Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes on Sunday shared his frustration with the lack of information about recent drone sightings in New Jersey, but he also emphasized that he doesn’t believe there is reason to worry.
“A lot of us are quite frustrated right now. The answer ‘We don’t know’ is not good enough,” Himes (D-Conn.) told Fox News Sunday host Jacqui Heinrich.
At a White House news conference on Thursday, National Security Communications Adviser John Kirby said there is no evidence the drones come from foreign adversaries or pose a threat to national security, but he had no conclusive answer on their origins.
Himes specifically called out the Federal Aviation Administration for not taking responsibility to address the concerns.
“Specifically, the FAA, the agency that has jurisdiction over domestic airspace, should say on Saturday morning, ‘Let us show you a picture of the number of aircraft, commercial, private and military, flying over New Jersey at any given time . A 24-hour period,” he said, adding that “just spreading information to fill that vacuum would be helpful.”
Some lawmakers have taken matters into their own hands; For example, Senator Andy Kim of New Jersey drove around the state with local police to look at the drones for themselves and posted updates on his social media. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) called for “more transparency” on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday, saying, “We need a briefing for the members of the Senate to figure out what’s going on here .”
Others, like Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.), accused the Pentagon of lying, claiming the drones came from an Iranian “mothership.”
Himes debunked Van Drew’s claim about the mothership as a conspiracy theory used to fill the vacuum in the absence of information, stating “with confidence” that it is not the Iranians or the Chinese.
“I’ve spent all my time as a senior member of the Intelligence Committee watching what the Iranians and the Chinese are doing,” Himes said. “And you know, what they don’t do is a bunch of drones that we can easily find over the continental United States. The Chinese learned that lesson with their spy balloon.”
He added: “The military is great at what they do. An aircraft carrier carries 6,000 great people who will defeat the Iranians. What they’re not very good at is identifying if there are twelve teenage boys in Montclair, New Jersey who fly. Walmart drones aren’t very good at that.”
The lack of certainty has led President-elect Donald Trump to take to social media and call on the government to shoot down the drones if they don’t know what they are.
Himes accepted that security is essential: “It is absolutely the job of the federal government to ensure that no one flies a drone over Edwards Air Force base and CIA headquarters in Virginia to undergo new surveillance or worse.”
But he emphasized that drones are easily available for anyone, American or adversary, to purchase at a local Walmart and that kind of recreational use “is unlikely to be a problem for the Department of Homeland Security to solve.”
When asked if he was concerned that the drones could be a state actor preparing for a future attack, Himes said he felt there was no threat.
“Frankly, Jacqui,” he said, “our adversaries who want to do us harm have billion-dollar satellites above our heads right now that are capable of doing what we do to them, which is observe. You know what they don’t do. aren’t they going to do that? They’re not going to put technology over Newark, New Jersey, that could fall out of the sky and we would capture it.”
