Christopher Mellon — ExoMagazin interview, Ufology World Congress Barcelona (Oct 2022)
Source: YouTube, “TOP SECRET UFO PROJECTS - Interview with Pentagon Insider Christopher Mellon”, ExoMagazinTV — interview by Robert Fleischer with former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Christopher Mellon, recorded at the Ufology World Congress, Barcelona. URL: https://youtu.be/Wg0YLxT_Rbg (37:38; uploaded 2022-10-25; ~37k views) Captured: 2026-06-17 via YouTube auto-captions — unpunctuated lowercase ASR, reflowed into ~90-word paragraphs (no sentence boundaries in the source). What this is: Mellon on the behind-the-scenes legislative/disclosure effort, the UAP Task Force report, and his read on recovered/reverse-engineered craft — a 2022 primary for mellon-career-and-advocacy.
a lot of interesting developments are currently happening in the United States concerning the release of formally classified UFO information from the US government one of the major players I would not say the key player of what is going on behind the scenes is sitting right here next to me welcome Christopher Mellon pleasure to be here it’s a great pleasure to have you in the interview now you were working as the deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence and had oversight over many intelligence agencies and also
their activities how is it possible that you never heard anything UFO related well I did hear about a couple of things um there was an occasion where a Navy pilot friend of mine called me up and he said you wouldn’t believe what happened in our Base today he was on the ground and a jet was flying this was in Florida the training base and a UFO and broad daylight came and flew around this jet fighter jet and people on the air force base on the ground
saw it too and landed another time there was a very highly classified report that I saw that came from the CIA that was analyzing some reports from some reconnaissance Pilots overseas in a sensitive location and then there was a third the only other time was I had a friend who went to one of our ground space surveillance sites and I said while you’re there it’s an optical camera system that stares at the night sky and it tracks all of the stars and looks for moving lights
and then a computer sorts it out and catalogs things and I said while you’re there why don’t you ask them if they ever see anything weird unusual and I got a call and say hey Chris I asked him the question sure enough and they had this videotape that we brought back that showed these five objects moving in formation across the night sky but there were no UFO programs there was no secret UFO research nobody talked about it nobody cared about it um it was a taboo
subject uh if anyone did ask about it people would run the risk of having other people think they were crazy or something so it was a non-issue all the atip stuff happened after I left the department so that’s why I wasn’t it wasn’t aware of that and you left the department in 2004 correct yeah yeah okay so how which are the most common UFO shapes reported that you know of from the military it’s the military with the military is seeing a lot of lately or spheres
uh they’re six feet wide and they have a cube inside and the points of the cube are touching the inside of the sphere and this is amazing to me because they’re not floating like a balloon or a lighter than your object they’re maneuvering they’re flying they go at hundreds of miles an hour they fly Against the Wind they don’t have any exhaust where is the energy coming from where is the force coming from there’s no air intake they have a very low radar cross section they’re
extremely difficult to see they’re very well concealed when Pilots see them on the radar even when the radar says it’s right over there like a mile away or half mile away they can’t see it with the naked eye unless they’re really really close fly practically right up next to it that’s appearing in a lot of our training areas and they seem to be there when our Pilots show up the pilots get out there and they see these things on the radar and they seem to be
out there indefinitely and this is another curious thing because drones have usually a limited loiter time you know they have electric batteries that run down or whatever these things seem to have sort of unlimited loiter time so they’re very very strange and curious that’s one kind of object that people are seeing um we have of course sometimes uh the Tic Tac shape which is an egg shape almost object again very bizarre how could something like that fly if it’s not pushing or pulling air the propellers
no jet engines where is the force coming from sometimes people see discs and the other thing that happens sometimes is I’ve had reports of triangles occasionally a big black triangles sometimes with a light on each corner and as you may know that’s a global phenomenon that’s been going on for decades people have been all kinds of people all over the world have been reporting these those are the most common shapes other they’re also orbs balls of light bright balls of light that are sometimes seen I’ve
seen one video of an orb that was filmed in broad daylight flying along very directly like this um very difficult to unders to explain what that is um so those are the primary shapes if that’s what your question is yeah okay so um they’re not just flying around they’re doing things right they’re showing up in specific locations what is the general likely Behavior behavioral patterns that have been assessed right so it’s hard to have much confidence that we have a real handle on on patterns so
