Desmond Leslie and Michael Hesemann in Italy, 1997. (image credit:Paola Harris)

Desmond Leslie

World War II British RAF Spitfire Pilot and aristocrat, Sir Desmond Leslie, co-author of The Flying Saucers Have Landed with famous contactee George Adamski, and German anthropologist Michael Hesemann

The animated conversation that followed came to focus on the possibility that the Nazis actually built disc-shaped flying objects (or flying saucers) in the 1930’s or early 40’s, as many do believe. Here’s the never before released full transcript of the interesting dialogue between Hesemann and Leslie.

Michael Hesemann:  The real German flying saucers program -called V-7 Program – was originally conceived in 1938 by the German engineer Andreas Epp after he saw the first helicopter flying over the fields of the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany. Andreas Epp developed the project because he was worried about the danger of a collision of the helicopter blades with birds or trees. He therefore designed a jet-propelled aircraft with internal blades, a capsule in the center, and wheels turning around with a crown-shaped dome to protect the wheels.

Epp suggested this project to Ernst Udet, general of the German Aviation Ministry and Udet informed Hermann Göring [Chief of the Luftwaffe, President of the Reichstag, and designated successor to Hitler]. Fascinated by the project, Göring presented it to Adolf Hitler. The “Fuhrer” however did show any interest and refused to finance it, and Göring then decided to take the project under his sole responsibility and the auspice of the Luftwaffe. He called three engineers, who already had military security clearance, Rudolf Schriever, Heinrich  Richard Miethe and Otto Habermohl.

German engineer Andreas Epp in 1997.

For further development they used the Skoda factory in Prag, in the Nazi occupied Bohemia. There they built the craft, and in 1944 the first test flights were conducted.
The problem was that the airplane actually never flew in a satisfactory manner, nor was possible to maneuver and that is why it never entered the production line. Nevertheless, Göring promised Hitler that the project that he led to his attention, was the V-7 weapon, but it never worked.

After World War II, the three engineers were unemployed and had heard about Operation Paperclip [the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) program used to recruit the scientists of Nazi Germany for employment by the United  States] and thought to do a good job with the Americans. At that point, they told the media that a prototype was flying with an acceleration of 1.400 km/h (870 mi): a spectacular performance.

The Americans then became interested and invited Schriever and Miethe – Habermohl had disappeared, maybe captured by the Russians as a POW. The AVRO company financed the project and built the so-called AVRO disc, very similar to the initial design. They obtained the same discouraging results as before, handling problems were insurmountable.  Andreas Epp is still alive [Epp actually died in 1997, shortly after this interview.] I He was an engineer and never was a member of the Nazi Party.

Maurizio Baiata: Is it correct to say that Epp was both, an engineer and a pilot?

German engineer Andreas Epp at work on the model of the Omega Diskus in the 1960's.

M.H.: Yes, but he was never a Nazi and he never had a “political” clearance. That’s why he was never commissioned any project.  He is still looking for sponsors for his idea of a disc shaped aircraft with a jet engine, propellers and internal rotation, but cannot find anyone as the project is not very promising.

M.B.: When did the Americans and Russians discover that the Germans were building and had an arsenal of disc-shaped objects?

Desmond Leslie: I know about a woman who saw the arsenal and took aerial reconnaissance photographs. They analyzed the photos and thought it was a small air base. Churchill spoke about this publicly. After a heated discussion on this, through espionage they later confirmed the installation was there and ordered its elimination. Unfortunately, they missed it by two miles and killed all the poor slaves who worked there.  The Americans flew over it and destroyed a large part of it. In 1943 we knew everything on the subject and we used to call it the “Rocket Run.” Normally, our flight missions were launched every afternoon and we bombed the places where they were building the V-1. The B-25 Mitchell bombers hit the buildings and we were ensuring protection from above.

M.B.: From your aircraft were you able to spot the Nazi installations?

D.L.:  No, we were just escorting the bombers, flew right over and then attack the targets missed by the bombers.

M.B.: They were surface installations?

D.L.: No, they were built in concrete defenses, along the coast of France. Churchill was very concerned that the V-1, able to carry two tons of explosives, could be armed with nuclear bombs. The V-1s hit London for twenty consecutive days. Terrified people were rushing to the shelters every time they heard the noise of the missiles.  
One night I was invited to a very pleasant and elegant dinner at the Grand Duke of Austria mansion. Suddenly the noise came and we dove under the table. Then we heard the crash, we were all terrified, and the Grand Duke rose from the table saying, as a true gentleman: “I must say: if we hear the sound, we are safe.”  Sure the bombs were scary. However, as they go faster than sound, if the first thing you felt was the crash that meant that you survived.

M.B.: I think that the allied secret services would have known that the Germans were building new deadly weapons in secret bases.

D.L.: Well, as you know, we were able to capture a V-1. The French helped us, they arrived in a field and found one that had landed on a wet ground. Despite the conditions we managed to have it take off before the Germans arrived. It was brought to a warehouse in England. The engine was very simple, it looked like an electric fan, it had thousands of small dots in spirals -like a jet- and it was a simple and well made device.

M.H.: Desmond, you are fully aware of the situation. The war was almost at its end and Hitler was desperate and wanted to introduce everything they were building and have it applied as an instrument of war, without even testing it. Half of the V-2 went down and destroyed villages in Germany and killed German citizens. However, he did not wait to solve these errors. He used everything he had, and if he would have had a disc shaped anti-gravity aircraft he would certainly have attacked the British pilots with it. But he did not have it. In the meantime, Foo Fighters [from the French term “feu”, fire, used to describe the mysterious lights appearing in the skies during World War II] were observed by the German and the Allied pilots, but they have never attacked anyone.

M.B.: We know, however, that in the 70’s, a plethora of paper documents on the Nazi flying discs started to appear in the German UFO community.

Desmond Leslie (left) with George Adamski.

