Credit: New Mexico Tourism/Dan Monaghan

SITES

Roswell, New Mexico, USA
In the summer of 1947, a UFO allegedly crashed northwest of Roswell, NM. Since then, the name “Roswell” has become analogous to the term “UFO,” and the city has embraced the attention from the incident. The city of Roswell hosts an annual UFO festival that draws thousands of people every year. There are a variety of UFO shops in the city, and even a UFO museum to entertain visitors.

Shag Harbour, Nova Scotia, Canada
An investigation was conducted in October of 1967 after a UFO allegedly crashed into Shag Harbour. Like Roswell, Shag Harbour has become a tourist destination, complete with an annual festival and a UFO museum.

Highway 375, aka the Extraterrestrial Highway

LOCATIONS

Stephenville, Texas, USA
Multiple mass UFO sightings have turned Stephenville, TX into a UFO hot spot, and its heavy UFO activity attracts many hopeful people looking to spot their own UFO.

Mexico City, Mexico
The capital city of Mexico is well-known for being a hotbed of UFO activity. Mass sightings are quite common, and UFOs are frequently captured on video in the Mexico City skies.

Kenneth Arnold

CONFERENCES

UFO X Fest – San Leandro, California, USA
The UFO X Fest is coming to California’s bay area, and will include films, entertainment, and informative speakers. The UFO X Fest takes place September 18th-19th at the historic Bal Theatre in San Leandro, CA. Alejandro Rojas from Open Minds will be presenting at this event.

MUFON UFO Symposium – Denver, Colorado, USA
The Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) is a leading UFO investigation and research organization. They hold an annual conference in Denver, CO that features presentations and workshops. The 41st annual symposium was just held in July.

International UFO Congress – Scottsdale, Arizona, USA
Approaching its 20th year, the International UFO Congress (IUFOC) is making big changes. Moving from Laughlin, NV, the 20th anniversary of the IUFOC will take place in Scottsdale, Arizona, and feature films, skywatching, parties, vendors, and more than 20 speakers from around the world.

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

Roswell Daily Record - July 8th, 1947

63 years ago today the Roswell Daily Record ran a front page story regarding the recovery of a Flying Saucer by the Army that had been taken to the Roswell Army Air Field. Intelligence officer Jesse Marcel was the first military man to get a look at the material, and one of many at the Air Field to believe that the debris was not of this world. His testimony to researchers in 1978 sparked the public’s fascination with Roswell, and without it we may have never known about this extraordinary event.

Open Minds sponsored the Roswell city anniversary celebrations, and had the honor of spending time with Marcel’s son, Jesse Marcel Jr. He gave us a tour of the city, pointing out the important landmarks while reminiscing about the debris his father had shown him, and what he knew about the incident from what his father and Roswell researchers had told him.

We hope you enjoy this video as we commemorate an important time in American history, and two important men, Jesse Marcel and his son Jesse Jr.

We only have Corso’s testimony for his briefing, so we made a thorough search of the public record to see if there were any clues about Bobby Kennedy and the UFO subject. Ironically, the best known document where he expresses a strong belief in UFOs—a letter to ufologist Gray Barker dated May 9, 1968—may be a forgery. We’ll discuss our research into this letter later on, but let’s look first at other letters written by Sen. Kennedy in the 1965-1966 period. Until recently, only the Barker letter and a couple of brief responses sent by Sen. Kennedy to Robert Barrow, were available. John Greenwald of www.blackvault.com, however, obtained a dossier of 127 pages from the Kennedy presidential library which gives a far more complete picture of the NY senator’s involvement with UFOs. The letters cover a period between 1965 and 1968 and contain 39 letters signed by Kennedy himself, plus the original letters he received from a number of constituents and UFO researchers, U.S. Air Force statements, some newspaper clippings, etc.

