The Chris Cuomo Project - Christopher Mellon

Episode Date: October 3, 2023

Christopher Mellon, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, joins Chris Cuomo for a wide-ranging conversation about government bureaucracy and transparency, how intelligence agencies handle unidentified flying objects, and how processes like Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) can serve as a model to make Congress more productive. Mellon goes in depth about why the government has been so secretive about UFOs and UAPs, including the reasons agencies err on the side of classifying material over public disclosure, and how cultural biases affect attitudes toward unexplained phenomenon.   Follow and subscribe to The Chris Cuomo Project on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube for new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday: https://linktr.ee/cuomoproject Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There is a frightening answer staring us in the face when it comes to unidentified aerial phenomena. And there's an even bigger secret that is right in the open about how we can get past all these Congress issues. Ready to know? I'm Chris Cuomo. Welcome to another episode of the Chris Cuomo Project. I have someone for you today who worked in intelligence, who worked with both Republican and Democratic presidential administrations and in Congress for both parties. So this is someone who knows the game, Christopher Mellon. If you've been following this issue, you know his name. And he has some very provocative things to say in a wide-ranging conversation that isn't just specific to what are they not telling us about these video images that

we've seen that come from the military or from wherever. It's how does government work? What is the reality about a deep state? What does that really mean? Where are the biases at play? Then how does that play into what we're dealing with now with the lack of transparency when it comes to UAPs? I don't know why we changed from UFO to UAP, to be honest. I guess it doesn't really matter either. But whatever you want to call them, more is known than we're being told. Why? And how does this feed into a larger understanding about our growing dissatisfaction with Congress? And maybe there's a mechanism that we could put into place that would get more done that matters to your life and mine, and less time devoted to all the

nonsense that keeps one party beating down the other. Christopher Mellon about UAPs, what's going on in Congress, what the culture really is, and how it can get better for real. Christopher Mellon, thank you very much for taking this opportunity. I want to pick your brain on a host of topics. We're going to have a nice expansive conversation here. So thank you for your participation. My pleasure. Delighted to be here.

So you are a little bit of a unicorn in that you worked in government. You worked with both types of administrations. And that does not happen anymore. And working in the Department of Defense, just like the rest of the government now, is now just dismissed as deep state. What do you want people to understand about the reality of what you've learned about the culture of government and how partisan people are or not? Well, thank you for that question. It's a great question. So one of the things that people don't understand when they bring up this deep state issue

is that there is a civil service bureaucracy. It can be very sclerotic. There's a lot of inertia, but that affects both parties. There is not a skew against conservatives or against Republicans typically. In my experience, for example, the FBI, which has come under so much criticism, has always been a very conservative organization. The great majority are white male FBI agents who vote Republican, in my experience. So the notion that somehow there's some kind of conspiracy or some sort of anti-conservative animus, I think, is mistaken. I think both parties encounter resistance and struggle

to get their initiatives pushed through and supported by the bureaucracy. I've worked, as you mentioned, in both Republican and Democratic administrations, and I saw the same thing in both. And I never detected on the part of the civil servants any particular partisan bias. It was more a matter of resistance to change of either kind, in either direction. The second thing I would say is I also worked on Capitol Hill for members of both parties, Republicans and Democrats. And it has changed distinctly for the worse. When I was first working on Capitol Hill, there were, for example, many more World War II veterans on the committees on which I served as a staffer. And they were more willing to cross party lines.

I think they were a little more principled. They did not challenge the patriotism of people on the other side. That was one thing. They were more civil, and there was never a question from somebody like Dolce and Inouye, who both lost the use of an arm fighting in Italy against the Nazis. It was inconceivable that either one would question the intent or the patriotism of the other. They would have policy disagreements, but they would discuss them like mature adults. They would have policy disagreements, but they would discuss them like mature adults. And today we've descended into this pit and morass of people almost trying to dehumanize the other side as though they're all vile and evil. I mean, I hear people say now, you know, the government's trying to destroy private enterprise and they're weaponizing it and so forth.

