AATIP and the Pentagon: The Struggle Over UFO Program Records

• Since October 2017, The Black Vault has investigated the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), an alleged UFO program led by Luis Elizondo.
• In 2019, Elizondo, claiming to have led AATIP, engaged in a dispute with the Pentagon over misrepresentation of his duties and the impact on his reputation, pushing for corrections through various communications.
• Despite specific FOIA requests, important attachments sent to the Pentagon by Elizondo demonstrating his involvement were not initially released, leading to an eventual partial disclosure by the Department of Defense after two years, but stating they would not validate the authenticity of the emails provided to them by Elizondo.
• Elizondo was asked for these same unclassified attachments in 2022, and he agreed to supply them; but quickly thereafter, Elizondo was surprised to learn all of his private emails had been deleted and he was unable to provide a copy. In 2024, Elizondo, through his attorney, told The Black Vault that “possibilities range from hackers, to haters, to system glitches, or something more nefarious” to explain why his personal and private emails disappeared. The attachments were never provided by Elizondo, but have now been released through FOIA.
• In the FOIA release, one key page was seemingly missing, but appeared in Elizondo’s Inspector General complaint. When asked, Elizondo said he was “100% certain he submitted the email”, yet the DoD FOIA office did not include it in the FOIA release as it was never found. DoD Public Affairs ignored eight follow up attempts for additional comment.

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Since October 2017, The Black Vault has hunted documentation on what was first described as a “sensitive aerospace threat identification program” that investigated “unidentified aerial technologies”. Later in December 2017, this program was identified as the “Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program” or “AATIP” by the NY Times, and described as the “Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program”. But controversy quickly followed when the Department of Defense (DoD), throughout 2018 and 2019, changed their story multiple times on whether or not AATIP had studied UFOs, and whether Luis Elizondo, the man who claimed to have run it, actually did.

Frustrated by the Pentagon’s stance about his job duties, Elizondo sent in an email on June 5, 2019, to the Public Affairs office of the DoD with the hopes they would alter their statements. Proof of this correspondence was released in FOIA case 21-F-0938, and published on The Black Vault in March 2022.

Although the recipient is redacted for privacy reasons, it was likely Christopher Sherwood, a spokesperson who at that time, released statements about Elizondo and AATIP.

“I am reaching out in a final effort to avoid seeing this unfortunate situation escalate. As a soldier and public servant with decades of unblemished service, these false accusations are personally painful as you can well imagine,” Elizondo began. “Moreover, the clearly inaccurate information released by your office has the potential to profoundly damage my career and with it my ability to provide for my wife and family.”

Elizondo continued, “In that regard, attached you will find a sample of unclassified correspondence that clearly demonstrates how active I remained on the UAP issue right up until my departure, to include interagency coordination with the IC on this important issue and operational collaboration with the US Navy.”

These attachments, which should have been released during the course of the FOIA request first finalized in 2022, were not, nor were they referenced as being withheld. Elizondo was asked by The Black Vault for the attachments at this time, given they were unclassified, with the hopes of speeding up the process to publish them to the public. In a response dated March 5, 2022, Elizondo had agreed to “pull the original email and forward it” to The Black Vault.

However, the next day, Elizondo told The Black Vault in an email:

“John. Just went through my old email.  VERY STRANGE!!!!  My email is completely empty?  Nothing in my sent box or even inbox?  Its like someone just deleted everything!?

Here are a couple screen grabs i took when my wife and I tried to access it.  Is this normal if you dont use an account for a while????”

As a result, these attachments sent to the DoD were ultimately never received by The Black Vault from Elizondo due to the fact that according to him, all of his emails were now gone. And although his private email box was likely just deleted due to lack of usage per the free email provider’s terms of use agreement, in April 2024, The Black Vault reached out to Elizondo through his attorney, Todd McMurtry, again to clarify. He was asked if Elizondo maintained the belief something “strange” truly happened to his emails. Responding on behalf of his client, he stated:

“Mr. Elizondo found it very odd that many of his personal and private e-mails had been deleted, but not necessarily surprised. As you recall (since you did the original story) all of Mr. Elizondo’s official work e-mails had already been deleted by his former employer despite a standing Court Preservation order in place for the 9/11 Military Commissions trials. Lue cannot prove who was behind some of his personal e-mails being deleted. Possibilities range from hackers, to haters, to system glitches, or something more nefarious. There is insufficient data to suggest how this happened at this time.”

