Luis Elizondo

Luis "Lue" Daniel Elizondo is a former United States Army counterintelligence special agent and senior Pentagon official who served as director of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) — a classified program investigating unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) — and who resigned from the Department of Defense in October 2017 in protest at the department's failure to take the UAP issue seriously. He was the primary public face of the December 2017 The New York Times disclosure of AATIP ("Glowing Auras and 'Black Money'") and the associated declassified UAP videos (FLIR1, Gimbal, GoFast); subsequently co-founded To The Stars Academy with musician Tom DeLonge; and published the memoir Imminent: Inside the Pentagon's Hunt for UFOs in August 2024, which debuted at number one on The New York Times Best Seller list. His status and role within AATIP have been disputed by the Department of Defense, though former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and contemporaneous Pentagon spokespeople have publicly affirmed his leadership role.

Early life and family

Elizondo was born in Texas and graduated from Riverview High School in Sarasota, Florida. His family is Cuban: his father, Luis Elizondo III, was a member of Brigade 2506, the CIA-sponsored exile paramilitary force formed in 1960 that attempted to overthrow Fidel Castro's government in the Bay of Pigs Invasion; he was captured on the beach and spent two years in Castro's prisons before his release. According to Elizondo's 2024 memoir, he grew up being trained for Alpha 66, which he describes as "a slightly rebranded Brigade 2506," attending childhood meetings in dim, smoke-filled rooms that functioned as informal paramilitary preparation as part of the broader network of Cuban exiles organized around the prospect of a second invasion attempt.

Education and early career

At the University of Miami, Elizondo studied microbiology and immunology with a focus on parasitology. He enlisted in the Army in 1995 and served in the Republic of Korea, Kuwait, and the United States before transitioning to civilian intelligence work, running military intelligence operations in Afghanistan, South America, and the Guantanamo Bay detention camp — including Camp Seven — and leading counterterrorism missions against ISIS, al-Qaeda, and Hezbollah. Beginning in 2008 he worked at the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence (OUSDI) in the Pentagon, where he reported working with United States Navy and CIA officials from his Pentagon office until 2017 on integrating national-level intelligence with state and local law enforcement.

AATIP directorship

In early 2009, Elizondo was allegedly recruited by rocket scientist James Lacatski to take on the counterintelligence and security function of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, a classified program investigating aerial threats including unidentified aerial phenomena. AATIP operated within OUSDI, funded initially through the efforts of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Elizondo has stated he was reportedly selected in part because of his scientific background, work as a counterintelligence agent protecting American aerospace technology, and lack of interest in science fiction. His focus was on "nuts and bolts" military encounters over controlled US airspace and near sensitive military installations.

Within AATIP, Elizondo allegedly briefed the Secretary of Defense's senior staff on a weekly basis and worked alongside Christopher Mellon, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, who became a principal advocate for declassifying UAP footage, as well as with David Grusch in a SCIF. The program reportedly investigated UAP according to a framework of five fundamental observables — anti-gravity lift, sudden acceleration, hypersonic velocity without signatures, low observability, and transmedium travel — and later added a sixth, biological effects on close-proximity witnesses. Elizondo has described the three declassified videos as "the least compelling" of the government's UAP holdings and has stated — with Pentagon approval — that "there is very compelling evidence to suggest that the U.S. government is in absolute possession of exotic material that is not made by humans."

According to the Department of Defense, AATIP ended in 2012 due to budget cuts; Elizondo and colleagues have stated that they subsequently requested and received an additional $10 million from Senate Majority Leader Reid to continue AATIP operations at the Office of the Secretary of Defense, with the funding reportedly written as "intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance" rather than UAP research to avoid triggering scrutiny. Elizondo has described AAWSAP as the broader umbrella (covering Skinwalker Ranch and related projects) and AATIP as "a smaller umbrella under a much bigger umbrella."

Elizondo has also disclosed that during his final years at the Pentagon he simultaneously ran "very sensitive operations for the White House and the National Security Council" in addition to his AATIP role.

