A Pentagon former official named Luis Elizondo revealed on August 23 that the United States government created a spacecraft crash retrieval program and is currently in possession of nonhuman material it recovered in some missions. During an interview with NewsNation, Elizondo explained that he knows that the government has been recovering vehicles and objects that are of unknown origin and could come from space. When asked what he knew about these, he claimed that they were neither from the United States nor any other nation around the world.
The former official added that, over the last few decades, the United States has been showing a “great interest” not only in these vehicles or the so-called Unidentified Flying Objects but also in their “occupants.” Elizondo also said that he’s aware that the human race isn’t alone in the universe, and that the American government has been knowing “that fact” for many decades. However, when asked if he had any information on when the retrieval program started, he said he didn’t know.
Following his remarks, the US Department of Defense spokesperson Sue Gough published a statement where she denied Elizondo’s allegations and even the existence of any evidence of alien activity in the country. While she said that the crash retrieval program does exist and is named Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification, Gough detailed that Elizondo’s words had to be taken with a grain of salt as he didn’t have any responsibility in the program.
The spokesperson also explained that the Defense Department is committed to accountability and openness not only to the House of Representatives but also to the American people. At the end of her statement, Gough said that even when the agency must balance transparency with the obligation of protecting classified material and sources, she detailed no evidence of extraterrestrial activity has ever been found. She explained that included the possession of “reverse-engineering,” which some people have claimed that the United States government has been dealing with over the last few years.
On social media, many users dismissed Gough’s statement as they claimed she’s part of a Pentagon disinformation campaign whose main goal is to discredit Elizondo and any former official who shares information about the program and UFOs. Some reporters also took to Twitter to say that Elizondo has been providing detailed information about locations and names of people and private companies that are allegedly involved in the retrieval program. However, they said that the veracity of the information he has delivered remains to be confirmed.
While Gough explained that Elizondo wasn’t anyhow involved in the program, some internal emails from the Department of Defense indicate that he ran it for a couple of months. A letter from former US Assistant Deputy Secretary of Defense Chris Mellon to Senator Harry Reid also confirmed the role Elizondo played in the program.