The period of 1965 and 1966 was the most active in Bobby Kennedy’s UFO correspondence. This coincided with a lobbying effort by the National Investigation Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) to have Congressional hearings on UFOs. NICAP was then the nation’s most influential UFO group led by the late Major (Ret.) Donald Keyhoe in the Washington, DC area. Out of the 27 individuals who wrote to Kennedy, most belonged to NICAP and some, like Robert Barrow, Raymond Konley and Ralph Rankow, wrote several letters to him. I was also surprised to see many names who were relatively well known in the UFO field—some of whom I knew personally—including the contactee Wayne Aho, the aviation journalist Don Berliner, the Rev. Frank Stranges, John Keel, author of The Mothman Prophecies and other important UFO and Fortean books, and the psychic Ted Owens, among others. When I saw the name of Terry Wilmot with an address in Roswell, NM, the name rang a bell. He was, in fact, the son of Dan Wilmot, who reported with his wife a UFO shaped “like two invert saucers faced mouth-to-mouth” on the night of July 2, 1947, shortly before the famous crash. His sighting was published in the Roswell Daily Record, although it’s not mentioned in Terry’s letter to Bobby Kennedy (Terry, too, was a member of NICAP).

Back in the 1960s, form letters had not been developed to the exact science than they are today, so Bobby Kennedy’s letters vary a little from one to the other, but some general themes nevertheless emerge clearly. He is of course a polished politician, always polite to his constituents, thanking them “for your thoughtful letter,” appreciating them for “your thoughtfulness in writing to me on this matter,” and so on.  He then tries to walk a thin line between appearing open minded enough while at the same time making it clear that, “from the evidence available to date, I do not believe that UFO phenomena are caused by vehicles of extraterrestrial origin.” Here is a typical response, in this case to Terry Wilmot of Roswell, NM, dated April 11, 1965:

Despite his mild skepticism, Kennedy hedges his bet by admitting that “scientists agree that not enough is known about UFO sightings, in some cases by reputable witnesses” and that, “I hope that science provides us with an answer to these unknown aspects of UFO sightings.” There can be little doubt that when it came to the allegation that the Air Force was covering-up some UFO evidence, an issue raised often by the NICAP members like Ralph Rankow and others, Kennedy rejected it. Here is his response to one of Robert Barrow’s letters, where he writes, “I do not believe that the Air Force is censoring any information of interest to the public of so-called ‘Unidentified Flying Objects’.”

In some cases, Kennedy attached Pentagon form letters with the standard line of “the Air Force does not withhold or censor any information on UFO’s.” In many of the letters, he mentioned Dr. Harlow Shapley, who was a then well known Harvard astronomer and author. For instance, in a letter to Anne Epple of New York City, dated September 10, 1966, Kennedy wrote that, “Dr. Harlow Shapley, for one, has stated that there is a high probability that there is other life in the universe.” But then Kennedy lowers the tone, adding that “to believe that there is other life in the universe is not, however, to believe that ‘UFO’s’ are manned vehicles.” He then adds a debunking line (which appears in several of the letters) that “one explanation of this phenomenon…connects the lights that are seen with the gaseous tails of comets.” Not one of the most convincing arguments to identify UFOs as prosaic objects, we may add.

As time went by, Bobby Kennedy was able to deflect the issue by referring people to the University of Colorado’s Scientific Study of UFOs led by physicist Dr. Edward U. Condon, which had been contracted by the USAF to conduct a supposedly independent and thorough study of the matter, later known as the Condon Report. That is basically the gist of the Bobby Kennedy UFO file. Generally speaking, many of the letters sent to the senator are more interesting than his responses. Author John Keel, for instance, wrote a long letter dated January 19, 1966. “I have been collecting information about UFOs since the appearance of the mysterious ‘Foo fighters’ in World War II,” wrote Keel. “But I did not fully believe in their existence until 1954 when I actually saw a ‘Flying Saucer’ maneuvering over the Aswan Dam in Egypt. It was hovering at a low altitude and was obviously a solid metal object, circular with a dome on top. After a few minutes the outer rim started to revolve rapidly and it moved off at very high speed. Similar objects…or the same one…were later reported over other areas of the Middle East.” As far as I can remember, Keel never wrote about this sighting in his books or articles, but there it is. He then goes on to criticize the Air Force’s incompetence on this issue, but basically received the Bobby Kennedy “form letter” with Dr. Shipley, the “gaseous tails of comets” and the final “appreciate hearing from you on this matter.”

