by Timothy Good
“They looked like they were made with a soft moccasin. I placed my foot alongside. I wear an 8C. They were half the size. I put the Geiger-counter leads on one. There was no reaction. I placed my compass. They were pointing east toward my missile firing sites, about ten miles away.”5
Two days later, Corso was told to report to two range riders, who demanded to know what he had seen at the site. “A booster from one of my missiles,” Corso responded. “There could be dire consequences for not telling us what you saw,” threatened one of the men.
“I am the commander of this U.S. Army installation, and don’t like threats in my command post,” Corso fired back. “If I press this button, a dozen armed men will surround this office. Consider yourself in protective custody; you will leave when I say so…. Now, give me your identification and the name of your commanding officer.” Over the phone, he explained to the officer that he had White House “Eyes Only” clearance and all other necessary clearances and therefore knew how to keep a secret.
Later, Corso flew over the area again to take another look at the object. But the area had been swept clean.6
Green Time
“While I was in command of the U.S. Army’s missile firing range at the Red Canyon range, I had one very annoying problem,” relates Corso. “The range was part of the White Sands complex. I could not fire a missile unless they gave me what was called ‘green’ time. This coordination was necessary so there would be no radar interference. At times they held me up for hours, keeping hundreds of men on hold.
“One hot day, during one of these lulls, I was downrange in my command car, with two of my sergeants (my command post was a white shack on a high hill overlooking the range)….”
“First Sergeant Willis asked me if I wanted to visit the gold mine, only a few miles from the range area…. A mile or so from the ‘D’ Battery firing site, we turned off the dusty desert road into what seemed like a moon ‘rille.’ Dark rocks on both sides, then into a sloping area with a dark outcropping like a cliff. We stopped and walked about a hundred feet to a simmering pool of water. In the cliff area was an opening [where] we entered the mine shaft…. My men said antelopes, burros [small wild donkeys], coyotes, jackrabbits, birds, and even large rattlesnakes came here to partake of the cool water. It was like an oasis in the desert….
“A week or so later, I was in my command shack during one of these White Sands-generated lulls. I decided to take a jeep and go visit the gold mine alone. When I arrived, some animals were around the pond. I drove up to the opening, went in, and sat down and cooled off in the natural air conditioning. The soft dripping water sound was almost hypnotic. I dozed off [but then] my instinct took over. My right hand slowly went to my holster. I drew my .45 and snapped off the safety. (Every other cartridge had a tip of pellets, like a shot-gun shell.)
“I drew the gun and rolled on my side. Suddenly, a word registered in my head—‘Don’t.’ In mental telepathy I responded, ‘Friend or Foe?’ The reply came back—‘Neither.’ I was impressed. In the shimmering half light, bouncing off the moving water, I saw a figure that appeared transparent. It had on a helmet, silver in color, large slanted eyes. and a bright red spot on a band across the forehead [see sketch on the next page]. The message continued as our eyes met in the semi-light. ‘Will you give me ten minutes, radar free, after green time?’
“I thought back. ‘Ten minutes could be an eternity. What do you offer?’
“‘A new world—if you can take it.’
A sketch by Amy O’Brien based on Colonel Corso’s description of the alien.
“I started the jeep, looked back, and saw a figure in the shimmering light of the mine opening. I saluted and took off.
“When I arrived at the range headquarters, Captain Williams reported, ‘Sir, D Battery locked on, for sixty seconds, on an object fifty miles out, traveling three thousand mph.’
“‘Tell D Battery to send me the tape.’
“The downed radars must have cleared an opening to let in a reported UFO. Did it pick up my new-found friend? Or enemy?”7
On the alien’s helmet, Corso thought he caught a glimpse of something that looked similar to the familiar caduceus symbol—that of the tree and the coiled serpent.8 “As for the (caduceus) sign of healing,” he wrote, “we compiled quite a list of medical by-products and other advances of our R&D [research and development]. The mental conversation I dismissed at the time as figments of my imagination. In 1960 I discovered that without vocal cords they probably communicated by mental telepathy.”
