Pentagon Won’t Name Official Who Divulged Misleading Info About Chinese Spy Balloons During Trump Admin
This is unbelievable. Transparency, you guys.
The Washington Free Beacon‘s Chuck Ross revealed that the Pentagon wouldn’t name the official who provided misleading information about three supposed Chinese spy balloons during President Donald Trump’s administration.
The senior official said on Saturday:
PRC [People’s Republic of China] government surveillance balloons transited the continental United States briefly at least three times during the prior administration and once that we know of at the beginning of this administration, but never for this duration of time. We spoke directly with Chinese officials through multiple channels, but rather than address their intrusion into our airspace, the PRC put out an explanation that lacked any credibility.
The media and Democrats ate it up. During his administration, Trump and his former officials, including John Bolton, denied knowledge of Chinese spy balloons.
Officials in the Pentagon changed their story on Sunday, but honestly, they made it worse. They told the media the balloons were discovered after Trump left office.
An official told The Wall Street Journal on Sunday:
“This information was discovered after the prior administration left,” one of the officials said. The official said that intelligence agencies are preparing to brief key figures in the previous Trump administration.
An official, I don’t know if the person is the same source in the WSJ, relayed the same information to CNN:
The transiting of three suspected Chinese spy balloons over the continental US during the Trump administration was only discovered after President Joe Biden took office, a senior administration official told CNN on Sunday.
The official did not say how or when those incidents were discovered.
The official said that the intelligence community is prepared to offer briefings to key Trump administration officials about the Chinese surveillance program, which the Biden administration believes has been deployed in countries across five continents over the last several years.
I blogged about the comments this morning because it’s a bunch of hogwash. If it’s true, then say it in the first place because now many people in flyover country, people who are a lot smarter than the beltway people think, really don’t believe you now.
It’s serious business if our military did not discover Chinese spy balloons and no one told Trump or his senior administration officials? How did they go undetected? What happened?
But the Pentagon won’t address or explain the misleading statements. They won’t identify the person or persons who issued all those statements:
The identity of the senior defense official could signal whether the Pentagon is also helping Biden combat the public relations crisis over the balloon. A Pentagon spokesperson denied the Washington Free Beacon’s request to identify the senior official, or say whether the individual is a political appointee or career employee.
“As the briefing was conducted on background, we are only attributing remarks to a senior defense [official] and senior military officials,” a Pentagon spokesperson told the Free Beacon.
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Comments
Damned if you did; damned if you didn’t.
They were so desperate to shift the blame to Trump they couldn’t even do a good job at it.
Pathetic.
Why does the Biden Administration have to do a good job? The question is, was it effective? What proportion of the population now believe and will remain convinced that the Chinese balloon intrusion into U.S. air space is simply old news, being exploited by the opposition? Certainly the media outlets that served as the means by which the Administration published disinformation for its own self-serving reasons did not require more than they gut. Do they even mind being used, or do they see that as their purpose?
They don’t have to. They take away reasoning and accountability, as they know that partisans (left and right, so don’t think it’s a left-only problem) will always eat-up that stuff because it plays to their biases.
And IF it were true – then it makes the Biden clown show look EVEN WORSE.
As I’ve said, they are trying to push two mutually exclusive stories.
If, as they claim, this wasn’t a big deal and had happened many times before, then how can they possibly justify shooting it down after it left the US???
And if this were such a big deal, then how can they possibly justify NOT shooting it down when it was first detected?
There is literally NO scenario in which what they did makes sense, other than as a demonstration that this administration and military leadership are an utterly unprofessional clown show that only takes action based on polls rather than any actual rational evaluation of the situation.
It makes sense if Biden’s Administration waited for permission from China to shoot it down….you know, After the ballon’s data was retrieved. It’s all theater.
Hmm. It is not possible that Esper, Radcliffe, et al did not know about this. Trump, too. But the balloons were likely destroyed before anyone on the ground noticed them overhead.
We know this didn’t happen simply because you are only finding out about this now.
Had this happened at any time between 2016 and 2020 it would have been blasted across the Democratic media as examples of Trumps weakness.
Hence why we know now, potentially 6 years after it “supposedly” first happened that it did in fact NOT happen during the last administration.
There’s ZERO chance that Adam Schitt wouldn’t have leaked this
Naming him could get him in front of congress under oath and then narrative control would be lost.
Transparent as a bucket of mud.
Brandon & Co. are lying. He’s using the same playbook he used for his crackhead son’s laptop.
It looks like a pack of lies. Today I saw reported that the current balloon left China on January 21. As anyone with half a brain would believe, our military is set to track anything that enters the atmosphere anywhere on Earth. These supposed 3 Trump balloons (and the current one) would have been reported up the chain of command long before reaching the USA and no one would have dared not bring it to the top in the Trump administration, if the trajectory was to the USA. Those 3 look to be a figment of someone’s imagination.
