Transcript of May 1st interview between John Williams of 720 WGN Radio, a 50,000 watt, AM monster out of Chicago, and Luis Elizondo of “To The Stars Academy of Arts and Science.”
To The Stars Academy: The UFOs in Pentagon-released videos are real
John Williams (JW): Videos show what appear to be unidentified flying objects. Well, they clearly are unidentified, flying objects, rapidly moving while recorded by infrared cameras. Two of the videos contain servicemembers reacting in awe at how quickly the objects are moving across the sky. One voice speculates that it could be a drone, but others say, “Oh, that’s not a drone.” Here again is the audio of those pilots talking. If you’ve got that Ashley, go ahead and play it.
Audio from Go Fast video plays.
JW:Lue Elizondo joins us on WGN Radio to talk a little bit about that. Lue, you’re on the air. How are you today?
Luis Elzondo (LE): Hey Sir, I’m doing great. Thank you very much for having me.
JW: You’re currently the director of government programs and services at To The Stars Academy. What was your job relative to this video? How do you know much about that, Lue?
LE: So sir, for a better part of a decade, I was part of a small program (I could be wrong about this but for the nitpickers, this may be the first time Elizondo has called AATIP a “small” program. ~Joe) within the United States military apparatus in the Pentagon, called AATIP. AATIP stood for the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. And while there, my colleagues and myself…our job was to study any type of strange or anomalous vehicle that was either in U.S. airspace or over a controlled, combat theater of operations.
JW: Can you describe for our audience what that sound was that we just heard? What would we see when we watch this video?
LE: Well, what you see and what you hear are two different things. What you’re hearing is the exasperation by trained pilots. These are the best of the best. In some cases, our pilots go through special training called Top Gun. And they’re trained to recognize the difference between an F-16 and a MiG-25 and an Su-22 from twenty miles away. And what you hear in the audio is the exasperation of these pilots chasing something that they have no idea what it is. And it’s flying pretty fast, right over the water. And you hear them basically being vectored in. And in the initial part of the audio he says, “Dude, what is that thing? Is that a drone?” And the other guy says, “No way, man, it’s not a drone.” And we know it’s not a drone because we didn’t have any drones flying in that airspace at that time. (They know WE didn’t have any drones in that airspace at that time but did Russia or China? ~Joe) What you see in the video is different. What you see is what looks to be like a black and white screen, taken…it’s actually gun camera footage from the aircraft and an attempt to try to lock on to a target. And it’s only towards…probably midway through the video, do you actually see this…what appears to be a little white dot or a Tic Tac (Is there data that suggests the Go Fast object is similar to the Tic Tac UFO experienced off the coast of San Diego in 2004? ~Joe) flying at a pretty fast pace, relative to their position. And they struggle for a little while trying to lock onto it, but they finally achieve a lock on this thing. And they’re just completely blown away. But I also think it’s important – if I may, just very quickly – to bring up the fact that there’s other videos as well. And you hear that same level of exasperation by pilots who are trained to be cool under pressure, and they know what an aircraft looks like. They know what a balloon looks like. They know what a missile looks like. And obviously these things are none of those.
JW: When did this happen? Where did this happen?
LE: Well, when the videos first came out, I wasn’t allowed to discuss that. That was still considered sensitive information. But now it’s become public that the three videos, one occurred in 2004, and then the other ones are much more recent in the 2014 and 2015 timeframe. And the most recent videos were taken by pilots off of the USS Roosevelt aircraft carrier.
JW: Has the Pentagon released this? Is this the Pentagon’s…is the U.S. government allowing the release of these or have they been leaked somehow?
