KANSAS CITY, Mo. — After several days of silence, President Biden finally addressed a series of high-altitude objects he ordered to be shot down last weekend over U.S. and Canadian air space.
One week after a Chinese surveillance balloon traversed the continental U.S., Biden ordered three unidentified objects shot down across three days — one each on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
At a press briefing Thursday, Biden’s first public comments about the incidents, he said the three objects last week were not Chinese surveillance balloons.
He said U.S. officials now believe the objects shot down last weekend to be “benign” objects launched by private companies or research institutions.
Biden said he has ordered national security adviser Jake Sullivan to lead a task force that reviews U.S. procedures and develops “sharper rules” for the tracking, monitoring and potential downing of such high-altitude objects.
Sen. Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri and renowned China hawk, was critical of the Biden administration’s response.
“This is the perfect encapsulation of the Biden administration — where he won’t shoot down an actual Chinese spy vessel, but he’s out there shooting down balloons from hobbyist clubs,” Hawley said Thursday in an exclusive interview with KSHB 41.
Biden eventually did order the suspected Chinese spy balloon, originally spotted over the U.S. in early February, to be shot down, but he waited until it was no longer over land out of an abundance of caution.
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By the time it was shot down in the Atlantic Ocean off the Carolina coast, the balloon had already made its way across the country.
“The fact that he has been out to lunch, that he has been asleep at the wheel — use whatever metaphor you want, out for ice cream probably in his cas,” Hawley said. “I don’t know, but he hasn’t been running the country and he hasn’t been doing his job here. As a consequence, we’re vulnerable here in Missouri. This thing flew right over us and took pictures of our military bases. That’s a problem.
Hawley claimed that the U.S. has existing programs to monitor high-altitude objects that have tracked at least 500 sightings in recent years
“We already know that this stuff is out there,” he said. “The question is where are they from and what are we going to do about it? That’s what Biden needs to get a handle on and it’s clear that Biden doesn’t have a handle on it.”
The Chinese initially expressed regret about the spy balloon incident, but have aggressively ramped up rhetoric critical of the U.S. and its response in recent weeks.
“I expect to be speaking with President Xi (Jinping) and I hope we can get to the bottom of this,” Biden said, “... but I make no apologies for taking down that balloon.”
Secretary of State Anthony Blinken canceled a trip to China amid the balloon controversy, which has escalated tensions between the two world powers.
“The message to China should be ‘don’t fly spy balloons over our country,’” said Hawley, who suggested the U.S. should sanction the Chinese government. “... China wants to invade Taiwan, they want to cheat on trade, they want to steal our secrets. They’re doing all this stuff and Biden isn’t stopping them. The message to Xi ought to be, ‘We are going to stop you. We are not going to allow you to come in here and to threaten the United States of America.’”
Biden had remained largely silent on the objects downed Friday off the coast of Alaska, Saturday over Canada and Sunday over Lake Huron.
On Monday, the White House announced earnestly there was no indication of “aliens or extraterrestrial activity.”
By Wednesday, U.S. officials said they were still working to locate the wreckage from the objects, but that they expected all three to be unrelated to surveillance efforts.
“The intelligence community is considering as a leading explanation that these could just be balloons tied to some commercial or benign purpose,” White House national security spokesman John Kirby said.
No country or private company has come forward to claim any of the objects, Kirby said. They do not appear to have been operated by the U.S. government.
Still unaddressed are questions about the original balloon, including what spying capabilities it had and whether it was transmitting signals as it flew over sensitive military sites in the United States. It was believed by American intelligence to have initially been on a track toward the U.S. territory of Guam, according to a U.S. official.
The U.S. tracked it for several days after it left China, said the official, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence. It appears to have been blown off its initial trajectory and ultimately flew over the continental U.S., the official said.
Balloons and other unidentified objects have been previously spotted over Guam, a strategic hub for the U.S. Navy and Air Force in the western Pacific.
It’s unclear how much control China retained over the balloon once it veered from its original trajectory. A second U.S. official said the balloon could have been externally maneuvered or directed to loiter over a specific target, but it’s unclear whether Chinese forces did so.
After the balloon was shot down, the White House revealed that such balloons had traversed U.S. territory at least three times during President Donald Trump’s administration unknown to Trump or his aides — and that others have flown over dozens of nations across five continents. Kirby emphasized Monday that they were only detected by the Biden administration.
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AP writers Zeke Miller, Chris Megerian, Nomaan Merchant and Ellen Knickmeyer contributed to this report.
