Christopher Mellon on UFOs, secrecy and what the public still doesn't know (The Chris Cuomo Project, 2025)

0:00 You know that there's a lot to know about UAPs that they're just not telling us, right? How do I know? I got somebody on the podcast who knows. Chris Cuomo here. Welcome to the Chris Cuomo Project. Christopher Mellon is as legit as you get, okay? He is a minted intelligence official from the United States government. He worked with Republicans and Democrats, okay? Not just as colleagues, but within administrations, Bush and Obama. So he knows what there is to know, and that's why he's been pushing so hard for transparency. So what does he make of what the Trump administration has done and not done? What does he believe about what is in the air around us and why it matters? What are his questions? What are his hopes? What are his beliefs? Christopher Mellon is ready to fill in the blanks for the rest of us. Are you ready? Let's get after it.

1:06 Christopher Mellon, thank you so much for taking the opportunity. Appreciate you. Delighted to be here. Thank you for your interest in this topic. All right, so Brother Mellon, take me to the moment. We are all waiting. The Trump administration has promised transparency. They've come in like a bunch of renegades that are going to buck the deep state. And those of us who are desperate for transparency on this issue eagerly await. And then comes the word, and what we hear from the White House is, everything you guys saw in the air over New Jersey and everywhere else, fixed wing aircraft, helicopters, commercial drones, nothing to see here. Same thing as the Biden administration. What was your reaction to that? I wasn't surprised. I mean, they are naturally going to want to try to soothe public concerns and prevent, you know, any kind of uproar or panic.

2:10 The fact is, they don't really know. They don't know what's going on. And it's very clear they don't know what's going on. And so while it's true that many people were misreporting aircraft and things, there were clearly other cases. It's equally true that they could not identify the sources of the drones, for example, over Langley Air Force Base after weeks. They're moving an entire squadron of F-22s. They can't fly safely from the Air Combat Command headquarters that is supposed to be protecting the nation's capital, among other things. So if they can't control their own airspace, you know, what kind of a protection can we expect them to offer the capital and so forth? So deeply embarrassing situation for the administration, for the Air Force. And it's hard to reassure the public when they really don't have any facts. And people are understandably skeptical

3:11 because they're not able to offer any definitive information about what's going on. So they default to nothing to see here because they don't have any good answers. Yeah, I think they default to we're not seeing any hostility or aggression, no reason to panic, which is about the best they can do. Because they didn't even have any video after weeks of overflights of the Langley Air Force Base, the military claimed the Air Force that they didn't even have a single video of these things. How? That's how they do is reveal. How can they not know what's flying around over an airbase? Right, right. It's and when you combine that with what we see going on in Ukraine, for example, it's horrifying. I mean, we're completely the emperor's buck naked when it comes to protecting America from these drones, which are now highly

4:11 weaponized and precise. And of course, it bleeds into a larger question about what else is overflying America, because our pilots, military pilots are seeing a lot of crazy stuff. It's clearly not drones. I mean, 35,000 feet going 500 miles an hour. That's that's not a hobbyist drone or anything of the sort. Weeks of drone formations operating in the American West and no ability to track them down or identify them. Drones overflying the most sensitive parts of our airbase in Guam and hovering over the the ballistic missile defense battery and shining lights down on it like they're recording it and taking photographs of it on consecutive evenings. It goes on and on. Our bases overseas. This is happening in England. Nuclear power plants.

5:11 It's a very concerning, very concerning pattern. And I think within the government, there's kind of shock, embarrassment, a realization that that we're in a very vulnerable situation. What is your best sense of what we're dealing with? I think we're dealing with a range of things. And in some cases, my guess would be in Guam, for example, that was probably Chinese drones. I think there was some other cases involving Navy ships where it was most likely Chinese Recently, a young man was arrested. He was flying a drone over a naval shipyard in Virginia. A Chinese visitor to this country of students. And so there's that kind of traditional espionage that is being sort of accelerated with the implementation of drone technologies. But in addition, for years now, we've been

6:11 seeing things that defy not only sort of our understanding of what they are, where they're coming from, but how they even work. And we're seeing propulsion-less craft that are, in some cases, say, spheres six feet across with a cube inside that fly in formation that sometimes go supersonic speeds without breaking the sound barrier, seemingly, that are utterly baffling. The Nimitz case, as you know, is a great example of that, but that's only one example. And there are a great many more. It's actually becoming almost overwhelming when you look at the number of incidents that are occurring in places like Arizona, where our F-35 and F-22 pilots are training, and they're running in a single week. And they might have three or four different encounters just in that one area with objects that are just baffling. And you have so much experience in this area

7:13 and understanding how the government processes things and what it knows. And, you know, one of the reasons I think you're so helpful in this transparency push is, one, it's hard to dismiss you as a little green man fanatic. And you've worked for Republicans and Democrats in their administrations. What do you make of the pushback that someone like I, I've never been involved in the UFO, UAP world in my life. It is not a point of personal fascination. I'm a transparency guy. And what is your read on how people want to dismiss that, wow, what's happened to Cuomo, man? He's gone full tinfoil hat. Why is this so easy to dismiss for legitimate media when it's clearly just a transparency issue? How do you spend so much money, do so many operations, use special operators from the military if there's nothing for you to tell anybody?

