Sailors assigned to Explosive Ordnance Disposal Group 2 recover a high-altitude surveillance balloon off the coast of Myrtle Beach. | U.S. Navy via AP
The military has concluded its efforts to recover debris from what the U.S. government says was a Chinese government surveillance balloon that was downed off the coast of South Carolina.
U.S. Northern Command officials said Friday that it wrapped up recovery efforts Thursday and is sending the final pieces of debris to an FBI lab in Virginia for analysis.
The balloon, which was shot down Feb. 4, was the first of four objects downed after flying in U.S. airspace in recent weeks. Three smaller objects, which have not been similarly identified by the U.S. government as surveillance equipment, were subsequently shot down over Canada, Alaska and Lake Huron.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Washington: US President Joe Biden has said that the last three of the four aerial objects shot out of the skies were probably balloons tied to private companies, recreation or research institutions; but the fourth was a Chinese spy and “I make no apologies”, he added, for bringing it down.
Biden said that he ordered the shooting of the remaining three “due to hazards to civilian commercial air traffic and because we could not rule out the surveillance risk of sensitive facilities”.
The American President acknowledged that the US knows nothing about these three, which were shot down on consecutive days last week – one over Alaska, the second over Canada in a joint operation with Canada, and the third over the American midwest.
Biden said further that he has asked for a new protocol for dealing with these kinds of unidentified aerial objects.
The Chinese spy plane, which started this shooting spree, was shot down by a US F-22 on February 4 off the coast of the American state of South Carolina on the western coast. It had been floating above the US mainland for more than a week, hovering over sensitive installations.
The Chinese owned up and expressed regret, saying the airship was studying weather and had gone off course.
The US declared the aerial intrusion as a violation of its national sovereignty and Secretary of State Antony Blinken postponed his visit to Beijing to express US displeasure more forcefully.
Relations worsened as an exchange of sharp words followed, especially after Biden seemingly taunted the Chinese President Xi Jinping in his state of the union speech, saying, no world leader would like to trade places with the Chinese leader because of the spy balloon incident.
Biden sounded reconciliatory on Thursday, reiterating that the US doesn’t seek a conflict with China and it also doesn’t want a new cold war.
“This episode underscores the importance of maintaining open lines of communication between our diplomats and our military professionals,” Biden said, adding, “Our diplomats will be engaging further, and I will remain in communication with President Xi.”
He added that “nothing right now suggests they were related to China’s spy balloon program” or from any other country.
Lawmakers from both parties have criticized the president over the past few days for remaining mostly silent on the issue. Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have called for greater transparency and for Biden to explain the military’s rationale for the multiple shoot-downs and the policy moving forward.
“At some point in time, the president needs to talk to the American people. There’s a lot of people very concerned,” Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) said on Fox News Wednesday. “Freedom of privacy is a big issue in Montana and across this country. People are concerned. I think it would help.”
Biden added in his address that his team will be creating parameters to deal with aerial objects. He said these parameters will be shared with Congress when completed, but will remain classified so that “we don’t give a road map to our enemies to try to evade our defenses.”
“Going forward, these parameters will guide what actions we will take when responding to unmanned and unidentified aerial objects,” Biden said. “We’re going to keep adapting them as the challenges evolve, if it evolves.”
The Senate attended a classified briefing on Wednesday on the initial Chinese balloon. Senators from both parties said they had unanswered questions following the briefing.
Biden also said he directed national security adviser Jake Sullivan to “lead a governmentwide effort” to prepare the U.S. to “deal safely and effectively with the objects in our airspace.”
These efforts include creating an accessible and updated inventory of unmanned objects in U.S. airspace, implementing measures to improve the ability to detect those objects, and updating the rules regarding launching and maintaining aerial craft, Biden said. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will also work to establish global norms on the issue, he said.
The day the military shot down the spy balloon, Feb. 4, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin attempted to speak with his Chinese counterpart. But Chinese Minister of Defense Wei Fenghe refused to take the call.
In the days after, Beijing accused the U.S. of sending its own spy balloons over China, a claim the White House denied.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Long ago, in May 1960, an American U-2 spy plane took off from Pakistan to fly at high altitude across the Soviet Union as part of a mission to photograph key facilities and military sites on behalf of the CIA. The Russians saw it and shot it down. The pilot, Gary Powers, managed to descend by parachute and was arrested. In Washington, the Eisenhower administration lied about his mission, claiming the U-2 was a “weather plane” that had strayed off course after its pilot had “difficulties with his oxygen equipment” (sound familiar?).
