NARRATOR: July, 1947, Roswell,
New Mexico, wreckage found in the desert outside
this small town is believed by many to be a UFO. The question
is, are UFOs real? The answer is, yes. NARRATOR: For years,
controversy has grown about what really
happened here that summer night. Now a decorated US Army
Intelligence officer has made a remarkable claim. He says that not
only are UFOs real, but that the US military
harvested advanced technology from them. He knows this, he says,
because he held the technology in his hands and saw alien
bodies from the Roswell crash. The humanoid-type body came
from the Roswell area where there was a crash in 1947. Why should we believe him? Because of the man
that he was, the years of service that he dedicated to
the United States of America, and the fact that
he was considered one of the top military
men in his field. Who is this person? What did he do in the past? What were the things that he has
said in the past that have come to fruition? NARRATOR: According to
Lieutenant Colonel Philip Corso, he was responsible
for bringing alien technology to military labs and
civilian scientists. And they used it to make
lasers, fiber optics, integrated circuits,
night-vision-image goggles, and bulletproof vests. We are looking at crashed
flying saucers or ones that are shot down. And we're trying to
figure out how they work. NARRATOR: Others are skeptical
that alien technology jumpstarted the military
industrial complex. That's a peculiar kind of
lack of self-confidence in human ingenuity. I found that Philip Corso
wasn't telling the whole truth about a number of things. NARRATOR: Is Philip
Corso's story the fantasy of one ambitious
intelligence officer? Or does he confirm that a UFO
did crash at Roswell in 1947 and that it launched a
secret military program to push alien technology
into mainstream development? Summer, 1947, Major
Philip J. Corso was on patrol at the army base
at Fort Riley, Kansas when he encounters something that
will challenge everything he knows about heaven and earth. Corso was a career military
man, a respected intelligence officer, and an artillery
commander with his finger on the nuclear button. But inside a crate in
a deserted building, Corso swore was a being
from another planet. Corso would publish an account
of this and other revelations in a book called "The Day After
Roswell," a "New York Times" bestseller when it
came out in 1997. During one of
his book signings, five colonels came to him. And it was verified
that my father was right on with everything that
was written in the book. NARRATOR: Corso died in 1998. But the material he
presented in his book is still controversial. Now, for the first
time, the full story of his military career and
his startling UFO allegations are being told on television. 1942, the year after
the Pearl Harbor attack, Philip Corso, a small-town
boy from Pennsylvania, is drafted into the army. During World War II, he trains
as an intelligence officer. And afterward, at
the age of only 29, Corso becomes a
spy hunter in Rome. His mission-- to seek out
and terminate Soviet agents. When the United States
Army occupied Rome, what they want to do is
make sure that the post-war government would be a
friendly government, not a communist government. Opposition with a lot
of authority behind it-- the man was regarded
as an up-and-comer. NARRATOR: By April
of 1947, Corso returns to the United States
for additional training at the US Army's intelligence
school at Fort Riley. Three months later,
in July, 1947, comes that fateful night when
he claims he has the encounter that shakes him to his core. 32-year-old Corso is
the post-duty officer, an assignment that puts him in
charge of security at the base. That evening, Fort Riley
is buzzing with rumors. Five trucks containing debris
from a mysterious aircraft accident in Roswell,
New Mexico have arrived at the base in Kansas. Corso, with his training
as an intelligence officer, is intrigued by the shipment. At about 11:00 PM, Corso says
he enters the building where the Roswell shipment is stored. A guard on duty tells Corso that
he has already looked into one of the crates making up the
shipment and cannot comprehend what he's just seen. Corso then says he has
a look for himself. WILLIAM J. BIRNES:
And he sees these-- they look like coffins. They're little. They're kid coffins. He can't figure
out what that is. So he goes, and he
picks up the tarp. It looked like a thin body,
and a humanoid with a big head on it, and eyes,
but not too long. And the shape of it was
not as wide, as I say, as our bodies are. NARRATOR: Corso says this
was his first encounter with extraterrestrials. But it would not be his last,
nor his most significant. Later, he would be
given top-secret files and alien artifacts
that he claims would generate a new
technological world order. But in 1947, that day
was still a decade away. The outbreak of the
Korean War in 1950 puts a hold on Philip
Corso's ruminations on extraterrestrial beings. Corso joins General
Douglas MacArthur's staff as an artillery targeting
specialist for UN forces. After the 1953 armistice,
he remains in Asia, serving as an intelligence
officer repatriating American and allied
prisoners of war. I came to know Philip
Corso because he had been a special projects
officer in the Far East command for prisoners
