Imminent: Inside the Pentagon's Hunt for UFOs

Elizondo joined the US Army in his twenties. He worked in military intelligence and did three combat tours in Afghanistan and the Middle East. In 2008, he returned to America to work with the Department of Defense (DoD) to help facilitate information sharing across government agencies. In early 2009, he was approached by Jay Stratton and Rosemary Caine (a pseudonym) about a “matter of national security” (6). Over a series of secretive meetings, Elizondo was introduced to the world of the Advanced Aerospace Weapon Systems Applications Program (AAWSAP), which would later become the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP). When Elizondo met a rocket scientist named Dr. James “Jim” Lacatski, he learned that AAWSAP investigated UAP, otherwise known as unidentified flying objects (UFOs). Elizondo was shocked but intrigued as Lacatski explained that many of the strange encounters studied by the AAWSAP team defied the conventional human understanding of physics. To work with AAWSAP, Lacatski warned, Elizondo would have to abandon all his preconceived notions.

Mulling over the offer, Elizondo spoke to his friend and colleague John Robert. John admitted that he recommended Elizondo for the position due to another project in Elizondo’s past, which is not specified at this time. Elizondo reflected on the offer. He had a good job already, and this new position would require more work. He worried that he would encounter more of the government bureaucracy that he loathed so much. Nevertheless, he was intrigued by the program. AAWSAP had support from a number of politicians, mostly notably former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada. For many years, Reid, a Democrat, had supported research into UAP and other phenomena. He was also “senator of the state that [houses] Area 51” (12), a site long associated with the history of UFO study in America. Elizondo accepted the offer to join AAWSAP.

Stratton and Lacatski invited Elizondo to meet the rest of the team. They met at a hotel, where they were joined by the billionaire hotelier, developer, and aerospace manager Robert “Bob” Bigelow, who had a longstanding “obsession with UAP and paranormal occurrences” (13). Bigelow used his fortune to operate the National Institute for Discovery Science to investigate such matters, while his firm—Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies—was the prime contractor for AAWSAP. Elizondo also met Harold “Hal” Puthoff, a “legendary figure in government and intel community research circles” (14), who would help to guide Elizondo through the more rigorous science of UAP research.

Present at the dinner was Paulo Roberto Yog de Miranda Uchôa, a general who worked for the Brazilian Center for UAP Studies. He operated “a massive archive associated with Brazil’s most disturbing UAP encounters” (15). Since the 1970s, Elizondo learned, people in coastal villages in Brazil had reported seeing strange lights and aircraft. These appeared as yellow orbs; they caused terror and physical harm to the witnesses. Researchers have suggested that 371 locations across Brazil have been frequented by these UAP. In particular, the small coastal island of Colares has become famous for a string of UAP encounters. Listening to General Uchôa, Elizondo learned of what amounted to “an airborne alien invasion” by technology that matched nothing in the arsenals of the United States, the Soviet Union, or any other nation on Earth (17).

Elizondo was skeptical, but the evidence from Colares was very convincing. Animals were killed, people were hurt, and witnesses described seeing two types of attackers: pale, tall humanoids and shorter beings with large heads and frail bodies. These two types of aliens, Elizondo notes, fit the descriptions of “the so-called Nordics and Grays” (18), which have been described in many UAP encounters around the world. Mention of such powerful machines and weapons reminded Elizondo of an incident in Kuwait in 2003. He was summoned to a site where he discovered a hole burned through two M1 battle tanks. No weapon in the world, Elizondo believed, could damage such a tank in such a way. He never received an explanation of what happened to these tanks, but a local goat herder mentioned seeing bright lights, just like those described by witnesses in Colares. Uchôa explained that the Brazilian government covered up the reports from Colares. Elizondo left the meeting with a newfound fear of “the highly secretive cold war that has been playing out globally since 1947” (21). He feared the threat that such weapons could pose to the United States.

After describing this “life-changing meeting” (22), Elizondo reflects on his life. He remembers joining the Army in 1995. As a lost and angry young man, he felt that the Army was his only option. In high school, he had been part of the Army’s Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC) program. Elizondo praises the JROTC, as it helped him find friends and take pride in himself. At the time he joined the Army, he was in a relationship with his first long-term girlfriend, Jennifer, who would later become his wife. She worked as a cocktail waitress in the same bar where Elizondo was working as a bouncer. He enjoyed his work as a bouncer, as he could take on the bullies who had plagued him for much of his life.

Elizondo also reflects on his turbulent youth. His father, Luis D. Elizondo III, was a Cuban national who had originally been part of the Cuban Revolution, fighting alongside Fidel Castro against the dictator Fulgencio Batista. Post-Revolution, however, Castro revealed his “true colors” (24), and Elizondo’s father was thrown in jail. Afterward, he fled to the United States and worked from afar to depose Castro, even taking part in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. While living in the United States, Elizondo’s father immersed his son in military tactics and training. Elizondo learned to assemble and fire guns, build bombs, and even fly a plane. During this whole time, his father was obsessed with the idea of reinvading Cuba, even as he worked in several businesses. Elizondo’s mother, Janise, was “a professional model and a onetime Playboy bunny” (27). She was from a multi-ethnic background but chose to raise Elizondo as Jewish. Elizondo remembers his father’s fierce temper, especially when confronting the bullies who tormented Elizondo. His parents divorced when he was 10, and both struggled through a variety of jobs in a variety of locations as they tried to put their lives back together. JROTC had helped Elizondo channel the anger from his parents’ divorce and his tempestuous youth into something productive. He joined the Army, hoping for more of the same.

