Philip J Corso

Military Career

Corso served in the U.S. Army from February 23, 1942 to March 1, 1963. His distinguished career included service in Military Intelligence during World War II in Europe, where he became chief of the U.S. Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) in Rome at war's end. Corso arranged safe passage for numerous Jewish refugees out of Rome and served as personal emissary to Giovanni Battista Montini, who later became Pope Paul VI.

During the Korean War, Corso performed intelligence work directly under General Douglas MacArthur as chief of the Special Projects Branch of the Intelligence Division, Far East Command. He focused on prisoners of war (POWs) and missing in action (MIA) soldiers, investigating North Korean POW camps. In 1992, he testified before the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs regarding hundreds of American soldiers abandoned at these camps.

From 1953 to 1957, Corso served on President Eisenhower's National Security Council staff as a member of the Operations Coordinating Board, a covert operations committee established by Eisenhower under Executive Order 10483 that reported directly to the NSC. His superior was C.D. Jackson, Special Assistant to Eisenhower and government psychological warfare adviser. During this period, Corso achieved clearances for Eyes Only material and specialized in air defense and ballistic missiles. He commanded missile units where unidentified objects were allegedly picked up on radar over New Mexico and Germany traveling at over 3,000 mph, with Corso ordered to destroy all records and tapes following these incidents.

After serving as commander of the 71st Missile Battalion in Germany and Inspector General of the 7th Army, Corso was recalled by Lieutenant General Arthur Trudeau in 1960 to become Special Assistant to the Chief of Army Research and Development and chief of the newly created U.S. Army Foreign Technology Division.

Fort Riley 1947: Observation of Non-Human Biological Entity

On or about July 6, 1947, while stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas as post duty officer, Corso claimed to have personally observed a 4-foot non-human creature in a crate filled with fluid. The being had an oversized, incandescent light bulb-shaped head, almond-shaped eye sockets, four-fingered hands, thin legs and feet, and no facial hair or eyebrows. The creature's skull was overgrown to the point where all facial features were arranged frontally, occupying only a small circle on the lower part of the head, with a tiny flat slit for a mouth.

Corso later learned the crate was part of a convoy of five trucks transporting biological entities from an airfield in New Mexico along Route 40 through Fort Riley to Wright Patterson Air Force Base. A sergeant of the guard informed him the trucks had originated from New Mexico and were carrying "something sensitive." Corso's official military records confirm he was stationed at Fort Riley on this date, lending credibility to the temporal aspects of his account.

The Roswell File and Foreign Technology Division

In 1961, Corso came into possession of what he called the "Roswell File" — a box of materials and documents given to him by General Trudeau containing field reports, medical autopsy reports, and technical debris from the 1947 Roswell crash. The autopsy reports, allegedly performed at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, referred to the recovered beings as "Extraterrestrial Biological Entities" (EBEs) and described creatures approximately 4 feet tall with anatomy significantly different from humans, including very large hearts and lungs and skin and bone structure built to protect against cosmic radiation or gravitational forces. A transparent film over the eyeballs of the EBEs led Trudeau to mandate the development of Passive Night Vision Technology.

Corso was designated chief of the U.S. Army Foreign Technology Division in 1960 and given 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 Foreign Technology Division operated with a budget of approximately $2 billion (over $10.5 billion in 2024 dollars) to manage Technologies of Unknown Origin (TUOs) from crashed UAP and seed them into U.S. industry disguised as normal research and development proposals.

