Report: Docs Allegedly Leaked by Teixeira Give Insights Into Chinese Spy Balloons

Becca Lower reporting for RedState 

As RedState reported this week, alleged Pentagon documents leaker Jack Teixeira was arrested on Thursday and charged Friday on two counts for violating the Espionage Act. The allegations stem from the unauthorized sharing of classified military documents on social media platform Discord, which appear to have been posted a month ago but just came to light .

In the wake of the revelations about the 21-year-old Massachusetts Air National Guardsman, the Washington Post has released an exclusive story with more details on what was contained in the documents. One intriguing element is that it gives previously unknown insights into the Chinese spy balloon that the Biden administration allowed to hover over the United States for a week:

U.S. intelligence agencies were aware of up to four additional Chinese spy balloons, and questions lingered about the true capabilities of the one that flew over the continental United States in January and February, according to previously unreported top-secret intelligence documents.

The Chinese spy balloon that flew over the United States this year, called Killeen-23 by U.S. intelligence agencies, carried a raft of sensors and antennas the U.S. government still had not identified more than a week after shooting it down, according to a document allegedly leaked to a Discord chatroom by Jack Teixeira, a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard.

The report also shares details about two other, similar Chinese balloons—one “flew over a U.S. carrier strike group in a previously unreported incident, and a third crashed in the South China Sea, a second top-secret document stated.”

One document gives “the most detailed government assessment to date of Killeen-23” and the other balloons:

A document produced by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and dated Feb. 15 — 10 days after the Air Force shot down the balloon that flew over the United States — contains the most detailed government assessment to date of Killeen-23 and two balloons from previous years, labeled Bulger-21 and Accardo-21. It was not clear from the documents if Bulger-21 and Accardo-21 were the same balloons that flew over the carrier strike group and crashed.

The report continues:

Annotating what appear to be detailed photos of the balloon that flew over the United States, presumably taken from a U-2 spy plane, intelligence analysts assessed that it could generate enough power to operate “any” surveillance and reconnaissance technology, including a type of radar that can see at night and through clouds and thin materials.

…

The leaked NGA document notes that Killeen-23 contained a parabolic dish measuring 1.2 meters in diameter, several unidentified sensors, and a possible mast antenna. The document says that the government has “no imagery collections of the bottom of the Killeen-23 payload to analyze for an optical sensor.”

The lack of detailed conclusions about the balloon’s surveillance capabilities raises questions about the decision to let it fly over the United States before shooting it down, an action the Defense Department justified at the time as an opportunity to collect additional intelligence.

Engineers at the National Space Intelligence Center, which is affiliated with the Space Force, assessed that the solar panels on Killeen-23 could generate upward of 10,000 watts of solar power, more than enough to operate any surveillance capability, including synthetic aperture radar, according to the document.

WaPo spoke with a U.S. official about the “government naming conventions” of the balloons:

A U.S. official speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence said the government naming convention for such balloons is alphabetical, from A to Z. It appears that the balloons are named after notorious criminals, including Tony Accardo, James “Whitey” Bulger, and Donald Killeen.

Another document WaPo found on the Discord server appears to show that news of the spy balloon “probably caught elements of China’s government by surprise”:

The incursion of the spy balloon into U.S. airspace in late January probably caught elements of China’s government by surprise, according to a third document that relies on intercepted communications. Knowledge of the incursion was likely “heavily stovepiped” within the Chinese military, which lacks “strong senior” oversight of the surveillance balloon program, the document assessed, adding that some in the Chinese government viewed their Foreign Ministry’s response as poor for allowing the crisis to be “sensationalized.”

As more information comes out about what was in the alleged leak by Teixeira, we’ll keep you posted.