There wasn’t a “shred of intelligence” shared among senior government officials suggesting that a Chinese spy balloon flew or was going to fly across the United States during former President Donald Trump’s administration, according to a former adviser to the administration.
Kash Patel, who served as the Pentagon’s chief of staff to Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller under Trump, made the comments shortly after a number of senior officials in the Biden administration claimed that Chinese regime surveillance balloons entered U.S. airspace during Trump’s tenure.
Trump has denied those claims, stating that it “never happened.”
Pentagon’s Claims
On Feb. 8, Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder claimed that new intelligence showed that China had been conducting surveillance across America for “several years.”Ryder, during a press briefing, also claimed that there had been at least four previous spy balloon incursions over the United States, three of which he said occurred during the Trump administration and one during the Biden administration.
Ryder then corrected himself to state that a second balloon was discovered during the Biden administration after China this week confirmed that another balloon that was spotted over Latin America also belonged to the nation.
Patel said he doesn’t buy the Pentagon’s narrative regarding what it stated is a “subsequent intelligence analysis” regarding the alleged previous balloon incursions into the United States.
“What do you mean, you ‘believe they happened’? Then you mean you detected them and failed to tell the secretary of defense, the director of national intelligence, the director of the FBI, the attorney general, the president of the United States, the vice president, and so on? That would be a strategic failure of epic proportions from our chain of command,” he said.
The United States shot down the first surveillance balloon at 2:39 p.m. EST on Feb. 4 after it was seen making its way across the Carolinas and approaching the Atlantic coast, according to defense officials.
While the Biden administration has confirmed that the balloon flew over sensitive military sites, it has stopped short of stating exactly which sites they were.
Beijing has rejected those assertions, claiming instead that the balloon was a civilian meteorological balloon that had been blown off course and just happened to fly over sensitive military sights.
China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Feb. 6 went so far as to accuse the United States of “an obvious overreaction and a serious violation of international practice.”
‘Balloons Serve a Specific Purpose’
Patel said there’s no doubt the downed balloon, as well as the second balloon China claimed, were being used to spy on the United States.“Even though the Chinese Communist Party came in and said it was a weather collection apparatus, anyone and everyone knows that’s a complete farce,” he said. “Those balloons serve a specific purpose, in my opinion, when they traverse our entire continental United States of America, starting in Alaska.
“They are looking at national security installations across our country. From Alaska to Montana, down to Carolina, we have military bases in every single one of those locations. We have other facilities, intelligence and otherwise, in every single one of those locations. And I bet you the CCP knows that.
“The trajectory of this balloon—it’s not like you just light it, or it’s not like you just fill it with helium and you set it on its way—it is actually controlled by human beings, probably from somewhere in mainland China as to its direction and where it’s going next.”
Patel said the balloon was directed with a strategic purpose, which is why the governors of the states under the balloon’s path were so concerned.
He noted that the latest events were a “victory” for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) over the U.S. national security apparatus.
The Epoch Times has contacted the White House for comment.