LE: No, and I think that’s a misnomer. No, they were never leaked. In fact, we, about two and a half years ago, put in a specific request through the official Pentagon program office, which is called DOPSR. I won’t go into the long acronym, you know, we love our acronyms in government. But it’s the office that’s designated to basically review information and material prior to it going out. And so they released the videos, they approved the release of the videos and the videos went out. What you see now is an actual endorsement by the Department of Defense officially, that is stating for the record that…yes, A) These videos are authentic and they are real from military platforms and B) That they are unidentified flying objects. So that’s a big deal. The Navy did this about a year and a half ago. They admitted that these were their videos, that these came off of their weapon platforms and that they were unidentified. But to have the Department of Defense, truly, I think this is historic, to come out and say, “Yep, you’re right. The videos are authentic, and they’re our videos and frankly, we have no idea what these things are.”
JW: Over what body of water were they flying?
LE: Well, in the first video, again, unfortunately your audience don’t have those videos in front of them. There’s three of them. One was taken off the coast of San Diego in the Pacific, and then the other ones were in the Atlantic Theater. So, both sides of the continental United States.
JW: Any idea how fast they were going? Lou?
LE: Yeah, I mean, it depends. In some cases, we have these things estimated at speeds well about 13,000 miles an hour and that’s at an altitude of about 5000 feet. And that’s tremendous because the lower you are in atmosphere, the more friction there is. And maybe some of your audience has heard recently that some of our adversaries like Russia have developed hypersonic weapons. Well, these hypersonic weapons, to fly that fast, have to fly very, very high. And they’re still only achieving maybe 5000 miles an hour. (Various folks have suggested that the East Coast sightings/encounters were drones and/or part of a radar spoofing effort from an adversary like Russia. But if Navy pilots were seeing objects with their eyes or on their FLIR cameras and confirmed (with radar) they were traveling 13,000 mph at 5,000 feet, that would rule out drones. Was Elizondo referring to the East Coast events or the Tic Tac encounter? ~Joe)
JW: Okay, wait a minute.
LE: These things are doing twice that.
JW: Okay, wait a minute. Thirteen hundred or Thirteen thousand?
LE: Thousand. Thousand. Not thirteen hundred.
JW: Mach one is about 700 miles (per hour).
LE: Correct. At sea level. So you’re talking Mach speeds that are in the double digits. You’re correct. And that, for me, I think, is what’s so compelling and also they’re doing right turns. They’re doing instantaneous acceleration. They’re doing things that aircraft don’t normally do. And I think that’s something that your audience needs to – so when you’re looking at these types of videos – understand. (Here, Elizondo is saying “they’re doing turns.” Once again, if he’s referring to any of the East Coast encounters, this would put the “it’s drones” talk to bed. ~Joe)
JW: But then the only thing it could be, I mean, so that’s not the Chinese or the Russians or the Japanese and it’s not us. The technology – I’m just gonna throw this out there – does not exist to go 13,000 miles an hour at almost sea level and make right turns. So the only thing it could be is an optical illusion. That’s something, you know, the sun could travel that fast, light can move that fast. You know, a cloud can part and suddenly a ray of light could zip across the sky. We’ve seen that, Lue, how is it not that?
LE: Well, because our team looked at those things. We looked at weather phenomenon. We looked at if there was artifacts in the camera lens. But the bottom line is that these are actually being witnessed by pilots. So not only do you have pilots witnessing it. you also have electro-optical data, the camera is witnessing it and what’s being backed up by radar, as well. So, an optical illusion you can’t pick up on radar. That’s not the way optical illusions work. And furthermore, objects that we’re detecting are coming out of the sky at 80,000 feet and then hovering 50 feet over the water and then disappearing over the horizon. So, it’s truly an enigma. And if it is foreign adversarial, like you said, then we’ve got bigger problems on our hands. Because that means someone has…
JW: Well, if the Japanese, Chinese or Russians, I don’t know who else it could possibly be, can go 13,000 miles an hour, you think they would have done something with it by now or we would have figured it out. I mean, that would be such a quantum leap from the technology we have that it’s hard to imagine that anybody could be that ahead of us, right?
