This man ran the Pentagon's secretive UFO programme for a decade. We had some questions
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of GQ Magazine
This man ran the Pentagon's secretive UFO programme for a decade. We had some questions
GQ Magazine, November 9, 2021
Posted: 2024-02-22 10:32:27
https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/politics/article/luis-elizondo...
When it came to UFOs, there was a time when the US government's official line was that it didn't study them.
Luis Elizondo was instrumental in changing that.
In late 2017, he met with the freelance journalist Leslie Kean and revealed the existence of a $22 million (Ł16m) Pentagon programme investigating military reports of UFOs – a programme he had been in charge of since 2010. He had left the job the day before and decided to turn whistle-blower in the name of national security. As he put it in his resignation letter to secretary of defense Jim Mattis: "Bureaucratic challenges and inflexible mindsets continue to plague the department at all levels... The department must take serious the many accounts by the Navy and other services of unusual aerial systems interfering with military weapon platforms and displaying beyond next-generation capabilities... There remains a vital need to ascertain the capability and intent of these phenomena for the benefit of the armed forces and the nation."Kean joined forces with two other reporters, one from the New York Times, and on 16 December 2017 the story appeared on the paper's front page. It detailed the "Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program" set up in 2007 to investigate unidentified aerial phenomena or "UAP", the term that has replaced the now stigmatised "UFO".
Kean joined forces with two other reporters, one from the New York Times, and on 16 December 2017 the story appeared on the paper's front page. It detailed the "Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program" set up in 2007 to investigate unidentified aerial phenomena or "UAP", the term that has replaced the now stigmatised "UFO". Many UAPs, the Times reported, appeared impossible to explain, lacking any visible means of lift but able to travel at unfathomable speed. What's more, the story stated, Elizondo and his colleagues had "determined that the phenomena they had studied did not seem to originate from any country".
But the reader didn't have to take the Times' word for all this. There were videos. An ally of Elizondo's, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence Chris Mellon, had helped the reporters obtain footage shot from the cockpits of US Navy fighter jets. One of the videos corroborates arguably the most compelling UAP episode ever to come to light.
According to reports, it took place in November 2004, when pilots were flying training missions from the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier. While squadron leader commander David Fravor was in the air, he was asked to intercept a mysterious aircraft. Upon arrival at its coordinates, what he saw was extraordinary: a 40-foot object, resembling a huge white Tic Tac, that had no visible propulsion system, rotors, wings or exhaust plume. Yet Fravor says it was able to jam radar, react to his movements and run rings around his F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jet – turning so sharply it was as if the UAP had no inertia – before flying away faster than anything he had ever seen. Simply put, it defied the known laws of physics. Not only were there multiple eyewitnesses – including another pilot who filmed the Tic Tac using his plane's targeting camera (this was the footage passed to the Times) – but the UAP was also detected by the radar of the nearby USS Princeton, an Aegis-class missile cruiser with state-of-the-art sensor systems.
Now, Elizondo's hopes for government action have started to be realised. On 27 April 2020, the US Department Of Defense confirmed the veracity of the Times' UAP videos and released them officially into the public domain. In a statement, the Pentagon said, "The aerial phenomena observed in the videos remain characterized as â€unidentified'." In August that same year, the Pentagon announced a new UAP Task Force "to detect, analyse and catalogue UAPs that could potentially pose a threat to US national security". And in June 2021, the Office Of The Director Of National Intelligence released a report to congress about the government's work on the UAP issue. Of the 144 encounters studied, it stated, 143 could not be explained. It didn't blame extraterrestrials, but nor did it rule that explanation out.
One of the consequences of his efforts, he says, is a significant piece of legislation that is going through congress. The 2022 National Defense Authorization Act contains important developments for the study of UAPs. It requires that the secretary of defense sets up a permanent office to carry out the duties currently performed by the UAP Task Force but on a department-wide basis. This new office would have to submit an annual report to congressional committees on a range of its findings, including updates on efforts to track, understand, capture and exploit UAPs – as well as an assessment of health-related effects on those who encounter these strange flying objects. Elizondo calls it "historic". GQ spoke to Elizondo as he prepared to head to Washington, DC, to brief members of congress on how to work with foreign allies on the issue.
Elizondo: I have in my possession official US government documentation that describes the exact same vehicle that we now call the Tic Tac [seen by the Nimitz pilots in 2004] being described in the early 1950s and early 1960s and performing in ways that, frankly, can outperform anything we have in our inventory. For some country to have developed hypersonic technology, instantaneous acceleration and basically transmedial travel in the early 1950s is absolutely preposterous.
