House Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), Chairman Mike Turner (R-OH) appears on Meet the Press to discuss his perspective on the motive of China to send a massive surveillance balloon over key U.S. military facilities.
According to Chairman Turner, it appears (a) the balloon was designed to capture some intelligence that satellites cannot; and (b) the flight path of the surveillance balloon was steered to cover areas housing key the strategic military bases and missile defenses. WATCH (Transcript Below):
CHUCK TODD: Joining me now is the Republican Chair of the House Intel Committee, Mike Turner of Ohio. Chairman Turner, welcome back to Meet the Press.
REP. MIKE TURNER: Good morning, Chuck.
CHUCK TODD: All right. Let me start with what you know here. So the decision to take this down – what more have you learned? And you’re part of the so-called Gang of Eight. I don’t think you guys have gotten a personal briefing, but I know staff has. What more can you tell us about the take-down operation?
REP. MIKE TURNER: Yeah. Well, clearly the president taking it down over the Atlantic is sort of like the quarterback—sort of like tackling the quarterback after the game is over. The satellite had completed its mission. This should never have been allowed to enter the United States, and it never should’ve been allowed to complete its mission. If you ask somebody to draw an X at every place where our sensitive missile defense sites, our nuclear weapons infrastructure, our nuclear weapon sites are, you would put them all along this path. Clearly, this was an attempt by China to gather information, to defeat our command and control of our sensitive missile defense and nuclear weapon sites. And that certainly is an urgency that this administration does not recognize.
CHUCK TODD: Do you think we should have a policy that just anything that enters our airspace that’s a balloon from China gets shot down immediately?
REP. MIKE TURNER: Well, first off, you have to understand this administration didn’t just fail here; they failed to prepare after the first time this happened during this administration. The administration has already admitted, which I’ve been briefed on, that China has done this before in the continental United States during this president’s tenure –
CHUCK TODD: When did that happen?
REP. MIKE TURNER: I – you have to let them release it; I can’t release classified information, but they can tell you.
CHUCK TODD: Were you also briefed on – there was apparently two or three incidents in the previous administration as well.
REP. MIKE TURNER: Well, that’s what they’re saying now. But I think that the administration needs to come forward, because this is not an ability to say that this is a crisis that was handed to them. This is a crisis that has developed as a result of this president during his administration allowing China to do a similar act before, not responding and then clearly in this one, not seeing the urgency of what was unfolding. I mean, the president allowed this to go across our most sensitive sites, and wasn’t even going to tell the American public. If you hadn’t broken this story, the American public would not have even known. There was no attempt to notify Congress, no attempt to put together the Gang of Eight. I think this administration lacks urgency.
CHUCK TODD: Do you – the Pentagon says that they were able to use some countermeasures that blocked or limited the ability of China to extract information from this balloon. Do you buy that?
REP. MIKE TURNER: No. And certainly you don’t either. Here’s the thing that’s interesting. The administration says there was nothing for them to gain here. This was quite a risk by China, quite a calculation that they would take a balloon, put it up in China, take it across the United States where it’s clearly going to be discoverable by us. They clearly had some information that they were trying to garner, that they can’t garner from space, so they did not have otherwise.
CHUCK TODD: What could that be? Have you – I mean what – you’re pretty familiar with this. What is it that they think they could have gotten from a balloon? Or what can be done with a balloon that can’t be done with a satellite?
REP. MIKE TURNER: Well, the key obviously is not just the balloon. The key is the payload that was attached to it, which you’ve reported is, you know, the size of three buses. That’s obviously huge. And it was being commanded and controlled by mainland China, and delivering data and information back to mainland China. Again, if you look at the path, and you put X’s where all of our sensitive missile defense and nuclear weapons facilities are, I believe that they were trying to gain information on how to defeat the command and control of our nuclear weapon systems and our missile defense systems. That’s a crisis. That certainly should’ve had an urgency to the president, and not just wait until this gets to the Atlantic to take it down.
CHUCK TODD: Do you at all accept – I mean, it sounds like he did put the order in on Wednesday to shoot it down, and then it’s the military that said, “Hey, it’s not safe yet.” Do you accept that?
