One of the more disturbing aspects of China’s violation of American sovereignty with a spy balloon is being lost.
One of the more disturbing aspects of China’s violation of American sovereignty with a spy balloon is being lost.
The tale we get from the reporting is that the Biden administration postponed Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s planned Friday trip to Beijing because the spy balloon crossed into American air space. That does not appear to be what happened. Rather, the Biden administration postponed Blinken’s trip because the press began reporting that the spy balloon entered into American air space.
Best I can tell, the administration had every intention of keeping a lid on the balloon’s presence in our skies and above critical U.S. defense installations, and of having Blinken go to China to project the illusion of thawing U.S.-China relations. It was only after local press coverage of the balloon in Montana snowballed into national attention that the White House abruptly, and at the eleventh hour, canceled Blinken’s trip. As our editorial notes, Montana “houses America’s 341st Missile Wing — and oversees over 100 Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles.”
According to the latest reporting, our armed forces’ surveillance systems first detected the Chinese surveillance vehicle crossing into U.S. airspace over the Aleutian Islands early enough this week that President Biden was briefed about it on Tuesday. It has not been explained why the aircraft – which is said to be the size of three school buses and to bear a payload of surveillance equipment – was not shot down at that point. The threat of debris damage, which the administration claims was cause for consternation among our military commanders, would have been minimal – as it would have been over the skies of Montana, the state’s governor has pointed out.
Exhibiting all of the vaunted “transparency” that has marked Biden’s classified-documents follies – i.e., clam up until comment is unavoidable because the media has reported unwelcome news – the administration said nothing for days. On Wednesday afternoon, sightings of the balloon began occurring in Montana. That generated local reporting, which led to national reporting.
On Friday, as media coverage and public concern spread, and as lawmakers began raising alarm, the Biden administration finally canceled Blinken’s trip to China, just hours before his evening flight was scheduled to depart.
Our Jimmy Quinn reported in a tweet last night that the Biden White House had “kept the balloon’s presence under wraps for fear of derailing the Blinken trip, until local media in Billings, Montana, published a picture of it on Thursday afternoon.”
If the balloon had not been noticed by enough members of the public that it was reported by the press, the American secretary of state would be gladhanding in Beijing today even as China’s surveillance aircraft was lolling over our homeland and defense facilities.