(ominous music) - [Narrator] Tonight
on Unidentified. - [Sean] They all
changed position and then they were gone. - And as soon as I turned
the lights, it was like zoop. Straight to me. - [Luis] When you
look at the data, the Nimitz was not
an isolated event. - [Sean] I know what I saw. Even if I don't know what
it is, I know I saw it. - [Luis] Do you know what it's
like to serve your country, only to have someone come
out and say you're crazy? - [Man] The Pentagon has
confirmed the existence of the Advanced Aerospace
Threat Identification Program that studied UFOs and
they released video. - [Pilot] There's a
whole fleet of 'em. My gosh. - [Narrator] For eight
years Lue Elizondo ran a secret UFO program
for the U.S. military. But in 2017, he quit in protest. - I put my entire
future on the line because I believe in
what I believe in. - [Narrator] Now he's
joined an elite group of former government insiders. Their mission, reveal what they
say is the truth about UFOs. - [Chhris] U.S. airspace
is being violated by vehicles of unknown origin
with advanced capabilities. - This is real, and we're
gonna get to the bottom of it. I've seen too much. I've talked to too many people. I can't in good conscience just keep my head
buried in the sand. - [Luis] So, while investigating
the Nimitz incident, we came across some information that leads us to believe
that there may be a particular area, a
rally point so to speak, where some of these
things are going. That's a big deal. At a minimum, we need
to get down to that site and we need to figure
out what's going on. - [Narrator] Lue
Elizondo is following an extraordinary break
in his investigation into a major military UFO
sighting off the West Coast. In the fall of 2004, two F-18 pilots
from the USS Nimitz told Elizondo they
came face to face with a bizarre, Tic
Tac-shaped object. - [Wingman Pilot] High G, rapid
velocity, rapid acceleration. - Whoa, we don't have that. And I'm talkin', we're flyin' one of the
premiere planes on the planet. - [Narrator] But the incident
wasn't an isolated event. A Navy technician
revealed the craft allegedly traveled underwater at nearly two times the speed
of the fastest U.S. submarine. - According to one
of the sonar guys, they were going 70 plus
knots under the water. - [Narrator] And another
Navy radar specialist says he had tracked
as many as a hundred of the strange craft for days. - They fell off
my radar envelope down off the coast
of Baja, California. - Okay. - These things were
going somewhere. I could tell you
the lat and long. - We now have a very good
lead on a potential hotspot. What does that mean? I
don't know what this means. Are these things, can
you see 'em all the time flying around out there? Is it underwater? What about the locals? These are all of the
things now that we can use to help us start collecting
additional data points and putting the pieces
of the puzzle together. Hey, how are you, brother? - [Sean] Doing
good, how you doing? - [Luis] Good, man,
I'm pulling right up. - [Narrator] Joining
Elizondo is a new member of the investigation who
himself was a witness to the strange events
of November 2004. - [Luis] Different people have different motivations
for coming forward. These are soldiers or sailors who have been involved in
something extraordinary. They're not quite sure
what to make of it, but they want the
truth to come out. How are you, my friend?
