The Black Vault: Release of reconstructed Elizondo emails via FOIA
The Black Vault published a collection of reconstructed emails originally belonging to former Pentagon official Luis Elizondo. After the Department of Defense confirmed destroying Elizondo's official email archives, these documents were recovered through targeted FOIA requests sent to his correspondence partners.
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Background
The publication represents a significant transparency effort to recover government communications previously considered permanently lost. When the Department of Defense acknowledged destroying Luis Elizondo's official email archives, it created substantial barriers for researchers attempting to verify his claims regarding the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) and his role within the Pentagon.
The Black Vault employed an innovative strategy by filing Freedom of Information Act requests with Department of Defense personnel who likely corresponded with Elizondo during his tenure. This indirect approach yielded partial success, recovering exchanges with former officials including Marcel Lettre, who served as Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence from December 2015 to January 2017.
The archive includes both released communications and documentation of unsuccessful searches, such as those involving former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Notably, the collection reveals operational details showing how Elizondo coordinated the review and potential release of the famous FLIR, Gimbal, and GoFast UAP videos through DOPSR channels. The documents were obtained through persistent FOIA litigation and published via TheBlackVault.com (FOIA) on September 11, 2023.
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