The former chief of a secretive Pentagon UFO program has signed a deal for a tell-all on their mysterious and controversial work, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Luis Elizondo, who headed the Department of Defense’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program’s effort to study UFOs around the world, signed a book deal with William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins, after a competitive bidding war, according to THR.
The memoir "promises to reveal shocking never-before-shared details regarding what Elizondo has learned about UFOs and the profound implications for humanity, all of which will escalate what is already a hot-topic globally," the publisher promises, the news outlet reported.
Elizondo appeared on CBS’ "60 Minutes" in May during a segment on the UFO phenomena that racked up 10 million views on YouTube, making it the show’s fourth most-watched segment on the streaming service, the news outlet reported.
"What is true, and I’m actually being serious here, is that there are, there’s footage and records of objects in the skies, that we don’t know exactly what they are," former President Barack Obama told "The Late Late Show" the same month.
"We can’t explain how they moved, their trajectory. They did not have an easily explainable pattern. And so, you know, I think that people still take seriously trying to investigate and figure out what that is."
The Pentagon in June released a report on UFOs — now dubbed as Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, or UAP — that contained limited information about the task force’s findings.
The report said defense and intelligence analysts lack sufficient data to determine the nature of mysterious flying objects observed by military pilots, including whether they are advanced earthly technologies, atmospherics, or of an extraterrestrial nature.
Submitted to Congress and released to the public, the report encompasses 144 observations of UAP dating back to 2004. It was issued by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in conjunction with a U.S. Navy-led UAP task force.
"UAP clearly pose a safety of flight issue and may pose a challenge to U.S. national security," the report stated, adding that the phenomena "probably lack a single explanation."
In a statement to THR, Elizondo said Americans "now know a small portion of what I and my colleagues in the Pentagon have been privy to: That these UAP (unidentified aerial phenomenon) are not secret U.S. technology, that they do not seem to belong to any known allies or adversaries and that our intelligence services have yet to identify a terrestrial explanation for these extraordinary vehicles. This conversation is only just beginning."
Elizondo’s background is wide-ranging, THR noted. He was a former Army Counterintelligence Special Agent and helped hunt drug traffickers, terrorists, and spies.
In 2008, he was asked to be part of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, a $22 million program sponsored by then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to study UFOs. In 2010, he was made director of the program, and resigned in 2017.
He was also involved in To the Stars Academy of Arts & Sciences from 2017 to 2020, and was on the History Channel’s "Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation."
In 2019, a Pentagon spokesperson attempted to cast doubt on Elizondo’s leadership role within the AATIP, but Reid issued a counter-statement that vouched for Elizondo.
Fran Beyer ✉
Fran Beyer is a writer with Newsmax and covers national politics.
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