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Secretary of State Marco Rubio Says Things Flying Over U.S. Military Installations Are Not Ours (11 August 2026)

Thomas Jefferson State Reception Room, Harry S Truman Building, U.S. Department of State, 2201 C Street NW, Washington, D.C. · 11 August 2026 · Disclosure and Policy / official statement · United States

Official U.S. Department of State portrait of Secretary of State Marco Rubio. This is not a photograph of the interview: no still from the recording in the Thomas Jefferson State Reception Room was available from a government source, and this case concerns a statement rather than a sighting, so there is no imagery of any object. (U.S. Department of State (official portrait, work of the U.S. federal government, public domain))

A sitting United States Secretary of State said on his own Department's official transcript that there are things flying over American military installations that are not American, admitted he had once used the subject as a diversionary tactic with reporters, and named the White House official who now holds the UAP portfolio. Almost none of the press coverage reported the last part.

What did witnesses see at Thomas Jefferson State Reception Room?

About twenty two minutes into a relaxed hour about marriage, faith, parenting and Pop-Tarts, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said something a sitting Secretary of State had not previously said on an official United States government transcript. The setting was episode 51 of The Katie Miller Podcast, "Marco & Jeanette Rubio Get REAL About Marriage, Faith, & Kids", an hour long, published on Tuesday 11 August 2026. Rubio appeared alongside his wife Jeanette. Nothing in the episode title or its published description mentions UAP.

The subject arrived by format rather than by design. The passage follows a quiz in which Miller read out Florida Man headlines and asked Rubio to guess which were real. Then she asked, "What's a conspiracy theory that you believe in? I'm asking both of you." Rubio's first move was to reject the framing. "A conspiracy theory that I believe in? Hmm. Well, I don't, okay. It's not a conspiracy theory, okay?"

What followed is the core of the record. "And, but I have long been on this UAP thing, and now I've sort of surrendered that portfolio to someone else who you know well who's very much in charge of the UAP issue." He then gave the formulation he has been giving for years. "Just, again, it's not, what I say is I don't know who it is, I don't know what it is, but there are things flying over our military installations and they're not ours, and we should look into this, be serious about it. And I did that for a long time in the Senate, and it had two benefits."

The second of those benefits is the most candid thing in the transcript. "The first is that, obviously, it's a legitimate topic. And the second is, whatever the news of the day was, it was controversial." He described deflecting reporters by telling them, "Look, I don't have time for these questions about politics. Do you realize there's things flying over our airspace, we don't know what they are?" and getting back, "Oh, what do you know? Tell me more." His verdict on the technique was blunt. "So it was extraordinarily effective as a diversionary tactic in addition to. Now, that said, it's also a very legitimate topic that we should be covering."

He then disclaimed knowledge and rejected the idea of a cover up. "So I don't call it a conspiracy," he said, and "I don't know the answer to any of it. I'm just asking the questions about we should know what's flying over our airspace." He allowed that "it can be, in some sense, because people do believe we're covering something up," then closed the thought firmly. "And I assure you, like, in this administration, if we knew, like, the President would be all over it. Like, there would be a primetime address." His wife interjected, "Oh, for sure." Rubio continued, "He'd be showing the pictures and the videos. But Stephen is on that case now, and I think he's doing a great job with that. Do you hear a lot about it?" Miller answered, "He's very excited. No, he says it's classified." Rubio said, "Oh, okay," and the transcript records laughter. Miller added, "I try. He's like, 'It's classified.'"

More footage and images of this sighting

The full episode. The UAP passage begins at roughly 21 minutes 40 seconds and runs to about 23 minutes 25 seconds. Video ID verified live through the YouTube oembed endpoint, which returns this exact title and the channel Katie Miller Pod. Katie Miller Pod

What is the official explanation?