8:13 Yeah, I think you're on a really great point here. There are a lot of problems here. And so you're raising sort of several different issues. One has to do with this issue of stigma. And many people are subliminally frightened, if not terrified, of this issue. It's very hard for a lot of people to process because it's so contrary to everything they've been taught and everything they believed. What we find, though, is, for example, there was a study of astronomers by an astronomer at Stanford. And what he found was that when astronomers who had been exposed to information about UAP, the more exposure they had, the more likely they were to support scientific research. So a lot of it is just plain ignorance. When you actually look at the historical record, it's overwhelming. So Sturek found, Professor Sturek, that if astronomers had had 50 hours of exposure to

9:14 UAP, two-thirds of them supported scientific involvement by the government and the scientific community. So ignorance is a huge factor. I would say cognitive dissonance is a huge factor. And this is sort of a circular argument because what happens is people who are skeptical resist collecting the information or efforts to collect it. And then, therefore, we don't have the information to show people, which reinforces the skepticism. And the government has been failing to release even unclassified information. And part of my message to congressmen is that there is a trove of information that should be unclassified, that is inappropriately classified, or simply no one has made the effort to submit it to be released. I think I took three videos that were unclassified to the press in 2018, 2017, as you know, New

10:16 York Times, Washington Post. That was, I was investigated. The Air Force confirmed that they were truly unclassified. Two years later, they created a classification guide that tries to suggest that exactly the same kinds of videos are now suddenly a threat to national security. Well, how is that possible? It makes no sense whatsoever. And yet, that's what they've done. If I may, I'd like to read a short excerpt from testimony before Congress of the Defense Department. So, Mr. Brave from the Office of Naval Intelligence was asked if they have a clear and repeatable process for considering public release. And he says, quote, what I will commit to, at least for that material that's under my authority as Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence, for information we have that does not involve sources or methods, etc., I commit to declassifying that. So I believe very much in the transparency of this, and we worked very hard to balance that with national security.

11:18 Well, to the best of my knowledge, they haven't declassified a single video since then. Yeah. Okay, that was three years ago, and we're now in over 1,800 official reports. You're telling me that none of those were unclassified? We know that a good number of them are people using iPhones. How is that a sensitive source of method? It's made in China. Some of them are guys using night vision goggles or handheld camcorders on the decks of Navy ships. Same question arises. What about the same targeting pod that was used to collect the videos, Gimbal and FLIR and so forth, that I shared with the press that actually helped national security? There are probably a couple dozen at least of those in the system taken in the same areas that haven't been released. So I think that this pledge has not been acted on. I think they're in breach of that commitment.

12:19 And my understanding from talking recently with government officials as part of the problem is there's nobody in the system who is an advocate for doing this. So it comes in, it sits on the computer, and there's not a single person who thinks, oh, the public has a right to see this, or we should get this out, or, oh, by the way, didn't we tell Congress we were going to do this? There are two problems. First one is the sources and methods boogeyman. Once you bracket the disclosure, and with all due respect to your intelligence background within the DOD and every other government agency, once you guys say, as long as it's not sources and methods, I know as a journalist, I'm not going to get what I want. Because you guys can tuck anything you want under that category. So how much of a kind of an obstacle is that just automatically? Well, this is what I'm trying to say. I believe the current classification guy that you're referring to violates the

13:19 president's executive order on classification. I think they have classified inappropriately, in violation of that order, a considerable amount of UAP material. And there are some wrinkles in here. Sometimes this information sits on a communication backbone that mixes classified and unclassified. And so they have to go through a process, but they're clearly not making good on this commitment. And at the time, I argued against this declassification guide. It was clear to me that it was greatly overstepping its bounds and unnecessarily and inappropriately doing so. I don't know how you can say that an iPhone video is a sources and methods issue, unless it's in a denied area or it's showing something of ours that is very secret. Of course, there are those kind of situations. Setting all that aside, there's no doubt in

14:21 my mind that there is a pile of imagery that would be useful for educating the public. It would be useful to the scientific community. It would be useful to Congress. And remember that even the congressmen who have access to classified material, theoretically, it's not often that it gets outside. It's not often that it's actually shared with them. And when it is, it's a limited number of committees. The best way to get this information to Congress is also through the press. And so the failure in that regard, I think, is huge. Support comes from cozy earth. Oh, I love my cozy earth. Why? I love the materials that they use because I like responsible companies and I like people who are thinking about the environmental effects of what they do. But also, I love the wear factor.

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16:23 So, as a result of the lack of transparency, it has fueled the fantastical notions, the paranoia. And how do you deal with the question of the unknown being explained as a function of the extraterrestrial? That if they won't tell us what it is, that's because it's from out of this world. Yeah. So, it's possible some of these things are from out of this world. And that's a legitimate hypothesis. It's natural that in a case like the Nimitz case that people would go to that hypothesis because it actually works. I think their failure to be more forthcoming obviously supports all kinds of conspiracy theories and discontent and so forth. So, this administration has been good on the JFK issue for what I can see and they're moving to get MLK records out.

