Errors in Luis Elizondo's UFO Book "Imminent"

[elvenwear]

I wouldn't be surprised if 2009 was the year they bought the MUFON database; it would explain why they needed someone like Elizondo.

That makes sense.

I think the DIA FOIA collection doesn't have any earlier references to AATIP, either?

You've posted that link elsewhere and I plan to look at it later. I'm taking a break from reading Imminent with a fine tooth comb at the moment. It's a hard read. After that I'll have a look at the FOIA docs.

It kinda makes sense that they grouped their in-Pentagon efforts under the AATIP umbrella so that the project would be presentable if someone inquired—and it's not really covered by the AAWSAP project mandate either.

If Luis is telling the truth about the program(s) coming under fire in 2010, it would seem using AATIP as cover only lasted one year.

So it really looks to me like they made up their own project and paid for it with AAWSAP funds.

Interesting theory.

I find the history of the occult fascinating. I can link up a history between the Theosophy movement and Scientology via L. Ron Hubbard's friendship with Jack Parsons who was under the guidance of Aleister Crowley. Scientology were involved in the remote viewing project and now I am discovering as well with Skinwalker ranch (via Harold E. Puthoff), which is connected with the AATIP program. It's fascinating. So the obsession of Theosophers with contacting alien intelligences using magical ritual has had a meandering evolution that let to similar efforts with AAWSAP/AATIP.

 

[elvenwear]

The program was under heavy scrutiny for two years before the funding was cut. It seems unusual that anyone could be trying to dig into a program like this for two years and not see what they were doing. Maybe there are political factors?

The other thing that strikes me as unusual is that Elizondo claims to have only been involved with AATIP but at the same time he also was somehow aware that the rest of the AAWSAP umbrella was involved in paranormal research at Skinwalker Ranch and was trying to get them to drop that part of the program.

 

[Mendel]

I posted on AAWSAP vs. AATIP in https://www.metabunk.org/threads/preview-of-luis-elizondos-ufo-book-imminent.13571/post-322502 ; there's a bit of discussion on that topic in the older thread.

And there's always https://www.metabunk.org/threads/the-origins-of-aawsap.12484/ , which is based on Skinwalkers at the Pentagon by Dr. James "Jim" Lacatski, Colum Kelleher and George Knapp.

 

[Mendel]

The timeline I have is:-
2009 (Early 2009) Luis meets the AAWSAP team. They begin vetting him.
2009 ??? Luis joins either AAWSAP or AATIP under the AAWSAP banner (it's not clear if AATIP is created before or after he joined).
2009 ??? AATIP is created as a part of AAWSAP either before or after Luis joined.
2009 (Fall of 2009) Luis is working in AATIP under the AAWSAP banner
2012 AAWSAP is shut down
2012- Edit 2016 2017 (see post below) /Edit Luis keeps AATIP running under the radar.

The problem with denying he was never in AAWSAP is that he claims he was under their banner in 2010.

2008 AAWSAP contract awarded to BAASS
2010 Final AAWSAP product delivered; DIA shuts down AAWSAP.
2010 Elizondo establishes AATIP in his office, with no official budget
2017 Elizondo leaves office.

 

[Ann K]

@elvenwear
Elizondo appears to use much the same wording in his book (your pp 30, 31 of 312) as he did in an interview in 2022. The article is entitled "How believers in the paranormal birthed the Pentagon's new hunt for UFOs".

In 2008, Lacatski met with Elizondo in an office in Rosslyn, just across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. The DIA analyst had identified Elizondo as a potential recruit into the DIA program.

"He looked at me very seriously and he said, 'So, what do you think about UFOs?'" Elizondo said in an interview with Military.com. "I told the truth. I said I don't think about it. He said, 'What do you mean, you don't believe in them?' I said, 'I didn't say that. What I said is I don't think about them.'"

Elizondo didn't end up joining with Lacatski. But he did go on to run the Pentagon's smaller in-house UFO program created when the DIA program ended.

"It wasn't involved at all with Skinwalker, and that was a conscious decision to do that," Elizondo said. "It was a decision we had to make because there were some 'antibodies' in the Department of Defense that were starting to become concerned about the focus of AAWSAP and what it was doing."

The Nimitz 'Tic Tac' investigation done by Lacatski's team was transferred to Elizondo, who was then running what was called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, or AATIP.

https://www.military.com/daily-news...ranormal-birthed-pentagons-new-hunt-ufos.html

But perhaps more importantly to this discussion was this comment in the same source:

Military.com asked the Pentagon whether it could confirm the paranormal research. "No," was the one-word response from Sue Gough, the department's spokesperson on UFOs. She pointed to the boilerplate disclaimer on the Lacatski and Kelleher book, which says the department's clearance for publication does not imply factual accuracy.

