In a possibly cosmically-ironic act of subterfuge, US Army Colonel Philip J. Corso–who served in high positions in the military and was directly involved with Roswell and its crash-recovered materials–left the Army in 1963 and went on to work as an aide to longstanding South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond.

Anyone who follows politics knows that Thurmond was an avowed racist and vehemently opposed the Civil Rights Act, giving the longest filibuster of its time in an effort to quell the measure that was ultimately signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson that year, who took office following the assassination of JFK a year prior.

https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/civil-rights-act

Here's the NY Times article published on June 5, 1997, following Philip J. Corso's 'The Day After Roswell' becoming a NYT bestseller, much like Luis Elizondo's Imminent is currently.

https://www.nytimes.com/1997/06/05/us/senator-regrets-role-in-book-on-aliens.html

By William J. Broad

• June 5, 1997

–A new book contending that the nation's military and industrial power largely derive from a crashed alien spaceship is being disparaged by Senator Strom Thurmond, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who wrote the book's foreword.

The book, ''The Day After Roswell,'' published by Pocket Books, says the Government found an alien craft that had crashed in the desert near Roswell, N.M., in July 1947 and set up a program to glean and use its secrets, including lasers, computer chips and fiber optics. Meanwhile, the book says, the Government covered up the existence of the aliens. The author, Philip J. Corso, who retired from the Army in 1963 and wrote the book with William J. Birnes, says he helped with this endeavor.

The book might be dismissed, as others in the genre have been, except for the author's military background, his claimed role and Senator Thurmond's praise of the author in the foreword.

Mr. Corso contends that, while at the Pentagon, he personally spearheaded an Army project that secretly planted the alien technologies throughout the economy and military, mainly to build up American strength to fight an inevitable war against alien invaders.

In the foreword, Senator Thurmond, a South Carolina Republican, says Mr. Corso worked for him as an aide after leaving the Army and praises him as a person of integrity who served his country well. ''He has many interesting stories to share with individuals interested in military history, espionage and the workings of our Government,'' Senator Thurmond wrote. But he made no mention of the book's central thesis of inadvertent aid to the United States by space aliens.

In a statement, Senator Thurmond said that he regretted that his foreword appeared to bolster claims of a Government conspiracy. ''I know of no such 'cover-up,' '' the Senator said, ''and do not believe one existed.''

Liz Hartman, director of publicity for Pocket Books, said in an interview that confusion over the book's topic appeared to center on Senator Thurmond's office and staff rather than Mr. Corso's revelations. ''We absolutely stand by the book,'' she said. ''It's a memoir.''

Here's a clip of an interview Corso did with George Knapp that aired after 'The Day After Roswell' was released:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyCftd_FHwE

Here's the full interview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWg5IZgssGs&t=4s

Here's a Dateline NBC interview with Corso about Roswell:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bI1RWIWHll0

Here's a nice super-short clip by the great UFO researcher Michael Schratt on Corso:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/XTK6WfHnZf0

Here's a great Weaponized episode from nine months ago about the lost tapes of Philip J. Corso:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyCftd_FHwE

Here's Corso's basic record according to his Wikipedia. They can't all be scrubbed!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_J._Corso

Philip James Corso (May 22, 1915 – July 16, 1998) was an American Army officer.

He served in the United States Army from February 23, 1942, to March 1, 1963,^\1]) and earned the rank of lieutenant colonel).

Corso published The Day After Roswell in 1997, about his alleged involvement in the research of extraterrestrial technology recovered from the 1947 Roswell Incident.

On July 23, 1997, he was a guest on the popular late-night radio show, Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell where he spoke live about his Roswell story.^\2])

Biography

Military career

After joining the Army in 1942, Corso served in Army Intelligence in Europe, becoming chief of the US Counter Intelligence Corps) in Rome.

In 1945, Corso arranged for the safe passage of 10,000 Jewish World War II refugees out of Rome to the British Mandate of Palestine. He was the personal emissary to Giovanni Battista Montini at the Vatican, later Pope Paul VI, during the period when the "Nazi Rat Lines)" were most active.

During the Korean War (1950–1953), Corso performed intelligence duties under General Douglas MacArthur as Chief of the Special Projects branch of the Intelligence Division, Far East Command. One of his primary duties was to keep track of enemy prisoner of war (POW) camps in North Korea.^\3]) Corso was in charge of investigating the estimated number of U.S. and other United Nations POWs held at each camp and their treatment.

