Page 23 - Director Clapper News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

>> secretary cohen, do you agree with director clapper that there should be some sort of publicly announced protocols or at least explained protocols? >> i think general clapper is absolutely correct in terms of making sure that congress is on board. one of the things that's taking place is everybody's trying to be quick draw mcgraw, come out and say, who's got the fastest gun in the west? i think what we saw is this administration acting and our military acting with restraint to, first, understand what the object was in the chinese balloon, see if they could get intelligence as director clapp...

And when you say that, do you believe it is not a spy balloon? >> no, no. i did not mean to imply that at all, kate. what i meant is that i believe that the chinese may have been truthful of it wandering off course, but i don't think they have been truthful of the center suite on it. i think that it is clearly for intelligence collection purposes. i have had some experience of my time with the intelligence communities with intelligence collection balloons, and you are subject to the vagaries of weather, the fog, mist and rain and in this case most critically wind. that is by the way, one of th...

Valuable, you know, bringing it down in a capacity where you can really evaluate, meaning, u.s. intelligence scientists can really evaluate the components. you know, what does this consist of, what are the sensors all about, or is there greater value in simply destroying it. i mean, they are weighing those things. how does that evaluation take place and who would be involved in that? >> so the evaluation is going to be based on our capacity. do we actually have the capacity to bring this thing down safely? or is it such a menace, you're basically making a risk calculation at this stage. maybe ...

They are not very sufficient, and with the vagaries of fog and mist and wind. so i don't 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 don't think that the issue should be allowed to get out of hand. >> so director clapper, the question now becomes what to do with the ...

In their distribution to people with not just top secret but sci access and special access program authorities that you're going to have to search to find the right people to be able to really dig into these documents, to conduct the sort of assessment that director clapper is talking about to understand, like, what have we lost here? what's the worst case scenario in terms of these documents falling into the hands of an adversary? what have we compromise snd sources and methods? have we betrayed the trust of a trusted ally? some of those nuclear nations who could have been the topic of discus...