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      Trump lawyers say Mar-a-Lago boxes contained foreign leader briefings

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      Donald Trump’s lawyers in the Mar-a-Lago documents investigation found the 15 boxes the former president returned to the National Archives a year after the end of his presidency mostly contained briefings for calls with foreign leaders, according to a new letter they sent to Congress.The majority of the letter – seen by the Guardian and earlier reported by CNN – served to characterize Trump’s retention of classified-marked documents as inadvertent, and due to White House staffers sweeping all documents into boxes during a chaotic departure at the end of the administration.But the 10-page letter that was sent to the House and Senate intelligence committees also revealed the order in which the documents were placed, as well as their contents, inside 15 boxes the National Archives struggled to retrieve for months and precipitated the criminal investigation.The investigation into Trump’s potential retention of national defense information and obstruction of justice led by special counsel Jack Smith is ongoing, though it may be near its end given prosecutors have subpoenaed almost everyone who conceivably could have knowledge of the matter.Trump’s two main lawyers involved in the documents investigation – Tim Parlatore and Jim Trusty – in late December last year formally asked the National Archives for access to the 15 boxes that Trump had returned through the relevant provision in the Presidential Records Act.The request was granted several weeks later, and Parlatore and Trusty went to one of the top floors in the main National Archives building overlooking the National Mall and started going through the boxes, which they found preserved just as when Trump had sent them up from his Mar-a-Lago resort.The boxes, according to the letter, contained a mixture of documents from the White House that were grouped by date and included newspapers, magazines, notes, letters and daily presidential schedules.Where there had been classified documents – which was what prompted the National Archives to first alert the justice department to start an investigation last year – officials had inserted placeholder pages that described the document that had been removed, the letter said.“That allowed Parlatore and Trusty to discern what the documents were, as well as what other materials in the boxes were in proximity … The vast majority of placeholder inserts refer to briefings for phone calls with foreign leaders that were located near the schedule for those calls.”The letter then described the ensuing criminal investigation as “misguided” because, in their eyes, the way the boxes were packed was indicative of White House staff pulling all documents into the boxes during a chaotic “pack-out” process at the end of the Trump administration.Left unsaid was that the criminal investigation has evolved since the initial referral.The obstruction part of the investigation is centered on Trump’s incomplete compliance with a subpoena last May that demanded the return of any classified-marked documents in his possession. That was after documents he returned earlier to the National Archives included 200 that were classified.Last June, Corcoran searched Mar-a-Lago and produced about 30 documents with classified markings to the justice department, and had another Trump lawyer, Christina Bobb, sign a certification that attested to compliance with the subpoena “based on the information provided to me”.But the justice department developed evidence that more documents that were marked as classified remained at the resort, according to court filings, and when the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago in August they found 101 documents marked as classified in a storage room and in Trump’s office.Last month, Corcoran was ordered by a senior US judge to testify and hand over his notes to the grand jury hearing evidence in the case, piercing his attorney-client privilege protections through the crime-fraud exception because Trump might have used his advice in furtherance of a crime.The special counsel is also investigating whether Trump violated the Espionage Act, and prosecutors have recently asked witnesses whether Trump ever showed a map to donors or a book author, a person familiar with the matter said. More

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      From Ellsberg to Assange: Jack Teixeira joins list of alleged leakers