The primary document is a press release of the Office of the Spokesperson, headed "Interview", "Marco Rubio, Secretary of State", "Thomas Jefferson Room", "Washington, D.C.", "August 11, 2026". That header is why the record carries weight. These remarks are not a leak or a reporter's paraphrase. The Department of State transcribed, cleared and published them itself, including the portfolio handoff and the admission about reporters.

The venue can be pinned from the Department's own rules. Section 6 FAM 1794.1 of the Foreign Affairs Manual lists the Thomas Jefferson State Reception Room among the rooms that "constitute the Diplomatic Reception Rooms", and 6 FAM 1792 records the main building at "2201 C Street, NW, Washington, DC 20520" as the Harry S Truman Building. The map pin marks the room where the statement was made. It is not a sighting location, and nothing was seen from it.

The Department also chose which part of the hour to amplify. PJ Media's write up, published the same evening, embeds a post from the Department's own account dated 11 August 2026 carrying video of the passage and quoting only the safest half of it: "I don't know who it is. I don't know what it is. But there are things flying over our military installations, and they're not ours, and we should look into this." The handoff and the diversionary tactic stayed inside the transcript.

The remarks land in the most active period of official United States UAP activity on record, all covered separately by this archive. The Department of War has been publishing declassified records at war.gov/UFO under the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters, whose programme page states that "The first tranche was released on May 8, 2026" and the fifth "released on Aug. 7, 2026", four days before this interview. Alongside it sit the presidential directive of 21 July 2026 waiving UAP nondisclosure agreements, the ODNI memorandum ES 2026-00818 of 31 July 2026, and the House adoption of the Burlison UAP Disclosure Act as an FY2027 NDAA amendment on 22 July 2026.

One thing is emphatically not official. No White House announcement, executive order or personnel notice that this archive could find assigns the UAP portfolio to any named official. Rubio's statement that he handed it to someone "very much in charge of the UAP issue" is the most senior description of that arrangement anywhere in the public record, and it gives only a first name.

What did the witnesses think it was?

Rubio is not a bystander here, and his paper trail is unusually clean. Mitch McConnell announced on 18 May 2020 that "Senator Marco Rubio has accepted my invitation to serve as Acting Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence." On 17 June 2020 Senate Report 116-233 was ordered to be printed, opening "Mr. Rubio, from the Select Committee on Intelligence, submitted the following REPORT". Its section headed "Advanced Aerial Threats" states that the committee "remains concerned that there is no unified, comprehensive process within the Federal Government for collecting and analyzing intelligence on unidentified aerial phenomena", and directs the Director of National Intelligence, with the Secretary of Defense, "to submit a report within 180 days of the date of enactment of the Act". One precision usually lost: this was committee report language accompanying S. 3905, not enacted statute. The words "aerial phenomena" appear nowhere in Public Law 116-260.

It worked anyway. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence published "Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena" on 25 June 2021, stating that it was provided "in response to the provision in Senate Report 116-233". Its findings are routinely overstated, so they are worth quoting plainly. "144 reports originated from USG sources." Of those, "We were able to identify one reported UAP with high confidence. In that case, we identified the object as a large, deflating balloon. The others remain unexplained." In "18 incidents, described in 21 reports, observers reported unusual UAP movement patterns or flight characteristics." It concluded that "UAP clearly pose a safety of flight issue and may pose a challenge to U.S. national security", while cautioning that anomalies "could be the result of sensor errors, spoofing, or observer misperception".

The continuity across five years is the point, and it is exact rather than approximate. To Jim DeFede of CBS4 Miami in July 2020 he said, "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." Stopped by TMZ at Reagan National Airport on 22 March 2021, he said, as Fox News transcribed it the next day, "There's stuff flying over military installations and no one knows what it is, and it isn't ours." On CBS "60 Minutes" on 16 May 2021 he put it institutionally: "Anything that enters an airspace that's not supposed to be there is a threat", adding that "there's a stigma on Capitol Hill" he would not let "keep us from having an answer to a very fundamental question." On 11 August 2026 the sentence is unchanged. Only the office is.

