11/10/2007 Steven Greer Speaks at MUFON
by David Richards
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| Steven Greer speaks at MUFON Orange County. |
This report is from memory, reinforced by later visiting some of the websites listed here. I didn't take notes, so the facts, figures and quotes may not be exact.
The event was held at the Costa Mesa Community Center. Here's the link to the program announcement: http://mufonoc.org/past_speakers.htm
I arrived 20 minutes early, expecting to leisurely pick out a seat before most of the people got there. I was wrong there; I was completely unprepared for the turnout. There was a 5-minute line to buy a ticket. When I entered the auditorium, I found two or three hundred people already seated, with the remaining seats fairly limited. The workers at the center kept bringing in more chairs until the talk started. By the time the talk was underway there were probably 500 people or more in attendance, with a few dozen people standing at the back and sitting on the floor at the sides. According to the people seated next to me, the normal attendance at these meetings is about 50-100, and they're on weeknights. This Saturday night meeting was a special event. (do the math, 500 x $15 or even the member price of $10 is a lot of money for a non-profit to collect in one night).
Disclosure Project flyers were handed to everyone as they entered. The flyer talks about the opportunities to attend a week-long "training expedition" with Dr. Greer, as well as including an order form for DVDs and books. The week-long training events are $995. The DP web site is: www.disclosureproject.org. Greer is also behind CSETI (not SETI), which sounds impressive due to sharing the last 4 characters with the more well-known and established agency.
The meeting was opened by Jan Harzan representing MUFON Orange County. He made some brief announcements about upcoming events. In introducing Dr. Greer his remarks included that they have been friends for more than 10 years, and the testimonial that Greer has "… been where he says he's been, and done what he says he's done." He said Greer's talk would be 2 hours including Q&A, with a book-signing afterwards. Greer was probably introduced about 7:15.
In manner, Greer is a very confident speaker, with a calm, persuasive voice. He was dressed casually in Docker-type slacks and a dark blue sports shirt. He strikes one as being very easy-going. He has a slight Carolina accent, and a touch of the preacher in him.
About a third of his talk was autobiographical, another third was the history of the government's interaction with the aliens and the establishment of the "shadow government" (the secret government that really runs the US). The last third was about the Disclosure Project, its accomplishments, and future goals. More details are given on the talk below, for now I'll stick to a high-level overview of the event and Greer the man.
About 8:30 the formal talk ended and Q & A began. Although Greer had seemed to wrap up his talk fairly conclusively at the end, apparently he remembered quite a few things he left out, and in addition to answering the questions, he would also segue to other points about his life or work, even though it didn't have anything to do with the question asked. So the response to each question took several minutes. I left at 9pm for other commitments, at which point the Q & A was still ongoing. As I left I ran into our friends from our IIG Santa Monica Mountains trip David and Rayven near one of the tables selling books and such. David said he would try to get us a copy of the video of the night's event.
Greer's talk was peppered with quite a few jokes and puns, many of them well-worn, not all that funny to me but getting laughs out of many in the crowd, and sufficient to relax and woo the audience. He would flash an engaging smile to let people know when something was intended to be funny. Many times the audience broke into spontaneous applause after Greer made some expression of his commitment to this project, or related a story about some government official he told off. He wasn't above including the occasional four-letter word in his talk, which probably furthers his down-to-earth, "everyman" type of appeal. Alternatively self-aggrandizing and self-deprecating, one minute he would be bragging about the VIPs he knows, how good shape he's in and how much weight he can bench press, and then a few minutes later, pull the old humble bit, "I'm just a simple country doctor" (a la Dr. Leonard ‘Bones' McCoy from Star Trek). He must have used the ‘just a country doctor' ploy four or five times in the talk. A couple of times he also mentioned giving up his $300k medical practice as an ER doctor to pursue this current work.
Greer is an unrelenting namedropper, mentioning by name many of the government officials he's managed to meet with since he began this project (he always refers to these as "briefings"). Other government figures remained unnamed, but he tantalizes by dropping mysterious hints. Here's one example (paraphrased): "A few weeks ago I was contacted by one of the current presidential candidates, who requested a briefing on what I've uncovered about the Shadow Government." Another time he casually mentioned meeting certain members of the royal family in England. He didn't say which ones, but again provided a hint with a quip along the lines of "I was tempted to say, ‘Your Highness, you're full of shit'" One can only guess what member of the royal family, or lord or nobleman he was speaking to (if this happened at all).
