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Luis Elizondo is a respected intelligence officer and former head of the Pentagon's Banned Aerospace Red Identification Program where he led efforts to investigate UFO sightings and unidentified aerial phenomena. There were real things that we were encountering over controlled US airspace by an unknown technology that frankly could outperform anything that we had in our inventory. And there was a big national security issue because there's potential for these things to be interfering with our nuclear equities. Is there a difference to suggest that they turned on the nuclear facilities in Russia, right?
Yeah, that's a big deal. Has there ever been anyone sent to jail because they've spoken about this subject matter? Worse, my life has been threatened many times. Taking huge risks.
But I think we deserve the truth. So let's go. People say that they were the best audience. Do you believe in the French reports?
I can tell you that we definitely have people that are now on US government medical disabilities because they're involved in the UFO. And then one of the rumours is that I heard 51-day found UFO materials. I cannot comment on why Area 51 might or might not have. All I can say is that the government is a possession of material that doesn't look like you made by us.
Do you have any theories as to why they might be visiting here? Oh gosh, well, where do I start? You eventually resigns. Why?
I resigned in protest because... Blue. Steve. I think to some people I'm probably a patriot.
I think other people I'm a father and a husband and other people I'm probably the devil. What's your professional CV? What did your professional resume say? Went to college, went to the University of Miami.
I studied microbiology, immunology and parasitology. I consider myself a disciple of scientific method and scientific principles. I then joined the Army, United States Army. I went in as enlisted.
I had an opportunity to go in as an officer because of my education. But the words of my father always rung in the back of my head. And he said in order to be a leader, you must first know what it means to follow. So I joined the Army as an enlisted soldier, spent some time on deployments.
Korea spent to live to year in Asia, was in military intelligence. And then I was recruited very shortly thereafter into a special program where I became a civilian, special agent and counterintelligence running investigations, supervised investigations throughout Latin America, South America, Central America, and then spent the rest of my time after 9-11 over in Afghanistan in the Middle East, primarily dealing with terrorism issues, running operations against ISIS and other organizations. And then after probably several years of that, my wife got very tired of it. It's too many birthdays, it's too many holidays.
And she said you really need to come back. And more importantly, I'm afraid the next time you leave, you may not come back. We're losing some people over there quite a bit. So I listened to my wife.
I came back to a supervisory job. We ran investigations worldwide, terrorism investigations. And then from there, I went to several of the three-letter agencies. I worked for the NCIX, National Counterintelligence Executive, I worked for the DNI, the Director of National Intelligence.
And it was in 2000 shortly thereafter that I was asked to be part of a very interesting program in the Pentagon. What my CV is, I'm probably a jack of all trades, but an expert in nothing. I've done a lot of things, mostly national security crimes, terrorism, espionage, some counter-gril operations, counter-narcotics, counter-insurgency missions. You said in 2000, sort of 80,000, and you asked them back to Pentagon to work on a particular project.
What project was that? So, well, it wasn't the one that wound up being the project that everybody knows me for. So in 2008, they asked me to run a program to help integrate national level intelligence with law enforcement, local and state law enforcement agencies. Now, why is that important?
Because, and then it kind of leads to the next thing. After 9-11, people think here 9-11 was caused by, unfortunately, some terrorists doing some bad things. That was an effect that wasn't a cause. The actual cause was us here in the United States not being able to share information with ourselves very well.
We had pockets of information at the CIA, pockets of information at the FBI, pockets of information at the Department of Defense, but we weren't sharing it with each other. And thereby, there was an information gap, an intelligence gap, and the folks at 9-11 were able to do what they did, unfortunately. So we learned that lesson by trying to create better integration. So how do you take super secret information and get it down to a level that can be consumed and usable without compromising sources of methods?
So that was the problem. I was asked to come back and fix. It was shortly thereafter when I was visited by some individuals and had some conversations with some other individuals about a program that I had no idea that I was ongoing, but it was. And it was a program involving the government's investigation into UAP or in the vernacular.
You might call them UFOs. Here it approached you. So there were two individuals. One of them I can talk about.
There's one that's identity is protected. It's a gentleman named Jay Stratton, who at the time was another intelligence official like me, and another one of his colleagues. They came to me and they asked me questions. They had a blue badge.
I knew they were cleared. They had a security clearance. I had. We worked at skips.
It's not uncommon when you need expertise in a particular portfolio or mission that you outsource. You find the right people to do this right job. I was told they were looking for somebody to run counterintelligence and security for this capability that they had. They didn't tell me what the capability was.
I was a counterintelligence and security guy. I was an expert at it. So after several conversations, a bit of a dance, if you will, trying to figure each other out. They arranged for me to have a meeting with an individual.
I met what I would consider is the premier rocket scientist for the United States government. When I say rocket scientist, I mean literally a rocket scientist, this is a gentleman who can tell you the fuel consumption rate of a first stage solid rocket booster. He can tell you the orbital velocity of a Murph vehicle, multiple-entry vehicle coming in from low Earth orbit. I mean the best of the best of the best.