- [Sean] Very good. - [Luis] How are things going? - [Sean] They're
outstanding today. - [Narrator] Sean Cahill
served 20 years in the Navy. He was the top security
officer on the USS Princeton, a missile cruiser in the USS
Nimitz carrier strike group. Cahill was responsible
for law and order aboard the ship and running
counterterrorism patrols at sea. - Tell me when this
event began for you. - We were told Nimitz has
got something going on, they've got something
in their airspace. - [Narrator] Cahill is the fifth Navy witness to come forward. This is the first time he has spoken publicly
about the events. - [Sean] We're gettin' calls
up on the bridge to run out on the bridge wing and let us know if
you see anything. And they'd give us an angle, and they'd say do you
see anything out there? And a few times we
even turned the ship and I recall saying "what
are we looking for?" And I think that
they were saying oh, the Nimitz has got
some strange contacts. They obviously had
something on radar. They wanted us to see if
we could put eyes on it. They didn't tell us what
we were looking for. We went out on the bridge wing, and me and one of my lookouts
were scanning the sky. - [Narrator] What
Cahill witnessed has haunted him for 15 years. - So we were both looking up
ahead, about 45 degrees angle, and there was a constellation
of lights up there. - Let me get this straight. You're looking up, and you
see these pattern of lights. - They all changed position, some moving inward
towards the center, some moving outward,
but all rotating. As it rotated, some of
the lights disappeared. And then they were gone. I didn't see a trail, I
didn't see any effect. It was just there
was a light there, and then there was no
longer a light there, but the night was clear. This was not stars being
occluded by cLueds. That was when I got, as I get the
goosebumps right now, I got really interested
in what was going on. What the hell is this? - [Narrator] Cahill is the
first eyewitness to describe this abrupt and extraordinary
movement of multiple craft. - If Princeton had
it on the radar, why isn't this on
the news every night, that something we
don't understand is present in our atmosphere,
coming and going as it pleases with absolute impunity
over our military? - [Narrator] Cahill's
account bolsters the testimony of his
shipmate Kevin Day. - The next morning I went
and checked my email, and I had a video from
the Black Aces squadron. - The following morning at
breakfast I talked to Kevin Day and another chief petty
officer who's a radar operator. And I said to them what
was goin' on last night? And the chief grunted at
me, go look at your email. I go in the back and I log on and there's the video. - [Narrator] The next morning, Cahill and Day watched a
longer version of this video captured by an F-18's camera. It's the same video that
wouldn't be seen again until more than a decade later, when Elizondo helped get it
released to the public in 2017. - Every night we would have an operations
intelligence briefing. So I kind of smirk
and I walk in, because I'm like wow, maybe
we're gonna hear something. Maybe we're gonna find
out what's goin' on. Now as they start the briefing, the young officer in
charge gave the little nod to the person
running the computer. You know, next slide. And as they hit the space bar, a caricature of a flying saucer with a little green alien
moves across the screen. The room erupts in
laughter, and that was it. The captain said well, we all,
we had a little bit of fun. I guess you guys were
chasin' something around, but that's over now, let's
get on with the briefing. - I'm an intel guy. It's not uncommon that
if you have a person in a particular
position of trust, and you want to keep them quiet, that ridicule can be used
as some sort of leverage. - Nobody raised an eyebrow, and it didn't seem
like anybody cared. We weren't even told
not to talk about it. And that was one of the things
that struck me as being um, how do I put it, that delegitimized
the experience. And I got to a point where I pretended like it didn't
happen, to be honest with you. Someone tells you something
you encountered is not real, and that you're crazy, and you got nowhere to go. - [Luis] Finally after 15 years
of carrying this secret around, somebody was paying attention. It was real, and other
people experienced it too. And he wasn't going crazy. - [Luis] How we doin', brother? - [Sean] Mornin'. How you doin'? - [Luis] You know, any day
above ground's a good day. - [Sean] I'm with
you on that one. - [Luis] I've asked Sean to
come with us on this trip. He is a trained investigator, knows how to ask
the right questions. He also has a personal
investment in it. I think Sean would like
some answers himself. - [Narrator] Cahill
is joining Elizondo on a mission to Mexico, following a lead from
a Navy radar operator. - Kevin Day provided
us a completely new piece of the puzzle
we never had before. - [Narrator] Day
provided the coordinates where he says a fleet of UFOs
disappeared off Navy radar. - We can actually now
go to the location, and we can try to figure out if there's any type
of correlation at all. - [Luis] My hope is to hear
what people have to say. If anything. If they have
anything to provide, I wanna be able
to hear it myself. - [Narrator] Lue
Elizondo has asked former Navy law enforcement
officer Sean Cahill to join his UFO
investigation to Mexico. They're following a lead provided by Cahill's
shipmate, Kevin Day. - These things were
going somewhere. They fell off my radar envelope down off the coast
of Baja, California. I could tell you
the lat and long. - [Narrator] The
coordinates lead here, a small, remote Mexican
island called Guadalupe. - [Sean] What I'd really
like to see is for us to take the event
from 2004 and to show if this phenomena has
continued post-2004. - [Luis] This is a part
of the Nimitz story that not only has
never been told, it has never really
been explored. - [Narrator] In order
to keep his work for the military's
UFO unit secret, Elizondo put in interviews
of civilian witnesses. - [Luis] I think there's
goodness in casting a wide net, try to get as many
people that we can to come on record and
tell us what they've seen. My frustration when I was at
AATIP was I was always stuck focusing only on
military individuals. - This is the first time
you've been able to not hide. - Right.
