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U.S. Navy vessels on Monday swarmed a widespread debris field with divers and cranes to retrieve pieces of the suspected Chinese surveillance balloon shot down by a U.S. fighter aircraft off the coast of South Carolina on Saturday afternoon.
A senior government said the FBI is expected to take custody of any recovered components of the balloon’s payload and to ship it to its laboratory in Quantico, Virginia. for analysis and intelligence gathering.
The balloon had been traveling across the continental U.S. since at least Tuesday, with the White House facing mounting questions and political blowback as to why the balloon was allowed to cross the country in the first place, especially as the U.S. deals with tensions with China.
The Department of Defense on Monday released some images of the debris recovery operations in the ocean off of South Carolina as well as images showing the takeoff of the two F-22 fighter jets in the shoot-down mission.
Republicans continue to condemn President Joe Biden for not having ordered the balloon shot down earlier, but Biden said Saturday he did ask for such action, until the American military advised him they should wait until the balloon wasn’t over civilian territory.
Asked whether the balloon incident has weakened U.S.-China relations as he arrived back at the White House on Monday from Camp David, Biden told reporters, „We’ve made it clear to China what we’re going to do, they understand our position. We’re not going to back off, we did the right thing, and there‘s not a question about weakening or strengthening, it’s just the reality.“
When asked whether it was always his view to shoot it down or that he did so only because it became public, Biden responded, „Oh no, it was always my position. Once it came over the United — into the United States from Canada, I told the Defense Department I wanted to shoot it down as soon as it was appropriate. They concluded — they concluded we should not shoot it down over land, it was not a serious threat, and we should wait until it got across the water.“
White House officials are continuing to push back against criticism from Republicans, insisting they simply did not want to endanger a successful takedown operation by disclosing sooner.
„On Wednesday, President Biden directed the military to shoot down the balloon while maximizing our ability to collect the payload,“ a White House spokesperson said in response to inquiries about the timing of the disclosure.
