Luis Elizondo (154:54)
Well, what it is, it's at least I think, encouraging that we, we've been, look, we've been looking at UFOs for a long time, brother. This is not new. We have been involved in this topic since well before Blue Book. I just read you a document there from 1950. There's stuff from the National Security Council, the President, from J. Edgar Hoover, the Director of the CIA. It's all in writing. It's all there. I just sent you a small, little, tiny little snapshot of some of the reporting. There's a bunch of it. So when people say, well, you know, our government doesn't know anything. Hello, yes, they do. That's just been a recent part of the narrative. So you don't look over there. We've known about it for a long time. We've been investigating. There's documents on official investigations all the way to the White House on this topic. We got it. So I would tell people, I think, look, here's the good news because I don't want to be all doom and gloom and go, oh, you're fear mongering and you know, you're trying to say these things are a threat. No, I'm not. The threat is our lack of knowledgement. I'm sorry, the threat is our lack of knowledge on this topic. And our threat is not being transparent with the American people. You can't fix a problem, right? You can't, you can't recover from a problem if you don't identify it in the first place. I think, I think we're at the point now there was a fear for a very long time why our government didn't share this information with the American public. And I understand, I don't agree with it it for the record, but I can respect it and understand it. At the height of the Cold War, what was going on? Well, you had this winner takes all approach to a chess match between then Soviet Union and the United States. And we had a lot of things going on. We had civil unrest and we had conflicts over here in Vietnam and other places. And you had a nuke, real nuke issue. Russians had nukes, we had nukes that were building more and more and more and more and more and possibly go to war. And there was this concern that here's this real threat from Russia and then you've got this other thing going on here that is interesting but doesn't show any obvious signs of being a threat yet. So why don't we focus on this issue here and then we'll kind of maybe at some point address that issue. Then there's also the notion of you don't admit that there's a problem until you have a solution. Look, governments are solution oriented. That's what we pay them to do, to have solutions. And let me give you a real case point of this. In the 1960s, it's actually started in the 50s. The CIA and Lockheed at the time developed the U2 spy plane. And the idea of this plane was to fly faster and higher than any other plane we ever had and fly in contravention to what the Russian agreement. We had the treaty with the Russians that we would not fly manned reconnaissance missions over mainland Russia. And what did we do? We did the exact opposite. We actually flew man reconnoitre missions, but we did in a way where we didn't think they would ever, ever see it. And what happened the first couple missions we succeeded, they didn't. Russians didn't respond. Mission success. They didn't even know we were there. Or did they? It wasn't until the Russians were able to develop the energies and deploy the SA2 surface to air missile and successfully shoot one down and parade powers who was the pilot and show the wreckage in front of the United Nations. Did the Russians ever admit that they were tracking every single flight? It wasn't until they could neutralize the threat did they ever admit even to the Russian people that there was a problem. Because that's what governments do. And so is it possible that some people in our government said look, this is just too much for most people to absorb right now. We don't know how to deal with it. Let's not cause panic. There were Some studies that were done by the United States government, commissioned to some think tanks by the US government. And in those studies, I said, what would happen with the American people if we disclosed the presence of UFOs? And the answer was, you can't. You will cause civil unrest throughout our population. And people say, no, that's silly. You're not gonna cause panic and civil unrest. Well, look, it's happened before where people got freaked out when the Dead Sea Scrolls were first. I think it was 1947, right? They were discovered, the Dead Sea Scrolls. It was like years and years and years later before the translation of those Dead Sea Scrolls were publicly released. Now why is that? Because they were afraid it was gonna contradict the current understanding of the Judeo Christian belief system. We don't want. This will upset people too much, right? Cause panic, cause anxiety at a hysteria at a mass scale. Mass scale. I can understand that. I can understand that mentality. But the reality is the American people can handle the truth. In fact, the American people deserve the truth. This generation, new generation of young men and women are different than mine. They are different. They have access to the entire world on their cell phones in virtually any language, instantly of any. If I wanted to go learn something in school, I had to go to the school library, grab a encyclopedia that's probably 20 years old and read a paragraph on something, right? If the page was even there, so some kid didn't rip it out and put it as part of his book report. Now you've got the entire world history in the palm of your hands. So I think this new generation is much more willing and readily able to accept some of these more profound ideas about humans and our existence, our place in this cosmos. They're not causing panic. Most of the people, young people I talk to, they go, meh, yeah, we know aliens are real. You do? Yeah, why not? Well, okay. I mean, that's different than when I grew up. People thought you were crazy. In fact, the American Psychological association once considered the study or researcher belief in UFOs as being an extreme form of deviance. Think about that. Same with tattoos, by the way, right? So I think our mentality of our society is changing. I think we're not. You know the old saying, I'm not your father, this is not your father's Oldsmobile. I don't think we're in the same place mentally, psychologically, sociologically, theologically than we were in my generation. I think with where we are as a society, things have fundamental changed. You know, the way we deal with new Information and new ideas. Let's not forget that in the words of Arthur C. Clarke, right? Any. Any sufficient technology, advanced technology appears like magic, right? But it's not. It's just. It's just technology. I