If you pick this up for earth shattering disclosure revelations, well, prepare to be disappointed. If you go in expecting greater details of the story Elizondo has already put on the record, this is an interesting look at what goes on behind the scenes within the US government.
Essentially, Elizondo recounts how he was head hunted to join AAWSAP, a project looking at military UFO sightings, potentially because of his past involvement in a remote viewing programme while serving in the US Army:
"As a measure of the program’s success that can be talked about, its psychics once located a Russian supersonic jet that crashed somewhere over Africa. Our best satellites couldn’t locate it, and neither could the Russians. One of our remote viewers “saw” and pinpointed the exact location of the downed aircraft in the Congo. The US was able to sweep in and salvage this valuable target, based on the remote viewer’s visions alone. President Jimmy Carter famously referenced the case to the media. Remote viewers also located Brigadier General James Lee Dozier, who had been kidnapped in Italy by the Red Brigade in 1981. In the Persian Gulf War, remote viewers identified and located storage facilities that housed deadly chemical war agents. The success stories of remote viewing were legion and seemed almost magical. The stories I can’t share are even more mind-blowing."
Initially skeptical, Elizondo details how the caliber of the other people involved and the information he was given access to changed his worldview. The skeptics among us might point to the remote viewing and claim Elizondo was simply a good candidate to feed disinformation to, like so many whistleblowers before him, but his position and rank within the Pentagon (i.e. GS-15, civillian equivalent of colonel) make such claims harder to stick.
Is he actively engaging in state sponsored disinformation? That's a whole other question and, ultimately, not one that can be answered either way at this point in time...
Anyway, back to the book, we're taken on a whistle stop tour of cases most people with an interest in the subject will already be familiar with. Operação Prato. The Lonnie Zamora Incident. Rendlesham. The now infamous Tic-Tac. All the while, Elizondo and his family see orbs of light in the family home:
"We had a long main hallway in the house, and one evening a green, glowing ball, probably about the size of a basketball, with soft edges that weren’t defined, floated down slowly from the kitchen to our bedroom door just below ceiling height, then disappeared into a wall. Hoping Jenn caught a glimpse of it, I turned to her, catching the perplexed look on her face. She indeed saw it the entire ten seconds it was in our house. Another time, the kids reported seeing an orb appear in the air, hover near them for a few seconds, and then float away. They described what they’d seen as best they could, first to my wife, and again to me when I asked. Their description made my blood run cold. The object had been three-dimensional but still translucent and suffused with an eerie green light. The object behaved as if guided by some intelligence. It parked itself in the air, then drifted off down the hall before disappearing entirely."
We learn that as time went on, and with growing official hostility, it was becoming ever more difficult for Elizondo to run AATIP alongside his day job - a significant portion of which was running military intelligence operations at Guantanamo Bay's notorious Camp 7. Reading this memoir left me feeling that perhaps Elizondo hasn't even conciously acknowleged it yet, but the vibe I got was that his work at AATIP and wanting to push disclosure provided an honourable out from a position he was finding untenable, and saw him dubbed a 'torture czar' into the bargain.
"My work with Guantanamo Bay brought endless rounds of drama and stress. An attorney for one of the 9/11 suspects labeled me in open court as the “US Czar of Torture.” From that moment, I would forever be branded by some as the nation’s Darth Vader. At one point I was informed that Europe had issued an open arrest warrant for me and anyone involved in the notorious Rendition, Detention, and Interrogation (RDI) program of high value detainees (HVDs). The International Court of Human Rights had decreed that any US intelligence officer involved in that effort would face trial if arrested. From my perspective, I was serving my country and my president, and preventing another 9/11."
The Nimitz video had already been leaked back in 2007, for example, so it was a major gamble to think that going public would substantially change anything. Plus, as Elizondo himself is at pains to point out, he had nothing to gain and a lot to lose. Sure, Tom DeLonge gave him a job at To The Stars, but it meant a pay cut and a costly relocation to California. Everyone is quick to yell grifter at the first sniff of a book or a podcast but, seriously, I doubt it stacks up against a government job, health plan, and pension.
(As an aside, Elizondo is way more gracious than I would be while recounting how To the Stars first cut his agreed salary in half, then sacked him with next to no notice...)
Still, whatever the motivation, it is this move that will now be Elizondo's legacy. The book does touch on some cool military cases, and puts in print Elizondo's assertion that one or more defense contractors involved with the old Legacy Program of the 1940s and 50s still has UAP materials in their possession. Perhaps today they're not even aware of it, with potential samples languishing in storage. The chief stumbling block to getting them back, according to Elizondo, is the upper brass of the USAF. Sadly, of course, it's his word against theirs...
For me, though, Imminent really shines when it's giving us a peek into how things work at the Pentagon. Slowly and with a lot of inadverdent duplication, by all accounts. Elizondo's claims of a group of religious conservatives - the 'Collins Elite' - working to prevent progress were also interesting because, well, it serves us all right for thinking the US had reached peak religious extremism years ago. They just went ahead and turned it up to 11. In relation to UFO/UAPs, apparently the belief is that they are demonic and putting funding into their investigation is basically akin to siding with the devil. Sounds like an average Tuesday for people who were taken in by Qanon.
There is also an intriguing bit about government surveillance when Elizondo goes to meet with journalist Leslie Keane:
"I met Leslie in a bar across from the train station, then we walked together to meet Ralph on the street. I noticed two individuals with tight military-style haircuts in different parts of the street as we strolled. I was certain we were being observed. They displayed the classic signs. They were most likely an AFOSI surveillance team, just not their A-Team. With a few more twists and turns (something I learned in countersurveillance school), we came across the lobby of a hotel that afforded a large window to view the street. “Let’s go in here,” I suggested. One of the surveillance guys walked into the lobby, only to discover that we were staring right at him and Leslie had just snapped his picture. He scurried away."
Makes you wonder just how many MIB stories can be directly attributed to agents who just aren't very good at their job!
Finally, there's a good overview of how detractors at the Pentagon did their best to discredit Elizondo after he went public. If they can do it to a 'team player' who had worked there years, it adds an awful lot of credence to the claims of other whistleblowers...
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