He was running a program and I still didn't know what the program was, but he said, look, we've been doing it for a lot of money to do it right. We're looking for somebody with your skillsets. The thing was Dr. James Lekatsky, the epitome of a rocket scientist.
At the end of the conversation, I remember him looking at me over his glasses and he said to me, what do you think about UFOs? I thought for a moment and I said to him, I said, I'm sorry, I don't. He said, well, what do you mean? You don't believe in UFOs?
I said, no, I didn't say that. You asked me, what do I think of them? My response was, I don't because I don't think about them. Too busy chasing bad guys and trying to fix problems for the government.
I never really had the luxury to think about them. He said, okay, that's fair, fair enough, but let me just warn you. Don't let your analytic bias get to best of you because you may learn things here that will challenge any preconceived notion or narrative that you have about the topic. I left that meeting thinking to myself, is this some sort of psychological evaluation?
Was it that a serious question? It was very soon thereafter that I learned the reality that the United States government was absolutely invested in a UFO investigative program and more importantly that it was legitimate. It was real. There were real things that we were encountering over controlled US airspace, over sensitive military installations by an unknown technology that frankly could outperform anything that we had in our inventory.
So that was my introduction to now what is known as ATIP. The program had several iterations under the contract vehicle was called OSAP. My focus was specifically more on the nuts and bolts investigations of these UAP incursions into controlled US airspace and counters by military aircraft of these things. We weren't really focused on civilian information.
It wasn't like a grandma seeing some lights in the backyard. These were, well, it's a lack of better term, closing counters by trained military pilots trained in Europe. By the way, who could recognize a silhouette between an SU-22 and mid-25 and an F-16 from 10 miles away and make a split second decision as a friend or foe. What these pilots were encountering were also being backed up by gun camera footage and fleered footage for looking at infrared footage.
Oh, by the way, that was being further backed up by radar data, airborne data, airborne radar data and also ground-based radar data, sea-based radar data. How'd you go from the project you were working on into ATIP? Because that was the first meeting right now as an introductory conversation. So there were several meetings before that where they were trying to vet me.
See if I had the background skillsets. It wasn't until that meeting with Jim Lukaski that the word UFO was used. And how did I go about that? He was the one who made the decision.
It was his program. I had nothing to do with it. I didn't even know what I was signing up for until after meeting with him. So did he say to you, okay, we'd like you to welcome this program, this ATIP program.
The acronym has advanced aerospace threat identification program. And eventually you became the director of that program. Yeah, so there was a natural evolution of it. Initially, I was just, they were brought into provide counterintelligence and security expertise.
But as that program also faded away, the necessity and urgency of some of these incursions was getting to a desperate crescendo. It was getting really, there was a lot of these incursions happening. There was a big national security issue that we were all recognizing. And there were some elements in the government that were trying to kill the effort.
And not for reasons you might think, believe it or not, completely different. And so the decision was made to bring it up to the Pentagon, up to where I was taken out of DIA Defense Intelligence Agency. And with the authorities I had, I was the director of National Programs, Special Management Staff. And so that was my job.
I ran special access programs for the White House and for the National Security Council. And we put the program into that, keeping it out of the prying eyes of some of the folks that previously were trying to kill the program. So this program, Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, was really focused on investigating reports and incidents of UAPs or UFOs in military environments. So if there was a UFO slash UAP in a, I don't know, in a military base, then this project would investigate what that was.
Is that correct? That's correct. So it was only military focused. It wasn't interested in civilian data.
By the time we were running at the Pentagon, it was really looking at, for example, nuclear carrier strike groups that were encountering these things all the time. It would be, for example, an Air Force base or a Navy base or there was a special operations unit on a particular patrol. And if they happen to encounter a UAP, those type of reports. And I also want to emphasize here, we weren't looking for UFOs.
We were always coming into a situation with the understanding that there's some sort of prosaic, there's a prosaic answer to what this is, right? It actually wasn't a UFO. It was a drone, a test fire of a missile. It was a drone.
It was a balloon, it was whatever, whatever. Because there are certain signatures and profiles that you can look very quickly, determine that's just conventional technology. But there was a guideline that we use that helped us understand when something really wasn't anomalous. We're really, we're talking about, it's not our technology and whatever that is, it's probably not adversarial or foreign technology.
So now we're getting into the real world of UAP. That's anomalous. What's UAP? Unidentified anomalous phenomenon.
So let me backtrack a little bit. For years and years and years, the term UFO, unidentified flying object was used. There were several reasons, but later on the term was changed to UAP and it stood for unidentified aerial phenomenon. And that's probably in the last year, year and a half, you're starting to see yet another definition of UAP, unidentified anomalous phenomenon.
And there's a reason for that. I had to happen to explain if you want, but the decision was made to change from UFO to UAP. I read that it was because a lot of the swam military personnel stopped reporting their sightings because there was a stigma associated with the time UFO. Correct.
So it's two reasons. There's stigma and taboo associated with the term because the moment you say UFO people think tin foil hats and crazy, all this on the mothership nonsense like that. But the reality is that this was a real issue in National Security, as you far nation and other nations too, by the way. But also the term UFO isn't really accurate anymore.