of war under MacArthur, and then later held the
same role and capacity for the National
Security Council as a staffer in the
Eisenhower White House. NARRATOR: According to
his military records, in July of 1953, Corso
was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel. He says he is a trusted
advisor to President Dwight D. Eisenhower, informing him
of what Corso asserts is rampant KGB infiltration
within the CIA. And Corso was screaming about
this in the National Security Council to Eisenhower. NARRATOR: Corso states
that Eisenhower rewards him with his own combat command. In 1957, military
records confirm Corso was placed in charge
of an artillery battalion at Red Canyon missile range. By October of that year,
Corso commands the battalion in West Germany, where
he develops new targeting strategies for nuclear strikes. He's shown he can
do the one thing. He'll follow orders. But he's shown initiative. He had sole command of
a nuclear weapons battery. Now, in the event that war would
have broken out with the Soviet Union in the '50s when
Corso was in Germany, he would have had sole authority
to release his nuclear weapons. NARRATOR: But after Corso
returns from Germany, his career dramatically
changes direction. The gifted intelligence
officer, fearless spy hunter, and artillery commander who
controlled the world's most powerful weapon now becomes
a reservist in the National Guard. In October of 1960,
Corso was virtually in retirement, a
part-time unit advisor to a National Guard
base in Maryland. You could say it meant
that some people were displeased with him. But it's just as easy to say
he didn't have what it takes. NARRATOR: But Corso's
supporters believe Corso is being groomed for his
most important and most secret assignment. Now there is a big, green
hand running his career. That big, green hand is
the hand of Arthur Trudeau. NARRATOR: Philip Corso has a
powerful mentor in Lieutenant General Arthur Trudeau. A West Point graduate,
class of 1924, Trudeau quickly
gained a reputation as a forward-thinking
officer comfortable with high technology. In the Cold War era, he
pioneers technological training for intelligence
officers, and by 1958 is named Director of Army
Research and Development. When Trudeau gets a
chance to appoint a deputy, he brings Corso
over, and thus begins Corso's stint in army R&D. The general
called me and said, establish a foreign
technology division, and you're the chief of it. And you got an office
down next floor under me. NARRATOR: Through this
point in his career, Corso's army job history
is easily verified by examining military records. Look, he did work
in the Pentagon. His office was there. I have the roster. And he worked for
General Trudeau. And he certainly knew him well. There's no question about that. NARRATOR: But after his
Pentagon appointment, the paper trail of his
career is harder to follow, and his assertions more
difficult to confirm. Corso wrote that his Pentagon
job entailed analyzing foreign military hardware,
such as helicopter armament developed by the French,
or the British military's vertical takeoff
and landing fighter. Then the technology would
be reverse engineered. The military has had, over
the years, a number of projects where enemy technological
devices have been recovered by American forces. So one of Corso's jobs was
to get this foreign technology, this French technology,
and reverse engineer it. And then, if they
had something good, fed into our own
technological timeline. NARRATOR: Reverse engineering
plays a significant role in the spy craft of
the Cold War era. The Soviets used captured
American Sabre jets to reverse engineer US technology. And the US captured Soviet
MiGs to reverse engineer Soviet technology. But if Corso's routine job
involves examining technology from abroad, his task
would soon change. Sometime after July
20, 1961, Corso claims that General Trudeau
calls him into his office and gives him an
astounding directive. Examine technology captured from
the 1947 alien spaceship crash in Roswell, New Mexico. Trudeau has a filing cabinet
delivered to Corso's Pentagon office. Inside, Corso says, is proof
positive of aliens visiting Earth and alien technology
that Corso insists he will use to change the world. In 1947, Philip Corso claimed
to have seen alien bodies from the infamous UFO crash
near Roswell, New Mexico. Corso's description is
consistent with those who claim to be
eyewitnesses to the crash. The aliens, according
to these witnesses, were four small
human-like beings with four-fingered hands,
thin legs and feet, an oversized head, and
large almond-shaped eyes. These descriptions
purportedly appear in these classified documents,
prepared by government investigators. To this day, the documents
have not been authenticated. Corso insists that he
told no one about what he saw at Fort Riley. But in the summer of 1961, the
46-year-old lieutenant colonel is assigned to a
Pentagon project that will force him to recall
his eerie experiences. He was assigned to the
army's research development at the Pentagon-- once
again, a position with a lot of authority. NARRATOR: His goal-- to
advance US military superiority by a factor of decades. We had enough
sense to push it. We had the organization. And we had the money. And we had the brains to do it. And we did it. NARRATOR: During
