Top pols on both sides demand WH briefing on downed objects

News

From Markus Moore

February 12, 2023 | 11:47 a.m

Senior congressmen from both sides of the political aisle on Sunday criticized the Biden administration for failing to update it on the two targets just shot down over Alaska and Canada.

Members of the Gang of Eight, which is made up of Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and Senate, as well as the chairmen and senior members of the House and Senate intelligence committees, said they are still awaiting information about Friday and Saturday’s shootings.

“That’s particularly annoying about this administration,” said Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. said CNN’s State of the Union. “The Biden administration needs to stop briefing Congress on our TVs and actually come, sit down and brief us.

“What we’re seeing here is a series of announcements by the administration with no real information given to Congress,” he said.

Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes, the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said the Gang of Eight received a “detailed briefing” on the first Chinese spy balloon shot down on Feb. 4 off the coast of South Carolina however, stated that they had done so. I have not received any information about the latest incidents.

“Since then, of course, there’s been the shootdown over Alaska and the shootdown over the Yukon,” Himes said on NBC News’ Meet the Press. “Congress was out of session and so we were not informed directly about it. Our employees were kept informed.”

But even after aid workers were briefed, Himes said he still had “real concerns about why the government isn’t being more forthcoming with everything it knows.”

Both Himes and Turner acknowledged that the salvage teams may not have had time to collect much data on the objects discovered off Alaska and over Canada’s Yukon Territory.

“Part of the problem here is that both the second and third objects were shot down in very remote areas. So I’m guessing there isn’t a lot of information out there that we could share yet,” Himes confirmed.

Contrasting the rapid launching of the unidentified objects on Friday and Saturday with the allegedly delayed launch of the Chinese spy balloon, Turner said he prefers the government to be “cheating” when it comes to planes breaching US airspace.

President Biden has been criticized by both parties for allowing the Chinese spy balloon to hover over large parts of the country – as well as sensitive military sites – before destroying it over the Atlantic.

The White House has said it waited until the balloon was floating above water to launch it over safety concerns over falling debris.

“[White House officials] seem a bit trigger-happy, although that’s certainly preferable to the revealing environment they displayed when the Chinese spy balloon flew over some of our most sensitive locations,” Turner said.

Still, he said the White House needs to be more transparent with members of Congress.

“I think there needs to be more engagement between the administration and Congress,” Turner said. “They’re probably hesitating a bit after the Chinese balloon fiasco, where they drew widespread criticism, bipartisan criticism and bicameral criticism from Congress across the country.”

US warplanes shot down the plane over the Yukon Territory on Saturday at the request of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

The object, which was floating in waters off Alaska’s north coast, was shot down on Friday.

Both objects flew at an altitude of about 40,000 feet, making them a threat to commercial air travel, among other things.