Luis Elizondo
Appearances
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
What the hell is that? And more importantly, that data is being backed up by radar data, right? So you've got electro-optical data like gun camera footage or POD or FLIR video, and then you've got radar data that is actually confirming what the video is picking up. And then you've got eyewitnesses that are also watching it, right? So you've got...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
trained observers, pilots that can recognize the silhouette between an SU-22 and a MiG-25 from 20 miles away and make a split-second decision, is it friend or foe, do I kill it or do I let it live? And they're reporting it. So you have now three separate, if you will, collection platforms, the human eye being one of them.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
You've got gun camera footage and you've got radar footage, all describing the same event at the same place at the same time under the same circumstances, right? And so keep in mind with my background as a former special agent in counterintelligence, if this was in front of a jury – You know, as I've said before, I think we're well beyond reasonable doubt. That is something there.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
I mean, that is real. That's not an atmospheric aberration. It's not an anomaly. That is something there. It's tangible.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
No, like I said, for me it was more slow and gradual.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
I think for me one of the most compelling moments was when I attended – Boy, let me go back into memory banks. I attended a dinner with some individuals who were already associated with the larger umbrella program called OSAP. And I attended dinner at a Washington, D.C. hotel, and a Brazilian general attended this dinner. And the dinner was sponsored by a gentleman named Robert Bigelow.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
The famous billionaire hotel. Yeah, I've met him. Yeah. Yeah. And by the way, he's he's an American hero. He's a patriot. He's brilliant. He is brilliant. And he's and people don't realize that he funded self-funded a lot of this stuff on behalf of the U.S. government for by himself. Like he paid it to do it himself. He really is an American patriot, in my opinion.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
But anyways, he flew in this guy named General Uchoa. General Uchoa was a Brazilian general, very, very senior in the Brazilian government, who led an investigation about an event that occurred over several days. Is this the Varginha incident? No, it's actually called Colares. Oh, another one. In Brazil, yeah. And the Colares incident. And they had... an overwhelming number of eyewitnesses.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And there was even some video and photographs that they had produced internally there to Brazil. And it was overwhelming, the evidence. And for me, it was more listening to him and explain the concern they had and some of the interactions the Brazilian government officials had with these UAP that really I left there that dinner scratching my head and really at that point beginning to absorb
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
the profoundness that we're dealing with something that is real. This is not a cover plan for some other technology we're trying to protect. Did he show you this video evidence? So I was sitting at kind of like a table like this. There was a whole lot of people at the table. He was sitting at the head. I was kind of way down over here.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And he brought a manila envelope and he was showing photographs to everybody. Right. And some reporting as well. I think he brought, if I recall correctly, his daughter to translate because I don't think English was his, you know, very good. It wasn't his language.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
But for me, that was and I think for one of my colleagues, too, which I probably can't say his name right now because he hasn't come out publicly yet. But we both left that dinner. And I think scratching our heads and saying, wow, this is legit. This is real. The U.S. government is interested in this. And there is interest by our government.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
After that dinner, attending more meetings and beginning to read the reports, the field reports and speaking to the scientists, it became evident to me that this was a very serious issue. We had near misses over some of our areas of operation. In some cases, literally these UAP splitting a combat formation. Now, if you know how planes fly, they fly very close in a combat situation.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
These things were splitting the formation, right? That there were reports being provided through the Air Force, mostly through the Navy, about air safety issues, where pilots literally could run into these things, right? They were pervasive. It wasn't like a onesie and twosies.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Not that I'm aware of what I can tell you that there has been incidents where there appears to be some sort of provocation where one of these things seems to be coming deliberately close to an aircraft, not necessarily trying to hit it, but maybe trying to demonstrate performance capabilities. There was one video in particular. I haven't been cleared by the Pentagon.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
So let me see if I can speak about it in general terms. There's a pilot flying. And you can hear on the radio this chatter back and forth. Do you see it? Do you have eyes down on it? Pilot, nope. Negative, no eyes down. Okay, you should have it on radar. Yeah, I got something on radar, but no eyes. I can't see it. And then all of a sudden, a craft, a
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
An object goes whizzing right by the cockpit, and I mean probably like 15 feet away. And you can hear the pilot, the expletives of the pilot. I won't say it here on air, but you can imagine, right, what a pilot would say when they're very, very surprised. That was one. Can you describe what he saw? I think I can.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
I want to be careful that I don't, because again, I haven't had a, what I, what I have approval to talk about. I've, I've spoken about, um, let me preface by saying I still have my security clearance. Uh, and on occasion I still will consult for the U S government. And so I want to be very mindful. I have no problem going up all the way to the line. Right. Understood.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
But if I put up, you know, a pinky toe over that line there. Right, right, right. Um, but it was a wedge shaped craft wedge shaped wedge shaped, um, like triangular, but, um, Yeah, like a wedge. I don't know how else to describe it. I could draw it for you if you want. You want me to draw it?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Yeah, but it was silver metallic and like a diamond maybe. That's a better way to describe it. Like a diamond almost.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
and it looked kind of like it look look kind of like that really it's just uh just a little and that that kind of shape is something that's been reported multiple times um so that was the first time i ever saw something like that to me it was keep in mind i i never followed this topic so every time i'm seeing one of these videos i'm kind of seeing something for the very first time so lenticular whether it's a disc shaped craft or it's
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
It's a wedge-shaped craft or a diamond-shaped craft or a triangle-shaped craft, boomerang in some cases. These were all new to me. So it was very, very perplexing. And obviously, to our military pilots, it was very concerning. And I think when you look at some of the gold standard cases we had, like the Nimitz, for example, that case, you have this overwhelming number of sensors
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Looking at the same thing going on that the pilots are reporting. And for me, that was most compelling. Like I said, more than eyewitness testimony is important. But at the end of the day, you know, grandma seeing some lights in her backyard doesn't really do it for me. You know, I'm a fact oriented kind of guy. I've got to see the data. Let the data.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
provide us the information we need so then we can make a conclusion. If you start seeing UFOs in the sky everywhere, well, chances are they're probably not. It's a quadcopter, it's a balloon, it's an aircraft, it could be all sorts of things.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
That's why I think from our perspective, having the fundamental categories, the observables we call them, was so important because they are so beyond what a normal aircraft, a traditional conventional aircraft can do. At that point, you realize you're dealing with some sort of beyond next generation technology. And that's when it gets compelling for guys like me, right?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
When you're seeing performance capabilities that far exceed, far surpass anything we have. And I'm talking even the very, very best technology we have. We don't come close to that. and no visible means of propulsion? No, or obvious signs of lift, right? And not even a cockpit. You have to scratch your head and see what's going on. Interestingly, I'll share with you.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
No windows. Well, in some cases, no windows. Other cases, people will report what they think are windows. They say, oh, I saw windows. But at the end of the day, we're looking at that in terms of what we think a window is, right? So you see a car, you see windows. Or a plane, those are windows.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
I didn't see any information to suggest that there were actually windows, even though an eyewitness might describe a window, because we are describing something that we recognize. And so we say, oh, that might be a window or whatnot. But it might not be a window. And so I want to be very careful to say there were no windows. There could have been.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
But the ones that I was privy to that I saw, I didn't see any obvious signs of like a windshield or a window. I didn't see anything like that. I saw vehicles that were doing things that were just left you scratching your head. And they were real, like I said, because you're backing it up with all this other sensor data.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And some of the best sophisticated sensor data, by the way, at the time on the planet... Right. Like the spy one radar and the E2 Hawkeye and and some of the other radar capabilities and technical capabilities that other intelligence agencies have that I can't discuss here. You know that this this is the stuff that that helps us put forgive the analogy here, but. warheads on foreheads.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
When we're going to take a strike against a terrorist, these are the same sensor systems we use to prosecute that war, that act, both in combat and not in combat. So yeah, that for me was very compelling. And it's lots and lots of videos. People think that there's only three videos. Those don't even scratch the surface. There are hundreds and hundreds of videos that
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
the intelligence community and the Department of Defense have on these things. Has there ever been any discussion about releasing any of these? I don't want to speak on behalf of the government. Colleagues of mine like Chris Mellon, who have been very, very, very active in this topic and have actually been responsible for a lot of what we see now happening in Congress, has been championing that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
He is the one who says, look, we need more videos to come out so the American people can see for themselves what we've been dealing with. When I had Chris Mellon in the Pentagon, he saw those videos.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And up to that point, he had been, when he was a senior person at the Pentagon, like very senior, one of his jobs as the senior intelligence official, he asked, hey, do we have any UAP, UFO videos, investigations, anything like that? And they told him no. So when he came to the Pentagon and saw what we actually did have, You can imagine someone like Chris Mellon, right? He wasn't very happy.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
He was actually pretty disappointed, saying, why was I told no? I can see these videos clearly. I see the reports. Clearly, this is something that we're interested in as a Department of Defense. And yet, when I was one of the senior guys, he got the Heisman, right? He was being told no. And so that was, I think, a point for him that really, that's probably the spark.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And I don't want to speak for my friend Chris, but I suspect that was probably the spark that got him to the point where he said, okay, we have to do something about this. This is BS.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Yeah, I think they said those were drones, though, if I'm not mistaken. I think the jury came out, if I'm not mistaken, I could be wrong, that it was somebody using drones with some LED lights.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, we have to be careful as our own technology begins to advance. There's going to be pranksters out there. And that's one of the things that for me in AATIP, I always went into an investigation or a case assuming that it was manmade.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And until I saw the compelling data that said otherwise, we were always going to assume or presume that this was something that was conventional. It was probably misidentified. but it wasn't exotic. And then once the data suggests otherwise, then you kind of go into that other mode of, okay, now what are we dealing with?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Again, especially on the backdrop of the five performance observables, that's when you start to say, okay, yeah, this is not an F-16. This is not a Chinese aircraft. This is something different.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
It just so happens I brought you something. Oh. When the glasses come out, you know it's getting serious. No, it just means I'm old. Me too. Yeah. I'm going to provide you a document here. It's a short document, but the portions I think are highlighted that you're going to want to pay attention to. And let's see here. Okay.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