The incident caused a temporary poisoning of US-Soviet relations as the Kremlin turned it into political theatre. Moscow subjected Powers to a highly publicised criminal trial and gave him a 10-year sentence.
In the US, Powers was portrayed as an all-American clean-cut hero who neither smoked nor drank (which was not true). In spite of the mutual fury neither side was genuinely shocked, since it was accepted that spying was routine. The technology might change as improvements were made in information-gathering systems, but the practice of surveillance went back to time immemorial and could not be stopped.
The analogy with the US downing of a Chinese high-altitude balloon that intruded into US airspace last week is clear. It too produced a hurricane of hypocritical outrage. The Republicans attacked Joe Biden for being weak and failing to protect US national security. They said he should have shot the intruding balloon down as soon as it was spotted. Fearful of being seen as too old to run for a second term, Biden ordered his secretary of state to delay a planned visit to Beijing.
In a pathetic parody of the political row in Washington, the UK government promptly ordered a review of Britain’s security. Rishi Sunak forestalled any Labour charges of being weak on defence by announcing that RAF jets were on standby to shoot down any Chinese surveillance balloons that penetrated UK airspace. What about Chinese spy satellites? Are they also going to be taken out by doughty British pilots?
The reality is that using technology to spy on other states’ military capabilities is as old as it is widespread. So is the use of covert tools to discover another government’s intentions. The methods are constantly being updated. Listening devices and phone-tapping have now been supplemented by cyber systems to hack emails and other internet messaging. An Israeli company, NSO Group, has – as well documented in the Guardian developed the Pegasus technology that can listen to conversations, read SMS texts, take screenshots and access people’s lists of contacts. It has sold the system to a range of authoritarian foreign governments that want to monitor their own citizens’ views and behaviour.
Phone-tapping and cyber surveillance are not only done by governments to potential or actual enemies. Remember the row in 2013 that erupted during Barack Obama’s presidency after Edward Snowden revealed that the US National Security Agency had been listening to German chancellor Angela Merkel’s mobile phone conversations for years. The Germans were almost as embarrassed as the Americans. Merkel angrily declared that “spying between friends just isn’t on” but an inquiry by the German federal prosecutor was quietly dropped.
Let’s face it. Spying is a benefit. The more that countries know about a potential enemy’s defence systems the better it usually is. Starting hostilities is less likely if you have accurate and up-to-date information about what your army is up against (a lesson Vladimir Putin failed to learn before 24 February last year).
Understanding another state’s or another leader’s intentions is even more important, whether this intelligence-gathering is performed by spies, diplomats and non-governmental political analysts or by what are politely called “technical means”. The crucial issue, which no amount of balloons or satellites can provide, is empathy. Put yourself in the other side’s shoes. Understand their history, culture and the economic and political pressures their leaders are under.
There is no doubt that the relationship between the US and China is the leading global security challenge of at least the next 10 years. The two countries are rivals and competitors, but they are not enemies. Everything should be done by western countries not to slip into a mindset that treats China as hostile. Peace in Asia – and indeed the whole world – is too important to be hijacked by hysterical excitement over a roving balloon.
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
Sometimes they appear in the form of an orb of light, high in the sky, that seems to pass through solid objects such as trees and buildings. Sometimes it’s a strange mist that descends out of nowhere. In an increasing number of cases, an object that can’t be seen with the naked eye shows up clearly in a photographic image.
These are examples of UFOs – literally, unidentified flying objects – that are spotted in UK skies every day. In the wake of the US shooting down a suspected Chinese spy balloon, plus three other objects it has yet to identify, experts say there are going to be a lot more of these kinds of sightings. As a UFO researcher, I treat these things with scepticism and scientific rigour, but part of me hopes they will never be fully explained.
As the head of national investigations for the British UFO Research Association (Bufora), I’m one of a team of people who investigate such sightings, which are sent to us by the public at a rate of hundreds a year. Often they come as grainy mobile phone footage taken at dusk or from a moving car, but we also require witnesses to fill in a detailed form explaining what they saw, heard, felt and even smelled at the time of the event. We promise to treat sightings confidentially, objectively and with scientific rigour. In 98% of cases, we find they have a simple explanation.
