Posted originally on the CTH on February 17, 2023 | Sundance
The White House is trying to put the best spin on the Chinese spy balloon events by claiming the U.S. military jammed the electronics attached rendering the ability of the surveillance equipment incapable of transmission to relays (satellites) or mainland China.
Additionally, according to the White House strategic communications spokesperson John Kirby, the main structure of the electronics, optics and surveillance system has been recovered by the U.S. military and the equipment is now being studied and reverse engineered. WATCH (05:18 Prompted):
(Via Reuters) – The United States said on Friday it had successfully concluded recovery efforts off South Carolina to collect sensors and other debris from a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon shot down by a U.S. fighter jet on Feb. 4, and investigators are now analyzing its “guts.”
The last of the debris fro the Chinese balloon, which was downed by a Sidewinder missile, is heading to an FBI laboratory in Virginia for analysis, the U.S. military’s Northern Command said in a statement.
Reuters was first to report the conclusion of the recovery efforts, which were halted on Thursday.
“It’s a significant amount (of recovered material), including the payload structure as well as some of the electronics and the optics, and all that’s now at the FBI laboratory in Quantico,” said National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby.
Kirby said the United States had already learned a lot about the balloon by observing it as it flew over the United States.
“We’re going to learn even more, we believe, by getting a look at the guts inside it and seeing how it worked and what it was capable of,” he told a White House news briefing.
The U.S. military said Navy and Coast Guard vessels that had been scouring the sea for nearly two weeks have departed the area.
“Air and maritime safety perimeters have been lifted,” Northern Command said in a statement.
The U.S. military has said it believes it has collected all of the Chinese balloon’s priority sensors and electronics as well as large sections of its structure, elements that could help counterintelligence officials determine how Beijing may have been collecting and transmitting surveillance information. (read more)
Canada’s politically and culturally correct Defense Minister Anita Anand held a press conference in Ottawa after a US warplane shot down an unidentified object flying over northern Canada on the orders of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
While reminding Canadians of the vital importance of working to protect the indigenous people of North America, and reminding the nation that all measures will be taken to ensure their safety as the recovery efforts continue, Defense Minister Anand emphasized the importance of the moment stating (06:55), “we detected this object together” with NORAD, and “we defeated this object together.”
A rather odd choice of carefully selected words, inferring “the object” was fighting back. WATCH:
Posted originally on the CTH on February 5, 2023 | Sundance
The more I see how much attention was exhausted focusuing on the Chinese balloon, the more I am inclined to believe the attention was manufactured by internal deep state operatives.
Secretary of State Anthony Blinken cancelled his trip to China over the spy balloon issue, and beyond the general cancellation, he also cancelled a rare meeting with Chairman Xi. Xi never almost never meets with foreign ministers, only Presidents and Prime Ministers. So, what gives? Did the intelligence community expose the balloon crossing to stop the Xi/Blinken meeting? I don’t know, but something is fishy.
Former Director of National Intelligence (DNI) John Ratcliffe gives his .02 cents. Ratcliffe takes the position that it was an intended spy and surveillance operation by China, and it was successful. WATCH:
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on February 5, 2023 | Sundance
House Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), Chairman Mike Turner (R-OH) appears on Meet the Press to discuss his perspective on the motive of China to send a massive surveillance balloon over key U.S. military facilities.
According to Chairman Turner, it appears (a) the balloon was designed to capture some intelligence that satellites cannot; and (b) the flight path of the surveillance balloon was steered to cover areas housing key the strategic military bases and missile defenses. WATCH (Transcript Below):
CHUCK TODD: Joining me now is the Republican Chair of the House Intel Committee, Mike Turner of Ohio. Chairman Turner, welcome back to Meet the Press.
REP. MIKE TURNER: Good morning, Chuck.
CHUCK TODD: All right. Let me start with what you know here. So the decision to take this down – what more have you learned? And you’re part of the so-called Gang of Eight. I don’t think you guys have gotten a personal briefing, but I know staff has. What more can you tell us about the take-down operation?
REP. MIKE TURNER: Yeah. Well, clearly the president taking it down over the Atlantic is sort of like the quarterback—sort of like tackling the quarterback after the game is over. The satellite had completed its mission. This should never have been allowed to enter the United States, and it never should’ve been allowed to complete its mission. If you ask somebody to draw an X at every place where our sensitive missile defense sites, our nuclear weapons infrastructure, our nuclear weapon sites are, you would put them all along this path. Clearly, this was an attempt by China to gather information, to defeat our command and control of our sensitive missile defense and nuclear weapon sites. And that certainly is an urgency that this administration does not recognize.