Since Elizondo could not provide the attachments to The Black Vault in 2022, an appeal was drafted to request the specific attachments of correspondence that was initially overlooked by the DoD during the FOIA process. Though after a telephone conversation with the DoD’s FOIA office at that time, they agreed to reopen the case to search for the attachments and review them for potential release. An appeal was never filed.

The Black Vault waited nearly two additional years until the FOIA request was fully completed, and the attachments in question were officially released. However, the saga took a strange turn, as the FOIA response had an odd caveat to the release of three pages found:

“The DoD cannot validate the authenticity of the material contained in this record,” the letter stated. “Personal information within the record is redacted to protect the privacy of individuals mentioned. As such, this record is marked accordingly.”

The attachments released were also marked with the fact that the DoD could not verify their authenticity.

The three pages of attachments appear to be unclassified dialogue between Elizondo, Neill Tipton, Director for Defense Intelligence, Collection and Special Programs, and other redacted individuals. One of those redacted individuals is known to The Black Vault to be Brennan McKernan, a former director of the Pentagon’s UAP Task Force (UAPTF), as reported by Politico in June 2021.

These were the three pages released in the final FOIA response:

What we learn through this thread of emails is that Elizondo was seemingly passing the reigns of a “portfolio” to Tipton. The emails began on August 22, 2017, when Elizondo wrote McKernan and cc’d Tipton about their “collective efforts”. On August 23, Tipton looped in a redacted named individual to assist with the scheduling of meeting(s). On August 25, Elizondo wrote Tipton again with a much more detailed email about how Elizondo “can’t think of a better guy to be involved with this,” and how Tipton would be a “perfect fit.” Elizondo went on to briefly describe the “portfolio” he was handing over, but at this point had never once spoke about the actual subject matter of that “portfolio”, nor its name, if any.

This seemingly confused Tipton, because within 45 minutes of Elizondo’s breakdown on why Tipton was a “perfect fit”, Tipton responded stating, “Thanks Lue. All good – although, at some point I need to know what this actually ‘is’ ….”

Weeks later, on September 11, Elizondo informed Tipton he was now “part of this endeavor” and that the “Front Office” was “happy with the decision.” There was still no discussion of the “portfolio” name or topic area. It was clear from the exchange Tipton would be going on leave, and back on the 25th that same month.

This is not the first time these emails have been seen by the public. Elizondo had filed a complaint to the Department of Defense, Office of the Inspector General, on May 3, 2021, alleging “malicious activities, coordinated disinformation, professional misconduct, whistleblower reprisal and explicit threats perpetrated by certain senior-level Pentagon officials…” This complaint was later published for the first time publicly by the NY Post in May 2022 via a link posted on their YouTube Channel.

Tipton, along with Gough and former Director for Defense Intelligence (Intelligence and Security) Garry Reid, were all named and had allegations put forth against them by Elizondo. Within the 64-page complaint, the above emails were embedded to show proof of Elizondo’s AATIP involvement, but there was one stark difference. The IG complaint had a fourth page, and this email specifically talked about “AATIP” and how Elizondo had drafted a memo to help Tipton “…better assume the new responsibilities for AATIP.” The other three pages never mentioned AATIP nor did they mention UAP, UFOs, or unidentified aerial threats, so this fourth would be the most convincing if proving involvement in an effort called “AATIP”.

The DoD claimed that only three pages were found that were attached to the email Elizondo sent, which did not include this AATIP email found in Elizondo’s complaint. So what happened to it?