often tell people, you know, a little exercise. I say, if I. If I think. If I tell you the word parachute, para being a prefix, parameter, Latin prefix meaning above or beside. So if I say parachute, what do you think of? Well, I think of about a device that deploys over my head and helps me hit the ground with a. With a thump and not a thud, hopefully. Right. And if I say parachute, I mean paramedic, what do you think? Well, I think of first responders, something positive. People there to save a life, you know, so paramedic, parachute. But then when I say paranormal, what happens? You just did it. You did exactly what I. Most people do, they go, right. The reason why is because we have been conditioned. That word paranormal is spooky. It's weird when in reality, everything in science. Everything in science is paranormal until it becomes normal. The cell phones that we use and WI fi signals and the laptop computers, all that at one point would have been considered paranormal. And now it's routine. It's not normal. It's just advanced technology. And so. So I think with this new. This new generation of young people, they realize that. They understand that a lot of things that we grew up thinking strange and weird are. I was at a time, you probably remember this. Probably you. Well, yeah, you're in the military for this. Do you remember the whole policy of don't ask, don't tell, right? And people's lives were ruined, and if they suspected you of being homosexual, that you could lose your entire career and. And be discharged. Well, that's silly. Who gives a crap someone's gay? I mean, right? But that was the mentality back then. And man, people were. You lose your career over that. Now we look back and say, being patriotic has nothing to do with your sexual orientation. Who gives a right? But that was real back then, and it affected a lot of people's lives. This new generation, I think, realizes that. They're like, hey, man, you guys are really kind of stuck in this old paradigm of doing things. Maybe you should reconsider and reevaluate. Because at the end of the day, the topic of UFOs and the UAP. UAP aren't going to change. It's here. Whatever it is, the only thing that changes. The way that we deal with it, the way we look at it, the way we think about it. The way we handle it, right, we can't change that fact that something exists. I can't change the fact that there's a lion or a tiger or, or, you know, a hippopotamus on the outside of the wall. What I can do is, is change the way that I view that. Is it a threat or is it an opportunity? Can it hurt me? Well, yeah, but if it's behind a case, then probably not. And. And can I learn something from it and things like that. That's my. That's my perspective. You know, I. I don't have all the answers. I. I have some answers that, that hopefully will continue to. To be developed and come out in a legal way. I'm not a leaker. I've never disclosed classified information. I still maintain my top secret security clearance with SCI eligibility. I'm not going to jeopardize it. I took an oath to defend this country from all enemies, foreign and domestic, and that's what I'm going to do. And I don't think I need to compromise national security to have this conversation. We've come a long way in the last seven years, and I've said before to people, there's a difference between doing things right and doing things right. Now, I prefer to do things right. We have one opportunity to do it right, and I think we are making significant headway. If someone like me were to just come out full Monty and say everything I know, you'll know more information, but you'll never get any more because I'll go to jail and that's it. And so I think. I think there's a balance. I think we can continue to have this conversation, get the members of Congress engaged, support our new administration and their pursuit, pursuit, dogged pursuit of the truth, while increasing the aperture of transparency and disclosure in a manner that is constructive, not destructive. In a manner that gives the American people what they deserve, the information they deserve, but without compromising any type of national security equity or capability. We can do it. Yeah, it's harder. Yeah, it's a lot harder. I know. Ask me how I know. But we're succeeding. We're doing it. We're able to do it. We just got to have a little bit of patience and a little bit of courage, and I think we're doing it. Look, the fact you and I are having this conversation, you are one of the biggest media personalities on the planet. Now. Think about that. You now have more people listening to you and your voice on a weekly basis than the major networks of our country. For the last 70 years, like ABC, the CBS, and NBC. Right. So your voice matters. And we're having this conversation. There was a time that people in the media would never talk about. About this because it was suicide. Just like politicians. This topic would be considered political suicide because when you mention UFOs, people think tinfoil hats and Elvis on the mothership and nonsense like that. No, we're talking about is national security. And we're also talking about the human condition, the way we process information, the way we handle new paradigms. I've used this before, and I think to its effect. My wife will kill me for saying this. She hates this analogy, but it. But I will submit to you that there are moments in our evolution as a species where these paradigm moments occur, where we change fundamentally our understanding of our reality. And so one may argue that when we were first coming out of the cave for the very first time and gazing upon the heavens, we realized at that moment that our world just got a lot bigger. Another paradigm moment may be when two people were striking a rock together, and all of a sudden, a spark, fluid. They created fire. And for the first time, mankind could illuminate the darkness. And now the monsters hiding behind the trees, well, they were just bushes. Another paradigm moment may have been when mankind was standing on a stony beach. And one fisherman says to the other, you know, I'm going to sail over the horizon. And he says to him, you can't do that. You're going to fall off the edge. And, oh, by the way, there's sea monsters out there. Giant cracking, and you're gonna get ripped apart. And of course, people laugh about it now, but you know what? It turns out they were right. There are sea monsters. They're just called giant squid of the Pacific and great white sharks and blue whales, and they're really not monsters. Really. They're part of our nature. They're part of our understanding. And so maybe this topic of uap, this is just yet another stony beach. We're about to sail over the horizon.
