Joe Rogan Experience #1645 - Christopher Mellon

1. 0:00 – 1:16

   Intro

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:00

      (drumming music) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

   2. CMChristopher Mellon0:04

      The Joe Rogan Experience.

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:06

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (rock music plays) All right. Well, thanks for being here, man. Appreciate it.

   4. CMChristopher Mellon0:17

      Pleasure. Absolute pleasure.

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:18

      Tell everybody who you are, and what your background is.

   6. CMChristopher Mellon0:21

      Okay. Uh, my name is Chris Mellon, and, uh, I spent about 20 years working for Uncle Sam, worked in the, uh, Senate for the Intelligence Committee, and for Senator Cohen also did some Armed Services Committee work. When he was asked to become Secretary of Defense, um, he asked me if I would like to go with him to the Pentagon, be part of his team, and I was honored and gladly accepted. So (clears throat) I then served for four years in the Defense Department with Senator Cohen, Secretary Cohen at that point, um, in various positions, all intelligence related, and, uh, and security related. And then, um, I was asked to stay on after, uh, Clinton departed, and so I worked for Senat-... for, uh, Secretary Rumsfeld.

   7. JRJoe Rogan1:07

      Pull up just a little bit closer there. There you go.

   8. CMChristopher Mellon1:08

      And, uh, (clears throat) then went back to the Senate Intelligence Committee as the minority staff director shortly before the, uh, the second Iraq War.

2. 1:16 – 2:22

   When did you get interested in UFOs

   1. CMChristopher Mellon1:16

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:16

      So, when did you get interested in the subject of UFOs?

   3. CMChristopher Mellon1:22

      That happened at a surprisingly early age. I was seven years old at a, uh, boarding school, and the principal of the school, a friend of his had photographed a video, an old reel-to-reel Kodak movie camera had taken a movie h- a home movie of a video of a, uh, UFO flying in beautiful blue skies, cumulus clouds, huge golden disc that, that comes into the picture, it banks, goes into a cloud, and it disappears into this sort of wispy cloud in a way that would be very, very hard, I think, to, to fake somehow, particularly in those days with no computer-generated imagery. And it comes out the other side, and then sort of goes off over the horizon. And I was, you know, stunned and flabbergasted, and myself and all the other kids ran outside that night and were looking at the stars. And it just, uh, uh, sparked my curiosity, a lifelong curiosity.

3. 2:22 – 4:23

   How long did you wait for an answer

   1. JRJoe Rogan2:22

      So once you got into government, and once you were... I mean, you were there, you're basically there, you had to start asking questions. Like, did you wait a while? Like, how long did you ask for?

   2. CMChristopher Mellon2:32

      Yeah. Sure did.

   3. JRJoe Rogan2:33

      Before you were like, "Hey, what do you guys know?"

   4. CMChristopher Mellon2:35

      Yeah. Uh, (clears throat) well, uh, for a long time I waited. Um, very rarely, I looked for openings, I looked for opportunities.

   5. JRJoe Rogan2:42

      (laughs)

   6. CMChristopher Mellon2:43

      So, uh, for example, you know, the stigma is, is so great that you're reluctant, obviously, to, uh, to raise that issue. A couple times there were some natural opportunities. So, uh, one of my colleagues on the Intelligence Committee was going to Hawaii for some oversight, uh, trips, meetings, and he went to the Maui, uh, Space Optical Tracking Facility. And I said to him, "While you're there, why don't you just check and see, do they ever see anything weird they can't explain and so forth?" So, he did, and, uh, Pete called me up and said, "Hey, you wouldn't believe this. I've got this videotape here, and it's, shows these weird things." And so, uh, I talked to the Air Force people, they sent the tape to us. Turns out it was totally unclassified. Um, I showed it to Senator Cohen, uh, and some others, and it ended up on, uh, on national TV, um, actually, but it didn't generate, uh, uh, in- any further response. Everybody just kind of threw their, their hands up in the air and said, "Well, you know, that's interesting, but, uh, we don't know what to do with it." It was, uh, Ted Koppel's Nightline show that this tape was played on. It showed sort of five objects moving parallel to the ground, possibly in formation. They're in the atmosphere 'cause they're burning, they're interacting with something. Uh, you know, there's plasma coming off 'em, uh, which wouldn't presumably be happening in space, but they seem to be too slow to be meteorites. So, it was mystifying and difficult to explain, never did get an answer. Um, occasionally something like that would happen, but by and large the issue almost never arose.

   7. JRJoe Rogan4:21

      (clears throat)

4. 4:23 – 6:28

   How did you feel about UFOs

   1. JRJoe Rogan4:24

      D- The, the, the issue is a weird issue, because if you bring it up in the wrong company or at the wrong time, you could be dismissed as a loon. Did you feel that when you were there? Like, uh, as a person who had a budding interest in unidentified flying objects and, and what have you, did you feel like this is a, a politically risky thing to discuss, especially to discuss, like, in serious terms? Like, do you believe in these things? Like, what are they? What do we know? Is... w- was that an issue?

   2. CMChristopher Mellon4:56

      Absolutely. Um, I concealed my interest in the topic, uh, for years and, uh, very carefully, and confided to a few trustworthy friends, had a few heart-to-heart talks with a couple individuals when I found a, uh, fellow traveler who was interested in this topic. But by and large, uh, absolutely, uh, wanted to conceal that and, and not reveal that.

   3. JRJoe Rogan5:20

      Did you know Clinton?

   4. CMChristopher Mellon5:22

      No, I did not.

   5. JRJoe Rogan5:23

      No? Well, he would be the guy that I would go to. I s- I feel like-

   6. CMChristopher Mellon5:26

      Well, he-

   7. JRJoe Rogan5:26

      I feel like he would probably tell you.

   8. CMChristopher Mellon5:27

      There was a request that came to me once that I think was from President Clinton, and it was... One of the astronauts claimed to have seen, um, a UFO out at Edwards Air Force Base, and it was videotaped, he said. And he described this in his memoir and wanted the president to get hold of the tape, of the video. And Secretary Cohen came back to the Pentagon from a meeting, and a message came down to me to go to try to find this tape. And, uh, unfortunately...There was, um ... I got, got nowhere with that. The Air Force was adamant that there was no such tape, there was no such information. Anything they had on UFOs had been destroyed. Um, so I had one of these situations that's very common in this area, which is you have just two apparently credible sources but utterly conflicting, irreconcilable information, which seems to happen often in this field.

   9. JRJoe Rogan6:27

      Now,

5. 6:28 – 7:59

   General perception of UFOs

   1. JRJoe Rogan6:28

      being as you were in government and very close to literally the machine that runs the world, wha- what, what's the general perception when people are discussing these, these things in, in Washington? What is, what's the general perception of what, what's going on with these things?

   2. CMChristopher Mellon6:48

      Oh, I'm happy to say that it's changed. That perception has changed considerably in the last few years. People feel like they have permission to talk about it.

   3. JRJoe Rogan6:55

      When do you think this happened?

   4. CMChristopher Mellon6:56

      This happened after the New York Times article and subsequent press, uh, beginning in 2017.

   5. JRJoe Rogan7:02

      Mm-hmm.

   6. CMChristopher Mellon7:02

      December 2017. And, um, that sort of gave people permission to talk about this.

   7. JRJoe Rogan7:09

      Sure.

   8. CMChristopher Mellon7:09

      And I've actually had Pentagon friends who said, "You know, this is kinda cool. We don't have to go in the closet to talk about this anymore."

   9. JRJoe Rogan7:15

      What do you think kept it in the closet before? Like, when did the stigma start? And do you think this was, like, intentionally sort of set up this way?

   10. CMChristopher Mellon7:23

       It was. Uh, it was the Robertson Panel Commission, 1953, and they concluded during the, those Cold War days that this was a, a potential threat to national security because UFO reports might overwhelm our, our air defense and communication system and that the Soviets might spook the public and somehow manipulate this issue. So they actually advocated in writing that, uh, this issue be debunked and discredited and the government, uh, went ahead and did so, um, extremely successfully, uh, unfortunately.

6. 7:59 – 9:26

   Project Blue Book

   1. CMChristopher Mellon7:59

   2. JRJoe Rogan7:59

      And this all started with the Project Blue Book, correct?

   3. CMChristopher Mellon8:01

      Correct. It was during that era.

   4. JRJoe Rogan8:03

      So, uh, what was the gentleman's name that was running Project Blue Book again? Um-

   5. CMChristopher Mellon8:07

      Well, there were different people who-

   6. JRJoe Rogan8:08

      The, the guy who went on to-

   7. CMChristopher Mellon8:09

      ... at the time. The astronomer? Uh, Allen Hynek?

