Arthur Trudeau
Lieutenant General Arthur G. Trudeau was a distinguished U.S. Army officer who served as Chief of Army Intelligence and later as Chief of Army Research and Development from 1958 to 1962. He is a member of the Military Intelligence Hall of Fame and has been called "the father of the ballistic missile." Trudeau is central to Philip J. Corso's testimony regarding exploitation of Technologies of Unknown Origin from UAP crash retrievals during the early 1960s.
| Role | Lieutenant General, U.S. Army; Chief of Army Research and Development; Director of Army Intelligence |
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Military Career
Trudeau served with distinction during World War II and the Korean War. He served as chief of Army intelligence but was relieved by CIA Director Allan Dulles, possibly due to his rigorous anti-communist stance. He was shortly reinstated and eventually returned to Washington as Director of Army Research and Development in 1958.
Trudeau was so influential that he was one of only eight former generals included in the Army's 1970s oral history project. When Corso was interviewed for this project, he was found spending time with his friend Trudeau in his kitchen, speaking to their close personal and professional relationship that extended beyond their service.
Golden Age of Army R&D (1958-1963)
In 1958, Trudeau established the Office of the Chief of Army R&D, consolidating all Army research and development under one single department for the first time. This ended what Philip J. Corso called the "dark ages" of Army R&D (1947-1958) and initiated the "Golden Age of Army R&D" from 1958 to 1963.
During this period, Trudeau handled all personnel, technical services, laboratories, installations, and budget for Army R&D. The creation of this unified department occurred alongside the founding of NASA (which killed the Army's Project Horizon moon base initiative), the establishment of ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency), and the transfer of atomic energy from the Army to the Atomic Energy Commission. Trudeau faced opposition from the CIA, Department of State, and other agencies hostile to Army R&D efforts, which contributed to the hyper-secrecy surrounding "out-of-this-world" R&D data.
Trudeau brought large industry, select laboratories, and leading universities into the Army R&D fold. According to Corso, Trudeau contacted the top 25 industries on the Fortune 500 list and arranged meetings with their boards of directors. He strengthened ties with Army R&D laboratories and organized efforts to attract the best and brightest scientists, including foreign scientists brought through Operation Paperclip. This network of contractors, Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs), University Affiliated Research Centers (UARCs), universities, and Army laboratories formed a powerful team tasked with exploiting technologies of unknown origin.
Foreign Technology Division and UAP Technology Exploitation
In 1960, Trudeau created the U.S. Army Foreign Technology Division and designated Philip J. Corso as its chief. Trudeau gave Corso a box of materials known as the "Roswell File" containing field reports, medical autopsy reports, and technical debris from the 1947 Roswell crash. He directed Corso to study the materials and develop a program to feed UAP-derived artifacts to U.S. industry scientists and contractors working on related research areas.
Trudeau assigned Corso four specific subject areas to track: (1) foreign development of this world, (2) foreign intelligence and developments not of this world, (3) interim project officer on select R&D projects, and (4) all other duties as special assistant to the Chief of R&D for the U.S. Army.
The guiding principle of Trudeau's exploitation program had two goals: National Security of the United States and protection of the American way of life. The program operated with a budget of approximately $2 billion (over $10.5 billion in 2024 dollars). Industry was allowed to hold patents on developments but was required to feed results back to the Army and make them available to the public and the world when necessary.
Trudeau mandated the development of Passive Night Vision Technology after Corso showed him autopsy reports describing a transparent film over the eyeballs of recovered EBEs that appeared to be a biological adaptation for enhanced vision. This led to the creation of first-generation passive night vision devices at the Fort Belvoir night vision laboratory with aid from 48 U.S. industries.
Secrecy and Compartmentalization
The Foreign Technology Division operated in extreme secrecy. According to Corso, Trudeau and his team kept UAP technology exploitation "among ourselves" because "we were certain that they would have destroyed our organization and label us as cooks and take our budget away." The program fed technologies into industry as normal research and development proposals without revealing their true origin as UAP-derived materials. This compartmentalization and secrecy structure parallels modern Unacknowledged Waived Special Access Programs (UASAPs) operating outside congressional oversight.
Corso stated that the Army treated the threat posed by non-human intelligence similar to the Soviet threat under a "fig leaf policy" — where both Soviets and NHI threatened existence but were not considered outright enemies. Acts of concern included abduction phenomena, animal mutilation, spying on atomic installations, hindering missile and space equipment testing, hampering military deterrent capabilities, halting exploration of the moon and Mars, causing aircraft crashes with military casualties, and tampering with human and animal genomes.
Retirement and Briefing of President Bush
Trudeau retired in 1962 and was succeeded by four-star General Dwight E. Beach in command of U.S. Army R&D. The U.S. Army Foreign Technology Division appears to have been dissolved or drastically reorganized shortly after Trudeau's retirement, with no public records of the division existing beyond institutional references in Corso's military documents.
According to Jacques Vallee's book Forbidden Science: Pacific Heights, Dr. Eric Davis had multiple conversations with former President and CIA Director George H.W. Bush regarding UAP Legacy Programs. Bush told Davis that he was briefed on Legacy Programs by Trudeau around the time of the 1968 Mendel Rivers Congressional hearings. Trudeau allegedly told Bush that "his man Corso" had been asked to testify before Congress and was able to reveal "rumblings of alien hardware that had been distributed to industrial labs," but the Corso testimony was squashed as a result of this conversation.
Bush further stated to Davis that when he asked Trudeau if Corso could have been mistaken about the material he was handling — whether it could have been Nazi hardware — Trudeau replied: "Impossible. The two topics were clearly separated by that time. All German secrets had been processed and filed away. They were not used as cover for anything else."
Promise and Oath of Secrecy
Trudeau extracted a promise from Corso not to discuss their work on UAP technology exploitation until after Trudeau's death. Corso maintained this oath of secrecy for approximately 35 years, not disclosing the information even to his own family. Trudeau died in 1991, and Corso began writing his account three years later in 1994, honoring the promise to his mentor and friend.