specifically and we don't want to see them dock anywhere in this hemisphere. we've been very clear about that. but there was no specific ask made of brazil. that's a sovereign decision. >> i want to follow the question i sasked you in september. in light of the chinese spy balloon incident, does this administration think the purchase of land near national bases are considered a security threat? >> we are always concerned about potential foreign collection near or around our military sites. you're right, last week is a good example of that. we take that seriously, whether that's terrestrial related or whether it's from the air and i think i'll just leave it at that. >> would you work with congress to put in place legislation to prevent that kind of -- >> we are always willing to work with congress to address our

national security interests and threats as best we can. >> thanks, admiral. >> real quick, is there a timeline for recovery of this object? >> you'd have to talk to the pentagon, i don't know. guys, again, this just happened in the last hour and a half and they're still assessing where this thing landed and the degree to which they can get to it. >> on the poland visit, i know in the statement that you put out, it says that the president is going to meet with leaders of the eastern flank countries. are any other european leaders, nato leaders expected to join the president on this trip? >> we're still putting the agenda together. the predominant reason is to talk to those nations who are literally on the eastern flank of the nato alliance. but i can't rule in or rule out there may be additional attendees that the president may have. >> thanks very much. back to lula, is there going to

be any commitment to the amazon fund by the united states during this visit? >> let's have the visit occur here shortly and we'll provide you a readout. i don't have anything specific on that. >> so, john, the u.s. special presidential coordinator for global and infrastructure energy is in angola and met with president lorenzo. can you elaborate on this visit? >> i don't have any information on that. we'll see if we can get you a better answer. >> was the president briefed on the object last night when it first came to our attention? >> he was. as soon as the pentagon had enough information, they did that. >> last question. >> thank you, john. as far as ukraine is concerned, one year now, does the president

believe when prime minister modi told president putin to stop the war, do you think there's still time for prime minister modi to stop the war or convince president putin? >> i think there's still time for mr. putin to stop the war. i think there's still time for mr. putin to stop the war. >> do you think prime minister modi convince? >> i'll let the prime minister speak to whatever efforts he's willing to undertake. i want to stress it again. certainly the united states would welcome any effort that could lead to an end of hostilities in ukraine that are in keeping with president zelenskyy's directives and his leadership and determination of what is acceptable to the ukrainian people. nothing about ukraine without ukraine. so president biden has said

this, gosh, dozens of times. we think this war could ending today, should end today. the single person responsible for what the ukrainian people are going through is vladimir putin. and he can stop it right now. instead, he's firing cruise missiles into energy and power infrastructure and trying to knock out the lights and knock out the heat so the ukrainian people suffer even more than they already have. he can endin it right now. and since he's not willing to do that, clearly, we have to make sure we can help the ukrainians succeed on the battlefield so when president zelenskyy determines it's time to negotiate, he can do it with the strongest hand possible. >> 4 billion people in india are waiting for president biden to welcome when is the next trip -- >> i don't have any travel to announce. >> all right. there is a lot there. the breaking news that the

president ordered the downing of another, as it's described, high altitude object. the description from john kirby there at the white house, much smaller than the chinese spy balloon of just a few days ago. remember, that one was the size of three buses. this described as the size of a small car. right now they don't know if this is owned by china or state owned by some other country, privately owned, owned by a corporation, but they say that the fighter jets got close enough to determine it was unmanned. it was nonmaneuverable but flying at about 40,000 feet. there is a lot to talk about. let's bring in christiane amanpour, phil mattingly, natasha bertrand, kylie atwood and retired colonel cedric leighton. also a founding member of the global security consulting firm.

let me start at the white house with you, phil. this breaking news was not in the prepared remarks from john kirby. he went through the trip to poland and the president of brazil coming and other details about support for turkey and syria, but only in response to a question about a rumor was this disclosed. >> yeah, victor, the confirmation of the trip to poland was supposed to be the breaking news of this press conference. you laid it out. this was not in prepared remarks. i think to some degree that underscores how quickly this came to pass over the course of the last hour. i think the timeline here is important as well. when you track back, they said that they received information about this unidentified object last night. the president was briefed shortly thereafter. fighter jets ended up flying next to this object, first last night, then again this morning. and the big difference here between -- well, there are a lot of differences between the

chinese spy balloon and this object, also a significant number of questions, is where it was flying. it was flying at 40,000 feet. the spy balloon was 60, 65, 70,000 feet. the 40,000 foot mark according to john kirby posed a threat to air traffic in the area. once that was determined, and as you noted they determined it was an unmanned flight, the pentagon recommended and president biden gave the order this morning to down the object. it was downed about an hour, maybe 90 minutes ago. they do not have a lot of details on what that object is, besides the fact that it is significantly smaller than the alleged chinese spy balloon. they do not know if there is any intelligence collection equipment on that. they did assess it posed no imminent military threat to individuals on the ground but they also do not know who owned it. they don't know if it was a state actor, private owned, if it was commercial. so the big questions that are still outstanding will need to be answered and likely won't be

