Ep. #124 – Ex-DoD Intelligence Officer’s UFO Claims Spark Security Concerns & Confusion, Pentagon Memos Reveal

evidence. Ever since October of 2017. When Mr. Luis Elizondo began making claims about his time directing a program, researching anomalous aerial threats, and declared UFOs were indeed real. I was fascinated. But it's no secret as time went on that I had my doubts. Over the course of the past five and a half years, I've taken great care to find out what is fact. And what is fiction throughout an ever evolving saga that will

no doubt not go away anytime soon. So here's my friendly warning, before we get going to some of you, I know you won't like the story I'm about to tell. Some don't care about what happened in the halls of the Pentagon back in 2017. Because in the end, we got UAP videos, and people are talking about UFOs in the halls of Congress years later. And although all of that is great, I want to know how we got here. And when I say I want to know, I mean, I want to know, everything, every

little piece. But I do know that not everybody is the same way. I bring with the story only verified official documents obtained through official means. And I've tried to string together firsthand testimony given in different ways from different people over the course of years. Official documents don't equate to the truth. But it is part of the story. I tried to backup everything I can and put the puzzle pieces scattered on a large table closer together, so we can finally see

what the picture is, or at least get a glimpse. Since day one, none of this has been personal against any one person. What it is about is discovering the truth behind a story that has huge implications, and a huge payoff for humanity, if what we want to believe turns out to be true. But in order to get there, we have to separate the wheat from the chaff. And to do that, we have to ask some tough questions, and sometimes deal

with some uncomfortable realities along the way. So with that said, buckle up, because you're about to journey inside the black vault. That's right, everybody. As always, thank you so much for tuning in and taking this journey inside the black vault with me. I'm your host, John Greenwald, Jr. and today we're diving into as I just went over there, in the top of the video, a pretty controversial story, or at least a gets into territory that I know some people are really not going to be happy

about. And they will just by default, deny any type of accuracy to these memos. Now, as I just stated, I want to state again, just because things come from official documents does not automatically make everything gospel, but they are pieces of the puzzle. And that is why I have always aimed to get this type of material because it tells the other part of the

story. For years now, we have heard various aspects of the story of Luis Elizondo and how he came out of the Pentagon and why he came out of the Pentagon. And his resignation letter stated that the DoD wasn't essentially taking UAP serious enough and it needed more action. All of those types of stories are great, and they could absolutely very well be 100% True. But now we're starting to see the other side

of it. And this is what this video is about. This is what was going on within the halls of the Pentagon in late 2017 after the New York Times published their article. Now hopefully you have all had a chance to see the article that I published earlier this morning. This breaks down with great detail admittedly it's long but it had to be great detail about what this is all

about. Why it's important, why it's a essentially inside look and what why we need that inside look To decipher what was really going on, because when you only have one side of the story, even

though it may be right, it's still not the whole picture. And this gives us a little bit of a sneak peek into the other side into into the Pentagon, and the confusion that was going on around Luis Elizondo his resignation and the security concerns, not only over his resignation, but also the actions that he was taking outside, and also how those

videos popping up the FLIR ONE the gimbal. And later, the go fast, how those popping up in the New York Times was not necessarily a good thing, and very much welcomed by the DOD, less about them being about UAP, although I'm sure that played into it, but more so and we'll get into this, but more so the fact that they were potentially classified. So put yourself into that mindset. This was days after the New York Times article, we know now that the videos were were deemed

unclassified. And we'll get into that as well. So before anybody reacts to that, like, Oh, this is who cares? It was later determined unclassified note, let's forget about that for a second, because this is chronologically chronologically, days after the New York Times article. So it creates a very interesting look inside what was really, really going on with all of this. So let me go ahead and pull up the documents

themselves. And this was not in the article. What I want to do here is kind of give you guys a little bit of an idea of how I came to know that my freedom of information act request was responded to because you will note, people that actually read the letter that it was sent on October excuse me on August

17 2022. Now, here's the weird thing, why am I right? What Why am I writing about it in June of 2023, that I would not sit on something like this unless there was like more to the story that I was pursuing and, and to essentially give give depends on the story. But but to give it the respect that a story deserves to ensure that I have all the pieces of the puzzle for that respective piece, something like this, all the pieces were kind of there for this, so I wouldn't sit on it. So why did

why is there that big discrepancy? Well, here's the weird thing. And again, I did not get into this in the article. But I figured I would tell the story here. I had seen a post online, on Twitter, actually, from somebody who had posted the the resignation letter that I'm about to show you is very short. It was not the resignation letter that we all have come to know from Luis Elizondo. And I thought, Oh, come on this is this is fake, there's no way that this is

real, because number one, we would have heard about it. But number two, that's not his resignation letter. So what's going on here, and then there was a snippet from another document. That was it turned out to be real, it was from this, but just a snippet. It was just a paragraph or two. So I wrote that person, because I do follow up on these types of things just to kind of, you know, feel it out and go, Hey, well, what's going on here? What are we talking about? That person

privately messaged back. And so well, the documents are genuine. I thought you got them. And I was like, wait a minute, no. Why would I get them and not talk about this? It was really interesting. The little snippet and the fact that there was a second resignation letter. And I thought okay, this is weird. And so I chatted back and forth with this person, and I'm not not giving you their name. I don't know their name. And their I only knew that the Twitter handle. And it got really

bizarre by the end. But in the beginning, as they're saying, Well, we think we got the documents from you. And they kept saying we they ended up sending me a heavily watermarked PDF file through a encrypted email. And I'll be honest with you, My first impression was like wow, if you guys fake that this is really well done because number one, it wasn't explosive. Like it wasn't, you know, saying alien bodies were in floor number two of area 50. One's underground facility. I mean, it

was quite the opposite. It was just straightforward. DOD memorandums and with redactions, which were weird, because the redactions actually look legit. And I'm like, wow, this is really fascinating. So they, for whatever reason, didn't want me to just run to the Pentagon spokesperson. And I thought, well, that's what's weird, but I said, Okay, I won't, but I had to verify these things. But one thing that I noticed when they