That is an unfortunate and inaccurate narrative. That is an unfortunate and inaccurate narrative. And in fact, the same people that are saying that are also accusing the government of subsidizing private industry too much. So which is it? Are they giving too much money to the private sector for chips and for SpaceX and so forth? Or are they weaponizing it against these companies? You can't have it both ways. So I think, unfortunately, yeah, the dialogue has descended into a perhaps almost unprecedented level of coarseness and crassness. It's highly

inappropriate and highly unfortunate. What is the chance that the Democratic Party was able to get the FBI and the DOJ to target a current and then past president in the form of Donald Trump. So here's my impression of this, and I think people who have worked in the intelligence community and worked on Capitol Hill or worked with the FBI generally share this view and this understanding. People have to recall, first of all, that the president's son-in-law and son were meeting with Russian intelligence operatives. The FBI didn't set that up or create that. That was something they were doing.

They admitted they were trying to set up a secret back channel to Vladimir Putin. Now, if we had a case where members of Hillary Clinton's family were meeting secretly with Chinese intelligence operatives, and moreover, her campaign manager was somebody who had been working for the Chinese party and taking millions of dollars, I think Republicans would be infuriated if we refuse to investigate that. And in fact, that investigation was supported by both parties in Congress. Congress asked for that investigation and asked for a special counsel. And the special counsel was led by a Republican, a lifelong Republican. So I think President Trump, inevitably, his pattern is he always accuses any group or organization that appears to be critical of him of bad faith and lies, etc., etc. And I think people should really try to reflect on that a little more instead of just immediately leaping to the conclusion that that's the case. It feels good though. There was one FBI agent who, when they asked to go through

all everybody's emails, they found one FBI agent who hated Donald Trump. There's no evidence he did anything to skew the investigation, but he clearly was probably, he was using government phone. He was expressing his private opinions. FBI agents are allowed to vote or U.S. citizens are allowed to have private opinions. If you had done the same thing to FBI agents under the Obama administration, you would have found a number of them who hated President Obama, but they were doing their jobs. And so, you know, absent any evidence that he did anything, and this was excruciating when he investigated, nothing emerged to suggest he introduced false evidence or anything of that kind. I think people have to realize the FBI got caught.

They were asked to do something that they didn't want to do, but needed to be done on behalf of the country. Making sure that foreign nations are not compromising the White House is an extraordinarily important national security mission. I would add that in the last, say, 30 or 40 years, it's another thing people don't generally know. If I asked you, how many foreign spies do you think we've convicted of espionage, say, since the last 40 years? No clue.

Okay, it's well over 100. And they come from every agency, every military service. Most of these people were in place for years, like Aldridge and the FBI Hanson, Whitworth and Walker and so forth, and they all generally had access to very, very highly classified information. We're not talking about just secret documents. We're talking about cryptology,

how to break the U.S. codes of the U.S. military, for example, or top secret code word compartmented information, or in Ames' case, the actual identities of every spy that we had in the former Soviet Union. And those people were executed. So espionage is a serious threat, and we've got to investigate that when these kinds of concerns arise. And the FBI did make mistakes. I think that's absolutely fair and appropriate to point that out.

But I don't think that they were motivated by any kind of an anti-conservative bias. I actually gave a talk at a graduation ceremony for an intelligence program at a local college. And an FBI agent and his wife came up to me after the, and I said to these people, you know, you're going to find yourself in your career, you may, as these FBI agents and other people are, in a very difficult position of having to speak truth to power and, you know, do the right thing. Just tell it like it is. And they came up to me afterward, and this one guy was almost in tears because he's spent his career supporting the country,

supporting the White House. The last thing that this guy would ever have wanted to do would be to undermine the presidency, regardless of who's in office. So I think if people had more information about this, they might be less inclined to fall for this idea that it is generally very conservative.

It's almost laughable to think that the FBI would have an anti-conservative bias. Yeah, but it is selling. And many who are watching right now and listening are going to say, what does this have to do with unidentified aerial phenomena? Here's why I'm starting the conversation this way. Ultimately, while you have very good insights for the audience on this issue and some provocative thoughts, I believe the issue ultimately is transparency. thoughts. I believe the issue ultimately is transparency. For me, the primary goal is not to find the location of little green men in a basement somewhere that the government operates, but it is to understand, unravel, and change the dynamic of what people in service of the American people tell them or their representatives.

