More whistleblowers in the Pentagon have come forward with ‘first-hand knowledge’ of secret UFO crash retrieval programs, US Senator Marco Rubio has revealed.

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.

Sen. Rubio said that some of these witnesses who provided their ‘first-hand knowledge or first-hand claims’ were likely some of the same individuals referenced by UFO whistleblower David Grusch, publicly and in a formal complaint to the Intelligence Community Inspector General

Ex-Air Force officer David Grusch made worldwide news earlier this month when he claimed the craft and bodies of ‘non-human intelligences’ had been recovered and studied by the US

‘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.’ 

Senator Rubio called for ‘a mature understanding’ from his fellow legislators, policymakers, and the public — saying that he sees his duty as to ‘just sort of intake the information without any prejudgment or jumping to any conclusions in one direction or another’

An image from an unclassified video taken by US navy pilots showing interactions with ‘unidentified aerial phenomena’

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.’

Earlier this June, AARO director Sean Kirkpatrick played a 2022 military UFO video taken by an MQ-9 Reaper drone in the Mid East for NASA’s own UFO advisory panel. ‘We see these [‘orbs’] all over the world,’ he said, ‘and we see these making very interesting apparent maneuvers’

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.