sent me, the PDF, my FOIA case number was in the title. And I thought how bizarre like, wow, not only if they fake these documents, they actually looked up my FOIA case number one I'll fast forward the story. I didn't go to the spokesperson, I went to the FOIA office. And I said, Hey, there's somebody out there touting this material from this case, I had an open Freedom of Information Act appeal on it from years ago. And, and in

fact, you'll you'll see it was filed December 17 2017. So you're going way back when this case actually was routed to. somebody's out there touting this thing. So about a week later, I got the response sent to me via email. And sure enough, the documents were all legit. And sure enough, for whatever reason, the DoD never sent me the response. So I was floored by that. I don't have a answer for you. I'm still

working on that, on why the DoD messed up. And with as many requests that I've had, and obviously, since I had filed this on December 17 2017, you know, that amount of weight is ridiculous. But to know that I could have had these, you know, months and months ago, makes it even more frustrating. So there's like this weird caveat that makes the story even more bizarre. That person, I don't know, just to kind of close the story where it got bizarre. Before I talked to the DoD at

all. They I think, either misunderstood a direct message I sent to them or or I'm not really sure, started making silly accusations that I sent all this paperwork and their name to the Pentagon, which which wasn't true. Again, I had not even talked to the DOD, they ended up blocking me on Twitter. And that's the end of it. And I thought with that, I was like, Okay, well, there's, you know, the writing is on the wall that this is fake. And this is someone that's just, you know,

fooling around. But when I went to the FOIA office and just said, Hey, you know, I'm probably getting my leg pulled here, but they're saying in my case number, and then a week later, I got the actual documents. And here we are. So that to me, was just a very one of the more bizarre things that has happened to me. And it turned out to be legit. So I have no idea I'm gonna keep pressing the DOD to figure out hey, how did someone I don't know who it is, how did they get

my my FOIA request release? How did they get it and I didn't, because that that there's also kind of an ethical issue here, where, you know, you're, you're filing these legal cases. So if you're gonna leave the requester, in the dark, but somehow somebody else gets sent the records. Again, there's there's kind of huge implications behind that. So still trying to figure that part out super weird, I thought I would give you guys a little bit

of behind the scenes of how that went down. But let's just go ahead and dive into the documents themselves. Because I do think these are definitely worth exploring. So as I mentioned, August 17, was the day but I did not get these till about a week and a half ago, I didn't go live or anything when

I first got them. Because this was one of those stories that deserved a little bit more handling with care, making sure that those people that I was going to be talking about in the story had a chance to give their say, and I did I did just that we'll get into it. So I won't read the letter to you. Nobody really cares about that. Here are the documents themselves. And for the purpose of this deep dive, I'm going to go ahead and

read it for you and through with you. Because essentially this this for the podcast version, I think is going to be much more worthwhile. So forgive me as I get queued up here on the actual graphic, the way that it was sent to me was reverse chronological. So that's why you just saw me scroll down through a bunch of stuff. And I'm going to start with the first memo. Chronologically easy to determine chronologically, it's the oldest because this is what started kind of chronicling the

media attention that a tip was getting. And then as we go through this, we'll go through a couple other documents that they gave me, but let me go ahead and start with this. All right, so this is a memorandum for the record. This was from Gary Reed. I know some of you cringed don't worry we'll deal with Gary Reed

later. Gary Reed director for defense intelligence office of the Undersecretary of Defense for intelligence update on media reporting related to the advanced aerospace threat identification program or a tip and actions of former DoD employee Luis Elizondo. This memorandum summarizes recent media interest in the a tip, which has been accentuated by the public statements of former DoD employee Luis Elizondo, who

is aggrandized his role in the program. We are collecting facts regarding Mr Elizondo his actual role in the a tip, reviewing the program's history with dia, Navy and Air Force and pursuing options to investigate Mr. Elizondo is possible mishandling of sensitive information. Mr Elizondo was assigned to AU Usdi from September 28 2008 to October for two days. 1017 He served as an action officer in partner engagement and subsequently as a branch chief managing classified information

to support the Office of Military Commissions. This is underlined by emphasis, by the way, from Gary Reed. This is not my underline, to the best of my knowledge. He had no job responsibilities related to the a tip. The a tip was terminated in 2012. And information paper on the program is at tab a. Now I'm going to stop right there. That emphasis like I said the

underlined that sounds familiar, right in 2019. Pentagon spokesperson Christopher Sherwood, not Susan golf, like everybody says, and the reason I'm saying that is for accuracy here. A DoD IG complaint was submitted against her, but she did not come out with the original statement. All evidence, although I'm still digging, but all evidence shows she had nothing to do with the UAP portfolio until after that. So Christopher Sherwood was the root of that statement. He was

never mentioned and Luis Elizondo his IG complaint. He's the one that issued it, but he was not the one that actually came up with it, as evidenced here. In fact, it wasn't even in 2019 wasn't even in 2018. But in fact, it goes all the way back to the end of December, within about a week. And you'll see even though this is undated, how we can determine it was probably around December 20 22nd, somewhere around that timeframe. But regardless, it was the end of December of 2017, that this

was written. And even then, they were already bantering within the Department of Defense and putting in a memorandum for the record. We do not believe that he had any job responsibilities on the a tip. We do know years later, they added the word in assigned responsibilities. The jury's still out on exactly why that is. There are some guesses I think I have a guess but doesn't matter. That was changed years later. But look, this is how early that statement was, but they did not release it. The

DoD never addressed it. Until years later. I found that pretty interesting, especially with the accusation that they were trying to assassinate the character of Luis Elizondo, you'd think like boom, right off the bat, they would start throwing these statements out there, but they didn't they sat on it. For reasons unknown. Let's continue on. On October 3 2017, Mr Elizondo submitted a resignation letter tab be requesting

immediate termination of his employment. He was cleared out of Usdi the next day, he provided no reason for the sudden departure. Now I'm going to start jumping around in the documents because it's for the sake of the storytelling. I will show you tab B, because the resignation letter that I know you guys have in your head, showed Luis Elizondo his reasoning for resigning right. It was all about the anomalous aerial threats. And in fact, there it is, that's the one that

you saw on the History Channel website. That's the one that was stored on Christopher Mellon's web server. So that's the one that goes into more detail. So what's this one? This was a second resignation letter never before seen by the public. And you can see it as short and sweet. There are no letterhead, note no letterhead to it. It just says effective for October 2017. I humbly submit my resignation as Director, National Programs special management staff office of the

