♪ ♪ good day. i'm chris jansing live at msnbc headquarters in new york city. never before has norad had to shoot a mysterious object out of

the sky, but they've now had to do it four times in less than two weeks. what the heck is going on? is today the day the white house gives the public some answers. dramatic video out of turkey where this woman was pulled from the rubble after spending 175 hours buried alive. she's not the only one. the stories that are providing flickers of joy in the midst of an escalating catastrophe coming up. nikki haley is poised to become the first republican to take on donald trump and she won't be the last. it's one thing to run. who is ready to actually go after the former president who is already in attack mode. lots to get to. we start with the extraordinary developments in the sky above the u.s. pentagon and military officials are scrambling to answer the question the entire country is asking. what are those unidentified objects we keep shooting down including three in the last three days. we're hoping to get more answers from the white house briefing

set to get under way any minute. spokesman john kirby will be part of that, and we'll have it for you live. in the meantime, national security officials say they still don't know what those objects were. in part because, officials say, they haven't even gotten to the remote scenes of the shoot-downs. while the first object downed over south carolina was clearly a balloon, the last three are being described only as objects. norad isn't even sure how they stayed in the air. kirby said this morning we shouldn't assume they are a threat. >> there could be completely benign and totally explainable reasons for why these objects are flying around out there. certainly don't have to be nefarious at all. there are corporate entities that operate these things, academic research institutions that do this sort of thing. we just don't know. >> joining me right now, nbc's tom costello, nbc's ali vitali is on capitol hill and "new york

times" chief white house correspondent peter baker is with us. he's also an msnbc political analyst. tom, tons of questions, not a lot of answers so far. what's the latest on what we actually do know about these things? >> well, what we know is these objects made officials concerned enough, defense officials in both canada and the united states, of the potential threat to aviation, civilian aviation that they decided they had to take action. that's why norad, the joint american-canadian defense system decided to take down the first object. that was on friday over alaska. we had the object shot down on saturday over yukon, canada. those are very remote locations. yesterday the one over lake huron, we think it probably actually went down in canadian waters. the fact that they were able to stay aloft is a question, what were they doing. we've been certainly led to believe they may not be

nefarious. we may be looking at an ed dishl since tugs's ozone monitoring type of device, or maybe a company's device got away from them or has been up there for a while. it could still be a country with nefarious intel gathering goals. we don't know at this point. the reason norad took those actions is because of the potential threat to civilian aviation at 20, 40 and 60,000 feet. of course, planes do fly at that altitude, 40,000, not 60, when they're coming over from europe over to the west coast of the united states or coming in from asia, those altitudes are not uncommon especially over the north pole or the polar cap, if you will. >> i want to play part of what we heard from lawmakers over the last 48 hours. they obviously want answers. take a listen. >> we live in a democracy. if you don't start providing information, people can wildly

speculate. and we don't want that. so what we need right now is more information on all of these kind of incidences. >> i have real concerns about why the administration is not being more forthcoming with everything it knows. >> the department of defense left me in the dark literally for about 18 hours while i had people all across montana asking questions about what is going on, what is going on with our national security. >> peter, is there a danger if you don't tell folks, whether on capitol hill or the american people, what's going on or what you know. they're going to fill in the blanks and it could be something like the questions that were asked, could this be a ufo in the sense we think of extraterrestrials or all the way to some sort of conspiracy theories? >> obviously you leave a void open and other people will fill the void. for what it's worth, my colleagues at the times did ask and they don't believe these are extraterrestrial.

they believe these are man made, human-made objects. the other danger on the flip side, government officials will tell you, getting out too soon with partial information or information that may be inaccurate has its own downside. they want to make sure they say they're getting everything squared away before they fill in the public. you're right. there's a hunger and desire, certainly on the part of congress and both parties to understand better about what's happening here and why is it all happening at once. >> which brings me to you, ali. i think 3:00 the senate gets back in session. what's the mood there, and what are you hearing? >> reporter: chris, there was already a clamoring for information at the end of last week. we finished friday with the shooting down of that second object. that news broke after the house and senate had gotten out of town. it was kind of the same choreography we saw on february 4th when we saw news of the first chinese spy balloon, that

