![]() ![]() ![]() We also need to know what capabilities our air defense professionals lacked while monitoring and scrambling aircraft to the object. This is partisanship at the expense of homeland defense. The best understanding we have of this timeline has come in spite of the Biden administration's best efforts to deflect my questions. This is hardly the hallmark of a dedicated effort from the Pentagon to be forthcoming with Congress. When I asked Secretary Austin, he also gave an unsatisfactory response, repeating many of the same interagency talking points. He testified that he still does not know when the president was made aware of the balloon and that he was not allowed to provide response options to the White House until five days after he first spotted it. VanHerck, the NORAD chief, about these questions in a public hearing in March. Press reports have been more reliable in answering these questions than the Biden administration's own tight-lipped accounting. I have pressed the Biden administration to provide the facts essential to understanding of this challenge: What was the Pentagon’s initial threat assessment of the first balloon, and when was it conducted? When was the secretary of Defense informed? What about the president? But during a critical moment with Beijing, President Biden and his national security team chose to mislead the public about the steps they took to counter an adversarial asset over our homeland. Transparency builds trust, especially during a geopolitical crisis. In this, the most dangerous period since World War II, the Biden administration should have been more forthcoming about the threat China’s incursion posed to our homeland. We are now learning the Chinese surveillance balloon – which traversed the United States uncontested in February – collected signals intelligence floating above American military installations. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |