Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) has alleged that many top government officials, including Pentagon staff with "high clearances," are aware of the US's covert UFO craft crash retrieval operation.
The assertions were made by the Republican congressman in an interview with NewsNation on June 26, soon after Air Force veteran and former intelligence officer David Grusch claimed that the Pentagon had uncovered dead extraterrestrial remains from a crashed spaceship.
“There are people that have come forward to share information with our committee over the last couple of years … I want to be very protective of these people,” said Rubio, who serves as vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
“A lot of these people came to us even before protections were in the law for whistleblowers to come forward,” Rubio said, adding that many of those claimed to have “first-hand knowledge” of the alleged extraterrestrial retrieval program.
The Florida Republican alleged that some of the whistleblowers who have stepped forward with similar claims to Grusch are public figures with “high clearances” and “high positions within our government.”
“We’re trying to gather as much of that information as we can … Some of these people still work in the government. And frankly, a lot of them are very fearful of their jobs, fearful [of] their clearances, fearful of their career, and some, frankly, are fearful of harm coming to them,” Rubio said.
Rubio's remarks come amid an ongoing inquiry into the purported covert military UFO program, sponsored by House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.). The committee will have a hearing on the topic soon.
That investigation was initiated immediately after Grusch revealed his assertions about possible alien finds in an interview with NewsNation earlier this month.
Grusch formerly worked for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office, and from 2019 to 2021 he was a member of the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) Task Force.
In the interview, the senior official claimed to have provided classified information about secret UAP programs to Congress and the Intelligence Community inspector general, claiming that the government has been recovering partial and intact remains of aircraft of nonhuman origin, as well as their occupants, for decades.
“These are retrieving non-human origin technical vehicles, call it spacecraft if you will, non-human exotic origin vehicles that have either landed or crashed,” Grusch said. “Well, naturally, when you recover something that’s either landed or crashed, sometimes you encounter dead pilots, and, believe it or not, as fantastical as that sounds, it’s true.”
Grusch noted that when he initially learned of the purported program, he thought it was "completely insane," but that over the years, several current and past senior officers had presented him with proof of the program, including records.
Despite his allegations, Grusch has failed to provide any concrete proof.
The Pentagon denied Grusch's claims at the time, claiming that officials had "not discovered any verifiable information to substantiate claims that any programs regarding the possession or reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial materials have existed in the past or exist currently."
Asked whether he believes Grusch’s and others’ claims to be genuine, Rubio told NewsNation that he doesn’t find them to be “not credible or credible” because they are simply “beyond the realm of what any of us have ever dealt with.”
“What I think we owe is just a mature, you know, understanding, listening and trying to put all these pieces together and just sort of intake the information without any prejudgment or jumping to any conclusions,” Rubio said.
The Republican's remarks follow the Senate Intelligence Committee's passage of legislation that would halt funding for any government activities involving "unidentified anomalous phenomena" that have not been "formally, officially, explicitly, and specifically described, explained, and justified to the appropriate committees of Congress" or congressional leadership.
The Act further stipulates that such government operations will not be funded if they entail the recovery of "unidentified anomalous phenomena craft or pieces and components of such craft."
Furthermore, the law directs persons who are presently or were previously under contract with the federal government and have knowledge of such operations to submit all relevant information to Congress and states that they would not face criminal or civil penalties for doing so.