- I hate to put it that way, but you don't have to
hide behind anything. You can ask the questions now.
- Right. - [Narrator] The journey to
Guadalupe Island starts here. Ensenada, Mexico, is a major hub for commercial and
tourist fishing. Elizondo and Cahill want to know if locals here have seen
strange things in the sky. - I'm used to speaking with
military people who are experts, but I think in the
end it comes down to sheer volume
and commonalities. If you have people that
are both trained observers and untrained observers
telling you the same thing, there is a really
good possibility that they are both
describing a similar event. - [Narrator] They've teamed
up with Jordy Lebrija, a Mexican journalist who
says he's heard stories about unexplained sightings in
Baja, California, for years. - [Luis] So Jordy,
who's the gentleman we're gonna be meeting today? - He's a pilot, and he does a lot of
flights to Guadalupe, and he has seen
crazy things as well. - [Narrator] Lebrija
set up a meeting with a commercial pilot who spots bluefin
tuna for fishermen between the Baja
coast and Guadalupe. - [Jordy] That's his plane. - [Luis] Beautiful. - [Luis] 172? - [Adrian] Yes. - [Luis] What year? - [Adrian] Uh, '83? - [Jordy] Wow, beautiful,
beautiful bird. - [Narrator] Adrian
Ojeda has spent 18 years flying over these water. But it only took a few seconds to change everything
he knew about aviation. - Thank you again for your time and for your courage
to come forward. - Thank you, because
this is something like I don't tell not
too many people, because they think you're
crazy or you're, you know. But so yeah. - Please start
from the beginning. - It was January 30, 2015, around three o'clock
in the afternoon. - [Narrator] This
is the first time Ojeda has gone on record about
the strange object he saw. - So, it was coming around
23 miles south of Ensenada. - [Narrator] On the afternoon
of January 30th, 2015, Ojeda says he was
flying over the Pacific just 20 miles
northeast from where two U.S. Navy pilots
from the USS Nimitz intercepted a Tic Tac-shaped
UFO 11 years earlier. - [Luis] Can you give me a
rough understanding of size, shape, color? - [Adrian] I thought at the
beginning it was just a ball, but when it got so close,
it was like this form. - [Luis] Did you notice
if it had any windows? - No.
- If it had wings? No flight surfaces? - No windows, no
wings, no nothing. - [Luis] Smooth. - [Adrian] Smooth
and clean, yeah. - [Narrator] Ojeda says the
object moved erratically, unlike any aircraft
he had ever seen. - When you see an airplane,
it goes straight, you know? But this was kind of
like chk, chk, chk. - [Narrator] He also
believes the object reacted to his presence. - It was so far, when I
just turned the lights, and as soon as I turned
the lights, it was zoop. - [Luis] Right at you. - Straight to me. - So it was - Around 10 miles, yeah.
- 10 miles. And then you kick on the lights, and all of a sudden-- - Three seconds. - Three seconds.
