YouTube Channel: "British GQ"
Video Title: "Luis Elizondo on unidentified aerial phenomena, extraterrestrials and the Pentagon's UFO programme"

Luis Elizondo on unidentified aerial phenomena, extraterrestrials and the Pentagon's UFO programme
3,583,067 views  Nov 25, 2021

Luis Elizondo ran the Pentagon's secretive UFO/UAP programme for a decade... We had some questions. Early last year, the US government officially acknowledged videos of “unidentified aerial phenomena” filmed by its Navy pilots. Was it evidence of extraterrestrials? Here the former Pentagon intelligence officer in charge of investigating these incidents, reveals (almost) all he knows at GQ Heroes…
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From: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yX6ETCKyPo

Transcript:

what separates these from anything else
that we have in our current inventory is
quite simple there's five observables
that associate when you look at
something as a UAP an identified Arrow
phenomena as being truly unique that's
instantaneous acceleration Hypersonic
velocity low observability trans medium
travel the ability to operate in
multiple environments or domains and
last but not least in in the vacular
would be anti-gravity the ability to fly
with no wings control surfaces uh no
obvious signs of repulsion even frankly
not even a
[Music]
[Music]
cockpit before we begin I'm just going
to bring everybody up to speed on what's
been happening in the news for for the
last few years so last year the Pentagon
made an extraordinary statement they
said that UF are real and it has videos
to prove it it released three pieces of
footage shot from the targeting cameras
of US Navy fighter jets which show close
encounters with fast moving Strang
looking craft that the Navy Pilots later
said defied the known laws of physics
the pentagon's statement which is up
there was just one in a run of
extraordinary recent developments that
have turned UFOs from a punchline into a
serious talking point in May Barack
Obama said said there is footage and
records of objects in the skies that we
don't know exactly what they are and in
June this year the US intelligence
Services released a report to Congress
about the government's work on the UFO
issue so clearly the conversation has
changed radically the US government's
policy used to be to deny and discredit
when it came to UFOs so how did we get
to where we are today well one man who
was instrumental to this is our next
guest Lou alzando uh he is a former
Counter Intelligence agent who from 2010
to 2017 ran the pentagon's secretive $22
million program investigating military
reports of UFOs these days the military
don't call them UFOs because the term
has become so stigmatized they instead
refer to them as uaps standing for
unidentified aerial phenomena so Lou
joined the pentagon's UAP program as a
skeptic but during his time there he
became not only convinced that these
things were real but that they were
interfering with military weapons
platforms and operating in protected
airspace with impunity he also became
convinced that they did not belong to
any Earthly nation state frustrated by
an action on what he saw as a grave
national security threat he turned
whistleblower and spoke to the New York
Times which revealed the existence of
the pentagon's UAP program on its front
page in December 2017 alongside
interviews with pilots who had
encountered these
things and since that 2017 New York
Times expose Lou has been briefing
officials in Washington and working
behind the scenes to compel the
government to firmly establish a more
transparent thorough investigation into
the phenomenon and that's actually
starting to happen the new National
Defense authorization act currently
making its way through Congress requires
that the government sets up a permanent
office to study uaps on a defense
department wide basis so Lou welcome
Charlie than we have a lot to talk about
thank you very much for having me and
thank you folks for being with us here
today we're really looking forward to
this so first things first rationally
there are three options for what these
aircraft are they're either a US
military Black Project they belong to a
foreign government like China or Russia
or are they or they of non-human origin
uh so talk us through why you think the
final option is the most likely sure um
this was actually one of the fundamental
questions we were trying to solve while
in the Pentagon um the first obvious
question is is it one of our secret
Technologies and the answer is quite
succinctly no um and how do we know that
well for several reasons first of all I
had access to to all those programs and
those type of programs you don't
typically uh test these type of secret
aircraft in and around areas where
you're doing active Maneuvers um you you
tend to test them at secret test ranges
like Area 51 one um and uh you certainly
don't endanger uh Pilots lives by
testing this type of secret technology
uh without without coordinating that
through our joint staff so we very
quickly realized it wasn't our
technology the second option as Charlie
you mentioned is is it uh foreign
adversarial technology is it Russian is
it Chinese and of course when you when
you go through the historical
documentation certainly in our country
and this documentation is official
documentation one realizes very quickly
we've been seeing this technology for
decades
and when you compare that to where we
