UFO whistleblower accuses top Pentagon officials of trying to discredit him

The former counterintelligence specialist who first blew the whistle on the Department of Defense’s UFO program has claimed that top Pentagon officials engaged in a ‘disinformation campaign’ to discredit him.

Luis ‘Lue’ Elizondo filed a 64-page complaint to the agency’s inspector general on May 3 detailing how he claims high-ranking Defense Department officials tried to silence him since he first spoke out about the Advanced Aerial Threat Identification Program (AATIP) in 2017.

Elizondo was assigned to work for the program, which investigated reports of ‘unmanned aerial phenomena’, in 2008 and grew increasingly frustrated as his bosses refused to take seriously reports of high-performing aircrafts, he wrote in the IG report obtained by Politico.

He said reports of ‘unmanned aerial phenomena’ were increasing over the years, ‘yet our resources were minimal, and leadership involvement was almost non-existent’.

‘After increased frustration, I became alarmed by the frequency and duration of UAP activity in and around controlled US Airspace,’ Elizondo wrote. ‘The instances seemed more provocative, and during one instance, they came within feet of a US fighter aircraft.’

He retired from the Department of Defense in October 2017,  and released three Navy videos he was able to get declassified showing military officials coming in contact with these unidentified flying objects.

Elizondo said he has since endured ‘malicious activities, coordinated disinformation, professional misconduct, whistleblower reprisal and explicit threats perpetrated by certain senior-level Pentagon officials’ which ‘suggest a coordinated effort to obfuscate the truth from the American people, while impugning my reputation as a former intelligence officer at the Pentagon.’ 

Elizondo claimed the Pentagon released press statements asserting he had no official role in the UFO research, despite the agency previously confirming his role in the project, and alleges that one of his colleagues at the Pentagon sought to damage his career by having him investigated for releasing UFO videos, even after he was cleared of any wrongdoing.

Politico did not name the officials identified in Elizondo’s report because it is unclear whether they are being investigated by the IG.

In his report, Elizondo claims a senior official warned him that he would tell people he was crazy and ‘it might impact your security clearance’.

‘I responded … by telling him that he can take any action he thinks is prudently necessary, but that I was not mentally impaired, not have I ever violated my security oath,’ Elizondo wrote in the complaint, saying he did not meet with the official again out of fear of retribution.

He also claimed the press office made statements asserting that the department had no record of his involvement in the UFO project, but had previously admitted he  worked on AATIP.

‘Several internet bloggers were notified … that I had no duties regarding AATIP and that AATIP did not involve the study of UAPs,’ Elizondo wrote. ‘As a result, the bloggers began … reporting accusing me of being a fabricator.’

When he asked officials why they changed his story, he said, one particular individual told him he ‘was not happy with the way this was being handled internally with the department,’ saying he was ‘aware I ran AATIP, but forces within the building were telling him not to admit it.’

The Department of Defense has now acknowledged the existence of the AATIP program, and is expected to release a report about it next month. But Elizondo said it has still not corrected the record on his involvement.

His attorney, Daniel Sheehan, who has previously represented the New York Times in its publishing of the Pentagon Papers and has publicly said he believes in little green men, said he believes this represents a cover-up at the department and wants to use the IG complaint to force the Pentagon to clear up any questions about the program. 

Sheehan told Politico there is an ‘extraordinarily bizarre process going on in the heart of the national security state bureaucracy where general officers, secretaries of defense are not being briefed in on something that is transparently within their jurisdiction.’

‘This is a profound and fundamental problem that they view as being above their pay grade,’ Sheehan said. ‘They know something is going on and they don’t care.’ 

In the years since Elizondo came public with his claims, other top officials have reported seeing these mysterious flying objects.

A retired fighter pilot reported seeing a Tic Tac-shaped UFO appear to fly erratically to the right and keep pace with her ship in 2004, releasing video of the encounter.

‘The technology that we witnessed with the Tic Tac was something we would not have been able to defend our forces against at the time,’ Sean Cahil – a retired US Navy Chief Master-at-Arms – told CNN’s Chris Cuomo of one recently-released video.

‘What we saw in the Tic Tac is the five observables. [These] indicate a technology that outstrips our arsenal by at least 100 to 1000 years at the moment.’ 

Other footage that was recently confirmed as real by the Pentagon appeared to show a UFO buzz a United States stealth ship near San Diego before diving under the water.

Commenting on the video, an ex-navy officer said that the technology on display is 100 to 1000 years ahead of that possessed by the United States.

‘What we’re seeing are a number of distinct and different things,’ he said.

‘Sometimes we’re seeing a 50-foot object that can travel at hypersonic speeds and seemingly go into orbit or come down from altitudes of potentially above 100,000 feet.’

He added that the social stigma around reporting such events has for a long time kept witnesses of such phenomena quiet. 

But just last week, former President Barack Obama confirmed the existence of UFOs with greater maneuverability and speed than anything in the US military exist – and said they must be taken seriously.

 ‘What is true… is that there’s footage and records of objects in the skies that we don’t know exactly what they are,’ he told The Late Late Show host James Corden.

‘We can’t explain how they moved, their trajectory… they did not have an easily explainable pattern,’ he said.

‘So I think that people still take seriously trying to investigate and figure out what that is. But I have nothing to report to you today.’

The Department of Defense’s watchdog is now expected to examine how the Pentagon has handled UFO reports, with a source telling CNN earlier this month that there will be more inquiries announced in the near future.

Meanwhile, Elizondo is scheduled to meet with investigators again next month.