   8. JRJoe Rogan8:11

      Hynek.

   9. CMChristopher Mellon8:11

      Yeah.

   10. JRJoe Rogan8:12

       And Hynek went on to become a believer. So he started debunking and was told, essentially, the way he reported it, was that he was told to kinda debunk every single case. Everything he could find, whether it was swamp gas or, you know, uh, ball lightning, find some way to, th- to explain this away. But then once he left Project Blue Book, he started openly discussing these cases and he started discussing his own belief.

   11. CMChristopher Mellon8:38

       That's correct. And, and he felt badly burned as well because he was trying to carry out, uh, his mandate that, that the Air Force had given him and as you may recall, in one instance, he went to Michigan and famously declared that the people of Michigan were misconstruing swamp gas for, for flying objects.

   12. JRJoe Rogan8:56

       Yeah.

   13. CMChristopher Mellon8:57

       And so Gerald Ford, who was representing that district, got incensed, as did the local population, and Congress took a fleeting interest in the topic, and, uh, Dr. Hynek was very embarrassed, um, and understandably so. It was really, uh, quite insulting to these, to these people who had, uh, had very clear sightings of these objects. So, um, he did eventually, um, change his view publicly and was very critical of, of Project Blue Book.

7. 9:26 – 11:35

   Being inside the government

   1. CMChristopher Mellon9:26

   2. JRJoe Rogan9:27

      W- was all this stuff, like being inside the government and knowing how prevalent these sightings are and how credible some of them are, was it, was it frustrating to you to be a part of this and to know that this information is kinda being squashed and distorted and ... ?

   3. CMChristopher Mellon9:46

      It's interesting. That ... (clears throat) What act- happened actually is that I wasn't seeing information squashed or distorted in the Pentagon, uh, or the intelligence community. I saw one instance of a very technical, very classified report that explained away some sightings that nobody even knew were being reported otherwise. It was kind of odd to see this explanation from, uh, about an incident that had not been otherwise reported. But generally-

   4. JRJoe Rogan10:16

      What was this, what was this incident?

   5. CMChristopher Mellon10:17

      Um, this was some military pilots doing reconnaissance missions who were seeing some very unusual lights and the Director of Science and Technology at CIA did a extensive analysis and found a plausible explanation for, for what they had seen that was not extraterrestrial. And so they published an article on that. It was a good article, good piece of research. But the only time, that was about the only time I ever saw anything that, uh, in writing about this subject, which the government said it wasn't following and it wasn't interested in. And you almost ... I had friends who would call me up. I had a Navy friend who was a pilot and he said, "You wouldn't believe what happened at our base today. There was a plane up and there was a UFO flying around it and it landed." And he was, you know, he knew I was interested in this from college days and he called me up with his hair on fire to tell me about this incident. But that kind of thing was not going up through channels. So people in the Pentagon, to the best of my knowledge, all the way up to the SECDEF, were not hearing or seeing any of these reports. It wasn't until I had met Lue Elizondo and his group and some of the Navy guys and talked to the pilots about what was happening on the East Coast from 2015 onward and the Nimitz incident that I found out that this activity had been going on and it just wasn't being reported.

8. 11:35 – 13:12

   Navy UFO

   1. CMChristopher Mellon11:35

   2. JRJoe Rogan11:35

      So, uh, was it that no one in the Pentagon was seeking this out? There wasn't a mandate to go look for it? There w- there wasn't a department that was, uh, designed to seek these things out? I mean, what was the reason why it wasn't getting all the way to the Pentagon?

   3. CMChristopher Mellon11:48

      Well, (clears throat) specifically in the case of the Navy in 2016, just today I believe, or yesterday, uh, DoD announced the, uh, that they're gonna do an IG investigation of this incident, of, of this phenomena. This, this-

   4. JRJoe Rogan12:01

      What's IG mean?

   5. CMChristopher Mellon12:03

      The inspector general.

   6. JRJoe Rogan12:04

      Okay.

   7. CMChristopher Mellon12:04

      Sorry. So there's gonna be an internal investigation at DoD of how they handled-... this UFO issue. Um, and I believe it's, this is, it's not clear yet. They just made this announcement and their motives and what sparked this are still a little bit uncertain, but it appears they're gonna focus on this issue of how did this fall through the cracks for years? How is it that these guys are flying around seeing this stuff, it's on the radar and nobody up the chain of command is being notified? Um, policymakers, the, the Secretary of Defense himself, um, Congress, et cetera, it was, um, uh, just going into the ether. I mean, there was no effort made to, to get support to any of those guys. And that's when I, you know, kinda threw the bullshit flag and said, "This is unacceptable." And so that's when I started jumping into this.

   8. JRJoe Rogan12:58

      Do you think it was because of the stigma that's attached to the subject that they just didn't bother bringing it to their superiors?

   9. CMChristopher Mellon13:03

      Absolutely. Yep. Um, people were afraid to report it. And as we saw in the Nimitz case some years earlier in 2004, they would-

9. 13:12 – 17:15

   The Nimitz Case

   1. CMChristopher Mellon13:12

   2. JRJoe Rogan13:12

      Let's explain what we're talking about.

   3. CMChristopher Mellon13:13

      Yeah, sure.

   4. JRJoe Rogan13:13

      We're talking about Commander David Fravor in his sightings off the coast of San Diego, the Tic Tac-shaped UFO that moved at extraordinary speed with no known propulsion system. They tracked it on radar, it was actively jamming their radar. It went to their, uh, predetermined point that where they were supposed to-

   5. CMChristopher Mellon13:30

      Cap Point.

   6. JRJoe Rogan13:30

      ... scramble. Yeah. Uh, so somehow or another, it had information as to where they were traveling to.

   7. CMChristopher Mellon13:35

      Mm-hmm.

   8. JRJoe Rogan13:36

      E- e- ex- extraordinary capability went from 80,000-

   9. CMChristopher Mellon13:39

      Absolutely phenomenal.

   10. JRJoe Rogan13:39

       ... feet above sea level to one in less than a second. They have no idea what it is, what it does. And then the people on the Nimitz were saying they had been seeing these things.

   11. CMChristopher Mellon13:48

       Cor- correct. And on the, uh, Princeton. And when Dave and the, uh, the other, uh, F-18 landed, there was no, uh, interest on the part of the intelligence officers of doing anything really other than, but ridiculing them.

   12. JRJoe Rogan14:03

       Yeah.

   13. CMChristopher Mellon14:03

       So they came out, you know, with tin hats on and foil hats and they were playing Men In Black song or something.

   14. JRJoe Rogan14:09

       Yeah.

   15. CMChristopher Mellon14:10

       But that case was phenomenal, uh, because there were so many witnesses and so many different sensor systems that were verifying independently the visual reporting. So there were multiple radars, there were infrared systems, uh, perfect viewing conditions, broad daylight, middle of the afternoon, multiple aircraft, and all of the data agrees that these craft are doing things that we thought were impossible.

   16. JRJoe Rogan14:37

       And then there was also the thing that led them to see it in the first place, was that he thought there was something under the surface of the ocean.

   17. CMChristopher Mellon14:45

       Well, what happened was he was vectored... He and his, uh, wingman were vectored to intercept that Tic Tac at that point. When they arrived and looked down, they saw it moving around and they saw the water roiled. In fact, I think first they saw the water before they saw the Tic Tac. They saw something unusual. It looked like white water breaking on a reef kind of thing.

   18. JRJoe Rogan15:04

       Right.

   19. CMChristopher Mellon15:05

       And then they saw the Tic Tac, and then Dave dove down to get close to it and it reacted to his presence, turned around, viewed him, and then started, uh, taking countermeasures. And it was clear to the pilots in both aircraft that this thing maintained a, a dominant position, uh, throughout their engagement with it. That it could easily have, have done what it wanted to them. They had no chance really of, of getting behind it or getting the upper hand in that engagement.

   20. JRJoe Rogan15:35

       Then when he went and reported this, that's when things are, get weird, right? Because people have to dissect this information and look at this guy, Commander Fravor, a very respected guy, not the type of person who makes up wacky stories. Then when it's supported by all this data, I think that's one, that's probably one of the biggest ones that led to being included in the New York Times, right? Would you-

   21. CMChristopher Mellon15:59

       Correct. Absolutely. Mm-hmm.

   22. JRJoe Rogan16:01

       Because it was so credible and because it was s- ... And then there was the go-fast video and the flare video and all these other videos that show these things moving in extraordinary ways.

   23. CMChristopher Mellon16:10

       Correct. And they're authentic. The Defense Department acknowledged those videos. Um, they-

   24. JRJoe Rogan16:15

       Why do you think they did that?

