Luis Elizondo shares the story of his connection to Skinwalker Ranch

Transcript

and uh you know it's it's it's kind of bizarre because like out of out of a movie um these two people i still remember today very clearly from what they were wearing very nicely dressed uh and um i remember someone knocking on the door and mr alexander there's some people here to see you which which is not uncommon you you're always working issues so you're trying to fix things uh so sure bring them on and they came in and uh they said hey uh you're you're luis alexander and yes i am lou uh can we talk to you and i said sure and one of them shut the door behind him my door i'm like okay this is probably not good you know uh i often joke you know what did i do now right um i probably upset somebody and uh they sat down and uh they started to say you know hey look uh we we are part of the intelligence community uh we're part of a program we're not gonna tell you much about it but uh do you mind telling us a little bit about yourself and uh i i probably was a little rude i probably was a little bit standoffish because i don't particularly like talking about myself especially if i don't know who you are um and they start asking very pointed questions specifically about you know we hear that you're you're you're a counterintelligence guy we hear that you did some background uh before you have some background uh in advanced uh avionics and aerospace industry uh is that true yes do you mind sharing with us i said well i'll share with you at the unclassified level the type of systems i've worked on but i'm really not comfortable going into more detail and so long story short they agreed to to they would come back and have another discussion with me and so when they left i ran some trap lines to find out that they were legit they were part of a special program but i didn't have clearance into it so i really didn't know but they really were who they said they were they were part of a small organization i presume that the time had something to do with aerospace but i really didn't know and then a couple more trips they came by we talked got a little bit more comfortable they got more comfortable with me i certainly got more comfortable with them and finally they said we'd like to uh have you meet our director and i said okay sure no problem uh it might have been john probably seven or ten days later we i had an appointment to go meet that i was hoping the director would come see me i thought i was sufficiently senior enough where you know you want to come see me you can come see me instead they're like okay be at this location at this time at this place and don't tell anybody you're coming uh so again a little bit unusual i'm like you know i'm sorry who are you so um i decided to go ahead and do it and uh i told my deputy that time hey i'm gonna go go to this meeting um i went to it and uh it was an undisclosed location in in also the national capital region uh looked just like a normal office building really uh until you go inside then you realize that you have you know guards and whatnot you're like okay no this is probably a little bit more more sensitive i remember going up the elevator up to the floor and uh it looked like a it looked like uh an office building you would see like on wall street really you know cubicles all over the place and people kind of making copies and doing work diligently on their computers and there was this corner office um kind of looked like a well glass you know the individual sitting back in there and what struck me is that the individual was i don't want to stereotype but if you would ever think of what a rocket scientist looks like he was your quintessential rocket scientist glasses uh you know very very look look appeared very astute um and very no nonsense um so i went i introduced myself shook his hand hey i'm glad you're here he didn't smile he was just very serious and he was man he looked at me he was staring at me i i felt almost a little uncomfortable because i know he was assessing the hell out of me and i was trying to assess him as well but obviously he probably knew a little bit more about me than i knew about him which is never really good to go into a meeting like that as an intelligence officer you know you kind of want to if you will know thy enemy uh not saying he was my enemy by any stretch but you know you wonder who you're dealing with uh and he introduced himself and um i'm sure at some point his name will become become very public i i have i have out of respect for him i've never mentioned his name uh he's asked me never to mention it uh until he's comfortable with with his name being out so i won't um but we talked we had a very good candid conversation and that's when he asked me i mean he started he started asking me about my background in uh in aerospace and the type of technologies i worked on and um you know this is a guy who i really he knew his stuff i mean he was like literally a rock literally by definition a rocket scientist and probably one of the best ones that we had in the government um and that's when you know he asked me said what do you what do you think about um man it was you know john he looked him straight in the face and looking back it's it was so weird because i wasn't sure if he was like testing me or if it was legit but he said what do you think about the topic of ufos now coming from my world you know we'll to test somebody we will use provocative statements sometimes and then gauge their body language and you know micro behaviors and neural linguistics uh to see if you know they're prone to you know flights of fancy and things like that you know and uh but he he was he was looking to be very serious and they said well i i don't really think about ufos he says what you don't think they're