My guest today is Lou Elizondo who is a former senior intelligence official, a disclosure advocate, a national security expert. And perhaps most interestingly, the former director of the Pentagon's UFO slash UAP program, known as a tip, a tip. So, Louis, thank you very much for being here, it's been a bit of a challenge, getting some of the key figures in the UAP world to talk. So thank you very much for agreeing to be here.
MC, it's my pleasure. And you give me too much credit for calling me a key figure in the UAP topic. You know that I think there's a lot of people that probably deserve that credit. You know, I'm probably like you I'm a spoken a much greater, greater we'll
Well, I think people would disagree with you there. But thank you for your humility. And we got a lot of material to cover. And lots of questions. I think I tried to take things going to roughly chronologically, but first of all, I wonder if you could just give a one or two sentence description of what you think a UAP is? What's your personal definition of a UAP?
Wow. Well, Nick, I think that definition is, is constantly evolving, and it evolves with our understanding. You know, there was a time in our history, and I'll try to be brief with this. But it's not a it's not a simple question. There was a time in our, in our, in our, in our world where anything that wasn't a bird that we saw on our sky, and it wasn't a star was was mysterious, right? These these supposed to traveling stars, and they turned out to be planets. And then of course, comets. Later on that had this this almost supernatural type of, of of identity, if you will, where where if you saw carbon in the sky, some people thought it was it was a sign of things to come, it was for boating, and it would cause sickness and disease. You know, that was a by definition a UAP. And then of course, we began to understand that and and then you have, well, you have in the in the 1940s, you have these these cargo religions that were established in the South Pacific based upon world war two aircraft, flying over these remote portions of the the South Pacific sea, flying over an island, maybe dropping some provisions. And you know that that was a UAP. Right? They were they weren't Gods from coming down from heaven dropping off food for the people on the islands. And that was very much my definition of UAP. And so it's hard to say what what is a UAP? Because I think, as we gain additional understanding, into into science and into technology, a lot of what was considered UAP before is not a UAP anymore. Anything by definition is is an unidentified aerial phenomenon until it isn't, you know, I think I think the definition of UAP is a moving target. And what was once a UAP is now something you know, that can be explained. For me. Anything could be UAP until it's not, if that makes sense.
Right? Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, let's talk a bit about ATF. I'm going to go back in time to around I guess, 2007 when you first joined the program, which at the time was called or SAP A w SAP, I think the advanced aerospace weapons something, something something program? Yes. What were you actually hired to do when you first What was your what you were tasked to do when you first joined either all SAP or, you know, the prototypical a tip program back then,
I was asked simply to establish a comprehensive security and counterintelligence portfolio within the greater construct. My background is as a counter intelligence officer, to a lot of people, they look at that and they say, Oh, it's disinformation. That's actually not really what's counter intelligence does. I think that's a bit of misunderstanding. Counter intelligence is really understanding what the enemy knows about us. It to put it very simply, I've often told people it's like playing a game of chess. And foreign intelligence is learning what the pieces on the opposite side of the chessboard can do. Counter intelligence is knowing what your opponent knows about your chess pieces and what they can do. That's a very oversimplified way of looking at it. But my job was to set up a security program within that construct to a protect the information we have and be to figure out if the enemy is collecting information on us about that, that portfolio.
So you're kind of an anti spying person you're trying to protect. And also do counter espionage essentially.
Yeah, that's exactly that's that's typically most of the job of counterintelligence is It used the same techniques as you do in, in foreign intelligence collection and human intelligence. But you're doing it for a slightly different purpose. It's the other side of the coin, if you will, of intelligence operations.
So when you when you first joined or separated, what did you actually understand the program to be about? What What would you say was the purpose of the program back then?
Well, initially, I didn't have any understanding. They didn't tell me what it was, until, until after I had a meeting with the director. And then it became very clear to me that we're dealing with with with a topic involving some very advanced technology that we really didn't have a good understanding.
Now, was it clear to you from the start that it was about the study of uaps?
Well, again, let me let me say it again, initially, when I was first approached, I had no idea what it was about. Maybe I wasn't clear, I apologize.
No, I mean, but after after your conversation with the director? Did he tell you we are studying UAP?
Yeah, it was it was very, very clear that we were studying UAP. That's correct. We weren't studying advanced aircraft we were studying, right? Something that really fell outside of the normal or traditional understanding of aircraft technology.
So when you look at like the the history of FAA tip and, and all that before that, you see things like there's the solicitation document, video, original or SAP program. And they don't mention new IPS. They just talk about technology over the next 40 years, I think, you know, advanced aerospace technology and speculative things like, you know, warp drives and quantum technology. Why Why wasn't anything mentioned about that type of thing? In the initial solicitations, and the initial descriptions, for example, Harry Reid's letter of 2009, doesn't mention uaps at all, even even like bay by inference, I think. Was that kind of a secret part of the program?
No, I mean, if we do, let's look at the dirts. Most of them were unclassified, right? We do scientific and academic solicitations for studies all the time. We don't necessarily tell the side when we say, we'd like to know the friction coefficient of a re entry vehicle coming in at, let's say, an altitude of 250,000 feet at a velocity of 17,000 miles an hour at an angle of let's say, 60 degrees. You know, what, what type of material can withstand that? And the reason why you might ask that you don't necessarily in an unclassified realm, tell the scientific community is because we're trying to look at enemy ICBM missiles coming in or re entry, right? So you don't, when you're putting out an unsolicited, when you're putting out an unclassified solicitation for a study, you have to understand that at the unclassified level, anybody can read that. And so from an op sec, or operational security perspective, you have to be very mindful of who's going to see it. And so it's very, very common practice in the US government. We put out these studies all the time. And we don't necessarily tell people why. When you look at the studies holistically, and you realize we're talking about warp drive and advanced materials and whatnot, then you begin to understand that Okay, we're talking about really advanced technology, why would be would be, why would we be interested in that? Well, clearly, it's from a national security and intelligence perspective. And, you know, what, what are we interested in? Well, as it turns out, that as as now everybody knows, it was part of the a tip program and part of the study.
