Personal details
Also Known As:
Luis D. Elizondo, Lue Elizondo, Luis 'Lue' Elizondo
Luis Elizondo
Luis "Lue" Elizondo is an American former U.S. Army counterintelligence officer and civilian intelligence official who has become a central figure in the movement advocating for the disclosure of information regarding Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs). He served in the U.S. Army, including deployments in the Middle East, before being recruited as a civilian intelligence officer into the Department of Defense (DOD), where he specialized in counterespionage and counterterrorism. From approximately 2008 to 2017, Elizondo claims to have been the senior ranking person of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), a highly secretive Pentagon unit established to study UAPs, operating under the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security. Elizondo resigned from the DOD in 2017 in protest of what he described as excessive bureaucracy and compartmentalization surrounding the UAP topic. Following his departure, he joined the private research company To the Stars Academy of Arts and Sciences (TTSA) and played a critical role in bringing three official U.S. Navy videos of UAP encounters—known as the "Tic-Tac," "Gimbal," and "GoFast" footage—to public attention via The New York Times. Despite some conflicting accounts from the Pentagon regarding the precise nature and extent of his role within AATIP, Elizondo remains one of the most visible and vocal advocates pushing for government transparency on UAPs, serving as a leading voice and author in the disclosure community.