were let's say in the late 1940s and 50s
we were just uh exploring and learning
the secrets of the atom we were
unlocking its secrets we had just
entered the jet age and we hadn't even
been into space and yet these these
Technologies were outperforming anything
and everything that we have uh so if
this was some sort of foreign
adversarial technology that's been
around for 70 years this would be
considered probably the worst
intelligent failure my country has ever
experienced perhaps even eclipsing that
of of 911 on an order of magnitude so
the last option is well if it's not our
technology and it's not some sort of
foreign adversarial technology then then
who's or or what is it and that's where
we are now in the conversation certainly
with our lawmakers and our legislative
branch and our executive branch and so
that's precisely what we're trying to
figure out now is is what exactly are
these if they're not ours
so what's the most
persuasive documented UAP encounter that
you can talk about sure that's first of
all it's a great question it's also a
loaded question because there's a lot I
can't talk about which to me is probably
even more persuasive if you had a chance
to see just just some of this data uh
what I can talk about is probably the
most famous uh case that we had it was
in 2004 it involved the USS Nimitz
carrier strike group this is a
nuclear-powered uh if you will aircraft
carrier along with a fleet of other
vessels uh nuclear powered and in some
cases submarines and so there were doing
what they call workups or they were
practicing before going out on a
deployment and they were out in 2004 in
November uh conducting operations off
the coast of San Diego California and
there you have uh one of the escort
ships with the latest uh spy one radar
capability beginning to pick up some
sort of weird anomaly in fact Not only
was it a the USS Princeton at the time
uh with this brand new radar system
looking at this which one could argue
maybe was a radar glitch but you also
had an E2 Hawkeye that was also in the
air providing Airborne radar and both
are now looking at some sort of object
we'll call it an object coming in from
880,000 Ft and within within less than a
second now hovering 50 F feet over the
water um so so certainly something very
perplexing so perplexing in fact that we
decided to go ahead and launch uh two of
our F-18 um aircraft uh super hornets
and so uh as you had Commander Dave
fraver and uh Commander Alex Dietrich
this is uh Commander Dave fraver by the
way a Top Gun graduate and instructor uh
these people are trained to identify and
and determine the difference between an
s22 a MIG 25 and a F-16 from 20 mi away
and by the way make a decision to to
shoot it down if necessary um so they
get vectored to to the area and the
first thing they notice is some water
roiling on on the ocean and so Dave
decides being being the the kind of
pilot that he is he's going to go in and
take a look at this so he conducts a
very very evasive maneuver to get down
and close uh to what he describes as
this white looks like a Tic Tac
literally like like the breath Min and
it's about 40 ft long there's no windows
no no real wings or control surfaces no
obvious signs of repulsion and yet this
object is witnessed Now by four separate
individuals and two separate aircraft um
bouncing back and forth almost like a
ping pong ball right over the surface of
the water so as he goes down and and to
take a closer look at this all of a
sudden this thing begins to react to
Commander fr's uh evasive maneuvers and
and really as as Commander fraver is
coming in for a better look this thing
begins to maintain its distance and
almost uh parlay if you will uh and keep
a distance from from this aircraft um so
that tells us first of all it's
intelligently controlled and so as he
decides this time okay I'm not getting
I'm not getting anywhere here I'm just
going to go aggressively and go for this
thing Full Throttle goes in and if you
will for the quote unquote kill uh to
see what this thing is and all of a
sudden like that it's gone it absolutely
disappears Over the Horizon with within
within about a second now what's even
more scary which is in about 5 Seconds
afterwards and we we know this
conclusively we did the investigation
this object now is picked up once again
on radar 60 miles away and in fact it is
now at the rendevu point waiting for
them and that rendevu point by the way
is a point that nobody knew other than
the pilots where they were supposed to
be so somehow this not only anticipated
their next move but was able to get
literally 60 miles you can do the
calculations if you want how fast that
is in 5 seconds so something certainly
well beyond our capabilities even today
Hypersonic velocity the instantaneous
acceleration and and whatnot and that's
that's Dave fraver up there that is that
is Commander Dave fraver one of our best
pilots and also I suppose what's been
particularly compelling in the news
stories is there's also these videos um
so I I wonder if we uh in a second can
show the two UAP encounters from 2015
these are the videos that the Pentagon
authenticated as being real last year so
why don't we play those and then you can
tell us what's so incredible about what
we're seeing can we roll the
type D that is a drone
bro there's a whole Fleet of them look
on the
ASA my
gosh they're all going against the wi
the wind's 120 miles
west
dude that's not our LNS though is it
