so now here s what we know. the balloon is about 200 feet high, the pay load, which you saw suspended beneath it to gather intelligence was about the size of a jetliner. that debris, which is expected to include glass solar panels was spread out over the size of 15 football fields. may have included battery material, explosives that would detonate that vehicle. the pieces now on their way, some of them, to the fbi lab at quantico for analysis. so there s a lot of discussion about how this thing was brought down and whether or not it maximized our ability to understand what it was and what was in it. as i mentioned, we re watching the white house. the press briefing is john going. we re waiting for fresh answers about what happened up there, new reaction. china says there might be a further response merited for the united states from our taking this out of the sky over the weekend. today fox news spoke with the gentleman who disclosed that this was up there in the sky without
About climate change. they didn t want anybody to know about the balloon. civilians saw it and our same military leaders did nothing until it raced across our country. we re going to talk to mike pompeo about why they weren t alerted about that later this hour. quickly, i want to play this new sound from ned price at the state department. we just got this in. the prc knows what this was. the prc knows precisely why this was in our airspace. the prc knows precisely what this was doing over the united states and ultimately the prc knows why we did what we did. martha: craig, what do you think about that? what is your reaction to what he had to say? it s really important that we call out china s political geo gas lighting. this was not an unmanned aerial meteorological balloon. so i do give the administration credit for saying point blank this was a surveillance asset, directed specifically against as
Shoot the balloon down immediately. the president also directed the military, the intelligence community to collect against the balloon so we would learn more about china s capabilities and trade craft. at the same time, we protected against chinese intelligence, collection, because we knew exactly where the balloon was going. the military recommended taking the balloon down over water following the determination by military commanders that there was undue risk of debris causing harm to civilians while the balloon was over land in alaska, canada or the united states. the president directed the military to take the balloon down when it could be done with safety as we r americans lives and maximizing our abil load. shooting the balloon down over water wasn t just the safest option, it maximized the chance of recovering the pay load
What was the communication between the white house and the governor of alaska, for example? what was the communication between the white house and justin trudeau while it was over canada? the dynamic that changes everything is when this photographer, who used to work for a billings newspaper takes a picture of it out of the sky and notifies the department of defense. so if it hadn t been for that, do you think that antony blinken would have been on his way to china and the white house hoped nobody knew about it? probably so. you heard about it. the president was authorizing the military to develop plans to shoot it down no later than the 31st of january. why is that important? because operation noble defender, which was a joined exercise in the canadians and the americans ran from january 15 to january 31. so the balloon is making its way over the aleutian islands and canada in the weekend before the end of this exercise. they were demonstrating the
well, you ve just seen tensions increase. it started with russia invading ukraine, them being allies. taiwan. now it s the balloon. farmland. we ve seen an increase in tensions and it s been on the chinese side. it s tough for a municipality figure that out but we watch the news like everybody else. thanks, mayor. there s a big rethink going on in towns like your and grand forks and across the country about whether or not we knee to decoupele from china and to bring jobs here is getting a huge second look. mayor, thank you very much. good luck to you. sandra: thank you. martha: this chinese spy aircraft reportedly took flight also during the trump administration by former officials that served in that administration say they re just finding out about it now. so why would that be? former secretary of state mike pompeo explains after this.