MYSTERY WIRE — United States Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) was interviewed by an investigative reporter who works for the CBS television station in Miami this week.
In this interview the reporter, Jim DeFede, asks Sen. Rubio, “Are we alone?” To which, Sen. Rubio gives a lengthy answer.
Here’s the interesting thing for me about all this. And the reason why I think it’s an important topic, okay. And that is we have things flying over our military bases and places where we’re conducting military exercises, and we don’t know what it is, and it isn’t ours. So that’s the legitimate question to ask. I would say that, frankly, that if it’s something outside from outside this planet, that might actually be better than the fact that we’ve seen some technological leap on behalf of the Chinese or the Russians or some other adversary that allows them to conduct this sort of activity. But the bottom line is, there are things flying over your military bases, and you don’t know what they are, because they’re not yours. And they exhibit potentially technologies that you don’t have at your own disposal. That to me is a national security risk and one that we should be looking into. And so that’s the premise I begin with.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL)
In late June, 2020, Sen. Rubio introduced legislation to create a special report dealing directly with Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (UAP).
The United States Government is now not only openly talking about its “Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force at the Office of Naval Intelligence,” its lawmakers are also asking for an unclassified report from the UAP task force within 180 days of the bill being approved.
This request comes from a report from the Select Committee on Intelligence in relation to the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021. The report was authored by U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) and filed with the Select Committee on Intelligence on June 17, 2020.
Follow the progress of this bill
Below is the text of the request in the Act along with the complete document. You can see the relevant text on pages 11 and 12.
Advanced Aerial Threats
The Committee supports the efforts of the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force at the Office of Naval Intelligence to standardize collection and reporting on unidentified aerial phenomenon, any links they have to adversarial foreign governments, and the threat they pose to U.S. military assets and installations. However, the Committee remains concerned that there is no unified, comprehensive process within the Federal Government for collecting and analyzing intelligence on unidentified aerial phenomena, despite the potential threat. The Committee understands that the relevant intelligence may be sensitive; nevertheless, the Committee finds that the information sharing and coordination across the Intelligence Community has been inconsistent, and this issue has lacked attention from senior leaders.
Therefore, the Committee directs the DNI, in consultation with the Secretary of Defense and the heads of such other agencies as the Director and Secretary jointly consider relevant, to submit a report within 180 days of the date of enactment of the Act, to the congressional intelligence and armed services committees on unidentified aerial phenomena (also known as ‘‘anomalous aerial vehicles’’), including observed airborne objects that have not been identified.The Committee further directs the report to include:
1. A detailed analysis of unidentified aerial phenomena data and intelligence reporting collected or held by the Office of Naval Intelligence, including data and intelligence reporting held by the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force;
2. A detailed analysis of unidentified phenomena data collected by: a. geospatial intelligence; b. signals intelligence; c. human intelligence; and d. measurement and signals intelligence;
3. A detailed analysis of data of the FBI, which was derived from investigations of intrusions of unidentified aerial phenomena data over restricted United States airspace;
4. A detailed description of an interagency process for ensuring timely data collection and centralized analysis of all unidentified aerial phenomena reporting for the Federal Government, regardless of which service or agency acquired the information;
5. Identification of an official accountable for the process described in paragraph 4;
6. Identification of potential aerospace or other threats posed by the unidentified aerial phenomena to national security, and an assessment of whether this unidentified aerial phenomena activity may be attributed to one or more foreign adversaries;
7. Identification of any incidents or patterns that indicate a potential adversary may have achieved breakthrough aerospace capabilities that could put United States strategic or conventional forces at risk; and
8. Recommendations regarding increased collection of data, enhanced research and development, and additional funding and other resources. The report shall be submitted in unclassified form, but may include a classified annex.
Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021
Former Pentagon intelligence officer reacts to UFO video release
Former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has been a big proponent of the government releasing more information to the public regarding UFOs. Mystery Wire reached out to Sen. Reid for comment on the acknowledgement of the UAP Task Force to which he replied, “I compliment the Senate Intelligence Committee for studying the repeated sightings of unidentified aerial phenomenon.”
Below you can read the transcript of the two minute interview with Sen. Rubio:
Jim DeFede
Are we alone?
Sen. Marco Rubio
Here’s the interesting thing for me about all this. And the reason why I think it’s an important topic, okay. And that is we have things flying over our military bases and places where we’re conducting military exercises, and we don’t know what it is, and it isn’t ours. So that’s the legitimate question to ask. I would say that, frankly, that if it’s something outside from outside this planet, that might actually be better than the fact that we’ve seen some technological leap on behalf of the Chinese or the Russians or some other adversary that allows them to conduct this sort of activity. But the bottom line is, there are things flying over your military bases, and you don’t know what they are, because they’re not yours. And they exhibit potentially technologies that you don’t have at your own disposal. That to me is a national security risk and one that we should be looking into. And so that’s the premise I begin with.
Jim DeFede
Let’s clear this up, who would be looking into this and they would be generating some sort of a publicly available report. And you’re not using the phrase unidentified flying objects, you have another euphemism for it, unidentified aerial phenomenon.
Sen. Marco Rubio
I didn’t, I didn’t come up with. That’s the one that the military uses internally. And ultimately, you know that that’s the one we use, then what we’re saying, Yeah, so the Office of Naval Intelligence, this is over, has impacted the Navy for the most part. I’ve seen reports on this now for the better part of a decade. Other countries have had similar reports. Our perspective, is, there’s someone flying in the airspace that no one else is allowed to fly in, and we don’t know who it is, and it isn’t something we have. We need to know what that is. I mean, that that’s, in my mind. I mean, that’s I don’t understand why we wouldn’t want to know what it is. Maybe there’s a completely sort of boring explanation for it. But we need to find out. And so that’s really what we’re asking about, and we’re asking him to make public as much as possible that information, none of that really fits into the mold of classified per se.
Jim DeFede
All right, but what’s so what’s your gut? Are we alone in the universe or is there something else out there?
Sen. Marco Rubio
I don’t have a gut feeling about it because it’s a phenomenon. It’s unexplained. I go, I just want to know what it is and if we can’t determine what it is, and that’s a fact what we need to take into account. I wouldn’t venture to speculate beyond that.