us D well if
there's it's
rotating n
61
got Roger Sho what is that can you
box moving
no I took an auto track oh okay oh my
gosh dud
wow look at the
cry so what's going on there
L well quite a bit actually so in the uh
the first video that you saw there it is
uh known as the gimbal video and because
of the the if you will the orientation
of this object that it is it is is it's
it has when you look look at this video
a couple things to the train dial you'll
begin to notice first of all um is the
the Telemetry that you see on the screen
is Altitude now when an aircraft Banks
90° you hear what they say wow this is
compelling and the thing is rotating
well not only is it rotating but it's
not losing lift so aircraft that have
wings whenever you're going to do a bank
and you're going to turn when you do
that you lose lift and you lose altitude
and yet this is not losing altitude and
as you hear them say it's going 120
knots against the wind right so we're
not talking about a balloon at 25,000
feet we're not talking about a a
quadcopter or a drone and we're not
talking about an aircraft and if you
look at that it doesn't really look like
an aircraft does it it looks looks
peculiar looks almost like a like a top
and then furthermore what you don't see
on the video but you hear in in in the
exasperation of the of the pilots is
that there's a whole Fleet of them and
so what's important to know here it's
sometimes not just what you see on
screen but it's the complete picture it
sometimes it's what you don't see and
also what you can hear and so part of
our investigation was to go talk to the
pilots and say what exactly did you see
right when you said there's a whole
Fleet of them what did they look like
how were they maneuvering what were they
doing right and this is this is probably
one of the the the better videos that
was released to the public that I will
tell you there's a lot more videos that
are in my opinion even far more
compelling they just haven't been
released yet uh because they they still
remain quite quite sensitive classified
to some degree um but that's what you're
seeing in that video there the other one
if you want I'm happy to walk through
that one as well but it's up to you I'm
not sure we have that one here there's
there is a video which is I would say a
bit less uh dramatic because there's no
audio of um of the of the theit
encounter correct isn't that yeah and
what that shows is basically the
instantaneous acceleration if I may I'll
just take 10 seconds
what separates these from anything else
that we have in our current inventory is
quite simple there's five observables
that associate when you look at
something as a UAP an identified Arrow
phenomena as being truly unique that's
instantaneous acceleration Hypersonic
velocity low observability trans medium
travel the ability to operate in
multiple environments or domains and
last but not least in in the vernacular
would be anti-gravity the ability to fly
with no wings control surfaces uh no
obvious signs of propulsion even frankly
not even a cockpit and that's of course
what fraver saw when he was up close
because he was much closer than these
cameras are right that's when alliver
Pilots are surface yeah um so look I
think we all want to know do you think
any government has recovered or crashed
UAP so what I've said for the record uh
which is unfortunately all I I can say
is that it is my uh belief that the
United States is in possession of uh of
exotic material and unfortunately that's
that's that's about all I can I can say
at this time how worried are you about a
foreign adversary uh getting hold of
this or maybe understanding this
technology before the US I think that's
my greatest fear um you know we are a
species that tends to um be violent
towards one another and my job with
National Security uh was to try to
anticipate what the enemy is going to do
uh if there is an adversary that has
this type of Technology the ability to
to operate without impunity in our
controlled us airspace um I think that's
problematic um we spend millions of
dollars ensuring we have what we call
Air domain awareness and control of our
airspace and uh clearly um we don't have
as much control as we we think we
do so you know you were working for the
government for a long time you then
chose to turn whistleblower um were you
worried about repercussion why why
haven't they shut you up
well probably because I'm pretty public
at this point um that's a that's a
multifaceted question that requires
several answers let me let me if I can
be as Frank as possible um there is a
strong undercurrent in our country of uh
of uh individuals in our government
particularly that know the seriousness
of this topic and what I've said before
is this is not a topic that is similar
to let's say fine French wine where the
longer you keep a cork on it the better
it gets um this is a conversation rather
more like uh spoiled vegetables in the
refrigerator and the longer you leave it
there the more it is going to it is
going to smell and so we should probably
begin to address this issue sooner
rather than later because whether or not
these are real you that's no longer Up
For Debate this is this is a fact this
we're here folks uh the question is what
is it where is it from what is it intent
uh and and what can or should we be
doing about it and there was a pretty
extraordinary statement by the serving
administrator of NASA a few days ago
wasn't there do you just want to talk us
