Luis Elizondo Opens Up On Why the Pentagon Keeps Changing Its Story on AATIP and UFOs

Article by Jazz Shaw                       January 13, 2020                        (hotair.com)

• Since we first learned of the (Pentagon’s $22 million) ‘Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program’ (AATIP), we’ve been told that it was a Department of Defense study of UAPs/UFOs, which Luis Elizondo ran before leaving the Pentagon to join the ‘To The Stars Academy of Arts and Sciences’. Both Elizondo and Harry Reid, the former Nevada Senator who initiated the Pentagon program, have gone on record confirming the UFO program and Elizondo’s role in it.

• Then more recently, DoD spokesperson Susan Gough backtracked saying that Elizondo was not involved with AATIP. Even stranger, Elizondo didn’t come forward to defend his statements. Said Elizondo, “There are elements in the Pentagon that are seriously upset with me for me ‘breaking rank’ in their eyes.” “I think (this disinformation is) a vendetta by a few in the Pentagon. But I think we will all know the real reason this year.”

• In a recent interview with John Greenewald of The Black Vault, Elizondo broke his silence stating, “As the senior ranking person in the AATIP program, I was ultimately responsible for ensuring the efficient and effective operations …performed by the outstanding men and women we had working in the program. My job was primarily to fend off the distractions so the rest of the team could do their job. …This includes fighting for resources, support, and personnel.”

• So why would Susan Gough keep insisting Elizondo wasn’t involved? Was the Pentagon deliberately and knowingly lying about Elizondo? Or was it a case of the DoD having lost the accurate records, as Gough has said? Elizondo suggests that this may have been a case where some in the Pentagon made “a deliberate attempt to confuse, hide, and conceal the truth.” Given the Pentagon’s casual relationship with the truth on this subject, that’s not so tough to believe.

• Toward the end of the interview, Elizondo refers to the recent admission from the Navy that there is at least one more, longer video of the tic-tac UFO encounter – something the Pentagon has repeatedly denied. “I am happy with the fact that recently some Navy former senior officials have come out and admitted there were more videos (of) greater length,” said Elizondo. “Also the Navy’s admission about the reality of UAPs and the fact they are creating new (UAP reporting) policies. … (This) is definitely a step in the right direction. I am not sure I can take credit for it but I like to think I played a small part in it.” “[I]t makes me feel a little vindicated.”

• Elizondo is still under an Non-Disclosure Agreement and doesn’t want to lose his security clearance, so he can’t say more. But perhaps he’s let something slip here. When referencing the “thousands of documents” related to the AATIP program that haven’t been cleared for release, he mentions “videos”… plural. There could be many UAP videos in the Navy’s possession from other incidents, but no one has filed a FOIA request for them. Still, Elizondo is confident that we will see a major disclosure of UAPs/UFOs by the Department of Defense this year.

One of the repeating themes we’ve run across in our coverage of the ongoing story of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP)

and the search for information about UFOs/UAP is the disconnect between what the To The Stars Academy of Arts and Sciences (TTSA) has said about Luis Elizondo and what the Pentagon has had to say about him. If you ask TTSA, Harry Reid (who requested the program initially) or Elizondo himself, he ran the program. If you run the question by the Pentagon, specifically spokesperson Susan Gough, Elizondo had “no assigned duties” in the Defense Intelligence Agency and was not involved with AATIP.

So what’s with that disconnect? It’s a question I asked early on when researching this subject and never found a convincing answer. And the fact that Elizondo himself never seemed to come forward to defend his statements made it seem all the more strange. But now he’s broken his silence. In an interview with John Greenewald at The Black Vault, Elizondo tackles that question and many others. There’s no new documentation coming out of this interview (at least not yet) but at least we get to hear his side of the story. I’m going to include a couple of the more interesting snippets from the interview here, but if you have any interest in the subject I would suggest you click through and read the entire thing for yourself.

First of all, what does Elizondo say his role in AATIP was?

“As the senior ranking person in the AATIP program, I was ultimately responsible for ensuring the efficient and effective operations of the overall effort. However, in fairness, the lion’s work was performed by the outstanding men and women we had working in the program. My job was primarily to fend off the distractions so the rest of the team could do their job. In essence, my job was to catch the proverbial bullets so our folks could do their job without distraction. Not an unusual role for the senior person in any program to assume. This includes fighting for resources, support, and personnel.”

So if that’s the case, how does the Pentagon get the story so wrong? Why would Susan Gough keep insisting he wasn’t involved? Elizondo mentions that he’s kept quiet about this in the past primarily because he was threatened with having his security clearance taken away when he first came out with TTSA and he doesn’t want to lose it. But now he feels he needs to set the record straight.

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