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      Jack Teixeira, the 21-year-old Massachusetts air national guard member who was charged on Friday with leaking classified Pentagon documents, has joined a long list of individuals who have been prosecuted for allegedly disclosing sensitive US national security intelligence.Previous leaks have ranged from information about US wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan to details of Russian interference in American elections. Despite the diversity of the subject matter, the treatment of the leakers has shared a common relentlessness on the part of the US government in pursuing those it accuses of breaching its trust.Daniel EllsbergIn March 1971, Ellsberg, a military analyst, leaked a top-secret study to the New York Times. The document, which became known as the Pentagon Papers, spanned US involvement in Vietnam between 1945 and 1967 and exposed covert efforts by successive US presidents to escalate the conflict while hiding deep doubts about the chances of victory.Ellsberg was prosecuted under the 1917 Espionage Act – a law designed to catch first world war spies – and faced a maximum sentence of 115 years in prison. All charges were dropped after the FBI’s illegal wiretapping of Ellsberg was revealed.Early last month, the 92-year-old Ellsberg, who has become revered as the doyen of whistleblowers, revealed that he has terminal cancer and has months to live.Jeffrey SterlingSterling, a former CIA operations officer, served more than two years of a 42-month sentence after he was prosecuted under the Espionage Act for allegedly leaking information about a botched covert US operation with Iran to the then New York Times journalist James Risen. In 2003, Risen published details of the operation in a book, State of War.It was not until 2011, under Barack Obama’s administration, that Sterling was arrested. Federal prosecutors accused him of leaking details of the Iran engagement out of “anger and resentment” – a reference to an earlier claim from Sterling, who is Black, that he suffered discrimination while at the CIA.Sterling has denied ever talking to Risen about Iran.Thomas DrakeA former senior official with the National Security Agency (NSA), Drake was charged in 2010 with leaking classified information to the Baltimore Sun. He faced 10 counts with a possible 35-year sentence, though the charges were whittled down to a single misdemeanor for which he was given a year of probation.Drake has always insisted that he had no intention of harming national security, presenting himself as a whistleblower who had been trying to sound the alarm on technical flaws in NSA programs that were wasting billions of dollars.Chelsea ManningAs a former intelligence analyst posted outside Baghdad during the Iraq war, Manning had access to classified information that shone a light on the vagaries of war there and in Afghanistan. She leaked hundreds of thousands of military records and diplomatic cables via the open information site WikiLeaks in 2010 in one of the largest disclosures of military secrets in US history.Three years later, she was convicted under the Espionage Act. She was given a 35-year sentence, of which she served seven. In a memoir published last year, README.txt, she wrote: “What I did during my enlistment was an act of rebellion, of resistance, and of civic disobedience.”John KiriakouKiriakou, a former CIA counter-terrorism officer, was sentenced to two years in prison in 2012 for leaking the identity of a covert operative to a journalist. He was the first CIA officer to be imprisoned for doing so.Prosecutors insisted that they went after Kiriakou to protect the safety of undercover government agents. He countered that he was a whistleblower attempting to expose the use of torture in the so-called “war on terror”.Kiriakou was the first former government official to talk in public about waterboarding, the form of controlled drowning used against terrorism suspects in the aftermath of 9/11.Edward SnowdenIn 2013 Snowden disclosed inside intelligence about the US government’s dragnet surveillance of the digital communications of millions of Americans through the Guardian and Washington Post. Working at the time as an NSA contractor, he fled to Hong Kong and from there to Russia, where he was granted asylum.After he outed himself through the Guardian, a raft of Republican politicians demanded that Snowden be extradited back to the US to face trial as a traitor. Donald Trump called for his execution three years before he was elected US president.In his support, a number of prominent public figures, including Ellsberg, have lauded Snowden as a pro-democracy hero who should be allowed to come home with a pardon.Reality WinnerThe former NSA intelligence contractor and air force linguist was sentenced to more than five years under the Espionage Act in 2018 for leaking a top-secret document on Russian interference in the US presidential election. She pleaded guilty to having handed a copy of a classified report about Russian hacking of voting software suppliers in the 2016 race.She was released after three years. Having regained her freedom she told CBS: “I am not a traitor, I am not a spy. I am somebody who only acted out of love for what this country stands for.”Julian AssangeThe WikiLeaks founder was initially charged in 2019 with conspiring to hack into a military computer – an accusation arising out of the massive leak by Manning to WikiLeaks nine years earlier. The seriousness of prosecutors’ case against him was dramatically expanded later that year to include 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act.Assange has been held for the past four years in Belmarsh prison in London as extradition proceedings work their way through British courts. The Joe Biden White House has come under mounting pressure to drop the charges, including from leading news outlets, on grounds that the prosecution is putting a chill on press freedom.Jack TeixeiraThe air national guardsman now finds his name added to the list. He was charged in a Boston federal court on Friday with two counts under the Espionage Act, each carrying a possible 10-year sentence.Prosecutors allege that they have evidence to prove that Teixeira unlawfully retained and transmitted hundreds of classified defence documents. The FBI has indicated that he enjoyed security clearance for sensitive intelligence marked “top secret/sensitive compartmented information”.The leak of the Pentagon documents is believed to have started on the social media platform Discord. Teixeira reportedly visited the platform over several years posting about guns, online games and racist memes, though any motive for the alleged leak remains obscure. More