She is talking about a different book, but presumably Elizondo's book would fall under the same clearance principles.

 

[NorCal Dave]

Referancing @elvenwear post #199

The problem with denying he was never in AAWSAP is that he claims he was under their banner in 2010. He repeatedly refers to 'AAWSAP/AATIP' as if they were the same or connected programs. I think it is feasible that they hired him as they were creating AATIP so he may only ever have been under the AATIP banner but this is not really made clear. There are not a lot of specifics on dates in the text as a whole.

That's a lot of spoilers to open and read. Might be better to just include the short segments that suggest Elizondo was involved in AAWSAP.

Having read through most of them, it's still confusing. My personal speculation:

• There was no such thing as AATIP, other than as a made-up nickname for AAWSAP. This was to hide AAWSAP, because it was funneling money to Bigelow, a Reid campaign doner, to study weird shit on his private ranch.
• It appears Elizondo was at least tangentially involved with AAWSAP in some form. He makes it sound like he was something like a security officer in layman's terms.
• In addition to Bigelow, AAWSAP was funneling money through BAASS to other UFOlogists like Puthoff, Davis and Green. Probably others as well.
• AAWSAP was NOT an SAP or secret program, so I suspect, and Elizondo seems to confirm in various passages, that all these characters are sharing with each other. Exactly how deep into AAWSAP Elizondo was is hard to tell, but it seems he may have learned a lot about it, not because he was in it, but rather he was a likeminded person. That is, Puthoff, Davis, Lacatski, Stratton and the rest were sharing AAWSAP stuff with Elizondo.
• Whatever AATIP was or wasn't, it was the name Elizondo and Stratton chose for their unofficial and unfunded (aside from funds Elizondo was diverting) side-gig after AAWSAP shut down.
• Elizondo was celebrated in the '17 NYT story as the "Head of the US Governments UFO Program", called AATIP. It's his claim to fame.
• It was later learned that AAWSAP was the only official and funded UFO program, not AATIP.
• I think Elizondo is back fitting parts of the story. He's claiming the program was always AAWSAP/AATIP to maintain the aura of him running the official government UFO program.

In fact, his complaint to the IG, says he took over AAWSAP and AATIP at the request of Lacatski and ran BOTH programs from May 2010 through August 2012, something Lacatski makes no mention of in his book and which contradicts his latest claim of having never worked for AAWSAP. But AAWSAP was only funded in FY 2009-2010, so how was he running AAWSAP?:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/cgqoaeore81lbxs/Luis Elizondo IG Complaint Redacted.pdf?dl=0

It's all very confusing. I think AATIP was made up to hide AAWSAP and that worked to an extent, causing people in the DIA to associate what AAWSAP was doing with a non-existent program called AATIP. Elizondo and Stratton chose to call their side gig AATIP for whatever reason. Elizondo later claimed to the NYT that he was running an official government UFO program called AATIP. He may have been running it, but it wasn't official or funded. Ever since he has been tangling AATIP in with AAWSAP to maintain his claim of running a government UFO program.

 

[knobby]

It appears Elizondo was at least tangentially involved with AAWSAP in some form. He makes it sound like he was something like a security officer in layman's terms.

Another question is how Elizondo ended up with AAWSAP in the first place. Lue states in Chapter 1 that he received an unsolicited invigation to join AAWSAP from Jay Stratton and "Rosemary Cain".

"They described it as a small but highly sensitive program focused on "unconventional technologies," and said they reported directly to the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and to Congress. Some of my past experiences working for Army intelligence had involved protecting high-end and sensitive aerospace technologies, so I just assumed that had made me a candidate."

Lue suggests he was ambivalent about UFOs at the time.

"Then he asked, "What do you think about UFOs?"
What the—? I thought. Is this a joke? Is he testing me in some way?
"I don't . . ." I said.
Jim pounced. "What? You don't believe UFOs are real?"
"I did not say that," I responded. "What I mean is I have no reason to think about them. All of my work has focused on other issues."
None of my professional projects had ever touched on the topic, nor was I particularly interested. In my personal life, I had never been fascinated by the topic. I never got into Star Wars or Star Trek, and hadn't even seen Close Encounters of the Third Kind."

Although it's clear he was hired to manage security, he talks about chasing down leads and reading records of prior UAP incidents.

