Back in 2021, Luis Elizondo was concerned his security clearances were under review as part of a concerted effort by certain people to take away his clearances.
This led to the opening of a Department of Defense Office of the Inspector General (DoDIG) investigation. In the end the DoDIG closed the investigation because Elizondo had done nothing wrong and his security clearances were not in jeopardy.
Recently some more information came to light about that investigation as a result of a FOIA received by Jeremy McGowan. And it is this article by Jeremy McGowan I want to discuss in this post –
– “Lue Elizondo — AATIP — and the DoD Office of Inspector General” https://medium.com/@osirisuap/lue-elizondo-aatip-and-the-dod-office-of-inspector-general-d845fca2725c
For many years now, there has been controversy about whether Luis Elizondo was the “Head of AATIP”, as both Elizondo, and Harry Reid (among others) have asserted. Regularly people have suggested there is not enough evidence to prove Elizondo was the Head of AATIP, or even if AATIP existed after 2012. The recent FOIA from Jeremy McGowan has been presented as if it suggests the DoDIG never investigated Elizondo’s claims to be the Head of AATIP, but reading between the lines, maybe the lack of investigation by the DoDIG of those claims by Elizondo indicates something very different.
What follows is not the article from Jeremy McGowan, but a look at some of the issues arising from the article.
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THE DODIG DIDN’T “DEFINITIVELY ESTABLISH” ELIZONDO’S ROLE IN AATIP, BUT DID THEY ESTABLISH ANYTHING ABOUT ELIZONDO’S CLAIMS? SEEMS LIKE THEY DID CHECK UP QUITE A LOT ABOUT LUE.
The suggestion in McGowan’s article is that the recent FOIA release to Jeremy McGowan indicates the DoDIG office didn’t “definitively establish” Elizondo’s claims he was the Manager of AATIP. That would appear to be clearly spelt out in the release where it says –
“the DoD OIG did not ever definitively establish Mr. Elizondo’s role with the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP).”
However, it seems the DoDIG did want information to verify Elizondo’s contract employment. Below is from the transcript of the interview Elizondo had with the DoDIG investigators on 19 May 2021 –
“…we’re going to need points of contact for the respective contractors that you work for, where we can get a hold of someone in, you know, H.R. or in corporate office, you know, if we need to, to identify ourselves and do things like obtain copies of the contract so that we can review it…”
https://documents2.theblackvault.com/documents/dod/DODOIG-2023-000010.pdf#page=11
Also, the DoDIG investigators wanted more information about Elizondo’s clearances. Could they have found out about his role in AATIP when they did that? Possibly, but I’ll admit, it isn’t known. From the interview on 19 May 2021 –
“Well, one of the things [redacted] and myself are going to take a look at is, you know, the current status of your clearance…”
“…we’re not conducting an investigation at this point. What we’re doing is, you know, gathering initial basic facts, you know, based on what our right and left limits are and what we can look at.”
“…and I can quite certainly let you know that we’re probably going to have some email clarification questions for you.”
https://documents2.theblackvault.com/documents/dod/DODOIG-2023-000010.pdf#page=35
So the investigators needed verifiable information about Elizondo’s current contract employment, and his current security clearances. But, as Jeremy McGowan has pointed out, they did not ask one question about Elizondo’s role in AATIP.
LOTS OF PEOPLE WERE OF THE OPINION THE DODIG HAD VERIFIED ELIZONDO’S STATUS AS HEAD OF AATIP, INCLUDING IT SEEMS LUE HIMSELF.
In McGowan’s article it says “Many people have used Elizondo’s IG complaint as proof that he was the Director of AATIP.”
Well, I don’t claim to be an expert in all this, but I have regularly used Elizondo’s DoDIG interview FOIA release as evidence Elizondo was the Manager of AATIP, just a few days ago for instance, so that could be a reference to me I guess, among many others of us on this sub and elsewhere. And yes, I admit I have held the opinion that the DoDIG must have thoroughly investigated Elizondo’s claims he was the Manager of AATIP, especially considering the strong statement from the Pentagon immediately before Elizondo’s interview that “Elizondo had no assigned responsibilities for the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program”. Even Elizondo appeared to be of this opinion when he wrote to the DoDIG on 27 Aug 2021 and said “Hopefully during your efforts, you have a much more clear picture by now” about his responsibilities in AATIP.
https://documents2.theblackvault.com/documents/dod/DODOIG-2023-000010.pdf#page=84
DID ELIZONDO ONLY CLAIM TO BE THE “SUPERVISORY INTELLIGENCE OPERATIONS SPECIALIST” WITH AATIP, OR DID HE SEVERAL TIMES TELL THE DODIG HE WAS THE “MANAGER” OF AATIP? SEEMS THE LATER.
