Overview
On 9 May 2001, physician and disclosure activist Steven M. Greer convened a large UFO/UAP press conference in the ballroom of the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Roughly twenty former military, government, aviation and contractor witnesses appeared in person. They described events they associated with unidentified flying objects, government secrecy, nuclear weapons, radar observations, recovered craft and advanced technology. The Disclosure Project said it had identified a much larger pool of several hundred potential witnesses and had already recorded more than one hundred interviews.
The immediate political objective was clear: persuade the United States Congress to hold open hearings, create protection for witnesses concerned about secrecy obligations, declassify UFO-related information and investigate allegations that parts of government or industry possessed hidden advanced technology. The event is often described in later UAP literature as if it were an official congressional hearing or as if its speakers gave sworn testimony to the U.S. government. Neither description is accurate. The 9 May event was a privately organised press conference held at the National Press Club. The National Press Club provided a prominent Washington venue; it was not a congressional committee and its hosting of an event did not constitute institutional endorsement of the claims made there.
Contemporary UPI reporting said the witnesses repeatedly offered to repeat their accounts before Congress under oath. That is historically significant, but it is different from having already testified under oath at the press conference. UPI — “Private project pushes for UFO hearings,” 10 May 2001 The press conference also did not produce a single body of evidence with one consistent quality level. Some witnesses discussed events that are supported by substantial government records. For example, former FAA official John Callahan spoke about Japan Air Lines Flight 1628, an event for which the National Archives now identifies an extensive Federal Aviation Administration record series.
Other witnesses described cases that have a genuine documentary core but a disputed connection to UFOs, such as Robert Salas's account of missile disruptions at Malmstrom Air Force Base. Still others made much more extraordinary allegations — including crash-retrieval operations, extraterrestrial bodies, secret propulsion systems and suppressed “free energy” technology — without publicly presenting evidence sufficient to independently establish those claims. The most defensible historical assessment is therefore two-sided: The 2001 Disclosure Project press conference was a real and unusually large public assembly of credentialed former officials and military personnel calling for government transparency.
It was not a government finding that extraterrestrial visitation, crash retrieval or reverse engineering had been proved. That distinction explains both its continuing influence and its evidentiary limitations.
Event record
9 May 2001
The Disclosure Project advertised the event for 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. in the National Press Club Ballroom at 529 14th Street NW in Washington. Its April press material said “over twenty military, intelligence, government, corporate and scientific witnesses” would appear. Contemporary reporting broadly agrees with that scale. ABC News described about 20 former government workers, many with military or security backgrounds. The Washington Post reported twenty witnesses seated at the front of a room with more than one hundred attendees and more than a dozen television cameras.
UPI similarly described roughly twenty speakers. ABC News — “Group Calls for Disclosure of UFO Info,” 9–10 May 2001 The Washington Post — “UFO Believers Sighted Here!,” 10 May 2001 The Project's own advance material named participants including:
- John Callahan, former FAA accident/investigation official;
- Robert Salas, former Strategic Air Command launch officer;
- Graham Bethune, retired U.S. Navy pilot;
- George Filer, retired Air Force officer;
- Michael Smith, former U.S. Air Force radar/air traffic controller;
- Clifford Stone, retired U.S. Army sergeant;
- Charles L. Brown, retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel;
- Dan Morris, described by the Project as a former Air Force/NRO operative;
- Carol Rosin, a former Fairchild Industries manager and associate of Wernher von Braun;
- and other former military, aviation and technical personnel.
The programme combined short live statements, references to a much larger videotaped witness archive, selected government documents and a lengthy briefing package compiled by Greer and University of New Hampshire oceanography professor Theodore C. Loder III. The Project was not asking reporters merely to take note of unexplained sightings. Its stated conclusion was substantially stronger: Greer argued that the accumulated material established an extraterrestrial presence, secret government knowledge of that presence and the existence of advanced energy and propulsion technology.
That conclusion exceeded what many of the individual witnesses could personally establish.
Private press conference
The prestige of the setting has contributed to decades of confusion. The National Press Club is a major Washington institution used for speeches, press events, policy discussions and public announcements. An appearance there does not create governmental authority. The Disclosure Project event:
The speakers frequently said they were willing to testify under oath if Congress convened hearings. That willingness was part of the political strategy. It should not be retrospectively rewritten as “twenty military witnesses testified under oath before Congress in 2001.” They did not. This distinction becomes especially important when comparing 2001 with the formal UAP hearings Congress held in 2022, 2023 and 2025, where witnesses appeared before actual committees and were subject to congressional procedures. The 2001 event belongs in the history of public disclosure advocacy, not in the formal legislative-hearing record.