17:25 They've got this declassification task force. Representative Burleson has said he's going to hold hearings. He's going to issue subpoenas where necessary. So, we may see some new information coming forth. I certainly hope so. I think there's an opportunity here to do that. And I think the public has a right. But not only is there a right in principle, there are actual, you know, utilitarian benefits from this. If the public didn't know about the Soviet Union putting a satellite in orbit, we wouldn't have had the space program and we wouldn't have gotten to the moon when we did. Thankfully, the intelligence community was not able to snuff that. They would have if they could have and kept it out of the public, you know, knowledge and domain. So, I think it's really important where we can that we make this information available. It also makes the public more resilient in the event that something happens beyond our control. The more background knowledge and

18:27 information people have, the more resilient the population is. If they know this has been going on for decades, maybe hundreds of years, we haven't seen aggression. They're more likely in the event that something shocking happens to be able to accommodate it without, you know, overreacting. What do you make of the idea when you say, well, there is a hypothesis where you introduce the possibility that this comes from somewhere other than this planet, that you immediately lose credibility? As soon as you say that, three quarters, maybe seven eighths of the media and any politician who aspires to higher office says, well, that's crazy sauce right there. Yeah, I've been careful. You know, the problem is if you can't back up a claim like that, you know, I'm prepared to say that if I can back it up. I don't have anything that I can take, present to the public right now that says

19:30 the Tic Tac was definitely an alien vehicle. And in the meantime, our government has not defined any criteria that would let us say, okay, this is so over the line. It can't be Russia or China or us. It's got to be somebody else. So they don't have any basis for, they're deliberately leaving it fudgy. It's a very hard issue for people in the Pentagon. Nobody wants to say the word alien or think about this for these exact reasons. It's still a, there's still a lot of stigma and that's still a big issue. So a lot of this is about where we are also. One of the reasons I'm pushing it as much as I do is because we are at the bottom of a curve of trust right now. And I've always felt that this issue is a layup for restoring trust.

20:30 Okay. It's not like, you know, and with all due respect to people who have more wild notions than I do. I don't believe the U.S. I don't believe the U.S. government can keep a meaningful secret, frankly. So if there was, well, listen, we really have aliens in a lab and they're just starting to talk to us. So we don't want to blow this up, you know, or, you know, we got them right in a room next to Jesus. And we don't want to freak people out. If even, you know, with that kind of mythology in the air, I don't believe that that's the defense. Is that the government's protecting us from something that we just can't handle. I think it's more about giving people power and their desire to want to use it. And you need transparency right now because there's such a dearth of trust. And this to me is like a layup because unless you got Jesus in a room, unless you got little green men who are finally starting to talk, you can tell people about so much of this stuff and make them have

21:33 growing levels of confidence in the men and women who they put in power. Yeah, I would disagree with you on the issue of the government not being able to keep secrets. And in fact, it's, you said meaningful So if that, by that you mean something that's politically loaded, that's explosive or something maybe. But I can tell you that people have such a lack of understanding of how much information we have secret that they don't appreciate the extent, the massive extent of government secrecy and the degree to which, in some cases, nobody even in Congress has a clue. So when I was involved in reviewing black programs at DOD, I won't state this precise number, but we're talking lots, hundreds, not a single one of those leaked. And the director of central intelligence was not cleared for those.

22:34 I was not able to share some of that information with the advisors to the president and the National Security Council in some cases. The Department of Energy black programs, there is no oversight committee in Congress except for DOD approves. And their black programs, I think, are completely off the radar. And they have tens of billions of dollars. There are tons of black programs out there that never leak over decades and decades, some of which are certainly newsworthy, much as, say, the B-2 bomber was when it came out. Everybody was shocked we had this incredible technology. There are other things like that today that we have quite a few of them, and nobody has any idea. So I would challenge the idea. The other thing I would say when it comes to this particular issue, it's almost impossible to leak. You cannot go to any major media organization in this country. I can bring people in there who claim they worked on this program. They will not write a story about it.

23:34 They won't publish it. They won't touch it. People have tried to leak this for years and years. And that same idea of this is incredible, we're going to be laughed at. The mainstream news organizations won't touch it. It's almost leak-proof. Well. I took David Grush and introduced him to some editors at one of the major outlets, and they didn't feel there was anything there worth publishing. Well, that's clearly changed. And I think News Nation actually has had a good amount to do with that because it's obviously a legitimate organization. It's owned by the largest holder of local news stations in America, Nexstar. So if we're putting our name on it, same as me having it on my chest, it comes. I will concede you are a brave, shining exception. But over the years, until News Nation came along, it's very hard to find any place that would touch this. It's scary. Even if you brought in witnesses, et cetera. It's scary because having been an anchor at

24:37 ABC News, at CNN, even at Fox News before that, people think you're unserious. You're unserious. If you're talking about aliens, you're unserious. Now, let's deal with something that's a very sticky bit about that. There are so many people who call themselves Christians who think it's absurd to talk about the idea of life outside of Earth. So you have billions of people like me who have chosen to have faith in something that I cannot demonstrate in any way, but I won't talk about the possibility that this is the only organic matter that has been able to use carbon the way it has been used on Earth anywhere in the universe. Somewhat laughable when you look at it that way, but it's too deep for media and politics. I agree with what you said about secrets and that there are many things in the unknown, knowable space. I agree with you.

