(NewsNation) — The Biden administration planned to keep the Chinese spy balloon that was flying over the U.S. earlier this year a secret, according to a new report by NBC.
The report provides new details about the mysterious balloon that sent the U.S. into a frenzy, including that the balloon was tracking the cell phone data of Americans.
“I do think that the American people probably had the right to know a lot sooner than quite frankly, a year later, that it was capable of collecting their cell phone data,” said national security contributor Tracy Walder.
The new report claims there was a phone call between President Joe Biden’s top military adviser General Mark Milley and General Glen Van Herck, head of the North American Aerospace Defense Command, one day before the balloon entered US airspace. Intelligence officials had allegedly been tracking the object flying over the Asia-Pacific for 10 days.
The previously unreported Jan. 27 phone call between Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and VanHerck, set off an eight-day scramble within the Biden administration.
The Chinese spy balloon entered U.S. airspace on Jan. 28, but President Joe Biden was not briefed until three days later. The story broke on national news channels days later, on Feb. 2, after many civilians spotted it in the sky.
The balloon was finally shot down on Feb. 4, raising questions about where it came from and what its intentions were.
“The fact that Biden wasn’t notified, right, and then the fact that the intelligence community was tracking it for 10 days and then the fact that not even all that information was being passed to the president or to generals or to the intelligence community – it actually makes sense that there was this mixed messaging,” Walder said.
According to the new report, the Biden administration wanted to study the object and keep it under wraps from the American public. The administration reportedly denied trying to keep it a secret, but said they wanted to protect sensitive intelligence information.
“I think it is less about the fact that things were purposely concealed and more about the fact that people were not properly briefed and all on the same page. And that’s a huge problem from a national security perspective,” Walder told NewsNation.
Nearly a year after the incident, U.S.-China relations have not fully recovered as tensions remain the worst they have been in recent times.
Military-to-military communication between the U.S. and China resumed this week, but the two countries are still ending the year with a frosty relationship.