You can download the entire Bobby Kennedy UFO file from the Black Vault here.

THE GRAY BARKER LETTER

Gray Barker

For years, the alleged letter to Gray Barker, dated May 9, 1968, was the only well known Bobby Kennedy statement on UFOs. Barker was a well known UFO writer from Clarksburg, West Virginia, who was the first one to publicize the subject of Men In Black (MIBs) with his classic 1956 book, They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers. The Kennedy letter was reproduced, among other places, in the book The Age of Flying Saucers by Paris Flammonde.

For a long time I thought this was probably a genuine letter but now, having seen Bobby Kennedy’s other letters, I have serious doubts, and so do many other researchers. For one, Barker was well known for having pulled several ufological hoaxes. One of the most infamous ones, which he concocted with veteran ufologist Jim Moseley (then publisher of Saucer News, now of the entertaining gossip newsletter Saucer Smear), was the so-called “Straith letter” sent to famous contactee George Adamski. It was purportedly written by a U.S. State Dept. official called R. E. Straith, who endorsed Adamski’s claims of contact with benevolent Venusians. First of all, the Barker letter does not appear in Bobby’s UFO file at the Kennedy presidential library, where it should be if it was authentic. The second serious problem is the letter’s opening paragraph: “As you may know, I am a card carrying member of the Amalgamated Flying Saucers Association. Therefore, like many other people in our country I am interested in the phenomenon of flying saucers.” The Amalgamated Flying Saucers Association was a group founded by Gabriel Green, a California contactee and new age writer who ran for president in 1960, representing the Universal Flying Saucer Party, and in 1962 for the U.S. Senate in California, where he supposedly received 171,000 votes. It is frankly hard to believe that Bobby Kennedy would have been “a card carrying member” of this organization.

However, believing that a document is fake is not the same as proving it, so we contacted Jim Moseley, his partner in crime in the Straith letter, and David Houchin, the curator of the Gray Barker Collection at the Special Collections section of the Clarksburg-Harrison Public Library, to see if they had any insights into the subject. “There is a possibility that Barker did it [the Kennedy letter] himself, but I have a feeling that he didn’t,” Moseley said on a telephone interview, adding that “it sounds that it could be genuine.” Moseley then related that, just as Barker was getting ready to publicize the letter, “he supposedly got a call from someone associated with the Bobby Kennedy family” and he backed off for a while. This would have been right after the assassination at The Ambassador Hotel in LA since the letter is dated barely a month before the tragedy. “The only thing I remember is how easily Gray was intimidated,” added Moseley, “but if it was a hoax, I don’t think he did it.” So that adds another wrinkle into the web—the possibility that Barker himself was hoaxed by someone else, though this remains to be proven.

David Houchin, whom we met several years ago when I lectured at the Clarksburg-Harrison Public Library, told me that “we normally treat it as one of Gray’s inventions,” although he doesn’t have concrete proof of it. He said that unfortunately the original had been stolen from the library many years ago, but there is remote possibility that it’s still misfiled somewhere. I asked Houchin if there is a copy of any letter written by Barker to Bobby Kennedy and he said he’s not aware of any, but promised to look for any additional evidence. If he finds anything new we’ll publish an update.

Today, twelve years after its Italian release, Open Minds Production is proud to present “Dawn of a New Age”, the Philip Corso Manuscript, for the first time in the U.S., in its original, uncut and unedited English-language version.

To access the manuscript, please click here.

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.

Julie Shuster, Roswell Museum Director

I heard about it and read about it, but I had to see it myself. Sure, they said Roswell is in the middle of nowhere. But when you actually find yourself in the flat, barren New Mexico desert and the only passers-by are tumble weeds, you feel an uncomfortable sensation. What if the engine went down and we all got lost?