So when the Harry Reid, like he sent this letter to the Deputy Secretary of Defense Secretary Lynn, in 2009. It was this essentially a kind of a public relations thing, then was the some kind of back channel thing. But he also told Secretary Lynn, that the reason we are studying these things is that we are studying uaps. It's not it's not necessarily just speculative technology. We've seen these things in existence, and we want to figure out how to do them. What do you have to
have told me? I can't speak on behalf of Secretary I'm sorry, of Senator Harry Reid. I can tell you he is an incredible human being but I can't answer that question for him. But what I can say is, once again, you had mentioned why isn't the term you AP, in in that letter? Well, again, look at the classification of that letter. That letter doesn't isn't classified, there's no classification marking on it. So once again, you know, that's going to go through a whole bunch of folks to coordinate that memo by the time it gets to the deputy secretary. And so what you don't want to do again, for operational security reasons opsec and infosec and other things. You don't want to give away more than you absolutely have to with the understanding that there were classified briefings already so Deputy Secretary Lin already knew what this program was doing. You didn't have to specify it and be redundant in unclassified document, if you're trying to protect, I mean, the basis of the memo itself was to establish a sap. So in an unclassified type document, the last thing you want to do is provide something classified, that's so sensitive that it should be a sap and and yet reveal it in unclassified document. So it's it's not, it's not a leap of faith to understand why you're not going to see necessarily the term UAP, or UFO in there, as we now know, that that the senator has come out and said, and as many others have, including myself, that the program has always been about the UAP issue.
Yeah. So but would that have been essentially I don't know. Exactly the terminology. SAP from the beginning, would it have been when you came on? Yeah, they told you, this is the public face of the program. And then there's the secret face of the program, which is about to work about uaps.
I can't discuss anything that's classified. So there were portions of that effort that were classified or, or considered SAP, I would not be able to have that conversation, unfortunately. In a manner like this.
All right. So so you That was 2007 2008 to kind of transitioned into the the the a tip program, which I guess was kind of a was that a refinement of the goals or a broadening of the goals? No,
I think it was a refinement of the goals it was it was really a closing of the aperture where Allsop was a bit of a shotgun approach. A tip, a tip took more of a of a concentrated, more laser focused approach, really focusing on the nuts and bolts of what is it and how does it work?
Okay, so you're working at a data and some point, you become the director of HR went about did that happen? 2010 2010. So you'd been there two or three years? And so you're the director of HR, what's your actual responsibilities and your kind of day to day responsibilities running a tip? Sure, well,
it was the same as, as the director before me, basically, you're managing a portfolio. And sometimes it's, it can be pretty boring, sometimes you don't have any really anything to do within that portfolio. Other times, it could be be really pretty hair raising and pretty crazy. So it really depended on the day and the situation, what information was coming in? Sometimes there was nothing to do. And other times it was, it was all hands on deck. And what it was it was triage and information trying to determine if, if, if what is being encountered is is is a Blue Force, something our own technology, maybe we have some sort of capability that we're using or testing in the area, we didn't do a very good job coordinating, coordinating with other other elements within the department, or is it a red force? Is it is or is there detected enemy, or foreign adversarial technology in the area that we are aware of? Right? Or is it something else with a hope that, you know, it was one of the first two things It was only after the through through an extensive and exhaustive process of of deduction? were we able to in some cases, look at some of these and say, Okay, these fall really outside the parameter of anything that we have, and, and that we're pretty sure that that our adversaries have and those were the ones that really now left your head scratching, you have to do a lot of analysis and research on and get a whole bunch of folks involved with and say, Okay, what what are we dealing with? And by the way, assuming this is what what what the cameras are seeing the radar is seeing the eyewitness or seen what are some of the physics and technologies I could explain this type of performance characteristic if that, if that makes sense.
Eat see like where stuff is coming in? What's the kind of like a pipeline that kind of directed stuff to you? What's the kind of like, you get pilot reports, obviously of like pilot seeing things in the sky, but where they're like kind of reporting guidelines that would kind of direct that
there were reporting channels, they weren't reporting guidelines at the time. Sadly, that's one of the things we really lacked. There were several pipelines that had been established there where we were getting information through various channels, because those channels knew that we were around the problem was it was a bit of a catch 22 The more you want people to report then the more they know who you are and what you're doing right and then the more upset issues you have. So you know, it's kind of like going out and saying look, if you see anything unusual reported, well, what does that mean? And usually what if I if I if I see a big wave in the ocean, if I see a manatee swimming across the bow of the ship, if I see a Russian submarine or an interesting looking cloud, what what does that mean something interesting, right? So that was always a challenge. Let's say well, you know, something that might be in the sky, you know, the sky, what do you mean? Or something might be under the boat, just report and then we'll determine if it's interesting or not. Sounds like,
you'd have to filter out a lot of stuff if you have kind of put me criteria for.
Yeah, yeah, unfortunately, it was not as as organized or structured as, as I would like them that we're seeing now, where there's formal, you know, reporting change, and there's policies and there's, there's teams dedicated to triage and information and get it to the right people.
