The Biden administration reportedly planned on not telling the public or the U.S. Congress that a Chinese spy balloon had crossed into U.S. airspace earlier this year.
Gen. Glen VanHerck, the head of the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, alerted Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, about the existence of the balloon and the U.S.’ efforts to track it for more than a week.
By this point, the balloon had already crossed over U.S. airspace when it flew over Alaska, NBC News reported. The news set off panic in the Biden administration, which scrambled for more than a week to figure out what they were going to do in response.
The report said that Biden officials were privately “complain[ing]” about “the political outcry over the balloon” because they did not view a balloon that was designed to collect intelligence on sensitive U.S. military sites as being a serious “threat” to U.S. national security, the report said.
Biden officials…