Disclosure Project briefing to Congress (2001)

Disclosure Project briefing to Congress (2001)

Organizer	Steven M. Greer, M.D., director of the Disclosure Project (a project of CSETI)
Briefing document	Disclosure Project Briefing Document, dated April 2001, by Greer and Theodore C. Loder III; 492 pages, plus a 95-page executive summary
Press conference	9 May 2001, ballroom of the National Press Club, Washington, D.C.
Witnesses	About 20–21 in person; Greer cited about 400 identified
Demands	Open congressional hearings; a ban on space-based weapons; an executive order protecting witnesses; declassification
Outcome	No hearings were held
Date	April 2001
Topics	Beings & bodies (topic), Secrecy & cover-up (topic), Government programs (topic)
People	Steven Greer
Testimony	Shellenberger testimony, p. 144
Year	2001 in UFO history
Timeline	2001 on the UAP Timeline
Sources	8

In April and May 2001, Steven Greer's Disclosure Project briefed members of Congress and officials. It also held a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington. It argued that UFOs were real, that extraterrestrial craft had been recovered, and that a covert group ran the subject through secret contractor projects beyond government oversight.^[2][4][8] About twenty former military, intelligence and civilian officials spoke on 9 May. The project called for open congressional hearings and a ban on weapons in space.^[1][2][3] The event drew a large online audience and some news coverage, much of it mocking. Congress did not hold hearings.^[3][5]

Background

Greer, an emergency-room physician in Virginia, founded the Disclosure Project in 1993 as an outgrowth of his UFO group CSETI.^[3][5] In the briefing document he gave this account of the project's history:^[8]

• From 1993. The project briefed the Clinton administration, including CIA Director James Woolsey, senior Pentagon officers and selected members of Congress.
• April 1997. More than a dozen witnesses were brought to Washington for briefings with congressmen, Pentagon officials and others. The project specifically asked for open hearings, but "None were forthcoming".
• 1998. Greer set out to "privatize" disclosure by raising $2–4 million to videotape witnesses. By August 2000 only about 5 per cent had been raised, and he went ahead anyway.
• August–December 2000. Greer and a few volunteers interviewed witnesses around the world on broadcast-quality digital video.
• Late December 2000 – February 2001. Greer edited more than 120 hours of footage at home on a Macintosh, first to 33 hours and then to 18 hours of "super-select" testimony.
• Transcripts. The 33 hours yielded about 1,200 pages of transcript, which he edited for readability in March and early April 2001.

Greer warned that working "7 days a week and mostly 18 hours a day" meant the transcripts were "very likely to contain errors", especially in proper names. He said he had changed only length and grammar, never meaning.^[8] He signed the editorial notice on 5 April 2001.^[8] The Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell, interviewed in the document, said he had helped with the earlier congressional, White House and Pentagon briefings. He found that most officials "have no more knowledge than the man in the street".^[8]

The briefing document

The Disclosure Project Briefing Document, dated April 2001, was written and compiled by Greer and Theodore C. Loder III of the University of New Hampshire's Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space.^[8] It ran to 492 pages. For busy officials there was a separate 95-page "Executive Summary".^[5] Copies were handed out at the press conference, including to the reporters present.^[2][7] A PDF copy is held by the Internet Archive, but could not be read directly. Its full text is available there in a separate version.^[4][8] Its abstract described the contents:^[8]

• summaries of videotaped witness testimony
• position papers on the need for disclosure
• fourteen major sighting cases with over two dozen military witnesses
• 27 quotations from scientists and officials
• reviews of the Sturrock/Rockefeller report and the French COMETA report
• a review of "zero-point energy, over-unity devices and anti-gravity research"
• an appendix of U.S. government documents

It opened with a quotation from Senator Daniel Inouye about "a shadowy Government with its own Air Force, its own Navy", and with Eisenhower's warning about the military-industrial complex.^[8] Greer's summary asserted the following:^[5][8]

• Earth was being visited by advanced extraterrestrial civilizations.
• This was "the most classified, compartmented program" in the U.S. government.
• Craft had been "downed, retrieved and studied since at least the 1940s".
• Secret projects held working anti-gravity and new energy systems that could replace fossil fuels.

A chapter titled "Unacknowledged" described a hidden "government" of "deep black projects, contract agents and companies" kept from elected officials.^[8]

The project said it had identified several hundred witnesses from every branch of the armed services, the NRO, the DIA, the CIA, NASA and other countries. More than 100 had been videotaped and about 70 transcribed.^[2][3] Greer put the total identified at "more than 400".^[1][8]

The press conference

On Wednesday 9 May 2001, from 9 to 11 a.m., Greer held the event in the ballroom of the National Press Club on 14th Street NW. It was streamed online through ConnectLive.^[2] The event ran about two and a half hours. The ufology writer Patrick Gross, who covered it, said 21 witnesses appeared in person in front of more than twelve TV cameras.^[3] Announced speakers included:^[2]

