In the days that followed a series of military maneuvers to shoot unidentified objects out of the sky above North America, the Biden administration has provided precious little information to the public about the suspected origin or purpose of the three vessels.
The scant details provided thus far came from National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, who only indicated that they were smaller than the suspected Chinese spy balloon that traveled across the United States earlier this month.
NSC spokesperson John Kirby on UFOs: "We have not yet been able to definitively assess what these most recent objects are." pic.twitter.com/d4OXjQv0mF
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 13, 2023
He went on to suggest that “a leading explanation” is that the objects “could just be balloons tied to some commercial or benign purpose,” though they had yet to be recovered or studied.
Even after a security briefing on Tuesday, U.S. senators on both sides of the aisle expressed frustration over the dearth of information and seemingly incongruent messaging from the White House.
“On the one hand, the administration is saying we don’t yet know what these last three objects are, and we don’t want to characterize them until we recover them,” said Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR). “But on the other hand, it wasn’t a threat. Both of those things can’t be true.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) urged the Biden administration to be more forthright in its statements on the matter, asserting: “There is a lot of information presented to us this morning that could be told to the American people without any harm to sources or methods or national security.”
Although most of the senators briefed this week were tight-lipped, Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) provided several important details from the closed-door meeting in a subsequent statement.
“Many people, intentionally or otherwise, have been given the impression that [until] a couple of weeks ago, our skies were clear, and then all of a sudden we have spy balloons and other unidentified flying objects raining down on us like confetti,” he said. “That’s not accurate. These objects have been flying over us for years, many years.”
As for the three most recently targeted objects, Kennedy explained: “They’re lost. They can’t find them. The remnants are in very difficult terrain.”
The Louisiana Republican reiterated that such aerial phenomena have been observed for years, noting that the White House provided no explanation as to why military jets were scrambled to shoot the most recent objects out of the sky.
“We need more transparency … now that this cow is out of the barn,” he asserted.