Luis Elizondo, Former AATIP Director, on UFOs and National Security (Live, 6/8)

[Music] well if there's another thing [Music] rotating [Music] without ufos or as it's officially identified officially called unidentified aerial phenomenon uaps while we're waiting for the unclassified report from congress on the matter our guest lou elizondo the former director for aatip the advanced aerospace threat identification program has some answers so excited to welcome you today lou thanks for joining us jack it is my sincere pleasure to be with you and your audience today thank you very much for having me so i wanna take us uh back for a second and set the table for this conversation how exactly did you get assigned in the first place to investigate ufos for the intelligence community well jackie quite frankly i was voluntold um in essence i had some i guess some prerequisite experience that they were looking for at the time the the organization was fairly fairly new and they were looking for someone to create a counterintelligence and security portfolio and i guess because of some of my background running investigations uh counterintelligence investigations and some of my background in in technology protection specifically with aerospace systems that probably i suspect was was a fairly lucrative skill set that they were looking forward to to create this this sub portfolio under atip um and that's how i got into the program it i i entered the program in 2008 i was asked by its director to come on board and and establish this program and then in 2010 is when i i was asked to take over the effort and i'm sure many of you are are well aware of this if you are tuning in you've probably watched the documentary that came out this year the phenomenon senator harry reid which the stock outlines got the program funded did you brief him in congress on these unexplained pilot sightings when you were running the program jackie we we provide many briefings mostly through dod and intelligence community leadership that information was also provided to times at to staffers and of course our elected officials um it's very important that when you're working in a national security construct that you try to follow the chain of command as much as possible um so a lot of my briefings were really to more senior level folks in the department of defense and within our intelligence architecture uh but there were times yes that we were we would be asked to brief uh other other officials particularly in the legislative branch and the executive branch as well and right now uh everyone in washington and really a lot of people around this country are hotly anticipating this unclassified government report on aerial phenomenon witnessed by navy pilots it's expected to be delivered to the senate intelligence community by the director of national intelligence hopefully by june 25th the new york times reported that senior administration officials who were briefed on the findings said that the unusual movements witnessed by pilots did not originate from american military or advanced us government technology but that's really about the only conclusive finding that has been so far teased from the report what do you think the likelihood is that aerial phenomenon are actually actually extraterrestrial spacecraft well jackie that that's really the question isn't it uh the bottom line is up up until very recently there are really only only three possibilities of what this could be and the first possibility is that it is some sort of secret u.s tech that somehow uh we have managed to keep secret even from ourselves for for a long period of time the second option is that it's some sort of foreign adversarial technology that has somehow managed to technologically leapfrog ahead of our country uh despite having a fairly robust and comprehensive intelligence apparatus and of course the the third option is is something quite entirely different it's it's a it's a different paradigm completely now as of this week we now know through some of the discussions at senior level leadership that uh this this report has definitively stated once and for all that it's not our technology uh and that's that's hugely important for 30 years there has always been this undercurrent if you will these conspiracies that there was some sort of tr3 b program and some sort of of super special technology that has been implemented and we've been uh just been very careless about it and i think that argument was finally put to bed this week uh so that really only leads to other options and that's again it's foreign adversarial or it's it's it's something quite different and i think we're now beginning to learn as we've heard from the director of national intelligence and i can certainly tell you from my experience that we're pretty confident that it's not russian or chinese technology there's several reasons for that that i feel like i'm more than happy to go into yeah actually could you go into that i know you've explained it in previous interviews but these sightings have happened for the past 70 years and i know you've said before that you didn't think it was possible for one of our foreign adversaries who have been helpful actually in providing information uh on this issue would be capable of keeping something a secret for so long is that accurate that that's that's precisely precisely one of the counter arguments in fact if i'm not mistaken as of today we had an announcement by former director of national intelligence ratcliffe who said this isn't russian technology and as we know during glasnost and the fall of the berlin wall there was this five-year romance period if you will between the united states and russia where we began really sharing a lot of information and a lot of their ironically enough a lot of their ufo information wound up in our hands and it turns out that they were experiencing the exact same issues from a ufo or a