2023-06-26 - Senator Marco Rubio interview with NewsNation

So I want to start off with some UAP news and then we'll move on to Russia. But I would like to begin with the whistleblower story. David Grusch, who I know you are familiar with. I'm just wondering generally yes or no, you find his allegations that he has made are credible.

Well, I think more importantly, the Inspector General has referred it to Congress. We have a law for whistleblower, so they go to the Inspector general of the intelligence community, and then they have an obligation if they find it to be an urgent concern, credible and urgent concern, their job is to refer it to Congress and they have done so. Obviously there isn't anything formal we need to do, although I know we have spoken to him and are familiar with much of his testimony, which of course we're not at this moment because it's a whistleblower investigation. We really can't talk about in detail. Although he has talked about it quite detail. And the gist of any whistleblower testimony is that the intelligence agencies are doing something wrong, and in his case, and this has been publicly reported, the argument is that what they're doing wrong is they are not appropriately disclosing to Congress money that has been spent on programs and the like.

(01:13)
Now, I want to caution everybody that under the law you have to have firsthand knowledge. That doesn't mean the person isn't telling the truth, but it simply means that technically, as a technicality, if you don't have firsthand knowledge of what you are claiming, so I can say that someone told me that someone did something wrong and I have good reason to believe it because I heard it from a lot of different people and they're saying the same thing, but unless you yourself have firsthand knowledge of it, sometimes you get caught in technicality. That doesn't mean that the things he is saying are not useful to Congress. And I would put it to people this way. There are one or two things here are true. Either what he's saying is partially true or entirely true - or, we have some really smart, educated people with high clearances and very important positions in our government who are crazy and are leading us on a goose chase. One of these two things is true. Either what they're telling us is true, or we've got some people in important positions that are doing this for some reason. So either one is a problem. We got to figure this out, we can't ignore it.

Well, the reason his story is getting so much attention is because the nature of his allegations are that the government maintains we have a UP retrieval program that in its possession has multiple aircraft that are not made by humans. I mean, what are we to make of that? The public that has to hear that?

Well, two things. Either it's not true - and I'm not claiming it is, and I'm not besmirching him or anybody else because, we passed the law to make it possible for people like this to come forward. Remember, a lot of these people sign these non-disclosure agreements and they're fearful of ever commenting because they think it's punishable by death. So we passed a law that basically said, you can come forward and talk to Congress or the UAP task force. So I don't want to say that anybody's not telling the truth. I understand that this is something that sounds fantastic and out of the ordinary. I would just say if it's even partially true, then somebody's broken the law. There's been some violations because these things have to be disclosed to Congress. I mean, Congress has been paying for it and probably for a long time. I am not in a position to tell you right now whether it's true or not true.

(03:17)
What I'm in a position to tell you is that people, and I think this is true, not just in this case, but going back to some of the things we've heard from Navy pilots, people who we entrusted to do some really important things for our country are saying some pretty incredible things that I think we have an obligation to take seriously and listen to because I don't think you go from being the commander of a naval fighting wing off an aircraft carrier to being some lunatic that's out to mislead the government. And there you have testimony from Navy pilots, things they've seen. So that's why this is something my biggest fear in all this, frankly, and I'm not ruling anything out obviously, but my biggest fear is that some adversary has made a technological leap that would be really bad news and that we have been caught flatfooted on it. So we're taking it seriously. It's bipartisan, everyone's working on it. But look, this is a tough thing to dig into. There's a stigma associated with it, right? Nobody wants to be known as the UFO guy, but these are things that are important for us to understand.

I feel that sometimes when I ask you these questions.

Yeah, no, I get it. No, look, but I mean stuff is flying. What is undisputed is that there are things flying over restricted airspace, sensitive restricted airspace in the United States, and they claim it's not ours. That alone is reason to be looking at this stuff.

He also claims that AARO is not being read in that whatever this program is allegedly is keeping the people who are supposed to be dealing with it in the dark. It's not just about funding, it's about disclosure to AARO as well. Do you think that's realistic, or how problematic is that, if that's accurate?

Well, it's very problematic if it's accurate because if that is accurate, and again, I'm not in a position yet to make that judgment, but if that is accurate, what you're basically saying is that within the government of the United States, there's a group of people who believe that they possess something that they don't need to share with anybody, including elected officials who they view as temporary employees of the government, and in essence, some sort of an internal military complex that's their own government and it's accountable to no one. So it would be a huge problem if it's even partially true. So look, I think AARO and its director, Dr. Kirkpatrick, from everything I've seen up to this point is trying to do the best they can to gather. There's a lot of information. We gave him a mandate to go back to historical records on this.

