Senators demand answers from Biden after report Chinese spy balloon gathered intelligence
Samantha-Jo Roth
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Senators are ramping up their criticism of the Biden administration’s handling of the Chinese spy balloon that flew across the United States following reports that Beijing was able to transmit information it collected in real time.
Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT), who has been outspoken since the balloon was flying over Malmstrom Air Force Base, home to one of the nation’s three nuclear missile silo fields, said the report proved the administration mishandled the incident.
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“The administration’s explanation that the balloon had ‘limited additive value’ is little comfort to Montanans and the American people and weak spin on an issue the administration mishandled from start to finish,” Daines said in a statement. ‘This is just the latest national security embarrassment from an administration that continues to project nothing but weakness on the world stage. Unfortunately, when it comes to national security, it has real world consequences.”
https://twitter.com/SenatorTester/status/1642992681583534080?s=20
Fellow Montana Sen. Jon Tester (D), who is up for reelection in 2024, tweeted in response to the latest report, emphasizing the need to keep America safe.
“I’ll keep holding the Biden Administration accountable to ensure Montanans’ freedom and privacy are protected,” he said.
Despite the U.S. military’s efforts to move around potential targets and block the balloon’s ability to pick up electronic signals, NBC News found China controlled the balloon so it could make “multiple passes” over some sensitive military sites, “at times flying figure-eight formations,” while beaming “electronic signals,” including “communications from base personnel,” back to China.
According to CNN, the U.S. is still not sure whether the Chinese government was able to wipe the data remotely, raising questions about what exactly the foreign adversary was able to learn.
The new information comes as senior defense officials said in February that the balloon had “limited additive value” for intelligence collection by the Chinese government “over and above what [China] is likely able to collect through things like satellites in low earth orbit.”
When the news first came out about the balloon in early February, Tester was critical of the Biden administration, saying it needed to “justify” its handling of the incident. After a classified briefing on the topic on Capitol Hill, the vulnerable Montana Democrat said the U.S. military made the right decision at the time.
“I am much more comfortable with the explanation of what they collected as to being, let me put it this way, it doesn’t put our national security at risk,” Tester told CNN during an interview with Jake Tapper in February.
Tester, who recently announced his intention to run again for his seat in 2024, is already getting criticized for his previous comments about the balloon. The National Republican Senatorial Committee released a statement questioning whether Tester still believes the Chinese balloon does not put national security at risk, as he said on CNN in early February.
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Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), the ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he’s frustrated that he keeps learning new information from press reports instead of directly from administration officials.
“These revelations clearly demonstrate that the administration made an unacceptable mistake,” Wicker said in a statement on Monday. “I will not abandon my oversight efforts to discover the full range of information related to this event, and I intend to hold this administration accountable.”
“It is 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,” Wicker added.
The Mississippi senator sent a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, asking several questions and requesting that the answers be provided in an unclassified format so that they can be shared with the public.
On Monday, Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh said the “precautionary steps” taken to limit Chinese intelligence collection were largely successful but could not elaborate further on what kind of information may have been transmitted to China.
“Because of the steps that we were able to take, we were able to prevent transmission of – of certain aspects of our sites to be transmitted,” Singh told reporters at an afternoon briefing. “But in terms of transmission back to the PRC and what was able to be transmitted back, I just don’t have further information for you at this time.”
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters on a conference call that he could not confirm reports that the balloon intercepted communications from sensitive military sites, nor would he say if the balloon flew in figure-eight patterns over U.S. bases.
The surveillance balloon was shot down over the Atlantic after it flew over sensitive military sites in Montana and drifted eastward for days. In the immediate aftermath, some Democratic lawmakers tried to characterize the incident as a win for the U.S.
“We got enormous intelligence information from surveilling the balloon as it went over the United States,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said on This Week with George Stephanopoulos on Feb. 12.
“By shooting it down over water, U.S. waters, only 6 miles out from South Carolina, we’re probably going to be able to piece together this whole, whole surveillance balloon and know exactly what’s going on. So that’s a huge coup for the United States,” Schumer said at the time.
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Daines is introducing new legislation in an attempt to stop another surveillance balloon from entering U.S. airspace undetected in the future. After meeting with officials at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Great Falls last month, Daines drafted a bill to require gap analysis of North American Aerospace Defense Command capabilities, which could expose limitations or potential areas that could be exploited by foreign adversaries.
“We must get to the bottom of how these objects incurred on American and Montanan airspace and ensure that never happens again,” Daines said in a statement when the legislation was unveiled last week.