The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee is hailing the dropping and recovery of the Chinese spy balloon this weekend, calling the remnants a U.S. "asset now" and saying America will "learn a lot" from it.
Critical narratives are forcing "just a huge intelligence win" is "being lost in this," according to Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., and ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee.
"There's a lot of value in observing an asset like this," Himes told "CNN This Morning." "What did we learn by watching this thing over a period of time?"
Himes, a member of the Gang of Eight, denounced "the breathless criticism of the decision-making process," calling it "partisan" attacks.
"When were the decisions taken?" Himes continued. "And most interestingly, what are we going to learn about the equipment, right? Who made the semiconductors that are on this thing? What are its capabilities? We'll learn a lot."
House Intelligence Committee Chair Mike Turner, R-Ohio, was adamant the balloon "should have never been allowed" to get all the way across the U.S. before the Biden administration dropped it after it "completed its mission."
"If you asked somebody to draw an 'X' at every place where our sensitive missile defense sites or nuclear weapons infrastructure, or nuclear weapons sites are, you would put them all along this path," Turner told NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday.
"Clearly, this was an attempt by China to gather information, to defeat our command and control of our sensitive missile defense weapons sites and that, certainly, is an urgency that this administration does not recognize."
Himes suggested Turner "doesn't know right now any more than I know exactly what the decision-making process was."
"There is enormous value in observing up close and personal an asset like this," he continued. "What are its capabilities? How does it maneuver? What is it collecting? What is it emanating?
"We need to see whether the decision was deliberate, or whether it was careless. I'm going to withhold judgment until we get that tick tock."
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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