John Kirby Pressed on Drones over NJ Amid Escalating Concerns: ‘Why Don’t We Know?’

MACCALLUM: “So, former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan has posted video that he says appears to show dozens of large drones over his home last night. This is his posting of it. You know, and as I was saying, it’s the direction of them and the way they move around, that is really what has caused people to be concerned. That was for about 45 minutes, he says last night. He says Americans deserve answers. And he’s calling on for a response from the White House, the military and the FBI. He says, so far, it’s been ‘entirely unacceptable.’ Let’s bring in John Kirby, White House national security communications adviser and assistant to the president. John, good to have you with us. You know, what do you make of the reaction? A lot of people were unhappy with that comment that you made yesterday and felt like you were, you know, telling people that they were nuts or that they didn’t know what they were seeing with their own eyes.”

KIRBY: “No, not at all, Martha. That’s the farthest thing that I would ever do. I was simply reiterating what the FBI and what the Department of Homeland Security have relayed to us about what they’ve been able to corroborate. And we haven’t been able to corroborate everything. I said many of the corroborated sightings have turned out to be piloted aircraft.”

MACCALLUM: “That’s weird.”

KIRBY: “I didn’t say all of them. And what I said was those are the ones we were able to corroborate. There’s certainly the ones that we have not been able to and we don’t know the answer to it. And, and I strongly recommend that for folks that are seeing these things and documenting them to share that as they can with the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI and investigators.”

MACCALLUM: “All right, let’s do that. Let’s share it with you right now. Let’s put up this photo. This is the closeup one. Here we go. This is in Bernardsville, New Jersey. So John, are you able to see this photo?”

KIRBY: “No, ma’am.”

MACCALLUM: “You don’t have a monitor there?”

KIRBY: “No, actually, I turned the monitor off. It distracts me. So I didn’t see it, I’m sorry.”

MACCALLUM: “Well, you’ll have to take a look at it after, but I can describe it to you. It is large. It has a white bar that goes through the middle, the right hand side is half lit up, white on the top and red on the bottom. The other side is green. So what would that — you know, you’re a former military person yourself. You’re an admiral, you’re the White House National Security Communications adviser. I’m sure you have seen some of these images. So what is that that we’re looking at?”

KIRBY: “It’s difficult for me to tell you, Martha. I don’t — we don’t — we don’t really know. It is possible that some of these things could be commercial drones, you know, developed for commercial purposes. It’s possible that they could be owned by private citizens.”

MACCALLUM: “But Why Don’t We know, John? That’s the point. Why don’t — why doesn’t the United States government know? It seems silly. I mean, it feels a lot like the Chinese spy balloon. It was like, oh, we don’t know. It’s not a problem, then we watched it to go all the way across the country and we kept hearing, you know, we’re not really sure where it came from until we saw it pop down — popped and, you know, floated down over the ocean.”

KIRBY: “That’s not quite how it went. We were very honest with the American people that we knew it was Chinese and we knew that where it was going to go and we were pretty comfortable given the analysis that there wasn’t going to be an intelligence threat by it and we, again, we shot it down once it was over safe waters and wasn’t going to hurt anybody. But back to this, Why Don’t We know? I wish I could tell you exactly why we don’t have an answer for you here in the afternoon on the 13th of December. But I can tell you that we are working on it very, very hard to know because we want to answer those questions the same as those folks in New Jersey want answers to them and we are working on this very, very hard. We are now applying, there was a interagency conversation this morning about this topic where we have now decided to employ some additional technology to New Jersey and some additional personnel to try to get a better sense of what these things are. And as I said yesterday, Martha, as soon as we know we’re —“

MACCALLUM: “No, I hear you. This is shocking. I got to tell you, this is shocking, OK. And I’m not the only person who feels this way. This was happening at Langley. A month ago, OK, these people are not crazy. They’re seeing these things with their own eyes. This is not normal behavior. They are not planes that are coming in One Direction and they’re heading into Newark Airport and then they’re landing. OK? We spend $824 billion on defense. We have the greatest intelligent capability in the world. So how can you stand there and say to the country right now, gosh darn, we just don’t know what these are?”

KIRBY: “Because I’m not going to lie to you or to the American people, and I’m not going to say we know something when we don’t. And we would never, ever stoop to think that an American citizen was crazy or nuts because of what they’re seeing and what they’re documenting. We’re taking that imagery seriously and we’re doing the best we can to analyze it, and we encourage people to come forward if they have additional sightings and imagery. We want to do the best we can to triangulate it.”

MACCALLUM: “Well, let me —“

KIRBY: “But I’ll be gosh darned if I’m going to stand up here and make up stuff that I don’t know to be true.”

MACCALLUM: “We don’t want you to make up anything. You know, do you know and you can’t say, can you tell me that?”

KIRBY: “No, no, I’m telling you, Martha, I’m telling you. We don’t know.”

MACCALLUM: “You don’t know.”

KIRBY: “Every — we don’t —“

MACCALLUM: “Let me ask you this.”

KIRBY: “We can’t corroborate every single sighting. Some of them we have, not all of them. And we’re working hard to do that. We know people are afraid of it. We know people have concerns. We have those same concerns.”

MACCALLUM: “Sure. Yeah, because they’re flying over your house and it sounds like there are motorcycles landing on your roof.”

KIRBY: “Of course.”

MACCALLUM: “Let me ask you this. One, you know, person who watched this online said it’s a — they think it’s a PteroDynamics Transwing drone X-P4, which is being developed by the U.S. Navy as recon and logistics drone capable of picking up and dropping off packages between land and moving ships in high season winds. You know, they’re suggesting it’s an American company. We asked the company, they said we can’t speculate on the origin of the drones that are flying over New Jersey. So, is that an avenue that has been inspected, you know, is this a private company that is practicing something? And what wouldn’t — wouldn’t they have to clear something with somebody to have this kind of activity?”

KIRBY: “It could very well be, as I said, these could be commercially developed drones of some kind.”

MACCALLUM: “Why not just take one down and figure out what’s going on?”

KIRBY: “Well, you — OK the idea of taking something down, again, you want to worry about public safety. First of all, we don’t have enough conclusions to take that kind of a policy action. But let’s just assume for a minute, Martha, that we did. I mean, you’re not going to want to shoot something down where it can hit somebody’s house or hurt somebody.”

MACCALLUM: “Well, the Coast Guard says that there are 30 of them following one of their ships in the ocean. So would that work?”

KIRBY: “I mean, again, we have to develop the policy options based on what we know we’re dealing with here. And we just don’t know enough to make those kinds of — to take those kinds of actions. But my goodness, we’re going to do everything we can to find out and we’re going to share as much as we can. I understand it’s frustrating for folks, it’s frustrating for us. We want to know as well.”