# Luis Elizondo

Luis Elizondo is a media personality and author formerly employed by United States Army Counterintelligence and the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence. According to Elizondo, he was director of the now defunct Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), which was associated with the Pentagon UFO videos. Elizondo's statements about his Pentagon role with AATIP have been contested by Pentagon officials. Since 2017, he has claimed there is a government conspiracy to suppress evidence that UFOs are of "non human" origin.

## Early life and education

Elizondo is the son of Luis Elizondo III, a Cuban exile who volunteered for Brigade 2506, a CIA-sponsored group of exiles formed in 1960 to attempt the military overthrow of the Cuban government headed by Fidel Castro, which culminated in the Bay of Pigs invasion. According to his 2024 memoir, Elizondo grew up being trained for Alpha 66, which he describes as a "slightly rebranded Brigade 2506". Born in Texas, his family "moved to Sarasota around 1975". At the University of Miami, Elizondo majored in microbiology and immunology.

## Career
### United States Army intelligence

Elizondo served in the United States Army with service in the Republic of Korea, Kuwait, and in the United States, and then as a civilian intelligence officer during which he ran military intelligence operations in Afghanistan, South America, and the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and its Camp Seven. Elizondo ran anti-terrorist missions against the Islamic State (ISIS), al-Qaeda and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. Regarding his military career, Elizondo stated he "dealt with a lot of stuff, like coup d'états, black market terrorism, violent drug cartels, all that kind of stuff".

### Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence

Starting in 2008, Elizondo worked with the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence (OUSDI) in the Pentagon. Elizondo has reported that he worked with officials from the U.S. Navy and the CIA out of his Pentagon office for this program until 2017, when he resigned to protest what he characterized as "excessive secrecy and internal opposition". Elizondo was Director for the National Programs Special Management Staff in the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
At the time of his resignation Elizondo was a federal "GS-15 employee", the civilian equivalent to colonel rank. Government spokespeople afterwards issued alternating and conflicting accounts of his role in government, both confirming and denying his intelligence work and work related to the topics of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and unidentified anomalous phenomenon (UAPs). Senator Harry Reid sent a letter to NBC News stating "I can state as a matter of record Lue Elizondo's involvement and leadership role in this program".
Writer Keith Kloor described Elizondo as among a group of "believers in extraterrestrial visitations", and that performance evaluations of Elizondo's work as a government employee were favorable.
From 2017-2024 Elizondo retained "the highest security clearance" and served as a contractor for the United States government.

### Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program

Elizondo was recruited in 2009 to the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), a special access program funded at the initiative of the then United States Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada to investigate aerial threats including unidentified aerial phenomena.
Elizondo has been called a "leader" with responsibility for management of security for AATIP. According to Elizondo, he was asked to take over AATIP as director in 2010, which was an outgrowth of a government project awarded to businessman and paranormal enthusiast Robert Bigelow to investigate Utah area cryptids, with Elizondo investigating "the national-security implications of military U.A.P. encounters". Elizondo told a reporter he thought that he might have been selected for AATIP because of his scientific background, work as a counterintelligence agent protecting American aerospace technology, and lack of interest in science fiction.
In June 2019, Pentagon spokesperson Christopher Sherwood confirmed that AATIP "did pursue research and investigation into unidentified aerial phenomena", and added to The Intercept that Elizondo "had no responsibilities with regard to the AATIP program while he worked in OUSDI, up until the time he resigned". In response, Elizondo filed a complaint with the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General describing "a coordinated campaign to discredit him for speaking out" including "Pentagon press statements asserting he had no official role in UFO research, even after his role was officially confirmed". In the Inspector General's complaint, Elizondo also claimed that he was the target of "a personal vendetta from a Pentagon rival", who attempted to harm his career via investigations of Elizondo's role in the 2017 release of the Pentagon UFO videos. Elizondo claimed he had been cleared of any wrongdoing by the Pentagon.
According to the Department of Defense, the AATIP program ended in 2012 due to budget cuts.