   25. CMChristopher Mellon16:16

       I, they didn't do it initially, but ultimately they didn't have much choice. And I think the reason that they, that they finally did is because, um, we had taken this issue to Congress. I had taken, uh, I contacted some former colleagues on the committee and said, "You guys really ought to look at this. I mean, I know it sounds crazy, but, you know, give me a chance here." And, um, so a couple of them started taking interest. Some of the staffers started meeting with some of the pilots. When they started requesting briefings, that, you know, coming from the Senate Armed Services and Intelligence Committees, that went up the flagpole to the top. And the Navy brass and the senior Pentagon, uh, civilians in the Office of the Secretary of Defense became aware that these committees are taking an official interest now and, uh, you know, we can't fool around with this and we have to really be straight and, and put it out there. So at that point they couldn't tell them in private, "Yeah, this is real," and then publicly deny it wasn't.

   26. JRJoe Rogan17:13

       Yeah.

   27. CMChristopher Mellon17:13

       So, so they came clean.

10. 17:15 – 18:13

    Elon Musk

    1. CMChristopher Mellon17:15

    2. JRJoe Rogan17:15

       So this is the great shift, right? The great shift in our time of from UFOs being ridiculed and being these silly things that, uh, tin foil hat conspiracy theory people believe in, to the Defense Department agreeing that this is an issue.

    3. CMChristopher Mellon17:31

       That's correct. Very interesting to me, I saw your interview with Elon Musk and he seemed unaware, as probably-

    4. JRJoe Rogan17:38

       He's an alien, bro.

    5. CMChristopher Mellon17:39

       (laughs)

    6. JRJoe Rogan17:39

       Listen, he's covering up.

    7. CMChristopher Mellon17:40

       Well, okay, maybe he's part of the cover-up.

    8. JRJoe Rogan17:42

       Yeah.

    9. CMChristopher Mellon17:42

       Because he seemed unaware that his own government is, has to taken the position that UFOs are real, that-

    10. JRJoe Rogan17:48

        I got Elon in trouble 'cause we smoke pot on the show.

    11. CMChristopher Mellon17:51

        I heard about that.

    12. JRJoe Rogan17:51

        And when he got in trouble, he w- like his top secret clearance was in trouble and there was a lot going on a- and I think he's trying to play it straight and narrow when he is around me now.

    13. CMChristopher Mellon17:59

        Okay. Well-

    14. JRJoe Rogan17:59

        But aliens, out- outrageous.

    15. CMChristopher Mellon18:01

        I, I was advised that, that, uh, getting high in the program di- wasn't, would be a vi- would not be a good thing to do.

    16. JRJoe Rogan18:06

        Yeah, it's not a good move. Don't do it. If you wanna drink, that's probably a better move.

    17. CMChristopher Mellon18:09

        I'll, I'll stick to the coffee.

    18. JRJoe Rogan18:10

        Okay. Stick to the coffee. That's a good move.

11. 18:13 – 22:12

    Aliens

    1. JRJoe Rogan18:13

       We wanna be clear here, right? We wanna be clear-headed when we discuss this because it's such...... it's such a, an easily ridiculed thing. You know, it's, it's one of those things like psychics and Bigfoot. You bring it up and people just automatically start rolling their eyes. But, statistically, if you just look at the size of the universe and you look at the fact that there's so many Goldilocks zone planets that they've already discovered and then also the, the wide variety of life that exists in various conditions on Earth, who knows? Right? And who knows whether or not these things are living in the ocean? This is what's bizarre to me, is there's a lot of these sightings, the one in Hawaii recently, and there's the, another one that Jeremy Corbell leaked, this, uh-

    2. CMChristopher Mellon18:59

       Mm-hmm.

    3. JRJoe Rogan18:59

       ... photograph that shows something disappearing into the ocean. They seem to, there seems to be multiple sightings and multiple witnesses that discuss things going into the ocean.

    4. CMChristopher Mellon19:12

       Yeah, that i- that is absolutely true. Um, in terms of backing up on, on your, your question there a little bit, um, you know, people ask me, "Do you think, do you believe in aliens?" And, and that's really not the question or the issue for most people.

    5. JRJoe Rogan19:26

       Mm-hmm.

    6. CMChristopher Mellon19:27

       There are probably, in an infinite universe, an infinite number of alien civilizations.

    7. JRJoe Rogan19:32

       Right.

    8. CMChristopher Mellon19:33

       The question is, you know, could we ever communicate with them or have contact, right? So, what's interesting about that to me, in part, is that we have NSA, uh, NASA spending billions to try to find alien life even if it's microbial. We have Yuri Milner spending hundreds of millions and supporting the SETI program. And meanwhile, we have these things flying around our atmosphere that we're seeing on the radar that kinda look and act like what you might expect if somebody sent a probe.

    9. JRJoe Rogan20:02

       Yeah.

    10. CMChristopher Mellon20:02

        Uh, if somebody followed the trajectory we're on ourselves today.

    11. JRJoe Rogan20:04

        Mm-hmm.

    12. CMChristopher Mellon20:05

        And they're doing incredible things that we don't understand, and yet the scientific community and the government have not wanted to dare to ask the question in this context that they ask every day in this other context with NASA and spend billions of dollars on. And there's no crosstalk. You know, scientifically, we would expect actually pro- you know, they're listening for these signals from outer space but it's more efficient to send probes and it's safer. And that's what we are doing ourselves.

    13. JRJoe Rogan20:38

        Right.

    14. CMChristopher Mellon20:38

        And so that's what would probably be more likely. Um, a probe would give more information. It wouldn't reveal the, the location or the source of the, the civilization that was sending it. Uh, you know, it's more dynamic and versatile. It could get closer to the target, et cetera. There's all kinds of advantages, including energy, and it would be easy for a civilization, uh, more advanced than ours, we're getting on the cusp of this ourselves, to create, using artificial intelligence, probes that were self-sufficient, launch them out in whatever numbers, let them go see what they find and report back. And that's, that's entirely plausible. There's no scientific reason for thinking that that couldn't happen. Moreover, if even one space-faring society started to expand outward as we are in our galaxy, in the Milky Way, within a tiny fraction of the lifetime of the Milky Way, they could explore and colonize the entire galaxy. So even if, you know, they haven't achieved superluminal travel, they can't violate the speed of light, um, and, and go faster than that, if they went, say, 20% the speed of light and just continued to steadily expand their domain and explore outward, in the space of two or three million years they could've, uh, gone from one end of the galaxy to the other. So, you know, it's not an unreasonable proposition. It's a question of, of getting the facts and, uh, it's about time some of us think that we, we take it seriously and, and start looking at it.

12. 22:12 – 23:44

    Probe

    1. CMChristopher Mellon22:12

    2. JRJoe Rogan22:12

       Do most people who look at this believe that this is some sort of a probe? Like when you look at the Tic Tac video.

    3. CMChristopher Mellon22:19

       Well, Dave himself says it's not from around here. It wasn't made here.

    4. JRJoe Rogan22:24

       Yeah.

    5. CMChristopher Mellon22:24

       Not made by us. And he doesn't propose to say where it's from. Some people suspect, as you suggest, that it could be ultra-terrestrial. It could be something inherently from our planet under the ocean that's been here for a long, long time. Perhaps a, uh, way station that some AI established that just is a, it's a waypoint here and it monitors what's going on in this planet and stays under the ocean, comes out, looks around, reports back, and just has been doing that for thousands of years, but, um, not aliens coming and going. There's all manner of, of theories. That's, that's one of them. But, uh, I would say that on the inside, the people that are really close to this in the Pentagon, they face the dilemma we all face is, which is, what hypothesis can explain what we're seeing that is prosaic, that doesn't involve either extraterrestrials or ultra-terrestrials or something like that? It's very hard for us to believe that the Chinese or the Russians are that far ahead of us in such basic technology, such fundamental technologies. Perhaps it's true and that's got its own set of problems, but either way, we need to get to the bottom of it. That's, that's my position at least.

13. 23:44 – 26:10

    Drones

    1. JRJoe Rogan23:44

       Yeah. There's some of these things that it's not outside the realm of possibility that's a drone. Like the, the most recent video-

    2. CMChristopher Mellon23:50

       Sure.

    3. JRJoe Rogan23:50

       ... the pyramid-shaped objects that are flying around. Like what you, you've seen that, right?

    4. CMChristopher Mellon23:54

       Absolutely, yeah.

    5. JRJoe Rogan23:55

       What was your take on those things?

