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Christopher Mellon

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Christopher Karl Mellon
Christopher Mellon in 2023
EducationColby College (BA)
Yale University (MA)
Years active1985-present
Organization(s)United States Senate, Department of Defense, Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, To the Stars Academy of Arts and Sciences, The Galileo Project
Known forCongressional staff, intelligence community oversight, UFOs
Notable workLaw that created United States Special Operations Command
TelevisionUnidentified: Inside America's UFO Investigation
Political partyRepublican
MovementDisclosure movement[1]
RelativesMatthew Mellon
FamilyMellon family
Websitechristophermellon.net

Christopher Karl Mellon is an American former Department of Defense and United States Senate civilian staff member whose career from 1985 to 2017 focused on defense and intelligence oversight. He is an advocate for transparency in government investigations of UFOs.

Mellon began his career by working for the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee, later serving as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence for the Clinton and Bush administrations. He helped draft legislation establishing the United States Special Operations Command and took part in a Department of Defense investigation of unidentified aerial phenomena. During his years of staff service on Capitol Hill and at the Department of Defense, Mellon worked for senators William Cohen, John Chafee, John Warner, and Jay Rockefeller, and under Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Mellon worked as part of a committee tasked with oversight of the U.S. Department of Defense's special access programs (SAPs). He was involved with the disclosure of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) and gave the Pentagon UFO videos to the New York Times as part of his broader efforts to raise awareness about UFOs.

Early life and education

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His parents, Karl Negley Mellon and Ann, met as teenagers and later eloped.[2]: 528  Karl, a trucker and fishing boat crewman, divorced Ann and was estranged from Christopher.[2]: 528 [3] Mellon was raised in inner city Chicago in circumstances described as "difficult".[4] He was declined enlistment in the United States Army owing to his response to an application question that asked about recent marijuana use, according to Mellon family biographer David E. Koskoff.[2]: 565  Mellon has a sister, Andrea, and a brother, Matthew, who died in 2018.[5][2]: 528 

Education

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Mellon graduated from Loomis Chaffee and enrolled at Colby College, where he was initiated into Kappa Delta Rho, worked part-time coaching youth soccer, and considered dropping out of college.[2]: 564  He received a Bachelor of Arts in economics from Colby and a master's degree in international relations from Yale University, with a concentration in finance and management.[6] Koskoff described Mellon in his youth as popular, and "a 1960s college boy at a 1950s college" in regard to his time at Colby and Waterville.[2]: 564 

Family

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Mellon is a member of the Mellon family and a descendant of both Thomas Mellon and William Larimer Mellon Sr.[7] He is the grandson of Matthew T. Mellon and Gertrud (née Altegoer) Mellon.[8][3] The Mellon family began fracturing into largely disconnected branches in the 1930s.[9][2]: 562  Koskoff wrote that the extended Mellon family is "a large, amorphous group" with little contact among branches and "virtually no sense of 'Mellonhood'".[2]: 562  Mellon is a member of a Pennsylvanian branch of the family; in 2024, Vanity Fair quoted a member of the Virginia–D.C. family line descended from Andrew W. Mellon that the Pennsylvanians and Virginians rarely meet.[10] During his college years at Colby, Koskoff reported that Mellon had not read any of the family writings other than Matthew's books and his uncle James Ross Mellon's African Hunter.[2]: 564  He maintained little contact with his wider Mellon kin, but met other family members when James took him hunting at the Rolling Rock Club.[2]: 564  In adulthood, Mellon redeveloped a relationship with his father, Karl, prior to the elder Mellon's death by suicide in 1983.[3][8]

Government career

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Beginning in 1985, Mellon served in various United States Senate staff positions on Capitol Hill, including a decade as a professional staffer of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), before joining the Department of Defense in 1997.[6] In 2003, Mellon returned as a Senate staffer for the SSCI.[11]

United States Special Operations Command

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Main article: United States Special Operations Command

As a legislative assistant to William Cohen, Mellon participated in drafting the bill that led to the creation of the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM or SOCOM) in the National Defense Authorization Act for 1987 (NDAA).[12]: 136  Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, William G. Boykin, reported that Mellon encouraged Cohen to take a leading role in the effort.[13]: 5  By 1985, Cohen and Mellon were interested in reforming United States Special Operations Forces (SOF).[12]: 125  Cohen was approached by "former special operations people" seeking his help in "helping to rebuild SOF."[13]: 5 

