"We have consistently learned more from press reports about the Chinese Surveillance Balloon than we have from administration officials.”
WASHINGTON, D.C. (Texas Insider Report) — The Chinese Spy Balloon balloon entered American airspace over Alaska in late January, crossed into Canada, and then re-entered American airspace before being monitored by the Biden White House as it drifted across the entire country gathering highly sensative intelligence information from American Military Sites prior to being shot down by U.S. fighter jets off the South Carolina coast on Saturday, February 4th. At the time, President Biden and his top Pentagon officials defended the decision to wait so long before destroying the craft, saying that a shoot-down over land could endanger American citizens.
They also argued the balloon offered little in the way of new capabilities for the Chinese Communist govenrment beyond what Chinese intelligence agencies already had in place via their satellites in low Earth orbit.
"We have consistently learned more from press reports about the Chinese Surveillance Balloon than we have from White House officials,” said Senator Roger Wicker, the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Service Committee, as the Biden White House came under renewed and increased fire Monday over its decision to allow the suspected Chinese spy balloon to travel across the entire continental U.S.
“These revelations clearly demonstrate that the administration made an unacceptable mistake,” Wicker said.
“It's critical that Congress also explore the capability and protocol improvements at the Department of Defense that are necessary to prevent something like this failure from ever happening again,” said the Mississippi Republican.
The renewed focus come on the heels of new reporting by NBC News – citing senior U.S. officials and first reported Monday – that the balloon was able to pick up sensitive intelligence communications from several U.S. military installations, and send that information instantly back to Communist leaders in Beijing as it flew across the American homeland in late January and into early February.
The sophisticated surveillance balloon, it has now been learned, flew over some of the nation's most critical military locations multiple times while transmitting data back to Beijing in real time, NBC reported.
In response to the NBC Reports, Pentagon officials reiterated their previous explanations, and stressed that after discovering the balloon the military successfully shielded sensitive information from beiong transmitted from U.S. sites as it traversed across the United States.
“We took steps to protect our own military installations from foreign intelligence collection,” said Sabrina Singh, Pentagon spokesperson, to reporters Monday.
But questions have lingered about why China would use such a balloon – which seemingly could be discovered and shot down relatively easily – if the craft offered no new surveillance capabilities. The most recent reports seem to suggest that Beijing believed the balloon could gather information that its satellites could not.
Republicans fumed over the new revelations, and said they underscore just how many questions remain unanswered over Mr. Biden’s handling of an incident that have sent already bad U.S.-China relations plummeting.
Republicans said the new information shows just how great a threat the Chinese balloon posed to national security – and how foolish Mr. Biden was for allowing it to spend days flying over America.
“Reports now indicate that the Chinese spy balloon gathered intelligence from several sensitive military sites during its journey across the United States.
"But Joe Biden waited until it flew across the ENTIRE COUNTRY before doing anything,” tweeted House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (right, R-OH.) Monday.
China maintains the balloon was on a "civilian mission" to collect "weather data" and blew off course accidentally. The Biden White House, however, contended the balloon's trip across the militarily sensitive sites in the heartland of the country was a spy mission.
The debris from the craft, recovered in the ocean after its downing February 4th, is still being analyzed by the FBI.
On February 16th, President Biden assured the nation:
The U.S. “tracked it closely, we analyzed its capabilities, and we learned more about how it operates.
“And because we knew its path, we were able to protect sensitive sites against collection,” Biden said.
At the time it appeared Mr. Biden was implying the balloon gathered no new sensitive information at all. But the most recent reports call that into question.