In pondering the request for “green time,” Corso theorized that radar had caused loss of the craft’s control systems, resulting in its subsequent crash.
“‘A new world—if you can take it.’ There was no other reply possible,” reflected Corso. “The debris [from the Roswell wreckage], research and development, new concepts, etc., were nothing else except the beginning of the challenge. Many men have taken up the challenge. New developments are coming so fast, after a slow start (1947–1960) that we can hardly keep up with them. If the alternative is destruction, we are progressing well toward ‘taking it.’
“Like Hermann Oberth said, ‘We have been helped by those from outer space.’ Most of what I did during my [research and development] tour were just concepts, but many are working out….”9
Interstellar Capability
On March 23, 1993, Ben Rich, who had headed Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works, which among others had built the SR-71 Blackbird high-speed reconnaissance plane and the F-117A Nighthawk “stealth” attack bomber, gave a presentation to the Engineering Alumni Association at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA), of which Rich was an alumnus. Two researchers I know, Tom Keller and Jan Harzan, who also had graduated from UCLA, attended the illustrated lecture. Tom is an aerospace engineer who has worked, for example, as a computer systems analyst for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Jan is an engineer and senior project executive with IBM Global Services.
“We sat at the front of the audience, say about 150 to 200 folks,” Tom’s report begins. “I took a look around. The 200-or-so capacity auditorium was filled with what appeared to be aerospace-industry professionals, the press, members of academia, and a few military types in uniform sitting at the back—Air Force ‘blue-suiters.’ Knowing the history of Lockheed’s activity in military intelligence, my guess was that there also were also a few ‘spooks’ there too.”
“Please don’t ask me any questions about the Aurora project,” Rich announced in his introduction. (Aurora is reportedly the top-secret unmanned hypersonic reconnaissance craft that replaced the SR-71.) “I can’t answer any and if I did, I’d be thrown in jail. There are some representatives of the CIA here who I recognize.”
Rich continued for an hour reviewing the history of the Skunk Works, highlighted by numerous slides. “He described the U-2 reconnaissance plane and its successor, the TR-1 variants [and] the SR-71 Blackbird [and] the little-known D-21 supersonic spy drone that was carried atop an SR-71 mother ship,” Tom continues. “The part of the lecture in which he truly beamed was the F-117 stealth attack plane (sometimes erroneously called a ‘stealth fighter’)…. All of these aircraft were built by the Skunk Works, not designed by them and then built by someone else.”10
Clarence “Kelly” Johnson was the legendary designer of aircraft such as the above. Of related interest, the Lockheed A-12 reconnaissance aircraft (code-named Oxcart), of which thirteen were built at the Skunk Works for the CIA, preceded both the YF-12 interceptor and the SR-71 (ordered by the U.S. Air Force). Donald Phillips, who prior to joining the U.S. Air Force worked as a design engineer on the SR-71 project with Johnson, stated cautiously at a National Press Club conference in 2001 that he was aware of evidence that these aircraft had served in another capacity apart from their more routine missions. “Each pilot—and I knew a few of them—learned about the assignment immediately prior t
o takeoff, and there’s strong evidence to suggest that there was a dual role in that they were monitoring some type of traffic to and from Earth….”11
At one point in his memorable presentation, Ben Rich said, “If you can imagine it, Lockheed Skunk Works has done it,” a phrase he later repeated on two occasions. And in his concluding comments, he added, “We already have the means to travel among the stars. But these technologies are locked up in black projects and it would take an Act of God to ever get them out to benefit humanity. Anything you can imagine, we already know how to do.”
He then showed his last slide—an artist’s conception of a flying disc zipping off into the unknown—and announced, “We now have the technology to take ET home.” The reaction of the audience was nervous laughter, Tom recalls. “My interpretation was that this was Rich’s way of saying, ‘We can do it now.’ A few others in the room, including my friend Jan, also took this statement very seriously. All you had to do was read between the lines.