Chapter 4 "When I wasn't chasing down leads at Jim's suggestion, I spent my time reading historical government records on UAP, which I had access to thanks to my credentials. A lot can be learned by studying history, especially history not widely known by the public.
At Jim's suggestion, I used my government computer to search terms including unknown technology, unusual performance, anomaly, unidentified, UFO, UAP."

Lue says his friend John Robert put his name forward, because of Lue's earlier involvement in the remote viewing program.

"They needed someone senior. Someone trained to run counterintelligence, someone who had been a part of sensitive programs. Someone who knows there's more to reality than the average person. That's you, brother."
"Sooo . . ." I said. "You told them about the other project of mine, back in the day?"
He smiled. "It might have come up briefly, yeah."

It seems odd that a guy with no interest in UFO/UAP was selected to run security but very quickly became an investigator and assumed a leadership role. I have to wonder if Lue wasn't already a UFO believer and sought out the role.

I also wonder what was the thought process behind the failed effort to turn AAWSAP into it's own SAP. Why did Lue and his friends at AAWSAP think it needed to be a secret program? A bit odd considering that Lue has spent much of the past 8 or so years pushing for complete disclosure of government UAP investigations.

 

[elvenwear]

Lue suggests he was ambivalent about UFOs at the time.

...

It seems odd that a guy with no interest in UFO/UAP was selected to run security but very quickly became an investigator and assumed a leadership role. I have to wonder if Lue wasn't already a UFO believer and sought out the role.

It also seems odd that a guy who was involved with the remote viewing program years prior had no interest in UFOs later didn't think the AAWSAP side of the program was worthwhile.

We have this timeline:
1995 Elizondo claims to be an excellent remote viewer entering the program as it is closing in 1995.
2009 Joins AAWSAP/AATIP while ambivalent about UFOs
2009-2012 Elizondo claims to have green orbs floating around his house and floating through walls. He doesn't specify when.
2010 Elizondo claims he told AAWSAP leadership that the supernatural/Skinwalker ranch part of AAWSAP is not worthwhile.
2024 Elizondo publishes a book talking about the miraculous occurrences at Skinwalker Ranch

This timeline paints a very inconsistent picture of his views on the supernatural.

Correction. Monkeysage is correct. He privately agreed that Skinwalker Ranch was a worthwhile project.

 

[MonkeeSage]

2010 Elizondo claims he told AAWSAP leadership that the supernatural/Skinwalker ranch part of AAWSAP is not worthwhile.

My take is that he told them to hide it but personally thought it was worthwhile, based on this passage from Immanent, pp. 106-107 (italics original).

Jim refused to lose focus on the overall scope of AAWSAP/AATIP, as he felt it was all interrelated. He felt that if he could show DIA and DoD
leadership the results of his efforts, any rational individual would see the value of continuing his anomalous investigations. The only problem: the
briefing Jim wanted to share with leadership included words like archangels, angels, demons, and spiritual realm. A bridge, or two, too far
for most.
I urged Jim to tone down the paranormal verbiage and focus instead on the importance of this work to US national security. Our UAP investigations made us aware of a very real national security threat and that was what I felt we had to focus on if we wanted people to pay attention.
"Lue, it's the truth," Jim said, his voice sounding increasingly frustrated. "What's wrong with telling the truth?"
He had a point. There should never be anything wrong with telling the truth. But in this case, it's how you tell the truth that matters. Jim made a
few adjustments to the slides, and we moved on. I felt bad for Jim. The program was his baby, and now people were trying to kill it. Jim believed
with all his core that research on Skinwalker Ranch was worth pursuing. Privately, I agreed. Unfortunately, the current atmosphere within DIA was now hostile to that work, and if we were going to have any chance of success, we needed to adjust our message.

 

[JMartJr]

This timeline paints a very inconsistent picture of his views on the supernatural.

This MAY indicate that his views, whatever they are, are not necessarily reflected in his statements. There are reasons to state things other than "to accurately communicate your opinion," an example might be "to attract favorable attention from those who DO believe in whatever you are talking about." That need not be the case with Mr. Elizondo, it is just an example. He might also just change his mind a lot, and every position may have been his sincere opinion at the time. Or something else... who knows...

EDIT: MonkeeSage posted while I was typing the above -- the passage he quoted might support an interpretation of saying what you think will get you support, rather than saying what you actually think. To be fair, I imagine we all do that from time to time in some situations.

 

[john.phil]

The Putamen is more involved with basic stuff like walking.

