ML = Michael Lindemann
PC = Philip Corso
BB = Bill Birnes
Michael Lindemann: Not only
are you a highly decorated military officer, but it seems you’ve
always been willing to be a bit of a maverick when it comes to
"doing the right thing," even if it might make some other people
uncomfortable -- to the point where this latest disclosure about
Roswell seems essentially in character for you. But this is a
bigger disclosure, a bigger departure from the norm than your
previous actions, don’t you think?
Philip Corso: Well, some other things have been pretty
important. Like when I moved those 10,000 Jews, I thought
nothing of it, but people said what a big thing it was. Putting
Rome back on its feet was important. I don’t think this is
bigger than some of those things. Even the looks on the
families’ faces in front of Congress [when he testified about
American POWs left in North Korea], that was pretty important to
those people.
And this one here, I think, fits in
with all those others. Yes, it’s important, because like they
say, it might have changed the course of the world. Well, I have
to give a lot of credit to General Trudeau, who made it
possible, and to the other people who were with me. Maybe we
changed the course of the world. The thing that I’ve done now is
going to affect the future. That’s why I bring the children in
on it, the young ones. We’re old now, we’re going to be moving
on.
But they’re going to be here. Let
them know what happened. I think it’s of great importance that
those children are going to read this and know what happened and
what it came from, and that it was true. It did happen. They
have to know what’s involved, and what it’s leading to. They’re
the ones who will be involved in what it leads to. From that
point of view, it’s the most important thing I ever did.
ML: Where do you think it
does lead to? You allude in your book to the possibility that
maybe there’s a hostile potential here.
PC: When you’re in the military, you always have to figure on
that hostile part. You can’t disregard that. Our motto was,
"Just in case, we’re going to be ready." What’s it going to be
in the future? We called it at R&D [the Army’s Research and
Development Department at the Pentagon] the dawn of a new age,
maybe a new world. The world’s not going to stop. Maybe this was
a seed that was sown to start a new world. Look what they did
with the [computer] chip -- in just a few years, how it
blossomed out into the supercomputer. I said to General Trudeau,
"What are we unleashing on the world, General? If this can
integrate with the brain, there’s great danger." He said, "Yes,
Phil, but the people coming after us, we hope, will possibly
understand and take this into consideration. But maybe not in
our lifetime." He didn’t see it in his lifetime. He died three
years ago.
ML: Do we know how to build the kind of craft that they found at
Roswell?
PC: I think that we will know. Where we were missing out on a
lot of this was in the propulsion and guidance systems. We came
to the conclusion years ago, and now it’s starting to take hold
even among scientists, that the reason we missed out on this was
that the extraterrestrial himself was the guidance system. He
was part of the system. We never figured on that.
One day I was walking in the hall with General Trudeau, and I
turned to him and said, "General, I think that son of mine is a
little bit crazy. He says engines talk to him." The General
turned to me and said, "Phil, don’t ever say that again. People
have certain relationships with engines, with solid matter, that
we don’t understand. But it’s there." See, this is all starting
to come forward now.
And it was uncanny that this book had to break when this thing
is happening here at Roswell. I never expected what I saw last
night, what I’ve seen here. [From the time he arrived in
Roswell, Colonel Corso was surrounded by press and people
seeking interviews.] Someone like me has always lived in the
shadows. To all at once see this happening around me, and I’m a
focal point -- I feel like I should be home sitting in my easy
chair, not here. And yet, last night [at the Friday evening
banquet] I was almost mobbed.
ML: Did you know that the American public was this hungry for
this information, and this ready to believe you?
PC: Sure I knew. My nephew is a research director at [inaudible]
university, and I have letters the young man wrote to me. He
said, "Uncle Phil, please tell them to tell us the truth. We
won’t pull our hair out or panic. We want to hear this." In all
of my interviews lately, I’ve been saying I’m going to prove
this to you people. My own experience: I commanded a battalion
of 1500 men. Average age, nineteen and a half years old. Those
boys didn’t panic and run. I told my exec[utive officer], my
god, we’re leading babies into combat. They didn’t panic. They
stood and fought some of the greatest armies the world has ever
seen, and defeated them. A lot of them died. But they didn’t
run, they fought. So I say, this is the younger-age people --
they’re not going to panic. Let them know. They want to know.
