In 1993, Dr. Steven Greer met with CIA Director James Woolsey for a covert briefing on the topic of UFOs under the guise of a dinner party. In 1999, Woolsey denied that the party had been a briefing. Here is Dr. Greer’s response.
Click here for the PDF version.
Click here for Woolsey’s letter.
23 September 1999
Tonight I was asked by the editor of a small UFO newsletter (CNI News) to comment on a recent letter signed by former CIA Director R. James Woolsey et al regarding my meeting with him on December 13,1993. Apparently, this letter was sent to Michael Lindemann for publication in the September 30 edition of the CNI newsletter.
Mr. Woolsey and the others question the accuracy (or manners) of my depiction of this meeting in the introduction of my new book “Extraterrestrial Intelligence: The Evidence and Implications”. You can read this introduction on the website for yourself.
Mr. Woolsey et al have a very selective memory of this nearly 3 hour briefing of a sitting CIA Director. If anything, and my wife who was present can attest to this, my description of the meeting is incredibly understated.
In his letter, Mr. Woolsey (now apparently a lobbyist in Washington) implies that this was not a briefing but only a dinner party, and that the dinner party was not a cover story for the briefing, etc.
It must be understood that it was a friend of the CIA Director, Mr. Petersen – not myself – who characterized the dinner party as a cover story for the meeting with the CIA Director. Indeed, Mr. Petersen made the arrangements for this meeting and hosted it at his home in Arlington VA . He told me and my wife that even his wife did not know Mr. Woolsey was coming to their home for dinner until the morning of the briefing.
They claim my characterization and specific references describing the meeting were inaccurate. Not at all.
Quoting from a sensitive memo FedEx’ed to my home from Mr. Petersen, who made all of the arrangements with the CIA Director:
“I talked to Woolsey this morning and he (underlined in the original) suggested getting together over dinner. He was not aware of your organization or that anyone was planning such an announcement {regarding UFOs}. This almost certainly means that,
- there is an active attempt being made at lower levels of government to sabotage Project Starlight {the CSETI UFO disclosure effort},
- this group almost certainly has tapped your phones and is aware of most of the details of your plans…”
“If we do have dinner with Jim (Woolsey), we will have moved this whole thing to a much, much higher plane and in doing so raised significant red flags for those who don’t want to see this succeed. Operation Starlight will become a serious (underlined) threat to the status quo.”
“Meetings with people like Woolsey must be kept very closely guarded. I have not even told Diane {Mr. Petersen’s wife/smg} about it.”
“You must understand that great principalities and powers will oppose your plans…”
Then, all in bold: “Remember: the most powerful people in the world will have a deep, compelling interest in our activities and will use everything (in italics) at their disposal to effect their objectives.”
And so forth.
Mr. Petersen, who heads up a national security think tank called The Arlington Institute, was working very closely with me during those days and had substantial experience in national security and military matters.
From the above quotes it is obvious that this was no mere dinner party! The dinner party was only the cover – and the stakes were and are every bit what Mr. Petersen describes.
As for other information contested in Mr. Woolsey’s letter, I stand by the account. Regarding Mr. Woolsey’s UFO sighting : This was first conveyed to me by his long-time friend Mr. Petersen and was later confirmed at the briefing.
In my new book, I reproduce the document handed to Mr. Woolsey during the briefing. In this document, which I handed personally to him, we recommend that Mr. Woolsey and the President move decisively towards a near-term disclosure of the UFO/ETI matter. Just a dinner party?
I am certain that Mr. Woolsey knew the UFOs were real and that a very deep cover project was running that area – a project which had kept the CIA Director himself in the dark.
Later in their letter, Mr. Woolsey et al complain that my conduct “contravenes ….simple manners”. Manners? I was on Larry King Live over 9 months after the meeting with the CIA Director. But this meeting was not disclosed, because Mr. Woolsey was still in office and I felt decorum necessitated silence regarding such meetings. I have behaved with the utmost restraint and have disclosed such matters only after very careful consideration. Indeed, I would not be writing this letter except that Lindemann at CNI plans to publish Mr. Woolsey’s ‘sanitized ‘ account of the briefing and has compelled me to write. (Why Mr. Woolsey et al would make such a letter available to Lindemann is beyond me.) I made no pact of silence regarding such meetings. And since disclosing this meeting, I have always portrayed Mr. Woolsey and his wife as people seeking the truth of such matters and as people who wanted excessive secrecy ended. Perhaps I was wrong…
Manners? Indeed – if anything, perhaps I have been too restrained.
Good ‘manners’ as it pertains to this subject means speaking the truth – and being willing to stand up for it. Good manners would be public servants such as Mr. Woolsey, Dr. Woolsey and others doing the right thing and working ardently for the truth to be told regarding UFOs and ETI. Good manners should mean being more concerned for the health of our democracy and the Constitution than covering-up the import and purpose of such a briefing. And good manners would be joining in the effort to disclose a matter which, once made public, would allow earth-saving technologies to be revealed which would halt the wholesale destruction of our eco-system.
As a very busy emergency doctor in NC, with 4 young daughters, I assure you that we did not make that brief trip to Washington DC on December 13, 1993 to sight-see or just to have dinner. But rather, we made that journey to plead for the end of super-secret projects which are being withheld from the people so that our democracy could be made whole and our children’s future made sustainable.
The current attempt to minimize, obfuscate or cover-up the purpose and details of this briefing with the CIA Director is quite disconcerting – and strange. Why Mr. Woolsey and the others would write such a letter is unknown to me. We can only speculate. I stand by my account. But now, perhaps the time has come for ”we the people’ to demand that current and former officials such as CIA Director Woolsey and the President be held responsible for the the lack of action on resolving this most pressing problem. After all, we pay their salaries, provide their perks – and they represent us. It is not I who needs defense. My actions over these long years have spoken my commitment. But we still await action from our elected and appointed officials. As the earth groans under the weight of the errosive and corrupting influences of big money and special interests, I wonder just how much longer we shall have to wait…
I think it is time that the American people demand that the waiting time be over.