REP. MIKE TURNER: Yeah, no. There’s no excuses here. When this first occurred last time during this administration — remember, this is the third year of this administration — they should have been preparing for this. They knew what this was. They know what the balloon is, what its capabilities, maneuverability is, from having observed previous actions by China. They should have been prepared. They seemed not only to be unprepared, but to even be waiting. You know, where is the balloon going to go? What are they trying to do? That’s not how you look at the actions of an adversary. China is a self-declared adversary. They are clearly expanding their military capabilities. They are tripling their nuclear weapons capabilities. They’re fielding hypersonic weapons, they’re expanding in space. In this instance, this president should’ve taken this as an urgency, and so should’ve our military. This should have been taken down before it entered the U.S. airspace, when it was over Alaska.
CHUCK TODD: This, there’s some sort of surveillance technology with this balloon. There’s been some speculation that it might have the capability of launching its own drone – sort of miniature drones to do extra surveillance. Do you know anything about that, or has there been any reports to confirm any of that?
REP. MIKE TURNER: No. I have not been briefed on that. But I can tell you — and we’re supposed to be briefed this week as to what we know. But I think what we can believe is that this administration says, “We don’t really know.” And if we don’t really know, how they keep telling the American public this is not a threat, that there was no need to act is just extraordinary to me. This administration does not understand the urgency of taking action to protect our national security –
CHUCK TODD: What do you believe the actual threat is right now? What is it that they’re trying to do? I mean, you see this as just a simple military exercise by the Chinese.
REP. MIKE TURNER: Absolutely. I mean, they didn’t go and look at the Grand Canyon; they went and looked at our nuclear weapon sites and the missile defense sites throughout the country. And whatever was in this humongous payload — I mean, there wasn’t a camera on this thing. I mean, I’m certain there were cameras, but at the same time, this was huge. The expanse that was there, and what they were trying to accomplish obviously was important enough to China to take the risk of something that was overt. This was not covert, this wasn’t secret. They did it in such a grand scale. They knew that the United States would know, and they did it anyway.
CHUCK TODD: So was it the right call for Secretary Blinken to postpone his trip?
REP. MIKE TURNER: Sure. But if you noticed – and I have a great deal of regard for Secretary Blinken – but if you notice, he didn’t cancel it until it was already public, and there was public scrutiny of the fact that he was going.
CHUCK TODD: Well, there’s some that argue that it shouldn’t have been canceled, that this should be immediately they – we should be immediately confronting them. What do you make of that idea?
REP. MIKE TURNER: What should’ve happened is the first time this happened during this administration, there should have been outrage. They should have addressed this with China. They should have prepared for when this balloon was coming. They should have understood that there was a great deal of risk at our national security. And they should have been prepared the moment this balloon was launched, because they knew what this was like, they knew what it was capable of, and they should have responded.
CHUCK TODD: So what now should be the American response here? What would you like to see going forward in our, in response to this incursion?
REP. MIKE TURNER: Well I – first off, the president needs to shift and understand that he has urgent national security matters. You can’t just act like nothing matters if it matters to our adversaries. If our adversaries think this is important, we need to thwart it and we need to respond. With respect to this balloon, obviously, you know, the administration’s indicated they’re going to try to collect whatever is left of having this strewn across the ocean to see what we can learn there. We’re going to find what signals intelligence that the administration might have been able to capture, and from that, understand what this was doing. But they need to make clear to all our adversaries, “You’re not going to get to come to the United States and take a tour of our most sensitive military sites and have a free shot.”
CHUCK TODD: How aggressive should we be about these balloons that are in the Western Hemisphere, not over our airspace, but we know there’s reports that there’s one of these balloons in Latin America right now?
REP. MIKE TURNER: Right. Well, I think all of these – if the administration had, when they became aware that China was deploying this capability, if they had been aggressive to determine how to capture them, how to exploit the technology, how to thwart the technology, we would be in a different place today. And I think, you know, the same is true for the other balloons that you’re seeing.
CHUCK TODD: All right, I’m going to – we’re running out of time – but before I let you go, you and others in the Gang of Eight have asked for a briefing on all of the classified documents that have been discovered from President Trump, President Biden, and Vice President Pence. Where are we on that?
