Nearly a dozen Senate Republicans are calling on the Defense Department’s (DOD) inspector general to launch an investigation into Pentagon official Colin Kahl for purportedly leaking classified information about Chinese surveillance balloons to corporate media.
In a letter submitted to the department on Tuesday, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and nine of his GOP colleagues allege that Kahl, who serves as undersecretary of defense for policy, “provided reporters with classified information regarding prior Chinese surveillance balloons” after such a device was identified over U.S. airspace earlier this year.
On Feb. 4, an unidentified senior defense official claimed during an off-camera briefing with reporters that Chinese government surveillance balloons had “transited the continental United States briefly at least three times during the [Trump] administration.” While several high-ranking Trump officials insisted that such an assertion was false, legacy media had the narrative they needed and began running wall-to-wall coverage of the claim to cover for the Biden administration’s incompetent response to the Chinese incursion into U.S. airspace.
It wasn’t until days later that regime propagandists conveniently admitted the “transiting of three suspected Chinese spy balloons over the continental US during the Trump administration was only discovered after President Joe Biden took office.” As the Republicans’ letter noted, that would mean “leaders of the previous administration did not have an opportunity to respond to the threat.”
“The selective leak falsely portrayed prior incursions as similar incidents and suggested that the previous administration was similarly ineffective in responding to known surveillance threats,” Senate
