The vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Marco Rubio, says there are more government officials who have come forward with “first-hand” accounts of America being in possession of extra-terrestrial technology.

In an interview with NewsNation, the Florida senator says multiple people with “very high [security] clearances” have made allegations similar to those made by a former intelligence official earlier this month that the United States has been operating a clandestine program to reverse engineer alien technology without congressional knowledge or approval. Mr. Rubio said some of the allegations were “beyond the realm of anything we have ever dealt with.”

“We’re trying to gather as much of that information as we can,” Mr. Rubio said. “Frankly, a lot of them are very fearful of their jobs,” he said of those who have come forward, “fearful of harm coming to them.”

The senator would not comment on whether he believes the testimony he heard was credible, but he said he sees no reason why those who have come forward would lie.

“Most of these people at some point, and maybe even currently, have held very high-level clearances and high positions within our government,” he said. “You ask yourself, ‘What incentive would so many people with that kind of qualification — these are serious people — have to come forward and make something up?'”

Mr. Rubio’s comments come after an intelligence community whistleblower, David Grusch, stepped up earlier this month with claims that American authorities have recovered both partial and intact vehicles that are of non-human origin. Mr. Grusch — an intelligence agency representative to the Pentagon’s Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force between 2019 and 2021 — described the vehicles as “spacecraft.”

“These are retrieving non-human origin technical vehicles — call it spacecraft if you will, though it’s probably not the right parlance — but, no kidding, non-human, exotic-origin vehicles that have either landed or crashed,” Mr. Grusch said.

Mr. Grusch has filed a complaint with the Department of Defense’s Office of Inspector General, alleging that information about the program has been illegally withheld from Congress and that he has been subjected to retaliation from some in the intelligence community for his attempt to disclose these truths.

After the allegations surfaced, journalist Michael Shellenberger reported that others in the intelligence community also have stepped forward to confirm Mr. Grusch’s allegations. The Pentagon has denied them. “To date, AARO has not discovered any verifiable information to substantiate claims that any programs regarding the possession or reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial materials have existed in the past or exist currently,” a spokeswoman for the defense department’s new UFO watchdog, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, Sue Gough, said.

Mr. Rubio’s comments would seem to explain why the Intelligence Committee recently inserted language into an intelligence authorization bill that would explicitly halt funding for any secret government or contractor programs to retrieve or exploit any vessels of “non-earth” or “exotic” origin.

The provision would require “any person currently or formerly under contract with the Federal Government that has in their possession material or information provided by or derived from the Federal Government relating to unidentified anomalous phenomena that formerly or currently is protected by any form of special access or restricted access” to notify the director of the Pentagon’s UFO watchdog within 60 days of the bill’s enactment.

The provision also requires anyone with knowledge of such programs to step forward and provides enhanced legal protection for whistleblowers such as Mr. Grusch. Mr. Rubio in the NewsNation interview that he wants “to be very protective of these people” who do decide to come forward.