real i said no no i didn't say that i just i never really had the luxury to think about ufos you know i'm not particularly a huge science fiction fan i never really watched x-files or anything like that uh and i've been so consumed with my work that when i'm not working i'm at home uh and i'm a father but those are really the only things i ever have time for work and and which didn't involve anything at all involving some of those clearly and um and and and raising a family so he said okay that's that's fair um and he said but let me let me uh just caution you caution you or warn you something to that effect let me caution you that um don't let your analytic bias uh get in the way and he said you're gonna you're gonna see things that you may not you may have a hard time reconciling now at this point i hadn't even accepted it i didn't i hadn't been offered even really a job right so yeah i'm thinking to myself are you are you is this a pitch are you offering me a job or this just is this just advice for life you know to take with me and what what the hell's really going on here so uh i nodded my head and said no you know very very fair point right uh i don't really have an opinion yet on it and then we agreed uh have another conversation but he said look i'm looking for a counterintelligence guy um for for those in your audience you may not know what really counter intelligence is you know a lot of people think they know what ci is ci is is really um knowing what the enemy knows about you right so so foreign intelligence collection is is learning what the bad guys know counterintelligence is knowing what the bad guys know about you so if you think of a chess board um if you are playing chess against an opponent um you know foreign intelligence is knowing what their pieces can do on the chessboard and how they plan to move counterintelligence is knowing what they know about your pieces right and how you can move so uh it's it's yet another layer of of of playing chess to some degree i guess um you know not any better or worse in other forms of intelligence it's just it's a very niche uh way of doing business uh from an intelligence perspective so uh he's looking for a counterintelligence guy um because we know that there are some foreign countries foreign adversaries out there that probably know what we're doing and i i need a good counter intelligence and security program which by the way it's not unusual um anytime you have a sensitive program uh you know you you want to have you want to have good security and counter intelligence expertise it's just it's just an extra layer of if you will um insurance to have to protect your program so it wasn't unusual that i was that i was being asked to provide counterintelligence expertise i wasn't being asked to do anything with ufos per se it was just to come in and provide you know the background that i already have just use that in this capacity so um ultimately long story short of it obviously the rest is history uh no pun intended i i i secure i'll i'll accept the job um and it was at that point um through through various conversations afterwards i began to realize that these guys are legit they're real i mean they have like real data and uh the individuals that they started that were part of this effort i knew from before like people like how toud off and whatnot that were you know there were kind of legends in their own time anyways um so i knew this was a serious legitimate effort and then i began to see the documentation uh from the senate and congress and i really began to recognize that this was a full-fledged program but they really did need counterintelligence expertise they didn't have anything so they were kind of they were kind of vulnerable from that perspective um yeah i know it's probably a long-winded explanation no that's okay i'm good i mean obviously yeah yeah no i appreciate it because i want the groundwork here now um in this next question i want you to kind of clarify you could do it quickly uh if you could the difference between what we learned of the advanced aerospace uh weapons uh now i'm drawing yeah thank you the awesome program and i get tongue tied versus the program that you joined that you just described the advanced aerospace threat identification program or atip what was the difference between the two because this has been an area of much confusion not only by myself but it seems like those that even worked on the program which i'll explain in a moment absolutely not not only you but i mean honestly probably to all of us to some degree in the beginning so in the in the in the very beginning days there was very little difference between ossep and atic there really wasn't a a a clear line distinction um there were there were focuses of the same effort um and what it was you had portions of ossap which of course now know bigelow aerospace was part of uh had some incredible scientists working at uh at the at the ranch facility and by the way other places it wasn't just the ranch uh and just to jump in just to clarify you're talking about skinwalker ranch okay so so you're and this is another one but since you brought it up i'll just ask it really quick so so atip or asap or both operated on the grounds of skinwalker ranch in utah uh i want to be careful i don't want to answer for bob bigelow or the former director of the program because those are probably nuances you'd have to ask them okay i will say that it involved uh the ranch um asap was that it was looking at looking at the phenomenon through um through a very broad lens um and uh you know that's that's what they were doing okay um and by the way there was some pretty compelling data i'll share with you that it was there was some very compelling data some of it was was a little bit disturbing to be honest with you