The Biden administration planned to keep the Chinese spy balloon that traveled across North America this year a secret from the public and even from Congress — and only came clean after civilians saw the massive white orb over Montana, according to a damning new report.
“Before it was spotted publicly, there was the intention to study it and let it pass over and not ever tell anyone about it,” a former senior US official told NBC News Friday, nearly 11 months after the balloon penetrated American airspace and began a meandering week-long tour of sensitive military sites.
When the North American Aerospace Defense Command saw the huge spycraft enter US airspace over Alaska Jan. 27, commander Gen. Glen VanHerck called Gen. Mark Milley, President Biden’s top military adviser, to flag the administration on the alarming intrusion.
But Biden himself was not informed until Jan. 31, and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was too “focused” on a diplomatic trip to Asia to pay heed, according to multiple officials in the administration and Congress.
By then, the balloon — the size of three school buses and equipped with solar panels and a payload of surveillance devices — had traversed half of Canada and re-entered the US over Montana, while transmitting data it collected from military sites back to Beijing.
The Biden administration remained silent until several Americans sighted the orb far overhead.
When the Billings Gazette, a local Montana paper, published photos of the strange craft on Feb. 2, the story sparked national outrage.
US Air Force jets shot the balloon down over the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of South Carolina on Feb. 4, after it had floated clear across the continent — and members of Congress were finally fully briefed days later.
Months later, the president tried to excuse Beijing for the blatant incursion.
“I don’t think the leadership knew where it was, and knew what was in it, and knew what was going on,” Biden told reporters in June.
“I think it was more embarrassing than it was intentional.”
“There was no intention to keep this from Congress at any point,” a Biden administration official said, contending that the extended silence was necessary to “protect intel equities related to finding and tracking” the spycraft.