So say a pilot report comes in, and he says, like, I, I saw a cigar shaped object in front of my craft, and it follows me for a minute and then vanished. And you got that report? What would you do with that?
Well, first of all, is you want to identify if there's any other corroborating information, right, is it? Is it one pilot? Or were the several pilots? Was there any radar data collected? And not just from that aircraft? But were there other maybe sensitive platforms in the area that maybe even the pilot didn't even know about? Right, that were operating in that same area, that we could then pull that data and look at Was there any pod camera footage, for example, or gun camera footage available electro optical data that we could, you know, compare and contrast that compared to the radar data compared to the eyewitness reports, and kind of cross layer all that information to give us a better what we call a cop? Common operating picture?
Hmm. So it was this? Like, did you have like a task team? You don't sit around a table? And you go over it? Or was one person take it away? And look at it or not? No, no, we
had a test team? No, we did. Absolutely right, we had an entire day, a small interagency team of individuals who had very specialized training in certain things. So some might be electro optical engineers, right. And they understand, you know, what a weather balloon looks like at 30,000 feet from all different angles, right? You might have several aerospace engineers, that can talk about performance characteristics at that altitude, right, because not all things behave the same way at that altitude, right. And then you have other individuals, I give you an example, if I may make, and I've done this a few times. This is a training aid that I that I've had for a very long time. And I don't know if you can see that on camera, but it's a profile of an aircraft. And on the back of it is details of the aircraft from various different perspectives. And you can see here, here's some other ones here of different aircraft. In this particular case, front side, bottom top, you name it, here's one of another aircraft from the bottom. And the bottom line is that individuals in the Department of Defense, many of them are trained to understand what enemy and adversarial and allied aircraft look like, there's 1000, you have to be able to very quickly identify what we call friend or foe. And and frankly, your survival oftentimes depends upon that. And so we had experts that understood what what enemy aircraft look like their silhouettes, if you will, from various different perspectives under various different weather conditions under all different types of scenarios in order to better understand what we're dealing with. And sometimes we were we were lucky, because they would come up and say, Look, actually, what you're seeing here is an su 22, for example, doing a 60 degree maneuver, probably about a 3g turn at this altitude. And this is why you're you're you're seeing what you're seeing, right. And that that case, where Oh, kind of rub the rub the sweat off your forehead and close the book and say, Okay, great, you know, that's, that's the plausible answer that we're dealing with here. But in other cases, you know, it really was it was, as I've said before, such a such an effort of mental gymnastics to try to come up with what it could have been that it was, it was extremely unlikely.
Right. Right. So you would you have like, you know, an official designation that this has been determined to be an identified or or determines to be a UAP.
Yes, correct. Okay. Yeah, that's it, that there was a threshold on once once you met that threshold, and that's why the five observables were so important for us because we we knew what traditional aircraft could do. And technology, we knew what, you know, very exotic technology, but still, technology that we had, could do. We were aware of the technology we were developing and what its performance characteristics were and it's only when you you really got outside of that paradigm. And you had something that was far exceeding those performance characteristics, if you will, well beyond that envelope of not of not only what we're what we have now, but what we're trying to build in the future. That's when You really were stuck with with with the difficult, you know, idea that maybe maybe we're dealing with something else. Again, try not to describe an origin,
very roughly like how how many kind of I guess, certified uaps? Would you have come across in your time that data?
Unfortunately, more than than we're comfortable with, you know, we wanted to find a solution for all of them. Unfortunately, I can't give you an exact figure but enough, where, where the system became energized. And now you're seeing increased reporting coming out. You're having classified briefings being provided to elected officials in Congress. Because of that, and again, not we're not ascribing an origin to this because I know people always say, you know, Lou, you said for the record, you know, before that, it could be us, it could be for adversarial. And but you think it's, you know, something different? Well, yeah, but that's why I don't like to offer my opinion, because at the end of the day, we have to let the data speak for itself, we can't ascribe just because I think it might be something we have to really avoid that temptation. And let the data speak for itself. And at this point, we simply just don't have enough data to make some sort of conclusion as to what this is.
So again, moving on from from a technology that we can really move away from it but like moving on to the the ttsa period of time, the to the stars Academy in 2017. You resigned from from ater and you joined on the lungs to the stars Academy. The same time, there was a New York Times article came out glowing auras and black money. And I believe at least one of the videos, I think it was the gimbal video came out in that article. And around that time ttsa was releasing that video, and the the FLIR one video from the Nimitz at the same time, was this was this kind of like, all happening together kind of coordinated? You know, you're talking to Leslie Kean, and you're talking to Tom DeLonge. And it's all kind of one big thing that's happening in this stuff. You're never going
back. I'd never I never went to go speak to to anybody in the press. In fact, I didn't even want to. I would my hope was that when I went with Tom DeLonge, it was going to be somewhat subdued. He asked me said, Hey, do you mind? I'm doing a kind of an internet type announcement for this effort to bring awareness. Do you mind saying a few words? And I saw and I thought, Steve justice were there. And we had some other folks. I said, How? Okay, yeah, I'm happy to say a few things. How I had worked with me, obviously, on a tip. But I did not reach out to the New York Times, it was not me who discussed with Leslie Kane, initially, anything about the program, she had her own sources. And somehow she had that video, I did not provide it to her. And honestly, and I didn't ask where she got it, because I frankly didn't want to know. You know, that really wasn't my business. And I don't want to, you know, overcomplicate things unnecessarily. The bottom line is she asked me to meet with her. I did I answered her questions. Of course, there were questions I couldn't because I'm not going to talk about anything that's classified. Was my my impression. She had spoken to other people, quite a few other people before she had spoken to me because she was asking me some very pointed, very relevant questions. And in fact, a few I was a bit uncomfortable to answer, because it showed that she had a lot more insight into the topic than then I would have expected her to have so she had a pretty decent understanding of, of, of, of that effort already. And I suspect that there were people that had spoken to her.