So what do I mean by that? Well, unidentified flying object. What is flying? Well, flying means you have four fundamental forces.
You have thrust, lift, drag, and wait. And when you understand that, you can create wings and create lift. And that is the definition of flying, right? These things didn't have wings.
They didn't have runners, elevators, control surfaces, L-arons, cockpits, and yet somehow they were able to remain a lot thinner atmosphere. So they weren't flying technically. So the name was changed to anomalous, I'm sorry, unidentified aerial phenomena because they were being seen in the air. But then they realized, you know what?
They're also being seen underwater. They're also being seen in high altitude and possibly low Earth orbit. So to say that their aerial isn't even accurate either. So then to say, okay, it's unidentified anomalous phenomenon to cover all the separate domains or environments that these things are being encountered in.
Before you had the meeting regarding this project at the Pentagon, what did you believe about UAP's and slash UFOs? I was never interested even in science fiction as a kid. Did you believe they were? If I'd asked you if I'd come up to you and said, are UFOs real?
And I say UFOs because that's the sort of social term. But what would you have said? Probably not. I would have said literally, probably not.
I wouldn't say for sure not until I didn't know. What about now? Oh, yeah, kidding me? I mean, yeah, it's these are all I mean, don't take my word for it.
Our government's already said it. I mean, you have a former director of national intelligence. I mean, I'm not a real guy. I'm a real guy.
I'm a former director of CIA. I'm a former president of the United States. And we've known for a long time, they're real. And by the way, it's not just our country.
There's other countries that are very forthcoming. There's countries in South America that have been dealing with this for a long time. Japan just entered into a bilateral information sharing agreement with our country for the express purpose of sharing UAP information and data. China's interested, Russia's interested in this.
Several European countries have a fairly robust capability and have a lot of information on this. Was there a moment when your belief changed? Was there a moment you can remember what you know what I thought about UAP's was wrong? Sure.
And what I often tell people, there's two types of individuals, the way that we process this information. In one category, you have people that will sit there and say, I had this epiphany, this revelatory moment where all of a sudden it's like, oh my God, they're real, right? Are you kidding me? And there's another group of people which I probably fall into that second category, the latter category, which is more of a slow progression and realization of what we're dealing with is not a conventional technology.
It's not our technology. It's something else. At some point, the preponderance of evidence is so overwhelming. Let me give you an example.
I am asking my life in investigations. Terrorist spies, whatever. And I've always been what I consider just the facts. I'm kind of guy, very, very data-driven.
I don't really care about any windows or suppositions in your opinion very much. I care about what the data says. What does the data suggest? And in this case, in this particular case, you have eyewitness testimony, you have a backed up by gun camera footage, you have a backed up by fear footage, you have a backed up by radar information, you've got five, six, and seven pieces of corroborating sensor data.
That's all reporting the same event at the same time, at the same place, under the same circumstances. Now, if I was in a court of law and I was presenting this evidence, we are well beyond reasonable talent. The jury would have no choice but to convict because the evidence is the same collection sensor suite that we use to prosecute and win a war and forgive the vernacular, but literally drop warheads on foreheads. It's the same information systems we're using to collect the data on the anonymous vehicle tracing.
And so, you know, it's a very uncomfortable conversation to have. I'm not saying it's not what I'm saying is that we have to deal with this. It's not me just telling you that this is our government. We know we've already we have laws now on the books because this topic is now so serious.
We have whistleblowers ready to come out and testify before the American people because it's a series. We have set up an organization specifically at sole purpose is to investigate UAP because this topic is so serious. So this is not a, you know, flight of fancy here. We're investing millions of dollars taxpayer dollars to try to figure this out.
And interestingly enough, I think when the investigative body first came was realized was created. There was this hope that the first report this other is 143 incidents that remain unidentified, we're going to whittle them away. What happened the next time they had a report? It was not 300.
What happened after that? Now 800. The numbers going up, not down. They remain unresolved.
And so, you know, we've got to have this uncomfortable conversation with ourselves. You eventually left. I did. Your project will simply be resigned from working with the Pentagon in the world that you're working with them.
Why did you resign? I resigned because that's what you do when you can't fix a problem internally. My concern was that we were spending time and money on an issue that leadership didn't want to know about. That leadership didn't want to inform the boss that then Secretary of Defense General Jim Mattis, the details about what was going on.
And there's reasons for that. And we certainly get in touch if you want. I understand them. I don't necessarily agree with them, but I understand them.
But at least here in our country, when you can't fix a problem, you don't stay and make it worse. You leave. You resign. And then if you still want to do something, you go from outside, but you don't create problems inside.
And it's not uncommon, is it? Because if you look just a year later, after I left, Secretary of Defense himself resigned. Right? So I resigned in protest, but not out of disloyalty.
I resigned because of my loyalty to this country and to this government. And what is that, just to be clear? The process is that we weren't able to get the information and the help we needed with this issue up to the right level of people. They were happy with us doing it, but they said, don't tell the boss.
But wait a minute, the boss needs to know we're having almost a major collision with our fighter pilots. We have captains and admirals of Navy ships asking us, what do we do about these things? Like, I don't even say, we can't keep these guys below that forever. What do you want to do?