uap issue perspective that that we were so if you look at really the timelines here um you know it it's looking increasingly less likely that this is some sort of russian technology so that really leaves china and some of these reports you're absolutely correct jackie they go back into the early 1950s and even earlier and so what that says is that you have pilots whether we're describing what we call a white flying tic tac or a white flying butane tank in the 1950s or a white flying lozenge if you will they're all describing the exact same vehicle craft if you will doing exactly the same thing performing in ways well beyond our current capabilities and if you look at that from a from a from a temporal perspective from a time perspective it simply doesn't make sense that china back in 1950 would have this beyond next generation technology mastered it is able to fly it at will anywhere it wants on the face of the planet and the last 70 years despite the billions of dollars we put into our intelligence community infrastructure and architecture it has it has managed to evade us in fact china is a country that has has stolen quite a bit spends a lot of a lot of time stealing technology from us and so one has to ask the question that if if really a country had this technology would it be necessary to steal you know much more basic technology from from another country furthermore if you had this type of technology you probably wouldn't need to invest so much in military because you had this if you will checkmate type technology or capability where everything else now becomes obsolete and so this goes to your last last part of your question do i feel or do i believe this is quote extraterrestrial let me be very careful before i answer that by saying at the end of the day jackie it doesn't matter what i think or what i believe what matters is what the data and the facts tell us uh and from that perspective it's very important that i've i've always i had a very simple job and that is to collect the truth and speak the truth that's it uh very much as an investigator which i used to be we applied the same type of level of rigor and methodologies we did in hunting terrorists and spies as we did in hunting ufos so we really didn't care what these were we were just trying to get to the bottom of what they were and so in in there in lies if you will a little bit of of um of our approach um we were we were very agnostic if you will or objective about this topic and try to allow the facts to lead us down a certain path and that is really what we're doing today what we're realizing is that that the facts are painting a far more compelling picture than than what we thought in this case you your audience they're the jury uh so what matters is really what what you think about this and so the the the hope here is that the u.s government can provide the data and the evidence and the information and then allow the american people to decide what we think this is about i think if i may just digress for a moment here you mentioned something very interesting that a lot of people want to talk about and say is this extraterrestrial and i want to just if i can for just briefly delve into into where we are with modern day science um we are human beings that a lot of a lot of of now people in in psychology refer to as cardiosocial animals means we look at things in extremes because for the first nine months of our existence we we were in our mother's womb and we heard that binary heartbeat of our mother and so we tend to look at the life if you will in our universe in that that binary way it's either good or it's bad it's hot or cold black or white up and down and that's how we tend to judge things but in reality the universe and physics is isn't binary it's not binary at all in fact there's all sorts of options and opportunities of what this could be so again back to your question is is it from here or is it from out there we don't really know in fact there's lots of other options on the table it could be from as i've said before it can be from outer space inner space or the space in between as we begin to to learn what quantum physics is and we begin to understand our place here on this little planet we begin to realize that there's a lot of other options we we judge the universe in five fundamental uh senses uh the ways that we perceive the universe and that's touch taste hear smell etc uh and and if you can't uh if you can't use those senses to look at something or measure it then we really can't interact with it and yet we know the majority of of of the universe around us 99 of it in fact is not perceivable uh there are right now wi-fi signals coursing through your body there's cosmic radiation coming in from the cosmos there's neutrinos coming in from from the sun there's radar hitting you from the local airport and yet these are all realities and and you can't interact with it because we just don't have the tools to do so take a beautiful night sky look at the stars and you might say wow that's that's really a pretty sky but if you now take a radio telescope and look at that same spot in the sky all of a sudden you begin to see things that you couldn't see before you see in the ultraviolet you see in the infrared spectrum you see nebula so i guess my my long-winded point to all this is that we must keep all options open if we already know that 99 of the universe we cannot perceive or interact with um then there may be other options here this may not necessarily be something from outer space in fact this could be something as natural to our very own planet as us we're just now at a point where beginning to technologically be able to interact and collect data this could be something from under the oceans this could be something from yes from outer space we we really don't know and this is why i think we really need to take a whole of government approach and look at this because it is day