Elizondo: I've got to be careful, I can't speak too specifically, but one might imagine that you get a report from a pilot who says, "Lue, it's really weird. I was flying and I got close to this thing and I came back home and it was like I got a sunburn. I was red for four days." Well, that's a sign of radiation. That's not a sunburn; it's a radiation burn. Then [a pilot] might say, if [they] had got a little closer, "Lue, I'm at the hospital. I've got symptoms that are indicative of microwave damage, meaning internal injuries, and even in my brain there's some morphology there." And then you might get somebody who gets really close and says, "You know, Lue, it's really bizarre. It felt like I was there for only five minutes, but when I looked at my watch 30 minutes went by, but I only used five minutes' worth of fuel. How is that possible?" Well, there's a reason for that, we believe, and it probably has to do with warping of space time. And the closer you get to one of these vehicles, the more you may begin to experience space time relative to the vehicle and the environment.
Elizondo: The government has already admitted not only that they're real, but that they truly are unidentified objects and they're behaving in a very peculiar way. For example, you have an object that is at altitude, going at 120 knots against the wind, that is rotating at 90 degrees without losing altitude. Anybody who understands aerodynamics, when you're flying an aircraft and you turn 90 degrees you lose lift, unless you're in a hard bank. What makes those videos more compelling is not so much what you see, but what you don't see. It's the radar signatures, it's the call signs from pilot to pilot, and pilot to ship, saying, "Hey, we've got a bogey up here." And in one case you hear one of them say, "Look, we have a whole fleet of these things on the ASA [radar display]." Some of the pilots have come out and said there was actually a whole fleet of these things manoeuvring right off camera. The pilots are trained observers. They are trained to identify an aircraft silhouette at 20 miles away – an SU-22, a European Tornado, a Harrier or even an F-16 – and literally within a split moment's notice be able to identify friend or foe and shoot it down. What they're reporting doesn't fit any type of parameters of any type of conventional aircraft that we know of.
Elizondo: I have been told I have to be very careful how I answer this question. I am not allowed to expound upon anything I've already said. What I have said is that it is my opinion, my belief – a strong belief, hint, hint – that the US government is in possession of exotic material associated with UAPs. That is all I'm allowed to say.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources.
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Below is a sample of just three of those 20 articles.
U.S. Military Wanted to Provoke War With Cuba
2001-05-01, ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=92662
In the early 1960s, America's top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba. Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban emigres, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities. The plans were developed as ways to trick the American public and the international community into supporting a war to oust Cuba's ... Fidel Castro. America's top military brass even contemplated causing U.S. military casualties, writing: "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba," and, "casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation." The plans had the written approval of all of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and were presented to President Kennedy's defense secretary, Robert McNamara, in March 1962. But they apparently were rejected by the civilian leadership and have gone undisclosed for nearly 40 years. The Joint Chiefs even proposed using the potential death of astronaut John Glenn during the first attempt to put an American into orbit as a false pretext for war with Cuba. Should the rocket explode and kill Glenn, they wrote, "the objective is to provide irrevocable proof ... that the fault lies with the Communists." The scary thing is none of this stuff comes out until 40 years after.
Note: Why was ABC the only major news source to report on this highly revealing story? Read the shocking declassified documents on Operation Northwoods. Many military and political leaders look at the world as a grand chessboard. Sacrificing pawns (innocent civilians) is sometimes necessary to capture the queen. Explore revealing news articles on military corruption. Then check out eye-opening 9/11 news articles.
Inside the secretive Bilderberg Group
2005-09-29, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4290944.stm
How much influence do private networks of the rich and powerful have on government policies and international relations? One group, the Bilderberg, has often attracted speculation that it forms a shadowy global government. Every year since 1954 [they have brought] together about 120 leading business people and politicians. At this year's meeting in Germany, the audience included the heads of the World Bank and European Central Bank, Chairmen or Chief Executives from Nokia, BP, Unilever, DaimlerChrysler and Pepsi ... editors from five major newspapers, members of parliament, ministers, European commissioners ... and the queen of the Netherlands. The chairman ... is 73-year-old Viscount Etienne Davignon. In an extremely rare interview, he played down the importance of Bilderberg. "I don't think (we are) a global ruling class because I don't think a global ruling class exists." Will Hutton ... who attended a Bilderberg meeting in 1997, says people take part in these networks in order to influence the way the world works, to create what he calls "the international common sense". And that "common sense" is one which supports the interests of Bilderberg's main participants. For Bilderberg's critics the fact that there is almost no publicity about the annual meetings is proof that they are up to no good. Bilderberg meetings often feature future political leaders shortly before they become household names. Bill Clinton went in 1991 while still governor of Arkansas, Tony Blair was there two years later while still an opposition MP. All the recent presidents of the European Commission attended Bilderberg meetings before they were appointed. Informal and private networks like Bilderberg have helped to oil the wheels of global politics and globalisation for the past half a century.