one downed over south carolina and the news of that becoming public because of our colleague, courtney kube's reporting before that. we've already seen bipartisan investigations, especially on the senate side. both the house and senate have all gotten classified briefings. if you listen to majority leader chuck schumer this morning, he supports that kind of bipartisan investigating going forward. democrats like jon tester of montana leading it alongside lisa murkowski of alaska, those are states central to this information. you have the michigan delegation and other delegations as clear parts of these briefings, because these things have been shot down and flown over their states. frankly, when you think about the transparency or the slow movement of information and details out of the white house, a lot of this information has come from lawmakers on capitol hill, both because they have demanded briefings and also because they shared what they've heard, to the extent they can,

in terms of classified and not, with reporters by holding hearings and trying to get more information from these officials. timing is everything, of course. the senate is in this week, the house is out. both of them are out the following week. so this is really the time where i've got to imagine lawmakers are going to be demanding answers and quickly here on capitol hill. >> tom, i want to play part of what one of the defense officials, melissa dalton, said why we might be seeing more of these objects. >> we have been more closely scrutinizing our airspace at these altitudes, enhancing our radar which may at least partly explain the increase in the objects detected. >> i know you've had a lot of conversations, tom. can you expand on that, weren't they looking for them before? aren't there any rules and regulations? you can't, for example, fly a drone anywhere you want, at any altitude you want. tell us sort of the backstory on this.

>> well, you're absolutely right. we've had the same questions. if they've tweaked the radar sensitivity settings to now pick up more stuff, if you will, whatever that stuff is, was it always there? did somehow plains just lucky miss these objects? or have we seen an uptick in these objects over the last couple weeks? listen, we don't have the answer to that. that's at the core of what we are hoping that the pentagon can shed light on here. yes, if you're flying any sizable object at altitude, you need to have that cleared with the faa. it would certainly appear that at 40,000 feet, if this did have its own mechanism to navigate, to maintain any sort of altitude, it should have cleared with the faa. we're talking now about the alaska incident. then we had the one over canadian airspace, and then we had separately the one over huron, that one at 20,000 feet. these are attitudes that commercial planes travel. so, yes, there should have been

some coordination with the faa or the canadian counterparts when you're flying at those attitudes. >> peter, the obvious assumption would be that these objects might be coming from china. you wrote, if any devices destroyed in north america in the past three days were chinese, it would amount to a major provocation. officials at beijing suggest that some u.s. officials that the latest objects are less likely to be deliberate chinese provocations or tests. if that's so, where does that leave us? >> i think that's exactly the question. in fact, if they are from china and they did this subsequent to the other original air balloon being discovered, it's very in your face. it's in your face in a way that doesn't seem to be what beijing wants. both beijing and washington want to move past this and resume some sort of dialogue they had begun in the last few months.

remember secretary blinken was scheduled to go to beijing and canceled because of the spy balloon. it looks like they wanted to keep it from escalating so far they couldn't resume that dialogue at a different time down the road. if there are, in fact, more spy devices being sent by china subsequent to that knowingly, that's a whole different beast diplomatically. that's why i think people are sceptical that they might be chinese. at least one or two came in on essentially the same route, over alaska, over canada, into the northwestern part of the continental united states. that does seem to suggest something similar to the original spy balloon. if that's the case and does indicate some sort of a chinese path that they use for these things, it raises all sorts of questions. if not the chinese, who would it be? the russians? could it be domestic as admiral kirby suggested, out of control

corporate device in we don't know. that's probably one of the reasons why they haven't said too mitch. they don't want to stir a diplomatic incident. >> there are a lot of people waiting to ask those questions in that room we were just looking at where you and i have spent countless hours. john kirby will be there with the press secretary. peter, you're going to stay with us. in the meantime, pennsylvania senator john fetterman will be back at work after doctors ruled he did not suffer a stroke last week. he was hospitalized for feeling light headed. he spent two days in the hospital to undergo tests before being released on friday. according to a spokesperson the senator underwent a ct scan, mri and eeg. all of them came back normal. we'll be right back. of them caml we'll be right back. just a fun, spontaneous thing. i'm looking for someone who will let loose.