So you were involved in getting them, the videos declassified so that ttsa could use them.
And at the same time, was it reviewed? And so Okay, so this is let me that's a great question make and I think there's a lot of confusion there. People say, well, you got them declassified. The portions of the videos that people see were never classified. Okay, they were residing on a classified system. They were never classified. The portions let me state state Say it again. The portions that that have been publicly released, were never classified and are not classified. Okay. So my part in that was after speaking with my office, who was general consensus, but I was a senior guy. So as my signature was tried to get these videos released, the unclassified portions, so they could be brought out to a wider audience for a more generalized distribution and analysis, because we did not after banging our heads against the wall for for quite a few years on this type of stuff. We realized that within the intelligence community, we weren't, we were we were, we weren't getting the answers we needed. Nobody could Understood, nobody could tell us what was going on. So he said, Look, why don't we go ahead, try to get these videos put out to a broader audience, maybe industry partners and whatnot to come out and take a look at these things, and see if they can help us with figuring out what the heck these things are evasive if they have ever seen anything like this before. And, and maybe there's a rational explanation that that, you know, for the life of us, we just can't figure out. Yeah. And so
the you feel that this I got this form here this 1910 1410? Yeah. Is this you? Did you fill this form out to get it declassified?
Well, I can't see too well, what you're holding up, I presume it is the same one. So I'm gonna in good faith.
Say, see, my camera can focus. There it is.
Yeah, I began, I presume that that's the same one.
Yeah, it's it says, Go fast and nimble and clear. At the top of it. Yeah. title. Yeah, that MPEG file times three. Yep. All right. And now it says here, like on the form, there's a stamp that say is cleared. I'll focus in a sec, there we go. Clears for open publication. Now, does that mean that it's basically anyone in the public can can have it and you can get correct. That's exactly what
that means. There's if you look at the actual DOJ directive on dotser, there are only there is no, initially when I asked him, Hey, I'd like to keep this in very controlled channels. Their response to me was you can't do that. Either. It's releasable to everybody. Or it's not. So I said, well, that's fine. I'm happy if you're okay, with it being released to everybody in the general public. That's your call. That's not my call. And
there was some dispute over that. I think some some spokesperson said that you had to agree to what it says on the form. And on the form. It says not the publication research and analysis only is
so because you don't you don't publish videos. Okay? This is not a book. So dopps are primarily if you look at the mission of dopps. Or even though everything has to go through this security review for pre publication review. You release videos, you don't publish videos, you publish books, right? You don't publish videos. So that's why you see they're not for publication. This is not we're not talking about a book. This is for research and analysis. These are videos that we want people to look at so they can tell us what it is, is going on here. And the emails exchanges you see between doctor and myself, they say in there, hey, look, you know, we don't have a problem with these going out at all. In fact, if you look at the dotser regulations, that category when it says releasable to everybody that means releasable to everybody. That's that's that is in the definition of the actual dotser little handbook that is publicly available for anybody to read. And that by the way, is not my stamp that's that stops or stamp.
Yeah, so that means that they have cleared. Alright, so this this, you said these three segments of these videos were not classified, they were on a classified system. And so you had to get them cleared to get off that classified system. And you know, you saying segments, and that kind of implies that there's longer versions of those videos available? Have you seen the longer?
I can't go into that? Unfortunately, you know, if if, if longer portions exist. That's not for me to discuss. Alright, so let's say that, go ahead.
I'm sorry, the title of the video so that are listed here. Go fast gimbal and FLIR? What did those titles come from? Oh,
can tell you? I mean, here it is. I mean, if I could take a guess here FLIR is forward looking infrared, right?
Who comes up with these titles? Did you usually
do? Whoever the owner of the film is? Right. So So when the film was first taken, it's put on let's say, let's take the Nimitz, for example. That would be that video came to us already with with the the name on it, and the metadata, and everything else that's contained in that video. So whoever is the the originator of that, you know, would be the one who usually usually assigns the name in the first place.
Do you personally know the significance of the three names?
I don't only what I would presume to be, you know, again, for Look at me, I don't think it stands for, you know,
since we're talking about the 19 term, let's see if I can just get this up here. Right here. It says, UI vs. Ui vs balloons and other UAS now UAB is unmanned aerial vehicle, you Yes, it would be in, I think, an unmanned aerial system, and balloons. Why? Why did you mention those three things on the forum?
Because when people are going to look at it, they're going to say, what is this. And unfortunately, that is an unclassified document. Understand, we had been reeling from the WikiLeaks situation, we knew that our systems had been compromised. And we also had a very significant insider threat. So the last thing I was going to do was try to compromise overtly, and ongoing sensitive effort to the open public, knowing that our systems could be compromised, that is an unclassified document, and I have to submit it in that unclassified manner. I don't have any other option. If you look at the 1910, that the directions are, you have to provide this in an unclassified manner, which is the 1910. You can't classify it. So. So how do you? Again, this goes back to the same same logic with Harry Reid, you can't put an unclassified memo to the Deputy Secretary defense with classified information. So how do you do that? Well, you can't. So what you do to make sure that you are okay, as you make sure that the OCA, the original classification authority, is the one who's ultimately going to approve the release of that, who does know the significance of those videos? Right? And that's why you see in there with a said, Look, you know, you need to check with the original classification authority, which was, like I say it was when it went to that office, and they turned around and said, yes, these are truly unclassified. And in fact, we took it a step further. My office because of the the uniqueness of these videos, we actually went to two of the most senior foreign disclosure officers sdos in the entire department of defense to have them actually review the videos and say, okay, even though now dotser has said they are unclassified. And the OCA has agreed that they are classified, we have the release, we want to do one extra level of due diligence, just to make sure is there any possibility that releasing these videos, if they come out to the public domain, can cause some sort of compromise and national security information if it gets into foreign adversarial hands, and that's why we went that extra step. And we went,
why, why white balloons? Why did you use balloons as a generic descriptor?