REP. MIKE TURNER: You know, what’s striking about this, Chuck, is that the Biden administration told the American public that they raided Donald Trump’s home because it was a national security risk. But what we found in the intelligence community and in the intelligence committee is that the Biden administration had not engaged at all anyone who was in national security on the issue of threats from these documents. It took Congress to step in and say, “We want a security threat.” And then they tried to deny giving the briefing to us from that threat. What’s interesting is that the moment this balloon became public, I got a notice not from the administration that I’m going to get a briefing on this balloon, but they have to rush to Congress now to talk to us about Donald Trump’s documents. You can see they want to change the news.
CHUCK TODD: So you’re going to get a briefing on Trump’s documents, but –
REP. MIKE TURNER: There’s nothing scheduled on the balloon, but they’re scheduling Donald Trump.
CHUCK TODD: Anything on Biden or Pence?
REP. MIKE TURNER: It’s included, yes.
CHUCK TODD: That will all be included. When is that, this week?
REP. MIKE TURNER: Yes, it’s supposed to be this week. We’ll see whether or not the balloon happens first. It certainly should. Again, urgency. This administration needs to understand we do have national security urgent matters.
CHUCK TODD: Mike Turner, Chair of the House Intel Committee, Republican from Ohio.
REP. MIKE TURNER:Thank you.
CHUCK TODD: Thanks for coming in, sharing your perspective with us —
REP. MIKE TURNER: Thank you.
Why would they care about our borders or the country?
They only care about other countries borders and country.
They only care about “Their Democracy” and their “National Security”.
It would seem that the “border crisis” is one more step on the agenda to soften the United States for an invasion. The CCP knows it has a friend in Resident Biden. The balloon is part of the plan. There were two of them. One is blown up. Now what about the other one?
Actually…I heard or read there were three. But, of course that might not be true. I also saw reports that something went down in Montana, but authorities were not confirming that. This invasion you speak of never was….its infiltratration…..which has already happened! It’s going to take the Military, if there is some left that is not woke!
Sincere thanks to CTH for publishing the “interview”, as I never would watch nbc programming. IMESHO, listening to charlie toad is a waste of time and an insult to intelligence. Quickly in the “interview”, that maroon brought up the debunked lie that such an incidence had apparently occurred during the “previous administration”. IMESHO, nbc is an embarrassment to quality broadcasting. I had service from Comcast, nbc “parent company”, twice before, and it was terrible, switched to a local company for reliable service both times.
Pfizer Admits ‘Directing’ the Evolution of COVID-19 Virus
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2023/02/06/pfizer-admits-directing-evolution-covid-19-virus.aspx?ui=226e1d151ae6a02b5cab7fd2e39955c7004dbff79c645b8c00442f6b72c5594b&sd=20211226&cid_source=wnl&cid_medium=email&cid_content=art1ReadMore&cid=20230206Z2&cid=DM1336255&bid=1713467642
Maybe people will now not scoff at the idea satellites are transported by balloons. Not holding my breath. People are not easily shaken out of deception.
At this point only the PRC/CCP/Xi government knows the full purpose of this surveillance balloon. Logically, it posed a series of tests of hypotheses regarding the US governance, military reaction, technical capabilities as well as potential intelligence surveillance, and possibly trial of technology for delivery of weaponized payloads. Nothing is off the table. Nothing of this scope happens without full approval at the highest level of the CCP government and at this point only they know the results and conclusions that this episode provides from their perspective. Any US government/media/alternative media-commentary is pure speculation.
Exactly! The only thing we know for certain is that we don’t know anything for certain and anything coming out of our government in the way of an explanation or information is bull excrement.
Why is everyone so quick to believe the narrative the satellite (balloon) was from China? Highly doubtful.
it was a ukrainian ufo looking for more stacey abrams tanks.
Thanks for the giggle.
seeing this bs “cements” the balloon invasion as ccp propaganda and LIEs. In reality this event used by ccp in full cooperation the pentagon & the biden regimen Hurt the US national security…. fjb and the ccp. This is HIGH TREASON and the biden and the military leaders Should be Hzung…
Agree!!!
Oh, I see, it is all about Trump. He must have something to do with every thing Biden does or does not know. Wow,Trump is really powerful.
There is a part of the GOP that will never stop fighting the Democrats.
