Pentagon was aware of suspected spy balloons during Trump admin, report says

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A small number of intelligence staff at the Pentagon were tracking several objects during the Trump administration. Those objects are now thought to have been balloons, according to a new report.

The existence of the objects wasn’t reported to the White House because it was unclear what they were, former staffers have told The Wall Street Journal.

The Biden White House chose to share previous incidents with the public after shooting down a Chinese spy balloon earlier this month. The Biden administration didn’t state where the previous objects had been flying and said they may have been undetected by the Trump administration.

But it now seems that some officials at the Pentagon during Donald Trump’s presidency were aware of the incidents and that they were connected to China, according to the Journal. The theory was that China was using the objects to test systems jamming radar near military sites in the US.

The information gathered regarding the incidents during the Trump administration was restricted to a simple assessment in the summer of 2020 and wasn’t distributed widely, the report said.

One official told The Journal that it “never got to be assertive” in finding that the objects were connected to Beijing and its surveillance state.

During a brief speech on Thursday, President Joe Biden said the recent objects that were shot down were likely “balloons tied to private companies, recreation or research institutions” and not connected to China’s espionage programme that launched a larger airship that flew through US airspace earlier this month.

Mr Biden said the US and Canada “acted in accordance with established parameters for determining how to deal with and fight aerial objects in US airspace” and that he was recommended to give the order that they be shot down, which he did, “due to hazards to civilian commercial air traffic, and because we could not rule out the surveillance risk of sensitive facilities”.

“Our military and the Canadian military are seeking to recover the debris so we can learn more about these three objects. Our intelligence committee is still assessing all three incidents. They’re reporting to me daily and will continue the urgent efforts to do so and I will communicate that to the Congress. We don’t yet know exactly what these three objects were. But nothing right now suggests they were related to China’s spy balloon programme, or they were surveillance vehicles from other any other country,” he said.

What’s believed to have been spy balloons tracked during the Trump administration were smaller and were flying at a lower altitude for a more limited period of time.

They were found over navy installations in Coronado, California, Norfolk, Virginia, and Guam, officials told The Journal. They said that these objects didn’t fly across the country, like the Chinese spy balloon shot down off the coast of South Carolina on 4 February, which entered US airspace over Alaska.

The information regarding the earlier balloons was gathered at the time from several sources within Defence Department. While agencies often share such information, they don’t have to do so, especially when it’s connected to specialized matters, like unidentified aerial phenomena, officials told The Journal.

Biden officials said this month that three objects during Mr Trump’s time in office and one while Mr Biden was in charge were undetected until after they had departed US airspace.

Between 2019 and 2020, Mark Esper served as Mr Trump’s secretary of defence. He told The Journal that he doesn’t remember being told of these incidents.

A spokesperson for the Pentagon confirmed to the outlet that intelligence analysts had been monitoring the objects but that leadership officials weren’t briefed.

The Biden administration made an offer to a number of former Trump officials to brief them on the subject after they said they hadn’t been aware.

The Independent has reached out to the Department of Defence for comment.