James Mattis served as United States Secretary of Defense, having accepted the position in the incoming administration of Donald Trump.1 Within the United States Department of Defense (DoD), he was referred to by the title SECDEF,2 and was known by the nicknames “Mad Dog” and, among friends, “Chaos”.3
Luis Elizondo first met Mattis in 2001 in Kandahar Afghanistan,4 during Operation Enduring Freedom, when Mattis was Marine Expeditionary Unit Commander.5 Elizondo introduced Mattis to John Robert, who became one of Mattis’s key aides on the ground,6 and Elizondo himself became one of Mattis’s off-the-books intelligence advisors,7 working alongside Robert to ensure Mattis had the information needed to make decisions.8 During this period, Mattis commanded troops in a firefight in which his convoy of amphibious Light Armored Vehicles (LAV) responded to rescue pinned-down soldiers,9 the convoy equipped with a 25 mm Bushmaster gun.10 Elizondo has said he credits Mattis with saving many lives, including his own,11 and considers him one of only five people on the planet he would follow into war.12 Elizondo has also described Mattis as a man who wants more information rather than less.13
After Mattis became Secretary of Defense, Elizondo said he had considered seeking a letter from the Secretary of Defense to compel an aerospace firm to grant access to what he described as nonhuman-origin materials.14 He later wanted a letter from Mattis specifically to secure access to the Legacy Program’s Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) materials,15 and sought Mattis’s clarity, as Secretary of Defense, on UAP incursions and range-safety issues.16 Elizondo directed the Guantanamo Bay Cuba portfolio at the time, which gave him routine access to the Secretary of Defense’s senior staff but not to Mattis himself or his direct minders.17 In a 2020-05-09 interview with Glen Beck, transcribed by Joe Murgia, Christopher K. Mellon said that FA-18 Super Hornet pilots had testified about the Tic Tac UFO before very senior DoD staff in Mattis’s suite.18
Reaching Mattis directly proved difficult. A Secretary of Defense liaison handling Elizondo’s efforts deferred to a senior The White House advisor, Brad Byers, and a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) liaison officer, Shari Smith.19 Byers was reluctant to brief Mattis until the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence (OUSDI) had a permanent, Senate-confirmed appointee, the post having been filled only on an acting basis since Michael Vickers departed,20 and Byers and Smith did not want to put Mattis in a position where the press could ask him directly whether he had been briefed on UAP.21 Mellon worked to help Elizondo secure an audience with the Secretary of Defense22 and was friends with two people who worked directly with Mattis on a near-daily basis.23 Elizondo authorised Mellon to share his name with senior officials who could help Jay Stratton and Elizondo reach Mattis.24 Despite this effort, nothing about the UAP briefing initiative reached Mattis.25 Elizondo has said he believed that personally calling Mattis to bypass the chain of command would have been insubordinate, given Mattis’s emphasis on strengthening chain-of-command authority during the Trump administration,26 and that his underlying aim was to save Mattis.27
On 2017-10-04, Elizondo submitted a formal resignation letter addressed directly to Mattis, delivering a paper copy to a colleague for the secretary’s office.28 He wrote two resignation letters that day: one for his chain of command, and one addressed directly to Mattis,29 deliberately naming Mattis as recipient so that no one within the USA, Washington DC, Pentagon would be able to intercept it.30 The letter survives in the knowledge graph as the Luis Elizondo resignation letter to James Mattis (2017-10-04), also catalogued as the Luis Elizondo resignation letter to Jim Mattis (2017-10-04); Elizondo later provided reporters with a copy bearing the apparent seal of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense.31 In it, Elizondo wrote that there remained a vital need to ascertain the capability and intent of unusual aerial phenomena for the benefit of the armed forces and the nation,32 and asked why more time and effort was not being spent on the issue.33 A separate resignation memo Elizondo addressed to Mattis highlighted the urgent need to address UAP as it related to US national security and nuclear weapons and technology.34
According to Elizondo, aides told Mattis at the Pentagon’s Christmas party that The New York Times was preparing a front-page Sunday story reporting a secret DoD programme investigating UAP and asking why Elizondo had resigned.35 Elizondo has said Mattis was surprised, not having previously known of the resignation two months earlier,36 and that Garry Reid had withheld it from him, hoping he would never need to reveal it.37 Mattis resigned as Secretary of Defense in January 2019 amid differences with the Trump administration.38 Elizondo has said that after Mattis left The Pentagon, the narrative around the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) was reframed to portray him as a fabricator, and that the Pentagon kept giving false information about his employment record.39