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22 Did Elizondo Expert Really Run AATIP?

The Media Loves This prominently featured in the show.) He appears to also said that he put the shares in a trust that
be having the last laugh at everyone who called “would be donated to a charity.” He believes that
UFO Expert Who Says He him looney tunes for having chased after transaction has been completed and that he now
Bigfoot and flying saucers in the Nevada desert. owns “zero stock” in the company, he wrote.
Worked for an Obscure
As it happens, Knapp also appeared in
Pentagon Program. Did THE ADVANCED AEROSPACE Threat the first episode of “Unidentified,” lauding
Identification Program received widespread DeLonge for his “unprecedented” efforts in
He? press coverage after Elizondo disclosed its advancing the UFO issue.

existence almost two years ago. “You can laugh Another fixture in the UFO orbit is John
if you want, but a lot of people are taking this Greenewald, the FOIA researcher and a sort of
Continued from Page 22
revelation seriously,” Brett Baer said on Fox antithesis to Knapp. Initially enthusiastic about
News days after the New York Times broke the To the Stars, Greenewald became increasingly
story with its lavish front-page Sunday spread skeptical when he was unable to verify many of
“If you were trying to come up with the A-team on December 17, 2017. Elizondo’s claims about the government’s UFO
of former, high-level government officials who Virtually overnight, Elizondo went from program through FOIA requests and
would come forward on this issue, you can’t living “in the shadows,” in his words, to conversations with Pentagon representatives. So
really think of a better team,” Bender says in the hopscotching between cable news studios, last year, Greenewald reached out to To the Stars
screener. “Lue Elizondo, Chris Mellon — these where he talked gravely about hypersonic, spokesperson Kari DeLonge (Tom’s sister) for
guys still have security clearances, still have gravity-defying “unidentified aerial vehicles” more information about Elizondo’s involvement
networks in Washington, still are in the business, that, in recent years, had encroached on military in AATIP.
if you will.” training areas in restricted airspace. Many of I mentioned Kari DeLonge’s response —
That last part sounds like a cryptic these reports were conveniently illustrated with about Elizondo having taken over AATIP and
reference to contract work they might be doing videos taken from cockpit cameras of F-18 run it “out of the Office for the Secretary of
for a U.S. intelligence agency or some other fighter jets that Elizondo had arranged for the Defense (OSD) under the Under Secretary of
government entity. Elizondo confirmed to me Pentagon to release just before he quit. The Defense for Intelligence (USDI)” — to
earlier this year that he is, in fact, working as a grainy footage of tiny, darting objects, combined Sherwood, the Pentagon spokesperson who had
government contractor, “but it’s not what you with Elizondo’s earnest claims of “compelling told me unequivocally that Elizondo “had no
think it is,” he said. Mellon did not respond to evidence” for “phenomena” he couldn’t identify, responsibilities with regard to the AATIP
my request for comment. made for great television. (Sherwood, the program while he worked in OUSDI.”
In the feverish UFO community, in Pentagon spokesperson, said the videos were I then asked Sherwood how he knew that
which conspiracy theories have long thrived like released “for research purposes … and not for Elizondo hadn’t worked for AATIP during his
a mutating virus (sometimes with good reason), general public release,” which seems a time with the Office of the Under Secretary of
some suspect that DeLonge is being played like meaningless distinction given their widespread Defense for Intelligence, where he was based
a useful idiot — and that his To the Stars use by news organizations.) from 2008 until his retirement in 2017.
Academy is a front for some kind of black ops Months later, after the attention from the Sherwood said he’d spoken with OUSDI
project. mainstream media died down, Elizondo hit the leadership, including individuals who are “still
If he is not a stooge, he is certainly an UFO banquet circuit, where he stroked the egos there” from the time when Elizondo started
odd figure for Mellon and Elizondo to hitch their of believers. “People may have associated you working in the office.
wagons to. with being fringe or out there,” he told one rapt Maybe Elizondo was running AATIP
In fact, the whole origin story of To the audience of hundreds at a UFO conference last under the purview of another office or agency
Stars, which DeLonge recapped in a bizarre July. “All along, you were right.” It was the first within the Department of Defense? Sherwood
public rollout in October 2017 and in an even public forum in which Elizondo laid out the acknowledged that Elizondo “worked for other
more bizarre interview with podcast host Joe history and objectives of the AATIP; soundbites organizations in DoD.” But that, too, would
Rogan, is pretty bananas. In sum, DeLonge from his talk were sprinkled throughout the first have contradicted Kari DeLonge’s statement to
claims that he is the military’s chosen vessel for episode of “Unidentified.” Greenewald.
UFO disclosure. By then, though, longtime UFO Kari DeLonge did not respond to
“Why you?” Rogan asked on his researchers were having trouble finding out multiple requests for comment.
podcast. “What could you do?” what the program exactly did, as well as the It bears noting that, although Elizondo
“Communication,” DeLong responded. scope of Elizondo’s role. FOIA requests were has made a point of providing various
“They don’t have a way to make a movie, a turning up dry. documents to reporters (including me) to
book. They don’t have a way to go on a show Elizondo was ready for them. “In the establish his bona fides, he does not appear to
like this.” Department of Defense, there’s always a paper have supplied any materials that validate his
It’s worth noting that, several years trail,” he told the audience at the UFO connection to the government UFO program he
before DeLonge took on this momentous conference. “When you establish an insists he led. No memorandums, no emails
communications assignment, he created a organization, there’s a paper trail. When you dis- discussing deliverables or findings, and no
website called Strange Times that was establish an organization, there’s a paper trail. paperwork addressed to or from him that
essentially a clearinghouse for UFO news and You won’t find one for this program.” connects him to AATIP.
conspiracies. “Think of it as a Huffington Post Some dubious, unofficial documents The documents he has provided include
for the tin-foil-helmet wearing crowd,” wrote leaked out to George Knapp, a Las Vegas TV recent annual Defense Department performance
one music blogger. journalist who, for decades, has been a fixture in evaluations and his October 4, 2017 resignation
Somehow, we are to believe that this is the UFO media orbit. Knapp has been a vocal letter to then-Defense Secretary James Mattis,
the mindset with which staid former members of defender of Elizondo and DeLonge for the past which bears the apparent seal of the Office of the
the military and intelligence community sought two years, pushing back on critics who have Under Secretary of Defense. In the letter,
to join forces. But perhaps there’s a more raised thorny questions about To the Stars. Elizondo alludes to internal opposition at the
innocent answer. To the Stars, which raised Knapp also purchased stock in the company, Pentagon to investigate UFOs that he wrote had
more than $2 million from investors, was something he has not always revealed to readers menaced Navy Pilots and posed an “existential
originally hyped as a UFO research company and viewers in his reporting. threat to our national security.” He was leaving,
that would explore the “outer edges of science,” In an email to The Intercept, Knapp he strongly implied in his letter, because the
but its Security and Exchange Commission acknowledged buying 400 shares of the Pentagon wasn’t taking that threat seriously.
filing identifies it as a “Motion Picture & Video academy’s stock in 2018, “not as an investment, The letter does not mention AATIP or
Tape Production” concern. but as a way to support their fledgling company Elizondo’s role as its director.
That designation seems appropriate now and their work.” He wrote that he had “made
with the making of “Unidentified,” which lists that information public” and “informed” his (Continued on Page 27)
DeLonge as executive producer. (He is also employer” at KLAS-TV in Las Vegas. Knapp