The Biden administration may miss the deadline to release a report on what it knows about UFOs, according to a top Republican senator.
Sen. Marco Rubio, who was chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee when it wrote up a 180-day directive for such a disclosure that was included in the $2.3 trillion coronavirus relief and government funding bill that former President Donald Trump signed into law in December, cautioned that the U.S. government is notorious for missing deadlines.
“I’m not sure they’re gonna come in on time, to be honest with you, because they miss a lot of deadlines in government on these sorts of things. But we’ll get a report at some point,” the Florida Republican told host Maria Bartiromo this week on Fox Business.
The deadline is in June, and a spokesperson for Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told the Washington Examiner that the intelligence community is “aware of the requirement and will respond accordingly.”
Rubio was asked about the UFO report after John Ratcliffe, who served as director of national intelligence under Trump, told Bartiromo on Fox News last week that reports of “unidentified aerial phenomena” already in the public eye are only part of the bigger picture.
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“When we talk about sightings, the other thing I will tell you is, it’s not just a pilot or just a satellite, or some intelligence collection,” Ratcliffe said. “Usually, we have multiple sensors that are picking up these things, and … some of these are unexplained phenomenon, and there is actually quite a few more than have been made public.”
Rubio said he was unsure if the U.S. government will be able to provide a “hard conclusion” about what is being witnessed, and “there may be more questions, or new questions, than full answers.” But he added: “I can tell you it’s being taken more seriously now than it ever has been.”
The request for a declassified report was included by the Senate Intelligence Committee in the “committee comments” section.
The committee directed the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, in consultation with the Pentagon and other agencies, to submit to Congress a report “on unidentified aerial phenomena (also known as ‘anomalous aerial vehicles’), including observed airborne objects that have not been identified.” This report is supposed to include “a detailed analysis of unidentified aerial phenomena data and intelligence reporting collected or held by the Office of Naval Intelligence, including data and intelligence reporting held by the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force” as well as “identification of potential aerospace or other threats posed by the unidentified aerial phenomena to national security, and an assessment of whether this unidentified aerial phenomena activity may be attributed to one or more foreign adversaries.”
The Defense Department announced in August that it had approved the creation of an Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force and that the group will be led by the Navy under the “cognizance” of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security.
The Senate Intelligence Committee told ODNI in December that its report, including information from the Pentagon group, should be submitted in unclassified form but that it could also include a classified annex.
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Last year, videos from the Navy were released through the Freedom of Information Act that showed UFOs moving at incredible speeds and performing impressive aerial maneuvers. One of the videos was shot in November 2004; the other two were shot in January 2015. The three videos were code-named “FLIR1,” “Gimbal,” and “GoFast.” In the 2015 videos, Navy pilots can be heard expressing disbelief. All three UFO videos were captured by Navy F/A-18 Super Hornets.
Rubio was asked in July by CBS4 News in Miami about UFOs and whether he thinks humans are alone in the universe.
“I don’t have a gut feeling about it because it’s a phenomenon,” Rubio said. “It’s unexplained. I just want to know what it is, and if we can’t determine what it is, then that’s a fact point that we need to take into account. I wouldn’t venture to speculate beyond that.”