To me, that's what it's about. So I wanted people to understand your profound education and how government works and operates and the culture and the dynamics because it informs your view on this as well, obviously. And given all you understand about it and the agendas that swirl around, what is your baseline understanding of why the level of disclosure to the American

public about anything related to UFOs or UAPs or whatever you want to call them is zero until very recently? And even then, NASA and the hearings, it's all based on things that aren't classified. So why is it at zero? Yeah. So I'll tell you an anecdote. It goes, I think, pretty much to the heart of your question. I turned over two unclassified videos to the New York Times. I negotiated with them to give them an exclusive if they would put these videos on the front page and provided another video later along with an op-ed to the Washington Post. And I was investigated by the Office of Special Investigations, the FBI, to see if I'd done anything improper or compromised national security they determined nope absolutely not it was unclassified no damage to national security and yet videos of

the same provenance from the same fighter aircraft and sensors are no longer being released because someone in the bureaucracy created a what they call a classification guide that took the extreme position that anything to do with uap should automatically be classified even i mean it's not even probably legal i don't think it could stand up in court um how would you argue that those videos didn't damage national security but yet another video of exact precisely the same ilk would i mean it's pretty far-fetched. And I happen to know the individual who created the class guide, and he was a long-term career professional. And this is an example also of where the so-called deep state, which is really just the

civil service and the bureaucracy, and again, it goes both ways, both parties struggle with this, have blinders sometimes. This person had spent their entire career in the intelligence community and the Air Force, and their immediate reaction was secrecy, we've got to protect everything, and it was a genuine instinct to try to protect classified capabilities and sensors, but even that individual now admits he overreacted. And at the time, I argued that this was inappropriate. They were, you know, privately, they were going too far. But that was the classification guide they approved.

And so the instinct of these institutions that own these sensors and so forth is to always err on the side of overclassifying and protection and so forth. Partly because of security and concerns about compromises. Partly because you never get rewarded in the bureaucracy for being open, whereas you can be severely punished for disclosing something that you shouldn't have. Yeah, I think it's culture, like you say. And I also think it's a power principle that people have the power over information and you want to know and you don't get to know unless they want you to know and the power

is more invested in them if they don't tell than if they do. is more invested in them if they don't tell than if they do. However, even still, in my many, many years of doing this job now, I would go back and forth with guys like you during the deep dish days of the war on terror. And you guys would say, I am not telling you this stuff because I got guys on the ground and you're going to compromise where they are, and you're going to compromise what we're doing to get these bad guys. And I'm not telling you,

that's why. And I didn't like it, but I understood it. What I don't understand here is if everybody is going to nod and wink so much so that even politicians who are desperate to play the gotcha game and play to advantage won't even go near it, usually the secrecy would be satisfying something worthy of protecting. And here, if everybody's going to nod and wink, like, look, it's not Little Green Men, okay? Well, if it's not anything extreme like that, which I totally can appreciate, then why won't you tell us? Because they're more locked down in this area than they were in telling me what they were doing to find Osama bin Laden. I knew more about that than I do about this. I don't get it.

Yeah, so let me say a couple of things in response to your question. First of all, you're absolutely right about the power. Classified information is almost like a currency in the bureaucracy and they hoard it and then they exchange it and trade it. You know, I'll give you access to this. Maybe if you do X and Y. So it happens. You know, in 9-11, the problem was not lack of information being provided to the public. It was lack of information sharing between FBI and CIA. Right. So it even works between these intelligence agencies. They have major problems sharing information, which goes back to that power issue and the culture and all of that.

So that's absolutely a huge part of it. In the case of this data, we do have to recall that, remember, that there's a difference between cover-up and classifying, and both could be involved in this case with UAP. Former DNI Radcliffe mentioned that we have satellite imagery of UAP. He didn't describe, he didn't go any further in that description. I think if that information were released or characterized, it would go a considerable way towards helping the public and the scientific community better understand what we're dealing with. I'm aware of some of this information.

The problem that we have is that many of these same sensors are used to support warfighting. And there is legitimate concern, of course, about compromising anything that helps give our people an edge in combat. Some of these sensors the public and our adversaries don't even know exist. Some of the most useful sensors in some cases are that highly classified and secret. There are other cases like satellite imagery where the issue is trying to disguise the precise degree of resolution that we can get and that sort of thing to make it harder for adversaries to know what we can do and plan around it. And sometimes, you know, they don't draw the line in the right place. In this case, even some DOD officials have acknowledged to me, and in fact, the head of Arrow, that they think the classification guide should be revised,

that should be to accommodate more openness and more information sharing. But we do run into a legitimate problem in many cases with trying to share the information without compromising the capability. I get it. And I get it not because I have your expertise, nothing like it. I've just been talking to people like you for a long time. But when we're dealing with terrorism and they were, whatever it was, searching for bin Laden or whatever it was, Al Qaeda, the Taliban, whatever it was, whatever group they were dealing with, there'd be a balance of, look, we want people to know we're doing everything we can to keep them safe. And we're fine to these guys. We're doing whatever it is, whatever the goal of the moment was, the ambition of the moment,

