GOP, Dems demand answers on China spy balloon ordeal

WASHINGTON — Senators grew frustrated Thursday with Pentagon officials who declined to answer many of the lawmakers’ questions about last week’s Chinese spy balloon ordeal during a public hearing Thursday — opting to save their responses for a later classified briefing.

Defense Department officials ducked at least five questions during the hourlong Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense hearing — all of which sought to know why the US chose to wait a full week for the massive surveillance balloon to cross the North American continent before shooting it down off South Carolina last Saturday.

“I know we’re going to have an opportunity for more information in the classified brief,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said. “[But] I think that the American public deserve more than they have seen in terms of transparency about why this spy balloon was allowed to spend two days over our waters and over the state of Alaska.”

The hearing came the same day the House unanimously passed a resolution condemning China for its “brazen violation of United States sovereignty” for the surveillance operation and calling on the White House to “continue to keep Congress apprised by providing comprehensive briefing on this incident.”

The House resolution also asked the Biden administration to provide an “assessment of what surveillance data [China] was potentially able to collect or transmit,” details on the measures “taken to mitigate the [balloon’s] intelligence collection threat” and detailed descriptions of “plans, capabilities and methods” that can be used to stop China from collecting intelligence.

To date, military officials have been mum on all such information.

The Chinese surveillance craft was first spotted approaching Alaska on Jan. 28 before it flew over Canada and into the Midwest — taking in sensitive military sites along the way. The craft met its end Feb. 4 when it was intercepted and shot down by an Air Force F-22 jet.

When it was first identified, NORAD did not believe the balloon posed a military threat, and talks with President Biden about whether to shoot down the craft did not begin until it was spotted hovering over Montana on Feb. 1.

Ultimately, the Pentagon convinced Biden to wait until the balloon moved over the Atlantic Ocean because downing the device over water “improved prospects of recovery” and ensured no civilians would be injured when the payload crashed, Melissa Dalton, assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense and hemispheric affairs, said at the Thursday hearing.

Murkowski, who said she had already had a “pretty thorough” classified briefing on the balloon’s initial approach and travel over her state, argued that Alaska’s geographical position makes it “the first line of defense” against China and Russia — and the balloon should have been downed before it reached the lower 48 states.

“As an Alaskan, I am so angry. I want to use other words, but I’m not going to … If you’re going to have Russia coming at you, if you’re going to have China coming at you, we know exactly how they come: They come up and they go over Alaska,” she said. “… It’s like this administration doesn’t think that Alaska is any part of the rest of the country.”

Dalton said downing the balloon over Alaska would have worsened the chances of successfully — and safely — recovering its payload.

“The water depths offshore the Aleutian [Islands] at six-plus nautical miles go very quickly from about 150 feet to over 18,000 feet,” she said. “The winter water temperatures in the Bering Sea hover consistently in the low 30s, which would make recovery and salvage operations very dangerous.”

“Additionally, the northern portion of the Bering Sea has ice cover, which can be extremely dangerous, which would induce additional risk,” she added.

Those conditions, she said, would have risked the Pentagon’s chance to collect intelligence on China’s spy balloon program and its capabilities.

“A key part of the calculus for this operation was the ability to salvage, understand and exploit the capabilities of the high-altitude balloon and we look forward to sharing that with you in a classified session,” she said.

But Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) said that while he understood some information must be kept secret to maintain an advantage over China, more information should be made public about the Pentagon’s handling of the situation.

“I don’t see a downside to a signaling to any government that any violation of our airspace that is not inadvertent — and certainly any violation that is intentional and has a military component — will be met with immediate kinetic action,” he said. “That just doesn’t seem to me to be something that there’s any benefit to keeping secret.”

Dalton countered that she “believe[d] we have sent that signal” and that the Pentagon had “established a deterrent line” regarding how the US handles violations of its airspace by balloons.

“I respect the need to keep some of this classified,” Schatz fired back, “but we all understand that some of the desire to keep things classified has to do with not wanting to disclose to the public things that might be inconvenient politically for the department.”