answered until recovery. it was shot down over water where the water is frozen. they are just starting the recovery process now. so a lot of unanswered questions. very clear differences from the balloon that was shot down literally just six days ago, but it's hard not to draw some comparisons here particularly given the fact that it was almost immediately ordered to be shot down, unlike the chinese spy balloon, victor. >> we of course are standing by for that news conference from the pentagon. we will bring that to you live. christiane, to you next. the first potential culprit you look at is china after the balloon that crossed the u.s. just a couple of days ago. john kirby says that he knows of no outreach to china and the latest reporting cnn has is that calls to china, outreach to china is going unanswered. >> yes, he did say that, particularly about military to military outreach. he said the defense secretary, lloyd austin, had tried very

hard to reach his chinese counterpart over the previous object, which was actually a surveillance balloon, but to no end. he never got through and could not discuss. but kirby also said that, yes, they do have an embassy there obviously and diplomatic outreach is something that does happen. i was struck by how for almost an hour kirby gave almost no information, was not going to be drawn on any comparisons from this high altitude object to the one that they shot down over -- off the east coast of the united states. clearly the pentagon is going to be able to recover the debris, because as we've said over and over now, the one thing we do know is that it was shot down over frozen water, ice. it is not going to sink to the bottom of the sea and it will be easily recoverable. i think that's really important. i would also say that at a time when there is very high tension, when this is all highly politicized as well within the united states, it needs a little

time to try to figure out exactly what it is. president lula of brazil is coming in the next 20 minutes to be received by president biden here at the white house. in an interview with me, he told me that he wants to reach out to his fellow brick presidents, i.e. china, russia and the others mostly on ukraine. but clearly he would have, if president biden talks to him about this, an opening to do so about this as well. so i think that's going to be interesting to see if he is going to try to bust through some of these unanswered phone calls. >> certainly. let's go to natasha bertrand. there's certainly a difference in the reaction from the white house and the military to this high-altitude object as it's described and the chinese balloon several days ago. the explanation we received from john kirby is that this one is not maneuverable, so that in

part justifies, also the height at which it was flying, 40,000 feet, the threat to civilian aircraft. >> yeah, victor. it's also unclear whether they would have been able to track the path of this particular object as they have been with the surveillance balloons. as we reported earlier, the u.s. has developed a method to track the chinese surveillance balloons but unclear whether they have the same kind of system for an object like this. it doesn't even sound like they are completely sure what the object is. also this object, according to john kirby, was at the mercy of prevailing winds so it was very unpredictable and unclear where it was actually going to go. interestingly he also mentioned that it had a very small payload. that is compared to the payload of the chinese surveillance balloon which was the size of three buses. this is only the size of a small car. so it sounds as though the u.s.

is concerned that this could pose a risk to civilian aircraft because it was flying at 40,000 feet, which is the height that civilian aircraft flies at, but also because they couldn't communicate with the object in any way and tell it to move in a certain direction or have a clear idea of where it was going to go so it seemed like this was the only option. there were a lot of questions about whether this was the new policy. if something unidentified enters u.s. airspace, is the president going to automatically have the pentagon come up with options to shoot it down. kirby said we should not draw conclusions the way the past two incidents were handled. >> natasha, let me interrupt here and go to the pentagon. >> i have a few things to talk about up top and then we'll get right to your questions. so, first of all, to add to information already provided earlier by the white house, at the direction of the president of the united states, fighter aircraft assigned to u.s. northern command successfully took down a high-altitude

airborne object off the northern coast of alaska at 1:45 p.m. eastern standard time today within u.s. sovereign airspace over u.s. territorial water. on february 9, north american aerospace command detected an object on ground radar and further investigated and identified the object using fighter aircraft. the object was flying at an altitude of 40,000 feet and posed a reasonable threat to the safety of civilian flight. u.s. northern command is beginning recovery operations now. u.s. northern command's alaska command coordinated the operation with assistance from the alaska air national guard, federal aviation administration and the federal bureau of investigation. we have no further details about the object at this time, including any description of its capabilities, purpose or origin. the object was about the size of a small car so not similar in size or shape to the