    6. CMChristopher Mellon23:57

       You know, it's, I wanna see the rest of the data. They've got radar data on that and from the radar data they should be able to gain some real insights as to where these things are coming from and going to, trajectories, speeds, all that kind of thing.

    7. JRJoe Rogan24:11

       That hasn't been released, right?

    8. CMChristopher Mellon24:12

       That has not been released. There's, they're still analyzing that. I don't think that they will comment publicly on that, unfortunately. But they do have that information and, um-... and other information. So, uh, we should be able to gain some insights. It's entirely possible that they are drones. Um, Tyler Rogoway is a, uh, a brilliant analyst, um, of, of aviation issues who works for The War Zone, has written a very lengthy piece making that, uh, uh, making that assertion. Um, could be right. I'm, uh, I'm a little skeptical. Um, but we'll see. That's-

    9. JRJoe Rogan24:47

       How so?

    10. CMChristopher Mellon24:47

        ... that's why we need more data.

    11. JRJoe Rogan24:48

        What do you say?

    12. CMChristopher Mellon24:48

        Well, the duration of the f- of flight was far longer than drones routinely can-

    13. JRJoe Rogan24:55

        What was the duration?

    14. CMChristopher Mellon24:56

        ... perform. Hours. So typically, um, if it's, um, an electric drone, it has a very short, uh, flight time. These things... these cr- these ships were 100 miles off the coast in conditions of low visibility and so whoever was operating these things, uh, was traversing a long distance probably. Uh, there were only a few other ships in the area, um, and they know what those ships were and they deny that, that they were operating these craft. Um, so they were in the air a long time, they were very, um, rigorous in, in the manner in which they operated as a, as a unit. They clearly intended to get our attention. They were operating in a manner that suggests they were trying to provoke our air defense, uh, systems, see how we would react. You know, maybe see what frequencies we start communicating on, what we... what actions we take and so forth. It's the kind of thing we sometimes do ourselves to get potential adversaries to help game the situation out. So, uh, you know, I, I have a completely open mind on it, I just wanna see the evidence. But there are some features of this that, uh, if they are drones, um, they're probably more advanced than anything we have.

    15. JRJoe Rogan26:09

        Now one of them was

14. 26:10 – 28:13

    Flashing

    1. JRJoe Rogan26:10

       flashing, right? Jamie, see if you can find that video. Is that your breathing? It is. I was trying to figure out what that noise was. Huh? See if you can find that video.

    2. CMChristopher Mellon26:23

       I've had my COVID test, it's not there.

    3. JRJoe Rogan26:24

       No, I don't think there's anything wrong with you. I was just... I was trying to figure out what that noise was. The one where... like, the flashing light? Yes. That one? Okay. Yeah. Have you seen... you know, talk-

    4. CMChristopher Mellon26:31

       I've seen that and it looks like it's flashing sort of the way an airplane would.

    5. JRJoe Rogan26:35

       Right, that's why-

    6. CMChristopher Mellon26:36

       At the same rate. And that's... but what's odd about that is you're in a, a restricted military airspace, commercial aircraft have transponders. You would know if they were commercial aircraft, they're on ra- they've got... they're looking at the radar picture so they would know from that if it's a commercial aircraft. Um, it, it's hard to, to understand if it was, uh, a, a commercial aircraft of some kind or even a private plane, why they wouldn't be able to identify it.

    7. JRJoe Rogan27:03

       Yeah. Well, the flashing... I mean, wh- th- yeah. See, you can see it here. So this is, uh, the leaked footage courtesy of Jeremy Corbell. So, like you see it. Now either it's reflecting something that's flashing off the ship or it's flashing itself and there was three of 'em that they tracked, right?

    8. CMChristopher Mellon27:27

       I think that's the right number, yeah.

    9. JRJoe Rogan27:28

       The thing about these things is yeah, yeah, it's extraordinary, it's crazy looking, it's, it's weird to see these pyramids floating through the sky, but they're not moving like the Tic Tac. It's not doing something that we can't do. It's just... you see them move around, it's, it's really weird but it's, um, th-

    10. CMChristopher Mellon27:45

        It's not definitive-

    11. JRJoe Rogan27:46

        Right.

    12. CMChristopher Mellon27:46

        ... evidence of anything at this point. It's strange, it's peculiar that it's happening around a warship-

    13. JRJoe Rogan27:52

        Yeah.

    14. CMChristopher Mellon27:52

        ... and that our guys don't know what it is and it looks like some of these things are entering and leaving the water, which is-

    15. JRJoe Rogan27:58

        Yeah.

    16. CMChristopher Mellon27:58

        ... really peculiar. Um, so it's an example of the kind of thing that, that we just haven't been looking at that's going on. We've been blowing off.

    17. JRJoe Rogan28:06

        Right.

    18. CMChristopher Mellon28:07

        And now we're finally getting some traction and getting the government to say, "You know, yeah, we probably really ought to pay attention to this."

15. 28:13 – 29:28

    More Reports

    1. CMChristopher Mellon28:13

    2. JRJoe Rogan28:13

       Do you think that there is a more f- there's more frequent sightings or do you think they're being reported more now?

    3. CMChristopher Mellon28:22

       There are certainly more reports coming in, civilian and military. Um, the technology, uh, that we have today is leaps and bounds over what we had even a few years ago in terms of resolution, distance, range, all those kinds of things. Um, the, the latest generation of radars that are being deployed are a huge step forward from what was in the fleet just years... a few years ago. So that is probably leading to some reporting that we didn't have before, things that were out there but the radar cross-section was so low they weren't appearing on people's scopes. So I think it's probably a mixture of things, but what is concerning in part is that some of this activity is more in your face kind of stuff.

    4. JRJoe Rogan29:03

       Mm-hmm.

    5. CMChristopher Mellon29:03

       It's more like not, not-

    6. JRJoe Rogan29:05

       Performative.

    7. CMChristopher Mellon29:06

       ... elusive, you know-

    8. JRJoe Rogan29:07

       Right.

    9. CMChristopher Mellon29:07

       ... on the edge, you see it and it flies away. It's coming to a nuclear power station and buzzing around it and, and staying there. It's coming around these warships and making a point of being seen. It's coming to a, uh, air force base in Guam and doing the same thing.

    10. JRJoe Rogan29:24

        Yeah.

    11. CMChristopher Mellon29:24

        Um, so that's, that's new and that's a little concerning.

16. 29:28 – 33:42

    The Air Force

    1. CMChristopher Mellon29:28

    2. JRJoe Rogan29:28

       And haven't there been reports of them showing up around missiles and doing something with the launch codes or stopping, stopping the, the power from working in th- in these places or something along those lines? Some sort of manipulation of, of the power systems almost to let you know?

    3. CMChristopher Mellon29:46

       Yeah. This is one of the most provocative and fascinating and important stories in this whole, uh, in this whole area of UFOs and national security. And we have retired Air Force officers who've testified to this and there are FOIA documents that support these claims, but the Air Force has never been asked by Congress or anyone to address this. They've never acknowledged it. There's an opportunity to do that now and I think it's long overdue. This is... this is stunning if it's true. I mean, this is the backbone of our nuclear deterrent strategy, it's really the crown jewels of our, our freedom and independence and, and, uh, ability to deter nuclear powers like Russia and China. You know, this is kind of the ultimate insurance policy, militarily that we have. And if someone can come in there and turn these things off, um-... that is just shocking, absolutely shocking. So it's... Because of the stigma, Congress has been unwilling even to ask the question, even in private, um, even though this is very well-documented and these people have come out, uh, in their retired, you know, uniforms and things, and with their, uh, documentation showing where they were assigned. And in one of these cases, um, out at Malmstrom Air Force Base I believe it was, there's a good book because the local sheriff was responding to so many calls from civilians in the area to UFOs that were being seen and encountered, and he co-authored a book on what was happening. So there's a lot of data about this, but yet there's no official confirmation that that occurred.

    4. JRJoe Rogan31:23

       Yeah. The, the sheer volume... I, I would like to know whether or not they are increasing in volume or whether or not it is just a, an increase in our ability to detect them. And we, we don't really know, right? Because it's been 2017, so it's not that long ago, four years when it really started being something that people were, uh, willing to take seriously, or willing to... Because of the New York Times article and because, you know, there's just a few videos that are pretty extraordinary. The Go Fast video when you-

    5. CMChristopher Mellon31:50

       Mm-hmm.

    6. JRJoe Rogan31:50

       ... you hear the pilots going, "What the fuck?"

    7. CMChristopher Mellon31:52

       Mm-hmm.

    8. JRJoe Rogan31:53

       And you're watching that thing buzz across the water with no heat signature.