That Orson Welles show [War of the Worlds, 1938] has thrown a
lot of people off. It’s not going to be like that.
ML: Do you feel we are ready to know the truth on this?
PC: We’ve been ready. A long time ago.
ML: Did you have to willfully break any personal oaths or
promises to the military or the country in order to do what
you’ve done?
PC: No. The oath that I held was with the General. I held that
oath until he died, because he was an honorable man, an honest
man. I liked him. He was a great man. As far as being an Army
officer, I kept my oath for thirty-five years. I did not violate
any security, and I had all the clearances. I was the one who
used to stop people from violating security. I did not reveal
anything that’s harmful or should be kept quiet.
ML: There have been rumors and speculations that Roswell, and
what came from Roswell -- the way we exploited Roswell
technology -- might not have been the very first time such a
thing happened. There have even been indications or speculations
that the Nazis had done such a thing, that some of their
extraordinary technological developments may have come from a
similar source. What do you think about that?
PC: Yes. True. I had German scientists on my team. I discussed
this with them. I discussed this with Oberth, von Braun. I was
part of
Project Paperclip with General Trudeau. There’s an
example in the book. In the middle of the book there’s a
photograph of Edward O’Connor, one of Truman’s poker-playing
buddies at the White House -- he was a Soviet expert -- and
General Trudeau, myself and Victor Fediay of the Library of
Congress, who spoke fluent Russian. Fediay was going to Russia.
I gave him a series of questions. I said, "Ask a KGB general
these questions [pertaining to UFOs]." So Victor comes back and
says, "Phil, I asked him the questions. You know what he said?
He said, ’I know what you want. But do you want me killed?’"
Now, that’s Russia. Germany? Yes. Canadians and British also,
and something in Italy. There were crashes elsewhere, and they
gathered material too. The Germans were working on it. They
didn’t solve the propulsion system. They did a lot of
experiments on flying saucers. They had one that went up 12,000
feet. But where all, we and they, missed out was on the guidance
system. In R&D we began to realize that this being was part of
the guidance system, part of the apparatus himself -- or itself,
because it had no sexual organs. This is where most people
missed out.
ML: Do you think, then, that if we are going to develop a way of
interstellar travel, we will have to develop a similar
relationship to our spacecraft?
PC: Man can’t travel in space today. Those clones were created
to travel in space, specifically. They can travel in space. Our
muscles, our bones, our brain, can’t take space travel, even
today. We can’t do it.
ML: We can do it to some extent.
PC: Well, when they go to Mir, they stay up there two or three
months, and when they come off, they have to be carried off.
Their bones won’t hold up. If they stayed a little longer,
they’ll never be able to walk. But the big thing that is not
talked about is [that] the brain is affected up there. [Might
that be the reason why those Russian cosmonauts continue to err
on the mission and thus endanger the MIR? - Jeroen W.]
ML: How is that?
PC: Gravity, radiation -- it comes right through that ship. Look
at Senator [John] Glenn, he saw "fireflies" coming through his
capsule. They weren’t fireflies, they were some kind of
electromagnetic thing that came through there. Those [alien]
beings are created specifically to travel in space.
ML: Speaking of Senator Glenn, my understanding is that he’s
sort of ambivalent on the subject of UFOs. How would you
characterize it?
PC: He told me exactly what he was. I met with Senator Glenn. I
was supposed to meet him for half an hour, and he kept me for an
hour and a half. During the course of the conversation, we
talked about UFOs, and he said, "Colonel, I’m an agnostic." I
said, "But you didn’t say you don’t believe," and he laughed.
That’s his exact word to me -- he’s agnostic.