Elizondo trained as a counterintelligence special agent. He was deployed abroad while Jennifer, now married to Elizondo and expecting their first child, remained in the United States. Elizondo recalls his strange experiences working in security and counterintelligence for the Army. In particular, he remembers meeting Eugene Lessman, who recruited Elizondo for the Stargate program, a team of “government-trained psychics” who attempted to spy on America’s Cold War adversaries through “remote viewing,” or mental telepathy (33). The results, Elizondo claims, “seemed almost magical” (34). Elizondo was briefly trained in this program until Stargate was abandoned, though he would often later use the techniques that he was taught. Elizondo wonders whether paranormal techniques such as remote viewing may be vestiges of prehistoric humanity—forms of communication that existed before spoken language. He criticizes the “closed-minded officials” who shut the program down and remembers how politicians would approach him to accuse him of working for both God and the devil (38).

Elizondo started his new job at AAWSAP/AATIP. He received his first briefings in a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF), a sealed room designed to prevent any recording from the outside and in which personal electronics are banned. The program primarily investigated UAP and often worked with a private group funded by Bob Bigelow at Skinwalker Ranch, a sprawling Utah property steeped in paranormal folklore. Elizondo learned that the United States government had spent years “studying and analyzing anomalous activity that [borders] on paranormal” (40). Elizondo familiarized himself with their work by studying old, classified case files and spending time with Puthoff. He also learned from Eric Davies, an astrophysicist best known as a co-author of the infamous Wilson/Davies memo, a leaked document pertaining to UAP that caused a sensation by claiming that the government had paid private companies to salvage and reverse engineer UAPs that had crashed in the US. These companies, Elizondo claims, may still be in possession of these materials, which could include vehicles or even biological remains. The memo puts Elizondo in mind of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s farewell speech, in which he warned of the dangers of the military-industrial complex.

Puthoff gave Elizondo a UAP history lesson, stretching back to the Roswell incident in 1947. Contrary to the government’s statements, Puthoff said, four nonhuman bodies were found at the site. Not every president is told the truth about UAP, Puthoff said, since presidents are temporary and politically motivated. Elizondo explains that UAP incidents increased dramatically in the mid-20th century as nuclear weapons and nuclear power generation became prevalent. Roswell provided the government with a playbook for how to cover up these events: deny everything, make counter accusations, retrieve any crashed materials and send them to undisclosed locations, reverse engineer alien technology, intimidate and discredit witnesses, stigmatize any abductees or outside researchers, and use the Espionage Act to threaten everyone into silence. Elizondo understands the need for secrecy during the Cold War, but he believes that secrecy should be preserved only as long as absolutely necessary. Left alone too long, he believes, secrets will begin to fester. If the public knew about UAP, then more funding and research would be made available.

Elizondo cites examples of UAP incidents. These include a police officer named Lonnie Zamora witnessing a large egg or Tic Tac-shaped object in the sky in New Mexico in 1964. In March 1952, two fiery discs were seen near uranium mines in the Belgian Congo. In July 1952, multiple UAP flew close to the White House. In October 1954, fans at a soccer match in Florence, Italy, spotted a “smooth, white, cigar- or egg-shaped vehicle” above the stadium (51). Typically, Elizondo notes, these UAP defy the common understanding of aircraft maneuverability and physics. Other incidents in 1966, 1967, 1971, 1980, 1982, 1981, and 1988 are listed. Often, UAP are spotted near large bodies of water or nuclear-related facilities, such as uranium mines, power plants, or weapons testing sites. These vehicles are often so fast and so maneuverable, Elizondo notes, that they appear to move faster than the speed of light, defying the laws of physics as humanity understands them. Elizondo refers to similar UAP research from nations around the world, including Vatican City. He claims that “Catholicism and now even Islam are beginning to prepare the public for the long-understood idea that humankind is not alone” (58).

In spite of the evidence that Elizondo discovered in the government files, he felt as though AAWSAP was working at cross purposes with the Legacy Program, a group within the government that had long been tasked with collecting information about UAP but that seemed determined not to share their discoveries with anyone else, even those within the government. By the time Elizondo began working with AAWSAP, the Legacy Program and government bureaucrats seemed determined to file away or ignore the truth. Elizondo began to worry that higher-ups would shut down Jim Lacatski and the AAWSAP.

Returning to the Lonnie Zamora incident, Elizondo describes the markings that Zamora glimpsed on the side of the egg-shaped object. Other markings have been reported, often likened to hieroglyphics, cuneiform, or ancient Hebrew. Elizondo references the description of the hierarchy of angels in the Book of Enoch, suggesting that religious works such as this can be very similar to modern UAP witness accounts. Myths and stories from around the world mention watchers, angels, and other beings that could be read as aliens. Religion, he suggests, is humanity’s attempt to explain phenomena that can’t be explained rationally in a pre-science era. When Lacatski began to investigate connections between aliens and religion, however, Elizondo felt that they were introducing an unnecessary obstacle in their quest to convey the truth about UAP to the public.