In 1985, House of Representatives staffer Ted Lunger approached Mellon to win Senate backing for Dan Daniel’s special operations reform bill.[12]: 125  Cohen and Mellon's interest in SOF reform intensified after the October 1985 Senate Committee on Armed Services report Defense Reorganization: The Need for Change.[12]: 125 [14] At a preliminary conference committee meeting, Mellon and his staff team argued the Daniel bill conflicted with the Goldwater–Nichols Act, whereas the Senate's Cohen–Nunn approach still let the Department of Defense craft its own long-term solution.[12]: 141  The 1986 reform bill from Cohen's office, largely written by Mellon, relied on ideas from Senate Armed Services Committee staff member Jim Locher.[12]: 136  While drafting the bill that would lead to the creation of USSOCOM, Mellon was unaware of an earlier Strategic Services (STRATSERCOM) proposal on the SOF topic.[12]: 136  Boykin noted in The Origins of the United States Special Operations Command that Mellon contributed many of the ideas in the reform bill related to low-intensity conflicts.[13]: 19  In a 1988 interview Mellon recalled that the SOF problem had been unknown to him when he first began drafting the legislation in early 1986.[12]: 134  Mellon credited both Locher and Andrew Krepinevich's work in The Army and Vietnam.[12]: 135 

Department of Defense tenure

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When Cohen became United States Secretary of Defense (SecDef) in 1997, Mellon accompanied him to the Pentagon as part of Cohen's transition team.[6][11] After the transition, he was appointed Coordinator for Advanced Concepts and Program Integration in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, focusing on encryption and information assurance issues.[6] From November 1997 to June 1998, Mellon served as Special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Policy, providing advice on intelligence matters, and from June 1998 through November 1999 he was Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Security and Information Operations.[6]

In November 1999, Mellon took a noncareer (political) appointment in the Senior Executive Service as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence within what was then the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence (OASD(C3I)).[6][15]: 56  Over the course of his Pentagon tenure, he served under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, and under SecDef Donald Rumsfeld.[7][11]

Return to Capitol Hill

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In February 2003, Senator Jay Rockefeller hired Mellon as minority staff director of the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI).[11] According to Gizmodo, during his government service he served on a Defense Department committee with oversight of special access programs (SAPs).[7] In Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War, author and journalist Fred Kaplan wrote of Mellon's involvement during his Senate career with the National Security Agency and J. Michael "Mike" McConnell, former Director of National Intelligence (DNI), and Mellon's research into the NSA's budget.[16]: 35–36  In Sabotage: America's Enemies Within the CIA, Rowan Scarborough wrote that, at the White House's behest, Mellon and his Republican counterpart, William D. Duhnke III, were excluded from briefings on the NSA warrantless surveillance program.[17]: 65  Journalist Keith Kloor wrote that Mellon "oversaw the Pentagon's most sensitive and closely held 'black' programs."[18]

Following the 2003 leak of a Democratic staff memorandum drafted for Senate Select Committee on Intelligence vice-chair Rockefeller that proposed leveraging cooperation, issuing a dissent, or pursuing a Democrats-only investigation to highlight potential administration misuse of pre-war Iraq intelligence, Republican committee members said the document aimed to discredit the panel's pending report and demanded Democratic repudiation of its partisan implications.[19] In a November 2003 Wall Street Journal editorial column attacking the leaked memo, the editorial identified Mellon as an aide whose dismissal would be necessary to restore bipartisan credibility.[20] In a January 2004 Insight on the News piece, writer J. Michael Waller, citing unnamed Senate and Defense sources, claimed that Mellon had set up an "autonomous Democratic staff apparatus" on the committee that pursued probes of senior Pentagon and State Department officials.[21] In a November 14, 2003 Wall Street Journal letter, Senator Richard J. Durbin wrote that Rockefeller appointed Mellon, a registered Republican, as minority staff director of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.[22] Durbin further noted that Mellon had earlier served the committee as deputy minority staff director for Republican senators William Cohen, John Chafee, and John Warner, which he cited as evidence of a bipartisan record.[22]

Mellon subsequently left government service.[23] Ed Henry of Roll Call called Mellon's credentials "distinguished" and Military.com called Mellon a "top expert" in matters of national security.[11][4]

