Christopher Mellon is a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and longtime Senate Intelligence Committee staffer who became one of the most consequential figures in the modern UAP disclosure movement. In late 2017, he facilitated the release of classified Navy infrared footage to The New York Times, triggering the most significant shift in public and governmental attention to unidentified aerial phenomena in decades. Since leaving government, Mellon has continued to press Congress and the executive branch for accountability on UAP, co-founding the To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science and serving as Chairman of the Disclosure Foundation.
Biography & Background
Christopher Karl Mellon was born on October 2, 1957. He is a member of the prominent Mellon family, whose wealth derived from Mellon Bank, Gulf Oil, and a network of industrial enterprises that made it one of the most powerful dynasties in twentieth-century America. He earned his undergraduate degree from Yale University and a graduate degree from Duquesne University, before embarking on a career spanning more than three decades at the intersection of national security and intelligence oversight.
Mellon’s entry into government came through the United States Senate, where he served on the staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee — the body responsible for overseeing the nation’s intelligence agencies. Over the course of his Senate career, he worked under Senators William Cohen, John Chafee, John Warner, and Jay Rockefeller, gaining deep familiarity with the classified programs and bureaucratic culture that define the American intelligence community.
Pentagon Career & Intelligence Oversight
Mellon’s Pentagon career spanned the Clinton and Bush administrations. From November 1997 to June 1998, he served as Special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Policy. He was then appointed Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Security and Information Operations (June 1998 to November 1999), before rising to Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, a post he held from November 1999 through 2002.
In those roles, Mellon had oversight over some of the most sensitive programs in the DoD portfolio, including counterintelligence, special access programs (SAPs), and the broader architecture of how classified information flows between agencies. It was during this period that he developed the conviction that UAP represented a genuine national security challenge the government was systematically failing to address, and that the institutional barriers preventing honest investigation were structural rather than accidental.
The 2017 UAP Disclosure Breakthrough
After leaving government, Mellon maintained contacts across the defense and intelligence community. By 2017, he had connected with Luis Elizondo — the former director of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) — and with Tom DeLonge’s To The Stars Academy, which was assembling a team of former officials to bring UAP to public attention through credible, documented means.
In a meeting in the Pentagon parking lot, Mellon received a package from a Defense Department contact containing three declassified Navy infrared videos: the “Tic Tac” encounter filmed by F/A-18s from the USS Nimitz on November 14, 2004 (pilot: Commander David Fravor); “Gimbal,” recorded by aviators from the USS Theodore Roosevelt in 2015; and “GoFast,” a second Roosevelt-era video. He provided these videos to The New York Times and the To The Stars Academy simultaneously.
On December 16, 2017, The New York Times published its landmark investigation co-authored by Helene Cooper, Ralph Blumenthal, and Leslie Kean, disclosing the existence of AATIP and publishing the Tic Tac footage. The article broke entirely new ground, moving UAP — in journalist Keith Kloor’s phrase — “from the tabloids to a serious news story” and igniting congressional and public demand for formal investigation that has not abated since.
To The Stars Academy & Congressional Advocacy
Mellon co-founded the To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science (TTSA) in 2017 alongside Tom DeLonge, Luis Elizondo, physicist Harold “Hal” Puthoff, and others. The organization combined documentary production with direct congressional lobbying for UAP transparency legislation. Its History Channel series Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation (2019-2020) featured Mellon prominently and brought military pilot and intelligence official testimony to a mass audience for the first time.
Throughout this period, Mellon worked actively on Capitol Hill, briefing members of Congress and helping to draft legislative language incorporated into successive National Defense Authorization Acts. The UAP provisions in the 2023 and 2024 NDAAs — including the creation of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), whistleblower protections, and requirements for a historical record report — reflect groundwork Mellon and his colleagues laid over several years of sustained advocacy.
Mellon has been a persistent critic of AARO’s performance, arguing the office has failed to meet its statutory obligations, including the long-delayed Volume II of its historical record report and the 2025 annual report. He has published op-eds and analyses in The Washington Post, The Hill, and Politico, maintaining pressure on the institutional actors responsible for UAP investigation.
The Disclosure Foundation
Mellon currently serves as Chairman of the Disclosure Foundation, a nonprofit providing legal and financial support to UAP whistleblowers and funding independent UAP research. The Foundation has backed individuals who risked careers and security clearances to testify before Congress about alleged classified UAP programs, including witnesses at House Oversight Committee hearings in 2023 and 2024. Mellon has framed its mission as ensuring those who come forward under whistleblower protection statutes have institutional backing they can rely on.
In 2023, Mellon and Luis Elizondo were named Research Affiliates of the Harvard University Galileo Project, Avi Loeb’s scientific initiative applying rigorous empirical methods to the study of anomalous phenomena. Mellon’s affiliation reflects a broader effort to bridge the classified world he navigated for decades and the independent scientific community that has historically been excluded from that data.
Media Appearances & Key Sources
- The New York Times — “Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money'” (December 16, 2017)
- The Washington Post — Mellon op-ed on UAP transparency (May 2019)
- History Channel — Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation (2019-2020)
- Harvard Galileo Project — Mellon & Elizondo named Research Affiliates
- Wikipedia — Christopher Mellon