we tend to see them around areas of training ranges and test ranges and that sort of thing which is indicative of somebody spying on us right somebody wants to understand our tactics our procedures our capabilities if it’s a test range to see our latest technology on the other hand of course there’s the old story about the the fellow who loses his keys and he looks under the lamp post because that’s where the light is are we see him there because that’s where we’re watching or is
it actually happening you know much more broadly but we’re not as aware of it because those areas we have much more radar and instrumentation now Gary Nolan recently talked about the case in which two girls were sitting in a car and taking a photo of a huge craft passing above the car through the glass seating of the of the car and when they looked at the photo it was only a star-shaped kind of object which which kind of implies that this object that they saw that
what they saw didn’t correspond with what was on the photo so what’s going on yeah so I don’t pretend to know what’s going on I don’t know what’s going on it’s a very very interesting case it’s a Jacque Valley case in France I believe um that is not a common occurrence typically uh what our Pilots see with the eye and military personnel comes out on the film but we have had situations where for example there appears to be interference with instruments in a in a cockpit
so there is a possible capability to interfere with and manipulate or modify cameras or Radars or you know interfere with those kinds of things it could have been something like that it’s very hard to say we’re at the very early stages of actually getting the government to even take this seriously much less analyze and collate the data and begin to reach any firm conclusions very early days yet so um I mean you talked a little bit about the shapes observed but according to the news security
classification guidelines even talking about that is classified I guess or or the or I hope it’s not because I just talked about no I mean I mean I don’t know if that’s written in that classification guide but I know that during the hearings in at the U.S Congress they didn’t want to go into the shapes observed which I found uh strange so do you think there will ever be public hearings again on this I do think there will be public hearings again there are none planned
at the present time to my knowledge uh the last time I spoke with this one of the Senate committees they said they were just going to hold off for the time being they weren’t planning anything I don’t think there is any near-term plan on the house side either the last hearing they had didn’t go very well the members were clearly not prepared um so uh and I’m not sure they got felt much benefit from the hearing so I don’t think there’ll be public hearings probably before
the end of the year there there are going to be closed hearings um and briefings and that will continue and that’s a good thing there should be an unclassified report by the end of next month released well and I’m very pleased about that because I had persuaded the Senate intelligence committee originally I persuaded the staff director uh you know they they didn’t have much support in the early days to do anything and uh I had been a staff director myself there on that committee and I
knew a lot of the tricks and things you could do and I said well why don’t you just ask for a report because it doesn’t cost any money you don’t need an appropriation you don’t have to convince that other committee to appropriate money they agreed to do that that report came in in June of 2012 21 then rep Senator gillibrand and others introduced legislation but they didn’t have a requirement to continue those unclassified reports and I spoke to the general counsel and others on the committee
and I’m sure others did as well and thankfully they agreed that it was a good idea to put that back in so that at least will continue so why is it so diff I mean now we’re talking about new legislation um the uip task force or its its successor organization is now going to ask for information pertaining to all kinds of government agencies intelligence communities and stuff why is it so important to get all this information together um why is it so difficult to get it
sorry right well first of all that’s generally the case for anything in the defense department the um and particularly when you’re talking classified information the and there’s several different reasons for that one is information is power it’s like a currency you don’t want it you don’t want to give money away for free right so organizations they hoard it like this and they you know they want to control it and it gives them some power and influence also the security Personnel involved they uh if information is
leaked then of course uh or compromise that’s a black mark for them they don’t get rewarded for sharing information so the people that control the security people are always very difficult to work with it’s always a problem and a hassle and it’s um it’s very dysfunctional it’s a major problem in the department you know prior to 9 11 today is the anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center in the Pentagon I was in the Pentagon when that plane hit I remember it very very