- Three or four, yeah. Zoop, like that. Fast. - [Narrator] As he
turned on his lights, Ojeda says the object
flew straight at him at 12,000 miles an hour or more than 15 times
the speed of sound. - [Luis] This pilot
really reinforced some of the observables that
we've already noticed before. - [Narrator]
According to Elizondo, his secret Pentagon
investigation cataloged a set of five incredible
capabilities the UFOs shared. He calls them the observables. -[Luis] Instantaneous
acceleration, hypersonic velocities, just really bizarre behavior. Something that you
would not expect a traditional aircraft
to be able to do. Were there any other
reports by any other pilots in the area that day
of anything strange in the air that you're aware of? - Not that I know. - [Luis] Okay. - [Narrator] Ojeda's 2015
account has an eerie similarity to the U.S. Navy's
2004 Tic Tac incident. - And all of a sudden it
goes brp, and it kinda turns, and we're like okay,
now it knows we're here. It just rapidly accelerates beyond anything
that I've ever seen, crosses my nose, and it's gone. - [Narrator] Have the same craft been flying off the
Baja coast for years? The Baja, California, peninsula is known across Mexico as a
hotspot for UFO sightings. For decades, local
fisherman have reported strange luminescent objects
over the Pacific Ocean. - [Luis] It's our understanding that you may have seen something very interesting in the water. - [Luis] 99% of all reported
sightings have a rational explanation. Typically, these are
things that are manmade or some sort of weather
phenomena or atmospheric anomaly. So, it's imperative we keep a
critical eye on every report. - [Narrator] The
fishermen may not be trained military observers, but they all have
similar accounts of spherical objects flying
in ways they can't explain. - [Fisherman] Buenos dias. - [Narrator] And one part of
their story stands out. - In the water? - [Fisherman] Yeah. -[Sean] Buenos dias. - [Narrator] Lue Elizondo
and Sean Cahill are in Mexico investigating one of the
most important UFO incidents in the history of
the U.S. military, the 2004 USS Nimitz encounter. - Very nice to meet
you, sir, thank you. Thank you for your time. - [Narrator] They're
interviewing local fishermen who have seen strange things
in the sky and under the water. - From our understanding
you may have some interesting information regarding strange things
in or near the water. - Same thing, lights coming
out of the water and moving. Fishermen have seen
lights under the water, lights underneath their boat, things coming out of the sky and then floating and
hovering above the water and then splashing
into the water. I was struck by some
of the similarities in particular with
the Nimitz incident. - [Narrator] In 2004, the Navy pilot who intercepted
a Tic Tac-shaped UFO first saw churning
water below the craft. - [Wingman Pilot] My heart sank. There was something
in the water. - [Narrator] And a
Navy radar technician says his ship tracked
the Tic Tac-shaped object moving underwater at
a high rate of speed. - [Gary] It went from 30,000
feet down to sea level, and sonar said they got a hit. They pretty much went
wherever they wanted. - [Narrator] The ability
to seamlessly move through water, air, and space, known as trans-medium travel, is one of the five observables Elizondo's secret Pentagon
program identified. - These objects seem
to be seen a lot around large bodies of water. These folks for the most part are not necessarily
trained observers, but they do know the
oceans very well. And a lot of 'em are reporting
some pretty interesting and in my opinion pretty
compelling things. - Looks like a Tic Tac, dude. - [Luis] Let me ask you, where
were you when you saw this? - [Narrator] The fishermen
all point toward one location, Guadalupe Island, where
senior Navy radar specialist Kevin Day told Elizondo
a fleet of UFOs had disappeared off
his radar in 2004. - Ensenada's right here. This is the bay right here. Okay, we've got
Guadalupe down here. One, two, three, four,
five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven
different unique incidents. We've got some
amazing data here. - Definitely a hotspot. - [Sean] Guadalupe
is calling us. - [Narrator] Guadalupe
lies 150 miles off the Baja, California, coast. The sparsely populated island is home to a Mexican
military weather station and is surrounded
by a restricted marine refuge area teeming
with great white sharks. - [Luis] The next logical
step is to get out there and see for ourselves is
there anything unique? Is there anything
underneath the ocean? The topography, is there
anything strange and weird? We've gotta get out there. - I think by going to Guadalupe we stand to gain more clarity. - Hopefully we can collect
some good information. It matters what the
facts and the data say. That's the pursuit, that's what
drives me every single day. We'll probably do about
six and a half knots. You're looking at
175 nautical miles out to where we need to be. It's gonna take us a good
25 hours to get out there. When was the last time
you were in these waters? - I have to do the math on it, but I was in these waters
for a number of years, over the course of 2004 all
the way to 2007 on and off. - [Luis] Wow. - [Sean] Yeah, this is
where the United States Navy on the West Coast does a
great deal of their training. - We've heard so much about
this Guadalupe Island. I hope we get a chance to talk
to as many people as we can. Talk to other fishermen,
talk to anybody who's willing to come out and meet us
and have a conversation. - I kind of want to consider some of the information
that we've picked up. We had circular, spherical
objects described. I hesitate to say saucer,
but a lenticular shape. - We had luminous. - Right.