‘When Elon Musk’s SpaceX first launched its Starlink satellites in 2019, we were inundated with sightings of small pinpricks of light moving steadily across the night sky.’ Starlink launch, Kennedy Space Center, Florida. Photograph: Joe Marino/UPI/REX/Shutterstock
Typically, when we receive a report at Bufora, I take a look and pass it on to our photographic analyst, Mark Easen. Objects most commonly turn out to be drones, aircraft (sometimes military aircraft), satellites, meteors, balloons, lanterns or birds. When Elon Musk’s SpaceX first launched its Starlink satellites in 2019, we were inundated with sightings of small pinpricks of light moving steadily across the night sky, sometimes 50 or 100 at a time. By finding out where witnesses are at the time and what airports, military bases or other facilities are nearby, we can usually identify the objects they’ve observed. It’s important to know what they’ve seen with the naked eye, because often a UFO will turn out to be a speck of dust on the camera lens, a tiny insect flying into shot or the reflection of a seatbelt buckle in a car window. First, we rule out the obvious. If it looks like a plane and flies like a plane, it’s usually a plane.
Reports follow patterns and trends that reflect the changing media landscape. In our not-too-distant past, unexplainable phenomena tended to be reported as fairies or goblins – things people saw in the folklore and mythology of the day. Now, sci-fi books and films affect the way people interpret what they have seen. There’s a particular type of sighting that we call high strangeness sightings (HSS), when someone feels they have been up close and personal with something of unknown origin – and during the 1990s, when The X-Files was hugely influential, as many as 8% of sightings reported to us were HSS. They’re usually rare, but I saw them increase again during lockdown. People were scared, and understandably so.
‘During the 1990s, when The X-Files was hugely influential, many sightings reflected the TV series.’ Photograph: Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy
I became interested in space when I lived in the US in the 1970s and early 80s, where my dad was an aeronautical engineer for Nasa. But I’ve always been interested in extraordinary human experiences – things outside the boundaries of what we understand. The UFO subject embraces a huge and diverse landscape: science, religion, folklore and myth, the paranormal, neuroscience and philosophy. I’ve learned a lot about the way memory works: once you lay down an experience into long-term memory, each time you access that memory it is slightly edited. You add to it things you’ve seen, conversations you’ve had, a TV programme you saw. I never think people are foolish when they report a UFO; I’m just fascinated by the ways we interpret reality.
I’m often asked what I believe about extraterrestrial life, and whether it will ever make contact. After all, about 2% of the UFOs we hear about can’t be identified – yet. In all the years I’ve spent looking at the evidence, I have never seen any definitive proof that a UFO has been extraterrestrial in origin, but I don’t close my mind to the possibility. I’m sceptical – to do this work properly I have to be. But, as JBS Haldane wrote: “It is my suspicion that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.”
Personally, I think there will be a rational explanation for the objects that have been shot down by the US military recently. But there are still mysteries, and I think there always will be. I wonder what narratives humans will invent to explain the sightings of tomorrow, and what science fiction will come up with next. Will science and expert analysis be able to explain all of these things, eventually? I suspect not. I hope not.
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
Harris noted that she said as much to Chinese President Xi Jinping when they met briefly in November at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Bangkok. “Everything that has happened in the last week and a half is, we believe, very consistent with our stated approach,” she said.
The intrusion into U.S. airspace caused immediate anger and outrage throughout Washington, D.C., with members of both parties criticizing the Biden administration for failing to shoot down the balloon earlier. The White House says they waited until the balloon was safely away from civilians, though it has since taken aggressive action to shoot down other objects floating above U.S. territory. At this point, the administration isn’t tying those additional objects to the Chinese government.
Harris conducted the interview roughly 24 hours before she was scheduled to depart Washington to lead the U.S. delegation at the Munich Security Conference. China’s top diplomat will be in attendance but Harris said there was nothing scheduled between her and Foreign Minister Wang Yi. Reuters reported Monday that Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who will also be attending the conference, is considering a meeting with his counterpart.
This will be Harris’ second time attending the confab of global leaders and allies on behalf of the administration and her fourth trip to Europe since Russia invaded Ukraine. Her first visit last year came just days before the war began. In her meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Harris promised full support from the United States and encouraged him to prepare for a full-scale invasion.
Nearly a year later, Harris returns aiming to push the western alliance to sustain its stance against Russia despite the impact the invasion has had on the world economy and energy security in Europe.
“There is an enduring commitment on behalf of the alliance, but it’s not without sacrifice that each country is doing that,” Harris said. “And that’s to be applauded, which is a nation standing in defense of certain foundational principles when the going gets tough.”
