William Morrow Acquires North American Publishing Rights to Luis Elizondo’s Memoir About His Government Work, Including Heading the U.S.’ UFO Program

Luis Elizondo’s out of this world memoir is headed to the printer…

HarperCollins imprint William Morrow has signed on for the North American publishing rights to a new memoir from the Cuban American former U.S. Army Counterintelligence Special Agent and former employee of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence.

Luis Elizondo

Elizondo is the former head of the U.S. Government’s UFO program, the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP). He was recently featured in a CBS 60 Minutes story about the potential existence of UFOs.

Following the Pentagon’s recent report to the U.S. Congress regarding UFOs, Elizondo was quoted saying, “The American people now know a small portion of what I and my colleagues in the Pentagon have been privy to: That these UAP (unidentified aerial phenomenon) are not secret U.S. technology, that they do not seem to belong to any known allies or adversaries, and that our intelligence services have yet to identify a terrestrial explanation for these extraordinary vehicles. This conversation is only just beginning.”

Elizondo spent the majority of his military career as a senior Intelligence Officer, hunting drug traffickers, terrorists, and spies around the world on behalf of the U.S. government and various branches of the military. In 2008, he was asked to be part of the Pentagon’s secretive UFO program. In 2010 he became its Director and led the effort to study UFOs around the world. In 2017, he resigned from his position in protest of excessive government secrecy regarding UFOs. Since then, he has led the global disclosure effort.

del Toro to Star in Cuban Mafia-Themed Film “The Corporation”

Benicio del Toro is joining the Cuban mafia…

The 49-year-old Puerto Rican-American actor will star in The Corporation, which takes place over the decades between the 1950s and 1980s in Miami and New York.

Benicio del Toro

Based on T.J. English’s yet-to-be-published book The Corporation: An Epic Story of the Cuban American Underworld, del Toro will play Jose Miguel Battle Sr., who leads the eponymous and hugely powerful Cuban mafia. Born in Havana, Battle escaped to the U.S. following the rise of Fidel Castro. Alongside his team of fellow Cubans, Battle was trained by the CIA so that he could fight in the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion.

Despite his name, things didn’t go so well for Battle during the attempted invasion, as he was captured, which led to him being imprisoned inside a Cuban prison. Battle failed to find the light side during his incarceration, and, when he was released, he headed straight back to the U.S. where he set off to build a huge criminal empire alongside the same posse of men that he fought with. His empire revolved around drug trafficking, gambling, and, even murder, and made him one of the most powerful crime bosses in the US until his death in 2007.

The nonfiction book will be published in winter 2017 by William Morrow. It’s being called a Cuban version of The Godfather and American Gangster.

del Toro is coming off a sizzling performance in Sicario, and this is an opportunity to play another badass character.

Paramount Studios and Appian Way have the film rights.