through that yeah well um he's one of
many we've had uh now uh former
directors of our Central Intelligence
Agency former directors of National
Intelligence uh former presidents of the
United States uh former and current
members of our Congress both Senate and
the House of Representatives and now uh
our current administrator for NASA all
uh acknowledging the reality that this
is real um again think once you you take
away the the the tin foil notion of tinf
foil hats and and and you know nonsense
like that and we look at this from a
national security perspective we can
start having a fair and rational
conversation without the the associated
stigma and taboo so supposing these are
of non-human origin do you think these
are like drones remotely controlled or
do you think there's something piloting
them well there certainly intelligently
controlled as we saw with Dave fraver
and other examples I can't discuss here
uh where they are reacting to our action
so uh there is a there is a stimulus and
there is certainly a response so uh this
isn't some sort of random atmospheric
anomaly or something like that they are
intelligently controlled the question is
what and who is controlling them and and
that is precisely what we are trying to
figure out today you got any
theories
um you know let me let me let me say one
thing um there have been moments in our
species par moments um In Our Lifetime
not so much but as a species it happens
quite a bit um there are these Paradigm
moments that that push the evolution of
of of our species mankind the first one
perhaps is when we came out of the cave
and we looked at the stars and we
realized our universe our world just got
a lot bigger the second time perhaps is
when when two stones were struck
together created a spark and all of a
sudden we we began to illuminate the the
the the darkness around us the third
time was probably when a couple folks
probably like us were standing on a
beach and someone said you know what I'm
going to sail over the horizon and of
course people said no you don't want to
do that the Earth is flat and there's
sea monsters out there and of course now
we kind of chuckle and look back and and
laugh about it but in reality you know
what there really are sea monsters
they're just called great white sharks
and blue whales and the great squid of
the Pacific and we realized that they're
not really sea monsters they're just
part of nature they're part of our
reality they're part of our Paradigm and
so Perhaps Perhaps this topic maybe
maybe we are just standing at the
precipice of yet another Paradigm moment
for our species maybe this is just
another Beach and we're looking over yet
another Horizon so you said what we saw
there was arguably the least compelling
evidence that you've seen what can you
tell us about the most compelling
evidence you've seen can you describe
any of its characteristics is it is it
pictures is it films is it you know what
kinds of things yes yes and yes it's
videos it's pictures it's it's the the
intelligence reporting um you know
it's quite titillating when we we look
at a a video like this and we say ooh ah
oh but but there's actually a lot more
to it we have hypos spectral technology
we have radar technology we have
capabilities that are airborne
capabilities in low earth orbit
capabilities in high orbit
geosynchronous orbit and when you when
you put all those resources together to
collectively look at the same thing at
the same time at the same place um it
can paint a very compelling picture and
to put that on the back Dr my country
spends billions with a bee billions of
dollars each year investing in just one
of those areas to get a little bit of an
advantage remember I mentioned low
observability as being one of those
characteristics of of UAP well the
stealth technology will spend $2 billion
on a single aircraft just so the radar
cross-section is a little bit less and
yet these things not only are harder to
see with electronical devices and and
radar they're hard to see with the naked
sometimes and they can perform in ways
that we can't they can drop out of
880,000 Ft hover over the water and then
pop right back up again I mean you're
you're talking about the energy
requirements to do that in a in a in a
conservative way um we we still don't
understand we can't do that today so a
lot of people might look at this and say
look if these things were alien why
aren't they landing on the White House
lawn and demanding a meeting with the
president great question so uh let's
let's let's detangle that for a second
um how many times have we watched a
nature show and you look and you see uh
the wilder beast in Africa migrating and
all of a sudden uh a couple uh humans
fly in over a helicopter scare the hell
out of the herd everything goes running
and stampeding uh and all of a sudden we
Dart one and uh we take measurements to
see the health of the herd and the
migratory patterns and the diets and
whatnot and we leave um you know I I I
don't think it's far-fetched to to think
that um some sort of intelligence would
want to be disruptive necessarily um we
don't necessarily behave that way even
as humans so to assume that something's
just going to land on the White House
lawn um I I think I think I'm not sure
that's really I mean look we don't we
don't land right now on the in you know
Red Square by the Kremlin um you just
don't do that you you're sometimes you
want to be
