Customer Reviews

The Day After Roswell

5 star:		(137)
4 star:		(49)
3 star:		(33)
2 star:		(22)
1 star:		(34)

 

 

Before I begin my review, let me clarify that I have only a moderate curiosity in UFO's and such. I'm not a skeptic or a believer, but someone who sees a field of study that's intriguing, impossible to flat-out dismiss, and at the very least entertaining. Nevertheless I did pick up this book and read it. Here are my thoughts:

Many skeptics ask, "If the government DOES know something about aliens and UFOs, why, and how, do they keep it secret from everyone else?"

Col. Corso's book gives a sober and convincing explanation for this. Rather than giving a broad overview, however, he wisely sticks to a specific description of his own hands-on experience and how he did the job he was asked to do. Specifically, as head of the Army's Foreign Technology Desk in the Pentagon, Corso alleges he was in charge of "getting something useful" out of alien artifacts collected from the Roswell UFO crash in 1947.

Corso was faced with a challenge: How do you gather funding and personnel (many of whom are low-ranking) for a US Army R&D project on the Roswell UFO artifacts, while using "normal," visible administrative channels, and keep it a secret from other branches of the government and even many of the individuals directly involved?

In describing how he faced that challenge, Corso gives a thorough account of not only the alien technology he says was discovered at Roswell, but the bureaucratic processes involved in researching it and putting it to use. He describes how artifacts from Roswell gave earthly science a jumpstart on the integrated circuit chip, the laser, and a host of other technologies, and how these technologies were "seeded" outside the military to eventually better life for the public.

If you're looking for a lot of descriptive, speculative narrative about Roswell and aliens in general, you'll find little of it here. Corso sticks to describing his singular, albeit tremendously important, role in how the government handled the discovery at Roswell, and he does it with a minimum of hocus-pocus.

Then again that's probably the most valuable thing about this book: it lets the nitty-gritty, sometimes boring details of how the government really functions supercede the sensational. It gives a solid description of HOW so much could be going on and kept secret within the government.

In writing this book Corso only opens himself up to ridicule, and risks tarnishing his entire career in the military. I can't see why a sane person would do this just to make a few bucks, and from his writing Corso seems like a very level-headed, objective person. Judge for yourself, but in my opinion this book seems very truthful and credible.

I've read literally hundreds of books and articles on UFO's - which I find to be a very serious subject. Unfortunately there are too many "questionable" sources contributing to the subject and many times it makes a mockery of serious contributers. In "The Day After Roswell" Colonel Philip J. Corso provides what I feel is the most detailed, reliable and completely objective account of history's most debated UFO incedent. Colonel Corso is one of a kind - in the right position at the right time to have first hand knowledge of many interesting details, a man of unquestionable integrity dedicated to serving the American people and exposing this incident for what it really is, and a true master of seperating fact from speculation. The truth is completely exposed in this book, more completely than I've ever seen. Everything from what actually happened in the deserts of New Mexico to the political and military scramble to not only cover it up but also to prepare a defense against it. Colonel Corso, I salute you - it takes a man of exceptional courage to jeapordize such an outstanding military career to do what's right.

Here is my thoughts on this book. This is a fascinating book that is well written, logical, and easy to read. It clearly explains how the great jump in our technology happened in the last 50 or so years. IF it's true. If it's not a true book, then the author is very creative and the book is still a good read.

I for one do not doubt that this whole book might be based on truth. Basically the author recounts how he got a filing cabinet full of information that he had to 'farm out' to companies. The information? technology that was retrieved from a downed space craft (UFO) that crashed in Roswell. The author recounts how he helped share this information with others so that they could use it to increase our technology.

Fascinating.

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. His grandkids growing tired of his stories, 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 to please 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.

Fun to read. Talks about the Roswell crash, the spaceship, our ongoing visitations from aliens, abductions, cattle mutilations, CIA/KGB, cold war, Apollo missions, U2 missions, etc.

Ultimately, however, I find that the author lacks credibility. "Spilling the beans" is entirely contradictory to LTC. Coroso's top-secret "need to know" military personality. By his own admission, Coroso was very skilled in counter-intelligence, misdirection, and deception.

I think this book is counter-intelligence aimed at the American Public for one or all of the following purposes:

1) Strenghten support for defense spending 2) Foster a feeling of dependency on the military 3) Convince the American public that they should not question to closely where defense spending goes. 3) Create a new national enemy now that the Russions threat is minimized.

I even question whether he wrote the book or whether it was a group effort by some military organization and he just put his name on it - as a last patriotic act.

Other things I find suspicious in or about the book include:

1) The author accidentally saw an alien corpse ten years before he became involved in alien technology. What a coincidence.

