Pentagon Releases Chilling Message

David B. Gleason from Chicago, IL, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

(TheRedWire.com) – A top U.S. general has said there had not been any suspected Chinese spy balloons detected during the Trump administration, as an official had previously claimed.

Former President Trump and his former administration staff have both denied the claims that there were balloons of this sort that had infiltrated the U.S. airspace three times during his presidency.

Gen. Glen VanHerck, the head of U.S. Northern Command, said on Monday that the Defense Department had not detected any other balloons in the past and that the balloon was actually tracked by the intelligence community through information collection.

VanHerck told reporters that they had not been the ones to detect those types of threats. He added that it had been the intelligence community that had informed them about the balloons approaching North America.

President Biden ordered the suspected Chinese surveillance balloon to be shot down as soon as possible during the Wednesday briefing. However, officials maintained that because of the expected debris and damage, they would need to shoot down the aircraft when it was over water. On Saturday they shot down the balloon off the coast of South Carolina. The debris will now be collected for investigation.

Over the weekend a senior defense official claimed that these types of balloons had flown over the U.S. at least three more times during the Trump administration. However, Trump took to Truth Social to deny these allegations immediately.

 

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