So if this is just for you and if your audience is interested, it's this paragraph here you're going to want to read. And then it's the last one that's highlighted. And then take a look at the date and the subject line.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Oh, great. Yeah. So paragraph six right now. So if you want to scroll down to paragraph six. OK.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And the date of that document, if you scroll a little bit higher, you are going to see the date of that memo.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
So this is the recognition that we have a serious problem over our sensitive military installations. This is nothing new. This is not – 1970s reverse engineered technology or some sort of special technology.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
We had just broken the sound barrier, and we had not yet entered into space. And we have these things that are performing in ways that, frankly, we can't replicate. I brought a few more of these later on to emphasize that point you just brought up at some point if you're interested. Yeah. But it highlights that these are official government documents through official government personnel. Right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
raising the alarm bells just like we did in OSAP and ATIPS. And so this is nothing new. Now, if you want to look at this from an adversarial perspective, our government has already said that's not ours, right? If you look at a 1950 Sabre jet, for example, it wasn't even supersonic. And yet these things that we are observing in some cases are doing about some more documents here.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
multiples of of mock um at at at and doing velocities and doing things that we frankly could not do back then and frankly we still can't do in some cases but temporarily speaking the only two countries in the world may may have a chance of doing something like that would be russia and china and now in 1950 where was china was in the middle of a famine and at the time, and where was Russia?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Russia was trying to develop the atomic bomb and still was using horse-drawn carts for a lot of their military operations. So, temporally speaking, it doesn't make sense. This is the analogy I've used before, Joe, that it would be like the Carter going into King Tut's tomb for the very first time in the 1920s, discovering King Tut's tomb, And when he goes in, he finds a fully assembled 747 jet.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
It doesn't make sense. Temporally speaking, they did not have that technology. So is it possible, and I'll be very careful what I say, that the U.S. government has some sort of exotic technology? Well, my answer is I sure hope so because, you know, we want to have an advantage over our adversaries. But in 1950, that wasn't the case.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
There is film of many crafts, and not just New Mexico per se, but over many military installations. I've got another one for you I'll provide you. You don't want to have to waste your time reading it, but I think you'll appreciate this. Take a look at the date of this and who it's to and who it's from, and I think you'll find the subject line very interesting.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Just to highlight a portion so you can see the top of the document, who it's from, who it's to and the date, and what the subject line is.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Yeah, it's an old reproduction of official government document. Bottom line, it's a document from J. Edgar Hoover.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Flying disks, I should say. Flying disks over the savanna. There's a sensitive facility that we had where we were doing atomic development.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Savannah River Plant. Yes, sir. Okay. That's correct.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Yeah, and the date of that being 1952, right? So this is verified? That was released by the government. Those are all official. All these are official U.S. government documentation that anybody can pull up anytime they want.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
So great question. Our focus was really more – modern time. It was more like taking a picture of where we are now.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Sure. And anecdotally, that's great. But keep in mind, on the backdrop of national security, when you go to a general... They should clean this up, by the way.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Yeah, that's Uncle Sam for you. You know, when you go to a general or- It makes me suspicious. No, you can find it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
But it was just like- Yeah, the government released that. I mean, they admit that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Well, remember, they were using typewriters back then too, right? And the ink smears. Blotchy. Yeah, blotchy. And I'm sure the original is probably much, much cleaner. But that's what the government put out online for people to review.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
So when you're going back to answer your question, when you are going to a general or you're going to a military leader about this topic, if you go back to anecdotal stuff like, oh, this is something from 1950s, they're not interested. They're like, look, what is going on now? What is the threat now? I've got a carrier strike group out in the water.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
I'm getting reports these things are coming in and interrogating the ship.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
you know what i want to see that i want to see the videos i want to see the reporting i want to see the the deck logs and what the commander says and i want to know the pilots i want to talk to the pilots the radar operators right that's their focus they're not interested by the way we've tried a few times and the further back in time we go the less interested they were so it was really interesting yeah it was really the current information what's going on now i'm not interested in what happened they're just taking a pragmatic approach yeah yeah and it's you know it's understandable from a military perspective a national security perspective
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
The other stuff is interesting. And from the general public's perspective, you know, they're interested. But from a national security perspective, they're like, hey, man, that was three decades ago. Right. Makes sense. I need now. So it is understandable. A little frustrating because you want to demonstrate, look, boss, this is nothing new. This is a repeated pattern that we're seeing here.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
There was reporting, yeah. And again, I got to be careful because some of that stuff I haven't been cleared to talk about. But there are reports we call foreign intelligence, FI, foreign intelligence reports. I can't say where or who or anything like that. But on classified systems where we know without a shadow of a doubt UAPs were encountered in other countries, adversarial countries. Why?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Because we spy on them and we know. Again, I can't say how we know and whatnot because I can get in trouble, but just... So we know this is not a United States phenomenon. Precisely. It is not a U.S.-only phenomenon. And in fact, in other countries, whether it's in Latin America, South America, or in Europe or Russia, China, there is an extreme interest in this topic.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
In fact, the Chinese, it was in the newspaper, I think it was the China Morning Sun, there's something called the Five Continents Initiative, where allegedly they were trying to
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
broker a deal with the united nations that would allow china to run all the ufo investigations for the united nations right so we also know that russia they've come out and said yeah we're interested in this topic there was some released old kgb footage that showed mig interactions with these uap and there's also in latin america you have the same thing if you go to latin america now they don't have the same level of stigma and taboo associated with this topic like we do
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And so they talk freely about it. They have no problem talking. In fact, when I was in the Patagonia area of Argentina, there is a near town called Bariloche and Las Lajas. One of the chief of police was telling me that there's an area there called La Miranda. La Miranda means to see, to view places.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And they call it that, the town, because UAP are so frequent there that local law enforcement actually built an observatory, an observation post, to look at these things because they were so frequent. So this is not a new phenomenon. This is something that's been around for quite a long time. The problem is, in my opinion, and I could be wrong, but this is my assessment –
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
The reason why it's so difficult to have the conversation here is because our government had placed so much emphasis and interest trying to stigmatize this topic that it almost worked too well. Now we're at the point where we should be having this conversation and people still don't want to because they think it's crazy. You think of tinfoil hats and Elvis on the mothership.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
But in reality, we're talking about a real national security issue. I mean, these things are here. You have, Joe, you have a former director of national intelligence, Ratcliffe, a former director of CIA. Yeah. Brennan, you have former presidents all coming out and saying, yeah, there's something to it. It's real. Right now, what it is, where it's from and all that stuff.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
I'm not sure we're quite ready to go there yet. But the acknowledgement is, hey, man, yeah, this is real. It's not ours. And we probably should do something about it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Luke, how are you? Hey, sir. I'm doing better than I deserve. Well, that's a good statement. You know, there's an old military saying, any day above ground is a good day.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Yeah. My understanding is you have to look at where America was at the time they were doing these investigations. It was at the height of the Cold War, right? And despite what some people think, the Cold War wasn't very cold at all. It was pretty hot. And we had Russia and the United States engaging in these proxy wars.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Neither side wanted to let the other side know what we had and what we didn't know. Right. So if you have these UAP coming in and out, the last thing you want to do is tell the other side broadcast. This is what we've learned from it. And more importantly, this is what we don't know about it. Right. And so both sides were keeping this very quiet.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
But there was an interesting agreement at the classified level, I believe, in the late 60s where. There was this relationship with the United States. We were putting up our northern tier radar system to detect then Soviet Union ICBMs. And they were doing the same thing, right, because none of us really trusted each other.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
But we trusted each other enough to say, look, before you hit that button, if you see something coming over the horizon, before you hit that button and launch, give us a call because – It might be a UFO, right? And we don't want to start World War III because either side mistakes the UFO for an ICBM. And that's how serious they took the topic. I mean, that's real.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
That's a real memo that existed between the United States and Russia. So that is an indicator how much both sides took this topic seriously.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
I'm aware of the fact that people say it does exist and people have been briefed on it. I wasn't privy to that. I was, again, more focused on the here and now. I was aware of people who had attended certain meetings, very senior level meetings where that was discussed, where they saw certain footage. But I'm hearing that secondhand. I did not see the old footage myself.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
My focus was more on the current, what's going on now. But back to your point, why was this effort to try to create so much stigma and taboo? I think it was because of that. I think because you had Russia and U.S. at this weird stalemate where neither one wanted to tell the other side what we know and what we didn't know about UAP.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And really, I think the focus from a national security perspective, let's say you're a general and I'm a general. Look, we've got a real Cold War going on here right now. As long as these things aren't coming in and zapping my people, that's going to be my focus right now. That's a real potential threat that I have to deal with now.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
I've got Russia pointing nukes at me and I'm pointing nukes at them at any time we could launch. Let's focus on that more so than the other stuff. And that has been my observation on why they didn't want to address the problem, the challenge openly with the general public back. And they also were worried.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
There was several studies that suggested that most people would be very uncomfortable with that idea that there's something else in the cosmos potentially or even right here on Earth. And that it would create some sort of societal disruption. Right. They didn't want to cause panic. They were afraid that people would kind of like think of a run on Wall Street. Right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
When people get panic, they do kind of strange things sometimes. And I think the government was very worried about that. What's the most compelling modern thing that you've seen? Oh, my God. I can't talk about it, unfortunately. This is my frustration, Joe, because I know what I've seen. I know what my colleagues have seen, right?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And to this day, there's video that's coming in on a regular routine basis that is very, very compelling.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Well, we have classified systems. We hide a lot of things.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
So let me backtrack a little bit. This, there's a general public that is filming stuff. But from a Department of Defense perspective, our focus, now Arrow is a different story, but when I was in the government, we had to be very, very careful of something we called intelligence oversight. Back in the 60s and 70s, the U.S. intelligence apparatus, particularly in the Department of Defense,