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      John Bolton chose not to brief Trump on Russia Havana syndrome suspicion

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      John Bolton chose not to brief Trump on Russia Havana syndrome suspicionFormer national security adviser tells podcast ‘we didn’t feel we would get support’ from president during Russia investigationDonald Trump’s third national security adviser, John Bolton, did not brief the president on suspicions Russia might be behind mysterious “Havana syndrome” attacks on US diplomats because he did not think Trump would support him.‘Havana syndrome’ not caused by foreign adversary, US intelligence saysRead more“Since our concern was that one of the perpetrators – maybe the perpetrator – was Russia,” Bolton said, “we didn’t feel we would get support from President Trump if we said, ‘We think the Russians are coming after American personnel.’”Bolton makes the startling admission in an interview for an episode of a podcast, The Sound: Mystery of Havana Syndrome, hosted by the former Guardian journalist Nicky Woolf and released on Monday.Bolton was national security adviser from April 2018 to September 2019, a period of intense scrutiny on Trump’s relations with Russia, primarily via special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian election interference and links between Trump and Moscow.Mueller issued his report in April 2019. He did not prove collusion between Trump and Moscow in his 2016 election victory over Hillary Clinton but the former FBI director did secure indictments of figures close to Trump and lay out extensive evidence of possible obstruction of justice.Trump angrily rejected allegations of wrongdoing and claimed to be the victim of a witch-hunt. But he also closely courted Vladimir Putin, even seeming, in Helsinki in July 2018, to side with the Russian president against his own intelligence agencies.“Havana syndrome” refers to the investigation of more than 1,000 “anomalous health incidents” involving diplomats, spies and other US government employees around the world. The first cases emerged in 2016.Symptoms have included brain injuries, hearing loss, vertigo and unusual auditory sensations. Speculation about directed energy weapons has persisted, though earlier this month an official report said “available intelligence consistently points against the involvement of US adversaries in causing the reported incidents”.Havana syndrome got its name because, as Bolton told The Sound, “the first reports came from Cuba [so] it would not be unreasonable to say the Cubans were doing it”.But, he said, “it becomes counterintuitive pretty quickly. If they wanted to keep the American embassy open, you wouldn’t attack it. That tended to show that it was some other government. And a government with more capabilities than we thought the Cubans had.”The Trump administration cracked down on Cuba anyway, returning it to the “state sponsor of terror” list, ending a diplomatic thaw begun by Barack Obama. Bolton, a famous rightwing foreign policy hawk, told The Sound he favoured taking that step anyway, regardless of the origin of the Havana syndrome attacks.He also said he and other national security staffers “felt that because it was possible – not certain, but possible – this emanated from a hostile foreign power and we had our ideas who that might be … we thought more needed to be done to consider that possibility and either find evidence to rule it in or rule it out”.If the attack theory was real, Bolton said, there was “no shortage of evidence that would point to Russia as … at least the top suspect”.Nonetheless, he said, he decided not to take that suspicion to Trump.“Who knows what he would’ve said,” Bolton said of his decision not to brief Trump on his suspicions about Russia and Havana syndrome.“He might’ve said, ‘Do nothing at all.’ I didn’t want to chance that, because I did feel it was serious.”Trump fired Bolton in September 2019. The following year, Bolton released a book, The Room Where It Happened, in which he was highly critical of his former boss. Trump sought to prevent publication. Bolton has said he could run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 if it is a way to stop Trump, who he has called “poison” to the Republican party.Speaking to The Sound, Bolton suggested the decision not to brief Trump about suspicions about Russia damaged attempts to investigate the Havana syndrome mystery.“When you don’t have the ability to bring the hammer down and say, ‘Find the answer out,’ … it’s much easier for the bureaucracy to resist.”TopicsDonald TrumpJohn BoltonTrump administrationTrump-Russia investigationUS politicsUS national securityUS foreign policynewsReuse this content More

