The House of Representatives has published Luis Elizondo’s witness statement for its UFO hearing on November 13 called: “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth.” The hearing is being held by the Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Information Technology, and Government Innovation and the Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs. Rep. Nancy Mace and Rep. Glenn Grothman are co-chairing the hearing. It starts at 11:30 a.m. Eastern.
This is the first major hearing since the July 2023 one where David Grusch, Ryan Graves, and David Fravor testified under oath.
See Luis Elizondo’s Statement Below
Luis Elizondo is a DoD insider. According to his bio, he was “the senior ranking person of the DOD’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program” (AATIP) by 2012. Elizondo resigned in 2017 and has been focused on raising public awareness ever since.
Elizondo’s witness statement is posted at Congress.gov, but you can read it in full below.
Luis Elizondo’s UAP Witness Statement by Stephanie Dube Dwilson on Scribd
Elizondo Recently Expressed Worry That Someone May Be Trying to Discredit Him
Elizondo has been an active voice in the UAP community. The Defense Department researcher made waves when he revealed he had formerly played a lead role at AATIP (Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program.) Sen. Harry Reid backed him up at the time, but the federal government has denied Elizondo’s claims.
However, Elizondo also came under scrutiny recently. He apologized after social media crowdsourced a UFO photo he shared at a presentation and debunked it. Elizondo said the source who gave it to him was trusted, but now he’s worried he “may have bigger problems on our hands.”
Elizondo started a national tour based on a book he just released called Imminent. The first stop was October 28 in Philadelphia. A video from one of his presentations circulated the Internet where he was standing in front of a later debunked photo on a slide presentation. The photo was labeled Romania 2022. Elizondo spoke about getting reports from pilots about things that “unimaginably seemed impossible.”
“They described it as literally a mothership, looking at the mothership from Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” the video shows him saying. “… Guess what we caught in Romania in 2022? By the way, the U.S. sent this to me. That. Now, is it atmospheric anomaly or something like that? Suppose so. I talked to some of the pilots and they’ll tell you, that’s what they saw and they continue to see it.”
John Greenewald of Black Vault did a deep dive into the photo, looking back at what Internet sleuths had figured out about it. A reverse image search revealed it was part of a viral post in a Facebook group back in September 2023. He surmised that when you zoom into the photo when it’s in higher resolution, it appears that you can see hair in a reflection. He guessed we were likely looking at the reflection of a chandelier or light fixture in a window, and someone standing in front of it.
Elizondo reviewed what was discovered and admitted that the consensus was likely correct.
He wrote on X: “A photo that was provided to me by a friend in Government a couple of years ago was presented by me two days ago at our engagement in Philadelphia. Looks like we can put this one bed, as our friends in Twitter figured/solved this one, major bravo to you! Excellent work to whoever solved this one and a big thank you! Crowdsourcing works. Now let’s see if together we can figure out the rest. As folks at the show will attest, this is precisely why I showed the first few slides at the beginning with an example of a fake UAP. We must continue to be vigilant and always go where the data leads.”
Then Elizondo added that he was owning up to his mistake, and he wrote: “A good lesson here, just because someone in Government gives me something, due diligence and scrutiny is always a good idea.”
In a later post he wrote, “1) No I will not trust that source again. 2) Any future information provided to me by someone “in the government”, will have just as much scrutiny as everything else. Lesson learned. 3) You’re absolutely correct in asking how can you trust information when some of the information is either inaccurate or corrupt. This is precisely why I am answering your questions publicly. We must all hold ourselves accountable (as I am doing right now).”
But in another tweet, he shared that this brought up a disturbing question when someone asked if his source gave him disinformation on purpose. “If it’s a set up in an attempt to discredit me from the inside, then we may have bigger problems on our hands,” he wrote.
Stephanie Dwilson is a licensed attorney and has a master's in science in science and technology journalism. She's known for her thorough, accurate reporting and commitment to journalistic integrity in all her work. You can reach her at writerdube@gmail.com.
