NBC News Report on Biden Admin Wanting to ‘Conceal’ Chinese Spy Balloon From Public Raises Eyebrows

Screenshot via U.S. Fleet Forces Twitter

NBC News’s Courtney Kube and Carol E. Lee took a deep dive Friday into the Biden administration’s response to the Chinese spy balloon that traversed part of the United States at the beginning of the year and was eventually shot down of the ocean. The incident sparked a major diplomatic blow-up between the U.S. and China and resulted in its own news cycle as journalists and pundits closely tracked the balloon and pointed fingers over the national security lapse.

NBC’s article offers new details on the internal government communications surrounding the event and reports that the first inclination from within the military and the administration was to try and keep it under wraps.

“The previously unreported Jan. 27 phone call between [Gen. Mark] Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and [Gen. Glen] VanHerck, the head of the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, set off an eight-day scramble inside the Biden administration. American officials faced an unprecedented challenge: a Chinese spy balloon the size of three school buses flying across the continental US,” reported NBC, which was granted an exclusive interview with VanHerck.

Kube and Lee also spoke to many sources within the administration, some of whom detailed an effort to hide the balloon from the public and even Congress:

Administration officials at first hoped to conceal the balloon’s existence from the public, and from Congress, according to multiple former and current administration and congressional officials.

“Before it was spotted publicly, there was the intention to study it and let it pass over and not ever tell anyone about it,” said a former senior U.S. official briefed on the balloon incident.

NBC added that the Biden administration flatly denied there was ever an effort to keep the balloon a secret:

A senior Biden administration denied that there was an attempt to keep the balloon secret. “To the extent any of this was kept quiet at all, that was in large part to protect intel equities related to finding and tracking” the official said, referring to intelligence gathering on the balloon. “There was no intention to keep this from Congress at any point.”

VanHerck reflected on the incident and told NBC that he “had learned valuable lessons from the balloon incident, but he would not change how the U.S. responded.”

“The process worked exactly as it should,” VanHerck is directly quoted saying, adding, “While we can be critical of the decision of where and the timeline to shoot it down, I think in the end the best decision and outcome happened.”

“We kept the American and Canadian people safe,” he added. Addressing future possible incidents the general said:

VanHerck warned, though, that the U.S. still lacks the over-the-horizon radar capability it needs to spot such a balloon far sooner.

“I’m confident in our ability to see that over our homeland,” he said. “I would like to see it over the horizon before it approaches our homeland.”

VanHerck believes no other Chinese spy balloons have flown over the U.S. since the incident, but he said the Chinese spy balloon program remains active. He believes it is focused on the western Pacific to collect signals, video, and infrared and electro-optical intelligence for a potential crisis or conflict there.

The NBC article raised quite a few eyebrows online. Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) shared the reporting and added, “As if it wasn’t enough that the Chinese spy balloon flew over Montana’s nuclear missile fields unabated, now we find out that the admin intended to hide it from Congress & the American people. The Biden administration must be held accountable.”

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