CHUCK TODD: Do you think we should have a policy that just anything that enters our airspace that’s a balloon from China gets shot down immediately?
REP. MIKE TURNER: Well, first off, you have to understand this administration didn’t just fail here; they failed to prepare after the first time this happened during this administration. The administration has already admitted, which I’ve been briefed on, that China has done this before in the continental United States during this president’s tenure –
CHUCK TODD: When did that happen?
REP. MIKE TURNER: I – you have to let them release it; I can’t release classified information, but they can tell you.
CHUCK TODD: Were you also briefed on – there was apparently two or three incidents in the previous administration as well.
REP. MIKE TURNER: Well, that’s what they’re saying now. But I think that the administration needs to come forward, because this is not an ability to say that this is a crisis that was handed to them. This is a crisis that has developed as a result of this president during his administration allowing China to do a similar act before, not responding and then clearly in this one, not seeing the urgency of what was unfolding. I mean, the president allowed this to go across our most sensitive sites, and wasn’t even going to tell the American public. If you hadn’t broken this story, the American public would not have even known. There was no attempt to notify Congress, no attempt to put together the Gang of Eight. I think this administration lacks urgency.
CHUCK TODD: Do you – the Pentagon says that they were able to use some countermeasures that blocked or limited the ability of China to extract information from this balloon. Do you buy that?
REP. MIKE TURNER: No. And certainly you don’t either. Here’s the thing that’s interesting. The administration says there was nothing for them to gain here. This was quite a risk by China, quite a calculation that they would take a balloon, put it up in China, take it across the United States where it’s clearly going to be discoverable by us. They clearly had some information that they were trying to garner, that they can’t garner from space, so they did not have otherwise.
CHUCK TODD: What could that be? Have you – I mean what – you’re pretty familiar with this. What is it that they think they could have gotten from a balloon? Or what can be done with a balloon that can’t be done with a satellite?
REP. MIKE TURNER: Well, the key obviously is not just the balloon. The key is the payload that was attached to it, which you’ve reported is, you know, the size of three buses. That’s obviously huge. And it was being commanded and controlled by mainland China, and delivering data and information back to mainland China. Again, if you look at the path, and you put X’s where all of our sensitive missile defense and nuclear weapons facilities are, I believe that they were trying to gain information on how to defeat the command and control of our nuclear weapon systems and our missile defense systems. That’s a crisis. That certainly should’ve had an urgency to the president, and not just wait until this gets to the Atlantic to take it down.
CHUCK TODD: Do you at all accept – I mean, it sounds like he did put the order in on Wednesday to shoot it down, and then it’s the military that said, “Hey, it’s not safe yet.” Do you accept that?
REP. MIKE TURNER: Yeah, no. There’s no excuses here. When this first occurred last time during this administration — remember, this is the third year of this administration — they should have been preparing for this. They knew what this was. They know what the balloon is, what its capabilities, maneuverability is, from having observed previous actions by China. They should have been prepared. They seemed not only to be unprepared, but to even be waiting. You know, where is the balloon going to go? What are they trying to do? That’s not how you look at the actions of an adversary. China is a self-declared adversary. They are clearly expanding their military capabilities. They are tripling their nuclear weapons capabilities. They’re fielding hypersonic weapons, they’re expanding in space. In this instance, this president should’ve taken this as an urgency, and so should’ve our military. This should have been taken down before it entered the U.S. airspace, when it was over Alaska.
CHUCK TODD: This, there’s some sort of surveillance technology with this balloon. There’s been some speculation that it might have the capability of launching its own drone – sort of miniature drones to do extra surveillance. Do you know anything about that, or has there been any reports to confirm any of that?
REP. MIKE TURNER: No. I have not been briefed on that. But I can tell you — and we’re supposed to be briefed this week as to what we know. But I think what we can believe is that this administration says, “We don’t really know.” And if we don’t really know, how they keep telling the American public this is not a threat, that there was no need to act is just extraordinary to me. This administration does not understand the urgency of taking action to protect our national security –
CHUCK TODD: What do you believe the actual threat is right now? What is it that they’re trying to do? I mean, you see this as just a simple military exercise by the Chinese.