M.H.: They came from the Tempelhof Society, which claimed to be descendants of the New Templars, a lodge founded by the Austrian Lanz von Liebenfels in the late 19th century. At the end of the 70’s the Austrian Journal of the Tempelhofgesellschaft published a document which allegedly proved, so to speak, that the George Adamski flying saucer was actually a German construction, called “Haunebu”. 
But what does it mean, “Haunebu”, where does the name come from? In 1953 a German protestant preacher, Jürgen Spanuth, went to Egypt and he visited the Temple of Medinet Habu where he saw the depiction of the Battle against the “Peoples of the Sea”, who came from a country called Haunebu and attacked Egypt. This is a real event that happened at the time of Ramses III.  This people attacked Egypt and later, after being defeated by Ramses III, settled in the area of Gaza and they became the Philistines of the Bible. Their provenance from a Greek island is provable because its’ ceramics is identical to that of Greek and Aegean cultures of that period, the 12th century BC.

Anyway, Spanuth noticed that some of them had helmets with horns on their head like those falsely attributed to the Vikings 2,000 years later. He thought then they could be German tribes of the past. Haunebu actually means “islands in the north (of Egypt)” and is a good description of the Greek islands since they were right north of Egypt. But Spanuth, the deluded German protestant preacher, believed this to be the Egyptian name for the Frisian Islands in the North Sea! He thought that the story told at the walls of the Medinet Habu temple was actually the true story of Atlantis and Atlantis was Helgoland, one of the German islands in the North Sea!

Of course the idea of Spanuth was absurd, but it became popular in Germany. The German right wing, the Neo-Nazis, were fascinated by his theory and considered it an evidence of the superiority of the Teutonic German culture. His book was published by a Neo-Nazi publishing house. But his claim that Haunebu is the Egyptian term for ancient Germany became only popular in the late ‘50s among the right wing neo Nazi activists, not any time before. Indeed Spanuth only visited Egypt and had this idea in the early 1950s, after WW2. Therefore we can be sure that nobody in the Germany of the Third  Reich knew the word Haunebu, nor thought to connect it to the German pre-history. This is why when the Haunebu documents surfaced, we immediately knew they were fakes. No Nazi Engineer of the Third Reich would have had any reason to call a German Nazi weapon project Haunebu, since this term at that time was only known among Egyptologist, meant Greek islands and therefore had no relevance to the Nazis. Only in the late 1950s, in Neo-Nazi circles, it received a new meaning, it suddenly became an Egyptian name for the German “Atlantis”.

Indeed, the “Haunebu-Disc” shown on this faked document is nothing more than the George Adamski saucer, copied from his book “Inside the Spaceship”. And suddenly the Neo-Nazis claimed that Adamski photographed a German flying saucer. Indeed, they blamed Desmond Leslie, as Adamski’s co-author, for launching a disinformation campaign, claiming that “their” German Nazi disc was indeed an extraterrestrial craft. Since Desmond is the grandson of Winston Churchill and George Adamski was a Polish immigrant (some say he was a Jew but I do not think he was) this is in their eyes evidence enough for a conspiracy.

D. L. (joking): Yes, we said that to irritate them.

M. H.: And you think that the SS were kind enough to meet George Adamski and invite him for a ride? Sure, the SS were real nice to everyone, especially to the Polish people! No, honestly, this claim is too ridiculous!

M.B.: Was there any researcher familiar with the SS documents?

M.H.: No, no serious researcher was actually involved.

D.L.: What most irritates me is that at the end it eventually turned out to be a well-made exposure of the five cosmic laws taken from the White Lodge, a very secret association to which I belonged, and they printed them. They were good laws, Law of Peace, Control, Balance et cetera, but they claimed that they were their own laws.

M.H.: I asked a criminologist to check if the typewriter of these documents was a machine of the ‘40s, since that’s the first thing to check: If the only thing you have is a photocopy of a document, you start with the typewriter. The typewriter turned out to be a model called “Gabriele”, built by the German typewriter manufacturer “Triumph Adler”, in ca. 1972 – and the drawing reproduced on the document was actually taken from the book “Space Gravity and the Flying Saucers” written by Leonard Cramp.

D.L.: You are referring to the drawings of the Haunebu.

M.B.: But I’ve seen them, I have seen many drawings of different schemes and projects of the Nazi discs with the SS symbol.

D.L.:  Yes, everyone can find them easily.

M.H.:  Of course, anyone with knowledge of engineering can make a design of any project and can draw one.

D.L.: They were wonderful drawings. My brother was prisoner in a concentration camp. The prisoners were making German stamps from potatoes. You can make a copy of a document from potatoes.  Prisoners who wanted to escape did use these false documents.

M. H.: Anyone can falsify a document.

D.L.: Ohh… that video documentary, had such a stupid narrator’s voice and the music so horrible, it seemed made by space maniacs.

M.B: I know this video, “UFO’s Secret of the Third Reich” as I know very well Gerd Burde, the producer. I met him in Cannes at the 1992 MIP TV market and I wonder if he really knew what he was doing at that time.

Video cover to the documentary "UFO Secrets of the Third Reich".

M.H.: Gerd Burde is one of the most deluded persons I have ever known. He claimed to be an alien from the constellation of Antares and now says he is the reincarnated prophet Eliah and he organizes workshops for a mere $2000 for a two days admission. He has published a series of books where he claims to be the Prophet Eliah and a series of videos about Atlantis.

D.L.: I’d call him a liar.

M.H.: His behavior is intentional.

D.L.: There are so many people like him in America.

M.B.: I think he is one of a kind and a type of person that surely you do not find in the United States.

M.H.: He moved to Tasmania and I know he is there now.

D.L.: I sincerely hope he stays there forever.

M.B.: Let’s talk about the video and its contents.

D.L.: False.

M.H.: The photos of the Nazi discs are a ridiculous hoax, because the object is blurred when the clouds in the background are in focus – it must be a model close to the camera. I did not know the concept of the documentary, I never said that the Haunebu were real: I only talked with Burde about the V-7 project and that this happened. I still do not know who put the photos in that film.