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new developments in the 2024 presidential race, and a key

question. what's the strategy for answering donald trump as he continues his aggressive attacks? for example, does ron desantis acknowledge trump's new nickname for him, meatball ron, according to "the new york times." nikki haley planning to launch the first official challenge to trump? what's her strategy ahead of what's expected to be at least half a dozen others. michael steele, msnbc political analyst. peter baker is back with us. michael, for any republican thinking of getting into this race, what do you think their strategy should be for taking on trump? >> it's got to be taking on trump. you're not going to wage this battle successfully unless you're prepared to take down the obstacle that's in your way. you've got to figure out how you do that and at least hold some of that base together for a

general election and even to support you in the primary. it is tactically difficult, strategically complicated, but at the end of the day, you've got to be prepared, as i put it, to sacrifice your bid for the presidency in the effort to get there. you've got to be willing to say, okay, i'm ready to potentially lose this battle, but this is important, because you may be able to create a lane or a pathway for someone else who can finish the job. maybe all those candidates can come together unlike they did in 2016 to sort of block and tackle trump. someone has got to lead that charge. is that nikki since she's literally the first out of the gate, or is it someone else? we'll see. >> let me ask you that question. if it's about being ready, able to walk that very fine line but also aggressively counterattack,

don't let him just come at you, who's got the juice to do that? >> none of them. >> really? >> none of them. hello. where have you been for the last six years? none of them. who stood up and said, you need to shut up and sit down because we've got this. >> is that walking the line i guess? is that what risks alienating the base, as you say? >> look, that's part of the problem. you can't be held hostage to that small loud chorus in the corner. you're talking 32%, 38 on a good day. that's 62% of the party that's left to play with. engage them, get them into the process. you go back and look at the numbers. there are a lot of republicans who do not vote in primaries. they just don't. so you've got some ready tools available to you to begin to cobble together a majority of the vote that you're going to need. here is the other thing, chris,

that's important. you can't do this with six other people in the race. this has to be a race, in my view, that's mano a mano. it can't have this bifurcated, trifurcated approach with all of the faces on the screen running for the prize because the guy on the left declared, he's saying, yeah, i can play with all y'all. i've got 32, 33, 34%. what do you have? divide that number amongst all those other potential candidates and you can see how he can win this. you've got to be strategic in this. you've got to be prepared to take the fight direct to trump, and you've got to be prepared to lose for something bigger than yourself. >> peter, your paper highlights the risk facing ron desantis if he continues to just ignore trump's attacks.

quote, some deep-pocketed republican donors have privately expressed concern about how mr. desantis will perform when forced to confront someone like mr. trump. unbothered by traditional roles of decorum. are there any clues from trump's time on the trail in 2016 about what might work? is there anything that might get under his skin in a way that's useful? i certainly saw up close how he got under the skin of his opponents. sorry. got to interrupt you. we have to go to the white house briefing. >> i do hope you'll bear with me and i'll be happy to take whatever questions you might have. so i'd like to begin today by updating you on the efforts to recover the debris of several objects the united states air force shot down, as well as that

to the spy balloon owned by the people's republic of china. i'd like to put in context for you how we have worked and are still working to better understand the the high-altitude, low-speed craft. when president biden came into office he directed the u.s. intelligence community to do a broad assessment of chinese assessment capabilities and to ensure that we were working to protect against them. i think for reasons you all will understand, we can't publicly go into many details about how we discover and counteract foreign intelligence. what we're doing is sensitive. we're able to determine china has a high altitude balloon program for intelligence program, that's connected to the people's liberation army. it was operating during the previous administration, but they did not detect it.

we detected it. we tracked it and we have been carrying studying it to learn as much as we can. we know these prc surveillance balloons have been around the world. we assessed that at this time these balloons have provided limited additive capabilities to the prc's other intelligence platforms used over the united states. but in the future, if the prc continues to advance this technology, it certainly could become more valuable to them. the president also instructed the intelligence community to take a broad look at the phenomenon of unidentified aerial objects. indeed, president biden conducted the first ever daily intelligence briefing session devoted to this phenomenon back in june of 2021. he was briefed that this is not just an issue for the united states, but one for the rest of the world. as i said, our friends and our partners are dealing with this

as well. we worked on a bipartisan basis to stand up in office at the pentagon to study this in partnership with the intelligence community, academic institutions and the private sector. these unidentified aerial phenomena have been reported for many years without explanation or deep examination by the government. president biden has changed all that. we are finally trying to understand them better. now, in light of the chinese balloon program and this recent incursion into our airspace, the united states and canada through norad have been more closely screwed niezing that airspace including enhancing our radar capabilities, which, as the commander of norad, general van herk said last night, may at least partially explain the increase in the objects detected. slow-moving objects at high altitude with a small radar cross-section are difficult to detect on radar. even objects the size of the