high-altitude surveillance balloon taken down off the coast of south carolina on february 4. separately, u.s. northern command continues their recovery operations in support of the recent takedown of the chinese high-altitude surveillance balloon. recovery teams have mapped the debris field and are in the process of searching for and identifying debris on the ocean floor. debris that's been recovered so far is being loaded onto vessels, taken ashore, cataloged and moved onwards to labs for subsequent analysis. while i won't go into specifics due to classification reasons, i can say that we have located a significant amount of debris so far that will prove helpful to our further understanding of this balloon and its surveillance capabilities. of note, due to less than favorable sea states right now teams will conduct underwater survey and recovery as conditions permit. the department wants to thank our interagency partners from the u.s. coast guard, the fbi and state and local authorities

for their continuing assistance and partnership. in other news, and i think this is important that we remember a lot of folks, people in turkey and syria right now are suffering. we want to, again, express our support for the people of turkey and syria as they respond to the deadly earthquakes that struck there earlier this week. in support of ongoing u.s. assistants efforts spearheaded by the u.s. agency for international development, u.s. european command has positioned personnel, equipment and a range of assets to aid the government of turkey in its continued search and rescue efforts. this includes the george h.w. bush strike group repositioning to the eastern mediterranean sea to provide logistics, medical and rotary airlift support if required. additionally there were missions flied on february 7 to transport first responders to the most affected populations. on february 8th, uh-60

blackhawks transported injured civilians to a local medical facility. they have designated uz naval forces europe and africa as the lead component command overseeing the humanitarian assistance and disaster relief efforts within turkey. to aid in that coordination andrew pretty, europe commander and second marine expeditionary general arrived february 9 to lead military coordination efforts with u.s. agencies involved in the humanitarian aid and disaster relief efforts. we'll continue to provide you with updates as we receive them. ucom will issue a press release with further details but again we offer our thoughts and prayers to the people of turkey and syria during this tragic and difficult time. secretary austin welcomed canadian minister of national defense for a bilateral meeting at the pentagon. he expressed his thanks for his

participation in tracking the prc high altitude surveillance balloon. during the meeting both leaders reaffirmed the close defense relationship between the united states and canada and a readout will be available later today on defense.gov. with that i will take your questions. >> hi. thank you for doing this. a couple of questions on this latest shootdown. first, what type of u.s. fighter aircraft were used, and what type of munition did they fire? do you already have navy assets or coast guard assets out involved in a recovery process? and then i have a few more. >> thanks, tara. so the aircraft that took down the object was an f-22 flying out of joint base elmindorf in alaska. it employed an a-9x to take down the asset.

in terms of recovery, we have hc-130, hh-60 and ch-47 aircraft participating in that recovery effort. >> okay. you mentioned there was a reasonable threat. was there also a threat to potentially this object detecting some of our more sensitive radar capabilities that are based in alaska? and then what hasn't been said is where this object has come from. is there any indication that this was also a chinese surveillance balloon, object, whatever it is? >> yeah, so at this point we don't know the origin of the object. again, we will know more once we're able to potentially recover some of those materials. but the primary concern again was the potential hazard to civil flight. and so, again, we'll know more later. >> no perceived threat to any of the radar installations that we have based in alaska?

>> again, right now -- we'll know more once we assess it and just leave it at that. thank you. liz. >> thanks for taking my question. what made this threatening enough to shoot down? what is different about this object than the last object that was over alaska, because it was chosen not to shoot the last one down over alaska. >> yeah, so the important thing to understand here is any time we detect anything, we're going to, first of all, observe it and then make a decision and take appropriate action. so you have to look at each individual case on its own merits. in this particular case given the fact that it was operating at an altitude that posed a reasonable threat to civilian air traffic, the determination was made and the president gave the order to take it down. >> was there a specific threat, a specific civilian air traffic incident that could have happened? >> again, as you well know,

civilian aircraft operate at a variety of ranges up to 40 to 45,000 feet so there was a reasonable concern that this could presenti a threat or potential hazard. >> has secretary austin reached out to his chinese counterpart or any other counterparts at all since this has been tracked? >> since this particular object? no. let me go here. >> what additional information you have now about the capabilities of that balloon? >> yeah, so we're continuing to assess that. again, i'm not able to go into more detail other than in addition to learning a lot about the balloon and the capabilities that it has while it was over the continental united states, we have identified or located a significant amount of debris on the ocean floor that will be

very beneficial to us learning more about it. >> is there a manufacturing label on these or the balloons indicate they're all manufactured in china? >> again, i don't have details. >> 39 other countries have indicated they have seen balloons in their territory. r are you sharing the information from the pentagon to these countries or the capabilities of how you shot it down? >> in terms of what we're learning from these balloons, i know the state department has talked about this. certainly the department of defense plays a role so we'll work with our allies and partners to share information with our state department coll colleagues. >> first, did this object show any signs of maneuverability or propulsion? and then you and other pentagon officials made a big deal about how much intelligence was gathered by letting the other