by day it's seeming like more and more this conversation is shifting from a a a human technology quite possibly we don't know for sure yet but to something far more profound but as someone who is more seeked and and in the know on the data and the facts do you have any more narrow idea uh in that 99 of things that we are unaware of of what this could be exactly you know through observations we are we are quite convinced that we're dealing with a technology that is is multi-generational several uh several generations ahead of what we consider next generation technology so what we consider beyond next generation technology something that could be anywhere between 50 to a thousand years ahead of us and and for us i think it's when you're looking at the observations and these things how they can outperform frankly anything that we have in our inventory and we're pretty certain anything that our foreign adversaries and have in our inventory then yes obviously as as human beings we tend to go down that rabbit hole of speculation i want to be very careful that i don't offer my my opinion in an unqualified manner i've always stated this is exactly why we need a uap task force in fact this is why we need a much bigger hole of government enduring capability because at the end of the day we don't know what we're dealing with and frankly all options have to be on the table until they're no longer on the table i could offer you my my opinion right now but but jackie in in all honesty would probably be a bit of disservice because we frankly don't have enough information yet we're just now getting to the point as a government as a society that we are accepting the reality that this is real whatever it is i think i think we need to do a little bit more uh and so out of respect to you and your journalistic integrity and that that to your audience i'm probably going to refrain from from offering more of my opinion on that particular aspect only because um the one thing i've learned in intelligence is you can be absolutely sure of something and still be absolutely wrong and i i don't want to mislead anybody i'm going to be a little bit of a pest here and i apologize for my desire for a more black and white answer but um in common parlance i guess is that something that you would refer to as an alien or a time traveler uh is there any sort of way you could you know more specifically this yeah i've said before this is something and i guess i may have just said it again but that this could be something from outer space inner space or frankly the space in between there's a lot of options out there this could be something that is that is extra hyper dimensional now i don't mean extra dimensional in a woo-woo sense i mean extra-dimensional in a quantum physics sense we know that the universe is full of shortcuts and loopholes uh we know so let me if i may backtrack for just a moment it took the renaissance to come to the point where we understand newtonian physics we understand what what what gravity looks like we still don't quite understand what it is yet but we understand what it looks like uh and and we understand force equals mass times acceleration and whatnot so we had these really elegant solutions for our observations of the of the natural world and then it took a couple hundred years but along comes some some some cat with crazy hair we called einstein who now introduces the notion of relativity and kind of upends really science uh and turns it 180 degrees and says well actually there's a thing called space time and space and time are actually connected and they're also stretchable and compressible and as bizarre as that may be that is precisely what we're seeing and so space-time can be warped based upon mass or a lot of energy and then of course 40 some years ago we really start getting into this whole another paradigm of science uh and it's it's quantum physics and someone once described it as you have this box uh sitting on the ground and in walks a dog and all of a sudden two cats walk out and as as as crazy as that may seem that's precisely what we're seeing in these observations with quantum physics proverbially speaking of course so it doesn't make sense and yet there's this weird duality maybe the universe uh the speed of light although maybe the universal speed limit there may be some shortcuts and off ramps uh in our in our in in this in this understanding of our universe so uh we are we are just now scratching the surface of understanding what type of science it may take to to do what we are seeing with these vehicles there's five specific observables associated with these with these these uaps unidentified aerial phenomena that really separate them from the rest of anything that we would consider terrestrial aircraft or manned aircraft or some type of of a human human base technology and again i want to be careful not to go too far out on the limb because that's where the speculation starts and that's also where the danger starts because we simply don't know yet well and i guess the other key question here is what do you think the likelihood is that the us government is actually going to confirm anything jackie i think i lost you but i'm going to go ahead and try to answer the best i can i think you were asking me what the likelihood is of the us government going ahead and confirming anything in this 180 day report so let me see if i can go ahead and answer that hopefully that was your question because i seem to have lost signal um so the 180 day report is first of all not substantial enough time to to to do a comprehensive report in fact i've told people it takes longer to remodel a household kitchen sometimes than it does to take 180 to to conduct one of these 180 day reports secondly there's the other issue here that we had covet and this this this pandemic that kept a lot of people home for most of that time and then thirdly i think if this turns out to