On the balloon, if the airforce pilots are so good then wouldn’t the order be to shoot minimum bullets into the balloon to deflate it and not stand the danger of debris field. Balloon is a big target. Or they can’t because the training is to just obliterate anything with rockets.
Early reports were that the balloon was 60,000 feet altitude and inferred that planes have difficulty flying at that altitude
So just on that basis, for a long while it might have been difficult to have placed bullets on target
Can’t speak about when they finally shot it down with a sidewinder, haven’t been following closely enough to know the altitude at that time
The SR 71 Blackbird went to 85,000 feet but, was unarmed and purely surveillance in equipment. Commercial air traffic flies between 30,000 and 35,000 feet typically. According to Lockheed Martin the service ceiling of the F-22 Raptor is 65,000 feet.
Yes, and any plane sent to pop that balloon would not have had to reach 65K to shoot munitions at it.
Negative. The diff between 40k & 60k feet is, what, less than 4 miles? We have air-launched missiles that can do that.
747s on international flights fly at that height. Flights from SFO to Hong Kong fly, trying to get above 200 mph headwinds in summer.
Would have been nice if a laser weapon brought it down…
Maybe not feasible, but sure would have been nice if something positive could have emerged from another bumbling disaster.
“GOP won’t fight so it’s gonna be an easy take.”
ahh
GOP wants answers, the dems call them the radical right.. And nothing to see here..sigh
CHUCK TODD: Were you also briefed on – there was apparently two or three incidents in the previous administration as well.
FAKE NEWS out there pushing THE BIG LIE.
There were NO big balloon overflights during the Trump presidency.
Aliens in the ocean. Aliens in the arctic. Balloons floating across America. Whoopee Goldberg’s latest beluga comments. Paul’s hammer. Trump should start tweeting. No, he shouldn’t—
….and on and on and on.
Shiny objects one and all.
Where are the tribunals prosecuting Big Pharma, the WEF, WHO, federal weaponized hit squads, Gates and China screwing with farming and the food industry, the military industrialized complex(where are the gazillions of dollars the bastards at the Pentagon cannot account for), money laundering through Ukraine. Black-rock owning the world —etc.,etc., etc.
Two weeks.
They are way past spying. They are in the prototype and test flight stages. This is a delivery vehicle of “something” that will get rid of most people, but not the infrastructure, nor poison the ground. If they kill 100% of US citizens, they get world-wide radiation 100x worse than Fukushima for centuries, so they don’t want that. I’m guessing a selective virus onto all military and offensive sites.
EMP.
After the Covid whammy, and the Biden energy whammy, I’m hoping we are not experiencing a massive crop failure whammy in the spring/summer of 2023 with this overflight of much of the US breadbasket.
Well, now that so much US monetary and military assets have been wasted in Ukraine, what is left to defend against China?
https://justthenews.com/government/security/china-threatens-us-popping-balloon-american-military-begins-recovery-operation
https://justthenews.com/government/security/four-star-gen-jack-keane-blasts-biden-over-chinese-balloon-plenty-opportunity
4 star weighing in:
https://justthenews.com/government/security/four-star-gen-jack-keane-blasts-biden-over-chinese-balloon-plenty-opportunity
Not the first under biden… thats critical.
It’s quite telling how many in the leftist media and their enablers so quickly went with the “balloons in previous administrations” based on some BS from an anonymous “official”.
Not a one of them will ask why Schiff wasn’t on their program back then discussing the pending impeachment of Trump for allowing such an incursion.
…since the balloon could be steered remotely, then it likely could transmit the collected data…
7 days of uninterrupted, steady
aerial observations including?
– aerial photogrammetry, spatial / relative locations and coordinates
– info for 3 dimensional mapping
– thermal imaging ( high to low heat signatures ) ?
– weather data? a canard
I do not know.
( fwiw, not likely the contents of the submerged structure will be openly disclosed.
But cameras and telescopes got a look of the structure etc. during ssslow flyby. )
is grinning I x pretending to be unhappy? ( adds to fiction theatre )
Will whomever got paid, as they laugh,
will they ever be able to miss spend it…?
Just curious if any of our resident military wizards can calculate the payload needed to poof a few pounds of spores over cropland from Montana to South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri and points east.
From 65,000 feet, it would be easy to cover a wide area with a particularly virulent strain of plant disease.
