A man who spent 20 years working in national security for the federal government has recently joined a group of scientist searching for evidence of UFOs. In a recent interview, he says he has been interested in the topic since childhood, and in all his time in the government, he has found no evidence of a cover-up. That includes Area 51, which he has visited in an official capacity.
The government insider’s name is Chris Mellon. An interview with Mellon by author and journalist Leslie Kean was posted as a Huffington Post blog, earlier this week. According to the blog post, Mellon worked for the Department of Defense (DoD) and other intelligence organizations, where he received a number of awards, including the National Reconnaissance Office Gold Medal and the Defense Intelligence Agency Director’s Medal.
Mellon told Kean, he has also had a lifetime interest in UFOs. His curiosity began when he saw a convincing UFO film captured by a friend of his school’s 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,” Mellon recalled. “I have no idea what became of the movie, but it filled me with wonder and awe.”
Mellon says that after seeing the movie, he began reading everything he could get his hands on about UFOs. He even did a research project on UFOs in college.
Throughout his professional career, Mellon says he kept his UFO interests to himself.
One topic Kean was interested in discussing with Mellon was the presidential election. In particular, Clinton’s comments regarding her willingness to look for UFO files if she becomes president. Mellon said he did not think Clinton, as Secretary of State, would be given access to any classified programs involving UFOs, if they even exist.
“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,” explained Mellon. “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.”
Even if Clinton were able to gain access to information on classified programs, in all of his years working with secret programs, Mellon found nothing to convince him there is a hidden UFO project. Not even during his visits to Area 51.
“I highly doubt DoD or any other government agency is concealing UFO information,” Mellon told Kean. “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.”
Although, Mellon was unaware of any official government UFO program, he says there are several credible incidents that, he believes, makes the UFO phenomenon worthy of scientific study. These include a UFO incident witnessed by police officers in 1989, and a wave of triangle-shaped UFOs seen over Belgium that was investigated by their military.
He also recalled an interesting UFO report he received during his career.
Mellon recounted, “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.”
The obvious question is, why would the Navy not pursue such a remarkable event?
“In my experience, on those rare occasions when UFO incidents involving the government occur, they are highly inconvenient, awkward and embarrassing for the afflicted government officials who want nothing more than to put the issue behind them as quickly as possible,” Mellon explained. “The military seems generally unwilling to investigate even when UFO reports come from our own military pilots or officials in high office such as Fife Symington, the former governor of Arizona. Senior officials are so fearful of being ridiculed that they conceal any expression of interest or curiosity.”
Mellon believes that in an environment where the military is not willing to touch the topic of UFOs, it is up to the public to find answers.
“In my view, calling for the end to an alleged government UFO cover-up is almost certainly a dead end, and does not help inspire anyone in government to become more open to the topic,” says Mellon.
Instead, Mellon has joined the board of a group calling itself UFODATA. They are a group of scientists and researchers who are planning to put together UFO listening posts that can be deployed across the planet. These stations will be able to collect telemetry on unidentified objects to help determine what they are.
According to Mellon, “UFODATA’s findings, one way or another, can help us to resolve this perennial mystery and perhaps even help us to better understand the universe and mankind’s place within it.”
Leslie Kean’s blog with her interview in its entirety can be found here.
UPDATE 8/12/2106:
Mellon contacted OpenMinds.tv with a clarification. A previous version of this story stated that Mellon believed Clinton, as President, could not gain access to Special Access Programs (SAPs). He says as Secretary of State, that would be the case, but not as President. The story was corrected.
Here are Mellon’s comments:
“One point of clarification: I was not suggesting by any means that a President Clinton could not get briefed on any or all DoD SAPs. The President is Commander-in-Chief and DoD will move mountains for the President. I was answering the question of whether she as SecState would have had access to DoD SAPs, a totally different issue. The President never has time to waste going through all the SAPs in the intel agencies or DoD or DOE, not worth their time or effort, but DoD will salute smartly and brief the President on anything they want any time!”
