Imminent: Inside the Pentagon's Hunt for UFOs — Chapter 2 (image only)

Imminent: Inside the Pentagon’s Hunt for UFOs is a memoir by Luis Elizondo, published in 2024 by William Morrow. The record captured here covers the book as image-only pages rather than extracted text, encompassing the front matter, foreword, author’s note, introduction, and the first eighteen or so chapters, along with appendix material and photo captions. A disclaimer reproduced within the source states that public-release clearance by the Department of Defense does not imply endorsement or factual accuracy of its contents.¹ The volume contains 25 chapters together with acknowledgements, an appendix, an index, a photo section, and an about-the-author section.² Elizondo dedicated the book to his wife Elizondo Jennifer (wife) and daughters Taylor Elizondo and Alex Elizondo (daughter).

The foreword, dated 2024-05-16, was written by Christopher K. Mellon, who describes himself as a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and former Minority Staff Director of the Senate Intelligence Committee.^3,16 Mellon opens by asserting that Elizondo played a central and indispensable role in changing how humanity views Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena.⁴ He describes the environment Elizondo operated in: from 1970 to 2017 the US Air Force maintained that no UFO had ever indicated a threat to national security or technology beyond present knowledge, a position unchanged since the closure of Project Blue Book, and a climate of hostility traceable to the CIA’s Robertson Panel, which Mellon says advised enlisting the Walt Disney Company and mass media in a campaign to debunk UAP reports.^5,6,7 An Air Force-funded study at the University of Colorado chaired by physicist Edward Condon concluded the topic was devoid of scientific merit and provided the Air Force the excuse it sought to shut down Project Blue Book.⁷ Mellon was serving as an unpaid consultant for the Office of Naval Intelligence in 2017 when mutual CIA friend Jim Semivan introduced him to Elizondo, and the two met in Elizondo’s Pentagon office.^8,9 There Elizondo presented what Mellon describes as incontrovertible evidence that unidentified aircraft lacking discernible markings or means of propulsion were routinely violating sensitive military airspace.¹⁰ Mellon recounts detail from the 2004 Nimitz UAP Encounter: the USS Princeton detected objects descending from low earth orbit, dropping to approximately 6,000 metres altitude before instantaneously accelerating,¹¹ and Commander David Fravor observed from his F/A-18 a craft approximately 14.6 metres long, wingless, and white, which he described as “not from this world” — a sighting corroborated by six naval aviators, multiple radar platforms, and an advanced infrared targeting system.^12,13 Mellon also describes the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP) as having been funded with 22 million US dollars earmarked by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in 2008, yet notes that the Department of Defense worked to kill it at the earliest opportunity.^14,15

The author’s note, dated April 2024, explains that Elizondo chose the title Imminent because he views the reality of UAP as something now upon humanity rather than still approaching.^17,18 The introduction establishes Elizondo’s central claims: that he joined the Pentagon in late 2008 and was shortly recruited into a highly sensitive programme investigating UAP,¹⁹ and that the craft he studied are not made by humans and that humanity is not the only intelligent life in the universe.²⁰ Chapter 2 of the book is titled “Colares”, chapter 7 “The Tic Tac”, and chapter 15 “USS Roosevelt”, signalling the case studies that structure the memoir’s narrative arc.²¹

Chapters 1 and 2 describe Elizondo’s recruitment into the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP). In early 2009, Jay Stratton and a colleague visited his office to recruit him for a programme at the Defense Intelligence Agency, which Stratton described as the AAWSAP that would later become AATIP.^22,23 Elizondo was then taken to meet James Lacatski, whom he describes as one of the US government’s top rocket scientists holding a doctorate in engineering.²⁴ The programme enjoyed the support of DIA Director Lieutenant General Michael D. Maples and was funded through the efforts of senators Harry Reid, Ted Stevens, and Daniel K. Inouye.²⁵ After accepting the role, Elizondo attended a dinner at a hotel in Roslyn Virginia where Robert Bigelow was introduced as the prime AAWSAP contractor through his firm Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies.²⁶ Harold E. Puthoff also attended as chief scientist; he had earned his PhD from Stanford University in 1967 and had previously managed the CIA’s Stargate Program.²⁷ The dinner also included Brazilian General Paulo Roberto Uchôa and his daughter; his father Alfredo Moacyr Uchôa had founded the Brazilian Center for UAP Studies in the 1970s.²⁸

Chapter 2 covers the Colares Incidents in detail. UAP reported along the coast of northeastern Brazil during the mid-1970s ranged in size from baseball-sized orbs to craft described as large enough to transport a city’s population, in shapes including discs, spheres, triangles, and cylinders.²⁹ In 1977 the intelligence branch of the Brazilian Air Force sent twenty investigators and physicians to Colares Brazil under Lieutenant Colonel Uyrange Hollanda, who captured footage and hundreds of photographs — one craft estimated at approximately ninety metres long.³⁰ Dr. Wellaide Cecim Carvalho treated approximately forty victims that year; twenty-three had burns featuring two central puncture wounds, and all tested had low haemoglobin levels.³¹ Researcher Robert Pratt interviewed 514 witnesses, and Jacques Vallée independently verified the incidents; the total evidence base runs to more than 3,500 case files.³² Brazilian officials subsequently shut down the investigation, classified the files until the 1990s, and Hollanda died of apparent suicide shortly after their release.³³ The Chupa-Chupa Phenomenon described by witnesses — beams of light that burned or incapacitated victims — drew comparisons, within the AAWSAP analysis, to UAP Biological Effects documented elsewhere.

Later chapters recorded in this source detail the AATIP UAP Six Observables framework. Elizondo identifies five primary performance characteristics — hypersonic velocity, Instantaneous Acceleration, Low Observability, Transmedium Travel, and Anti-Gravity Propulsion — and adds a sixth, biological effects, which he states had not been publicly discussed by the US government at the time of writing.^34,35 In a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) briefing, Puthoff then proposed that all six observables could be explained by a single technology: the warping of space-time in a localised bubble around a craft, consistent with Albert Einstein’s general relativity and related to concepts including Warp Drive, Zero-Point Energy, and Space-Time Warping.³⁶ The source also documents Elizondo’s formal resignation on 2017-10-04, with his letter addressed directly to Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis citing opposition within the Department to further UAP research despite overwhelming evidence.³⁷ On 2017-12-16 the The New York Times broke the AATIP story, followed immediately by Politico and other outlets, catalysing the public phase of the UAP disclosure campaign that Elizondo and Christopher K. Mellon had planned in the event of his resignation.³⁸ The Gimbal Video, Go-Fast Video, and FLIR1 Video were formally cleared for unlimited public distribution via a DoD Form 1910 submission Elizondo made before leaving the Pentagon, and these videos became central exhibits in subsequent congressional engagement and the eventual passage of the UAP Disclosure Act.