defense eight days ago now i think made the right decision in terms of letting the balloon fly over the united states. although it was incredibly unpopular politically. with the earlier about aen look, you know, we jammed the communications signals, we monitored the direction of flight, and now we re going to examine the equipment and ultimately learn. and i think that the learning capability is incredibly important here. just one more thing on this unidentified object. look, officially there is not much we know about it, we don t really know the shape of this object. what do you make of it? do you think that this was a spy balloon in the least? and it looks like unfortunately we lost mr. harrell s shot there. brian, are you there? we ll try one more time. all right. we ll have to leave the conversation there. thanks to brian harrell. sorry, boris. a lot of unanswered
far as how it was moving, did it have any propulsion or moveability. frankly what it looked like despite the fact u.s. fighter jets and fighter pilots had eyes on this and then what it was doing. right at the end of the press conference, the pentagon said it was moving in a northeasterly direction. it had been spotted yesterday and they kept an eye on it since then. eventually the decision was made to shoot it down. it had been roughly at the same altitude throughout the time the u.s. had eyes on it, so with 40,000 feet, which is the upper edge of commercial air traffic. and that brigadier general pat ryder said is why the decision was ultimately made to shoot this down. one of the key questions we asked, the pentagon made a big point of this, ryder himself and others as well, that there was a benefit to having the other balloon fly across much of the continental united states in terms of intelligence dpgatheri. if that s the case, why was this one shot down so quickly because
that s the same type of aircraft and missile that shot down the chinese balloon off the coast of south carolina. one of the questions we asked at the pentagon briefing was if there was so much intelligence to gain by letting the previous balloon fly across the united states and being able to observe it, why was this one shot down so quickly especially when the senators were furious it wasn t shot down earlier. was the pentagon wbowing to political pressure. the decision to shoot it down before it entered into u.s. airspace, the pentagon bowing to pressure from the hill? we re going to judge each of these objects on its own merits. it entered into u.s. airspace on february 9th. we sent up aircraft to assess what it was. the decision was made that it posed a reasonable threat to civilian air traffic. the president gave the order to take it down and we took it down. in the end this was shot down just a few miles over the water. that water frozen so it did
let me ask you this. there were three incidents where a balloon flew into u.s. territory during president truffle s time in office. this were much shorter in duration them didn t know at the time. it was undetected at the time. one official said much of the information on the flights was pieced together much, much later. is that even possible? did you ever hear of any such incident when you were secretary of state? or cia director? i never heard of anything like this. i never briefed president trump on anything like this. i never had any one on my team and i talked with them over the last several days hey, anything you forgot to tell me? no one saw that size balloon fly across the u.s. during any time during our administration. now they say there were incursions that were undetected they supposed together. maybe that s possible.
water [inaudible]. howard: joining us now is mike emmanuel and the fox correspondent anchoring with this happened and it s typical of the non-flamboyant president, days of international controversy and does it in a few words of a press gaggle rather than make ago bigger deal. the media reverted biden s a wimp and caving to china and not shoot it down now and is that why he emphasized he gave the order to shoot it down on wednesday? struck me he was trying to look very commander in chiefy where he said i gave the order and it was up to the pentagon and exact timing, but i took action, swift action and give me a break. basically i issued the order a few days ago and they waited till saturday when it was safer. howard: right, you know, certainly was a strong argument that shooting it down might have harmed people on the ground and wait till it s over the water and media criticism on the right has immediately shifted to well, he should have done it sooner and let the balloon fly over the