Pelosi tore up Trump’s State of the Union speech on national TV. To celebrate “Balloongate”, I’d love it if McCarthy could sneak in a helium balloon and attach his copy to it, while being read by Biden.
Anyone who hasn’t figured out the US government has devolved into nothing more than a giant organized crime organization….
Tucker tonight reminds us of the timeline: first the balloon was reported by a civilian in Billings (SOUTHERN Montana), THEN the airspace over southern Montana was shut down.
So did the US government really have any freaking idea this balloon existed before Billy Bob told it? It sure doesn’t look like it.
I suspect they were more focussed on correct pronoun usage and prosecution of anyone daring to look sideways at trans admirals.
How could they not know about it? Something that large will appear on radar as a huge blip. It could be identified and deliberately ignored, but it could not be missed.
I suspect they did miss it. Their radar was probably filtering out slow moving objects. When discovered they got the raw data going back years and looked for large slow-moving objects and found the three other balloons. All the articles I have read say after Biden took office but not an exact date. I suspect that it was last week.
fishingfool55-
If such a filter was in place, (1) who put it there, (2) who authorized it, (3) why, and (4) when? Maybe some congresscritter will ask those questions on live TV.
You would have heard about it 24/7 if this had occurred during the Trump years. Now if it did happen and the IC/Military didn’t inform the President and his appointed National Security appointees, then you have a “deep state” issue that lays it all out for everyone to see in real time. My guess is that if it did happen, all of those military guys( Looking at you Milley)were afraid Trump would order it shot down and really clamp down on the chicoms.
Way back in the 1960s, major powers were looking into a Fractional Orbit Bombardment System [FOBS], which used very low altitude satellites to deliver nuclear weapons.
The problem, of course, was once a satellite was nuclear armed, it became a permanent danger, and with very low altitude could deliver its payload more or less instantaneously, not the 15 or 20 minutes an ICBM required for intercontinental flight.
Thus, FOBS made first strike do-able, since FOBS could potentially wipe out a nation’s retaliatory capability.
Everybody agreed to outlaw FOBS and to outlaw satellite weaponry.
And here we are, a half century later, and the ChiComs are flying over the U.S. at 60,000′, something Democrats in power in the White House chose to permit.
And we owe this ALL to Democrat voters in 2020, thanks!
Well, yes, the Democrat voters did have a role, but the Democrat ballot-box stuffers were the key.
The ballot harvesters couldn’t have thrown it if it wasn’t as close as it was. The Media image of Joe Biden as a “nice guy” is probably what swayed enough swing voters to mark (D) on their ballots. If people saw him as he actually is – a demented, senile, nasty SOB, he wouldn’t have gotten within 5% of Trump.
Yes and no.
Yes, a close vote makes fraud especially effective.
No, the fundamental problem was mail-in ballots, 130,000,000 of them, all of which were:
1. sent from voter ID lists that had not been purged of the dead, the relocated, the name changes, the otherwise disqualified in decades
2. received by persons unknown
3. completed by persons unknown
4. mailed / dumped by persons unknown
5. processed by political partisans in the dead of night with no validation of any kind
That’s a lot more than a small margin of doubt.
There’s only one solution: same day voting, in person, with government issued photo ID.
Anything else is fundamentally fraudulent, a “poisoned tree” of evidence.
Either the people making these decisions are petulant teenagers on the inside (whatever their biological age) or else they’re hoping that we are. The “Trump did it too!” is a pathetic argument of a kind I wasn’t permitted to get away with as a child.
As I recall they claimed that Biden is a vast improvement over Trump. So how is it a defense to say that Biden is doing what Trump did (even if that is true)?
The Trump balloon story was sent out to see how gullible we might be. A trial balloon, so to speak, However, now that Biden is catching it from the Democrats, it didn’t have a prayer. So:
1. Harris to quit “to pursue other interests”
2. Senate puts in new VP not part of a known crime family (other than the Democratic Party)
3. Biden complains of medical issues, quits.
4. New VP is promoted
5. Senate fills that vacancy.
No way Harris quits. She will have to be dragged out kicking and screaming. And a new VP has to be confirmed by both House and Senate. McCarthy has as much say in the matter as Chucko.
Again, this is why we need a Ministry of Truth, not to police the speech of citizens but to police the speech of politicians and bureaucrats. Put it in MO or FL and give it the power to fine parts of the government (i.e., take from their budgets) and to fire government personnel who lie like this. Because what good is the Wizard of Oz style “transparency” we currently have? Yet it all goes unpunished.
Hard pass on a govt funded entity that decides what the truth is or is not with power to coerce compliance. That’s basically where we are now FWIW.
Congress has plenty of power to get answers already. The real question is will voters make Congress do their job or will more kabuki theatre hearings throw everyone off the scent?
Your proposal reminds me that over 100 years ago when the income tax was proposed that “only the rich will pay income tax”.
Well, I guess by standards in most of the world, anyone making minimum wage in the USA would be considered rich!