one float across the united states and yet you shot this one down before entering the united states. is that the pentagon bowing to political pressure? was there nothing to gain from this one? >> again, we're going to judge each of these on their merits. no indication at this time that it was maneuverable, but again we'll know more. in terms of entering the united states, it did enter u.s. airspace and we took it down. >> did you get intelligence from this one as you did from the previous one? >> we're going to recover what we can from this and more to follow. >> and was the decision to shoot it down the pentagon bowing to political pressure from the hill? >> again, we're going to judge each of these on its own merits. it entered into u.s. airspace on february 9th. we sent up aircraft to assess what it was. the decision was made that it posed a reasonable threat to civilian air traffic. the president gave the order to take it down and we took it down. thank you. >> thanks for taking my

question. so a couple of questions. first of all, has anything like this happened before with an object this size, this shape, in this particular height, the 40,000-foot range, has it happened before? and second of all, why did you -- can you say more about why you knew that last balloon or object was from china whereas this one you don't know? >> so in terms of this particular object, again, as i highlighted, we don't know where it's from. it posed a reasonable threat to civilian air traffic and so the determination was made to take it down. in terms of the other balloon, as i mentioned in our previous briefing, we have learned a lot about the chinese surveillance high-altitude balloon program. we've gathered a lot of information over the last couple of years and so we were able to, based on that information, detect at a very early stage as it approached u.s. airspace.

we had a good understanding of what it was. as i mentioned, we were able to monitor that closely, track it while it went over the continental united states, learn a lot about it and take it down at the appropriate time. >> so would you urge us to put this in a different bucket than that? >> yeah, i think i was pretty enclosure. this was traveling at about 40,000 feet which posed a potential reasonable threat to air traffic and the decision was made to take it down. >> when the pilot -- when the pilots approached it and they determined, i understand, that it was not manned, how did they determine that? and at that point, wouldn't it be possible to at least describe what they were looking at? did it resemble a balloon or an airplane or what? >> again, we'll know more and have more information once we've recovered this. i will give credit to our pilots that they are very capable in

terms of looking at an object, assessing whether or not this had the potential to be manned. at that altitude, something that small, very, very unlikely that it was manned. and so, again, no indication that it was manned, presented a potential reasonable threat to civilian air traffic and we took it down. >> what speed was it traveling at, by the way? >> i don't have that information. >> on the chinese blalloon, if e could go back, is it still in the pentagon's view plausible or likely that it was not intentional when that balloon turned and blew eastward, that it seemed to not -- had some technical problem? >> dan, what i would tell you is based on the information that we have, it was being maneuvered and purposefully driven along its track. again, recognizing that winds do

play a role. because of the maneuverability of the balloon, it's our assessment this was a purposeful mission. in terms of the chinese motivations, again, i'd have to refer you back to china to talk about that. >> we emailed you police body camera footage showing a national guard general in ohio pushing my colleague and having to be escorted away from him this week. we asked the ohio national guard for comment. do you as a spokesperson for the department of defense condone such conduct by a commissioned officer of the u.s. military against an american journalist. >> let me be clear, the answer is no, that's not acceptable behavior. the secretary of defense, the department of defense absolutely supports, strongly supports a free and independent press.

so again, i'd refer you to the ohio national guard for any comments about that particular incident. but i can assure you that that is not acceptable behavior. >> face any kind of conduct unbecoming charge -- >> i'd have to refer you to them. i'm not going to -- i'm not going to make those kind of policy comments here from the podium in terms of what they may or may not be doing to address it. it would be inappropriate for me to comment on that. let me go to nancy. >> i just had a couple of clarifying questions. you said that the pilots were able to see it, that it wasn't the same shape or size of the balloon. can you say definitively it was not a balloon? >> i don't -- at this point considering the fact that we're still assessing the object, i don't want to get into characterizing it. so just leave it at that. >> you mentioned you didn't know

how fast it was traveling. can you say if it was traveling faster or slower than the balloon? >> i don't have that information so i don't want to make it up. >> did anyone within the administration try to contact their chinese counterparts before the decision was made to shoot it down? >> in terms of when you say the administration, if you're referring to the white house, i'd have to refer you to them. the department of defense to my knowledge did not. again, we don't know the point of oerigin of this object. >> and was there any effort to jam or somehow disable this object before? >> i don't want to get into specific tactics or techniques that we may or may not use when observing these types of things. again, norad sent up aircraft to observe to see what it was and then the ultimate decision was made based on the reasonable threat to civilian air traffic to take it down.