They're all over the ship. You know, so a decision has to be made. What are we going to do about it? And that decision has to be made by the top guy, the Secretary of Defense.
And for whatever reason, the upper echelons of leadership didn't want to tell the boss. And we weren't getting any guidance on what to do about it. Now, keep in mind, these things are coming over our scented military installations as well and is potential for these things to be interfering with their nuclear equities. That's a big deal.
And nobody wants to have a conversation. Now, wait a minute, let's put this on the backdrop of other national security issues, right? Like terrorism. If you go to any airport in the United States today or any train station, you always hear over the announcements.
If you see something suspicious, say something reported. Well, that wasn't the case with these things. In fact, people were told not to report. Yes, if you saw a UFO and you saw it over a sensor military installation, don't report it because I think you're crazy.
And that is dangerous. That is a dangerous mindset because if these things had a Russian star on the tail or a North Korean tail number, this would be huge. But because these things didn't have a tail at all and didn't have any obvious signs of propulsion, why not? It was cricket.
People would know about it. It wasn't worst kept secret. People would never see them all the time. But we don't want to report it.
Well, you have to report it. Well, there's no reporting mechanism. Okay, well, let's create one. Well, we can't create one.
Can we be permission to do it? And this person needs to be briefed up. Meanwhile, you're being told, no, you can't, you can't, you can't. Why wouldn't they want to report this information?
Why wouldn't they want the boss to know? Well, I think it's a statement. Tabu, well, there's several reasons. But I think it's superficially stigma taboo.
No one wants to be known as that UFO guy or gal. I get it, you know, especially if you're a pilot, because historically you'd be taken off flight status. You know, put behind a desk and you'd fly a desk the rest of your career because people think you're mentally unstable, could affect your security clearance. I mean, there's all sorts of things that can happen.
And so people were being being reinforced not to report this information, even civilian pilots today. If you talk to them, they'll tell you quietly, you know, we see things in the sky. But we're not even reporting things because I need a job. You know, what did you see?
Oh, like what they mean? I mean, videos, reports, photographs. I mean, we have, there's videos that are so compelling in high definition that there's no question what you're seeing. It's not our technology.
It's not our technology and the capabilities are beyond anything we can do. I mean, I'm happy to explain some of those capabilities you like. But you know, when you look at this from a rational perspective, you only come the one out. That's only one can be the other one is so remotely possible that the mental gymnastics to get to that and we can go into that a minute, it's absurd.
And so let's go into a little bit. What make these things unique because planes fly and you look at your ears. So that doesn't make them unique and you know, things go fast and whatnot. So you have to do intelligence if you want to still throughout data and only focus on certain data, you have to create parameters.
So we realized early on in the government that these things had five parameters, five observables that made them stand out away from everything else. And so the first one was instantaneous acceleration. So what is acceleration? It is the change of velocity, right?
It is the ability to change your velocity very quickly. And as a result, as a consequence, there are inertial forces that are experienced. So for us human beings, we express those inertial forces as g-forces. So the force of gravity is pulling on us equally at 9.8 meters per second per second.
And that's experienced as 1g. A human being can withstand up to 9g for a very short period of time before you start having medical consequences, right? You have things like blackouts and redouts and ultimately death. To compare that to let's say standard technology, one of our most highly maneuverable aircraft, manned maneuverable aircraft, let me emphasize manned, is an older aircraft.
It's called the General Dynamics F16, built by General Dynamics. It's the F16. And that at an unclassified level can pull about 17g's before you start having structural failure, meaning wings snap off, right? The plane begins to disintegrate while you're flying it.
So we are seeing our objects that are performing in excesses of 2,000 and 3,000 g-forces, okay? Well beyond the healthy limitations of anything biological to withstand and certainly from a material science perspective, more than we have. There's an advanced technology here. The second observable is hypersonic velocity.
So what is hypersonic? Hypersonics are those speeds in excess of Mach 5 or above. What's a Mach? It's the speed of sound.
Roughly 767 miles an hour at sea level. So it's really fast. Now, do we have technology that can do hypers, sure we do. So one of the best examples is a Lockheed YF-12A SR-71, otherwise known as the Blackbird.
It can get to about Mach 5, which is really fast. But at that speed, if the SR-71 wants to take a right hand turn, takes roughly half the state of Ohio to execute that maneuver. We are seeing things, not doing Mach 5. We are seeing things doing in excess of 10,000, 13,000 miles an hour and executing immediate right hand turns in even 180s, right?
So that is another observable that is significantly above and beyond anything we have. Another observable, it's a bit of an oxymoron, but it's called low observability, meaning you'll hear from the pilots, and it was there. I saw it, but I can't describe it. Didn't have wings, didn't have a rudder, a tail, anything.
No rivets, nothing. And then also on the radar, you will get these nonsensical returns. These returns, like there's some sort of active jamming or spoofing going on within the radar system. So low observability.
Now, do we have low observable vehicles? Sure. For example, the B2 bomber and the Valkyrie. These are stealth vehicles.