chinese spy balloon which had a payload the size of roughly three school buses were not picked up by previous administrations or other countries. we also know that a range of entities including countries, companies, research and academic organizations operate objects at these altitudes for purposes that are not nefarious at all including scientific research. that said, because we have not yet been able to definitively assess what these most recent objects are, we acted out of an abundance of caution to protect our security, our interests and flight safety. in saturday's case, we acted in consultation with the canadian government, the president speaking personally with prime minister trudeau. the spy balloon was, of course, different, because we knew precisely where that was. as we have said, we do not assess these most recent objects posed any direct threat to people on the ground and we are laser focused on confirming

their nature and purpose including through intend sef efforts to collect debris in the remote locations where they have fallen. in each instance we have followed the same basic course. we assessed whether they posed any kinetic threat to people on the ground. they did not. we assessed whether they were sending any communication signals. we detected none. we look to see whether they were maneuvering or had propulsion capabilities. we saw no signs of that. we made sure to determine whether or not they were manned. they were not. we did, however, assess that their altitudes were considerably lower than the chinese high altitude balloon and did pose a threat to civilian commercial air traffic. while we have no reason to suspect that they were conducting surveillance of any kind, we couldn't rule that out. that is why the president at the recommendation of the secretary of defense, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and the

north com norad commander gave the order to shoot them down. these missions were completed successfully and safely. efforts are under way right now at all sites to find what's left of those objects so we can better understand and communicate with the american people what they are. i think it's important to remind the objects in alaska and canada are in pretty remain terrain. ice and wilderness, all of that making it difficult to find them in winter weather. the object over lake huron now lies in what is probably very deep water. so outside of recovery operations, what are we doing? well, first, we're continuing to monitor. there are no active tracks today, but the professionals at norad will continue to do their important work. secondly, we're consulting with allies and partners on the challenge of identified aerial phenomenon and how we can all work together to deal with that

challenge. the president has directed the secretary of state, secretary of defense and the director of national intelligence to engage with their relevant counterparts to share information and to try to gain their perspectives as well. again, this is an issue that affects everybody around the world. third, we will continue to brief members of congress and relevant state leadership on what we're doing and what we learn. the president has made this a very top priority. we have over the course of just the last few days and certainly over the course of last week reached out to inform and brief members of congress and relevant state governors of the operations we were conducting and of the recovery operations that are under way. we've also kept congress briefed generally on this issue of chinese surveillance balloons including classified briefings last august. last week administration officials provided classified briefings for all senators and all members of the house of representatives on the prc surveillance balloon.

we fully anticipate and support the ability to continue these briefings in the days ahead. fourth, the president, through his national security adviser, has today 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. every element of the government will redouble their efforts to understand and mitigate these events. i'm happy to take some questions. >> john, if the objects don't pose a military threat and they don't pose a threat to anybody on the ground, why shoot them down, particularly because the military has -- is routinely monitoring radar blips and such? >> i kind of covered that in the opening statement. two real reasons here. first, there was a very real potential risk to civilian air traffic. the one shot down on saturday -- i'm sorry -- yesterday was about

20,000 feet. the two shot down friday and saturday were at about 40,000 feet. as you know, transcontinental air traffic is roughly 30,000 feet. it depends, of course, on weather. because we obsessed they weren't manned and weren't being controlled, therefore, left to atmospheric conditions, the real risk to safety of flight was a problem. second purpose, and i talked about this earlier, too, even though we had no indications that any of these three objects were surveilling, we couldn't rule that out. so you want to err on the side of safety in terms of protecting our national security interests and the fact that these objects could have and likely did at some point in their path transit over potential military sites of ours our sensitive sites. so again, out of an abundance of caution, for those two reasons, the president with the recommendation of his military

leaders directed them to be taken down. >> because it's so unprecedented, should the public be hearing directly from the president on this? >> we have been i think as transparent as we can be. i won't speak for the president's personal speaking schedule. he has been deeply engaged in every one of these decisions. he's been kept informed, including as of this morning on what's going on with recovery efforts. he's very much staying on top of the issue and directing his team to make sure we are properly consulting and briefing not just members of congress but state leaders as well. of course, we're also doing what we can in the public sphere. >> -- >> wait a second, sir. excuse me. >> what is the president's standard going to be about when he orders an unidentified object shot down? >> it comes down to one simple

formulation, and that's if the at the recommendation of his military leaders, the safety and security of the american people, his prime responsibility, warrant that type of action. >> it's possible we could see this -- >> i don't think it's useful for me to get ahead. the president will always side on protecting the safety and security of the american people. >> you say we're not flying any surveillance balloons over china? are we flying any surveillance craft over china? >> we are not flying surveillance balloons over china. i'm not aware of any craft we're flying into chinese airspace. >> can you tell us any more about this octagonal object? >> we're still trying to assess what it was. i've seen the press reports about what it looked like. i think we all need to be humble here in terms of what our