the Cold War era, Corso says, there was
great government concern that the Russians would gain
access to the alien materials. Or worse, the aliens would
use their superior technology to invade earth. According to Corso, an
ordinary filing cabinet contains the extraordinary
artifacts of the Roswell crash. A piece of super
strong metallic cloth-- Corso contends it may have
protected the alien pilots in their spacecraft. A tube that appears to
shoot a searing red light-- Corso thinks it might
be a surgical instrument or a weapon. An alien-made headband
that, according to his military
reports, might have been used to transmit thoughts
or control the alien craft. An imprinted set of
miniaturized circuits-- perhaps a prefabricated
microcircuit. A flexible wire that might
have transmitted light through its interior-- and a lens that
could allow anyone to see in the dark, supposedly
taken from the eye of an alien being. To better understand the
puzzling contents of the filing cabinet, Corso claims
to immerse himself in classified government
documents reporting on alien technology
supposedly found at Roswell. According to the reports that
Corso claims to have read, some of the world's
foremost scientists, men like Wernher von Braun
and J. Robert Oppenheimer, have access to the
Roswell crash site. Corso says that Lieutenant
General Trudeau greenlights him to assemble his
own A-list team. You will put on that team
anybody that you want-- engineers, scientists,
and even the Germans. I told him, I'll take
a couple of Germans, too, in addition to
the US scientists. NARRATOR: Corso claims that,
based upon his close readings of the Roswell reports, he
developed his own theories about how the alien craft
may have functioned. WILLIAM J. BIRNES:
What Corso said was that the spacecraft
had a way to jump. It didn't fly from wherever
it came from to here. It jumped. And he said that's
all they knew-- that there was a wave around
the spacecraft that allowed it somehow not to be a
spacecraft, but a time machine. And the reason is
that, to travel the kinds of vast
distances it had to travel, it had to leave what we
understand in physics as a space-time continuum,
drop out of that, and suddenly reappear
in a new spot. NARRATOR: In Corso's
personal notes are sketches detailing
his concepts. Corso speculates
that the alien craft is navigated by a
mind-control interface fitting the alien cranium. It seemed as though,
by revolving the headband around the alien brain
drawings, you would match up the pickups on the
headband with various parts of the alien brain. NARRATOR: His background
research complete, Corso maintains he is ready
to move on to the next phase-- distribution. He will hand off
the alien technology he says comes from Roswell to
appropriate defense contractors for development. Try to imagine what would
happen if a spaceship crashed on Earth, and there was a
fabulous piece of technology, and somebody like Corso pulled
it out and gave it to research labs and said, here, guys,
figure out how this works. NARRATOR: The result,
Corso maintains, will lead to a complete
reconfiguring of the world's most advanced technologies. [music playing] In the early 1960s,
America's military might is directed toward
fighting the Cold War. Lieutenant Colonel Philip Corso
wants to bring alien technology from Roswell into the fray. By the end of the
summer of 1961, he maintains that he begins
to contact military weapons labs about his alien artifacts. ROBERT M. WOOD: Now, the
army laboratories also had civilian scientists there. And they developed this
relationship of handling classified material. And Phil Corso felt
very comfortable working through the army laboratories
to the civilian scientists, because the clearances
were all taken care of by the laboratory. NARRATOR: America is dotted
with top-secret, high-tech labs where civilian scientists work
on sensitive military projects. Los Alamos, home of
the Manhattan Project, is perhaps the most famous. But in 1961, Fort
Belvoir in Virginia is quietly working on
a decade-long project to develop night-vision
engineering. Corso claims he makes this
lab the first he approaches with alien technology. In order to get these things
reverse engineered properly, you couldn't just take
this to a Radio Shack. It had to go to a place where
somebody would understand the technology. NARRATOR: According to
Corso, Roswell eyewitnesses report that the alien craft has
image-intensifying technology. If one went inside the
ship and looked out, the world outside would look as
bright as day, even at night. There was also, according
to Corso, a lens taken out of an alien's eye that has
life-enhancing properties. No one knows how the two
are related, says Corso. But he knows their
potential value. Corso maintains that, by
the late summer of 1961, he helps researchers
at Fort Belvoir by showing them the alien
light-enhancing lens, and possibly other
light-enhancing technology from the Roswell craft. Corso says he wasn't
able to further develop the alien mind-control
interface. His theory was
that it would only function with an alien brain. But this momentary
setback, he claims, didn't forestall development
of another Roswell artifact-- an imprinted circuit
of mysterious design. We also had a
