Page 22 - Director Clapper News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Xi was aware of an order to send the spy balloon over the u.s. if the latest object turns out to be china again, first of all, do you buy that, that the president wouldn't have known that, president xi wouldn't have known that? >> no, i don't. the chinese setup is that there is a politburo member who is the overseer, the senior overseer on behalf of the politburo for the entirety of the intelligence and security apparatus of china, which is mammoth, and they have many, many organizations and agencies that are involved in this. so it's hard for me to believe that a politburo member, who is dire...

So there are -- and the other part of this is there are ways to collect intelligence on the balloon that is not directly connected physically with the balloon itself. so if we have some insight into its launch facilities and the protocols the chinese use when they launch, that's all valuable stuff. and particularly if you can connect that with the actual operation of the balloon as it's flying. >> secretary cohen, do you agree with director clapper that there should be some publicly announced protocols or at least explained protocols? >> i think general clapper is absolutely correct in terms o...

Protocol that could be explained to the congress and to the public as what the ground rules are on when and where and under what conditions we'd shoot one down or those conditions that we wouldn't want to observe it for intelligence purposes. now, speaking purely as an intelligence guy, i was amused a bit by those who were complaining about the chinese balloon being an intelligence failure, but, yet, also complained because we took the time to learn something about it, and it's not like we can fly over china and observe one of their balloons. so this was an opportunity to gain intelligence. so...

That are involved in this. so it's hard for me to believe that a politburo member, who is directly associated with president xi, would not have informed president xi about it. so i don't buy that. >> interesting. director clapper, secretary cohen, i appreciate it. thank you. coming up next, breaking news. the former president's legal team has turned over yet more documents marked classified to federal prosecutors. also the fbi is searching mike pence's home and what they found at the office where back in november he said on television he took no classified documents with him from the white h...

It's not like we can fly over china and observe one of their balloons. so this was an opportunity to gain intelligence. so i think that may have been a valid argument. all to say i think it would be a good thing if we had a protocol that could be explained both to the public and especially the congress about the ground rules. >> director clapper, one can gather -- like in the balloon incident, you can gather intelligence just by following the balloon, watching it, reading signals off it or something? >> well, yes. and if you can observe it up close and personal, you can learn a lot about, for ...