Remember the Chinese spy balloon?  The one that flew the length of America while somehow mysteriously hovering over many sensitive military installations? The one that could not be shot down over Alaska, Montana or Wyoming, because it might land on a protected toad or snail? There’s not much else out there in large parts of the West. That Chinese spy balloon, the one as big as two buses, the one that was finally shot down over the Atlantic after it had gathered and transmitted to the Chinese all the data the Chinese Communist Party wanted? The one that insulted and humiliated America? That one? Oh yes, there were earlier balloons the government hid from us.

Now we discover we only know about that particular spy balloon because a few Americans, on commercial airliners, and on the ground, saw it and decided it was something about which Americans ought to know. The Mummified Meat Puppet Administration? Not so much:

Cleaning up after the late shootdown.

Image: S1C Tyler Thompson, USN, wikimedia commons.org, public domain.

At the time we learned that the Biden administration was trying to hide its existence from the American people, but now NBC News is reporting that they were also trying to conceal this important information from Congress, as well.

NBC News reports (archive link):

Administration officials at first hoped to conceal the balloon’s existence from the public, and from Congress, according to multiple former and current administration and congressional officials.

“Before it was spotted publicly, there was the intention to study it and let it pass over and not ever tell anyone about it,” said a former senior U.S. official briefed on the balloon incident.

“Study” an enemy intelligence gathering platform? Wait. It gets worse, much worse.

A senior Biden administration denied that there was an effort to keep the balloon secret. “To the extent any of this was kept quiet at all, that was in large part to protect intel equities related to finding and tracking them,” the official said, referring to intelligence gathering. “There was no intention to keep this from Congress at any point.”

Right. “Intel equities” like the everyday Americans who saw it from the ground and told a Montana newspaper, which went public. Other than intentionally keeping it from Congress, they had no intention of keeping if from Congress, and the border is secure.

U.S. military jets dispatched from Alaska used their targeting pods to determine what was on board the object. They confirmed that it was a Chinese spy balloon that was not carrying offensive weapons but was outfitted with a large payload of surveillance equipment.

Fighters from Alaska checked it out over or near Alaska. They don’t have the range for longer flights.

. . . . On Feb. 1, NBC News told White House officials that it was planning to report that a Chinese spy balloon was flying over the U.S. and asked for comment. With NBC preparing its report, and Biden’s decision not to shoot it down, officials hastily organized briefings for lawmakers and the media to try to get ahead of the story.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken and then-Deputy Secretary Wendy Sherman met with officials from the Chinese Embassy, but the Chinese diplomats denied the balloon even belonged to China. U.S. officials believe they genuinely did not know about it.

The Chinese didn’t know? Nah. Blinken was tricked? Yeah. With our wide-open borders, what’s a little national security risk among enemies? It’s only surprising the MMPA didn’t collect the balloon and fly it free back to China. Now we learn the balloon was using our own online infrastructure against us:

The balloon connected to a U.S.-based company, according to the assessment, to send and receive communications from China, primarily related to its navigation. Officials familiar with the assessment said it found that the connection allowed the balloon to send burst transmissions, or high-bandwidth collections of data over short periods of time.

The MMPA got a FISC warrant, supposedly to intercept the balloon’s take, and took “maximum protective measures.” They said so themselves:

After the balloon was shot down on Feb. 4, Gen. Glen VanHerck, the commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, told reporters that the U.S. military and intelligence community had taken exhaustive steps to protect against the balloon’s ability to collect intelligence.

“We took maximum precaution to prevent any intel collection,” VanHerck said at a briefing. “So that we could take maximum protective measures while the balloon transited across the United States.”

Minimum “protective measures” would have entailed simply shooting it down as soon as it was detected. It overflew the Pacific to get to Alaska, where shooting it down might have scared a caribou. They might have been able to cover that up.

As for the American people and Congress? What they don’t know will hurt them.

Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher.  His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.