Strom Thurmond
Strom Thurmond (1902–2003) was a U.S. Senator from South Carolina who served for 48 years, making him the longest-serving member of the Senate at the time of his retirement. Thurmond had a professional relationship with Philip J. Corso stemming from Corso's military and intelligence career. He became inadvertently involved in the controversy surrounding The Day After Roswell when he was asked to write a foreword for what he believed was a different book.
| Role | U.S. Senator; longest-serving member of the Senate |
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The Day After Roswell Foreword Controversy
Thurmond originally wrote a foreword for The Day After Roswell, praising Corso's military service and character. However, according to researcher Stanton Friedman and others, the foreword Thurmond wrote was intended for an entirely different book about Corso's general military career and activities, not a book centered on UAP crash retrieval and reverse engineering of alien technology.
When Thurmond learned that the book was actually about Roswell, extraterrestrial biological entities, and seeding alien technology into American industry, he angrily retracted his statements and withdrew the foreword. This led to an early reprint of the book without Thurmond's endorsement.
While Corso's original manuscript Dawn of a New Age makes mention of Corso's relationship with Thurmond, no such advocacy or foreword by the senator was ever referenced in the manuscript itself — suggesting the foreword was arranged by co-author Bill Burns or the publisher without Corso's full oversight or Thurmond's complete understanding of the book's content.
Relationship with Corso
Despite the foreword controversy, Thurmond and Corso did have a documented professional relationship during Corso's military career. However, the nature and extent of Thurmond's knowledge of or involvement with Corso's UAP-related claims remains unclear.