Coulthart on Elizondo's oversight role
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🗓️ Event
Contents 8
| Speaker | Ross Coulthart, Australian investigative journalist |
|---|---|
| Year | 2021 |
| Subject | Luis Elizondo, former Pentagon intelligence officer |
| Claim | A source said Elizondo served as a liaison to the Pentagon's special access program oversight group |
| Pentagon position | Conflicting; a 2019 statement said he "had no responsibilities" for AATIP |
| Status | Unconfirmed |
| Date | 29 June 2021 |
| People | Ross Coulthart, Luis Elizondo, David Grusch |
| Testimony | Shellenberger testimony, p. 201 |
| Timeline | 2021 on the UAP Timeline |
| Sources | 3 |
In 2021 the Australian journalist Ross Coulthart, author of In Plain Sight, said a source had told him that Luis Elizondo served as a liaison to the Pentagon's special access program oversight group. Coulthart later became a leading reporter on David Grusch's claims.[1] The claim mattered because Elizondo's role at the Pentagon was, and remains, disputed.[2][3] The Pentagon has not confirmed any such role.[2]
The claim
According to the testimony this article draws on, Coulthart said in 2021 that an unnamed source described Elizondo's work as including liaison with the Pentagon body that oversees special access programs.[1] In that account Elizondo had a senior, sensitive role reviewing secret programs, not a marginal one. Coulthart did not name the source or publish documents.[1]
Elizondo has since described his own work along similar lines. In his 2024 memoir Imminent, he wrote that late in his career he was recruited to manage security and counterintelligence for a deeply classified UFO research program.[2] According to the testimony, Elizondo also said he worked with special access program oversight but saw no evidence of UAP programs in that role.[1] The same memoir, however, claims that a crash retrieval program has run in secret for decades under "a supersecret umbrella group made up of government officials working with defense and aerospace contractors".[2]
Luis Elizondo
Elizondo enlisted in the Army in 1995 and later worked as a civilian intelligence officer. He ran operations in Afghanistan, South America and at Guantanamo Bay.[2] From 2008 he worked in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence (OUSDI) at the Pentagon.[2] He says he was recruited in 2009 to the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), whose government funding the Defense Department says ended in 2012. He says the work went on with Navy and CIA support.[2][3] He resigned in late 2017 in protest at what he called "excessive secrecy and internal opposition". He then joined To the Stars Academy of Arts and Sciences and helped bring three Navy UFO videos and AATIP itself to public attention in December 2017.[2][3]
The disputed role
Official statements about Elizondo's role have been inconsistent:[2][3]
- 2017. The Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White confirmed to Politico that Elizondo had been an AATIP leader.
- June 2019. The spokesman Christopher Sherwood told The Intercept that Elizondo "had no responsibilities with regard to the AATIP program" up to his resignation, effective 4 October 2017.
- Garry Reid. The director of defense intelligence in Elizondo's office wrote that Elizondo "aggrandized his role" and, to his knowledge, had no AATIP responsibilities.
- 2021. Former Senate majority leader Harry Reid, an original sponsor of the program, wrote to NBC News confirming "Lue Elizondo's involvement and leadership role in this program".
- Keith Kloor. The writer reported in 2019 that Elizondo had been asked to take over security management for AATIP, but later questioned his role.
Elizondo filed a complaint with the Defense Department Inspector General alleging "a coordinated campaign to discredit him". He cited press statements denying his role "even after his role was officially confirmed".[2] Coulthart's source offered a third version: that Elizondo's real importance lay in oversight of special access programs, not in AATIP as such.[1]
Ross Coulthart
Coulthart, born in 1962, is a Gold Walkley-winning Australian investigative journalist. He turned to UFOs after 2018, publishing In Plain Sight in 2021. In June 2023 he interviewed Grusch for NewsNation.[1] Critics, including the ABC's Media Watch and Australian Skeptics, have faulted his UFO reporting for its lack of evidence.[1]
Assessment
The Pentagon has not confirmed that Elizondo had any liaison role with special access program oversight.[2] Elizondo's credibility has also been questioned on other grounds:[2]
- FBI agents searched his former office for UFO files he described and found nothing of the kind.
- A former co-worker accused him of fabricating information.
- Images he presented as possible alien craft were identified as a light fixture and an irrigation circle.
In 2024 the Pentagon said it had found no verifiable information that any program to possess or reverse-engineer extraterrestrial materials had ever existed.[2] Coulthart's claim remains a single, anonymously sourced account.[1]
People and topics
- Ross Coulthart — Australian journalist who reported David Grusch's claims.
- Luis Elizondo — Former Army counterintelligence officer who says he ran AATIP.
- In Plain Sight — Ross Coulthart's 2021 book on UFO secrecy.
- David Grusch — Former intelligence officer who testified in 2023 that the U.S. has recovered non-human craft.
- AATIP — The Pentagon UAP effort associated with Luis Elizondo, revealed in December 2017.
- Unidentified anomalous phenomena — The U.S. government's current term for unidentified objects in the air, in space and underwater.
On the Timeline
- Richard Dolan on the classified UAP annex (29 June 2021) — Researcher Richard Dolan describes the classified part of the UAP task force report.
- Long Beach undercover approach claim (1 August 2021) — Coulthart writes a source was asked to go undercover inside an aerospace company.
See every 2021 event on the UAP Timeline →
References
- Ross Coulthart — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Luis Elizondo — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia articles “Ross Coulthart”, “Luis Elizondo”, “Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
This page was last edited on 29 October 2026. Articles are written in our own words from the sources listed under References; disputed claims are attributed to the people who made them.
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