On May 8, 2026 — the same day the Department of War launched war.gov/UFO — NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo sat down with Pentagon UAP whistleblower Lue Elizondo and investigative journalist Ross Coulthart to assess the first PURSUE release. The verdict from both: underwhelming, but a signal of more to come. The most explosive moment came when Coulthart revealed that a serving astronaut told him privately that disclosing what he has seen in orbit would be “an act of treason.”
“Underwhelming” — Both Experts Agree on the First Release
Coulthart was direct: “I must confess I was underwhelmed by today’s supposed maximum transparency. I don’t think it is maximum transparency.” He said insiders he speaks with — people inside the UAP crash retrieval and reverse engineering program — are “deeply frustrated that the Pentagon is in charge” of the release process, and believe “Congress is having the wool pulled over its eyes” by the national security state dictating what can and cannot be released.
Elizondo was more cautious but agreed the release was modest: “I think it’s a bit of a test bullet. They’re dipping a toe in the water to see the reaction before they decide to take the high dive.” He said members of Congress he trusts have been told by administration officials that more significant releases are coming, and framed the current output as consistent with the early stages of a much larger process.
The 46 Videos — Still Not Released
Cuomo pushed hard on the 46 military UAP videos that Rep. Anna Paulina Luna and the UAP caucus have been demanding from the Pentagon. None were in the first PURSUE tranche. Coulthart: “We still haven’t seen any of the 46 videos that Representative Anna Paulina Luna with the UAP caucus is demanding be provided to Congress.” Cuomo’s counterpoint was sharp: “When you take a swing, you usually swing for the head when you come out of the box. They could put out the 46 videos. They don’t need to start slow.”
Elizondo: UAP Programs Are Protected Under Covert Action Law
Elizondo made a significant legal point that rarely gets covered: “There are actually parameters that allow our government to lie — not only on the international stage, but even to our own people. That specific umbrella is under the covert action umbrella. If you look at the definition of covert action, it says in there that the US government is not only allowed to lie to the American people, but deny its involvement in certain activities even though we were actually sponsoring it.”
He then confirmed: “From what I’ve been told when I was in the Pentagon, a lot of the legacy UAP efforts are actually protected under that umbrella of covert action — which the penalties are very, very stiff if you violate that.” The implication is significant: the programs Grusch described may be legally structured as covert action, meaning the government has explicit statutory authority to lie about their existence. The President can declassify, but there are legal processes involved.
Astronaut Told Coulthart: Disclosure Would Be “An Act of Treason”
The most significant moment of the segment came when Coulthart described a private conversation with a serving astronaut: “I’ve spoken privately to one astronaut. He’s told me categorically that he has seen enormous objects in orbit. But when I was asking him why he won’t go public about it, he said it would be an act of treason. That would be a breach of his national security oath.”
Coulthart drew the conclusion directly: “NASA is not telling the public the truth, frankly. Neither is the Pentagon.” He added: “One of the points I really want to emphasise — there are other agencies that have, as yet, not come under the scrutiny of the supposed maximum transparency: the NGA, the National Geospatial Office, the Department of Energy, the NSA, the CIA. All of those three-letter agencies need to be demanded to release all of their files. That, frankly, is where the pot of gold is being hidden.”
Elizondo: NASA Knows What’s Been Happening at the ISS and Space Shuttle
Elizondo confirmed there is significant UAP data from space missions that has not been made public: “The videos and audio coming out from the Space Shuttle missions are very special. When the US Space Force and I worked together with the UAP Task Force, we were supporting something a lot of people don’t know. NASA knows what’s been going on with the International Space Station and, before that, the Space Shuttle missions.”
He connected this to the Gemini 7 astronaut footage included in the PURSUE release: “We did not have satellites orbiting the Moon at that time. NASA spent decades saying ‘nothing to see here’ and now turns out there’s actually quite a bit to see.”
Cuomo’s Assessment: More Disclosure Is Coming Because It’s Politically Useful
Cuomo offered a deliberately cynical but strategically useful take: “If this administration believes it’s good for them, we’ll get more of it, especially now because they are desperate for distractions.” He argued that the NASA astronaut footage — where a government astronaut is on record reporting UAP activity — creates political embarrassment for NASA that benefits the administration’s transparency narrative. “The more that embarrasses NASA, the more it accrues to the benefit of this administration, the more motivated they’ll be to give us more.”
Bottom Line
The three key takeaways from this segment: (1) Both Elizondo and Coulthart confirm the PURSUE release is a starting point, not the reveal. (2) The legal architecture of covert action may be the specific mechanism preventing full disclosure — and the President has the power to override it but faces legal process. (3) The agencies that actually hold the real material — NSA, CIA, NGA, DOE — have not been required to release anything yet. Those are the next pressure points.
Source: NewsNation — Chris Cuomo with Lue Elizondo and Ross Coulthart. May 8, 2026. Transcript via NewsNation broadcast.