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.

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.

This time, he was accompanied by Dr. John Alexander, who stated that he had gone to Washington, D.C. and visited to the National Archives and other records to verify the facts of Corso's public service.