M.B.: Desmond, what is your opinion about this video?

D.L.: It’s a fake: They took the George Adamski’s flying saucer and they attributed it to the Germans and created a video with bad ear piercing music, and a disgusting narration.

M.H.: It’s a Nazi propaganda film.

D.L.: Yes, but a very bad propaganda and half of the book is anti-Semitic propaganda. It is all about the Rothschild-Jewish world conspiracy?

M.H.: They thought that the God of Israel was a negative extraterrestrial who took the Jews as leaders to take control of the planet. And Adolf Hitler was the messiah who would rid the world of the Jewish conspiracy. The book is written by a young fanatic, calling himself Jan van Helsing, certainly it was inspired by the story of Dracula. The book was banned by the German government because it contained anti-Semitic and Nazi propaganda, both prohibited in our country.

D.L.: Was this part of a secret government strategy? And why they did not have it work better? I really think it was an international conspiracy.

M.H.: Maybe.

D.L.: Their mission is to continuously ignite new wars.

M.H.:
 Obviously…

D.L.: For example, the Vietnam War was one of the weakest wars, organized just to test on new weapons.

M.B.: I once asked Colonel Corso [who was traveling with us but in a different car] to give me his insight, since he was in the US Military Intelligence long enough. How could the US allow the Vietnam War to escalate, once they knew how difficult the Korean War had been and how insidious the Far East scenario was. It was clear that the escalation would lead to a complete downfall and to thousands and thousands of US casualties. Corso replied: “I remember one day, I participated in a meeting at the Pentagon in Washington with General Troudeau. The point you are making was discussed during the briefing. A general stated that our expected casualty number exceeded 50,000. A huge and useless death toll for us, for a generation of young units. Everything was planned. And it was systematic: the elimination of youth.”

Leslie with Colonel Corso in Rome. (image credit: Paola Harris)

D.L.: America has been punished enough, by the drug culture. Many Vietnam veterans came back as drug addicts.

The tape recording ended here. I would again have opportunities to talk to Sir Desmond Leslie, during his visits in Italy. He was a hilariously, eccentric and incredibly intelligent person. Leslie dies in his house in Antibes, France in 2001 at the age of 79.

Corso in Rome, Italy in 1997. (image credit: Paola Harris)

Col. Corso, author of The Day After Roswell passed away 12 years ago today. It was around 8 p.m., in Rome the evening of July 17, 1998, when I received a frantic phone call from fellow journalist and friend Paola Harris. She was calling from Boulder, Colorado. Just few minutes before Paola had been informed of the death of Colonel Philip J. Corso. Stunned and shocked, I couldn’t say anything to comfort her. The next morning I was able to reach Philip Corso, Jr., who confirmed the sad news. It was the first time I ever spoke to Philip Jr. and he very kindly detailed the chain of events surrounding his father’s passing.

Colonel Philip J. Corso had suffered a heart attack in the morning of June 9, 1998. He was in his house in Port St. Lucie, Florida and his close relatives were with him. They decided to rush him to the best medical facility in the area, the Jupiter Medical Center, located less than fifty miles south from Port St Lucie. According to the Jupiter medical staff, the colonel arrived already in critical condition and thought there was no hope of Corso surviving such a massive heart failure. Philip Jr. was informed that there was nothing the family could do, and they should go home. So in their heart, they said goodbye to the old man and returned home. But that same afternoon, the hospital called to notify the family that an unexpected and miraculous improvement had occurred! The doctors had no explanation for it, a nurse found Corso sitting in his bed. He felt perfectly well and he wanted to be discharged immediately, but they kept him there for three days, before he was sent back home in Port St. Lucie. All the family was in awe witnessing his spectacular recovery! Philip Jr. said “I spent every possible moment with dad.  Back home, for few days we managed to keep him isolated from any contact with the outside, even by phone.”  He disagreed all the time and he insisted he felt fine and wanted to return to work. Philip Jr. said “so, we started to put in place his unpublished notes and a pile of documents. You know, there’s plenty of interesting material there. In fact the last three weeks have been very productive. Dad had way more to say.”

Corso in front of the Roman landscape in 1997. (image credit: Paola Harris)

But then the fatal Wednesday, July 15th arrived. Colonel Corso had risen early, looking happy and claiming to feel great. Then, around 9:00 a.m., the grandchildren heard him moaning. He was struck by a second heart attack. Corso was urgently rushed to a different hospital in Palm Beach, where his condition had gradually worsened. On the evening of July 16th the doctors then decided to move him again to the Jupiter Medical Center. Corso died during the transfer. None of his family was with him in the ambulance. He was announced dead upon arrival at 11:15 p.m. Corso’s funeral was held on Wednesday, July 22, 1998, in a military cemetery near Orlando, Florida. Because he was a veteran, the last salute to Philip J. Corso was accompanied by honor guards and the firing of volley shots.

After his father’s death, Philip Jr. noted that in full compliance of his father’s will, the unpublished manuscripts and other precious UFO information would have to be made available in due time, both to researchers and to the public at large. That was what had kept him alive. As Philip Jr. stated, “Now the burden of this responsibility rests on my shoulders. My father informed me of his involvement with the Roswell files only after General Trudeau passed away. Until then he had never said a word to anyone. Then he began to tell us and wanted us all in the family to know, even my sons. My father left us, saying that some people should take care of the material. Among these are you in Italy.”

From left: Actress Ursula Andress, Col. Corso, Dimitri Hamlin, Paola Harris. (image credit: Paola Harris)

My last phone conversation with Colonel Corso occurred during the days he was recovering at home after the first heart attack. His voice sounded to me crystal clear. “Maurizio, you have to work to bring out the truth. We need to start from scratch, we have to have a new science, nothing is more important than this. Try to do everything possible.” I then asked him about his sensational recovery. Corso answered: “My recovery? I’ve got it to their intervention. I was in my hospital bed. At any moment I knew I could die. In my mind I was bright, but I suddenly felt like a hand pressure on my chest and a voice saying to me ‘Don’t be afraid, everything is fine now. We have replaced your heart, and now it will work fine again.’ Here, Maurizio, I’ll stay with you much longer. I promise.” So it was not.

