In the long history of the modern UFO Phenomenon, a key and iconic moment stands out as of particular import. I speak of a rumored crash of a sophisticated aerial vehicle in the desert terrain near Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. The event prompted an initial acknowledgement by the government that this was indeed a moment of the greatest significance: the crash of an actual alien craft, apparently not of this world, and piloted by beings of a decidedly non-human nature.

Of course, as many of us now know, that initial acknowledgement was quickly retracted, giving rise to a series of ever more mundane and suspect explanations, involving a downed weather balloon and the like. And when rumors spread that the crashed vehicle included actual entities, the cover story was that these were merely crash test dummies, mistaken for living, breathing beings of extraterrestrial origin.

While many deeply invested in ufological history long questioned the official account of what happened that night all those years ago in the American desert southwest, evidence to demonstrate that the prosaic explanations were propaganda aimed at covering up something more world-shaking was scant. That was, at least, until 1997 – some 50 years after the event in question – when a retired Colonel of the U.S. Army emerged to offer a new account of what he claimed really happened that night.

His claims provided sweet vindication for those long convinced that what slammed into the New Mexico desert in 1947 was anything but conventional. Colonel Philip Corso – the man making these claims – suggested not only that an alien craft really was recovered that night, but that indeed alien entities were also “at the wheel”, as it were. He even claimed to have laid eyes on one of these aliens in a later turn of fate while he was stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas.

And his claims didn’t stop there, he also stated that he came to be involved in a scheme to take technology recovered from the craft and farm it out to American industry, in order to jump-start the American advantage over adversaries of the time such as the Soviet Union. He also suggested this was done under the cover of a “foreign technology desk”, done in such a way as to cover the tracks of the true origin of this revolutionary tech.

It goes without saying that these claims are as bold as they come. If true, they are truly world-shaking – with implications that effectively rewrite not just the history of the 20th century, but once and for all settle the matter of our place in the universe. But how credible are these claims? And what historical lines of evidence exist to either support or refute them? These are the very matters we’ll seek to delve into in this, the 65th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.