Blinken scrubs trip as Chinese balloon floats across U.S.

Officials say surveillance object seen from the ground in Kansas, Missouri

The huge balloon floats high in the sky Friday over Columbia, Mo.
(AP/Missourian/Anna Griffin)
The huge balloon floats high in the sky Friday over Columbia, Mo. (AP/Missourian/Anna Griffin)


WASHINGTON -- A huge, high-altitude Chinese balloon sailed across the United States on Friday, drawing severe Pentagon accusations of spying on sensitive military sites despite China's firm denials. Secretary of State Antony Blinken abruptly canceled a high-stakes Beijing trip aimed at easing U.S.-China tensions.

Aside from the government response, fuzzy videos dotted social media as people with binoculars and telephoto lenses tried to find the "spy balloon" in the sky as it headed southeastward over Kansas and Missouri at 60,000 feet.

It was spotted earlier over Montana, which is home to one of America's three nuclear missile silo fields at Malmstrom Air Force Base, defense officials said.

The U.S. actually had been tracking the balloon since at least Tuesday, when President Joe Biden was first briefed, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters.

According to three U.S. officials, Biden was initially inclined to order the surveillance balloon to be blown out of the sky. A senior defense official said the U.S. had prepared fighter jets, including F-22s, to shoot it down if ordered.

The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, strongly advised Biden against shooting down the balloon, warning that its size -- as big as three school buses -- and considerable weight could create a debris field large enough to endanger Americans on the ground.

The Pentagon also assessed that after unspecified U.S. measures, the possibility of the balloon uncovering important information was not great. It was not the first time Chinese surveillance balloons have been tracked over U.S. territory, including at least once during former President Donald Trump's administration, officials said.

Blinken's trip cancellation came despite China's claim that the balloon was merely a weather research "airship" that had blown off course. The Pentagon rejected that out of hand -- as well as China's contention that the balloon was not being used for surveillance and had only limited navigational ability.

Blinken had planned to leave Friday night for the trip, the first visit by a U.S. secretary of state to China since 2018.

He had been expected to meet with President Xi Jinping and discuss a wide range of issues. But Blinken said he called Wang Yi, the Chinese Communist Party's top foreign policy official, Friday and told him that he was postponing his trip because of the balloon.

"I made clear that the presence of the surveillance balloon in U.S. airspace is a clear violation of U.S. sovereignty and international law, that it's an irresponsible act and that the PRC decision to take this action on the eve of my planned visit is detrimental to the substantive discussions that we were prepared to have," Blinken said at a news conference Friday afternoon, referring to the People's Republic of China.

"The first step is getting the surveillance asset out of our airspace," he added.

After passing the sensitive military sites in Montana, the balloon was moving southeastward over the heartland of the central United States during the day and was expected to remain in U.S. airspace for several days, officials said.

ANOTHER BLOW

The development marked a new blow to already strained U.S.-Chinese relations that have been in a downward spiral for years over numerous issues. Still, U.S. officials maintained that diplomatic channels remain open and Blinken said he remained willing to travel to China "when conditions allow."

"We continue to believe that having open lines of communication is important," he said.

Biden declined to comment on the matter when questioned at an economic event. On Tuesday, the president is scheduled to give his annual State of the Union speech in Congress.

Trump and Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador, said the U.S. should immediately shoot down the balloon.

Several Republican congressmen said the same, and a number blasted the administration for "allowing" the balloon intrusion.

"The idea that Communist China has a spy balloon headed toward Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri right now -- the home of the Stealth bomber -- is absolutely unbelievable," said Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo. "No American should accept this. I don't."

Jean-Pierre did not shed light on why the administration waited until Thursday to make its concerns public.

Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, Pentagon press secretary, refused to say Friday whether there was any new consideration of shooting the balloon down. He said it was posing no threat.

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Little Rock, first learned of the balloon through initial news reports Thursday.

"The administration needs a plan to bring down this Chinese spy aircraft," Cotton told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on Friday. "More to the point, they should have never allowed it to reach the middle of the United States."

Cotton blamed the Biden administration for refusing to discuss the balloon until it was over Montana when civilians could see the balloon. The senator tied the delay to Blinken's planned trip to China, which has been canceled because of the balloon.

"An ill-advised trip to begin with," the senator said.

"None of this would have been implicated if the president would have done what he should have done, which is take this balloon down as soon as it entered remote, uninhabited air space over Alaska. We wouldn't even have this question of how we bring the balloon down safely and exploit the technology on it fully without undue risk to human life."

Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who is eyeing a presidential bid for the 2024 election, said the United States needs a "zero-tolerance policy on any and all foreign incursions into American territory."