Greer said he has "briefed" several of the CIA Directors over the years, but seems particularly proud of his association with James Woolsey, who was Director of the CIA from 1993-1995. Woolsey was mentioned by name half a dozen times during the talk. Apparently Greer so charmed Woolsey that they met more than once on an informal basis, extending to a dinner party that included their wives.
Greer's manner of speaking, and the way he drops these hints makes him sound very important, and well-connected with the world's leaders. He also mentioned TV appearances, but in an offhand, casual way, mentioned only incidentally in connection with a point he was making so as to not make the reference too obvious. Example (also paraphrased): "I think it was when I was on Nightline with Ted Koppel when I first revealed to the public that (etc, etc)."
I already mentioned the spontaneous applause that erupted at several times (at least I assume it was spontaneous). I also saw a few heads nodding around me, and heard occasional murmurs of support at some of the comments Greer made, reinforcing the church sermon feeling. A few times Greer would provide an explanation of some advanced technology, for example the ET's method of ship propulsion, or our military weapons being used against them. When discussing such advanced technological subjects, Greer patched together an incomprehensible mish-mash of technical words related to magnetics, electrostatics, and atomic terms that made no sense. He would rattle off this string of words at high speed, which no doubt impresses the layman. I had decided to not attempt to be disruptive or make trouble at the talk, however several times I couldn't avoid a snort of amusement at some of the more preposterous phrases of gobbledygook he used in this context.
Okay, enough about my impressions of Greer and his talk, on to the summary of what he talked about. He didn't actually divide the talk into parts, but that's how I've perceived it and arranged it here.
Part 1: Greer's background
He had a very bad childhood (no details provided, referred people to his autobiography, "Hidden Truth – Forbidden Knowledge"). He describes his parents and upbringing as being "devout atheist." However he said he always had this sense of a presence, of some powerful intelligence that was running everything. Since he entered adulthood he seems to have believed in some kind of god or at least a creator, although he didn't go into detail about that.
He has always been very much into exercise and athletics (currently in very good shape, with a powerful upper body – based on the dates and his ages given in his talk, I figure he is about 51 or 52 years old). At age 17 he decided to embark on a trip of several hundred miles by bicycle, even though he had some sort of wound in his thigh at the time. He made the trip to his destination, although by the end of it he said he had acquired blood poisoning ("sepsis" in his words), and had a fever of 105 degrees. But being a stupid teenager and believing himself indestructible, he went ahead and made the trip back home. He said at that point he collapsed and had an out-of-body experience and a "cosmic encounter" with these other non-human intelligences. They said he could "go on" to the next plane of existence, or go back. He asked them what they wanted him to do, and they said he should go back. So he did, and when he was back in his body and opened his eyes his fever was gone, the sepsis was gone, and the wound in his thigh was healed (although he's still missing some flesh at the wound site). He points out that all during this time he was living alone in a small apartment, and at no time did he see a doctor or seek medical treatment of any kind. [Editor's note: An interesting parallel - famous skeptic Michael Shermer had a similar abduction experience in 1983 "after 83 straight hours of sleep deprivation and 1800 miles of nonstop cycling" during the Race Across America.]
Another time he went hiking to the top of a mountain peak to meditate and commune with nature, and it was at that time he met some kind of other being (maybe he said it was an ET, maybe not, I don't remember). Anyway it was a small, deer-like being but with different eyes and he could tell it was intelligent. It came up to him and touched him. At that moment, he received a clear understanding of this entire civilization that stretches throughout the galaxy, that includes us.
Part 2: the Government
Greer talked about the ET contact starting in the 1940s with "foo fighters" reported in WWII. These were bright lights that were seen flying over and through battle areas, and even through the cargo areas of airplanes, and the holds of ships. The Nazis thought this was an Allied weapon of some kind, the Allies thought it was a Nazi weapon. A military investigation was conducted, and the official report was that these were ET craft (unfortunately I can't remember who he said initiated the investigation or who made this report, but I think Greer provided names… but according to Wikipedia the phenomenon remains unexplained).
