« I’m really hopeful that this will be an intelligence boon for us seeing what this payload has, » Tracy Walder said on Sunday.
A former CIA officer said on Sunday that she is « hopeful » about the information that can now be recovered from the downed Chinese spy balloon.
The strange craft was first sighted over Billings, Montana, on Wednesday, and despite China’s claims about it being a weather balloon, it was ultimately found to be a surveillance device. Following days of debate and calls for the craft to be shot down, the U.S. military finally took out the balloon over the Atlantic Ocean on Saturday afternoon roughly six nautical miles off the coast of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
Countering criticism over the government’s seeming inaction against the balloon earlier in the week, President Joe Biden said that he first ordered the balloon destroyed on Wednesday, but military officials insisted that they wait until it was over the ocean, to prevent debris from harming people on the ground.