Another common source of inflation is witness count. Greer told reporters in 2001 that the Disclosure Project had identified roughly 400 people with claimed firsthand information and that many would be willing to appear before Congress. The Project's briefing materials said several hundred witnesses had been identified, more than one hundred had been videotaped and about seventy interviews had been transcribed. That was the broader Witness Archive Project. It was not the number of people who appeared live on 9 May. The live press conference had roughly twenty speakers.
Later promotional accounts sometimes combine:
- live speakers;
- videotaped witnesses;
- people interviewed privately;
- people identified but not interviewed;
- and people described as willing to testify,
into one large number. For historical accuracy those categories should remain separate. Disclosure Project — April 2001 briefing/press material preserved in later archives The Disclosure Project prepared an approximately 500-page briefing document for members of the press, government and scientific community. The surviving copy is dated April 2001 and credits Greer and Loder. Its contents included:
Disclosure Project Briefing Document archive The document is historically valuable because it preserves what the Project was actually arguing in 2001. It is not a neutral government dossier. The authors state conclusions in advance, including that extraterrestrial visitation and associated secret programmes had been established. That means each document and witness claim inside the compilation must be evaluated on its own provenance. A declassified Air Force memorandum does not automatically validate the Project's interpretation of every other item bound alongside it.
A former official's verified employment does not independently authenticate an extraordinary allegation made decades later. The briefing book is best treated as an advocacy archive containing material of mixed evidentiary quality.
Witness testimony and claims
Credentials and evidence
One reason the event attracted attention was that the speakers did not fit a simple stereotype of anonymous UFO witnesses. Many had genuine careers in: Credentials matter because they can improve a witness's ability to recognise aircraft, radar behaviour, military procedures or secure-facility operations. They also provide a record against which biographical claims can sometimes be checked. But credentials answer only one question: Was this person in a position where they might plausibly have encountered the thing they describe? Credentials do not by themselves answer:
The 2001 event was strongest when it put specific named witnesses and specific historical cases into public view. It was weakest when multiple forms of authority were combined into a single “therefore extraterrestrial” conclusion.
Former FAA official John J. Callahan presented one of the most document-rich stories associated with the conference. The underlying aviation event is real and extensively documented. On 17 November 1986, the crew of Japan Air Lines cargo Flight 1628 reported unusual luminous objects while flying over Alaska. The FAA interviewed the crew, preserved air-traffic-control communications and radar information and later issued an information release. The National Archives now lists a dedicated record series: Record Group 237 — Information Releases Relating to Unidentified Flying Object, 1986 (FAA—Japan Airlines Flight 1628), National Archives Identifier 733667.
National Archives — UAP records, RG 237 That archival existence gives the case a much firmer documentary foundation than many stories presented in 2001. The FAA's own public assessment, however, did not conclude that an extraterrestrial craft had been confirmed. The released record said the agency was unable to confirm a second aircraft/object from the available radar evidence and discussed radar artefact explanations. Callahan later alleged a further layer. He said senior FAA officials reviewed the event and that a Washington briefing included CIA, FBI and White House science-related personnel. According to Callahan, intelligence representatives then sought to suppress discussion of the event.
That alleged intelligence-intervention meeting is Callahan's later account. The public FAA record establishes the incident, investigation and existence of extensive data. It does not independently establish every detail of the alleged CIA suppression meeting. This makes Callahan a useful example of how the 2001 evidence should be separated into layers: Layer 1 — highly documented: JAL 1628 occurred; the crew reported unusual objects; FAA investigated; official records survive. Layer 2 — partly documented/interpretive: radar returns and their meaning remain debated.
Layer 3 — testimonial: Callahan's account of intelligence-agency intervention and instructions to treat the event as if it had not occurred. Those three layers should not be merged into one sentence claiming that “FAA records prove the CIA covered up an extraterrestrial craft.”