well and uh it was a very long day to say the least but uh one of the reasons that happened was because the FBI and the CIA were not sharing information that problem was solved in the case of terrorism by creating a fusion Center and all the agencies have representatives and all the information has to go there they solved it for terrorism they didn’t solve it for other other problems and issue areas this is a new one they’re now trying to create a solution with this
new office and this new organization so which are the organizations that you suspect may have um like the most interesting documents so the national geospatial agency has interesting information the national reconnaissance office probably has some interesting information the Air Force has tons of information the space force has some information uh Army David Air Force had information the defense intelligence agency has some information so there are lots of organizations and that’s that’s always been a challenge to to get them first of all to get people to
report information and then to get those organizations to share it before this one there wasn’t a reporting requirement um and two even if you saw something depending on your organization you had no idea what to do with it what about Homeland Security Homeland Security has got a that’s a good question so they’ve got a process as well they’re they’re still not fully integrated the FBI is not fully integrated into this yet this is primarily the defense department and the intelligence Community however the Congress is also
working to um try to ensure that the FBI and and Homeland Security will play in some capacity that’s important because the the state local Federal officials sometimes do have very pertinent information and sometimes the FBI so for example some of the defense department test ranges like White Sands or Area 51 or China Lake Edwards if they’re doing tests and something happens there’s a security issue something flies over it the FBI will be the ones who investigate it so it’s important for them to also be participating
okay so all this information now goes to this newly formed organization which is called Arrow right on what’s it and that’s about to change that’s about to change it’s not the what’s the next thing is going to be the joint uh Aerospace hyphen undersea phenomena or phenomenon program office yeah it’s becoming a joint program office so now the the focus has so the part of the name change while you’re asking about that part of the reason for the change is that the Air Force has not
wanted to include information from space the Air Force has said oh UAP just says aerial so we don’t have to tell you if we see something on orbit we don’t have to tell you if we see something in deep space and so they want to make sure that they address that in the name because they were hiding behind this semantic this definition to withhold information the same thing with the Navy the Navy has information about things under the ocean anomaly so they wanted to put so
it’s now it’s Aerospace air and space and undersea so this new definition excludes or includes our space or includes includes okay all right so this means that the focus has been widened we’ve we’ve always been talking about flying objects in the skies now they are also under the water in in the Seas so you know that may and in space so um I know that the United States agencies are quite reluctant on talking about what they know of what’s going on under under the sea and
in space and in Spain what’s like the most fascinating case that you know of that has occurred under the sea uh I can’t unfortunately talk about any specific cases in in space or into the sea what I can tell you is that I understand that there have been cases under the sea of very high speed objects now the Russians have what they call Super cavitating torpedoes they can travel hundreds over 100 miles an hour is maybe 200 miles an hour is underwater I understand there have
been incidents where we’ve detected things going at even much higher speeds underwater but I don’t have any definition on that to share with you or detail yeah so back back in 2016 when you were first interviewed by Leslie Kane on what you know on UFOs you said you didn’t have during all of the time that you’ve worked there you haven’t found any hint that the United States government may have something now recently you stated the opposite what made you change your mind new information what’s that
new information so since I got back involved in this issue I met a different group of people Who provided information that suggests there was a program that was not in our normal oversight process for what we call special access programs and black programs and I can’t vouch for that that there is or such a program that’s why Congress is doing what they’re doing in part to find out if that’s the case what I can say is that I have reason to believe that may be true
there are credible people that um I believe that to be the case and uh claim to have first-hand knowledge uh first or secondhand knowledge but I have to also say that there are many people that you would think would know about that if it were the case who claim it’s not true a very very senior former military or you know Secretary of Defense or people at very high levels who should have known you would think if there was such a program and yet when you raise