Undersecretary of Defense for intelligence. In this regard, I understand I will no longer be an employee of the US government. I respectfully request I receive a quote, deferred retirement very respectfully, Luis de Elizondo. Now let's jump back on and going back to the memo on or about October for after Mr. Elizondo had departed the organization. A second resignation letter tabs see was delivered to the USDA chief of staff office in this letter, which is formatted as a

memorandum for record, but uses the salutation. Mr. Secretary, Mr. Elizondo cites concerns over anomalous aerospace threats as the basis for his resignation. Given the uncertain provenance of the second letter, oh Usdi retained a copy, but did not provide it to the SecDef office. The uncertain provenance stuck out to me what uncertain provenance the first resignation letter didn't have that tag to it. And then this one on or about October 4. Well, why didn't he know that we knew this

one. Is it because it was dated maybe, but who dropped it off? You'll see later it was Mr. Elizondo who submitted that that resignation letter to his boss John Garrity, look at the signature here. initialed John Garrity written out three October 2017. This stipulates that he had received it from Elizondo personally and again that's in these documents as well. But when it comes to the second now we know second resignation letter, the one that we all know about and have for

quite some time. That was technically the second that had this uncertain provenance to it. What that was, is your is your best guess is best guesses? Same as mine. I have no idea. Yes, I did ask Mr. Elizondo. We'll get to those statements later in the video, or the lack thereof. Back to the letter or memo I should say in a phone call on October 5. When asked about the second letter, Mr. Elizondo told me that for many years, he had been secretly tasked by the Secretary of Defense as the program

manager for investigating UFOs and other aerial threats. He said nobody in Usdi was cleared for this program and would not discuss it further. I discussed his claims with senior officials who would likely have known of such an arrangement but but was unable to substantiate them. Keep in mind Gary Reed has now for the last year or so been the guy that people are pointing their fingers to in some circles that say he's the one that's the

root of all of this. This is showing that he checked with senior officials to try and substantiate the claims of Luis

Elizondo. Moving on in the memo. On October 12, I learned a video featuring Mr. Elizondo that was posted on YouTube by the to the stars Academy of Arts and Sciences, which appears to be his current employer, he asserts for nearly the last decade, and this is a quote he asserts, quote, for nearly the last decade, I ran a sensitive aerospace threat identification program focusing on unidentified aerial technologies, that's unquote from Elizondo back to the memo and later says, We are

also planning to provide never before released footage from real US government systems. So again, that last part quote being from Mr. Elizondo, we are also planning to provide never before released footage from real US government systems, put yourself into the timeframe late December, and in as this was written, but in October before the videos came out, he started to see Elizondo say publicly, they were going to release never before released footage from the

US government systems. You can imagine that might be a red flag, put a pin in that because that's absolutely a red flag and plays a role later. Back to the memo. Following discovery of the YouTube video, I requested an informal review of Mr. Elizondo is conduct by the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, or AF OSI, which is responsible for providing investigative support to the Office of the Secretary of

Defense, including investigation of assigned personnel. In late November, FOS, I advised that absent more tangible indicators of possible misconduct, they did not have enough information to open a case on Mr. Elizondo. Now remember, another thing that we keep hearing about in from some circles in the last year was that Reid was using his kind of all powerful arm in office to push for these investigations, and that he was the sole we'll call it puppeteer to make Elizondo his life miserable.

However, this shows that he didn't have that power afosr At that time, in October through to November of 2017, before those videos were published in the New York Times, that's key. Before that, afosr I pushed back and essentially said no, the evidence there does not justify a investigation into Mr. Elizondo. So despite what you may think about Reid, and I could care less about the man, myself, I mean, I don't know

him. I've never talked to him. I know nothing about him. But regardless of what you think about him, the claims that he had this all powerful like, oh, investigate this guy, and then a fo fo is I goes, Okay, let's investigate the guy. That's not true. And the there was not enough there. So they pushed

back and said, No, we will not open a case. Back to the memo on December 7, DOD was contacted by the New York Times seeking information regarding the a tip and noting that Mr. Elizondo, his recent resignation was submitted to protest what he characterized as internal opposition and lack of resources for continued research. So now we're getting into the New York Times playing a role in this on December 15, based on information contained in the New York Times inquiry, I notified

the O Usdi. Security Officer, that Mr. Elizondo may have misused government systems and may intend to release US government footage or information that he obtained during his employment with Oh Usdi. I don't know what was in that initial New York Times inquiry, but this shows you that they likely had knowledge of some kind or We're asking questions about something that may have encroached into classified territory or was potential, potentially a

classified territory. And that's going to pique any senior defense officials ears right up, because clearly for years, leaks are a concern to the Department of Defense. So now you've got a mainstream media outlet and a major one pushing for answers about a program that may or may not even exist at this point. But obviously was was potentially tied to somebody who was irrefutably, Luis Elizondo was highly cleared and had access to many government secrets. So put all of that

together. Any senior defense official anybody doesn't matter if it's Gary Reed or not, who sees that is going to start perking their ears up going, Hey, wait a minute, what is potentially going to be leaking out to the general public? Back to the memo. On December 17, Mr. Elizondo appeared on national news programs providing commentary on a video that appears to be camera footage taken by a US military aircraft showing what he claims is an unidentified flying object. In

the TV interview, Mr. Li. Mr. Elizondo affirms his alleged role in leading the a tip program and says, quote, We are not alone. Now, I did look up that quote, that is not exactly what he said. It's there's quite a kind of a twist. He has said we may not be alone, so I want to be clear there. Regardless, that tone that claim was a concern to the DOD. So despite the slight misquote there by Reid Elizondo was essentially alluding to that very thing that humanity may not be alone.

