By KEN KORCZAK
Embarrassing Photo Snafu at Congressional Briefing Damages Credibility of a Major UFO Disclosure Advocate
Say it ain’t so. Lue has to go?
The “Lue” in this case is none other than Luis Elizondo, the man who has been the “UFO Darling” of record for the past several years. His meteoric rise and celebrity in “The Phenomenon” realm may have peaked with the publication of his 2024 New York Times bestselling book, Imminent: Inside the Pentagon Hunt for UFOs. (See my Review)
Even before his book hit the racks, Luis Elizondo was an emerging star in all things UFO. His journey to “significant UFO figure” began with his role in the high-profile To The Stars Academy (TTSA), a remarkable collection of scientists, military and government insiders brought together by an unlikely figure — rock star, Tom DeLonge, frontman of the mega-popular pop-punk group, Blink-182.
TTSA was founded in 2017. It has since stepped back from UFOs and rebranded as just To the Stars. It now identifies itself as “a vertically integrated entertainment company.”
Elizondo’s position with TTSA led to plum gigs with high-end TV productions, especially the History Channel’s Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation, which first aired in 2019.
He also fanned out to grant numerous interviews with A-list media organizations, from CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS and the BBC to dozens of the most popular podcasts, including Spotify behemoth, Joe Rogan Experience, with his 14 million subscribers. Elizondo also established his own YouTube channel.
It was Elizondo’s position as a bona fide U.S. Department of Defense intelligence officer that imbued him with an aura of legitimacy. He enjoyed high-level “Top Secret” security clearances with access to scads of sensitive documents & databases. Working in this milieu, Elizondo encountered classified government information about UFOs. This included stunning video and photographic evidence.
Reviewing this data caused him to become amazed, then frustrated — and soon deeply alarmed — with the way the Pentagon (and other government groups, such as the Department of Homeland Security) handled UFO information. It prompted Elizondo to start talking publicly about the astonishing information he uncovered.
His conclusion, which he has stated in his book and countless media interviews, is that “We are not alone.”
CONTROVERSIAL FROM THE START
Ofcourse, Luis Elizondo faced withering blowback from the day he resigned from the Pentagon and began his new career as a UFO whistleblower. Interestingly, an equal measure of that blowback came from the UFO community in addition to the “usual skeptics.”
For example, UFO disclosure icon Dr. Steven Greer wasted little time before he publicly called out Elizondo as “a liar” and a figure who is “almost certainly a disinformation agent” still under the thrall, or at least being manipulated by U.S. deep intelligence creeps.
The UFO advocacy community, all-to-predictably, began to divide and take sides on Elizondo’s legitimacy. Anyone familiar with the dynamics of “UFO people” knows that no other social movement in the world is more adept at gleefully “eating its own” and regurgitating them. Anyone can see this for him or herself.
Just take an hour to review some UFO threads about Elizondo — such as the now sickeningly toxic X (formerly Twitter) — or Reddit or your favorite UFO forum. You will find thousands of people blasting Elizondo as “untrustworthy,” “compromised from the start,” a “braggard and liar,” an “opportunist making money with bestselling books & TV shows” — and the probably the worst thing you can call a UFO truth advocate– a “disinformation agent still on the payroll of the Pentagon.”
It’s important to say that Elizondo also has just as many, and maybe more, passionate supporters who make positive cases for him across numerous popular media platforms. It’s also only fair to say that Elizondo denies these “disinformation agent” charges made against him. He views himself as a patriot who believes the American people deserve the truth about UFOs.
BUT NOW THE FINAL DOWNFALL?
Whatever the case, Elizondo’s fall from grace as the “UFO Darling Du Jour” may have reached an inflection point on May 1. That was when he appeared along with a cadre of top scientists, insiders and whistleblowers at a briefing for the Congressional House Oversight and Accountability Committee. This committee, led by Florida Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna and Missouri Congressman Eric Burlison, is charged with investigating government involvement with the UFO issue.
In addition to Elizondo, the May 1 Congressional briefing included powerful players — such as DARPA scientist Dr. Eric Davis, author of the infamous Wilson David Memo (see my story), Yale University Ph.D., chemical engineer Dr. Anna Brady-Estevez, former top NASA administrator Mike Gold, former Undersecretary of Defense Chris Mellon, Harvard astronomer Dr. Avi Loeb and others.
