The Trump administration is facing blowback after putting out conflicting reports from top officials at multiple agencies — and after offering no explanation initially — as it closed a U.S. airport, initially for ten days, only to reopen it hours later. Reports revealed communications snafus between the Department of Defense and the FAA, and alleged causes being foreign drones or a “party balloon.”
“A U.S. official confirmed to Fox News that the U.S. military earlier this week shot down what was later determined to be a party balloon near El Paso, Texas, after initially assessing it as a possible foreign drone,” the news outlet reported. “The misidentification eventually led to a total shutdown of airspace around the El Paso, Texas, airport.”
“A separate U.S. administration official had told Fox News that Mexican cartel drones breached U.S. airspace near El Paso, Texas, and that counter-drone measures were taken to disable them,” Fox added.
CNN reported that a “Pentagon plan to use a high-energy, counter-drone laser without having coordinated with the Federal Aviation Administration about potential risks to civilian flights prompted Wednesday’s unprecedented airspace shutdown over El Paso, Texas.”
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CBS News reported that the “unexpected but brief airspace closure” had “stemmed from disagreements” between FAA and Pentagon officials over drone-related tests.
“Two sources identified the technology as a high-energy laser,” CBS added.
The FAA Administrator, Bryan Bedford, “on Tuesday night decided to close the airspace — without alerting White House, Pentagon or Homeland Security officials, sources said.”
But Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth offered a different explanation, saying that the FAA and the Pentagon “acted swiftly to address a cartel drone incursion. The threat has been neutralized, and there is no danger to commercial travel in the region. The restrictions have been lifted and normal flights are resuming.”
Critics blasted the administration.
Pointing to one administration official’s claim about “Mexican cartel drones,” Aaron Fritschner, deputy chief of staff for U.S. Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) wrote: “As everyone knows, the standard response to an incursion by ‘Mexican cartel drones’ is a sudden unexplained and poorly communicated 9/11 esque shutdown of all air traffic for ten days that is clumsily revoked a few hours later.”
“This is so obviously a lie,” he charged.
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Veteran journalist Kevin Baron, who has a background in global security, defense, intelligence, and foreign policy, called the closure and rapid re-opening, “unnecessarily alarming.”
Astrophysicist and associate professor Robert Rutledge remarked, “We are being lied to by @SeanDuffyWI [Secretary Sean Duffy] and the FAA. This is obviously b — —.”
“There have now been three different explanations given by government sources to reporters for the shut-down of the El Paso airport,” he continued. “If any one of them were correct, the shut down would still be a completely bonkers, unacceptable situation.”
CNN national security analyst Juliette Kayyem slammed the Defense Department.
“The Pentagon is dangerous,” she wrote. “This is totally outrageous and risky. The American public’s safety is not a pawn in Hegseth and Duffy’s fighting over DOD and DOT control of skies. Hegseth totally at fault here, it seems.”
Responding to an FAA statement, former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance asked, “Who is running this clown show?”
Meteorologist Justin Stapleton remarked, “y’all need to get your story straight. This isn’t ok.”
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Image via Reuters
This article has been updated to include Kayyem’s remarks.
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