be some sort of adversarial technology that has happened to leapfrog ahead of us for the last 70 years jackie we're talking about one of the greatest intelligence failures this country has ever seen probably eclipsing 911 by an order of magnitude it took us nearly three years to come up with a 911 commissions report if this turns out to be some sort of adversarial technology that did happen to technologically leapfrog us 180 days i don't think it's going to be sufficient i think what we can expect the report to say is something like this there are about a hundred and some odd cases out there that are compelling enough that they are definitely displaying some sort of capability technology that we don't have secondly um we don't know what these things are we have no evidence to suggest that they are from outer space but at the same time we have no evidence to suggest that they're not and so this this report will probably be a bit of a placeholder the one the one thing we know for sure at this point is that it's not us secret technology so that that takes part of the the 30-year argument that this is some sort of secret air force if you will a weapon platform being tested that's now off the table and so now we can focus more i think on the foreign adversarial perspective or or hopefully maybe something on something quite frankly uh sufficiently different than anything that we had we had possibly considered before and when we're actually talking about this as a national security threat uh or as a foreign adversarial threat as you just mentioned um you know i think we need to to talk about china here which we the united states government also views as a national security threat and china is making big investments at the moment to identify extraterrestrial life as a part of their military mission there's discussion within the community about whether it's better for us to lead the way with confirmation versus china doing so and possibly being dishonest about what they found essentially a new modern-day space race do you think in your opinion does it matter which national uh takes the lead on confirming the presence of extraterrestrial life and who gets to the bottom of this answer first i i think well you're right jackie not only that they've just announced they've established a new uap task force similar to ours and they're using artificial intelligence to do this we also know that there's a play by them to to try to to lead this conversation at the united nations um that for me it's it's a multi-faceted question you're asking me there's two parts of me and i'm i'm a little bit i guess you'd say schizophrenic about the response there is the national security side of me that has said always we have these adversaries these traditional adversaries and they're going to steal everything they can from us we should don't trust them try to cooperate but don't trust them but then there's the other side which is the the non-governmental side of me that that tends to be a little bit more optimistic and perhaps this is an opportunity for our countries rather than to to find disagreement maybe to find some sort of common ground maybe maybe this may be a new renaissance maybe this is an opportunity for our countries to work together on the common good that involves all of humanity um maybe this is like we did in the cold war where we started working with russians uh to to to you know this this this era of cooperation where we start meeting each other in space um i i would certainly hope the latter is is what happens i'm i i don't know you know that's that's a great question because i what i what i hope for may be different than what i i expect um and it's that still needs to be reconciled um so i don't know if i answered your question appropriately but uh that's that's that's how i feel i would love nothing more than an opportunity to work with with our adversaries our conventional adversaries russia china let's get everybody to the table i believe this is a topic that involves all of humanity i think it affects all of us equally and yet differently depending on our philosophical and sociological and theological belief systems so uh i i you know that i guess maybe the maybe guess the kid in me wants this to to be an opportunity for us to to work together but i also have a very realistic side because i've seen what those countries are capable of doing uh and you know i i it would have to take a lot of trust for us to do that and several of these ufo sightings have been above secret nuclear weapons facilities almost every major nuclear power across the globe really has reported and declassified these sightings um you have talked extensively about the connection here which might be helpful i think for some people uh to hear in advance of my next question which is whether or not the us government has considered utilizing nuclear-powered naval fleets to lure these kinds of things to further study them wow so first of all jackie thank you for asking such a thoughtful question obviously you've done some homework and i also want to by the way thank you as a journalist for following this topic because i know there's a lot of of risk involved and i also know there's been traditionally a lot of stigma and taboo associated with it so so i want to congratulate you for your courage and thank you and your audience for for at least having this conversation but secondly uh yes that is that is one of the concerns we have from a national security perspective that there does seem to be some sort of congruency or some sort of intersection between these uap or ufo sightings and our nuclear technology with nuclear propulsion nuclear power and generation or or nuclear weapon systems furthermore those same observations have been seen overseas in other countries they too have had the same incidents so that tells us this is a global issue now in this country we've had incidents where these uaps have