disclosurediaries | For the past few weeks I've been compiling a Disclosure Timeline and list of Key People in Disclosure for a free educational website I'm officially launching in September, and I stumbled across a pretty interesting quote from an interview Christopher K. Mellon did back in 2016.
"I find it hard to imagine something as explosive as recovered alien technology remaining under wraps for decades. So while I have no reason to believe there is any recovered alien technology, I will say this: If it were me, and I were trying to bury it deep, I'd take it outside government oversight entirely and place it in a compartment as a new entity within an existing defense company and manage it as what we call an "IRAD" or "Independent Research and Development Activity."
Now why is that interesting?
Well, if we revisit that statement in the context of the July 26 UAP Hearing – where Rep. Moskowitz specifically asks Grusch to clarify how the Legacy programs are being funded (pages 27-28) – we see the following exchange:
Rep. Moskowitz: Does that mean that there is money in the budget that is said to go to a program, but it doesn't, and it goes to something else?
David Grusch: Yes. I have specific knowledge of that. Yep.
Rep. Moskowitz: Do you think US corporations are overcharging for certain technology they're selling to the US government and that additional money is going to [Legacy programs]?
David Grusch: Correct. Through something called IRAD.
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So basically, this re-iterates that Christoper Mellon has had a clear view of the goings-on since (at least) 2016. More importantly, these allegations are now part of the public record.
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Rep. Cortez (AOC) also later followed up along the same lines (Pages 35-56):
Rep. Cortez: ...Now, when it comes to notification that you had mentioned about IRAD programs, we have seen defense contractors abuse their contracts before through this committee. I have seen it personally, and I have also seen the notification requirements to Congress abused. I am wondering, one of the loopholes that we see in the law is that there is, at least from my vantage point, is that depending on what we're seeing is that there are no actual definitions or requirements for notification. What methods of notification did you observe? When they say they notified Congress, how did they do that? Do you have insight into that?
David Grusch: For certain IRAD activities, and I can only think of ones conventional in nature. Sometimes they flow through certain, how to say, SAP programs that have cognizant authority over the Air Force or something, and those are Congressionally reported compartments. But IRAD is literally internal to the contractor. So as long as it's money, either profits, private investment, et cetera, they can do whatever they want, yeah
Rep. Cortez: To put a finer point on it, when there is a requirement for any agency or company or any agency to notify Congress, do they contact the chairman of a committee? Do they get them on the phone specifically? Is this through an email to hypothetically a dead email box?
David Grusch: A lot of it comes through what they call the PPR, Periodic Program Review process. If it's a SAP or controlled access program equity, and then those go to the specific committees, whether it be the SASC, HASC, HSI.
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So not only are IRAD programs alleged to be involved with the cover-up of UAP retrieval and reverse engineering programs, it turns out Members of Congress are already familiar with other IRAD misuses. AOC took a very specific and well-informed line of questioning in this hearing, which I was personally quite impressed by.
