By Courtney Kube and Carol E. Lee -
NBC News
The Chinese spy balloon that flew over the United States was able to collect information from several sensitive US military locations, despite efforts by the Biden administration to prevent it from doing so, according to two current senior US officials and a former senior administration official.
China was able to control the balloon so that it could make multiple passes over some of the sites (sometimes flying in a figure eight) and relay the information it collected to Beijing in real time, according to the three officials.
The information obtained by China came mainly from electronic signals, which can be picked up by weapon systems or include communications from base personnel, and not from images, the officials explained.
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The three officials claimed that China could have collected much more information from sensitive locations had it not been for the White House's efforts to move around potential targets and obscure the ability of balloons to pick up their electronic signals by preventing them from emitting or broadcasting signals.
The National Security Council referred NBC News, sister network to Noticias Telemundo, to the Department of Defense for comment.
The Defense Department referred to comments in February in which senior officials claimed the balloon had "limited added value" for Chinese government intelligence gathering "beyond what [China] is likely to be able to collect through things like satellites in low Earth orbit.”
Sailors assigned to Explosive Ordnance Disposal Group 2 retrieve a high-altitude surveillance balloon off the coast of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, on February 5, 2023. US Navy via AP
China has repeatedly claimed that the balloon was an unmanned civilian aircraft that accidentally veered off course and that the United States overreacted by shooting it down.
Authorities have not said which company, department or organization the balloon belonged to, despite being asked multiple times by NBC News for comment.
After the balloon was shot down in February, Biden Administration officials said it was capable of picking up intelligence signals.
[China Offers “No Apology” in First Meeting After Spy Balloon Crisis, Secretary of State Says]
The balloon had a self-destruct mechanism that could have been remotely activated by China, but officials said it's unclear if that didn't happen because the mechanism malfunctioned or because China chose not to activate it.
The balloon first entered US airspace over Alaska on January 28, according to the Biden administration, which said it was tracking it as it moved.
In the following four days, the balloon flew over Montana, specifically the Malmstrom air base, where the United States stores part of its nuclear material.
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On February 2, NBC News was the first to report that the Chinese spy balloon was flying over the United States and that President Biden had considered shooting it down, prompting the administration to publicly confirm this and reveal that it had been monitoring the balloon for days. .
Once the balloon's existence was made public, China increased its speed, according to authorities, in an attempt to get it out of US airspace as soon as possible.
The United States shot down the balloon on February 4 off the coast of South Carolina, and authorities are still analyzing the recovered wreckage.
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At the time, the US government waited to shoot down the balloon until it was over the ocean to avoid damage or casualties on land.
The device, which was almost as big as three school buses, would have left a large field of debris that US authorities could not control when it fell to the ground.
“U.S. military commanders had determined that shooting down the balloon on the ground posed an excessive risk to the population of a wide area due to the size and altitude of the balloon and its surveillance payload,” Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin explained in a statement. written statement after the shooting down of the balloon.
Authorities have attempted to reconstruct the balloon from the recovered remains.