Notes / Lue Elizondo : “There's an existing relationship there to feed misinformation to the American public”

In an interview published in Coast to Coast on August 25, former secret program coordinator for the National Security Council, Lue Elizondo answered questions from veteran journalist George Knapp

Sentinel News

Made famous by his appearance on TTSA and then by articles written by Leslie Kean, Ralph Blumenthal and Helen Cooper for the New York Times, revealing the existence of a secret UFO program, Lue Elizondo recently published a book recounting his memoirs. 

Now a New York Times bestseller, the book “Imminent” reveals the journey that led this former soldier to sacrifice his career and retirement for the sole purpose of serving his country, resigning in protest of an internal Pentagon policy obfuscating the frequent violation of the USA’s restricted airspace by unidentified crafts.

The book also lists the reprisals Mr Elizondo suffered as a result of his decision, and the multiple contradictory reports the Pentagon appears to have disseminated. Here is an interesting excerpt of his interview with George Knapp. 

Source

“Dana White was the original Spokesperson for Jim Mattis. Jim Mattis is an individual who I served with in Kandahar in Afghanistan, and he was a Secretary of Defense, and his staff was briefed by me on a regular, routine basis by other members of AATIP. So he knew what I was doing. And same with his staff, and they actually, for the first year, acknowledged : 

“AATIP was real, yes, it was a UFO program” - yes, I was part of it. 

I was one of the senior ranking people there, and then only after Mattis left, after he resigned, my enemies that I had in OUSDI, that I had sufficiently - excuse the vernacular - “pissed off”, launched a criminal investigation against me, and the Air Force Office of Special Investigation, in their paper, said :  “actually, as a conclusion of the investigation, there is no wrongdoing. Lue didn't do wrong”, and they actually know he was the director of AATIP, “Yeah, he was doing that.“

Indeed, one of the things that adds to an already confusing situation was the Department of Defense (DoD)'s first reversal of position. If the facts recounted by Lue Elizondo are exact, they paint a dark picture of information manipulation that clearly contradicts the truth. 

But that wasn't good enough for my former boss. And my former boss, if anybody wants to know about what happened, all they have to do is look up a story on Google called “Sex, lies, and UFOs”. 

It was put together by a former detective, Tim McMillan. He did some stuff on Popular Mechanics, and he has also something called The Debrief. It's a news outlet, and they exposed my former boss. He was caught up in an IG investigation, and he was the one that was having reprisals against me, which was also one of the basis of my IG complaint, both to DoD and the intelligence community. 

The article mentioned by Lue Elizondo can be found here. In Sex, Lies, and UFOs: Pentagon's Head of Counterintelligence and Security Ousted, we learn that: 

“Before his ousting as Director of Defense Intelligence, Reid had been the subject of a nearly two-year-long investigation by The Debrief. Speaking on the condition of anonymity, multiple current and former Pentagon employees told The Debrief Reid had engaged in wide-ranging misconduct and corruption for years.

In the past four years, the DoD's Inspector General's Office had investigated Reid on numerous allegations, including maintaining a sexual relationship with a subordinate employee, sexual harassment, and fostering a hostile work environment. ” 

And at the time, he had an individual who became a new Pentagon spokesperson, who, when I talked to, the first time, I said: “Why are they changing this?” He told me on the phone, he said:  “Lue, I don't agree with this. I know what you did, but I'm being told by the higher ups to put this statement out.” 

It was very, very upsetting to me, and I said:  “Well, how can you do that?” He's like: “Lue, look, I'm trying to fight it, but that's what they're doing”. And I knew exactly where that’s coming from. It's coming from my old boss. 

If true, the fact that even DoD spokespersons know they're lying to journalists who ask them questions poses a huge ethical problem for those who rely on government authorities to verify their information. 

And then, they have this… a new one came in, and she's a former Colonel. I'm not going to mention her name because I don't want to disparage her. But the fact is, she's a colonel, and she is formerly trained in psychological operations, and she actually wrote a thesis to the Department of Defense, saying that, in essence, you can't separate psychological operations or, “propaganda”, from public affairs duties. 

A quick inquiry seems to point to the spokesperson responsible for answering all UAP-related questions for the entirety of the DoD. In an article available online, the author states: 

“First, DoD needs someone with the appropriate position and authority to oversee the policy and to coordinate DoD strategic influence activities among DoD public affairs, military PSYOP, and other military information activities.”