When The Day After Roswell was published, the more conservative and mainstream members of the American UFO community, attacked Corso. Researchers and scientists such as Pflock, Friedman, Hopkins, Jeffries and Randle, just to name a few, criticized many of Corso statements. Unfortunately, Corso died too early to have the opportunity to rebut such allegations. However, during our last phone conversation the colonel mentioned to me two generals who knew of the Roswell file besides General Arthur Trudeau. In 1998 one of them was still alive and could had come forward. But he was still in a prestigious position within Martin Marietta, a major American aerospace industry. “Our agreement was not to speak until our consciousness had ordered us to do it. My moment came when Trudeau died. There is still much to say and to do for the good of future generations.”

More Open Minds stories on Col. Corso:

Colonel claims he briefed Bobby Kennedy on UFOs

Dawn of a New Age – The Philip Corso manuscript

The Philip Corso Legacy

Left: Mariastella Gelmini, Italian Minister of Education Right: Silvio Berlusconi, Italian Prime Minister (Credit: Forza Italia)

On June 22^nd, 2010, for the first time in the history of the Italian educational system, UFOs and extraterrestrials became the topic of an essay requirement for hundreds of thousands students of Italy, asked to express their thoughts on this controversial subject.

The “Maturity Exam” (also known as “Esame di Stato”, State Exam) is the final goal of every student, who wants to continue to study and enter the university world. The Maturity diploma is equivalent to the ACTs or SATs in the U.S., where the students have to pass written and oral tests. The first written exam (“Italian test”) pertains to humanistic culture and the second pertains to scientific culture. The Italian written test is identical nation-wide, regardless of the type of school the student had attended.

Usually, among the humanistic topics proposed by the Italian Educators, the test requires the students to choose from literary, sociological, historical and current life subjects. Last Tuesday 500,694 young candidates were utterly surprised to see the humanistic test dedicated to the subject of extraterrestrial life and UFOs. The test allowed students to choose which topic they wanted to write about among five choices. Each topic begins with introductory references for the students to use to help guide them on their topic.

Four of them considered the possibility of life in the Cosmos, the philosophical implications of such existence and the consequences of a possible Alien/Human contact. These four introductory references were writings of American science historian and astrobiologist Steven J. Dick, great German philosopher Immanuel Kant, and contemporary famous scientists, Stephen Hawking and Paul Davies. British astrophysicist, Hawking, focused on the importance of intelligence and of tolerance. He argues that an intelligent human being has to accept the idea of the existence of many different intelligences. Arizona based astrophysicist, Davies, sees the search for extraterrestrial intelligence as a fundamental challenge for our minds and our consciousness.

Remarkably, the fifth choice referred to UFOs, its introduction was written by two experts, scientific journalist Pippo Battaglia, well known author and documentary writer and Walter Ferreri, of the Turin Astronomic Observatory also a science writer. Here is the Battaglia and Ferreri text chosen by the Ministry of Public Education to direct the Italian students:

Italian students taking the exam (Credit: blogosfere.it).

Subject: Are We Alone?

“UFOs: uninvited guests? In the past years, as a result of public pressure, several studies were conducted primarily by the U.S Air Force to establish the nature of the UFO phenomenon… At the present state of our knowledge, the percentage of the alleged sightings found unexplainable is very low, around 1.5 to 2%. This small percentage could be attributed largely to suggestions and visions, which certainly exist… There are numerous hypotheses that may explain the nature of UFOs. For example, one hypothesis suggests that the origin of a number of sightings is in fact little known geophysical phenomena, another suggests secret experimental aircraft, yet the extraterrestrial origin is not completely excluded. The truth is that we cannot explain it with rationality and knowledge… Apparently, logic and scientific method do not seem effective in the study of UFOs for which any explanation is unsatisfactory and/or too risky”.

According to Televideo (RAI News on-line service) an unexpected 19%, almost one out of five of this young population, has chosen the UFO topic. What could be more refreshing when you are 20 and full of hope than to have a Maturity test about UFOs and life in the Universe. This is unprecedented for the Italian educational system and probably is still unseen worldwide.

Even though the Italian and European educational systems are still lacking when it comes to the UFO/ET life question as part of normal curriculum, something is changing and this initiative will certainly help to open and grow thousands of young minds.

What a difference from forty years ago when it was my turn to deal with the infamous and scary Italian Maturity test. I remember the topic I had to cover, It was the fascinating life of Ugo Foscolo, 18th century revolutionary, writer and poet, whose dark style I actually loved. My essay barely passed the scrutiny of the judging commission. I narrowly made it to university afterwards, although I soon quit. Rock Music and journalism were calling me.

Between 1961 and 1963 Corso was at the Pentagon as special assistant to Lt. General Arthur Trudeau, who headed Army Research and Development. Corso was responsible for the newly established Foreign Technology Desk. Foreign technology of this world and out of this world… as Corso used to say.

Through his own words in this exclusive interview, Corso reveals that the information on UFOs that his assignment covered was forwarded to the highest level of the American Government at the time, directly to the U.S. Attorney General, Robert Kennedy.

Quote from Corso’s interview:

“I discussed this very thoroughly with Bobby Kennedy, the attorney general, the President’s brother… He knew about the flying saucers, I talked to him about it. I used to meet him when he was attorney general right in his office… What went to Bobby went to the President also.”

Read more about Bobby Kennedy and UFOs here.

