Leon Panetta, a former defense secretary in the Obama\u2002administration, questioned the Biden\u2002administration\u2019s response to the suspected Chinese spy balloon that drifted across the U.S. before being shot down off the Carolina coast on Saturday.
\nDuring an appearance on \u201cCNN Newsroom,\u201d Panetta told host Jim Acosta\u2002that U.S. officials should\u2019ve taken steps sooner and been more transparent with the American public about the balloon as President Biden \u201callowed it to simply cross over the country.\u201d
\n\u201cSo the question obviously is \u2014 Pentagon said that there were risks here. I understand that argument that there were debris risks,\u201d Panetta said. \u201cAt the same time, I think we should have acted earlier if our suspicions were valid that this was in fact on an intelligence mission.\u201d
\nBiden reportedly ordered the balloon to be shot down on Wednesday, but those orders were not carried out until it was above the ocean. Panetta, who also served as CIA director under Obama, said that information should have been conveyed to Americans.
\n\u201cIt would have prevented some of the criticism that occurred later, and the American people I think are entitled to know just exactly what our adversaries are up to,\u201d Panetta said. \u201cSo I think greater transparency would have helped the White House as well.\u201d
\nBiden faced a rash of criticism over the weekend, mostly from Republicans who said he acted too slowly in shooting down the balloon, allowing it to drift over areas with sensitive military sites.
\nThe incident comes amid tension between Washington and Beijing and as Democrats and Republicans seek to take action to curb the Chinese threat, both militarily and economically.
\nSecretary of State Antony Blinken postponed his trip to Beijing on Friday, and a senior State Department official called the incident a \u201cclear violation of our sovereignty as well as international law.\u201d
\nU.S. fighter jets finally shot down the suspected spy balloon off the Carolina coast Saturday afternoon, and the Federal Aviation Administration paused flights from three airports in North Carolina and South Carolina due to security concerns.
\nThe U.S. military is currently working to recover debris and intelligence information from the spy balloon.
\nPanetta told Acosta that he hopes U.S. officials will tell their Chinese counterparts that this type of incident \u201ccannot happen again\u201d and \u201cthat we will indeed shoot it down much earlier than we did this time around.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thehill<\/p>\n
Tags\uff1aspy ballon<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Leon Panetta, a former defense secretary in the Obama\u2002administration, questioned the Biden\u2002administration\u2019s response to the suspected Chinese spy balloon that drifted across the U.S. before being shot down off the Carolina coast on Saturday. During an appearance on \u201cCNN Newsroom,\u201d Panetta told host Jim Acosta\u2002that U.S. officials should\u2019ve taken steps sooner and been more transparent with the American public […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":5309,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1154],"tags":[1705,2270,2271],"class_list":["post-5308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-defense","tag-obama","tag-secretary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5308"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5308\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5310,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5308\/revisions\/5310"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}