Earth (17 page)

“The weather was probably high alto stratus, but between being over the North Sea and in the weather, no frame of reference was available—i.e., no stars, no lights, no silhouettes; in short, nothing. GCI [Ground-controlled Interception] continued the vectoring and the dialogue describing the strange antics of the UFO. The exact turns and maneuvers they gave me were all predicated to reach some theoretical point for a lead collision-course type rocket release. I can remember reaching the level-off and requesting to come out of afterburner only to be told to stay in afterburner. It wasn't much later that I noticed my indicated Mach number was about .92 … about as fast as the F-86D could go straight and level.

“Then the order came to fire a full salvo of rockets at the UFO. I was only a lieutenant and was very much aware of the gravity of the situation. To be quite candid, I almost s__t my pants! At any rate, I had my hands full trying to fly, search for bogeys, and now selecting a hot load on the switches. I asked for authentication of the order to fire, and I received it….

“The authentication was valid, and I selected 24 [2.75-inch Mighty Mouse] rockets to salvo. I wasn't paying too much attention to [my wingman], but I clearly remember him giving a ‘Roger' to all the transmissions … instructions were given to look 30 degrees to the port for my bogey. I did not have a hard time at all. There it was exactly where I was told it would be [on his radar]. The blip was burning a hole in the radar with its incredible intensity….

“I had a lock-on that had the proportions of an aircraft carrier. By that, I mean the return on the radar was so strong that it could not be overlooked by the fire control system on the F-86D [and] it was the best target I could ever remember locking on to. I had locked on in just a few seconds, and I locked on exactly fifteen miles, which was the maximum range for lock-on. I called to the GCI ‘Judy,' which signified that I would take all further steering information from my radar computer….

“I had an overtake of 800 knots and my radar was stable,” Torres's report continues. “The dot [on the screen] was centered and only the slightest corrections were necessary. This was a very fast intercept and the circle
started to shrink. I called ‘twenty seconds' and the GCI indicated he was standing by. The overtake was still indicating in the 7 or 8 o'clock position. At about ten seconds to go, I noticed that the overtake position was changing its position. It moved rapidly to the 6 o'clock, then 3 o'clock, then 12 o'clock, and finally rested about the 11 o'clock position. This indicated a negative overtake of 200 knots (the maximum negative overtake displayed). There was no way of knowing what the actual speed of the UFO was, as he could be traveling at very high Mach numbers and I would only see the 200-knot negative overtake.

“The circle, which was down to about an inch and a half in diameter, started to open up rapidly. Within seconds it was back to three inches in diameter, and the blip was visible in the blackened ‘jizzle' band moving up the scope. This meant that it was going away from me. I reported this to the GCI site and they replied by asking ‘Do you have a Tally Ho?' I replied that I was still in the soup and could see nothing. By this time the UFO had broken lock and I saw him leaving my thirty-mile range. Again I reported that he was gone, only to be told that he was off their scope as well….”
26

Torres had the impression the craft was moving at no less than Mach 10 (over 7,000 mph) when it disappeared. “It didn't follow classic Newtonian mechanics,” he told reporter Billy Cox. “It made a right turn almost on a dime. The [RAF radar] scope had a range of 250 miles. And after two sweeps, which took two seconds, it was gone.”
27
The pilots were then vectored back to Manston.

A Cloak of Secrecy

“Back in the alert tent, I talked to Met sector,” the Torres report continues. “They advised me that the blip had gone off the scope in two sweeps at the GCI site and that they had instructions to tell me that the mission was considered classified. They also advised that I would be contacted by some investigator. It was the next day before anyone showed up.

“I had not the foggiest idea what had actually occurred, nor would anyone explain anything to me. In the squadron operations area, one of the sergeants came to me and brought me in to the hallway around the side of the pilots' briefing room. He approached a civilian, who appeared from nowhere. The civilian looked like a well-dressed IBM salesman, with
a dark blue trenchcoat. (I cannot remember his facial features, only to say he was in his thirties or early forties.)”
28

In an interview with
The Times
of London in 2008, the 77-year-old Torres—by then a retired professor of civil engineering—told defence editor Michael Evans that the man flashed a National Security Agency (NSA) identity card at him and warned that if he ever revealed what had happened, he would never fly again.
29
“He immediately jumped into asking me questions about the previous day's mission. I got the impression that he operated out of the States, but I don't know for sure. After my debriefing of the events, he advised me that this would be considered highly classified and that I could not discuss it with anybody, not even my commander [as in the case of Colonel Willingham]…. He threatened me with a national security breach if I breathed a word about it to anyone.”
30
(In the
Air Force Times
, Dr. Torres elaborated that the agent had threatened to revoke his flying privileges and end his Air Force career if he talked about the mission.
31
)

“He disappeared without so much as a good-bye, and that was that as far as I was concerned. I was significantly impressed by the action of the cloak-and-dagger people, and I have not spoken of this to anyone until recent years.”
32

Lieutenant Torres later became a range control officer at Cape Canaveral for the Gemini and Apollo space programs before flying 276 combat missions in the Vietnam War and earned thirteen air medals, including the Distinguished Flying Cross. He attained the rank of major prior to retiring from the military in 1971 and later became a professor of engineering at Florida International University, retiring in 2004.
33

In other interviews, Dr. Torres expressed relief that he had not actually been ordered to fire upon the craft because he was certain he “would have been vaporized,”
34
and asserted his conviction that the craft was designed by an alien intelligence.
35
“My impression,” he concludes in his report to the Ministry of Defence, “was that whatever the aircraft (or spacecraft) was, it must have been traveling in two-digit Mach numbers to have done what I witnessed.

