President Joe Biden’s top military adviser has been “compromised by the Communist Chinese,” in the estimation of a House Republican tasked with overseeing U.S. diplomacy.
Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) questioned the integrity of U.S. Army Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during a congressional hearing on "Combatting the Generational Challenge of CCP Aggression.” He offered the allegation in light of his disagreement with the administration’s recent decision to shoot down an alleged Chinese spy balloon over water rather than over land.
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“I fear that the U.S. government has been compromised by the Communist Chinese,” Burchett said during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing before referring to reports that military officials advised Biden against destroying the balloon as soon as it was detected. “From what I understand, Gen. Milley said, 'No, it should not.’ And then it was allowed to traverse the entire continental United States of America ... and he was the same general under President Trump, at the end of his presidency, that actually spoke with the Chinese apparently, unbeknownst to the White House.”
The decision to delay the downing of the balloon until it was over the Atlantic Ocean was made in order to avoid any risk of the debris causing death or damage on the ground, according to U.S. officials who say that it also allowed them to study the balloon in flight.
“This gave us the opportunity to assess what they were actually doing, what kind of capabilities existed on the balloon, what kind of transmission capabilities existed,” U.S. Air Force Gen. Glen VanHerck, who leads the North American Aerospace Defense Command, told reporters on Feb. 6. “I think you'll see in the future that that time frame was well worth its value.”
Milley has been a lightning rod under Biden in some Republican circles, particularly following revelations that he spoke with his Chinese counterpart in the midst of the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6 to assure Beijing that Trump would not launch a “surprise” attack against China.
“If we’re going to attack, I’m going to call you ahead of time. It’s not going to be a surprise,” Milley was quoted as saying in Peril, a book by Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Robert Costa. Milley has defended that call as a necessary response to “concerning intelligence” that Chinese officials were anxious about the possibility of a sudden war due to the chaos of Trump’s attempt to remain in office.
“I know, I am certain, that President Trump did not intend to attack the Chinese and it was my directed responsibility to convey presidential orders and intent,” Milley told the Senate in 2021.
“My task at that time was to de-escalate. My message again was consistent: stay calm, steady, and de-escalate. We are not going to attack you.”
State Department Assistant Secretary Daniel Kritenbrink, who leads the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, reminded Burchett of the administration’s reasoning for declining to shoot down a balloon carrying a “payload, the collection apparatus is the length of three buses” over the U.S. mainland.
“The president ordered that it be taken down, and that was done as soon as it was determined it could be done safely, and not in a way that [would] rain debris down, potentially, on top of the heads of American citizens,” Kritenbrink said. “We took a number of steps to shield ourselves from any vulnerability from that balloon. We learned a lot from that balloon by tracking it, and we're going to learn even more now that we have taken it down and recovered the [debris].”
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Burchett, who noted that former CIA Director Leon Panetta has said he would have recommended shooting down the balloon much sooner, insisted that the administration’s explanation is not credible.
“I'm not calling you a liar, but I am calling somebody a liar,” he said in an apparent reference to Milley. “Because they're not telling us the truth about this thing. And it's the type of thing we'll never hear about. If we do, it'll be in some expo a day later. And then, you know, and nobody will.”