“The talk concluded with some questions and answers and the formal part of the program was over. As soon as it ended, about thirty of us crowded around Rich like rock fans around the Beatles at their last concert. I was beginning to wonder if anyone else (except Jan, as he and I think alike) in the audience was having the same thoughts: Could Skunk Works be working on some otherworldly craft as we spoke?
“One man spoke up and said that he was a new manager at Northrop [which built the B-2A Spirit stealth bomber] and wanted Rich’s advice. Rich pointed his finger at the man and said, ‘Well, let me ask you a question: Is it possible to travel to the stars?’ The man was taken aback a bit and then said, ‘Oh, sure. It would just take a long time.’ Rich replied, ‘No, it won’t take someone’s lifetime to do it. There is an error in the equations and we know what it is, and we now have the capability to travel to the stars.’
“Rich went on to imply that various people at Skunk Works had been studying alternative propulsion technologies for interstellar travel [and] said they had, for example, determined that Einstein’s equations dealing with relativity theory were incorrect. I asked him to clarify that. Did he mean that Skunk Works employed theoretical physicists, ‘Einstein types,’ to look for alternative means of space travel? Rich said ‘Yes,’ [then] went on to say that they had proved that Einstein was wrong. He made a mistake.
“I didn’t know how that set with other people in the room, but to me that possibly meant that they had determined how it was possible to travel faster than the speed of light. It’s important to keep in mind that Skunk Works is a fabrication outfit. They are not in business to be a theoretical think-tank. My take on this was that at Skunk Works they were looking for loopholes in Einstein’s work that would give them a way of traveling at ultra-high, faster-than-light speeds, to the stars and back. I interpreted Rich’s comments to mean that the scientists at Skunk Works had found such a loophole—and they were building or had built a craft to do it.
“One woman in the small crowd apparently had similar thoughts. She asked, ‘Mr. Rich, when will the ETs go home?’ Rich smiled, looked down at the floor, and said nothing. Some of us were left wondering what his response might have been had he been able to answer without fear of being sentenced to twenty years in Fort Leavenworth.
“As Rich was walking out of the door, Jan followed him and asked privately, ‘Ben, what equations are you talking about?’ He just looked at Jan, who then explained that he was interested in propulsion and wanted to know how UFO propulsion worked. Rich said, ‘Let me ask you: How does ESP work?’ Jan replied without thinking, ‘All points in time and space are connected?’ Rich shot back, ‘That’s how it works!’
“Jan did not know if Rich was referring to his question or his answer. Rich then turned around and abruptly left the room….”12
The great pioneer died of cancer in January 1995, aged sixty-nine.
Chapter Ten
Gray Liaison
The summer of 2009 brought me a promising letter. “I have a true story to tell [which] relates to my RAF Service, 1955–1957, and involves an alien situation at the camp where I was stationed,” the writer began. “I need some advice and wonder if you have time for a chat? I would add that my involvement, with five of my RAF/Fleet Air Arm pals, fills the gap relating to Britain.”1
My informant—“Thomas”—spoke guardedly about the gist of the “alien situation” when I first conversed with him on the phone, stressing that he was still bound by the Official Secrets Act. However, he wished to include the story in a book he was currently engaged in writing about his Royal Air Force career and requested my guidance on how to proceed. I agreed to visit him for a couple of days at his home in the West Country. Much of the information presented in this chapter is taken from Thomas’s remarkable manuscript,2 and from my regular communications with him.
Thomas began by giving me details of his National Service record. In March 1955, at the age of eighteen, he had been posted to RAF Cardington, Bedfordshire. He then was posted as Airman Second Class (AC2) to Padgate, Lancashire, for “square-bashing,” consisting largely of .303 rifle/bayonet drill. Following that came trade training, in which Thomas and his colleagues were given a choice of five RAF trades. Thomas ticked off five “admin” jobs, and was assigned to the Equipment Provisioning and Accounting Section (EPAS) at RAF Creddon Hill in Hereford for five weeks’ training. In due course, he was posted to RAF Weston Zoyland, Somerset, and nearby RAF Merryfield.