the fear of the moment was. They didn't want to give away tactical advantage. Makes sense. Operational security, OPSEC, as you guys say. Makes sense. But they also didn't want the public scared as hell and not trusting their efforts to keep them safe. So they had to say the right things at the right time

and give what they had to give. Here, that dynamic doesn't happen. So they let people believe crazy things that they could easily dispel. And, you know, as simple as saying, it's not a box that has unknown propulsion capabilities. We know what it is. We know how it works. We know who sent it. And, you know, it is a matter of national security. And that would be it. And I'm not saying that's the explanation for all of them

because I don't think they know the explanation for all of them. But it would at least balance the public interest. They don't even do that here. And then a guy like you comes with a pedigree that, like, you know, could exhaust Wikipedia. And you say that the best explanation for some of these things is that they are extraterrestrial

and everybody's heads explode. Why do you believe that? And what did you want people to take from it? So I've not taken the position that any of these things or specific cases are necessarily of extraterrestrial origin, but there are cases like the Nimitz incident where I don't know how else to explain it. And my main point is that we need to keep an open mind and not rule that out.

If we look scientifically at what we know today, various astronomers, PhDs and publications have a range of estimates about the number of intelligent civilizations that are currently existing in the Milky Way that we share this galaxy with. We know the direction of technology and artificial intelligence. We know that, so for example, one Russian, Yuri Milner, is building a spacecraft, a probe, to send to another star system, the Alpha Centauri, right now. That's not even a nation state. One rich Russian guy can fund an interstellar probe. Why would we think that civilizations that might be a billion years older than us and more advanced couldn't send probes out for purposes of exploration, even possibly self-reproducing probes. So my point is really, let's follow the facts wherever they lead, keep everything on the table.

And we have some cases where the aviators themselves who were witnessing these events, they're saying it could not have been made by man. where the aviators themselves who were witnessing these events, they're saying it could not have been made by man. These are people who know what we can do. They've got security clearances. They're patriots. They're sober. They have 20-20 eyesight.

And they're seeing objects doing things that are way beyond anything that we can do, even in our most cutting-edge programs. And I have friends who've worked at the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works for decades. And I talk to those guys, and they're like, there's no way. We could do one or two of those things. We're talking about craft that are sending in a vertical line in a couple of seconds from 80,000 feet to 20,000 feet hovering, instantaneously accelerated to hypervelocity, hypersonic speeds without friction, without plasma, without breaking the sound barrier. I mean, a lot of stuff that is utterly baffling and so far beyond what we're capable of that you naturally, you're trying

to find a hypothesis that fits the facts. Unless you just dismiss it as being fake and made up. Yeah. So, you know, you could say, well, all those radar operators on the USS Princeton and all those aviators in the three different F-18s, which have two aviators on each and saw this thing at close range in broad daylight, combat veterans in some cases, including the squadron commander, who was the guy who got closest to it. This was an enlisted guy in the Marine Corps, got served on a carrier, decided he wanted to fly fighter jets, went back into the military, became an officer, got a college degree, became an aviator.

You're talking about, you know, super gung-ho, patriotic, hardworking Americans here. We're not talking about crazy people. Right, who are all either duped or dumb or, you know, they're completely hyper-devoted. And that's very, very unlikely. devoted and that's very very unlikely um but and if i may say please it's really important that to to bear in mind not only did they multiple pilots seen in broad daylight but multiple radar systems confirmed right what they saw and then there was an infrared video of the object on top of it so we have you know 10, 15 witnesses, all U.S. military. There's sensor data that confirms it and so forth.

So I think what I'm saying is, of course, there's a possibility that somebody else's space program has found us in an infinite universe. This universe is so strange and so bizarre and so immense. Why would we be surprised if we encountered intelligent machines from somewhere else? Support for the Chris Cuomo Project comes from PrizePix. I got to tell you, there's a reason PrizePix is America's number one fantasy sports app. Three million members. Why? Easy, plenty of action if you're into DFS, and it's just you against the numbers.

