

In December of 2017, The New York Times published a stunning front-page exposé about the Pentagon's mysterious UFO program, the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP). Featuring an interview with a former military intelligence official and Special Agent In-Charge, Luis Elizondo, who confirmed the existence of the hidden government program, the controversial story was the focus of worldwide attention.

Previously run by Elizondo, AATIP was created to research and investigate Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) including numerous videos of reported encounters, three of which were released to a shocked public in 2017. Elizondo resigned after expressing to the government that these UAPs could pose a major threat to our national security, and not enough was being done to deal with them or address our potential vulnerabilities.

Now, as a part of HISTORY's groundbreaking new six-part, one-hour limited series "Unidentified: Inside America's UFO Investigation," Elizondo is speaking out for the first time with Tom DeLonge, co-founder and President of To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science, and Chris Mellon, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense and Intelligence, to expose a series of startling encounters and embark on fascinating new investigations that will urge the public to ask questions and look for answers. From A+E Originals, DeLonge serves as executive producer.

In collaboration with We Are The Mighty and HISTORY, I had the opportunity to sit down with this warrior for an interview.

Series premieres Friday, May 31, at 10/9c on HISTORY.





Luis Elizondo - Director of Global Security & Special Programs Luis Elizondo is a career intelligence officer whose experience includes working with the U.S. Army, the Department of Defense, the National Counterintelligence Executive, and the Director of National Intelligence. As a former Special Agent In-Charge, Elizondo conducted and supervised highly sensitive espionage and terrorism investigations around the world. As an intelligence Case Officer, he ran clandestine source operations throughout Latin America and the Middle East. Most recently, Elizondo managed the security for certain sensitive portfolios for the U.S. Government as the Director for the National Programs Special Management Staff. For nearly the last decade, Elizondo also ran a sensitive aerospace threat identification program focusing on unidentified aerial technologies. Elizondo's academic background includes Microbiology, Immunology, and Parasitology, with research experience in tropical diseases. Elizondo is also an inventor who holds several patents.

What was it like operating under high levels of secrecy regarding AATIP? I think in my position as a career intelligence officer in the department of defense, I am used to working discreetly on programs of a national security nature. I think the very role of intelligence tends to be secretive, obviously for the purposes of Operational Security (OPSEC), you don't want to inadvertently compromise your activities or efforts and have those fall into the hands of a foreign adversary. You know, it was just another day at the office.

Has AATIP found any man-made threats? Well, what I think AATIP was successful in identifying signatures and performance characteristics that go beyond the typical profile of adversarial type technologies. I know from that perspective AATIP was very helpful because you're looking at performance characteristics including; extreme acceleration, hypersonic velocities, low observability, multi-median or trans-median travel and, frankly, positive hits without any type of propulsion or flight surfaces or wings. Put that into context of what you're observing electro-optically on radar and what's being reported by the military eyewitnesses. I think you have to pause for a minute and scratch your head thinking 'you're not looking at a conventional technology.'

What kind of repercussions are there with providing the public with this type of information? Well, I can't answer on behalf of the government. Obviously, there are some individuals that remained in the department that may not appreciate what I did or how I did it. At the end of the day, if the information is unclassified and is of potential national security concern, I think the public has a right to know. Keep in mind that at no point in time were [any] sources or methods compromised, vocational data or any other type of data, [that] we try to keep out of the hands of foreign adversaries. Keep in mind, had the system worked [from] the beginning I wouldn't have had to resign. I resigned out of a sense of loyalty and duty to the department of defense. I tried to work within the system to inform my boss, General Mattis at the time. This is the man who was the secretary of defense, and my experience with him in combat was he was a man who wants more information, not less. We didn't have the ability to report certain information or aspects of AATIP up the chain of command to the boss -- that was a problem. Sometimes if you want to fix something, you have to go outside of the system to fix it. That's my perspective anyway. Let's not forget that secretary Mattis did almost the exact same thing almost a year later, he had to resign for reasons that he thought were important to him. A+E Network

Project Blue Book insisted that UFOs were not a threat to national security, however, decades later your findings tell otherwise. What is responsible for this shift? Do I think they're a threat? They could be if they wanted to be. Let me give you a very succinct analogy: Let's say at night you go to lock your front door, you don't expect any problems, but you lock it anyways just to be extra safe. You lock your windows, and you turn on your alarm system, and you go to bed. You do this every morning, and let's say one morning after you wake up, you're walking downstairs, and you find muddy footprints in your living room. Nothing has been taken, no one is hurt, but despite you locking the front doors, the windows, and turning on the alarm system -- there are muddy footprints in your living room. The question is: is that a threat? Well, I don't know, but it could be if it wanted to be. For that reason, it's imperative from a national security perspective that we better understand what it is we're seeing. My job at AATIP was very simple: [identify] what it is and how it works, not to determine who is behind the wheel or where they're from or what their intentions are. What I'm saying is that other people who are smarter than me should figure out those answers. To me, a threat is a threat, until I know something isn't a threat, in the Department of Defense, we have to assume it is a threat. The primary function of the Department of Defense is to fight and win wars, we're not police officers, we don't go to places to protect and serve. I hate to say it but our job is to kill as many bad guys as possible, so from that perspective, if this was not potentially a threat it would be something someone else should look at -- There are different agencies out there such as Health and Human Services, DHS, FAA, and State Department. This is something that is flying in our skies with impunity. It has the ability to fly over our combat air space and control overall combat theaters, potentially over all of our cities and there is not much we can do about it. I have to assume it's a threat. Keeping in mind that if a Russian or Chinese aircraft entered out airspace the first thing we'd do is scramble F-22s and go intercept it and it would be front page on CNN. [These things, however,] because they don't have tail numbers, insignia on their wings or tails -- they don't even have wings or tails [at all], it's crickets. This is occurring, and no one wants to have a conversation about it. That, to me is a greater threat than the threat itself because we can't allow ourselves [to talk about it] despite the mounting evidence that is there.

Is there anything the public can do to put pressure on our leaders to have a more appropriate response? First of all, in defense of the Department of Defense, people like to blame DoD "oh, these guys said it was weather balloons or swamp gas" but the reason why there is a stigma is because we made it an issue and made it taboo as American citizens and therefore the Department of Defense is simply responding to the stigma we placed on it. The DoD, for many years, wanted to look at this but the social stigma and taboo, put a lot of pressure on the DoD not to report these things. It's a shame because of a laundry list of secondary, tertiary issues that ensue if you ignore a potential problem. I think DoD, in defense of our national security apparatus, nobody wanted to own this portfolio because it was fraught with so much stigma. $22 million of taxpayer dollars were used to support this and it's problematic because how do you, as a DoD official, go to your boss and say "there's something in our skies, we don't know what it is, we don't know how it works, and by the way, there is not a damned thing we can do about it." That's not a conversation that's easy to have. Now imagine having that conversation with a man named "Mad Dog Mattis." You want to have answers. In this particular case, we didn't have enough data. We need more data. The only way you're going to get more data is by letting the Department of Defense and Congress know that the American people support this endeavor. The reason they're not going to respond to it is if they're [only] getting calls from their constituents saying "what are you doing wasting my taxpayer money?" I think that once the American people decide this is an issue that should be a priority, then I think the national security apparatus would respond accordingly.

Do you have any advice for service members that may witness strange events? How would you advise them to come forward? I would advise them [by] letting them know that there are efforts underway in looking at this and they should report this. The Navy and the Air Force are changing their policies to be able to report this information to a cognoscente authority without the fear of repercussions.