As much of the political world took an interest in a Chinese surveillance balloon last week, the U.S. military made some news over the weekend, letting the public know that an F-22 raptor took down the balloon off the Carolina coast on Saturday, and efforts to retrieve relevant materials and intelligence were underway.
But that’s not all military officials said.
As Republicans insisted that such an incident wouldn’t have happened if Donald Trump were still in the White House, the Pentagon confirmed in writing that Chinese balloons “transited the continental United States at least three times during the prior administration.”
Some GOP officials preferred to ignore the revelations, but others pushed back aggressively. In fact, the former president, members of his team, and loyalists on Capitol Hill insisted that they knew nothing about the alleged incidents from Trump’s term.
The obvious response to the denials was understandable skepticism. After all, Team Trump hasn’t exactly earned a reputation for honesty and credibility. But as it turns out, some additional details came into slightly sharper focus yesterday. The New York Times reported:
The top military commander overseeing North American airspace said Monday that some previous incursions by Chinese spy balloons during the Trump administration were not detected in real time, and the Pentagon learned of them only later. “I will tell you that we did not detect those threats, and that’s a domain awareness gap,” said Gen. Glen D. VanHerck, the commander of the Pentagon’s Northern Command.
To be sure, there are a great many elements to this story that are far from clear. But the general added yesterday that U.S. intelligence had determined that some unexplained incidents from the Trump era were Chinese spy balloons based on “additional means of collection.”
That was an obviously vague phrase, but it sounded as if there were real limits as to what officials were prepared to say. Jake Sullivan, the…
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