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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: Welcome back to Coast to Coast. Richard Saratt sitting in

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Speaker 1: for George Nori, coming to you live from my home

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Speaker 1: studio in Thornhill, just north of Toronto, and asking about

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Speaker 1: these Chinese surveillance balloons. I believe the surveillance balloons. I

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Speaker 1: certainly don't for a minute believe the Communist Chinese government

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Speaker 1: that these are meteorological balloons that have blown off course,

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Speaker 1: because now there are two of them. These are high

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Speaker 1: altitude balloons, and they are considered a key delivery platform

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Speaker 1: for secret nuclear strikes on America's electric grid. I know

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Speaker 1: this is something that George Nori has been very vocal

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Speaker 1: about over many, many years, talking about the need to

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Speaker 1: strengthen our electrical grids from an EMP attack and the

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Speaker 1: threat of a balloon launched electromagnetic pulse attack. These have

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Speaker 1: been warm about by Congressional EMP, the Congressional EMP Commission,

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Speaker 1: and inside the military at a number of years ago.

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Speaker 1: Back in twenty fifteen, a report from the American Leadership

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Speaker 1: and Policy Foundation. Air Force Major David Stuckenberg, one of

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Speaker 1: the nation's leading EMP experts, wrote extensively about the threat

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Speaker 1: balloons carrying bombs pose to national security. All right, let's

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Speaker 1: go to Billings, Montana Noles and welcome Jeff on the

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Speaker 1: Wildcard Line. Jeff, Welcome to coast. How are you hi?

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Speaker 1: Thanks for taking my call. Yeah, things are kind of

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Speaker 1: crazy around here. They shut down our airspace Wednesday and

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Speaker 1: diverted flights and they prevented a flight from taking off

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Speaker 1: on time, So it's pretty crazy. Fighter jets landing at

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Speaker 1: the airport and everything. Usually we get the Air National

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Speaker 1: Guard will do stuff, but we had I think they

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Speaker 1: just have F eighteens, but we had the F twenty twos,

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Speaker 1: which those are the big boys. So lots of stuff

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Speaker 1: going on here. Did you did you happen to catch

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Speaker 1: sight of one of these balloons or were the balloon rather?

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Speaker 1: I think I might have, UM, but I just thought

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Speaker 1: it was like a just a weather balloon, And then

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Speaker 1: I get home it's like, no, this is bigger and higher.

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Speaker 1: So UM, I didn't think it'd be that high up

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Speaker 1: in the air. But you know, with perspective, UM, you

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Speaker 1: think it's closer and that's something small, but it was

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Speaker 1: higher and something a lot larger. Um. And when I

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Speaker 1: heard the news. My um thoughts immediately, I kind of

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Speaker 1: a World War two buff And these aren't the first

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Speaker 1: balloons to cross the Pacific and get here. Um, Japan

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Speaker 1: launched probably like ten thousand balloons. Only three hundred made

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Speaker 1: it here, but those were loaded with incendiary devices and explosives.

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Speaker 1: And yeah, we don't really like these drifting in our airspace.

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Speaker 1: And um, if it's China that sent them, they're probably

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Speaker 1: testing us to see, well, how are they going to

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Speaker 1: react to this? And if we're just letting him fly by,

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Speaker 1: it's like, what's to prevent him from putting well the

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Speaker 1: e MP thing or canisters of who knows what on

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Speaker 1: there to just start dropping here. So yeah, I don't

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Speaker 1: like it in our airspace. And I know our governor's

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Speaker 1: not very happy about it either, because he didn't hear

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Speaker 1: about it until it was already in the middle of

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Speaker 1: our state. And but he's not happy that this is

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Speaker 1: like right over our land here and above. He found

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Speaker 1: out about it right when I was above buildings and

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Speaker 1: that's the largest city in Montana. And I guess there's

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Speaker 1: a video tonight of somebody catching UM. I didn't get

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Speaker 1: that good of a look at it because I think

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Speaker 1: the servers were jammed from people looking at it, but

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Speaker 1: it looked like the witness heard some jets flying. This

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Speaker 1: wouldn't have been a balloon because that's a drift that's

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Speaker 1: long gone, that's drifted somewhere else. But they heard fighter

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Speaker 1: jets and then some sort of explosion and he can

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Speaker 1: kind of see this trail where it looks like something

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Speaker 1: falling from the sky. So I don't know. I saw that.

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Speaker 1: I saw that video and they were claiming this was

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Speaker 1: the balloon, but as you say, no, it had drifted.

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Speaker 1: It was long gone by that. So I'm one testing

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Speaker 1: some sort of a weapon type delivery system to if

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Speaker 1: another one comes. Were they testing some sort of system

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Speaker 1: to knock it out of the air, This would be

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Speaker 1: a good place to test it if UM kind of

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Speaker 1: get practice for drills to knock it out, because there's

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Speaker 1: enough blowback from UM. I know our congressman wasn't happy

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Speaker 1: about it either, so I think if one of another

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Speaker 1: one of these drifts, they're probably gonna take it out. Well,

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Speaker 1: there's one coming up apparently from There's been another one

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Speaker 1: spotted in Latin America that's coming up. So now I

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Speaker 1: don't know why is it out of the question that

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Speaker 1: they would shoot this thing out of the sky because

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Speaker 1: it's a balloon. I mean, it's okay, it's the size

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Speaker 1: of three buzzes. Apparently this idea that their concerned. The

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Speaker 1: Pentagon is concerned that the debris field could possibly injure

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Speaker 1: people on the ground. But I mean, when is that

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Speaker 1: a consideration. I mean, you have to be careful, obviously,

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Speaker 1: but when you have one of these vehicles, let's say,

