MYSTERY WIRE - Lue Elizondo on 60 Minutes - Part 2

Transcript

mysterywire.com home of the unusual and unknown from area 51 to the paranormal it's your source to the most vetted ufo stories and special investigations in the world take a journey into the universe of mysterywire.com as you know the uap task force had a gigantic task in front of us it put together uh as much information as it could prepared a briefing presentation that's been given to congress uh the defense community contractors it's been gone to uh i think the joint chiefs uh various different agencies around washington you are familiar with a lot of that material i would assume the videos and photos and images are you uh you know george i yes i have to be a little careful about going into too much detail because clearly i i am not a dod civilian anymore so therefore i i cannot i do not have the authority to speak on behalf of the u.s government but to suffice it to say that a lot of this stuff really isn't isn't much of a surprise to me um well we released something i'm sure by now you've seen it it's from the uss omaha uh you know there were earlier there were images of stills that were part of a slide that was used in a uap task force presentation of these spherical objects seen around the uss omaha one that traveled with the ship for about an hour and then boom went into the water and then they went after it couldn't find it i realize you probably can't comment directly on that video but can we speak in general terms uh about the capabilities of whatever these things are i mean as i think miss mellon has said if if we have failed to see the chinese building something that is transmedia that does what that thing did uh it's an incredible intelligence failure uh george that's a great question uh and you're referring to one of the observables that we had in the pentagon's program atip that was that we refer to as transmedium travel and trans medium travel is very significant what it means it means that you have the ability to operate multiple domains or multiple environments now to put that into context we do indeed have technology we do have vehicles that can operate in multiple environments let's take a seaplane for example but when you really look at it a sea plane is neither a really good aircraft or a really good boat it's a compromise it's design compromise because you're you're trying to operate in multiple environments and yet here we are looking at things now and collecting information and data on things that have the ability to operate seemingly without any type of performance compromise i can operate in the atmosphere and even underwater and and that is you know that's that's that's something unique we do have certain capabilities for example certain missiles that people are familiar with in submarines that we can launch out of a tube and for a very short period of time it's under water and then pops out and flies but there really isn't a whole lot of examples where we have uh some sort of technology that has the ability to fly for let's say an hour next to a navy destroyer and then all of a sudden drop into the water and continue to operate as if if the water wasn't even there and so you're right it's very perplexing um again you can't comment on specifics but the uss omaha the information that we released it was one of at least five different ships that were buzzed in july 2019 by these unknowns and they they weren't able to see them coming in they weren't able to see them leaving and it seemed like these things wanted to be seen they were making a display or an obser a performance the uss omaha spear travels with the ship right along with it for like an hour it's like hey take some close-ups here i am and then it goes in the water i know that we have increased technical capabilities and centers to track things like this unknowns to attract the adversaries and enemies but um is there a point at which we can say the phenomenon is upping its game that it is making itself known in a more demonstrable way than we have seen before yeah so that's a really good good question george and the question is are we beginning to notice an uptick if you will in provocations or what we would call in defense terms show of force um it's not uncommon that we will display our capabilities to an enemy or an adversary they will of course do the same with us in order to demonstrate our capabilities basically a warning don't uh you know don't don't mess with us because look what we can do the question you're asking is is what we are witnessing here a a potential provocation in essence look at this technology that we can do you don't have it so better be careful i don't know it certainly i think if you talk to certain folks inside the intelligence community they may come up with that assessment that this is clearly someone or something trying to to be obvious and say look we're here and we really don't we don't really respect your your uh your distances and and whatnot these limitations restrictions you put on your vessels you know we're going to do whatever we want that's possible uh it could also be something that is unintentional when they say unintentional deliberate in that they're there but not necessarily trying to provoke a response maybe there it is just as curious uh uh about us as we are curious about it um so we have to be careful of signing intent behind something um i think that's that's a certainly a natural question but i don't think we have enough data yet to to address that you know from from a threat perspective in the department of defense and the intelligence community there's really two parts of an equation to determine uh if if something is a threat and that is capabilities versus intent uh now we are we are seeing some of the capabilities up close and personal that's for sure but we still have no idea the intent and so therefore it's it's really it's really a tough egg to crack because we we really have no idea why these things seem to be so so provocative and pervasive at a minimum it would seem to be surveillance isn't it it's in you know uh it's a interactive quality to it it's not hiding it's right there and it seems to be congregating around military facilities ships things like that well that that for me is the greatest problem and that for me is is the greatest question and challenge why is it that we see a a a large frequency of these these incidents occurring in and around controlled u.s airspace and particularly around uh military assets and equities that that for me is is the biggest question because you're right from an adversarial perspective um certainly that would be indicative of some sort of show of force but again we we just