After US fighter jets shot down two unidentified, high-altitude “objects” above Alaskan and Canadian airspace within two days, Republican and Democratic members of Congress are pressing President Joe Biden’s administration for answers to better understand what happened and, critically, offer some clarity to a series of incidents that have drawn widespread speculation.
Democratic US Rep Jim Himes, the ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, told NBC News on 12 February that he has “real concerns” about the administration’s transparency on the latest incidents after Congress received extensive closed-door briefings on the suspected Chinese surveillance balloon that was shot down earlier this month.
The congressman – a part of the so-called “Gang of Eight” leaders on congressional intelligence committees – told Meet the Press that administration officials have not provided the same level of clarity on the two other objects that were shot down in Alaska and Canada, adding that the “absence of information” could feed into US anxiety and fuel baseless speculation.
“Part of the problem is that the second and the third objects were shot down in very remote areas. So my guess is that there’s just not a lot of information out there yet to share,” he said.
“The one thing I see troubling … is massive speculation about alien invasions and additional Chinese or Russian action,” he added. “So I do hope the administration has a lot more information for all of us on what’s going on.”
Democratic US Senator Jon Tester of Montana, who led a Senate panel on Thursday probing the Chinese surveillance balloon, said on Sunday that the Biden administration and US military need to “have a policy” about unidentified objects in US airspace to recommend to the president to swiftly handle any future incursions.
“What’s been going on the last … 10 days has been nothing short of craziness,” he told CBS Face the…
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