“Equally fallacious in today’s world of instant, worldwide communications is the notion that you can separate military psychological activities from public affairs and public diplomacy. There is a prevailing misconception in the State Department and public affairs field that military psychological operations are not truthful, and that contact with PSYOP will somehow taint public affairs and public diplomacy. While there are valid reasons for keeping the messages and activities separated in the eyes of foreign audiences, those reasons do not apply to coordination at the U.S. national level.”

“The Administration’s efforts also appear to be hampered by “political correctness,” something that has been a bane for military PSYOP for years. In an effort not to offend anybody, products are bland, without emotional impact.”

“At some point, strategic influence must go beyond simply informing and educating and must involve the emotions of the target audiences.”

One might wonder whether the dissonant communications from the DoD are not the result of a “Strategic Influence” trying to plug the cracks in a wall that is constantly crumbling on all sides. 

Now think about that for a second. And by the way, this individual has relationships with some of these bashers you're talking about. They worked previously together in a previous assignment, so there's an existing relationship there to feed misinformation to the American public through some of these bad actors. 

If Lue Elizondo's remark is correct, the situation looks bleak for the Fourth Estate. Not only would the Pentagon be calibrating its information to induce as much fog as possible without being accused of lying, but it would be actively participating in disinformation campaigns. 

But anyway, with that said, she wrote a thesis on it. So think about that. There is a requirement to ensure that the American people and the American population is informed, and you cannot lie or deceive the American people. 

Now, they do it all the time, but it's illegal. You're not supposed to conduct propaganda operations on the American public, you can't do it, and yet that is exactly what is happening. And this person has continued to be caught flip-flopping and lying. 

It's very simple, did AATIP exist? And was I part of it? That's it, and they refused to answer it. They would come back and say, “Well, I don't know why it's important for us to answer that”, or “he had no assigned responsibilities”, and “AATIP wasn't about UAP.” 

Look, the Under Secretary of Defense for intelligence himself, Ronald Moultrie, testified to Congress under oath that they looked at the AATIP files, and they looked at the Blue Book files as part of the UAP review process. Senator Harry Reid himself, the actual program sponsor for AAWSAP and AATIP said for the record in a memo what AATIP was and that I was part of it. 

This part of Lue Elizondo's argument sounds like a checkmate against the communication strategy allegedly put in place by the Department of Defense. Not only does the Pentagon have the authority to present what it declares as absolute truth, but journalists are also constrained in their access to information from the DoD. Many correspondents may be tempted to publish scoops in exchange for framing the information provided to them from a certain angle - a practice known as “grooming”. 

Ronald Moultrie testified before the American people to Congress about it, and there's ample documentation. And the problem here is that they keep changing their stories. Now, we know the Pentagon never lies, except for Iran-Contra, and Pentagon Papers, and Afghanistan withdrawal… But the list goes on and on and on and on, and they only are forced to tell the truth when you know they're caught red-handed. 

Intriguingly, while Ronald Moultrie stated during a public congressional hearing that he was unaware of the Malmstrom incident - one of the most dramatic cases of UAP incursion in US history that caused nuclear missiles to go offline - he claimed to have found the Blue Book and AATIP programs while researching UAPs within the DoD. The fact that such a secret program is known to one in the highest echelons of US military intelligence raises questions about the Pentagon's response, which is to deny any involvement with UAPs. 

You know, this is one of those cases where I am consciously optimistic that in the very near future, with some new members of an administration, and even if it's the same administration, I think we can expect some turnover somewhere in the Pentagon. I think we're going to start seeing a change in their messaging. And I think people will be surprised, because look, enough people know who I was, what I was doing. This has been rehashed 1000 times. There are memos out there.  There's people in the Secretary's front office that were being briefed every week by me. They know it. They've already talked to members of the press off the record. 

A ray of light in this morass of information revealing the supposed conduct of those in charge of DoD communications, Lue Elizondo’s remark shows that even if the Pentagon's clout is considerable, it cannot erase the real facts that took place within it. 

So at this point, it's kind of a fool's errand that they've backed themselves into a corner. And for me, George, I gotta tell you, it's embarrassing, because this is my beloved department, and it pains me not, not because they're doing it to me or other people. It pains me because at this point they just look silly. And how do our adversaries look at this where the government can't even get their own message straight, and they've changed it like seven times in the last six years. Think guys, can't you get one thing right? 

This last remark in the excerpt is perhaps the most damning. At a time when the USA has lost its war in Afghanistan, with the Taliban back in power, and Iraq is still ravaged after a second futile war conducted under false pretenses, the fact that the Department of Defense has changed its response to Lue Elizondo's information so many times only serves to remind us even more vividly of the 4 different versions provided by the US government to prosaically explain the Roswell crash, also recently confirmed by Lue Elizondo as involving UAP.

Full interview here.