non-disruptive how long do you think
we've been visited for is is this since
it seems like flying sorcer the the idea
of the flying sorcer seems to be a sort
of post-war phenomenon do you think it's
you know the last century or do you
think it goes back further than that
fantastic question let me share with you
an experience that I had at the um in
Rome not too long ago uh I had the honor
and pleasure of sitting down with some
individuals that were out of the Vatican
and there was a scroll uh and in this
scroll it was written in Latin and it
was a communic between a Roman soldier
and a Roman general some 2,000 years ago
and what they described in This communic
was um the the name for the Roman Shield
is eclip means um like Eclipse like a
sun and so they described these flaming
Roman shields in the sky that would
follow them from Battle space to battle
space so it is quite possible we are
dealing with something that could be
could be potentially not necessarily
even from outer space believe it or not
it could be from right here could be
right from this planet and we're just
now at a point where technologically
we're beginning to interact with it I'll
give you another case and point up until
very recently the last 100 years or so
we believed as a species there were only
two types of kingdoms of living
organisms and that was animal and plant
and then about 150 years ago we realized
that fungi was its own kingdom of life
form and about 100 years ago we realized
there were these little microorganisms
that uh someone famously screamed little
beasties little beasties uh and there's
a whole another kingdom of life form
that has been invisible to us uh since
we've been homo sapien sapien and we
just now realize and by the way the
biomass of that one Kingdom alone
outweighs the total biomass of the
animal and plant kingdom put together
and it's been completely invisible to us
so we have to be very careful going down
that road when we say well if it's not
ours and it's not from Earth it must be
from outer space it could be but there's
other options as well now we're almost
out of time but I'd like to have a
couple of questions from the audience
does anyone have a question they'd like
to ask
Lou I'm a Gemini I like long walks on
the beach
[Music]
um anyone at all any hands there we are
yeah um it seems like oh sorry there's a
mic coming for you I
think yeah it seems like
um we start talking about the evidence
of aliens in quotations that people
automatically assume they're coming here
to you you sort of touched on this um
they're automatically coming here to
fight with us to start a war with us to
take over our planet or whatever I'd
just like to hear more about your theory
on um I just touch on whether you think
that is a a
common yeah idea let me see if I if I
capture that so the question is you know
do I think this is a threat and of
course I'm a product of US National
Security so we tend to think everything
is a threat until we're sure it's not
okay let me give you a very quick
analogy here I I think most of us uh
would agree at night before you go to
bed you might lock the front door just
to be safe you probably live in a nice
neighborhood you don't expect anything
bad to happen but just to be safe you
lock the front door and maybe you even
go as far as to lock the window before
you go to bed and you might even turn on
your alarm let's say you wake up one
morning and you come down to have a nice
cup of well I say coffee but here it's
tea right um and you come downstairs and
uh there are muddy bootprints sitting
that are on your on your floor in your
living room floor on the carpet that
weren't there the night before now no
one's been hurt nothing's out of place
nothing's been taken but despite you
locking the doors and the windows and
turning on the alarm there are now muddy
bootprints in your house that were not
there the night before the question is
is that a threat well my response is
that it could be if it wanted to be so
we should probably figure out who's
leaving the bootprints now there is a
fundamental difference between and I
don't want to fearmonger I'm not saying
these things are hostile intent threat
and hostile intent can be two entirely
different things hostile intent is the
willful uh if you will desire to to to
to to create harm whereas threat you can
have involuntary threats you can have uh
environmental threats if I if I get on
an airplane there's no threat but if I
get to the back of the engine of that
same airplane while it's throttling up
there's definitely a threat there's a
biological threat to me right I can I'm
going to get burned I might lose my
hearing so um we're still trying to
determine that that's a great
question literally got 10 seconds so
very quick question very quick answer
not to be factious but the fact that we
keep sending billionaires to space do
you feel there's any
connection
um for a friend well sure um the fact
that we've been seeing these at least in
my country since the late 1940s what you
see is described as a Tic Tac was
described in the 60s as a white flying
throat lozen in the ' 50s was described
as a white flying butane tank um we're
it's clear we're dealing with the same
technology and I'm not aware of any
billionaires that would have that type
of Technology again temporally you have
to look at this from a Time perspective
way back then um it it just doesn't make
sense sorry that we have to wrap this up
Lou thank you very much indeed my
pleasure