A White House official said Harris’ tentative schedule in Munich includes meetings with leaders of the United Kingdom, Germany, Finland and Sweden, and that “more engagements are possible.” Harris also is scheduled to address the conference in a speech Saturday.
The vice president said she will be reassuring both the alliance and Ukraine of the U.S. commitment as the war enters its second year. Her stop in Munich will be followed by a visit from President Joe Biden to nearby Poland.
But there are questions about whether the White House’s hands will be tied back home. Congressional Republicans have demanded that any future aid to Ukraine be accompanied by stringent new layers of oversight, if passed at all.
Harris said she believed the GOP posture was overstated if not bluster.
“One thing is rhetoric at the press conference,” she said. “But the other thing is how they’ve been voting and they’ve been voting to support the assistance that we have been as a nation giving the Ukrainian people.”
A myriad of other international issues will be occurring in the backdrop of the Munich conference. Among the thorniest for the White House is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s planned overhaul of his country’s judicial system to shift power away from its supreme court.
The move has been criticized by members of the Israeli government, including President Isaac Herzog, who in recent televised remarks said a “powder keg is about to explode” as thousands of Netanyahu’s opponents have taken to the streets in protest.
Harris offered a measured critique of the judicial reform as well, placing it in the context of democratic backsliding.
“As the president has said, an independent judiciary is foundational for a democracy,” she said. “And I think that there is no question that we need to make sure that that is supported in terms of what we talk about [and] in terms of our values.”
In the brief phone interview, Harris also addressed domestic matters, including concerns from members of her own party over the prospect of another Biden-Harris ticket. Biden is expected to announce his decision on a reelection bid in the coming weeks, amid polls that show most Democrats have doubts about the two taking on whomever the Republican nominee will be.
“We were in Philadelphia recently and hundreds of people were shouting their support of the work that our administration has had and the success that our administration has accomplished and their desire to see it keep going,” Harris said. “So I have seen just in terms of, in real life, real people being very supportive of the work that is happening. When I look at the midterms and how people voted, that gives me further objective and empirical evidence of this point.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
“This intrusion was completely unacceptable and has got a lot of people asking a lot of questions,” Rep. Bill Huizenga, a senior member on the House Financial Services Committee, said about the initial balloon incursion. “I don’t see [our approach] becoming less hawkish. If anything it’ll stay the same, but likely get more hawkish.”
The House Financial Services Committee is now kicking off work on legislation targeting American firms operating in China — rules they hope will prevent U.S. banks from funding technologies that can end up in Chinese military or surveillance applications, like the balloon and other spy devices. The Biden administration is also readying its own action on the same front, with a new executive order expected next month, following its decision Friday to blacklist six Chinese aerospace firms allegedly associated with surveillance balloon development.
The reopening of hostilities in the trans-Pacific trade war is a shift from the implicit ceasefire that President Joe Biden struck with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Bali last November, when they pledged to put a “floor” on the deteriorating relationship on the sidelines of the G-20 summit.
Since that meeting, the U.S. had refrained from issuing trade penalties that could inflame Beijing, like sanctioning new military-aligned firms, and planned high-level visits for the nations’ top economic and diplomatic officials. Meanwhile, Chinese officials mounted a diplomatic campaign in Washington to reset the two countries’ commercial relationship.
But in the time it took the Chinese balloon to travel from Montana to South Carolina, U.S. officials say that any nascent goodwill has evaporated, and Washington is again revving up its campaign to hem in the Chinese economy.
“It’s literally got the entire country lit up now,” said House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul, who authored a House resolution this week condemning the balloon that passed unanimously. “I think it did tremendous damage … to the relationship. If that was their goal, fine, but I don’t think that was in their best interest.”
Whether by design or accident, the balloon incident has dealt a critical blow to Beijing’s recent efforts to improve the trade relationship as its economy emerges from the coronavirus pandemic. Since late last year, Communist Party officials have blanketed Washington with diplomatic overtures, offering lawmakers visits to China and policy briefings on contentious issues like Chinese-owned social media platform TikTok’s operations in the U.S.
The Chinese sought openings with even some of the most hawkish members of Congress, including McCaul and Rep. Andy Barr (R-Ky.), who both confirmed in interviews that China’s ambassador to the U.S. contacted them late last year.
“They made a lot of charming overtures for me to come to China,” said McCaul, who said the Israeli ambassador facilitated an introduction to China’s then-ambassador at a social function in November. “And the TikTok issue, they want to talk to me about this new arrangement they have,” he said, referring to a proposed national security compromise between the firm and the Biden administration.