thank you. tony. >> couple of things. you mentioned you recovered a significant -- or located a significant amount of debris. is it fair to say you've located a significant amounting of the payload? >> you're talking about the high-altitude balloon. >> the one today. >> at this point i'm not able to go into more detail other than what i would describe we've discovered or located a significant amount of the debris associated with the balloon. again, we'll have more details to follow. >> located, but you haven't recovered and pulled out of the ocean for forensic analysis, is that right? >> great point. so the way to understand how this is unfolding is as we map out the area where the debris field would be, it enables us to figure out where are the places that we need to prioritize the search, recognizing we're talking a wide area.

as that happens, divers are available to go down. depending on the size of the debris, they're able to tag it. so debris that can be brought up quickly, it is plot up, put on a vessel an taken ashore. debris that is going to take more time, especially given the current sea states it may take a little longer. we know where it is so we tag it and we'll go back and bring it up. >> you founding the titanic but haven't pulled up the debris. >> exactly. >> you've learned a lot about the balloon program yet the annual china report doesn't have a peep about balloons in there. you spent a lot of money and effort but no balloons. we learned about taiwan and china's balance of power but no balloons. why not? >> on the unclassified china power report, there's going to be certain elements, intelligence aspects in the unclassified version that may

not be included in that particular report. in terms of what's in that report and what's not in that report, again, we can go back and look at that, but i can assure you that there are a lot of activities that we continue to monitor to include this balloon program, and we've learned a lot the last couple of years. [ inaudible question ] >> i'd have to go back and look. i do not know the answer to that. let me get a couple other folks here. mike. >> the only reason the american people know about the first balloon is because a couple of guys in montana spotted it and it leaked out. my question is if it had remained secret and did not become a spectacle and arguably appear embarrassment to the white house, would you have shot it down or allowed it to continue on its way. >> you're asking me to speculate? so, mike, i'll push back a little bit at the assertion. first of all, what made this balloon different was the length

and duration that it was over the continental united states. look, we track activities all over the globe on a daily basis. some of which will remain classified because, again, we don't want to reveal sources and methods. in this particular case i can tell you that there were efforts under way to make that public. montana journalist reporting notwithstanding. all that to say, look, there's going to be times when there's activities happening that we're monitoring that we're not going to go public, especially if it doesn't pose a significant threat to the american public. but again, as we monitored that balloon, there was an effort under way to ensure that folks understood what this was, especially given how visible it was. i'll just stop there. thank you. yes, ma'am. >> thank you, general.

first, a really quick follow-up on tony's question. at this point is the pentagon reassessing the need for counterballoon or counterobject capabilities at that altitude at this time? >> what i would tell you is not -- in the air force sometimes we talk about don't get platform specific. so what we're talking about is monitoring the domain and having domain awareness. as i highlighted a couple of days ago, probably last week, we're continuing to learn more and more about this program which allows us to identify and track objects, and thus ensure that we're continuing to protect our skies and our airspace. >> thank you. and then real quick, first, do you and admiral kirby know the shape of this new object? and if so, what is sort of the reason for why you can't share its shape before it was shot down? and then separately, how is the

recovery efforts of this new object downed over ice different from the one used over the coast water and are you using unmanned systems with this new object as well? >> in terms of the shape, i don't know. i have not seen any imagery of it. i'm just telling you the verbal characteristics as described to me. in terms of the difference in the recovery effort, again, this was literally an hour and a half, two hours ago, so that's under way right now, so more to follow on that front. right now i think they're moving to the site. we'll have more to follow in the days ahead. let me go to a few other folks here, sorry. some new folks back here and then over here to mike. >> the object was spotted yesterday. is that the first that we saw it? or did we see it coming in a couple of days before? >> no, it was spotted yesterday. >> and follow up, did what we --

what we learned about the first balloon last week, did that help us detect this object? >> i would say that, again, we detect -- when we detect objects -- let me just back up. what you're asking is did what we learned from the prc balloon help us track this. kind of a little bit of apples and oranges. in terms of norad north com tracts objobjects. so they tracked this. we're still assessing what this object was. i don't know that we learned anything new as a result of that other than, again, i think we're all, to include the media and the public, very attuned to balloons at the moment. so thank you. yes, sir. >> thank you, sir. and just to clarify, so this was

first identified when it flew into u.s. airspace, is that correct? or was it identified before? >> it was detected yesterday, and again norad sent up aircraft to observe it, see what it was, and the decision was made to take it down. >> do you have any information whether this object flew over any other sovereign nations or countries? >> i do not. do not. i have time for a few more. let me go to joe. >> question about the recovery effort. i think you had mentioned at the outset that it was going to involve rotary wing aircraft. that's because it landed on ice as opposed to water, that's why there's watercraft being used is it? >> yeah, joe. we'll get you more information on that front. again, this happened just a short while ago, and so according to north com, these are the assets that were being used to go out and do the initial recovery. but we'll have more information