the issue they give you a big eyeball role no not that UFO stuff again so we have very conflicting information from sources that appear to be credible on both sides and to get to the bottom line uh Congress is creating a procedure that will allow those people who claim to have this information to come forward without fear of prosecution without fear of violating secrecy agreements and present and share that information not with the public but with this with this office which will then share it with
Congress yeah this new legislation also includes um private contractors of the government that why is that so one of the allegations is that the U.S recovered either an object that landed and was left undamaged or something that was crashed maybe more than one occasion and that the material was provided to some of our aerospace companies that build our most advanced aircraft and so forth for them to try to research and understand and therefore that may be a source of knowledge and information and they may actually
possess some of these materials so they wanted to include that in the scope of this uh of this inquiry in this new legislation hmm because there is the the possibility that there may be uh reverse engineered technology in private companies right doesn’t mean that they succeeded reverse engineering but one of the stories is one of the allegations is and I’ve that I was supposed to meet a fellow for example who supposedly was in one of these aerospace companies and supposedly had been directly involved in that
activity and uh we were about two ways weeks away from meeting when he died when he had a heart attack and um you know uh can’t say you know whether that was true or not but that’s one of the allegations and it makes sense because if you’re the government and say you recovered some degree and there were complex components and materials right you wanted to have keep it secret but have world-class technicians and scientists try to understand it it would be natural that you would go
to Lockheed Martin or Raytheon or Grumman or some of those companies that are used to routinely you know they build the B2 bomber they build all those things so it’d be natural to go to them yeah and ask for their help and you know on a very close whole basis yeah they don’t have their own Workshop the White House any comment on the Wilson memo I have uh I know both of those individuals and one of them has asked me not to comment so I’m not
commenting okay all right so what do you suspect the Russians and the Chinese know about this well I have the Russians have first of all said publicly on a number of occasions they’ve had incidents with UAP and they’ve been saying that for many many years it’s very hard to know uh what to take seriously with the Russians they’re very skilled in the practice of disinformation uh we all know that um that’s commonplace I’m not saying they’re the only country that does that but it’s very hard
to know sometimes what they what they say for example the CIA has a translation service during the Cold War and we would translate they would translate Russian broadcasts on different topics and sometimes a general in Russia would come out and uh and comment on this in an interview that kind of thing so there’s those kinds of reports there’s other information as well obviously the the Soviet Union and then now Russia is a target of considerable interest for United States intelligence Community for obvious reasons and so
they observe and listen and uh there are reasons to think that that they have had some interest in this topic as well the what about their like I mean also um investigated their their structure right the structure of their program what it looked like I think it was called phase three or something yes there I I’ve seen that documentation um I don’t know to what degree that has been independently validated uh there was a source that provided some information but you know human intelligence sources are
notoriously unreliable they can be terrific but it’s it’s less reliable than say a photograph or The Intercept that kind of thing um it is absolutely true the phase three was uh supposedly an elaborate extensive Russian program the allegation the story is that they have recovered materials themselves from some other civilization and they have a program to reverse engineer it and uh that’s that’s one of the stories that needs to be chased down whether do we have information about their program that is buried away in the
intelligence Community what about the Chinese less information about that they have an interest today in the topic for sure um they they have uh which is not surprising if for no other reason than the fact that uh other countries tend to follow closely with the United States does my office for example was involved in information Warfare and computer Warfare and cyber security and we used to produce booklets for our military undoctorate and things like that to get even thinking about it and sure enough a few
years later you start to see the same sorts of things turning up in other countries like in China and Russia you know they’re clearly reading and following what we’re doing and then and and it goes both ways there have been times in the Cold War we’d see the Russians doing so we say oh we better investigate that too like the Paranormal yes yes exactly so it that that can work both ways um all I can say is one that they acknowledge they’ve had some incidents of
