Where does one begin to review a book as important and provocative as this? Of all the books written on extraterrestrial interactions, abductions and government cover-ups, Steven Greer’s Hidden Truth, Forbidden Knowledge has the answers that make sense.

            First, he gives us his personal background from a childhood in a dysfunctional family, and you wonder how he ever managed to make it to the station in life he achieved: as an emergency room physician in North Carolina. He admits to a near-death experience in his late teens that sparked his spiritual path and allowed him to emerge from a destructive route often taken by young people in that life situation. The absence of religious upbringing seems to have actually been a blessing in disguise.
            CSETI (Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence) is the organization Greer founded to establish contact with the extraterrestrials, who are present but rarely seen, due to their higher frequency and ability to cloak themselves, mostly as a defensive measure due to humans’ aggressive nature. He cites instances where his CSETI groups in the field have brought ETVs (extraterrestrial vehicles) in close, only to have some member in the group freak out and get scared, causing the ETs to withdraw out of compassion. He spells out his protocol for achieving a CE5 (Close Encounter of the Fifth kind), which is human-initiated contact with ETs. There are meditations you can read out loud at the end of the book to assist in this process.
            Probably the most startling information centers around Greer’s famous Disclosure Project. Not many are aware that Disclosure encompasses more than the UFO coverup, which is just the tip of the iceberg. By autumn of 1993, Greer learned how the shadow government had infiltrated “not only the covert world and the government and corporations, but also the civilian media and the civilian UFO community.” He had private meetings with true insiders, such as Laurance Rockefeller, CIA Director Woolsey, close friends of President Bill Clinton, higher-ups in the military, and countless others — many of whom admitted to covert activities and actually said they were in favor of disclosure.
            “This shadowy cabal forces into the civilian population completely concocted pseudo-extraterrestrial events,” Greer writes. He goes so far as to suggest that most abductions and cattle mutilations that have taken place have nothing to do with ETs and are purposely staged by covert programs using very advanced technologies.
            The purpose? To create fear and to brainwash the public into believing extraterrestrial people are the enemy. “By putting up enough believable disinformation and hoaxing enough events, they are able to persuade researchers to accept these bogus events without question and then report them to the public in various magazines and books,” he reveals.
            Psychological warfare is fed by rewarding those researchers and authors who promote the negative side. Greer says, “If I were to write a book that said I had been abducted and kidnapped, vivisected or sexually molested by fearsome ETs from Tau Epsilon, I could retire a very wealthy man.”
But every time CSETI or the Disclosure Project were about to receive a huge funding grant, something would happen at the last minute to pull the plug.
            Disclosure finally took place on May 9, 2001, in the ballroom at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on a shoestring budget. The room was packed with 22 cameras and the entire media. Approximately 20 military and government-related witnesses were present.
            Connect Live, the official web-cast and Internet hosting entity for the National Press Club (also for CNN and the Pentagon) reports Greer’s press conference as being the most watched web-cast in the history of the Internet, despite attempts by the NSA to jam it. The two-hour session was viewed by more than 3 million people. Various news agencies covered it only briefly, unfortunately.
            Dr. Greer’s world view is most extraordinary and also encouraging, given we live in a world of chaos, uncertainty and often despair. One of my favorite chapters in the book was Chapter 42, “Universal Spirituality,” although I also greatly admired Chapter 33, “A New World — If You Can Take It.”
            The advanced technologies that we already have available to us can eliminate poverty and hunger and disease from Planet Earth — right now. Those technologies are not science fiction, they exist today. They are, detrimentally, in the wrong hands, being withheld from the masses because of power and greed. Part of the Disclosure Project’s purpose is to release these technologies that can free us from pollution and our destructive dependence on oil and coal.
            So why isn’t Steven Greer dead? That is the question that goes through your mind as you read about the people who came forward and were quelled. Greer has come out with all this information and escaped assassination. He does discuss the heart-breaking tragedies, including the death of his assistant, Shari Adamiak, who died of cancer. Greer himself was struck with metastatic cancer at the same time as Shari, along with another colleague. He was attacked by powerful electromagnetic weapons. Still, he refused to give up. There was no stopping him.
            Steven Greer is a man of integrity, who does not insist you believe him, and mentions at the beginning of the book that probably most people are incapable of accepting a lot of the information in his book. Furthermore, he says he does not fear death. He goes into the consciousness aspect a great deal, and it may take more than one reading of these chapters to absorb it.
            I have to confess, this book has changed the way I think about the UFO phenomenon, particularly with regards to abductions and the ETs themselves. It is mind-blowing to realize to what extent the shadow government can go, to manipulate our beliefs and motives. But after reading this book, I feel much more confident in being able to discern truth (which is felt rather than seen) from illusion.
            I wish Greer had contacted me for some proofreading. The book is laden with typos and some sloppy layout. However, one tends to overlook such minor details in the face of something this profound.

            Ann Ulrich Miller is editor and publisher of The Star Beacon.