• John Callahan, former division chief of accidents and investigations at the FAA
• Master Sgt. Dan Morris, formerly of the Air Force and the NRO
• Carol Rosin, space-policy consultant and former spokesperson for Wernher von Braun
• Maj. George A. Filer III, formerly of Air Force intelligence
• Cmdr. Graham Bethune, a retired Navy pilot
• Michael Smith, a former Air Force air-traffic controller
• Sgt. Clifford Stone, U.S. Army
• Lt. Col. Robert Salas, a former SAC missile launch officer

Greer said the testimony established "once and for all that we are not alone". He said technologies linked to the phenomenon could solve "the global energy crisis".^[1][2] "I know many in the media would like to talk about 'little green men,'" he told the room. He said grown men "who are in the Pentagon, who are members of Congress" had wept in front of him.^[5] Stone said he had visited crash sites, seen aliens both dead and alive, and catalogued fifty-seven species.^[5] The Washington lawyer Daniel Sheehan, acting as the witnesses' counsel, repeated his account of being shown photographs of captured UFOs during the Carter administration. He said he traced the alien-looking symbols onto the cardboard back of his legal pad.^[1] A video of the event is listed on the subtitling site Amara, which requires an account to view.^[6]

The demands

The project asked for these actions:^[2]

• Hearings. Congress, the White House and the United Nations should let witnesses testify under oath in open hearings. It noted that the last congressional hearings had been the House Science and Astronautics Committee's 1968 "Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects".
• Space weapons. Legislation to ban space-based weapons.
• Executive order. A presidential order to protect witnesses who feared violating security oaths, and to declassify documents and secret projects.

The briefing document's "Recommended Congressional Actions" went further. It recalled the House Armed Services Committee hearing of 5 April 1966, supported by Gerald Ford, and the closed CSETI briefing of April 1997.^[8] It asked Congress to:^[8]

• question the intelligence committees and the facilities on its list of projects
• convene hearings with co-sponsors
• ban weapons in space
• then investigate compartmented "military, intelligence and corporate contracting" projects
• authorize their declassification and bar the suppression of new technologies
• plan for a transition to "a non-fossil fuel economy"

Reception

Coverage was limited and mixed. Gross reviewed the reports:^[3]

• Sober. NBC's report, "UFO group wants X-Files opened", gave the Air Force position.
• Sceptical. A UPI story carried by CNN quoted sceptics who said the secret could not have been kept.
• Doubtful. The BBC said Congress was unlikely to act "unless a space ship lands" in sight of Capitol Hill.
• Ironic. The Washington Post was impressed by the witnesses' résumés but turned ironic.
• Broadcast. CNN Headline News, Fox and BBC World also ran the story.

ABC News reported that "about 20 former government workers" had spoken. It quoted the space consultant James Oberg, who said Greer promoted "this bizarre theory that there is a worldwide real X-file cabal that is using UFO technology". Oberg added that not every witness shared that theory and that they should not be mocked.^[1] Gross considered the zero-point energy claims "probably the most criticized and controversial side" of Greer's agenda. He still judged the event "the best executed such initiative ever".^[3]

The journalist Leslie Kean, who had worked with Greer, watched "with unease". She was troubled by unsupported claims such as Stone's alien cadavers. "There were some good people at that conference, but some of them were making outrageous, grandiose claims," she later said. "I knew then that I had to walk away."^[5] A later account republished by the History News Network noted that the media covered the event "with frolicsome derision", and that Congress held no hearings.^[5]

Supporters saw it differently. Jonathan Kolber argued in a piece titled "Deafening Silence" that the limited coverage was itself significant. He claimed the witnesses were neither lying nor deluded, and he cited one witness's claim that 43 media employees were secretly on the government payroll.^[7] He reported that 250,000 people watched the webcast despite what the broadcast provider called "sophisticated electronic jamming" in the first hour.^[7]

Legacy

The Disclosure Project's central claims went unconfirmed, and no hearings followed.^[3][5] Many of the themes in its briefing document later resurfaced in the 2020s through official channels, though the specific claims remain unverified:^[8]

• congressional briefings
• witness testimony
• unacknowledged contractor programs

People and topics

• CSETI — The organization founded by Steven Greer in 1990.
• Unidentified anomalous phenomena — The U.S. government's current term for unidentified objects in the air, in space and underwater.
• Steven Greer — Physician who founded CSETI and the Disclosure Project.
• Disclosure Project — Steven Greer's campaign for UFO disclosure, best known for its May 2001 press conference.
• Unidentified flying object — An object in the sky that can't be identified; the older term for UAP.

On the Timeline

• Project Zodiac (3 March 2001) — Eric Davis tells Vallée about a story called 'Zodiac' involving real researchers.
• Don Phillips testimony (April 2001) — Former contractor Don Phillips claims Lockheed studies extraterrestrial technology.

See every 2001 event on the UAP Timeline →

Further reading

References