The Republican Florida Sen said officials with 'very high clearances' who have occupied 'high positions within our government' have come forward with 'first-hand knowledge or first-hand claims' of top secret Government programs.
Ex-Air Force officer David Grusch made worldwide news earlier this month when he claimed alien craft and bodies had been recovered and back-engineered by US officials.
Grusch noted that these beings are cautiously described as 'non-human intelligences' by insiders within these highly classified programs, because even experts can't say for sure where these beings really come from.
Sen. Rubio said that some of these witnesses who spoke with the Senate Intelligence Committee — where Rubio is vice chairman — were likely some of the same individuals referenced by Grusch.
'A lot of these people came to us even before these protections were in the law for whistleblowers to come forward,' Rubio told NewsNation Monday.
Grusch, an Air Force veteran who went on to posts at both the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the NRO, told the inspector general that he had faced illegal retaliation for his inquiries into these same highly classified UFO programs.
For their part, the inspector general described Grusch's complaint as 'credible and urgent' in July 2022 — forwarding the filing to the US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines and Rubio's own Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, among others.
Sen. Rubio - who is vice chair of the Senate's intelligence committee - emphasized that there have been similar credible threats to the committee's other unnamed witnesses, their livelihoods and their lives.
'I'm not trying to be evasive,' Sen. Rubio said, 'but I am 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,' the Florida Republican noted, 'fearful of their jobs, fearful of their clearances, fearful of their career, and some frankly are fearful of harm coming to them.'
Rubio's comments illustrate the need for Congress's newly created UFO whistleblower protections — which were enacted last year through a bipartisan amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act.
But the senator's comments also help explain the bold recent moves by the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Last week, the committee unanimously adopted a provision to cut off all federal funding to any secret UFO reverse-engineering program, whether conducted by the US government or hidden away in the private sector via a defense contractor.
The Intel committee chose their words carefully, broadly targeting any reverse-engineering programs involving unidentified craft of 'non-earth' or 'exotic' origin.
Despite the shocking directness of these legislative moves, Rubio was more circumspect about the complete accuracy of these high-level whistleblowers and their claims.
'I don't find them either not credible or credible,' Sen. Rubio told NewsNation Washington correspondent Joe Khalil. 'Understand some of these claims are things that are beyond the realm what any of us has ever dealt with.'
In Rubio's assessment, the sheer number and stature of the first-hand witnesses who have briefed the intelligence committee is — by itself — a cause for concern and worthy of more attention.
'Most of these people at some point, or maybe even currently, have held very high clearances, and high positions within our government,' Rubio noted.
'So, you do ask yourself, 'What incentive would so many people, with that kind of qualification, have to come forward and make something up?"
'These are serious people,' Rubio said.
Given the stature of these sources and the volatility of their claims, the senator called for 'a mature understanding' from his fellow legislators, policymakers, and the general public — saying that he sees a duty to 'intake the information without any prejudgment or jumping to any conclusions in one direction or another.'
'We're trying to gather as much of that information as we can,' Rubio said.
Since "black ops" programs are secret, and the funding is secret, why would we expect them to even know about a program? The Congress has completely abandoned its role of controlling the "purse-strings". Where did the billions go to Ukraine that they all voted for?