Thankfully, we did not find out during our trip in early July 2009. We actually enjoyed our adventure toward a small town that in 1947 was the theater of the most famous and still highly debated UFO crash of all time. For me, even if I was doomed to have my bones scarred on the desert sands in New Mexico, death would have been a sweet consolation because it would have marked the end of my UFO career where “it” all began.

In some ways, being there was a dream come true, like visiting the International UFO Museum and Research Center on Main street, which for me is the inner sanctum of the entire history of the UFO phenomenon and a must-see for everyone.

I have always been convinced that the Roswell incident did really occur in July, 1947, and that the U.S. military decided then – and still believes – that the best way to handle the delicate matter is to bury it. They have hoped that the sand of the desert will cover it forever, until no trace of it is ever visible. But there were too many implications and too many people involved – only a few are still alive. These folks are the last and proud survivors of a vast list of witnesses always convinced that Roswell was no myth and no legend.

An alien on exhibit at the Roswell Museum.

Roswell will persist, even if the importance of the Annual Festival that draws thousands of people subsides. Julie Shuster, executive director of Roswell’s International UFO Museum and Research Center, firmly believes in the future of the institute and of a town visited each year by almost a half million souls. She foresees a new and larger location for the museum. And once you enter the actual museum’s library, with its long walls covered by thousand of books, magazines and videos, you understand how precious this historic heritage is.

My pilgrimage started in Phoenix, Arizona. I arrived at the Albuquerque airport on July 1 in the late afternoon. There, I met fellow journalist Paola Harris, Col. Jesse Marcel, Jr. (son of the late Maj. Jesse Marcel), British researcher Nick Pope and Alejandro Rojas (then MUFON public relations rep and now on the OM editorial staff). Thankfully, at Paola’s advice, we had something to eat at the airport, because it’s a long way to Roswell. Tired and somewhat exhausted, we arrived in Roswell around 10 that night. The next morning would bring a visit to the “debris field” at the Foster Ranch.

From left: Maurizio Baiata, Paola Harris, Jesse Marcel Jr.

The Foster Ranch

Very politely, Paola Harris had arranged this trip, but she was not with us, busy with interviews and lectures in Roswell that day. Debbie Ziegelmeyer (MUFON Missouri state director and STAR investigator) and her brother Chuck Zukowsky (MUFON field investigator) were our tour guides. Chuck and Debbie know the area of the Foster Ranch very well, as they participated in two on site digs in 2002 and 2006. In both occasions, the research was conducted under the supervision of Dr. Bill Doleman, archeologist at the University of New Mexico, and sponsored by the SCI FI Channel and NBC Television. The location known as the “Debris Field” is a large portion of desert terrain that on early July, 1947 rancher William “Mack” Brazel (1899-1963) found covered by strange metallic and balsa-like fragments that he could not recognize. Brazel later decided to bring some of the debris to Chavez county Sheriff George Wilcox and from that moment on the saga of the Roswell incident had begun.

Jesse Marcel Jr., Debbie Ziegelmeyer, Chuck Zukowski in front of Zukowski's UFO Nut mobile.

From Roswell was a two-hour drive to get to the Foster Ranch on board Chuck’s powerful Nissan 4×4. Also with us were Col. Jesse Marcel Jr. and a camera operator, Matt Morgan, from Los Angeles. Now 72, Col. Marcel, Jr. would visit for the first time the sites where his father, Maj. Jesse Marcel, Sr. and CIC Capt. Sheridan Cavitt, found the UFO debris. The route was first traversed on asphalt roads, then on dirt roads and then on paths recognizable only to our guides’ trained eyes. There’s no way an ordinary car would make it through the last 2-to-3 miles of stony grounds that lead up to the presumed UFO debris field at Foster Ranch.

Our first stop was at the barn of the corral in the Hines property, where Maj. Marcel, Sr., Capt. Cavitt and rancher Mack Brazel spent the evening of July 6, 1947. They reported that they stored some of the wreckage in this barn, and the next morning they handed it over to Col. William Blanchard, commanding officer of the Roswell Army Air Base, who handled the hot situation under the orders of Gen. Roger Ramey from the headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas.

