According to a story on Friday from the Washington Post, records that were leaked show that American authorities were aware of up to four other Chinese spy balloons in addition to the one that sailed over the continental United States and was shot down in February off the coast of South Carolina.
The Massachusetts Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira was detained on Thursday and charged on Friday with “unauthorized retention and transmission of national defense information and unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents,” according to the Post. The report in the Post was based on documents that were allegedly leaked to a Discord chatroom by Teixeira.
According to the papers, one of the other balloons soared over a U.S. carrier strike group in the Pacific Ocean, while another one crashed in the South China Sea.
The dates of such balloons’ launches are not mentioned in the documentation.
The GOP and former national security officials heavily criticized President Joe Biden for failing to quickly take down the Chinese surveillance balloon known by the codename Killeen-23 that traveled over the United States in January and February.
The Post claims that aircraft was equipped with “a raft of sensors and antennas that the U.S. government still had not identified more than a week after shooting it down.”
In reaction to these surveillance balloons, the Biden administration “made an enormous mistake” that resulted in “global shame,” according to former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