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Plus, price is going to vary based on product and subscription information. You're going to need a subscription. It's required. Plus, price is going to vary based on product and subscription plan. The entire issue to me, again, it's about transparency. It's about what we accept and what we don't and on what basis. And it's interesting to me what a kind of lens the issue is. Like, I'll have people

mock that I cover this, okay? Because I could be spending more time on Donald Trump's obvious efforts to destroy the democracy, including stealing confidential, classified, whatever you want to call it, to distribute that we now know he was using it as like notepaper. And I'll say, you really believe that Donald Trump's goal was to do anything other than serve his own end and get elected again? You really think he wanted to destroy democracy? You really think he's another Hitler? You really believe that? And they do. They'll say, yeah, I look at all this. But you mock the notion that we may not understand where these aircraft come from. That you mock. But you totally are invested in the fact that he's a Russian operative. Or you're totally convinced that Joe Biden is brain dead and being controlled by pedophiles.

That you believe because of something you saw on Alex Jones, but the idea that there could be other life in the universe you find preposterous, but you believe in God. I am a Christian by choice, but I cannot be open to the possibility of other life, but I am open to the possibility, in fact, the existence of a supernatural intelligence that knows all and controls all here, including the grace of free will. That's okay. Nobody's going to make any points in America by saying you're stupid to believe in God.

But on this issue, it's like everybody suspends all of the normal instincts they use on every other issue. I don't get it. Yeah, I've been giving that a lot of thought. It's quite interesting that if you look at Hollywood treatment of this issue with aliens, people love it. Some of the biggest franchises going, Star Wars has got like 17 million followers on Facebook or something. The biggest UFO organization's got a pitiful like 40,000. And so there's a huge gap here. And I asked myself, what explains that? And why don't more people share my interest in this, given it's an existential issue?

There's nothing that would be more transformative and no greater discovery that we could make than finding out that some advanced civilization is actually operating in proximity to our planet, right? So why is that? And I think looking back historically, and it's hard to find any perfect analog, Every group has, every ethnicity, tribal group, sort of a sense of superiority in the world and the universe is about them. The Copernican Revolution was a shock that we're not the center of the universe. And those shocks have continued. Then we found out, well, there's not just one galaxy and we're not even near the center of it. We're in a random place out on the periphery.

And it took years and years for people to accept Darwinian evolution and process that despite overwhelming evidence. So I think it's quite natural, particularly when you have this element of fear. Two other things. One, people have been inculcated in the belief that this is crazy and you shouldn't take it seriously, in part because the U.S. government fostered that belief deliberately. And also, you know, what is true? For many of us, and the research shows this, most people don't bother to look at the facts or do any independent research. look at the facts or do any independent research. The average person, if you say, do you believe in mandate climate change or not? The answer you get is going to be based on what their friends think, what their group thinks. If they're a conservative group in Texas, they'll probably say no.

What they want to be true as a function of their own identification. Yeah. So a lot of this, for many people, what is true and what they believe is not based on an examination of data or facts. It's based on what their peer group thinks. And people like to fit in and they want to go along to get along and it's easier that way. And there's a huge, you know, traditionally the overwhelming view has been that this UFO thing is crazy. And it's hard for a lot of people to shake that. It's also a difficult thing to process.

So I think there are a variety of reasons that you still get that kind of reaction, even at a time when our government is saying flat out, this is real. This is happening. We don't know where hundreds of, we can't explain hundreds of cases. They need to say that more and louder.

And I am shocked. Again, this issue has really grabbed me, and not because I believe that they have alien bodies. I don't know if they do. I don't know if they don't. I'm not going to stake my reputation on it, but I'm open to it. But most importantly, I want to know.

And what bothers me about this issue, and I did direct it at the White House, but only because they're so, you know, they're coming into an election year where they're like desperate for a winning narrative. Why wouldn't you grab hold of this issue and say, I'm going to be the guy who makes the government that I'm running tell us more about this stuff. Even if it is, yeah, Chris, there are hundreds of things that we know were here that we have no idea where they came from. And we know nothing more than you do.

And in fact, most of this stuff is not found in military airspace. It's, you know, there are people with cameras all over this world, there are billions of cameras out there that capture things. You shouldn't only be hearing from us about it.

Even that would be such a great issue to grandstand on as a politician. I mean, they stand on complete bullshit all the time. They'll make up an issue and use it to advantage. And this one is real and right in front of them

and they won't touch it. Baffles me, except until we get to what you were talking about. What was a philosophical extension of what they used to call solipsism, that you believe the sun revolves around you, you are the center of anything, as an extension of narcissism, and we are that culturally. We need to be all important. And the other aphorism that we all grew up with, we mock what we don't understand. And we're afraid of the unknown.