in terms of the various roles and responsibilities. >> just to get down in the weeds for a second, any idea what units are involved in the recovery effort our the f-22 that shot it down? >> we can get you that information. thanks. phil. >> hey there, just a couple of clarification questions. first off, when you first identified it, was it traveling at the same altitude, around 40,000 feet? did you at that point know its velocity? and secondly, doesn't north com have the authority on its own to shoot down unidentified objects entering u.s. airspace if they pose a threat to civilian air traffic? if so, why was the president's authorization required in this case? >> yeah, thanks. so my understanding is that it was at 40,000 feet when it was detected and ultimately taken down. the norad north com commander does not have the authority necessarily to take down an object if it's not posing a

potential hostile intent or actions. however, given the fact that this aircraft was -- or, excuse me, this object was operating at an altitude that posed a reasonable threat to civilian air traffic, after consultation with the secretary and the president and of course the president on our advice gave the order to take it down and we took it down. >> to clarify, is his authorization required in a situation like this? >> again, it's kind of a moot point at this point because the president gave the order. but he has the authorization to take action against anything that presents a potential threat to the american public or people on the ground. in this particular case it was determined that this posed a reasonable threat to air traffic. again, i'll just leave it at that. thanks. tara. >> just a couple of clarifiers.

was it a single f-22 or a pair that were up today for the shot? and then when the -- when norad sent the initial aircraft up to see, was there any sort of hailing or any type of warning given typically when an aircraft makes an incursion into an airspace, there's a whole lot of procedures that need to be followed before it would escalate to something like this. >> well, this was an object so it wasn't an aircraft per se. it was a twoship of f-22s but one aircraft took the shot. we've got time for one more. i'll go to liz. >> really quick. when it was started to be tracked last night, were you able to tell what direction it was coming from? >> this was travel in a northeasterly direction when it was taken down. >> one more. the aircrafts that were observing it, what type of

aircrafts were those? >> i'll have to come back to you. i think i know but i don't want to make it up from the podium so we'll come back to you on that one. okay, thank you very much, everybody. appreciate it. >> brigadier general pat ryder there, spokesman at the pentagon. i think we learned some important details here about this high-altitude object that was just shot down. the first one i highlighted in my notes is that it was shot down at 1:45 p.m. so under two hours ago this at the president's order was shot down near alaska. we also learned some details about when it was first discovered. first discovered last evening and then they decided that this object, they're not calling it a balloon and not saying it isn't a balloon was taken down just about an hour and 50 minutes ago. let's bring back natasha bertrand, kylie atwood, cedric leighton and mike lyons.

colonel, the details that we're getting do not answer the big questions, what exactly it is, who is the owner of this object, considering that they knew about it last night, only shot it down less than two hours ago and they have not yet retrieved that. should we know more now? should they know more than they do? >> well, victor, it's in this particular case probably not. there's always the fog of war and in this case the fog of the incident. what we're dealing with is a situation where in the wake of the balloon incident that happened just six days ago or so, now we're looking at something that's very -- perhaps a little bit different but what similar. so out of an abundance of political caution, the craft was taken out because it posed -- as general ryder said, it posed a threat to civilian aircraft and could possibly have also been

some type of a collection platform. we don't know that yet, but they decided they didn't want to take this chance again. as a result, we have what we have at the moment. >> kylie atwood to you. the question of who's responsible. the words that still stick with me are from john kirby and he said i have no idea who owns this. what do you know about the efforts happening right now potentially to find that out? of course the first country that most people think of is china, considering that blalloon that just passed over the u.s. a couple of days ago. >> yeah, that's right. i think there is a widespread effort to figure out where this came from and who owns it. multiple officials saying today from the white house and the pentagon, the u.s. doesn't know if this is state owned or privately owned. so they're really trying to figure out who owns this and where it came from, because they first detected it just yesterday when it came close and then into

u.s. airspace. i do think that there's one significant thing to point out here, which is that with the chinese spy balloon, there was a number of contacts between u.s. diplomats and chinese diplomats before the biden administration took the move to shoot it down off the coast of south carolina. the fact that there hasn't been any back-and-forth with china according to the white house on this does indicate that perhaps they don't think it is chinese owned, but of course they aren't counting out anything right now. what we'll be watching for is the contacts, particularly on the diplomatic front, to inform allies about what happened here and try to work with partners that we share intelligence with to figure out what those countries might know that could help us, in addition to what's going to be this effort on the ground. this obviously went down over -- this was over frozen water, so it's going to be a very

