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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