Well, this is a little more than that because it's actually also with the human eye very hard to discern. The fourth observable is something called a trans-medium or multi-medium travel. So that means the ability to operate in multiple domains or more specifically multiple environments. Now, once again, do we have multi-domain vehicles?
Absolutely. A seaplane is a perfect example of a multi-medium vehicle. It can fly and it can float. But let's face it, a seaplane is neither a really good airplane or a good boat.
And why? Because there are design compromises that have to be made in performance and design in order for it to operate in multiple domains. And that's true with just about every technology we have. The more domains we want something to operate in, the more sacrifices we have to make.
That's why a submarine looks like a submarine, it's designed to be underwater in a plane, looks like a plane, and a rocket looks like a rocket. These things can operate in multiple different domains. They can operate in air, underwater, and possibly in space. But they don't have that performance and design sacrifice that we have to do with our technology.
So is it like when you get this job, do you get to see like a folder on a computer? I'm trying to understand what access you're given to these things. I mean, you are not practicing. You're seeing the investigations that were done previously by other members of UAP.
You're seeing video, you're seeing photographs, you're seeing the historical reports. I mean, these classifieds. Oh, absolutely. Very.
Okay. So the general public can't see these kinds of things. No. They're not really publicly available.
They are highly classified. Okay. So it's videos, it's photos, it's various accounts, it's correct. A lot of people talk about Area 51 when they talk about UFOs and such.
I think one of the sort of rumours is that Area 51 they've found and retained UFO materials, spacecraft, et cetera, that they've studied to understand the technology so that they can introduce it to the US military. Is there any truth in that? You know, the US government invests a lot of money in research. You know, a lot of test facilities where we want to be able to test things outside the prying eyes of our enemies.
And so we create these test ranges for that purpose. We do all sorts of things with test ranges. You know, I cannot comment on what Area 51 might or might not have. I would not be authorized to talk about that.
All I can say is what is in the public domain, which people already know that it is a sensitive test facility where we experiment with things. Because I was a gentleman, I think from that works in your area 51 that's talked a little bit about this publicly, Bob Lazar. I actually didn't know anything about Bob Lazar until about two hours ago. So what exactly is it that Bob Lazar is claiming?
Well, to be fair, you probably have to ask Bob. I don't know Mr. Lazar. I've never met him.
His claims were that he worked at a particular facility and he had access to and privy to one of the covered vehicles, crash retrieval. That was allegedly performed by the United States and acquired them and brought there. That is in the public domain. I cannot and will not comment on Bob Lazar because I don't know him.
So when you say you can't comment on something and as it relates to something that's classified, have you had to go through some process? There's a book in front of me called In Minute, which is the book you've written. It says Inside the Pentagon Sun for UFOs. What is the process when you're writing books like this, the information lieud40 so that you can share it?
I can only imagine if I would ever want to add a good birth. Is it probably done when you're talking about these things? There are a lot of people that don't want us talking about this. But there's also a lot to do.
So you go through a process, it's called Doppster. In the US government, we lower acronyms. It stands for Department of Defense, Office of Pre-Publication and Security Review. As a former defense official, if I want to write anything, it has to go through a review process to make sure it's not classified and I can talk about it.
That book went through an exhaustive almost one year process through the government before they allowed me to publish it. And even then, they redacted portions of it. If you look in there, you will see great proportions because I wanted Americans to see what some people don't need to see. And so those redactions are there by the government.
And it is a very exhaustive process. But it's important because that's what keeps us legal. That's what keeps people like me not going to jail because I go through the proper procedures. I'm not a leaker.
I have never leaked classified information. I will never discuss classified information and unauthorized disclosure, something that should be avoided at all times. Like I said, I'm a patriot. I'm loyal to my country.
I'm not disloyal. So there's a right way and a wrong way to do things. So if you want to write a book and you want to talk about things you're not sure you can talk about, you go through this Doppster process. And that's exactly what I did.
And that's how that book was able to be published. Otherwise, right now it would probably be in jail. Is there a single most compelling piece of evidence that you will witness to as it relates to your belief in UFOs and UAPs? They were all significant.
There wasn't one that said, oh, that's it. Because they were all compelling in their own way. Whether you can go back to the USS Nimitz incident in 2004 or the Roosevelt incidents in 2014 and 2015. There was so much data.
Every time you think you had one that was great, that another one coming, that was even better. So you put one in the front cover of this book, right? What is this incident on the front cover of your book? That is known as the gimbal incident.
That is a video that was taken by an F-18. And you can hear the exacerbation. If you listen to the actual video, you can hear the pilots trying to discuss what it is. And then you also hear on the discussion of, there's a whole fleet of them.
Look at the ASA. And oh, by the way, it's going 120 knots against the wind at roughly 20,000 feet. So it's not a balloon. And you begin to see this vehicle orientated itself in a 90 degree angle.
Now, if this was a plane, like, here's your wings, if you go 90 degree angle, you lose altitude. Because that's how the principles of lift work. That's not the case there. I think this is the video.
Yep. You hear that fucking... There's a whole fleet of them. Look on the ASA.
Boy, that can't go in. It wins 100 point outs for us. Oh, I think, yeah. That's not it.
