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Able, to recover much of the debris. which we will exploit. we'll study it, we'll learn from it. we also took advantage of the time that it was flying over the country to learn from the system itself, while it was in-flight. we collected on them while they were trying to collect on us. >> general, can you pull back the curtain for us, give us a sense of what the u.s. could learn from that debris? what the u.s. could learn from watching the movement of that balloon? >> i think much of the intelligence community, we have an incredible space borne intelligence collection capability ourselves. the...

President biden now saying that balloon was a violation of international law, but not a major security breach. >> the total amount of intelligence gathering that's going on by every country around the world is overwhelming, and the idea that a balloon could traverse great american air space is -- anyway, it's not a major breach. >> joining us now cnn national security correspondent tasha bertrand. natasha, those words from the president, not a major breach, consistent with the pentagon, saying that this balloon had surveillance capabilities but not significantly greater than satellites that ar...

Drifting towards the u.s. air space wasn't originally marked as urgent. and this has drawn ire from republican lawmakers already unhappy with how long it took for the u.s. president's order to shoot it down. here is what the pentagon had to say about the incident. >> i can assure you this was not for civilian purposes. that is -- we are 100% clear about that. based on what we know and have se observed, it was an intelligent collection capability. you know, a question i would ask myself is if in fact it was a civilian balloon, a weather balloon and it was approaching a sovereign nation about to...

And balloon that would use spy technology. at biden administration admits that's what this is, a spy balloon, but i don't believe the biden administration when they put out this defense that they didn't intercept the balloon, they didn't shoot it down when they could over the elution islands over the open water when it initially violated alaskan air space. they say that their intelligence collection capability is not any better than a low orbit satellite. that's just not credible. 12 kilometers versus 1,200 kilometers is a big difference in terms of that kind of a platform being able to collec...

The fact that china has the balloon so low in our atmosphere and collecting our infrastructure is disturbing to the american people. >> mike walt is coming out, listen, we let them get away with this that's why we keep on doing this. here is what the pentagon said. >> once the balloon was detected, the u.s. government acted immediately and protect against the collection of sensitive information. >> yes, but this one lingered longer, bill. >> yes, it continues to linger and until we find out where it is, and when it is seized to exist, how do we mitigate that collection capability across the no...