REP. MIKE TURNER: Absolutely. I mean, they didn’t go and look at the Grand Canyon; they went and looked at our nuclear weapon sites and the missile defense sites throughout the country. And whatever was in this humongous payload — I mean, there wasn’t a camera on this thing. I mean, I’m certain there were cameras, but at the same time, this was huge. The expanse that was there, and what they were trying to accomplish obviously was important enough to China to take the risk of something that was overt. This was not covert, this wasn’t secret. They did it in such a grand scale. They knew that the United States would know, and they did it anyway.
CHUCK TODD: So was it the right call for Secretary Blinken to postpone his trip?
REP. MIKE TURNER: Sure. But if you noticed – and I have a great deal of regard for Secretary Blinken – but if you notice, he didn’t cancel it until it was already public, and there was public scrutiny of the fact that he was going.
CHUCK TODD: Well, there’s some that argue that it shouldn’t have been canceled, that this should be immediately they – we should be immediately confronting them. What do you make of that idea?
REP. MIKE TURNER: What should’ve happened is the first time this happened during this administration, there should have been outrage. They should have addressed this with China. They should have prepared for when this balloon was coming. They should have understood that there was a great deal of risk at our national security. And they should have been prepared the moment this balloon was launched, because they knew what this was like, they knew what it was capable of, and they should have responded.
CHUCK TODD: So what now should be the American response here? What would you like to see going forward in our, in response to this incursion?
REP. MIKE TURNER: Well I – first off, the president needs to shift and understand that he has urgent national security matters. You can’t just act like nothing matters if it matters to our adversaries. If our adversaries think this is important, we need to thwart it and we need to respond. With respect to this balloon, obviously, you know, the administration’s indicated they’re going to try to collect whatever is left of having this strewn across the ocean to see what we can learn there. We’re going to find what signals intelligence that the administration might have been able to capture, and from that, understand what this was doing. But they need to make clear to all our adversaries, “You’re not going to get to come to the United States and take a tour of our most sensitive military sites and have a free shot.”
CHUCK TODD: How aggressive should we be about these balloons that are in the Western Hemisphere, not over our airspace, but we know there’s reports that there’s one of these balloons in Latin America right now?
REP. MIKE TURNER: Right. Well, I think all of these – if the administration had, when they became aware that China was deploying this capability, if they had been aggressive to determine how to capture them, how to exploit the technology, how to thwart the technology, we would be in a different place today. And I think, you know, the same is true for the other balloons that you’re seeing.
CHUCK TODD: All right, I’m going to – we’re running out of time – but before I let you go, you and others in the Gang of Eight have asked for a briefing on all of the classified documents that have been discovered from President Trump, President Biden, and Vice President Pence. Where are we on that?
REP. MIKE TURNER: You know, what’s striking about this, Chuck, is that the Biden administration told the American public that they raided Donald Trump’s home because it was a national security risk. But what we found in the intelligence community and in the intelligence committee is that the Biden administration had not engaged at all anyone who was in national security on the issue of threats from these documents. It took Congress to step in and say, “We want a security threat.” And then they tried to deny giving the briefing to us from that threat. What’s interesting is that the moment this balloon became public, I got a notice not from the administration that I’m going to get a briefing on this balloon, but they have to rush to Congress now to talk to us about Donald Trump’s documents. You can see they want to change the news.
CHUCK TODD: So you’re going to get a briefing on Trump’s documents, but –
REP. MIKE TURNER: There’s nothing scheduled on the balloon, but they’re scheduling Donald Trump.
CHUCK TODD: Anything on Biden or Pence?
REP. MIKE TURNER: It’s included, yes.
CHUCK TODD: That will all be included. When is that, this week?
REP. MIKE TURNER: Yes, it’s supposed to be this week. We’ll see whether or not the balloon happens first. It certainly should. Again, urgency. This administration needs to understand we do have national security urgent matters.
CHUCK TODD: Mike Turner, Chair of the House Intel Committee, Republican from Ohio.
REP. MIKE TURNER:Thank you.
CHUCK TODD: Thanks for coming in, sharing your perspective with us —
The Chinese Balloon is a surveillance balloon. It is meant more for intimidation. It is unlikely that it really poses a national security threat. There is also one flying over Latin America. Joe Biden’s response was immediately to shoot it down. He was warned that it is too big and would possibly create a debris field that would harm civilians for no reason. The Chinese did the same when Trump came to power. He knew it was just intimidation and gave no order to try to shoot it down.
