And it hits me, Oh my gosh, this is that triangle. You
know, there's explanation for everything that occurred in the randallscham parsident doesn't involve aliens
at all. It was completely silent. It comes right over our heads.
He's so a Gothic cloy sorcererate is standing into cleary. He turned over to
my father and held his hand, and he looked in his eyes and said,
we're not alone. Hello, and welcome to our show. I'm Martin
Willshire host. We have a very special guest for you this evening, Chris
Mellon. He graduated from Meale with a master's degree in international relations. He
worked for many years for the US Department of Defense as Deputy Assistant Secretary Security
and Information Operations, as well as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and
Minority Staff Director of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. His responsibilities included a
review and oversight of intelligence activities, which included Area fifty one and other sensitive
governmental locations. He also spent over a decade on the Senate Intelligence Committee,
involved in oversight of NROCIA, NSA, and other intelligence organizations. He became
the first congressional official to review all of the NSA's compartmented programs. Chris is
a recipient of numerous awards, including the National Reconnaissance Office Gold Medal and the
Defense Intelligence Agency's Directors Medal. Chris has had a lifetime fascination with UFOs and
has recently become a board member of UFO Data, which is a UFO detection
and tracking and he believes the topic needs serious scientific investigation. I'm glad to
hear that, and he's putting forward his efforts, and I hope the listener
has read Leslie Kyne's Huffington Post interview with Chris. It's gone viral worldwide.
If you have not, make sure you check that out. And the easiest
way to get there, really is, if you're listening, is just play
a little Google Huffington Post and Chris Mellon and that link will come right up.
It's also in our show notes. There's a link right there well.
With no further ado. Welcome to the show, Chris, Thanks Martin.
It's pleasure to be here. Thanks so much for joining us. I really
do appreciate it, and you and I had a couple of conversations I thought
was pretty interesting, and first of all, can you tell the listening audience
a little bit about your background, but starting out, what got you fascinated
in the UFO topic? To begin with? Okay, well, I was
about seven years old and attending a small school and a friend of the principal
and made an old fashioned movie of UFO, and the prince showed it to
our entire school one night. It was a boarding school that showed it after
dinner. And you could see this very large, seemingly massive, had a
cannoted a feeling of density and mass. But it was luminous and it was
a perfectly clear sunny day. It wasn't one of these you know lights in
the night sky. And you could see it gently bank and enter a cumulous
cloud. It sort of as wisps of cloud passed by it. It disappeared
into this cloud, and then it emerged on the other side and sort of
banked and then went off out of sight. And it just, you know,
filled me with sort of wondering, awe, what could that be?
And so it kind of set the hook in me, and I started afterward
reading all the books I could find and so forth and maintain an interest in
their sets. Now, any of your classmates at the time, or any
friends also fall along on that path with you, or were you kind of
buy your lonesome. You know, I'm not in touch with anybody from from
that period. That was a long time ago, and I've moved a lot
of times, so I don't know if any of those and my classmates also
had the same reaction. Yeah, I mean immediately after the movie they did.
But whether an interest they maintained, I don't know. Yeah, yeah,
that's I can understand that. And at this time when you and I
had a conversation, I got to tell you. I'll just start out with
one of the things that really impressed me in our conversation was you said that
you're you're sticking your neck out uh here talking about this topic, and uh,
can you tell the listening audience why you're willing to do that? Well,
this is a little lot of my normal way, that's for sure.
By and large, I'm concerned these days with trying to promote sort of a
breakthrough in Washington on some of the partisan gridlock. And I'm working with a
couple of think tanks, and I write op eds and so forth, and
this is not my normal area focus. But some months ago when I learned
about the UFO Data projects, I decided to volunteer and to get involved.
This topic has been sort ofmired down and stuck for many, many years,
where they'll continue to be very interesting reports and photos and videos, but nothing
defendtive. And I think it's a very legitimate topic. There are many very
sober military and law enforcement people that have reported these sightings, and you know,
I really, I really think it's time to just get serious about it,
try to find out what's going on. I think UFO Data offers the
best way to do that, and we're encouraging people to get involved with us.
We've got a website and you get a visit for more information UFO data
dot net. And if the government is not going to take this on,
and nobody else is, I mean, somebody, somebody have to set up,
step up to the play. That's what we're trying to do. That's
great, and it's really glad. I'm really glad that you decided to join
that team. You know, all I've heard it said many times. All
it takes is one one to have solid heavedence on and it's really amazing that
there has been so many sightings. I actually saw one myself. It's something
that is fleeting and with technology. I know that for instance, Ray Stanford
was working on doing that all the way back in the nineteen seventies with equipment
trying to get and he did get some data. And with the growing of
technology since then, you know, it just seems like we're getting closer to
getting something that will get enough information to make more people look at it,
you know, right now there's such a stigma in general, and I'm sure,
Well, one of the questions I had for you have have you had
any black backlash all along the way about this topic in your career? Well,
I was very This was not an interest that I advertised and worked in
the government. This was not something that I spoke about to other people until
I became you know, good friends with them, and you know, so
it was It was not something that I wasn't wearing this on my sleeve or
raising it often in meetings or anything. It just typically wasn't appropriate. But
I did kind of keep my eye out and because I had this interest,
and from time to time the issue would arise, or I might be working
with a colleague, for example, who had been the senior intel officer at
Space Come. And I remember one night working with a Brigadier general who had
been the senior intel officers based common Flast assignment and so I, you know,
just you know, informally, I asked him about that just and he
looked at me sort of like, what are you crazy? He gave me
this look like I had a third eye in my forehead. And you know,
generally speaking, the it's not an issue that is uh talked about or
has a lot of credibility, and you rift your own credibility if you expressed
too much interest in it. So it's just something that I quietly, you
know, it was always in my mind because I had this interest, So
I would keep my eye out for things, and occasionally that would would lead
to something or their their fruit. In one case in particular, I had
a friend who was a colleague at that time on the SAT it tells his
staff, and he was doing some oversight at the Malee Optical Tracking Facility,
which took space surveillance, and I said, while you're out there, you
know there's Abelian nights guys running you just ask them, you know, they
ever see any strange really anomalous stuff? That you can't identify. And so
he called me up and said, you know, I asked that question.
Sure enough, there's a tape right here, and these guys got video of
these, you know, fireballs going through the night sky. And I said,
well, can we get a copy of it? And I called this
this Air Force officer and said, sure, it's unclassified too, you know,
just set it to it and I forget it. They probably sent it
to the Congressional Affairs or something. But anyway, got the tape and one
of the interesting things about that was the one it showed these sort of five
objects, four or five objects look almost like a formation. May be low
in the sky, sass, but slower than the meteorite. You know,
normally, how do you see a metia it's kind of a flash. And
this was much slower than that, but but much faster than you would expect
an airplane to be. And there was a lot of heat, intense heat,
probably didn't speed. And I knew there were a few other folks who
had an interest in this topic, and so I asked the UH decided to
you know, ask people they reached didn't see the video, and a few
people did, and and one of the security officers who opened up a room
for us to show the video. Uh, one of the side. I
had noticed all it for years and salted in your retired Air Force guy,
you know, completely down to earth kind of shawow nothing odd or unusual.
Let him in the least, and he started to he saw this and all
of a sudden he spontaneous and starting to talk about this UFO side. And
he had as a teenager with a group of his friends in a convertible car
in Kentucky and this thing was hovering over a lamp post. It was a
telephone post, and it was low to the ground and it was this shaped
object. And I found had that kind of experience many many times with people
that I knew well and I trusted and respected. He had no reason to
invent that. And he's, you know, an utterly incredible person to me.
And I've had the same sort of experience with different military officers and other
people. And that's part of the reason that you know, I've continued to
maintain an interest, notwithstanding the official disinterest, and so you know, occasionally
would arise, but you buy and large, it's not something that you you
advertise and talk about those positions, you know, just credibility. Yeah,
uh, just something you said earlier just kind of sparked a question, and
that is you said that this particular film was not classified, they didn't have
to worry about it. Now, who decides or do you know, who
would decide whether a film of an object like that should be classified or not.