Well, let's go back to the beginning of our conversation, which I think you agreed with me maybe maybe not that that anything is a UAS until it's not right. Anything is a UAP. Until it's not Unmanned Aerial system, well, what does that mean? Well, if it's not a human being incited, then it is technically a UAS. It is an unmanned, it's aerial and it's a some sort of system. Same thing with UAP. So, you know, it's it's, it's not disingenuous to say that because we frankly, don't know what we're dealing with. Now, clearly, in the videos, we're probably looking at something that is not that after extensive analysis that was done and I know some people argue about that. That's fine. I respect I'm
just about to argue about that. Especially sure, because I'm one of the people has done a lot of analysis independently on on these three videos, and I like to talk about them and kind of get your take. I don't have you ever seen any of the videos that I put out analyzing these videos?
I am aware of your work, Mr. West, okay.
Okay. All right. So, let's start with the FLIR video, the Nimitz video. And my hypothesis there is that it's some kind of distant flying a plane or drone or something like that, and that it doesn't make any sudden movements. Now, a lot of people they look at this video, it's kind of this this blurry video taken by Chad Underwood, who's very low resolution. And you see the thing kind of jumping around. But I think it always coincides with a change in the camera system. And I did a detailed breakdown where I went through the video one step at a time. So when the camera had changed, or there was some kind of camera rotation, or a lens change, or change from IR to to TV mode. And it was always correlated with some kind of movement of the object and a loss of luck, and then a regaining of lock until the final thing where there was one big camera movement, and there was a loss of luck, and it just didn't regain the lock. And then the camera changed from tracking mode to I believe, the grounds tracking mode, and then the object itself went off to the side. Are you aware of like, well, first of all, like, what do you think of that analysis if you if you're familiar with it at all? And do you think well, I take it away?
I think Well, let me answer great questions, and you have a couple questions there. So I want to make sure I'm thorough and answer them appropriately. Do I think your analysis is valuable? Absolutely. it's always valuable did we conduct our own analysis absolutely very comprehensive analysis did we come up with the same conclusion you did we did not and my question to you would be as you're looking at the video are you certain that there's not other video or perhaps that there's also perhaps radar data that correlates with what the pilot testimony
that would be great but unfortunately you know i've only got the video to go by but my point there isn't really that there may be other data is that people are taking the video itself and they're saying this video itself shows these things like chad underwood says this video shows the object flying up very rapidly at the side within the the unidentified tv program on the history channel it was claimed that this video itself was evidence of the object flying off and i would put it that the video itself could be interpreted as just a regular object not making any sudden moves i think
your interpretation is is i think you're certainly entitled to to your own opinions and your own interpretation i will tell you with my experience take it for what it's worth that was not the interpretation and we look at things in the government we tend to look at things holistically we try to avoid single source reporting from an intelligence perspective it's kind of a no no for us right just like in reporter and the world of reporting you never look at a single source and so that's why it's important to look at these videos in the greater context of the manner in which they were taken and the circumstances so you know anybody can look in a video and we see all the time videos that that show things that appear to be marvelous and then turn out to be not so much right and then in hindsight there's also other examples where you look at something and something seems to be fairly rudimentary and all of a sudden you realize after some careful analysis that is actually extraordinary and i would be my caution to everybody anybody out there is when you're looking at a video understand that a video itself is only going to tell you so much and that's why you need additional information to look at that can either cooperate or repeat that information and based upon my experience in the a tip program there is certainly additional information that made it very very compelling and again people are gonna say well what is it lou why don't you tell us i'll be we've got to know well i can't but but that information is starting to come out and when you look at that data that's compared to not only what you see on the gun camera footage what you hear with the eyewitness testimony what you see on the hawkeye radar information which is backed up by the spy one radar data from the princeton and possibly and i'm not going to say yes or no other sensors that were in the area at the time now you've got a much more complete picture of what's actually going on
it would be great if i could get that picture of course but unfortunately i'm just like you know a member of the public all i have access to is this one video but let's move on to the next and
i respect that tremendously and this is why mr west i wanted to have this conversation with you because i think i think it's unfair for for i think it's unfair for me to criticize you and i think it's unfair i'd be happy for
you to criticize me
no it's not it's it's not a personal thing i think everybody's entitled to their opinion, this is
no I don't mean that , I mean you criticize specific things that i've said. it's fine like if i've said something that you think is wrong now i'll be happy to be ....
well there's a difference between being critical analysis and criticizing and and i don't think i don't think we i think, critical analysis.
Well, let's stick with the former.