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      Three objects shot down by US jets may be ‘benign’ balloons, White House says

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      Three objects shot down by US jets may be ‘benign’ balloons, White House saysFlying objects could be commercial- or research-linked but US military admits first shot at object over Lake Huron missed Three unidentified objects shot down by US fighter jets since Friday may turn out to be balloons connected to “benign” commercial or research efforts, a White House official said on Tuesday.The US has not found any evidence to connect the objects to China’s balloon surveillance program nor to any other country’s spy program, national security council spokesperson, John Kirby, told reporters.‘Significant’ debris from China spy balloon retrieved, says US militaryRead more“We haven’t seen any indication or anything that points specifically to the idea that these three objects were part of the [People’s Republic of China’s] spying program, or that they were definitively involved in external intelligence collection efforts,” he said.Instead, a “leading explanation” may be that the objects were operated privately for commercial or research purposes, Kirby said, though no one has stepped forward to claim ownership.The unidentified object shot down by a US fighter jet over northern Canada on Saturday was a “small, metallic balloon with a tethered payload below it”, according to a Pentagon memo to US lawmakers obtained by CNN.The details about the mysterious object – one of three shot down by the US in an eight-day period after a suspected Chinese spy balloon traversed the US mainland and was brought down over the Atlantic Ocean on 4 February – come amid growing frustration over a lack of information from Joe Biden’s presidential administration.The object shot down over Alaska on Friday was the “size of a small car”, the memo states. It also warns against drawing hasty conclusions: “It should not be assumed that the events of the past few days are connected.”The object shot down over Lake Huron on Sunday was previously described as an “octagonal structure” with strings attached to it.“These objects did not closely resemble and were much smaller than the PRC balloon, and we will not definitively characterize them until we can recover the debris, which we are working on,” a national security council spokesperson told CNN.Also on Tuesday, Gen Mark Milley, the US’s highest ranking military official, acknowledged at a briefing in Brussels that the first attempt to shoot down the object over Lake Huron missed.The first missile “landed harmlessly” in the water while a second missile successfully downed the object, Milley said.“We’re very, very careful to make sure that those shots are in fact safe,” Milley said, according to the Associated Press. “And that’s the guidance from the president. Shoot it down, but make sure we minimize collateral damage and we preserve the safety of the American people.”US senators received a classified briefing about the objects on Tuesday. The briefers included an assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense and hemispheric affairs as well as Gen Glen VanHerck, commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or Norad, according to Politico.The information vacuum has fueled speculation about the origins of the unidentified flying objects detected and shot down over Deadhorse, Alaska; Yukon, Canada; and Lake Huron, Michigan, since Friday.At a press briefing on Monday, administration officials defended Biden’s decision to shoot down the objects and also attempted to bat back at least one strand of the conspiracy theorizing inspired by the spate of unidentified flying objects, or UFOs.“I know there have been questions and concerns about this, but there is no – again, no – indication of aliens or extraterrestrial activity with these recent takedowns,” the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said at a briefing on Monday. “I wanted to make sure that the American people knew that – all of you knew that – and it was important for us to say that from here because we’ve been hearing a lot about it.”Pressed on whether political pressure played into the decision to shoot down the objects, Kirby said: “There were very good reasons to do it … These were decisions based purely and simply on what was in the best interests of the American people.”The three objects shot down during the three-day period beginning Friday did not pose any threat to people on the ground, Kirby said, and were not sending communication signals.However, their altitude – significantly lower than the Chinese balloon from earlier – meant that they did pose a “very real potential risk to civilian air traffic”.TopicsUS newsUS politicsChinaUS national securityUS militarynewsReuse this content More

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      China has been spying on US and allies via balloon for years, White House says