little charred chip-- a small thing, maybe 3/8 of
an inch, square, two threads coming out. And all went in the
center with thin wires. These came from Roswell. We didn't know exactly the
function of these integrated circuits. But we suspected that these were
circuits, electrical circuits. NARRATOR: Corso asserts that he
brings the object to Bell Labs, which had developed the
transistor 14 years earlier. He says scientists there were
able to analyze and later recreate the alien microchip. Corso claims the Roswell
microchip was supposedly damaged from the crash,
but that in his possession is another alien
object, this one apparently fully functioning. He knows from reports that,
when people were shining this thing around, it caused
burning on the surfaces that it was aimed at. NARRATOR: Corso says he reads
classified military reports speculating that the
artifact from Roswell, apparently capable of
burning holes in walls, is some kind of cutting tool,
perhaps used for surgery. At Hughes Aircraft,
from the late 1950s into the early
1960s, researchers have been working on what would
become the first laser tracking and targeting devices
for military aircraft. But engineers have run into
a snag in their efforts to create a practical device-- that is, Corso asserts, until
he shows them the alien cutting tool. It did accelerate after 1960,
'61, because people figured out new ways to make lasers. And as the science advanced,
the engineering advanced. NARRATOR: Corso's filing
cabinet reportedly contains another treasure
from the Roswell trove. PHILIP CORSO: It
was glass tubes. And they admitted
different colored lights. And those were sent
to Bell Laboratories. From that was one of the
greatest advancements I think we have today
came out in fiber optics. NARRATOR: Many UFO researchers
theorized that the spacecraft had no wiring because
it was fitted instead with fiber-optic cable. Transmitting
information with light happens to be an old technology. It dates back to one of the
pioneers of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, who
experimented with a device he called the photo phone in 1880. JIM QUINN: Most people
have never heard of it. But back in his day,
serious scientists thought that the photo phone
was a more impressive invention than the telephone. The photo phone was a way that
you could transmit a voice signal over a beam of light. NARRATOR: Corso's
research tells him that data transmission via light
had failed because scientists could not direct a beam
of light around corners. But Corso contends that
the Roswell artifacts might hold the answer. ROBERT M. WOOD: They were
looking at these glass fibers and saying, wow, the light
actually turns a corner. How can light go in curves? And then they
concluded the reason for that was because it
had a cladding wrap on it. The cladding was
the key discovery you had to make in order
to make fiber optics work. NARRATOR: Although it would
not be until the 1970s that fiber optics
were in general use, UFO researchers believe
that the cladding wrap on the alien artifact, an outer
covering on the fiber that guided the light, made it
possible for earthly fiber optics to advance. Corso also says he examined
some curious super strong fibers that his military reports claim
come from the aliens' flight suits. The first thing
on the fabric that amazed me was a thread that
I couldn't cut with a razor blade-- just a thread. NARRATOR: In his
book, Corso offers a theory about the fibers
composing the alien flight suits. The alien bodies, probably
the more vulnerable aspects, were protected from what had
to be incredible energies by the super tenacity of the
fabric, which somehow formed a shield. And Corso said, they
didn't put these on. They were woven around them. In other words, they
spun them like a cocoon. NARRATOR: According
to Corso, he wonders if these super strong
fibers could be developed into super strong bulletproof
shields for law enforcement and military use. Corso said that the
army tried to bring it to the University of
Colorado to try and fabricate this technology. NARRATOR: The mid-1960s
saw great advances in super strong fabrics that
used polymer technology, the type of molecules
that Corso claimed were present in
his alien fabric. In 1965, Kevlar was
invented, a fabric that would be used in bulletproof vests-- more proof, according
to Corso, of the impact of alien technology. There's no denying that
the period Corso works in the Pentagon
coincides with a period of rapid technological
growth in the United States. Corso's supporters say alien
technology played a role. But others see things
very differently. In his bestselling book
"The Day After Roswell," Lieutenant Colonel
Philip Corso claimed to introduce alien technology
from the 1947 Roswell crash to the American military's
technological agenda. But others say that the
scientific leaps of the 1960s were not made by one hero, and
not with the help of aliens. It's nice to think in terms
of one heroic person leading us into the new world of far-out
technology learned from saucers. That sounds great. But having worked on a
whole host of big research and development programs,
that isn't the way it works. Look, on an aircraft
nuclear propulsion program, we employed 3,500 people. 1,100 of them were
engineers and scientists. We were spending
