Calls grow for Biden to address public about objects shot from sky
Samantha-Jo Roth
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A growing number of lawmakers are demanding more transparency from the White House and the Pentagon after the United States downed three unidentified airborne objects over the weekend, with some calling on President Joe Biden to brief the public.
An F-16 fighter jet shot down an unidentified object Sunday over Lake Huron on the U.S. side of the border with Canada, the fourth incident over North American airspace during the past eight days. The Biden administration is under fire for a lack of transparency over the incidents, with lawmakers from both parties calling for officials to provide more details.
Tensions are rising after the military shot down an alleged Chinese surveillance balloon last week after it drifted across U.S. airspace for days.
The full Senate will get a classified briefing on Tuesday morning regarding the unidentified airborne objects. There will also be a Wednesday classified briefing on China for all senators.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), ranking member of the Intelligence Committee, criticized the Biden administration as keeping the public in the dark.
“Americans need to hear directly about this from their president today,” Rubio tweeted on Monday.
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Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) also said Monday that Biden should be getting out in front of the incident.
“We saw Prime Minister Trudeau do it today. We’re asking the president, please tell the American people what you know and what you don’t know and let them know the plan going forward,” Daines said ahead of Senate votes. “We’ve got Montanans who are calling our office. I’ve got county commissioners calling me on Saturday after closing down airspace. They are saying, ‘What is going on?’”
Daines’s counterpart, Democratic Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT), said it is up to Biden to decide when it’s time to address the public.
“I will tell you the people of Montana are concerned about what transpired because it does impact our privacy,” Tester said Monday. “In the end, we need to make sure that we’re getting the right answers to keep the country safe.”
Unlike Daines, Tester said he has been in close contact with the Department of Defense and does feel like the White House has been transparent.
“I don’t have a lot of questions unless they have new information about where these planes came from and what the threat was,” Tester said.
Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) said he was briefed multiple times by the military and from Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas about the events that unfolded over Lake Huron over the weekend. He said he spoke with Mayorkas on “three separate occasions.”
“I know some of the recovery operations have been delayed in Michigan because of weather, the water is pretty rough and it was downed in a very deep part of the lake,” Peters said ahead of a Senate vote on Monday.
The Michigan senator said he believes Biden should address the public but that it is important to get all the facts first.
“Think we are still trying to get more information before he does that. Hopefully, that will be forthcoming. We have to remember that these things have been downed in inhospitable places in north of Prudhoe Bay or in the wilderness of the Yukon or deep in Lake Huron. These are not easy places,” he said.
UFOS AND THE WHITE HOUSE’S ‘NO EVIDENCE OF EXTRATERRESTRIALS’ DISTRACTION
Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI), the chairman of the China Select Committee, released a statement Monday afternoon urging the administration to provide lawmakers with more details about the objects that were shot down.
“We need answers from the Pentagon. We need answers from the President himself. There are times to err on the side of secrecy in national security operations. But when our fighter pilots are shooting down presumably hostile aerial objects all across America, it’s long past time for transparency. Where are these UAPs coming from? What is their purpose? Are they related to the CCP’s spy balloon or other CCP-directed espionage programs,” Gallagher questioned in a statement.
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Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) commended the president’s actions and the “swift” response of the military on Monday.
“Unlike the balloon shot down last week, these objects demanded a swift response to ensure they didn’t get in the way of commercial jets or pose any other risk on the ground,” Schumer said from the Senate floor. “I have scheduled for senators to receive a briefing tomorrow on what we know and do not know about where these objects come from and what threats, if any, pose to the United States.”
Senators on both sides of the aisle have many questions for military and intelligence personnel, who will brief them Tuesday. A number of lawmakers said they want to learn more about whether the Pentagon has a method of registering and tracking objects flying up to 40,000 feet that are being utilized for research for private companies.
“Those are questions we have, and certainly it’s curious that we’ve downed these objects and it’s curious that no one has complained and said, ‘Well, you’ve downed my weather balloon,'” Peters said. “It’s likely not a company or a weather monitoring service, probably a bad actor.”
Tester, who chairs the Defense Appropriations Committee, said he hopes to learn more about whether the Pentagon has a protocol for handling situations with unidentified flying objects.
“I don’t get the sense that there is one, but there could be one. I just don’t have it yet. That’s what the discussion will be as we go through the appropriations process and bringing people forward to find out what they knew, when they knew it, and what the plan is,” he said.
Senators also want to understand whether these surveillance balloons and flying objects are new or whether the Pentagon is only starting to look for them.
“That’s one of my questions. If they are new, like what has changed with Chinese calculation,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) said to reporters on Monday evening. “I think, generally, we are looking more intently for fast-moving stuff and slow-moving stuff. So, it’s possible that even though the sensors you have can pick up things, you are kind of calibrated to pick up certain kinds of things. You may miss others.”