Pentagon chief reveals high-res photo of a UFO ‘mothership’: ‘A huge mini city floating in the sky’

A former Pentagon official, known for exposing a secret $22 million government program focused on UFOs, has shared an image of what he claims is a ‘mothership’ UFO.

Luis Elizondo, who previously led the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program and served as a counterintelligence specialist in the US Army, revealed the image at a private event in Philadelphia on Monday night. Describing the object, Elizondo said it looked like “the mothership from ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind,'” referencing the classic 1977 film by Steven Spielberg.

“Guess what we caught in Romania in 2022? By the way, the US Embassy,” Elizondo told the event’s attendees, pointing to the image. He called it a “huge mini city floating in the sky.”

The alleged UFO, which has a disc-like appearance, has drawn skepticism and criticism from various sources, including UFO believers and military witnesses. Many have questioned its authenticity, claiming it originated from a Facebook page rather than the US Embassy. One critic told DailyMail.com that Elizondo might have failed to verify the image in his eagerness to provide fresh, sensational content for his “paid speaking engagements.”

Jeremy McGowan, a former US Air Force Staff Sergeant who had his own UFO encounter in the Middle East, spoke to DailyMail.com about the incident, suggesting that this recent claim aligns with what he sees as a pattern in Elizondo’s behavior. “This unfortunate situation with Lue mirrors my past experiences with him,” McGowan said. “I’ve seen him exaggerate or even fabricate information that wasn’t accurate.”

Elizondo presented the Romanian UFO image during an event at The City Winery in Philadelphia on October 28, 2024, where tickets ranged from $30 to $50. In a leaked clip, he teased the audience with promises of more information. “There’s a whole lot more here, folks,” he said. “I just want to give you a small taste of what’s happening behind the scenes.”

He further elaborated that both military and civilian pilots from Eastern Europe and the Middle East have reported sightings of objects that defy explanation, some even describing them as “the mothership.”

Despite some credible reports of ‘mothership’ sightings over US military installations—reports that have been investigated by agencies like the FAA, FBI, Air Force Office of Special Investigations, and various local sheriff’s offices—online investigators quickly challenged the authenticity of Elizondo’s 2022 Romanian UFO image.

John Greenewald Jr., a transparency advocate and creator of The Black Vault, traced the image back to a Facebook post from September 13, 2023, in a group called ‘Mysterious Ancient Discoveries.’ “I reverse image searched it,” Greenewald shared on X (formerly Twitter), noting that the post had garnered over 182,000 likes and 23,700 comments.

The high-resolution version of the photo, which initially appears to depict a bright disc piercing through clouds, is more likely a reflection of a chandelier seen through window glass. Additionally, the location of Romania’s Arad Power Station suggests that the photo was not taken from the US Embassy but rather from a building near the Mureș River, several miles away. The US Embassy in Romania is located around 400 miles southeast of Arad in Bucharest.

Both skeptics and UFO enthusiasts have voiced their frustration over the incident. “Lue is definitely using us to make money,” one user on the r/UFOs forum wrote. “His latest book was a national bestseller.” Another commented, “This kind of behavior distracts from the real conversation.”

By Wednesday afternoon, Elizondo attributed the error to “a friend in Government” who provided him with the image “a couple of years ago.”

McGowan, however, maintained that this mistake was not an isolated incident. “I’ve seen Lue pull out his cell phone and show me what he claimed were classified videos,” McGowan told DailyMail.com. “The idea that he would carry classified info on an unsecured civilian phone is insulting. And I wasn’t the only one; other podcast hosts saw videos that Lue claimed were something they weren’t.”

For the past two years, McGowan has spoken publicly about an incident where Elizondo showed him a video supposedly smuggled out of Russia. According to McGowan, the footage resembled a decades-old public video from the Soviet Phobos 2 probe near Mars, released by retired Soviet Air Force Colonel Marina Popovich in 1991.

Elizondo showed the video to McGowan in January 2021. While Popovich had long argued that the footage showed an alien craft, the video had been available to the public for about thirty years.

“There’s a clear resemblance between that old video and what Lue showed me on his phone,” McGowan recalled. “I only saw it for a few seconds, so I didn’t catch all the details.”

McGowan, who served in Desert Storm with Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) and participated in anti-drug missions in Colombia, has been open about his own UFO experience. In the mid-1990s, while on a classified mission in the desert, McGowan claimed to witness mysterious lights over a secured cargo container. He shared his story in a 2020 History Channel series called “Unidentified,” which was hosted by Elizondo.

In a blog post, McGowan expressed his disappointment with the show, saying he had hoped to reconnect with other witnesses but felt “used” by the production. “I wanted to be connected to researchers who could help identify the other witness to the event,” he wrote in 2022. “But I left without answers, and my emails to the production team were ignored.”

Concerns within the US government about potential ‘mothership’ UFOs carrying smaller ‘drones’ have come to light through internal documents obtained via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Reports of mysterious ‘drones’ emerged in Colorado, Nebraska, Wyoming, and Kansas during the winter of 2019-2020, alarming residents and local law enforcement.

These incidents particularly concerned the US military because the drones appeared near nuclear-equipped intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) sites. “They all seem clustered in an area with many Minuteman sites,” noted a redacted email from F.E. Warren Air Force Base, which mentioned sightings of a ‘mothership’ about six feet in diameter accompanied by ten smaller drones. “When deputies pursued the drones, they clocked them at speeds of 60-70 mph,” the base official wrote.

On October 31, 2023, Elizondo issued a statement through his publicist at HarperCollins, his book publisher. The statement, sent at 10:15 AM Eastern, was also posted on social media. In it, Elizondo emphasized that he values public engagement and encourages analysis of the images he shares.

“The fact that we have people on social media who are eager to conduct their own analysis is encouraging,” Elizondo’s statement reads. “I appreciate the public’s help in investigating this case and believe that we should all remain vigilant, even when information comes from the Government—including myself.”