The Day After Roswell - My Close Encounter with Philip Corso
When "The Day After Roswell" came out in 1997, I was working in a bookstore in Albuquerque. We got the book's author, Philip Corso, for a signing.
Our store had a good reputation for events around "High Strange" subjects, partly due to my efforts. Publishers knew we were worth putting on the schedule. Besides, UFO books in general make for good trade - host a novelist or a 'serious' book and you might get less than a dozen people, feature a UFO author and you could count on at least 100.
And it was well over 100 who turned out for Philip Corso that night. It was a great draw, even besides the local interest of Roswell: an ex-military man who had been "deep in", telling all...
Mr. Corso made an impressive speaker. His grasp of names and dates was so immediate that it actually made me envious; he never seemed to falter in his recall. He was able to reel off locations, offices, names, ranks...
He covered the basic elements from the book: that he had been called upon to assist in reverse-engineering and disseminating technologies garnered from alien craft, and that he had seen what seemed to be a small humanoid body packed in blue gel. He was careful to state that such was his only exposure to "the Roswell question", and that he had not himself seen any alien spacecraft
Then he took questions from the audience, and here it was that things started to get fuzzy around the edges. Just as does the book, he started to vary from the things he said he had personally witnessed, and included material from other sources.
At one point he mentioned that someone elsewhere in the government had told him that they had received some sort of strong signals from space, from a direction which Mr. Corso recalled and could provide. And he said, "Someone at one of these things [meaning a previous signing event] told me that in that direction is Zeta Reticuli."
(I groaned inwardly when I heard him say this. Zeta Reticuli was a particular favorite for the UFO enthusiasts at the time, as a home for certain alien visitors. And I just knew that, were I to interview the crowd the next day, a goodly number of them would remember that Mr. Corso had told them that the signal came from Zeta Reticuli. Thus do folktales grow.)
He answered a variety of questions, then we moved on to the signing of the books. As the host for the signing, it was my job to make sure things kept moving smoothly, and I was at Mr. Corso's elbow as I opened books so he could sign them. Thus I was privy to all of his conversations with people.
Most of the discussions were the usual things -- "usual" for a UFO book signing being a mix of sincere inquiry and intense conspiratorial viewpoint. But it was right at the end that things got really interesting.
A young boy came up with his mother; they had been waiting patiently and the boy had a drawing he wanted to show Mr. Corso. The boy was interested in engineering, as was Mr. Corso's son (or was it grandson? - I cannot recall for sure) and the author warmed to the boy and spent more time with him than he had with anyone else.
Mr. Corso praised the boy's drawing and told him to continue in his studies and become an engineer and maybe someday he would go into space. Then they talked about spacecraft and what they might be made of, and Mr. Corso suddenly said, "And even in the hot sun, they are cool to the touch, you know."
The boy asked what, and Mr. Corso said, "Alien spacecraft." My ears pricked up at this, since I had not long before heard him say very clearly to a large group of people that he had never himself seen an alien spacecraft, and now he was telling this young boy that he had touched one.
Mr. Corso proceeded to make a drawing for the boy, a representation of a classic flying saucer stuck into the ground at a 40-degree angle. He said that he had gone up to it and put his hand on it and "even in the hot desert sun it was cool to the touch".
The boy thanked him and took the drawing and left; the event was over. And I was left to mull over what I had heard.
Mr. Corso seemed to be what so many people in UFOlogy had been awaiting: an inside source, finally telling his tale. (Though even in the book he is very vague why he finally decided to break his security oath.) His presentation made him seem sharp and sure of his recall of names, titles, and places. But his willingness to be agreeable to suppositions put to him by the audience made me uneasy. And hearing him contradict a major part of his testimony in less than an hour made me place all of his testimony in question.
I had to conclude that Mr. Corso was a very nice old gentleman with some great stories. I suppose the people around him grew tired of his stories and he went looking for a new audience and found a willing and eager one in the UFO community. And he himself was willing to support suppositions which were presented to him, as a way of pleasing his new audience.
Mr. Corso's death soon after the release of the book brought, if not joy, great satisfaction to the conspiratorialists who could now claim that he was "silenced because he told the truth". But the truth I personally heard him present changed markedly in only a short time, and I carry away the conviction that Mr. Corso's stories are just that, stories, and do not constitute evidence.
