A Military Whistleblower Showed a Photo of an Allegedly Huge "Disc-Shaped" Object, But There's an Incredibly Obvious Explanation
Self-styled Pentagon whistleblower and former US Army counterintelligence officer Luis "Lue" Elizondo showed off a peculiar image of what appeared to be a gigantic, disc-shaped object floating hundreds of feet above the ground, during a House Oversight and Accountability Committee meeting this week.
The briefing, which took place on Thursday, was hosted by the Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Disclosure Fund, a nonpartisan political advocacy group "committed to uncovering the truth about UAPs," a less-stigmatized term used by government officials to refer to UFOs. Also present at the meeting was Harvard professor and noted UFO hunter Avi Loeb.
According to a tweet by the Disclosure Fund, the object was "estimated 600-1,000 ft in diameter, silver-hued, disc-shaped," which the group used to call for "full declassification and open scientific analysis."
https://twitter.com/UAPDF/status/1918006945887236115
"This was taken by a civilian pilot," Elizondo claimed during the meeting. "But again, you'd think this information would be important for somebody to look at," he added, while holding up a printout of the image.
According to Elizondo, "an average person with an average camera" took the photo at "21,000 feet."
"The object is potentially anywhere between 600 and 1,000 feet in diameter," he added. "It's a lenticular object, and it is silver."
However, despite making a big deal out of the image, he admitted that he couldn't "vouch for the veracity of this photograph," quipping that "I didn't take it."
At first glance, it does indeed look like an alien ship from a Hollywood movie. But as eagle-eyed users on Reddit quickly pointed out, Elizondo's purported smoking gun has a hilariously simple explanation. On the platform's otherwise conspiracy theory-friendly r/UFOs community, user mattperkins86 traced back the satellite image to two adjacent, perfectly circular fields, with the nearer, much darker one perfectly lining up to look like the second circle's shadow.
The two circles, located an hour east of Colorado Springs, can be spotted on Google Earth here.
Put the pieces together, and showing the image as evidence of a UFO makes Elizondo look absolutely buffoonish.
"He HAD to have known that if this thing was fake, it was going to be found," mattperkins86 wrote. "So I am left thinking that this is intentional, I guess."
"This is actually hilarious," one user wrote. "Not even a crop circle, just regular crops in a circle."
UFO debunker Mick West also had a closer look, finding that the shadows simply didn't line up the way they should if it was an object floating above the ground.
Elizondo tried to retrofit the photo after the criticism, arguing in a lengthy tweet that the "specific photo had only just been provided to me (by a private pilot) that morning, prior to the forum" admitting that the photo "had NOT YET been vetted."
"The dimensions I quoted, were per the pilot's own assessment of what he saw, based on altitude and experience," he added.
"As you know, I am always first to admit mistakes, but this is not one of those times," Elizondo wrote.
Instead of admitting his gaffe, Elizondo argued that the incident "illustrates a bigger point" that pilots and other individuals reporting UFO sightings may be "faced with fierce ridicule."
Of course, none of that really addresses the core criticism: that he shared an unvetted photo that was handed to him hours earlier, seemingly having done no due diligence.
The incident, following almost a decade of public government investigations into the UAPs, shows that even though it's a singularly grabby topic — or perhaps exactly because of that reality — official discussions often devolve into a laughable circus.
Officials have repeatedly pushed back against claims that the US government is hiding recovered alien spaceships that crashed on Earth, or that the Pentagon was conspiring against the public to keep evidence of extraterrestrials secret.
As he's admitted, Elizondo already has a track record of showing off debunked evidence of UFOs.
"A photo that was provided to me by a friend in Government a couple of years ago was presented by me two days ago at our engagement in Philadelphia," he admitted in an October tweet. "Looks like we can put this one bed, as our friends in Twitter figured/solved this one, major bravo to you!"
The photo, which Elizondo alleged to show a "mothership" UFO, turned out to be a simple, unusually-shaped cloud.
Elizondo has previously alleged that military pilots had received radiation burns after making close encounters with UFOs, and that other pilots had experienced the "warping of space time."
The former intelligence official has strongly advocated for the release of classified information regarding UAPs, promising to turn up the pressure on the Defense Department's UAP Task Force.
In 2017, Elizondo resigned from the DoD in protest of the "bureaucratic challenges and inflexible mindsets" that he said "plague" his former employer and its treatment of the "UAP issue," according to an official bio submitted to Congress.
After years of hunting for evidence of UFOs, though, Elizondo has little to show. His repeated efforts to prove their existence using phony pictures of crops and clouds aren't helping his ambitions.
Whether his latest slip-up will meaningfully add to the discussion and reduce the stigma surrounding the subject remains dubious at best. If anything, chances are it could risk further undermining the UAP Disclosure Fund's legitimacy.
Even the r/UFOs community, which remains extremely open-minded when it comes to the supernatural, is starting to turn on him.
"Jesus, this is embarrassing," one user wrote in response to Elizondo's latest gaffe.
More on UFOs: There's Another Reason Flights Have Been So Messed Up Lately: UFO Sightings
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