Dispute over AATIP role

Elizondo's reported leadership of AATIP has been publicly disputed. In December 2017, Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White confirmed him as an AATIP leader to Politico. In June 2019, however, Pentagon spokesperson Christopher Sherwood stated that Elizondo "had no responsibilities with regard to the AATIP program." A 2021 letter from former Senate Majority Leader Reid stated: "As one of the original sponsors of AATIP, I can state as a matter of record Lue Elizondo's involvement and leadership role in this program." Separately, Garry Reid, director of Defense Intelligence at USDI, stated in a memo that Elizondo "aggrandized his role" and had "no job responsibilities related to the AATIP."

Resignation

In October 2017, Elizondo submitted his resignation letter directly to Secretary of Defense James Mattis — an unusual step reflecting his personal relationship with Mattis rather than going through the standard chain — citing the bureaucratic obstruction that had prevented the UAP issue from being escalated appropriately. He has described the problem inside DoD as layers of "praetorian guards" — mid-level officials who allegedly blocked the UAP issue from reaching senior leadership. In contemporaneous accounts he characterized the reasons for resignation as "excessive secrecy and internal opposition."

Post-government disclosure work

December 2017 UAP video release

After resigning, Elizondo provided three videos made by pilots from the USS Nimitz and USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carriers to reporters; they were publicized alongside The New York Times story disclosing AATIP's existence. CNN reported that Elizondo expressed his belief that the objects depicted were not of human origin. The classification status and his authorization to distribute the videos were subsequently 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," though a later investigation "determined the videos were not classified."

To The Stars Academy

Elizondo co-founded To The Stars Academy (TTSA) with Tom DeLonge, describing DeLonge as "a grenade in the punch bowl — very effective at getting attention when needed." A History Channel series, Unidentified: Inside America's UFO Investigation, produced by TTSA, featured him. Elizondo and Christopher Mellon left TTSA in late 2020 to focus on government lobbying for UAP transparency.

Memoir: Imminent

In 2024, Elizondo published Imminent: Inside the Pentagon's Hunt for UFOs (HarperCollins, August 20, 2024, ISBN 978-0063235564) following a nearly year-long Pentagon security review. Visible redaction blocks remain in the published text, which Elizondo left in place intentionally to mark where the government had intervened. The book debuted at number one on The New York Times Best Seller list. In the book, Elizondo reports that a UFO crash-retrieval program has reportedly operated in secret for "decades" administered by "a supersecret umbrella group made up of government officials working with defense and aerospace contractors," and that "technology and biological remains" of extraterrestrial origin have allegedly been retrieved — including allegedly four non-human bodies from Roswell; he also describes the reported "hitchhiker effect" phenomenon in his home (see below) and involvement in a military remote viewing program under parapsychologist Hal Puthoff. The Pentagon's security review also granted him authorization to publicly discuss Roswell as a genuine crash event, a topic he had previously been forbidden to address. A planned second book, Reckoning: The Unspoken Truth about UFOs and the Urgency of Now, is scheduled for release in August 2026 through HarperCollins' Mudlark imprint.

Media and public advocacy

In summer 2021, Elizondo appeared on 60 Minutes in a segment titled "UFOs regularly spotted in restricted U.S. airspace," interviewed by Bill Whitaker. In a 2021 GQ interview, he stated that UFOs/UAPs were "just as likely" to have originated from outer space as from another dimension and might use hydrogen found in water to "warp space time," while adding: "I also think it's possible that [UFOs/UAPs are] something that has been on Earth for a very long time." In 2025, Elizondo participated in the McMenamins Hotel Oregon UFO Festival at McMinnville Community Center in McMinnville, Oregon.

Elizondo has been a consistent public advocate for what he characterizes as a gradual, process-based disclosure: "Disclosure isn't an event. It's not — you wake up one morning, aha, here it is. No, it's a conversation. It's a lengthy conversation. It's a process." He has characterized certain figures in the UAP space as cult-like: "My narrative is the only narrative and anybody else who tells you otherwise is trying to hurt you. I have all the answers, I have the solution. Anybody who says that — I think it's a charlatan." Responding to Neil deGrasse Tyson's skepticism toward UAP, Elizondo drew an analogy to Tyson's own defense of the black hole hypothesis — objects that cannot be seen directly — and argued the same reasoning should apply to UAP. In 2020, he said that if the general public could see what he had seen, the societal response would be "somber" — later clarified as "sobering": "What if all of that turned out to be not entirely accurate... Are we prepared to recognize that we're not at the top of the food chain, potentially?" Elizondo has said that his public advocacy has imposed personal costs: "I've ruined my family's life. It's been terrible... I wouldn't wish it on anybody. Would I do it again? Absolutely."