ability is to positively identify stuff from fighter aircraft that are going several hundred miles an hour past essentially -- in terms of relative motion, a stationary object. that was not very big. so we don't know what this exactly looked like. again, we're still not sure exactly what the purpose of it was or who owned it. we hope to be able to find out more once we can recover the debris, from that one and the other two as well. >> just a few minutes ago, prime minister trudeau said there's some sort of pattern to the objects for the last couple days. is that something you can elaborate on that? >> i'm not familiar with the prime minister's comments. i don't know that i should take a swing at that. i will tell you, going back to what i said before, these objects were not being maneuvered. they did not appear to have any self-propulsion. the likely hypothesis is they

were being moved by the prevailing winds and maybe perhaps that's what the prime minister is talking about. i don't want to speak for him. certainly, as the prevailing winds, particularly at that altitude go west to east across the north american airspace, there was a general common movement in that regard. >> you spoke at the top about reassessing radar given what happened with the initial balloon. can you give us a sense -- should we assume that this is the regular number of these objects over the united states, they've always been there and not looked at the same way? or is there any reason to expect this is more than usual that are flying -- >> two thoughts there. i think we can all ged our heads around the fact that there are sometimes things floating at high attitudes for various purposes. as i said, scientific research, weather balloons, all manner of

innocuous craft can be aloft at high altitudes. i don't think that's necessarily unusual here. it's difficult for me to say exactly what you can expect going forward. one of the reasons that we think we're seeing more is because we're looking for more. as you heard general van hert mention last night, they've modified the filters, and the gains, as we call it, of the radar capabilities to look more discreetly at high altitude, small radar cross section and low speed objects. if you do that, and anybody that's operated a radar will know you can set the parameters. if you set the parameters in such a way to look for a certain something, it's more likely that you're going to find a certain something. >> given all you've discussed

here and the actions the administration has taken and what people have learned, chinese spy balloon, this year, previous years, these unidentified objects to shoot down, they might have a question. when they come to the higher attitudes, are america's borders secure? >> the president takes, as i said earlier, he takes our national security extremely seriously. he has no higher responsibility than the safety and security of the american people. i don't think you need to look any further, quite frankly, than the decisions he's made in just the last week to ten days to evidence that. >> it feels like plugging holes, that these are vulnerabilities that we're discovering in realtime. >> you're making an assumption there. i don't know the analysis will bear that out. >> the president gave the order to shoot down the object over lake huron yesterday. where was he, what kind of

information did he have when he made that order? >> he was here at the white house. he was kept constantly informed by his national security team and certainly by the military. he made that decision -- i couldn't give you the exact time on the clock. i believe it was mid to late morning, and then it was executed in the afternoon. >> -- contingenies in place in case there was reaction to shooting the object down. >> the one yesterday? >> the one yesterday. >> well, it was shot over lake huron and landed in what we believe to be the canadian side of the lake. we were obviously in constant communication and consultation with our canadian counterparts. rightly because of where it slashed down, in concert with the u.s. coast guard, but they're also involved in trying to locate the debris right now. there was good communication with our canadian allies. >> -- foreign government taking

a special interest or reacting in an unusual way? >> no. >> in the back. >> john, who questions. one, you mentioned early on that the china balloon might have been giving limited capabilities, i assume you mean on to their satellite surveillance. can you specify what exactly it's getting from a blon that they're not getting from satellites -- >> the caveat that we haven't fully recovered everything, that we have recovered some things from the bottom of the atlantic and we're analyzing that. with that caveat, that we don't know exactly what this balloon was surveilling or what its capabilities were. so just in general, an important caveat that i'd like you to remember. when you are at a lower altitude

than space, you could perhaps get a better fidelity of imagery, for instance, of things on the ground. when you are not moving at the speed of the satellite and only getting seconds over a site, when you can maneuver, left, right, slow down, speed up, like this thing could, then you can loiter. if you can loiter, you can soak in a little bit more. you can spend more time over a sensitive site. >> some of the satellites are just sitting there gathering signals intelligence, right? what is the benefit -- is it just to see -- >> we're going to learn more. i'd rather not go into more detail than that right now. i think that's a terrific question you should be asking beijing. >> last one. you said that the other objects shot down were not able to transmit or were not transmitting signals, they didn't have any propulsion.

