the fbi says so far investigators have been able to recover the balloon canopy, wiring and very small amount of electronics. the fbi has begun decontaminating some of the debris by removing salt and sea water, some evidence has made the way to the fbi lab in quantico, virginia for analysis. a source confirmed with fox, the balloon had english writing on them, and part of the reason they did not shoot down the spy balloon early on over the aleutian islands in alaska, recovering the chinese spy airship would have been much more complicated. the water depths offshore of the aleutians at six plus nautical miles, from about 150 feet to over 18,000 feet near the berring sea.
not saying this is a sign of who was behind this object, but remember the balloon last week flew down over the aleutians, it s very plausible this was on a similar track to the one that we just saw last week. another question that we ll be asking. another big difference here, the balloon from last week, we were told the u.s. was tracking it prior to this. the pentagon briefing is about to begin. we re going to listen in and hear anything more on these answers. first of all, to add to information already provided earlier by the white house at the direction of the president of the united states, fighter aircraft assigned to u.s. northern command, successfully took down a high altitude airborne object off the northern coast of alaska at 1:45 p.m. eastern standard time today within u.s. sovereign airspace over u.s. territorial water.
0 president lula has to make. reporter: i wanted to follow up on a question i asked in september. in light of the chinese spy balloon incident does this administration consider chinese land purchases near u.s. military bases a national security threat? we are always concerned about potential foreign collection near or around our military sites, and you re right, last week is a good example of that. we take that seriously, whether that s terrestrial related or whether it s from the air. and i think i ll just leave it at that. reporter: would you work with congress to put in place legislation to prevent that we are always willing to work with congress to address our national security interests and threats as best we can. reporter: real quick, is there a time line for recovery of this object? you would have to talk to the pentagon. i don t know, guys, this just happened within the last hour and a half, and they re still assessing where this thing landed and the degree to whi
hurtling. continue text around all this new reporting we re getting on the spy balloon, i guess for lack of a better word program of china. the state department confirming today this chinese surveillance program extends far beyond the united states. what more can you tell us about it? well, you know, first, erin, i ll go back to what you said at the very beginning about the military failing to flag the balloon going over alaska as an urgent matter. i m not sure i agree with that. the tipper that some of our reporters talked about in a recent article in dot com talked about information that was provided to the command about this balloon coming across the aleutians and going into africa. i hate to do this to you, erin, but i ll give you a hierarchy of military information and organizations. there is an organization called alaska command. it s near anchorage actually, and they have responsibility as part of northern command, the command that eventually shot down this balloon of kind of
it. i suspect frankly when it went across the aleutians, there was confusion in the white house. there s not a playbook that i m aware of the way through is a playbook for if an intercontinental ballistic missile is headed our way, you crack open the codes and convene a conference call. it s set out and rehearsed and practiced. not for this. there will be in the future neil: general, you think that policy should be to shoot it down the first time you see it? yeah, that s the lesson. the question is did we have a plane that was anywhere near the aleutians. it s very easy looking back to say that that should have been done back then. of course, once it s over the continental united states, it s more challenging and then the order was given and they neil: i m sorry, sir.