Skinwalker Ranch in Utah’s remote Uintah Valley defies explanation, but former Pentagon official Luis Elizondo sees possible explanations. Elizondo, who worked in the government’s UFO studies for the Pentagon at the same time that Robert Bigelow was leading a study of his own, knows the subject. Could forces we just don’t understand yet lie behind the explanation for the strange happenings reported at Skinwalker? Elizondo discusses possible answers with investigative reporter George Knapp, who wrote “Hunt for the Skinwalker,” with co-author Colm Kelleher. Previously unaired, this interview was recorded June 27, 2018, in Las Vegas. Sixth of 9 Parts.

George Knapp: What about Skinwalker Ranch? Did you get reports on that? Or can you say?

Luis Elizondo: I would prefer to defer that question if that’s okay.

Knapp: Let’s let’s do a hypothetical. The kinds of phenomena that have been described there that were investigated by Bigelow, both as BAASS and as NIDS are confounding in the sense that they never repeat. That the same thing doesn’t happen again. It almost seems to be … like the approach would be to study it as an intelligence issue rather than a scientific issue or as an intelligence …

Elizondo: Well, I think there’s always an intelligence aspect to any big question, right? You have to ask questions. You know, let’s take the nature of Skinwalker out of the equation and just look at it from an intelligence problem. You have to ask yourself, A. Is this something that is naturally occurring? Is just something that is being deliberately done? Is this something that another nation could be behind trying to influence us? Or is this something that is occurring that is just a natural part of being a human being on this planet? Right? And a bunch of other possibilities as well. So we’re looking at things through the optic of trying to determine exactly what are these things that are being detected, that are being observed, that are being reported? And is it something that is naturally occurring or not? And when I say naturally occurring, it doesn’t necessarily mean naturally occurring as part of a weather pattern. This is an awfully big universe we live in. And we now realize through theories such as string theory and theory that the universe in which we live in may be part of a much bigger neighborhood of universe as part of a multiverse which reside within one great big superverse. And this is not just mere speculation. There is scientific evidence right now that even some very serious scientists are looking at. Give you a case in point. The lopsided, supposed lopsided, nature of our universe. When a hand grenade blows up, it tends to blow up in a somewhat symmetrical pattern. And yet, here is our universe, supposedly originating from a big bang, and it seems lopsided. And so some scientists now have speculated it could be that way because of the gravitational force from a neighboring universe. Those gravity effects are actually affecting our universe over here, right? Is it proven? No, but it is a theory. And so I think whenever it comes to things like Skinwalker Ranch or anywhere else, I think we have to keep an open mind. Again, 20 years ago, my cell phone, my iPad, maybe 30 years ago, was paranormal, right?

Knapp: Witchcraft.

Elizondo: Supernatural, witchcraft, voodoo. And now it’s routine. I think when you get into quantum mechanics and you realize things such as duality principle and tangled particles, you realize this universe is far more complex than we had ever even imagined. And we have to take that into account, that there were things that may go bump in the night. And we just need to figure out what those things are.

Knapp: The words “threat” and “weapons” in those titles of those programs have generated a lot of attention, a lot of discussion. “Threat,” a-ha. When you combine them sort of with Harry Reid’s proposal to create a special access program to study this, is the idea that we need to study this in a classified manner — it’s touchy stuff — raises the specter, I would think in the minds of some of the public. “A-ha, they’re going to spend a bunch of money in some secret program. We’re never going to see it.” Is it right to speak about this as a possible threat? Well, we talked about that before, but should it be handled by special access program? And is there a model in which the public could be kept part of it even though it is quite …

Elizondo: Absolutely. Yes. In fact, that’s what we did with AATIP. So you have different layers of a program. Think of it as an onion, right? So you have an outside layer, which everybody sees, that’s the outside of the onion, and that part remains unclassified. And that is the way that we communicate things to the public, just like we did when North Korea had nuclear weapons and they were developing them and potentially pointed over on this side of the coast of the United States. Now, underneath that layer are several classified layers, and when we go maybe potentially secret or top secret and even further. So depending on the sensitivity, it’s not that you’re trying to keep this information away from the public. It’s not the American people we don’t trust. It’s foreign adversaries that we don’t trust. And there’s no way to communicate to the American people information, and make sure it doesn’t get into the wrong hands. So that’s why we classify things. We don’t classify things to keep the Americans in the dark. We classify things to keep our adversaries in the dark. And unfortunately, you know, in order to do that you have to keep Americans, as well, in the dark of certain operations.

NEXT STORY: Luis Elizondo on what should be secret, and studying ‘metamaterial’