Well, it depends on the source, you know. So in this
case, the source was totally unclassified. The data from that they were collecting
there from that instrument at MAUI was open source and unclassified data. So you
know, it's derived from the source. Now that some of you might be
wasn't Whatever happened to that tape? I had a copy of that. I
can't find it, I'm saying, but it appeared on national television. I
mean, it just didn't get you know, lost in some drawer. It
ended up in the hands of Ted Copple. You may recallhead a long running,
well known nightly television program called Nightline on Agency I believe it was a
major network television show with high ratings, and he did the segment on this
and he played the game and had some guests on to talk about it.
So this is not a case of another one of these stories where you know,
oh yeah, it sounds interesting, but you know, how come there's
nothing to back it up. You know that that went out and probably millions
of people saw it on TV, but nothing happened afterwards. Now, one
of the things I was thinking of, and I know that this came up
in Leslie Kane's Huffington Post interview, was that it was kind of like,
so what I mean, like, okay, this is unexplained, but so
what no one makes a big deal of it? What's the story with that?
Is it the ridicule factor or is there something deeper than that? Do
you know? I don't know. I don't know for certain. I think
a lot of it is that, you know, nobody has this in their
job chart. Nobody has this assignment of trying to evaluate UFOs, and so
something like that pops up. Well that's kind of interesting, but you know,
hey, it's not my job, it's not my problem, it's not
my affair. You know, all these military officers they have assignments, they're
all busy, and you know, they don't have time to do these things
as hobbies, nor do they have the authority they have clear direction instructions jobs
to do, and if nobody's assigned in initiative of the task, even though
they might find it interesting, probably nobody's going to take it on. So
I don't think they have the where particularly to send it to a value have
an evaluate hit or saying we got this and you know you're the guy responsible
for UFOs, so we're going to send it to you. He just went
on the shelf. And now I know there is a large feeling that well,
somebody of the government must be looking at this, because there are so
many reports over the years from so many people, including military people, and
indeed it's it is a bit of the conundrum. And you can see in
black and white reports that are available now to the Freedom of Information Act where
there are objects referred to as UFOs by Air Force officials in and over nuclear
weapons storage facilities. It's there for anybody who wants to see it. It's
been released under the Freedom of Information Act. And you know, to the
credit the Air Force is then putting this stuff out. You can find it
online. There's some folks do some great research, telling me. Paul Dean
in Australia has a blog site called documenting the Evidence you have post documenting the
evidence, and heeded some colleagues in this case, for example, he got
stores of these memos and they're quite incredible when you read them, and they
really do make you wonder, you know, how could the Air Force not
think there's a problem here. You've got several different airbases over the course of
one year. You've got enemies that are you know, they're scrambling jets,
they're sending the security teams out in some cases, you know, one case
the object is passing directly over control tower. Another one is like going down
right over a runway. And there's a whole lot of discussion about this,
and it's happening on multiple days, and it's happening over trying it multiple bases
that are storing nuclear weapons. And someone's written a book about this, which
I've just looked at, a bit called Clear Intent, and I don't I'm
not terribly familiar with it. I can't vouch for it all, but based
on what I've seen from the Freedom of Information Act documents that are available,
there's clearly something behind this, and you find quite a few of these kind
of reports. I printed a couple out on the show tonight, as I
thought this might come up. So here's one from January seventy five, National
Military Command Center CFOs reported near the flight line and Canon Air Force based in
Mexico. Security police observing them reported UFOs between five yards in diameter gold or
silver and colored with blue light on top, hole in the middle, in
red light on bottom. Air Force is checking with radar, additionally checking whether
inversionating they JS Moore and you're able. US Navy get to be directed for
operations. National Military Command Center. That website is life with documents like that.
So I get it in terms of why people white so many people who
are interested in this synonomy, it's a large block of people clearly who just
write it off and they just now they can't be true, that's nonsense.
You know, there's a segment of the population. And I think most of
those people are thinking that because they just have and really looked into it,
and I've done the research. And it's interesting in the Internet age, when
so much information is so readily available on so many topics, that lots of
people do that on lots of issues. And you know that I talk to
people about global warming sometimes friends of mind it and it was something that uh,
you know, I just went online and tug into the issue to try
to find out what's going on here and and everything. And then you can
do that and you can get a pretty good handle on it pretty quickly,
a pretty good sense of what the data says and the science and so forth.
And even though it's readily available, many people don't. There are some
good sources on this topic for people that want to take a you know,
have an open mind and want to take a uh, you know, want
to look into it and make up their own minds. And I think,
as most people did, they'd say, you know, this is pretty curious,
this is and strange, and there are quite a few substantiated, well
documented reports, and in fact that there are also some very curious patterns in
the data, patterns that weren't necessarily evident when Blue Book did their study back
in the early fifties. So I can very well understand why people that the
government must be on topits, they must know about it. Maybe they do.
Maybe there's some super secret program somewhere. Obviously, one can't prove a
negative, right, so it would be impossible to prove that such a thing
doesn't exist, and it could I can only say that in many, many
years of being responsible for looking at and keeping a book on black programs,
both in the intelligence two Defense department, I never saw anything that suggested that,
Nor did I th sort of informal inquiries. And you know, sometimes
you learn things not because you're formally necessarily right into something, but you to
osmosis sort of pick out something's going on. And I never had any indication
of that. So I understand why people feel right. I respect you,
I know, very right. Highly educated people who looked at the evidence who
leave something like that must exist. They could be right. But I never
saw any indication of that. You know, the barocers need if you imagine
yourself being the base commander somewhere or some some echelon even perhaps above that,
and you get reports that you know, we've had, you have you security
teams the scenes, you know, ruminous object, and they brushed out there
and scrambled z that we we couldn't verify this thing. We couldn't identify it.
There was no physical evidence. And even if you had a sort of
a disturbing pattern event going on, and you're a career official in a culture
that doesn't accept this, doesn't want to be weeded, which you know,
people with the scans at that even raising that topic. And plus you don't
have answers to the questions that you're superior is going to ask you, and
you don't have any ready way to come to grips with it, you might
very well be tempted to just sweep it under the rug or to just move
on or just say, Okay, we're going to increase cognitive security and we're
going to do blah blah blah, and nothing happens after that, and then
you know, gets forgotten. So the bureaucracy and in the organization instructure,
particularly if nobody's saddled with the mission to look into this. I wouldn't underestimate
the potential for for these very large organizations to avoid issues if they don't have
to come to grips of them because they're they're they're always putting fires out all
the time, they've got their hair on fire, They've got lots of issues
that they have to deal with, and something is awkward, difficult, maybe
unmanageable, might fall through the cracks so or just be sort of buried or
you know, left behind as it doesn't occur. Maybe we don't have to
deal with it hasn't happened again, Okay, fine, So you know I
can only speak to what I had experienced, and that was I never saw
any indication of any cover up or you know, specialists put them involving the
exploitation of you knowing materials or even trying to collect on the UFOs or anything
like that. Chris, One of the things one of the questions that I
had a number of people send in, you know, questions last week and
kind of along the lines you were just saying about you didn't see anything there.
You know, John Alexander speaks of the same when he looked into it.
One of the things I had thought myself only because of things like Project
Bluebook, and you know, when these things are flying around in our airspace
and there's enough people seeing them, you would think that there would be an
interest in some possible compartmentalized section of our government somewhere. But someone was along
the lines of this whole thing, whether you would share the information if you
knew it, you know, there's someone that's going to come in and say
something. And that one is while you were working for the d D,
did you sign a secrecy oath? And if so wouldn't that bar you from
letting us know that there was a UFO cover up? Well, I signed
lots of secrecy os and but none of them had to do with anything having
to do with UFOs. And if there were such a program, I wouldn't
have been joining UFO data. Most in all probability, it wouldn't be as
frustrated as I am by the situation we find ourselves in. And in terms
of this perception too, you know, bear in mind that people who are
following this data at this this issue, like you and I, you're interested,
you know, we're aware of this sort of constant that this stream of
reports that goes on. But those reports they're going to move on, or
they're going to do websites of people that follow this. The average person has
no idea. The average military officer is not seeing that. They're not hearing
that unless there's some very surprising, unusual incident that occurs in their immediate vicinity.