uh anomalous vehicles and they seem to have some interest in looking into the topic they have a private sector research a group I believe these days which I imagine is connected to their government in some way but I don’t know why is Germany So Silent on this that’s something you could probably tell me about you must know more about that than I do I suspect it has something to do with the United the biggest Military Base outside of the United States being located in Germany yeah
so that’s that probably that could very well have something to do with it I know that um over the years other countries I know from speaking with Dr Jacque Valley that um the French government had some extraordinary information about an object they were tracking in space and they were afraid that if they shared that information the Americans would ridicule them and laugh at them and the individual running that organization according to Jacques actually ordered the information to be destroyed because he was afraid that the Americans
would think the French were Silly or would ridicule them or something like that so the negative posture of the United States on the issue probably has influenced some of our allies that’s probably fair so in your presentation you drew a picture of a possible collaboration on an international level concerning the subject do you think it would be useful to bring it to the United Nations you know I’ve been involved in uh some discussions along those lines and trying to do that and my first suggestion was
we don’t need to create a new UAP organization necessarily at the U.N there’s already a huge bureaucracy but they have an existing International Aviation organization and a good first step might be to ask that organization to begin collecting reports from Pilots around the world and from countries around the world that might be an initial step but I do think it could be useful there is a interest on the part of the government of San Marino in uh hosting an international annual U.N sponsored conference on this
topic and I think they’re going to try to propose that to the UN and try to get other countries to support them on that um at least that’s what I’ve heard but I think it’s uh if for no other reason that you know there’s an air safety reason there’s still a great deal with skepticism but I think it would be a useful for them to begin also collecting or information and sharing it that was a historic predecessor right the the in 1977 United Nations resolution 33
426 um yeah yeah exactly yeah Grenada yeah and so you know right now we’re not at a point where there’s anything for the United Nations necessarily to discuss or decide but they could become they could establish a mechanism for helping to collect reports from all over the world Asia and Africa and South America that’s where that might be a role that they could play so if the government of San Marino would try to engage this would you be willing to support them I’ve told them that
I would try to help if I can um I’m not sure that I am in a position to provide much assistance but I’ve told them I would try to a system if I can yeah yeah now the UFO phenomena didn’t just start back in 2012 with Nimitz or 1947 in Roswell but there are many indications that it’s been may have been here all along um what you think is at stake here if we’re talking a possibly a species that’s living among us or with us on
this planet how would the government ever want to admit this and and and address this issue because it means that they’re losing power or they’re admitting they don’t have any power at all yes it is what we call an unnatural act right no government wants to admit there’s another greater power higher authority they all want independence and control everything but it could get to a point where they can’t deny the facts anymore and the reality is such they have to acknowledge it that could happen because
of the Galileo project it could happen because of other scientific research it could happen because a bunch of UAP come and hover over a major city sometime in broad daylight and hang out there and everybody sees it it could happen because of this Congressional process and DOD and maybe we or the Russians or some other country have material and they can no longer keep it secret so there are various I don’t think it’s likely to happen because some government wants to admit it or acknowledge it
but I think they could get to the point where they have to admit or acknowledge it so all the information that will be collected will be classified what’s the benefit for the rest of the world besides the US it’s it’s not being done for the benefit of the world it’s being done for the benefit of the United States it’s been done for National Security of the United States you know that’s that’s the initial rationale and justification and don’t don’t forget that you and I are talking
about the Extraterrestrial aspect and possibility here but many of these things could turn out to be Chinese or Russian some of these things could be you know our Navy ships a lot of the reports in the last couple years may be some kind of new sophisticated drone so we have Navy ships that are seeing these lights swarming around we those are going into this system and they’re being recorded and reported as UAP but that doesn’t mean they’re anything extraterrestrial they could turn out very well to