Moving on, on December 18, oh, USDA, I located a classified email generated by Mr. Elizondo in August of 2017, in which he requested assistance from a navy civilian, a navy civilian employee to declassify one or more videos. The video attached to the email is the same footage broadcast on national news on December 17. The email chain is incomplete. So we have yet to determine if the video was properly declassified, what process was followed and how it ended up in the possession of

the national media. We continue to research these email transactions. This is one of the key parts of this memo again, despite what you think about Gary Reed, take that name out of the equation and look at the reality of the facts. The DoD was, was encountering a classified email written by Luis Elizondo with attachments that were the same videos that were now broadcast worldwide. So I'll say that again, a classified email written by Luis Elizondo, talking about declassifying

them. So the declassification word is declassifying is key, because that indicates potentially they were classified and they are all over the world. That is a concern for any senior defense official doesn't matter how you slice it or dice it. That would be a concern to try and figure out did classified information just spill out into the open, or is this something

else? The last paragraph in this memo on December 21, I met with afosr agents to initiate a formal inquiry into Mr. Elizondo as possible mishandling of classified materials. Attachments, as stated that's the end of the first memo. Now to go back to that classified email. I am not sure if the email there's a there's an email or two that was released to me years ago through a Freedom of Information Act request in relation to the Doppler process. Now, that was potentially what

is being referred to here. I can't confirm that at this point. I have filed other requests to get that specific email and may ultimately be the same. But the point here is the same regardless of it is the same email or not. It was classified. The attachments were technically classified because they were on a classified system. And they were talking about declassifying the videos. So that that's every indicator that potentially there was a security problem and a security

leak. So now let me go to the second memo, which is interesting, because this is essentially what I just read to you with one exception, see all these scribbles? Those are not mine. Those are made by someone who I believe I figured out and I will show show you the handwriting analysis before we go through the hand writing itself and what was scribbled. But you see up here, these initials. And we know at the

time the Secretary of Defense was James Mattis. His middle initial was n. So when I saw this, I thought, Okay, could do. Essentially what this indicates is Mattis got this memorandum for the record initial receipt on the 23rd. This is Gary reads, GER. So that would be Gary Reed's initials. And then you see these handwritten notes. So I'm going to change how I'm going to do this. I'll go through the notes first, then I'll tell you why I think it's

Mattis. So I'm not going to reread the entire memo again to you. But you can see what what what I believe is Mattis so I'm just gonna give that friendly caveat again, I couldn't confirm it. 100%. I wrote James Mattis, he read the email did not reply. And I have followed up with the Pentagon numerous times to try and confirm it. They they say they are researching it, but have not gotten back to me by the recording of this video. But there's a lot of indicators that it is. So that's my friendly

caveat. There's a slight possibility it's not him. I considered a very small possibility. But if it isn't, doesn't matter. It's clearly a senior official above read, who saw this, analyzed what read was writing and then issued some follow up questions which we'll go over as well. But here's what piqued their interest, underlining who was aggrandized his role into the program. Obviously, him going out there telling tall tales in the eyes of the DoD was something that

that kind of piqued his interest there. Here's some exclamation points with another underlying brand. He was a branch chief managing classified information to support the Office of Military Commissions. That obviously piqued his interest as well got a couple of exclamation exclamation points. Likely because it tied in with, there was no reason for his sudden departure. Look how he boxed that in exclamation point at

that one. And then hand wrote in C, Intel alarm, that's the letter C for those listening to the podcast that essentially stands for Counter Intelligence alarm with a question mark. Now why would he write that? And to me, I think the answer is easy. He had access and managed classified information to support the Office of Military Commissions. We know from Elizondo his background he was working with or through Gitmo on some of those law enforcement proceedings when it came to the

terrorists. I was able to show that his position likely was farming out SAP access meaning Elizondo has position farming out SAP access to the attorneys of Collete, Sheikh Muhammad, and an unknown number of other terrorists. I've done a video on

this channel. It's been a couple of years. But I was always fascinated by what Elizondo was confirmed to have been doing this kind of supports that with the office of the military commissions managing classified information, but back to the counterintelligence alarm, his sudden departure to any senior defense official, if you are just immediately leaving your position. Why, where are you going? Is somebody threatening you? Is there a problem? Are you taking your secrets with you?

And potentially selling them? All of that, again, is just conjecture. So I want to stress that, but that justifies putting in there, Hey, are we concerned here for any type of, you know, potential threat here with his knowledge, sudden departure, and

obviously, where he in what he worked on? So let me stress that's just speculation, but it's kind of obvious speculation because of combining what piqued his interest, why this stuff was underlined, and then the sudden departure you can also see here, he circled uncertain provenance. So that was in relation to that second resignation letter, you'll see that a question goes directed. What does that mean? And we'll get to that question

in the next memo. Scrolling down here he kind of has some check marks so it's probably you know, he's just going through it my guess is Mattis may have been a little old school and and you know wasn't in the right and emails but would grab a paper copy of something and and and do that type of you know, okay, read this or read this or this goes down the line underlying Navy civilian so the Navy civilian that was on the other side of that classified email that Luis Elizondo wrote, which

was obviously a big concern, because it's in there quite a bit and referencing these that classified email. It was starred, it was underlined. And then you can see here, the handwritten note who is investigating AF LSI. If so, are they looking into all Excuse me all. That's the word I couldn't read. I think it's all aspects surrounding the situation. I don't know what this word is. It's kind of hard to read. And I might figure it out like after zooming in, but it's kind of

hard into all aspects. All aspects or assistance maybe Regardless though, you can you can kind of see that he was worried about this navy civilian and asking who was who was writing, I thought it was a little bit clearer of a copy, but I guess it's a little bit a little bit bad there to see on screen. Regardless, though, that was the the handwritten note in the margin. And so that was it. That was the second document that was released. Now let's get to why I think that this is

