Disclosure Project

Founded in 1993 by emergency-room physician Dr. Steven Greer, the Disclosure Project is an American advocacy organization that seeks the declassification of alleged government information on unidentified flying objects (UFOs), extraterrestrial intelligence, and suppressed zero-point energy and propulsion technologies. It is most widely known for its May 9, 2001 press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., at which more than twenty military, government, intelligence, and corporate witnesses testified publicly about alleged UFO cover-ups and called on Congress to hold open hearings with witness immunity.

Founding and 1990s briefings

The project was founded under the code name Project Starlight in 1993, originally conceived as an intelligence-briefing effort targeting senior government officials. Greer, who had founded the Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence (CSETI) in 1990, said he convened a group of military advisors in the Virginia countryside in 1993 to plan a coordinated civilian-military disclosure effort.

In December 1993, Greer briefed R. James Woolsey, then Director of Central Intelligence under President Bill Clinton, at a meeting allegedly arranged under the cover of a dinner party. Over the following eight years, Greer stated that he had assembled a pool of more than 400 witnesses — purportedly drawn from military, intelligence, aerospace-contractor, and NASA ranks — willing to testify about direct contact with UFO-related programs. In October 1994, Greer appeared on a Larry King television special on UFOs, raising the project's public profile. Greer retired from emergency medicine in 1998 to pursue the Disclosure Project full-time.

2001 National Press Club conference

The May 9, 2001 press conference was held at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., and was sponsored by White House correspondent Sarah McClendon. Contemporary press coverage described the line-up as approximately twenty retired Air Force, Federal Aviation Administration, and intelligence officers, with twenty-one speaking witnesses actually seated on stage and more than 100 additional recorded testimonies held in reserve. Stage witnesses included John Callahan (FAA), Lt. Col. Charles L. Brown (USAF/AFOSI), Graham Bethune (USN), Dan Willis (USN), Clifford Stone (US Army), Carol Rosin (Fairchild Industries), Mark McCandlish (defense contractor), Donna Hare (NASA contractor), Larry Warren (Rendlesham), George Filer (USAF intelligence), and attorney Daniel Sheehan.

Greer framed the conference around three demands: open congressional hearings, a permanent ban on the weaponization of space, and a full study of alleged classified technologies for peaceful energy generation. A nearly 500-page briefing document with transcripts from dozens of purportedly top-secret witnesses was distributed to the press and to members of Congress at the event, along with a four-hour videotape summary distilled from 120 hours of recorded interviews. Greer declared that national-security oaths bearing on the subject were null and void, arguing that they derived from an allegedly illegal enterprise.

The event drew coverage from ABC News, BBC News, Fox News, Wired News, and The Washington Times, but did not produce the congressional hearings that Greer had demanded. Greer subsequently alleged that on the day of the press conference, unnamed intelligence agencies jammed the event's live broadcast signal for the first hour.

ABC News reported that the witnesses said they had seen evidence of aliens or UFOs and called for congressional hearings, and that Greer said some 400 witnesses were willing to testify before Congress. In 2002 the Oregon Daily Emerald reported that Greer had compiled more than 120 hours of testimony from government officials, later reduced to 18 hours, including accounts from Brigadier General Stephen Lovekin and the astronaut Gordon Cooper.

Post-2001 activity

After the conference, Greer continued to brief government officials privately and expanded the project's activities into documentary film production. In 2013, Greer co-produced Sirius, a documentary directed by Amardeep Kaleka and narrated by Thomas Jane, which drew on his 2006 book Hidden Truth, Forbidden Knowledge and featured the purported alien Atacama skeleton — subsequently shown by genetic analysis to be human, a South American with severe skeletal deformities.

In 2017, the crowdfunded documentary Unacknowledged, directed by Michael Mazzola and narrated by Giancarlo Esposito, debuted on iTunes and digital platforms on May 9 — the 16th anniversary of the Press Club conference — reaching the top documentary spot internationally and number two in the United States. A follow-up, Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind: Contact has Begun, was released in April 2020, with Owen Gleiberman of Variety describing the film as "fantasy propaganda" and The Hollywood Reporter's John Defore characterising it as "far too impassioned in its nuttiness to be a purely cynical, Scientology-style sham."

Daniel Sheehan served as legal counsel for the Disclosure Project for approximately twenty years, a role that later positioned him to represent Luis Elizondo in his whistleblower complaint against the Department of Defense and to found the New Paradigm Institute.

2023 archive release

On June 12, 2023, Greer returned to the National Press Club for a second major disclosure event, unveiling the Disclosure Project Intelligence Archive — purportedly some one terabyte of data including maps and supporting documentation for 145 alleged top-secret facilities and files on 752 whistleblowers — and announcing that its unredacted version had been provided that same week to Congress, the White House, and the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) at the Pentagon. Attorney Derek Garcia announced the formation of the Disclosure Project Legal Defense Fund, reportedly with more than ninety volunteer attorneys prepared to file civil RICO actions against corporations allegedly suppressing the technology.

Witness database and related work

The project's witness database has grown from the roughly 400 claimed at the time of the 2001 conference to over 750 by the 2023 Intelligence Archive release, spanning military, intelligence, aerospace contractor, and NASA personnel. The Disclosure Project is institutionally intertwined with the Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence (founded by Greer in 1990) and the CE-5 protocol contact methodology that Greer originated; CSETI handles field contact work while the Disclosure Project concentrates on witness collection, legal advocacy, and document release.

See also

• Sirius (2013 film)
• Unacknowledged (documentary)
• Project Starlight
• CE-5 protocol
• CSETI
• Sarah McClendon
• UAP Disclosure Act of 2023
• Majestic 12

References

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