Congressional testimony

In November 2024, Elizondo testified before a joint hearing of the House Oversight Subcommittee on National Security titled "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth," claiming the government has conducted secret retrievals of UAP craft and non-human bodies. The Pentagon responded that "the department has not found any verifiable evidence that any UAP observation represented extraterrestrial activity nor has the department discovered any verifiable information to substantiate claims that any programs regarding the possession or reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial materials have existed in the past or exist currently."

Legislative advocacy and research affiliations

Elizondo is a research affiliate of the Galileo Project. In 2023, journalist Art Levine reported that Elizondo and Mellon had lobbied in support of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022, which included provisions to investigate UAP-related topics and create the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO); 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.'"

Hitchhiker effect

During his time running AATIP, Elizondo and his family reportedly experienced recurring appearances of diffuse luminous green orbs in their home beginning around 2010 — witnessed by his wife, children, and neighbors — that allegedly passed through walls and doors. Other AATIP personnel reported similar experiences; the phenomenon was referred to within the program as having a "sticky portfolio" or producing the "hitchhiker effect."

Intelligence community retaliation and disputed claims

After filing Inspector General complaints with the Director of National Intelligence and DoD, Elizondo's full protected-communication transcript was released publicly by the DoD — a move that, according to Elizondo, violated the department's own whistleblower protection policies and was intended as a deliberate signal to other potential whistleblowers. Elizondo's IG complaint described "a coordinated campaign to discredit him for speaking out" and alleged he had been targeted by "a personal vendetta from a Pentagon rival" over the 2017 release of Pentagon UAP videos.

Several of Elizondo's specific public claims have been challenged. A former co-worker, Jeremy McGowan, alleged that Elizondo frequently fabricated information, and stated that Elizondo once showed him what he claimed was footage from a Soviet spacecraft near Mars which McGowan later identified as publicity film of Phobos 2. Between 2022 and 2023, Elizondo reportedly told the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office that files proving the existence of a secret U.S. government program collecting evidence of non-human intelligence were in a locked drawer in his former office; FBI agents subsequently sealed and searched the office but found nothing, and a former supervisor said he had never heard of such a program. At a 2024 speaking event, Elizondo presented a photo he claimed was an alien "mothership" taken near the U.S. embassy in Romania, allegedly provided by a government contact; subsequent research by John Greenewald and others found the image was taken over 400 miles from the embassy, had first appeared on a Facebook group in 2023, and was "a photo of a light fixture reflected in a window." In May 2025, at a hearing sponsored by the UAP Disclosure Fund, Elizondo showed a photograph of what he described as "potentially anywhere between 600 and 1,000 feet in diameter... a lenticular object, and it is silver"; skeptic Mick West and Reddit commenters identified the object as an irrigation circle.

Steven Greer has alleged that Elizondo and David Grusch told members of Congress that Greer was "a Russian sleeper agent" and "a Russian spy," causing several congressional offices to refuse contact with the Disclosure Project. A 2021 "Disclosure Wars" panel on the Alien Addict YouTube channel examined Greer's characterization of Elizondo.

Published works

• Imminent: Inside the Pentagon's Hunt for UFOs (HarperCollins, August 20, 2024, 304 pp., ISBN 978-0063235564).
• Reckoning: The Unspoken Truth about UFOs and the Urgency of Now (HarperCollins Mudlark, scheduled August 2026).

See also

• Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program
• AAWSAP
• All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office
• Glowing Auras and 'Black Money'
• Tom DeLonge
• To The Stars Academy
• Christopher Mellon
• David Grusch
• Imminent
• Hitchhiker effect
• UAP disclosure (2017–present)
• Disclosure movement
• Galileo Project
• Unidentified: Inside America's UFO Investigation
• The Age of Disclosure
• Yankee Blue

External links

• Official website
• Template:IMDb name
• Elizondo and others featured on '60 Minutes' - May 2021

References

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