Eisenhower met with the ETs in 1954. He wanted to reveal the details of this meeting to the US public, but the "Capitalist/military/industrial complex" who were already starting to run things disagreed and prevented him. Eisenhower's words in his final speech to the American public included the warning to "beware of the military industrial complex" (quote verified on Wikipedia). Since that time we as a people could have had free energy, free food, no wars, etc, but it was denied by this new secret government, since there would be no more money to be made on oil, weaponry, etc. (by the way, Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative was intended to repel the ETs – defense against Russian missiles was the cover story).
Greer casually mentioned Roswell and the crash in 1947, in passing. He said this was not a crash landing as many believed, but was actually the result of two alien ships colliding or battling or something. He said this in a very offhand, condescending manner, as if anyone who knew anything about UFOs was aware of this: "of course you all knew that already, right?" was the way he put it, as if anyone who didn't know that was hopelessly out of touch.
He said the ET's are peaceful, they have been misrepresented in stories and movies, they have no intentions of trying to take over the Earth. Incidentally he doesn't like the term "grays' because it exhibits interspecies racial bigotry.
Greer offered an explanation of how their ships can do interstellar travel. He correctly pointed out that it would take thousands of years to travel just a fraction of the distance across our galaxy, even at the speed of light. The explanation for how they do it was that they are able to shift to a different plane of existence, that of consciousness, and travel at the speed of thought. They then translate back into what he called "linear space" once they reach the destination (a nifty little explanation, but not fundamentally different from the "hyperspace" explanation used in SF stories and movies for decades, in order to make the completely impractical idea of interstellar travel plausible for a story).
Part 3: Disclosure Project
Greer had just returned from a week-long training session at Joshua Tree, at which he said there had been a significant encounter. He dropped several teasers on this early in his talk. He finally got to describing the event, which was that one of the attendees had had a vision of traveling into space and meeting these beings or something – but it was clear this was just a vision or dream, not an actual thing that happened, which didn't quite live up to the suspense he'd built up about it. He did talk about attendees at one of these sessions being able to summon an ET ship, causing it to materialize in the field right next to them, but I wasn't sure if he was talking about this trip he just came back from, or if it was at a previous one.
Interestingly, other than the encounter with the "deer-like" creature early in his life, and seeing the ET craft from a distance, Greer didn't mention ever going inside a craft or meeting an ET face to face. He said there are several different species in this galactic civilization, one of the types he called "cute little guys, only about 60cm (2 feet) tall." The implication was that he's seen them up close, but he didn't explicitly say that or explain how else he knew this detail. I was a little surprised at the lack of detail provided about meetings because he seems to know so much about what they seem to want with us.
The overall tone of this portion of the talk was that everything about Earth is going to Hell, mankind is ruining the planet, destroying mother Earth (he used the term "Gaia" several times). He mentioned wars,starvation, disease – very doomsday type of talk. He said this was especially tragic because we don't need to use fuel for energy at all, he said, "there is enough energy in every cubic centimeter of empty space in this room to power the entire Earth for a year." He suggested that with the ET's help we can eliminate all conflict, hunger, etc, in the world, and all live in peace and harmony.
Now here's the important part… he mentioned a project he's currently involved with to develop a working model of a free energy machine. He said if all goes well, this should be complete in about 4 months. Mark your calendars!
Overall Conclusion
You know that saying about Jesus, that he was either a liar, a lunatic, or
Lord, i.e. the son of God. That's sort of how I feel about Greer – he is either trying to sell a huge hoax, or
he really believes what he's saying but is seriously mistaken in his beliefs, or he is dead right about
the whole thing (or it may be some combination of these things, with different aspects of his project
falling into different of these categories). He has lots of testimonials and affidavits from government
figures and people in the military who say they've worked on these top-secret government projects. But
we all know how unreliable this kind of documentation is. Most of us also know about the
MJ-12 documents supposedly written by Truman that were found to be forgeries. We know what lengths true
believers will go to support their cause. So we need better evidence than just anecdotes and
affidavits. Greer didn't show any slides in his talk, and I haven't been able to find any photographic
evidence on the DP website. Until such time as photographic or physical evidence is forthcoming,
to substantiate Greer's claims, I have
to classify him in one of the first two categories, but I have no way to make a definite determination
as to which
one. However my personal, subjective impression of the man is that of the classic fantasy-prone
personality. I think he believes most of what he says. I'll be watching for the demonstration of the free energy
machine.
