Christopher Mellon

Christopher Karl Mellon (born ) 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 authored legislation establishing the United States Special Operations Command and took part in a Department of Defense investigation of unidentified aerial phenomena. During two stints as a Senate staffer, and one 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

Family

Christopher Mellon is a member of the Mellon family and a descendant of both Thomas Mellon and William Larimer Mellon Sr. He is the grandson of Matthew T. Mellon and Gertrud (née Altegoer) Mellon. The Mellon family began fracturing into largely disconnected branches in the 1930s and, by the time Christopher came into adulthood in the 1970s — according to the contemporaneous account of his grandfather — the "great days of the family ... ereover". A separate branch of the family, descended from Andrew Mellon, consider themselves to be "the true royalty of the clan" and have limited or no contact with Christopher's relatives.

His parents — Karl Negley Mellon and Ann — met as teenagers when both were patients at the Menninger Clinic; they later eloped, after which Ann gave birth to Christopher. Karl, a trucker and fishing boat crewman, soon divorced Ann and was estranged from Christopher. Christopher was subsequently raised in inner city Chicago in circumstances he describes as "difficult".

Christopher showed little interest in the extended Mellon family as a youth, but did consume the writings of his grandfather, Matthew, and read his Monégasque uncle James Ross Mellon's book '' African Hunter''. In the absence of Karl, Christopher enjoyed a fatherly affinity from James. In adulthood, Christopher redeveloped a relationship with his father, Karl, prior to the elder Mellon's death by suicide in 1983.

Education

Mellon graduated from Loomis Chaffee School and enrolled at Colby College where he was initiated into Kappa Delta Rho and worked parttime coaching youth soccer. He considered dropping out of college but, according to Mellon family biographer David Koskoff, was declined enlistment in the United States Army owing to his response to an application question that asked about recent marijuana use.

He went on to obtain a Bachelor of Economics (BE) from Colby and earned a master's degree from Yale University in international relations with a concentration in finance and management.

Government career

Mellon served since 1985 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 (DOD) in 1997. In 2003, Mellon returned as a Senate staffer once more for the SSCI.

United States Special Operations Command

As a legislative assistant to William Cohen, Mellon participated in drafting the bill that created United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM or SOCOM) in the National Defense Authorization Act for 1987 (NDAA).

Cohen was approached by "former special operations people" seeking his help rebuilding the United States Special Operations Forces (SOF). Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security William G. Boykin reported that Mellon encouraged Cohen to take a leading role in the effort. In 1985, House of Representatives staffer Ted Lunger approached Mellon to win Senate backing for Dan Daniel’s special operations reform bill. 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''. 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. The 1986 reform bill from Cohen's office, largely written by Mellon, relied on ideas from Senate analyst Jim Locher. While drafting the bill, Mellon was unaware of an earlier United States Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) proposal on the SOF topic. Boykin noted in ''The Origins of the United States Special Forces Command'' that Mellon contributed many of the ideas in the reformation bill related to low-intensity conflicts. 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. Mellon credited both Locher and Andrew Krepinevich's work in ''The Army and Vietnam''.

Department of Defense tenure

When Cohen became United States Secretary of Defense in 1997, Mellon accompanied him to the Pentagon to join Cohen's transition team. Following the transition, Mellon became coordinator for Advanced Concepts and Program Integration in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, concentrating on encryption and information assurance issues. From November 1997 to June 1998, he advised Cohen on intelligence issues as the special assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Policy. Later, he was Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Security and Information Operations from 1998 to 1999.

Beginning in November 1999, he served in 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. He served under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

Return to Senate staff

In 2003, Mellon left the Pentagon to return to Capitol Hill as minority staff director for Senator Jay Rockefeller. Mellon became minority staff director of the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, focusing on special access programs (SAPs) and special operations. His work involved oversight of the National Security Agency (NSA) and other intelligence organizations. 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, and Mellon's research into the NSA's budget. In ''Sabotage: America's Enemies Within the CIA'', Rowan Scarborough wrote that Mellon, at the behest of the White House, was deliberately excluded along with Republican Party Senate counterpart William D. Duhnke III from critical briefings on the NSA warrantless surveillance events from 2001 to 2007. Keith Kloor later observed that Mellon "oversaw the Pentagon’s most sensitive and closely held 'black' programs."

