"We Don’t Know What It Is and It Isn’t Ours," Says Chairman of Senate Intelligence Committee about UFO Phenomenon

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) has served as the Senate Intelligence Committee’s interim chairman since May of this year. (CBS Miami) — Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) has served as the Senate Intelligence Committee’s interim chairman since May of this year. *(CBS Miami)*

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told CBS Miami’s Jim DeFede during a July 16th interview that the UFO phenomenon represents a "national security risk, and one that we should be looking into,” because “we don’t know what it is and it isn’t ours.”

"Here’s the interesting thing for me about all of this, and the reason why it’s an important topic, okay," the senator said.

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 a legitimate question to ask. I would say that, frankly, if it’s something 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 other adversary that allows them to conduct this sort of activity. But the bottom line is, if 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. So that’s the premise I begin with.

In their Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021, the Senate Intelligence Committee included a directive ordering the Director of National Intelligence (DNI)—in consultation with the Secretary of Defense—to create an unclassified report regarding “unidentified aerial phenomena,” which is the current government nomenclature for UFOs.

This bill follows the Pentagon’s official release last April of three unclassified UFO videos shot by Navy fighter pilots, and continues an interest in UFOs shown by several senators—including Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee—that has developed after years of testimony by defense and intelligence personnel.

"The office of Naval intelligence [should aid in compiling the report, since] this has impacted the Navy for the most part," Sen. Rubio explained to DeFede. "I’ve seen reports on this now for the better part of a decade. Other countries have had similar reports. Our perspective is, there is 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. That’s, in my mind, 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. So, that’s really what we’re asking about, and we’re asking to make public as much as possible that information. None of that really fits into the mold of classified, per se.”

When asked his opinion on the nature of UFOs, Sen. Rubio refused to speculate.

“I don’t have a gut feeling on it, because it’s a phenomenon, it’s unexplained,” he said. “I just want to know what it is, and if we can’t determine what it is, then that’s a fact point we need to take into account. I wouldn’t venture to speculate beyond that.”

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