Okay the gimbal video has been more self contained i think because there isn't that much kind of other stuff associated with it at least in public. The gimbal video shows what looks like a flying saucer type thing and it's got this this aura around it. And that was kind of reflected in the title of the New York Times article glowing auras and black money but the aura was later discovered to be just kind of a standard artifacts of the infrared the infrared camera system is this thing called an unsharp mask which creates contrast in the boundaries between light and dark and yet this was something that was it was promoted on the TTSA site that there was an order on the new york times thing as on Undentified. wWhy wasn't this discovered it's such as a fairly simple thing that it's it's just an artifact of the camera even Jeremy Corbell now admits that it's just an artifact of the camera. Why wasn't this discovered right from the start?
Well, because I don't subscribe to that. I think you can you can look at something and say, Oh, it's it's a artifact of the the infrared and heat signature. But are you sure there was even a heat signature creating that? That? I mean, I don't know, the physics, what creates that? And whether it is something naturally occurring or not. But there are other explanations. What you see on a [camera?) we can say it, well, this explains that. Well, but there's other things that do too. And you're assuming that it had, it had a heat signature, right? Because
what do you mean by a heat signature, though? I think there's a lot of confusion as to what what a heat signature mean? So, from your ....
from your infrared, so infrared, in a technical perspective, you're looking at at at light wave energy below the visible spectrum of the red frequency, right?
Yeah,
infra red, which means below red. And usually, typically, dealing with that type of signature can be can be attributed to heat right infrared, you use like we use infrared cameras.
But, if you're getting a picture of something, aren't you getting a heat signature . It'sa n infrared camera, you can only see it if it has a heat signature?
Well, that's not true. You What you see is contrasting in temperatures, it's not necessarily heat, you can also see, with infrared cameras, cold spots, which is the absence of heat. So my point being is that, you know, we have to be very careful when we're looking at something if we see something that fits a conventional model, well, okay, great. But I guess my my word of advice to anybody, and this is including folks in the government as well. Always look at the second and third order layers of data, it's important not to, and this is what we found in AATIP and some cases, it helped us find conventional explanations. In other cases, it didn't. You know, if you see something, an accident on the street, for example, you see two cars collide, and one naturally assumes one car hit the other. Well, okay, it may appear that way. But, but you have to start that's where the investigation really is important, that investigative process to make sure you're you're not assuming or presuming something, simply based upon looking at something in a video.
Sure, sure. Yeah, it looks like to me it looks like it is a glare of a heat signature, which would be like something like a jet. Like my, my broader hypothesis with this is that, you know, if you have a heat source, which I'm simulating here with a light source, and you shine it at the camera, then you get this glare around it, which is much bigger than the heat source. And we see this in videos of jets that lead the heat source, yep, covers the jet itself, it actually is something that does actually happen.
It does happen, you're right, that's called lens flare, yep.
That's not really lens flare, lens flare is the reflection, this is lens flare over here, the reflection within the lens, this glare, this is
your lens flare is creating a halo effect, if you will, from the object. And so a lot of people have said well, this is, you know, this is an artifact of the camera or this is lens flare or this is a you know, an uneven distribution of light energy, as you say, from from, from a heat source creating this, this, this, you know, fuzziness if you will, and this, this, this aura. But, you know, again, you have to understand temperature differences, you have to understand differences, you have to do all those things to determine, whether or not this..
I have done a lot of research on this. But you know, one thing that really, I think, sways, the argument here is the in the gimbal video, you've got this, this saucer shaped thing in the middle, which you say might not be a glare, I think is a glare. And at some point, you see it rotated, which is very strange. And it's the thing that gets everybody excited. But if you look at the high, high quality versions of the video that were finally released by the DoD, you see the the horizon stays solid, it stays at a certain angle, which I think this angle, and then you see this thing in the middle here, and you see it the shape of this thing rotate, but you also see light patterns in the sky rotate coincidentally with this thing here the same time, which seems to suggest to me that that it is in fact the rotation isn't a rotation of the object itself, it's a rotation of something in the camera system which is causing these these reflected internal patterns to rotate and this glare to rotate. Is that something has even considered?
Yes, sure was but you know, when you look at the horizon, the horizon doesn't change.
That's the whole point. I mean, now that they wouldn't change because there's this thing in the cameras call it de-rotation mechanism
right
that corrects for the the gross gimbal movements of the camera. You know, the thing is a 500 pound six foot long pod.
sure
And it's got this very heavy like front thing at the end. And when it when that thing does a big rotation, that thing itself weighs like 80 pounds or something, it's got, it's got these big gears grinding to kind of judders around. So they try to minimize the use of that. And they use the internal steered mirrors to actually track things most of the time. But when it transitions over zero degrees, it has to rotate. And we see that in the videos, you actually see it in the FLIR, one video, the Nimitz video, and we see it in the Gimbal video that there is a rotation. And it seems like the entire light field rotates, and the object rotates, which really suggests to me, that is the only way
you're gonna get a horizon to stay sir, let's go back to then some, some study in undergrad, grab this for a second, forgive me, this nail represents an object flying and this is a horizon line, the only way I'm going to be able to demonstrate this rotating and this thing straight is if I have two different cameras, one focused on this. And one focused on this. And the one that's focusing on this doesn't change while the one focusing on this does change. In this particular case, you have one camera, focusing on both the horizon and the object itself. And the orientation of the horizon does not change consistent with the orientation of the object inside. You have you have you had the eyewitness testimony of the individuals who got pretty up close and personal to this thing as it was rotating. And you're saying we have good?
Do we do we actually have eyewitness testimony? I think we have we have the audio on the tape itself. But
you might not have it.