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Speaker 1: with monitoring and surveilling capabilities, flying over nuclear bases and

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Speaker 1: so forth, if an airplane were to do that, the

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Speaker 1: air Force wouldn't wouldn't hesitate, you know, to uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: first they try to establish radio contact I suppose, and

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Speaker 1: they would try to escort it out, but if it persisted,

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Speaker 1: they would shoot that thing out of the sky. Why

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Speaker 1: are they so hesitant space in Montana that this would

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Speaker 1: have been the place to do it. I don't know

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Speaker 1: if they can figure out, like the wind um because

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Speaker 1: it is really high up there, they can kind of

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Speaker 1: get an estimate of where it would drift. And I

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Speaker 1: don't know if it's possible to get the balloon um

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Speaker 1: like put a hole in it so that it loses

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Speaker 1: air and if it's if it's able to land sort

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Speaker 1: of gently, we could retrieve it and see what alls

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Speaker 1: in the like somehow get that technology to see what's

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Speaker 1: in it and get more information on any capabilities it

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Speaker 1: might have to have a payload or whatever. We just

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Speaker 1: need to get more information on what this thing is.

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Speaker 1: So I don't know if there's any way to have

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Speaker 1: it have some sort of controlled landing, um like just

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Speaker 1: puncture the balloon. It probably would have who knows of

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Speaker 1: that atmosphere, It might have just collapsed and it would

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Speaker 1: have probably would have been pretty ruined by the time

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Speaker 1: it got down anyway, So I don't think they could have.

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Speaker 1: But yeah, and how much damage could could have even

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Speaker 1: a giant balloon do I mean, how much damage could

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Speaker 1: it do? I don't know. Yeah, And again we may

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Speaker 1: have plenty of time to get out of the way.

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Speaker 1: I would think, Yeah, it'd be the stuff hanging off

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Speaker 1: of it. Um, the balloon itself is that's probably not

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Speaker 1: going to hurt anything. But if it's what two or

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Speaker 1: three school bus is worth, it's not like a meteor

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Speaker 1: strike because it's not coming in at like, how are

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Speaker 1: many miles per hour meteorites come in and just be

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Speaker 1: free falling, and I really don't see how much damage

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Speaker 1: that could do if it landed like in a neighborhood.

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Speaker 1: But the odds are it's going to land sort of

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Speaker 1: in the middle of nowhere, and so I think the

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Speaker 1: risk there's probably more risk keeping it up there and

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Speaker 1: just letting it do whatever it's going to do. All right, Jeff,

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Speaker 1: great call. I appreciate you checking in from Billings, Montana.

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Speaker 1: Thank you, very insightful. Howard is West of the Rockies

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Speaker 1: in Vancouver, Washington. Howard, Welcome to Coast. Good morning, Richard.

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Speaker 1: I think I saw history repeat itself this afternoon. There

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Speaker 1: was a rather heated press conference between a kind of

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Speaker 1: guy general and the media this afternoon, and they were

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Speaker 1: insisting that he told them exactly where the you know

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Speaker 1: what position the Chinese bloom was in, and he just

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Speaker 1: slatly refused to tell them. It got it got rather nasty. Now,

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Speaker 1: whether he may have been have been unaware of it,

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Speaker 1: but he was repeating an eighty year old strategy that

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Speaker 1: was used in World War Two. The latter part of

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Speaker 1: World War two, when the Japanese started manufacturing the two

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Speaker 1: god Boon bombs and they sent up thousands of these things,

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Speaker 1: as the previous color was talking about, they were landing

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Speaker 1: all over the western United States, and the strategy that

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Speaker 1: was the War Department used then was to just simply

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Speaker 1: classify the whole thing. They would not allow the media

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Speaker 1: to report any of this. The idea was that they

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Speaker 1: didn't want the enemy to know how effective or accurate

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Speaker 1: their balloons were. And they they actually did uh succeed

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Speaker 1: in creating some damage. The Yes, there were casualties, there

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Speaker 1: were people killed. Yes, there was a family attending a

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Speaker 1: church picnic. It was in I believe it was in

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Speaker 1: the spring of nineteen forty five, and they came across

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Speaker 1: one of these things. I believe it was in the

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Speaker 1: Willamit National Forest, and I believe it killed about three.

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Speaker 1: They started messing with this thing. They didn't know what

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Speaker 1: it was, that hadn't it hadn't been reported, and it detonated.

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Speaker 1: I sum believe it killed three of them. But I

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Speaker 1: believe that the strategy of just keeping quiet about it,

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Speaker 1: that general or the Panic for that matter, really doesn't

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Speaker 1: know what the Chinese know about the you know, they

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Speaker 1: may not know it just exactly what the position of

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Speaker 1: their balloon was. And he didn't want to let him

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Speaker 1: know if he knew that if he said it there

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Speaker 1: or they'd hear it. So anyway, I thought that was

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Speaker 1: a rather interesting situation there. How this rerepeats itself like that. Indeed, Howard,

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Speaker 1: great call, thank you for that. That makes a certain

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Speaker 1: amount of sense. Although I don't know the technology that

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Speaker 1: the Japanese had, whether they were just sending these over

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Speaker 1: and whether they had any way of tracking where they

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Speaker 1: were once they were in the United States, or whether

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Speaker 1: they were basically sort of working blind, whereas here, obviously

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Speaker 1: these surveillance balloons are there too, specifically surveill I believe,

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Speaker 1: and they would have they would know the Communist Chinese

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Speaker 1: where these balloons are within the United States. Listen to

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Speaker 1: more Coast to Coast a m every week night at

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Speaker 1: one a m. Eastern, and go to Coast to Coast

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Speaker 1: am dot com for more