As much of the political world took an interest in a Chinese surveillance balloon last week, the U.S. military made some news over the weekend, letting the public know that an F-22 raptor took down the balloon off the Carolina coast on Saturday, and efforts to retrieve relevant materials and intelligence were underway.
But that’s not all military officials said.
As Republicans insisted that such an incident wouldn’t have happened if Donald Trump were still in the White House, the Pentagon confirmed in writing that Chinese balloons “transited the continental United States at least three times during the prior administration.”
Some GOP officials preferred to ignore the revelations, but others pushed back aggressively. In fact, the former president, members of his team, and loyalists on Capitol Hill insisted that they knew nothing about the alleged incidents from Trump’s term.
The obvious response to the denials was understandable skepticism. After all, Team Trump hasn’t exactly earned a reputation for honesty and credibility. But as it turns out, some additional details came into slightly sharper focus yesterday. The New York Times reported:
The top military commander overseeing North American airspace said Monday that some previous incursions by Chinese spy balloons during the Trump administration were not detected in real time, and the Pentagon learned of them only later. “I will tell you that we did not detect those threats, and that’s a domain awareness gap,” said Gen. Glen D. VanHerck, the commander of the Pentagon’s Northern Command.
To be sure, there are a great many elements to this story that are far from clear. But the general added yesterday that U.S. intelligence had determined that some unexplained incidents from the Trump era were Chinese spy balloons based on “additional means of collection.”
That was an obviously vague phrase, but it sounded as if there were real limits as to what officials were prepared to say. Jake Sullivan, the Biden White House’s national security adviser, added that the United States “enhanced our capacity” in 2021 “to be able to detect things that the Trump administration was unable to detect.”
The Times’ report, which has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, added, “In 2021, the intelligence agencies announced an intensified effort to collect more and better data on unexplained incidents near military bases and exercises. While part of a long-term push, those efforts have dramatically increased the percentage of unexplained incidents the Pentagon and intelligence agencies have been able to identify.”
Why not acknowledge this sooner? Because “officials kept the information secret to avoid letting China know their surveillance efforts were uncovered,” according to the Times. In other words, if the reporting is accurate, U.S. officials were aware of some Trump-era incidents involving aerial intrusions, but they didn’t know what they were at the time. More recently, officials were able to review those incidents in new ways, applying improved techniques, and they determined that they were Chinese balloons. White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters yesterday that the Biden administration has “reached out to key officials from the previous administration and offered them briefings on the forensics that we did. And we expressed our willingness to walk them through what we learned.” Whether anyone from Trump’s team might be interested is unclear. President Joe Biden will deliver his second State of the Union address on Tuesday at 9 p.m. ET. Follow msnbc.com/sotu for live updates and analysis from experts and insiders.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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