Byron York
Washington Examiner, Feb. 6, 2023
“I don’t know of any balloon flights by any power over the United States during my tenure, and I’d never heard of any of that occurring before I joined in 2018. I haven’t heard of anything that occurred after I left, either. I can say with 100% certainty, not during my tenure.”
The Chinese balloon story is even bigger than it seems. The Chinese spy balloon matter has become far more serious in recent hours — and it was serious enough to begin with.
Of course, there are lots of questions in the aftermath of the U.S. Air Force shootdown of the balloon off the coast of South Carolina on Saturday. Questions such as what, specifically, was it spying on? What information had it gathered? When was the United States aware of its existence? Will experts be able to secure enough of the wreckage from the ocean floor to answer those and other questions?
But there are perhaps more troubling questions raised by the conduct of top Biden administration officials. First, they sought political cover by claiming that Chinese spy balloons had overflown the U.S. three times during the Trump administration, and nobody did anything about them at the time. Then, when a chorus of high-ranking officials of the Trump years said with one voice that simply did not happen, the Biden team responded with an explanation that strains credulity. That’s where we are now.
As the balloon drifted across the U.S., starting in Alaska, then into Canada, then from Idaho all the way to South Carolina, with the Biden administration refusing to take it down, Republicans were appalled at the White House’s tepid response to such a blatant violation of American airspace and sovereignty. Shoot the damn thing down, many of them urged President Joe Biden.
Biden tried to make himself look tough by saying he had ordered the balloon shot down but that military officials argued doing so would be too dangerous for people on the ground. That argument made little sense when the balloon was over empty areas of the U.S. in the Aleutian Islands, Alaska, Idaho, and Montana. Yet Biden deferred to his military commanders, and the balloon was allowed to fly across the entire continental U.S., possibly sending back intelligence to the Chinese the whole way. (Biden officials suggested they had somehow neutralized the balloon’s intelligence-gathering capabilities but did not offer details.) … [To read the full article, click here]