Page 820 - Balloon News Today

From man with an unrivaled resume, former defense secretary, former cia director, former white house chief of staff, leon panetta. grateful for your time. i want to start with the capability questions and pull out and get to the big picture of why or what this is about. in terms of capability, based on your experience at the cia and at the pentagon, does the united states, first and foremost, have any military capability to get up to 60,000 feet and capture this balloon? i assume that would be t...

Senior defense officials telling me they are continuing to watch it literally minute by minute, and they keep open the option of still taking some sort of kinetic action against it, jose. >> yeah, if theyd been monitoring this minute by minute, why not shoot it down when it just enters air space? >> so they watched it, and i think that was a very real consideration. in fact, it was so real that norad brought in aircraft including f 22 fighter jets. they were used for surveillance to check this t...

They are not very sufficient, and with the vagaries of fog and mist and wind. so i dont think that the chinese would expend the political capital here for an intelligence purpose in the face of and in contrast to the very capable overhead reconnaissance satellite program which gives them all of the intelligence they need. so we should put it in context and i certainly believe that secretary blinken should go ahead with the trip and certainly bring it up, but i dont think that the issue should be...

Photograph? >> the balloon is assessed at 60s,000 feet, well above civilian air traffic or civilian air traffic would normally fly. certainly aware there are cameras civilian-owned commercial cameras that could spot this balloon in terms of guidance to folks. this is something norad is closely monitoring and do assess it does not pose a physical threat, as i mentioned, to people on the ground. leave it at that. jennifer. >> general ryder, who is controlling this balloon right now? >> again, we k...

Asked great questions about why is the balloon moving east? maneuvering on its own, sent off course? one question that is still out there. the pentagon not answering every question out there, for them making it clear they see it as violation, this was intentional and will be around for next couple days is fascinating story that will not go away. president biden did not take questions on the balloon or china this morning, talking about jobs report and reporters including yours truly shouting ques...

Security. they say they have taken steps to prevent this balloon from carrying out its mission of surveillance of gathering intelligence. the president was briefed on military options. he asked for military options were told and was told by his top commanders it would not be a good idea to shoot this down, simply because of the damage it could do to people and property on the ground. remember, this thing is the size of three school busses. it is not just a balloon. it has surveillance equipment ...

Secretary blinken is postponed, and this is coming amid this revelation of this audacious sending is of this chinese spy balloon across the border into the united states. blinken is the highest ranking biden administration official to visit china since president biden took office. he had met wit h sxi jing ping, and so this balloon not under

Just shoot this balloon down first place, i imagine well hear more of that as the situation unfolds too. >> shooting this balloon down means potential damage to people below. is that cautious posture still the right move at this point? >> i think that the action that the u.s. and the biden administration has taken is not to shoot down the balloon, but then to postpone or cancel blinkens trip, which politically is a much more important message to send. this trip was coming at a time when they wer...

With china he has been a hard liner. this administration is not being tough enough with them and questions about the balloon. one of the folks out there saying they should take it down and strip it for intel. china said it is a civilian air ship tracking weather off course by a whole continent. we have a lot of questions and so does tom cotton but also talk to him about the classified documents that senators got the briefing but werent allowed to see. he threatened to shut down judicial nominees...

>> and those talks were going to be tense with the bolster of defense in taiwan for example. and we are joined by dr. james clapper this morning. welcome. >> nice. >> and so, the satellites that fly over the u.s. every 90 minutes have capabilities at least at par with something like this, and they describe it at least in less significance of spig than just the audacity of the move, and now we have open discussions of shooting it down. i wonder how tense you describe this moment between the u.s. ...