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
was kind of naughty. They were doing things they shouldn't do. They were spying on students and they were spying on American citizens. You don't say. Crazy. Say it isn't so. So Congress passed some laws and said, okay, you can no longer do this kind of stuff on American citizens. You can't conduct intelligence operations on American citizens. You can't do it. It's illegal, right?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
So you have Executive Order 12333 and all these other rules and laws and DoD 5240.1 that all come out and say, no mas. So Department of Defense is supposed to focus on military. That's it. You don't bring in U.S. persons' information and ingest them into a Department of Defense database, especially a Department of Defense intelligence database. That's a super no-no. That's called U.S.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Persons Information, and it's pretty much verboten. So our focus was looking specifically at military-sourced information. I was not focusing at all on what the private citizens were seeing because at the end of the day, we couldn't use it. You can't do anything with the data.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Overwhelming. Overwhelming. There's absolutely no doubt that we didn't have to look at civilian data because we had... better collection sensor systems from the military that was looking at stuff and giving us better insight if you can't tell us about can you give us some sort of an understanding of like what you're talking about yeah sure um without being specific yeah let me see um okay yeah um
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
There is a video, high resolution video of, I can't say what platform it was taken from. I can't say where it was taken from. But an object that, do you know how large an offshore oil derrick is? They're huge, right? They're almost like a small city, right? They're like one city block. They're huge. They're enormous things. There is a video that shows one of these objects underwater.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
That goes by, the speed was calculated between 450 and 550 knots underwater, and it was bigger than the offshore derrick that it was passing, because you could see in the video the offshore derrick, and you could see this thing zip right by it. Jesus. Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Right. So exactly. Why do we use the term UAP, right? Now it's unidentified anomalous phenomenon because it's all domain. Initially it was UFO, unidentified flying object. And for several reasons they changed the name. One of them not just because of stigma like people think. But because the word flying object means flight and you have to have wings to fly. That's flight.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And these things don't have wings. So that term we're not even sure is even accurate anymore because they're not necessarily flying. We see them underwater. We see them super high altitude. So the term was changed to unidentified aerial phenomenon. But again, that did not encompass flying. All the observations we were seeing.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
So now the term UAP, I think the latest description of it is unidentified anomalous phenomenon to help describe this multi-domain or transmedium characteristic that we are beginning to see and record that these things can do. And that is – I'm going to – if I can digress for a second because that's super important, Joe.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
We have transmedium vehicles, right? We have things like seaplanes. And it's a plane and it can float on water. But let's face it, a seaplane is neither a really good plane or a really good boat because it's a compromise. It's a design compromise between an object that you want to perform in the air and in the sea. And that's why it's neither really good at both.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Same thing with, for example, a space shuttle. It goes out into space and it can glide down, but it's not a very good airplane. It comes down like a brick, you know, because there's design compromises and performance compromises. But what we are seeing doesn't have any of that attributable compromise. These objects aren't slowing down. They're not changing their performance capabilities.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
They can do the same thing that we're seeing in the air now. and possibly in space and even underwater. So that is a fundamentally different type of technology than we are used to dealing with.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Yeah. So we had some of the best scientists on the team, folks like Dr. Hal Pudoff and some other folks. I'm not allowed to say their names. Dr. Davis and some others that were doing the calculations, mathematical calculations on how this is possible. And the consensus was by by the scientists, not me, because I'm not a I'm not a. I'm not a physics expert. I'm not an astrophysicist.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
They were saying that – so let me back up here. Initially, the government for years was trying to identify the different exotic technologies that could explain the different performance characteristics. And it was during the ATIP years that the scientists had this consensus that if you had one type of technology, if you could do one thing, all these other observables now become possible.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Kind of think of like a unifying theory. And so if you had the ability to create this bubble around you in a localized area that insulated you from the effects of Earth's gravity. Now, what is gravity? People think that, you know, when I... Drop my glasses. That's gravity. That's not gravity. That's an effect of gravity. Gravity is the warping of space-time.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And that's important because people don't – you hear the term thrown around a lot. But they don't realize that space and time are actually connected. They are one and the same. They're opposite sides, if you will, of the same coin. And so you can't have one without the other. And so you have this ability to create a bubble around you that insulates you from the warping of space time.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Let's say in this case, Earth's gravity or something like that. then the way you experience time inside that bubble is perhaps fundamentally different than the way you might experience space-time outside that bubble because you're not subject to the effects of gravity, which would explain potentially why things don't need wings and why they don't need propulsion systems like that, right?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
So it's a completely different way of looking at how we understand physics and how we, as humans, move about. Everything we do is fundamentally force equals mass times acceleration. F equals MA, right? Mass times acceleration and you force. This may be something a little bit different. This is not using a set, again, conventional thrust or if I put, you know, Newtonian, right?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
If I push this way, I have an equal and opposite reaction that way, right?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
There is. Actually, Dr. Halpudoff about- Three years ago, gave a speech on this, a very interesting talk, lecture about this technology. And if you ever have the chance, you really should have him on because he's an incredible human being. He's also the one who helped start the government's remote viewing program and a bunch of other stuff for the government.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
He's been involved in a lot of our nation's probably most classified efforts. But he was working with us on ATP as one of our scientists. And he gave a lecture about three years ago to some other scientists about the specifics on how this is possible. I am not a scientist, so I'm definitely not going to speak on behalf of Hal Pudov because I'm sure I will muck it up.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
But I do recall a time when he came into our SCIF and gave us about a three-hour lecture on this unifying theory. And at that moment, it was very much for us the epiphany that a lot of us had been searching for. He's like, look, at the end of the day, this is how it's possible. And that was kind of this... Wow. So it's really not.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Yeah. Explain it to someone like me. Yeah. Well, I'm in that category, Joe. So we're speaking the same language. Yes, sir. Yeah. Single syllable grunts. Right. Yeah. So. You have an object like this cup on your table, and you want it to be insulated from the effects of Earth's gravity.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
So you create this bubble artificially using a certain energetic source at a certain frequency, and it interacts with certain material, certain metamaterial. And again, I've got to be careful exactly what I say, but...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Well, I look 10 years older than you. I got a lot of hard miles on me, unfortunately. I do, too. Believe it or not. Well, you'll have to share with me your secret because, unfortunately, I tell people this is as good as it gets. I'm about as attractive as a cement truck.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
uh certain skin of the craft this aluminum via the cup here and all of a sudden you have this bubble around you where what you see on the outside is not necessarily what you see on the inside in fact may do it one more drawing for you okay forgive me i'm not an artist so i'm going to do this upside down for you and then i'm going to kind of scoot this just a little here all right let's do this so
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Unfortunately, I know your audience can't see this, but actually it's probably good. That's okay.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
It's probably good that they don't because I'm not an artist. But let's say this is a two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional space. Okay. And in essence...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Yeah, right. And so you have this – you have location A and location B. And let's say you go from Los Angeles to Baltimore. Okay. And it takes me five hours to fly at 500 miles an hour. Okay. That's a function of distance over time. And in essence, you can mark that linearly like this. So I fly. It takes me five hours. There I am. Okay.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
If you had the ability to compress space-time, and not a lot, just a little bit, and you were able to allow these points to be a little closer together, now in essence... What took you, let's say, five hours and 500 miles an hour to do it, you can do it in one hour. And you can do it in much less time.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
But to the observer outside, because we're still in the same universe, we would see something like that. We would see this incredible hopscotching ability to, if you will, take a shortcut through space-time. And so what would appear to be instantaneous acceleration, hypersonic velocity, and other things, now becomes a reality. And so that is fundamentally what the scientists had discovered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And so it seems like science fiction, but when you understand the mathematics and some of the theorem that they proposed, a lot of these other observables become possible.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Yeah. And again, I'm not a scientist. I want to be very careful. I don't want to misrepresent anything. There's a whole lot of other stuff that if you can do that, all of a sudden now makes sense and may describe things. the observations that people are seeing and why they're kind of hard to see and they seem obscure.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
So after the Army, I went into the Federal Service and had a lot of jobs, mostly in counterintelligence, which is looking basically what the bad guys know about us from an intelligence perspective. And in 2008, I changed my job. One of my jobs, I was working at the Director of National Intelligence, which for most people may or may not know, it's kind of outside of D.C.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And so I think from a governmental perspective that it was kind of a revelatory moment for the folks in our program.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
I am not allowed to talk about what the government may or may not have in its possession, other than that I have, so I went through a very lengthy Pentagon review process. Recently, I wrote, I won't talk about it here, but I wrote something, and I had to go through Pentagon to have a review process, and it took almost a year.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
In this thing I wrote, I talk about up to the part I can talk about, and they approved for me to talk about up to that point. When it comes to what the government may or may not have in its possession, all I can simply say is that there is very compelling evidence to suggest that the U.S. government is in absolute possession of exotic material that is not made by humans.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Now, beyond that, I can't really expound upon. I haven't been given permission to talk about it. But what I can say is what I've already said for the record, which has been approved by the Pentagon. won't get in trouble by saying it, is that there's very compelling data to suggest that we are in possession.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
I don't, well, two reasons. I don't think they have a choice. I think with now the introduction of cell phones and ring cameras, the cat's out of the bag. It's the worst kept secret at this point. Two, there is a faction, unlike before in the Cold War, I believe there is a faction of people inside the government that do want this conversation to occur.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
But equally, there's still a faction of people that are very mad with me. They do not want me having this conversation. And mark my words, just by me being on your show, It is going to cause an absolute storm inside the Pentagon, and I am sure the other shoe is going to drop. I promise you, you're going to hear all sorts of stuff.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
People make stuff up about me trying to discredit this topic because as many people are in the government that want this topic to be discussed now, there's still some people that do not want this conversation.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Sure. And I want to preface here. I'm not fear mongering.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Look, if I was a military person, right, I would look at this from the perspective of there's three options. They're good, they're neutral, or they're bad. So let's go down this road for a second. Let's say they're good, right? Well, we've got nothing to worry about. The problem is there's nothing to suggest that they truly are benevolent.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