25:37 I don't know what you know, but I agree with you. I'm talking about this, that if there were aliens among us, I think that people would have a sense of it by now. I think that'd be too hard to keep. That's just my suspicion. But the most important and accessible part of this is that whatever the interest is in discretion by those with the information, it is backfiring. Nobody believes that things are being kept from the American people for their own good or for national security when it comes to this. They believe it's either deep state elitism or it's nonsense. But the lack of transparency, I think, hurts. Nobody has confidence that it's being withheld for the right reasons. Yeah, I can't argue with you on that. And there's a lot of work to be done to

26:38 restore faith in the government and restore trust. This issue in particular is one of the prime examples, and it does lead to all manner of conspiracy theories and beliefs. And I think the best antidote is getting to ground truth to the extent we can. And I know that there is some unclassified information right now in the hands of the government that is the kind of thing that would have some impact, that would change some lines or at least open some to considering this issue. That information is available to make public. I can't imagine any legitimate argument for classification. And so I'm hoping that with this new pressure from Congress and from people like yourself raising this issue, that that information will start to get to the public

27:39 to help them better decide for themselves. Not to convince them of a particular point of view, but to help them better appreciate what people in the government are seeing, what the military is seeing, and what the bottom line is. Right. And it's a double-edged sword. So there's the, you won't tell us anything. And then there's the, you'll tell us some things. So that takes us to the JFK issue. My problem with the disclosure there is, whatever you don't release becomes the most powerful aspect of the pursuit. So they dumped a bunch of JFK files. Everybody hires people and different AI tools for search engines to go through it. The collective response now, other than a bullshit story that came out about John F. Kennedy Jr. sending a letter to someone he never sent to, it was fake. Nothing really came out that changed anybody's understanding.

28:39 And so all it does is raise suspicions as to what they haven't released. And now I'm not as worried about it with JFK, frankly, as I am with Dr. King. And the obvious reason is because of the added layer of suspicion based on race and preference. So then I'm worried that when that story doesn't come out in full, it now has a really dark aspect, no pun intended, about, well, why aren't they telling us this? What's being covered up? And there's going to be a whole new cottage industry of who killed Dr. King, which is not great for his family. And I don't think it's great for the country. So what is your best advice for the men and women doing the job when it comes to if you're going to disclose stuff, what should you keep in mind as government workers? Well, the executive order on classification tries to strike a reasonable going in position, which is when in doubt, declassify

29:41 it. That is what we're supposed to be doing under the executive order. If it's ambiguous at all, whether it's going to damage national security, you should err on the side of releasing it. And we're not doing that in the UAP area where it's particularly difficult because there are clearly systems involved that are so intimately tied to supporting combat operations, military systems, that there is a definitely legitimate argument for retaining classification of some of that data. So the government needs, but the government needs to lean forward and show that it's doing what they can consistent with national security and the best interests of the country. And they're not, they're clearly not doing that. I think if you establish the baseline of credibility and we're putting out a lot of this data and seem to be trying to answer the mail, people might give you more slack

30:44 when they come, when they, at the point where they say, well, we're sorry that this particular satellite image we can't release because of, you know, X or Y. That would have more credibility. We're not there. We're a long way from that. Right. And look, part of the frustration with St. Grush is that to hear him say, look, I'm telling you, I'm not allowed to say, but I'm telling you, there are things here to be known. I don't want to get prosecuted for telling it when you guys won't protect me, but I'm telling you, there's stuff to know that is very knowable. But, you know, the American people hear it and they're like, all right, this guy can't say it because he doesn't want to have the rest of his life ruined. This is ballsy enough for him to come out in the first place. And now all these people are going to say he's a nut job. But it just reinforces everything. I think the JFK disclosures did it. I mean, the Trump administration is trying to take a victory lap. I don't know why. And I think they're going to have the same

31:45 problem with MLK that they had with UAPs. It's just not as many people cared about UAPs as they do about JFK and even more are going to care about Dr. King, depending on how it's spun. You know, you guys, not you, but the government gets a lot of break on UAP because people think it's silly. Yeah, yeah. I don't know why there would be anything that couldn't be released regarding JFK and Martin Luther King. Right. I don't know. I mean, everybody's dead. Yeah. After this period of time, it's hard to imagine what sensitive source or method there could possibly be. So, and I do think that, as you said correctly, the bits that you don't release, if you hold on to anything, that immediately becomes the, fills the vacuum of every conspiracy theorist that, you know, aha. Yeah. You know, they're not releasing that part because that's the part that says there's a second gunman or whatever. And it's weaponized, it's weaponized information based on a lack of, of disclosure and knowledge.

32:45 Like, for instance, okay, on a very easy level to deal with, I still have people from Bush II's administration, George W. Bush, telling me that there was yellow cake. They did find weapons in Iraq. There was stuff there that that wasn't, you know, that that stuff wasn't all fake, that brought down Colin Powell, you know, that led us into war with Iraq that was completely fugazi. And people like me who went there and embed programs, there was never anything found like that. They still say it, Chris, they still say, oh, no, there was, there was some stuff. See, that's part of the issue here. I hear Ari Fleischer. Oh, no, no, no, no, there was stuff. I mean, we had real reason to believe it's all bullshit, but that's the representation of it. I was, I was at the Pentagon and I was also at the Senate Intelligence Committee during that time and they found absolutely nothing except for some forged documents and it was outrageous.