Technology Seeding and the Golden Age of Army R&D

Under Trudeau's direction, Corso oversaw a program to feed UAP-derived artifacts to U.S. industry scientists and contractors working on related research areas, with the provision that industry could hold patents but would feed results back to the Army and the public. Technologies allegedly leveraged from UAP crash materials included:

• Image intensifiers developed at Fort Belvoir's night vision laboratory with aid from 48 U.S. industries
• Fiber Optics from a broken wiring harness where each strand emitted a different color, seeded to Bell Labs
• Super Tenacity Fibers from single strands that could not be damaged, used for flak jackets, parachutes, and stealth composites
• Molecular Alignment techniques showing atoms aligned in patterns for incredible hardness and radiation resistance
• Transistor and Integrated Circuit technology seeded to Bell Labs and Texas Instruments
• Laser technology believed to be the EBE method of communication over vast distances

Trudeau created the Office of the Chief of Army R&D in 1958, consolidating all Army research and development under one department and initiating what Corso called the "Golden Age of Army R&D" from 1958 to 1963. The program brought large industry, laboratories, and many leading universities into the Army R&D fold, including establishing partnerships with FFRDCs and UARCs. The program contacted the top 25 industries on the Fortune 500 list and arranged meetings with their boards of directors and chiefs of Army R&D laboratories.

Cloned Beings and Consciousness-Craft Integration

Analyzing the Roswell File materials, Corso and his team concluded the recovered beings were clones or expendable creatures created by some outside intelligence specifically designed for space travel. This conclusion stemmed from the observation that recovered craft had no food, water, waste disposal, refrigeration, or medical facilities — suggesting the beings were engineered not to require these necessities. The team theorized the Roswell craft was a reconnaissance vehicle designed to return to a mothership, and that the species had solved gravitational or dimensional travel allowing instantaneous return to base.

Most significantly, Corso's team concluded the biological entities were integrated into the flying saucer's guidance system, effectively serving as the craft's navigation and control mechanism. This led to research into harnessing brain waves to control aircraft and missiles, a concept that would later inspire investigations into Consciousness-Craft Integration.

White Sands 1957-1958: Telepathic Encounter with Non-Human Intelligence

While commanding the ballistic missile firing range at Red Canyon Range, part of White Sands Missile Range, in 1957-1958, Corso claimed to have encountered a non-human being in an abandoned mine while seeking shelter from heat. The being, which had a different physiology from the entity observed at Fort Riley in 1947, communicated with him telepathically. It requested that Corso lower radar coverage from nearby installations, which were preventing its craft from departing.

According to Corso, he asked what he would receive in return, and the being responded: "A new world if you can take it." Corso claimed he returned to his installation and ordered radar shutdown, allowing the craft to escape. This experience was so profound that Corso contemplated the meaning of the statement throughout his life. He would later recount this story to John B. Alexander, Jacques Vallee, George Knapp, and Danny Sheehan, and produced an 8mm home movie for his grandchildren describing the encounter, which was never intended to be made public.

Dawn of a New Age vs. The Day After Roswell

Corso's testimony exists in two primary forms: The Day After Roswell (1997), co-written with William Birnes, and Dawn of a New Age, his original unfiltered manuscript released in Italy in 2003 and the U.S. in 2011 after his death. According to Corso's son Philip Corso Jr., Corso went through The Day After Roswell and highlighted everything he did not say or did not like, giving up halfway through due to frustration. Corso Sr. had no plans to release the original manuscript but his son did so to correct inaccuracies that made his father furious during his lifetime.

The Day After Roswell is 130 pages longer than Dawn of a New Age and contains sensational details absent from the original manuscript. Multiple individuals who were privy to the manuscript before Corso's death, including Colonel John B. Alexander, remarked on details featured in the book that were missing from the manuscript, such as Corso intimidating a CIA director and recounting the Roswell crash in detail despite not being present. Senator Strom Thurmond originally wrote a foreword for the book but angrily retracted it upon learning it centered on UAP, leading to an early reprint.