In all probability, they have an entirely different perception. It's not on
their radar at all. And so I think you know when and this is
you know, commonplace with a lot of things. You know, if you're
deeply interested in something and you're you're you're very cognizant of what's going on in
that field, and you follow it closely. And the average person doesn't share
that awareness. And you know, most people in the government may I would
say most don't take the subject seriously at all, and they're not following it,
and they're not seeing many of these reports, and they don't have the
same sense or perception that there's a lot of activity going on right I've said
a number of times in the show too, the average person is so focused
on, you know, what's going on in their lives around them. A
lot of you know, it's a very small percentage of let's say, just
the United States, of people that have an interest or even ponder what could
be going on. You know, it's really very, very small. And
you know, with all the information. There was a question that came up
earlier on the message board, with all the information being blasted out and shotgun
manner to everyone, you know, it's amazing what young people are going through
today, and that was a question that came up. How can we get
young people interested in the topic of UFOs. What what's your thoughts on that?
Hmm, it's interesting. I don't know. I mean, there there
there seems to be a considerable amount of interest out there. I don't know.
You know, there's some different polling data I've seen a little bit of.
I am not a uh expert in this field in terms of somebody who
has been writing books about it and researching it, like you know, for
for decades, like my colleague god Leslie Keane on UFO data, I bring
a little bit of a different expertise and perspective to the issue. I certainly
follow it as I can, but again, you know, that's part of
the reason that we want to bring science to bear hair. If we can
collect very high fidelity, very high quality data, and we have an array
a sensor platform that may have as many as fourteen different sensors collecting electromagnetic radiation
in different frequencies, testing for electrostatic discharges, distortions, electromagnetic field and the
gravitational field and so on, then if we are able to get that data,
and I think there's good reason we could talk about this to believe that
we can, then I think that will change public perception for people young and
old. Okay, Well, one of the things that we had talked about
earlier. Is in the news, is the black triangles or large triangles that
all these people are seeing triangles there. One of the things that also came
up in the news is, you know, Michael Schrad there's a number of
people that are claiming that they think these are military. And with your background
and all the research that you had hands on and special access programs and all
that, what what do you have to say to that claim? Well,
a couple of things. There are undoubtedly cases where people are seeing say a
B two bomber and you know, in a context that they're not expecting it,
or a location or whatever. They are undoubtedly cases where that is generating
some UFO reports. But in some of the other cases, for example,
the famous incident in Belgium or the famous incident in southern Illinois ten years later,
where you had multiple witnesses, you had an object. The B two
did not take flight until July of eighty nine, so it could not explain
these sightings in the first instance. Secondly, it was my job to you
know, I participated in the group that was keeping track of all these things
on behalf of the Secretary of Defense, and I recall a specific incident that
you know, helps to keep the memory clear for me. So the chairman
of the Appropriations Committee, Senator Bobby Bird, who was one of the most
powerful men in Washington because he controlled the purse strings, and he was noted
and famous for many things, one for being the Senate Parliamentarian par excellence,
the Senate historian. He was a champion of the legislative body more ardently than
perhaps any other legislator who's ever lived. And he would tear the hide off
of anybody who dared to cross him. And everybody knew it because he had
done it many times. And we got to call a day from Congressional Affairs,
and he had been reading these articles about this Aurora spacecraft. And you
know, how come the committee hadn't been briefed on it, because he,
by law has to be briefed on all the special access programs has to be
notified, and people don't probably isn't aware of this. All these programs are
brief to Congress. There are multiple layers of review and oversight. I wasn't
sure how much I could say about this initially, so ident little research,
and it turns out that the DD instruction is unclassified and specifically released and posted
on the web. So if you're interested in getting a sense of how these
programs are managing what the oversight mechanism is, you can look at DoD instruction
fifty two zero five dot one one, which is approved for release, and
you will it describes the structure and how these programs are reviewed for legality and
congressional notification. And it doesn't say this because it's also part of the function
is to make sure that you don't have one black program and one agency or
service spending money on something that is duplicating what another group is doing somewhere else
and they just don't know about each other because the program is so secret.
So all those things are going on. So this call comes in and we
all kind of looked at each other and you like, well, we don't
remember anything like that, and so we all ran it down to make double
sure, you know, contacted all the appropriate people with Air Force and Joint
staff and so forth, and you know, reviewed the programs whatever. And
you know, we replied, we told the Congressional Affairs Office, you can
tell them categorically, note without hesitation, there is no such program. We
don't have anything like that. So basically, and so go ahead. Whatever
these people were seeing in Belgium, the Belgian military and tracking. First of
all, the performance characteristics were unlike anything that we had or any technology we
had. Secondly, you know it it was definitely not It was not something
that we had you know, on the books, was not It was not
us. And very curious. You know, if the US had had something
like that, it would be completely out of character for American military people to
be flying around a place like Belgium. I mean, the American desert out
west and a test rained sure over the ocean or you know, some remote
areas, but flying low and slow over a NATO ally, why would you
do that? I mean, that's that doesn't make any sense. So,
you know, I don't I understand why people surmised that it would be that
these things might have been US vehicles of some advanced nature, But in those
cases they clearly weren't. The B two bomber wasn't even flying then, Yeah,
what about you know, there's the old saying. Well, I say
old because it was years ago, sunt work, skunk works. Ben Rich
said that they already have Let's see, here's a quote right here, and
this We're going to be reading some of the comments that people left on the
Huffington Post interview, but this one in particular says Ben Rich. It's a
direct quote. We already have the means to travel among the stars, but
these technologies are locked up in black projects, and it would take an act
of God to ever get them out to benefit humanity. Anything you can imagine,
imagine, we already know how to do. So what's your what's your
did you know of Ben Rich? And what's your opinion? Ever, I'm
not familiar with this, gentleman. And if that's news to me that anything
you can imagine we already have that, that's that's news to me. It
is news to you, That's not my perception. Yeah, so Area fifty
one. Now I'm going to be asking all different types of questions also about
Hillary Clinton as well, because I want to make sure I get that question
in before the top of the hour. But so Area fifty one, the
projects in DARPA, there projects, nothing that you were ever aware of,
was like really high end technology. You know, there's for instance, you
know a lot of people are saying the triangles appear to be like something that
defies gravity, you know, it does. It moves much slower than a
conventional aircraft in like forty miles an hour or something like that, And how
could it stay afloat Nothing that you ever saw look like high end technology that's
not conventional. Yeah, we excel and are justifiably you know, famous and
known around the world for for exotic technology. And we have incredible engineering talent
and incredibly dedicated people that are producing you know, extraordinary results in many fields
in many ways. But I never saw anything that you would look at it
and say, you know, wow, that that couldn't be explained by just
the talent of our people and the resources, and you know, this must
have come from some someplace else. I never saw anything that, you know,
involved something that was so orthogonal to you know, our understanding, conventional
understanding of science, that you would think it must have come from somewhere else.
Now, with your level of clearance, how deep could you go if
you were actually looking for something like that. Well, you know, as
I say, I mean, the Sectuary of Defense has a mechanism for conducting
oversight of all these programs in the Defense Department, and that was one of
my jobs. So you know, presumably I should have would have known if
we had, you know, a time machine or something that could you know,
travel faster than light or in one of these programs. Now, of
course, there is always the possibility that there's something completely outside the DOOD directives
and policies and budgets and programs. You know, maybe there's something that's so
completely radical they you know, took it out of the government altogether, or
something that I wouldn't know about it. So you mean like in the private
sector. Yeah, I mean, you know, I can't say that's impossible,
and I'm not claiming omniscience. I can only say that speak to what
I saw, what I know, and what I knew, and I never
had the sense again that you know, most people even took the subject seriously.