People say, well, you know, they're like – they don't want us to nuke ourselves. Well, you know, I discussed it in what I wrote that – There's no data to suggest that. They didn't stop us from dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and vaporizing 500,000 living souls. They didn't stop us when we started developing nuclear weapons from the atomic age.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
They didn't stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons. They didn't stop the testing in the Nevada range of atomic and nuclear weapons. And now, how many countries have atomic weapons and nuclear weapons? A lot, right? They didn't stop... Chernobyl, they didn't stop Fukushima, they didn't stop Three Mile Island. So to say that they're here to help us, I'm not sure there's data.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And where I lived, I was on the other side of D.C., living on a little island in the Chesapeake Bay. And so my commute was terrible. I mean, it really, really frankly sucked.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
People say, well, you know, in Minot and North Dakota and Montana, the UFOs came in and they interfered with our nuclear weapons and they brought the entire Echo flight offline. Which, by the way, I have the government report on that if you want it. But in Russia, a lot of people don't know, they turned them on. So that's equally scary.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
They're interfering with our nuclear capability whether to attack or to defend ourselves. So when you say they turned them on in Russia, this is a Russian report? Yeah. So this is a – I don't know if you remember the – hearing, congressional hearing that occurred last year where the- With David Grush? Nope.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
The other one with Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, Ronald Moultrie, and some people from the Navy. And I think it was Congressman Gallagher that asked the very specific question. And he said, are you aware of UFOs interfering with our nuclear capabilities? And the response was something like, no, I'm not really familiar with it. Never heard of it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And then the question was, I think, we asked specifically at these locations. And the government's response was, no, not familiar with it. Here's the actual report from the Department of Defense. This is the actual intelligence report that was released through FOIA. There's a gentleman out there who runs a site called the Black Vault. His name is John Greenwald.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
He's probably the world authority on Freedom of Information Act. And he has a wealth of data that is out available to the public that he has received from the government. This is one of those documents. This is the document that our own government has no idea about. Apparently exists. I like how they write it in all caps. Yeah. Yeah. That's the old reporting.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
No, but it was about a three-hour commute each way. Oh, God. Because you have to go right past Langley. Yeah, it was brutal. Why didn't you move closer? Why? Well, I wanted to give my kids a really good quality of life, and I did not want to work in the city and then kind of expose them to kind of the craziness, if that makes sense. Especially D.C. D.C. is crazy.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
I believe so. That's been my observations and my experience.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
I didn't finish, though, the other parts, right? So if they're not here for friendly – if they're not friendly, that leaves them neutral like us. Right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Benevolent. Now, from a military perspective, and I just want to caveat, I don't agree with this, but I can respect the understanding. You, sir, are a general, and I say – We cannot prove that they're not here to do something bad. But what we do know is that they can interfere. They're very interested in our military capabilities, and they have interfered with our nuclear capabilities, right?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
From a military perspective, that looks an awful lot like something we call IPB, initial preparations of the battle space, or perhaps even ISR, intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance. Whenever we're going to go into a foreign country and invade, we do long range surveillance. We want to know how the enemy operates, how they react.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
So even if there's a 2% chance, 5% chance that these things are here to do something wrong.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
malevolent right then we probably should not tip our hands to the fact that we are aware of it publicly because what happens the moment that the bad guys in a foreign country find our surveillance team over the border we've got 12 hours we got we got to invade because the element of surprise is now over so some may feel in the government the mere fact of acknowledging this if there is some sort of malintent may push up artificially a clock
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
That exists somewhere for these things to say, oh, OK, the foolish humans are now the cats out of the bag. They know where we're here. We need to go in now for whatever reason they may have. So that is the military mindset potentially of some of these individuals who want to keep this secret.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Well, but they have to be. That is the role of our national security apparatus, right? Even if there's a 1% chance, they have to consider that in their planning and in the decision-making matrix. So, again, going back to what I said, I respect that. I don't agree with it, but I can respect that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
If that is the reason why, then I would say, okay, look, in your heart, you really do have the best interests of the American people. You are a patriot. I can accept that. Again, I don't think it's your decision to make. I think it needs to go to Congress. I think it needs to go to the president. Let the American people decide. I think America can handle the truth.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
I think America deserves the truth. And let the American people decide if it's in their best interest to know more about this.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
That's right. That's right. But you know what, though? I'm also very optimistic, Joe. You and I are having this conversation and people aren't making a run on Wall Street. People are still paying their mortgages and going to PTA meetings.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Well, and this is apolitical. I mean how many topics can you go to Congress and have that's not polarizing? Right, right. This is one of the only ones where you can have – literally have – Congressman Burchette and Congresswoman AOC side by side agreeing that this is important. It's a very rare opportunity. And so, you know, my concern, I'm doing this because I believe it's the right thing to do.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And my concern is that we're at a point now where I've said before, you know, secrets aren't like a fine wine where the longer you keep a cork on it, the better it gets. I think secrets are perishable. I think they have a shelf life. I think they're like vegetables in your refrigerator.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And there comes a point where if you leave them there too long, they start to rot and they start to stink and it becomes a big mess to clean up. Right. And so that's my perspective. And what I'm trying to do is give the government an ability to work its way out of a corner that it's put itself into for the last several decades. And with no seeming way out, right? Right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
It's such a disgrace because you bring in these foreign dignitaries, and the first thing they see is, is just the dereliction of it. And it's a very poor reflection on really what the American spirit is about. But that's for another conversation.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
They look around like, well, how do we get ourselves out of this trip?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And I know people want their pound of flesh. I know there's people out there, we've been lied to for decades. Right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And I think that's the wrong approach. I think there was a time where we needed to keep this secret. And I think what you do is you give those guys awards. Give those guys and gals awards who did it. Don't make them enemies. Make them friends and say, okay, look, but those were different times. Now is the time to come clean. Talk to the members of Congress. Right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Now. All in the interest of the United States security. You talk about legal issues. The problem is there are the real legal issues. So let's say you have, again, these cups forgive my analogies. You have two aerospace companies. Company A, Company B. And let's say I am in the Department of Defense back in the 50s, 60s, and I come across this interesting technology.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
I have no idea what the hell it is. It just came out of the sky. And I go to company A and I said, Tell me what you can figure out about that, right? 10 years later, company A becomes a multi-billion dollar aerospace company. Company B goes bankrupt. 200 people lose their jobs. And now people who have stock, investors in that company, lose their money, right? Unfair advantage.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Keep in mind, you're supposed to have fair competition in the U.S.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
So if you give an unfair advantage to company A... to be, you're talking a serious liability. There's SEC violations there. There's all sorts of concerns one has to pay attention to because someone somewhere gave an unfair advantage to one company over another. So there are legal liabilities that we have to recognize. It's not just clear cut, okay, forgive and forget.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
There's going to have to be some additional protection and understanding for if that occurred, we need to figure out how we deal with that as well.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Yeah. These are big companies, right, with deep pockets and a lot of lawyers.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Going back to, you know, a colleague of mine made the comparison. He said, look, Lou, imagine being during the days of Da Vinci and all of a sudden bringing Da Vinci a garage door opener. You have no idea what it's used for. Right. You've never seen plastic before. You don't even understand electromagnetic radiation, right? Right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Yeah, I mean, Jesus Christ, it's the nation's capital. Yeah. So I was offered a job to go back to the Pentagon in 2008 for a little while and basically run the integration between national-level intelligence information and local and state and tribal law enforcement.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And infrared, you know, where do you start on the analysis and exploitation of a technology that the physics hasn't even been discovered yet? Right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
I press a button and a door opens like magic. Wait, where's the horse? Where's the strings? Exactly.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Because, you know, I always wanted to be insulated from prejudicing the jury. And I know it sounds kind of strange, but I didn't ever. Makes sense. You know, it's kind of something I impose on myself because I didn't want to have any preconceived notions of going in. Most people kind of, I suspect, would be tempted to say, well, I'm going to learn everything I can about UFO lore.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
I wanted the opposite. You're a better man than me. I'll be fucking chasing that shit down. You know, I think I just wanted to be very, very careful to preserve the investigative integrity, right? And look, we're all humans. We're all biased. There's no way around it. We all have some degree of bias. Let's be honest and truthful here. It doesn't matter what type of bias it is.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
We all have some sort of bias somewhere, whether it's food or the people you like to date or whatever. Mm-hmm. I wanted to avoid that as much as possible. And so I always kept it very, very focused on the here and now. And, you know, what can we see today? Right. You're aware of the story though, right?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Tangentially. That he worked at a particular facility and at that facility he was exposed to some sort of UAP technology. That thing. Right. That thing.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Yeah, I'm aware of, again, the overarching story. I don't know any of the details, and I've never met him personally.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
So after 9-11, the country realized that we had a significant problem getting national-level information down to the cops on the ground that could actually do something about it. Why? Because they didn't have security clearances. So they weren't allowed to be provided that information. So- One of my jobs was to try to help fix that. And shortly thereafter, I got there in 2008.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
That's a hell of a lucky guess. Hell of a lucky guess.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Of course. Everything had rivets. Exactly. The skin of a craft was the skin of an aircraft. Exactly. It had rivets and it had nuts and bolts.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
But, Joe, is that really that much of a stretch? Let's look at this. We've done experiments where we've had pilots be able to control aircraft thousands of miles away. with a helmet that interprets thought. Right. Right?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
He's playing better than I can with my hands. Well, better than anybody can.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
It was probably early 2009 is when I was approached by two individuals who came to me and they said, look, we'd like to consider you for a program that we're part of. It's a very nuanced program, very... secretive program. Now, when you're in the government, you hear that all the time. It's not, you know, people look and they say, oh, you have a secret clearance or a top secret clearance.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