Mattis. Okay, so now you see what was important to what I believe is who I believe is Mattis, but potentially a senior defensive official above. Read. Obviously, I already went over the initials. But take a look at this. This is what I just read to you. Again, that word or two is kind of hard to read. But look at the writing style. Number one, though, it sticks out. It's all capital letters. Number two, you look at matching. You look at matching letters throughout the these two

are confirmed. Mattis Okay, so those are those are confirmed, written by Secretary of Defense Mattis. So this is like what we're what we're questioning. So when you look at stuff, you look at the different letters. And when you look at, let's say, the N, you look at the end, so you see an n here, and you go over and try and find an N, look at how he writes this n kind of hooks, the end there a little bit has kind of a weird way to start it, you're never gonna find exact matches, but you'll

find huge similarities. Now look at the ends over here, same way hooks at the end, same kind of short on the top part of it or the front end of it. He also has these kind of bubble, you know, kind of the only way I could describe is more of a bubble writing to where he really kind of like you could see the W there on how he does this. On the RS, you can see he trails the tail of letters, RS is a big one, see how he tails he trails

on the tail. So he writes the R but it trails down. Look over here, he does the same thing in all the letters that he does. The SS also you look at the hooks that the SS have the hooks are the same, the way that he does them are very, very similar. So you see that and a lot of it. So I invite you to stare at that image and look and see the similarities there. On

on his on his different writing. But then let me get to the third document, which again reinforces that it was the Secretary of Defense's writing, because that first one I had mentioned was a memorandum for the record. Right. So it wasn't to anybody directly, but it was for the record. So read was outlining everything that was going on within the media. The response here to different questions was for the Secretary of Defense, so not record anymore, but directly to the Secretary of Defense.

That's further, that's a further indicator that all that writing and provenance, uncertain provenance and all that which are in these questions came from the Secretary of Defense

himself. So memorandum for the Secretary of Defense. So this is a new memo looks kind of similar, but this is a new one from Gary Reed, Director of Defense Intelligence Officer, the Undersecretary of Defense. The subject response to your questions on the advanced aerospace threat Identification Program are ative and actions of former DoD employee Luis

Elizondo. So obviously this was in response to the questions for the secretary of defense Okay, so I'll leave the handwriting thing alone now but obviously wanted to stress that that all indicators point that was Mattis All right. So let's read this memorandum provides response while there's a sick there, he grammatically was wrong, provides responses to your sick six questions. Regarding the actions of former DoD employee Luis Elizondo, responses to your questions on the eighth tip are

in the classified enclosure. The US Air Force Office of Special Investigations or aft OSI is conducting an inquiry to determine if Mr Elizondo mishandled classified information. Now, the classified enclosure I have filed an appeal for that it was not referenced in the release letter, nor was it included in the release. So I am going after that. Question number one, quote, I want to know more about his abrupt resignation. Why? The response? Mr. Elizondo has provided three

different explanations for his sudden resignation. On October 3, he told his direct supervisor he was resigning because he had a fleeting job opportunity that required his immediate availability, and a memorandum dated October 1 worth, he cited his concern over inaction within the department over quote, anomalous aerospace threats, unquote as the reason for his resignation on October 6, via a phone call, he told me he

resigned because his job was too stressful on his family. So those were three different explanations all given by Elizondo to different people in different ways. Obviously, that was a red flag. That was something that was tying into that uncertain provenance. Question too. Did CIA immediately review or counterintelligence response? Yes, we referred the timing and circumstances to Mr. Elizondo

his resignation to the AFL OSI. Their informal assessment did not find any wrongdoing by Mr. Elizondo, and absent any indicators of misconduct, they were unable to open a formal investigation.

followed protocol. So if this was questions that were by the Secretary of Defense, again, I'm not defending the man here, but this is kind of going against what we have heard now for more than a year that Reid was doing all of this maliciously with a vendetta against Elizondo. But as you can see here, the circumstances warranted it, and even likely up to the Secretary of Defense himself, wanting to ensure that it was being

reviewed. And oh, Usdi, at that time, had obviously followed whatever protocol that is, or saw the same concern and refer to it over but they did not do any afosr did not do any investigation beyond that. So again, I'm just trying to clear up the things that we've been told in the last year from one side of the story. I mean, hey, now we've got it in potentially the Secretary of Defense's own writing, that there was a

security review here. So unless we want to say that Secretary Mattis was involved in this big character assassination plot that was aimed towards Luis Elizondo, we may want to just kind of resign from pushing that angle and just say okay, well there's some pretty obvious reasons here why you know, why,

why, why we should look into this. Question Three was subjected read out of all classified responsibilities between his October three notifications last resignation letter and his departure 24 hours later response Yes, Mr. Elizondo completed all administrative and security related out processing including formal debriefs of all saps, Sei and compartmented. Programs. Alright, self explanatory. Question Four. What was the uncertain provenance you refer

to? Regarding subjects second letter? response, the letter was hand delivered to the USDA chief of staff office by someone other than Mr. Elizondo. The letter is not consistent with the first resignation letter, Mr. Elizondo personally handled his supervisor after my phone call with Mr. Elizondo in which he said he had been secretly working for the secretary. I checked with two senior officials that have knowledge of

special programs. Our collective assessment was that Mr. Elizondo, His claims were not credible, and the letter was not worthy of the Secretary's personal attention. Also self explanatory but pretty big. You now have read not making the decision on his own but checking with two other senior officials.

At least two we don't know if there were more than that. But as of late December 2017, multiple senior officials above him who were they we could venture to guess maybe one of them was the third individual on Luis Elizondo his complaint by the name he goes by the name of Neil Tipton in Elizondo is complaint, nothing is alleged against Tipton, which is really bizarre. So he filed a complaint against the guy, unless I missed it, I did that big deep dive on it. I have no idea what he was

issuing the complaint about tipped in about. So let's just say one of the two is tipped and who's the other one. And why aren't they backing anything up? If if Reid is in a high position himself, again, doesn't matter who you like him? That's where he was. But if he goes to other people that who would know

things that he doesn't? Who are those people? That That to me was was really interesting, because it shows that this branched out well beyond Reid's office to try and figure out and substantiate Elizondo his claims and nobody could substantiate them. And of course, that second resignation letter that we were all shown to the public wasn't even sent to the Secretary of Defense, because of all of those reasons, giving an uncertain

provenance. And then the last thing I'll point out, you can see here it was noted that first one was personally hand delivered by Mr Elizondo to his boss, but this other one was delivered by someone other than Mr. Elizondo. So who was that? I did, as I mentioned, asked Mr. Elizondo, and we'll get to that. Question five, has the Navy civilian been interviewed about the declassification response? Yes. Usdi staff contacted him upon discovery of the supranet email sent to him by Mr.

