Philip Corso

Philip Corso (1915–1998) was a US Army lieutenant colonel who served on President Eisenhower's National Security Council staff and in the Army's Foreign Technology Division. His 1997 book The Day After Roswell, written with William Birnes, said that in 1961 he was given custody of material from the 1947 Roswell crash and seeded it to defence contractors, and that integrated circuits, fibre optics and night-vision devices derived from it. He also said he had seen a non-human body in 1947 at Fort Riley.

Corso's service record is documented and confirms the posts he held. The book's central claims are not supported by any document he produced, and the technologies he names have well-recorded independent histories. Senator Strom Thurmond, who wrote a foreword, withdrew it when he learned the book's subject. Researchers on both sides have found errors of fact in the book; supporters argue that his position gave him access others lacked.

The corpus discusses Corso in ten episodes as the highest-ranking officer to have claimed direct handling of Roswell material, often in the same breath as Harald Malmgren. The knowledge base records his career as documented and the book's account as testimony that is uncorroborated.