Policy Brief No. 3
Will the Declassification Task Force or President Trump Compel the DoD to Release its Trove of Unclassified UAP Videos?
April 5, 2025
This policy brief explores how a congressional declassification task force—or a second Trump administration—could unlock improperly withheld UAP videos, challenging systemic overclassification and renewing momentum for public transparency.
This article is reproduced in full with permission from The Debrief. Original publication date: April 5, 2025. View original article.
To its credit, the Trump administration has been taking swift action to declassify documents pertaining to the JFK and Martin Luther King assassinations and the Jeffrey Epstein case. Meanwhile, with the administration's support, Representative Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) is leading a new Congressional Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets.
The Administration and Rep. Luna have also expressed support for releasing information on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP). I believe that if Rep. Luna's Task Force or the Administration looks in the right places, they will discover a trove of unclassified UAP imagery that is being unnecessarily and improperly withheld from the public. This imagery will not reveal classified sources or methods, which is the common refrain used to deny access to Congress and the American public.
Liberating this data can provide a boon to UAP researchers; help raise public awareness regarding unmanned vehicles and the strategic challenges they pose for our country; and help to restore the public's faith in the ability of civilian policymakers to manage a huge and all-too-often self-serving bureaucracy.
Over-Classification Is a Systemic Problem
There is already a strong bipartisan consensus in Washington regarding the need to combat excessive government secrecy. We spend as much as $18 billion per year on classifying government documents, a number that does not fully account for the costs and inefficiencies this arcane system imposes.
Anyone who has worked in the intelligence community is well aware of the inefficiencies resulting from overclassification. Secrets are hoarded by separate fiefdoms and become a source of power; a commodity that can be traded for advantage.
As former Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Avril Haines said, "[D]eficiencies in the current classification system undermine our national security, as well as critical democratic objectives, by impeding our ability to share information in a timely manner."
Over-Classification of UAP Imagery
My concerns stem from events that began in 2017 when I obtained three Navy UAP videos approved for public release by the DoD's Office of Prepublication and Security Review (DOPSR). I shared two of these unprecedented military UAP videos with The New York Times, and on December 16, 2017, they appeared in a front-page story entitled "Glowing Auras and 'Black Money': The Pentagon's Mysterious U.F.O. Program." The third UAP video appeared in The Washington Post on March 9, 2018. An inquiry by the Air Force Office of Special Investigation (AFOSI) confirmed that the videos were unclassified and their publication did not damage national security.
What happened next was a classic case of a bureaucracy seeking to enforce a monopoly on access to information. Suddenly, a new classification manual for UAP was created by the DoD's UAP Task Force, making virtually anything and everything related to UAP a national secret – including precisely the same kinds of unclassified videos that had already appeared in two of the nation's leading newspapers.
The All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) and UAP Declassification
After AARO was created, I raised the issue of excessive classification with its new director, Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick. He agreed that the classification guide was problematic and indicated that he had already initiated a process to revise it.
Later, AARO determined that it does not require the authority to classify UAP-related information. The reason is that the UAP reports it receives are already classified by the agencies that originally collect the data. Unfortunately, these agencies seem to have adopted the original approach, which treats all UAP-related material as classified. As a result, countless UAP videos are being needlessly withheld from the press and public.
The far more common classification problem is simply the government's use of classified computer systems, such as the SIPRNET, that host both classified and unclassified information. As a result, any information downloaded from one of these networks has to be reviewed before it is released. This is a somewhat time-consuming process that DoD officials have no incentive to undertake because nobody has been asked to serve as an advocate for disclosure, and nobody is rewarded for declassifying information.
The President's Executive Order on Classification
The President's Executive Order (#13526) governing classification states that information can only be classified if "the information reasonably could be expected to result in damage to the national security… and the original classification authority is able to identify or describe the damage."
It goes on to state that, "if there is significant doubt about the need to classify information, it shall not be classified." The current approach to UAP imagery is nearly the opposite of what is required by the President's executive order.
Benefits of Information Sharing
The necessity of transparency in a democracy is a sufficient argument for action, but there are pragmatic benefits to be gained as well because the UAP topic is uniquely well-suited for collaboration between the public and the government. Quality analysis of UAP imagery by UAP proponents and debunkers can help to identify the objects that have been filmed. Equally, scientists can benefit from analyzing military UAP imagery in a variety of ways.
When we deny this data to the public, we deny specialists in a range of disciplines the opportunity to help solve the UAP puzzle.
A Critical Year for UAP Policy
AARO and federal UAP investigative efforts are at a critical juncture. For the first time in history, unmanned aircraft are causing more battlefield casualties in a major conflict than artillery or any other technology. Meanwhile, drone and UAP incursions at US military facilities from Guam to New Jersey have revealed a near total inability by NORAD to track, capture, or down unmanned systems when they place vital US military capabilities at risk.
Statistical data is crucial, but nothing is more effective or powerful than imagery. If a trove of unreleased, but unclassified UAP imagery exists, its release could make a significant contribution to public awareness and demands for action.
UAP and the Congressional Task Force on Declassification
Knowledge is power, and empowering the American people whenever possible is as important as empowering the bureaucracies that collect military and intelligence information. Hopefully, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna's Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets will be able to perform the policymaking surgery required to repair the insidious blockage presently impeding a healthy flow of unclassified UAP information to the public.
I hope the Administration and Congress will seize this rare opportunity to establish a fundamental and lasting improvement in transparency regarding UAP. We need more and better information on this vital topic to ensure our security and advance American science and technology.
Christopher Mellon spent nearly 20 years in the U.S. Intelligence Community, including serving as the Minority Staff Director of the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence. He actively participates in Harvard's Galileo Project and is a member of the Disclosure Foundation. In his free time, he works to raise awareness regarding the UAP issue and its implications for national security. Follow him online at his official website and on X: @ChrisKMellon.