At later hearings in 1992 of the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs, Corso testified that he believed hundreds of American POWs were abandoned at these camps.^\4])^\5]) Committee member John McCain stated that his knowledge obtained from those who had personal relationships with Eisenhower led him to believe that Eisenhower was just not capable of allowing known American POWs to remain incarcerated after the termination of the Korean War.

Corso was on the staff of President Eisenhower's National Security Council for four years (1953–1957).

In 1961, he became Chief of the Pentagon's Foreign Technology desk in Army Research and Development, working under Lt. Gen. Arthur Trudeau.

Here is the Wiki bio of 'The Day After Roswell':

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_After_Roswell

The Day After Roswell is an American book about extraterrestrial spacecraft and the Roswell incident. It was written by United States Army Colonel Philip J. Corso, with help from William J. Birnes, and was published as a tell-all memoir by Pocket Books in 1997, a year before Corso's death. The book claims that an extraterrestrial spacecraft crashed near Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947 and was recovered by the United States government who then sought to cover up all evidence of extraterrestrials.

Synopsis

Philip J. Corso (right) in 1945

The majority of the book is an account of Colonel Corso's claims that he was assigned to a secret government program that provided some material recovered from crashed spacecraft to private industry (without saying where the items came from) to reverse engineer them for corporate use. Corso was a Special Assistant to Lt General Arthur Trudeau, who headed Army Research and Development, and was in charge of the Foreign Technology Desk. In this position, he would take technological artifacts obtained from Russian, German and other foreign sources, and have American companies reverse engineer that technology. The book contends that several aspects of modern technology such as fiber optics and integrated circuits were developed by using information taken from the craft.

Colonel Corso also claimed the world was "at war" with extraterrestrials and that the Strategic Defense Initiative project was part of that campaign that was successfully concluded in Earth's favour.

The Day After Roswell

In his book The Day After Roswell (co-author William J. Birnes), Corso claims he stewarded extraterrestrial artifacts recovered from a crash near Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947.

Corso says a covert government group was assembled under the leadership of Adm. Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter, the first director of Central Intelligence (see Majestic 12). Among its tasks was to collect all information on off-planet technology. The US administration simultaneously discounted the existence of flying saucers in the eyes of the public, Corso says.

According to Corso, the reverse engineering of these artifacts indirectly led to the development of accelerated particle beam devices, fiber optics, lasers, integrated circuit chips and Kevlar material.

In the book, Corso claims the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), or "Star Wars", was meant to achieve the destructive capacity of electronic guidance systems in incoming enemy warheads, as well as the disabling of enemy spacecraft, including those of extraterrestrial origin.

Here is Strom Thurmond's Wiki:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strom_Thurmond

James Strom Thurmond Sr. (December 5, 1902 – June 26, 2003) was an American politician who represented South Carolina in the United States Senate from 1954 to 2003. Before his 48 years as a senator, he served as the 103rd governor of South Carolina from 1947 to 1951. Thurmond was a member of the Democratic Party) until 1964, when he joined the Republican Party). He had earlier run for president in 1948 as the Dixiecrat candidate in opposition to Democrat Harry Truman, receiving over a million votes and winning four states, and endorsed Republican Dwight Eisenhower for president in the 1950s.

A staunch opponent of civil rights legislation in the 1950s and 1960s, Thurmond conducted the longest speaking filibuster ever by a lone senator, at 24 hours and 18 minutes in length, in opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1957.^\2]) In the 1960s, he voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Despite his support for racial segregation, Thurmond denied the accusation that he was a racist by insisting he was a supporter of states' rights and an opponent of excessive federal authority.^\3]) Thurmond switched parties ahead of the 1964 United States presidential election, saying that the Democratic Party no longer represented people like him, and endorsed Republican nominee Barry Goldwater, who also opposed the Civil Rights Act.^\4])^\5]) By the 1970s, Thurmond started to moderate his stance on race, but continued to defend his prior support for segregation based on states' rights and Southern society at the time.^\6])

As a Republican, Thurmond served three times as President pro tempore of the United States Senate, and chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee from 1981 to 1987 and the Senate Armed Services Committee from 1995 to 1999. He retired in 2003 as the only member of either chamber of Congress to reach the age of 100 while still in office and the oldest-serving senator, and died nearly six months later. His 48 years as a senator, a record at the time, is the fourth-longest in U.S. history behind Robert Byrd, Daniel Inouye, and Patrick Leahy.^\7]) At 14 years, Thurmond was also the longest-serving Dean of the United States Senate in political history.

Of course, there's lots more that can be dug into regarding all of this. We'll be unpacking this history forever.