UFO investigations

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The Pentagon UFO videos

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Main article: Pentagon UFO videos

The Washington Post in 2017 identified Mellon as having worked for the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), the 2007-2012 Pentagon program that investigated unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), that was also disclosed by a New York Times article in the same year.[24][25] Popular Mechanics reported that Mellon, while outside of government, had been invited to an AATIP meeting by a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) acquaintance.[26] Unsuccessful in contacting then-SecDef James Mattis about UAP-related topics, Mellon afterward focused on raising awareness about UFO- and UAP-related issues.[26]

In 2017, Mellon became a member of To the Stars Academy of Arts and Sciences (TTSA), an organization founded to research UAP-related topics, and worked as a paid adviser.[23] TTSA described Mellon as its "National Security Affairs Advisor", and Art Levine wrote in The Washington Spectator that Mellon "lent credibility by his association."[27] Mellon stated he was personally recruited by Tom DeLonge, TTSA's founder, after the musician read an article Mellon had written.[28] At TTSA's first press conference, Mellon unveiled "photographic evidence of a UFO" that turned out to be a party balloon; journalist Art Levine noted ironically that Mellon's "prestige has not been dimmed" despite this.[27]

Mellon and TTSA played a role in the publication of the New York Times report "Glowing Auras and 'Black Money': The Pentagon's Mysterious U.F.O. Program", with freelance journalist and UFO proponent Leslie Kean telling The New Yorker's Gideon Lewis-Kraus that Mellon and Luis Elizondo were responsible for the creation of the article.[29][30] Mellon, along with other TTSA members, met Kean on October 4, 2017, at an arranged meeting in a hotel near the Pentagon.[30] According to Space.com, Mellon helped provide to the New York Times what became known as the Pentagon UFO videos.[31] Mellon and Elizondo were credited for bringing the videos made by pilots from the United States Navy aircraft carriers USS Nimitz and USS Theodore Roosevelt to TTSA.[4] In the 2020 documentary film The Phenomenon, Mellon again confirmed he was the source of the videos.[32] Mellon departed TTSA at the end of 2020.[27]

Further UFO affairs

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The Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Issues in Science and Technology highlighted a 2018 column by Mellon in the Washington Post, discussing lack of interest in UAP investigations by the Pentagon, despite repeated military encounters with them.[33][18][34] Writing for the National Academies, Keith Kloor credited Mellon's piece in the Washington Post for moving UFOs, "a topic long confined to the tabloids", to being a "serious news story".[18] Kloor also noted that Mellon was "influential" for leading the Senate and House Committees on Armed Services to seek information in regard to AATIP and Pentagon UFO investigations, and to interview military pilots who reported UFOs.[18] In 2020, then-Senator Marco Rubio included language in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021 which directed the DNI and SecDef to create "a detailed analysis of unidentified aerial phenomena data and intelligence reporting", which "drew heavily" from proposals by Mellon to the Congress.[30][35] Writing for Politico, Bryan Bender credited Mellon as having "effectively drafted" the legislation calling for the report.[23] After then-DNI John Ratcliffe disclosed on Fox News that some UFOs lacked "good explanations", the Washington Post reported Mellon supported the disclosures.[36]

According to a 2021 interview with Bill Whitaker on 60 Minutes, Mellon began his advocacy due to his views on investigations of UFOs by the government and surrounding secrecy matters.[37] Vox reported that Mellon attributed his UFO-related beliefs to his security clearances.[28] Mellon also authored pieces for Politico.[35] The History Channel documentary series Unidentified: Inside America's UFO Investigation listed Mellon as a featured contributor.[30] In 2021, The Galileo Project at Harvard University named Mellon a research affiliate, joining founder Avi Loeb's effort to search for extraterrestrial intelligence or technologies on and near Earth and to identify the nature of UFOs.[38][35] In 2023, Art Levine reported in the Washington Spectator that Mellon had lobbied in support of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022, which included provisions to investigate UFO-related topics and created the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office.[27] Mellon has been associated with the UFO disclosure movement, and appears in The Age of Disclosure, a 2025 American documentary film.[1]

Post-government career

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He returned to his family's Pittsburgh home in 2006 after decades in the Washington, D.C., area and settled in Ligonier, Pennsylvania, home to many of his extended family.[9] Mellon served on the board of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.[9] He has been involved with startup companies, including in the wireless power transfer field.[9]

Personal life

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As of 2020, Mellon is married.[39] Mellon is a fan of Jimi Hendrix.[2]: 564 

See also

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References

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Public Domain This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the United States government.