Located some four miles from Bridgwater, Weston Zoyland was originally a World War II airfield, opened in 1944 and used jointly by the Royal Air Force and United States Army Air Forces, primarily for transport aircraft. It was also used, I learned, as a secret base in that period by Britain’s Special Operations Executive (SOE). After the end of war in the European theater, four fighter squadrons occupied the station briefly. The station was then used as a reserve RAF Fighter Command airfield, but little flying took place there until the summer of 1952, when Meteor and Vampire jets operated there in a training role. Canberra bomber/photo reconnaissance and training aircraft were present during the mid-1950s. By 1958, no more aircraft used Weston Zoyland. During the relevant period, the commanding officer was Group Captain H. E. Hopkins. Today, several derelict buildings remain, excluding the hangars but including the control tower, which I explored in September 2010. Part of the airfield is used nowadays for microlights, and it is also a base for the Sky Watch Civil Air Patrol.
At the time of Thomas’s posting there, Weston Zoyland had been taken over by the Fleet Air Arm (FAA). EPAS included a squadron leader in charge, plus a flight lieutenant, a couple of corporals, and the six airmen, including Thomas, who became firm friends with his colleagues.
One morning, the flight sergeant (“Flight”) came over to the EPAS office and whispered to Thomas that he was to present himself in the squadron leader’s office at 10:00, to say nothing to anyone, and to join his colleagues. The flight sergeant ordered the men to be on parade outside No. 1 hangar at 08:30 the following morning, dressed in their “best blues.” At the appointed hour, the EPAS team assembled outside the hangar, followed by the squadron leader with three others, one in naval uniform. The team snapped to attention.
“Airmen,” began the squadron leader, “you will all recall signing the Official Secrets Act. You will be here until the end of your service, by which time the matter you will be dealing with will have been resolved. Or should be…. Your duties will be extraordinary, to say the least.”
No badges of any sort were to be worn. “To anyone in camp you will be rank-less and anonymous,” continued the squadron leader. “On the left epaulette of both your new working blues you will find an orange band already in place. You will not remove them at any time.
“You will have no status whatsoever as far as any other personnel can see. Only yourselves and others involved on the project will know who you are, and from time to time that will include civilians as w
ell as members of the armed forces.
“You will all receive a small pay increase and will deserve it. However, you will say nothing about it to anyone, even at home, if you go on leave. The increase will be on a scale higher than your actual rank. Simply follow orders quietly and responsibly and all will go well and smoothly…. You cannot go off camp in uniform, nor take your orange flashes off camp, nor will you say one single word about today for the remainder of your service, not even to your nearest and dearest. Is that perfectly understood?”
The team confirmed that it was. “Now, of course, you are all curious as to what the hell this all about. You will return to your billet, then change into your new shirt-sleeve order, with orange flashes worn as instructed. Be here at No. 1 hangar at 14:30 hours for a further briefing. Stay together and not a word to anyone, no matter who….”
Code Orange
Thoroughly bemused, Thomas and his colleagues—now effectively attached to the Fleet Air Arm—presented themselves outside hangar No. 1 at the appointed time. The squadron leader summoned the men into the hangar and ordered them to sit down on a row of six chairs—individually assigned with the mens’ initials. Opposite stood a table with four chairs. A car drew up outside and the three men from earlier that day came and sat down, dressed this time in civilian suits. “One was tall and hawkish,” Thomas reported, “and the other strongly built with a head of white hair. The naval officer sat away from them, allowing our squadron leader to sit beside him, but between him and the two civilians.”
“You are now attired as you will be for the remainder of your service,” began the squadron leader. “You each have certain things in common. For example, you passed your RAF entrance exams at the top of your classes, though of course you did not know that about each other. Equally, at your respective training camps you were recorded as best airmen in your Flight…. I shall not introduce you to the three gentlemen with me today. If any of you feel you know any or all of them by sight, forget it and say nothing.