Editor’s note: This story has been corrected to indicate the implant was not necessarily in a human brain.

(NewsNation) — In an exclusive interview, former Pentagon insider Luis Elizondo says the Department of Defense has a spacecraft retrieval program and that doctors with Veterans Affairs have seen an alleged alien implant.

“I saw a technical device that had been removed, excised by the Department of Veterans Affairs by a surgeon, a trained physician, from a U.S. military service member who claimed to have a UAP encounter. The physician claimed that the object tried to run on him or evade being excised,” Elizondo told NewsNation.

Elizondo says the physician he spoke to described the object as trying to avoid being captured by the doctor intelligently.

As for whether the aliens pose a threat to humanity, Elizondo said there’s not enough data to know.

“From a national security perspective, it’s a very simple calculus, it’s capabilities versus intent,” he said. “We see some of the capabilities, and by the way, we can’t replicate them. We have no idea the intent.”

Elizondo says the Pentagon’s UFO investigators were keenly interested in the impact UAPs were having on individuals, especially military personnel.

“There’s enough reports that substantiate that not all these interactions are necessarily benign or peaceful. Some people leave terrified, some people leave injured,” he said.

The Veterans Administration has granted full medical disability benefits to airman John Burroughs for injuries to his heart and eyes, which he claims he suffered during the famous 1980 UAP incident in Rendlesham Forest, England.

Elizondo says that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

“We came across information that suggested that people were having things put inside their body that they did not give approval to,” he said. “I have been privy to some very interesting things.”

In one photo, he showed one of those “interesting things.” It’s allegedly a biological sample removed from a U.S. servicemember and submitted for analysis.

“In essence, you have a foreign object, which it’s a metallic object in there. And it seems to be encapsulated by some sort of biological material,” Elizondo said.When asked how he knew it wasn’t just a bit of metal that somebody knocked into on a building site, Elizondo said it “was moving on its own.”

“It actually had its own metabolic activity,” he said. “It terrified one of the doctors who was looking at this under a microscope.”

So are UAPs abducting people at random? Or are they drawn to certain individuals?

Elizondo says research has revealed a fascinating pattern among UAP experiencers, in an interesting part of the brain: the caudate putamen.

He says the caudate putamen is larger in people with alleged psychic powers, what he said the government has called “remote viewing.” It’s also larger among those who’ve had UAP experiences, he said.

Stanford immunologist Dr. Garry Nolan has been researching this topic, and while his conclusions are not definitive there are two working theories.

One, that people with naturally large caudate putamen might attract UAPs like antennae. Another, that UAP encounters with normal people cause that same part of the brain to get bigger.

Elizondo argues that people with enhanced caudate putamen might have a talent for both remote viewing and communicating with UAPs. He says that’s important because it’s an established fact that the Pentagon has had an interest in remote viewing for military purposes.

In the vernacular, it used to be called psychic espionage. There was a program in the US government called Stargate. They were taking young soldiers and civilians, and they were training them to conduct espionage behind enemy lines. The term was called remote viewing.

Remote viewing has been discredited with the CIA determining it doesn’t work but Elizondo insists that it does and says he was trained in remote viewing himself.

“It absolutely works,” he said.

“I don’t like to really publicly talk about it,” Elizondo added. “My involvement was only tangential.”

That alleged capability for remote viewing, and its potential connection to non-human intelligence, may sound like a gift but Elizondo says it was also a curse.

He says that’s because, after years of studying UAP encounters, he began experiencing what’s known as “The Hitchhiker Effect.” UAPs were appearing at his home, perhaps because he was attracting them.

“We would have these weird glowing balls of light in the house,” he said. “It really caused some disruption for my kids and my wife.”

Jennifer Elizondo, Lue’s wife, said she would routinely see small, green orbs at home.

“I would just stop and it would just continue to go right through the wall,” she said.

She said the disturbances were very upsetting and that the “house had been turned upside down.”

In response to the interview, Department of Defense spokesperson Sue Gough said, “As we have stated previously, Luis Elizondo had no assigned responsibilities for the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) while assigned to the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security.”

“The department is fully committed to openness and accountability to Congress and the American people, which it must balance with its obligation to protect sensitive information, sources, and methods. As we have said many times before, the department and AARO will follow the data wherever it leads; however, to date, we have not found any credible evidence of extraterrestrial activity,” Gough added.

Believers in UFO activity pushed back on the response from the DOD, contending that the Pentagon is running a disinformation campaign to discredit Elizondo.

Additionally, they believe Elizondo’s involvement in the UAP program at the Pentagon has been confirmed multiple times. Those include a letter from former Assistant Dep. Sec. of Defense Chris Mellon to Sen. Harry Reid that allegedly confirmed Elizondo’s specific role in AATIP. Also, internal DoD emails since made public allegedly indicate that Elizondo was running AATIP.