In the government, they weren't concerned with it. It wasn't on their
agenda. I know. You know, people would laugh about it sometimes,
you know, people at Area fifty one, you know, they may crack
a joke about it. If you were going out there about the aliens and
stuff. It was not an atmosphere or an environment in which this was an
issue or deemed to be. You know, it wasn't on people's radar.
It was it was deemed to be sort of a little bit of a you
know, wacky area, and and you know, so people who some people
who did have an interest, like myself, weren't keen to advertise that factor
talk about it much. But again I never, as I said in the
Huffington Post article, I never had the faintest whiff of anything involving a UFO
cover up. Again doesn't mean it couldn't be there. But I had a
lot of access in the intel NDOD world because of my responsibilities. It was
my job to you know, catalog and review these programs in a fairly comprehensive
way, and I just never encountered that. But you know, one of
the interesting issues, and one of the things I'm involved with more in my
my daily life more centrally, is this issue of trust in government. And
we are at a point where it's ebbing to perhaps in all time low,
maybe at least in the post World War two era, or maybe at least
the highest level since Vietnam. I don't know, but it's certainly we're in
a bad place that way. And you know the fact that the candidates who
are prevailing in the nomination process or you know, there. There appeal largely
lies in there to some degree in their anti establishment sort of credentials and views
the gridlock. We have the money. There are a whole lot of reasons
that trust is really a big issue these days and a problem in a lot
of ways, and I think it manifests itself kind of across the board in
this area. It's it's very prominent, but by no means is it limited
to this topic, that's for sure. Yeah, no, I totally agree.
There. We have a caller on the line. That caller, welcome
to the show. What's your first name and where are you calling from?
Hi, Martin? This was Phil from Big Dass Lake in Michigan. Oh.
Phil, you're the guy that's going on a fishing trip, right,
Ben on a fishing trip? Oh? Ben on a fishing trip. Yeah?
How you doing? So? You have a question for our guests?
Yes, I do. I've been listening to your guests for over a power
now and I haven't really heard him say anything. And I don't mean to
be too hard that I just I'm looking for something specific that this guy is
bringing to the table because I'm just not hearing anything other than I don't know
how to say it to just conversation but no information. Well, why don't
you, why don't you, why don't you give him a specific question you'd
like from him? Actually, may I address that? Yeah? Sure,
exception so I don't know you know what you caught my remarks. But what
I'm bringing to the table is very specific. It's very concrete, and if
you're really interested in finding out the truth, we invite you to go to
UFO data dot net, make a contribution or sign up as a volunteer if
you want to know you go, okay, well, I mean this is
I'm sorry. You just lost me. I think you just lost everybody else
giving you a dying for anything were interested or not you can or what?
Okay, bye, bye see you. Okay, sorry about that, but
just me let me I'm sorry, I don't have I'm not sure what the
guy expected me to say. All the expect me to come on here and
say, you know, yeah, there's aliens, you know under some air
base or something. Let me, Well, I'm just what I'm trying to
do is build support for an activity. They can help all of us achieve
some real clarity, and if we succeed, we may in fact get the
government also to step up. Now, if people say they're really interested and
they want to, you know, uncover this, they want to know the
truth, they want to find what's going on. That's what we're trying to
provide. Okay, So this UFO data, by the way, is a
nonprofit and it's no one's gaining any money out of it. And also you
can volunteer. For instance, I do have a banner on my sidebar and
have offered to help out, you know. And there's there's other UFO detection
out there as well. There's UFO Talk Mark d' antonio and Doug Trumbull,
So there's other people trying to do this, and I think, you know,
a collaboration between anyone that can help. So it's not like someone's looking
for money. So I think film might have taken that in a different way.
I'm not really sure, but I promised i'd try to get by the
top of the hour the topic of Hillary Clinton. So let's just I just
want to know what your opinion is of when she said that she's going to
look into getting to the bottom of the UFO topic or uIP I believe she
put it. Also, do you think that was just some type of way
to possibly get voters attention, or do you think she is sincere? And
also the most important question, I want to ask you, if someone is
sitting in the president's chair, can they know anything they want to know?
The answer to that question is absolutely. Here's kind of the way it works,
though, And I apologize Martin. I it sounds like I'm I'm maybe
losing your audience here, but I can only speak to my experience and anyway,
so the president has far better, more important things to do than look
at classified programs, of which there are a great many and many different agencies
and organizations. They're typically boring, they're technical. There things that are very
straightforward. Just because something's in a black program doesn't mean it's interesting or it's
even terribly important. You know, most of these things are very useful.
They're logical applications of technology, the challenges we have, trying to improve weapons
systems, try to improve the safety of our military personnel, all those kinds
of things. They don't The president absolutely can. The DD will salute.
He's the commander in chief. And I caused a little confusion. I think
I was trying to In the Huffington Post article, address the question of you
know, wouldn't Hillary Clinton already know about these programs if they existed, you
know, because she's such a senior official. And what I was trying to
point out is that no, these programs are on a need to know basis,
and Secretary of State wouldn't have any routinely any reason to know about most
of these things. If it became pertinent, of course they could provide a
briefing, but these people are dealing with much more important things by and large.
If somebody's working on you know, making a strengthening a tank armor or
increasing you know, the ability to jam a signal at twenty three megahertz or
something like that, you know, that's not worth their time, and it
doesn't have any big policy implications. It's just something we don't want potential adversaries
to know that we're doing. And so yes, absolutely, of course the
president can get anything they want, but it's pretty rare for them to you
know, they're really focused, naturally and appropriately at a very high strategic level.
Occasionally there might be something that rises to their level where there might be
you know, a foreign policy issue involved or something. But absolutely anything they
want they can get. But there's a distinction I would make between the President
himself and the National Security Council's staff, which number one hundreds, and they
will sometimes the White House staff ask for things and be denied, but the
President absolutely, of course the Defense Department will salute and move mountains to support
the commander achieve right. And I think that anyone that takes that office basically
has the tiger by the tail. And she probably or may forget that.
She even said that by the time she gets her hands full if she does
become president. That is. We have the one and only Lee Spiegel in
the chat room from the Huffington Post. And here's a he posts a question
earlier, but I'll get to this one that's up there right now. He
says, Chris, please speculate on what you think freely operating in this is
freely operating the guys around our planet that has for decades out maneuvered all attempts
to engage them in the sky and speak to the issue of how many commercial
airline pilots have had close encounters but they're encouraged not to go public about it
because it might hurt their career. Well, you know, I'm reluctant to.
I agree with Lee that there's a lot of data that you know,
as I look at the data, it paints a similar picture. I don't
think there's any doubt that there are a lot of airline pilots who've reported I
know that there are a lot of airlineportans and military pilots who've had sightings and
reported them, and it's all very mysterious, and that's why we're trying to
build support to deploy some technology. It would be great if the government were
doing this, that would be my preference, but since they're not, and
nobody else's, we're trying to do that so that we can actually, you
know, bring high quality, first rate scientific technical data to bear on the
issue and get past this very frustrating impasse of these continued rapports, which are
you know, fire the curiosity but never go anywhere right and never lead to
any resolution or clarity. I'm reluctant to to speculate. I don't rule anything
out. I think what we need is data. Is we need, we
need, we need, we need better, more and better information to answer
the question he's posing, and that's what we're trying to do. So he
also adds this just now, So please speculate what your inner senses might tell
you what might be going on. Well, you know, I wish I
knew. I really wish I'd believe me. I'm burning with curiosity ever since
I was a kid. This fires my imagination in all kinds of ways.