simply don't have enough data and i think probably this is why people in congress and the government are taking this topic so seriously because we spend millions and millions of dollars each year trying to protect our military assets and equities from from from the enemy from a wide spectrum of threats whether it's an intelligence or a physical threat or whatnot and yet we still have no idea what the things are what they're doing in and around our our military military equities you know we've you and i have talked about this before you've made public statements i've had my own reports uh news reports over the years about the interest of whatever this unknown intelligence is the interest in nuclear capabilities nuclear missile bases nuclear carriers nuclear power plants and and you have remarked how uh concerned you are about that can you say uh and again this is pretty sensitive but can you address the idea of whether or not we have tried to confirm their interest in nuclear assets say an experiment if we do x will they do y yeah um so george i can tell you definitively we we know there's a a a connection there's a congruency because there is official u.s government reporting going back decades from very senior officials to other various senior officials that have established and substantiate the fact that there is uh uap interest in our nuclear equities so that that that that's a fact that that's already occurred we have uh reporting on that through certain channels uh and and and the the evidence is quite compelling the question is why and and that is something we don't know yet as far as um going into detail specifics about our nuclear equities unfortunately i i'm not at liberty to do that because when you start getting into the sources and methods and specifics that information becomes quite quite sensitive very very quickly but there is already reporting that has been uh been been made available to to the open public if you know where to look for it that substantiates without a shadow of a doubt that there is interest in our nuclear equities and let me further state that it's not just ours it's also other countries as well and for me that is probably uh even more indicative of the fact that we may be dealing with something here that we we really don't understand because if we're having the same problem that russia is in other countries then then chances are this is a a a this is a topic that is of mutual concern and interest for for for more than just the united states in fact it would paint the picture that this is not a u.s phenomenon at all but this is rather a global phenomenon you know we're both pretty excited about the level of media coverage national media coverage of the issue but as you know there continues to be some confusion uh among national media and some reporters about atip versus awesome um you know we have reported before about the 22 million dollars which went to awesome not atef can you clear this up for for the benefit of all about those two efforts did they coexist at the same time did one grow out of the other which one got the money and and what the setup was then and what it became afterwards sure george i i know there's continued confusion on this and let me just say yet again and i this is probably the thousandth time i've said this okay i was not part of awesome okay i was part of aten so any questions that regard asap i i i'm really not qualified to answer that was a a predecessor of mine who was running that along with uh the aerospace company that everybody now now knows was associated with it a tip was part in the beginning grew out of the all sap but it became it's its own thing uh as time progressed and my colleagues and i continued to run this effort all the way till the day i left 2017 and by the way it continued after the day i left as well there is also documentation official government documentation probably hasn't seen the light of day yet that absolutely substantiates that so uh again i i i guess i i i understand there may be some confusion but uh i at this point i've addressed this over and over again again forgive me my frustration here but it's it's it's something that continues to come up and so one more time for anybody who may have any questions us i was not part of awesome i was part of atip and so uh anybody has questions about asap probably needs to direct those questions to somebody who was you know who was who was in that effort at the time um so 22 million dollars senator reed and his colleagues secure that funding it goes into a contract uh through the dia bigelow aerospace gets the money and it studies not only ufos but a much much wider array of pr strange phenomena that occur in proximity to ufos don't really have an explanation atip existed after the money for assaf was pulled and you know we don't know a lot about what assap did in terms of there hasn't been a lot of release of documents produced by that that might be coming but the same could be true as atip it was it kept going after the money for asap was pulled and it studied the kinds of cases we're talking about now national security military it did and not necessarily not not necessarily the folks in osap uh were were part of atip in its later years um you know at became a very small very niche very nuanced capability that was run primarily from government people uh the hopefully at some point the person who replaced me will be coming out in the public and be able to to have additional conversation right now i think most people just think i was the guy in egypt when in fact there were other people as well and the program continued after i left and that morphed into what we now know as a uap task force um so how hopeful are you about the uap task force report that's due at the end of june uh you think it might it's going to be preliminary or interim that leads to something bigger uh i first of all i i've stated before george i don't think we're going to have a a complete uh assessment by june um i just think it's it's it's too too far of a bridge to cross i think we need more time so i wouldn't be surprised if that if there if there's some sort of extension uh or or delay to the to the 180 day report um i'll share with you that i'd spoken to some people before and who were on these similar type of valuation teams and it took them eight months just to get the appropriate security clearances to to do an evaluation then after that it took him another entire year just to do the evaluation itself so i i think you know i the it's good news and bad news the bad news is i i don't think people are going to get everything that they expect at the at the end of june but the good news is i think that given more