did the china balloon, did that have any -- was it emitting signals back? >> i'm not going to go into more detail about the capabilities of that. we are going to be studying it and analyzing it. there is no question in our minds that that system was designed to surveil, that that was an intelligence asset. i'll leave it there. >> has there been any outreach from anywhere in the administration to the kinds of companies that produce weather balloons or other craft that would fit these descriptions that might be from the commercial or corporate world to say is this yours? any kind of outreach or have you been hearing from anyone who might say we have ours, they're in this area? is any of that going on right now? >> i don't know of any conversations right now, kelly. one of the reasons the president directed mr. sullivan to put together an interagency effort is to take a long look at that

and try to learn a little better about who is up at that altitude doing what for completely legitimate purposes. i think we all recognize we need to have a better sight picture on that. >> what kind of intelligence might be happening in terms of the diplomacy that's going on or whatever if these are state-owned objects? >> i'm not sure i understand what you mean. >> is there a network of conversations that might be happening where someone might be able to say based on this octagonal description that, hey, that sounds like the so and so? is there some conversations that are happening that might be able to give us some descriptions? >> the short answer to your question is yes. i talked about that in my opening statement. the president directed secretary blinken, secretary austin, director blans to have these conversations with our allies and partners around the world,

to share with them what we're learning but also get their perspectives. >> the chinese were quick to say it's ours but it's for commercial purposes. >> again, we're going to have those kinds of conversations with our allies and partners, to see what we can learn from them, what they with learn from us. >> still with object or can we skaul them balloons? >> still with object. i won't mess that up today. >> on the corporate angle, is there any expectation this will affect the executive order of surveilling the u.s. companies and what they're doing in china. >> no change to that. >> you said a moment ago there's no knowledge of a u.s. balloon or other craft over chinese territory, just being cognizant of what their territory is, is there any u.s. aircraft over taiwan, the south china sea -- >> there is no u.s. surveillance

aircraft over -- in chinese airspace. >> even chinese claimed airspace. >> there is no u.s. surveillance aircraft in chinese airspace. >> finally, is there any new formal approach being developed as far as how you're going to deal with these things on a system attic basis going forward? >> again, that's exactly what the president wants mr. sullivan to run, to help us get around the policy implications here and whether or not there needs to be any policy changes going forward. >> -- u.s. territories as far as i'm aware of. you talked about the tweak in the radar systems. -- the into gone presenting the the president and the president signing off to military action to anything over our airspace.

>> not sure i'm following. >> the chinese spy balloon. the radars were tweaked, why you think you're seeing some of these things. >> right. >> has the threshold for the use of fighters to take down fighters also been tweaked? has it been lowered, has it been changed? we've never seen this before. >> you heard general van hert talk about this last night. he's using established protocols to engage craft in the air, aircraft in the air that can be legitimately brought down. as he said last night, the best way to do that certainly in a timely and efficient effective way was through fighter aircraft and through the side winder air-to-air missiles. they looked at -- he talked about this. they looked at other options to try to bring them down to include gunfire, but that would have created a crater risk to the pilots themselves.

this is the safest, most effective way to do that. where we go from here, i think we just don't know right now in terms of whether there needs to be threshold changes. i think it's important to take a step back here. what the president did was ordered these actions with the safety and security of the american people foremost in his mind. there were very good reasons to do it. the military then, once given an order determines how they're going to execute that order. general van hert decided the best way to do this was with side winder missiles and fighter aircraft. >> this isn't reactive to the chinese spy balloon, that there's political pressure so we're going to act quickly to take down anything over our airspace because of pressure -- >> these were decisions based purely and simply on what was in the best interests of the american people. >> john, does the u.s. government have video or imagery of these latest intercepts, and

will you be releasing it? >> you'd have to talk to dod about that, jackie. i don't know what kind of imagery might exist. they would be the one to talk about whether they're releasable or not. obviously, certainly with respect to the spy balloon, we want to make sure that we are gleaning what we can from this imagery so we can answer your questions better. so to what degree there is or -- will or will not be public release, i do want to stress that we're going to want to make sure that we have had a chance to analyze that imagery for ourselves as much as possible. >> to follow up on phil's question. what we're trying to discern is, you said earlier we're looking for these more, finding more -- >> i said that could be one reason we're finding more. >> what we're getting at is why are we all of a sudden shooting them down. to add to that, the norad commander said when the first

