Office of Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence (OUSD(I))

The Office of Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence (OUSD(I)) is a senior organisational component of the Department of Defense (DoD), responsible for overseeing defence intelligence policy and activities. The Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence position is a Senate-confirmed appointment.⁶ Notable holders of the role include James R. Clapper, who served as undersecretary of defense for intelligence before being asked by President Barack Obama to become Director of National Intelligence.⁵ The office has, in later years, been referred to as the Office of Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security (OUSD(I&S)), reflecting an expanded remit. The office sits within the Office of the Secretary of Defense and exercises authority over a range of subordinate defence intelligence functions.

Luis Elizondo was assigned to OUSD(I) from 2008-09-28 to 2017-10-04.¹ During that period, his documented role was as an action officer in Partner Engagement, focused on information-sharing operations between the DoD, the Department of Homeland Security, and state, local, and tribal law enforcement authorities.^2,7 At the time of his resignation, his formal title was Director, National Programs Special Management Staff, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence.³ Elizondo’s first resignation letter, dated 2017-10-03, was addressed to OUSD(I) and requested that his resignation take effect on 2017-10-04.⁴ He was cleared out of the office on that same day.¹

The question of whether Elizondo held any responsibilities relating to the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) while assigned to OUSD(I) became a matter of sustained public dispute. Pentagon spokesperson Christopher Sherwood told journalist Keith Kloor in 2019-06 that he had consulted OUSD(I) leadership — including individuals present since Elizondo’s arrival — and confirmed that Elizondo had no responsibilities with regard to AATIP.⁸ Separately, Pentagon spokesperson Susan Gough formally stated on 2019-06-14 that Elizondo had no assigned responsibilities for AATIP whilst at OUSD(I).⁹ Sherwood also acknowledged that Elizondo had worked for other organisations within the DoD beyond OUSD(I).¹⁰ The Elizondo Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) Claims Investigation centres substantially on these conflicting characterisations. Elizondo himself reportedly told Garry Reid, who held the position of Director for Defense Intelligence within the office,¹² that nobody at OUSD(I) was cleared for his alleged unidentified aerial threat programme and that he would not discuss it further.¹¹

The circumstances surrounding Elizondo’s departure from OUSD(I) were complicated by a second resignation letter delivered to the office’s Chief of Staff on or about 2017-10-04 — after Elizondo had already departed — by a person other than Elizondo himself.¹⁷ Due to the uncertain provenance of this document, OUSD(I) retained a copy but did not forward it to the Secretary of Defense’s office.¹⁷ The Elizondo Second Resignation Letter (Memorandum for Record) relates to this episode. On 2017-12-15, Garry Reid notified the OUSD(I) Security Officer that Elizondo may have misused government systems and might intend to release US government footage obtained during his employment.¹⁵ Three days later, on 2017-12-18, the office located a classified email generated by Elizondo in August 2017, in which he had requested assistance from a Navy civilian employee to declassify one or more videos.¹⁶ That Navy civilian employee stated he had told Elizondo he was not the declassification release authority and had taken no further action.¹¹ Elizondo has separately alleged, citing a Freedom of Information Act response from the Pentagon, that his electronic files, folders, and emails were deleted by someone at OUSD(I) on the grounds that they had “no historic value”.¹⁸ Sources still within OUSD(I) reportedly informed Elizondo that Garry Reid planned to launch a criminal inquiry involving the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI).¹⁹ Elizondo describes the office under Garry Reid — who had replaced Michael Higgins and was brought from the special operations community¹³ — as having suffered from low morale and poor management, and recounts that he and Jay Stratton attempted to circumvent OUSD(I) by submitting OPLAN Interloper to the Joint Chiefs of Staff via an Alternate Compensatory Control Measures (ACCM) process, though these efforts ultimately did not succeed in bypassing the office’s bureaucracy.¹⁴

In the years following Elizondo’s departure, OUSD(I) — in its later designation as OUSD(I&S) — acquired a formal institutional role in UAP oversight. Congressional legislation in fiscal years 2019 and 2020 required OUSD(I&S) and the intelligence community to establish an interagency task force and develop a plan to investigate unidentified and unexplained airborne activity in sensitive areas.²² The Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF) was subsequently led by the Department of the Navy under OUSD(I&S).²⁶ In November 2021, the Deputy Secretary of Defense directed OUSD(I&S) to establish the Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group (AOIMSG) as the UAPTF’s successor,²³ an organisational step that was publicly announced approximately two days before Thanksgiving 2021.¹³ AOIMSG was itself eventually succeeded by the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO))), established on 2022-07-20. A subsequent evaluation by the Department of Defense (DoD) Inspector General — which included interviews with senior OUSD(I&S) officials and requests for UAP-related organisational data²⁵ — recommended that the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security, in coordination with the AARO Director, issue a DoD policy integrating UAP roles, responsibilities, and coordination procedures into existing intelligence and force protection frameworks.²⁴ OUSD(I&S) agreed with that recommendation, noting that many of the Inspector General’s findings appeared to predate AARO’s establishment.²⁴