But it was Elizondo’s presentation at the briefing that caused skeptics everywhere to burst forward with glee and pop champagne corks.
That’s because Elizondo showed a picture to the committee that he proclaimed to be a photograph of a gigantic disk-shaped UFO hovering near the Earth’s surface, with the shadow of the UFO appearing underneath the craft.
The problem? Even the most ardent UFO believers quickly realized that the photo was that of two standard agricultural central-pivot irrigation circles on the ground. The illusion of an airborne object and “UFO shadow” is created because a light-colored irrigation circle is adjacent to a darker colored one. (See photo here: Not a UFO photo?)
TWO FAKE PHOTOS
This major snafu was magnified by the fact that Elizondo’s photo was the second highly questionable image he had presented at a public speaking venue. Some weeks earlier, Elizondo displayed a photo which he called “a UFO mother craft” hovering over an urban location in Romania— this photo was also easily debunked as obviously the reflection of a light fixture on the ceiling of the room from where the photo was taken. (See photo here: Light Fixture UFO)
The falsity of this latter debunked UFO image was exacerbated by Elizondo when he added elaborate details, such as saying he personally “interviewed military pilots” who encountered the “mother ship” the day it supposedly hovered above a city location. The certainty that the photo is fraudulent makes his statement all the more troubling.
THE LUE UFO FLU?
Things got even worse a week or so after the May 1 Congressional briefing because Elizondo and some of the other whistleblowers were scheduled to appear again before the committee on May 12 — this time inside a SCIF — a Sensitive Compartmentalized Information Facility. This meeting was abruptly cancelled for mysterious reasons.
News reports vary, but one suggested that Elizondo and others opted out of the meeting, claiming “illness.” This prompted Congressman Luna to suggest that “The SCIF Flu” was the cause of the cancelled meeting. Other observers (mostly just online chuckleheads) spun the “SCIF Flu” quip as “The Lue Flu,” suggesting Elizondo’s disastrous display of a phony UFO photo may have had something to do with it.
Elizondo reacted quickly by sending out his lawyer, Ivan Hannel, to conduct media interviews. Hannel angrily denounced the “SCIF Flu” comments as false and “nonsense” in media interviews. He suggested it was merely “scheduling conflicts” that jettisoned the SCIF meeting.
THE DAMAGE DONE
Despite all, Lue Elizondo’s two slip-ups — presenting two phony UFO photos he told people were real and staked his reputation on being real — are damaging.
As I said above, no coterie is more aggressive about “eating its own” than the UFO community. Worse, however, is that UFO skeptics are masterful at finding and exploiting “tiny chinks in the armor” of the most credible UFO cases — but when they are handed an unforced error served up on a platter by the one of the most famous, credible and influential UFO advocates, the skeptic can run that “fumbled ball” all the way back to the goal and “score points” against UFO reality advocates.
Skeptics are in a constant state of “playing Jenga” vis-à-vis the UFO issue. In the game of Jenga, players take turns carefully removing 54 pieces of a precariously constructed tower one at a time. The goal of Jenga is to outlast your opponent, hoping he or she will remove that one key block that will collapse the entire structure.
Elizondo delivered a handy favor to skeptics with his inexplicable presentation of two phony UFO photos — a move akin to removing that final fatal Jenga block to topple the whole system.
The buzz on many of the UFO podcasts now is that Elizondo is considering — or should seriously consider — taking a step back and removing himself from the UFO realm for a time. Some say he’s given it his best shot, that he is probably fatigued after nearly a decade of effort (starting with TTSA in 2017) and has now gone adrift — or whatever. Some say: “Maybe it’s time for Lou Elizondo to take a break and exit the spotlight for a time.”
To be fair, Elizondo took to his own podcast to offer his explanation and comment on the fallout of the questionable UFO photo presented to Congressional folks. Rather than comment — except to say it’s a bit “word-salady” — I’ll just post a link here so that you can judge Elizondo’s response for yourself: Luis Elizondo Washington DC briefing update — YouTube
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