But is that right? So if we can do that now. Right. Right. Is it really that far of a stretch to think that, you know, someone who's a little more advanced than us. Right. Our friends from out of town. Realize that's the way to do it. That's more efficient, right? The speed of the processing of the brain, the processes of the brain is much faster.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
It takes us longer to then have to mechanically use our hands and manipulate and do things. This is almost, not quite, but almost instantaneous. You don't have that lag, right? Right, of course. And so that would certainly make sense. Modern warfare, not the game, but actual modern warfare.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
You know, I used to give a briefing to some folks. I'm so glad you mentioned this because this goes back to the whole stigma and taboo issue. I used to have a slideshow, and I still have it somewhere, and I would discuss the word, the Latin word prefix of para, P-A-R-A, and it means above or beside.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And so what I would do is show up, I would say the word parachute, and I'd ask people, what do you think of when you hear the word parachute? And people would describe, obviously, something that deploys over your head, and hopefully you hit the ground with a thump and not a thud, right? But something that's normal, we use every day. And then I say, what about the word paramedic?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And then people would look at it and say, well, I think of a first responder, someone good, some sort of medical lifesaver that's going to be there for your benefit. And then I say the word, when I say the word paranormal, what do you think? And people stop for a second. Maybe they kind of give you a little sly smile and say, what do you mean? I said, what do you mean? I mean that, paranormal.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
The only reason why you're reacting the way you are, because you've been conditioned that the word paranormal is cookie stuff. When in reality, in science, by definition, everything is paranormal until it becomes normal. The cell phone that I use every day 50 years ago, absolutely paranormal. And so I would go through this exercise of things that were once considered paranormal.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
For example, when the Inca first saw the Spaniards, the conquistadores coming from the reconquering, They saw them on the shores of the beach and they saw these humans in armor riding on a horse. And they assumed, because they'd never seen a horse before, they assumed it was a single entity. It was a single monster. And that for them was paranormal.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
They didn't understand it was actually a human riding on a horse with metal skin. Same thing with acupuncture. I remember a time when I was growing up as a kid, people thought Eastern medicine acupuncture was nonsense. Well, now at the Veterans Administration, the VA, for some of my guys in combat, they actually prescribe acupuncture as therapy. It's not paranormal, right?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And so there's all these examples. in history where we think something is kooky and weird when in reality it's not. It's just we don't understand it yet and we have done such a good job of stigmatizing this conversation that the moment you even say the word paranormal or you say the word UFO or anything like that, people are conditioned without even thinking about it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
It's reflexive to react a certain way. And we have to first deprogram ourselves first a little bit Before we can start moving forward, how do we destigmatize this conversation? Well, first of all, what's kooky? What do you think is kooky about something that's in our airspace that's performing in ways that we can't replicate? People say, well, wait a minute.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Millions of people have some sort of security clearance in the government. And a lot, a lot of people have a top secret clearance. So it's really not that uncommon. It's really not that sexy. So you didn't really know what you were getting involved in? I didn't at all. Not at all. In fact, so, yeah, great question. So, no, I didn't know what I was getting involved in.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
We spend millions if not billions of dollars. putting a probe on Mars to try to find microbial life. And by the way, it looks like that may happen. It looks like there actually may be some evidence to suggest that. We spend lots of money trying to find technosignatures of intelligent life, radio signatures, in our own Milky Way, right?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Well, is it possible within the four and a half billion years our planet's been here that maybe intelligent life maybe found us first? Is it possible? Could be. We have to stop putting these limitations.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Joe, when I was in the medical program, when I was learning to be microbiology and immunology in college, we learned from our professor that Homo sapiens sapiens, as a modern species, has been around roughly between 100,000 to 200,000 years. Now, I'm not an expert, but that's what they say.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
It was only the Greeks 2,000 years ago that introduced the idea that there's only two types of life forms on this planet. And you are either A, a plant, or B, you're an animal. And it wasn't
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
The last 300 years, so if you look at a 24-hour clock, roughly the last five minutes in the 24 hours towards midnight, we discovered another form of life that is neither plant nor animal that's been here with us on this planet, and that is the world of fungus. During the Renaissance and the days of Newton, we discovered that there was this other life form we've been sharing all along.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And so we pat ourselves on the shoulder. And it wasn't the last 120 years. Think about it. The last 10 seconds of our existence on this planet, so to speak, in a 24-hour clock as a modern species. We actually discovered the true dominant life form on this planet. And in fact, if you take all the biomass of every plant,
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And the biomass of every animal and the biomass of every fungus and add it all up together, it still will not equal the biomass of this hidden kingdom of life that's actually the dominant life form on this planet. And that wasn't until we were able to curve glass and look through a little steel tube and famously shout, little beasties, little beasties.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Did we discover the world of microorganisms that, yes, live inside of you, and yes, live on the skin of the ISS space station, and yes, live miles underneath the Arctic ice, right? That is the true dominant life form on this planet, and it always has been. And it wasn't until the last 120 years we discovered that. So is it possible that there is something else that is just as normal to this world?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Is it possible? Well, the answer is a resounding yes, of course it's possible because we're always discovering new ways life can exist. When I was growing up as a kid, I was told absolutely, as a matter of fact, all life form is derived from photosynthesis, ultimately, when you go all the way down. It turns out that's not true. It wasn't until we discovered in the deepest depths of our oceans that
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And after several conversations, it occurred to me that their interest in me was some of my background I had. In my early career as a special agent in counterintelligence, I was protecting technologies, critical technologies, critical avionic technologies, for example, and some aerospace technologies.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
or these things called black smokers, we discovered there are creatures that thrive with no light, and they thrive off of something called chemosynthesis, a completely different way to metabolize energy to sustain life, right? So every time we put Mother Nature in a little box, she always finds a way to wiggle her way out.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And I think that's important when having this conversation, because if there's one thing we know as human beings, we're usually wrong at first.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
How about 100 years? We have evolved more in the last 150 years than we have in the last 150,000 years. Sure. And then you have the other – For me, I find when people say, well, the space is so huge and, you know, is it possible that things are coming from outer space? My response has always been the same. Look, I don't know where they're from. I just know that they're here.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And could they be from outer space? Sure. They can be from inner space or even the space in between. And I say that because the universe is far more complex than we give it credit for. Every time there was a time we had Newtonian physics, we thought there was a solution.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Then all of a sudden Einstein comes along and we realize that weight, space and time are actually connected and then everything's relative. And all of a sudden now you have quantum mechanics, which is this spooky action at a distance, right? Where the whole universe is behaving in a way that it shouldn't. And yet that looks like the real way the universe works, right?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
I often tell people we are, as humans, we have only five fundamental senses that we can base our reality upon. And if you can't touch it, taste it, hear it, smell it, et cetera, we can't interact with it. And so where I live in Wyoming, we have these beautiful night skies, kind of like you have here in your studio here, 300 days of unoccluded night skies.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And as beautiful as those night skies are, if you were to look at that same portion of the night sky through a radio telescope, you would see a whole different reality around you. You'd see nebula and you'd see things in different spectra that we can't pick up. You pick an ultraviolet, an infrared, so you would see a whole different reality. Just like our cell phones, right?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
So think of first stage solid rocket motor booster technology, Tomahawk cruise missiles, stuff like that, Apache Longbow. So, advanced avionics was something I was kind of already familiar with, and at the same time, I had the counterintelligence background.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
If you could see in cell phone vision and see in Wi-Fi and 5G and GPS, you would interact with your environment completely different because you would see reality. So we can only... interact with a very small sliver of the reality that we can perceive because we're humans. But most of reality is actually beyond that. And then, of course, you have scalability issues. The universe is immensely huge.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And what scientists are now saying, if you look in any direction, you can see roughly within the visible, let me emphasize, visible horizon of our universe is about 13.9 billion light years, plus or minus. So that means in any direction I can see 13.9 billion light years with the right equipment. What's a light year? Well, it's as fast as light can travel in a year.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Well, light travels pretty fast. In fact, it travels at 186,000 miles per second. So seven and a half times around our planet in one second. So imagine how far you can go in a year. Now, multiply that by 13.9 billion. And that, by scientists' estimation, so if the universe end-to-end of our visible, we're stuck in the middle, is roughly 27 billion light years.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Scientists are now saying that's only possibly only 10% of the known universe because the universe is so big and so vast and so far, light will never have time to reach Earth. So that's at a minimum 100 billion light years, right? And so we are this little speck in the middle.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And as crazy as that is to even try to conceive, if you compare one atom inside the hill, one hydrogen atom, Avogadro's number, right? One times 10 to the negative umpteen all the way down. it is roughly the same level of scale As we are to the universe, meaning that atom is the size of a human as we are the size of the universe as we are a human to the size of the universe.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
So there is this and we as humans can only interact plus or minus with one order of magnitude up or down. Otherwise, the universe is simply too big or too small, meaning most of the universe and reality lies in those scales. We live in this little tiny, tiny sliver. And so you hurt my head.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
So, I was asked to come in and run the counterintelligence and security aspect for a particular program, at which time I had no idea what the program even was. So, what does counterintelligence and security mean? It just simply means making sure that our adversaries like Russia and China can't penetrate our organization and steal our secrets. That's all it is.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Well, let me ask you this. As human beings, right, how many times do we fly over the Serengeti in a helicopter, right? Let's say you want to monitor the health of a particular herd of elephants, right? And so what happens are wildebeests. We fly over. We pick one. We shoot it with a tranquilizer. It falls asleep. We go down. We do some tests, pull its blood.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Now think about it from the perspective of the wildebeest, right? It wakes up, kind of meanders over to the watering hole and says, Bill, you're not going to believe this, man, but… Right. Something out of the sky came down and all of a sudden they were touching me. And, you know, I woke up and my butt hurt. Right. What the hell was that? To this day, even in China, when we go into a zoo. Right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And we have the panda bear exhibits. What do we do? We put. So we don't disrupt the pandas. We wear panda suits. Now, it sounds silly, but you can actually get online and see zookeepers wearing panda suits because they don't want to. They want to interfere as least as possible with a natural phenomenon. Flora and fauna, they're inside the exhibit, right?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
