Robert David Steele (born July 16, 1952) is a former military intelligence officer, former Central Intelligence Agency officer, ^[15] and co-founder of the Marine Corps Intelligence Center (now a Command). ^[1] He is widely known for his promotion of open-source intelligence (OSINT). ^[7] He was a candidate for the Reform Party's nomination for President of the United States in the 2012 presidential election until February 23, 2012. ^[9] Steele has been labeled a conspiracy theorist for publicly promoting a theory claiming NASA runs a secret child slave colony on Mars. ^[2]

Raised in Colombia and Southeast Asia (including Thailand and South Vietnam) by an American-born father (a petroleum engineer) and a Colombian-born mother, Steele completed his secondary education in Singapore in 1970. He received a B.A. in political science from Muhlenberg College in 1974 and an M.A. in international relations from Lehigh University in 1976. From 1975 to 1979, he served in the United States Marine Corps as an officer variously assigned to infantry, ground intelligence and security/personnel duties in Colombia, El Salvador, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Panama and the Philippines. Following his service obligation, he remained in the Marine Forces Reserve until 1996 as an adjunct faculty member at Marine Corps University and developer of the Marine Corps Master Intelligence Plan, ultimately attaining the rank of major.

In 1979, he joined the Central Intelligence Agency as an operations officer. During three tours overseas focused on extremist and terrorist targets in Latin America, Steele recruited 25 traitors and managed over 100 clandestine assets. Hand-picked to pioneer advanced information technology for the Agency, he was a member of the Advanced Information Processing & Analysis Steering Group and the Advanced Program & Evaluation Group. During this period, he received a second master's degree in public administration in 1987 from the University of Oklahoma, where he completed a thesis on strategic and tactical national security information management and was elected to Pi Alpha Alpha. He resigned from the CIA in 1988 to accept an invitation from the Marine Corps to establish the Marine Corps Intelligence Center as a GM-14 civil servant, where he remained until 1993. Steele also received a professional certificate in defense studies from the Naval War College in 1990.

From 1993 to 2010, Steele served as chief executive officer of Open Source Solutions, a pioneering open-source intelligence firm.

In 2011, Steele announced his intention to receive the nomination of the United States Reform Party. In November of that year, he crafted a proposed statement called the Electoral Reform Act of 2012 and presented it to the Occupy Wall Street Electoral Reform Committee. ^[3] He withdrew on February 23, 2012, citing a lack of support from other prospective third party candidates.

In June 2015, Steele announced his candidacy for the 2016 presidential nomination of the Libertarian Party, ^{[12] [13]} but in January 2016 announced that he had withdrawn his candidacy. ^[6]

During a June 2017 guest appearance on the *Alex Jones Show *, Steele said, "This may strike your listeners as way out, but we actually believe that there is a colony on Mars. It is populated by children who were kidnapped and sent into space on a 20 year ride so that once they get to Mars they have no alternative but to be slaves on the Mars colony." ^[2] A a NASA spokesman subsequently issued a denial stating, "There are no humans on Mars." ^[4]