And we would rather dismiss it and devalue it and debase it than deal with it because that's easier and it's more comforting. And that's really what I think we're taking on here. And I know that you were optimistic before the hearing that you believe like some other guys that I've had on the podcast and on my show, we're moving in the right direction.

I don't know yet. I don't know that anything has been offered that is suggestive of a change in the state of play. Am I being too cynical? Maybe a little bit. And I say that because we certainly have made enormous progress since 2017 when I got into this issue. We now have an office dedicated to this, studying this subject jointly between the Intelligence Committee and DOD. NASA is getting involved. They actually even spoke to the issue you just raised about

crowdsourcing and trying to make use of people's cell phone data and commercial pilot encounters and so forth. The data is being collected. We're now at a point, as soon as they started to give people permission to talk about this, we had an explosion in the number of reports. The initial report from DOD came in and said we had 144 reports since 2007 or 2004, which was a bogus number and it was way too low. But that's when they came up. The Air Force didn't even cooperate, essentially. they came up. Like the Air Force didn't even cooperate,

essentially. But since then, and since they've started telling the pilots, we actually want you to report this stuff, we're now over, well over 800,

probably over 1,000 in just two years. So we went from 144 over 20 years. We're now at like 100 or more, 50 to 100 per month, according to Arrow.

So data is being collected. There has been a change in the degree to which the legitimacy, perceived legitimacy of the issue, even though there's still a lot of resistance. And commercial airline pilots are also reporting. Private sector organizations, scientific organizations, the Galileo Project at Harvard, led by Dr. Loeb, which I'm one of the volunteer supporters for. All of those things are moving us forward. There absolutely is information the government has not shared. And there's information they haven't even shared with Congress, classified information. And that gets

a bit arcane and complex. I do think that absolutely more information should be shared. There should be more openness. But we're now in a very different spot, certainly, than we were in 2017. And so I think great progress has been made. If you had asked me in 2015, say, you know, is Congress, can you get Congress to hold an hearing on UFOs or pass legislation on this topic? It would have been laughable. You know, it would have seemed just crazy, impossible. So I do think we've come a long way and I do think we're making it. I think you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. Now that you're saying we have to report this stuff and people are looking and sensors are recording and radar data is coming in and so forth, that stuff is going into the books and

it's on the record. And they have to have an unclassified report that goes to Congress. The oversight committees are asking questions. So I don't think that we're going to go backwards on this. I think we're going to go forward. The question is, at what rate are we going to go forward? How quickly will they be actually more open and honest with Congress and the public? What is the most obvious next? Well, one of the things that's hanging fire, of course, is the Schumer Amendment. So Senator Schumer has introduced a rather extraordinary bit of information that would require all agencies and departments to release all information they have on not be released to the public. They have to submit it

to a presidential commission that would be established by this legislation that would independently review that claim that it shouldn't be released. So that is a potentially huge step forward. It's unclear. It's going to take time. They have to appoint people to the commission. Then the agencies have to begin the process of collecting the records and data, submitting it to the National Archives. And then that commission is going to have to engage in a sort of step-by-step process of reviewing individual documents or categories of documents. Satellite data from 20 years ago when our capabilities were much less versus satellite data from last year and all sorts of things like that.

So it's going to take time, particularly for the classified information, the information that they want to retain and not release to the public. But we might see a great deal of additional insight into what the government actually has and knows as a result of that legislation. So that's probably the next big step item that's on the agenda. Will they get through conference? Will it be in the bill signed by law by the president? I think it will. Look, no shame in my game. I've been using AG1 for over five years. Why? No shame in my game.

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an op-ed about recently, something you'd like to extend as a mechanism to help government get out of its own way and get back in the business of progress instead of problem exploitation. And you see it working as a model in an area of government agency work that started with dealing with what's called base realignment and closures. So what you do with military bases, which are a big deal in politics, for those of you who don't know, because they're a big pork game on one level for politicians. They want them in their base,

but then they like to attack them in other people's constituencies. So what did you learn about the BRAC, or however you say the acronym, that dynamic and why you believe it could be greatly or be extended to great effect in Congress? I think it not only can be, but most likely inevitably will be, because it may be the only way we can get out from under this crushing debt that is politically viable. So let me start at sort of the 10,000-foot level and drill down a little bit. Extinction is the norm historically for species, nations, corporations.