The Black Vault reached out to Elizondo to ask why the AATIP email was missing or never sent in. McMurtry, who responded on Elizondo’s behalf, stated:

“It is no surprise Mr. Elizondo does not trust the Pentagon’s PAO Office due to their history of waffling and providing false information. Mr. Elizondo is not surprised you received a comment like that from the same people who have been inaccurate in the past. There is a difference between the Pentagon saying to you that they didn’t receive it and actually receiving it but claiming they didn’t. This should be no surprise to you. Saying that ‘DoD confirmed to me’ versus ‘DoD told me’ are two different things. Not sure why you still believe them when even you have admitted they have a tendency to be wrong and misleading. It’s perplexing why you trust the Pentagon on certain things but then admit you dont trust them with other things. Why is this any different, other than the fact it deals with my client? The fact remains that that the e-mail is legitimate, and the DoD has a copy of it.”

Note: The Black Vault never issued an endorsement or stated a belief in the DoD’s claim. Rather, questions were posed to Elizondo based on the DoD’s final response to a FOIA request and subsequent telephone conversations with them.

The DoD has failed to offer any additional information or context.

Gough, speaking on behalf of the DoD, received multiple questions from The Black Vault regarding this issue and acknowledged the request for comment back on February 20th, 2024. After numerous follow ups, the DoD has since ignored the request.

The Black Vault specifically asked Elizondo if Gough was sent the email. In a follow-up response to that:

With differing stories coming from the Pentagon via their FOIA office and Elizondo, coupled with the fact that the office of Public Affairs won’t help add additional context; we may never get to the bottom of whether the DoD was sent this AATIP email, or if they researched it in 2019. That fact is key to understanding what evidence the DoD had during this timeframe; finding out what they were able to confirm, if anything; whether or not they did anything with the emails at all; or if they simply ignored it in hopes to smear Elizondo’s name.

It should also be noted that the elusive AATIP email goes back even farther from Elizondo’s IG complaint. Back in February 2020, it was leaked and published in part by Popular Mechanics. The story was authored by journalist Tim McMillan, who has since co-founded his own news platform, The Debrief, that describes itself as, “…providing a public venue for credible reporting on science, tech, and defense news, with an eye for the cutting edge science and technology of tomorrow.”

The source of the email published by Popular Mechanics requested not to be named, and it was shown as a cryptic, partially redacted photograph taken from a skewed angle:

McMillan wrote, “Popular Mechanics has obtained documentation that seems to unambiguously show AATIP was active after the closing of the BAASS AAWSAP contract, Elizondo was running this extension of AATIP, and the efforts to examine UFOs are still currently underway,” and showed the above email as proof of that.

A FOIA request has been open with the DoD since June 17, 2021, as filed by The Black Vault, under case 21-F-1154, which specifically requested this email thread that would include the AATIP email, and hopefully others not yet seen by the public. The last ETA for completion of the case was said to be May 13, 2024, though previous dates were given, not met, and deadlines were extended. It is unclear if the new estimated time to completion of May 13 will be adhered to and will finally be completed, but given the UNCLASSIFIED nature of the emails, hopefully it will shed more light, or at the very least, officially confirm the emails the public has seen thus far.

Note: This should not be taken as an inference the contents of Elizondo’s attachment are fake or hoaxed. Future FOIA responses will likely confirm the emails as legitimate, though those cases remain open, and will be published, when available.

Lastly, it is unclear by the IG complaint what the actual complaint against Tipton was about. Given that Elizondo spoke very highly about Tipton up until Elizondo’s retirement date, it is not known what he did that sparked him being named in the IG complaint.

Elizondo, through his attorney McMurtry, was asked about what the complaint was specifically against Tipton. His response:

“Regarding Mr. Tipton, he was part of OUSD(I). The Secretary’s front office approved the transition of AATIP from Mr. Elizondo’s charge, over to Mr. Tipton. Much more of this will be explained when Mr. Elizondo’s book is published.”

Whether or not the book explains more about wrong doing by Tipton has yet to be seen. However, numerous FOIA requests going back to May 5, 2021, have been open seeking out information about Tipton’s connection with AATIP, if any, and any communications he had regarding it. Many of those cases remain open, and will be posted when they become available. Those cases also don’t stop at the date of Elizondo’s retirement in October 2017, but rather, extend far beyond. If there is an AATIP connection to Tipton, or if there are nefarious actions on his part to hide the truth about what truly went on in the halls of the Pentagon with Elizondo, there are numerous cases that aim to reveal it.

