Steven Macon Greer (born in 1955) is an American ufologist and a retired physician. He founded the Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence (CSETI) and the Disclosure Project. The Disclosure Project aims to reveal alleged classified UFO information.

Early life and education

Greer was born in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1955. He says he saw an unidentified flying object up close when he was eight years old, and another UFO when he was 18 years old.

He learned to teach Transcendental Meditation and worked as the director of a meditation organization during the early 1970s.

He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in biology from Appalachian State University in 1982 and a Doctor of Medicine degree from the James H. Quillen College of Medicine at East Tennessee State University in 1987.

Medical career

Greer obtained his medical license in Virginia in 1989 and worked as an emergency room doctor. In 1998, he retired from his job as a physician to focus on his work in ufology.

Ufology career

In 1990, Greer created the Center for the Study of Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (CSETI) to develop a program focused on communication and research with extraterrestrial civilizations. CSETI introduced the term CE-5, which refers to human-initiated contact with extraterrestrial life. The organization reports having over 3,000 confirmed UFO sightings by pilots and over 4,000 instances of what they describe as landing traces. CSETI uses teams called RAMITs, which aim to reach UFO landing sites quickly. The group has also established a psychic protocol for human-initiated communication with UFOs.

In 1993, Greer started the Disclosure Project, which seeks to share information about the government’s claimed knowledge of UFOs, extraterrestrial intelligence, and advanced technology. Greer describes the project as an effort to offer protection to government workers who share classified UFO information, despite breaking their security agreements.

In October 1994, Greer participated in a TV special titled The UFO Coverup? hosted by Larry King. In May 2001, Greer held a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., where 20 retired Air Force, Federal Aviation Administration, and intelligence officers spoke.

Documentaries

In 2013, Greer co-produced Sirius, a documentary that describes his work and ideas about extraterrestrial life, government cover-ups, and close encounters of the fifth kind. The film was directed by Amardeep Kaleka and narrated by Thomas Jane. It covers Greer’s 2006 book Hidden Truth, Forbidden Knowledge. The movie premiered on April 22, 2013, in Los Angeles, California, and includes interviews with former government and military officials. Sirius shows a six-inch (15 cm) human skeleton called the Atacama skeleton, which was claimed to be alien. However, genetic testing showed it was human, with genetic markers found in indigenous women from the Chilean region of South America. The director of the center that conducted the genetic analysis said, “It’s an interesting medical mystery of an unfortunate human with a series of birth defects.”

In 2017, Unacknowledged, a crowdfunded documentary featuring Greer, was released. It was directed by Michael Mazzola and narrated by Giancarlo Esposito. After premiering on iTunes and digital platforms on May 9, Unacknowledged became the top documentary on those platforms internationally and ranked number two in the U.S.

Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind: Contact has Begun was released in April 2020. The documentary was directed and written by Michael Mazzola and includes Greer, Daniel Sheehan, Jan Harzan, and Russell Targ. A film critic from Variety described the movie as “fantasy propaganda…a conspiracy documentary built around the idea that the ‘national security state’ has hidden information from the public.” The critic also said Greer “is like a ‘70s computer nerd played by John Waters with a touch of Guy Pearce.” Another critic from the Los Angeles Times wrote that the film was “overlong and rambling – more focused on unrelated stories than making a strong argument or telling a clear story.” A critic from The Hollywood Reporter noted that the film “is too passionate in its strange ideas to be purely cynical or like a Scientology-style deception,” and that it “oddly places recent UFO-related news into a misleading context, suggesting that journalists, experts, and the government are working together to create fear that could support the idea of a ‘one-world government’ capable of an ‘interplanetary war.’” The critic also mentioned that, despite Greer’s long interest in UFOs, he has never managed to get an alien spacecraft to hover close enough for a clear photo.