"President Biden and his administration's lackadaisical attitude toward this concerning event shows weakness," Hutchinson said in a statement through America Strong and Free PAC, a political action committee affiliated with the governor.

"Rather than continuing to allow this national security threat to linger over the heartland of America, the spy balloon should be destroyed by our air defense forces when the safety of American lives are assured."

Cotton has requested a hearing on the balloon, noting that he wants defense officials to provide answers in a closed, classified environment.

"We're going to get answers about this. I think we'll probably get them sooner rather than later," he said. "Most Arkansans are appalled that we would have a Chinese spy balloon floating over our country, maybe even our own state, depending on wind patterns.

MANEUVERABLE CRAFT

Ryder said it was maneuverable, not just at the mercy of the wind, and had changed course. Still, weather experts said China's claim that the balloon had gone off course was not unfeasible.

China's account of wind patterns known as the Westerlies carrying a balloon to the western United States was "absolutely possible -- not possible, likely," said Dan Jaffe, a professor of atmospheric chemistry at the University of Washington.

As for Blinken's trip, Jean-Pierre said a diplomatic visit to China was not appropriate at such a time. She said "the presence of this balloon in our airspace ... is a clear violation of our sovereignty as well as international law and it is unacceptable this occurred."

A State Department official said Blinken and Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman had protested to the top official at the Chinese Embassy on Wednesday, a day before the Pentagon announced the discovery of the balloon.

Blinken's long-anticipated meetings with senior Chinese officials had been seen in both countries as a possible way to find some areas of common ground at a time of major disagreements over Taiwan, human rights, China's claims in the South China Sea, North Korea, Russia's war in Ukraine, trade policy and climate change.

Although the trip, which was agreed to in November by Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping at a summit in Indonesia, had not been formally announced, officials in Beijing and Washington had spoken in recent days about Blinken's imminent arrival for meetings Sunday and Monday.

China, which angrily denounces surveillance attempts by the U.S. and others over areas it considers to be its territory and once forced down an American spy plane and held its crew captive on Hainan Island, was relatively conciliatory in its response to the U.S. complaints.

In a statement that approached an apology, the Chinese foreign ministry said the balloon was a civilian airship used mainly for meteorological research. It said said the airship had limited "self-steering" capabilities and had "deviated far from its planned course" because of winds.

"The Chinese side regrets the unintended entry of the airship into U.S. airspace due to force majeure," the statement said, citing a legal term used to refer to events beyond one's control.

Information for this article was contributed by Matthew Lee, Ellen Knickmeyer, Tara Copp, Lolita C. Baldor, Aamer Madhani, Zeke Miller, Michael Balsamo, Matthew Brown, Emily Wang Fujiyama and Caroline Chen of The Associated Press; by Edward Wong, Helene Cooper and Chris Buckley of The New York Times; and by Alex Thomas of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

  photo  FILE - The American and Chinese flags wave at Genting Snow Park ahead of the 2022 Winter Olympics, Feb. 2, 2022, in Zhangjiakou, China. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has postponed  a planned high-stakes weekend diplomatic trip to China as the Biden administration weighs a broader response to the discovery of a high-altitude Chinese balloon flying over sensitive sites in the western United States, a U.S. official said Friday. (AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato, File)
 
 
  photo  FILE - President Joe Biden meets virtually with Chinese President Xi Jinping from the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, Nov. 15, 2021, as Secretary of State Antony Blinken, right, listens. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has postponed  a planned high-stakes weekend diplomatic trip to China as the Biden administration weighs a broader response to the discovery of a high-altitude Chinese balloon flying over sensitive sites in the western United States, a U.S. official said Friday.(AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)
 
 
  photo  FILE - In this image provided by the U.S. Air Force, Airman 1st Class Jackson Ligon, 341st Missile Maintenance Squadron technician, prepares a spacer on an intercontinental ballistic missile during a Simulated Electronic Launch-Minuteman test Sept. 22, 2020, at a launch facility near Malmstrom Air Force Base in Great Falls, Mont. The U.S. says it is tracking a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon that has been spotted over U.S. airspace for a couple days but the Pentagon decided not to shoot it down due to risks of harm for people on the ground. One of the places the balloon was spotted was Montana, which is home to one of the nation's three nuclear missile silo fields at Malmstrom Air Force Base (Tristan Day/U.S. Air Force via AP)
 
 
  photo  FILE - U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken attends a meeting with China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Nusa Dua on the Indonesian resort island of Bali, July 9, 2022. Blinken has postponed  a planned high-stakes weekend diplomatic trip to China as the Biden administration weighs a broader response to the discovery of a high-altitude Chinese balloon flying over sensitive sites in the western United States, a U.S. official said Friday. (Stefani Reynolds/Pool Photo via AP, File)
 
 


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