Robert Salas
Robert Salas presented another of the conference's most influential cases. Salas had served as an Air Force missile launch officer at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana during the 1960s. He later said that security personnel reported a glowing red object near a launch-control facility and that multiple Minuteman missiles subsequently entered a no-go condition. The documentary record contains a genuine and serious missile incident. The declassified 341st Strategic Missile Wing history records that on 16 March 1967 all ten missiles in Echo Flight lost strategic alert almost simultaneously.
The failure was operationally significant and prompted investigation. The same history also states that rumours of UFO activity around Echo Flight had been “disproven” after a mobile security team reported no unusual activity. Salas disputes that statement. An additional complication is that Salas's own later reconstruction shifted the specific launch-control flight associated with his experience. Earlier public accounts linked him with the documented Echo/November chronology; later work placed his experience at Oscar Flight, for which there is not an equivalent surviving official shutdown record.
UAPRAD's dedicated Malmstrom case research therefore assesses the case in two parts:
- high confidence that the documented Echo Flight missile outage occurred;
- substantially lower confidence that an unidentified object caused that outage or that the separate Oscar account can be reconstructed to the same documentary standard.
UAPRAD — Malmstrom AFB Missile Incident This is not an argument that Salas fabricated his account. It is an example of why an event presented from a podium in 2001 cannot be treated as fully verified merely because a related government record exists. The correct question is which part of the story does the record actually support?
Retired Navy pilot Graham Bethune described a 1951 aviation encounter involving a luminous object during a military flight. The Washington Post reported him as telling the audience about a glow near Iceland that developed into a circular arrangement of lights with a dome-like appearance. Bethune said he was prepared to testify under oath. His testimony illustrates a second major category of Disclosure Project evidence: the experienced aviation witness describing a historical observation. Such testimony can be valuable. Pilots are trained observers of air traffic, weather, navigation and aircraft performance.
But an encounter from half a century earlier is inevitably constrained if original radar, flight logs, weather records, crew statements and investigation files cannot be reconstructed. A professional witness can establish with confidence what they remember perceiving. That does not necessarily establish the object's physical dimensions, distance, speed or origin.
Professional-observer claims
Retired Air Force officer Charles L. Brown and former Air Force radar/air-traffic personnel such as Michael Smith represented another important theme at the event. The Disclosure Project deliberately selected witnesses whose professional roles involved aircraft recognition, radar or military operations. The argument was that trained observers should not be dismissed merely because the subject was culturally associated with “flying saucers.” That point is reasonable. A trained observer's report deserves documentation and analysis. The stronger Disclosure Project inference — that repeated testimony by trained observers collectively establishes extraterrestrial origin — does not follow automatically.
Multiple good witnesses can establish that unusual observations occurred. Origin still requires further evidence. That distinction would later become central to modern UAP policy, where military personnel are encouraged to report anomalies without the reporting system assuming in advance what the phenomenon is.
Clifford Stone
The Washington Post identified retired Army Sergeant Clifford Stone as the only live speaker at the conference who described personally seeing extraterrestrial beings. Stone claimed involvement in recovery operations involving crashed non-human craft and living or deceased entities. He also spoke publicly about multiple alleged extraterrestrial species. Those claims belong in the historical account because they were a prominent part of the event. Their evidentiary status is much weaker than the existence of Stone's military service or his appearance at the press conference.
No publicly authenticated crash-recovery order, chain-of-custody record, medical record, biological specimen, photograph or physical artifact presented at the 2001 event independently established his claim. The Washington Post made this evidentiary gap central to its skeptical coverage, noting that the conference presented no forensic evidence capable of independently verifying the extraordinary allegations. The Washington Post — contemporary report Stone's account should therefore be presented as: a named retired serviceman's extraordinary personal allegation, publicly delivered and historically influential, but not independently authenticated by the evidence shown at the conference.
Mark McCandlish
Technical illustrator Mark McCandlish became associated with claims about an alleged advanced aerospace vehicle often called an “Alien Reproduction Vehicle” or ARV. His work included detailed renderings based on accounts he said came through other people. This is a different evidentiary category again. A technical drawing can make a claim concrete. It does not prove the depicted machine existed. Where a witness did not personally handle or inspect the alleged craft, the claim may involve one or more layers of hearsay between the alleged original observer and the person presenting it.
The evidentiary chain should therefore include:
- who directly observed the object;
- when and where;
- what access they had;
- whether contemporaneous notes exist;
- whether photographs or engineering data survive;
- and whether independent witnesses describe the same configuration without cross-contamination.