interfered and actually brought offline our nuclear capabilities and i think to some they would probably say well that's a sign that that whatever this is is is something that is peaceful but in the same context we also have data suggesting that in other countries these things have interfered with their nuclear technology and actually turned them on put them online so that is equally for me just as concerning i think that there is certainly at this point enough data to to to demonstrate there is an interest in our nuclear technology a potential to even interfere with that nuclear technology and when you look at all these naval ships out there let's take the nimitz uh battle carrier fleet for example in some cases you're talking about a nuclear footprint probably bigger than most cities you have a nuclear-powered carrier with aircraft on board uh that and and then you have nuclear-powered destroyers you have nuclear-powered submarines some of those with nuclear weapons on board or nuclear certainly nuclear capabilities i'll just say that um so i think i think uh yeah it shouldn't be a surprise that maybe uh there is there is an increased interest in our in our capabilities as it relates to to our nuclear technology in the navy is is certainly uh not immune to that yeah absolutely and so you know i think the there's there's two there's two congruences that we see we see a we see an interest in our nuclear capabilities and then we have this really bizarre uh what i don't know if you call it an interest but there seems to be a connection with water and these things have uh have a a tendency to be seen in and around water which which kind of leads to one of the observables that we've had there's five distinct observables that set this technology as i mentioned earlier aside from everything we have in our inventory the first is hypersonic velocity the ability to change directions instantly and and when i say instantly i mean human beings can withstand about nine g forces uh are some of our best aircraft can withstand about 16 g's these things are doing three four 600 g's uh in mid-flight uh then there's hypersonic velocity that is speeds that by definition are mach 5 or above very very fast we do have some technology you mentioned russian hypersonics and things like that you know there are technologies that can go that fast but then again you don't expect a hypersonic aircraft to do a 90 degree turn to put that into context our sr-71 blackbird when at 3 200 miles an hour wants to take a right-hand turn it takes roughly half the state of ohio to do it you don't expect it to just kind of do this and that's precisely what we're seeing and then the third observable is a bit like cloaking we call it low observability but the fourth observable is what what we were talking about that's transmedium travel and water the ability for for an object to fly not only in our atmosphere low and high altitudes but also potentially in a vacuum environment like space and even underwater now we do have vehicles that can do that we have that for example a seaplane a seaplane is is a plane that can fly and it can float on the water but when you look at it it's neither really a very good aircraft or a boat because it's a design compromise and yet what we are seeing are objects that can operate in all these domains or all these environments seemingly without any type of performance compromise and so why are we seeing these things around in and around water is something that we're really we're really kind of scratching our heads with because we've seen these things they've been recorded not only in our atmosphere but there is data to suggest that they have also been tracked by some of our our capabilities underwater as well and being able to perform in ways that frankly exceed anything that we know we on on the planet right now and lou unfortunately we only have time for one more question but um i should make it here to our viewers that you actually signed an nda when you were working on this at the pentagon is there any scenario that would cause you to break that nda if you feel like for example this report obfuscates or peddles disinformation about what the findings actually are here no ma'am i will never violate my don my non-disclosure agreement with the government i still maintain a security clearance and the reason is that not because it's my loyalty to the government because it's my loyalty to the american people that contract i send signed those many years ago was a promise to the american people that i would never violate their trust period and i can't violate their trust in order to gain their trust it doesn't work that way so what i'm going to continue to do is doing what i'm doing now and and pushing for this disclosure pushing for the information that i know to be true because i saw it and so did my colleagues continue to have this conversation the way i can and i'll tell you if it looks like the pentagon continues to obfuscate i have made it clear before that there's a possibility i would consider running for for some sort of congressional office i don't want to do that i'm not a politician i don't have the political savvy but if i have to put my boots back on in order to to make sure this conversation is had and ultimately allow the american people to to to have this conversation amongst themselves then i will do what's necessary short of violating my non-disclosure agreement and violating my trust with the american people well we hope you'll come to us uh if and when you make that decision to to run for office thank you so much for joining us today lou and thanks for your work on all this jackie thank you sincerely to you and your audience you've been wonderful anytime and everyone i'm going to be back at 4 30 for special program life after vaccines the future of travel and live events with wa commissioner kathy engelbert and kayak ceo steve hafner thanks for joining us you

