Better in their words…

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Fox News last night that the interview he gave for the new documentary film, “The Age of Disclosure,” about unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) or what used to be called UFOs, was “three or four years ago when I was in the Senate,” that “I was describing what people had said to me, not things that I have firsthand knowledge of.” He described the “pretty spectacular claims” made by “people with high clearances in government” and said, “I just don’t have any independent way to verify everything they said.” And Rubio said the film engaged in a “Little bit of selective editing, but it’s okay, because, you know, you’re trying to sell a show there.”

But Rubio also said, “I’m not disavowing” what he said in the film, and, as both Secretary of State and National Security Advisor (NSA), he should have ways to either verify or debunk the spectacular claims made in “The Age of Disclosure.” If Rubio feels he lacks the power to verify the claims in the film, then he should explain why. As NSA and Secretary of State, Rubio has unparalleled access to Special Access Program briefings, compartmented intelligence, and interagency assessments comprised of top-secret and classified information. If Rubio cannot determine whether highly cleared officials are telling the truth or lying, that raises questions as troubling as those around UAPs.

Many UAPs are, without question, drones and balloons.  Rubio said “the point I was trying to drive at” in “The Age of Disclosure” was preparedness for anomalous threats. “We’re looking for missiles and fighter jets, and they’re coming at us with drones and balloons,” the Secretary of State explained. “I remember when NORAD turned on the radars and started looking for balloons, and all of a sudden, they spotted a bunch of balloons flying overhead, and 90% of them were innocent. A couple of them were Chinese. But we never looked for balloons because our radars aren’t trained for that.”

But the Intelligence Community, the Department of Defense, and Congress have rejected the notion that all UAPs are simply advanced Chinese or Russian drones. “None of these resolved [UAP] cases substantiated advanced foreign adversarial capabilities or breakthrough aerospace technologies,” noted the Department of War last year.

In “The Age of Disclosure,” Rubio, Senator Mike Rounds, Senator Chuck Schumer, and others say the government is hiding UAP information from the public and Congress. Tulsi Gabbard, President Trump’s Director of National Intelligence, said in August she thought UAPs could represent nonhuman intelligence.

“Some of these people were Navy pilots, admirals, generals, whatever,” Rubio told Hannity last night, “that would come forward and say that there were programs in the US government that not even presidents were made aware of.” Pointing this out is not an appeal to authority but rather the recognition that their security clearances and activities give them access to information the public and most lawmakers do not have.

Such secrecy must be justified. Whatever UAPs ultimately are, the possibility, raised again by Rubio in his Hannity interview, that America’s President, Secretary of State, Senate-confirmed intelligence heads, and Congressional overseers are being kept in the dark, is troubling. Excess UAP secrecy, as displayed by the redacted documents below, not the claims that UAPs represent nonhuman intelligence, is undermining public trust in government, which is essential for democracy and national security.

For years, a large share of the American people have believed the government is hiding what it knows about UAP. Earlier this year, a survey found that 44 percent of Americans “believe the US Government is hiding information about the existence of UFOs,” against 28 percent who don’t. Gallup found that 71 and 68 percent of voters believed the government knows “more about UFOs than it is telling us” in 1996 and 2019.

The public is right to believe that the government is hiding what it knows. Dramatic visual proof of this can be seen in the blackened-out pages of the handful of documents that the federal government has released about UAPs in recent years. A February 2020 US Navy UAP briefing document redactsthe entire analysis section. The entire “Background,” “Objective,” and most of the substantive sections of the Charter for the Navy’s UAP Task Force is redacted. Even the guide for how to classify UAPs, “The UAP Security Classification Guide,” is heavily redacted. I have, for the last several months, urged President Trump and the leaders of the Intelligence Community to lift the redactions on these documents to no avail.

Trump has repeatedly said the government is hiding information. In a summer 2020 interview with his son about an alleged UAP crash in Roswell, New Mexico, Trump said, “I won’t talk to you about what I know about it, but it’s very interesting.” In June of 2024, Trump said that the government has information about UAPs that it has not released. “I have access,” he said, “and I speak to people about it. I’ve had actually meetings on it. And they will tell you there’s something going on.” And Trump told Joe Rogan last year that “a lot” about UAPs has not been revealed.

Others in the administration point to secrecy. “Frankly, there are a lot more sightings than have been made public,” said CIA Director John Ratcliffe in 2021.

John Greenewald, who filed the successful FOIA requests for the redacted UAP documents described above, told Public in 2023, “Secrecy is tightening. If we are in a new level of transparency that some UFO believers want us to believe we are in, then why is that the case?”

Whatever the reason for the secrecy, it is time for President Trump to level with the American people about what the government knows about UAPs. The president has significant discretion over what to share with Congress regarding classified national security material.

Both Republicans and Democrats in Congress have expressed frustration with the information they have received regarding UAPs. “I don’t really know what is true on this subject,” said Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) at a UAP hearing in September. “But I do know when we’re being lied to and we are definitely being lied to, there’s just no doubt about that.” Said Chuck Schumer in 2023, ”The American public has a right to learn about technologies of unknown origins, non-human intelligence, and unexplainable phenomena. And Rubio said, that same year, “There is a lot we still don’t know about these UAPs and that is a big problem.”

In 1953, the Office of Scientific Intelligence of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) worked with a professor at the California Institute of Technology to create a panel of experts to discredit (“debunk”) sightings out of fear that the Soviets would use public panic and misinformation to undermine trust in the government or distract from actual threats. “The ‘debunking’ aim would result in a reduction in public interest in ‘flying saucers’ which today evokes such a strong psychological reaction,” wrote the report’s authors.

But the report, declassified in 1975 and made public in 2001, simply asserted these risks and offered no evidence of such threats. In fact, while the report expressed concern that “skillful hostile propaganda could induce hysterical behavior and harmful distrust of duly constituted authority,” it also noted that “the general absence of Russian propaganda based on a subject with so many obvious possibilities for exploitation might indicate a possible Russian official policy.”

Despite the “debunking” effort, President Jimmy Carter said, while running for office in 1976, “If I become president, I’ll make every piece of information this country has about UFO sightings available to the public and the scientists. I am convinced that UFOs exist because I’ve seen one.”

Anyone who thinks it’s dangerous for current and former government officials to say that UAPs may represent nonhuman intelligence should advocate for greater transparency and disclosure by the government about what it knows. And continuing public distrust of the government is proof that the CIA’s 1950s approach of “debunking” has not worked.

It may be that members of the Trump administration recognize this. “What’s actually going on?” said Vice President JD Vance in August. “What were those videos all about? What’s actually happening? I haven’t gotten to the bottom of it yet, but we’re only six months in…. [Secretary of State Marco Rubio] Marco’s actually very interested in this, too. We talked about this back in our Senate days.”

The demand for greater government transparency on UAPs is bipartisan and strong in Congress. But the responsibility now lies with the president to make a clear statement. He should have the strong support of his cabinet in doing so.

In response to a request from Public, ODNI said, “As mandated by statute, ODNI leads the IC in coordinating and analyzing information related to anomalous events. In this capacity, Director Gabbard and ODNI are actively managing this information flow across relevant government agencies and, when appropriate, sharing it with the American people. DNI Gabbard takes this process to protect national security and public safety seriously, and as she said in August, we’re ‘still going through and looking at what we know and what we don’t know,’ and ‘we’re continuing to look for the truth and share that truth with the American people.’”

Said Vance in August, “I can’t allow myself to become so busy that I don’t get to the bottom of this,” said Vance. “I will get to the bottom of this.”