Why Trump Officials Didn’t Know About Chinese Spy Balloons

In recent days, former Trump administration officials have expressed frustration and confusion at revelations that Chinese spy balloons hovered over US airspace during their time in office.

As more information emerged about the extent of China’s use of balloons to monitor the US and other countries – another object was shot down over waters near Alaska on Friday afternoon, though it’s not clear where it came from – that raised questions about why officials from The Trump administration was unaware of previous incursions, which has left some of these officials frustrated.

“I was in the administration every single day while Trump was in power on the national security team,” said Keith Kellogg, who served on the Trump National Security Council at the White House before taking over as national security adviser to then-Vice President Mike Pence. in 2018.

“During this time, this has never come up,” he added. “So if they said it happened during the Trump administration, we weren’t aware of it and would have taken immediate action. If this really happened under President Trump, and he wasn’t told, it’s more than just blatant, it’s a dereliction of duty.”

Last week, a senior Pentagon official told reporters that Chinese government surveillance balloons hovered over the US mainland “at least three times” during Trump’s tenure and one more time early in Biden’s tenure.

These three incursions were within shorter periods of time than the balloon that caused a major international incident last week after it was spotted over Montana and then flew over parts of the country and was eventually shot down off the coast of South Carolina. .

Since this disclosure, scores of former Trump administration officials who have worked in the intelligence community have invariably stated that they were unaware of Chinese spy balloons hovering over the US at any point during the last administration.

“I never remember anyone walking into my office or reading anything about the Chinese having a surveillance balloon over the United States,” Mark Esper, who has been secretary of defense since July, told CNN last week. 2019 to November 2020.

Kellogg, who briefly served as Trump’s national security adviser, said he was unaware of the sightings, as was John Bolton, who spent about a year in that role.

Kellogg even suggested holding a congressional hearing on how these sightings could have happened without the knowledge of national security officials in the Trump White House.

John Ratcliffe, who spent the last seven months of the administration as director of national intelligence, said he was not aware of any Chinese balloons hovering over US territory at this time.

“This has never happened to us under the Trump administration, and if it did, we would immediately shoot it down,” Trump told Fox News. “This is disinformation.”

Republicans have criticized the Biden administration for not being able to shoot down the hot air balloon first seen over Montana faster. On Friday, the White House announced that a “flying object” had been shot down near Alaska as reporters asked about rumors that another balloon had been sighted.

There appear to be several possible reasons why senior Trump administration officials were unaware of Chinese balloons over the US.

Gen. Glen D. VanHerke, commander of the Pentagon’s Northern Command, told reporters on a conference call Monday that the balloons had gone unnoticed, calling it “a gap in awareness that we need to look into.”

VanHerck declined to comment further on how the balloons went unnoticed.

Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser, said on Monday that the Biden administration has improved the government’s ability to “detect things that the Trump administration could not.”

The Trump administration’s balloons have also not been over US airspace for a very long time, officials have said in recent days, shortening the window for their identification and action.

On Fox News on Thursday, Esper was asked why the US could not detect Chinese spy balloons in the past.

“I think this is a very important issue,” Esper said. “Is this a technical issue? Is it a reporting issue or a decision making issue?

In the case of the balloon shot down last week, Esper wondered if there was a communication problem between military and civilian leaders that allowed him to float over most of the US before he could be filmed, or if the Biden administration was biding its time so as not to upset relations with China ahead of Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s visit.

Blinken’s visit was ultimately canceled due to the balloon, and Biden and his aides said the military waited to bring down the balloon until it was above the water. The size of the balloon, which was comparable to the equivalent of about three school buses, could damage property or injure people on impact, officials said.

Concerns about China’s use of surveillance balloons have only intensified in recent days as word spread that the object shot down last week had antennas to collect information and was part of a much larger operation by the Chinese military to spy on more than 40 countries. . on five continents.

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James Andrew Lewis, director of the Strategic Technology Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, argues that balloons rank fairly low among the potential spy methods that could be deployed by China or other adversaries.

He said China was unlikely to use similar tactics in the near future, given the focus on the latest hot air balloon.

“The real problem is that if we don’t confront Chinese espionage, we will continue to face the consequences,” Lewis said.

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