On Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was questioned on President Biden falsely saying that the Chinese spy balloon that traversed that United States was unable to collect intelligence.
The questions were in response to a new report from NBC News, which revealed that one former senior Biden official and two additional senior US officials said the Chinese spy balloon was “able to gather intelligence from several sensitive American military sites, despite the Biden administration’s efforts to block it from doing so.”
“The intelligence China collected was mostly from electronic signals, which can be picked up from weapons systems or include communications from base personnel, rather than images,” one of the officials said.
Jean-Pierre was questioned on the news by Fox News reporter Peter Doocy.
“Why did President Biden say about the Chinese spy craft, in February, ‘[W]e were able to protect sensitive sites against collection’ if that’s not true?” Doocy asked.
“I’m not going to go into — or dive into any reporting. That’s not something I’m going to do. I’m not going to confirm any reporting,” Jean-Pierre said.
“That’s not reporting,” Doocy said. “The DNI said today that the U.S. does not appear to have provided critical new insights to the People’s Republic of China. So is it they didn’t provide any new critical insights or they didn’t get anything?”
“I would refer you to the ODNI if you have specific questions on their reporting,” Jean-Pierre responded. “What I can tell you from here and what we have said many times is that we knew the flight path of the balloon before it crossed the United States. We took precautions in advance to ensure that it didn’t get sensitive information. And when it — when it — when it comes to technology like this balloon, it has limited added value compared to other means of intelligent collection. And we have said that.”
“And the — and the bottom line is: This is the administration that identified the problem and took action,” she added.