This story is far from over…

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Document Archive

FOIA Release for 21-F-0938 [11 Pages, 2.3MB]

Full Quotes / Context

The quotes from Luis Elizondo were used IN FULL and UNEDITED within the article. They are reposted below with the questions/context submitted for response. The Black Vault’s questions are in BLUE and Mr. Elizondo’s attorney Todd McMurtry’s responses, on behalf of Mr. Elizondo, are in RED.

1. The DoD confirmed to me that the documents attached to Mr. Elizondo’s email to Susan Gough did not contain that the following email, which is the only that mentions “AATIP.” I put the screen shot at the bottom of this email, for reference. Arguably, this would be the most important since it talked about AATIP responsibilities to Neill Tipton, however, the DoD said that it was never sent in Mr. Elizondo’s email to Gough. Is there a reason he only sent 3 of the 4 pages to Gough that he later put in his IG complaint? It seems the AATIP email is the most important one if he was trying to get Gough to change the DoD’s stance about his role on AATIP. RESPONSE:  It is no surprise Mr. Elizondo does not trust the Pentagon’s PAO Office due to their history of waffling and providing false information.  Mr. Elizondo is not surprised you received a comment like that from the same people who have been inaccurate in the past.  There is a difference between the Pentagon saying to you that they didn’t receive it and actually receiving it but claiming they didn’t.  This should be no surprise to you.  Saying that “DoD confirmed to me” versus “DoD told me” are two different things.  Not sure why you still believe them when even you have admitted they have a tendency to be wrong and misleading.  It’s perplexing why you trust the Pentagon on  certain things but then admit you dont trust them with other things.  Why is this any different, other than the fact it deals with my client?  The fact remains that that the e-mail is legitimate, and the DoD has a copy of it. 2. In 2022, I asked Mr. Elizondo for the attachments to the email he sent to Gough when I discovered it through FOIA. He said he would send them to me. However, later that day, he said, “John. Just went through my old email.  VERY STRANGE!!!!  My email is completely empty?  Nothing in my sent box or even inbox?  Its like someone just deleted everything!? Here are a couple screen grabs i took when my wife and I tried to access it.  Is this normal if you dont use an account for a while????”  My question is, does Mr. Elizondo suspect something nefarious  with his PRIVATE emails being deleted in the way he told me? RESPONSE:  Mr. Elizondo found it very odd that many of his personal and private e-mails had been deleted, but not necessarily surprised.  As you recall (since you did the original story) all of Mr. Elizondo’s official work e-mails had already been deleted by his former employer despite a standing Court Preservation order in place for the 9/11 Military Commissions trials.  Lue cannot prove who was behind some of his personal e-mails being deleted.  Possibilities range from hackers, to haters, to system glitches, or something more nefarious.  There is insufficient data to suggest how this happened at this time.   3. I have read, multiple times, Mr. Elizondo’s IG complaint. I understand it was closed by the IG, and no action taken, but I could not determine what Neill Tipton did to spark Mr. Elizondo filing the complaint against HIM. I understand the other two he filed on, but not Mr. Tipton. Can it be explained what Mr. Tipton did? Or, a citation to the portion of the IG complaint that explains it? I could not find anything relating to wrong doing. RESPONSE:  Regarding Mr. Tipton, he was part of OUSD(I).  The Secretary’s front office approved the transition of AATIP from Mr. Elizondo’s charge, over to Mr. Tipton.  Much more of this will be explained when Mr. Elizondo’s book is published.

The Black Vault also reached out to Susan (Sue) Gough, Pentagon spokesperson for this story.

In addition to numerous other requests, on February 18, 2024, the following email was sent specifically for this story.

It was confirmed as received by the Pentagon on February 20th, 2024. Gough stated:

Hi John,

Yes, received; I was away for the federal holiday weekend.

I will check with the relevant offices tomorrow regarding responses.

Regards,

Sue

There were EIGHT follow ups attempting to get comments. The last was sent April 11, 2024, and most follow ups were completely ignored. No comments from the Pentagon were received.

 

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