“Perhaps the cloak of secrecy can be lifted in this day of enlightenment and all of us can have all the facts….”
36

A letter to Lt. Col. Roy Jack Edwards from former president Jimmy Carter. In 1955, while stationed at Edwards Air Force Base test-flying an F-100C Super Sabre, Edwards's jet was attacked by a large unknown craft, temporarily blinding him and disabling the aircraft's communications. The U.S. Air Force later falsified his whereabouts at the time of the incident.
(The Carter Center)

“A New World—If You Can Take It”

L
ieutenant Colonel Philip J. Corso served on the staff of the National
Security Council (NSC) and became an inter-agency coordinator for the NSC's Operations Coordinating Board—also known as the “Special Group,” “54/12 Committee,” or “5412 Group.” As such, I learned, it was “the most clandestine, covert, and senior secret intelligence authorizing and controlling committee in the executive branch of the U.S. government during the Truman and Eisenhower administrations.”

From 1961 to 1963, Corso acted as chief of the U.S. Army's Foreign Technology Division at the Pentagon. In 1997, his book—
The Day After Roswell
—caused a sensation with the revelation that he had been instructed by his boss, Lieutenant General Arthur Trudeau, chief of U.S. Army Research and Development, to steward alien artefacts from the Roswell incident in a reverse-engineering project that led to today's integrated circuit chips, fiber optics, lasers, and super-tenacity fibers.
1
Corso also briefed Robert F. Kennedy, during his term as U.S. Attorney General, regarding the Army's effort to seed extraterrestrial technologies into the private sector.
2

Although Corso describes in detail his viewing of the recovered alien bodies at Fort Riley, Kansas, omitted from the book was his close observation of a grounded flying disc and, later, an encounter with an alien
being, which occurred while he was in command of the Army's missile firing range at Red Canyon, White Sands, fifteen miles west of Carrizozo, New Mexico, in 1957. Corso's Record of Assignments (in my possession) shows that he served as Battalion Commander, based at Fort Bliss, Texas, from June 1957 through August 1958.

Described in a manuscript provided for me,
3
which Corso had intended for inclusion in his book, the separate events began with the intrusion and subsequent downing of an unknown craft.

“I took my small military plane with pilot and headed for the area where my radars had last located the object,” he reports. “We flew over the site and I saw a bright, shiny saucer-shaped object on the ground.” He assumed it was a missile booster.
4

Later that day, Corso drove an Army car to the area where the unknown object had come down. “I asked Fort Bliss to send me an old World War II command car. It was built high off the ground, had large tires and four-wheel drive [which] was ideal for cross-country over the desert. So I set off for the area about ten to fifteen miles from the down-range launching sites and well within my area of jurisdiction. I decided to go alone. I took my belt with pistol and canteen, a map and a compass and a Geiger counter which we used to test stray voltage in the connection between the booster and missile…. When I arrived at the spot I had marked on my map, there was nothing there but desert. I sat in my command car and surveyed the area with binoculars. Finally, I saw something shimmering like a heat wave…. Suddenly it materialized.

“It looked like a metal object [shaped like] a saucer…. Seconds ticked away and abruptly it disappeared. I approached closer. I stopped and waited. Then again after about ten minutes it materialized in the same shimmering manner, then quickly it disappeared. I timed its appearance (forty-eight seconds). Again after about twelve minutes it appeared again. I picked up a desert rock and threw it at the solid metal-appearing object. The rock bounced off but made no sound. It disappeared again. I placed a large rock in the spot and some sagebrush. When it reappeared, it crushed both stone and sagebrush.

“By the time interval I figured, I had a total of about five minutes to observe the object in its solid state. On this appearance I gathered my nerve and went and placed my hand on it. In the hot desert sun it was cool; the
surface was smooth, and felt like a highly varnished table top. It had no rough edges, no seams, and no rivets or screws.

“When it disappeared, I went back to my command car and sat to observe the see, no-see sequence. Each time it appeared to shake, but more like a shiver or tremble. Suddenly on the next appearance my Army compass started to spin and my Geiger counter began to fluctuate. I thought, discretion is the better part of valor. I started the engine, put the command car in reverse, and gunned it. After about three or four hundred yards, the engine stopped. The object slowly rose, turned on edge, and with a streak disappeared…. The bright-colored streak as it disappeared remained embedded in my memory. I started the engine and made four or five widening circles around the site. I stopped and got down, and thought I saw footsteps on the ground.

“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 r
eport 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 to 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