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      China has been spying on US and allies via balloon for years, White House saysSurveillance program dated back to at least the Trump administration, which was oblivious to it, says John Kirby China has been operating a high-altitude balloon program spying on the US and its allies for many years, the White House said on Monday as it answered questions about a series of mysterious objects shot down by the US military over an eight-day period in North American airspace.The surveillance program, according to John Kirby, the US national security council spokesperson, dated back to at least the administration of Donald Trump, which he said was oblivious to it.What do we know about the four flying objects shot down by the US?Read more“It was operating during the previous administration, but they did not detect it,” Kirby said.“We detected it, we tracked it. And we have been carefully studying to learn as much as we can. We know that these PRC [People’s Republic of China] surveillance balloons have crossed over dozens of countries on multiple continents around the world, including some of our closest allies and partners.”The briefing took place amid growing criticism of the Biden administration for not revealing everything it knew about the unprecedented and extraordinary sequence of events beginning with the downing of a suspected Chinese spy balloon off the South Carolina coast on 4 February.Biden, Kirby said, directed a broad assessment of China’s intelligence capabilities when he took office. In response to recent events, Kirby said Biden had also now directed an interagency team “to study the broader policy implications for detection, analysis and disposition of unidentified aerial objects that pose either safety or security risks”.Kirby was unable to offer new details about the three most recent objects, including the missile strike on Sunday on an unidentified “octagonal” flying object above Lake Huron, Michigan, and other high-altitude objects shot down over Yukon, Canada, on Saturday and Deadhorse, Alaska, the day before.But he said that authorities would know more once debris had been recovered from remote locations and analyzed. He said all three were much smaller and at a lower altitude than the Chinese spy balloon, but their origin, composition and purpose remained unknown.“We assessed whether they posed any kinetic threat to people on the ground. They did not. We assessed whether they were sending communication signals. We detected none. We looked to see whether they were maneuvering or had any propulsion capabilities. We saw no signs of that,” he said.“[But] while we have no specific reason to suspect that they were conducting surveillance of any kind, we couldn’t rule that out.”He said all three were shot down in “an abundance of caution to protect the security, our security, our interest and flight safety”.The Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, suggested on Monday the objects were part of a “pattern” of surveillance of the US and its allies by China and Russia, and an American air force commander said the US military had spotted Chinese spy balloons in the Middle East in “the recent past”.‘It’s surreal’: search for mystery flying object rocks quiet Canadian lakesideRead moreCanada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau echoed those comments, saying: “I think obviously there is some sort of pattern in there. The fact that we are seeing this in a significant degree over the past week is a cause for interest and close attention.Trudeau said that Canadian authorities had deployed “significant resources” to attempt to recover the object shot down over Lake Huron.The Florida Republican Marco Rubio, vice-chairperson of the US Senate intelligence committee, claimed that unidentified aircraft had operated “routinely” over restricted American airspace for years.“This is why I pushed to take this seriously & created a permanent [unidentified aerial phenomenon] taskforce two years ago,” he said in a tweet.In a press briefing on Sunday, a senior air force officer said he could not eliminate the possibility of extraterrestrial activity. “I’ll let the intel community and the counterintelligence community figure that out. I haven’t ruled out anything at this point,” Gen Glen VanHerck, head of North American airspace defense command (Norad), said.But at the briefing on Monday the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said that the objects did not come from outside Earth. “There is no indication of aliens or terrestrial activity with these recent takedowns. I wanted to make sure that the American people knew that,” Jean-Pierre said.Melissa Dalton, assistant secretary of defense, echoed VanHerck, saying: “We have been more closely scrutinizing our airspace at these altitudes, including enhancing our radar, which may at least partly explain the increase in objects that we’ve detected over the past week.”Beside aliens, CBS’s veteran national security correspondent, David Martin, on Sunday said officials also apparently could not rule out whether at least some of the unidentified aerial objects which had been shot down were so-called sky trash.“Sky trash includes balloons that are put up by governments, that are put up by corporations, that are put up by research institutes, and probably just by private individuals, and not for nefarious purposes, but just to collect scientific data,” Martin said on CBS’s Face the Nation.