Elizondo gave an interview to Ross Coulthart where he mentions the "caudate-putamen" (12:57 - 16:06):

(13:14 - 13:25) - Elizondo (holding a brain MRI) - This is a part of the brain known as the caudate-putamen and it is a very specific part of the brain. It's responsible for all sorts of stuff. And some even speculated precognition may...

(13:25 - 13:26) - Ross - Certainly intuition.

(13:26 - 13:28) - Elizondo - Intuition for sure.

(13:28 - 13:38) - Ross - Elizondo says the caudate-putamen is larger in people with alleged psychic powers. What the government has called remote viewing.

(13:38 - 13:41) - Ross - What about people who've had UAP experiences?

(13:41 - 13:50) - Elizondo - Very interesting. The same thing. And by the way, that's not me telling you. These are medical doctors and scientists.

(13:51 - 14:16) - Ross - Stanford immunologist Dr. Gary Nolan has been researching this topic, and while his conclusions are not definitive, there are two working theories: One, that people with naturally large caudate-putamen might attract UAPs like an antenna. Another, that UAP encounters with normal people cause that same part of the brain to get bigger.

(14:16 - 14:24) - Elizondo - And there's a lot of information to substantiate that this is real morphology occurring in the human brain.

(14:25 - 14:43) - Ross - Elizondo argues that people with enhanced caudate-putamen might have a talent both for remote viewing and communicating with UAPs. And that's important because it's an established fact that the Pentagon has had an interest in remote viewing for military purposes.

(14:44 - 15:18) - Elizondo - In the vernacular I used to call it psychic espionage. There was a programme in the US government, it's called Star Gate. They were taking young soldiers and civilians, and they were training them to conduct espionage behind enemy lines. And the term was called remote viewing. A lot of people that were in the remote viewing programme had MRIs done of their brains and a vast majority have that specific morphology. Do I think it's extraordinary? No, it may be a vestigial capability that humans had for a long time.

(15:19 - 15:19) - Ross - But does it work?

(15:20 - 15:22) - Elizondo - It absolutely works. It absolutely works.

(15:22 - 15:28) - Ross - You see, remote viewing has been discredited. The CIA determined that it doesn't work.

(15:29 - 15:29) - Elizondo - Ok, sure.

(15:30 - 15:31) - Ross - You're saying it does work.

(15:31 - 15:32) - Elizondo - It absolutely works.

(15:33 - 15:38) - Ross - Lue says he knows it works because he was trained in remote viewing himself.

(15:39 - 15:43) - Elizondo - I don't like to purely publicly talk about it. My involvement was only tangential.

(15:44 - 15:55) - Ross - There's a story you tell of a terrorist suspect, and there was a remote viewing operation done that you were part of.

(15:54 - 16:06) - Elizondo - Yes. We did an experiment. Probably shouldn't have but we did. And long story short, it appeared to be very effective.


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgM5V44eQHU&t=777s

 

[NorCal Dave]

I think part of the problem we're dealing with is trying to decide who is more reliable when discussing what AAWSAP and AATIP were.

Right up front we need to acknowledge that Lacatski, Elizondo, Puthoff, Davis, Stratton, Bigelow, Kelleher, Green and a host of others involved in these programs believe, up front, in UFOs, aliens, paranormal shit, floating blue and green orbs, all the crazy stuff from the Secrets of Skinwalker Ranch TV show, a contingent that follows people from SWR, the government has captured UFOs and maybe alien bodies, bits of junk mailed to Art Bell are form crashed UFOs, 7' tall werewolves, and a whole host of other unsubstantiated claims. So, who do we trust?

Lacatski does seem to be the origin of AAWSAP. He went to SWR after reading Knapp & Kelleher's book Hunt For The Skinwalker and had a vision. He somehow got hooked up with Ried and seems to be the guy that wrote the requirements for RFPs for AAWSAP. Those requirements never mentioned UFOs, SWR or anything beyond some musings on possible future technology. Only Bigelow, a Ried campaign doner, knew to write an RFP that was far beyond what Lacatski had asked for, and Bigelow's BAASS was the only bidder for AAWSAP.

Lacatski maintains, in his book, that AATIP was just a made-up name used to hide the identity of AAWSAP. Lacatski never mentions Elizondo working for or with AAWSAP.

Lacatski never mentions Elizondo taking over AAWSAP/AATIP as claimed in Elizondo's IG complaint.

Lacatski never mentions AATIP as some sort of sub-program under AAWSAP or a Pentagon version of AAWSAP.

When AAWSAP lost funding, Lacatski claims he and Ried tried shopping it around to agencies outside the DIA, including the DHS.