be a sophisticated Chinese uh you know a new technology but still having that very advanced technology would be quite a game changer for in a war against potential enemy right so I guess that’s why the U.S military would never want to share this in from this technology I mean you know this is uh we don’t have World Peace yet yeah you know it’s not a it’s not a friendly situation out there right now and uh uh you know the survival National survival is the top priority
of any government not just the United States um so but if we were dealing with an advanced species living or living on this planet how would this shape U.S policy on this issue I I mean we’re talking about like like uh they’re present everywhere in space in the skies Under the Sea they’re everywhere yeah I mean we’re you’re asking me to speculate about something this is uh no I’m asking you to assess like the probability in which direction this is going to go being an intelligence
specialist I’m not trying to not not speculation you know just from what you know with your background what do you think yeah I mean it’s informed speculation right okay okay let’s put it that way yeah so I think it would be very very hard for any American president or government to admit or acknowledge this first of all it’s so threatening to so many people and you know people in the UFO community are not uh it’s very easy to say well of course and I say this
myself the public has a right to know on the other hand if you’re the leader of a Nation you’re responsible for protecting all the children all the elderly people everybody who might be terrified you know revealing that kind of information um could uh you know it’s not an easy it’s not going to be an easy decision if they get to that point and particularly if there’s some reason to believe that there is some uh agenda other than love and friendship involved you know it’s not clear
what the intent here is and if it’s one group or more than one group or you know there’s there’s so many unanswered questions at least from my standpoint based on what I know to date and if there was information that suggested the possibility of uh you know in fact I’ve actually heard from somebody that again this is uh uh second-hand information but this individual indicated that he was told one of one former president had considered releasing this and convened a group to evaluate the pros and
cons of doing so and they ran through a list of 60 Questions and they considered all these different Alternatives and issues and at the end the entire group concluded that the government should not release the information that it was not in the public interest to release the information that it would be so disruptive uh and and have so many negative repercussions so uh if it does happen I think it will happen most likely because it’s impossible to contain it any longer and I would imagine that
one of the things that I’ve suggested to people in the government they think about if we’re really going to be going down this road um it’s helpful to lessen this shock and to help people internalize and process this so if for example we do have some compelling information about uaps in space let the government admit that now and acknowledge that without saying it’s aliens or whatever but just start to expose people the public generally not the UAP fan group and people like us that live and
breathe this and are obsessed with this but the average person who doesn’t care anything or know anything about this and begin to get this into circulation writ large across Society this possibility to help bridge uh from where we are today to where we might need to be or or have to be it at some point in the future so this is a following a plan of Information Management no there’s no plan of Information Management there’s none at all that I know of and and this is
a good question because there I see this all the time and I go oh my God what do these people think that I’ve been doing and other people have been doing the only reason that this information is starting to come out is because of troublemakers and activists who’ve been bucking the system and uh diverting information and taking it to the news it’s all coming from the bottom up yeah none of it’s because somebody up here has some plan I’m not working for some you know I’m
not a puppet for some group somewhere and neither is Lou Elizondo and um so but maybe they need to think about something along those lines maybe they need to think about ex getting the public writ large to begin processing this this possibility so if it’s true for example this is one reason before the last hearing I drafted questions for the members and I sent that to the committee staff and I published a Blog I think too about it and one of the issues I suggested they
asked the witnesses do we have any information about uaps in space because if the answer is yes that’s a very powerful advance from where we are today and nobody can say they’re helicopters nobody can say it’s ball lightning nobody can say it’s Chinese lanterns yeah yeah if they’re flying around in space right now everybody it makes the whole issue much more credible and it begins to engage the public at large thinking in in bigger terms and I think they did say that they have uaps in
space right nobody asked the question no no none of this none of the congressmen asked the question was very disappointing to me yeah so you need to keep making trouble to get this thing forward thank you very much thank you very much for your work and uh yeah I wish you good luck let’s see where we’re where we at in in one year or so okay well I’ll keep making trouble thank you thank you bye-bye yeah you bet [Music] thank you