Elizondo. He informed us that he told Mr. Elizondo that he was not the declassification release authority and took no further action. So that's a pretty interesting development. Obviously, this was stretching far beyond, again, just those those emails, but they were investigating, they talked to that Navy civilian, I have an idea of who that is, but the name, I'm not, I'm not ready to put the claim yet. But I think I

have an idea of who that was. So there was a lot of weirdness about that declassification exchange, that obviously was it was a red flag, and it wound up with that Navy civilian being interviewed during this whole process to question six. What is a deferred retirement response? deferred retirement refers to delayed payment of benefits until certain criteria are met. deferred retirement applies to those with at least five years of federal service, who depart before reaching their minimum

retirement age, which is between ages 55 to 57. Depending on your birth, those with five years can opt to collect retirement benefits as early as 62. Those with 10 years can collect at their MRA but will sacrifice 5% for each year they are under 62. That's great, wonderful. I'm not really concerned about his his retirement. So I wish him all the best. I hope he gets a great pension in regards to Mr. Elizondo. So that that is now all of the documents themselves. That is what was released to me.

We've gone over all of those. Now, obviously, the article itself went into a lot more detail. Here's that article. I'm not going to read this to you. But if you haven't already, I hope you do. Because there's a lot here. Admittedly, it's long, but as I mentioned, it deserves it. There's a lot of anchor links there. That's the blue links you can click on that backs up the bigger points that I made, making sure that you had

access to all of that information. And obviously links to other the recorded interviews that I've that I've done or that I reference, and give a lot more detail there. Now a couple of big notes that I want to deal with this video, and then I'm

going to end it here for you. One thing that I tried to explore with Mr. Elizondo, and Christopher Mellon, was the videos, the videos obviously, were a big security concern inside the Pentagon, that they all indicators were just based on how people were acting and writing and emails like Mr. Elizondo was classified email, that potentially those videos

were classified. That was a big concern. I also feel that the AF OSI investigation, now that you see all the information was very much justified, that's not me defending the government in any way. But look at how this played out. You have somebody saying that they're going to say they're going to release never before seen videos to the public. And then a couple months later, videos are released to the public. And a classified email with those same videos is found internally at the

Pentagon. I mean, I'm sorry, that's a security concern, no matter what anybody who knows anything about classification can see those are numerous red flags all lined up, that needed to be dealt with. So it's no surprise that that happened.

Well, one of the things that I wanted to tackle was the huge discrepancy between Mr. Elizondo his claims to me directly, and I link to that video, but essentially, he said he did not know that TTSA had the videos, nor did he know that the New York Times was going to be publishing the FLIR and gimbal

video, and he said that he was quote, very surprised. And I was always really intrigued by that because I'm like, how do you work for an organization and stand up in October of 2017 Elizondo said it he says, We are planning to release these never before seen US government videos. How do you not know like what they have and it just so happens that they came across the same videos that you said you wanted for internal use

only. And that was another revelation that came out of this interview was the fact that Elizondo stated he did not want those videos for any other reason other than internal use only for a database that was essentially tracking drones, and that was it and balloons and so when you couple all that, you know together, combine it all together. You have some really

big weirdness there. But then when Christopher Mellon says to James Fox, I received the videos in the Pentagon parking lot from a Defense Department official, and I still have the packaging in Barcelona. Mellon had said that it was let me see if I find the quote here. It's been from troublemakers and activists like

Lewin me. We snuck these videos out and I took them to the New York Times, to quote well, that to me is every indicator that Louise Elizondo, and him snuck it out whether we liked the result or not, obviously, someone was bending the rules enough. And here we go. The last point was the packaging that Elizondo had, excuse me that melon had referenced to James fox that was on the documentary and that's in video as well. Had Luis Elizondo his name on it. So how do you say that you

had no idea that these things were out in the open? I don't get it. So I did ask Mr. Mellon about all of that and to try and clarify, because that plays a role in these documents. It's clearly a security concern. And I'll bounce down to what he said. There's a you can see a lot here. I published all

questions in the interest of transparency. verbatim what I sent to Christopher Mellon and Luis Elizondo my I won't read the questions outright Tia, but essentially they surrounded the videos, asked him about the resignation letter why that was

on his web server. The one thing that I haven't said that yet in this video was the NY Mellon has a tie to this was that back in 2018, a Twitter user was roaming around Christopher melons website stumbled on an unsecured directory, it wasn't hacking, and found Luis Elizondo, his resignation letter, some a tip documents, a unredacted assessment that TTSA was distributing but it had personal contact information, especially

those witnesses with the Nimitz encounter. It was kind of an embarrassing moment, but also the packaging the photos that I just showed you. Those were all stored on Christopher melons website. So I asked him about the resignation letter why he had it what he thought of the the first resignation letter that I asked him about the packaging that he has referenced with Elizondo his name on it. It's like, well, how did you get

that? Did somebody steal it from the Pentagon from Elizondo his desk you know, I mean, that's the only thing that makes sense because of Elizondo said he didn't give it to anybody. And he wanted internal use, Oh, somebody's lying, somebody's not telling us the truth. And then I went into the fact that Elizondo in the recorded interview with me completely contradicts kind of what Mr. Mellon story is, and so on. Here's his response. This

