Unacknowledged

The Book in 1 Sentence

The supposed stories from the 50s-70s of alien encounters and the supposed actions by "Government Entities" and Defense Contractors to cover up this fact in an effort to keep making money.

Brief Review

Steven Greer's reliance on repetition of an individuals credentials and work history, single source stories, and boogeymen in the night make this book feel like a conman's playground. The structure of the book in an of itself does present what should be an honest assessment of the information provided, i.e. Each chapter tells you what it is about, where the information provided came from, and when commentary is. However, that doesn't take away form the absolutely force fed conspiracy ladened stories being shoved down your throat.

Why I Read this book

I grabbed this book thinking is was written by Annie Jacobsen, the author of Operation Paperclip because audibles title for the group of books I was looking at was "Annie Jacobsen's next read" and most of the other books in that selection where written by her. This one wasn't. I choose this book around the time the hearing into UFOs was going on so that is why I was curious about the book.

In-Depth Review

Post writing acknowledgement: This is a VERY long review in comparison to my typical reviews.

I need to get a couple things off my chest very quickly about how I know this book was never truly fact checked and makes statements to radicalize and create problems that don't exist. First, Nellis Air Force Base is not Area 51 in fact it is in the middle of Las Vegas. Every time Area 51 is mentioned, he says Nellis AFB. Its crazy. Below are some very helpful maps to give you an idea of where each are.

Nellis AFB to Area 51 = ~80 miles

Secondly, the United States Government has only 2 clearance levels*. Secret (S) and Top Secret (TS). The asterisks comes from the fact that once you have a Top Secret, you can be given additional access to items based on your role and position. These are part of the TS/SCI that you will see that stands for Top Secret Special Compartmented Information. It does require additional background investigation and polygraph to get that level, but it is VERY rare for someone to have just a TS and not a TS/SCI. When you get and SCI, that is when you can be read into operations, tools, etc. depending on what you are doing. In this book you will here a about a Mr. Morris who had a "'COSMIC' clearance which is 38 levels above TS and as far as Mr. Morris knows, no US President has ever been given this level of clearance." This is so patently false that I got annoyed every 38 times that Mr. Morris was introduced. I'm not kidding, every person who was introduced had their credentials and history announced each time. Imagine reading that sentence in quotes above every other chapter and there are about 80 chapters/parts. Along with this stupidity, we need to talk about the statement "Need to know." That statement is the underlying rule for EVERY clearance and EVERY mission/operation. Just because someone has a TS/SCI clearance doesn't mean they need to know the means and methods of how the CIA does there job when they work for the TSA. Like I said previously, the SCI portion is componentized so that as few people as possible have access to the information while still completing the mission. This action is what allowed the Manhattan Project to be built by different people with only a few knowing the end result and because of that, it wasn't until after the explosion that the world really knew about it.

Third and finally, the government agents in this book are all the same person and all perfect in there coverup. Never did ANY evidence of the cover up get released. Having worked for the government for a long time I can tell you that 60% of the people there are incompetent and the other 40% spend their time picking up the pieces. There is no way that all the people in this "Magic 12" group are all the 40%. It is a stupid story to add.

Another disclosure that you will probably want to know is my view on aliens in general. I think it is highly arrogant of us as humans to think that we are the only ones around with intelligent life. I feel that even those who believe in God can be reasonable about the idea that God might have made other things in the 7 days it took him to create life here on earth. We don't know what a day is for God and so we just don't know his works. So to be concise, I believe that there are is probably life out there, but they don't care about us/can't reach us just like we as humans don't care about them/can't reach them.

Ok onto the review of the book. I think a lot of this is really going to be pointing out things that don't make sense when looking at it with logic, even the logic from the book. For instance, he mentions that the US government and Defense Contractors like Northrup Grumman, Lockheed, etc. has access to "Zero Point Energy" (ZPE, An unlimited energy source that is freely available and never runs out) and "Anti-gavitics" (Anti-gravity engines). They have access and aren't making things with it in an effort to keep money flowing via the gas companies which they have interest in. This is stupid. Do you know what they could charge the US Government to build a fleet of F-UFOs to fight Russia or whatever country wanted to play games with us? Being able to move in any direction and stop on a dime in the air? That would be world changing and there would be a massive movement to stomp on those going against US interest. As for ZPE, you are trying to tell me that the gas industry doesn't want to stop wasting BILLIONS of dollars on clean up, resource development, and personal for a device/source that never goes out? They would be in pure profit by making these devices to power cities. These don't make sense to me as an American, as someone who has seen people do dumb things for money, and seen companies hire an AI to cut people cost.

Lets also talk about why/when the Aliens came to earth. According to this book, they came when we gained nuclear power/weapons and have told Presidents they will not let them start a nuclear war. I think the idea of the altruistic Alien attempting to stop a foreign species stop from killing themselves to save a planet is crazy.

Ok so lets move on from the arguments and talk about the writing and stories themselves. For this to work as a disbeliever or just someone who doesn't know (Where I generally put myself) you do have to suspend your disbelief of the audacity of some of these stories (Something I obviously had a hard time doing based on the previous 2 paragraphs). The testimonial stories told are interesting in there assertion that the information is accurate and true. However, there is a habit of the writer to basically copy and paste a transcript which creates a feeling of rambling in some of them as they spend a lot of time saying things like "There were a lot of people there," "There are records," and "Just ask [Insert Someone who is dead]" in there statements and I think that actually detracts from the narrative they are looking to provide.

Also, my other big gripe is the repetition of who people are. You only need to say it once and then if you feel like you need to add more, that is what an appendix is for. I should have to here the "AH" was a structural engineer for Skunkworks and has friend in the CIA, NSA, DIA, NASA, etc. over and over again. It just feels it was added to extend the book and not the position the author is taking.

For the good about the book, I think that if any of this is true, the objectives at the end of the book are lofty and admirable. I think that IF the Governments of the world are attacking UFO/ETVs or whatever you want to call them on site, then we have an issue. Also if there is technology being hidden for the face of money and greed, then we need to find those government officials and arrest them. Simple.

One last dig. Dr. Greer makes a point of talking about false flag attacks saying there a groups that look to discredit his work and others like him. The way this book is written makes me feel that it is the inverse. They are using people like him to write crazy stories in an effort to hide other events like morons wanting to start war for greed. Hey look, we found something to agree about. There are a lot of people in power that want war to make money.

How my life / behavior / thoughts / ideas have changed as a result of reading the book.

This is hard. I generally feel that this book falls within the range of conspiracy theory which I define as a story that is unproveable at its base level. For instance, this book says multiple times "I was told not to publish this information until X person was dead" or all the records were destroyed except these 2 files that I kept myself. It constantly stands on this single source idea which in any information gathering you shouldn't do. However, I think that if you spend the time reading a non-fiction book looking for information you should learn something. I will say that I have learned that there is a lot more information out there about "Aliens" than I expected and I think in the future I will be more observant about how that information is provided.

Rating

I am not rating the content here, just the writing and coherence of the story. The writing is juvenile. How do I know? It reads like me trying to write a paper for college. The stories are barely retainable and have very little detail that isn't surface level. It is a 4. It just feels basic.