That's not it. That's not it. I think it's not it. But I'm sure it's a good thing.
It's directed. And that was shot by two US sort of fighter pilots. Yep. And a lot more of those out there.
A lot clearer, too, but they're classified. So there's more videos like this that you've been exposed to. Oh, yeah. But they won't release them.
They won't release them. Why? Because of sources of methods. Because they remain classified because how they were taken, where they were taken under what circumstances, the most important thing is that technological capabilities were used to collect information.
The US government wants to keep out of its... out of the hands of its adversaries what our true capabilities are. So let's say you're flying a mission over at Denied Area and you don't want the enemy to know that you're over it, right? The last thing you want to do is release a video where you can look and say, oh, we're in this location and now the enemy knows.
Or we have this capability or we can see this is good. These are the technologies we have. These videos here ironically are probably some of the least compelling videos. Now, people say, oh, these are incredible.
But these are the ones that were unclassified that could be released. The other ones, some of these are so clear. The problem is how they were taken, the collection capabilities that were used to take them, where they were taken under what circumstances, the metadata in the video, all that is a consideration. Okay.
And did the US government and the Pentagon generally want people to believe that UFOs, UAPs exist or not? I think it's both. I think up until recently nobody wanted to have this conversation. The problem is the government backed itself up after 70 years of denial into a corner and it has to figure a way out.
There are some elements now that want the conversation to occur. And so that's why you see Congress getting engaged by the creation of Arrow. But there are still elements unfortunately in the Pentagon that don't want this conversation to occur. And you're doing what they can to discredit individuals and launch this campaign against them.
One of my colleagues, David Grusch, who was a decorated Air Force officer and a senior intelligence official, the moment he broke rank and went public about this topic, within 24 hours, they released his medical records trying to discredit him and he did it illegally. So there are people there that definitely don't want this conversation to occur. Well, there's a lot of reasons why. Back historically.
Great question. Let's can I pack a little bit? Okay. So let's start really at the heels of World War II.
You have these Foo Fighters that are being observed by Allied pilots, these luminous balls that would follow them into combat areas. And then after particularly as we start developing in the atomic weapons, we start releasing a lot of UFOs over our controlled military airspace over our center of military installations, our research facilities. And so at the time you have this mindset, you have high to the Cold War, United States versus Soviet Union. And by the way, they had nukes and so do we.
Right? So you've got a real potential threat over there. And then you've got these other things over here. So as a general in the Pentagon, say, look, I know these things are real, but they're not showing any over hostilities.
Meanwhile, we've got this real issue over here, this real threat called Soviet Union. Let's focus on this threat. And then we'll worry about this other stuff later. The other part of that is the mindset of, look, it's really uncomfortable as a government to have a conversation with its people about a problem that there's no solution for, right?
We can see what they do, but there's not a damn thing we can do about it. We can't stop what they're doing. And so you really want to have a conversation with the American people and admit a problem for which we don't have a solution for it. Governments are solution focused.
And that is not a great spot to begin, right? And it's by the way, not the first time this has happened. Let's look at the U2, for example, spy plane. When we first built that, the CIA commissioned it through Lockheed Martin's gunquarks, and we were flying that vehicle in contravention to a standing treaty we had with Russia that we would not fly or command reconnaissance missions over Russia, mainland Russia.
We were, but we built this plane to fly so fast and so high we thought they couldn't detect us, right? And for a while, we thought they couldn't because we went unchallenged until the Russians were able to develop the surface to air the missile, SA2 missile and successfully shoot one down. And then, and only then did they admit to the world, we've been tracking the things since day one. The reason why they didn't talk about it is because they didn't have a means to shoot it down.
So why admit a problem for which there's no solution until you have a solution? So that's another mindset depending on it. And then you had several studies done that were commissioned by the US government in the past that asked the question if we were to be honest and truthful about disclosure, about we're not alone in university, things are real. What would the consequences be?
And the studies came back unanimously said, you can't do it. The American people are not ready to have this conversation. It'll cause civil discord and it'll upset the population and people will lose faith in their religions and economy may crash. You can't do it.
And so the decision was made, okay, we're not going to do it. In fact, we're going to actively suppress this information. We're going to stigmatize the heck out of it so bad that no one will ever even mention the word UFO. It was very successful.
That campaign to stigmatize this topic was so successful. In fact, that even now it's hard to unwind the tape and have the conversation. And so therein lies part of the problem. Why doesn't the government, parts of the government want to have this conversation?
Then you've got a legal issue, which is probably the biggest issue now. You have elements in the government that were making unilateral decisions, not to inform Congress and not to inform the president of the United States, right? That's illegal. There are oversight committees that have a designated need to know on all intelligence matters, especially when it comes to funding, right?
We're spending billions of dollars on these projects. We've got to inform Congress, certain elements of certain oversight committees, like the Senate silly community on intelligence. They weren't being briefed to this. There's also this fear by some people on the inside of the government that, oh my gosh, I used to work on a secret UFO program.
Am I going to be in trouble now because we've been lying to Congress? And so it's a little more complicated than necessarily just saying, oh, well, we want the truth, be honest. It's not that easy. To your knowledge, has there ever been recovered UAP or UFO materials?
