Christopher Mellon goes public (2016)
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🗓️ Event
Contents 7
| Date | 9 May 2016 |
|---|---|
| Topics | Beings & bodies (topic), Secrecy & cover-up (topic) |
| People | Christopher Mellon, Bill Clinton, Leslie Kean |
| Testimony | Shellenberger testimony, p. 185 |
| Year | 2016 in UFO history |
| Timeline | 2016 on the UAP Timeline |
| Sources | 4 |
In May 2016 Christopher Mellon, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and longtime Senate intelligence staffer, discussed UFOs publicly for the first time, in an interview about his joining a project to collect UFO data. He went on to become one of the most influential figures in the modern UAP story.[1][2]
Career
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Mellon held Senate staff posts from 1985, including about a decade as a professional staff member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. He joined the Pentagon in 1997, serving as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Security and Information Operations and, from November 1999, as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence. In 2003 Senator Jay Rockefeller hired him as minority staff director of the Senate Intelligence Committee.[1]
Going public
In the May 2016 interview, Mellon said he doubted the government was deliberately hiding UFO information, but that if it was, he would want it revealed, and argued that the military's failure to investigate unidentified objects was a potential national-security problem.[2]
To the Stars and the videos
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In 2017 Mellon joined Tom DeLonge's To the Stars Academy as its national security affairs adviser, leaving at the end of 2020. He and Luis Elizondo were credited with bringing the Navy pilots' UAP videos to the academy, leading to the December 2017 New York Times story, and Mellon later confirmed he was the source of the videos.[1][3]
Influence
Mellon wrote a widely read March 2018 Washington Post column asking why the Pentagon did not care about military encounters with unidentified objects, and his proposals helped shape the UAP provisions of the 2021 and 2022 defence authorization acts. In October 2021 Harvard's Galileo Project named him a research affiliate, and he appeared in the 2025 documentary The Age of Disclosure.[1]
People and topics
- Christopher Mellon — Former deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence who helped release the Navy UAP videos.
- Unidentified anomalous phenomena — The U.S. government's current term for unidentified objects in the air, in space and underwater.
- Bill Clinton — 42nd U.S. president, lobbied about UFO files by Laurance Rockefeller.
- Leslie Kean — Journalist who co-wrote the 2017 New York Times story on AATIP.
- Unidentified flying object — An object in the sky that can't be identified; the older term for UAP.
- To The Stars Academy — The company founded by Tom DeLonge in 2017 that released the Navy UAP videos.
- U.S. Navy — The U.S. naval service, whose pilots reported the UAP encounters revealed in 2017.
- The New York Times — The newspaper that revealed AATIP in December 2017.
On the Timeline
- Greer's underground facilities list (18 April 2016) — Steven Greer names underground facilities he claims are tied to secret programs.
- Death of Max Spiers (16 July 2016) — UFO researcher Max Spiers dies of an apparent overdose; authorities investigate.
See every 2016 event on the UAP Timeline →
References
- Christopher Mellon — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- "This man has had incredible access to Pentagon secrets for decades — now he's joining a UFO data project", AlterNet (May 2016) · alternet.org · archived copy
- "This guy says he was the source of the Pentagon's UFO videos", Vice · vice.com · archived copy
- huffpost.com · huffpost.com · archived copy
This page was last edited on 29 October 2026. Articles are written in our own words from the sources listed under References; disputed claims are attributed to the people who made them.
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