The Lead with Jake Tapper: Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) Is Interviewed Regarding The Unidentified Objects Shot Down By U.S. Military

Interview

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Well, we don't know yet, Jake, but I'm very concerned about not assessing unidentified aerial phenomenon which is why two years ago I worked with Republicans and Democrats to create a new part of the Pentagon that just focuses on all reports of unidentified aerial phenomenon and assesses them scientifically with as much publicly available data and intelligence data as well as data from aircraft of military personnel and assess what it is.

And in the last two years, they've assessed over 300 unidentified aerial phenomenon. About half of them were determined to be balloons or balloon-like devices. A couple dozen were determined to be drones. Some were just birds or bags in the air and other debris. And then there's still about 170 that are still not determined.

So, the assessment is really important. The military has said that these balloons they've shot down they did not believe to be creating any risk to the United States. But if they are intelligence-gathering devices, that's a decision for President Biden to make as to whether they are going to be tolerated. There are spy satellites everywhere.

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But there's a certain area that we don't have a protocol for which is above commercial airspace to space. And we have not made a determination as a government what we're going to do in that space. And that's something Congress should focus on. We should focus on what should be the protocols in that space.

And then in terms of commercial airspace, we've already made that determination. You cannot fly any devices in commercial airspace, which is why the last three devices were taken down immediately because we already have a protocol for those.

And now we just need to gather them up, whether they're in Michigan or in Canada or just off Alaska, and to see exactly what kind of devices they are. Whether they are benign, scientific, you know, climate- gathering devices or whether they are spy devices. And then which country, which adversary are using them.

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Correct.

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Well, it's not about me being vindicated.

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It's all the servicemembers who've reported these for years and been dismissed, derided, disregarded, their careers have been harmed. Those are the heroes at this moment because men and women have been reporting these sightings for certainly our military, for decades and they have been met with derision.

And so, what we made it clear in this law is that there could be no stigma associated with reporting and that reporting is now mandatory. And then if there is retaliation, that that will be prosecuted. So that's the nature of the law that we passed. And so, Arrow, which is the department we created, has some of the smartest minds in our country working on analyzing this data and these videos and radar detections as scientifically and as thoroughly as possible to make assessments.

And as I said, there are still many that are not assessed yet, and it takes time and resources. So, one of the things I'm going to be working on this week is to make sure this is fully funded this year and to make sure that this is a priority for the Department of Defense because regardless of how they looked at these things in the past, and I understand these are not threats from a military perspective, but we need to understand what is in our airspace. We need to understand who is spying us and how.

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And we need to know what technology they're using. Whether it's Russia, whether it's China, whether it's Iran, whether it's any other entity known or unknown. We need to know. And that's -- and no one should be derided for giving reports on it.

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There is and that's why they chose locations that would minimize that risk, over Lake Huron, for example, in the Yukon, off the coast of Alaska. That's the three places where they shot them down. Interestingly for the first spy balloon, they had an option to shoot it down immediately just off the coast of Alaska. And one of their reasoning was, it's very hard to recover anything from that location which is now proving to be true for this shot-down device over the coast of Alaska.

The cold temperatures, the roughness of the sea. It makes it very hard to retrieve. And so, I think the Biden administration made the right judgments and waited until it was in a safe place and they could also watch it and see, really get their own information about how does it move, what's it doing, and they can then take that information, as knowledge it's very important for defense.

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Thank you.

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