The corral near the debris field on the Foster Ranch.

The Pentagon handled it to perfection, and everybody involved had to be silenced one way or another. It seems that each man in the contingent that cleaned the Foster Ranch, was provided $10,000 to keep the mouth shut forever.

After the stop at the barn and corral we continued into the heart of the Foster ranch getting to a point of reference, the remains of an antique windmill, 75 miles north of Roswell. The windmill marks the direction to the site where many researchers believe a flying disk initially descended and impacted the ground, creating a wide gouge and leaving on the terrain a large quantity of strange debris. In theory, after the alleged alien machine bounced on the ground, it continued its flight for a few more miles and then, according to one reconstruction, finally impacted near Corona, over the Capitan Mountain Range, in Lincoln County. Another theory places a second crash site in the Plains of San Augustin, near Magdalena.

The debris field at the Foster Ranch is a fascinating sight in the New Mexico desert country, very rough and punctuated by singed cacti that were burnt during a fire that swept the area a couple years ago. Surely, this is not a place you would choose for camping or hiking, and the Capitan Mountains are maybe the only appealing natural setting for these activities within many miles. But in the 1940s, the site was actually good pasture, and Mack Brazel was looking for his sheep that morning in July 1947, after a thunderstorm the night before.

The gang at the debris field. From left: Debbie Ziegelmeyer, Jesse Marcel Jr., Maurizio Baiata, Chuck Zukowski.

I asked Chuck Zukowsky his opinion and according to him, “one story is Cavitt, Marcel and Brazel were on horseback from the Hines house. They brought debris back to the house and stored it in a shed (which is no longer, the actual barn was rebuilt over it). From the Hines house they loaded their cars and drove on the county/dirt road.” This version makes sense to me, now, after I’ve visited these places. Col. Jesse Marcel Jr. distinctively recalls his father came home that night with his Buick sedan trunk and back seat loaded with the debris that he collected earlier that day.

I roughly estimated the debris to be of 600 yards in length and 300 yards in width, half-surrounded by a shallow cliff of approximately 180-200 feet. The gouge does not exist anymore. The military were very meticulous in their search for each single piece or fragment of debris, and they have filled and leveled the terrain to perfection. “They vacuumed everything,” Col. Marcel, Jr. said as he walked on his shaky legs protected and reinforced by braces. Tireless as he was, we spent more than two hours together, just strolling, talking and wondering. The morning hours were still not too hot and our eyes, the whole time, were attracted by the sloping landscapes of the Capitan Mountains and the clear, magnificent blue sky.

Jesse Marcel Jr. at the Roswell debris field.

I recorded conversations between myself, Debbie, Chuck and Col. Marcel, Jr. for future reference.

The debris field is still there if you want to go and take a look, but you have to be armed with good patience. You won’t see anything alien there. You may simply breathe some of the same air that Mack Brazel breathed in this high Roswell desert the morning of July 3, 1947, when he found his pasture covered by strange materials. And sixty three years later, I had the luck and the privilege to walk the same walk with Jesse Marcel Jr., one of the last real witnesses of the Roswell crash.

Object over Newfoundland

Historically, if a UFO sighting is significant enough to make it on the nightly news, it has almost been guaranteed that the same explanation will be given for absolutely every sighting – “It’s a weather balloon.” Weather (or “research”) balloons have been the default report offered by government and other officials when it has come to explaining mysterious areal objects. The balloon response even dates back to the famous 1947 Roswell incident, where a research balloon was offered as the official explanation for a downed craft (after retracting an initial statement about the capture of a flying saucer). Based on responses to recent sightings, however, it seems that the “weather balloon” response has now been replaced by a new default response – “It was a missile test.”

A missile-like UFO sighting was recently observed by hundreds of residents in a rural community in Newfoundland. Witnesses reported the noiseless object rising from the ocean, and shooting through the sky with smoke and flames shooting out its back. The French Ministry of Defence came forward to state that it had launched a test missile from a submarine recently.

