Marco Rubio
| Marco Rubio |
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Marco Rubio (born 1971) is a U.S. Senator from Florida and former Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman who has been one of the significant congressional figures advancing UAP disclosure legislation — instrumental in establishing the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF) in 2020, supporting David Grusch's credibility and access to classified programs, and co-sponsoring elements of the UAP Disclosure Act framework that led to the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO). In January 2025, Rubio was confirmed as U.S. Secretary of State under President Donald Trump, making his prior positions on UAP and whistleblower retaliation of renewed interest to the disclosure community.
Political career
Rubio served as a Florida state legislator and Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives before winning election to the U.S. Senate in 2010. He was re-elected in 2016 and 2022. He served on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence throughout the 2020s, rising to Acting Chairman — the position from which he exercised the significant UAP oversight authority in U.S. congressional history. Lue Elizondo has specifically cited Rubio, alongside John Ratcliffe, as among the congressional and executive figures who were aware of UAP intelligence and positioned to act on it: "You also have people like Marco Rubio, who was on the Senate Select Committee for Intelligence... who's going to be [Secretary of State]. And then you've got other individuals. Ratcliffe's involved."
Senate Intelligence Committee role
As Acting Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Rubio was the primary Senate sponsor of the provision (in the Intelligence Authorization Act for FY2021) mandating that the UAP Task Force report to Congress within 180 days — the provision that produced the June 2021 ODNI/UAP preliminary assessment, the first unclassified government UAP report since 1969. The 2021 report's release marked the beginning of the current wave of formal disclosure activity. Rubio subsequently conducted classified briefings with UAPTF and AARO officials and publicly stated he had received information he could not discuss in unclassified settings.
Whistleblower testimony
Rubio has been one of the most consistent Senate voices affirming the credibility of UAP whistleblowers. In public statements captured and widely circulated in the UAP community, Rubio stated directly that people had come to the Senate Intelligence Committee with firsthand knowledge of classified programs involving non-human phenomena, and that he was determined to protect them from retaliation: "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."
When pressed by NBC News on whether he found whistleblowers credible, Rubio articulated a deliberately non-committal but respectful posture: "I don't find them either not credible or credible because we have no basis. I will say I find most of these people at some point or maybe even currently have had access to very high levels of our national security apparatus... What I think we owe them is just a mature, understand listening and trying to put all these pieces together."
David Grusch support
Following David Grusch's 2023 congressional testimony alleging the existence of multi-decade UAP crash retrieval programs, Rubio stated publicly that Grusch and other whistleblowers had provided detailed classified information to the Senate Intelligence Committee and that he took their claims seriously. He expressed concern that individuals with firsthand knowledge feared retaliation for disclosure — a concern that informed the UAP Disclosure Act whistleblower protection provisions he supported.
Joe Rogan cited Rubio's statements in multiple conversations as evidence that the UAP phenomenon had crossed a threshold of governmental seriousness: "Rubio said he talked to people in the government who said they had firsthand [knowledge]. He talked to people who said they saw the thing under oath."
UAP Disclosure Act co-sponsorship
Rubio joined Chuck Schumer, Senator Mike Rounds, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, and others in supporting the UAP Disclosure Act framework attached to the National Defense Authorization Act in 2023 and 2024. Hal Puthoff characterized this effort as one of the significant legislative disclosure attempts in history: "This write up that Schumer and Rounds and some other people Gillibrand and Rubio put together said, okay, we're gonna have to lay everything out on the table in a highly classified area."
James Fox read the specific language of the UAP Disclosure Act language mandating program disclosure on the Joe Rogan Experience in 2023, attributing the statutory framework to Rubio and colleagues: "Any activity — thank you, Senator Gillibrand and Rubio and others — any activity or program by a department or agency of the federal government or a contractor of such a department or agency related to unidentified anomalous phenomena... material analysis, reverse engineering, research and development, detection and tracking, development or operational testing."
Role as Secretary of State
When Rubio became Secretary of State in January 2025, UAP researchers and advocates noted the apparent irony: a senator who had been among the most outspoken on UAP whistleblower retaliation now held one of the most powerful positions in the U.S. national security apparatus. Michael Salla explicitly raised this dynamic: "Marco Rubio first heard about this while he was a U.S. Senator. Now he is Secretary of State and the National Security Advisor. And what's he doing about it?"
Steven Greer has described Rubio as "one of the most knowledgeable people" on the UAP subject owing to his tenure on the Senate Intelligence Committee, and stated that his organization "provided an enormous amount of information to him."
Garry Nolan similarly highlighted Rubio as a notable official who had made "remarkable things" public on UAP: "You know, Marco Rubio, our current senator — he's in it for like ten minutes saying some remarkable things, you know, Senator Rounds, you name it, more recently Tulsi Gabbard coming out and saying there's something going on."