2) There is no way the information, dates, places, documents in this book could have been compiled without government assistance.

3) Quite a work for an 82-year old man, 1 year away from a heart attack.

4) Given Coroso's description of how the government works, there is no way this book could have been published without the implicit concent of the government and military complex.

5. The aliens had incredibly advance technology including laser weapons, and had malevolent intent. Yet they limited their interference with our space program to buzzing flights and jamming signals. Why didn't they just blow up our satellites one by one as we put them in orbit?

6. Why would the aliens let us land on the moon if they had a base there?

Anyway, fun to read, but I think it is a lot of strategic fiction interwoven with some fact.

I bought this book in 1999. It was my first real foray into ufology and it really hooked me. I was working on a "swords to plowshares" program in the R&D dept of BART. We were converting "Black Program" products and interfaced with DARPA. Consequently, I know a little about the DARPA activities over the years. As I see it, Corso DID NOT LIE!

THE DAY AFTER ROSWELL is the first `UFO book' I've ever bothered to read. I guess I'd never really looked upon the whole `UFO thing' as being all that book-worthy. Granted, I've always seen the subject as an interesting one. Let's face it, thousands of sane, credible people have seen things in the skies that were more than `probably just Venus', but with the very nature of a UFO being `unidentified', any book on the subject would have to bring a uniquely informed writer to the table to keep it from being just another speculative exercise on a highly speculative subject. Which brings us to the author, Col. Philip J. Corso. Say what you want about the subject matter of the book, or the tale the good Col. is telling, at least in Col. Corso, the story is coming from a qualified source. A person who would have known.

So what exactly is the story? Well, it isn't the `UFO agenda' smoking gun the title had me expecting. In fact, it isn't at all what I expected. Whereas I thought the book might be about actual `EBE's'(extraterrestrial biological entities), where they may have come from or what they might be doing here, the book hardly touches on any of that. What it does touch on is how Col. Corso, from his post within the Army's Research & Development program in the early 1960's, went about farming out bits and pieces of technology from a crashed spacecraft found near Roswell in 1947, into ongoing Defense Department development programs. As he tells his story, it was put upon him not only to think up different weapons applications for each little piece of crash wreckage he had at his disposal, but to also put them in the hands of the right contractor, working on the right projects, while at the same time not letting anyone know where the technology was coming from. Nor could he let any of the competing branches of the military know what he was up to. And it's here, on this level, as the tale of a mild mannered military bureaucrat working against the tense, cloak and dagger backdrop of the cold war, that THE DAY AFTER ROSWELL ultimately worked for me. Basically the story of an ordinary man put into an extraordinary situation.

I did have trouble with a number of things in the book. Like the chance meeting Corso had with his own destiny back at Fort Riley, or the lack of action taken on the `nut file' by his predecessors at R & D in the 13 years prior to his arrival. And I must say, his account of his involvement in the Cuban Missile Crisis left me feeling like I was watching a Commander McBragg cartoon, yet none of these little problem points really affected the core point of the book. On the overall, I still came away from it with the feeling of. . . . . oh, I don't know . . . . . let's just call it - plausible plausibility. And for a story as way out there as this one, that's not too bad.

Is it the truth? Who knows. But one thing is for sure, something strange did crash outside of Roswell New Mexico in 1947, and it sure as hell wasn't a weather balloon.

The biggest mystery about this book, even bigger than the supposed existence of a hostile alien race that may or may not have lost a spaceship outside of Roswell in '47, is why Philip Corso's mantlepiece is not currently groaning under the weight of Nobel Prizes for physics ? For, if this book is accurate, then Philip Corso and Philip Corso alone is responsible for the ideas in many diverse fields that led to the development of many new technologies.

Because, in the author's own humble words iterated several timwes throughout - "I realised that perhaps what this was for was (fill in - Starlight Optics, Lasers for medical and military and range-finding use, Particle-Beam weapons etc etc etc)". Single-handedly Corso discovered what alien technologies did and also thought of the ways to exploit them ! This must be deeply distressing news for the hardworking scientists who really developed all this stuff. However, as Corso explains, they were in on the secret as he fed them info and let them hold any patents fof the new stuff. So that explains that. Humble guy.

This might have been believable has Corso gotten his scientific facts right, but facts, like concrete evidence, are thin on the ground in this flight of fancy. The effects of microwaves for instance were, depending on which side of the Atlantic you happen to be on, discovered by either RAF radar technicians who found cooked sparrows by radar stations in 1941 or by Doctor Spencer of Raytheon in 1946 who noticed that a candy bar in his pocket had melted when working with radar. (The former is more believable for more than the obvious patriotic reasons for one wonders why no other part of Doctor Spencer was affected by the microwaves). In any event, neither of these histories of microwave discovery appear in Corso's work and so it goes through the other fields.