### To the Stars Academy of Arts and Sciences

Soon after resigning from the government, Elizondo joined To the Stars Academy of Arts and Sciences (TTSA), a public-benefit corporation co-founded by musician Tom DeLonge, CIA veteran Jim Semivan, and parapsychologist Hal Puthoff to research UFO-related topics.

#### United States Navy UFO videos

In 2017, Elizondo gave three videos to reporters made by pilots from the United States Navy aircraft carriers USS Nimitz and USS Theodore Roosevelt which were then publicized in the New York Times. The Times story also publicized the existence of the AATIP, with Elizondo expressing his belief that UFOs depicted were not of human origin.
The classification status of the videos and the validity of Elizondo's authorization to distribute them were questioned. In 2020, Pentagon spokesperson Susan Gough told Popular Mechanics that "The videos were not cleared for general public release because DOPSR did not receive final approval from Navy. Navy’s approval would have included PA review from Navy’s PA office (Public Affairs)". Gough said that a later investigation "determined the videos were not classified".
According to writer Art Levine, "the videos of supposed UFOs originally obtained by Luis Elizondo and TTSA [...] were not officially acknowledged by the Pentagon at the time. More than two years after the Times stories, the Pentagon declared the videos “real.” Not surprisingly, that language reinforced the notion that aliens were involved".

#### Documentary series and departure

A History Channel series titled Unidentified: Inside America's UFO Investigation, produced by TTSA, featured Elizondo and others who present themselves as affiliated with AATIP.
Elizondo, along with Christopher Mellon, left TTSA in late 2020, saying "Tom [De Longe] is really focused on the entertainment side, so there's not a whole lot for Chris [...] and I to do [...] Our talents lie in engaging governments, Congress and international organizations, and we're ready to shift into second gear. Entertainment is one way to do it, but it's not comprehensive."

### Subsequent UFO-related activity

In the summer of 2021 Elizondo appeared on the CBS News program 60 Minutes in a segment titled "UFOs regularly spotted in restricted U.S. airspace" in which he was interviewed by Bill Whitaker.
Elizondo believes UFOs/UAPs might be from another dimension, that they might use hydrogen found in water to "warp space time", and that the US government may be in possession of "exotic material" associated with UAPs.
Elizondo was announced on October 30, 2021 as a research affiliate to The Galileo Project, a program began by astrophysicist and ufologist Avi Loeb to search for extraterrestrial intelligence or extraterrestrial technology on and near Earth and to identify the nature of unidentified flying objects.
In 2023, journalist Art Levine reported that both Elizondo and Mellon had lobbied in support of the National Defense Authorization Act, which included a provision to investigate UFO-related topics and to create the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office. Levine noted that Elizondo had "become a lightning rod for a dangerous new rage that is overtaking some conspiracy-oriented UFO believers and influencers, who are demanding “disclosure now” by the government about its purported encounters with aliens". Levine wrote that Elizondo has been accused of "fabrications" by ufologist Jeremy McGowan, who wrote that Elizondo exhibited "cultlike behavior" and claimed to have remote viewing powers.

### Imminent: Inside the Pentagon's Hunt for UFOs

Elizondo's memoir, Imminent: Inside the Pentagon’s Hunt for U.F.O.s, was published on August 20, 2024 by HarperCollins and debuted at number one on The New York Times Best Seller list.
In the book, Elizondo claims that late in his military and intelligence career, he was recruited by Pentagon officials to manage security and counterintelligence for a deeply classified UFO-related research program, subsequently embracing ufology.
Elizondo's claims include UFOs created and operated by what he describes as "non human intelligence", a conspiracy to cover up United States government awareness of UFOs and non-human intelligent life, the Roswell crash incident and other crash retrievals including recoveries of alien technology and 'biologics', alien abductions, and alien implants.
According to Elizondo, he was involved in a military remote viewing program under Hal Puthoff, who he claims "worked for 50 years as the government’s chief scientist on aliens". Elizondo also claims that for several years his home was "invaded" by floating, glowing orbs that were seen by his family and neighbors.