Note: Why is this meeting of top world leaders kept so secret? Why, until a few years ago, was there virtually no reporting on this influential group in the major media? Thankfully, the alternative media has had some good articles. And a Google search can be highly informative. Explore many other revealing major media news articles on powerful secret societies. And for those interested, check out reliable, eye-opening information covering the big picture of how and why these secret societies are using government-sponsored mind control programs to achieve their agenda.
[9/11] Hijack 'suspects' alive and well
2001-09-23, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1559151.stm
Another of the men named by the FBI as a hijacker in the [9/11] suicide attacks on Washington and New York has turned up alive and well. The identities of four of the 19 suspects accused of having carried out the attacks are now in doubt. Saudi Arabian pilot Waleed Al Shehri was one of five men that the FBI said had deliberately crashed American Airlines flight 11 into the World Trade Centre on 11 September. His photograph was released, and has since appeared in newspapers and on television around the world. He told journalists there that he had nothing to do with the attacks. He has contacted both the Saudi and American authorities. He acknowledges that he attended flight training school at Daytona Beach in the United States, and is indeed the same Waleed Al Shehri to whom the FBI has been referring. But, he says, he left the United States in September last year [and] became a pilot with Saudi Arabian airlines. Abdulaziz Al Omari, another of the Flight 11 hijack suspects ... says he is an engineer with Saudi Telecoms, and that he lost his passport while studying in Denver. Meanwhile ... a London-based Arabic daily says it has interviewed Saeed Alghamdi. He was listed by the FBI as a hijacker in the United flight that crashed in Pennsylvania. And there are suggestions that another suspect, Khalid Al Midhar, may also be alive. FBI Director Robert Mueller acknowledged on Thursday that the identity of several of the suicide hijackers is in doubt.
Note: The deceptions in the 9/11 official story are clearly shown in this key story. The FBI never revised its list of alleged hijackers. These four are all listed in the official 9/11 Commission report as the hijackers. Click here and scroll down a little over half way to see their photos in the official report. For more, see this webpage. Explore also concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles with evidence of a 9/11 cover-up from reliable major media sources. Then examine an abundance of reliable information suggesting a major 9/11 cover-up.
The above three are excerpts from the 20 most revealing news articles ever published.
Below is a sample of the three articles most recently posted to this website.
How a post-9/11 law could enable a crackdown on speech
2025-03-06, Quincy Center for Responsible Statecraft
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/trump-protests/
In yet another example of Donald Trump announcing new policy via social media, the president has now pledged to crack down on "illegal protests" at universities, warning that "agitators" will be headed to jail or targeted for deportation. On the campaign trail, Trump already pledged to crush pro-Palestinian protests if they ramp up again, including deporting foreign national students who participate. Peaceful protest isn't illegal. But what many do not realize is that counterterrorism law gives enormously wide-ranging discretionary authority to the president, to law enforcement, and to immigration officials that could be used to squelch free speech and dissent. For example: providing material support for terrorism is a federal crime. The breathtaking scope of this provision becomes more clear once we see how the terms are defined. "Material support" includes the provision of "service," "expert advice or assistance," "communications equipment," or "personnel" (including yourself). And the Supreme Court has confirmed that the support does not actually have to go toward any particular violent act that might be considered terrorism, only to a group that is designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) by the U.S. government, even if that support is otherwise lawful. Hamas is designated as an FTO and those opposing U.S. and Israeli policy are often accused of supporting Hamas. Could peaceful pro-Palestine protesters be charged with materially supporting terrorism?
Note: We have documented decades of free speech repression beginning with COINTELPRO. We support freedom for all peoples including Palestinians, and many of these campus protests have indeed been peaceful. However, we can in no way overlook the disturbing cases of campus protesters glorifying the violent attacks on October 7th and using Hamas symbols in banners and protest signs. Protesters have been caught on film screaming "We are Hamas." At NYU, a sign literally said "Death to Israel" and "Death to America." A University of Michigan pamphlet contained the phrase "Death to America." NBC News reported that the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network as a sham charity that allegedly funneled money to a pro-Hamas terrorist organization while also helping organize pro-Palestinian protests on US college campuses. Before October 7th, the human rights abuses and sexual violence Hamas committed against Palestinians were extensively documented. Where is the nuanced dialogue beyond media polarization on this tragic issue?
