Bell Labs free-energy devices claim
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🗓️ Event
Contents 9
| Claimant | Steven M. Greer, founder of the Disclosure Project |
|---|---|
| Source | Greer's 2006 book Hidden Truth – Forbidden Knowledge (around p. 212) |
| Witness | An unnamed former Bell Laboratories employee |
| Claim | 28 or 29 "free energy" devices had been shelved and hidden |
| Context | Greer's argument that energy technologies are being suppressed |
| Status | Undocumented; conflicts with conservation of energy |
| Date | 28 April 2006 |
| Topics | Government programs (topic) |
| People | Steven Greer, Christopher "Kit" Green |
| Testimony | Shellenberger testimony, p. 161 |
| Year | 2006 in UFO history |
| Timeline | 2006 on the UAP Timeline |
| Sources | 14 |
The Bell Labs free-energy devices claim is a story told by the UFO-disclosure advocate Steven Greer in his 2006 book Hidden Truth – Forbidden Knowledge. He wrote that a former employee of Bell Laboratories, the famous American research center, had told him he had seen 28 or 29 "free energy" devices that had been shelved and hidden.[8] The claim is part of Greer's long-running argument that energy technologies able to end the world's dependence on fossil fuels exist but are being suppressed.[2][5] No such devices have ever been documented, the witness was not named, and devices that produce more energy than they consume conflict with the basic laws of physics.[8]
Greer and the Disclosure Project
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Greer, an emergency-room physician in Virginia, founded the Disclosure Project in 1993, run by his group the Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence (CSETI).[3][2] On 9 May 2001 he held a two-and-a-half-hour event at the National Press Club in Washington with about twenty former military, intelligence, government and corporate witnesses. They called for congressional hearings on UFOs and for legislation to ban space-based weapons.[1][2][5] Greer said about 400 witnesses were willing to testify.[1]
Energy was central to the message. The event's announcement quoted Greer as saying that "technologies related to extraterrestrial phenomena" could solve the global energy crisis. Speakers referred to zero-point energy and anti-gravity, and to advanced technologies that could stop global warming and end the energy crisis.[2][5] Greer handed out a 492-page "Disclosure Project Briefing Document" and a 95-page executive summary.[3][4] According to the summary, alien craft had been "downed, retrieved and studied" since at least the 1940s. Efforts to reverse-engineer them had produced "significant technological breakthroughs in energy generation", kept secret because the world's social, economic and geopolitical order was at stake.[3]
Coverage was mixed. ABC News's space consultant James Oberg said Greer had long promoted a "bizarre theory" of a worldwide cabal using UFO technology. He noted, though, that not every witness shared that theory, and argued that strange sightings deserved to be documented rather than mocked.[1] The journalist Leslie Kean, who had worked with Greer, was uneasy at some of the "outrageous, grandiose claims" and decided to walk away. Congress did not hold hearings.[3] Supporters complained of a "deafening silence" in the media.[7] Recordings of Greer's presentations circulate online.[6]
The claim
Hidden Truth – Forbidden Knowledge combines Greer's account of alleged secret programs with his own story of contact with extraterrestrials. He describes a near-death experience at 17 and the CSETI contact work he calls "Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind".[8] In the passage at issue, Greer relays what he says a former Bell Laboratories employee told him: that the man had seen 28 or 29 devices producing "free energy", which had been put on the shelf and hidden rather than developed.[8] Greer does not name the witness. As described, the account gives no details of what the devices were, when they were seen, or who suppressed them.[8]
Bell Labs
Bell Labs began as the Western Electric Engineering Department in New York and became Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1925, owned jointly by Western Electric and AT&T. It later moved its headquarters to Murray Hill, New Jersey. After the breakup of the Bell System it passed to AT&T Technologies, then Lucent, and it is now Nokia Bell Labs.[13] Its researchers are credited with radio astronomy, the transistor, the laser, the photovoltaic cell, the CCD, information theory and the Unix operating system. Work there has earned eleven Nobel Prizes.[13] No devices of the kind Greer describes appear in its documented history.[13]