33:45 And that is a whole subject unto itself, but, you know, they were blaming the intelligence community when, when in fact there were policymakers who were putting memos on top of the intelligence reports going forward. Saying, oh, this is bunk, ignore the intelligence. We're telling you that Saturn really has links to terrorist groups and so forth and so on to advance the war effort. And yeah, there's, it's, there's no question that he had no, no WFD program whatsoever. But that is, see, that's the power here that we're dealing with, right? No, you don't know, Chris, but I know. And I'm telling you, just trust me. This is why we have to, and then fill in the blank, go to war, fear Russia. I now believe the same thing. And again, I'm not a conspiracist and I'm not even cynical. I'm really not. Even 25 years into this business, I'm a hopeless optimist, which I know is a little

34:45 bit of an oxymoron, but it's where my, it's where my, my head is. I believe the Cold War was a complete fabrication. I believe that we decided to exaggerate Russia's potential and it allowed the industrial military complex to build up and everybody's agenda was soothed here at home. And there was no real downside because nobody loved Russia to begin with ever since the Yalta conference and the suspicions that grew out of that. And it hit home for me. And again, I'm not, I'm not a conspiracist. I'm always open to being wrong. It just, it just fuels understanding. When Lugar and Nunn did that great program where they were trying to clean up nukes, I went over to Russia as part of the entree in that. And they sent me out into Siberia, Moscow, and then St. Petersburg. But eventually we wound up in outer Siberia, a place called Shusha. And one of the many places they kept, uh, small biological and maybe potentially

35:47 nuclear weapons. And they were keeping them in a barn. Okay. And when we walked into the barn, we walked up to the barn. I noticed that all the Russian military I saw had mixed matched uniforms on and almost none of them had weapons. And I was like, I don't understand. They were, you know, they're, they're, they're guarding this. And the guy's like, well, a lot of them sell the weapons. And then we get there and the door is locked with a string and a wax seal. And the guy says, well, if the wax seal is broken, we knew people came in. I was like, you mean like the Chechens that are like a 50 minute helicopter ride away and want to kill all of you right now? And I realized what, and then Ukraine. So right then, uh, this was many years ago. I was like, these people are not us. Okay. Like there's no way these guys can run with us. And then, but they have nukes. I get it. You don't want to mess with them. They have nukes. Okay. Then Ukraine happens.

36:47 And only in Trump land, is there any understanding that Russia is kicking Ukraine's ass. Okay. And, you know, you lived it. I lived it. Nobody thought that this was going to last more than a few days. Right. They were going to roll right over and into Kiev. But it turns out that, and now the new answer is, oh, well, Russia doesn't want to use its citizens. Oh, that's why he just called up another 122,000 of them, right? Oh, they're just using all the prisoners because he doesn't want to use the real military here. Like he just wants to use the farm team. I think it's all bullshit. And that's the need for transparency, Chris, is that if you start with something easy, when nobody gets hurt, which is like, what's in the air? Okay. Who's flying stuff around here that we have to figure out about? Who should be allowed? Who shouldn't be allowed? This is not geopolitical in a way that we see with like Russia and Ukraine. You're not going to scare anybody. We're not, it's not an army of Martians. I just believe it's a huge missed

37:48 opportunity that has magnified the animus towards government. Well, you're certainly right about that. And that's partly reflected in President Trump's election and support that he got from many people who are, you know, fed up with this kind of thing and suspicious of the government. But we have a huge issue here. Two comments briefly. One, with regard to the Soviet Union, when I was responsible for reviewing counterintelligence security for the Secretary of Defense, one of the things I used to remind our officers was that we didn't defeat the Soviet Union because we were better at keeping secrets. We defeated them because we defeated them because we were better at sharing information in free markets and through the free press that made us more innovative, productive, efficient, and all those kinds of things. So, you know, it's not about protecting information generally is the top priority or

38:52 the key to security. The second thing I would say is that in this splintered information environment where people are getting their information from partisan sources and so forth, I don't know how we get back to the days once that we had with, you know, Walter Cronkite and people that were reasonably nonpartisan and we had sort of a common information base. It's very hard to debate, it's very hard to debate, it's very hard to debate, discuss policy options where you can't even agree on the basic facts. And I don't know. I've often been thinking, you know, is there a possibility we could get some kind of a news information source? It's truly bipartisan where you have buy-in from, you know, maybe representatives from both parties or some kind of, or none of the people there are registered to either party or something. I don't think people have good options right now for sources they can rely on and feel are really independent, rightly or wrongly.

