The Media Loves This UFO Expert Who Says He Worked for an Obscure Pentagon Program. Did He?
The Media Loves This UFO Expert Who Says He Worked for an Obscure Pentagon Program. Did He?
One of the first images in the opening episode of the new History Channel show “Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation” is a 2017 headline from the New York Times projected on a flickering screen: “Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious UFO Program.”
It’s the story that launched Luis Elizondo into the public eye, the article that “shocked the world,” the narrator of “Unidentified” declares, before continuing, “A clandestine U.S. government program had been investigating UFOs. For eight years, the secret program was run by this man, Lue Elizondo.” The camera then pans to a visual of the former military intelligence case officer in a darkened house peering out warily through half-drawn window shades.
It’s an odd scene. Is Elizondo on the lookout for aliens or a bad guy from his old spook life? Either way, the History Channel show, which premiered on Friday and is being promoted as “groundbreaking nonfiction,” goes on to follow Elizondo as he re-investigates strange UFO incidents he says he learned of when he was at the Pentagon running the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, known as AATIP. It’s as if Agent Mulder had handed off his X-Files to another paranoid government agent, this one with a pug face and billy-goat beard. In the screener I saw for “Unidentified,” the narrator says that Elizondo quit the Pentagon because he was “frustrated by what he says was a cover-up.”
Whatever the truth about otherworldly UFOs (cue a collective eye-roll from scientists), there is one crucial detail missing from “Unidentified,” as well as from all the many stories that have quoted Elizondo since he outed himself nearly two years ago to a wide-eyed news media: There is no discernible evidence that he ever worked for a government UFO program, much less led one.
Yes, AATIP existed, and it “did pursue research and investigation into unidentified aerial phenomena,” Pentagon spokesperson Christopher Sherwood told me. However, he added: “Mr. Elizondo had no responsibilities with regard to the AATIP program while he worked in OUSDI [the Office of Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence], up until the time he resigned effective 10/4/2017.”
That directly contradicts an email sent by a spokesperson for To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science, a UFO research and entertainment company that Elizondo joined after he left the Defense Department.
There is no discernible evidence that Luis Elizondo ever worked for a government UFO program, much less led one.
The email was sent over a year ago by Kari DeLonge, a public relations representative for To the Stars, to John Greenewald, a UFO researcher who runs an online archive of Freedom of Information Act-obtained government documents on a website called the Black Vault. At the time, Greenewald had become frustrated at the lack of tangible information about AATIP and Elizondo’s role; additionally, Elizondo had spurned Greenewald’s interview requests.
Greenewald told me that he had asked DeLonge specifically where Elizondo worked within the Department of Defense when he ran AATIP.
“Hi John – Thanks for reaching out,” DeLonge wrote. “The program was initially run out of [the Defense Intelligence Agency] but when Lue took it over in 2010 as Director, he ran it out of the Office for the Secretary of Defense (OSD) under the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence (USDI). Hope that clarifies.”
I tried contacting Elizondo multiple times via email and his cellphone. He has not responded. It’s not as if he is on retreat somewhere; I noticed that in the run-up to his star turn on the new History Channel show, he has been speaking to everyone from the New York Times to UFO media personalities and military bloggers.
Indeed, judging by all the UFO stories lighting up the internet this week, the self-described “career spy” is having another big moment in the media spotlight. The timing is either an auspicious coincidence or the “flying saucers are here” brigade’s well-oiled PR machine is working overtime.
Another important detail being glossed over or entirely left out of the breathless coverage surrounding the release of “Unidentified” is the relationship between its executive producer, Tom DeLonge, Elizondo, and other former Pentagon officials and members of the intelligence community who appear in the show.
DeLonge, a musician of Blink-182 fame and longtime UFO enthusiast, is the co-founder and interim CEO of To the Stars, the company Elizondo joined in October 2017, several days after he resigned from the Department of Defense. Since the company’s inception, certain members of its “elite team,” including Elizondo, have appeared frequently in the news media.
This week is a prime example. Another former Pentagon official with a prominent role in “Unidentified” appeared several days ago on “Fox & Friends.”
“We know that UFOs exist,” Chris Mellon, a deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, pronounced on the show. “This is no longer an issue. The issue is why are they here? Where are they coming from? And what is the technology behind these devices that we are observing?”
Mellon, like Elizondo, works for To the Stars (his title, according to the company’s website, is national security affairs adviser). “Fox & Friends” neglected to mention this connection, along with the fact that the History Channel show was made by the company Elizondo and Mellon work for.
I’m not surprised. By now, Elizondo and Mellon have come to rely on a largely passive and credulous press to generate sensational UFO headlines.