    9. CMChristopher Mellon31:56

       Mm-hmm. Yeah. The... In terms of reporting, there has definitely been an increase, a surge, the last 12 or so months. And you see this on the public side with, uh, organizations that track these things, the Mutual UFO Network and so forth, they've had a surge of maybe 20%. Some people think, "Well, maybe it's COVID, more people are outside looking at the night sky." That could be some of it. Um, there are more reports that are coming with video and photographs these days. If you look at these websites, NUFORC and MUFON, from say 10 years ago, uh, not so many people had cell phones in their pockets. Routinely now you'll see very strange photographs and, and videos. Frequently, most of the time, there's a prosaic explanation but, but not always. And, um, so I... My sense is that there're probably a little bit of both going on. Um, more activity, some of it's a little bolder than we've seen in the past and, um, but also better instrumentation to, to record this. Another thing that's happening, certainly on the government side, this is the big thing, is that people are less afraid to report it. So there was a lot of stuff going on. We don't know how much because nobody was reporting it. And I've been in meetings with people, um, at, uh, at the Pentagon, with guys who were commander of an AWACS aircraft, for example, and they'd say, "Yeah, you know, we saw some really weird stuff but we weren't telling anybody about it. You know, we tore up the files." And-

    10. JRJoe Rogan33:23

        Yeah.

    11. CMChristopher Mellon33:24

        ... guys at the National Security Agency or other places who said, "I kept a book of, uh, you know, anomalies, weird things, and then I didn't turn it over to my replacement, I just tore it up." So we have blinded ourselves, um, we've done this to ourselves, and we're playing catch-up now.

17. 33:42 – 34:32

    Mass sightings

    1. JRJoe Rogan33:42

       Well unfortunately, some people are full of shit and that muddies the water, right? Some people do make things up.

    2. CMChristopher Mellon33:47

       Absolutely, absolutely. That didn't help, for sure.

    3. JRJoe Rogan33:49

       Yeah. What do you think about mass sightings? Like, what, what was your take on, like say, the Phoenix Lights?

    4. CMChristopher Mellon33:55

       Yeah, that's fascinating. Um, and there are a number of these mass sighting cases and not just in the US. Um, there was a soccer match in Italy reportedly with 10,000 fans at a stadium, the game came to a screeching halt and people watched this thing overhead. Um, there have been some mass sightings in Brazil and other places. The Phoenix case, what I find most intriguing about that, one of the things is that Fife Symington, the governor of Arizona who's a former Air Force officer, himself said after the fact he saw this thing and it was not a plane and it was not flares as some in the Air Force contended.

18. 34:32 – 38:17

    The triangle

    1. CMChristopher Mellon34:32

    2. JRJoe Rogan34:32

       And that was the triangle-shaped object-

    3. CMChristopher Mellon34:34

       Right.

    4. JRJoe Rogan34:34

       ... that was m- enormous. He said it was, uh, at least a football field long, maybe several football fields.

    5. CMChristopher Mellon34:41

       Correct.

    6. JRJoe Rogan34:41

       Yeah.

    7. CMChristopher Mellon34:42

       Huge. And hundreds if not thousands of people saw this, a number of people took videos.

    8. JRJoe Rogan34:45

       They had very similar sightings, yeah.

    9. CMChristopher Mellon34:47

       Yeah, very similar. And it was coming down from... There was quite a path of sightings, so before, uh, Phoenix-

    10. JRJoe Rogan34:52

        Is there a video? I'm sorry to interrupt you. Is there a video of the triangle?

    11. CMChristopher Mellon34:56

        Not that I know of. I've, I've not seen it. If there is...

    12. JRJoe Rogan34:58

        The videos were all just the lights that were in the sky, right?

    13. CMChristopher Mellon35:01

        Yeah.

    14. JRJoe Rogan35:01

        Yeah.

    15. CMChristopher Mellon35:02

        Yeah.

    16. JRJoe Rogan35:02

        And-

    17. CMChristopher Mellon35:03

        One does se-

    18. JRJoe Rogan35:03

        ... they said that they were flares but they're hovering.

    19. CMChristopher Mellon35:06

        Right.

    20. JRJoe Rogan35:07

        Yeah.

    21. CMChristopher Mellon35:08

        And, uh, so-

    22. JRJoe Rogan35:08

        Because it takes a long time for... I mean...

    23. CMChristopher Mellon35:11

        The- There were flares out that night, and so that muddies the waters, right? They... I think they determined there were actually some aircraft doing an exercise, they dropped some flares. But, uh, this seems to be something apart from that, at least, uh, what Fife Symington and, and many others reported, hard to reconcile with the flare, flare exercise.

    24. JRJoe Rogan35:31

        Well, the problem with the flare analogy is unless the flares were suspended with balloons where they were slowly lowering from the sky, it doesn't make any sense, because they're hovering.

    25. CMChristopher Mellon35:42

        Yeah.

    26. JRJoe Rogan35:42

        Like, I mean, they might have been flares suspended by balloons and slowly making their way down but... You know, like see if you can find the Phoenix Lights video. It's, it's weird because if they were just drop flares, they would drop. They would drop with speed of gravity, it would be normal. I mean...

    27. CMChristopher Mellon35:58

        Well in some cases people also saw these, these lights moving in formation.

    28. JRJoe Rogan36:02

        Yeah.

    29. CMChristopher Mellon36:02

        So, you know, as far as I know flares don't do that. I've seen flares and that's not what I observed.

    30. JRJoe Rogan36:07

        And this was, what, the '90s? Was this the '90s?
19. 38:17 – 39:37

    The African School Children

    1. JRJoe Rogan38:17

       It looks like something dropping.

    2. CMChristopher Mellon38:19

       Yeah.

    3. JRJoe Rogan38:19

       That's something hovering. Um, there's, there was a few other ones that, that have taken place. The, the African schoolchildren. The, the children-

    4. CMChristopher Mellon38:27

       The aerial?

    5. JRJoe Rogan38:27

       Yeah.

    6. CMChristopher Mellon38:28

       Yeah.

    7. JRJoe Rogan38:28

       That's a, that's a crazy one.

    8. CMChristopher Mellon38:30

       It is crazy. And there are other cases like that. There's a case very similar in Australia. Um, supposedly thousands of people s- were witnesses-

    9. JRJoe Rogan38:39

       Hmm.

    10. CMChristopher Mellon38:40

        ... to that event. And there were dozens, uh, at least 50 schoolchildren who, who saw this thing, and teachers. Um, but yeah, that's really bizarre and that, that's part of the, the challenge with this phenomenon is you get into these areas very quickly and, uh, it makes it even harder to have the discussion.

    11. JRJoe Rogan39:03

        Yeah.

    12. CMChristopher Mellon39:03

        It makes it harder for government people, politicians, and others to engage. It reminds me a little bit of, uh, Galileo when he was before the Inquisition for claiming that, um, you know, it's a heliocentric, uh, solar system, we're going around the sun. And he said, you know, "Just look through the telescope, guys. Come on, look through the telescope. You'll see if you-"

    13. JRJoe Rogan39:24

        Mm-hmm.

    14. CMChristopher Mellon39:24

        They wouldn't look through the telescope.

    15. JRJoe Rogan39:26

        (laughs)

    16. CMChristopher Mellon39:26

        When you (laughs) , when you bring this issue up-

    17. JRJoe Rogan39:28

        Yeah.

    18. CMChristopher Mellon39:28

        ... a lot of people just stop right there. They don't wanna hear anything else, they don't wanna talk anymore about it. They're done.

    19. JRJoe Rogan39:33

        Yeah.

    20. CMChristopher Mellon39:33

        So it's, it's a challenge. Mm-hmm.

    21. JRJoe Rogan39:35

        I do think there has been a shift.

20. 39:37 – 40:43

    Gimbal

    1. JRJoe Rogan39:37

       Um, and I think, um, I, I, I agree with you that the big one was the New York Times, but I also think, uh, the Bob Lazar documentary was a big one too. 'Cause when you listen to Bob talk over long periods of time and you, you hear him describe what it is that he saw, what he supposedly worked on in the late '80s and the way he described the propulsion system, which is exactly the same way that tic-tac thing moves. That's what's bizarre. It's like in the other one, was it the FLIR video? Which-

    2. CMChristopher Mellon40:06

       Mm-hmm.

    3. JRJoe Rogan40:06

       Which video where it turns sideways before it takes off?

    4. CMChristopher Mellon40:09

       That's Gimbal.

    5. JRJoe Rogan40:09

       Gimbal, I'm sorry. When you watch that video you're like, what is... That's, it's-

    6. CMChristopher Mellon40:13

       The one where it's rotating?