spy balloon was crossing over american and then canadian airspace, one of the reasons he couldn't take action was because his assessment was it didn't pose a military intent or hostile intent so he couldn't take action there. it seems like the protocol has changed, or his ability to make the call when there's not an imminent threat militarily might have changed. can you explain to us what changed? why are we shooting them down all of a sudden? >> i kind of feel like i took care of that in my opening statement. i'm happy to revisit. really two reasons here. in both cases they're different. we need to separate the chinese spy balloon. we knew what it was. we knew where it was going, we knew what it was trying to do. by not taking it down -- it was also a huge payload. like i said, the size of three

school buses. so really the option of shooting that down over land wasn't a legitimate option because somebody really could have gotten hurt. we used the time available to us. knowing what this thing was all about, we used that time to study it, to learn from it, to collect on it, then taking it down at the earliest opportunity over the water. we've retrieved some of that off the bottom and we're studying it. these other three, what are the differences? altitude. >> a risk to civilian aircraft. >> let me get through this. altitude is different. the chinese spy balloon was at 60,000-plus, well outside commercial air traffic concerns. these three were right on the border of it. so there was a legitimate concern there. chinese spy balloon, we knew exactly what this thing was and we knew what it was trying to do, and we saw it, jackie, as it

slowed down, sped up, maneuvered a little bit trying to get a look at what we believe to be sensitive military sites. these other three, they didn't have propulsion and weren't being maneuvered. basically they were being driven by the wind. we don't think -- we don't know for sure whether they had a surveillance aspect to them, but we can't rule it out. so there was enough uncertainty there that, again, out of an abundance of caution, doing the prudent thing, the president directed they be taken down. we're going to dive into this. we're going to learn from these three events. we're going to continue to study what happened. we'll have an interagency effort to help us get around the policy implications here and see where this goes. the bottom line for president biden is, we've got to do the right thing for the american people for our safety and security. >> -- >> i can't say whether that's

strange or not since we're sort of in incharted territory, no pun intended. we don't know. >> -- >> go ahead. i'm basically done. >> what's your name, sir? >> from cbs. has the payload been recovered from south carolina? >> as i said, some of the debris -- certainly they were able to take things off the surface like the next day -- actually that afternoon, some of the balloon fabric. and in the days since they have been able to recover some, not all, of the payload that sank to the bottom of the atlantic. it's around, weather conditions are pretty tough off the coast. today, for instance, they have not been able to get in the water and dive on it. over the course of the weekend, they were able to raise some of the debris, including some of the electronics and some of the

structures. >> do you have an expectation of when the payload is going to be collected? >> if i could tell you, i would be a wealthy man. it's going to take a long time given the sea state and weather conditions and the degree to which we have to protect the safety of the diverse. >> you said you were unsure of the surveillance capabilities of these latest objects. last week we were told every precaution was taken to ensure the sensitive installations were covered. we don't know exactly what you all did. >> nor are you going to find out. >> has there been a posture change nationwide regarding all of these sensitive sites? proactively? >> let me just put a fork in this if the implication is that, you know, there's some sort of blanket now security policy for every base on the continental united states, the answer is no. we do have protocols,

particularly when we know that surveillance is going to occur. like in the open skies treaty with russia. when all of that is scheduled and laid out, and when you know that there's going to be an open skies flight by russia, you take the appropriate actions. and that's what we did in the case of the chinese spy balloon, and we'll always do that. i will never talk about what precautions we're going to make at any given time, but we always do what we need to do to protect our nation's secrets. i won't talk about it any more than that. >> way in the back. way in the back. >> thank you very much. >> you started the briefing by talking about the president's involvement in this, the report from ood and i report. there were 247 unidentified aerial reports since march of

2021, some of which have demonstrated unusual flight characteristics or performance capabilities. can you say why the president just recently within the last couple of weeks started ordering some of these objects to be shot down, and why there weren't orders throughout 2021 or throughout 2022? >> it's very simple. it comes down to what sort of safety and security threats and risks we're talking about. and also it comes down a lot to our ability to track, detect and engage. having come from the pentagon, i can tell you that some of these uaps, while we may not be able to know what each and every one is doing, some of the big concern there was that many of those reports were happening around our training ranges. were happening around air training ranges, so combat

pilots were seeing these things, and it was -- and there was a potential impact to the safety and flight of our pilots, but you may not have but a fleeting moment on some of these things to see it, and so it's different. in these cases, we had time to detect, time to analyze, time to engage, time to make those kinds of decisions, but it all comes down to safety and security, first and foremost. >> the time, though, is a matter of capability? we have better capabilities now? >> we are certainly improving our capabilities now, and as i said, the president has directed the national security team to dig into this deeper from an inter-agency effort and to see if other improvements might need to make. look, just by adapting the way the radar parameters are set, we have improved our ability to detect, and again, i said that could be one reason why we're seeing more.

