Is There a UFO Cover-up? A Government Insider Speaks Out (Part 1)
05/09/2016 06:09 pm ET | Huffington Post Updated 18 hours ago
05/09/2016 06:09 pm ET | Huffington Post Updated 18 hours ago
About six months ago, our board at UFODATA was privileged to welcome Christopher Mellon as the newest member of our team. Chris spent nearly 20 years in the federal government serving in various national security positions. For the first time, he has agreed to speak publicly about his experiences within government as they relate to UFOs.
Photo courtesy Chris Mellon
It is unusual for a man of Chris’s stature to speak openly about UFOs, which gives his statements great weight. His positions during the Clinton and Bush administrations involved high clearances; in fact, there are few people who have enjoyed such deep and wide-ranging access to compartmented programs in both the Defense Department (DoD) and the intelligence community. Chris is the recipient of numerous awards, including the National Reconnaissance Office Gold Medal and the Defense Intelligence Agency Director’s Medal.
At DoD, Chris served on a small committee that provided oversight of all DoD special access programs, in order to eliminate potential waste and duplication. The oversight included visits to Area 51 and other sensitive facilities. He also spent over a decade on the Senate Intelligence Committee, involved in oversight of NRO, CIA, NSA and other intelligence organizations. He became the first Congressional official to review all of the NSA’s compartmented programs.
I wanted to know what Chris had to say about Hillary Clinton’s implications that the government may be withholding classified UFO documents. Backed by John Podesta, chairman of her campaign, Clinton has been speaking about the need to “get to the bottom of the UFO mystery.” Her comments are unprecedented within a presidential campaign.
Here is my recent conversation with Chris Mellon, mainly conducted via email, edited only for clarity.
Q: When did you first become interested in UFOs?
A: I was about seven years old when I saw an old-fashioned amateur movie taken by a friend of our school principal. It showed a huge, golden disc-shaped object serenely moving through sunny, blue skies, passing through cumulous clouds in a manner that would be very hard to fake. I have no idea what became of the movie, but it filled me with wonder and awe. I read everything I could get my hands on afterwards and eventually did a research project on UFOs in college for a physics professor. I remain deeply intrigued.
Q: Did your colleagues in government know you were interested in UFOs? Were you afraid of being ridiculed?
A: It was something I didn’t reveal to colleagues unless I got to know them well and we became personal friends. Even then of course I wasn’t a nut about it and I certainly was not obsessed; it was simply a subject of great curiosity. It did not come up often. I was focused like a laser on my duties 99.9 percent of the time.
Q: Hillary Clinton has been asked about UFOs during her campaign. As the former Secretary of State, would she be likely to know if there were any classified government programs involving UFOs?
A: No, I don’t think so. I recall instances when White House officials sought briefings on highly compartmented DoD programs and were flatly refused. Access to such programs is on a need to know basis. In general, nobody outside DoD, including the Secretary of State, is deemed to have a need to know. Officials like John Podesta and Secretary Clinton can easily serve for years in senior positions and be avid consumers of classified intelligence analysis but never obtain access to DoD’s compartmented programs, which mostly relate to new weapons systems. Information about such programs rarely leaks because it doesn’t circulate, unlike the constant stream of leaked information regarding classified intelligence activities.
Chris (right) with former Secretary of Defense Bill Cohen in 1995. Note the inscription:
“The Other Man who kept all the secrets.” Chris drafted the bill for Cohen
that established the US Special Operations Command. (photo © Chris Mellon)
Q: Do you think that if Clinton is elected we can expect to learn new information about UFOs?
A: I highly doubt DoD or any other government agency is concealing UFO information. I participated in a comprehensive review of DoD’s black programs and spent over a decade conducting oversight of the national foreign intelligence program, an almost totally separate world of secrets. I visited Area 51 and other military, intelligence and research facilities. During all those years, I never detected the faintest hint of government interest or involvement in UFOs.
Q: Clinton and John Podesta have been focusing on the need for de-classifying government documents. What do you think about that?
A: While a few new, previously overlooked documents might turn up (the bureaucracy is never perfect), I do not believe they would resolve the UFO issue or provide significant new insights. I can think of one lengthy UFO report that is classified only due to concerns over sources and methods. In fact, it identified a convincing conventional explanation for the pilot sightings in this particular case. There are lots of classified documents related to activities at Area 51, where high security is needed. But this is all legitimate stuff the American people would support. They have nothing to do with UFOs, to the best of my knowledge.
Q: Do you recall any incidents involving UFOs while you were in government?
A: Yes, there were a handful of incidents. Knowing of my interest in UFOs, a breathless naval aviator called me one day to report that he was present minutes earlier when a Navy jet landed after being circled by a UFO in broad daylight. The Navy did not pursue the issue as far as I could tell. I also recall the Maui Optical Tracking Facility, which tracks satellites, recording a flight of four or five fiery UFOs traversing the night sky. Nobody knew what to make of it. But no government official expressed the slightest interest even after the tape was featured on ABC’s Nightline. I found the utter lack of scientific curiosity due to political correctness highly frustrating.
Q: How do you think the press and public will react if Clinton is elected, makes the inquiries she promised, but comes up empty-handed?
A: I think the conspiracy theorists will be angry and unconvinced, while the general public may conclude UFOs are not a worthwhile topic. If Clinton really wants to get to the bottom of the UFO issue, I think she should officially task NORAD with collection and analysis responsibility. Simultaneously, she should assign the Office of Science and Technology Policy the job of reviewing available evidence, coordinating with other countries and providing scientific assessments and recommendations.
Q: The taboo against taking UFOs seriously is a huge problem. How can we get more government officials to change this ingrained attitude?
A: I think we have to ask ourselves a key question, and then bring it forward. “Are there UFO cases that are sufficiently well-documented to warrant a scientific investigation of the phenomenon?” In my view, the answer is yes.
The patterns in the data are too strong; the reports from credible witnesses separated widely by time and place too similar; the evidence from videos and trained military and law enforcement observers too extensive; and the independent radar data in select cases correlates too highly with visual observations to safely ignore. Finally, when someone you trust and respect, like a naval aviator, looks you in the eye and tells you he saw something truly extraordinary at close range, it’s hard not to take his testimony seriously. It is arrogant, unreasonable and unwise to dismiss such reports. We should simply and impartially follow the trail wherever it leads.
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