Imminent: Inside the Pentagon's Hunt for UFOs

Elizondo was told by several senior officials about an autopsy report detailing the dissection of a nonhuman body found at a UAP crash site. The report of a smooth-brained alien made Elizondo think about a rumored crash-retrieval program that involved private companies. Elizondo claims that several nonhuman bodies have been recovered through this program. Elizondo does not believe the previous assumption that the aliens’ smooth brains mean they lack intelligence, and he provides alternative hypotheses for these phenomena.

Los Alamos, New Mexico, is home to the test range where the Manhattan Project developed the atomic bomb. In 2013, during a test for another unspecified weapon, “several mysterious and luminous orbs” were spotted (116). Details from the incident have been redacted from the book by the DoD, but Elizondo cites “an almost obvious display of out-of-this-world performance characteristics” (118), though the reports quickly became lost in the administrative quagmire that, in Elizondo’s view, defines government operations.

At this time, Elizondo felt as though his career had plateaued. He was in charge of parts of Guantanamo Bay and had access to almost any classified information he could want. He was even eligible for many perks, though he declined them because he believed that chauffeured cars and private jets were demonstrative of government waste.