Mario Borghezio (Credit: European Parliament)

An Italian Member of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, has submitted a request to the highest legislative body within the European Union for full disclosure of classified UFO documents by the 27 nation governments that belong to the EU. The written declaration presented on June 14^th was sponsored by Mario Borghezio, leader of the Italian Northern League party, a controversial politician due to his extreme right-wing positions. From a political standpoint, the core of the declaration (code # 0057/2010) is to create a “European commission on UFOs,” but actually the basis of the request is that the 27 governments who are members of the EU (UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland, etc.) have to open their classified archives and release all documents relating to UFOs. The title of the document submitted by Borghezio is: “Written Declaration pursuant to Rule 123 of the Rules of Procedure on the declassification of documentation on UFOs.” This is the full text of the declaration:

The European Parliament,

–   having regard to Articles 4, 179, 180 and 189 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union,

–   having regard to Rule 123 of its Rules of Procedure,

A. whereas in 1978 the 33rd General Assembly of the United Nations formally recognised UFOs as a valid issue,

B. whereas in 1993 a resolution drafted by the Italian physicist Tullio Regge and seeking to extend to European level the investigative remit of what was then the only government body looking into UFOs (the SEPRA, which has now become the GEIPAN) was tabled in Parliament,

C. whereas many members of the scientific community have been looking into the issue of UFOs and have denounced the systematic covering-up of information on the subject,

D. whereas a study of the material collected by the governments of all the Member States would have major scientific and technological spinoffs,

1.  Considers it essential to set up a scientific centre for the analysis and dissemination of the scientific data gathered to date by various European bodies and governments;

2.  Calls for public archives on UFOs to be opened up and for records to be declassified by the Member States, thus providing the public and the mass media with access to the full range of documentation on the subject;

3.  Instructs its President to forward this declaration, together with the names of the signatories, to the Council, the Commission and the governments of the Member States.

European Parliament's Louise Weiss building in Strasbourg, France.

This is not the first time that the UFO subject has been officially discussed by the European Parliament, although similar initiatives in the past were eventually defeated. In early 1990, in view of the massive UFO wave then taking place in Belgium, the Belgian European deputy Elio Di Rupo (a Socialist, son of Italian immigrants) proposed a motion to set up a “European UFO Observation Center” under the Committee on Energy, Research and Technology (CERT). Despite Di Rupo’s political relevance– he is one of Belgium’s most respected politicians–his initiative failed. However, the matter was eventually revived by another Eurodeputy, Prof. Tullio Regge, an Italian member of the European Parliament with a Ph.D. in physics, who released a “Draft Report” on August 17, 1993.

The Regge report, as it came to be known, was a fairly long document that discussed a number of interesting issues, including “Military secrets; Alien civilizations; Supertechnologies,”; etc. Regge sought the advice of Jean-Jacques Velasco, who was then the head of SEPRA (the French Space Agency UFO department who has since been renamed GEIPAN) and basically recommended that SEPRA be expanded to include all members of the European Community. Unfortunately, the European Parliament did not have the necessary votes to implement and fund Prof. Regge’s recommendations, and so the matter was dropped until Mario Borghezio’s recent “Written Declaration.”

Borghezio's written declaration on the declassification of documentation on UFOs page 1.

Borghezio's written declaration on the declassification of documentation on UFOs page 2.

Click here to go the official webpage of the European Parliament to download the document in PDF format.

St. Peter's Basilica

Was Rome visited by Unidentified Flying Objects? Definitely, and once again the sightings in the skies over Vatican City stirred newspaper headlines and numerous TV news reports in Italy. According to recent reports, it seems that a UFO flap is taking place in Rome and that strange objects were also recorded on camera several times. The most important one is the footage of an odd luminous formation taken by three security guards stationed in front of the residence of the U.S. ambassador to the Vatican (Holy See). These were qualified witnesses since they are artillerymen, trained experts in air surveillance.

It was at 4 am in the night of June 7^th when three men belonging to the 17° antiaircraft Regiment at the “Santa Barbara” station in Sabaudia (Latina province), spotted three spherical bright objects hovering in the sky above St. Peter’s dome in the Vatican, right in the center of Rome. They promptly filmed the unexpected nocturnal air show with a cell phone.

From their point of observation in the Roman Monteverde area (overlooked by the Gianicolo hill), they immediately stopped a police patrol. Well trained in spotting aircraft, the artillerymen excluded the possibility of a commercial plane, a jet fighter or a balloon. They described the object’s swift maneuvers, mentioning a “darting move toward the sky,” a “delta formation,” and “luminous dots suspended at about three hundred feet above the ground.” They added that there is “no way a conventional airplane can do such things.” The UFO disappeared and reappeared for brief moments, with sudden changes of altitude before it darted westbound at a 40 degree angle. The police patrol took the report very seriously and the central police station in Rome was immediately alerted. The footage, more than a minute in length, was acquired by the Italian police, pending further investigations.

“Studio Aperto” anchorwoman Elena Guarnieri.

Thanks to the technical background of the witnesses, many TV networks took the news seriously. “Studio Aperto” (Mediaset, Italia Uno newscast) anchorwoman Elena Guarnieri introduced the segment saying: “We will show  you now an exclusive video footage of a UFO sighting in Rome, this video was filmed by three soldiers, take a look.” Staff journalist Paolo Capresi then describes the images: “They are three flying objects and they are floating in the air, they were filmed last night in the sky above Rome. The images were taken with a cell phone by three soldiers who were in service in front of the U.S. ambassador’s residence in the Vatican City (Holy See), Monteverde district, two steps from St. Peter’s Square, and were immediately handed over to the Carabinieri [police]. As you can see there are no objects around to use as reference points that can give us the exact distance and size of the UFOs. It seems that they are spherical in shape and they hover above the Vatican. They appear and disappear often changing altitude.”

The journalist concluded, almost ironically: “The soldiers who have filmed these objects are based in the antiaircraft division and are specialized in recognizing the flight path of aircraft. Since 1978 it’s the Air Force that is in charge of registering sightings (over Italy)”. Colonel Marco Picciau of the Italian Air Force specifies that “statistics of sightings reported before 2001 were 300, after 2001 we have a more precise statistic on 50, 55, sightings [every year]”.

