roswell to be an alien event, have to come up with an alternative back-engineering scenario that makes some sense. (Skeptics have it much easier: there were no back-engineering efforts because there was no alien crash at Roswell.)

    If US scientists didn't know the provenance of the alleged artifacts, they could still testify that the artifacts were of an unusual and unknown technology. No such testimony is forthcoming.

    Which proves nothing. First of all, testimony about any CLASSIFIED technology is extremely rare. Unless you have the artifacts in hand, where is your proof? That is always the problem of the whistleblower, especially those who have signed security oaths. They have everything to lose and nothing to gain. Second, if it was as Corso said, they hid the ultimate origins of the technology, go prove it wasn't inspired by Russian or Germany technology.

    Kevin said: "Corso’s job, in 1961, was to parcel the debris into American industry hands..." Maser; First working prototype in 1953.

    1954 actually, Charles Townes. Specifically mentioned by Corso, who claimed no credit. Did however say maser research (generating very pure microwaves through stimulated emission of radiation) was pushed along by what was discovered at Roswell, but he had no hand it.

    Transistor; First working prototype in 1957.

    Dec. 1947 actually, Bell Labs. Corso again claimed no credit. First transistors very crude, noisy, unreliable devices, made from germanium, not silicon. First junction transistor made of germanium 1951 (more reliable). First silicon transistor 1954. First silicon transistor using diffused doped impurities, 1955, the basis of present semiconductor electronics industry. Purification of silicon wafers, oxide coatings, first metal oxide transistors—latter half of the 1950s. First crude demonstration of a germanium integrated circuit, 1958. First silicon IC 1959. First commercial low density integrated circuit 1961. Medium scale integration later in the 1960s. Large scale integration 1970s, first primitive microprocessor 1972, etc., etc.

    POINT: Transistor and IC development clearly post-dated Roswell. However, whether their development had anything to do with Roswell is certainly open to question. The first commercial integrated circuits first appeared when Corso started at FTD. Again Corso claimed no credit for any of this, but said he and boss Trudeau realized the military importance of further miniaturization of electronics through integration and again pushed it. Corso’s primary interest was in missiles and space travel, where compactness, light weight, and reliability were essential for further advancement. The first IC’s were much too expensive for public consumption and thus IC development was indeed primarily paid for by militiary R&D money and government funding from NASA. Corso’s remark about the Roswell connection was that silicon wafer IC’s were pulled out of the Roswell wreckage, it was predicted it would take decades to make transistors and two centuries to replicate the silicon IC, and he and his boss Trudeau were amazed at how quickly this was all actually accomplished. So Corso was claiming transistor/IC development was inspired by Roswell but claimed no credit for it. His role was to push further R&D of ICs for military applications.

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  73. (Part 3 of 3)
    Fiber optics; A Gastroscope in 1954.

    Another red herring. Corso did NOT claim credit for fiber optics, which has a long history. The fiber optic gastroscope has nothing to do with fiber optics for military communications, which Corso said was his R&D emphasis, and indeed was developed later. Military R&D money helped push the technology forward in private industry, such as Bell Labs, which already had early research going. Fiber optic communications also requried improved lasers, which again post-date Corso’s arrival at the FTD.

    Night vision; Devices in use by Germany & Allies in WWII.

    AGAIN, Corso did NOT claim credit for their invention or developments prior to being at FTD. Corso specifically mentions their WWII roots, but night vision devices were extremely crude and impractical during WWII and through the 1950s. They needed vast improvement to be militarily practical, Corso’s goal. Practical military night vision was indeed developed duirng the 1960s, whether Corso had any hand in this or not. Corso was a bit vague about how the supposed night vision devices found with the Roswell crash were supposed to have contributed to this, just that they knew it could be done because the aliens had done it, and therefore poured R&D money into the technology to improve it because of its obvious military importance.

    Microwave oven; Radarange", it was first sold in 1947.

    Again specifically mentioned by Corso, saying it predated Roswell and obviously had nothing to do with Roswell. AGAIN, NEVER claimed credit. (Who’s getting these ideas that Corso claimed credit for all these inventions or everything came from Roswell?) Instead claimed scientists and engineers examining Roswell debris thought the aliens utilized stimulated emission devices (maser/laser), and this may have inspired research along these lines afterward (which he had nothing to do with), thus the first maser in 1954 and first laser in 1958.