The 2001 event generally did not provide that level of public verification for the advanced-propulsion claims. Carol Rosin used the event to argue against weapons in space and to describe conversations she said she had with rocket scientist Wernher von Braun. According to Rosin, von Braun had warned that successive threat narratives — including asteroids and extraterrestrials — could be used to justify space-based weapons. The Disclosure Project incorporated that allegation into a wider anti-weaponisation agenda. Rosin's testimony is evidence of what she said von Braun told her.
It is not a recording or contemporaneous written statement from von Braun himself. This is important because the claim is frequently shortened online into statements such as: “Wernher von Braun predicted a fake alien invasion.” That wording is stronger and more specific than the evidentiary chain supports. The historical source is Rosin's recollection of conversations, filtered through later disclosure activism. It should be attributed to her.
Energy-technology claims
The Disclosure Project's political programme was not limited to declassification. Greer argued that secret projects possessed advanced propulsion and energy technologies that could transform civilisation, eliminate dependence on fossil fuels and address environmental problems. The briefing document included discussion of zero-point energy and various unconventional energy concepts. Contemporary Wired reporting highlighted these claims and the skeptical response to them. Wired — “Ooo-WEE-ooo Fans Come to D.C.,” 10 May 2001 The evidentiary problem is straightforward.
Even if an unexplained military sighting were genuine, that would not prove:
- a recoverable craft existed;
- the government possessed it;
- engineers successfully reverse-engineered it;
- the technology produced usable energy;
- or that such technology could replace global energy infrastructure.
These are separate propositions requiring separate evidence. The press conference often presented them as a connected package. A rigorous historical assessment should unpack them. The 2001 campaign can be understood as advancing four increasingly strong propositions. There is abundant evidence for this proposition. Military personnel, pilots, controllers and officials have made such reports over many decades. This is also well established historically. Project SIGN, GRUDGE, Blue Book, CIA reviews and later UAP programmes demonstrate official collection.
The 2001 press conference presented testimony alleging this. It did not publicly produce evidence sufficient to establish the proposition. This was an even stronger claim. The conference did not publicly provide reproducible engineering evidence establishing it. The historical mistake is to use evidence for Propositions 1 and 2 as if it automatically proves Propositions 3 and 4. It does not. The event did receive mainstream press attention, although later Project publicity sometimes inflated the scale in ways difficult to independently verify.
ABC reported that about twenty former government workers and military/security personnel appeared and that Greer said roughly 400 potential witnesses had been identified. The article also included skeptical commentary from former NASA engineer James Oberg. Oberg made a useful distinction: unusual sightings should not automatically be mocked, and documenting them can be valuable for science or intelligence, while that does not validate the wider theory of a global secret extraterrestrial programme. ABC News — contemporary coverage UPI described a private group issuing a roughly 500-page report and calling for congressional hearings. It reported that speakers offered to repeat their stories to Congress under oath. Its report also highlighted Callahan's JAL 1628 testimony. UPI — contemporary coverage
Joel Achenbach's report was openly skeptical and satirical. It nevertheless provides valuable scene-setting information: approximately twenty witnesses, more than one hundred people in the room and more than a dozen cameras. It also records specific claims by Stone, Bethune, Salas and Brown. The article's tone should not be mistaken for a scientific analysis of each case. Its central criticism — absence of forensic evidence supporting the most extraordinary propositions — remains an important evidentiary point.
Wired focused heavily on the movement's broader claims about covert government, contractors, energy technology and congressional action. It quoted skeptics demanding tangible evidence and noted that the 488-page briefing document mixed witness material with established UFO lore and energy claims. Together these outlets demonstrate something historically important. The event was not ignored. It reached major news organisations. But media exposure did not convert the Project's conclusions into institutional acceptance.
Later Disclosure Project material has claimed extremely large global audience numbers and record-breaking internet traffic. The organisation and allied advocacy groups stated that hundreds of thousands attempted to access the webcast and that subsequent media coverage reached enormous audiences. Those claims may capture the unusual online interest generated by the event. Independent web-analytics records capable of verifying the largest numbers are not readily available in the current public research record. Contemporary mainstream reports establish that many cameras were present and that major outlets covered the event.