(05:38)
We'll know I think in time, and I mean not 20 years from now, but over the next couple of years, whether in fact enough information is being shared and whether the analysis is being done and whether there's any impediments. And I certainly think we are getting more information now and more people coming forward than at any time in the history of our country about this and somewhere out there, I think we need to find answers because at the end of the day, these are activities should never be unsupervised. Anytime agencies of the federal government are unsupervised and do whatever they want, it's generally not a good outcome for the country.

I'm wondering how much interaction you've had on Senate intel with David Grusch himself and potentially how much interaction you all have had with the people who do have firsthand knowledge. Have you talked to anybody who he says, these are my sources, these are the guys that have actually seen firsthand aircraft? Have you talked to anybody?

And I'm not sure he's disclosed these individuals, at least not to us. And so again, because it's a whistleblower process, not just him but others, I'll say there are people that have come forward to share information with our committee over the last couple of years. I would imagine some of them are potentially some of the same people that perhaps he's referring to. I want to be very protective of these people. A lot of these people came to us even before these protections were in the law for whistleblowers to come forward. And a lot of them come,

Sorry, people who have had firsthand knowledge, who claim to have firsthand knowledge of seeing this type of thing?

Or have firsthand knowledge or firsthand claims of certain things. Some are public figures and you've heard from them in the past, others have not shared publicly. And so we're trying to gather as much of that information as we can. And the reason why I'm being cautious, I'm not trying to be evasive, but I'm trying to be protective of these people. 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. And so I want to be very respectful of that because I don't want to discourage others from coming forward.

And I totally understand. I will never ask you to reveal a source to us, but I'm just wondering, just so I can a hundred percent clarify, you are saying that the people who would be whistleblowers because they would have firsthand knowledge of seeing these kind of aircraft or they claim that they have seen, those are the category of people you've heard from?

We've heard from people that are both in the service of our government, and some who used to serve in the past and some of whom publicly out there saying these things, sort of saying to us what they've seen out there in the public record, whether it's about legacy programs or about current events and things that are going on at this moment. Again, all of them have, in many cases, understanding the different elements of this firsthand. They may have heard some of the other pieces. And so I think for us, it's really important to sort of just gather information and understand this. But I think the more we know, the better. We are prepared to go down the right roads or in the right paths or ask the right questions. But we're still sort of in that phase where this is new to a lot of people and there's still a lot of people that I think are starting to edge towards coming forward and we hear maybe coming forward, but we're still trying to see how it plays out for the people that came forward first.

So that category of people who have firsthand knowledge who say they have actually seen these kinds of things, do you find many of them credible?

Well, I don't find them either not credible or credible because we have no basis. Understand, some of these claims are things that are beyond sort of the realm of what any of us has ever dealt with. What I think we owe 'em is just a mature listening and trying to put all these pieces together and just sort of intake the information without any prejudgment or jumping to any conclusions in one direction or another. I will say I find most of these people at some point, or maybe even currently, have held very high clearances and high positions within our government. So you do ask yourself what incentive - which so many people with that kind of qualification, these are serious people - have to come forward and make something up. And on the other hand, like I said, I mean extraordinary claims is something that requires a lot of work and to back up. And so I don't know the answer to it. I think when you're in a fact finding mission, you try not to prejudge anything. You're trying to take in information and you're trying not to rule anything out or jump to any conclusions because this is new to everybody, frankly. I mean, this is not what I thought I would be focused on when I ran for the US Senate, but here it is and it's I think a serious issue.

Yeah, I understand that. Okay, I'm going to wrap up this topic just with one more question and that is that you have co-sponsored an amendment to the Intel Authorization Act where you said within six months you want a comprehensive list of all non earth origin or exotic, unidentified anomalous phenomena material to make that available to Arrow within six months. Can you tell me about that amendment and just the need to bring it up?

Yeah, and I mean, Senator Gillibrand deserves a lot of credit. She's sort of been the one pursuing that. And then we want to be supportive of it. And I think the gist of it is, if in fact these claims that are out there are true. That information needs to be provided to the task force that we set up to both protect whatever national security equities are in place, and at the same time gain access to all of this. Now, if the answer that comes back is no such material exists, then obviously that goes par for the course because you've already seen some of the public statements, but to that effect. But I think when it's in the law, career people, people that are in the service of our government have to make a decision. Do I just basically ignore the law and the consequences that come with it?

(11:13)
No one's ever asked these questions before. This has always been the realm of science fiction. So I think we're simply responding to some of the things that we've seen come out in the public record and ensuring that we're doing everything we can to make sure that this entity we've created called AARO actually has access to information or materials. If in fact, they exist. Again, I can't tell you that they do or they don't. I don't know. I don't think anybody knows yet. That's probably the gist of all this is we're trying to find out the answer.