Luis Elizondo

Luis Elizondo is a media personality and former U.S. Army Counterintelligence Special Agent and former employee of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence.

Elizondo has claimed to be a director of the now defunct Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, a program associated with the Pentagon UFO videos, a claim supported by former senator Harry Reid but contested by both reporters and Pentagon officials. Elizondo has also claimed to have held "an array of leadership posts" with the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program which has also been similarly contested. Elizondo has subsequently appeared in various media, including 60 Minutes, as a UFO expert.

Early history
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. Born in Texas, his family "moved to Sarasota around 1975". Elizondo graduated from Riverview High School in Sarasota in 1990, where he was a member of the ROTC program.

In college Elizondo studied microbiology, immunology, and parasitology. He later served in the U.S. Army for 20 years, during which he ran military intelligence operations in Afghanistan, South America, and Guantanamo Bay's Camp Seven. 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
From 2008 until his resignation in 2017, Elizondo worked with the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence (OUSDI) in The Pentagon. Elizondo claims that ending in 2012, he was the director  of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, a special access program funded at the initiative of the then Senate majority leader, Harry Reid (D-Nevada) to investigate aerial threats including unidentified aerial phenomena. 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.

According to the Department of Defense, the AATIP program ended in 2012 after five years. Elizondo claims he worked with officials from the U.S. Navy and the CIA out of his Pentagon office for this program until October 2017, when he resigned to protest what he characterized as "excessive secrecy and internal opposition". Elizondo asserts that "underestimating or ignoring these potential threats is not in the best interest of the Department no matter the level of political contention." The New Yorker reports that Elizondo was hired to take over the program, which was an outgrowth of a government project awarded to businessman and paranormal enthusiast Robert Bigelow, ostensibly to examine the future of warfare, but reporting almost exclusively about U.F.O.s, including "a photo of a supposed tracking device that supposed aliens had supposedly implanted in a supposed abductee".

His position in the AATIP was questioned by The Intercept and challenged by Pentagon officials, with spokesperson Christopher Sherwood saying Elizondo "had no responsibilities with regard to the AATIP program while he worked in OUSDI, up until the time he resigned effective 10/4/2017." In response, Elizondo filed a complaint with the agency's inspector general claiming "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 stated that he was the target of "a personal vendetta from a Pentagon rival". Senator 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".

To The Stars and media appearances
After resigning from DOD, Elizondo in October 2017 joined To the Stars Academy of Arts and Sciences. Elizondo also distributed three declassified videos to the press that were made by pilots from the United States Navy aircraft carriers USS Nimitz and USS Theodore Roosevelt which became known as the Pentagon UFO videos. The release was accompanied by the first mainstream press reporting on the existence of the AATIP. In April 2019, the Navy acknowledged drafting new guidelines for pilots and other personnel to report encounters with "unidentified aircraft", and Elizondo told The Washington Post that it was "the single greatest decision the Navy has made in decades". The classified nature of the videos and the validity of Elizondo's authorization to distribute them were questioned. In April 2020, the United States Department of Defense released the videos prompting Elizondo to comment, "We are fueled by the Pentagon's significant actions and hope this encourages a new wave of credible information to come forward". According to Gideon Lewis-Kraus, Elizondo initially explained to the Pentagon in a memo that the videos would "help educate pilots and improve aviation safety", but in later interviews he stated that his goal was to shine light on the program he ran for seven-years to "collect and analyze reported UFO sightings". After joining To the Stars, Elizondo announced they were, "'planning to provide never-before-released footage from real U.S. government systems—not blurry amateur photos but real data and real videos'". Elizondo believes UAPs might be from another dimension, they might use hydrogen found in water to "warp space time", and the US government may be in possession of "exotic material" associated with UAPs.

A History Channel docuseries titled Unidentified: Inside America's UFO Investigation produced by To the Stars features Elizondo and others who claim affiliation with AATIP.

Elizondo, along with Christopher Mellon and Steve Justice, left To the Stars in late 2020, saying "Tom [De Longe] is really focused on the entertainment side, so there's not a whole lot for Chris, Steve 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."

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, who included interviews with Christopher Mellon and two U.S. Naval Avaitors.