    7. JRJoe Rogan40:14

       Yeah.

    8. CMChristopher Mellon40:14

       That's Gimbal, yeah. What's really, uh, also interesting about Gimbal is that off the screen there's a formation of UFOs flying towards the Gimbal and the Navy aircraft that are there. And when you hear the one guy remark, one of the pilots, he says, "Look, dude, there's a whole fleet of them out there."

    9. JRJoe Rogan40:33

       Hmm.

    10. CMChristopher Mellon40:34

        That's what he's referring to.

    11. JRJoe Rogan40:35

        Oh.

    12. CMChristopher Mellon40:35

        There was a V-shaped formation of these objects approaching the Gimbal, which then veered away and flew off. And-

    13. JRJoe Rogan40:41

        So you-

    14. CMChristopher Mellon40:41

        ... they don't have any idea what those were.

21. 40:43 – 42:13

    Debunking

    1. CMChristopher Mellon40:43

    2. JRJoe Rogan40:43

       Yeah, the, the Gimbal one is weird. Um, and I've, I've seen people try to debunk it too and it's, uh, it's so strange when people try to debunk things that you really can't explain. So here you see this thing move, it's moving, and then at one point it turns sideways. So they're switching between different ways of viewing it, and they're trying to figure out what it is. But they're real- this is just... What is this, infrared? Is that what this is?

    3. CMChristopher Mellon41:07

       Correct. Forward-looking infrared radar.

    4. JRJoe Rogan41:09

       And so they're, they're tracking it, trying to figure out what it does, and then you see it rotate.

    5. CMChristopher Mellon41:14

       Mm-hmm.

    6. JRJoe Rogan41:15

       And that's bizarre.

    7. CMChristopher Mellon41:16

       Yeah. And there's a strong headwind, so it can't be a balloon.

    8. JRJoe Rogan41:20

       Yeah.

    9. CMChristopher Mellon41:20

       I mean, the headwind's like 120 knots or something.

    10. JRJoe Rogan41:24

        It's just so, it's so-

    11. CMChristopher Mellon41:24

        Um, and then off-camera, as I said, you've got this formation approaching.

    12. JRJoe Rogan41:27

        Yeah.

    13. CMChristopher Mellon41:27

        This V-shaped formation of craft and they don't have transponders either. What the hell are they doing in there?

    14. JRJoe Rogan41:33

        And did they get-

    15. CMChristopher Mellon41:34

        Mister leader of space.

    16. JRJoe Rogan41:34

        ... footage of the formation?

    17. CMChristopher Mellon41:35

        Uh, I don't believe so.

    18. JRJoe Rogan41:36

        Now how does this footage get out? Did somebody leak it?

    19. CMChristopher Mellon41:39

        Yeah.

    20. JRJoe Rogan41:40

        (clears throat)

    21. CMChristopher Mellon41:40

        Yeah. But leak, leak, uh, sounds pejorative. Uh, let me try to put a positive spin on this. (laughs)

    22. JRJoe Rogan41:48

        Okay.

    23. CMChristopher Mellon41:48

        Somebody-

    24. NANarrator41:49

        Released it.

    25. CMChristopher Mellon41:49

        Uh, yeah. They went through a proper process and it came with documentation that said, "Approved for public release."

    26. JRJoe Rogan41:56

        Mm-hmm.

    27. CMChristopher Mellon41:57

        It wasn't like it just went out the back door. The rub in part is that public affairs didn't know about it, so they got their nose out of joint. But it actually had gone through an official review and, and had documentation saying, "Approved for public release."

    28. JRJoe Rogan42:12

        Wow,

22. 42:13 – 43:56

    Pentagon Concerns

    1. JRJoe Rogan42:13

       that's interesting. I wonder why they've decided to approve that for public release?

    2. CMChristopher Mellon42:18

       Uh, well, there were some people on the inside who were worried that this issue was, was not getting any attention and, um, were very concerned about what was happening, very concerned about the national security situation. Uh, I had actually introduced Lue Elizondo, who was leading a small effort in the Pentagon to try to track this, this activity, uh, to two people that w- who were direct reports to General Mattis. And so when I first found out this was going on and, and it was falling through the cracks, I thought, "Well, maybe we can get this up to the front office and at least make them aware." And unfortunately-After several meetings, uh, bringing pilots in, um, these individuals became aware that- that yes, indeed, something is happening but they were confir- they were concerned that General Mattis might be contaminated politically from even taking a briefing. They were very protective of his, uh, his reputation and his stature, which is understandable.

    3. JRJoe Rogan43:19

       You mean contaminated if he took a briefing?

    4. CMChristopher Mellon43:21

       If he took a ... just from hearing the briefing.

    5. JRJoe Rogan43:22

       Okay, so just-

    6. CMChristopher Mellon43:23

       That- that people would question his sanity or something.

    7. JRJoe Rogan43:24

       Right, wasn't crazy. Yeah, got it.

    8. CMChristopher Mellon43:26

       Yeah. So they didn't want that to happen and this was kind of happening out of normal channels which are suffocating in the Defense Department. Normally, any memo to go to the SecDef has to get routed through like 14 or 17 different offices, all have to approve. And if they have a question, it stops the process and they have to be briefed and convinced to sign on and then it goes into a line with thousands of other packages. So (clears throat) this is an attempt to sort of expedite this and get- get it to a senior level.

23. 43:56 – 44:35

    Whistleblowers

    1. CMChristopher Mellon43:56

    2. JRJoe Rogan43:56

       Is that one or more extraordinary things about the fact this stuff is being released? The fact that everything generally does have to go through some- so many levels? That they are kind of throwing their hands up in the air and going, "W- we have to do something or say something."

    3. CMChristopher Mellon44:08

       Well, there were a- a few, um, I won't call 'em whistleblowers, but there were a few people who were very concerned and willing to take this out of normal channels because it wasn't even ... it wasn't even that- that people were having trouble moving along. It wasn't going anywhere. Nobody ... NORAD didn't even know.

    4. JRJoe Rogan44:29

       Hmm.

    5. CMChristopher Mellon44:29

       The North American Aerospace Defense Command was not even being notified that this was happening right off the coast.

24. 44:35 – 45:35

    Radar

    1. JRJoe Rogan44:35

       Now when you look at the Gimbal video, did- did they have some sort of a radar on this before they went and tried to meet up with it? Like how- how did they find out where this thing was?

    2. CMChristopher Mellon44:46

       I don't know in that case. I know for certain in the case of, um, of the Tic Tac, um, in 2004 with Commander Fravor that the Princeton was guiding them with its AEGIS radar to the intercept point and tracking it afterward when it went to the cap point. In this case, I suspect it was a ship, uh, guiding them, but they ... it may have been their onboard, uh, radars because they have very sophisticated radars and the pilots that I've spoken with out there said, "We would see these things all the time."

    3. JRJoe Rogan45:16

       Yeah.

    4. CMChristopher Mellon45:16

       Uh, we'd see their- the radar ... see 'em showing up on radar all the time and a couple times guys just went to investigate for themselves. They had enough fuel or coming back from an exercise and said, "I'm gonna go check that thing out."

    5. JRJoe Rogan45:27

       Hmm.

    6. CMChristopher Mellon45:28

       And, um, so I'm not sure in this particular case which- which it was, but, um, could've been either.

25. 45:35 – 48:15

    Oceans

    1. CMChristopher Mellon45:35

    2. JRJoe Rogan45:35

       I think to take ... something to take into consideration is the vast expanse of the ocean too. I mean, if you were gonna try to hide something, you know, as it were in plain sight, there's no better place to do it than the ocean.

    3. CMChristopher Mellon45:46

       Right, right.

    4. JRJoe Rogan45:46

       I mean, there's nothing out there.

    5. CMChristopher Mellon45:48

       Right, and-

    6. JRJoe Rogan45:48

       It's mostly a desert. A- a giant, wet desert, right?

    7. CMChristopher Mellon45:51

       Yeah, it's vast and largely unexplored-

    8. JRJoe Rogan45:54

       Yeah.

    9. CMChristopher Mellon45:55

       ... and unknown and inaccessible. We do have the ability to, um, if we become interested in a particular area, to really do some serious reconnaissance underwater. Um, we have resources, but again, it ... somebody has to make a decision.

    10. JRJoe Rogan46:10

        How specific do we have to be in terms of like ... it's not like they can look at the entire Pacific Ocean, right?

    11. CMChristopher Mellon46:15

        Certainly not, but you know, with- with bottom scanning sonars and things like that, they can cover pretty large areas. Um, so in the case of the Nimitz-

    12. JRJoe Rogan46:25

        And did they do this from a s- from a ship?

