(Mark Pellin, Headline USA) Multiple government officials, some from within the Pentagon, claiming that U.S. agencies and operatives have conducted retrieval exercises of alien aircraft “have held very high clearances and high positions within our government,” Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., confirmed this week.
The claims from multiple top-ranking officials referenced by Rubio mirror the whistleblowing allegations previously made by U.S. Air Force veteran and former intelligence officer David Grusch.
Those claims, which were met with widespread skepticism, alleged that the U.S. military had retrieved and was in possession of alien UFO technology. Grush further claimed that evidence of “nonhuman exotic origin vehicles that have either landed or crashed” was being illegally withheld from Congress.
The claims made by Grush were not an isolated incident, according to Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., who said the government has “downplayed” the number of credible claims that have been made.
“The number of these is apparently huge,” Hawley said. “And that is something that the government has, the best I can say about it, downplayed, if not kept from the public, for a long, long time.”
Defense Department officials in a statement on the allegations referred to its ongoing investigation of “unidentified aerial phenomena” by the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, which claimed “that in our research AARO has found no credible evidence thus far of extraterrestrial activity, off-world technology, or objects that defy the known laws of physics.”
Rubio, who is vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that many of the people coming forward with information “at some point, or maybe even currently — have held very high clearances and high positions within our government.”
Because the issues and claims “are beyond sort of the realm of what any of us have dealt with,” Rubio chose to withhold judgement on the credibility of the claims, and was reluctant to reveal who has made those claims.
“I want to be very protective of these people. A lot of these people came to us even before protections were in the law for whistleblowers to come forward,” Rubio said.
“Some of these people still work in the government, and frankly a lot of them are very fearful,” he said. “Fearful of their jobs, fearful of their clearances, fearful of their career, and some frankly are fearful of harm coming to them.”
The fact that so many have come forward, Rubio said, prompts the question, “So You do ask yourself, like, ‘what incentive would so many people, with that kind of qualification — these are serious people — have to come forward and make something up?’”
Lawmakers might get a chance to find answers, or at least begin asking questions in earnest. House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., announced earlier this month that an investigation would be forthcoming into allegations raised that the military has been running covert UFO operations. GOP Reps. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida and Tim Burchett of Tennessee have been tasked with leading the investigation.
“What I think we owe them 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 in one direction or another,” Rubio said.
