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The original was posted on /r/ufos by /u/Fermato on 2024-12-24 10:25:20+00:00.
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Inside the Monthlong White House Effort to Quell New Jersey Drone Frenzy
Biden called the Pentagon four times seeking information and was told the military had found nothing unusual
WASHINGTON—President Biden’s first call to the Pentagon about the drones over New Jersey came on Dec. 12, nearly a month after the initial reports of mysterious flying objects in the night sky, U.S. officials said.
In the days that followed, Biden called Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin again. And again. And again, seeking updates.
By then, the drone frenzy had escalated into a major headache for the White House, fueled by rumors about an Iranian mother ship off the coast, by videos of unknown aircraft hovering over suburban towns—and by little information from Washington except assurances that there was nothing unusual.
Though the sightings began on Nov. 18, the Department of Homeland Security didn’t brief New Jersey’s congressional delegation on what it knew until Dec. 4, and then not again until weeks later, lawmakers said. The White House didn’t address the issue publicly until the same day Biden called Austin, playing down what had become a national fixation.
“There is no known malicious activity occurring,” White House spokesman John Kirby told reporters, adding that federal authorities were investigating the sightings with New Jersey state law-enforcement agencies.
Within days of the first sightings, DHS, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other agencies were looking for explanations and were in touch regularly with New Jersey law enforcement and officials, a senior Biden administration official said. The FBI opened a tip line on Nov. 25 and ran down “every single one” of the 6,000 tips it received, the official said.
As concern mounted, White House aides at the National Security Council began daily check-ins with the relevant agencies, the official said, never finding any evidence of criminal activity, a national security threat or a public safety danger.
But those findings frustrated state and federal lawmakers. “I just didn’t see the commensurate type of response by the administration to meet that level of public interest,” said Sen. Andy Kim (D., N.J.).
The response gave President-elect Donald Trump an opening to suggest, without evidence, that the White House was withholding the truth.
“Our military knows and our president knows, and for some reason they want to keep people in suspense,” Trump told reporters this past Monday, urging that the drones be shot down.
The sightings began the night of Nov. 18, when law-enforcement officers in northern New Jersey began seeing several drones in the sky. Live Storm Chasers, a local weather-tracking group with 1.3 million Facebook followers, posted that “at least five, unknown, large drones have been flying unauthorized for over 2 hours.”
The Morris County prosecutor’s office said there was no known threat to public safety and urged skepticism about online reports. It didn’t work, and the attention might have attracted more drone pilots who made the situation worse, said Rob D’Amico, a former FBI counterdrone chief.
“I grew up in New Jersey. If I was a teen with a drone, I’d be flying over the mayor’s house, I’d be flying over the sheriff’s house,” D’Amico said. “I’m a smartass, and there are a lot of smartasses in New Jersey.”
As the sightings continued, the FBI’s Newark office opened an investigation on Nov. 20, and the Federal Aviation Administration two days later issued a temporary prohibition on drones over the Trump National Golf Club Bedminster. Days later, the agency ordered another temporary flight restriction over the Picatinny Arsenal, an Army research center, where there have been several confirmed sightings of unidentified drones entering the airspace.
Then things really took off.
Across the Atlantic, unidentified drones were spotted flying over four military bases used by the U.S. in the U.K. “Small unmanned aerial systems continue to be spotted in the vicinity of and over Royal Air Force Lakenheath, RAF Mildenhall, RAF Feltwell and RAF Fairford since Nov. 20,” the Air Force said in a statement, giving the names of the British bases.
The Pentagon offered no explanation, just as in New Jersey.
By Dec. 4, the state’s elected officials took matters into their own hands. New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy organized a Zoom call for the delegation with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Rep. Chris Smith (R., N.J.) said he asked why the U.S. government couldn’t follow one of the mysterious drones.
“We surely have the capability to follow one. He didn’t know,” Smith said.
A DHS spokesman disputed Smith’s account, saying in a statement that Mayorkas explained that the department had limited authority to track and take down drones, citing restrictions imposed by Congress.
On Dec. 8, a Coast Guard officer at Island Beach State Park in New Jersey told Smith that one of its 47-foot vessels had been trailed by as many as 30 drones, the lawmaker said.
Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R., N.J.), a member of the House subcommittee on aviation, said in an appearance on Fox News that he had “high sources” telling him the drones were coming from an Iranian “mother ship” in the Atlantic. He had been alerted by three people with links to U.S. intelligence that the vessel had left its port in Iran in November, Van Drew told The Wall Street Journal.
“I have not been presented a single credible, cohesive narrative except for that Iran is controlling these drones from offshore,” Van Drew said in a letter sent to Biden on Dec. 11.
Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh soon responded: “There is no Iranian ship off the coast of the United States, and there is no so-called mother ship launching drones toward the United States.”