  1. ^ a b Hibberd, James (January 2, 2025). "'Age of Disclosure' UFO Documentary Trailer Touts "Biggest Discovery in Human History"". Hollywood Reporter. Archived from the original on January 23, 2025. Retrieved May 25, 2025. An upcoming documentary about the UFO/UAP phenomenon...
    Former Department of Defense official and longtime UAP disclosure advocate Christopher Mellon declares, 'This is the biggest discovery in human history...'
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Koskoff, David E. (1978). The Mellons: The Chronicle of America's Richest Family. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co. pp. 387–388, 526, 528, 562–565. ISBN 0690011903. LCCN 77-25947.
  3. ^ a b c "Mellon Note Cites Names". Times Record. Associated Press. April 6, 1983. Archived from the original on October 22, 2025. Retrieved May 12, 2025.
  4. ^ a b c Tritten, Travis (March 7, 2022). "How Believers in the Paranormal Birthed the Pentagon's New Hunt for UFOs". Military.com. Archived from the original on March 9, 2022.
  5. ^ Vardi, Nathan (May 3, 2018). "The Last Days Of Banking Heir Matthew Mellon". Forbes. Archived from the original on April 19, 2018.
  6. ^ a b c d e f "Christopher Mellon". Harvard Colloquium on International Affairs. 2003. Archived from the original on November 14, 2004.
  7. ^ a b c Ropek, Lucas (March 19, 2024). "Is There a UFO Cover-up? A Government Insider Speaks Out". Gizmodo. Archived from the original on February 15, 2025.
  8. ^ a b Hay, Jean (April 28, 1983). "Content of Mellon Papers Disclosed". Bangor Daily News. Archived from the original on October 22, 2025. Retrieved May 12, 2025.
  9. ^ a b c d Fitzpatrick, Dan (June 30, 2007). "Mellon family's legacy lives on". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Archived from the original on May 2, 2025.
  10. ^ Reginato, James (September 18, 2024). "The Mellon Family Is Famed for Restraint, but MAGA Mega-Donor Tim Mellon Is Rocking the Boat". Vanity Fair. Archived from the original on September 29, 2024. Retrieved May 19, 2025.
  11. ^ a b c d e Henry, Ed (February 12, 2003). "Unholy Alliance?". Roll Call. Archived from the original on August 11, 2020. Retrieved May 3, 2025.
  12. ^ a b c d e f g h i Marquis, Susan (1997). Unconventional Warfare: Rebuilding U.S. Special Operation Forces. Brookings Institution. pp. 125–144. ISBN 9780815754763. Retrieved May 7, 2025.
  13. ^ a b c Boykin, William G. "The Origins of the United States Special Operations Command" (PDF). Air Force Special Operations Command. Archived (PDF) from the original on November 17, 2016.
  14. ^ Locher, James R. (October 16, 1985). "Defense Organization: The Need for Change, Staff Report to the Committee on Armed Services, United States Senate". Naval Postgraduate School. Archived from the original on November 30, 2023. Retrieved August 30, 2024.
  15. ^ United States Government Policy and Supporting Positions (Plum Book) (PDF). Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office. 2000. p. 56. Archived from the original (PDF) on October 14, 2025.
  16. ^ Kaplan, Fred (March 2016). Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War. Simon and Schuster. pp. 35–36. ISBN 9781476763262. Retrieved May 2, 2025.
  17. ^ Scarborough, Rowan (July 16, 2007). Sabotage: America's Enemies Within the CIA. Regnery Publishing. p. 65. ISBN 9781476763279.
  18. ^ a b c d Kloor, Keith (March 1, 2019). "UFOs Won't Go Away". Issues in Science and Technology. United States National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and Arizona State University. Archived from the original on April 5, 2019.
  19. ^ "Politicized Memo Incites Row". Washington Post. November 5, 2003. Archived from the original on May 8, 2025.
  20. ^ "'Flagrantly Dishonest'". Wall Street Journal. November 5, 2003. Archived from the original on May 6, 2025. Retrieved May 7, 2025.
