{"id":1848940,"date":"2023-02-16T07:35:54","date_gmt":"2023-02-16T12:35:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1848940"},"modified":"2023-02-16T07:40:43","modified_gmt":"2023-02-16T12:40:43","slug":"was-the-white-house-aware-all-along-of-the-chinese-spy-balloon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/was-the-white-house-aware-all-along-of-the-chinese-spy-balloon\/","title":{"rendered":"Was the White House Aware all Along of the Chinese Spy Balloon?"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">24<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fwas-the-white-house-aware-all-along-of-the-chinese-spy-balloon%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1848940&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47-->\n<div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/cbs-spy-balloon-path-1052x615-1.webp\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" alt=\"image\"   style=\"display:none\"><\/div>\n<p>These reports raise many questions. <em>Sorts<\/em> of questions about competence and credibility at the White House \u2026 to the extent we expect either at this point. When ground observers in Montana first spotted China\u2019s spy balloon, Joe Biden and his team made it seem as though it had taken them by surprise. Later, we learned that NORAD had first picked up the anomaly over the Aleutian Islands, but didn\u2019t know what it was.<\/p>\n<p>We find out now that \u201cUS officials\u201d As both <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/chinese-spy-balloon-us-intelligence-tracked-it-soon-after-liftoff-course\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">CBS News<\/a> and the Washington Post report \u2014 and still let it traverse the continental US before finally shooting it down. They didn&#8217;t react until it was spotted on the ground, and even then they were dumb.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">U.S. officials first saw the Chinese spy ball when it lifted off from Hainan Island in China last October. They kept track of it for over a week before it flew over Hawaii. <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/edokeefe?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">@edokeefe<\/a>. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/T5T5Zx8bkv\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/t.co\/T5T5Zx8bkv<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/iszracOalN\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">pic.twitter.com\/iszracOalN<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 CBS Mornings (@CBSMornings) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/CBSMornings\/status\/1625841010914762752?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">February 15, 2023<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>U.S. intelligence officers were monitoring the\u00a0<span class=\"link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/live-updates\/chinas-spy-balloon-unidentified-objects-shot-down-what-we-know-so-far\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http=\"\">Spy balloon<\/a><\/span>\u00a0U.S. officials announced Tuesday that the aircraft was shot down after it lifted off from China&#8217;s south coast.<\/p>\n<p>U.S. officials claim that the spy balloon flew east after takeoff in direction of Guam, Hawaii, then headed north to Alaska, where it entered U.S. airspace Jan. 28. Given the path, it\u2019s possible that the balloon was blown off course by weather, but U.S. officials said that once it came south over the continental United States, it was being controlled by China.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/national-security\/2023\/02\/14\/china-spy-balloon-path-tracking-weather\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Washington Post\u2019s sources concur<\/a> \u2014 to a point, anyway. They believe the balloon was heading off course over Guam. However, this spin is not without its problems.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>U.S. surveillance cameras observed as the balloon took off on a path that would have appeared to have taken it over Guam. But somewhere along that easterly route, the craft took an unexpected northern turn, according to several U.S. officials, who said that analysts are now examining the possibility that China didn\u2019t intend to penetrate the American heartland with its airborne surveillance device.<\/p>\n<p>The balloon floated over Alaska\u2019s Aleutian Islands thousands of miles away from Guam, then drifted over Canada, where it encountered strong winds that appear to have pushed the balloon south into the continental United States, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive intelligence. The balloon was shot down by a U.S. fighter plane off the coast South Carolina on February 4, one week after crossing over Alaska.<\/p>\n<p>This new account suggests the possibility that the ensuing international crises that have ratcheted up tensions among Washington and Beijing could have been partially caused by a mistake.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>So what we\u2019re hoping is that Beijing is as incompetent as Biden and his team?\u00a0<em>Slender reeds, man<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>However, this explanation doesn&#8217;t make sense. The balloon clearly didn\u2019t just drift. It flew over sensitive military installations.\u00a0<em>Then, he hovered<\/em> Intelligence to gather intelligence, which is most likely signals intel. CBS points out that this shows that the balloon operator was in control of the vehicle throughout. Furthermore, since we don\u2019t have much in the way of SIGINT in the Pacific once you get past Guam or Hawaii, the obvious target of such a mission would be the US mainland and its defensive military installations. If that wasn\u2019t the mission, then China would have downed the balloon on their own over international waters once they supposedly lost control of it.<\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s return to the main point, though. Why did the White House allow the balloon to reach Montana despite knowing about its provenance and launch history? Why didn\u2019t they shoot it down over the Aleutians, when it became clear that its path would take it over the US mainland? It\u2019s not as if they couldn\u2019t shoot it down there; Biden ordered it shot down over the Atlantic coast, well after the balloon had collected all of the intel it possibly could access and almost certainly transmitted it back to China, too. The perfect time to bring the balloon down would be <em>Before<\/em> It arrived before anyone could even see it, making it an international sensation. Had they reacted properly and competently, it\u2019s likely that none of us would have known about the balloon at all.<\/p>\n<p>And that\u2019s not the only question, either. If the CBS and Washington Post reports are accurate \u2014 and granted, that\u2019s asking a lot these days \u2014 then the White House flat-out lied about the balloon from the beginning. The impotent shooting spree against benign aerial vehicles that followed seems more like a cover up of their lies, which served only to conceal their incompetence at security.<\/p>\n<p>Incompetence can be dangerous enough. Combine it with dishonesty and cover-ups, and it becomes a national crisis of confidence in the Biden administration and its primary job \u2014 to secure the United States. That\u2019s why Joe Biden\u2019s not answering questions about it now, as Ed O\u2019Keefe notes in a refreshing if subtle rebuke at the end of his report, and talking about the economy \u2026 where Biden has also been less than honest and less than competent for the last two years. We still have two years with this group of incompetents.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>These reports raise many questions. Sorts of questions about competence and credibility at the White House \u2026 to the extent we expect either at this point. When ground observers in Montana first spotted China\u2019s spy balloon, Joe Biden and his team made it seem as though it had taken them by surprise. Later, we learned &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1848943,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[547],"tags":[13142,17453,4117,3653,6893,3765],"class_list":["post-1848940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-bongino-report","tag-aware","tag-balloon","tag-chinese","tag-house","tag-spy","tag-white"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1848940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1848940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1848940\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1848943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1848940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1848940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1848940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}