What I can say, what I'm allowed to say, which is yes, up until recently I wasn't even allowed to say that. When did that change? When that book got reviewed. Up until that point, I had signed documentation from the government saying I will never discuss that ever.
If you did. Oh, jail. Oh, yeah. That's why that book I had to go through the process because what I run that book, I am allowed to talk about.
I can't go beyond that, but at least I can talk about that in the book I talk about. Yes, that the government is in possession of material, it's not material that doesn't look like it's made by us. Has there ever been anyone sent to jail because they've spoken about this subject matter? Worse.
Worse. And that story has yet to be told. Yes, there are people who have had the face extreme disciplinary actions and potentially worse. They death penalty?
I'm not going to elaborate right now because there's some things happening to try to put this is why Congress is working hard for whistleblower protections because we want people to feel safe to come out and have a conversation and right now they don't feel overly safe. They've seen some of the tactics and techniques that were applied to try to keep people quiet in the past. Let me say this in general for people say, oh, well, the government would never kill anybody to protect a secret. Try going to Area 51 and look at the signs on that chain link fence where it says, be full force authorized.
You cross that fence and they can kill you dead. Okay. So the government can under certain extreme cases under certain extreme situations and conditions. They can do whatever they need to do to protect national security and they will.
Which department is that? I cannot go into that conversation unfortunately because people think of it as maybe the CIA or something. I can't elaborate, unfortunately. No, because I've never a little about American governmental departments and such, but obviously most of the world knows about the presidential assassinations and things like that.
So I've spoken to a few CIA agents and stuff like that on the top of the course before, but I've never really understood, frankly, who would be making such an order and how those things don't leak? Well, good question. Look, we've done in the past another situation pretty recently. And I'll do a case in point and this is not attacking anybody.
We have roned these drones to lethally kill people, Americans and American citizens specifically and persons child without due process in the US. Not in the US, he was a US citizen. He was suspected of being a terrorist and there's some other things you're not going to go in there. But we as American citizens are as American citizens, we are afforded something called due process under the law of peace.
Meaning you get your day in court no matter what. And there've been Americans where that hasn't been the case. They didn't get a day in court. Someone made the decision to liquidate them.
There are examples of that happening. There's another one with Rosenbergs, those who were accused of selling the atomic secrets to the Russians actually giving it to them. And if you know a little bit about what happened with his wife, it turns out that she was innocent. What happened to his wife?
The hunger, hung her and him for espionage. But because of the information that we had at the time was so sensitive, we'd have to reveal the capability. So, unfortunately, it looks like maybe we'd have done something that we shouldn't have done. I wasn't around for that, so I can't tell you definitively what happened.
I can only tell you what my understanding of it is. I could absolutely be wrong and I really hope I am. But it turns out that there are extreme examples where we will take drastic measures to protect national security. So, in writing this book and in talking about the subjects, you understand that there's some people that don't want you talking about these subjects?
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. So, and you also understand that punishment for talking about these subjects, in range from jail or worse? So, you're not scared?
I didn't say that. I didn't say I wasn't scared. I mean, I'm taking huge risks. My life has been threatened many times and it's very concerning for me.
It's a reason why I live in Wyoming and I'm heavily armed and have now six German shepherds. Yeah, I'm very cautious and careful. But I'm also understanding, I also know that I'm left and right limits in the law and I'm not going to break the law under any circumstances. This book is an elite.
I'm authorized to talk about that book because I went through the proper processes of getting it reviewed, whether they like it or not. But yes, I am absolutely worried. This is why I'm very careful when I say things. I don't want to...
I'll walk up to the line, I will not step over the line. I will not violate my security oath and compromise national security for disclosure. And I don't think I have to. I think the proof is in the pudding, the fact that it's been seven years and we've come this far in the conversation and I haven't gone to jail and I'm still here to have a conversation.
I think it's indicative of the fact that there's a right way and wrong way to do it. I understand people want disclosure and they want it now. But I've told people before there's a difference between doing things right and doing things right now. They're different and we only have one chance to do this right.
And so hopefully we can have this conversation, this collective conversation in a way where we don't have to be disruptive. No one has to be threatened. No one has to go to jail. No one has to lose their jobs or anything like that.
You mentioned presidents on Iran. Do presidents of the United States know about UFOs? Some do, some do not. Unfortunately, there's a mindset by some people that think the politicians and presidents are temporary hires.
They're here today, gone in four years. So why brief them up on something, especially if they have no military or intelligence background? It's a risk. So you know what?
Don't brief them. Which presidents do you think were aware of UFOs and this sort of these kinds of programs? Sure. Well, we know for sure there were several.
Sure, for example, Carter was. But then how did you know Clinton? Well, because Carter was briefed. I know somebody who actually worked with Carter to get information on this topic.
I can almost see the person's name, the person's still alive. So I don't have permission to talk about that. But we know that for a fact and there's records of it. There's other presidents like Bill Clinton who wasn't briefed but wanted to be briefed.
