Luis Elizondo

“Yes, sir.”

“Yes. Yes, sir.”

“What we required was a memo from the Secretary of the Air Force in order to make that complete, and that never occurred. And so, when Secretary Mattis became Secretary of Defense, I decided it would be appropriate for me to try to receive a memo from him, as SecDef, as Secretary of Defense, if we could not get a memo from the Secretary of the Air Force to transfer that material.”

“It wasn't until the Russians could develop the SA–2 surface-to-air missile and successfully shoot them down”

“Sir, I was the Director of National Programs Special Management Staff, managing a White House special access program on behalf of the National Security Council.”

“And then, in 2009 timeframe, when I came back to the Pentagon after a tour with the Director of National Intelligence, I quickly became part of a program that was originally called AAWSAP. That evolved into the program now called AATIP, which is where those videos that we now see, the GOFAST, the GIMBAL, the FLIR, that was part of our effort, sir.”

“My background is I went to school to study microbiology and immunology. I entered into the U.S. Army, and after a very short stint in military intelligence, I became a counterintelligence special agent as a civilian. Later on, I became a special agent in charge, running investigations and counter terrorism and counter espionage primarily with some experience in counter insurgency and counter narcotics.”

“There is documentation, that I believe was submitted for the record, that was approved for release by the U.S. Pentagon, by the Department of Defense Office of Prepublication and Security Review. And it states that one of the reasons why my predecessor program, AAWSAP, was trying to collect material of unknown origin”

“In fact, there is a very real example when we built the U–2 spy plane and flew it over then-Russia and were taking reconnaissance. And when we first started flying the aircraft, it flew so high and so fast we thought they were not tracking us. In reality, they were tracking every flight.”

“It wasn't until the Russians could develop the SA–2 surface-to-air missile and successfully shoot them down——”