Ex-Pentagon Official Discusses Government's Hunt for UFOs: 'I Have To Be Careful What I Say' (Exclusive)

It’s been seven years since Luis Elizondo began making headlines after resigning from his job as a senior intelligence official for a top-secret Pentagon program that investigated UFO's — also known as UAP's or unidentified anomalous phenomena — and going public about his frustration over the lack of transparency on the issue.

The longtime military intelligence veteran spent nearly seven years as director for the Department of Defense’s clandestine Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. What he learned during his tenure convinced him that the countless sightings and encounters with highly advanced aerial phenomena by military pilots and personnel posed a potentially grave threat to our national defense.

Instead of dismissing these reports, he wanted Pentagon higher-ups to wake up to the possible dangers our nation — and planet — face by these unexplained phenomena.

“The amount of stigma and taboo that was placed on this topic for so long has really paralyzed the conversation,” the former U.S. Army Counterintelligence Special Agent — who served in Afghanistan and ran antiterrorism missions — told PEOPLE in 2021. “But these things are real. We don’t know what they are yet, but they are real, so we should probably take them seriously.”