Full story at site
The Media Loves This UFO Expert Who Says He Worked for an Obscure Pentagon Program. Did He?
One of the first images in the opening episode of the new History Channel show “Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation” is a 2017 headline from the New York Times projected on a flickering screen: “Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious UFO Program.”
It’s the story that launched Luis Elizondo into the public eye, the article that “shocked the world,” the narrator of “Unidentified” declares, before continuing, “A clandestine U.S. government program had been investigating UFOs. For eight years, the secret program was run by this man, Lue Elizondo.” The camera then pans to a visual of the former military intelligence case officer in a darkened house peering out warily through half-drawn window shades.
It’s an odd scene. Is Elizondo on the lookout for aliens or a bad guy from his old spook life? Either way, the History Channel show, which premiered on Friday and is being promoted as “groundbreaking nonfiction,” goes on to follow Elizondo as he re-investigates strange UFO incidents he says he learned of when he was at the Pentagon running the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, known as AATIP. It’s as if Agent Mulder had handed off his X-Files to another paranoid government agent, this one with a pug face and billy-goat beard. In the screener I saw for “Unidentified,” the narrator says that Elizondo quit the Pentagon because he was “frustrated by what he says was a cover-up.”
Whatever the truth about otherworldly UFOs (cue a collective eye-roll from scientists), there is one crucial detail missing from “Unidentified,” as well as from all the many stories that have quoted Elizondo since he outed himself nearly two years ago to a wide-eyed news media: There is no discernible evidence that he ever worked for a government UFO program, much less led one.
Yes, AATIP existed, and it “did pursue research and investigation into unidentified aerial phenomena,” Pentagon spokesperson Christopher Sherwood told me. However, he added: “Mr. Elizondo had no responsibilities with regard to the AATIP program while he worked in OUSDI [the Office of Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence], up until the time he resigned effective 10/4/2017.”
That directly contradicts an email sent by a spokesperson for To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science, a UFO research and entertainment company that Elizondo joined after he left the Defense Department.
There is no discernible evidence that Luis Elizondo ever worked for a government UFO program, much less led one.
The email was sent over a year ago by Kari DeLonge, a public relations representative for To the Stars, to John Greenewald, a UFO researcher who runs an online archive of Freedom of Information Act-obtained government documents on a website called the Black Vault. At the time, Greenewald had become frustrated at the lack of tangible information about AATIP and Elizondo’s role; additionally, Elizondo had spurned Greenewald’s interview requests.
Greenewald told me that he had asked DeLonge specifically where Elizondo worked within the Department of Defense when he ran AATIP.
“Hi John – Thanks for reaching out,” DeLonge wrote. “The program was initially run out of [the Defense Intelligence Agency] but when Lue took it over in 2010 as Director, he ran it out of the Office for the Secretary of Defense (OSD) under the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence (USDI). Hope that clarifies.”
I tried contacting Elizondo multiple times via email and his cellphone. He has not responded. It’s not as if he is on retreat somewhere; I noticed that in the run-up to his star turn on the new History Channel show, he has been speaking to everyone from the New York Times to UFO media personalities and military bloggers.
Indeed, judging by all the UFO stories lighting up the internet this week, the self-described “career spy” is having another big moment in the media spotlight. The timing is either an auspicious coincidence or the “flying saucers are here” brigade’s well-oiled PR machine is working overtime.
Another important detail being glossed over or entirely left out of the breathless coverage surrounding the release of “Unidentified” is the relationship between its executive producer, Tom DeLonge, Elizondo, and other former Pentagon officials and members of the intelligence community who appear in the show.
DeLonge, a musician of Blink-182 fame and longtime UFO enthusiast, is the co-founder and interim CEO of To the Stars, the company Elizondo joined in October 2017, several days after he resigned from the Department of Defense. Since the company’s inception, certain members of its “elite team,” including Elizondo, have appeared frequently in the news media.
This week is a prime example. Another former Pentagon official with a prominent role in “Unidentified” appeared several days ago on “Fox & Friends.”
“We know that UFOs exist,” Chris Mellon, a deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, pronounced on the show. “This is no longer an issue. The issue is why are they here? Where are they coming from? And what is the technology behind these devices that we are observing?”
Mellon, like Elizondo, works for To the Stars (his title, according to the company’s website, is national security affairs adviser). “Fox & Friends” neglected to mention this connection, along with the fact that the History Channel show was made by the company Elizondo and Mellon work for.
I’m not surprised. By now, Elizondo and Mellon have come to rely on a largely passive and credulous press to generate sensational UFO headlines.
Full story at site