Lacatski never says Elizondo took AAWSAP over or that AATIP was any part of AAWSAP. He claims Elizondo and possibly Stratton adopted the name AATIP for their research at the Pentagon.

Elizondo has repeatedly contradicted himself in various forms. He claimed to run the official government UFO Program, AATIP, that was just a side gig. He later claimed that he ran AAWSAP and AATIP at the request of Lacatski, something Lacatski never mentioned. After claiming to work with, or for, or actually running AAWSAP, he then came out and said he never worked for AAWSAP.

It's all very convoluted, but at this point in time it seems Lacatski's version of things more closely aligns with many of the FOIA documents, while Elizondo's claims are often contradictory.

I don't know.

 

[Ann K]

15:20 - 15:22) - Elizondo - It absolutely works. It absolutely works.

(15:22 - 15:28) - Ross - You see, remote viewing has been discredited. The CIA determined that it doesn't work.

(15:29 - 15:29) - Elizondo - Ok, sure.

(15:30 - 15:31) - Ross - You're saying it does work.

(15:31 - 15:32) - Elizondo - It absolutely works.

How much credibility do we want to give to whatever Elizondo claims after hearing an exchange like this? I mean, he lost me at "fried dogs", but the deeper we search, the more paranormal beliefs we find.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

Re: Elizondo's comments on the caudate-putamen. He's so far off into (self-important) fantasy that there's no point in talking details.

-Gary Nolan deserves criticism on this. He knows better. He seems to be claiming that UFO witnesses are more sensitive to stimuli because of observable differences in the brain. But these differences are not defined. He makes his remarks in interviews and so on, but has not published anything in a peer-reviewed paper, or even written in definite terms in a serious minded article.

He seems to imply that more connections between brain regions must equal enhanced function, but that's not at all the way the brain works. He has to know better. Overconnectivity between neighboring brain regions plays a role in many problems including schizophrenia, OCD, ASD, epilepsy. It comes under the heading of dysfunctional coupling.

His "idea" seems to be something like: The enhanced connectivity between these regions might theoretically contribute to heightened sensitivity to environmental cues. This could mean these individuals are better able to detect subtle or anomalous sensory inputs.

Which is nothing more than building dream castles.

Couldn't this more likely be dysfunctional coupling and schizotypy?

He seems to be deliberately playing to the kind of simple idea that would make sense to naïve people. And adding his authority. Which is abusing his authority, in my opinion.

 

[elvenwear]

My take is that he told them to hide it but personally thought it was worthwhile, based on this passage from Immanent, pp. 106-107 (italics original).

You are right. Post edited.

Also, we have another inconsistency. On page 28-29 (quote above), he claims meeting with his AAWSAP recruiters in Early 2009, but the complaint Luis filed at the link below, he was already onboard in either July or August 2008.

https://www.metabunk.org/threads/errors-in-luis-elizondos-ufo-book-imminent.13613/post-322566 <edited link>

 

[Mendel]

Also, we have another inconsistency. On page 28-29 (quote above), he claims meeting with his AAWSAP recruiters in Early 2009, but the complaint Luis filed at the link below, he was already onboard in either July or August 2008.

There was a time ca. 2017/2018 where Elizondo's recollection was off by a year. He told Keane and Blumenthal that AATIP started in 2007 for their 12/2017 NYT piece, and this:

Article:

Source: Mr. Luis Elizondo Slide Presentation, MUFON Conference, July 29, 2018.

Source: https://www.theblackvault.com/documentarchive/the-black-vaults-aawsap-aatip-and-post-2017-ufo-timeline-project/

We know this is a year off because the DIA FOIA collection has the contract solicitation, and it was definitely 9/2008.

 

[Mendel]

the complaint Luis filed at the link below

also online here, View attachment 67486.
(Via https://www.metabunk.org/threads/th...ing-claims-by-elizondo-ttsa-and-others.12292/ )

It probably bears mentioning that Elizondo's IG complaint failed because the investigation determined that Elizondo's clearance was intact; his AATIP claims were never investigated.

 

[elvenwear]

You are right. Post edited.

Also, we have another inconsistency. On page 28-29 (quote above), he claims meeting with his AAWSAP recruiters in Early 2009, but the complaint Luis filed at the link below, he was already onboard in either July or August 2008.

View attachment 71339

https://www.metabunk.org/threads/errors-in-luis-elizondos-ufo-book-imminent.13613/post-322566 <edited link>

That link should read https://www.metabunk.org/threads/errors-in-luis-elizondos-ufo-book-imminent.13613/page-6#post-322533