I will read to you. I appreciate your efforts to bring credit to the brave individual who provided me the famous unclassified DoD UAAP videos. However, I am compelled to honor their request for privacy in due time, hopefully, that individual will receive the credit they richly deserve, for helping our nation overcome a glaring intelligence failure, and an unfortunate and misplaced prejudice against the legitimate

and vitally important UAP issue. Keep up the good work, perhaps someday the black vault will succeed in bringing to light information that has a comparable benefit for science and national security. Boy, I can't tell the snarkiness there, Mr. Melon, glad you work that in. But in the interest of transparency, that's what he said. And, and look, that was that was silly. I never asked about the identity of the

leaker. I asked for him to confirm what was going on with the resignation letter in the packaging and why I'd had Elizondo 's name and why nobody story agrees with each other. So it's great that he that he had some great things to say about whoever this hero is, and that's fine. We can love the result here. But we should actually get the you know the answer to some of this I mean, who's lying who's not telling us the truth

here? Because nobody can be all right here. Somebody is either lying or really misguided with what they are telling everybody. So I'm glad he worked in the snarkiness against me but and, and that's fine. But he had an opportunity to answer this and he decided not to now with Mr. Elizondo. Let's get into him. For those who don't know, Mr. Elizondo will not speak to me directly anymore. I have to go through Todd McMurtry, his attorney, and I want to say up front, I have no bad things to

say about Mr. McMurtry. He has been a pleasant person to speak with. Absolutely no issues there. I'm not just saying that because he's an attorney and I'm afraid or anything. But quite the contrary. I was I was very impressed. There was a lot of professionalism there. He was very appreciative that I wanted

Elizondo side of the story. But also I want to just for the record, I mean, it was the professionalism was on his side as well that he understood what I was doing and, and, and realized that I was not trying to defame Luis Elizondo so So, so credit to him, you know, because sometimes attorneys are not so pleasant to deal with. But in this case, you know, for the record, it was it was fine. So I submitted the questions to

him asking about that second resignation letter. You know, and what the, what the idea was behind it, kind of going into the uncertain provenance on the letter that we were showing, like who delivered it? If it wasn't Mr. Elizondo, why was there uncertain provenance to that? Talking about let me see here. And again, I'm not going to read all of these to you, I invite you to I published it. And this is a verbatim copy and

paste, I made zero edits on what I submitted. But essentially the discrepancies behind what we keep hearing, even in these DoD documents, but also by Mr. Elizondo, his interviews with me and elsewhere asked about the reasoning for resignation, talking about, you know, his statement to me that he had no idea that TTSA had the videos, and that the New York Times was

going to publish them. But essentially, in October of 2017, was saying, Hey, we meaning TTSA are going to release these never before seeing videos very, very again, trying to dig into the very, very, very again, straightforward trying to dig in to these different claims and trying to make sense of the contradictions. And then, lastly, about the role, the packaging and the role he played, if any, in the leaking of these videos in a pentagon parking lot. Why was his name on

the envelope? And could he address that? Here's what I got on behalf of Mr. Elizondo from his attorney. Thank you for allowing Mr Elizondo the opportunity to respond to your questions. He believes he has already answered these questions repeatedly, and will stand by his prior public statements. To clarify one point his memorandum or of resignation directed to John Garrity was simply an official notification to his

direct supervisor. His resignation letter to the Secretary of Defense and the DoD was his explanation as to why he was resigning and expressing his concern with the bureaucratic challenges and other issues that created hurdles for the investigation of UAP, which present national security concerns as Mr. Elizondo his resignation letter states under estimating or ignoring these potential threats is not in the

best interest of the DOD and the American people. And he hoped resigning and calling attention to these matters would encourage positive change as evidence, excuse me, as evident by where we are today in the UAP disclosure process, his efforts were clearly successful. As a reminder, you are aware of the fact that Mr. Elizondo was cleared of any wrongdoing by an

official afosr, investigation and 2019. As for the remainder of your questions, Mr. Elizondo will be addressing many of these points in his upcoming book and prefers to rely upon that writing rather than creating a separate account through this response. So he pitched his book to get answers to the questions that I submitted. And again, I invite you to read them, because

they are a little bit lengthy. But they were very direct and pointed to try and clarify what many people not just me, but when many people have been a little concerned about now for the course of a couple of years. So now that we get a little bit part of the DoD side, and it connects a lot of these dots, even more, so take this opportunity to answer this, as you can see, snarkiness and all for Mr. Melon, I publish it, I won't hide from it. You know, this is your opportunity. And

that is a word that I gave to Mr. McMurtry. On the last article I wrote. And I followed through with that, that 100% of what they give me, I will publish 100% There's not a lot of journalists that will promise that however, I give the friendly caveat that for my article itself, I will cut it down but not change context, and not maliciously omit any any

type of statement to make him look bad. You know, but rather for ease of reading, I mean, you you can sometimes see especially in the last article, answers you get can be like paragraphs and paragraphs. So it's not fair to a reader who maybe wants a more condensed version. So I give that caveat, I will trim it down. But to ensure that I am not taking anything out of context or changing meaning, or being malicious and omit something 100% of that will be published at the bottom and that

was agreeable. There was no negotiating, you know, meaning like, like all parties were very happy with that. It was like oh, great, thanks. So that was great. And so this time around, I did the same thing. long winded way of saying this is an opportunity to address all of this, and to finally put some of this to bed if they have easy answers. Phenomenal. Let's go ahead and see it. And yet I didn't get answered. from either one of them, neither one of them helped. Christopher Mellon

answered a question I didn't even ask. And Luis Elizondo did a book pitch for his book. And no, look, I have nothing against books. I fully support books. I've written books myself, I've always said, if you're going to write a book, all my best, I hope you do great. Hope you sell millions of copies, I truly mean that. It's not easy to put a book together. But in a context like this, where new information is revealed, and there are clear

contradictions to the story, and there's clearly problems. We need to address those. Because this, this story is important. At least I think it is not because it's Mr. Luis Elizondo not because it's Christopher Mellon. No, it's the implications behind what they are claiming. It all ties to the root of what they have been talking about for years. What are UAP? Do they tie into some extra terrestrial presence, or now the buzzword of today is non human. The

implications behind this are staggering. So let's get the story. Right. And as I said, on the top of this, I know every puzzle piece is not of, of interest to every person out there. They want to focus on on on the pictures on the videos, and that and today, and that's fine. But I want to know how we got here, because that's important. Because where we are today, was built on all of this that I've been going over the New York Times article, the Luis Elizondo claims the videos that

had leaked out all of it. All of it is built on that foundation. So shouldn't we understand where that foundation isn't, how it was built, and why. For those who only want one side of the story, and again, that story very, very well may be true, but wants to ignore any other thing that may challenge it. That means that foundation is weak. Full stop. See, I don't mind hearing Luis Elizondo, even though I'm skeptical about some of the things he claims, because I know that he has experience.

