Christopher Mellon
Former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence; former Senate Intelligence Committee staff
On camera in The Age of Disclosure: Speaks on the multi-decade history of compartmented UAP work inside the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community.
Christopher Mellon served as U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations[1] and previously as Minority Staff Director of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence[2]. He left government in 2004 and re-entered public discussion of UAP in 2017 by helping coordinate the source material for the original New York Times AATIP story[3].
Mellon has testified to the National Defense Authorization Act conference committee on UAP oversight[4] and writes regularly on the subject in public venues including The Hill and The Debrief.
- Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence (1998–2004) — Wikipedia — Christopher Mellon
- Former Minority Staff Director, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence — Senate Intelligence Committee — Historical staff
- Helped coordinate source material for the December 2017 NYT AATIP story — Cooper, Blumenthal, Kean — NYT, 16 Dec 2017
- Public statements on UAP at the Sol Foundation Initiative — The Sol Foundation
- Official Statement
Christopher Mellon Calls on Trump Declassification Task Force to Release Withheld Unclassified UAP Videos
Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Christopher Mellon published an op-ed in The Debrief on April 5, 2025, arguing that the Department of Defense is improperly withholding a large volume of unclassified UAP imagery from Congress and the public. Mellon contends that a restrictive classification guide created by the DoD's UAP Task Force — developed in the aftermath of the 2017–2018 Navy UAP video releases — has been applied to material that does not legitimately qualify for classification under Executive Order 13526, and that no official at DoD or in the Intelligence Community has been designated to advocate for or execute the release of unclassified UAP information. Mellon's piece is directed at Representative Anna Paulina Luna's Congressional Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets, as well as the broader Trump administration, urging both to compel a review and release of unclassified UAP videos held by military and intelligence agencies. He references specific prior commitments — including a 2022 pledge by Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence Scott Bray before the House Intelligence Committee — that have not resulted in any meaningful public disclosures beyond a handful of videos on the AARO website. Mellon also notes an encouraging development: AARO, under the direction of Dr. Jon Kosloski, has agreed to locate and submit for declassification review a specific F-18 UAP video he recalled from years prior.
- Report
New York Times reveals the Pentagon's AATIP program
Helene Cooper, Ralph Blumenthal, and Leslie Kean publish a front-page New York Times investigation revealing the existence of the Department of Defense's Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. The story includes a release of the 'FLIR1' video and on-the-record statements from former AATIP director Luis Elizondo.