That is sufficient to describe the conference as a significant media event. UAPRAD should not repeat precise “one billion viewers” or “largest webcast in internet history” figures as established fact without independently auditable metrics.
Congressional response
The central demand was for open hearings in Congress. Those hearings did not follow immediately. The Project's own later materials acknowledged that earlier attempts to obtain formal congressional hearings had not succeeded. The 9 May event was followed by lobbying and meetings with congressional offices, according to organiser accounts, but the 107th Congress did not establish a Disclosure Project hearing that tested the witnesses under subpoena and oath. This is an important historical outcome. The Project succeeded at publicity and witness mobilisation.
It did not succeed in turning the 2001 event directly into a formal federal adjudication of its claims. Later advocates would repeatedly return to the same strategy.
Later narrative context
Disclosure Project accounts later argued that the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, four months after the press conference, diverted public and political attention. That is plausible as a general political observation: national-security priorities changed dramatically after the attacks. It should not be treated as the sole demonstrated reason Congress did not act. No evidence establishes that congressional hearings were otherwise scheduled and certain to occur but for 9/11. The pressure campaign had already failed to produce a formal hearing in the four months before September.
The better wording is: The post-9/11 national-security environment further reduced the political space for the Disclosure Project's agenda, but the public record does not allow the absence of hearings to be attributed to that event alone.
Evidence and limits
Continuing relevance
Skepticism about the Project's strongest conclusions does not make the entire archive worthless. Several witnesses attached themselves publicly to identifiable cases and records. That matters because a named witness can be: This is much better than anonymous folklore. John Callahan is a good example because the underlying FAA file can be read independently of his later interpretation. Robert Salas is another because the missile-history records can be compared with the evolution of his account. The correct research response is neither blanket belief nor blanket dismissal. It is case-level decomposition. The press conference should be treated as a directory of claims that vary widely in evidentiary strength.
Critics often respond to events like this by saying eyewitness testimony is worthless. That is too strong. Eyewitness testimony is evidence. Its weight depends on conditions. Factors that can increase its value include: Factors that reduce its value include: The 2001 event contained examples at many points along that spectrum. Treating all speakers as equally strong is analytically poor. Treating all speakers as equally worthless is also poor.
The speakers' repeated willingness to appear before Congress was rhetorically powerful. A person who publicly attaches their name and career history to a controversial claim accepts reputational risk. A willingness to take an oath can also signal personal confidence. But an oath does not create physical corroboration. A witness can sincerely testify to an experience and still be mistaken about its cause. A witness can accurately report what another official told them while the second official was wrong. Even sworn testimony must be weighed with records, physical evidence and independent corroboration.
That principle became especially visible in later congressional UAP hearings.
Different witness positions
Another important correction comes from contemporary ABC reporting. Former NASA engineer James Oberg noted that not everyone appearing at the conference necessarily accepted Greer's full theory of a global hidden extraterrestrial technology programme. That observation matters. The event placed witnesses with narrow observational claims alongside speakers making system-level claims about secret government, extraterrestrial civilisations and transformational energy technology. A pilot saying “I saw an object I could not identify” is not automatically endorsing:
Historical summaries should not place Greer's entire worldview into the mouths of every participant. The Disclosure Project explicitly connected disclosure to opposition to the weaponisation of space. Its press material called for legislation banning space-based weapons. That agenda was politically relevant in 2001 because the incoming George W. Bush administration was pursuing missile-defence policy and the United States was debating strategic technologies that could extend into space. The Project interpreted some of those developments through an extraterrestrial framework.
There is no need to accept that interpretation to recognise the political context. For Greer, UFO disclosure, peace policy and advanced energy were one integrated campaign. For many journalists and skeptics, that bundling made it harder to separate testable aviation or military cases from sweeping ideological claims.
Later activism
The 2001 conference did not create the modern UAP movement by itself. It did establish a format later used repeatedly: Variants of that model appeared again. Journalist Leslie Kean and filmmaker James Fox helped organise a separate National Press Club event involving international military and government witnesses. That event was not a continuation under Greer's control, but it shared the strategy of credentialed witnesses and public governmental appeal. Robert Hastings and Robert Salas organised a National Press Club event focused specifically on claims of UFO activity around nuclear weapons. Disclosure advocates paid former members of Congress to sit on a privately organised panel and hear several days of testimony. The event intentionally simulated a congressional hearing but was not one.
