constantly surveilling us every 90 minutes, rotating the earth and watching what we re doing. so this is not necessarily a counterintelligence move by the u.s. in that sense, but they do, of course, want to minimize the amount of intelligence that they can collect by having a balloon at a much lower level with, arguably, better visibility into some of our missile silos and other sensitive areas of the united states. so this is a message that they re sending to the chinese, look, we know that this is not out of the ordinary for what you guys are doing, but it s so obvious and it s so clear to the american public, who can also just see it with the naked eye, that there s really nothing else we can do here. natasha bertrand, hold tight. i want to bring in cnn s dianne gallagher in charlotte, north carolina. while you re a couple hundred miles away from the coastal airport of wilmington, north carolina, that is among the three airports that are now experiencing a ground stop, what are yo
kind of assets or components do they believe might be associated with this balloon? that we haven t learned yet. that will be part of the questioning here. we re waiting for some official statement or some official acknowledgment from the pentagon. so far this is only coming from u.s. officials who have confirmed the steps taken to shoot down the balloon and confirmed that president biden had approved this. let me take a quick look and check email and see if there s any more information at this point. it doesn t look like there is, but obviously we re waiting for more information and we ll pass that along as it comes in. the specific method of taking down the balloon is unclear, but the order was given by biden. officials say it was presented and supported by military leadership, so now it s more about what we can learn about that process and what we can learn about what was on the balloon itself. oren lieberman, thank you so much. we ll allow you to get back to your sources and re
minutes. so then they re going to have to collect it. so i would imagine it s possible that the stop might be expanded. mary, stand by. i want to bring in cnn s natasha bertrand because earlier we heard a posting from the president when he was spontaneously asked i mean, these are live pictures right now. he s been in syracuse, new york, and he is momentarily going to be departing. but it wasn t that long ago that the white house press pool asked him what are you going to do about this balloon, and he says, we ll take care of it, if i m quoting properly. and now, not long after that, we re hearing about this temporary flight restriction in place, 20,000 square miles impacted. what can you tell us about the information, the tidbit of information that the president was allowed to get out when asked that question, and even still we re waiting for details about what is going to happen?
president joe biden. this is a very interesting area as well, because this is not too far away from some really key military bases where many fast fighter jets are placed. that includes norfolk where the navy has a station there, super hornets, and the f-22 out of joint base langley and this is a strategic move as well. although the goal was by the faa to essentially protect the airspace below this apparent shoot-down. this balloon was cruising at an altitude of 60,000 feet, which is very high. it s about twice the altitude of a commercial airliner. usually between 30,000 and 40,000 feet. and they wanted to protect that area off the coast of north and south carolina to make sure that if any debris was to fall from this, it would not fall on airplanes below. there is still a bit of a trickle-down here, apparently, according to the latest alert from the faa, that the ground
need to get this. he said he was out there. i m, like, can you live stream it? i don t know if he got the video or not. hopefully he did. well, extraordinary timing and you had the wherewithal to get on the 15th floor of a building, of a hotel in order to get the best vantage point as a photographer. that s part of the craft, right, looking for the best vantage point. you couldn t know when it was going to happen. but then you re saying you saw it with your own eyes, the strike, and the disintegration of the balloon. we still would love to see your images when you have them uploaded. caller: i do have photos of it. i just didn t catch the full video of it actually striking it. we still would love to see those images of what you were able to get after that balloon was pierced. travis, thank you so much for joining us. really appreciate it. i want to bring in jim sciutto, on the line with us.