Luis Elizondo is a media personality and author formerly employed by United States Army Counterintelligence and the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence. According to Elizondo, he was director of the now defunct Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), which was associated with the Pentagon UFO videos. Elizondo's statements about his Pentagon role with AATIP have been contested by Pentagon officials. Since 2017, he has claimed there is a government conspiracy to suppress evidence that UFOs are of non-human origin.
Starting in 2008, Elizondo worked with the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence (OUSDI) in the Pentagon. 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, when he resigned to protest what he characterized as "excessive secrecy and internal opposition". Elizondo was Director for the National Programs Special Management Staff in the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
At the time of his resignation Elizondo was a federal "GS-15 employee", the civilian equivalent to colonel rank. Government spokespeople afterwards issued alternating and conflicting accounts of his role in government, both confirming and denying his intelligence work and work related to the topics of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and unidentified anomalous phenomenon (UAPs). Senator Harry 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".
Elizondo was recruited in 2009 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 to investigate aerial threats including unidentified aerial phenomena.
Elizondo has been called a "leader" with responsibility for management of security for AATIP. According to Elizondo, he was asked to take over AATIP as director in 2010, which was an outgrowth of a government project awarded to businessman and paranormal enthusiast Robert Bigelow to investigate Utah area cryptids, with Elizondo investigating "the national-security implications of military U.A.P. encounters". 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.
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". 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". In the Inspector General's complaint, Elizondo also claimed 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. Elizondo claimed he had been cleared of any wrongdoing by the Pentagon.
According to the Department of Defense, the AATIP program ended in 2012 due to budget cuts.
Luis Elizondo - Wikipedia