39:54 You hear that from both sides. Yeah, look, I don't know, I mean, look, that's why I'm doing this, right? That's why I'm at News Nation. And yet, and yet, one, no podcast can compete except on a one-off basis with a legitimate media organization. You don't have the resources, you don't have the sourcing, you don't have the reach, you don't have the layers. Reporting is about layers, not unlike, you know, your acumen within the intelligence world. It's layers, it's what adds, what subtracts, what qualifies, what contextualizes. That's why investigative reporting is both expensive, but more importantly, timely. And so I believe there's a little bit of player hating that goes on with independent versus legacy media on the basis of wanting market share, right? So Joe Rogan, oh, don't trust anybody but me. I have everyone here on. Yeah, you just don't know what the fuck you're talking about and can't ask a critical

40:55 question. So, you know, there's a little bit of that to me that's specious on its face. As an independent, you know, operator within it who's also been within the media, I know I can't out-report CNN or ABC News. They're going to beat me on a story. I may have you one day, right? I may have Chris, and Chris told me something that they didn't have, and now I advance a story. But that's a one-off. Over time, resources matter. Reporting matters. Walter Cronkite was good to me. He and his wife, Betty, were good to me. I enjoyed time with them socially. I enjoyed mentoring from Walter. Walter Cronkite, may he rest in peace, would have been the first to say what follows. Walter Cronkite was never Walter Cronkite. What you had was three options. And for a while, you really only had two. At first, you really just had CBS. Then you had CBS and NBC. Then you had CBS, NBC, and ABC, okay? So you really just had scarcity.

41:55 So you had three guys, and you had a different culture of what we now call democratization of media. Everybody's got a platform now. Yeah. And you have media that has become not just multiplied, but has become much more competitive in terms of what works. And like every other market, you always go to what's easiest, right? And what's easiest? Provocativeness, salaciousness, sex, those kinds of scandal, those things. So we just see more of what has always existed. Walter Cronkite took one big swing in his career. And again, this, I know Walter would absolutely endorse everything I'm saying right now. And probably is pissed that I haven't talked about him more sooner about correcting this idea of an earlier perfect past. He complained about the war. He cried because of what he knew was happening. He cried because he realized that, as he

42:57 explained to me, that he had been so wrong in what he had relied on for so long. And that hurt his credibility. Now, it's what we point to about Walter Cronkite. In that moment, it hurt Walter a lot and made him seem like a closet pinko and all this other stuff that they said about him. So it's very interesting how history, you know, reveals itself and heals itself. So where are we today? We are in a space of opportunity that is being used and abused on a nano scale that it's happening so fast in such small increments all the time that it's very tough to get a read. But within it is an opportunity, which is why I have such a value on you and why I have a dual platform, right? Because when you're on TV, why would you also have a podcast? There are very few people who do it, unless

43:58 it's like a podcast on grief or a podcast on food, you know, or some shit like that where it's like your pet project. For me, the reason to do it is because of the opportunity for better. The bar, the feelings are so low. I don't know that you know or realize or appreciate what you, what Grush, even what Corbell, even though he doesn't come from a government background, which makes you much more valuable. You've been so helpful to so many American people, not because they've got a shirt on that says, I was abducted, meet my wife, but because they trust that you were somebody who did the job for us, who's telling us the truth about things. And that you, like there's only one thing that's more rare than a Martian, is someone in government that you can trust, right? And that you, Grush, a handful of others have helped restore that. So I see opportunity in it. Not that people don't know where to go. People are looking for echo chambers.

45:01 They're looking for sucker, S-U-C-C-O-R, in terms of what they wanted to take in. But I also think that there's reaction formation to that. And what we see in our market testing at News Nation is that we're overweighted, independent, critical thinkers who do not want to ascribe to any allegiance. Not that they're anti-America, but that they're, I'm not a Democrat. I'm not a Republican. I'm offended by them. I'm a critical thinker. I don't believe you. Don't tell me what to think. Just tell me why you think what you think. Let me deal with it. So I think that's growing also, Chris. And I think that you probably see a lot of that with who's following you now and why, that they're not just hobbyists. Well, thank you for your kind words. Just the truth. I try to follow a simple dictum, which is simply to share what I can as I know it and not go beyond that. And it seems to keep me out of trouble most

46:02 of the time. And so I feel passionately about these issues. I think that, again, one of the huge discrepancies between the perspective of some of us who are really seized with this issue in the general public is we're familiar with the huge cumulative volume of history associated with us. And we've had personal discussions, interaction with the Navy pilots and with the radar operators and so forth. And that cannot help but have a powerful effect on you. So, you know, I'm really, you know, honored by your comments. I miss being in the government. I love serving the country. It was the I have no regrets about my career. And if I can help in some way from out here in the past years of retirement, I'm delighted to do so. What do you think the next couple of steps are in the search for truth and more

47:06 importantly, more importantly, strategy of what we need to do where UAPs are involved? Great question. So we're in a bit of a we've lost some ground in the last couple of years with Senator Rubio going to the administration. For example, he was a strong supporter on the Senate Intelligence Committee. We don't enjoy the support of the chair or ranking of the committees that have jurisdiction over DOD and the intelligence committee. That's a huge problem. And we had more support a few years ago. The actions on the House side are very helpful. But remember, they're not cleared for all of the information, even in closed session, because they don't serve on certain committees and they don't have necessarily the leverage, the ability to get language into the authorization bills and so forth.