But it's there you have it you have so you say
I'm I'm a I'm a public? I mean, I'm a civilian right now. I'm no longer a public servants. I don't have it now. But I'm very well aware of that kid. Yeah, I
think respectfully, I don't think you understand the the argument I'm making with the rotating glare the horizon and that maybe we don't really, I think we really have time to get into it. But basically, the camera system is mounted on two axes, externally, the big, you know, external 600 pound thing. And because because of that, you can't actually track something from left to right ahead of the the forward position just with that gimbal system. So when it when it transitions, zero degrees, and this is something that's mentioned in the pattern, it has to do a rotation, a physical rotation of the whole system. Now this would make the image rotate. So to counter that it has an internal system called a D rotation system, which rotates the image back so that the horizon doesn't move. So you've got this, this camera going like this, and then they just flip and then it carries on, or it does a couple of them. corrections kind of tried to minimize image disruption. And then then it's D rotated, this image is d rotated. So from the pilots perspective, you don't see anything, it just looks like you're tracking from left to right across their degrees, everything is fine. But because there's been a rotation of the camera, and because the glare is relative to the orientation of the camera, this makes the glare rotates but the horizon not rotate.
I'm not sure I'm tracking I apologize, I think what you're saying is that the the software is correcting is somehow keeping the horizon line straight. But because the physical attribute of the camera having to rotate the object is rotating, but I'm not familiar with the system not flipping the the if you're going to rotate the object while not rotating the horizon. Yeah,
it's not really my object though. It's rotating a glare. Like the shape of the glare. Like my
teacher saying, Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. You're saying the Okay, so you're presuming or assuming that the object inside is is not even? Perhaps not. You're just you're just referring to the two if it was a glare and Yeah, well, I
mean, I think it's I think it's an all day like you know, this flashlight is an object, but when we turn it to the camera, all we see is the glare. And then if I was to rotate this camera, you will see the glare rotate even though Yeah,
so So what your what your hypothesis is, correct me if I'm wrong, but let me just want to make sure I get this corrected your hypothesis? Is that the object that that is that is creating that glare you're not actually seeing in the camera, you're only seeing the glare is that yes,
sir. Yeah, so I'm thinking you're looking basically at the tailpipe of an FAA team that's like you know, yeah, miles Well, I
understand what you're saying. I will have to respectfully disagree. And again, please don't I'm not I'm certainly not trying to be argumentative here. But the data that that we had did not did not demonstrate that you were just looking at at a glare All right, well,
We've only got seven minutes left so I want to just real quickly get on to the go fast video.
Okay.
Now the Go Fast video. It was said originally that it was a low and fast objects but if you do the math on the range and the angles that are shown on screen you can see that is actually a high and slow object are you familiar with this discrepancy
Well, I'm familiar with the alleged discrepancy but that is not the position of those that were inside the government. So you know, I'm always, I think an alternative hypothesis is always interesting and always worth having a discussion about
It's pretty straightforward math though i mean would that imply that the the readings that are displayed on screen are actually wrong, the angle and the range
Well that's a question we'd have to go back with isn't it that's a question that we'd have to go back and figure out why there's a discrepancy. I can tell you that that several individuals that were very qualified, in particularly in that particular collection platform were able to discern that this was an object that was indeed moving at a fairly fast speed. I can't tell you what that speed is but I but I know what that's what was indicated to me after quite a bit of analysis and by the way let me make this clear it wasn't world according to or it wasn't even world according to ancient we had truly some of the finest engineers and scientists in other organizations within the intelligence community providing that data to us because we're not engineers right so we really needed those experts to tell us what it is we were seeing and then the discussion with the pilots were also very interesting because according to them and according to again radar data, not just what you see in the camera, that the performance characteristics of this object in particular the way i presume you're talking about, again, Go Fast, is that correct?
yeah
yeah that that there was some very compelling signatures associated with that with that video
alright so you have access, so you've had access to additional
I do not have access now and let me again let me make this clear because I have a nondisclosure agreement with the government and i know it drives people nuts but i do not have access to that data now or any more but fortunately there are people in the government that do and they have a lot more information than just that so again i guess my word of advice to anybody not just you but anybody even even to myself and everybody we try our best to avoid single source reporting it's very important to when you're looking at something have all the available data that you can have in order to cross reference what you're seeing because seeing something is only part of the picture and again remember what you're seeing may only be a portion of an event and may not be the entire event
all right well i know we're not going to get to all my questions that i have here but just the one more thing that i want to discuss briefly with you the there was a chase there was a case publicized by leslie kean in the huffington post about the chilean navy the chilean navy they saw a object ahead of them and it looks like it was just some kind of black blob on the ir and they couldn't really make it out in the tv mode it started spewing out some stuff out of the back and it was investigated as a ufo by safer i think c e ff oh
yes if i looked like a contrail like a black contrail coming out at the end yes
i think i'm familiar with it
yeah and that was something they investigated for two years and leslie kean if you look at her original article she said like he was highly trained navy pilots who were you know trained to observe these things and then they had this whole team of people they all sat around the table and they sent out to other places to get get sources and they looked at the radar data in the area i
can tell you from my perspective and i also want to say this i'm unqualified to make this assessment you know to me it looks when you look at the video it looks like a plane looks like like an aircraft traveling at a relative you know cruising altitude cruising speed but i wasn't there for that and i will tell you now i do not nor did i have access to any of the data that the that the chilean military have access to so i guess we're not going my
point here is that you know we've got this this group of highly trained people like the chilean i mean probably not as good as the us the us navy but you know they're still they're good people