You avoid extinction by adapting to change. The world is changing at an unprecedented rate, and many of the problems and challenges we face are more complex and technical than ever before. Global warming, AI, many different things. Since the Constitution was ratified, our legislative process has become sclerotic. Money has become an overwhelming influence in elections, but we can't pass campaign finance reform. Partisanship has spun up and social media has exacerbated that. We have party line votes now and we can't come to grips, it seems, with our biggest, most pressing challenges. processes. What happened was after the Cold War, or as the Cold War was winding down,

DOD had a lot of bases they no longer, in locations they didn't need them, and they didn't support the war plan. Every time they tried to close them, somebody with Congress would say, well, that's fine, but not in my district. So they were carrying all this overhead, and we couldn't get by that. So a congressman came up with an idea. Let's create an independent commission. But unlike commissions in general, this one, we're going to actually devolve our legislative authority under the Constitution to this commission. Their recommendations will automatically become the law of the land unless vetoed by the president or overridden by congress the result was instead of congressmen who often don't even go to the hearing or because they're fundraising or other

things and who don't have the expertise we had a commission composed of uh former generals and admirals and real estate people and people who had a lot of expertise. They were doing this full-time, focused on this. Every meeting was transparent, open to the public. And after 18 months and reviewing what DOD wanted to close, they put forward their recommendation. The president can either veto it or send it back proposing changes. The administration accepted it. send it back proposing changes. The administration accepted it. They then held a vote on Capitol Hill. A small number of members opposed it. And bam, we closed, I think, I'm trying to think of the first round, maybe 50 bases. It saved $700 million a year. And this commission is, from its inception, bipartisan. The members are picked essentially by the leaders of both parties in Congress

in consultation with the White House. So you had a very fair, transparent, open process. These people aren't running for office. They're not taking money from anybody. They're subject matter experts. And we got a great result for America. So my argument is, given where we're at today, the Social Security Trust Fund is going to not be able to pay its bills by around the end of

the decade. Same is true of Medicaid and Medicare. We can't get immigration reform passed. Here's a process that overcomes so many of the objections we have today about congress in terms of special interest group influence and the influence of money and parliamentary procedures like um uh putting holds on legislation and all of those kinds of back rooms this surmounts and addresses all those problems so my argument is why don't we give this a shot? If Congress can do their job the old-fashioned way, in the meantime, and pass an immigration bill or a bill that deals with these budgets, great. But if they can't, in the meantime, the nation's work will get done in a fair and open way. Is this the equivalent of like an amicus brief or when the courts bring in somebody who's a subject matter expert in an area to inform the jury as to a basis of litigation?

Or is it constitutionally valid? Has it been tested as Congress giving its authority to people when it doesn't have the constitutional ability to give its authority to people? Yeah, that's another great question. And one of the reasons that I advocate this process is its viability. So Arlen Specter challenged the constitutionality of this provision, and it went all the way to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality. and the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality. And let me point out that many of the other bromides that people put forward for trying to overcome the problems in Congress, which is at about an all-time low

in terms of public support, in terms of legislative output, about any metric you want to use, the other suggestions that many people put forward, like term limits, are impossible. Just forget about it. Because everywhere there's a constitutional amendment. The last constitutional amendment

took hundreds of years to pass. The idea that you're going to get three quarters of the states and the majority of Congress to pass term limits is just totally unrealistic. So this overcomes that objection. This is truly viable. So yeah, they found that this was a legitimate exercise of Congress unanimously, nine, nothing.

So that means that they didn't see any problem with the potential abdication of power. I mean, look, I guess the easy, I love the idea. However, I do see an obvious pushback, especially from a disruptor or an outsider saying, well, then what the hell do we need you for? You know what I mean? If I'm voting you in and you guys aren't going to do your job and you're basically going to broker it out to consultants, then what do we need you for? Yeah. So let me answer that. Congress would have more than enough to do.

This would only be one or two or three specific issues, you know, immigration reform or dealing with the Social Security Trust Fund and Medicare. There are so many other legislative activities that need to be done. This is not replacing Congress as a whole or undermining their ability to confirm nominees from the president for high positions in government or any of those other things.