It flew over Montana which is the #1 target to eliminate our major intercontinental missiles that would point to China. So from that perspective, it had targeted sensitive areas but everyone in the world knows where those missiles are at.
Biden has shot it down once it made it to the Atlantic. Any information would have been transmitted back already. So this too was a measure of Bravado for the PR value. As one client wrote in:
Message: Martin, I live in Myrtle Beach, SC. Today was a clear sky day, the balloon and 5 military jets flying around were clearly visible. Many neighbors were calling each other to inform them of what was happening outside, we and many neighbors were out in the street watching this. Then all of a sudden there was a boom and the balloon disappeared, so much for the balloon. It was interesting. End of story.
WES
This is just intimidation. It seems to have worked for Secretary of State Antony Blinken abruptly canceled a high-stakes Beijing trip aimed at supposedly easing U.S.-China tensions after the US has done everything it can to make matters worse. Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan was stupid. By the US making such a grand stand against China over Taiwan, they have absolutely now guaranteed that China will take Taiwan. Pelosi went just before the Chinese election which only guaranteed Xi’s reelection.
I do not know if there is something in the water in California that seems to make the politicians there lose all understanding of war and intimidation. Now the Republican McCarthy is showing that he too is just acting irrationally and poking China to ensure it MUST now take Taiwan. He announced a Taiwan trip simply because Pelosi did it, and it will do nothing but ensure a war that the USA would lose. Because China warned McCarthy, then he has to certainly go,
McCarthy has now come out and said that China cannot tell him where to go. So he now must go to Taiwan as a matter of gamesmanship, but that works both ways. Pelosi’s trip and now McCarthy’s trip are both doing the same to China. The US pretending it will defend Taiwan when we cannot is absurd and it then forces China to invade for the very same reason McCarthy is saying they cannot tell him where to go. McCarthy is part of the uni-party where Democrats and Republicans will act ONLY in the self-interest of the government.
China has come out and declared that its people should be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. The Air Force general told everyone to be prepared for war with China by 2025. Even just looking at the ECM from the start of Taiwan, this is the second wave of 51.6 years and the third wave peaked on January 13th, 2023 (2023.036). That was the week when China staged a massive drill against Taiwan which was three days after a US Navy destroyer transited the Taiwan Strait in a “freedom of navigation” operation which prompted the reaction from China.
All of this poking China only forces war. Just as McCarthy now views he must go since China told him not to, China will respond by invading or they will appear weak. This is like kids pretending to be tough in a schoolyard. The emotions are the same and it becomes a matter of pride.
3:15 P.M. EST – THE PRESIDENT: On Wednesday, when I was briefed on the balloon, I ordered the Pentagon to shoot it down, on Wednesday, as soon as possible. They decided — without doing damage to anyone on — on the ground. They decided that the best time to do that was as it got over water, outside — within our — within the 12-mile limit.
They successfully took it down. And I want to compliment our aviators who did it. And we’ll have more to report on this a little later.
Thank you.
Q Mr. President, what does this say about China? What’s your message to China?
Q You were saying the recommendation from your — was from your national security —
THE PRESIDENT: I told them to shoot it down.
Q On Wednesday?
THE PRESIDENT: On Wednesday.
Q But the recommendation from them —
THE PRESIDENT: They said to me, “Let’s wait till the safest place to do it.”
Posted originally on the CTH on February 4, 2023 | Sundance
Apparently, the Chinese surveillance airship has been taken out of commission inside the 12-mile range of U.S. territorial waters on the South Carolina Atlantic coast.
Delivering remarks to the press pool, Joe Biden confirmed the Chinese dirigible was taken down. According to his statement, Biden ordered the airship to be shot down last Wednesday (lol sure), but the military advised him to wait until it crossed the U.S. and could be taken down over water.
Several U.S. jet fighters were seen circling the coastline, and the FAA had shut down the airspace above the Atlantic near Myrtle Beach prior to the operation to remove or destroy the surveillance airship.
I have created this site to help people have fun in the kitchen. I write about enjoying life both in and out of my kitchen. Life is short! Make the most of it and enjoy!
This is a library of News Events not reported by the Main Stream Media documenting & connecting the dots on How the Obama Marxist Liberal agenda is destroying America
Centinel2012 