And so, and again, this is the crush of the problem. Who's making the decision on what president gets briefed and what doesn't? That's nonsense. President George Bush, Sr.
was briefed when he was also the director of the CIA. So he was very well aware of this topic. But then there's other presidents that weren't. And so this is again, that's highlighting the very problem that I have.
Who's making the decision to choose who gets briefed in 2000? What about bomber and Trump? I can answer for them. Obama has recently stated for the record that the UAP are a national security issue, not a threat, but an issue that there's something there that these are real, whatever.
They are whatever it is. President Trump recently, former president Trump said we can have a go for the record when asked that he would be willing to release the UF files and that he wanted to do it in the past, but he faced fierce resistance. I think about that statement for a minute. Who the hell is giving him resistance to releasing UF files when you're the president?
Right? That is a very significant statement. That is what needs to be fixed. If the president himself can't get or herself can't get a briefing, who in the hell has the authority to make that decision?
Nobody. What is that face resistance that Trump's talking about? I don't know. You have that's Trump.
Where do you think he is? It is a huge amount of influence by the military industrial complex and it is an enormous business. It always has been. It's huge.
It is probably the world's largest business globally. And why wouldn't the military industrial complex want those files to be released? Well, because they have to admit that they're part of the programs. Some of these folks, you know, have been a lot of their successes in being able to work a super secret program for the U.S.
government and maybe there's technology that they don't want to be released. Maybe there's capabilities that we have that we don't want to tell our adversaries. And there's a lot of reasons for it, which are understandable. Some of them are actually legitimate.
I can understand. How much do you think the average person on the street knows about what goes on in the Pentagon and buying the scenes of the government? Rather forget the government, Pentagon, how many parents they can tell you who's a quarterback with their favorite football team and they can tell you their stats, but how many parents know who their kids sit next to during lunch or in second period math class? Government is, I mean, that's basic facts, man.
As humans, most of us, we suck. We don't know anything. And we're so used to being force fed information by whatever outlet du jour we want to tune into, you know, if I'm a liberal, I'll watch this and we'll conservative. I'll go straight to my echo chamber.
And, you know, just hear what I want to hear and have people tell me not only information that I think I need to know, but even my opinion of what it should be about. This is a much, much bigger issue than just UFOs and UAP. We as people have become extremely lazy and we no longer are willing to ask the hard questions. We're not.
You are part of one program, but you also referenced the second program called the legacy program. What is the legacy program? It is the traditional long held effort by the US government to study UAP. People think AIT was the only program in OSAP.
Before that, there was there was blue book and before that, the legacy program is the collaborative effort of individuals over the course of several decades that have been looking into this topic for the US government and by the US government. And okay, just doing some of the things to AIT did. Yes, and more robust and much more well funded. I wonder why they didn't fund it as well these days.
There's a reason for that too that I when you permission to talk about there were some distractions in the early 2000s that lifted and shifted resources away from efforts to something else. Probably can figure out what that was. But there was enormous resource training refocusing in the early 2000s to focus on something else. And so I had you talk about these sort of different types of aliens passing because when we think of aliens, we think we reflect on movies that we've seen and they have like the big heads and things like that and maybe like white tool skinny with like the big arms and the big legs and stuff like that.
Is that what people in the Pentagon consider aliens to be? What we see in movies? I can't speak on behalf of other people. I can only speak on behalf of me.
I've been very, very careful not to stereotype anybody or anything. I think it's important we have to keep an open mind because when you say the word aliens, you are automatically presuming that the things are from outer space. They might not be. There's lots of different options.
It doesn't have to be from outer space. What do you believe? Do you believe they amongst us? Well, can I can I explore this with you?
This question, okay. So it's not a either or. So in the beginning of our conversation, I told you I went to the university and I studied microbiology immunology and study of parasites. Now if you go to some anthropologists, they will suggest to you that modern human beings, the sapiens sapiens has been around roughly between 100 to possibly 200,000 years.
So on the 24 hour clock, right, it's only the last 2000 years. And it was the Greeks that proposed there were two fundamental life forms on this planet. And you were either a plant or you were an animal and human beings were an animal. And so the 24 hour clock you're talking to me 10 minutes ago before midnight.
Well, it was 300 years ago doing the rental saunce or the days of enlightenment that we discovered an entire new life form on this planet that's been here all along. And that was another plant nor animal. It was the world of fungus. And we pat ourselves on the shoulders to a we found a new life form.
And this 24 hour clock has been probably the last maybe 10 seconds, last 120 years only that we discovered for the first time the true dominant alpha life form on this planet. And in fact, if you take all the biomass of every plant and all the biomass of every animal and all the biomass of every fungus and added it all up together, it still will not equal the biomass of this hidden yet dominant life form that's been on this planet all along. And it wasn't until we could have the technology to curved glass and look through a little tube and famously shout the words, little beasties, little beasties. Did we discover the world of microorganisms?
Okay, the true dominant life form on this planet that's been here all along. In fact, it's inside of us. It makes us up. It's pervasive everywhere.
And we just discovered it. So when I say to people, you know, the only thing from outer space, they can be from outer space, inner space or frankly the space in between. These things can be just as natural to our environment as we are. Maybe we're at the point where technologically we can start interacting.