You can see the full coverage by the Italia Uno network here:

The June 7^th sighting was preceded approximately eight hours before by another relevant sighting. As reported in the Roman newspaper “Il Messaggero”, “Just last Sunday [June 6], at 8 pm, many motorists traveling along the Via Aurelia and the A12 highway in the section between Civitavecchia and Santa Marinella, said they saw a very bright circular object flying across the sky.”

Il Messaggero newspaper article "A UFO in the sky of Rome - Reported by three military men", regarding the June 6th sighting.

In the just released second issue of Open Minds magazine, my colleague Antonio Huneeus wrote the cover story about the Vatican Extraterrestrial Connection, which includes a section about UFO sightings in Rome going all the way back to 214 B.C. The article describes in detail a famous report in 1954 when a formation of unidentified objects flew right on top of St. Peter’s square and made a St. Andrew’s cross for a few seconds. It seems that UFOs are still flying over the Roman airspace and particularly the area around Vatican City.

Click the image to get your copy of the Vatican issue of Open Minds Magazine.

Col. Corso speaking at a conference (credit: Baiata Collection)

“Dawn of a New Age” – the original notes of U.S. Army Colonel Philip J. Corso- are available through our website here. We can now get to the core of the classified activities and research on the Roswell files examined by Corso at the Pentagon between 1961 and 1963.

Philip J. Corso, Sr. died in July of 1998 at the age of 83. Thirteen years after his death, we will finally get to see his manuscript, which has never released in the US [the only foreign edition was published in Italy by Pendragon in 2003]. People interested in UFOs will be compelled to read this book, because too much of the information in the bestseller “The Day After Roswell” does not stand up to what Corso really wrote in his diary. Philip Corso Jr., a man devoted to fulfill his father’s legacy, described the manuscript in his lecture at the 2007 IUFOC in Laughlin.

“…“Dawn Of A New Age”, I had no intentions to put out this book. This one here [holding a book] is all in my dad’s original handwriting. Part of it is in typing and part of it is in handwriting. What it really [contains] is the original notes. The original notes without Hollywood involved is what the people really wanted. They don’t want it edited. But it reads like a textbook, in other words. It’s a manual…. Well, Dad went through “The Day After Roswell” and was yellow lining everything that he didn’t say and didn’t like. He got half way through it and quit because it was impossible. He had almost every page blacked out… This book [The Day After Roswell], my dad was really very upset about it… he did not proofread it.”

General Trudeau (credit: US Army)

Executing General Arthur Trudeau’s orders at the Pentagon, Corso handled technical data and some mysterious components derived from the alien craft that crashed in Roswell, New Mexico, in early July 1947. Corso had also seen medical reports of the autopsies performed on the bodies retrieved at the incident site.

According to Corso, they determined that the craft was a biological spaceship, functioning in conjunction with a crew of EBE’s (Extraterrestrial Biological Entities). They were biological robots created through advanced genetic engineering, clones designed to withstand the extreme conditions of space travel. These EBE’s were able to drive their starship through a particular neural interface, whereby they could connect with the craft, becoming an almost integrated part of it.

Corso says he was responsible for handing parcels of alien technology to several industrial contractors connected to the US military. Their development would lead to discoveries such as night vision devices, Laser, fiber optics, transistors, and more.

Would such a highly-decorated military figure lie so blatantly? This is hardly believable, especially considering the affidavit signed by Corso, arranged by the Citizens Against UFO Secrecy (CAUS), a few weeks before his death. Unfortunately, we don’t have a corroborative statement by anybody who knew what Corso was really doing in the early 60’s when he was head of the Foreign Technology Research and Development department for the Army at the Pentagon.

Drawing of Corso meeting an Extraterrestrial (credit: Baiata Collection)

On June 8, 1998 CAUS issued this press release:

“RETIRED ARMY COLONEL SWEARS UNDER OATH TO SEEING ALIEN BODIES AND AUTOPSY REPORTS

Attorney Peter A. Gersten, executive director of Citizens Against UFO Secrecy, Inc (CAUS), a non-profit Arizona activist organization dedicated to ending all secrecy surrounding this planet’s contact with an extraterrestrial intelligence, announced today that retired Army Colonel Philip J. Corso has sworn under oath to statements previously made in his best selling book ‘Day After Roswell.’

Gersten stated that Colonel Corso has provided CAUS, for use in its lawsuit against the Department of Army, with a sworn affidavit re-affirming previous statements that he saw alien bodies in July, 1947 and had the opportunity to read their autopsy reports in 1961.

This is the text of the Corso affidavit:

AFFIDAVIT

I, Col. Philip J. Corso, (Ret.) do hereby swear, under the penalties of perjury, that the following statements are true:

That at all times hereinafter mentioned, I was a member and officer of the defendant.

That during my tenure with the defendant I was a member of President Eisenhower’s National Security Council and former head of the Foreign Technology Desk at defendant’s Research & Development department.

That on or about July 6, 1947, while stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas, I personally observed a four-foot non-human creature with bizarre-looking four-fingered hands, thin legs and feet, and an oversized incandescent light bulb-shaped head. The eye sockets were oversized and almond shaped and pointed down to its tiny nose. The creature’s skull was overgrown to the point where all its facial features were arranged frontally, occupying only a small circle on the lower part of the head.

There were no eyebrows or any indications of facial hair. The creature had only a tiny flat slit for a mouth and it was completely closed, resembling more of a crease or indentation between the nose and the bottom of the chinless skull than a fully functioning orifice.

That in 1961, I came into possession of what I refer to as the ‘Roswell File.’ This file contained field reports, medical autopsy reports and technological debris from the crash an extraterrestrial vehicle in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947.

That I have personally read the medical autopsy reports which refer to the autopsy of the previously described creature that I saw in 1947 at Fort Riley, Kansas.

That said autopsy reports indicated the autopsy was performed at Walter Reed Hospital, which was under the authority of the defendant at the time of the autopsy.

