The Media Loves This UFO Expert Who Says He Worked for an Obscure Pentagon Program. Did He?

“The Media Loves This UFO Expert Who Says He Worked for an Obscure Pentagon Program. Did He?” is an investigative article by Keith Kloor, published on 2019-06-01 in advance of the History Channel premiere of Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation. The show opened with a 2017 headline from The New York Times about the Pentagon’s UFO programme¹ and its narrator declared that the 2017 NYT Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) Story Publication had “shocked the world” and that Luis Elizondo had secretly run the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) for eight years.² The programme follows Elizondo as he re-investigates UFO incidents he says he learned of while heading AATIP at the Pentagon,³ and portrays him as having quit because he was frustrated by what he described as a cover-up.⁴

The 2019 Elizondo AATIP Credibility Controversy is the central subject of Kloor’s reporting. Kloor states that he found no discernible evidence that Elizondo ever worked for a government UFO programme, much less led one.⁵ Pentagon Public Affairs spokesperson Christopher Sherwood confirmed to Kloor that AATIP existed and did pursue research into unidentified aerial phenomena,⁶ but stated that Elizondo “had no responsibilities with regard to the AATIP program” while working in the Office of Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence (OUSD(I)) up to his resignation on 2017-10-04.⁷ Sherwood confirmed he had consulted with OUSD(I) leadership who remained in post from the period when Elizondo started working there.²³ He also acknowledged that Elizondo had worked for other organisations within the Department of Defense (DoD) besides OUSD(I).²⁴

The only official confirmation Kloor could locate asserting that Elizondo led AATIP was a 2017-12 article in Politico by Bryan Bender, in which Dana White, then serving as Pentagon spokesperson and a Trump administration political appointee, confirmed to Bender that the programme existed and was run by Elizondo.¹⁰¹¹ However, White subsequently resigned from the Pentagon amid an internal investigation into charges of misconduct,¹³ and Sherwood told Kloor he could not confirm her statement.¹² Kari DeLonge, a public relations representative for To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science, had written in the Greenewald–Kari DeLonge Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) Email Exchange — initiated by UFO researcher John Greenewald Jr. — that Elizondo took over AATIP as Director in 2010 and ran it from the Office of the Secretary of Defense.⁸ Kari DeLonge did not respond to multiple requests for comment from Kloor,⁵³ and Tom DeLonge, co-founder and interim chief executive of To the Stars Academy, is listed as executive producer of Unidentified.^N

Kloor examines the documentary record Elizondo has made available. The Elizondo Resignation Letter, dated 2017-10-04 and addressed to then-Defence Secretary Jim Mattis, bears the apparent seal of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense and alludes to internal Pentagon opposition to investigating UFOs that Elizondo wrote had posed an “existential threat to our national security."²¹ The letter does not, however, mention AATIP by name or describe Elizondo’s role as its director.²² Kloor also observes that although Elizondo provided reporters with DoD performance evaluations and other materials,⁵⁵ he had not supplied any memorandums, emails about deliverables, or paperwork directly connecting him to AATIP.²⁰ Elizondo arranged for the Pentagon to release cockpit camera videos from F-18 fighter jets shortly before he resigned,¹⁴ and at the Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) Conference 2018-07 Elizondo Talk told the audience that no paper trail for the programme would be found.¹⁶ By 2018, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests seeking details of AATIP and the scope of Elizondo’s role were returning nothing.¹⁵

The article also scrutinises the media ecosystem surrounding Elizondo and To the Stars Academy. Christopher K. Mellon, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence and the company’s national security affairs adviser, appeared on Fox News’s Fox and Friends days before the Unidentified Season 1 Premiere 2019, asserting that UFOs exist and raising questions about their origin and technology.²⁸ Kloor notes that Fox News did not disclose Mellon’s affiliation with To the Stars Academy or that Unidentified was produced by the same company.²⁹ Las Vegas television journalist George Knapp, who received unofficial AATIP documents and had been a vocal defender of Elizondo and DeLonge,¹⁷ appeared in the first episode of the show. Kloor reports that Knapp had purchased stock in To the Stars Academy without always disclosing this to his audience;¹⁸ in the Knapp George TTSA Stock Purchase Knapp acknowledged to The Intercept buying 400 shares in 2018, describing it as support for the company’s work rather than an investment.¹⁹ On The New York Times podcast NYT The Daily Podcast, Pentagon correspondent Helene Cooper described Elizondo in the NYT Daily Podcast Elizondo Cooper Discussion 2017 as a “spooky, secretive guy” but “completely credible,"²⁵ and said she believed him after he showed her documents, pictures, and military videos during their meeting.²⁶ Kloor notes that one of the three reporters who shared bylines on the 2017 NYT Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) Story Publication was freelancer Leslie Kean, who had previously written that she was privileged to welcome Mellon into the UFO organisation to which she belonged. The Securities and Exchange Commission filing for To the Stars Academy, cited in the article, classifies the company as a “Motion Picture & Video Tape Production” concern rather than a scientific research body.²⁷