LE: Well, therein lies the problem because we as the United States spend billions of dollars each year to avoid something we call strategic surprise. You do not want the enemy to get ahead of you technologically. And that’s true in most most cases. So we spend a lot of money to make sure we’re always ahead of the game with our research and development, etc. So this is why, for us, it’s so compelling. Because in the Department of Defense, despite having the best weapon systems in the world and radars to tell us not only what kind of aircraft it is, but even, you know, what airbase it took off from, we were getting a big goose egg. We had no idea.
JW: And Lue, just for a minute then, give me the best explanation of how that could be something from another world.
Commercial
JW: We’re visiting with Lue Elizondo, who studied for the government and now privately, these sorts of unidentified flying objects. Most famously this one released recently by the Pentagon by the U.S. government. And it shows something that nobody has an explanation for moving at 13,000 miles an hour. And that was just a few years ago. So Lue, if it’s not us, and it’s them, how could it be something from outer space?
LE: Well, sir, first, if I may, let me correct the record just for a second, I don’t want to make any misstatements. The object you see in the video…that one was not calculated at 13,000 miles an hour. However, other videos, the objects were certainly calculated at that speed and were performing in incredible ways with G forces off the scale. But I just want to make sure I’m clear with your audience. That video that is available now that one is not traveling at that velocity, but others are. And then as far as your second question, what it means as far as us being alone in the Universe? That’s a question my colleagues and I for the last two years have been trying to answer. We had a documentary last year and we have another one this year through History Channel, where we have military witnesses, we have psychologists, we have academics and scientists, all asking that same question. And really, like you said earlier in your program, it’s really only three options: Either A) What we’re witnessing is some sort of super-secret U.S. technology, which is highly doubtful, because you don’t test super-secret technology, in and around combat theaters where everybody can see it, and endanger the pilots lives of our Navy and our air crew. The other option is that is foreign adversarial. And in which case, we’ve got a really big problem if Russia or China has managed to really have, over the last ten years, a technology that is a paradigm change from what we have today and our understanding of physics. We’re in real big trouble. And, of course, the last option it’s neither. It’s neither U.S. nor foreign. In which case that’s a question that really you and your audience have to figure out because it’s a much broader question that’s going to involve everybody, I think, in our society. Our theologians and our academics and our scientists and our politicians and our citizens. That’s a question really for you, not not me.
JW: Are you rooting for that version of it?
LE: Actually, sir, I’m not rooting for any of them. They’re all kind of disappointing to me because I’m an old gumshoe investigator. Just the facts ma’am, kind of guy. And for me, before I even took this job with the government, I couldn’t even really spell UFO. I wasn’t a follower. I didn’t really, you know. So, for me, it’s just, I’m doing now…I’m just finishing the job that I was given in the Department of Defense in the first place, and whatever the results are, I just want the answer. I don’t really care what the answer is. As long as we have an answer. For me the biggest threat is not knowing. (I understand Elizondo not caring what the answer is as far as who’s driving/controlling these objects and just following the data. But it’s confusing to hear him say all the answers are disappointing. What does that mean? ~Joe)
JW: Fascinating. If I watch that documentary, where do I see it on TV, Lue?
LE: Yes, sir. It’s on History Channel. It’s called, “Unidentified: America’s UFO investigation.”
And this is now our second season. It is a documentary. It is not a drama. There’s no actors. There’s no script writing. What you see is what you get. No retakes. These are all former military and law enforcement personnel and intelligence officers. And they are, they’re having an open and honest dialogue with the American people. And for me, this is the first time we’ve really been able to have this this conversation without the associated stigma and taboo that normally people associate with with this topic. You know, little green men and grandma saw some lights and (Mars?).
JW: No, I’m not making fun of it. That video is compelling. Lue Elizondo is on the phone line and we have to say so long for now. Currently director of government programs and services for To The Stars Academy. I’ll visit with you again, Lue. Thanks for your time today.
LE: Yes, sir. Thank you very much.
Elizondo, gimbal, go fast, lue, luis Elizondo, tic tac, TTSA, uap, ufo, wgn
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