In a short Introduction, Luis Elizondo describes how he was recruited to a job at the Pentagon in 2008. Though he had worked in a variety of military and defense roles previously, he was excited to be added to a program designed to investigate unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP). These UAP, Elizondo says, have been operating with impunity since the end of World War II. They are not made by humans, and they represent a serious threat to national security. The job transformed his life, and now, he believes that the rest of humanity has a right to know that intelligent life exists beyond Earth. Regardless of how he may seem to people, he insists that UAP are real.

Elizondo joined the US Army in his twenties. He worked in military intelligence and did three combat tours in Afghanistan and the Middle East. In 2008, he returned to America to work with the Department of Defense (DoD) to help facilitate information sharing across government agencies. In early 2009, he was approached by Jay Stratton and Rosemary Caine (a pseudonym) about a “matter of national security” (6). Over a series of secretive meetings, Elizondo was introduced to the world of the Advanced Aerospace Weapon Systems Applications Program (AAWSAP), which would later become the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP).