back to the conversation and marc polymeropoulos as well. general, what do you make of the statement from the president that he made this decision on wednesday but was in fact advised that they needed to wait it out until it reached kind of a safer area. of course you know, montana where it was first spotted, certainly a more rural area than some other areas of the country. well this is about when risk and in this case here, i am sure that the pentagon as well as the national student security agency, they looked at all options and then they waited the risks whether or not it was safe or not to take this down over u.s. airspace, particularly in montana. i sort of agree that you know you shoot a three bus, you can understand the debris field that that would consist of. you had probably put people in
well. democrat from california. congressman, thank you for sticking with us. we have been going back and forth a lot on this, breaking news story over the last hour or so. we appreciate you jumping on for us. we are getting word now that this thing has been shot down over the carolina coast. and the atlantic ocean. u.s. government likely gathering the debris now, the question is what we will learn from that debris and what china has already gathered from this balloon. despite the fact they said that it was for whether. what is your reaction? first, this was an unacceptable act by china violating american airspace and our sovereignty. reaction from president biden was measured but also proportional to the incident. he took stab, stab military took steps to shoot down the balloon which is the first step to really finding out what was behind the balloon, what were
we told them to shoot it down on wednesday. they said to me let s wait for the safest place to do it. way to the safest place to do, it that s exactly what they did. six nautical miles off the carolina coast, the atlantic ocean is where they shot it down just about 60 minutes or so ago at this point as we are hearing from the pentagon. want to go to gary braun walk, nbc correspondent standing by for us. , gary we heard from the president he was arriving and maryland, he gave the orders on wednesday. they waited until saturday, when it was over the ocean to issue the spy balloon down. they had successfully dug so and are now seeking to gather the debris for intelligence collection. what more are we learning from the white house here in this hour? so this is interesting to, me biden has been quiet all week about the story. showering questions for a number of days now and ignored them. until this afternoon when he said they are going to take care of it as he was getting
that from the water. the navy will be involved in this, it will be a multi agency and an organization effort here and they will seek to recover this and see what they have here. gary for us, thank you gary. want to bring in quickly if i can marc polymeropoulos lisbon with us throughout the hour. mark if i, can i want to get final thoughts from you on this. what you are most concerned about looking ahead and i also want to get you to weigh in if you can about the benefits of being more transparent about intelligence gathering with the u.s. public. if you believe there are any? i think that previous vector is set something that was really important. talked about the use of authorize intelligence to what the biden administration has done for russia and ukraine. now is the perfect time to do that, and i think in this case. what we get from that debris field. evidence that this was chinese
balloon as soon as the mission could be accomplished without undue risk to american lives under the balloons path. i quickly want to say we are watching the president here, let s listen in. earlier, the pentagon to shoot it down on wednesday, as soon as possible. they decided without doing damage to anyone on the ground. they decided that the best time to do that was over water, outside 12 mile limit. it successfully was taken down, and i want to compliment our aviators who did it and we ll have more to report on a little later. thank you. we are saying the recommendation was from your national i told them to shoot it down on wednesday. they said let s wait for the safest place to do. it wasn t this mean for china relations? so the president reiterated