Well, what do you think about the extraterrestrial Uh? Thought, I don't
see any reason to rule that out whatsoever. And I say that for a
variety reasons. One, you know, our we've made unbelievable strides in a
fairly short period of time. When I think just about my own grandfather riding
and a horse and buggy and not having a phone, and be born before
there were airplanes and all of that. Yet I think, you know,
we don't know what dark matter is. If we don't know what dark energy
is, that's ninety five percent of the universe. We haven't been able to
reconcile quantum mechanics with the general relativity. With regard to the meaning remaining five
percent, we have already got vehicles that have left this A vehicle has left
the Solar System and all others on Mars. So everything we're learning about the
universe and the entire trajectory of our cosmological understanding is one of one hundred and
eighty degrees from where we started, which was that we're at the center of
the universe and we're unique and everything goes around us. Everything we learned at
every step of the way, it seems to suggest more and more that we're
a very commonplace solar system and a very commonplace galaxy. And you know,
there are trulyions the planets in this galaxy, and so you know, I'm
I don't think there's any reason to exclude that possibility that, but I want
to get to the point of really being getting beyond speculation and trying to really
answer the question. I'm glad glad to hear that. You know, when
when that article came out in the Huffington Post, it went viral, and
there's a ton of different articles out there now everywhere that people have kind of
gone off of that and you know, made their own speculation and some of
the things I know in conversation with you, the things we just cleared up,
and that is the president who's who's sitting in that chair can get any
information that they want, but anyone lower than that than that position it's possible
that they cannot access certain let me try. Let me try to be a
little bit more clear, perhaps, so you know within the Defense Department,
of course, the Secretary of Defense can get anything he wants the deputy can
you know, there is a chain I mentioned that VOD instruction, and it
stipulates the process of how these prayers are managed. And as I mentioned before,
they are all brief to Congress to the appropriate people. So there you
know, there is oversight. It's not as though this is a world.
Some people would argue that we have too much oversight, and in some areas
I think they're right. There are things that we are unable to do quickly
and effectively, sometimes on intelligence matters, for example, because we have so
many echelons of review and so many attorneys and so much coordination. We have
committees in Congress that have staffs that are far larger than any other government in
the world. The Intelligence Committee has a staff that's twice as large at least,
as I recall, is the Arb Services Committee, even though the budget
that they oversee is about one tenth the size. So there's a lot of
poking around, a lot of review of these budgets and programs, and certainly
the president and people in the appropriate chains of command and the appropriate positions can
get access to this information. Now, Chris was what were some of the
things that people sort of took out a context in that interview that you'd like
to clear up just a couple of them, if you would. Well,
the one, I think the one the first one was the one about that
was the one you've already touched on at Harwy Clinton versus the President was funny.
There was an article in a British tabloid that that said, uh,
you know, for redew the official says President won't be told about UFO cover
up or something, and I and I had to laugh because, first of
all, I said, as far as I know, there isn't a cover
up, and I never said the president couldn't get access, And you know,
I said that the Secretary of Defense wouldn't typically because they wouldn't have a
need to know in you know, every compartment, in program in other departments.
So I'm glad. I hope that we're able to clear it out up
at least sure now we talked earlier, I just posed I think one question
from one of the comments that were left in a couple of them are pretty
harsh of one of them. Yeah, oh maybe I deserve it. No,
here's here's one here. This is a comment left on that post.
It says two things about this Chris guy. One either he was never allowed
access to UFO type files or material evidence, or two, he's lying about
what he knows and is humoring the Board of UFO data in order to gain
access to what they know and their files in order to design misinformation or steal
evidence of e T. Well, it's it's interesting. I mean, I'm
not sure how I can. You know, what I can say to prove
that I'm not some kind of you know, mole or something. Let me
see here. I don't know what I can say early. I mean,
you can sort of believe me or not. The fact is, as I
said, I never saw anything indicating that there was any kind of UFO program.
I understand very well. While a lot of people think there must be,
I have recommended publicly that there ought to be. I specifically recommended in
the Huffington Post article that nor had be tasked and you be put on the
hook. They have some tracking data already that's not being examined from this standpoint.
At the best of my knowledge, I think somebody, a couple of
people with President's Council Scientific Advisors, can be clear to get access to all
that data. I don't think anybody in the government is trying to cross correlate
it with data that goes into civilian organizations that are that are collecting sightings and
cataloging them. I really wish there was some sort of government activity. It
is possible, of course, as the person suggests that I didn't have access,
there is always possible. There's an old saying in the intel community you
don't know what you don't know. You never know what you don't know.
And sometimes just when you're thinking you're at the center of the onion, you're
the innermost layer of compartmentation, you find some other little trap door and some
other compartment. But I really don't if there is any such thing. All
I can say is it's completely outside that mechanism that the Secretary has for moneting
these things. As far as I know, the fellow who is responsible for
a special access program security policy was a direct report to me. I took
my job seriously. I never sign anything like that or it covered anything like
that, So I think if it does exist, it's been pulled off into
some separate world. That's possibility. I can't say that's not a possibility.
That could be, but I'm not aware of any such thing. Well,
when you were involved with some oversight for Area fifty one, do you actually
physically visit these places? Yes, so you were actually there. Yeah,
did you see Bob Lazaar Because I wouldn't have know what he looked like at
that time either, But you know, it was kind of it's kind of
interesting, and I'm not going to talk about you know, there's a little
of a slippery slope issue here in terms of you know, not crossing into
inappropriate areas and not causing problems for former colleagues in terms of generating press requests
that they have to respond to or something. But yeah, when I was
there, you know, I never again there was nothing that the people kind
of laughed about about the idea that there was a there was a hidden UFO
facility or something. Yeah, Groom Lake. I think that's the area of
that where there's supposed to be these according to Bob Blazar in the side of
the mountain, these doors open up in this I forget, but you know,
you know, maybe maybe when Secretary, if Secretary Clinton becomes president,
maybe John Podesta will take Bob Blazaar and a group of pressed people on a
plane out there and say, okay, Bob, show us the doors and
and you know, maybe they'll just, you know, get some camera crews
and a film crew and say, okay, Bob, you know, show
us the beef, and let's let's get a vehicle and drive down there.
I don't know. I mean, you know, who knows. But let
me kind of a little bit more. Actually, if I if I may,
in terms of this issue of you know, a cover up, if
there were such a thing, maybe maybe it would be for good reason.
I mean, the people that I worked with, they're not sinister people.
They're they're very patriotic, hardworking Americans. I'm sure many people on this podcast
have friends and family in the military. They're really exceptionally patriotic, hardworking.
I know. I worked with the current Director of National Intelligence, Jim Clapper,
really good man. I worked with the current CIA director, John Brennan,
used to attend regular meetings with him. These are good people. These
are people. If if somehow, and I very much doubt this, there
was some program they knew about and it was being kept under wraps. I
could only imagine that, you know, would probably be for good reason,
and I could imagine why that would be. Imagine, you know, let's
entertain this scenario, which I am skeptical of, but just entertain it for
a moment. Imagine your you or the president, and somebody comes to you
in some secret briefing and says, mister President, we have this remnants from
this space alien spaceship that we captured, and we don't know where these people
are from or this maybe it's you know, autonomously controlled or something. But
we have this technology, but we don't know who's behind it, or why
they're here, what their agenda is, and we're not able to provide any
reassurance that if they had bad intentions, we could stop them. Now,
what kind of responsible person would go public with that? When you think about
that, all the kids, all the the you know, the public,
the elderly people. People have enough problems. If you're the person who's responsible
for the safety of three hundred and fifty million Americans, would you really want
to come out with some half baked thing and say I dropped his hand grenade
under the dining room table of every family in America and say, oh,
yeah, we can't protect we don't know what's going on, and we can't
really protect you and we don't know what they're doing. But oh yeah,
by the way, there's some alien race visiting the planet. Have a nice
day. Really, really, come on, think about it. That's crazy.
Who would do that. I think what you just said there is probably
very close to the truth. That's my opinion. I think that's possible.