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 charged that the document aimed to discredit the panel's pending report and demanded Democratic repudiation of its partisan implications. In a November 2003 ''Wall Street Journal'' editorial column attacking the leaked memo, minority staff director Mellon was explicitly identified as an aide whose dismissal would be necessary to restore bipartisan credibility. A writer for ''Insight on the News'' claimed, citing Senate and Defense sources, that Mellon had set up an autonomous Democratic staff apparatus on the committee which pursued probes of senior Pentagon and State Department officials. 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. Durbin further noted that Mellon earlier served the committee as deputy minority staff director for Republican Senators William Cohen, John Chafee and John Warner, highlighting his bipartisan record.

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

Post-government career

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. Mellon served on the board of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. He has been involved with startup companies, including in the wireless power transfer field.

UFO investigations

The Pentagon UFO videos

The ''Washington Post'' in 2017 identified Mellon as having been a member of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), the Pentagon program investigating UFOs that was also disclosed by a ''New York Times'' article in the same year. ''Popular Mechanics'' reported that Mellon had been invited to AATIP meetings by Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) staff, and that Mellon was unsuccessful in contacting then-Secretary of Defense James Mattis about UFO-related topics; later, Mellon left government to advocate for the issue.

After leaving the government, Mellon became a member of To the Stars Academy of Arts and Sciences (TTSA), an organization founded to research UFO-related topics. As of fall 2017, Mellon was working as a paid adviser to To the Stars Academy of Arts and Sciences (TTSA). Mellon stated he was personally recruited by DeLonge, after the musician read an article Mellon had written. 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 that Mellon's "prestige has not been dimmed" despite this.

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. Mellon with Puthoff, Semivan and Elizondo met Kean on October 4, 2017, at an arranged meeting in a hotel near the Pentagon. Mellon was involved in sharing with the ''New York Times'' what became known as the Pentagon UFO videos. 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. In the 2020 documentary film '' The Phenomenon'', Mellon again confirmed he was the source of the videos. TTSA described Mellon as it's "National Security Affairs Advisor". Art Levine wrote in ''The Washington Spectator'' that Mellon "lent credibility by his association." Initially joining TTSA in 2017, Mellon departed at the end of 2020.

Further UFO affairs

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 UFO investigations by the Pentagon, despite repeated military encounters with them. 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". 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 investigatons, and to interview military pilots who reported UFOs. In 2020, then-Senator Marco Rubio included language in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021 which directed the Director of National Intelligence and Secretary of Defense to create "a detailed analysis of unidentified aerial phenomena data and intelligence reporting", which was "heavily drawn" from proposals by Mellon to the Congress. Writing for ''Politico'', Bryan Bender credited Mellon as having "effectively drafted" the legislation calling for the report. After then-Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe disclosed on Fox News that some UFOs lacked "good explanations", the ''Washington Post'' reported Mellon supported the disclosures.

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. '' Vox'' reported that Mellon attributed his UFO-related beliefs to his security clearances. Mellon also authored pieces for ''Politico''. Mellon was a featured contributor to the History Channel documentary series, '' Unidentified: Inside America's UFO Investigation''. Mellon was announced in 2021 as a research affiliate to The Galileo Project, began by Harvard University astrophysicist and ufologist Avi Loeb to search for extraterrestrial intelligence or technologies on and near Earth, and identify the nature of UFOs. 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.

Personal life

Mellon is married and has two children.

Koskoff, who interviewed Mellon in the 1970s, said that Mellon was affable, considerate, popular among his peers, a good writer, and had a pleasing face but he did not seem inclined to "build or maintain an empire". Mellon has been described by a cousin — who, like Mellon, believes there is a government coverup about UFOs — as "ultraconservative".

See also

* Clipper chip
* David Grusch UFO whistleblower claims
* ECHELON
* Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act

References

External links

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Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs): A National Security Threat
2021 '' Stars and Stripes'' podcast with Mellon

UFO Expert Chris Mellon: Based On What We Know About UAPs, Aliens Are The BEST Explanation
2022 '' The Hill'' video

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mellon, Christopher
American investors
Colby College alumni
Living people
Mellon family
People associated with ufology
People from Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania
United States congressional aides
United States Department of Defense officials
Yale University alumni
Year of birth missing (living people)