The December 2017 New York Times reporting fundamentally changed the governmental context because it dealt with an acknowledged Pentagon programme and authenticated military videos. Congress eventually did hold formal public UAP hearings. Those hearings differed from 2001 because they operated through actual legislative committees, official transcripts and government witnesses. The continuity lies in the demand for oversight and protected reporting. The evidentiary and institutional conditions were different. It is reasonable to describe the 2001 conference as an early precursor in advocacy style.
It is not possible to show a simple causal chain in which the 2001 event directly produced the 2017 disclosure or later congressional hearings.
Influence on stigma
One genuine effect of the press conference was to put named military and government witnesses on camera together. That challenged the idea that every UFO report came from an untraceable or unserious source. Even skeptical coverage acknowledged that many witnesses had substantial résumés. The Washington Post essentially framed that as the event's strongest point: impressive professional backgrounds were not forensic proof, but they were not irrelevant. This is a useful middle position. Credentialed testimony can justify further investigation.
It does not predetermine the result of that investigation. That principle remains central to modern efforts to reduce reporting stigma without reducing evidentiary standards.
What the event established
The historical record securely supports the following: It took place at the National Press Club on 9 May 2001. This is supported by organiser materials and multiple contemporary media reports. The event was deliberately built around credentialed participants. The exact quality of every interview varies, but the archive and briefing package existed. That was a central purpose of the campaign. ABC, UPI, The Washington Post, Wired and other outlets reported on it. The advocacy campaign did not become a 2001 congressional adjudication. JAL 1628 is a strong example.
The Malmstrom missile event also has a real documentary core, although its alleged UFO connection is contested.
Evidence assessment
The 9 May 2001 Disclosure Project press conference deserves a substantial place in the history of modern UFO/UAP disclosure activism. Its historical importance is real. It assembled approximately twenty named former military, aviation, government and technical witnesses in a prominent Washington venue. It created a large audiovisual archive. It put issues of secrecy, stigma, nuclear weapons, aviation reporting and congressional access into one public campaign. It generated mainstream press coverage. And it clearly articulated a strategy that later disclosure activists would continue to use: move controversial claims away from anonymous sources and toward named professionals willing to place their reputations on the record.
But its evidentiary limitations are equally real. The event was not a congressional hearing. The witnesses were not sworn there. The National Press Club did not authenticate the claims. A long briefing document was not equivalent to an independent scientific review. Professional credentials increased the relevance of particular witnesses but did not prove their conclusions. Some of the best cases had substantial official records but remained ambiguous. Some of the most extraordinary claims lacked public corroboration altogether. Greer's broader conclusions about recovered extraterrestrial craft, biological entities, secret faster-than-light vehicles and suppressed energy technology went far beyond what the publicly presented evidence could independently establish.
The most useful way to understand the event is therefore not as “the day disclosure was proved” or as “a room full of cranks.” It was a major witness-mobilisation and transparency campaign containing material of sharply varying quality. Its lasting contribution was political and methodological: named people with relevant backgrounds were publicly challenging government institutions to create a forum where their claims could be tested. Congress did not provide that forum in 2001. Decades later, formal UAP hearings would make the same basic questions — protected testimony, government records, classified access and evidentiary verification — part of official legislative oversight.
Chronology
1993 — Disclosure Project initiative begins.
Greer's later briefing materials date the project's effort to identify government and military witnesses to this period. 1997 — Washington briefings and disclosure advocacy.
The Project later said it organised briefings with government and military figures but did not obtain formal congressional hearings. August–December 2000 — Witness Archive Project expands.
The Project records a large number of interviews for later public release. April 2001 — briefing document completed.
Greer and Theodore Loder prepare the large press/government/scientific briefing package.
26–30 April 2001 — press campaign intensifies.
Advance releases announce the National Press Club event, congressional objectives and named witnesses. 9 May 2001 — National Press Club press conference.
Approximately twenty former military, government, aviation and technical personnel speak publicly. 9–10 May 2001 — mainstream news coverage.
ABC, UPI, The Washington Post, Wired and other outlets report on the event. 10–12 May 2001 — lobbying and related Washington events.
Organisers say witnesses and staff meet with congressional offices and hold additional briefings/symposium activity.
2001 — no formal congressional Disclosure Project hearing follows.
The campaign continues outside the official committee process. 11 September 2001 — U.S. national-security priorities change dramatically.