different excavation effort, but that will probably be their best shot to figuring out the answers to many of these questions we don't know right now. >> let's bring in oren liebermann. oren, the pentagon and also at the white house very careful not to describe this balloon. in part general ryder said because he does not know. we're learning that it is not similar in size or shape to that chinese surveillance balloon that was shot down last week. what stood out to you from what we just heard from the pentagon? >> significant differences in si simply how they describe this. the previous object was the length of three buses. the balloon 200 some feet tall. nothing near that size in terms of the object shot down. brigadier general pat ryder was very careful not to describe this in any way other than it was a small car size object and it was unmanned. there wasn't much beyond that as

far as how it was moving, did it have any propulsion or moveability. frankly what it looked like despite the fact u.s. fighter jets and fighter pilots had eyes on this and then what it was doing. right at the end of the press conference, the pentagon said it was moving in a northeasterly direction. it had been spotted yesterday and they kept an eye on it since then. eventually the decision was made to shoot it down. it had been roughly at the same altitude throughout the time the u.s. had eyes on it, so with 40,000 feet, which is the upper edge of commercial air traffic. and that brigadier general pat ryder said is why the decision was ultimately made to shoot this down. one of the key questions we asked, the pentagon made a big point of this, ryder himself and others as well, that there was a benefit to having the other balloon fly across much of the continental united states in terms of intelligence dpgatheri. if that's the case, why was this one shot down so quickly because

the pentagon described in great terms how much intelligence they gained from the previous balloon. in this case the pentagon simply said every decision on every different object will be decided on an individual basis. in this case possibly because of the threat to civilian aircraft, the decision was made to shoot this one down. right at the endi we got into te question of the authorities to carry out something like this. the north com commander would generally have the authority to call a fighter jet to take out an unidentified balloon over u.s. airspace. but ryder said because this doesn't pose an imminent threat to national security, the decision went up to the president and joe biden gave his approval in that case. also worth noting if you were listening to the press conference, it was the same type of aircraft and same type of missile that was used to shoot this object down. >> major lyons, certainly we're trying to get as many details about this object and the decision to take it down as

possible. can we just zoom out for a minute. this is the second time in, what, ten days now that an object has been discovered in u.s. airspace. the first one a chinese spy balloon shot down. still so many questions about this one. what's your reaction to the breaking news that we just learned minutes ago, and now just two hours ago this thing was shot down? >> well, victor, it tells me that they have changed their protocol. the fact that they're going to notify the administration or put the message out up front and quickly decide and engage these targets. in a post-9/11 world that's really the only thing they can do. that comment the pentagon makes about we wanted to see the last spy balloon travel across the united states and get intelligence from it just frankly doesn't pass the red face test. so i think this is a message that they're sending out to the world that we've got dough main capability now to see this. it was at 40,000 feet, that was commercial airliners.

when the norad commander last week said the last balloon showed some domain weaknesses, that's a problem. we usually don't tell our enemies where those are. so this is going to be normal course of business if things violate our airspace. >> colonel, back to you. i'm going to ask you a question that i assume is tough to answer. based on the description we have, this is the size of a small car. it was about 40,000 feet. nonmaneuverable. and when people hear small car, don't think of the dense ity of car, just the size of it. is there anything that you think that this could be, likely is, we can rule out that this item was? >> yeah, that's a great question, victor. i think, you know, one of the possibilities might be that it is actually a weather balloon so

we can't rule that out completely. the key thing that i focused on was that apparently this object did not have the kind of connective capability that the balloon did. so that becomes a very different issue. and to what major lyons was saying, there is a big difference from an intelligence collection perspective. it actually is okay in some cases to collect the information, see how it actually talks to other entities. in this particular case you have a bit of a different situation where it didn't talk to anything, but you don't know what kind of a threat it poses except for the fact that you know it is a threat to commercial aviation. >> natasha, to you and the intersection of the military and politics here. i think oren's question is fair, considering that the argument to let the chinese balloon go across the country and then shoot it down, you can collect something from it, one has to

question the potency of the criticism of the administration for not shooting it down early on when it was discovered, that chinese blalloon, and if that influenced the decision today. >> it's an absolutely fair question, victor. i think we should recap a little bit all of the furor that's happened over the past week from republicans mainly that wanted to know from the biden administration why they didn't shoot down that first chinese spy balloon when they saw that it was on a path towards entering u.s. airspace. we know alaskan lawmakers in particular have been pretty angry for allowing this balloon to cross over alaska and then just deciding that they were going to watch and monitor it because they did not think that it would actually enter the lower 48. so that obviously has been taken by the biden administration. they have been listening to that criticism. it is completely unclear at this with that criticism in mind.