>> thank you so much. so you said that the greatest trend are in remote areas, and these are also objects shot down by missiles. how optimistic are you that you would be able to connect enough debris to get an idea of what these objects were? >> we won't know until we get on site to see. you know, how much damage was done, not just by the missile strike, but by the fall from very high altitude, what you said, in one case on sea ice. we'll just have to see. >> yeah, thank you, john does secretary of state blinken plan to meet with his chinese counter part this week at the munich security conference. >> i would refer you to the state department about the secretary's schedule. i don't have visibility on that. >> what have you been able to learn more or not you but the government since these objects were shot down. you just alluded to the fact that he's not been able to get on site yet.

has there been any additional information since one was shot down friday and over the weekend. >> because this happened over the last few days, and we haven't found the debris, there's still a lot more we expect to be able to learn, and i think once we can get to the debris, and i'm not forecasting how easy that's going to be. they all three have fallen into some pretty remote difficult areas to reach, but we're going to do everything we can to find him, and that will tell us a lot. since we have -- i know you didn't ask about this, but in the case of the chinese sky balloon, we have been able to recover some debris and some of the electronics and even some of the structure from the bottom of the atlantic, and that will tell us a lot and we're learning from it right now. >> we got to get everybody. >> guys. >> when do you think that you'll have all the -- as much debris as you can get from all the sites? when do you think you'll be

satisfied you've gotten as much debris as you can from all the sites? >> i wish i could give you a date certain on the calendar. i can't do that. we're work to go surveil them right now. the canadians are in charge of the one in the yukon, and the cost guard is working with the canadian guard to do the same thing there. we'll keep you informed as we learn more. diverse in the water over the weekend, we have recovered debris off the coast of south carolina. we'll keep you informed. >> will you brief congress this week? >> there have been briefings as early as late last week, and we fully expect additional briefings this week, perhaps later today. >> the response has been very harsh, they said the first balloon was an accident and the last three were not theirs. has the white house had conversations with beijing about this, and can you share a little bit about that? >> we know the first one was chinese. they admitted.

they claimed it was a weather balloon. we know it's not. these three we don't have attribution for right now. we don't know who owns them. i'm not going to take anybody's word at face value here until we can get a chance to take a look at them. are we in touch with the chinese? we have an embassy in beijing, we maintain routine diplomatic conversations and we have had in over that spy balloon incident, we had private discussions senior chinese leaders. >> thanks, admiral. you said are you in touch with the chinese, is there any effort to arrange with president xi. >> i'm not aware of plans. >> does the president plan to speak with netanyahu about the moves his government is making to try to weaken the people. >> i have no calls or conversations to read out. but we are deeply concerned by some of the moves with respect to settlements. >> the president just recently

has said that there was a russian plot to sort of overthrow her government, and break moldova's path to europe. it was something that president zelenskyy himself had also warned about. what is the u.s.'s assessment of this possible plot and more broadly, what is the concern about russia's attempts to sort of influence these pro european governments in the region, even though it's right now focused on ukraine, other country's in the region. >> so i want to say about that is deeply concerning reports, certainly not outside the bound of russian behavior. and we absolutely stand with the moldovan government, and the moldovan people. >> we have no confirmation from the u.s. side of intel? >> i don't know independent

confirmation, but we're certainly not questioning the capacity, the will, of the russians and mr. putin to try to do that. it's right out of his play book. >> yes, i was going to ask you a question. >> just one quick question. have you established lighter than air or heavier than air. >> we have not. >> we have to get to everyone, okay. you already had a question. go ahead. >> all three shoot downs in the u.s. occurred offshore but the one in canada occurred over land. is it effective u.s. policies to not shoot down these objects over land for safety concerns? >> i wouldn't read into this a policy decision. we will always in deciding whether something should be taken down or not consider the impact on the ground. >> when the chinese ruling came down. the foreign ministry indicated they would respond in a way they were prepared to. the other objects are also chinese in origin, is there a menu of options