Interview with Philip Corso shown at Knapp Lecture

From: campbell@ufomind.com (Glenn Campbell, Las Vegas)
Date: Tue, 25 Mar 1997 16:38:24 -0800
Subject: Interview with Philip Corso shown at Knapp Lecture

George Knapp was the featured speaker at Las Vegas MUFON last night
(3/24/97).  He discussed claimed government insider Philip Corso and
showed portions of an interview he had with him.  The following is my
best recollection of Knapp's talk and the video he showed.  (It is a
mixture of what I heard Corso say on the tape and what Knapp recounted
Corso saying. It is a bit sketchy, I know, because this is based only
on my memory of Knapp's short talk and the several interview clips
shown.)

Knapp said he had been sitting on his Corso material for 5 or 6 years,
but since Corso's book was due soon and Corso's claims were now being
discussed on the internet, Knapp felt he could talk about it.

Knapp says he was first tipped about Corso by Mark Sauter, who is now
a reporter for American Journal & Inside Edition.  Sauter had
interviewed Corso regarding POWs in the Korean War when he happened to
mention UFOs and Corso began to recount some stories.

Apparently, this is the first time interviews with Corso regarding his
UFO claims have been shown in public.  The interviews showed a frail
looking man in his 70s.  His speech is somewhat rambling and hard to
follow.  This is not the Philip Corso I had pictured.  (Somehow, I
had envisioned a stronger, younger man.)  He reminds me of "Jarod 2",
whose claims I reported in the Desert Rat.  He had a similar style of
speech (logical to him perhaps but hard to follow by the rest of us)
and a similar unnerving tendency to mix things he had directly
experienced with things he read later in the UFO literature.  (In the
tape, Corso mentions cattle mutilations and talked about Zecheria
Sitchin and the Sumerians -- things he does not claim to have had
official access to.)  It was unclear when the interview took place,
but it was apparently when Knapp was working for Altamira several
years ago. Knapp says he had arranged for Corso to come to Las Vegas
to be interviewed, but he didn't arrive.  Corso is apparently under
the control of a literary agent

Knapp said Corso's credentials are "impeccable," although the UFO
claims themselves can not be proven.  Knapp gave the sequence of
events in Corso's career: Among other things, he was an artillery
officer in WWII, was trained by British Intelligence and was a
battalion commander at White Sands Missile Range.  Somewhere around
1960, he worked for "C.E. Jackson" at the White House.<P>

Later, between 1961 and 1963, he worked for General Trudeau (I didn't
catch the first name.) in the Foreign Intelligence Division.  Trudeau
is apparently the only one who could verify this story, and Corso said
he had been dead 2-3 years (at the time of the interview),

The Foreign Technology Division had the responsibility of analyzing
both "foreign" technology (i.e. Soviet) and "alien" technology,
apparently from UFO crashes.  Corso's role was the writing of
"proposals" for how alien material should be handled -- typically sent
to government and contractor labs for analysis.  The contractors
didn't know what they were getting and assumed it was "foreign", not
"alien."  The alien technology, Corso insists, was incorporated into
human technology, including things like computer chips and night
vision goggles.

An alien "ship" went to Bell Labs and from there to Rockwell.

Night vision technology came somehow from the covering over the alien
eye.

While in his position with Trudeau, Corso was privy to information
about at least one alien autopsy, which took place at Walter Reed
Hospital.  Corso has seen the Santilli alien autopsy, and says the
alien was very similar.

Corso says the Roswell incident was real.

Corso apparently has never worked at Area 51, and he seemed to have no
information about it when he was queried by Knapp.

Corso said on the tape that he didn't think there was a UFO cover-up.
There didn't have to be, because the UFO buffs discredited themselves.

Corso left his position with Trudeau when Trudeau retired from the
military to work for a defense contractor, and the office was
dissolved.

Corso doesn't seem to know the "big picture," only his part of it.  He
made "proposals" to Trudeau, but it was Trudeau who implemented them.

Complicating Corso's story is his claim of direct alien encounters
before he became involved in this program.  (Knapp acknowledges that
this coincidence is going to be fuel for critics.)  Corso apparently
had two encounters at White Sands Missile Range in the 1950s, both
when he was alone.

In one, he was on some kind of assignment in a remote area of desert
"past trinity site."  It wasn't clear to me how the encounter started,
but on the tape Corso described standing in the desert as a craft
appeared and disappeared repeatedly.  He placed a rock and some
sagebrush in the place where he thought the craft would reappear, and
when the craft again appeared and disappeared, the rock and sagebrush
were crush.  At one point, he put his hand on the side of the craft
and found that it was cold.  This was a great surprise to him, since
it was 110 degrees in the desert around him.  Corso got scared and
tried to drive away.  (He seemed to be concerned that the craft might
reappear where he happened to me.)  As he did, the compass he had
started spinning, and the car motor died.  When the craft lifted off,
it turned on its side and then vanished.

In the other encounter, Corso was exploring a cave or mine, apparently
in the White Sands complex.  He went there, he said, because that's
where animals went to drink, and you could watch them at the mouth of
the cave.  While inside the cave Corso was approached by an alien.
(Knapp showed a video clip in which Corso displayed a drawing of the
alien, which appeared to by your standard "gray.")  Corso asked,
"Friend or Foe," and the alien replied, telepathically, "Neither." The
alien had only one request for Corso, that he turn off his radar for
10 minutes.  Corso asked why, and the alien replied with something
cryptic. (I forget the quote.)  It wasn't clear to me what the radar
was for or where it was in relation to the cave, but Corso complied
with the request.

According to Knapp, the title of Corso's forthcoming book is "The Day
After Roswell."  It is scheduled to be released in July to coincide
with the Roswell 50th Anniversary. (Knapp didn't say the publisher.)
Knapp said the publisher was making claims for the book which didn't
really match Corso's -- that it was going to reveal all about the
Roswell case, for example -- and this was being used as ammunition by
critics.

Corso's previous book was on POWs in Korea.  He claims some POWs were
taken to the Soviet Union.  (I'd like to get ahold of this book, at
least to see how Corso thinks and how credible his earthly claims
are.)

I recall that Daniel Fry made some fantastic claims about White Sands
in his 1954 book, White Sands Incident.  I wonder how his and Corso's
claims compare.

The Ufomind link page for Corso is:
http://www.ufomind.com/ufo/people/c/corso/

For Fry it is http://www.ufomind.com/ufo/people/f/fry/

Glenn Campbell

+---------    U    F    O    M    I    N    D    ---------+
| Glenn Campbell                     campbell@ufomind.com |
| Area 51 Research Center          http://www.ufomind.com |
| Las Vegas Annex               Box 448, Rachel, NV 89001 |
|                                                         |
|             "No opinions, only the facts."              |
|                                                         |
+---------------------------------------------------------+