And given the POTATUS administration reaction to this, I doubt they would admit to any detection of such poofs.
Gee, no idea why 95% of the wheat/corn/oat crop is dying off. But hey, at least they didn’t get high resolution pictures/video of our missile installations.
Can anyone think of a better use of the prevailing winds given their flight path?
What pathogens would be found on equipment after hours in saltwater? If found at all?
Mix this in with the Chicoms stockpiling corn for the past few years.
Yeah, we are taking Taiwan, but since you’re busy with starvation over that unfortunate crop failure, what are you gonna do about it?
65,000 feet altitude is well above the jet stream
any pathogen like spores released at that altitude would be swept along laterally at high speed, no telling where and how it would disperse down into lower levels of the atmosphere
any very small particulates like spores would essentially NEVER “come down” – they’d largely remain in the jet stream for a long time and be slowly dispersed into the lower atmosphere very, very slowly (years) and become so dilute as to pose no effect and no threat
200 hectopascal is the pressure level meteorologists use to portray jet-stream circulation (“upper air”)
it converts to 38,600 feet altitude
https://www.weather.gov/epz/wxcalc_pressurealtitude
https://www.noaa.gov/jetstream/global/jet-stream
http://www.chanthaburi.buu.ac.th/~wirote/met/tropical/textbook_2nd_edition/media/graphics/tropical_easterly_jet.jpg
Balloon, aircraft or whatever is about to enter the USA airspace unauthorized. It is shot down, plan and simple.
*plain and simple.
…elecshuns have consequences,
stolen selections
have catastrophic consequences…
( unabated, coordinated, secret reconnaissance flight, data collection from sea to sea –
… that unfortunately for the spies and permission granter,
people noticed….
…yet, the mission continued…)
The next consequences are untold…
Imho
I truly cannot believe the number of people, and alternative ‘thinkers’ that are buying into the purposeful mainstream ‘panic’ about this balloon.
So??
First Scenario: a media that HATED Trump didn’t report a Chy-na spy balloon during the Trump Presidency?
Second: Did Miley the all powerful, fail to tell the Commander in Chief ? Which would be treason.
So is calling his counterpart in the CCP to let them know we’re about to launch missiles at them.
Did Milley do that in this situation before the balloon was shot down?
Milley did make calls to China while Pres. Trump was still in office in October 2020 & Jan. 2021.
Any idea why this yoyo brain has not been court- martialed yet?
i think people need to step back here and do a little thinking. This was a hot air balloon. As such, they are not ‘steered’. Human’s can control their elevation, causing them to go up or down. Otherwise, they move in whatever direction the wind takes them.
This map shows air streams in the US. Note that the path of the Chinese ballon was in what they call the Polar Jet Stream.
[video src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/6/62/Aerial_Superhighway.ogv/Aerial_Superhighway.ogv.480p.webm" /]
Territorial air space going up vertically is the same as for waters – 12 nautical miles. That would be an altitude of about 73,000 feet. Space beyond that is considered international and open for anyone to travel in. The ballon in Montana was traveling at about 60.000 feet.
Just from this factual information, first, due to difficulties in controlling, ballons do not make good vehicles for collecting spy data. They do make good vehicles for collecting meterological data. Thus China’s claim this was the balloon’s purpose is more than reasonable.
Second, possibly this was china’s first balloon but it would be reasonable to assume they have flown others. Thus claims that ones flew during Trump’s administration are reasonable. But as long as US air space was not violated, they would not have been an issue and certainly within China’s rights. Since they were never an issue, it is reasonable to assume that US air space was not violated.
Third, it is not reasonable to think that China, whether collecting metereological data or spy data, would intentionally violate US air space. Thus their claim that they had lost capabilities in controlling – its altitude – is quite reasonable.
I have not seen any report that reveals at what point the balloon lost sufficient altitude to put it into US airspace. Reports are that we tracked it from its entry on the west coast. My logical deduction is that it likely was not in our air space util later, and there was discussion with the Chinese that it was in distress – unable to control. While we do control our water and air spaces, we do not usually blow up vehicles in our spaces that are in distress, which does happen not just to other countries but to us as well.
I think we have made ourselves look unreasonable, foolish, and disrepectful of other countries, in this case, China. Icing on the cake was Sullivan canceling his visit with Xi and all the accusations that China is our great enemy.