Object over China

Another recent flying object was seen over Xinjiang, China. The bright object had a cone tail, and was flashing red, blue, white, and green lights. The explanation for this object was a ground-based midcourse missile interception test.

Object over Norway

Yet another strange object was seen recently – this one in the sky above northern Norway. As seen in the photo, the sky was filled with a blue trail, leading to a brightly illuminated, spiraling object. This incident has been explained by the testing of a new Russian intercontinental missile. Russia has admitted that their recent test was a failure (which could explain the spiral motion of the object), but Russia’s defense ministry refuses to confirm that the mysterious lights seen over Norway were from their missile test.

It’s possible that several countries are conducting more and more missile tests. It’s also possible that missile tests are the new trendy subterfuge that will replace the weather balloon to explain UFO sightings. Either way, I wonder how many more unusual objects in the sky will be credited to missile tests this year.

Sorry, weather balloon. You’re a has-been. I think you’ve been replaced by something sexier and flashier.

Before the autopsy

In October 1995, I organized a private viewing of the Santilli Footage with two Italian leading autopsy technicians, Cesare (now deceased) and Massimo Signoracci. In fact, four generations of the Signoracci family have worked at the Institute of Forensic Medicine at the University of Rome and their experience is beyond question.

Prof. Pierluigi Baima Bollone

Of the two technicians, the youngest, Massimo, had already seen the material.  He felt the being in the film was neither human nor a dummy.  This reflects the opinion of Pierluigi Baima Bollone, a professor of pathological anatomy at the University of Turin. The autopsy they viewed is the one released officially by Ray Santilli and broadcast in the documentary “The Roswell Incident,” produced by Union Pictures for the British television network Channel Four, which is of excellent quality.

Upon their initial examination, according to the Italian technicians, the body revealed obvious abnormalities: the evident swelling of the abdomen, the sagittal fissure, a deep laceration to the left leg with clean, hard edges, and the apparent absence of a bone structure in the thigh where there seems to be a joint. The lack of tissue suggests a major burn, or carbonization, or hemorrhagic lesion. This is a transcript of their comments during the viewing.

Massimo Signoracci, M.S.: The table looks like the type used at the time, perhaps made of metal. From the images it is not easy to establish rigor mortis. Stiffness in a person appears in the second or third hour after death.  It starts from the head, the jaw, the caudal region of skull, and moves down to the small joints and then the large joints. Rigor mortis is present from the third hour onwards, until the forty-eighth hour, when it consolidates well. We usually operate after 24 hours. It looks like a female subject. It’s strange.

Cesare Signoracci, C.S.: They are taking tissue from the wound for analysis.

M.S.: I had not noticed the smaller wound, high on the thigh. There is another hole.

The two wounds, the thigh wound is circled.

C.S.: The white parts appear to be extraneous metal fragments.  We find these in the X-Rays plates on the gun shots wounds, the reflection shows the metal, bone does not stand out in this manner.

M.S.: To me, they appear to be swollen parts that reflect light.

C.S.: It’s a pretty deep wound, it is strange that it does not off-set the bone. The markings of the under jugular part stand higher up the grooves.  If this body is a fake, it’s done very well.

[the surgeon starts the incision]

M.S.: He is making a cut from the mastoid region to the region of the neck, doing a semi-circle and then going the other way. The blood comes out profusely. I’ve never seen that before. What does it mean?

Openning the chest

C.S.: With an injury of that extent on the thigh, there must have been severe hemorrhaging. It may be that this autopsy was performed immediately after death, because the blood coagulates in the cadaver. In this case, the blood loss due to the injury on the thigh, on the femur, must have been strong, plus the subject is not a big size. With such an incision, this sort of bleeding is not seen even during a surgical operation.

M.S.: One would think that if the person died of bleeding, of course, when you cut on the head there would be blood, but there isn’t any and there should be. When we execute a cut on the mastoid region, blood is not there. The hypostasis tends to converge at the rear of the body.

C.S.: How many hours after death did they say that this autopsy was done, roughly?