- Objects, right? - Different colors
of luminosity. - And we had objects that
flew, objects that hovered, and objects that
went into the water, and in some cases objects
that came from the deep up to the surface of the
water, i.e., rings of light. - [Narrator] Unidentified
submerged objects, known as USOs, have been reported
around the world by civilians and military
witnesses for decades. - [Broadcaster] Allied
warships taking part in Exercise Mainbrace provided
a formidable spectacle. - [Narrator] In 1952,
military personnel taking part in a large-scale
NATO exercise off Denmark reported seeing
strange, round craft flying above and
below the water. The incidents made
international headlines, and ever since USOs have
become part of UFO lore. - We know that there is
a geomagnetic anomaly just north of the island
and it is significant. - [Narrator] Adding to the
mystery surrounding Guadalupe, a variation in the
earth's magnetic field, known as a magnetic anomaly, lies just off the
island's northern coast. - When you look at the map, there are no magnetic
anomalies anywhere within hundreds and hundreds
of miles of that island except two hotspots right
north of the island. Could that have anything to
do with what we're seeing? We don't know. (suspenseful music) - [Luis] I think we owe it to
ourselves to collect more data. I think it's in our DNA
to always search and find the truth, whatever that truth is. - [Bryan] Lue was someone who
had come into this issue very skeptical
and came out of it almost a religious
believer that wow, this stuff is really happening, these are really credible
reports from pilots, from other people
that are not wacky. He became someone who
felt that it was his job to try and get
more senior leaders in the Pentagon to
pay attention to this, eventually maybe get the
public to pay attention. - [Narrator] The team is
finally approaching Guadalupe, where U.S. Navy and
Mexican eyewitnesses say something strange
is in the air, or under the water, or both. - [Luis] That's amazing. 30 miles away you
can see that thing. - [Narrator] After 20
hours on the open water, Lue Elizondo and Sean Cahill have arrived at
Guadalupe Island, where a U.S. Navy
radar specialist reported a fleet
of strange craft disappeared off his radar scopes during the 2004 USS
Nimitz UFO event. - [Luis] This is the land
that time forgot, for sure. - [Sean] Aw, it's
just incredible. - [Narrator] Guadalupe was
formed millions of years ago, when two volcanoes erupted
on the ocean floor. Today it's a marine refuge, and access is strictly
controlled by the Mexican government. As foreigners, the team can't
step foot on its shores. (chatting and laughter)
- Buenos dias señor. - Hola. - Hola. But they've found a
group of fishermen who have seen things
they can't explain. - [Luis] How fast
did it take off? - [Luis] Wow. (indistinctly speaking spanish) - [Luis] Now, you said it was
kind of like a ball, like a chrome ball. (boat motor revving) - [Narrator] These fishermen had never heard of
the Nimitz incident, but their accounts are similar
to the U.S. Navy witnesses. - [Sean] When you come
back from fishing, and someone sees
something like this, do they make fun of the person
when they tell the story? (speaking foreign language) - Also the people have seen
strange things happening, so they take it very seriously. - [Narrator] The
fishermen take them to the island's
rocky north coast, where most of the
sightings have occurred. It's also where a
magnetic anomaly lies deep under the ocean. (speaking foreign language) - Ah, ha ha. - Wow. - [Sean] I've never
seen anything like this. - [Narrator] Elizondo and Cahill want to know if the
strange sightings could have a
scientific explanation. - Bien, como estas? Mauricio Hoyos is a
world-renowned marine biologist. - [Luis] We know your
time is valuable. Thank you very much for
spending it with us. - [Narrator] Hoyos has been
studying great white sharks on Guadalupe for over 15 years and documented what
is believed to be the largest great white
ever captured on film. - We are here because
several people have reported very
interesting phenomena in the sky and even underwater, and we wanted to get
your scientific knowledge of these waters. - Well, Guadalupe is a
very important place. Actually, it's the best place to see white sharks
in the world. The visibility of the water,
it's more than a hundred feet. - [Luis] Oh wow.