$100 million a year. That's the kind
of effort it takes to develop new technology. And that was in 1958
dollars at that. NARRATOR: Corso claims that
the laser jumped from theory to practice after scientists
examined the device found in the Roswell crash debris. But to science historians,
that's science fiction. The laser is a good example
of an invention that doesn't really have a single eureka
moment where somebody gets a brilliant inspiration. And then they go down into
their basement workshop. And 15 minutes later, they've
hammered together a laser. The laser really
began back in 1951 when a physicist from
Columbia University was taking a walk in Washington. NARRATOR: That physicist
was Charles Townes. CHARLES TOWNES:
And I woke up early in the morning worrying
about, why hadn't we've been able to get anywhere? It was before breakfast. So I went out, and walked out in
the park, sat down in the park. Suddenly I said,
hey, wait a minute, we can get a whole
collection of molecules all in excited states
with excess energy. And I wrote down the
numbers to see, now, could I make it oscillate? NARRATOR: The first laser device
used microwaves rather than light. The light-emitting version
wasn't functional until 1960, nine years after Professor
Townes jotted down his notes. While the laser's development
was slow and steady, the integrated circuit
advanced rapidly. But the greatest progress
was made by scientists well after Corso retired. The real breakthrough
happened in 1971 when a guy named Ted Hoff
conceived of the idea of putting an entire
microprocessor on one piece of silicon, a
computer on a chip. Basically, what happens
in an integrated circuit is that you are controlling
the flow of electrons or actually, in some cases,
the absence of electrons. NARRATOR: Ted Hoff,
known as the architect of the microprocessor, started
working on integrated circuits in 1968. Hoff disputes Corso's claim
that an alien chip captured from the Roswell crash made an
earthly version conceivable. If you have a crash scenario,
there's presumably damage done. And that damage may make the
device even harder to analyze. And even if you had the device,
you'd really want a context. If you had seen this device in
those days and had no context to put it in-- in other
words, what's it used for-- you'd even have less
chance of understanding it. NARRATOR: Hoff also says that to
reverse engineer an integrated circuit, as Corso
claimed happened in 1961, you would need a scanning
electron microscope, which was not invented until 1966. Philip Corso also claimed that
his alien fiber-optics cable inspired scientists. But science historians
don't support his assertion, because fiber optics required
a convergence of technologies occurring over decades
of development. The idea really became
interesting in 1965 when lasers were available. And people suddenly realized
there was a commercial use for fiber optics. So shortly after
that, the project was tackled by a trio
of inventors at Corning. And they came up with a
successful fiber optic in 1970. NARRATOR: The highly
directional light of a laser improved signal strength. The team of researchers
at Corning Glass created a form of fused silica. This super pure
glass material was capable of carrying 65,000 times
more information than copper wire. This made fiber optics
commercially practical 10 years after Corso
claimed to have accelerated the technology. Corso also stated that he
inspired a quantum leap in image-enhancement technology. But science historians say the
technology of turning night into day was also
decades in the making. JIM QUINN: Progress
increased so incrementally. It goes all the way
back to the 1940s when image-intensifying
radar scopes were issued to allied troops
in the Pacific Theater. NARRATOR: The first night-vision
gear employed thermal imaging. Developed by the Germans
during World War II, it brought heat energy
into the visible spectrum using an infrared
light and a receiver. Then, by the early 1960s,
William Spicer, a Defense Department researcher,
had created image-intensification
technology. Fort Belvoir scientists
built upon his work. Image intensification
requires no additional light. Functioning like a radio
receiver for light waves, it amplifies existing light. Today's image intensifiers
are small enough to be worn as goggles and are
capable of amplifying light by a factor of 35,000. Scientists suggest that, if
Corso really had an alien image enhancer, showing it to
researchers in the 1960s did little to advance the
technology's measured progress. JIM QUINN: The engineering
that was required just progressed at a very slow rate. Making night vision
work was largely the result of really
brilliant engineering. NARRATOR: Finally, according
to technology experts, Corso's super tenacity fibers
came not from alien space suits, but from years of
research by a scientist named Stephanie Kwolek, who
worked at the DuPont company. She learned how to organize
super strong chains of atoms in 1965. And by 1971, Kevlar
was on the market. The theory that
something like Kevlar came off a flying
saucer strikes me as being insulting to someone
like Stephanie Kwolek, who poured enormous
amounts of effort-- years of her life, tremendous
dedication and brainpower went into cracking
the secrets of nature. NARRATOR: Furthermore,