    13. CMChristopher Mellon46:26

        Excuse ... They can do it from ships, they can do it from submarines, they can do it from various kinds of platforms. And, uh-

    14. JRJoe Rogan46:34

        But would it be like being in California on a plane trying to look at the entire country?

    15. CMChristopher Mellon46:41

        No. I mean, in- in the case of the Nimitz, for example, they had a lat-long where they had the intercept so they had a very precise location and looking under the ocean-

    16. JRJoe Rogan46:49

        Lat-long being latitude and longitude?

    17. CMChristopher Mellon46:51

        Latitude and longitude were- were that incident occurred, where they vectored the jets to, so looking a few square miles around that area would've been very feasible.

    18. JRJoe Rogan46:59

        That would've been feasible?

    19. CMChristopher Mellon47:00

        On the bottom, yeah.

    20. JRJoe Rogan47:00

        A few square miles?

    21. CMChristopher Mellon47:01

        Yeah.

    22. JRJoe Rogan47:02

        But-

    23. CMChristopher Mellon47:02

        I mean, with a high ... Depends on how much resolution you want so if you want really precise resolution, there's always a trade-off then in the time it takes to cover an area.

    24. JRJoe Rogan47:11

        Right.

    25. CMChristopher Mellon47:11

        And, um, so they could do a larger area more quickly at a lower resolution, but to- to really look closely and carefully, you know, the sonar underwater sounds like a radar kind of, but when it's focused, it can give you a very, uh, strong picture of what you're looking at and it can also, you know, detect, uh, metal, it'll react, you know, bounce off more strongly, you get a stronger signal and things. So they can do a pretty efficient search, uh, if they want to.

    26. JRJoe Rogan47:39

        That's assuming that this thing is still gonna be there. And also assuming-

    27. CMChristopher Mellon47:42

        Right, if it were or if there was s- if there was still something down there.

    28. JRJoe Rogan47:45

        ... that it doesn't recognize that they're there, like the Tic Tac did and block their tracking, which it did, right?

    29. CMChristopher Mellon47:50

        Correct.

    30. JRJoe Rogan47:51

        Yeah.
26. 48:15 – 49:58

    Reconnaissance

    1. JRJoe Rogan48:15

       Um, so what I was getting at though is it's not like we can drop something in the Pacific Ocean and- and get a detailed map of the entire ocean?

    2. CMChristopher Mellon48:25

       No. Hell no.

    3. JRJoe Rogan48:25

       No. Yeah. Impossible.

    4. CMChristopher Mellon48:27

       Right.

    5. JRJoe Rogan48:27

       It did- it kinda would be like looking at the entire country from California in a plane. Like there's ... you're gonna miss a lot.

    6. CMChristopher Mellon48:33

       Yeah.

    7. JRJoe Rogan48:33

       There's no way you're gonna see the whole thing.

    8. CMChristopher Mellon48:35

       And what's- what's interesting, I mean, from overhead imagery now, even commercial imagery with artificial intelligence, you know, we're able to pretty much map the world every day and if you have a particular profile you're looking for with these computer algorithms, you could search all that imagery fairly quickly. So, the reconnaissance capa- cape- reconnaissance capabilities are extensive and you can, uh, cover large areas, particularly if you're looking for a particular thing and you can describe it well.... so that if it sees a match, if the computer sees a match, it, it identifies it.

    9. JRJoe Rogan49:09

       Hmm.

    10. CMChristopher Mellon49:10

        Um, there is a lot ... There's just mountains of data coming into this panoply of sensors that we have, from thousands of miles out in space, to closer in space, to the air, ground, sea, undersea. Um, th- there's a layer, uh, a mesh network around the entire planet, essentially.

    11. JRJoe Rogan49:30

        Except in the ocean.

    12. CMChristopher Mellon49:32

        Well, in the ocean we have sensors but it's not the same kind of coverage.

    13. JRJoe Rogan49:36

        We kinda have to get lucky.

    14. CMChristopher Mellon49:39

        Yeah, I mean, certain ... Depends. Certain areas are very closely monitored. Choke points, for example-

    15. JRJoe Rogan49:42

        Mm-hmm.

    16. CMChristopher Mellon49:42

        ... are gonna be natural places you're gonna wanna look carefully. Um, and certain kinds of things are, are gonna give a, a pretty strong signature, but that gets off pretty quickly into the area that, um, is confidential, the government keeps confidential.

27. 49:58 – 50:31

    Stealth

    1. CMChristopher Mellon49:58

    2. JRJoe Rogan49:58

       I bet they do. But I ... Well, I would imagine, though, that if I was an alien, that I would, uh, definitely hide in the ocean. I would say that's, that's the move. Just-

    3. CMChristopher Mellon50:04

       Be a great place to do it.

    4. JRJoe Rogan50:05

       Yeah, you can fly around in there.

    5. CMChristopher Mellon50:07

       And there was a sub, uh, accompanying the Nimitz Carrier Battle Group and it didn't detect anything in the water, so there may be an ability to, to move under water, uh, and remain undetected, much as there's an ability in the air to, to, uh, go at supersonic speeds without creating a shockwave.

    6. JRJoe Rogan50:27

       Right.

    7. CMChristopher Mellon50:27

       Whatever this technology is, it has some very unusual properties.

28. 50:31 – 52:02

    Sport Model

    1. CMChristopher Mellon50:31

    2. JRJoe Rogan50:31

       Yeah, that's the bizarre thing, right? The supersonic speeds. Uh, uh, and then that brings us to Lazar's depiction of how these things worked, that they somehow or another bend gravity. These things that he worked on, which is the model that's on the desk there. That's, uh, supposedly a detailed model of what that thing looked like that he worked on. The Sport model, I think they called it.

    3. CMChristopher Mellon50:53

       That's what he called it, yeah.

    4. JRJoe Rogan50:54

       Yeah. When you watch him talk and you hear him give his description of his time working there and what he saw and what he thinks those things are, what was your take on that?

    5. CMChristopher Mellon51:06

       Uh, I thought it was curious and interesting. I mean, I'd been to Area 51. I didn't see any flying saucers or anything like that.

    6. JRJoe Rogan51:14

       What did you see? (laughs)

    7. CMChristopher Mellon51:16

       (laughs) I saw, uh, Defense Department, uh, uh, experiments being performed and, and training activities and that sort of thing. Nothing that the taxpayer would, uh, uh, object to. But, uh-

    8. JRJoe Rogan51:30

       Of course not. (laughs)

    9. CMChristopher Mellon51:31

       But it's a big range. There's a lot of stuff going on out there-

    10. JRJoe Rogan51:33

        Right.

    11. CMChristopher Mellon51:33

        ... and there's a lot of adjacent ranges. Uh, if you look at the map, actually.

    12. JRJoe Rogan51:36

        Areas for where he was.

    13. CMChristopher Mellon51:37

        That's what he said, yeah.

    14. JRJoe Rogan51:39

        Yeah, that's what he said.

    15. CMChristopher Mellon51:39

        Um.

    16. JRJoe Rogan51:40

        What's your take on him then?

    17. CMChristopher Mellon51:40

        I found his explanations curious, um-

    18. JRJoe Rogan51:42

        Yeah? How so?

    19. CMChristopher Mellon51:44

        The, the complexity of it, uh, and the fact that he talked about lawrentium, for example, and then decades later it turns out that, um, apparently there is a more stable form of that than-

    20. JRJoe Rogan51:57

        That's element 115?

    21. CMChristopher Mellon51:58

        I ... Sounds right, I couldn't tell you if, for sure.

    22. JRJoe Rogan52:01

        Yeah. But it's called lawrentium?

29. 52:02 – 52:34

    Laurentium

    1. JRJoe Rogan52:02

    2. CMChristopher Mellon52:02

       Lawrentium.

    3. JRJoe Rogan52:03

       That sounds like something from Battlestar Galactica. You know? We need the, the, lawrentium to power the ship.

    4. CMChristopher Mellon52:06

       There's ... All this stuff takes you into that.

    5. JRJoe Rogan52:08

       Yeah.

    6. CMChristopher Mellon52:09

       Right?

    7. JRJoe Rogan52:09

       Right.

    8. CMChristopher Mellon52:10

       So, uh, now, I, I'm a little skeptical about his claims, I have to say. Um, a friend of mine, uh, claims to know the, the gal who was his supervisor when he worked out there, and knows what he was, was actually doing and where he was located, um, and claims that, uh, that he was a guy who checked radiation on badges.

    9. JRJoe Rogan52:33

       That's it?

30. 52:34 – 55:28

    The rest is fiction

    1. JRJoe Rogan52:34

    2. CMChristopher Mellon52:34

       Yeah.