The physics
"Free energy" in this sense means a device that puts out more energy than it takes in, without an outside source. That would violate the conservation of energy, and such claims are treated as perpetual-motion claims. Modern thermodynamics has shown such machines to be impossible, though designers keep proposing them, often calling them "overunity" devices.[14] Disclosure advocates usually say the energy comes from the "zero-point" field of the vacuum. Claimed vacuum-energy generators, such as Thomas Bearden's patented Motionless Electromagnetic Generator, have been dismissed by critics as perpetual-motion machines with unscientific explanations attached.[14]
Related background
The testimony this article draws on places the claim alongside other discussions of hidden technology involving the same circle of researchers:
- Kit Green. The CIA scientist Christopher "Kit" Green, formerly of the agency's Office of Scientific and Weapons Intelligence and Life Sciences Division, worked for General Motors from 1985 to 1999. According to an annotation in the testimony's sources, Green emailed Hal Puthoff and Colonel John Alexander from a GM corporate address about UAP information, recovered biological materials and recovered craft. Puthoff and Alexander are said to have held GM addresses as well, though GM never acknowledged any UAP project.[8][9]
- The ATP conference. In 1985 Alexander led the Advanced Theoretical Physics conference under Department of Energy supervision to judge whether UAP evidence justified a research program. It met at BDM International's secure facility in McLean, Virginia, under DOE "Top Secret/Restricted Data" controls. Attendees came from Los Alamos, the CIA, the NSA, Army intelligence, McDonnell Douglas, BDM, Lockheed and the Pentagon's research office.[10][11]
Documents from the ATP group's first meeting have been published by researchers.[11] Other researchers have written about the government's handling of cases such as Cash–Landrum.[12] None of this background bears directly on the Bell Labs claim, which remains unsupported.[8]
People and topics
- Steven Greer — Physician who founded CSETI and the Disclosure Project.
- Christopher "Kit" Green — CIA physician and analyst who became a long-time contact of Jacques Vallée and studied UAP-related injuries.
- Advanced Theoretical Physics group — Advanced Theoretical Physics group
On the Timeline
- E-Systems reverse-engineering claim (28 April 2006) — Steven Greer claims an E-Systems executive told him the firm did UAP reverse engineering.
- Skunk Works astral projection anecdote (28 April 2006) — Greer claims a Skunk Works engineer described using astral projection.
See every 2006 event on the UAP Timeline →
Further reading
- Steven M. Greer — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
References
- 'Group calls for disclosure of UFO info' — ABC News (2001) · abcnews.go.com · archived copy
- Greer's Disclosure Project — Patrick Gross · ufology.patrickgross.org · archived copy
- A historian on the Disclosure Project — History News Network · historynewsnetwork.org · archived copy
- Disclosure Project briefing document (2001, PDF) — Internet Archive · archive.org · archived copy
- Greer's Disclosure Project event, 9 May 2001 — Patrick Gross · ufology.patrickgross.org · archived copy
- Disclosure Project National Press Club event, 9 May 2001 (video) · amara.org · archived copy
- 'Deafening Silence': media response to the 9 May 2001 event — Jonathan Kolber · lifeboat.com · archived copy
- archive.org · archive.org · archived copy
- johnclarkson.com.au · johnclarkson.com.au · archived copy
- imgur.com · imgur.com · archived copy
- ufos-scientificresearch.blogspot.com · ufos-scientificresearch.blogspot.com · archived copy
- blueblurrylines.com · blueblurrylines.com · archived copy
- Bell Labs · en.wikipedia.org
- History of perpetual motion machines · en.wikipedia.org
Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia articles “Bell Labs”, “History of perpetual motion machines”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
This page was last edited on 29 October 2026. Articles are written in our own words from the sources listed under References; disputed claims are attributed to the people who made them.
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