Our store had a good reputation for events around "High Strange" subjects, partly due to my efforts. Publishers knew we were worth putting on the schedule. Besides, UFO books in general make for good trade - host a novelist or a 'serious' book and you might get less than a dozen people, feature a UFO author and you could count on at least 100.
And it was well over 100 who turned out for Philip Corso that night. It was a great draw, even besides the local interest of Roswell: an ex-military man who had been "deep in", telling all...
Mr. Corso made an impressive speaker. His grasp of names and dates was so immediate that it actually made me envious; he never seemed to falter in his recall. He was able to reel off locations, offices, names, ranks...
He covered the basic elements from the book: that he had been called upon to assist in reverse-engineering and disseminating technologies garnered from alien craft, and that he had seen what seemed to be a small humanoid body packed in blue gel. He was careful to state that such was his only exposure to "the Roswell question", and that he had not himself seen any alien spacecraft
Then he took questions from the audience, and here it was that things started to get fuzzy around the edges. Just as does the book, he started to vary from the things he said he had personally witnessed, and included material from other sources.
At one point he mentioned that someone elsewhere in the government had told him that they had received some sort of strong signals from space, from a direction which Mr. Corso recalled and could provide. And he said, "Someone at one of these things [meaning a previous signing event] told me that in that direction is Zeta Reticuli."
(I groaned inwardly when I heard him say this. Zeta Reticuli was a particular favorite for the UFO enthusiasts at the time, as a home for certain alien visitors. And I just knew that, were I to interview the crowd the next day, a goodly number of them would remember that Mr. Corso had told them that the signal came from Zeta Reticuli. Thus do folktales grow.)
He answered a variety of questions, then we moved on to the signing of the books. As the host for the signing, it was my job to make sure things kept moving smoothly, and I was at Mr. Corso's elbow as I opened books so he could sign them. Thus I was privy to all of his conversations with people.
Most of the discussions were the usual things -- "usual" for a UFO book signing being a mix of sincere inquiry and intense conspiratorial viewpoint. But it was right at the end that things got really interesting.
A young boy came up with his mother; they had been waiting patiently and the boy had a drawing he wanted to show Mr. Corso. The boy was interested in engineering, as was Mr. Corso's son (or was it grandson? - I cannot recall for sure) and the author warmed to the boy and spent more time with him than he had with anyone else.
Mr. Corso praised the boy's drawing and told him to continue in his studies and become an engineer and maybe someday he would go into space. Then they talked about spacecraft and what they might be made of, and Mr. Corso suddenly said, "And even in the hot sun, they are cool to the touch, you know."
The boy asked what, and Mr. Corso said, "Alien spacecraft." My ears pricked up at this, since I had not long before heard him say very clearly to a large group of people that he had never himself seen an alien spacecraft, and now he was telling this young boy that he had touched one.
Mr. Corso proceeded to make a drawing for the boy, a representation of a classic flying saucer stuck into the ground at a 40-degree angle. He said that he had gone up to it and put his hand on it and "even in the hot desert sun it was cool to the touch".
The boy thanked him and took the drawing and left; the event was over. And I was left to mull over what I had heard.
Mr. Corso seemed to be what so many people in UFOlogy had been awaiting: an inside source, finally telling his tale. (Though even in the book he is very vague why he finally decided to break his security oath.) His presentation made him seem sharp and sure of his recall of names, titles, and places. But his willingness to be agreeable to suppositions put to him by the audience made me uneasy. And hearing him contradict a major part of his testimony in less than an hour made me place all of his testimony in question.
I had to conclude that Mr. Corso was a very nice old gentleman with some great stories. I suppose the people around him grew tired of his stories and he went looking for a new audience and found a willing and eager one in the UFO community. And he himself was willing to support suppositions which were presented to him, as a way of pleasing his new audience.
Mr. Corso's death soon after the release of the book brought, if not joy, great satisfaction to the conspiratorialists who could now claim that he was "silenced because he told the truth". But the truth I personally heard him present changed markedly in only a short time, and I carry away the conviction that Mr. Corso's stories are just that, stories, and do not constitute evidence.
Labels: Philip Corso, Roswell, Ufology, UFOs
posted by InsightStraight @ 12:59 AM
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