Another AP article on Corso/Thurmond controversy

From: campbell@ufomind.com (Glenn Campbell, Las Vegas)
Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 14:49:00 -0800
Subject: Another AP article on Corso/Thurmond controversy

[From USA Today via Stig_Agermose@online.pol.dk.  It is similar to the AP
article posted to this list earlier, but is a bit more explicit. --GC]


USA TODAY: 06/05/97

Senator regrets connection with UFO book

WASHINGTON - Sen. Strom Thurmond wrote the foreword for a new book
about an alleged UFO cover-up after being led to believe the author, a
former staffer, was writing an autobiography, the senator's aides said
Thursday.

The Day After Roswell, by retired Army intelligence officer Philip J.
Corso focuses on the rumored crash of an unidentified flying object
near the city of Roswell in the New Mexico desert in 1947.

Corso, with help from William J. Birnes, wrote that the government
confiscated the UFO and gleaned secrets from it that led to advances
such as laser technology, fiber optics, night-vision capabilities and
the microchip.

But Chris Cimko, Thurmond's chief spokeswoman, said a 21-page outline
from Corso on which the foreword was based did not mention UFOs.

It was presented as a memoir by Corso, titled I Walked With Giants: My
Career in Military Intelligence, she said.

Corso was not available for comment Thursday, said a relative who
answered the telephone at his home in Fort Pierce, Fla.

Corso handled military matters for Thurmond during separate stints in
the 1960s and 1970s, Cimko said.

She said that both she and Thurmond's chief of staff also were told by
Corso's son that the original book had been changed.

"We've been totally blindsided by this man and his publisher," Cimko
said. "The book that's coming out is not the book outline that was
provided to us."

In the introduction, Thurmond praised Corso as a person of integrity
who has "many interesting stories to share with individuals interested
in military history, espionage and the working of our government."

But Thurmond, R-S.C., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee,
issued a statement disavowing his connection to the book because it
appears to bolster claims of a government conspiracy.

Cimko said she learned of the UFO angle when a reviewer called.

"I regret that the foreword I wrote in comment on Col. Corso's
professional life has now appeared as part of a book that professes to
'reveal the U.S. government's shocking UFO cover-up,"' Thurmond said in
the statement. "I know of no such 'cover-up' and do not believe one
existed."