No conclusive evidence to prove Chinese balloons were used for spying, says White House

Casting aside initial aspersions over the Chinese balloons that were shot down by US jets over suspicion of spying on American military sites, the White House on Tuesday said its intelligence officials believe that the balloons were being flown for “benign or commercial” use.

Briefing reporters, White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said that the assessment of the intelligence officials is preliminary and added that the US is yet to determine the origin of the three objects.

Kirby said that more would be known once the debris is collected, but added that the parts are in hard-to-reach areas —two in the frozen north and one in Lake Huron. He further said that retrieving the debris was proving difficult.

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“The intelligence community is considering as a leading explanation that these could just be balloons tied to some commercial or benign purpose,” Kirby said.

He said that efforts to retrieve the debris have been hampered due to “pretty tough conditions,” exacerbated by the geographic challenges on Lake Huron, in the Yukon wilderness and on sea ice north of Alaska.

“Pretty tough weather conditions, let alone just geographically, just tough time of year,” Kirby said.

He further said that there was no indication they were connected to China’s spy balloon program, on the bias of which the US jets were scrambled to take action earlier this month.

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US senators briefed on spy balloon

Meanwhile, US senators, who were given a classified briefing on balloons on Capitol Hill, said they were reassured that the flying objects posed no threat to the American people.

“There are a lot of these things that are up in the air from time to time, some commercial, some government and maybe there are some things we don’t know,” said Republican’s Utah Senator Mitt Romney, reports CNN.

He added that he wasn’t worried “in the slightest” that the objects themselves threaten the American people.

The reaction from the US seeks to put rest to the ongoing claims about the origins of the balloons.

Administration officials have increasingly cast doubt on their ability to fully recover debris from the objects, given tough conditions where they landed.

(With inputs from agencies)

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