“In the past, the US just hasn’t paid much attention to those balloons, but this Chinese balloon was a game-changer. And now, certainly, the Biden administration does not feel it can simply let these other objects pass through American airspace.”The Connecticut congressman Jim Himes expressed frustration with the White House on Sunday in an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press.“I have real concerns about why the administration is not being more forthcoming with everything that it knows,” said Himes, who like Biden is a Democrat.“In an absence of information, people will fill that gap with anxiety and other stuff. So, I wish the administration was a little quicker to tell us everything that they do know.”Stoltenberg told reporters on Monday in Brussels that he suspected the incidents were part of an ongoing strategy of spying by Nato’s rivals.“What we saw over the US is part of a pattern where China and also Russia are increasing surveillance activities on Nato allies,” he said, urging member nations to maintain vigilance.Lt Gen Alexus Grynkewich, commander of US air forces central, appeared to back up Stoltenberg’s assessment, telling reporters on Monday that Chinese spy balloons were spotted transiting the Middle East in the recent past, according to foreignpolicy.com.Meanwhile, Biden’s secretary of state, Antony Blinken, is reportedly weighing a meeting with his counterpart in China’s government, Wang Yi, at a three-day security conference in Munich scheduled to begin 17 February, according to Bloomberg. Blinken had postponed what would be the first visit to Beijing by a senior US diplomat since 2018 in response to the Chinese balloon’s intrusion.TopicsUS national securityUS militaryJoe BidenUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Mystery surrounds what exactly was object US jet shot down over Alaska

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      Mystery surrounds what exactly was object US jet shot down over AlaskaHigh-altitude object the size of a small car was downed on Friday but its owner and purpose have yet to be identified Questions remain a day after the US government said it shot down a high-altitude object the size of a small car along the north-eastern Alaskan coast on Friday afternoon.Though efforts by the navy, coast guard and FBI are under way to recover the object, officials had yet to identify its owner or purpose on Saturday.China ‘spy balloon’ wakes up world to new era of war at edge of spaceRead moreMeanwhile, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) confirmed to Canadian news outlet Global News that another “high-altitutde airborne object” has been detected over northern Canada Saturday. NORAD officials said that military aircraft are “currently operating from Alaska and Canada in support of [NORAD] activities”. American officials have not publicly commented on the airborne object seen near Canada.The separate object that was ultimately shot down near Alaska flying at an altitude of 40,000ft, about the same level as commercial planes, and was travelling at about 20 to 40 miles per hour before it was struck down. Officials say the object had flown over parts of Alaska but was heading toward the north pole before it was struck down. American radars first identified the object’s presence around 9pm Alaska time on Thursday evening. A US warplane ultimately shot it down about 1.45pm ET on Friday.Joe Biden briefly told reporters on Friday afternoon that the takedown of the object “was a success”, but the president did not offer any further details.At a White House press briefing on Friday, the national security council spokesperson, John Kirby, said the US military brought the object down “out of an abundance of caution”. Once spotted, officials quickly deemed the object a threat to civilian air traffic and ordered Alaska airspace to be temporarily closed.Fox News reported Saturday that an unnamed but senior US official confirmed to the network that the object was not detected until it had entered American airspace.The object, shot down in territorial waters, was unmanned, officials said.The object’s destruction in Alaska came after a tumultuous week for the Biden administration, which ordered the military to shoot down a high-altitude balloon from China over the Atlantic Ocean on 4 February.Officials have yet to publicly give further descriptions of the object that was travelling over Alaska besides its size, altitude and speed. Still, officials have been speculating in various reports about the nature of the object.One official told ABC News that the object was “cylindrical and silver-ish gray” and gave the “balloon-like” appearance of floating without “any sort of propulsion”. Another official from the Department of Defense told the New York Times that the object broke into pieces when it hit the frozen sea.After the Chinese balloon was shot down, images showed what appeared to be shreds of materials as it was fished out of the ocean.Brig Gen Pat Ryder of the Pentagon told reporters on Friday that officials “have located a significant amount of debris so far that will prove helpful to our further understanding of this balloon and its surveillance capabilities”.From the size comparison given by officials, the object that was flying over Alaska appears to be much smaller than the Chinese spy balloon. The confirmed balloon was described as being as big as two or three buses rather than a small car like the object over Alaska.The Alaska object was also flying at a lower altitude than the Chinese balloon, which had an altitude of 60,000ft – much higher than the level of commercial aircraft.The Republican senator Lisa Murkowksi of Alaska told NBC News on Friday that she was concerned about the threat posed by objects over her state’s airspace.