Then we got into Project Horizon. I had the whole project
[document], 310 pages, and he wanted it. I had to give it to
him. He was amazed when he saw that [in] 1959, long before he
went up in the capsule, we had all the plans made up to put a
military colony on the moon. Defense killed it on us. They
didn’t like the Army, so they took it away from us and killed
it, and made NASA.
ML: Is it possible for any civilian to get their hands on the
Project Horizon report today? How do we find out about this?
PC: It’s unclassified. I was the declassifying officer. There’s
50 pages of it in [my] book. I wrote to the Army Corps of
Engineers historical division, and I told them where it was and
what it was, and they found it and sent me copies of it
immediately. The original was in color. Beautiful. I’d like to
get my hands on it. [Corso pages through Appendix One of his
book as he speaks.]
Look, there’s a lunar lander. This was 1959.
The best brains in the world worked on this, all the Germans,
all von Braun’s team, they worked on this. I talked to a German
in Huntsville, Alabama, a few months ago, and he said, "I
remember that. I worked on it." This was an amazing document.
And here’s General Trudeau’s instructions that started it.
Lately, my scientist friend at the Institute of Advanced Studies
in Texas [probably a reference to
Dr. Hal Puthoff] had a meeting
with the top [scientists] at NASA, and he threw Project Horizon
on the table, and he says they were shocked. They couldn’t
believe it. They never knew about it. Defense killed it on us;
and the CIA had a hand in killing it.
ML: Just the other day, the Air Force issued their latest
official explanation of what happened at Roswell. I’m sure you
must have had a few chuckles over it. How are you responding to
this? And how is the press treating you, now that you’ve made
your position so clear and now that the Air Force has said,
again, that it’s all a bunch of baloney?
PC: They’re treating me better than I ever expected. I expected
criticism. As far as the Air Force, I fought alongside them in
Korea. I have a lot of friends in the Air Force, and I will not
criticize a sister service. But I will criticize their
superiors, the Secretary of the Air Force and so forth. It
amazes me and I cannot comprehend why they do this. They don’t
have to do this. Why do they want themselves to look like fools?
Even the young kids are telling me, "Dummies? Dummies?" and then
they laugh. I can’t comprehend why they put that out. What is in
their mind? If I’d have written something like that, General
Trudeau would have thrown me out of the top window of the
Pentagon.
ML: What about the problem with Senator Strom Thurmond’s
foreword to your book? Simon and Schuster has issued a bland
apology, saying they’re going to pull Thurmond’s foreword out of
future printings of the book. What was your understanding with
the Senator?
PC: I’ve known Strom Thurmond for almost a lifetime. He’s a very
honest, sincere and courageous individual. We’ve always been
close. I found out recently that his staff did it. I don’t think
the old man knew it, and I think the old man will eventually
call me. We were too close for too many years. I sent the
original foreword for the other book [Thurmond had written a
foreword for a book titled "I Walked With Giants"] back to the
Senator, and I told him, "If you want to send me another
statement for this new book, that’s fine. If you don’t want to,
that’s fine too." I discussed UFOs with him. I gave him a copy
of Project Horizon. About a week later, not only did I get the
two pages that are in the book, but I also got a note from him
authorizing Simon and Schuster to print it. Bill Birnes has all
that. He has the original foreword -- the one I sent back -- and
he has the new one.
ML: Bill Birnes told me when I arrived here today that he was
under the impression that Thurmond or perhaps his staff had been
pressured from higher up to back out of this. Can you say
anything about this?
[Colonel Corso’s son, present during the whole interview, made
very visible hand signals to the Colonel at this point
indicating that the Colonel should not answer this question.]
PC: can’t verify that one way or another.
ML: Forgive me, Colonel, if I ask Mr. Birnes to say something
about this. [Birnes was in the room embroiled in a side
conversation at this time.] Bill, the Colonel has just declined
to address the question whether or not Senator Thurmond or his
staff may have been pressured from higher up. You indicated that
he might have been. Can you explain?