That said autopsy report referred to the creature as an

‘extraterrestrial biological entity.’

Colonel Philip J. Corso (ret.)

Sworn before me

this day of ___ May, 1998.

From left: Yvonne Smith, James Courant, Maurizio Baiata, Col. Corso, Michael Lindemann (credit: Baiata Collection).

The manuscript of “Dawn of a New Age” is of essential importance in order to better know Philip James Corso and fully appreciate his fundamental contribution to the cause of truth. Not only for the Roswell incident, but for many very factual events narrated in his notes as he lived them. These are actual facts that do not appear in the over glamorized “The Day After Roswell”.

In closing, I’d like to quote a brief passage of a CNI News bulletin of July16, 1998. Announcing the death of Colonel Corso, was journalist and researcher Michael Lindemann: “Unpublished manuscripts and other UFO-related information left by Col. Corso will be protected and made available in due course to researchers and the public, Philip Jr. said. “This is what my father lived for,” he added.”

Col. Corso's original manuscript, titled "Dawn of a New Age".

As reported in “Dawn of a New Age,” in 1957 colonel Philip J. Corso had a face-to-face encounter and a telepathic conversation with an Extraterrestrial Biological Entity (EBE) while he was stationed at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. This is by far the most controversial of Corso’s many statements. Interestingly enough, this encounter was never mentioned in Corso’s bestseller, The Day After Roswell.

In order to evaluate the credibility of Corso’s alleged encounter, we had to first ascertain if Corso was really at the White Sands proving ground in 1957. We were able to assess Corso’s military career records through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) (see http://www.cufon.org/cufon/corso_da66.htm) and confirm that he was in fact a Battalion Commander from October 1957 to September 1958 in various Army Nike missiles battery installations. During this time, White Sands was the largest military base in the United States and the nerve center of the Southwestern defense system.

Corso refers to the alleged encounter in his diary as occurring one hot day in late summer of 1957 while he was inspecting the radar station connected to the White Sands range launching ramps. Corso was informed that an unknown blip had appeared on the radar screen. The unit followed the radar object’s track until it suddenly vanished from the screen. Theoretically, if one excludes a hyper/space jump, the reason for the disappearance could be either a crash impact or a crash landing. That’s exactly what Corso thought occurred and he quickly figured out the coordinates of the possible incident location in the high New Mexico desert.

In the original manuscript of “Dawn of a New Age,” Corso mentions the event several times at random, giving the reader the impression that the episode had a fundamental importance in his life.

Maurizio Baiata (left) receiving documents from Colonel Corso (right).

In a chapter entitled “Nine Clearances Above Top Secret” [page 27] we can read, “During my military career at one time or another, I counted nine clearances above Top Secret granted to me… Twice while I was in command of missile units, the radar picked up and locked on objects traveling and accelerating over 3000 mph once in New Mexico 1957 and once in Germany in 1958. On both occasions, I was instructed to destroy the tape recordings and forget the incidents. However, I did not destroy the 1957 tape”.

On page 156, Corso writes, “… Red Canyon is part of White Sands, and south of Los Alamos. The crash was only a few miles from my command post. I was the Senior Commander and made all military decisions. Red Canyon was in the desert 140 miles from Ft. Bliss and 100 miles from Roswell.”

Corso finally describes the event in full details in the chapter “A New World if You can Take It” on page 159. Having calculated the trajectory and the point of impact, Corso flew over the area on a small military plane with a young lieutenant pilot. When they reached the site they saw “a shiny saucer shaped object on the ground,” that Corso interpreted as a missile booster.

Two days later, Corso decided to go back to the same site, this time driving alone in his jeep.

Col. Corso at his desk in the Pentagon in the 60's.

The encounter happened in a cave in an abandoned gold mine out in the desert, only a few miles from the range area. Corso perceived a strange presence at the bottom of the cave. There was a humanoid figure that appeared transparent in the dark. Corso felt his mind was connected to that being’s mind. The core of the telepathic connection was reached when the being asked him, “Will you give me 10 minutes, radar free, after green time?” (Green time is a military term for a launch time window.)

Being commanding officer of the radar station, Corso was in power to ask his men to block the radar/missile system and to allow the takeoff of the alien’s flying object that landed in the desert. Corso communicated back to the EBE: “Ten minutes could be an eternity, what do you offer?” The being replied, “A new world if you can take it.”

Without hesitation, Corso left the cave, walked to the jeep and called range headquarters by radio, asking them to make sure that after the “green time” procedure the radars were put in hold for 10 minutes. The radar unit promptly executed the order. The radars must have cleared the way for the UFO to take off, because when Corso arrived at the range, Captain Williams reported that their D-battery locked on for a minute on an object 50 miles out, traveling 3000 mph.

Now, if a UFO was plotted by the White Sands radars, the matter had to be classified top secret and it had to be handled accordingly. Corso had the highest security clearance and he decided to inspect the incident unaccompanied. His taking the responsibility to act alone corresponded with the security procedure under the circumstances.

In the absence of any confirmation by other witnesses, anyone can object and reject Corso’s account. However, if what Corso is claiming is truthful, even 53 years ago flying saucers were not invulnerable at all—at least at close range—once detected by radar. They could malfunction and they could crash.

Access Corso’s full manuscript, “Dawn of a New Age,” here.

According to many newscasts, the UFO presence has been recorded in the images coming from the area of the volcano. In one video a clear UFO is visible just in the core of the explosions and in the midst of the dark grey clouds.

What you can see in the following YouTube video is incredible:

Michael Schratt, Open Minds Aerospace Historian, analyzed the images and provided the following commentary analysis:

Recent video footage of anomalous objects seen in the vicinity of the Iceland Volcanic ash cloud have been explained as a “flock of birds”, or an experimental aircraft.  Both of these theories lack scientific evidence, and appear to be just another attempt by the main stream media to avoid dealing with “uncomfortable issues”. The explanation of birds seen near the immediate area of the volcanic ash cloud is highly unlikely for two reasons: #1, it’s well known that animals have an acute sense of awareness with respect to natural phenomena (reference earthquakes). Therefore, video footage of a “flock of birds” near the ash cloud days AFTER the original eruption defies logical reasoning. Any birds in the area would have departed hours PRIOR to the first blast. #2, any living creatures near the ash cloud would have been exposed to extreme levels of high heat which would certainly prove to be fatal.