“Quite honestly, the first line of defense is Alaska,” Murkowski said. “If it comes into Alaska airspace, if it comes into Alaska waters, we need to act.“We need to send the message and we need to be clear and unequivocal that we don’t tolerate this.”The appearance of the Chinese balloon over US airspace has caused a rift in the strained and delicate relationship between the Chinese and US governments. The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, postponed an upcoming trip to Beijing, which would have been the first visit to the country by a top American diplomat since 2018.Blinken said the spy balloon was “an irresponsible act and a clear violation of US sovereignty and international law that undermined the purpose of this trip”.Chinese officials have apologized and maintain that the balloon was a “civilian airship” used for weather research that went off course due to limited self-steering capabilities and that its entry into US airspace was unintended.Meanwhile, US officials say the balloon was carrying equipment that was capable of intercepting and geolocating communications.It “was clearly for intelligence surveillance and inconsistent with the equipment onboard for weather balloons”, a senior state department official said on Thursday. “It had multiple antennas to include an array likely capable of collecting and geolocating communications.”US officials say the balloon was part of a fleet that has been used to collect intelligence in more than 40 countries on five continents. They maintain that balloons went into US airspace at least three times during Donald Trump’s presidency and twice so far during Biden’s.Despite the technology carried by the balloon, the Pentagon said the balloons do not give China any intelligence-collecting capacity beyond existing technology, such as satellites.TopicsUS national securityThe ObserverUS politicsAlaskanewsReuse this content More

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      ‘Hot air’: Marjorie Taylor Greene in State of the Union balloon stunt

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      ‘Hot air’: Marjorie Taylor Greene in State of the Union balloon stuntRepublican extremist appears to reference Chinese surveillance dirigible by parading halls of Congress with white balloon Marjorie Taylor Greene appeared to tee up a State of the Union stunt on Tuesday, patrolling the halls of Congress with a large white balloon in reference to Republican criticism of Joe Biden over his handling of a flight over US territory by a Chinese surveillance dirigible.Now the Chinese ‘spy balloon’ is down, the question is: what was it for?Read more“Just an innocent white balloon everybody,” the Georgia extremist said, hours before Biden’s address to Congress, attempting to keep aloft the balloon saga which ended when it was shot down off the Carolinas on Saturday.Greene did not discuss the Pentagon disclosure that three Chinese balloons passed over the US during the presidency of Donald Trump, only for the Trump administration to fail to spot them.Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, told reporters earlier improvements to surveillance under Biden “enhanced our capacity to be able to detect things that the Trump administration was unable to detect”.Greene’s promenade with a balloon prompted widespread criticism.Bonnie Watson Coleman, a New Jersey Democrat, said: “She has to do something with all that hot air.”But Greene is nothing if not a dedicated conspiracy theorist and controversialist. Elected in 2020, she was ejected from committees for threatening behaviour in 2021 but last month restored to key panels as an ally of Kevin McCarthy, the new Republican speaker.President Biden: “Instead of making the wealthy pay their fair share, some Republicans want Medicare and Social Security to sunset. I’m not saying it’s the majority.”Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene: “Liar!” pic.twitter.com/OFUglFuBxC— CSPAN (@cspan) February 8, 2023
      US officials have explained that Biden wanted to shoot the balloon down three days before it was eventually popped with a missile, but was persuaded not to order the operation while it was over land, and might cause injury or destruction on the ground when brought down.China claims the balloon was for civilian meteorological research. Its downing stoked a confrontation with Beijing, as Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, cancelled a trip for talks.McCarthy – who has recently praised Greene – reportedly told Republicans not to plan any stunts in response to Biden’s speech.Greene did not have her balloon with her in the chamber. But she did make her mark when Biden accused Republicans of threatening social security and Medicare.“Liar!” Greene was seen to shout.TopicsState of the Union addressJoe BidenBiden administrationUS politicsUS CongressHouse of RepresentativesRepublicansnewsReuse this content More