48:06 I think we need to do to make headway. We need to build more of a consensus on the Hill as part of it. And you do that in an incremental way. Some people are swinging for the fences in disclosure, you know, where they envision, I guess, a press conference where the president comes out and just, you know, bears everything. I doubt that's going to happen anytime soon. So I think in the meantime, the best approach is to try to produce more of this information that will help to inform the American people about what's really going on. Part of it is this declassification. Part of it is convincing the committees that do have oversight and jurisdiction of DOD to ask more probing questions that will produce more information for all concerned. So, for example, if you ask the Air Force,

49:07 there's a strange thing I've been pointing out for a number of years now, which is why is it that all the reports that we get are coming in from ships and aircraft and these huge radar systems that NORAD has are not reporting anything. Even when they're looking at the same areas where all this activity is happening. So is this a Chinese balloon problem where they don't have the filters set right or whatever it is, we need to fix it because we're dealing with a huge drone issue. If Congress puts language in their authorization bill requiring reports on this, which they should, absolutely, because we have a huge air defense issue. And ask the question, for example, how often did you launch jets from strip alert and what happened in those circumstances? What did you find? Because they see they track thousands of uncorrelated targets over North America every year. But there's a small and so they'll throw

50:08 those statistics at you. And it's kind of like, you know, where do you go from there? If you ask the question, tell us about the ones where you actually launched armed aircraft from strip alert. Those are the ones where they really got excited about something. And I know there are cases that they haven't been telling Aero about where they've launched from strip alert. I've proven that with a specific case. I think there's a lot of data that's not even reaching Aero, much less Congress or the American people. And I think that kind of information, which doesn't require an appropriation, would help the taxpayer and the oversight committees better understand the effectiveness and the holes in our air defense system. And also could be very informative with regard to UAP. So I think there are questions that can be asked that will help to produce additional information that will help to expand the consensus and the number of members who are interested and want to take action. And better inform the public and like the

51:10 inkblot strategy and counterinsurgency, you build out from the beachhead. You know, you build out from that. What are your top three questions? Ah, so I guess my first question would be, what are these massive multibillion dollar air and space surveillance systems seeing with regard to UAP? We've been getting essentially no reporting. They cover immense areas, 367, I mean, 365 by, you know, 24. And we're talking all the oceans, the Arctic and everything else in space. And so I think we need to know how well those systems are working for a whole lot of reasons and what they're seeing with regard to UAP. Are we seeing things in orbit, et cetera? So that would be a question that has, that serves a number of different audiences, I think. The UAP group, as well as national security,

52:11 et cetera. That would be, that would be the first. The second is, when are you going to revise those classification guides? And what are you going to do to a related problem is not just the classification guides, but nobody feels it's their job or their duty to submit this stuff into the process to get it out to the public, to do the paperwork. So who's going to be the advocate? Mr. Bray said in this hearing that he's going to do this for the Navy, but to the best of my knowledge, they haven't produced a single, released a single video or photograph as a result of this. So who's going to be doing this if they're, if they're not, that's very doable and should be done. As we're going down the list, I think I would love to see a, again, doesn't even require an appropriation. They've bungled the history report requirement, in my view, completely bungled it. Congress asked for the history of UAP in the

53:12 U.S. government. I wrote a 14,000-word article dissecting that. It was appallingly bad, in my view. I think they should ask for an oral history of the UAP issue. And they could get, that we have military historians and others in the government who are official historians. They have clearances. They can do the interviews and skiffs. Get in the former secretaries of the Air Force. Get in the former heads of the National Security Council. You could even do, you know, talk to former presidents, former secretaries of defense. And you wouldn't be able to release it all immediately. We'd have something that no one's ever done that would be an invaluable historical record for the future. And it might settle a lot of these questions once and for all, if not immediately, then down the road. I think that would be something that would have enduring historical value that costs virtually nothing and would be original historical research as opposed to them just

54:14 sort of regurgitating Project Blue Book stuff and whatever. And let me give one quick example, if I may, of the kind of things that could be surfaced. So I was on the set of a documentary being filmed, talking to former DNI Jim Clapper. And he mentioned when he was director of Air Force Intelligence, a problem they were having with UAP flying over one of our most sensitive test ranges. Well, this didn't come out in the history report, nobody at Aero, I think, has any idea about this. And what it demonstrates is how wrong the report was that they put out, which asserted that everybody's just seeing our stealth aircraft and stuff. Well, it turns out the people seeing our stealth aircraft were alarmed by the UFOs they were seeing. And they were actually, you know, putting in requests to have a security response to figure out where these UFOs were coming from. So that's the kind of thing, if you had an oral history, how much of that kind of stuff

55:15 would you surface? I don't know. But there'd be a lot of new information that's never been out there before. And it could address a range of issues from have we recovered crash materials to, you know, what's going on with these nuclear power plants and ICBM facilities and all that kind of stuff. Someone said to me, and they really captured it perfectly, that all you need to know about this subject is that the only meaningful disclosure or change that's happened in the last several years is changing vocabulary from UFO to UAP. And I hadn't really thought, other than having some initial confusion as to why I had to change my vernacular, but then I never thought about it again because I just had to... How true is that? That why did that change happen? And like, who made that happen? And how did it help anything?