When you say – well, two things. So I don't want to be evasive. But I also want to be very specific. When we say aliens and then we also – are we saying something from another planet or are we simply saying non-human?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
So is it possible? Well, we're doing it already with the panda bear. So it's not that we do it all the time.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Sure. And especially if you have the technology. Now, as far as- The panda bear.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
But, yeah, my point is that we always use camouflage for obvious reasons. We do it in the military, right? Sure, sure. Camouflage uniform, stealth aircraft for camouflage. Sure, you do it when you go hunting. Absolutely, I do. Absolutely. So it's not a stretch of the imagination to suggest anything coming here that doesn't want to provoke us. Probably wants to blend in. Of course.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Do I have any type of empirical evidence to suggest that they are living among us? I don't. What I can say definitively that whatever it is, it's here. And by the way, you already have very senior people in our government that have said it's here, whatever it is. But these things could also be from under the water.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
These things could be something that is as natural to Earth as the little beasties were, right, when we first discovered them. Maybe they've been here all along. Right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
We know more about the moon than the bottom of our own ocean. That's so crazy.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
It's kind of a fancy word for just saying security, information security and operational security. So, I remember I had a meeting. They brought me to go see their director. And it was in a... I would tell you the location, but I was told by the Pentagon not to say the specific location of this office. But it was somewhere in the D.C. area.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
So let me tell you what I can say from open source. Yeah. Okay. And then I'll tell you about a conversation I had without attribution because I don't want to get in trouble. A lot of people are familiar with the Air Force's program called the Fast Walker program, which is a program that was started by the Air Force, among other things, was to detect UFOs. That's a fact.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Actually, that was part of their mission, to detect a lot of things, adversarial technology, but UFOs was one of them. It was called the Fast Walker program. There was some information that was released publicly about a similar program the Navy has. I can't talk about it because I don't have approval to talk about it. But obviously they're interested because they have equities underwater.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
They're interested in if there's anything underwater that can perform beyond anything we have. And I remember speaking to one individual who pulled me aside very privately and he said, Lou – We were tracking this thing doing, and I won't say the exact speed, but hundreds and hundreds of knots underwater. And it was bigger than our own submarine. You know how big our submarines are, right?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And I asked him, naively, I just kind of came out, what do you do when you encounter that? And he just said, very honestly, he said, we go around. Just like that, we go around.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
I would not at liberty discuss any details about that. That's not for me to discuss. You and I got to get drunk. I'm a lightweight. I got to get you drunk. Let's go have some whiskey.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Let me give you another great, great event that occurred. And I'll talk about this because it's not classified. The portions that might be, I don't know about, so it should be fine. There's an individual who I'm aware of who was a helo pilot, a helicopter pilot back in the late 90s in the Caribbean. And they were doing missile recovery.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
So what happened is that the Navy would test fire missiles, and then they kind of run out of fuel. They hit the water, and they sink. At a predetermined time, they pop to the surface. We grab it with a helicopter, bring it back to shore, and we test it for telemetry and make sure that this cruise missile was doing what it was supposed to do.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
So they're out there in the helicopter, frogmen hanging down the line. You've got the helo pilot, you've got the crew chief and the co-pilot looking all down at the bubble. And as they're about to grab this cruise missile out of the ocean, something huge and round and what was described to me as black as a devil starts to rise to the surface.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
The water begins to churn very much like David Fravor's description of the Tic Tac incident and the roiling water.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
the frogman is so freaked out he's literally trying to climb the line back up he's like total panic at the disco right yeah and the helicopter is like do we do it like an emergency ascent what the hell's going on here and right as this thing is about and by the way it's the size of a small island and round right as this thing is about to break the surface it sucks the missile down and disappears and that was yeah and uh dave fravor could probably tell you that story a
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
It was a facility that wasn't known publicly to be an intelligence, to have an intelligence office in there. So I can't say the specific location. But I went there and I went up to the top floor. I think it was the top floor, almost the top floor. And I met for the first time a gentleman named James Lukatsky, Dr. James Lukatsky, Ph.D. And this guy was the epitome of a rocket scientist.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
But when you compare that to other things, you've got to say, imagine being that guy hanging from that line. No. No, thank you. We call that bait. Yeah, but it didn't do anything to him. No. I would have loved that experience. Yeah. So that was one of the anecdotes that was revealed to us by one of the maybe helicopter pilots.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
The frogman? Was he a seal? I don't know. I don't even know the pilot.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Submarines look like this, right? They're not round. Right. So that was one of the anecdotes. That was shared with us. Obviously, Puerto Rico with the other – there's been some UAPs that have been recorded off there. Everybody knows about Aguadilla, the Aguadilla incident. I don't know about it. Oh, I'm sure you do. I do? Tell me. Wow. Trust me. So you can look it up online.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
There's a video taken by a DHS helicopter of a very interesting object. First, it appears to be like a, perhaps a balloon, but then it does all sorts of weird stuff. And as you're tracking it, it enters the water without making a splash. You can track it underwater. Then it comes up and splits into two. And it's been analyzed over and over again by a lot of experts.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And so keep watching that. And I'll tell you a little story about this. This is a Customs and Border Protection. Release this.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Well, so if you look here, they're looking at this through a form of night vision. I don't know the exact velocity. All that is available. But if you keep watching this, something interesting happens. So here it goes. You're going to see this thing enter the water here. There he goes underwater. And then it pops back up and splits into two. Keep their track in it. See, no waves, no wake.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And then it surfaces and then does something pretty interesting here. So keep watching.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Underwater. That's underwater. Then it breaks the surface of the water again. Keep watching. Boom. Underwater. Overwater. Boom. Underwater. Out of water. And then you'll see it split into two. I didn't see it split into two. Did you see it? If you watch the rest of the video, there it is. Oh, there it is. Yeah, the video is actually really long, but that's just one example.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
You can see all these videos. They're prevalent everywhere. You see the aircraft on the bottom right? You see the UAP on top that's tracking it?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Yeah. No wings, no control surfaces, and it keeps up with the A-10 and does all sorts of interesting maneuvers, right? So that's an A-10 Warthog.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
You know, I don't know. I mean, could it be a demonstration of capabilities? We do that, right? Every time a Russian surveillance aircraft comes by, we launch two F-22s and we get real close to it and say, hey, you know, be careful.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Yeah, we call that sensitization. You sensitize a population or environment. Right. You know, the counter argument to that is that's a very human thing, right? We have – as humans, we always – it's almost innate. We look at everything through anthropomorphic eyes.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
We look at, you know, our pet dogs and we give them human names and we do things like that because we assign human value to things because we have intentions and motivations. But most of nature isn't that way. Like, for example, when a shark – Bites a surfer. He's not wanting to hurt the surfer. He's just hungry. The shark's hungry. I don't care if you're a seal or whatever.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And when I say the epitome, I mean he was probably – and there's no exaggeration – the number one rocket scientist in the U.S. government. Now – He's a humble guy, so he'll probably tell you he wasn't. But he really was an amazing human being and very smart. And after a very brief conversation, he looked at me and he said, I want to ask you a question. OK, sir.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
I'm not trying to inflict pain. I just want to feed my belly. Intent and motivation is a very human thing. And we have to – I don't want to say resist the urge because it's almost impossible to do it. But we have to recognize that there are – There are things that may exist that don't have human motivation, meaning maybe they don't care about sensitizing us. Maybe they do.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
But maybe it's like a computer, right? Maybe it's binary. Maybe there's some sort of binary thought process, just information in and information out. So that's one of the aspects I've always been very careful with is to assign human traits to something that is –
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Touche. In fact, there's examples of that. Let me reinforce your point because there's examples of that, my background being science, in nature. You know, when lionesses stalk the zebras. You know, they get very low into the grass. They don't want to be seen, right? They're not motivated necessarily because they don't want to spook the herd, but they do it. It's almost instinctual, right?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
It's part of their DNA, part of their wiring to have a low profile, low observability, and to get closer to their target, whether it's prey or anything else. So you're right. I mean, there are examples in nature that also can suggest that. So it's a very good point.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
I mean, the tiger recognizes the behavior characteristics of the zebra, doesn't it? Right. Exactly. It studies it. And so it knows what it has to do to get close to the zebra.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Well, we do that in the Amazon, don't we? And African tribes, lost tribes that are remote, right? Separated by outside human contact. We study them. We study them from afar, but we do the same thing.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
It is. I'm really resisting the urge of continuing to smoke this thing right now. Okay.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
You feel terrible with cigars. My wife is going to give me hell for this.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And he said, what do you think about UFOs? I said, well, I answered truthfully. I said, I don't. And he said, well, what do you mean? You don't believe in them? And I said, no, that's not what I said. You asked me if I think, you know, what do I think about UFOs? And frankly, I don't think about UFOs. I really don't have the luxury to think about them.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
You bring up another very interesting point. Is there a natural glide slope or a natural evolution to evolution? Meaning any species that reaches a certain point, is there a natural progression that of any intelligent species to progress to the point... All life is expansive. Life doesn't contract. Life expands, whether it's bacterial life, whether it's animal life or human life.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
There are certain biological functions to procreate, multiply, and continue to expand. So is that a universal norm? Is that part of fractals in geometry throughout the universe? part of the blueprint of all life? Or is it only specific to life here on Earth?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And that's a great question because there's probably arguments to suggest that, yeah, there probably is a natural, there's a natural blueprint for physics in the universe. They're probably, since life has to abide by physics, probably a natural, potentially natural blueprint for the evolution of all life, whether, again, bacterial or animal or human or anything else, non-human.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Well, not to make light of it, but I'll tell you recently. So I've learned over the years there's nothing more expensive than a cheap lawyer. So I've got a couple good lawyers that I work with on just contractual stuff. And one of them is named Ivan Hanel. I call him the bull. And I've learned to appreciate the shout out to Ivan, the infinite complexity of law and legal. Right. So right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
So if there is this natural progression as we're talking about life, I mean, we even see it in our own human interactions. Right. This this this intricate complexity of how things work and how even in the way we behave with each other socially.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