They'll have way more than enough to do. I like it. I'm going to advance it and start getting people to chew on it and see how they come back to me. It'd be interesting. I would think that the lawmakers, it depends on who they are. If there's somebody like Matt Gaetz right now has like magically become relevant in that party again, which is one of the best comeback stories I think I've heard of recently to the extent that it's accurate. And he's like, yeah, McCarthy promised us a vote on term limits. What would that do? I know that that's how we start a constitutional amendment process is that one of the branches of Congress puts it forward

as a proposal. But if that's what he's thinking, that's where it dies. I mean, you're not going to get a super majority in Congress and you're not going to get 75% of state legislatures, not in our lifetime. I don't even think we can get that, as I often say on the podcast, state legislatures, not in our lifetime. I don't even think we could get that, as I often say on the podcast, for the name of the country. And people think I'm joking, but I'm not. You don't think that the left would grab onto the idea of naming this country after Amerigo Vespucci? You don't think that guy was guilty of a lot of the same stuff that they're hanging Columbus for now? So the point is, we're not getting constitutional amendments, not these days. We're not going to get them on anything. And it also goes to the gun control issue,

because there's this great fear that somebody is going to pass an amendment that, you know, takes away our people's right to bear arms. And that's not going to happen. There may be all sorts of restrictive legislation passed, but you're certainly not going to see any constitutional amendment on that. This is a great idea. And the conversation all goes together. We need better transparency. We need better mechanisms for deciding how the people's work gets done, whether it's legislation, taxes, or disclosure. And again, I don't know any issue that is more susceptible to scrutiny than when it comes to unidentified aerial phenomena. Because if you don't have a big, bad secret that makes it worth keeping, then you have

no basis for all of this confidentiality that has fueled all of this, you know, fervor and anxiety and just energy in society that we don't need that can be dispelled. Christopher Mellon, thank you much for explaining, relating, and advocating for what will get us to a better place, not just on this issue, but as a society, because the more we do to embolden ourselves as a nation, transparency, efficacy, the better off we'll be. So thank you. Thank you for adding to the stew, my friend. Well, thank you very much for letting me, allowing me to speak on your show and advocate this. I hope this idea will get into discussion. Many people are already advocating a commission to deal with the budget issues, but they haven't gone so far as to recommend a BRAC

type commission that actually has authority. Yeah, it's a huge distinction, though. Because giving a bunch of suggestions to Congress doesn't leave you in any different place than you are right now. They don't need the ideas. They need the decisions. Most commission studies just go on the shelf and gather dust. But this process actually delivers results. It's tried, true, tested, and constitutional,

open, and fair. And I think people's dissatisfaction and distrust is understandable. So why not provide an alternative that is open and transparent and bipartisan and addresses all those issues? That's my argument. Yeah, and you'd get people who actually know the stuff better. Absolutely.

And when we talk about issues like AI and so forth, I mean, Congress, really? Yeah. Do you think that they understand how these things work, the average member? No, they don't. Yeah, I don't want Lauren Boebert and AOC deciding what happens with AI.

All right, Christopher Mellon, thank you very much for adding to the stew. Very provocative questions and even a chance at some solutions. So thank you very much. To be continued. My pleasure. Thank you. Look, I got to tell you, if you choose to believe in God, but you think it's preposterous to suggest that there could be other life in the universe, I don't see how you put those two together. I certainly can't. I certainly can't. I got to be open on both to be open on either. That's the way I feel. Now, what do you think? And while that's really existential and metaphysical and kind of hard to get your arms around, you know what isn't? Making Congress better. And what an

interesting idea Mellon has as a creature of government, someone who worked in intelligence for White Houses in Congress as a way to get better. And we know it passed constitutional muster, which surprised me. This was back in like 94, by the way, you can look up the case, B-R-A-C. It was unanimous. The Supreme Court said, we have no issue to review when it comes to Congress's actions. What does that mean? This was a legitimate action of Congress. What does that mean? That means that this body that they put together to decide which bases to close

didn't violate the Constitution. Unanimous. So what do you think? Thanks for subscribing. Thanks for following. Check out the free agent merch. This is what it's about. It's not independent, anti-Democrat, anti-Republican.

It's pro me, my family, my community, and my macros of what I think matter most. I'm an independent thinker. I'm a curious person. I'm a critical thinker. I'm open. I want three, four, five points of view of information and perspective.

Then I'll figure out what's best for me. That's what I'm saying to be, okay? That's being a free agent. And it should apply in every aspect of your life. So thank you for giving me a chance. Thanks for being with me on News Nation, okay? 8 and 11 o'clock p.m. Eastern time. I'll see you there.