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Readers may be used to us droning on and on about government transparency. So we’ll get right to the point.
If Biden administration officials know what is going on with the reported drone sightings on the East Coast, and aren’t providing that information to an increasingly alarmed American public, that is a major problem. And if they don’t know what is going on with these unidentified objects hovering above, that could be an even bigger problem.
There are two most likely scenarios here: Either the federal government is not being fully forthcoming about these sightings, or they’re scrambling like everyone else to figure out what’s happening. Whether the Biden administration is being secretive or incompetent, they owe the American people better.
The sightings have been particularly active in New Jersey and New York, including around sensitive military and energy sites. Airspace around an Air Force base in Ohio was shut down for part of the weekend due to suspected drone sightings. Even observers in Maine have reported sightings, though police here haven’t been able to confirm those.
Top administration officials and spokespeople have acknowledged the drone sightings in the New York and New Jersey area, but downplayed any potential foreign involvement or safety risks. Details beyond that have been sparse from the highest levels of our government. If these drones are part of a sensitive national security operation, the U.S. government is clearly doing a bad job keeping that hidden from American adversaries. And if this is some sort of foreign surveillance or domestic misunderstanding, the government is doing a bad job explaining that to the American people.
Comments from officials like White House National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas have been bureaucratic to the point of being obtuse — heavy on legalese and light on specifics.
You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to be frustrated with this response, or to wonder what the Biden administration doesn’t know or isn’t telling us about this seemingly escalating situation. A failure to more quickly and clearly share information with the public, as in this case, is all but sure to make the situation even worse.
In a vacuum of information and with a deficit of trust in institutions, speculation and frustration is sure to run rampant. That is true for the general public, and for members of Congress.
“There’s a lot of us who are pretty frustrated right now,” Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut told Fox News on Sunday.
“’We don’t know’ is not a good enough answer,” said Himes, who leads Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee. And he’ll get no argument from us about that.
President-elect Donald Trump’s comments about shooting the drones out of the sky are hasty and irresponsible, but they speak to an underlying and legitimate frustration about a lack of clear information and a lack of cohesive action from the current administration. And Trump’s incoming national security advisor has correctly identified a major concern about these unidentified drones.
“I think Americans are finding it hard to believe we can’t figure out where these are coming from,” Rep. Mike Waltz of Florida, Trump’s pick for the security role, told CBS News on Sunday. “It’s pointing to gaps in our capabilities and in our ability to clamp down on what’s going on here. And we need to get to the bottom of it.”
Americans need to trust that the government is capable of monitoring and protecting our airspace, and we need to trust that the government is being forthright when questions about those efforts arise. In the absence of more information, both competence and transparency appear absent from this situation as well.
