So, going to have to repackage it. Read the full preview over and I have about 8 pages of notes. This is just some heavier points I noticed. My full post will have more sourcing screens and breakdowns.
To narrow for this comment before the breakdown, one thing I would really like to note, is that in the introductory chapter by Mellon, he also, admits to the influence campaign that was planned before any of these guys ever resigned. So now we have confirmation from Elizondo, Stratton, and Mellon, that their claims all these years about the *why* of everything was deceptive. Further than that, all 3 have also admitted to running a concerted influence campaign directed towards DoD leadership, Congress, and "the American public".
Interestingly, right after explaining this, Mellon inserts-
This does not make a whole lot of sense sequentially. He just reasoned why in the above paragraphs - they did it. This reeks of an attempt to try and pull some psych tricks with the writing, and is a major red flag for me with the rest of the books potential contents & these guys prior careers touching on relevant matters.
Mellon spends a bit talking intelligence issues ala surrounding Iraq and other activities. The most ironic part being he was DASD/I when all this happened, which, made him the functional manager of responsibility for these issues he talks about
In an interesting bust to my prior hypothesis about their being 2 co-interactive networks (legacy/aviary & modern), Elizondo gives a lot of details about meeting guys like Puthoff in the late 90s/early 2000s, and, as we now know, Elizondo has been responsible for a lot of the "modern" network surfacing. This, actually, would raise the hypothesis that this is actually all one network and Elizondo is simply a critical node extending interaction between "new" members of the network (ala Grusch, Nell, etc) and old legacy members (Puthoff, Kit Green, etc pre-2000s).
Elizondo in Chapter 3 speaks about the Stargate program very interestingly. According to Elizondo, he was brought into the Stargate program in its final years. How this happened though is very interesting. While actively serving in the Army, he just, ghosted from service into "Gregs" pet project (it was not a formal continuance with Congressional funding or a recognized departmental activity, rather, it was basically Greg doing a Stargate version of Elizondos later fake-"AATIP"). He then claims at the end of this, he immediately went back into the Army in normal assignments.
AKA, he went AWOL basically, and just showed back up to work fine and dandy. Not sure how that one works, pretty sure there's some bullshittery going on there. The way this was explained really confused me procedurally, there could be an explainer but Elizondo sequenced it very weird in the book.
He leaves a very confusing timeline of events too that seemingly contradict each other in where he was assigned and what roles he had when where, although, for my full post, I am going to make a timeline here to parse it out for sureties.
There are some other procedural issues mentioned also in the book. For example;
A) Elizondo claims that while a DCIPS employee, NSA was paying him. This makes no sense, DCIPS has its own funding. You can be assigned to a DCIPS function from another agency, but you would be working/contracting for that other agency, and the paperwork you yourself sign would make that very clear.
B) He also later notes he was an "intelligence operations officer" while a DCIPS employee. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but "intelligence operations officer" I've only ever seen for actual enlisted/officer roles, not any sort of civilian staff which would use the Intelligence Operations Specialist continuum (which we know Elizondo was on). He also mentions reaching GS-15 by this point. This raises an issue as, we know later on, he was a Supervisory Intelligence Operations Specialist as D/NPSMS, nearly a decade after the point of reference he made, and *was not a GS-15*, and I've only seen SIOS max out at 14 granted not impossible to hit 15.
C) When meeting with Stratton and his assistant, fellow DoD employees, in a DoD office building, meeting about DoD matters - are wearing blue badges. I may be incorrect, but the blue/green badging only happens with independent IC functions, the DoD has their own internal coloring system for this matter. Now, if you were part of a DoD IC program and went over to CIA HQ, yah you'd get one. I don't think this makes a lot of sense entirely being DoD internal though. I could be incorrect about the blue/green carding working this way, but I've only ever seen it used in independent IC bodies & their locations. For internal-DoD stuff I've seen other colors like orange badges, but, could have a very specific meaning other than that, unsure.
And just for a funny note, he gives a story about him meeting Stratton that 100% sounds like it was out of a fiction book. Stratton, of course, brought his assistant. The smoking hot intel chic! Not that we don't have baddies in the IC but ensuing parts make it seem like the run of the mil hot badass chick side character insert. Before hunting UFOs she was slaying it in combat postings instead of traditional collection tours. Tad bit unlikely but not impossible.
The ensuing 3 pages explains their meeting as basically one giant spooky talk session. In my experiences, IC types absolutely fucking hate talking like this, no one does it. I interview guys that've done very sensitive stuff all the time, and I am well aware there are things they cannot speak about it, so when I started interviewing folks years ago, I would try to talk around it to avoid potential issues. As it turns out, this annoys them and can just make it harder to answer the actual Q, they'd much rather just tell you they can't answer X part instead of wasting an extra 7 minutes getting to the point.