Disclosure Project supporters later argue that the attacks reduced political attention; the evidence does not show this was the sole reason formal hearings did not occur. 2007 — separate international National Press Club UAP event.
A new group of military and government witnesses again uses the press-conference model. 2010 — nuclear-weapons witness event.
Robert Hastings and Robert Salas organise a focused National Press Club conference on UFO/nuclear claims.
2013 — Citizen Hearing on Disclosure.
Advocates stage a privately organised simulated congressional hearing involving former legislators. 2017 — Pentagon programme reporting changes the public context.
Mainstream reporting on AATIP and Navy videos brings acknowledged government UAP activity into the centre of the debate. 2022–2025 — formal congressional UAP hearings.
House and Senate committees hold actual government hearings, creating the kind of formal venue the 2001 Project had demanded.
Source library
Disclosure Project — April 2001 press material
Type: Primary organiser material / advocacy source.
Establishes the event's date, venue, stated purpose, advertised participant categories, named witnesses, larger witness-archive claims and demand for congressional action. It is authoritative for what the Project claimed and intended, not independent verification of the underlying UFO conclusions.
Read preserved contemporary material
Disclosure Project Briefing Document, April 2001
Type: Primary advocacy/research compilation.
Approximately 500 pages combining witness testimony, historical cases, selected government records, policy arguments and advanced-energy claims. Essential for reconstructing the Project's thesis, but every embedded source must be assessed independently.
View the archived briefing document record
WorldCat — National Press Club news conference recording
Type: Independent bibliographic record.
Confirms a 2001 published video recording of the May 9 National Press Club event, hosted by Greer and the Disclosure Project. Useful for provenance of the event recording rather than verification of testimony.
View the WorldCat record
ABC News — “Group Calls for Disclosure of UFO Info,” May 2001
Type: Contemporary mainstream reporting.
Confirms roughly twenty former government/military/security witnesses, Greer's claim of approximately 400 identified witnesses and Daniel Sheehan's participation. Includes James Oberg's useful distinction between documenting unexplained observations and accepting the Project's wider cover-up theory.
Read ABC's report
UPI — “Private project pushes for UFO hearings,” 10 May 2001
Type: Contemporary mainstream wire reporting.
Important for confirming the roughly twenty live speakers, the approximately 500-page report and the fact that witnesses offered to repeat their accounts before Congress under oath. Also records John Callahan's JAL 1628 presentation.
Read UPI's report
The Washington Post — “UFO Believers Sighted Here!,” 10 May 2001
Type: Contemporary reporting/commentary with explicitly skeptical tone.
Useful for room size, camera presence, the approximate 20-witness count and contemporaneous descriptions of Stone, Bethune, Salas and Brown. Its satire is an editorial framing; its observation that no forensic proof of the strongest claims was presented is an evidentiary point.
Read the article
Wired — “Ooo-WEE-ooo Fans Come to D.C.,” 10 May 2001
Type: Contemporary skeptical technology reporting.
Documents the Project's claims about secret government, contractors, free-energy technology and space weapons and records skeptical demands for tangible evidence. Helpful for separating the movement's broad political/technological thesis from narrower witness reports.
Read Wired's report
National Archives — FAA / Japan Airlines Flight 1628 records
Type: Primary federal archival record guide.
Confirms a dedicated FAA series for the 1986 JAL 1628 incident, National Archives Identifier 733667. This independently establishes the documentary core behind John Callahan's testimony while not proving his later claim of CIA suppression.
Browse NARA's UAP textual records
UAPRAD — Malmstrom AFB Missile Incident
Type: UAPRAD case-level synthesis drawing on declassified Air Force records and competing witness accounts.
Useful for keeping the documented Echo Flight shutdown separate from the disputed UFO-causation and Oscar Flight elements in Robert Salas's later testimony.
Read the UAPRAD Malmstrom case
Disclosure Project Archive — early material collection
Type: Private archival preservation project.
Preserves copies of original Disclosure Project video, audio and documents whose original web locations are often no longer available. The archive itself states that it is a curated personal collection, so provenance should be checked at item level.
Browse the archive
Steven Greer official video archive — 2001 press conference
Type: Organiser-controlled audiovisual source.
Useful as direct evidence of what speakers said and how the event was staged. It is not an independent fact-check of the statements.
View the event recording