some skeptics insist Lieutenant
Colonel Corso simply didn't have the
technical background to run a
reverse-engineering program. I read something
he'd written years ago and found that it
was not high tech. I worked for General Electric,
Westinghouse, General Motors, TRW Systems, McDonnell Douglas
with lots of technical people. I'm a physicist myself. And I saw nothing in
what Corso had written that gave any indication of
his having the knowledge, the skills, the
talent, the background to handle stuff like this
and get it into industry. NARRATOR: Corso had an
answer to this objection, claiming that his team
of A-list scientists helped him interpret
the Roswell cache. I didn't have the training or
the background for something-- that got highly technical. But fortunately, German
scientists were there. I knew von Braun. And I knew Herman Oberth. Oberth was the man who
said we'd been helped. But we had to keep it quiet to
protect our budget, to protect our organization. NARRATOR: For doubters, there is
also the issue of Corso's rank. A lieutenant
colonel, some argue, wouldn't be running things
as Corso claimed he was. I think an indication of
his value to the military would have been
given by the fact that he was not a full
colonel, despite all his years in service. NARRATOR: But others stand
by Corso's assertions, particularly those who say
they're familiar with the way the US military functions. CHIP BECK: Back in those
days, a lieutenant colonel had a lot more authority and
position than a lieutenant colonel today has. And even today, you've
got lieutenant colonels doing quite a bit of
the important tactical and even strategic
planning and operation. NARRATOR: The History
Channel contacted the military contractors Corso
claims to have worked with. And all say there was no alien
involvement in the technologies Corso says he jumpstarted. No memos, directives,
or paperwork of any kind exists to directly
support Corso's assertions about reverse engineering
alien technology. But Corso's supporters say there
is no paper trail for a very good reason. Among those who
believe there was an alien crash
near Roswell, there is consensus on one concept. The US government systematically
suppressed the truth. The government of
the United States and other governments
around the world have gone out of their way
to keep that wrapped up inside a riddle that's
smothered by an enigma. NARRATOR: Philip
Corso says he also had to keep his
reverse engineering program under wraps. PHILIP CORSO: We
couldn't discuss it. We made a decision. It cannot be discussed
outside of us. We're doing good. We have the authority. We have the money
for our R&D projects. Well, that's fine. Let's keep it that way. Let's not get mixed up
in the murky area of whether they exist or not. NARRATOR: As for
Corso's contributions to the advancement
of science, skeptics say that the technology he
claimed to have pushed forward was ready to emerge anyway. As proof, they offer up
the mind-control headband, one alien technology that
Corso did not claim to develop. Today, it's well on its
way to becoming a reality without his help. Since the 1970s, scientists
have been experimenting with using EEG
readouts of brain waves to provide feedback
and change behavior. It's now possible to use EEG
feedback games, like this one, to learn how to
manage brain states. But mind-control technology
has advanced even further than that. I'm going to open the first
email, which says, congrats. It says-- NARRATOR: In 2004, researchers
received FDA approval to test tiny brain
implants designed to allow disabled people
to control computers using their thoughts. Next, I'm going
to paint a circle. NARRATOR: UFO researchers say
the government's supposed cover up may forever obscure
the facts of Roswell, and therefore also
obscure the truth about whether alien technology
played a supporting role in the development of fiber
optics, super strong fabrics, lasers, integrated circuits, or
battle-ready image enhancement. SETH SHOSTAK: Some people
think that, for example, aliens intervened in 3,500 BC in Egypt
to help the Egyptians build pyramids. Well, doggone it, the
Egyptians of 3,500 BC were fully capable
of putting big blocks on top of other big blocks. If the Egyptians had suddenly
developed cell phones or something like
that, then I would say, OK, there's intervention there. But that's not what they did. NARRATOR: But while Lieutenant
Colonel Philip Corso might be questioned, his ideas
deemed controversial, and his predictions dismissed
as the stuff of science fiction, his impact on UFO legend and
lore can never be minimized. The military, the Pentagon,
the government of the United States does not give that type
of authority to a loose cannon. This man was highly
regarded, highly respected. PHILIP CORSO: At my age,
what do I have to lose? I have to let my grandchildren
and my own know this, because how long
will I be around yet? And when I go, it goes with me. There must have been
many days, many days that Philip Corso said
to himself, why me? Why do I have this information? And again, I think that's one
of the things that probably plagued him for so many years. It's pretty difficult
to keep a secret like that within yourself. Even today, only 10% of the
story is told, my father says. The rest is classified. [music playing]