You look at a when I was in the in the government, you could look at a terrorist link analysis and. And that link analysis still follows those fractal patterns that the patterns in our lungs, the patterns of lightning, the patterns of super medullonic clouds and galaxies, super clusters of galaxies all have that same pattern. And it's not just a physical pattern. It's a social pattern, right?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
I'm too busy, you know, working intelligence operations and whatnot. And I remember him looking over his glasses and saying, very seriously, staring me straight in the eye and says, well, don't let your personal bias get the best of you because what you may learn may surprise you and may challenge any preconceived notion of what you think something is or is not. And so...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And so, again, not to make joke of it, but I'm learning that it's beyond these patterns or beyond just physical patterns. Even in something as silly but fundamental as law, there are these patterns that continue to spin off and whatnot. So, yeah, I can appreciate that. I think we're at a point now as a species where we probably should be having these conversations. And I'll also say this, Joe.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
There are parts of this conversation I don't feel the government has any place. There is definitely a national security conversation here. But the conversation we're having, as you can tell, is far beyond national security, right?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
We're talking philosophical, psychological, sociological, theological implications that I'm not sure I want my government necessarily dictating for me what I should think about this.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Well, life is abundant on this planet, isn't it? And it thrives in places that we thought life could never thrive before. It's everywhere. It almost seems like a natural function if you have certain situations and circumstances on a rock somewhere, then life pops up.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Look at Titan. It's methane. And by the way, that's organic chemistry. It's got methane clouds. So there are things that thrive in these types of environments.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Maybe there are too many. But yeah, I mean, you're absolutely correct. I think we have, again, this goes back to the original point of every time we try to put Mother Nature in a box, she always finds a way to wiggle her way out of it and prove us wrong. If the one thing we're right about is that we're always wrong.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
I would defer that to the United States Navy and maybe NOAA, National Oceanographic and Atmospheric. Yeah, no, not the biblical NOAA. Oh, Jesus. Yeah, no, no. I mean NOAA meaning National Oceanographic and Atmospheric.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Today's magic is tomorrow's technology, right? Right. So I can tell you when I went to Italy, I spoke to one of the senior – I think it was one senior – one of the senior Vatican academics. And he said to me, he says, look – The Vatican doesn't have a problem with this topic.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Let me backtrack for a minute. I've never been a UFO guy. People come up, like, oh, you're that UFO guy. I'm really not. I was never really into science fiction as a kid. I wasn't into the Star Trek or the Star Wars like a lot of people were. So that was not my disposition. I grew up, I guess, playing G.I. Joe and stuff like that. So that wasn't my background. And certainly in college, I...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
This is something, in fact, up until the 1600s, it was heretical to presume or assume that mankind was the only, if you will, incarnation of God, representation of God. But in essence, you're putting limitations on the dominion of what God can and can't do.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And there are these scrolls, in fact, that are in the Vatican archives that discuss—it's a conversation between a Roman soldier and a Roman general— where they describe, there's something called eclipus. Eclipus in Latin means like sun, eclipse, right? It's the shape of the Roman shield.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And they talked about these flaming Roman shields in the sky that would follow them from battle space to battle space. And Mr. Jacques Vallée could probably expound much more upon that than I can, but this was just a brief conversation I had with someone there.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
He looks at you sideways. Yeah. He did a lot of good stuff. Oh, yeah. And he's an incredibly smart guy. Great researcher of just phenomenal big brains.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
I never had the guts to ask him. I figure he probably gets tired of being heard. I'm sure.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
But, you know, there's a lot of – and when you look at what the Vatican is, I mean, really, it's probably the world's oldest, most capable intelligence organization because they have priests around the world that people will report miracles to, right, and confessions to. And eventually that gets filtered up to the Vatican. So, you know – Talk about the world's first CIA and KGB.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
It was Vatican, baby. Those guys had it going on. And so no wonder they have all this archival information. And some of it relates to UAP. Wow. Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Well, you remember the stories, right, of even Christopher Columbus coming over to the New World. There were some interesting accounts when they were on the water of potentially some sort of UAP interaction. I did not know that. Yeah, you can look it up online. This is all open source, but you can type it up and – There were some very interesting accounts and even old sailor accounts.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
People say, well, old sailors also talked about big giant kraken and stuff like that. But there was always an element of truth to it. Now we realize there are giant squid of the Pacific.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
They still do. It's called the great squid of the Pacific. We find it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
You know, we called them sea monsters back then, but really, you know, we laugh about it now, but it turns out there are sea monsters. There's what's called great white sharks and blue whales.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Right. That was a real thing. A great white shark is now. Absolutely. Go swimming with a great white shark and tell me that's not a monster, right? Exactly. So, you know, we just realize, oh, it's just part of nature. It's part of our existing paradigm.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Right. Absolutely. You know, especially at night when you don't have a flashlight, that thing behind the bush, That's a monster. Right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Yeah, there were some reports of some interesting lights that the crew had reported. And it was actually, he put it down in his logbook. Something about some interest. Now, some folks will come back and say, well, that's St. Elmo's fire, which absolutely could be.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
St. Helens Fire is a static charge. It occurs on the wingtips of aircraft. Even the old sailors would report it. In certain environmental conditions, there is this weird greenish-blue plasma glow that will often sometimes be seen on the tips of wingtips on aircraft. There's some really good pictures of it online. And even on the old mariner ships up towards the sails and the masts.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And they believe it's... It has to do with static charge, and under certain environments, it creates this energized plasma, and you can see it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
I studied microbiology and immunology with a focus on parasitology, not parapsychology, the study of parasites, parasitology. So the scientific method has always been something that has been near and dear to me.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Well, it could be. Here you go. And they call it St. Elmo's fire. Wow.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Yeah. Whoa. Yeah. It's either around the cockpit of the aircraft. Whoa. And by the way, you see the patterns? It's fractal, right? Look at that ship. So very, very interesting how St. Elmo's fire, you know, can cause some people to, you know, perhaps see things and say it's... Well, also, they might be seeing that, yeah. They might, right?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
But there are some accounts of ancient mariners who report strange, bizarre things.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Well, religion calls us vessels, right? Religious scripture and a lot of different religions refer to humans as vessels. I'm certainly not a religious expert, so I don't want to pontificate here and say something that's inaccurate, but that doesn't surprise me.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And then, of course, later on as a special agent, you know, when you're conducting investigations, for me, I was always very fact-driven, kind of the old gumshoe, if you will, just the facts man sort of guy. So I was never really prone to any type of – if you will, affinity towards science fiction or even the UFO topic. I just, I just never really considered it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Like AI, right? When does that become sentient? Now is that a life form? Not biological.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
I'm going to share something very, very personal with you. And I know when I say with you, I know it's with everybody else, but you know, part of my struggle is I can't, I can't urge the government to be transparent and I'm not transparent myself. Right. It's hypocritical. So let me share with you a very personal story because you bring something up that I think is fascinating. Um,
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
I'm a human being. But if for whatever reason I get into a car accident and I lose an arm, I'm still Lou Elizondo, right? In fact, if I lose my legs and all my arms, I'm still Lou. So my body doesn't define who I am. And my intellect, right? If I suffer a traumatic brain injury, let's say I'm in Afghanistan in a TBI accident. And my brain is compromised. I'm still Lou.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And so what makes Lou or what makes Joe, Joe? Well, it's not your physical self and probably not even your intellectual self. My mother... I was very close to my mother. My mother was an incredible human being. And I'll share this story with you and take away with it what you want. I was very young, maybe two, two and a half, three years old.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And I remember watching a show with my mother, one of my very first memories. And in this TV show, I don't remember what show it was, but I remember that a shark had eaten a dog. And I was shocked. My first understanding that what death was. And I looked at my mom, I said, mom, what just happened? And she said, well, son, the shark ate the dog. I said, what does that mean?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
She said, well, the dog's not coming back. The dog died. I said, well, does everything die? She said, well, yes, son, everything dies. I said, well, mom, you're not going to die. You're a mom, right? You gave me life. She said, no, son, one day I'm going to die. And I remember spending, from that day forward, as God is my witness, I spent every single day of my life
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
knowing one day my mother was going to die. And it terrified me. I was very, very close with her. And one day, that day came. My mother was diagnosed with cancer. And she started, her body started failing. And despite the best efforts, we knew she wasn't going to make it. And when you love somebody sometimes, It doesn't sound right, but sometimes you deceive them.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
They want to know they're in a bad state physically and mentally, and you say, am I going to make it? And you say, yeah, of course you're going to make it, right? Knowing full well that there's probably not a good chance you're going to make it. And so we're in the hospital, and my mother had at this point been in probably a state of coma for about a week.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And it was just me, my wife, and a couple members of the family. Very, very sad moment. my mother began this process of death called, you know when someone's gonna die, there's something called a death rattle. And it's when the mucus begins in the back of the throat to congeal. And it makes breathing—it can be very unnerving for the people who have to witness this. It's very, very common.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
It's called a death rattle. It's the body beginning to shut down. And I knew something told me my mom was going to go very quickly, within the next 30 seconds to a minute. So long story short— My mother's body was, at that point, it was a husk, an empty husk. It was broken. Her brain had shut down. And yet, the very moment she passed away, within five seconds, I knew it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
It was just something weird. Something reached and said, this is it. She's going. And I reached over the bed and I looked at my mom. Her eyes all of a sudden opened up and she looked right at me. And even though her brain had been compromised and wasn't working, her body was nothing anymore. And she was a beautiful woman. She worked for Playboy. She was a beautiful lady, at one time a model.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Yeah, do the math, right? So it's 2024, 2000, early 2009.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Her body resembled nothing of what she did. She looked at me, and she passed. But we communicated. And I knew there was something else at that moment more to a human being, more than just a body, more than just a brain. There is something that is beyond the physical and even intellectual part of what it means to be human. And I felt it. And everybody in the room felt it. It was undeniable.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
You can call it a soul, an id, a cheat, whatever. You can put a label on it. I don't know what it's called. I don't know what it is. But I do know that was the essence of my mother. And the moment she passed, it was this weird feeling because... As my mother laid there dead in the bed, it wasn't my mother anymore. That essence, whatever made my mother my mother...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And you could see the light in her eyes. It was like someone turning off the light switch. And I've been around death a lot. It's a terrible, horrible thing, especially in warfare. But this was something visceral. This was something far more intimate. This cut to my soul. And I could recognize it. And she recognized me and I recognized her, even though that the brain functions were gone.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
