Profile · United States
Luis Elizondo
Whistleblower Former AATIP Director Author 🇺🇸 United States
In Brief
Luis "Lue" Elizondo is a former United States intelligence official whose twenty-two-year federal career spanned the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation counter-intelligence section, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and ultimately the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence at the Pentagon. He has stated publicly that he served as director of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program from 2010 until his resignation in October 2017.
His resignation letter became part of the foundational record for the 16 December 2017 New York Times article that revealed AATIP's existence publicly and opened the post-2017 disclosure cycle. He is the author of Imminent: Inside the Pentagon's Hunt for UFOs (William Morrow, August 2024) and provided sworn testimony before the House Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets on 13 November 2024.
Notable Statement
"I resigned because I could not in good conscience continue serving in a position where the seriousness of the threat was not being matched by the seriousness of the response inside the Pentagon."
Where to Find Them
In the Archive
Editorial note. This profile is the short-card form for the Disclosure Network. The full life and career record, the AATIP programme lineage, and the five-observables framework live on the biography page. The archive takes no position on the substance of the claims, only documents that they were placed in the public record under oath and in published memoir. The Department of Defense's rejection of the substantive claims through AARO's Volume I findings is documented on the United States country page. If anything needs correcting, please get in touch.