I mean, I don't know. I say I never the people that I
knew at high levels. I mean, I see, you know, Clinton's
been asked about this, Bill Clinton and President Obama and stuff. They seem
to laugh it off and shrug it off. And I knew worked very closely
with the former Secretary of Defense, and I don't for a minute believe that
he knew about something like this or was involved in it. But you can't
rule it out, of course. I mean it is there is a bit
of cognitive dissonance you get when you look at these Freedom of Information Act requests.
For example, when you see the Air Force guys scrambling on the one
hand, and these sort of incursions and reports and the Belgian incident and the
center and how could we not be, you know, getting on this so
you know, anything is possible, I suppose. But again, if that
were the case, and if somebody were to come out with that sort of
a half baked revelation, think about the firestorm and it would result, and
for what possible productive purpose? I mean, the press, the Congress,
our allies, everybody. It would just be it would just be an absolute
firestorm, and for what and what would it accomplish? Also, there'd be
so many things I think. I'm not saying that that's what's going on.
I'm not saying I have no reason whatsoever to believe that is true. I'm
saying for those people who consider that scenario, I think. I guess part
of the reason I'm saying this is, like John Podesta said publicly, the
American people can handle the truth. My question would be, if you don't
know what the truth is, how do you know that they can handle it?
You know, what if they're what if they're flesh eating or ragnins or
something. I meant, doesn't that make sense to me? Yeah? Yeah,
we just had someone try to call in, So I'm going to take
the call right now. Caller, you are alive. Your first name?
Please? Where are you calling from? Lou Rancho cucamong in California. Hi
there, Lou, Do you have a question for our guest Chris Mellon tonight?
I do, and I apologize. I tun didn't late, and I
too didn't kind of in the middle of the conversation you were just having,
and I wanted to call in to clarify at least and mentally for me,
my understanding is technically the president has a right to know all of the information.
There might be rogue employees who withhold information. But is that your guests
understanding? Is that what the point for me? Yes? Absolutely, Yeah,
that's all I understand it. But there are people out there who say
there are black programs and the president doesn't have a right to know what's going
on, and that just doesn't make sense to me. I mean again,
is that the point you're making or one of the answerary points you're making.
Yeah, let me try to be really clear about it. You know,
I apologize. I gather you got in a little bit late, but I
mentioned earlier. There's a d D instruction fifty two zero five point one point
one, which you can find on the web. It outlines the process US
by which the Defense Department provides oversight of all special access programs, at least
in theory, and how that is done, and they're all reported to Congress,
and there are multiple echelons of reviews. So the Air Force reviews all
of its special access programs and then they go to this committee, and there's
another level of review with a number of people on this committee looking at it
from a legal standpoint, an acquisition standpoint, a budgetary standpoint, a congressional
notification standpoint. So of course we have programs and activities that we can't put
in the public domain because it would be shared with our adversaries at the same
time we shared them with the public. If there was some way to share
it just with the American people and ensure it didn't go beyond that, you
know that that would probably be what we should be doing. But there's no
way to do that. So we have this balance of trying to be able
to do things and still provide over site and accountability. And I think it's
a reasonable balance and I think it works reasonably well. See, Okay,
I just again, I've I've had discussions and not necessarily pleasant discussions from the
other side somehow saying that there are programs up there that president does not have
a need to know about. I just I can't imagine setting up a government
that way. Again, there could be rogue employees who share it not to
reveal information, but that's that's not legal. That's a good point. And
so that's what the Iran contra affair was about, right, exactly exactly.
You had you had people doing things without the knowledge of the President, allegedly
or Congress. So there was not a single elected official in the United States
government who knew that these people were launching an independent foreign policy initiative that was
contra present stated policy. Right. Conductor was the admiral who admitted that it
was. I can't remember his name, was it, Yeah, he specifically
admitted to that. Right, So that kind of thing can happen, And
that's when those kinds of things do happen. Of course, they do undermine
people's trust and faith in the government, and they often result in even more
intrusive oversight. The intelligence committees established in the Lake of revelations about the CIA
conducting LSD experiments on citizens and all this kind of thing, and when that
finally got into papers that led to such an outcry. You had these hearings
on Capitol Hill, and they decided we need to have a Select Committee on
Intelligence in ease House of Congress to you know, review the intelligence community annually
their budgets, their programs, their activities, et cetera. So there actually
is considerable oversight. And I am not the Church Committee. That's the Church
Committee front absolutely right. Our Church Committee was one of the committee recommendations.
Correct, And I I thank you for repeating your points. I just like
I said, I too, didn't Lane. We're on the exact same page
and it was just good to hear. So thank you for your times.
Hey, Lou, I appreciate the call. Thanks all right, Chris,
I want to get to a couple of messages that came up on the message
board as we're going on. First of all, I did promise Lee that
I would ask this he wonders what actual need to know level that you were
given and whether or not you wondered if there were those above you that actually
knew more. All right, it's a logger. But so if you are
a member of the Special Access Program Oversight Committee, you are what they call
a super user. That means you cleared for all special access programs. Okay,
that was a quick, easy answer. Good. Now. One came
up a couple of times. Some one person in particular wanted to know if
you if you even you know what this is. I think I've heard of
it, the bole Ender memo. I believe I'm familiar with that. Yes,
so what's your view on that? Well, if I understand this correctly,
this is a memorandum in which a general indicates that he saw some materials.
Materials that were sent back to right Patterson Air Force Base were not the
weather balloon materials that were shown at the press conference. If I've got that
right, it was sort of he was saying there was sort of a bait
and switch. There was some other stuff sent back to Right pat If I
recalled his correctly, and my sense of that was, it's interesting. I
believe it's authentic, but I'm not sure what conclusion to draw because that would
appear to be consistent with two hypotheses. The Air Force, which claims they
you know, came clean in the nineties on this and revealed this Project Mogul,
which was a high altitude experiment trying to detect nuclear weapons explosions in the
in the former Soviet Union, which was a highly classified program, and it's
possible that they may have he might have not not have been cleared for that,
and they you know, rolled out this this balloon or whatever for the
public to cover it up, and then they took the components from the classified
program and sent them back to write pat And so it's conceivable that that's what
he saw, or you know, alternatively, maybe it was something else.
Maybe maybe there was some debris from uh, you know, erect uh,
you know, a crash of some kind. So to me, it's it's
it's interesting, but I'm not sure that it is dispositive of anything, right,
Okay, So let's see the question another question that came up there.
Did you have any evidence of any sort of government type organization that works externally
to the main government. M I guess that would be like a private sector
oversight. Well, you know, there's the government relies to a huge degree
on contractors, and I mean to a degree that I think the public generally
doesn't appreciate. And oftentimes that's for the better because the contractors are often more
efficient than having government employees performing those same functions. So I'm not saying it's
that's necessarily a bad thing, but there is a huge contractor base, and
obviously, you know a huge percentage of the government budget goes into into the
private sector and so forth. If now you know, when you have d
D programs, for example, like Boeing, you know, I've visited their
plant and assembly line where next generation aircraft were being made and the d O
D. Anytime you have a big acquisition program of any kind, there is
a mountain of an excessive volume I would say, of oversight regulation, acquisition
milestones, et cetera. There's encyclopedias literally of acquisition regulations, and so it
would be wouldn't be easy to hide something of a really spectacular nature in that
domain and keep it out outside of government oversight. But you know they're there.
In theory, you could could have something, I suppose. I mean,
the Iran contract Fair was interesting because there's an example of where people were
running an operation completely off the books and they were making money. They were
engaging in trades, they were exchanging you know, weapons, anti tank missiles,
and taking money and using that to fund the covered Action program in Nicaragua,
to fund the contrast, and there was an example of something with rogue
employees running a black operation off the books, completely outside of any of these
oversight mechanisms I've been talking about. So it's not impossible it's happened, but
I wouldn't be surprised if it's happened. More than that myself it could be.
It was so outrageous when it happened, and you know, the issue
really was at a point like that, You know, people do have a
reason to start asking, you know, what kind of a democracy are we
really If people who are not beholden to any elected official can run completely independent
foreign policy and COVID actions. I mean that that was crazy right here.
