UFO researcher David Marler looks for a file during an Observer visit a couple years ago. Gary Herron photo.

On the July 18 edition of “Unidentified,” on The History Channel at 8 p.m., former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Christopher Mellon visits Rio Rancho’s own UFO researcher and historian, David Marler, to investigate reports of triangular UFOs, as reported by military personnel.

Mellon, who once held the third-highest intelligence position at The Pentagon, and his team examined Marler’s extensive collection of data and research into this subset of UFO reports, Marler said. He and Mellon review cases pulled from historic newspaper articles and declassified military files, and discuss Marler’s detailed profile of these elusive objects that have been seen for decades.

“Beyond eyewitness reports being sent directly to me, I still have a fascination with culling through vintage newspapers to see what contemporaneous reports existed in conjunction with these historic sightings,” Marler said. “I believe these are important historical records. It is easy for someone to claim they had a UFO sighting decades ago — and I am not denying that they did. But it is a much more substantial report if we have a documented account captured in an official publication (i.e., local newspaper) immediately subsequent to the event.”

In the fall of 2019, when Mellon visited Marler’s west Rio Rancho home, the two men had a lengthy discussion in Marler’s research room, which included his book on triangular UFOs and Mellon’s insights, given his intelligence background.

“It made for an interesting discussion,” Marler said, “which, hopefully, translates well into the final edit of the episode. One of the items we focused on were the historical newspaper accounts involving triangular UFOs — I had two examples surface in a series of flying saucer scrapbooks that were filled with an abundance of news clippings documenting UFO sightings from the 1950s and ’60s, (and) I had just acquired these prior to Chris’s arrival.”

One of those newspaper accounts, Marler said, was “a fascinating report in a number of ways. First, the year — 1950. This was only three years after Kenneth Arnold’s famous sighting in 1947 that ushered in the modern era of UFOs. However, even in 1950, these objects were not yet referenced as ‘UFOs.’ They were still referred to as ‘flying saucers’ or ‘discs.'”

For more on Marler’s research on UFOs, visit his website, davidmarlerufo.com.