Figure 1: A-10 turbine blades.

The explanation of “experimental aircraft” also fails to address two fundamental issues: #1, any aircraft using turbo-jets, or turbo-fan engines for propulsion run the risk of getting into what is known as a “flameout” condition. This can happen to jet aircraft when the fuel/air mixture entering the combustion chamber is drastically reduced or starved. In this emergency condition, the engine can shut down completely causing a catastrophic failure, and loss of both the aircraft and crew. #2, any aircraft entering a volcanic ash cloud runs the risk of extreme damage to the jet engine turbine blades (see turbine blades of the A-10 in figure 1).

During a flight in 2000, a specially configured NASA DC-8-72 aircraft (see figure 2) inadvertently flew into a volcanic ash cloud. Upon further examination by mechanics, the aircraft clearly suffered massive degradation to the leading edge of the turbine blades (see figure 3). Per NASA technical report TM-2003-212030, the amount of damages to the aircraft by flying into a volcanic ash cloud totaled $3.2 million. Of course any classified experimental aircraft using electro-gravitics or a magneto-hydrodynamic propulsion system would not necessarily need to rely on conventional aerodynamics for lift. However, risking an American “Silver Bullet” in an unknown environment which could compromise the program seems highly unlikely.

Figure 2: NASA DC-8-72 aircraft.

Figure 3: Damage to turbine blades.

Antonio Urzi speaking in Mexico in March 2010.

Antonio Urzi’s ET contact case is well known within the UFO international community. Still highly debated in Italy, the case stands uniquely in the whole history of ufology. In fact, there is no memory of anybody that has produced more than 2,500 video recordings of UFO sightings like Antonio Urzi has done since he began to talk about his experiences at the end of the nineties. Antonio, originally from Livorno and now 37, and his wife Simona live in Cinisello Balsamo, a small town bordering the north of Milan, in the region of Lombardy. Located a few miles off the metropolitan center and densely populated, Cinisello Balsamo is an industrial and residential area, punctuated by high buildings, crowded condominiums and some sparse green in a lot of cold cement.

Despite these uncanny conditions, almost every day Antonio has been able to capture hundreds of images of UFO’s, shooting with his video camera from a small dormer window in a top floor condo. Maneuvering just above his head either at far or close distance, the anomalous objects apparently are willing to show up to him in many spectacular ways, patterns, and shapes. Antonio’s UFOs span from singular balls of light to couples and numerous spherical luminous objects in swarms (in Spanish “flotillas”, small fleets), from structured metallic discs pivoting and standing still in the air to dome shaped crafts silently hovering, rotating and shining till they disappear to the naked eye.

I met Antonio and Simona more than ten years ago during a conference in the city of Viareggio, a hot spot for American and German tourists on the sunny Tirreno coast. I have reason to believe that I was one the first ufologist they wanted to approach to disclose their story. Sincerely, I was stunned. The couple looked to me sincerely willing to understand what was happening to them, and why. I did not have an answer then, I don’t have it now, despite my efforts. I followed the case closely for about five years and after a very long video interview that the couple gave to me in 2005, I finally reached the conclusion that the case was genuine. My opinion was mainly supported by the positive results of the video analysis conducted by the British researcher Andrew Fry to whom I sent a dvd copy of some original videos shot by Antonio. In the last five years I had no more chance to personally investigate a case that in the meantime was becoming very popular in Italy. With such a massive public exposure obviously Urzi obtained an unprecedented visibility and lots of criticism too.

Any serious researcher knows that a selective factor in this field of study is the “strangeness coefficient” of a case, the highest it is the more is worthy any effort to ascertain its authenticity. The great oddity of the Urzi affair is evident. Too many videos, one can say, and too good to be true, one can argue. However, in several instances, the sighting and Antonio’s ability to film the event occurred in the presence of other witnesses, including professional camera operators of the Italian most important TV networks RAI and Mediaset. What is really noticeable is that very often wherever Antonio goes to participate to a UFO conference, strange flying objects do appear in the sky in the same time. And this has happened not only in Italy, but in many other locations around the world. The experience continues to repeat itself. All of a sudden, while the Urzis and friends are walking the streets, Antonio points his finger to the sky and the evidence of what he is seeing is often recorded by other people’s cameras. This has happened in February 2009 during the International UFO Congress in Laughlin, Nevada, reoccurred during the Istanbul New Age and UFO Conference in June 2009 and it happened again during the Cumbre Mundial OVNI held in Mexico City on March 19-21, 2010. This last time, witnesses to the sightings in the Mexican capital with Antonio and Simona, where also Open Minds editors Antonio Huneeus and Alejandro Rojas, and fellow Italian-American journalist Paola Harris. To their eyes, it was indisputable that the bright luminous objects whose presence Urzi first spotted and then recorded with his camera, were really there.

Antonio Urzi with his wife, Simona Sibilla.

Antonio sightings are continuous, constantly increasing in number and frequency and witnessed also by dozens of people in such occasions as large international UFO conferences. It is understandable therefore that Antonio had become a worldwide sensation.

Antonio and Simona have many detractors, however, especially in Italy where their case was presented several times in popular TV shows, viciously attacked and in a couple of cases. Some detractors and debunkers are disputing the truthfulness of his experiences. Nonetheless, while the scrutiny over Antonio Urzi’s images has to continue until the case is proven one way or the other, it seems that he is a genuine participant inf an ET contact case, supported by miles of images.

His position also, is pretty clear. He feels the urge to get his camera, which every day he aims to the sky. Then he just waits patiently and they appear, as if attracted by a powerful human catalyst.