    3. JRJoe Rogan52:35

       And so, uh, all the rest is fiction?

    4. CMChristopher Mellon52:38

       A- according to that story. Um-

    5. JRJoe Rogan52:40

       And this is a person that you know?

    6. CMChristopher Mellon52:41

       Yeah.

    7. JRJoe Rogan52:42

       Maybe that person's full of shit.

    8. CMChristopher Mellon52:43

       Maybe.

    9. JRJoe Rogan52:43

       How 'bout that?

    10. CMChristopher Mellon52:44

        Y- you know, I, I don't have the ground truth on this.

    11. JRJoe Rogan52:46

        Yeah.

    12. CMChristopher Mellon52:46

        But ... But I-

    13. JRJoe Rogan52:47

        It's interesting-

    14. CMChristopher Mellon52:48

        But he, he did falsify his educational records and he's been involved in some other things, and, uh, and it just doesn't track with what-

    15. JRJoe Rogan52:55

        Are you talking about the MIT records?

    16. CMChristopher Mellon52:57

        Yeah.

    17. JRJoe Rogan52:57

        Yeah. He explained that to me. He said that he was working on something for the government at ... And they sent him to MIT to learn something. He ... I, I can't say too much. I'll tell you off-air, 'cause he told me not to talk about it. But it makes more sense when you hear his description of it, that essentially it wasn't documented that he was studying there, because what he was doing was really a terrible thing, a, a terrible experiment they were working on. When I explain it to you, maybe it'll make more sense.

    18. CMChristopher Mellon53:32

        Okay.

    19. JRJoe Rogan53:33

        Maybe not, though. Maybe he's full of shit.

    20. CMChristopher Mellon53:35

        Yeah.

    21. JRJoe Rogan53:36

        Maybe he lied about that. What's interesting, though, is he's told the same exact story since the late '80s and he doesn't seem full of shit. Now, some people are really good at lying, and, uh, you know, I've been tricked before and I'm sure you have too. There's some people that are just sociopaths. They're really good at ...

    22. CMChristopher Mellon53:54

        Yeah, they don't even, like, know they're lying. They're-

    23. JRJoe Rogan53:56

        Yeah.

    24. CMChristopher Mellon53:56

        ... like, convinced in their own head why they're spinning it.

    25. JRJoe Rogan53:58

        He's obviously, though ... He's obviously very intelligent and he obviously knows a lot about science. He knows a lot about-

    26. CMChristopher Mellon54:04

        Mm-hmm.

    27. JRJoe Rogan54:04

        ... propulsion systems and, and he really did work at, uh, Los Alamos, which is interesting because he's actually on the employee roster.

    28. CMChristopher Mellon54:12

        Mm-hmm. Yep.

    29. JRJoe Rogan54:13

        And they tried to say that he didn't. He knew people that were there, he knew the layout of the building. When he went there with George Knapp they went through the building. He knew exactly where everything was and he knew the people that worked there. So, he really did work there, apparently.

    30. CMChristopher Mellon54:26

        Mm-hmm.
31. 55:28 – 55:51

    We can exchange stories offline

    1. CMChristopher Mellon55:28

       stuff going on.

    2. JRJoe Rogan55:28

       I enjoyed his company. I, uh, went to dinner with him and Jeremy and, uh, I talked to him for several hours, uh, on the podcast and off the podcast. I, uh, I don't know. You know? I don't ... But it's some- it's a weird one 'cause he never made any money doing that. He never made any money telling that story.

    3. CMChristopher Mellon55:46

       I'll tell you another story offline. We can exchange stories offline.

    4. JRJoe Rogan55:49

       Oh, boy. I'm excited.

    5. CMChristopher Mellon55:50

       On this, okay.

    6. JRJoe Rogan55:50

       I can't wait for this to be over

32. 55:51 – 1:18:30

    Travis Walton

    1. JRJoe Rogan55:51

       now. Um, one of the stories are compell- we talked about Travis Walton, who is a ... I got a Travis Walton bobblehead, ladies and gentlemen, from Travis himself. And Travis is the, uh, the man whom the movie Fire in the Sky, uh, was created about, his event that happened in, uh, Arizona, correct?

    2. CMChristopher Mellon56:11

       Correct.

    3. JRJoe Rogan56:11

       When he was, uh, working for a logging company and encountered an object and went missing for several days and came back with this fantastic story of being abducted by aliens.

    4. CMChristopher Mellon56:23

       Yeah, I had the, uh, the pleasure of meeting him once, uh, with my, two of my boys and, um, listened to his story and, and read the book and so forth. And, um, it seems credible. You know? As, as incredible as it is, he was missing for those five days. No one's ever found any explanation of where he was. There was a full manhunt going on. There were, like, six or seven other guys who saw the UFO, saw this beam strike him. Uh, he's told the same story for years. Um, i- it's, you know, I asked him a couple questions and he, he gave quick, rapid answers. Of course, he's been telling this story for a long time but he didn't sound like someone who had to pause and, you know, try to, "What am I gonna say with this?" You know? He seemed very natural talking about it. Um, according to that story, as you know, he, uh, woke up on an examination table, lashed out, these beings were examining him, he runs into the hallway, runs into another room and these, uh, very Nordic-looking individuals come in and settle him down and escort him out and so forth. And days later he wakes up next to a road hundreds of miles from where he was last seen. Um, you know, what do you do with a story like that? It's just so, it's so hard to independently confirm anything.

    5. JRJoe Rogan57:46

       Yeah.

    6. CMChristopher Mellon57:46

       There, there's nothing that contradicts his story that, that we have, uh, but it's not possible to confirm it so it goes into a category of which there are a great many wild, incredible stories like that-

    7. JRJoe Rogan58:01

       Yeah.

    8. CMChristopher Mellon58:02

       ... that, that really make you scratch your head. Um ...

    9. JRJoe Rogan58:05

       You just, uh-

    10. CMChristopher Mellon58:05

        There are some where there's a little more evidence. Uh, there's the Cash-Lundrum case here in Texas, for example, where, uh, a family was severely irradiated. They saw a UFO blocking the road, stopped, got outta the car, um, it fried some of the paint, they ended up in the hospital, you know, serious radiation poisoning. Sued the Defense Department thinking it must be some DOD project. Um, DOD swore up and down it wasn't theirs and, and lost the, uh, uh, they lost the case.

    11. JRJoe Rogan58:35

        What year was this?

    12. CMChristopher Mellon58:36

        Uh, '70s or '80s. I, I'm not sure. It's Cash-Lundrum. You know, you can find it on on Wiki, it's, it's public knowledge but there are cases-

    13. JRJoe Rogan58:46

        Is there any images of their car?

    14. CMChristopher Mellon58:48

        Excuse me?

    15. JRJoe Rogan58:48

        Was there images of their car-

    16. CMChristopher Mellon58:49

        I believe so.

    17. JRJoe Rogan58:50

        ... where the paint got fried?

    18. CMChristopher Mellon58:51

        I believe so.

    19. JRJoe Rogan58:52

        Yeah, well, I wanna look at that. I, I don't, I'm not aware of that one. I hadn't heard that one before.

    20. CMChristopher Mellon58:56

        Yeah, that's ... You know, there, there are a number of cases actually like that where people are, um, visibly, uh, affected and physically ill and have, uh, you know, red marks on their skin and, uh, very ill. And though they're not well-known, those cases, but-

    21. JRJoe Rogan59:15

        I see this and I ... Not a car. This is the burn on their hands? Yeah. Hmm.

    22. CMChristopher Mellon59:21

        Yeah, I, when I say fried, I mean I, I heard the paint was damaged. Um, I don't know if there's-

    23. JRJoe Rogan59:29

        And this was where in Texas?

    24. CMChristopher Mellon59:31

        This was, uh, Dayton, Texas. Near Dayton, Texas, which is a couple or three hours, uh, west of here.

    25. JRJoe Rogan59:39

        Huh. "Three live in pain and terror after attack by blazing UFO." Is that from The Enquirer? Mm-hmm. Oh, they lost their hair. Damn.

    26. CMChristopher Mellon59:49

        Yeah. Typical radiation, uh-

    27. JRJoe Rogan59:51

        Yeah.

    28. CMChristopher Mellon59:51

        ... effect. So-

    29. JRJoe Rogan59:52

        Very strange.

    30. CMChristopher Mellon59:53

        Very strange and very well-documented. The doctors, the medical reports are all there. Uh, nobody has a, a good explanation for it and, um, you know, there are other cases like that. There are actually quite a few. Strange stuff.

Episode duration: 2:59:30