China and Russia have both accused the US of being the greatest threat to peace and stability in this world. Saddly I think they are right. We need some adults in Washington DC.
…visited some other liberals that bought into the changing media narrative… for days and talking like tgey knew it all – and provided cover, excuses for what just happened… ( denial of problems…)
while ignoring..
-the border invasions..
-inflation
– funding unneeded ukr
grinder while bleeding our military supplies
– someone ordering vax mandates
– people being arrested without cause…
– selection
Etc
Imho
“Just from this factual information, first, due to difficulties in controlling, ballons do not make good vehicles for collecting spy data. They do make good vehicles for collecting meterological data. Thus China’s claim this was the balloon’s purpose is more than reasonable.”
…..sure the COMMUNIST Chinese would never lie!
“Territorial air space going up vertically is the same as for waters – 12 nautical miles. That would be an altitude of about 73,000 feet. Space beyond that is considered international and open for anyone to travel in. The ballon in Montana was traveling at about 60.000 feet. ”
…..First, who says this is the standard for “international” space and open to anyone? Second, the balloon WAS in American airspace, even by your stated criteria.
“Just from this factual information”
……..Your claim that your suppositions are factual, don’t make them factual.
“I think we have made ourselves look unreasonable, foolish, and disrepectful of other countries, in this case, China. ”
Um, do I need to point out that COMMUNIST China has been stealing technology from the US for decades. They have been caught red handed attempting to leave our country with biological materials stolen from our laboratories. They have been caught infiltrating our government, and our universities so exactly how does the US owe them any sort of respect and or deference?
to me it looks like our country is being run by a bunch of seventh graders.
“…You can’t just act like nothing matters if it matters to our adversaries…”
That’s just it – China is an adversary to America, but not to Joe Biden and the globalists. To them, China is the prototypical system to which they aspire.
The Biden maladministration does not consider China to be an adversary at all, rather it considers Americans to be their adversaries, at least those Americans whose interest includes keeping America out of the hands of globalists.
I remember on a certain day referred to as 9/11, we grounded everyone, and if you were still in the U.S. airspace you were getting shot down.
This is the new 9/11, which I have always preferred to call 911 aka EMERGENCY.
Biden reports to his boss, Xi Jinping, and does as he’s told to keep the millions rolling in. He and his whole administration should be charged with insurrection, sedition, and treason.
That would require the assistance of the DOJ, Deep State & an awful lot of Democrats, like Jim Comey’s daughter in the DC U.S. Attorneys Office, A.G. Garland. McConnell is FJB’s new best friend.
I suppose if there is no other way to get FJB out, prosecuting him for sedition/ treason is Deep State’s best option before he does too much more harm to the Democrat Communist party. He is racking up bonus points on incompetence.
The F-22 that shot down the surveillance balloon used a $400K Sidewinder missile. The radar guidance could not loch on the soft fabric balloon, so exploded the undercarriage, scattering evidence over seven miles of ocean. The DOD is our CCP
Setup for emp
Yea we lied about the balloon but everything else we have done is the truth.
This IS the talking point. Sorry, I dont believe this! Why did Mr. Turner go on this show and speak with this guy? A show that has lied constantly to us with a host that has done the same. This IS what they want us to believe…so, until proven otherwise….
I don’t. The swamp lies, the media lies, the healthcare industry lies, our so called leaders lie! All proven by the way! So……
Now why should we believe any of this? Let me know when someone can prove to me that they have stopped! Until then, it’s a narrative and a push to get us to think and believe what they want. It sure the hell does not mean it’s the truth!
Ten Percent Joe was just following orders.
Gordon Chang said the US has been demonstrating they don’t have the will to defend themselves against China. Keep in mind he’s talking about the actions of the crooked scallawags in the government. I don’t think anyone has taken a survey of the American people yet. I disagree that it would be an easy take.
If they were serious about wanting to see what it was about, they would have found a way to deflate the balloon without hitting the payload.
“CHUCK TODD: Do you think we should have a policy that just anything that enters our airspace that’s a balloon from China gets shot down immediately?”
Gosh, that’s a deeply profound question, but, well, yes, Chuck, yes I do. 🤦🏼♀️