In the article McGowan asserts Elizondo only “listed himself” as the “Supervisory Intelligence Operations Specialist with the AATIP”. Well, Elizondo claimed to be much more than that. In discussions with the DoDIG Elizondo clearly claimed he was the “Manager” of AATIP, although I can’t see how McGowan proves Elizondo could not be both the Manager and the Supervisory Intelligence Operations Specialist – McGowan does not explain that. Below are several instances where Elizondo told the DoDIG he was managing the program in the 19 May 2021 transcript of the interview from u/BlackVault.
pg 13 – “…I was indeed running the program.”
pg 19 – “And I was also running the ATIP [sic] program, the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program…. And because I was the program manager and I decided really who got read on and who didn’t…”
https://documents2.theblackvault.com/documents/dod/DODOIG-2023-000010.pdf
So, Elizondo said he was in charge of who was “read on” to AATIP. This suggests a fairly high level of security classification one would assume. In any case, Elizondo several times claimed to the DoDIG that he was the “manager” of the program, not just the Supervisory Intelligence Operations Specialist.
ELIZONDO ACTUALLY INFORMED THE DODIG ABOUT THE PENTAGON “NO ASSIGNED RESPONSIBILITIES” STATEMENT WITHIN ONE DAY OF IT BEING PUBLISHED ON THE BLACK VAULT WEBSITE IN AUGUST 2021.
It seems Elizondo doubled down on his claims he was the Manager of AATIP many times in discussions with the DoDIG office, including when he wrote this on 27 Aug 2021 –
“As a result of a recent FOIA request, it appears that Pentagon PAO is still publically [sic] stating “I had no assigned responsibilities for AATIP during my time at OUSDI”. Clearly they still do not acknowledge my role and addressing the public in this manner is disingenuous because it appears that i had no responsibilities at all. Hopefully during your efforts, you have a much more clear picture by now. [redacted] I was given a job to do by the Pentagon, and now they pretend i didn’t do the job i was asked to do. It is a feeling of betrayal by certain individuals i can’t explain.”
https://documents2.theblackvault.com/documents/dod/DODOIG-2023-000010.pdf#page=84
So, given that the DoDIG was investigating the possible loss of Elizondo’s security clearances and his allegation there was an effort to discredit him, wouldn’t a statement from the Pentagon that Elizondo had “no assigned responsibilities” have been front and centre in their analysis of events? I would have thought so. Clearly Elizondo did, because Elizondo made it impossible for the DoDIG to ignore that Pentagon statement that he “had no assigned responsibilities” when he drew their attention to it in an email he sent them on 27th August 2021 one day after it was published on the Black Vault website – hardly the actions of someone trying to mislead the DoDIG!! Elizondo even sent them a link to the statement.
https://documents2.theblackvault.com/documents/dod/DODOIG-2023-000010.pdf#page=84
https://www.theblackvault.com/documentarchive/department-of-defense-briefing-card-on-unidentified-aerial-phenomena/
THE STATEMENT FROM THE PENTAGON THAT SAID “ELIZONDO HAD NO ASSIGNED RESPONSIBILITIES FOR” AATIP WAS ACTUALLY MADE THREE WEEKS BEFORE ELIZONDO’S INTERVIEW WITH THE DODIG, BUT THEY NEVER ASKED HIM ONE QUESTION ABOUT IT.
Below is a link to a Gadi Schwartz tweet from 27 April 2021 with the Pentagon statement. Elizondo’s interview with the DoDIG was nearly a month later, on 19 May 2021.
Today, when asked if Elizondo ran AATIP, a pentagon spokesperson said, “Luis Elizondo had no assigned responsibilities for the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP)while he was assigned to the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence & Security.
https://twitter.com/GadiNBC/status/1386870260716883969
Schwartz then tweeted out “ UPDATE: Former Senator Harry Reid has sent us a letter confirming @LueElizondo’s role at #AATIP.” Schwartz had a copy of the letter attached to the tweet in which Harry Reid said Elizondo was “the Head of AATIP.”
https://twitter.com/GadiNBC/status/1386872125835812864
As far as we know, the DoDIG did not ask Elizondo one single question about that statement from the Pentagon which stated emphatically Elizondo had “no assigned responsibilities for” AATIP.
Everything about AATIP after 2012 is shrouded in a pretty high level of secrecy, so nobody has any real idea what sort of organisation AATIP was after 2012. Is it possible that knowing certain facts about AATIP are outside of the DoDIG’s ability to “definitively establish” because of what the “right and left limits are and what we can look at” according to the DoDIG investigators? Honestly I don’t know. Is it reasonable to believe that the DoDIG investigators could ignore the Pentagon statement about Elizondo’s role with AATIP, especially after he provided them with a link to the statement? You would have to suppose the DoDIG investigators were well aware of the Pentagon statement, and yet it appears as if they really did completely disregard that Pentagon statement.
