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Luis Elizondo
Born	Luis Daniel Elizondo Texas, United States
Other names	"Lue" Elizondo
Education	University of Miami
Occupation(s)	Former Military intelligence officer, author
Organization(s)	Department of Defense, U.S. Army Counterintelligence, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, Office of the Secretary of Defense, Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, To the Stars Academy of Arts and Sciences
Website	luiselizondo-official.com

Luis Elizondo is an author formerly employed by the United States Department of Defense^[1] in roles of United States Army Counterintelligence^[2], the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence^[3], and as Director for the National Programs Special Management Staff in the Office of the Secretary of Defense.^[4]

Elizondo's reported position as a director of the now defunct Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), associated with the Pentagon UFO videos, has generated controversy as his role has been both confirmed and contested by Pentagon officials and the media.^{[5][6][7][3][8]} Since 2017, he has claimed there is a government conspiracy to suppress evidence that UFOs are of "non human" origin.^{[6][1][3][7][9]}

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.^[10][5] According to his 2024 memoir, Elizondo grew up being trained for Alpha 66, which he describes as a "slightly rebranded Brigade 2506".^[11][12] Born in Texas, his family "moved to Sarasota around 1975".^[5] At the University of Miami, Elizondo majored in microbiology and immunology.^[7]

Elizondo enlisted in 1995^[5] and 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.^[2][7] Elizondo ran anti-terrorist missions against the Islamic State (ISIS), al-Qaeda and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.^[2] 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".^[13]

Starting in 2008, Elizondo worked with the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence (OUSDI) in the Pentagon.^[3][14] 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.^[14][1] Elizondo was Director for the National Programs Special Management Staff in the Office of the Secretary of Defense.^[4][1]

Elizondo was recruited in 2009^[2] 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^[15] to investigate aerial threats including unidentified aerial phenomena, with Elizondo investigating "the national-security implications of military U.A.P. encounters".^{[16][17][17][18]} 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.^[7] Writer Keith Kloor reported that Elizondo was asked to take over management of security for AATIP, describing Elizondo as among a group of "believers in extraterrestrial visitations", and that performance evaluations of Elizondo's work as a government employee were favorable.^[1] According to the Department of Defense, the AATIP program ended in 2012 due to budget cuts.^[6][14]

Government spokespeople have issued alternating and conflicting accounts of his role in government, both confirming and denying his intelligence work related to the topics of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and unidentified anomalous phenomenon (UAPs).^[5] Elizondo has been called a "leader" with responsibility for management of security for AATIP.^[6][1] In 2017, Elizondo was confirmed as an AATIP leader by Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White to Politico.^[6] 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".^[3] 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".^[19][20][8] In the Inspector General's complaint, Elizondo also alleged 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.^[19] Senator Reid sent a letter in 2021 to NBC News stating, "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".^[7]

In late 2017, Elizondo resigned to protest what he characterized as "excessive secrecy and internal opposition".^[14][1]

From 2017-2024 Elizondo retained "the highest security clearance" and served as a contractor for the United States government.^[2]

In 2017, after resigning, 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.^[21][22] The Times story also publicized the existence of AATIP,^[14] with Elizondo expressing his belief that UFOs depicted were not of human origin.^[23]

The classification status of the videos and the validity of Elizondo's authorization to distribute them were questioned.^[24][25] In 2020, Pentagon spokesperson Susan Gough told Popular Mechanics that "The videos were not cleared for general public release because DOPSR (the Defense Office of Prepublication and Security Review) did not receive final approval from Navy".^[24] Gough said that a later investigation "determined the videos were not classified".^[24] Popular Mechanics noted that Elizondo was cleared of wrongdoing by the Pentagon's admission of DOPSR accidentally clearing the videos for release, but observed he had faced scrutiny for labeling the videos as "UAV, Balloons, and UAS" in his release requests.^[24]

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.^[16][26] 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.^{[27][28][29][30]} Elizondo along with former Senate and Pentagon official Christopher Mellon left TTSA in late 2020 to focus on government lobbying for UFO transparency.^[5]

Elizondo has stated that UFOs/UAPs might use hydrogen found in water to "warp space time".^[7] Elizondo has stated he believes the US government to be in possession of "exotic material" associated with UAPs.^[7] 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.^[31][32]

Elizondo was announced on October 30, 2021 as a research affiliate to The Galileo Project, a program began by Harvard University 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.^[32][9] In 2023, Art Levine reported that both Elizondo and Mellon had lobbied in support of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022, which included a provision to investigate UFO-related topics and to create the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office.^[9] 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".^[9]

In 2024, while appearing at a paid speaking event in Philadelphia, Elizondo presented a photo purportedly taken by pilots in Romania, explaining that the photographers described it as a "mothership".^[33] According to Elizondo, the photo was provided him by a contact within the U.S. Government.^[33] It was later debunked as fake, which Elizondo subsequently acknowledged.^[33] On 1 May 2025, according to Futurism, Elizondo "showed off a peculiar image of what appeared to be a gigantic, disc-shaped object floating hundreds of feet above the ground" at a hearing on UFOs sponsored by the UAP Disclosure Fund.^[34] Elizondo commented that "the object is potentially anywhere between 600 and 1,000 feet in diameter ... it's a lenticular object, and it is silver".^[34] The following day, Mick West confirmed the analysis of commenters on Reddit that the purported object was actually an irrigation circle.^[34][35]

Elizondo's memoir, Imminent: Inside the Pentagon’s Hunt for U.F.O.s, was published on August 20, 2024 by HarperCollins^[12] and debuted at number one on The New York Times Best Seller list.^[36] In the book, Elizondo states 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.^[37]

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.^[37] Elizondo also claims that for several years his home was "invaded" by floating, glowing orbs that were seen by his family and neighbors.^[12][2][38] 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".^[38]

• David Grusch
• Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force

• Official website
• Elizondo and others featured on '60 Minutes' - May 2021