Barr said his contact with then-ambassador Qin Gang — now China’s Foreign Minister — was more contentious.
“Our conversations should be diplomatic, and that was not,” he said, declining to elaborate. “We just have a lot of reasons to be upset with the Chinese right now. They shouldn’t be spying on the American people.”
But while Washington is by and large united in its desire to crack down on China’s high-tech economy, policymakers are increasingly divided over how to do it.
For over a year, China hawks in Congress have pushed legislation that would set up a new federal oversight body to review — and potentially deny — American investments in key Chinese industries that could affect U.S. national security. Sponsors of that bill, the National Critical Capabilities Defense Act, say they will soon reintroduce it in the new Congress. The Biden administration is also considering restricting U.S. investments in those sectors via an executive order that has been in the works since last year.
But some House Republicans oppose those efforts, arguing they are a dangerous expansion of the federal government’s power over business, even as they insist they want to penalize Beijing’s high-tech industries.
Those lawmakers presented their case at a Financial Services hearing on China this week, led by committee Chair Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.).
“For the U.S. to compete with China, we cannot become more like the Chinese Communist Party,” McHenry said. “We need to carefully evaluate if a policy proposal could jeopardize America’s ability to innovate, grow, and allocate capital, or if it would cause allies to question our commitment to free people and free markets.”
Instead of a government review board, members of the committee offered up a bill from Barr that would expand the federal government’s authority to sanction or blacklist Chinese firms connected to the country’s military. Such an approach would give more certainty to financial institutions about where they could invest, Barr said, rather than leaving their fate up to an oversight committee.
The debate on stricter oversight of U.S. investment in China is still in its early stages on Capitol Hill. The Senate Banking Committee is set to take up the issue in a hearing at the end of the month, likely setting up months of debate and negotiation over how to shape final legislation.
The debate is also continuing to play out in the White House, where the push by national security adviser Jake Sullivan and others to tighten oversight of U.S. investments in China has been met by resistance by economic officials in the Treasury and Commerce Departments. Congressional leadership has pushed the Biden administration since last year to quickly issue that order, and China hawks are hopeful the balloon incident will spur them to action.
“They said, originally, March,” Casey said. “I hope they can keep to that. We’re pushing them.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
London: British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Monday vowed to do “whatever it takes” to keep his country safe, amid mounting fears that suspected Chinese spy balloons could also target the UK, a day after the US military shot down a fourth flying object over the American airspace.
During a hospital visit in northern England, Sunak said the UK was in constant contact with its allies across the Atlantic and remained in readiness for any safety response.
Sunak’s response comes as his defence minister Ben Wallace confirmed the UK is launching a review into the security implications of the recent incursions into western airspace.
“I want people to know that we will do whatever it takes to keep the country safe,” Sunak told reporters.
“We have something called the quick reaction alert force, which involves Typhoon planes kept on 24/7 readiness to police our airspace. I can’t obviously comment in detail on national security matters but we are in constant touch with our allies and as I said we will do whatever it takes to keep the country safe,” he said.
On Sunday, the US military shot down its fourth flying object, indicating that they were still trying to determine the details and did not yet rule out any explanation for the objects.
“The UK and her allies will review what these airspace intrusions mean for our security. This development is another sign of how the global threat picture is changing for the worse,” said UK Defence Secretary Wallace.
Tensions were rising since a suspected Chinese spy balloon was shot down off the coast of South Carolina last week.
According to reports, US officials fear it was sent by Beijing to monitor sensitive sites but China has described it as a weather balloon.
In the UK, Transport Minister Richard Holden said it was “possible” that Chinese spy balloons had already been sent to this country.
“It is also possible, and I would think likely, that there would be people from the Chinese government trying to act as a hostile state. I think we have to be realistic about the threat these countries pose to the UK,” Holden told ‘Sky News’.
Meanwhile, the diplomatic row continues to escalate as the Chinese foreign ministry claimed on Monday that the US has flown balloons into its airspace more than 10 times over the past year.
“It’s not uncommon as well for the US to illegally enter the airspace of other countries,” said foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin at a press briefing.
“Since last year alone, US balloons have illegally flown above China more than 10 times without any approval from Chinese authorities.
The first thing the US side should do is start with a clean slate, undergo some self-reflection, instead of smearing and accusing China,” he said.
Washington is yet to respond to the allegations from Beijing.