Did the investigators receive some information that countered or contextualized that Pentagon statement? The investigators told Elizondo they would look into his current contract employment, and his current clearances. It was their job to ask people questions, and if Elizondo was never the Manager of AATIP surely that would have come up in the conversations with someone and they would have had to respond by asking Elizondo questions about it.
Yet, as Jeremy McGowan asserts in his article, the DoDIG investigators never asked Elizondo one single question about his status with AATIP. Apparently it seems they never asked anyone about it. To steal a line from Jeremy McGowan, “TAKE A MOMENT TO CHEW ON THAT…”
THE $22M STORY AGAIN – THE NYT ARTICLE FROM DECEMBER 2017 NEVER SAID WHAT PEOPLE CONTINUALLY SAY IT SAID, AND ELIZONDO HAS REGULARLY CLARIFIED HIS POSITION RELATING TO THAT MONEY.
McGowan’s Medium article asserts “The world has been led to believe, by Lue Elizondo, that he ran a 22 million dollar “Pentagon Program” designed to study UFOs.” The 2017 NYT article right from the beginning of all this stated pretty emphatically that Elizondo did not have that money. This drama about the $22M being claimed by Elizondo is constantly brought up to discredit the NYT article, and Elizondo, and it is not what the article or Elizondo said. AAWSAP was classified at the time, so it was not reported the money was for a program called “AAWSAP”, and we know now that “AATIP” was a nickname for “AAWSAP”. The 2017 article was accurate in its reporting, and Elizondo clearly said the money was not for AATIP as he ran it. Below is what the article actually said –
The Defense Department has never before acknowledged the existence of the program, which it says it shut down in 2012. But its backers say that, while the Pentagon ended funding for the effort at that time, the program remains in existence…
But Mr. Elizondo said the only thing that had ended was the effort’s government funding, which dried up in 2012. From then on, Mr. Elizondo said in an interview, he worked with officials from the Navy and the C.I.A…
Contracts obtained by The Times show a congressional appropriation of just under $22 million beginning in late 2008 through 2011.
https://web.archive.org/web/20171216172629/https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us/politics/pentagon-program-ufo-harry-reid.html
GENERAL MATTIS ASKED SIX QUESTIONS WHEN ELIZONDO LEFT THE PENTAGON, AND NONE OF THEM WERE ABOUT AATIP OR ELIZONDO’S ROLE.
US Defense Secretary Mattis asked six questions about Elizondo’s resignation. These were questions like “I want to know more about his abrupt resignation – why?” and “Was the subject ‘read-out’ of all classified responsibilities…?” All of this sounds like Elizondo’s resignation was a serious matter, even for the Secretary of Defense. So what did James Mattis ask about the program titled “AATIP”, or Elizondo’s claims to be the Head of AATIP? Surely if this was an issue there would have been a question about that?
https://documents2.theblackvault.com/documents/osd/18-F-0324.pdf#page=10
In fact James Mattis didn’t ask one single question about any thing to do with AATIP, or Elizondo’s claims to be the Head of AATIP. One might reasonably assume James Mattis already knew the answers to those questions.
THERE HAVE NEVER BEEN ANY FINDINGS AGAINST ELIZONDO.
Finally, the outcome of the DoDIG investigation (in a letter dated 16 Feb 2022) was that the DoDIG brought to a close the investigation because they determined there was nothing to investigate. The issue had been whether Elizondo’s security clearances were under review erroneously. In the end, none of Elizondo’s clearances were effected by any review “based on allegations that he made unauthorized classified disclosures”, because he actually hadn’t made any unauthorized disclosures. Essentially, Elizondo’s security clearances remained intact, and still do to this day as far as we know.
“Your client’s eligibility for access to classified information remains intact. Accordingly, we are closing his case. “
https://documents2.theblackvault.com/documents/dod/DODOIG-2023-000010.pdf#page=86
TLDR.
A recent FOIA suggested the DoDIG didn’t verify whether Luis Elizondo was the Head of AATIP. Both Elizondo and Harry Reid claimed Elizondo was once the “Head of AATIP”.
In fact, there were very good reasons to question Elizondo about his role in AATIP because just before Elizondo was interviewed by the DoDIG, the Pentagon said “Elizondo had no assigned responsibilities for the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program.”
It was Elizondo who informed the DoDIG about the Pentagon statement in an email one day after it was released in a FOIA’d document, which you would imagine would hardly be something Elizondo would do if he were trying to mislead the DoDIG.
And yet, neither the DoDIG who investigated a whole heap of other issues relating to Elizondo’s contract employment and his current clearances, nor the Secretary for Defense who asked six questions about Elizondo’s resignation, ever asked one single question about whether Elizondo was the Head of AATIP. I wonder why? It’s almost like they didn’t need to because they already knew the answer!
submitted by /u/ASearchingLibrarian
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