  21. ^ Waller, J. Michael (January 6, 2004). "Democrats Subvert War Intelligence" (PDF). Insight on the News. Archived from the original on May 8, 2025. Retrieved May 7, 2025.
  22. ^ a b Durbin, Richard J. (November 14, 2003). "Pre-War Intelligence Leak: Independent Probe Needed". Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on June 20, 2021. Retrieved May 7, 2025.
  23. ^ a b c Bender, Bryan (May 28, 2021). "How Harry Reid, a Terrorist Interrogator and the Singer From Blink-182 Took UFOs Mainstream". Politico. Archived from the original on May 28, 2021. Retrieved May 7, 2025. By the fall of 2017... Mellon, who by then was also a paid adviser to DeLonge's TTSA...
  24. ^ Wootson Jr., Cleve R. (December 18, 2017). "The government admits it studies UFOs. So about those Area 51 conspiracy theories …". Washington Post. Archived from the original on December 19, 2017.
  25. ^ Cooper, Helene; Blumenthal, Ralph; Kean, Leslie (December 16, 2017). "Glowing Auras and 'Black Money': The Pentagon's Mysterious U.F.O. Program". The New York Times. Archived from the original on December 16, 2017.
  26. ^ a b Howard, David (April 24, 2023). "Lue Elizondo Ran the Pentagon's UFO Unit—and Says the Government Is Withholding What It Knows". Popular Mechanics. Archived from the original on April 25, 2023.
  27. ^ a b c d Levine, Art (July 20, 2023). "Spaceship of Fools". The Washington Spectator. Archived from the original on July 21, 2023. Retrieved July 21, 2023.
  28. ^ a b Matthews, Dylan (June 18, 2021). "UFOs are real. That's the easy part. Now here's the hard part". Vox. Archived from the original on June 28, 2021.
  29. ^ Baker, Nicholson (January 31, 2024). "How We Lost Our Minds About UFOs". New York Magazine. Archived from the original on February 3, 2024. Retrieved May 15, 2025. Kean continued her UFO advocacy work with the assistance of Christopher Mellon, a wealthy defense and intelligence insider.
  30. ^ a b c d Lewis-Kraus, Gideon (April 30, 2021). "How the Pentagon Started Taking U.F.O.s Seriously". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on July 6, 2021. Kean gave all the credit to Elizondo and Mellon for coming forward...
  31. ^ Wall, Mike (May 19, 2021). "UFO answers coming soon? US government to report on mysterious sightings". Space.com. Archived from the original on June 5, 2021.
  32. ^ Banias, MJ (October 20, 2020). "Ex Intel Official Says He Was the Source of the Pentagon's UFO Videos". Vice. Archived from the original on August 31, 2024. Retrieved May 5, 2025.
  33. ^ "UFO sightings ignored by Pentagon, former insider says". Australian Broadcasting Corporation. March 12, 2018. Archived from the original on March 16, 2018. Retrieved August 31, 2024.
  34. ^ Mellon, Christopher (March 9, 2018). "The military keeps encountering UFOs. Why doesn't the Pentagon care?". Washington Post. Archived from the original on March 13, 2018.
  35. ^ a b c "US Congress holds UFO hearings, and we might not be alone in the universe after all". Wired. July 27, 2023. Archived from the original on November 10, 2024.
  36. ^ Thebault, Reis (March 21, 2021). "Thanks to Trump-era covid relief bill, a UFO report may soon be public — and it'll be big, ex-official says". Washington Post. Archived from the original on May 26, 2021. Retrieved August 31, 2024.
  37. ^ Whitaker, Bill (August 29, 2021). "UFOs regularly spotted in restricted U.S. airspace". CBS News. Archived from the original on August 29, 2021. Retrieved July 5, 2023.
  38. ^ "The Galileo Project welcomes Christopher Mellon and Luis Elizondo as Research Affiliates" (PDF). Harvard University, The Galileo Project. October 30, 2021. Archived from the original (PDF) on November 11, 2021. Retrieved August 30, 2024.
  39. ^ "Donald Brenner, 89". Charles E. Snyder Funeral Homes & Crematory. Archived from the original on May 22, 2025. Retrieved May 20, 2025.
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