Luis Elizondo
Luis Elizondo is a former U.S. intelligence officer who, by his own account, led the Pentagon's UFO program, AATIP, and then publicly resigned from his post in 2017 to draw attention to the UAP phenomenon.
Luis Elizondo is a former U.S. Department of Defense official with a background in U.S. Army intelligence who, by his own account, was the head of the Pentagon's Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), a program dealing with unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP).
In 2017 he publicly announced that he was resigning from his position, citing as his reason that leadership was not treating the subject with appropriate seriousness and that it was surrounded by excessive secrecy. His resignation became known at the same time that The New York Times published an article about the existence of AATIP, which contributed significantly to the later mainstreaming of the UFO topic in the United States.
Elizondo then joined musician Tom DeLonge's venture, To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science, which worked on releasing UAP footage and popularizing the subject. He later also wrote a book about his experiences concerning the UAP phenomenon and its alleged withholding by the government.
What he claims
According to Elizondo, the U.S. government has for decades been in possession of data, and possibly physical materials, that can be linked to unidentified aerial vehicles, and these have been concealed from the public and, in part, from Congress as well. He has stated on several occasions that the phenomenon may pose a national security risk.
Official and skeptical positions
Official Pentagon statements have disputed that Elizondo was ever the official head of AATIP in the role he claims. Skeptical researchers and journalists have pointed out that his claims have so far not been supported by any publicly verifiable document or evidence.