Bill Birnes: This is just my understanding of it from stories I
heard. The staff really wasn’t aware of the agreement that
Colonel Corso and the Senator had. It was an agreement between
two friends, more than two business associates. The staff went
ballistic when they found out. In other words,
"How dare you do
something and not consult your staff about what you’re writing?"
So the staff’s immediate preliminary reaction was, "Oh no, this
was the foreword for the book ’I Walked With Giants.’"
What the
staff didn’t know was that Colonel Corso had sent that first
foreword back to the Senator and got a new foreword in return. I
have copies of both. So, obviously, they weren’t in the loop.
When they were told that this is a new foreword the Senator
wrote, the story immediately changed. "Well, we weren’t told,
and we can’t do this." Finally, one of the staff members said,
"Don’t you understand that the Senator cannot be on a book
cover, writing a foreword, for a book that says the United
States government utilized alien technology to win the Cold War?
Don’t you realize this man is fourth in line to succeed the
president? Don’t you know this man is chairman of the Armed
Services Committee? NO, it can’t be."
So they went to Simon and
Schuster and said, "You have to pull the cover. Take it off the
shelves, get the foreword out, write a new cover." Simon and
Schuster said absolutely not. Then they made it very clear to
Simon and Schuster, saying, "You’re part of a large
conglomerate. Your large conglomerate has to deal with
government regulatory bodies. [According to Birnes, Simon and
Schuster is owned by Paramount, which in turn is owned by
Viacom.] Do you really want to be in this position? Viacom goes
before the FCC. You have a constituency of stockholders that you
have to respond to.
ML: You’re suggesting political blackmail.
BB: It’s absolutely political blackmail.
ML: Can you verify that this is what was going on?
BB: I have to say that this is my understanding of what was
going on because of confidential discussions I had with legal
[personnel] at Simon and Schuster, and from statements that the
staff members made to the Corso family with respect to the
pressure that was being put on them to get this foreword out of
the book. What I do know for a fact is that they demanded that
Simon and Schuster pull the book off the shelves. Simon and
Schuster flatly refused and said they had a signed release.
Then
[the Senator’s staff] came back and said, "As a matter of
courtesy, if we say that the Senator really wasn’t clear on the
nature of the book..." and Simon and Schuster said, "Well, if
it’s a matter of courtesy, then we can certainly understand that
in the heat of material passing back and forth,
misunderstandings can happen." So, that was the basic agreement.
ML: So, once they got the niceties of language straightened out,
the agreement was that the foreword would be pulled from future
printings of the book?
BB: Yes, exactly. But it will remain as it is, with this cover,
for this printing.
ML: Cutting to other news, there was a story that broke here
yesterday morning [Friday, July 4] about an object that had been
tested by several scientists. Its content was almost entirely
pure silicon, with small traces of metals such as germanium and
zinc. This sounds suspiciously like some kind of solid state
artifact, and it showed such highly anomalous isotopic ratios
that a scientist was willing to say on the record that it had
the appearance of extraterrestrial manufacture. Can this be
compared with anything you saw at the Pentagon, Colonel?
PC: I don’t know anything about it. It doesn’t even sound
similar to me.
ML: According to your book, you spent most of your time dealing
with the artifacts and debris of the Roswell incident, but what
about the aliens involved, and more especially, what about the
alien situation today? What do you think is the nature of the
alien presence, if any, on earth today?
PC: From my knowledge, at the moment, I don’t know of any alien
presence on earth. There are still reports of flying saucers, of
course, but I don’t know of any report of a body, or anyone who
has seen [an alien] lately.
ML: What do you say about people such as abductees who claim to
be actually seeing these creatures?
PC: My reports were thirty-five years ago. If there’s anything
now, I’m not aware of it. I know just what I saw in those days,
and the truth like I lived it. If there’s any aliens now, I’d
like to see them. I don’t know where they are. I’d like to see
if they compare with the ones that I saw.