- And sometimes you get to see more than 33 sharks in one day. - [Luis] Wow. How come that these white sharks can find this island in
the middle of nowhere? And we think that they
have these sensors, they are called the
ampullae of Lorenzini, and they can detect the
electromagnetic field of the earth, so we think that they use
that in order to get here. - [Narrator] Hoyos
believes great white sharks have a special ability to
detect electromagnetic signals, which helps them migrate
to the island each year. - I was talking with
one of the captains, and he told me that every time that they are
coming to Guadalupe, he can see that the
compass is moving awkward. - [Luis] That's interesting. Is there bioluminescence
in these waters? - Yep. They're actually very
close to the shore. - [Narrator] Bioluminescence
is a natural phenomenon found in oceans
all over the world. It occurs when a chemical
reaction in sea life emits light. Could this explain the
luminescent objects in the water the fishermen of
Guadalupe are seeing? - Okay, so do you ever see bioluminescence in
circular patterns, almost like a spotlight
coming out of the water? - No. No. - You have a small
submersible, right? So there's lights on it,
I'm sure, for navigation? - Yes. - Could fishermen
around the island mistake your submersible
for a light under the water? - We have had
submersibles, just in 2008, and I need a special
permit for that. If the submersible is here,
the big boat has to be here. - Okay, so you
have a boat nearby. So it's not isolated out
in the middle of the ocean. - [Mauricio] No, exactly. - [Narrator] According to Hoyos, there is nothing he
knows that can explain what the fishermen of
Guadalupe are seeing. - You are a scientist
and trained observer. In our book, that's
as good as it gets. So hearing from you, anything that you'd be
willing to share with us, would be immensely important. Is there anything you have
seen that has been unusual? - Yeah. And I thought that it
was a hallucination, but my captain and I,
we saw the same thing. (ominus music) - [Luis] We have lots of reports from fishermen
around the island. Is there anything
that you have seen that has been unusual? - Yeah, and I thought that
it was a hallucination, but my captain and I,
we saw the same thing. - [Narrator] Lue Elizondo
and Sean Cahill are more than a hundred miles
off the coast of Mexico, where a fleet of UFOs
fell of U.S. Navy radar during the USS Nimitz
incident in 2004. - In 2006, we started to track
white sharks for 24 hours. - [Narrator] Marine
biologist Mauricio Hoyos has spent years collecting
data on great white sharks, but he can't explain what he
saw early one morning in 2006. - It was like 6 a.m., and
we were coming to the north, and then I saw in that mountain, I saw a little light,
like a little sphere. I thought that it was a star. But suddenly it,
shoop, it moved. I thought oh my
God, I didn't sleep, and maybe I am looking
something that is not real. And then my captain asked
me did you see that? - Could you actually
see an object, or was it more the light
that you could see? - It was a very bright object. It was like a sphere. I mean a perfect sphere. In like maybe two
seconds, shoop. - [Luis] Two seconds. - Two seconds, we
didn't see anything. - [Luis] So it didn't just
disappear. It moved.
- No. It moved, yeah. - A definite sense
of movement, okay. - Exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah. - Very, very fast.