This killer drone is designed to be thrown like a football
2025-03-05, Fast Company
https://www.fastcompany.com/91275004/xdown-killer-drone-designed-like-football
Alexander Balan was on a California beach when the idea for a new kind of drone came to him. This eureka moment led Balan to found Xdown, the company that's building the P.S. Killer (PSK)–an autonomous kamikaze drone that works like a hand grenade and can be thrown like a football. The PSK is a "throw-and-forget" drone, Balan says, referencing the "fire-and-forget" missile that, once locked on to a target, can seek it on its own. Instead of depending on remote controls, the PSK will be operated by AI. Soldiers should be able to grab it, switch it on, and throw it–just like a football. The PSK can carry one or two 40 mm grenades commonly used in grenade launchers today. The grenades could be high-explosive dual purpose, designed to penetrate armor while also creating an explosive fragmentation effect against personnel. These grenades can also "airburst"–programmed to explode in the air above a target for maximum effect. Infantry, special operations, and counterterrorism units can easily store PSK drones in a field backpack and tote them around, taking one out to throw at any given time. They can also be packed by the dozen in cargo airplanes, which can fly over an area and drop swarms of them. Balan says that one Defense Department official told him "This is the most American munition I have ever seen." The nonlethal version of the PSK [replaces] its warhead with a supply container so that it's able to "deliver food, medical kits, or ammunition to frontline troops" (though given the 1.7-pound payload capacity, such packages would obviously be small).
Note: The US military is using Xbox controllers to operate weapons systems. The latest US Air Force recruitment tool is a video game that allows players to receive in-game medals and achievements for drone bombing Iraqis and Afghans. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on warfare technologies and watch our latest video on the militarization of Big Tech.
From â€Terrorist' to â€Freedom Fighter': How the West Rebranded Al-Qaeda's Jolani as Syria's â€Woke' New Leader
2024-12-12, Mint Press News
https://www.mintpressnews.com/from-terrorist-to-freedom-fighter-how-the-west-...
Corporate media is heralding the fall of Bashar al-Assad and the emergence of Abu Mohammed al-Jolani as the new leader of Syria, despite his deep ties to both al-Qaeda and ISIS. CNN portrayed him as a "blazer-wearing revolutionary." In 2013, [CNN] labeled him one of "the world's 10 most dangerous terrorists," known for abducting, torturing and slaughtering racial and religious minorities. Western governments consider Jolani's new organization, HayĘĽat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), as one and the same as Al-Qaeda/Al-Nusra. Jolani – whose real name is Ahmed Hussein al-Shar'a ... was captured by the U.S. military and spent over five years in prison, including a stint at the notorious Abu Ghraib torture center. While in Iraq, Jolani fought with ISIS and was even a deputy to its founder. Immediately upon release in 2011, ISIS sent him to Syria with a rumored $1 billion to found the Syrian wing of al-Qaeda. While both journalists and politicians in the U.S. are scrambling to change their opinions on Jolani and HTS, the reality is that, for much of its existence, Washington has enjoyed a very close relationship with al-Qaeda. The organization was born in Afghanistan in the 1980s, thanks in no small part to the CIA. Between 1979 and 1992, the CIA spent billions of dollars funding, arming, and training Afghan Mujahideen militiamen (like Osama bin Laden) in an attempt to bleed the Soviet occupation dry. The Bush administration would use [the 9/11] attacks as a pretext to invade both Afghanistan and Iraq, claiming that America could never be safe if al-Qaeda were not thoroughly destroyed. And yet, by the 2010s, even as the U.S. was ostensibly at war with al-Qaeda in Iraq and Afghanistan, it was secretly working with [al-Qaeda] in Syria on a plan to overthrow Assad. The CIA spent around $1 billion per year training and arming a wide network of rebel groups to this end. As National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a leaked 2012 email, "AQ [al-Qaeda] is on our side in Syria."
Note: As recently as 2016, Syrian militias armed by the Pentagon were fighting with Syrian militias armed by the CIA. Read more about how radicalized Iraqis were swept into US military detention at Camp Bucca–a notorious facility often called a "terrorist university"–where they forged alliances that directly led to the rise of ISIS.
The above three are excerpts from the news stories most recently posted to this website.
Explore our index to revealing excerpts of news articles on several dozen topics.
Don't miss amazing excerpts from the 20 most revealing news articles ever published.