Katie Miller's reply is the other testimony here and needs care. She is married to Stephen Miller, the White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, a relationship Fox News reported when her podcast launched in August 2025. Identifying "Stephen" as Stephen Miller is close to certain, but it is an inference and this archive marks it as one: Rubio gave a first name only, and no official document confirms the assignment. Three public traces support it. Stephen Miller posted from his own account on 12 June 2026 that "DOW, under the PURSUE initiative, has uploaded thousands of never-before-seen formerly-secret UAP records", pointing readers at war.gov/ufo. On 22 July 2026 the reporter Matt Laslo asked him at the Capitol how UAP disclosure was going and got a smirk and no answer. And on 3 August 2026, eight days before this interview, Liberation Times reported that Stephen Miller "is reportedly leading the administration's work on UAP", a hedged claim from an unnamed source that Rubio has now corroborated on the record. What Katie Miller's line establishes is that she says her husband tells her the subject is classified. It does not establish what is classified, or whether that is more than the ordinary answer a senior official gives a spouse holding a microphone.

Is the Secretary of State Marco Rubio Says Things Flying Over U.S. Military Installations Are Not Ours (11 August 2026) real? The two-pass assessment

Pass one, the deflationary reading, and it is strong. This is a lifestyle podcast. The passage arrives inside a Florida Man guessing game, in answer to a question about conspiracy theories, and runs about one hundred seconds out of an hour otherwise given to faith, marriage, EDM and Pop-Tarts. Rubio disclaims knowledge four ways: "I don't know who it is", "I don't know what it is", "I don't know the answer to any of it", and "I'm just asking the questions". He denies a cover up, says he no longer holds the portfolio, and restates a position he has held since 2020 rather than reporting anything new. Nothing here is a disclosure of fact.

The candour about method points the same way and should be reported straight rather than spun in either direction. Rubio said the topic "was extraordinarily effective as a diversionary tactic" for steering reporters off politics. That is an unusually honest thing to volunteer, and it is real evidence about how the political class handles this subject. It does not make his factual claim false, and he said so in the same breath: "Now, that said, it's also a very legitimate topic that we should be covering." But anyone resting a case on political UAP statements must now reckon with a senior practitioner conceding they can serve a second purpose.

Pass two, what survives. The speaker is a sitting Secretary of State who, as Acting Chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, personally submitted the report language that forced the 2021 ODNI assessment into existence. He has held clearances at the highest levels across two very different roles, and he kept saying the same sentence in office rather than quietly dropping it, which is not what politicians usually do with claims that briefings have killed. He also did something new: he located the portfolio, named the person who holds it, and praised his work on it. And the interviewer, who is close to that person, said on an official government transcript that the subject is classified.

The absence of coverage of that handoff is itself a finding. NewsNation, both IBTimes UK pieces, the Washington Examiner, PJ Media and RedState all covered this interview, and not one named Stephen Miller as the recipient, quoted "But Stephen is on that case now", or quoted Katie Miller's reply. The closest was IBTimes UK, which wrote that Rubio "has now 'surrendered that portfolio' to another official more directly responsible for investigating the issue", withholding the name. The line survives publicly only in verbatim transcript republications by Mirage News and GlobalSecurity, and in an independent transcript of the audio at Singju Post, which renders it "Stephen's on that case now" at about the 23 minute mark. That last one matters forensically: it confirms the name was spoken aloud and is not an artefact of State Department transcription.

The tier is Unknown, and for a statement record the word means what it says. No official narrative resolves what the objects over American military installations are, the Secretary of State says he does not know, and the ODNI assessment his own committee language produced identified exactly one report out of 144 and called it a deflating balloon. No counter explanation is needed because no specific object is claimed. What is on the record is a statement by the senior officer of the United States cabinet, in his own Department's transcript, and a named handoff the press did not report.