time we'll be able to get more fidelity into what this is and let's not forget that the congressional request war was to have this report done at the unclassified level so that means you can share a lot more information with the public you know how hard it is you've you've been one of the people who's gone knocking on the doors uh where the keepers are the secrets where you think the really good sensitive stuff is uh you know it seems to me the closer they get to the real goodies the harder it's gonna be and the more pushback there's gonna be don't you think well yeah uh you know unless unless it's we've reached critical mass you know there's it's double-edged sword i've often said that at one point uh we considered this topic very much like a fine wine and where you the longer you keep a cork on it the better it gets and now what we're realizing is this this this topic is probably more like rotten fruit or what rotten vegetables in the refrigerator the longer it stays in there the more it's going to smell and so it's probably time to clean out the fridge and i i think we're at a point now where it's going to be very hard knowing what we know now about this topic to not continue to ask the hard questions and as you say put the genie back in the bottle i i i'm not sure how you can do that you have too many folks that that are on the hill in our legislative branch and too many folks in the executive branch and former leaders both on both sides of the aisle by the way coming out saying yeah i've been briefed and this is compelling and it's real and we don't know what it is and we need to figure it out well it's not something you can get to the bottom of in six months or eight months or even a year it seems like there should be a permanent ongoing program are you optimistic about that uh you know i i've always said for the record i think we need to have a uh an endearing capability and and i'll further go by saying ultimately this may not even be in the big picture a dod or an intelligence community issue they may have part of it but i think we need to bring more people under the tent i think we need to bring in scientists and academics we need to bring in some of the perhaps national laboratories to come in and department of energy and faa because this topic impacts more than just potentially national security it impacts everyone and it impacts everybody equally yet differently and so this may be really at some point a philosophical conversation it might be a theological conversation might be a social conversation uh and and at that point that's not really government's job to to be involved in those aspects well you know you and i have had private conversations about this over the years and uh you know the assap investigation got into some pretty weird areas areas that really would be uncomfortable for the department of defense to investigate you know again i i don't want to comment on on the osap piece um because it's a bit of a damned if you do damn if you don't situation for me um i've always made it very clear that i was not part of asap uh the the formal program uh and i'm just gonna i'm just gonna say to that because you know i i i can't speak uh from an educated perspective about that program um my my my my experience was on the a-tip side of the house not not awesome and and you know from what i've told you i will say this from the people i spoke with it was it was very compelling that the results of of all sap were indeed legitimate and were compelling um but i i can't i can't speak beyond that one other question so you've been out in front for a couple of years now i know there was some trepidation when you stepped out on that stage october 2017 with tom delong and hal and and chris and some other colleagues um and you have been beaten up and pummeled and accused of all kinds of stuff i'd like to get a sense of how it's going for you now whether you know every couple of weeks the pentagon puts out another statement that seems to contradict things that said before about you about atip is there still pressure are you under fire are you how are you handling it uh george i look into specifics i i've obviously angered some people uh within the beltway and and i've had i've had uh my security clearance uh looked at and scrutinized um i've had my my uh my credibility attacked uh and and frankly statements that have been put out that are that are just flatly wrong and inaccurate um and i i'm hopeful that the ig uh if you will the the the inquiry that is being done will be able to resolve uh a lot of that for me um it it is it has been very challenging for me and and for my family uh both personally and professional um i've been labeled as that ufo guy um and uh it's it hasn't hasn't been easy it's been very challenging um you know you wake up every day and you're trying to do a good job not by the way i don't get paid for this right so this is this is something i'm doing because it's it's i believe it i still feel it's the mission that i was given uh way back when and i'm just trying to finish that mission um it's it's been extremely challenging um there's times that that frankly if i could if i could just disappear to the sunset i certainly would uh and i keep looking desperately for for for the new new faces to step up and and pick up the baton but until that day comes i'm going to continue doing doing what i'm doing well i mean the 60 minutes thing i think we've reached a new plateau lou and i think help is on the way i think that that's that sets a new bar it tells the other media come on in the water's fine and once there is cover for members of congress to investigate further uh people uh like you who are still in the shadows can come forward and uh i think that's the work that you guys have done that we we reached a really critical point in this tipping point and there's no going back well george it's been a collective effort so again i i can't i can't take uh credit for that uh i appreciate that the compliment but that's something that really goes to everybody who's even watching your program right now these are people are are having the conversation they're having around the water cooler they're having it around the dinner table uh they're having at their you know their church functions and it's making a difference and and the fact that the media now is finally having the courage to report on this topic which was once considered so taboo and fraught with stigma and fringe quite frankly i think says a lot about about the the courage of a lot of people now coming forward to have this conversation folks like the four pilots that that we saw in 60 minutes thanks lou talk to you soon yes sir thank you always a pleasure