Could either be career or political appointee. There are plenty of both I imagine who are ‘go along to get along’. It’s a pretty large club.
Bring retired General Mattis in to testify about alleged Trump era Chinese spy balloons. Also bring in the career officers who directly manage the country’s airspace defense radars etc
This is another example of the Deep Stata a/k/a the so called resistance at work
Biden is their name, treason is their game.
Biden and his administration still attempting to gaslight the country. If, balloons had in fact happened while Trump was in office, Biden and his ilk would have blasted that information to the country before the midterms. If you need to know who the unknown intelligence officer is that is trying to pass this latest story about Trump, my first suspect would be General Milley.
UNDETECTED- Not detected- Not known- Not discovered!!
So, just how does Little Joey and his merry band of Keystone Kops know about 3 spy balloons on Trump’s watch, when the were Quote “undetected” Unquote?
Even John Bolton who would gladly hang Trump, says that this is not so; that there were No incursions under Trump.
This is all an attempt to divert blame and attention from the dementia patient that is the puppet president!
For who though?
If you take their lies at face value, that either means someone saw traces on old surveillance or radar records, or else records of such incursions were recovered from Chinese sources by either HUMINT or hacking. I don’t buy it.
No one believes a damn thing coming from this administration. Don’t you think the pathetic media would have looped a video, ad nauseam, showing what Trump “allowed” to happen on his watch, if it actually happened?
Our military BRASS (ASSES) have proven once again that they are LIARS, INCOMPETENT, or BOTH. Given the speed and the way that this lie has BLOWN UP in their faces, the final answer must be BOTH !!!
In other words, the Pentagon official made the whole thing up, and is putting it off on unnamed “senior defense official”. Probably Milley
Milley is probably Trump’s worst mistake
That honor belongs to Sessions.
The same Intel agency LIED about WMD in Iraq. It is going on 20+ years and how many Americana are dead?
Democrat means “never having to say I’m sorry.”
“Sorry” only follows having a conscience, which no Democrat has.
I spent my working life in the air and know a little about winds. One thing I know is that winds are a product of the atmosphere, which ends at 35,000 feet. We used to climb out of the winds when heading westbound against the Jet Stream. They’d start dropping off and would be down to nothing at 41,000. That’s why certain aircraft designers began designing airplanes that could go to 51,000 – there’s no wind at that altitude. Balloons drift, they’re not powered and have no thrust. That’s why high altitude balloons are ineffective for reconnaissance. Not to mention that China doesn’t need them. They have dozens of satellites orbiting the earth and already KNOW where our “secret” facilities are, just like we know where there’s are. This is much ado about nothing,
If you won’t be fearful of something, fear the nuclear-armed Russian submarines lurking off the East Coast.
On Monday, NORAD commander Gen. Glen VanHereck told reporters that spy balloons entered US airspace three times during the Trump administration, but “that we did not detect those threats,” calling it a “domain awareness gap.”
“Every day as a NORAD commander, it’s my responsibility to detect threats to North America. I will tell you that we did not detect those threats,” VanHereck said. “And that’s a domain awareness gap that we have to figure out, but I don’t want to go into further detail.”
VanHereck then said that the US intelligence community was able to determine the Trump-era transits after the fact “from additional means that made us aware of those balloons that were previously approaching North America or transited North America.”
Did the Biden Administration reveal something that should not have been revealed, just to cover their asses ?
Answer: It wouldn’t be the first time.
We already know that it didn’t happen during Trump’s admin.
If it had, there would have been wall to wall coverage of it, and they would have blamed Russia.
“Balloons entered US airspace during the Trump administration, too. (Nyah, nyah so there.)
Q: “Who sez?”
A: “We can’t tell you.”
Q: “How do you know?”
A: “New intelligence stuff.”
Q: “What new stuff?”
A: “We can’t tell you.”
Q: “How did you find out?”
A: “We can’t tell you.”
O: “How did you know where to look?”
A: “We can’t tell you.”
Yeah, all so wonderfully convenient. My six-year old kid can concoct better lies than this.
Since this incursion appears to have been initially discovered by the civilian population, seems like business as usual!
Pfft! Can’t name the person because the person does not exist.
An anonymous source claims that something had previously happened that no one knew about at the time. In that case, how did the Pentagon know that it had ever happened? This anonymous source then surfaces at a convenient time in order to show that The Orange Man had presided over the same derelictions of duty and failed to respond to something, that no one knew about at the time—or after. No more specifics are to be given, merely an anonymous accusation, based upon undisclosed evidence that somehow surfaced only in time to somehow vindicate the present administration’s lack of a vigorous response. And we are supposed to believe this??
Yes, we are “supposed” to believe it, but “NO!”, we don’t.
“Pentagon Won’t Name Official Who Divulged Misleading Info About Chinese Spy Balloons During Trump Admin”
meanwhile over at the Pentagon: who do we have as a fall guy for this: find someone who died this year and leak his name