M.S.: That’s what we need to figure out.

C.S.: The bureaucratic procedure usually…

M.S.: Forget red tape. This thing was in the hands of soldiers who must perform their duty.

C.S.: Yes, but there are times when jurisdiction changes from one group to another before getting authorization for an autopsy. Now the surgeon performs the ventral cut, he should divert to avoid the navel, but he does not.

M.S.: Taking off the skin of the sternum region, look how hard it is, you see the rib cage…

C.S.: A diminutive rib cage, however.

M.S.: I can not recognize the ribs, it’s a problem with film, some images are not clear… here are the arches of the ribs, then this organ that protrudes at the center here.

C.S.: What do you think?

M.S.: I do not know. This is an organ that seems to be in the area of the liver. Watch out for a liver! What kind of liver is that?

C.S.: I do not know. And the leakage of blood in this bi-mastoid cut is already excessive, let alone when they cut lower down, and it’s a lot of blood coming out.

Up to now I have to believe that this is a real thing, it is a reality. But I wonder why this was done? Can we go on?

M.S.: These two black tubes protruding here, I do not understand what they are. They opened the chest, it’s strange, the peritoneum is rigid, if there is a muscle under the skin, the skin should also be folded sag…

Neck

C.S.: The skin flap was folded, as we normally do to give a better view to explore the thorax/abdominal section, but the black and white images do not allow us to distinguish the organs, it is a dark mass. What is the surgeon doing now?

M.S.: He operates in the central area, theoretically at the heart, that is a sort of central organ in the chest, and now he is pulling something, a strange material, indefinable, but it is hard and perhaps clear, I do not know if it is crystalloid. It looks like a triangle, not stuck outside because there are no wounds in this area. And here they seem to have cut the aorta.

C.S.: You see that is a big cable.

M.S.: It does not go up, it is folded down and now the surgeon has taken hold of the heart, perhaps.

C.S.: Anatomically, it should be.

M.S.: The aortic arch is rather small; it could be linked to a narrowing of the aortic arch. I would understand. This could be… a lung? Here he has already checked everything. I do not see the intestines. You recognize them?

C.S.: No, it lacks the intestinal mass.

[start of cranial resection]

M.S.: I did not notice the leakage of blood from the nose. Now he immediately proceeds with the bi-mastoid cut. In an individual who has suffered a trauma, blood comes out of the head. Do you remember this type of rectangular saw? It’s wide.

C.S.: Yes, it is like that roughly, it is certainly an old anatomical saw.

M.S.: The skull cap was removed and there is a kind of “dura mater” (brain membrane). This image shows that there has been, it seems, bleeding under the skin. But perhaps it is a prevalence of black on the background of the photograph. If it is, we call it “bleeding cake”.

(The following conversation is after the viewing of the film.)

M.S.: During the first broadcast [of the Italian TV show] “Misteri”, Professor Baima Bollone said that he had identified a gynecological instrument, maybe a kind of Klemmer pliers. I believe the table is sheet metal.

C.S.: We had marble tables in the old Rome City Morgue, and a big basin for washing the corpses, but the anatomical plates were made of metal. The table you see is normal. As for the deformities present in this being, the six fingers, etc. these sorts of deformities happen, but never six digits on all four limbs, although perhaps this is a macrocephalic [having a head with a large cranial capacity] or hydrocephalus [accumulation of serous within the cranium often causing enlargement of the head]  subject. It is not important to define whether the person doing this autopsy is a surgeon or an anatomical pathologist, given the nature of specialization, because with a scalpel in hand, you can either do surgery or autopsy.

Marble tables

M.S.: Usually I do not use scalpels, but an anatomical knife called “Marchiafava” that has existed for 200 years. But we can also use a relatively small scalpel. We operate according to the needs of the moment. The “Marchiafava” is very flexible, you can cut, low-cut, and so on.

C.S.: Here they use the classic old metal lancet, long handle. However one thing is certain. Massimo had told me about this footage, I saw something on TV and some photographs and I was skeptical, but now I am not sure. I’m more inclined to say this is real. I wonder what the purpose of this autopsy was when the film was made.