Kennedy was hardly alone among Capitol Hill Republicans chastising the administration for handling the balloon’s incursion inappropriately, while Democrats stood by the administration’s decision to wait until the balloon had traveled toward the coast before bringing it down. The partisan lines that formed after the briefings starkly contrasted with the House’s Thursday morning vote on a resolution condemning China for the balloon that passed in a 419-0 blowout.
That measure, introduced by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul (R-Texas), required two-thirds support to pass, and its lack of opposition was a remarkable show of bipartisanship in the closely divided chamber. But the GOP remained openly concerned about the administration’s management of the balloon episode.
“I think they should have taken it down earlier,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said in an interview. “I mean, I think there’s the debate, ‘what’s the collection opportunities for us if we shut it down early?’ but then they had their collection opportunities.”
And Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, the top Republican on the Intelligence Committee, also said the White House should have shot down the balloon before it completed its transit.
“We had both authority and the capability to bring it down much earlier than we did,” Rubio said. “What if it had malfunctioned, or what if it had a self-destruct mechanism and could have fallen on a city? If it wasn’t threatening, why did they shut down civil aviation?”
At least one Democrat also took the opportunity to slam Republicans for political jostling over the Chinese incursion. Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) held a Thursday hearing on the balloon in the defense spending subpanel that he chairs. The centrist, who’s up for reelection in his red state next year, said Republicans were using China’s actions as an “opportunity to score some cheap political points and get attention on social media.”
“I do not care who was in the White House,” Tester said, vowing to “hold anyone accountable” he needs to in the Biden administration over the spy balloon.
While the State Department indicated it would “explore” potential punishment in response, McCaul argued on the House floor before the vote that the incident “cannot go unanswered.” A House vote in condemnation, he said, sends a “clear, bipartisan signal” to the Chinese Communist Party that the incursion “will not be tolerated.”
“I’ve never seen a foreign nation adversary fly a reconnaissance aircraft that you could see from the ground with your own eyes,” McCaul said. “The CCP threat is now within sight for Americans across the heartland, a vision and memory that they will not forget. This is further proof that the CCP does not care about having a constructive relationship with the United States.”
The bipartisan vote to censure China for violating U.S. airspace came after House Republicans initially weighed a symbolic measure more pointedly criticizing the Biden administration’s response to the balloon. GOP leaders pivoted amid lobbying from McCaul to call out China’s spy tactics on a bipartisan basis rather than ding Biden.
Democrats have noted, in particular, that bringing the balloon down closer to land would have risked injuring Americans with debris.
Republicans “would probably feel differently if the craft had been downed and killed someone on the ground and the administration put the security of the American people paramount as they should and so I think they made the right call,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), a former intelligence panel chair, said in an interview after the House briefing.
Biden last week ordered the balloon shot down, but military brass advised waiting until the aircraft was over water to minimize risks. The balloon was shot down by a U.S. fighter Saturday off the coast of the Carolinas, and the military is working to recover debris.
Pressed during Thursday’s hearing on why the balloon wasn’t shot down when it first approached U.S. airspace in Alaska, Pentagon officials told senators doing so would have made recovering the payload a much riskier operation.
Melissa Dalton, the Pentagon’s assistant secretary for homeland defense, said the depth of the waters near Alaska, cold temperatures and ice could make recovering debris “very dangerous.”
“If we had taken it down over the state of Alaska … it would have been a very different recovery operation,” Dalton added. “A key part of the calculus for this operation was the ability to salvage, understand and exploit the capabilities of the high altitude balloon.”
The No. 2 U.S. diplomat, Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in a separate China hearing on Thursday that the administration “responded swiftly to protect Americans and safeguard against the balloon’s collection of sensitive information.”
Sherman, one of the officials who briefed lawmakers behind closed doors, added that the U.S. “made clear to PRC officials that the presence of this surveillance balloon was unacceptable.
“And along the way we learned a thing or two, which you’ll hear in the classified briefing, about the PRC’s use of the balloon,” she said.
Senate Foreign Relations Chair Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) said he was convinced by Sherman’s presentation that the administration had done the right thing by monitoring the balloon’s path across the U.S. before shooting it down over the Atlantic Ocean — as well as by announcing they would postpone Secretary of State Tony Blinken’s visit to Beijing.
“I believe that the administration acted correctly in how it dealt with the surveillance balloon,” Menendez said. “To the Chinese, it sent very resolute message, including stopping the Secretary of State from his visit, [and] the downing of the balloon. And I think all of those sends a very resolute message to the Chinese.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