The works laying the foundation of fibre-optics appeared in 1951, some ten years before Corso's "brainwave" when pondering the Roswell find. Admittedly, the first concrete proposals for the application of fibre-optics were put forth in 66, but the point remains, the idea for them was hard graft by scientists ten years earlier. What's more Dutch and English scientists lest people object they were given their ideas by the US military.

And on it goes, example after example of how this technology really came about from previous research predating the Roswell crash can be put forth to utterly refute Corso's claim. For we only have Corso's word that his is indeed the case. Corso gives us no evidence of his story. All the photographs are of him or are plucked from other UFO sources. The appendix "official" documents are largely unsigned. The schematics therein able to have been produced by any Star-Trek buff, not any competent scientist. Conveniently, Corso's superior is dead and thus can't refute any of Corso's astounding claims.

Not that really they need refuting. If you are unable to refute this yourself after 10 minutes on a good search engine, then there's a bridge in Brooklyn I want to sell you. Gets two stars for being entertainingly written.

I must agree that The Day After Rosewell had me going. It's a very readable story and almost believable.

I'm not one to resist all arguements just because they may challenge my own view. I have been a skeptic on UFO's before reading this book, and I admit Col. Corso's account is better than a Steven King novel.

I am suspicious though, of his book, which testifies to his seeing alien remains while they were enroute as shipment through the US Army, and that he worked to secretly deseminate recovered Alien Spaceship technology to American military contractors. Besides concluding that UFO's have been buzzing the earth, I ask myself what other reasons may have been at work to create this fun book.

The several references in the book to Orson Welles' Holloween radio hoax in 1939(?) made we wonder if this was not a wink to readers, or perhaps an unconscious referance as to what the book is really up to, and what we are being treating to.

One explanation that crossed my mind was that this may have been an old intellegence officer's last work for his country. The book may really be a work of 'dis-informatsia' (Russian word) - a technique of spy organizations used to throw off opponents, or send them down blind alleys hunting for tresures that are not there. Intelligence organs sometimes plant false news articles, stories or books for such a purpose.

Another possiblity is that Corso may actually have written a book about his intellgence career and an account of his persceptive on the history he saw pass during his various assignments. Such a book is actually contained within The Day After Roswell. Perhaps when publishers showed no interest, some ingenious editor showed the way to literary fame and fortune. Corso's work may have then been rewritten to salt in the Roswell story, after paying Corso for his manuscript and the use of his name. Note that the copyright reads: "Rosewood Woods Productions" and not Philip J. Corso. Remember: "There is no such thing as corporate integrity."

I'm sure one of these more reasonable explanations has some merit in understanding this work other than just taking The Day After Roswell at face value --- BUT WAIT, what's that BRIGHT LIGHT OUTSIDE MY WINDOW IN THE NIGHT SKY!

In a nutshell, an army Colonel should know that the Soviets introduced the "Backfire" bomber in 1970, not 1957. I doubt Pope Pius would request an audience with a lowly army officer, and for the same reason his claims of working with postwar government in Italy are not entirely plausible. And if the cover-up has been succesfully hidden from U.S. presidents from Eisenhower on, how would Reagan have known about it when supposedly negotiating with Gorbachev for the SDI? Laser technology is not an alien invention, but has been around (in theory) since Tesla, read about him. Nor is night vision, in use since World War II by the Germans on sniper rifles. If the aliens had stealth technology, how were we able to pick them up on primitive 50's era radar? How were we able to shoot down a UFO capable of incredible speeds with a Vietnam era missile? How could we even have achieved a radar lock if they had stealth? If most of the moon has been mapped, probed, or seen from the Earth, where is the alien base? To what end does buzzing our spacecraft serve? Why have none of our space shuttle astronauts reported anything? Why are they interested in our technology if theirs is supposedly superior? If the aliens are mindless automotons, how can they so intelligently communicate their emotions? If they are automotons, who's pulling the strings? Does the story of an alien, crashed at Roswell, lying there for hours, gasping for air, and then suddenly getting up and running away from soldiers make sense to you? Why would the alien communicate its pain and suffering only to the observers (who later told the story, how convienient) and not to the actual MPs who were carting it away on a stretcher, which would make more sense? I don't discount the idea of aliens simply because I don't want to believe it but this book is definatly the result of Birnes' imagination coupled with a sprinkling of some of the events (non-alien) that happened in Corso's life. He dies a year later, and even his family says there are inaccuracies in this book. End result - very boring fiction.