- Yeah. - [Luis] I know time is limited, sun's going to be going down, don't want to take
much more of your time. You've been super,
super helpful. - [Sean] Doctor, thanks
very much. - You're very welcome. - [Luis] It has been an
absolute pleasure, thank you. It's amazing. - [Narrator] As
far back as 2009, the Pacific Ocean
off Baja, California, was identified by
Elizondo's Pentagon program as part of a global
pattern of UFO hotspots. After days on the open water, interviewing multiple
civilian witnesses, Elizondo now has evidence of a continuing UFO
presence in the area. - The trip to Guadalupe Island
was very well worthwhile. The eyewitness testimony
from folks from the Nimits. - He just rapidly accelerates beyond anything
that I've ever seen, and it's gone. - Was corroborated by civilians. So, between Guadalupe
Island and Ensenada seems to be a real hotspot. When you look at the data, the Nimitz was not
an isolated event. In fact, the Nimitz may have just happened to trip
over one of these hotspots when they were doing
their maneuvers out there. It's one of the
pieces to the puzzle. But we would be remiss if we
consider it the whole puzzle. It's not. - [Narrator] The mission
to Guadalupe Island provided valuable
new information. But for Elizondo and Cahill,
the journey was also personal. - Being part of that
incident on the USS Nimitz, and now being here 14 years
later, right, it's time. Talk about a cold case. What's it like? - I gotta be honest
with you, man. I do get why people
don't come forward. Because it's isolating. There were 5,000
people on Nimitz. How many people saw it and
aren't willing to come forward? I know what I saw. Even if I don't now what
it is, I know I saw it. It was on tape, it was on radar. I mean, that boosts me. - We don't have all
the answers yet. - Yeah. - But we know it's real. This had affected
Sean profoundly. He didn't talk about it much, because quite frankly
he thought people were going to look at
him like he was crazy. Do you know what it's like
to serve your country, to swear an oath of loyalty, only to have someone come
out and say you're crazy? You know, ---- you. I've spent my life
living in the shadows. I've put myself out
there, voluntarily, so I've got no one
to blame but me. I have people who question
my credibility at every turn. I want so badly to show people what I've seen and what I know. But I can't, 'cause I have a
nondisclosure agreement with the U.S. government. It's very frustrating for me,
because I know this is real. - [Luis] When you look at some
of the other incidents over time that we've collected
back in AATIP, we continue to see
the same pattern over and over and over again. - [Narrator] Elizondo
is back in the States, briefing the team on
his trip to Mexico. - More people are bringing
information and cases to us, military and civilian people, and I think this kind
of data and information is beginning to
make a difference as we're bringing it forward. - [Narrator] As former
Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense
for Intelligence, Chris Mellon knows
how difficult it is for military personnel
to come forward with stories of UFO encounters. - Those people in the military at these lower-level
operational ranks are also swimming upstream, trying to get people's
attention and say hey we've got a genuine
issue here, people. We need to take action. And I'm delighted
that we're able to assist them in doing that. - [Narrator] But it's not
only the military personnel involved in the incidents
who have been silenced. - I would much rather
put this behind me, but the problem is
I've seen too much. I've talked to too many people. I have too many reports. I know it's real. I can't in good conscience just keep my head
buried in the sand. I had to leave the
very job that I love to get my point across. (digital chirping)
(atmospheric music) - The trip to Mexico was a
bit of a revelation for us. Certainly when I was in AATIP there was no way I
would have been able to go into a foreign country and start asking questions
about this thing. There's no way that
would have happened. - [Narrator] Lue Elizondo
has new evidence that he believes confirms
an ominous pattern. The Pacific Ocean off
Southern California and Mexico is a hotspot for
unidentified craft with incredible capabilities. - If it's okay with you, I'm gonna go ahead and
provide you his information. - [Narrator] The
newfound freedom to bring information
directly to the public is a victory for Elizondo. - AATIP had a small
group of allies, but equally there was
a small group of people who were diametrically opposed
and became increasingly vocal about their opposition
to what we were doing. - [Narrator] Elizondo
spent 10 years studying reports of military
encounters with UFOs. -[Pilot] What is that? - [Narrator] But according
to Elizondo, getting anyone inside the
Pentagon to pay any attention to what he was finding