Here's another question that came in, and that is what do you think about
blink one two? Tom Blong's claims when it comes to the government and UFO,
such as this is a direct quote, I have ten people that I'm
working with that are at the highest levels of the Department of Defense and NASA
and the military. And this is in regards to the UFO maybe disclosure or
something he's claiming. Well, yeah, I think he's a he's a creative
genius. For one thing, I've enjoyed his his novel UH and UH.
I think Blink went he too is UH was a great band in their day.
And if he's got some some advisors working with him, I think that's
great. I think they could probably help him to make what he's doing,
and I think that's his intent, uh, to make it appropriately. I
think he wants to be authentic and also cast the military, our military people
in the positive life they deserved to be cast in. So I think he
probably wants to, you know, avail himself with some real expertise as he
goes along. I think that's great. Okay, Yeah, we'll see where
that leads to. We have a caller, caller, what's your first name?
And where are you calling from? Hello? Can you hear me?
Now? Okay, caller. If you can hear me and I can't hear
you, you're going to have to do a Skype test call and check to
see if your microphone's not working, because I'm not hearing anything. So I'm
going to hang up on you. Try your Skype test call, see if
you can figure that out or call back perhaps. Okay, So you know,
he he is claiming that he is getting somewhere and you know that something
may come out, so that will be interesting whatever happens through that. Another
going back to the comments that were left on the blog on the on the
interview that you did in the Huffington Post. Another one is Hillary Clinton knows
the truth about UAP. She was involved for three years in the Rockefeller initiative.
She and Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Governor Richardson, and a couple
of others worked with Lauren Rockefeller to tell the people the truth. Something happened
to stop the plan. John Podesta wants the truth out now. I do
want John Podesta's name came up a lot of times tonight, But first of
all in that comment and then after that, what do you think about John
Podesta and his claims are well his initiative? Yeah, I I don't know
John Podesta personally, never met the man. My impression of him from Afar
is that he has long been somebody who believed in transparency in government and letting
the sunlight in, letting the sunshine in, and I applaud him for that.
I think, I think that's true, and I think we're at a
point where, you know, as I mentioned, we're at a real low
point in terms of people's trust of their government, and the country's getting dangerously
polarized, and that weakens us and divides us, and so I applaud you
know, his his general philosophical sentiments. My concern is, frankly, that
this is going to be a setback for people who want to really understand the
UFO phenomenon and what lies behind it, because my concern is based on my
experience, that they'll find there is no uh, that Bob Bazaar was not
correct, that there is no UFO cover up in all probability, and so
then some press release to that effect will be issued and people will laugh it
off, and people who are disdainful of this whole subject will as I see,
I told you so, and uh, then we'll get you know,
it'll go nowhere, and the whole topic will have less credibility and interest.
So I wish that people or formulating the request a little differently to the candidate
and to her advisor, in the form of not, you know, just
releasing the alleged cover up documents, but making a commitment to trying to get
to the bottom of the issue if that requires, you know, if they
get in and find out there's something and they release it, Okay, but
if not, then that would require assigning some responsibility and some resources to undertake
some research, not a lot at all. It can be done very easily
and simply, but I think that would would help to ensure that this doesn't
become sort of a dead end or a big setback for people that are interested
in this topic. Okay. We had a couple of questions come in,
and this one here. Do you know of any contingency plans by the government
in the event that an extraterrestrials do make themselves aware to us in a mass
scale, if they were so to speak to land on the White House lawn?
Are there any I think I've actually seen a documentary where they said there
actually is something in place. Are you aware of that. I'm not aware
of anything like that. That's news to me. I've seen some there's some
think pank sort of groups that I gather have examined the issue to some extent,
and some of the people associated with SETTI, for example, have thought
about how would you break that news to the public and what impact might it
have and that sort of thing. But now I'm not aware of anything like
that. You know, I would think you know, I watched the movie
Independence Day. A few people have out there. I would think that it
would not be a bad idea, because you know, we are floating in
space. Anything can happen for us to have like contingency plan if if you
know, kind of like a worldwide contingency plan, if if we ever had
to defend ourselves in any type of way or something. It just seems like
there would be some type of program. I mean, it's kind of like
someone not ever prepared for their house catching on fire, you know. I
mean, it's just kind of like something that could happen. You know,
I think to probably the most government officials that seem so remote that, you
know, in terms of their list of priorities, it wouldn't make the cut.
But it's interesting that that Reagan and in one of his un speeches and
others have talked about, you know, the speculated a little bit on this
sort of unifying impact that might have if we faced if we did face a
common thread. I suppose, you know, I would there's so much increasing
danger in stability in the world today that you know, looking for things that
help to to mitigate some of those differences and bring people together is a good
direction to be looking as a general matter, but I don't know that in
the absence. Again, for something like that to happen, I think you'd
have to have some compelling evidence and information if we had it, that could
have that could change everything, that could have a really profound impact. And
we're trying to see if that's possible. That's why I joined this organization,
and you know, we're hoping to really move the ball down the field.
And science has evolved a great deal since Project Blue Book and so forth.
We have a lot of sophisticated, precise instrumentation. They can be brought to
bear if there are enough people interested in doing it right. Lis Spiegel posted
another question up there, who's ultimately responsible to the citizens of Earth regarding UFOs?
Too many people put all the responsibility of UFO information on the shoulders of
the American government. Who should speak for planet Earth in your opinion? Well,
I you know, nobody can speak for planet Earth. You know,
we're not there yet, and we have the United Nations, and they don't
really speak for They have very little authority, very little cloud. They don't
really you know, we're still tribal and balkanized to a large degree. And
you know, this is one of the troubling things when you see the trends
with what is going on today with Russia and with China and North Korea and
the Middle East, the world that we thought we were moving into after the
former Soviet Union fell apart and the wall came down and there was a honeymoon
pre everyone thought it's all going to be liberal democracies like us around the world.
We're all going to get along. Things are going to be great,
very optimistic time, and things are going in a very decidedly different direction right
now. Yeah, that's very concerning. And the propensity potential for military incidents
is growing as both of these dictatorships in China and Russian are trying to foment
nationalistic impulses to strengthen their control and power. And you know, it's a
very concerning situation. After spending some time there, I don't want to get
into politics too much, but after spending you know, almost just shy of
a whole month in Russia and trying to talk to a few people over there,
they think kind of the same thing about us. Uh, you know,
from what I can gather, you know, we feel like first of
all, they think that we're full of bs and and they think that Putin
is going to straighten us out on you know, by telling the truth.
Again, I don't want to get into politics too much, but it was
interesting to hear those comments from people. Okay, so I'm glad you're not
adding to that. That's much more in my in my sweet spot than in
UFOs probably dur my activities, but I won't go there. Okay. Now.
A question that came in also from one of the listeners during the week
was what do you think about the rumors and ording to some documentation that Eisenhower
was actually communicating with ETS. I don't know anything about anything like that.
I really not in a position to offer any inside I'm afraid yep, yep,
no problem. Again, a lot of these questions would come in,
and another one came in that said with regards and I think you may have
addressed this, at least partially with regards to historical UFO citing reports over a
military basis nuclear weapon sites. Do you think there are any agreements in place
to alert counterparts and opposing countries of these events occurring. I doubt it.
I'm not aware of that. And I and I strongly doubt it that we
would seek to do that because of the nature of nuclear warheads. Basically,
I mean, you know there's a there's a there's a hotline, and you
know there are a few there are mechanisms through our MSIs and so forth to
try to avert misunderstandings in general should they begin to develop. But nothing specifically
related to dufos or anything like that. Yeah, okay, I wanted to
just make sure because at the time is just flying here. I knew I
kind of thought it would. Another one came in, says Grant Cameron.