    BTW, comparing a maser to a microwave oven is like comparing a laser to a light bulb. Masers and lasers emit very pure, coherent wavelengths of light, unlike ordinary microwave and visible light devies. Lasers have very narrow beams, etc. Corso claimed something like a small laser diode device was pulled out of the Roswell wreckage. Yes, perfectly understandable to be skeptical of all of this, but for crying out loud, is it necessary to lie about Corso claiming to have invented microwave ovens?

    Let me say this just one more time. Corso did NOT EVER say he was personally responsible for any of these developments prior to taking on the Foreign Technology job in 1961. What he did say was it was his job to envision potential military applications of the alien technology at Roswell, some of such technology already in early stages of development by humans. The military R&D money plus ideas from alien technology sped up the course of development of various technologies considerably.

    I certainly cannot prove Corso’s claim that alien technology from Roswell seeded American technological advances post-Roswell, and people can understandably question such a claim, including Corso’s personal contribution to this. But I certainly can disprove skeptics claims that Corso claimed credit for the invention of the laser, fiber optics, integrated circuits, microwave oven, etc., etc. This is just total BS.

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  74. @David

    "Albert wrote:
    Basically, what Corso was saying was that HE provided alien technology to US labs to reverse engineer and develop things like "...the transistor, night vision equipment, fiber optics, lasers, microwave
    ovens..." (Randle)

    You said:

    "Corso NEVER said he was alone responsible for development or research into all these things. In fact, he goes into the history of some things like lasers, transistors, integrated circuits, microwave ovens that PRECEDED when he arrived at the Foreign Technology Office at the Pentagon in 1961."

    WHERE did I say "...he was alone responsible for development or research into all these things..."

    WHERE??

    "Corso said he provided alien technology to ...."

    TRUE or FALSE?

    No amount of obfuscation can change his statement.

    I won't bother to respond to your other, similar strawmen.

    Your little dance is becoming tiresome.

    Find another partner...





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  75. Albertguitar,

    Yes, Corso said a number of American technological advances were seeded by alien technologies found at Roswell, before, during, and after his stint at the Pentagon Foreign Technology Division in the early 1960s under General Arthur Trudeau, head of Army R&D.

    No, Corso did NOT say he alone was responsible for all of these advances, just that he participated in the process while at FTD.

    Insinuating that Corso claimed full credit for such things as the invention of night vision, microwave ovens, masers, lasers, transistors, fiber optics, etc., is just plain dishonest and cheap shots to discredit him. He did no such thing. You now are trying to backtrack and claim you didn't do this, but you very clearly did. And you aren't the only one. That's what I object to.

    Still, as I tried to make clear, Corso's story is hard to swallow in its entirety, to say the least. I GET the skepticism. There are certainly many factual errors in the book and many grandiose claims, whether the fault of ghostwriter Birnes, Corso, both, I still don't know. What I found most interesting about the book is the accounting of how alien technology might have been back-engineered and driven the modern technological revolution, all done quietly and under our noses. I consider this real food for thought, and unlike most, place Corso's basic account (not everything he said) in my gray basket for future reference.

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  76. Regarding the RE issue, as some of you already elaborated: no invention ever happen over night. That is a fact.

    But, on the other side: a thing we have no basic knowledge about, not at all, can not be even observed as a potential subject for Reverse Engineering. Never forget this point. So far, reading around the internet on "the Corso case" I found no one pulled out this obvious fact.

    If we had no basic idea about masers (later lasers) - how we could possibly think about alleged "cutting tool" from the craft? This approach may offer reconciliation between two hard headed group of thinkers: "the UFO reverse engineering" and "the hard-work science engineering" believers.

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  77. Does anyone know the number of Alien Vehicle's that crashed in New Mexico back in July 1947! San Agustin, the ship in tacked. Roswell proper is #2 can't forget the ET Vehicle that crashed up in the El Capitan mountains we can't forget the Frank Koufman crash site eather. One to many Alien Crashes and even so all the people that came forward in good faith to give there eyewitness accounts ? This seems to be all in vain. The proper Authority's have denounced every last reported event. As simply a weather balloon a RAWIN SONDA balloon that was fouND by a ranchER. Who to belive? I belive many Alien Ships crashing in New Mexico in 1947 seems much more credible than an old delapitaded weather worn reminat of a RAWIN SONDA weather bolloon.Save it don't waist your breath.

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  78. And where would you get that impression? Just because I didn't buy into Corso's ridiculous story that was contradicted by real evidence. Let's not throw out accusations if there is no evidence. There is way too much of that going on today.

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