So I guess my point is... I absolutely believe there's something more to the human experience than simply a tangible body and a brain. And I witnessed this firsthand. Now, people can say all sorts of stuff they want. I don't care. I've got enough haters out there anyways. If they want to think that I'm trying to – hope that my mother has a soul and she goes somewhere.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
I'm just telling you what I experienced and other people experience too. And it was, it was proof for me at that moment that there's much more to, to us as, as, as human beings.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And it's not like you're trying to override this acknowledgement that they're dead. You know they're dead. It's just that whatever made that person that person, it's not in the body anymore. It's gone.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
It's a feeling. It is. And, again, it's not an intellectual or even a physical thing. Yeah. Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
I'm not familiar with that hypothesis, but it sounds interesting. Also scary, perhaps.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Well, you know, evolution isn't just a physical thing, is it? Evolution is the ability to change within one's environment over time. And that's a fascinating concept you bring up because some speculate – That it is inevitable that human beings will eventually evolve into something. We're just a link in a much longer chain. Right. And that all intelligent life potentially goes through this process.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Yeah. So great question. So for some people, there's kind of two ways people process this information, at least in my experience. And there may be others. This has just been my observation. Some people have this kind of revelatory moment, this epiphany where it's this aha moment where, oh, my gosh, this is real, right? For other people, it's kind of more of a slow, gradual realization.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And that this is a natural process where eventually we actually make ourselves extinct. Not in the way where we kill ourselves.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
But we wind up creating a life form, whether it's AI or we start enhancing ourselves with more and more machine interface and technology. And life doesn't have to necessarily be organic, right? Silicon is very, very close to carbon in some cases. So is it possible that life, it is destiny for all life eventually to evolve itself out of existence and bring in or usher in a new type of life form?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Is it possible? I mean, certainly from a technological perspective, I mean, ask Elon Musk, it seems that we're You know, we're making a lot of advancements right now to augment the human experience. And given, as you said, how technology progresses exponentially, very quickly in the next 200 years, I mean, we might be there.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Not to my knowledge, and I sure hope not, because I don't think the government – this is a conversation. This is where I go back to. This is a conversation that involves a lot of people, whether it's your priest or your rabbi or your imam or it is your philosophy teacher at the university. I think we're getting into an area now that is beyond national security.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And honestly, Joe, I'm not comfortable – Right. Right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Well, in fact, it's illegal, especially in our democracy. This type of stuff is supposed to be discussed with certain members of Congress and certain elements of the executive branch. And when somebody, I don't care if you're in the government or in a religion or anything like that, this goes to the fundamental pillar of something that agrees me, which is corruption.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Now, when I say corruption, let me backtrack a little bit. My father recently died this last Father's Day. Not this one, but the one before. And I had the privilege of knowing he was sick. And so we took a road trip down to Miami about a month and a half before he died. And he never told me he was sick. But I knew something wasn't right. I knew my father for a long time.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And something wasn't right. He started losing weight. And I could see he wasn't eating as much. And there were telltale signs. And he didn't want to tell me. And I asked my father almost flippantly, I said, Dad, I think we were probably somewhere by St. Louis, and I said, Dad, what is the greatest threat to humanity, to humans? What is the greatest threat?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Now, I say it flippantly because I'm thinking, you know, terrorism, right, and this and that. My father thought for a second. He looks at me and says, Son, it's corruption. And I said, What do you mean corruption? Like financial corruption? Governmental corruption? He says, No. Corruption at its heart is when you are willing to bypass your own moral code, your own ethics for something else.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And whether it's financial corruption, religious corruption, governmental corruption, or even moral corruption, when you start to compromise on your own values, it's a very quick downward spiral to utter chaos. And he know that firsthand because my father was in the Bay of Pigs invasion. He was a political prisoner of Castro. He actually fought with Castro against Batista,
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And then when Castro went communist, my father joined the folks here and the friendly folks at the CIA and was part of the invasion of the Bay of Pigs. He spent two years in Castro's prisons being tortured. So when he came to this country, this country offered us opportunities that no other country could or would. And the reason why Cuba failed was because of corruption.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And I think for me, I was probably in the second category, more of a slow, gradual realization that – This isn't a cover for something else. This is really about UFOs.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And he said, look, corruption will be the end of all. And it's a very quick downward spiral with democracy that if democracy becomes corrupt, you now have tyranny, right? And so every time someone in the government is willing to compromise a little bit on the value of what it means to serve the American people and they forget that, they become corrupt.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And that actually erodes the very essence of what democracy is and what this country is about. And that is why it is so important that the individuals in our government that don't want to have this conversation and don't want to talk to Congress and are making the unilateral decision on your behalf and the American taxpayer and my behalf. That's wrong. They don't have the right to do that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
There is a process of rules and laws we have in this country that we've all agreed to are going to abide by. And that includes them. And they don't have the right to bypass that, even if they think they're doing it for the right reason. I disagree with that. I think I think. This democracy only works because we all agree it works, right?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And the moment you begin to compromise on that, all of democracy is at risk. And I mean that sincerely. It's not a slow downward spiral. It's quick. And you can hit rock bottom very, very quickly. And the only reason why this government works is because we all have faith. and a commitment to what we consider are the American values and serving the American people and for the people, by the people.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
So I think it's very dangerous when elements in the government, and I don't want to villainize the whole government because the government's full of great people. They do great things. They keep us safe. So I'm talking about the minority few. Some of these people who have actually gone after me and will probably continue to come after me to try to discredit me and everything else, despite the
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
volumes of documentation that I have in my possession and others, because they don't want to have the conversation. And they are happy with the status quo. And to me, that is a greater threat than any UAP could ever have on humanity. The greatest threat is how we perceive
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Well, so I didn't get introduced to these things. First of all, I was introduced to the reporting. So there was these official reports that we were getting from the field. There's official videos and whatnot that describe vehicles. doing things, maneuvering in ways that, frankly, outperform anything we have in our inventory. Now, keep in mind, my background was at some point in aerospace.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
and what we are willing to do to keep this a secret in violation of the commitment and what we have done to... We've sworn in some cases to uphold the values of this country. And I think that's a concern for me. And that's why I don't want certain elements having this conversation of what this means, you know, the bigger macro level conversation because I don't think they're qualified.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
I'm not qualified. I know that. I'm damn sure they're not qualified either. So... This is why I think this type of national level conversation is so important. At the end of the day, it's not up to me. People say, Lou, what do you think? You know what? Tell what I think. It doesn't matter what I think. What matters is what you think. Here's the information. Here's the data. You figure it out.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Don't ask me what this means because I'm not entitled to that. I didn't earn that privilege. And I would definitely never take it away because that is sacred. That's you. That's up to you to decide for yourself. And this is part of my frustration with this overall conversation because there are elements that don't want you to have this conversation.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Joe, this has been fantastic and truly, truly an honor and privilege. You have one hell of a responsibility. Look, I got to tell you, I don't ever get nervous doing an interview. You were the first one and probably the only one I will ever have been nervous coming in just simply because, not because of me, because of you.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
The responsibilities you have on your shoulders to have a communicate, you reach a global audience. People are listening. to this conversation right now. And by the way, they're part of this conversation very much so, right? That is an enormous responsibility. You have a voice in some cases that exceeds presidents.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
The technology you now have available to your fingertips and this wonderful staff you have, you are influencing the world. And I can't imagine that type of responsibility. I mean, there are world leaders that don't have the voice you have. And so for me, it is a profound, profound honor and privilege to be with you here today and your wonderful audience.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
You know, if I never see you again, I wish you the best of luck. You are amazing. You're doing America a great service. Be honest. Be candid. Speak your mind. That's all I can say as a little chicken here in the United States. You've got big shoulders, man. You've got a big weight and a lot of responsibility on your back, and I mean that sincerely.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Joe, it's been my honor and privilege, sincerely. My honor, too.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
So I knew all the capabilities of an F-16 or, for example, an F-22 or the F-35. And at the end of the day, as advanced as they are, they're still conventional aircraft. You know, they still have the old, there's an adage they use for jet engines. It may seem a little awkward here, but it's suck, squeeze, bang, and blow. That's what a jet engine does. Forgive me. That's what it does.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
It's a conventional type engine. Of course, you have a propeller, too, that can displace air and whatnot. These vehicles were different. These vehicles, for the most part, didn't have any type of associated characteristic that you or I or any normal person would associate with. with the plane, with an airplane, an aircraft, right? And yet it's flying. So how does an airplane work?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Well, let's say this cigar, for example, is an airplane and there's four fundamental forces. And so you have thrust, lift, drag, and weight. And if you understand those, you can create, you can build wings and you create lift and you can fly. And then you have to have an engine for that thrust and whatnot. The things that our military pilots were encountering didn't have that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
They didn't have wings. They didn't have rudders and ailerons and control surfaces. They didn't have cockpits. They didn't have engines. There were no obvious signs of propulsion. They were doing things and maneuvering in ways that, frankly, defied anything that we had in our inventory. And we were pretty certain the enemies didn't have either. Our adversary didn't have these technologies either.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And even more perplexing is that they were being encountered over controlled U.S. airspace and over sensitive military installations. So, you know, from that perspective, you've got a real national security concern on your hands. Yeah. So you said video.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
Boy, there's so many. I think part of the challenge is that most people here in this country, they're familiar with the three videos that have been famously released by the Pentagon. The Go Fast. Go Fast, Gimbal, FLIR, correct. But those are the least compelling of all the videos that the government has. Those were unclassified.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2194 - Luis Elizondo
And so those were the ones, those were kind of the low-hanging fruit that could be released to the general public. There's stuff out there that's like 4K ultra high definition, right? So when you see something like that from a certain military platform or a certain military equity or an intelligence collection platform, you have to look at that and say, well, what – What is that?