Cover of original film released by Santilli in the UK.

M.S.: When the flap of skin around the neck is lifted and is bent on his face, if you notice, usually the organs of the neck should be here, higher up. You do this cut and turn the skin to expose a lot more. It is a matter of anatomical topography. Why would they have not laid it all out? Here the arch rib, the sternum handler, and these two tubes at the sternum cledo-mastoid are similar to humans. But here the technique is wrong. The procedure is not clear. Because usually you examine a body from top to bottom, analyzing the organs of the neck to the sternum plastron in order to highlight the entire apparatus. Perhaps it was done at a later time, but in terms of an autopsy it should have been better observed.

C.S.: This was an autopsy at the time.

M.S.: But when your grandfather executed the autopsies was that not so?

C.S.: It’s been 50 years. The technique is different in many ways. Moreover, we do not have a full field of view, we have to make a determination with just the available images. Who says that’s the heart and those are the lungs? This being had a heart? The surgical instruments still look a bit different from those of today.

M.S.: There is an anatomic hammer, a chisel and these are two small double-blade razors. There is the removal of the eye membranes.

C.S.: It’s a dark substance that was applied so as not to distort the eyeball? Certainly he went a bit too fast. He is going much slower now in executing the scalp.

M.S.: He has some issue in dissecting the skull.

C.S.: They seem to be dealing with something they do not understand, a very special case. Whatever the cause of death, it was obviously traumatic. Then the organs were removed, apparently they were placed in a freezer afterward.

M.S.: They didn’t even cut them for analysis.

C.S.: No, these doctors could not cut the organs, just keep them intact to study later. They certainly have taken fluids and small parts of the body.

M.S.: But for a histological examination don’t you immediately remove some samples?

C.S.: Here you have to go thorough a full autopsy. Remember that the Americans created formaldehyde. You can’t put the blood in formalin, but you do that with organs and supposedly that’s what they have done here. These were the people who performed the autopsy, but somewhere else there are people ready to study the organs. There is another issue, the surgeon in the resection of the skull cuts way too deep, he may have damaged the brain.

M.S.: You see the two hemispheres of the brain, with the lobes divided by the sagittal line, where the dura mater passes.

C.S.: He pulled awkwardly, the two occipital lobes have been torn, you notice white patches, maybe they are injuries and this is the residue of the cerebellum. But I want to return to the possible causes of death. Judging from the level of injury on the leg, I gather there was an explosion outside the object that they were in. From the inside there would have been loose burning metal fragments that caused the very deep wound with the burn. Two possible causes of death: a head injury, given the bruising on the left temporal region, and the injury to the right thigh. We should be able to determine the body temperature.

M.S.: The skull does not seem broken, maybe it was protected by a helmet [the computer thermo graphic investigations of Dr. Corrado Malanga, Chemistry, University of Pisa, had highlighted the possibility that during the undressing of the body a helmet or cap was removed from the head].

C.S.: And who says so, maybe not. Depends on the efficiency of the individual.

M.S.:  I think that the autopsy report from the pathologist in Sheffield is worth very little, it is far too simplistic.

C.S.: As for my opinion, in keeping with that of other pathologists, I am in favor of the hypothesis that it is not a human being, in the order of 70 percent. What I do not think is that it is a human being in the autopsy. As far as the tent footage, I do not know: they seem to perform some odd resuscitation maneuvers.

M.S.: I rule out that the body is a dummy.

C.S.: We worked with movie directors like Dario Argento and Luigi Zampa, creating cinematic tricks for many years. Here we do not have any technical problem in reenacting the scene on stage. If this is fiction, who created this monster? Honestly, I saw something that leaves me very puzzled. I am among those who taught the craft to Massimo. He is very good, and is also able to reconstruct a destroyed and maimed body. But what you see in this film is not the same thing. Finally, I can say that if it was a real autopsy, the body is certainly being reassembled and preserved together with the removed organs. Who knows where.