Channel: Washington Post Live

Views: 1,784,514

Rating: 4.5949292 out of 5

Keywords: luis elizondo, jacqueline alemany, ufo report, uap, washington post live, breaking news, breaking news video, interview, live, live event, live speeches, live updates, live video, press conference, real time coverage, video updates, washington post, ufo, ufo national security, aatip, aatip director

Id: GcH5nuqa-0w

Length: 31min 6sec (1866 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 08 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/H3nkTheTank]

Summary so far (English is not my native and information might not be entirely complete , but i'll give it a go):

• Rehearsel of information that what we already know:
• Talks about that UAP's are happing for 70 years
  • During ColdWar a lot of information was being shared between Russia and America about UFO's because Russia also were dealing with the problem. Leaves only China open. From a time perspective it doesn't make any sense that China already had the technologie since the 50's.
• Lue hopes that data will be released so the public can make their own judgement
• Goes off the path: Talks about life is a bit binary (It's black or white etc). The universe is not Binary because there are a lot of possibilities. We just don't know. It could be from outer, inner or de space inbetween. We judge the universe in five fundamental senses. If you can't use senses to look at something, then we don't interract with it. So a lot of things are not sensible (gives example of wifi, ultra violet, etc). Point is, keep all options open.
• Obervations: Convinced that it is technology that is multi generational (beyond next gen technology, something between 50 to 1000 years).
• There is a lot of options, could be extra dimensional in a quantum ( something somethign) sense
• Talks abit about Quantim Physics. Space and time are connected. Can be stretched and compressed. Space and time can be warped by mass and energy. There can be some shortcuts in understanding the universe. Talks about observables again. Lui is carefull about speculation, because we simple don't know yet.
• Lui thinks that the upcomming report is not a substantial report because it is a short time. Also because of covid. Talks about Intelligence failure. Hopes that it is a placeholder report.
• China also started with a department to track UFO, China tries to lead the conversation at the United Nations.
• Concern is that there is a intersection with these UAP's and nuclear technology
  • Same observations have been made overseas
  • Interfered and brought offline nuclear capabalities but also there is data that suggest that these UAP's interfered with other nuclear facilities overseas and turned on these nuclear facilities.
  • There is a really bizar interest with water. Tendency to be seen in and around the water
• Describes movement, Hypersonic velocity, instant manouvering, the amount of G's that are involved with this. There is also something called cloaking and transmedium travel. Can fly in space, air and underwater.
• Lui will never ever violate is NDA with the government. It is his loyalty to the government and to the american people to not violate their trust.

Just to be clear, Lui really sticks with the facts during the interview. I tried to summarize what he said so the information might be a bit distorted

[u/__maddcribbage__]

Ok so this is def all narrative prepping by the Fed to make the government look like they have no idea what this is (despite having known for decades), so it can be "discovered" in the proper channels (think: some NASA discovery) and they don't have to admit to years of lying and all the other baggage they've covered up?

[u/[deleted]]

This needs to be watched by everyone.

E V E R Y O N E.

Say it with me:

👏Non👏Human👏Origin👏

I'm not American but Lue has my vote.

[u/tangled_torus]

Elizondo comes across better in these longer format interviews than in the 3 or 4 minute sound bite interviews, imo.

[u/Oracle16188]

Bottles of alcohol behind Jacqueline when interviewing Lue. Now she's interviewing WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert and Kayak CEO Steve Hafner, and it's gone. Discuss!

[u/tweakingforjesus]

She asked the wrong question about his NDA. These reporters need to start asking if he went before Congress to answer questions, would he about the answer questions about protected material without violating his NDA.

The government has already stated that it is not US technology and not a foreign country. What national security interest could he violate by discussing what he knows?

[u/Ferrisuk]

It’s not US tech.

Does the fact a former counter intelligence agent is beating this drum so loudly come across as suspicious to anyone else?

He was very ambiguous about every other possibility but this he very firmly said was "off the table".

[u/StretchedButWhole]

It's the Washington Post, surely he's going to drop us something juicy?

[u/zoziw]

He can chew up a lot of time when doing these long form mainstream media interviews by going into things like binary perception (in another one he rambled on for a long time about the dynamics of flight).

Edit:

Now he is off on Newton and Einstein.