And I know not everything is a bold faced lie, or at least I hope not. But I can still be skeptical. I can look at the DoD because I'm not afraid of being challenged over what I believe is really going on. I'll meet the DoD head on through legal channels, because I know what's there. I've done this for almost 27 years. So it doesn't scare me at all. If the DoD wants to push back, like in my last video on this channel, and say, No, John,

you can't access anything well, game on. And yeah, I will file those appeals. And yeah, I will continue to pursue it. I'm not afraid of any legal challenge. But in the same respect, I'm not afraid of anybody on the outside either. I'm just not. My beliefs are my beliefs. But regardless, every piece of the puzzle is important to try and figure out how strong is the foundation

that holds up where we are today? And answering those those questions that I send to Mr. Mellon and Mr. Elizondo through his attorney, those are important to figuring out that answer. And if we determine beyond any shadow of a doubt, that foundation is super strong, then great. Let's build another couple stories on this building. But if it's weak, and people want to throw mud and sling mud and launch attacks against me, or whomever is asking these questions, then I think that's a

pretty good indicator that the foundation is weak. And all that's doing is making me push harder. The harder the DoD pushes back on me, the harder I will push back on them. But the same is true for people on the outside, if people are making gigantic claims. And I challenge that just as much as I challenge a DOD statement or document or, or stance or spokesperson statement. I know that I have to push harder, because that to me is the indicator. There's something there that either the

DoD or those outside people don't want me to know. And what's interesting is even though it's like pulling teeth with the Pentagon, trying to get statements, at least they're talking, at least they don't have snarky remarks. I may not believe what they have to say. But at least they're willing to try and put something on paper. But when I get snarky remarks and a book pitch, when I'm trying to make sense of some of this stuff, I'm sorry, that's a red flag to me. And that means

I'm just gonna push harder. I know that there are more documents like the ones that I just sent to you. I know that for a fact. I'll prove it to you real easy tab a that already went over. I know there's more documents on a tip and yes, I will go for the declassification of that record. I think I'll have a good chance of getting it. On top of that. You'll see that on that third memo that I showed you with the six

different questions they were in quotations. That was pulled from somewhere whether an email or a memorandum that was sent to Gary Reed regardless, that shows me there's more to the story. I have other reason to believe that in the months that followed, all the way through the end of the afosr investigation and beyond, there is much more tied to the story. So I go back to me asking those questions, why wouldn't people want to deal with them? Why wouldn't people want to address

what we all want to know? Because the end is where we're trying to get. I know, some, some people just don't care about the puzzle at all. And they four wheel drove over the line, and they're at the end, and they're like, we're in disclosure. And that's fine. I love those people, too. We're not that's okay. That's where they are. I'm still behind the line trying to uncover what in the world is going on. And I'm still trying to see how strong that foundation is and answers

like this. Answers and statements of pitching a book, or answering a question I didn't even ask but then ignoring the follow up, that's the one thing I didn't mention, he ignored my follow up, which was can you at least just deny that Luis Elizondo had a role in this? Like he says, That's it, just say, No, he had no and no response. These are missed opportunities for us to actually work together and get to that finish line. Because if that's truly the intent, let's work

together. If I didn't care about what they had to say, I would have never reached out to them. I wouldn't publish these these memos last week, and say, Aha, look, the truth. But no, I wanted to make sure they have their word. And sadly, they didn't want to give it. Now, they don't owe me anything. Nothing. I'm a nobody. I get that. But people watch this channel, they want to know what documents are coming. Sadly, I'm one of the only ones that pursue stuff like this. There's a few

others don't get me wrong. But I'm one of the only ones that covers it in this way. Others do the copy and paste journalism, and they see one thing and one blog, and they just roll with it. And you see it in all the British tabloids or whatever, and the story is a mess. That's not me. I go for all the puzzle pieces. So the bottom line for me is I really do, despite our differences, despite my skepticism, despite me doubting what people say sometimes. Let's work together. Let's try and

figure something out together. But the pushback just doesn't help. And in the end, it's only going to make me push back that much harder to try and figure out why. So I hope you all do have an opportunity to read the article. Like I said, it is big, long, I get it. There's a lot of words there. But there's a lot of information to cover in these three. And it really is the culmination of five and a half years of research. So I do hope that you check out those anchor links, see the documents, read

them, read them carefully. And as always, I'm always interested in your feedback, your questions or comments, even your criticisms, all I ask is that you do stay respectful. If you're watching here on YouTube, you can do so right below, on your way down. If you think it's worthy punch that thumbs up button, it really does does help the channel, make sure that you are subscribed with notifications on but give me

your comments below. If you're watching or excuse me, if you're listening on the audio podcast, just know that there's a video version, just go to the black vault.com/live it'll bounce you right to the YouTube channel. And if you don't know that there's a podcast audio version of these types of shows these longer ones anyway, you can find the podcast just go to the black vault.com. There's a podcast link at the top all sorts of ways to subscribe. Most major platforms have it under the

black vault radio. When you're there, I can't tell you to put five stars but that's what I shoot for. So please offer a rating if you can, a review is even more helpful. But those types of things really, really do help spread the word about this. So thank you all again for listening and watching. I know that this is a controversial topic, as I said at the top of

this, and I'll say it again, at the back end of this. It is controversial, but it is one that I hope that we all care about in the same way that we want the truth behind it all. Because it's not personal. It's not personal against anybody, but that this is about the truth. At least I would hope that that's what it's about for everyone else as well. That said, this is John Greenewald Jr signing off. And we'll see you next time