56:17 Well, there was... The UFO term is so freighted with baggage. And you say UFO, people immediately think aliens. And so part of it was just a effort to get something that was a little more neutral, a little bit less loaded. That was part of it. Part of it also was looking for terminology that would try to express even that we're not just interested... The Congress is not just interested in aerial phenomenon. It could be under the ocean. It could be in space. They're interested in anomalies wherever they occur. The Air Force, incidentally, in typical sort of response, initially the term was unidentified aerial phenomenon. And they said, oh, we don't have to tell you about anything in space then. Because you didn't mention space, you just said aerial. So that was partly why it became, you know, unidentified anomalous phenomenon. All domain anomalous phenomenon. I really wanted to hammer, guys, we really mean, you know, like wherever it is, if you

57:18 see something that looks like it could be a breakthrough in technology that we don't have, we want to know about it. Because it's important. And I don't know, I had suggested originally a term, anomaly resolution, an office that would take hard technical problems, anomalies, and work them with, from a lot of angles. And I don't know if that, how that morphed or where this actually started. But I think largely it was an effort to get away from UFO, which was so loaded. I mean, you know, they just always say, oh, well, yeah, it came out of the Pentagon. And I always found that odd because they'd like want to talk about this the least. And yet the only thing that's really changed is what they did. Yeah, I don't know. I don't think it started in the Pentagon. I don't think that term, but I could be wrong. I think actually, I think maybe Jay Stratton has said that he originated that.

58:19 That's possible. I'm not really certain. Perhaps it did come from over there. They say the Pentagon's Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force, UAPTF, and its successor, the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office. That came from Congress. That term came from Congress. It's like, man, we just twist ourselves up. Did you see the term that DOD had before that? A-I-O-S-G, something or other, that they were proposing to call the office? As awkward as it is, they had something that was even worse, if you can believe that. I do, because I think it goes to the desperation is probably the best word, to control. I think ultimately, the truth of this, of this frustration, of this difficulty, of this hand-wringing, is about control. And people being invested with power who believe that that means that they must control.

59:21 And I'm sure you've seen that many, many different ways, many different times in your work in the government. And I'm sure you've seen it, and I've seen it myself, is that it's about control. The JFK, the JFK, the MLK, I remember the first time Trump was president, everybody thought the JFK stuff was going to come out. Next thing I know, I'm hearing from one of his guys, it's not going to happen. Why? Because somebody made the case that you're going to embarrass parts of the government that you're now in control of, and you need them to like you, and you don't want people to think that they shouldn't trust you. It's not worth it. Leave it alone. And they were like, okay, if there's downside to this, why would we do it? And it was as simple as that, like, you know, I was going to do this because I thought it was a layup. If it's not a layup, if I might get some stink on me because of this, I'm not doing it. Who cares anyway? The guy's dead. And that was it. And it was gone. So I really believe it all comes down to control. What is your, I'll leave on this. What is your best basis for hope that we get

1:00:21 more and better in terms of transparency on this? Well, number one, we do have still some interested parties in Congress who are willing to shake the tree. That's extremely helpful. And I'm hoping that there's still some on the Senate side, although fewer than there were a couple of years ago. And I'm hoping that will build rather than recede. Secondly, we have a lot of collection now that is being established and going on beyond the government's control. So the Galileo Project, for example, is establishing its own sensor sites. There's an organization called Enigma Labs that has got an app and people can report and take videos and submit them. And there's some other organizations like MUFON that are doing that. And I recently just saw an iPhone video that was very compelling. And I hope it will, it's in the government's hands, I hope it will soon be released.

1:01:26 So I think those are probably the leading causes for optimism. This administration, with this effort on the JFK records and so forth, seems to be leaning towards responding to this desire to declassify and get things out, the House Task Force. So there are some positive, some positive developments. There are still some whistleblowers coming forward. So there are an array of things that that are going to continue that I think are going to incrementally produce more information. And I think it's going to be increasingly difficult down the line for the government to pretend there's nothing there. There's no there there. And in fact, the current director, it's a very refreshing change. Dr. Kozlowski has admitted UAP are real. We're seeing things we don't understand. That alone is a big change from his predecessor at any point in the past.

1:02:28 The U.S. government is officially saying, yeah, UAP are real and we're seeing things we don't understand. Well, at least we're all on the same page, even if it's just page one. It would be good for something to change other than the acronyms. Christopher Mellon, I appreciate your contribution so much. Thank you for coming to us at News Nation. Thank you for coming to us here at the Chris Cuomo Project. I'm always a call away if you have anything to say to advance our understanding. Well, thank you very much for having me and thank you for interested in this topic. Really appreciate it. Christopher Mellon, you can't say he doesn't know. You can't say he doesn't get government. You can't say that this is too sophisticated for him. The reality is that trust comes from transparency. Transparency builds trust. You want people to feel differently about government? Have government make them feel differently. The only thing we've changed is the acronyms.

1:03:29 What do they know? What do we need to know? Christopher Mellon laid it all out and I appreciate you for being here with me to get after it. I'm Chris Cuomo. Thank you for subscribing and following. Thank you for checking me out at News Nation, 8p, 11p every weekday night. Be an independent, critical thinker. Forget the parties. Wear your independence with your free agent gear. You love the pod. You don't want to go through the ads. I love my sponsors, but I get it. Join my subs stack for just $5 a month, $50 a year. That's a discount of $10. I'll do the math for you. And you also get a lot of philosophy, a lot of access to me and why I'm covering what I'm covering and how, and my wellness journey that involves fitness, but also long COVID and what I'm taking and what's working for me and what isn't and why. It's all there and it's cheap and you get the podcast ad free. All right, my friends, the problems are real. So should be our approach.

1:04:31 What do you control? What do you not? Forget what you don't and what you do. Let's get after it. Thank you.