hey listen you know what to fly a multimillion dollar weapon system there's no such thing as not being good there may be people that are better but they're all good
yeah i think as a helicopter pilot but my point is they couldn't figure out what it was two years and then they released the video and within a week people on the internet tracked down exactly what plane it was it was as you said it was a plane and those things are looked like contrails were actually contrails they're a type of control called aerodynamic yeah but you know if that big team of people can spend two years looking at something and get it wrong what's to say that you haven't done that
yeah well i can't speak for the children again but back to what i said i can't speak for the chilean armed forces I don't know, when they had, who they had looking at it, I can only speak from my perspective with the United States government. You know, you're asking me to to hypothesize the the capabilities of, of aerospace engineers if they were used at all, in Chile,
a bunch of nerds on the internet, figured it out in less than a week. I think it was about three days before that. I think that was I think that's
testimony to the wonderful world of social media and the World Wide Web. This is exactly why the UAP issue on on social media and as we're seeing now on Twitter, is is so good, because you're you're getting a lot of different perspectives and a lot of different minds, looking at the looking at the same object. But I can tell you what you what I saw on that Chilean video, for me is is not what compelled me to continue to pursue this in the government. What I was privy to was far more compelling than than what I saw in that Chilean video. And by the way, no disrespect to anybody who has been part of that Chilean video analysis, because again, I don't know that personally. And it's not a personal thing for me, you my honest opinion, it looks like like a typical standard aircraft, probably a commercial plane, you know, maybe with a slight increase in altitude, and you're looking at his contrails, probably from twin engine, I suspect. I don't know for sure. But it looks like that, to me. The
interesting thing about that case is if you look at it, it is actually you can't see the plane in the infrared, all you can see is the glare of the engines, which is a lot bigger than the plane, which is very similar to the gimbal gimbal video, but I guess my point here is I think this is why I don't entirely believe and I don't believe you, I believe that your what you're saying is true. But I think there is possibility so that you may be mistaken in your group being mistaken, even though they're highly talented people and they've got all this this extra information. I still feel that because Chilean government messed up. Well, I'll
tell you one thing for sure governments mess up all the time, Mr. West, and and we're fooling ourselves if they don't, I mean, we've we're not going to go into anything political here, but we started wars off mistakes. Okay, so if anybody thinks that their government is perfect, you know, then I've got a bridge to sell you. But the government is trying. And I think that when you apply, you know, the talent resources that we had available, it paints a very compelling picture, do we have the interest now that's why they're called uaps. Because at the end of the day, we don't know what we're dealing with. And maybe it is, in some cases, you know, something that can be conventionally explained these three cases, I beg to differ. But that's okay. Because that's, that's the beauty about this conversation. Yeah. Yeah. Ultimately, you know, the truth, the truth has nothing to fear, the truth always comes out. And if it turns out to be, you know, a kid with remote controlled airplane with some tinfoil wrapped around it to, you know, spook a camera, then. So be it. And we have an answer, right. And I think that's okay.
Yeah, we're all searching for paralysis here. And this is Yeah.
And look, as far as belief, I look this there's four categories of people. And I know we're going over my time. But let me let me find me just digress here. There are four categories, people, the first category, those no matter what happens, they're always going to be believers. The second category are those people that believe now, but they can probably be convinced otherwise, if there's compelling information. The third category of people are those people who don't believe but can probably convinced otherwise, if there's compelling information, and the fourth category is those people who are never going to believe no matter what happens, okay? Sure. My job is not to convince anybody of anything, I'm not trying to have any I don't I don't give a damn if people believe me or not, my focus has been getting the government engaged to figure this out, which is what it should be doing. Whether it's a balloon, whether it's little green men from Mars, whether it's a Russian news surveillance platform, or anything else, the government has a job to figure it out, and not ignore it, period, full stop. And so that is what compels me to continue doing what I'm doing and have this conversation openly with anybody who wants to have it. I don't get paid a penny for this. I don't have my YouTube channel, I'm not getting advertisements. You know, I'm doing this because I believe in what I'm doing. And I'm not going to focus on the first category, those people who who are true believers, and those people who the second that fourth category, people who no matter what will never believe I'm not going to convince them either way. It's a waste of time. And so for, you know, I don't come out here for people to say, Oh, you know, I want you to believe in me or believe what I'm saying. That's irrelevant. What I'm trying to say is get the data, get the government to do what it needs to collect more data so we can figure this out. That's all this is about for me, because I've seen the compelling data back when I was in the Pentagon, and it was very compelling and I can tell you that the Senate And some of the people that are government have received now similar briefings with even more relevant data. And they are all unanimously coming out saying the same thing. Anybody who's received that classified briefing has come out and said, we need to take this seriously. And, and that's, that's my only that's really my only my only perspective in this is anything. You know, I think we can both agree that we need more data.
Yeah, I'd love to have more data. And
we need more transparency into this. Yeah.
I was gonna put myself in the category of people who would be convinced, by compelling data, I would say, I would love to see this, this data that you, unfortunately aren't able to share with me. But for now,
well, I think that data is is starting to come to come out. Yeah.
Do you think there'll be like a second wave? And
it's coming out in a legal way, right, where nobody gets in trouble. So
yeah. Well, I have a huge list of questions yet to be answered. Unfortunately, we didn't have time for it. But
Mick, I'm happy to do this again. Some time, right? Yeah, you've got an open
invitation. And a lot of people on Twitter asked me to ask you questions, and we didn't really have time. So I know you have a hard stop on the hour. And you've got a few minutes over, which is great. So I just want to thank you very much. For this time. It's been a very interesting conversation. And I'd like to Okay, thank you. We
have an open invitation anytime.
Great. Thanks. I will take it up. Talk to you later.