UFO Working Group and Intelligence Support Activity

Corso claimed to have learned that in February 1987, Colonel Harold E. Phillips of the Defense Intelligence Agency chaired a group called the UFO Working Group, consisting of 17 personnel including one Army and three Air Force generals, DIA scientists, three NSA officials, a supervisor from the CIA's Domestic Collection Division, and a technical team from the CIA's Science and Technology Directorate. The working group allegedly received funding from U.S. Army INSCOM (Intelligence and Security Command) under Major General Albert Stubblebine's direction. The Intelligence Support Activity (ISA), founded by INSCOM, was handed over to JSOC in 2003, the same year the CIA Office of Global Access was created — an entity later accused of serving as a logistics coordinator for UAP crash retrieval operations.

Sworn Affidavit and Legal Action

Shortly before his death in July 1998 at age 83, Corso signed a sworn affidavit for CAUS attorney Peter Gon to support a lawsuit against the Department of the Army. The affidavit, published by CAUS, stated under penalty of perjury that Corso was a member of Eisenhower's National Security Council and former head of the Foreign Technology Desk, that he personally observed a 4-foot non-human creature at Fort Riley on July 6, 1947, that he came into possession of the Roswell file in 1961, and that he personally read medical autopsy reports referring to the creature as an "Extraterrestrial Biological Entity."

Criticism and Controversy

Corso's claims have faced substantial criticism. FBI documents released by John Greenewald and The Black Vault in July 2024 from a 1964-65 background check showed FBI characterization of Corso as someone who spread unfounded claims, including that Lee Harvey Oswald was an FBI informant and allegations about Fabian socialists. One FBI document stated "another government agency has characterized Corso as a parasite who has never produced any intelligence through his own efforts." However, no FBI documents discussed UFOs or his Army Foreign Technology Division duties, and all files were cross-references rather than main investigatory files.

The Eisenhower Library confirmed Corso never attended a National Security Council meeting despite claiming membership, though his service on the Operations Coordinating Board — which reported directly to the NSC — is documented in his military records. Researcher Stanton Friedman and others noted 92 technically false claims in The Day After Roswell, and Senator Thurmond's withdrawal of his foreword after discovering the book's UAP focus further damaged credibility. Physicist Dr. Lou Cameron, director of the night vision laboratory at Fort Belvoir, flatly denied that an NHI eye lens aided passive night vision breakthroughs.

Colonel John B. Alexander found discrepancies regarding technology seeding claims, particularly around integrated circuitry genealogy. However, Alexander and others, including Jacques Vallee, maintained that Corso's story never wavered — details were never altered, added, or subtracted across multiple tellings, suggesting either remarkable consistency or a fixed narrative.

Legacy and Historical Significance

Corso's testimony, dating to the early 1960s, established what may be the first detailed public account of a structured U.S. UAP technology exploitation program utilizing defense contractors, FFRDCs, and university research centers. His claims parallel modern disclosures about Unacknowledged Waived Special Access Programs (UASAPs) operating in stovepiped compartments protected from congressional oversight. Whether fully credible or not, Corso's framework for understanding how Legacy Programs might be structured — with technology seeding through normal R&D channels, patent retention by contractors, military-industrial partnership, and hypersecrecy justified by Cold War competition — remains influential in UAP research.

Former President George H.W. Bush, according to Jacques Vallee's Forbidden Science: Pacific Heights, told Dr. Eric Davis that it was "impossible" Corso was mistaken about the material he handled, stating "the two topics were clearly separated by that time" — meaning German/Nazi hardware and UAP materials were distinct by the 1960s. Bush also claimed he was briefed on Legacy Programs by Trudeau around the time of the 1968 Mendel Rivers Congressional hearings and that Trudeau told him "his man Corso" had been asked to testify before Congress about alien hardware distributed to industrial labs, but the testimony was squashed.

Corso maintained a strict oath of secrecy for approximately 35 years, waiting until three years after Trudeau's death to begin writing his account, honoring a promise to his mentor not to discuss their work until after Trudeau passed away.

Sources

• Video - Philip J. Corso - US Army UFO Technology Research & Development
• Video - Deep Underground Military Bases (D.U.M.Bs.) - UFO Legacy Programs