Luis Elizondo
The former head of a Pentagon UAP effort who went public in 2017.
Elizondo is a former US Army counterintelligence officer who says he ran the Pentagon's Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP). He resigned in 2017 and helped bring the AATIP story and the Navy videos to the New York Times, a moment widely seen as the start of the modern disclosure era.
The Pentagon has disputed the extent of his role in AATIP. He has continued to advocate for transparency and published a memoir in 2024. His claims are more institutional than sensational, and their accuracy is partly contested by the department he served.
Known for AATIP; the 2017 disclosure moment
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