The Day After Roswell - Philip J. Corso-pages

Page 64 of 118

Page 64 of 118
The Day After Roswell - Philip J. Corso-pages

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both of them a degree of freedom to dominate the political affairs of our planet. This may seem paranoid now, in the 1990s, but in the late 1950s this was exactly the thinking of the military intelligence community. General Trudeau's concerns were the concerns of anybody who knew the truth about an alien presence around our planet and their abilities to drop on top of us from out of nowhere just like they had done in Roswell, in Washington, D.C., in 1952, and in countless other places around the world. And we didn't know if any one of these sightings could turn into a full-fledged landing in force or if an invasion hadn't already begun. If they could turn the Soviet government into a client state with a proxy army, there might be no checking their ability to exercise their will to colonize our planet, appropriate our natural resources, or, if the cattle mutilations and stories of abductions were true, conduct with complete impunity an organized experimentation or testing program on the life forms of this planet. In the absence of any information to disprove our fears, it was the military's obligation to project the worst possible scenario. That's why the army pushed for Project HORIZON. We had to have a plan. The Horizon documents were straight forward in expressing their concerns : We needed to put a fully armed military outpost on the moon first because if the Soviets achieved this objective before we did, we would be in the position of having to storm a hill or secure a military position. We would rather be the defenders of a strongly fortified enclave than the attackers. Our outpost had to be strong enough to withstand an assault and have enough personnel to conduct scientific experiments and continual surveillance of the earth and its airspace. Initially, General Trudeau argued, the outpost must be of sufficient size and contain sufficient equipment to permit the survival and moderate constructive activity of from ten to twenty personnel at a minimum. It must allow for expansion of the permanent facilities, resupply, and rotation of personnel to guarantee the maximum amount of time for a sustained occupancy. The general not only wanted the outpost to establish a beach head on the moon, he wanted it to be permanent and able to sustain itself for long periods without support from the earth. Therefore, location and design were critical and required, in the army's view, a triangulation station of moon to Earth baseline space surveillance system that facilitated: (3) the best possible exploration capability not only of the immediate area of the lunar surface but long range exploration expeditions and, most importantly from the army's perspective, (4) the military defense of the moon base. The army's primary objective was to establish the first permanent manned installation on the moon and nothing less. The military potential of the moon was paramount, but the mission allowed for an ongoing investigation of the commercial and scientific potentials of the outpost as well. The army wanted to make Horizon conform to existing national policy on space exploration, even insofar as the demilitarization of space was concerned. But it was tough because all of us in the military services who had come in contact with the Roswell file believed that we were already under some form of attack. Demilitarizing space only meant playing into the hands of a culture that had displayed a hostile intent toward us. But we also realized that overtly establishing a military presence in space would encourage the Soviets to match us step for atan step and result in an arms race in outer space that would exacerbate Cold War tensions. Armaments in space might be more difficult to control, and the chance of an accidental military exchange could have easily precipitated a crisis on Earth. Thus, the whole problem of what to do about establishing a military presence in space was a conundrum. Horizon was the army's attempt to accomplish its military objectives within the context of the government's demilitarization policy. The army faced another obstacle in its plans from the members of the Roswell working group who were still establishing and enforcing policy at levels above top secret. The working group correctly saw that any independent military expedition into space, especially for the purpose of establishing an outpost on the moon, had a high probability of encountering extraterrestrials. In this encounter, there was no guarantee that a military exchange would not ensue or, at the very least, a military report would be filed. Even if these reports were kept top secret, given the military bureaucracy and the presence of legislative oversight it was highly unlikely that the press would not learn about military encounters with aliens. Thus, the basic premise of the working group and its entire mission, the camouflage of our discovery of alien life forms visiting and probably threatening Earth, would be undermined and years of successful operations might easily be brought to an unsatisfactory end. No, the working group would rather have the exploration of space in the hands of a civilian agency whose bureaucracy could be more easily controlled and whose personnel would be handpicked, at least at the outset, by the members of the working group. Thus, the stage was set for a Byzantine bureaucratic struggle among members of the same organizations but with different levels of security clearance, policy objectives, and even knowledge of what had taken place in years gone by. And underlying it all was the basic assumption that the world's civilian population was not ready to learn the real truth about the existence of extraterrestrial cultures and the likely threat these cultures posed to life 63 (1) communication with and optimum observation of the earth, (2) routine travel between the moon and the earth,