it's also important to note here that we still do not know whether this item or device actually has any kind of intelligence value. it was unmanned, so it didn't pose any kind of risk to any human being inside the object to shoot is down, but also it didn't pose any threats to -- appear to pose any threat to anyone on the ground, and it was traveling at an altitude that could have posed a threat to civilian aircraft. there was not as much of a choice here in what they were going to do as they had with the balloon which was traveling at around 65,000 feet and did not appear to pose a real threat to any civilians really either in the air or on the ground. so different situations here. i think it will be clearer once we actually are able to see during these recovery efforts what this is, whether it was the correct decision. >> yeah. we've also learned from the faa that they issued a temporary flight restriction in the area of deadhorse, alaska, as the military took that action, we're told at 1:45 p.m., to shoot down

this -- what's described as a high-altitude product. we'll bring in david singer, national security analyst. i want to bring that question to you. we heard from the brigadier general there that these are treated independently of one another, but does it appear to you that the reaction to this -- based on what we know, and there are still lots of questions -- the reaction to this object is potential a correction by the white house for its reaction to the chinese spy balloon? >> i think there probably was. it's hard to imagine that they necessarily would have shot this down had they not been through that experience. i think the most important thing we heard was that they didn't hear or see the kind of transmissions going on between this new object, you know, back to satellites and so forth, that they did a week ago with the balloon. and that tells you it may well not have been a spying

operation. it may well have been something else, a weather balloon or something else. so their rationale is threat to the aircraft. i'm not sure the rationale is the same as the reason for taking it down. >> let's talk about the rationale. bring in tom foreforeman. this was flying at 40,000 feet. i talked about the faa temporary flight restriction. talk about the importance of that elevation as we hear the justification for shooting it down. >> well, it's 10,000 and above where you would normally find a commercial jet flying. so it's sort on the edge there. flights are changing altitude for any reason. there can be concern about that. also, based on what we heard a short while ago, midoving northeast would have been moving out of u.s. air space, possibly into canadian or international airspace depending on exactly where it was, we don't know. we do know if they shot it down at the time they say that would have been around the time you really had early morning up in

this area. remember you're far up in the arctic there. you don't have terribly long days. they would have been shooting it down around first light. that would give them five, six hours or so, maybe longer when you consider the sort of twilight light that you get when you're up in the area this time of year, to look for it on the ground there. they say on the -- the sea. ice is the condition much of the year that goes out pretty far. so assuming they have a good idea where it came down from that 40,000, they do have several hours to get out there and track it down. although one caution in all that, it's minus 21 degrees fahrenheit right now. challenging conditions no matter how you look at it. >> challenging indeed. tom foreman, thank you for that. thank you, everyone. more breaking news -- another classified document found at mike pence's home. the latest ahead. shortening brand!ed highghly recommend it! zifans love zicam's unique zinc formula.

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this just in -- an fbi search of former vice president mike pence's indiana home turned up one document marked classified. the fbi agents there spent several hours searching penn's house in carmel, indiana. a spokesperson said six additional pages without nose classified markings were also removed from the vp's house. cnn has more. what more are you learning about there document? >> reporter: right now this document, we don't know what it is exactly, we don't know what level of classification it is. and we don't know why it wasn't discovered before in mike pence's indiana home. but we do know now that the fbi after an unrestricted search of that home outside indianapolis, they were there for five hours, and they did remove one classified document that was found today, plus an additional six pages of documents without classified markings on them. the fbi has taken that back and will be looking at it. right now all of this is coming because there is a lot of

attention being paid to former high-ranking officials of the federal government, why they may have documents in their possession after leaving office. obviously there's a criminal investigation around donald trump and documents kept at mar-a-lago after his presidency. joe biden having classified records in his private home in an office from his vice presidency. then the pence team, an attorney for mike pence had gone into the home out of abundance of caution and looked for documents found, about 12 in january. and so the fbi was expected to do a search like this today to make sure whether or not there were other classified records there, they went in, did the search, and did find an additional record now. the justice department at this time is going to have to make some decisions about what this means -- is everything secured now? are they going to be doing another search of an office of mike pence in washington, d.c.? that is expected in the coming days. and then of course what do they do now that they have found

additional classified material, is there going to be a criminal investigation here just as there is now with donald trump and as there is with joe biden, with special counsels looking at both of those situations. today we did get a statement from deaf ino'malley, spokesperson for mike pence, they've directed the legal team to continue with authorities and be fully transparent through the conclusion of this matter. they are putting out that information, and we are learning this has been a really big week for mike pence. he had some grandchildren born, and he also has been subpoenaed in a january 6th criminal investigation. a lot going on, victor. >> a lot, yes, there is. thank you so much for the reporting. president biden just weighed in on the unidentified object shot down over alaska. he says it was a success. earlier this afternoon the white house announced that the president will be going to poland ahead of the one-year anniversary of the war with ukraine, between russia an