was a daily struggle. - [Aucio tech] All right,
sound is speeding. - [Narrator] This
intelligence officer worked closely with
Elizondo at the Pentagon and saw first hand the
challenges he faced. - [Narrator] Because
she continues to work for the Department of Defense, she wants to remain anonymous. - [Narrator] Fear of
being called crazy wasn't the only roadblock to getting Pentagon leadership
to care about the issue. - [Bryan] Some officials
that I talked to told me that they thought
there was resistance in the Pentagon on
religious grounds, that effectively you had some senior officers who
were Christians, who thought looking into this kind of voodoo
stuff was dangerous. - [Luis] I was pulled into the
office of one of these seniors. The senior looked at
me in the eye and said "I want this program to stop." I said well, okay, but
what's the rationale? He said well, what
you're looking at is something that is
a demonic presence. - There's a faction
in the government, high up in the Pentagon, of religious fundamentalists
who are concerned that anything paranormal
or supernatural is demonic in origin, that flying saucers
represent demons, that if you study this, you're inviting the devil
and Satan into your world. - You're telling me to ignore it because it goes against your
philosophical belief system. Well, that's the same ----
I faced in Afghanistan and in the Middle East. There's no difference. Only you're wearing
a three-piece suit, and they're carrying
a Kalashnikov. So, I couldn't believe
what I was hearing. - [Narrator] Elizondo says his
superiors' religious beliefs hindered his mission
to get the government to take UFOs seriously. But he and other
government insiders, including former presidential
advisor John Podesta, believe the larger political
culture is to blame. - There's a natural
tendency to just kind of sweep the question away
and to avoid the taboo. We've created a culture
where you really can't do what any scientist
would want to do, any skeptic in the
best sense of the word, saying well, maybe we
ought to know about it. - So imagine this for a moment. Your job is to give the
boss recommended solutions. Imagine going now to the boss. Sir, we have something,
we don't know what it is, we don't know how it works, we don't know who's
behind the wheel, we don't know what
their intentions are, and by the way, there's not a
damn thing we can do about it. - [Narrator] By 2017, Elizondo
had become so concerned, that whatever these craft were, the U.S. military had
no way to defend itself against their
advanced technology. So he tried to send a warning
up the chain of command. - I realized that none
of the information and developments that we
had in our program in AATIP was being communicated to
the Secretary of Defense. - [Narrator] Elizondo believed
the threat was so great, that it required the attention
of then-Secretary of Defense James Mattis. - There are five people
I can count on this hand that if they were to call me
at four o'clock in the morning, I would put my boots on and
I'd go to war with them. Secretary Mattis is number one. He is truly one of
the greatest Americans I've ever had the honor and
pleasure to serve with and for. - [Narrator] Despite being
one of the military's most experienced
counterintelligence operatives, even fighting alongside
Mattis in Afghanistan in the months after 9/11, every attempt to get a meeting with the Secretary of
Defense was thwarted. - In this particular case
you had a lot of people that were worried about
their political careers. - [Chris] I attended
some meetings that Lue was present at, trying to see how
I could be helpful, and this actually led to
meetings with these senior people who were very
close to General Mattis, and they were very sympathetic, but they did not
see a way ahead. They did not see how
they could get this by the praetorian guard
around the secretary. - This is a man
who's responsible for the safety and
security of our country. And if you don't give him
the information he needs, that is ammunition, in order for him to
make a right decision. - Despite our best efforts, we were not successful in
actually getting this issue in front of the secretary and letting him evaluate
the evidence himself. - We've got a
problem internally. We've got blinders on. And if we've got
blinders on, baby, you're gonna get blindsided. - [Narrator] On the
next Unidentified. - You know those voices?
- I know those guys. - We're just trying
to figure out what were the
objects that we saw. - I've always kind of
been somewhat skeptical. I'm a lot more convinced now. These vehicles do exist. - It was basically a
cube inside a sphere. - Over 60 people have
seen these things. - [Chris] If people in
the D.C. area knew within minutes of their location these unidentified
vehicles are operating, I think they would say isn't this something we
ought to pay attention to?