Used to believe, as you do, Chris, that it is unlikely that
Obama knows anything about our government's secret UFO programs. Cameron has however, changed
his beliefs based on a number of reasons, including, but not only,
Ben Hansen's analysis. I'm not even sure if you're aware of this of Obama's
interview with Jimmy Kimmel. I don't know if you know anything about that at
all. Are you familiar with Grant Cameron's assessment or anything. I'm really not
mart Knight. I passed by a website with a little information about him,
and i'd like to go back and learn a bit more, but I'm not
really in a posistrict comment. Yep, no problem. Here's one I think
I discussed with you on the phone briefly when we first talked, And what
is your opinion on Chase Brandon's claim of seeing a filebox with roswell evidence.
I'm not familiar with the claim, and I don't know what evidence that would
be a reference to. Well, here's let me just ask this thing.
Is it according to his claim? Is it would the government actually put on
a filebox roswell evidence? I mean, wouldn't they number it or like have
a whole bunch of numbers or something instead. It just sounds kind of odd
to me. I mean, just you know, knowing the way bureacracies work,
that if you had some maybe let's take a crash slight of not an
alien say a Russian satellite or advanced reconnaissance vehicle or something, people wouldn't be
leaving boxes lying around saying, you know, evidence from the crash and he
just left it in the corner. Generally it would probably be you know,
pretty well tidied up and accounted for a squat way. But I'm not familiar
with that claim. You know, Lee Spiegel was involved actually at the United
Nations years ago and back in nineteen seventy eight. It was kind of a
milestone for the time, and there's still information out there about this. It's
really very interesting and this is just a comment from him, and he knows
that the UN definitely doesn't speak for earthlings. That was going back to when
you were talking about that. Okay, now let's see we have some comments
coming in. I'm just trying to get them. Do you think that there
is any this is one that came in. I think you kind of addressed
this, but yeah, I think it would be redundant to bring it up
about a compartmentalized part of the government. But you mentioned the UFO flap and
Belgium. Are there any other in a couple of other things? Are there
any other cases that you think are really solid as far as not being able
to explain what they are? You know, I think there are quite a
few. The you know, that one was particularly to me compelling because there
were so many different witnesses over such a sustained period of time, ground based
radar, air based radar, police and military officers and a you know,
full military investigation. The Belgian Air Force general has addressed this on the record,
made it very clear this was not a case of mistaken helicopters or balloons
or something like that. And I know people that have talked to the Belgian
I know somebody who was on a NATO visit and discussed this with them directly,
and they said the same thing to him that they've said publicly. And
so I think that's a really stellar example of why there's a phenomenon here that
should be taken seriously. But there are so many cases. I remember when
I in college, I did a research project on this topic for a physics
professor. Really yeah, and he consented. He was an open minded individual.
He consented to let me do an independent research project on this. And
at the time I was doing it, there was a lot of UFO activity
going on in New England and there were also some very prominent cases going on
in the papers globally. But some of the cases in a where when you
know somebody it you know sometimes makes it more real or more concrete. So
there was a local sheriff that people in our community who went skiing up Sherloaf
knew and his name was Hensby, and I've got I started a scrap book
then, which I still have. I've got it in front of me.
And Hensby and his wife were driving, and they came across a couple,
a group by the side of the road, and they're coming back from a
function in the evening. And Hensby was a tea toler, didn't drink at
all. And in this article, which was in the United President of National
Officer him he says, one of the guys told me, quote, don't
go up over the hill. There's a UFO up there. If you do,
you're going to witness something you won't want to see. And then they
could drive off. Then they drove off, and I could see they were
terrified. Well, he continued with his wife. When they approached the hill,
the object hovered on top of the hill and lit up the whole hill.
So we sat there and watched it. I saw a bright light.
It was probably about a telephone pole high, and it was stationery in space.
He waited a few moments, tried to drive over the hill. It
advanced, quote, it advanced toward us, then stopped in mid air.
I then backed up thirty to forty yards and then stopped three times, he
tried to pass. Every time the object came up again. It was bright
enough I couldn't see in front of me. We had the feeling it didn't
want us to go up there, and they turned around a reverse course.
And you know that's just a you know, small local exam. But when
those kind of things happen to people that you've met or you know, or
for example, a Navy friend of mine who told me about a naval instructor
who he was present on the runway when this guy landed and a UFO had
just flown completely around his jet. Wow. And so there are these cases
that are ones that are very useful for trying to establish, you know,
something that's well documented with multiple sources of information. But sometimes the ones that
you know that I kind of feel the most personally, or were the ones
that are personal, you know, where you know the person individually. You
just you know that guy and you know he would not lie. You just
know in your heart that guy is telling the truth of what happened to him
and what he perceived. What it was another question, but you know he's
telling honestly what happened. Yeah, I do a great makes totally the difference
when you know someone personally. We do have a caller waiting. Caller,
your first name and where are you calling from? Well, thanks for your
indulgence. It's Lou from Rancho Kukamoga again. Oh you're back'd like to throw
up. I'd like to throw out an observation that is not my own.
I can't take credit for it or blame, but it regards Chase Brand and
talking about the box, and the commentator said that the box is a euphemism
and intelligence speak, that there really wasn't a box. He was just trying
to say that he saw evidence wherever. I just thought it was an interesting
comment. I certainly can't vouch for it, so I throw that out for
your for your consideration. Well thank you what I'm saying, yeah, okay
again and joining the show by the way, all right, I'll talk to
you later. All right, thanks for your call. Okay, all right,
so we only have we only have I think three minutes left, not
too much, so keep that in mind, and I think that's probably going
to do it for calls. Uh. And I do appreciate the people who
have who have called in and what uh what is your I think we sort
of address this, Chris, But another message up there is, so what
is your take on the et hypothesis? You think it's a possibility, right,
I don't see I don't see any reason why we would exclude that none
whatsoever. In fact, if you look at our technical trajectory, last month
we launched the first cruelest naval worship with trans ocianic capability. Amazing. If
we you know, autonomous vehicles we already have. The Voyager spacecraft is outside
the Solar System. It doesn't even have a propulsion system on it. But
the uh, you know, there's a group right now that is putting together
a plan to send some sensors to the nearest star, Alpha Centauri. And
Stephen Hawkings evolved with the groups some other people and they're they're for real and
they're engineering people. It's trivial to imagine a civilization somewhat more advanced than our
own at a minimum, given what we're seeing with artificial intelligence being able to
spew autonomous vehicles out and if it took them one hundred or three hundred or
five hundred years to get somewhere, it doesn't matter to a computer, right,
And you know, these kinds of things are already on our horizon.
Why we would think that if there's no reason, there's every reason to think
that there's life elsewhere. How frequently? How often? How often does it
become highly sophisticated and technical? All those questions remain to be answered. I'm
somebody that is of the view that, you know, the best way to
approach is to scientifically and empirically, and my colleagues on the board of UFO
data, that's kind of what unites us. That's what we're trying to do.
We're all canalyzed by the various possibilities, and we're eager to get answers.
But absolutely, I think you know, there was interesting physicist Brian Green
made the point that in an infinite universe, and we think it is infinite
based on what we know about the curvature of space time, every combination of
atoms and molecules must not only not recur, but recur infinitely. So there
must be an infinite infinite number of other advanced civilizations. Yeah, very good.
Hey, we are totally out of time, Chris. I want to
thank you so much, my pleasure, Martin. I'm sorry to disappoint people
who were hoping I would come out, I would say that that you know,
we've got the aliens underground, but perhaps we do, but I'm not
aware of it. Right, all right, you take care, Thanks love,
all right, all right, everyone, so thanks so much. That's
it for the show. I hope you enjoyed it. And if you're listening
this far, you're either listening live or you're supporting the show and or you're
listening to the Dark Matter Digital Network on Thursdays. Thanks a lot. And
our guest next week is Jeff Willis spelled with an es at the end,
no relation, and we're going to be talking about Phoenix, so that's coming
up next week. And again I want to thank everyone for listening. This
is Martin Willis saying, keep your eyes to the sky.