Luis Elizondo

Government resignation In late 2017, Elizondo resigned to protest what he characterized as "excessive secrecy and internal opposition". The Times story also publicized the existence of AATIP. Most of the videos had terrestrial explanations; according to The Guardian mental health reporter Daniel Lavelle, one, referred to as "Go Fast" as it purportedly exhibited unusual speed, "required grade-school geometry to figure out that it wasn't anything special or even going fast". NASA's own assessment of the video concluded that parallex had created a deceptive appearance of speed. In 2020, Pentagon spokesperson Susan Gough told Popular Mechanics that "The videos were not cleared for general public release because DOPSR (the Defense Office of Prepublication and Security Review) did not receive final approval from Navy".

To the Stars Academy of Arts and Sciences After resigning from the government, Elizondo joined To the Stars Academy of Arts and Sciences (TTSA). Elizondo along with Christopher Mellon left TTSA in late 2020 to focus on government lobbying for UFO transparency.

Subsequent UFO-related activity In a 2021 interview with GQ, Elizondo stated that UFOs/UAPs were "just as likely" to have originated from outer space, as from another dimension, and they might use hydrogen found in water to "warp space time", though he said "I also think it’s possible that [UFOs/UAPs are] something that has been on Earth for a very long time." According to The Guardian'''s Daniel Lavelle, Elizondo's analysis jumps "to the most far-fetched hypothesis, presenting it as if they had eliminated all prosaic possibilities".

In November 2024 Elizondo testified before a joint hearing of United States House Oversight Subcommittee on National Security entitled "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth" where he claimed the government has conducted secret retrievals of UFOs and alien bodies. Elizondo's claims have been criticized as lacking direct evidence, and a statement from a Pentagon spokesperson said the department “has not found any verifiable evidence that any UAP observation represented extraterrestrial activity nor has the department discovered any verifiable information to substantiate claims that any programs regarding the possession or reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial materials have existed in the past or exist currently”.

Elizondo is a research affiliate to The Galileo Project. In 2023, Art Levine reported that both Elizondo and Mellon had lobbied in support of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022, which included a provision to investigate UFO-related topics and to create the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office. Several hours later, in response to the claim, FBI special agents sealed and searched Elizondo's former office but found nothing of the nature he'd described. Subsequent research by John Greenewald and others found that the image was actually taken more than 400 miles away from the embassy, that it had first appeared on a Facebook group in 2023, and that it was a photo of a light fixture reflected in a window.

In May 2025, at a hearing on UFOs sponsored by the UAP Disclosure Fund, according to Futurism Elizondo "showed off a peculiar image of what appeared to be a gigantic, disc-shaped object floating hundreds of feet above the ground," described by Elizondo as "potentially anywhere between 600 and 1,000 feet in diameter ... it's a lenticular object, and it is silver". Mick West agreed with analysis of commenters on Reddit's UFO community that the object was actually an irrigation circle.

Elizondo claims to posses extraordinary powers, such as psychic abilities.

Work and livelihood Since leaving government employment, Elizondo earns money through UFO-themed book and TV deals; according to The Guardian mental health reporter Daniel Lavelle, he enjoys "a loyal cult following on the internet, lapping up his every word and attacking anyone who doubts him".

Publications Imminent: Inside the Pentagon's Hunt for UFOs Elizondo's memoir, Imminent: Inside the Pentagon’s Hunt for UFOs, was published in August 2024 and debuted at number one on The New York Times Best Seller list. In the book, Elizondo states that late in his military and intelligence career, he was recruited by Pentagon officials to manage security and counterintelligence for a deeply classified UFO-related research program. In the book, Elizondo claims that four non-human bodies were recovered from Roswell.

In his memoir, Elizondo claims that a UFO crash retrieval program has been operating in secret for "decades" administrated by "a supersecret umbrella group made up of government officials working with defense and aerospace contractors", and that "technology and biological remains" of extraterrestrial origin have been retrieved from these crashes.

Reckoning: The Unspoken Truth about UFOs and the Urgency of Now Elizondo's planned second book, Reckoning: The Unspoken Truth about UFOs and the Urgency of Now, is scheduled for release in August 2026, according to publisher HarperCollins. The book is to be released by HarperCollins' Mudlark imprint,