The Day After Roswell is an American book about extraterrestrial spacecraft and the Roswell UFO incident. It was written by the late 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 a cover up all evidence of extraterrestrials.
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. The book contends that several aspects of modern technology such as fiber optics and computer chips were developed by using information taken from the craft.
Colonel Corso also claims 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 book concludes with reproduction of information about Project Horizon a 1950's US Army plan for bases on the Moon.
When it was released, the book contained a foreword written by Strom Thurmond, for whom Corso had once served as an aide. Thurmond wrote, "He has many interesting stories to share with individuals interested in military history, espionage and the workings of our Government." The foreword did not mention anything about UFOs, since Thurmond had assumed the book was a straightforward memoir . When he learned about the book's contents, Thurmond asked for his foreword to be retracted, saying, "I know of no such 'cover-up,' and do not believe one existed."[1]
The book appeared on the New York Times Best Sellers List for several weeks,[2][3][4][5] but received many unfavorable reviews. Publishers Weekly advised, "[Corso's book] is only for the few special libraries that have made documenting the unconventional a collecting priority."[6] In 2001, The Guardian included the book in its list of "Top Ten literary hoaxes".[7]