President Biden and the Pentagon now claim they knew about Chinaâs spy balloon after all. So, why then didnât they inform the American people? Thankfully, Montana resident Chase Doak captured the balloon perfectly. He joins Glenn to describe the moment he witnessed it in the sky and took the now-viral picture that potentially forced Team Biden to finally OWN UP about the Chinese surveillance balloon floating through our skiesâŚ
TranscriptBelow is a rush transcript that may contain errors
GLENN: Now, the president and the Pentagon, and everybody else, they knew about the balloon. He decided to not tell anybody about the Chinese balloon. Because he didn't want it to mess up their global warming conversation, that they were if we go to have last weekend with China.
Unfortunately, just a regular citizen looks up, like, what's that?
Takes a picture of it. And the Chinese spy balloon, is now out in the open. The -- the -- the picture goes viral everywhere. And the Pentagon has to admit, oh.
That's a spy balloon. The guy who did it, lives in Montana. His name is Chase Doak, and he is with us now. Chase, how are you?
CHASE: I'm doing all right.
GLENN: So when you looked up in the sky, and you saw the balloon. You just thought it was a regular weather balloon. Or what did you think?
CHASE: I honestly had no idea, what to think. I knew that we had a ground stop in place, so there were airspace restrictions in our airport.
And outside of my office window, I looked straight out on to the -- the airport. I -- you probably don't know much about the Billings Airport. We have cliffs here in town.
GLENN: You are on top of a butte. And I've been there, my friend.
The Becks are rampant in Billings. Anyway, go ahead.
CHASE: Yeah. So I just happen to be looking out. Because I wanted to see what was going on. I thought there might be a military exercise. Or somebody important might be flying in. And it turned out, that it was just this thing in the sky, and I had no idea what it was.
GLENN: So they had closed the airport. Or restricted the airspace. Was it because of the balloon?
CHASE: Yeah.
GLENN: Yeah.
CHASE: Yeah. It was pretty easy to put two and two together.
GLENN: Really? Huh.
And so were you surprised when -- when your discovery really -- I mean, it's -- this is being compared now to Sputnik.
Did you know that? That this is a Sputnik moment.
CHASE: Yeah. I heard. I have heard that -- you know,it -- it's still pretty surreal for me. But I didn't know when I was taking the photo, that it was going to lead to something like this.
GLENN: Sure. Sure. You're like, I bet this will bring down the fires of hell around my head.
Have you had any pushback on it. Have you gotten any heat?
CHASE: Not really. I mean, for the most part, people who have corresponded with me, have been pretty supportive. And pretty excited about it, to be honest.
GLENN: So you -- the story that I have read, said that you thought at first, it might be a UFO, or a star or something.
Is that true?
CHASE: Yeah. Yeah. I thought, you know, at best, I might get a good shot of a UFO, that would end up in a Steven Greer documentary in a few years. But...
GLENN: Well, you got a lot more than that. I -- and you took the picture from your office? Or your driveway?
CHASE: I took the initial picture from my office, and then I -- I kind of rushed out to my car, because I had my camera in the trunk of my car. But the lens I had, was just too short to get anything good.
So I actually called the photo editor at the local paper, the Billings Gazette. Larry Maher is his name, and I worked with him, for about 10 years at that paper.
And I knew he would have a big line. So I had him look up. He also is a pilot, so I thought he might what it was. But he had no idea either. Then I rushed home, to get my big lens on my camera.
GLENN: Was it hard to see?
CHASE: No. You could see it with the naked eye. And it was still broad daylight. So seeing a bright spot in the sky, and it -- it was circular. It didn't look like a point of light. It looked like a circle.
It would -- it was very easy to spot.
GLENN: How did they think they would get away with keeping this quiet? Is it --
CHASE: I have no idea. It was just so brazen.
GLENN: So amazing. So amazing.
Well, thank you. I just want to talk to an average Joe. Like, you changed history.
I don't know if you really -- that sunk in.
But I've made -- I've made a -- a point of trying to call people now, that have impacted history.
In realtime.
And they may not know about it. And ask them this question. Would you do me a favor, and write out in your own words, what you saw and everything else. In your own handwriting. And sign it for me. So we can put it in our museum and our vault.
CHASE: Yeah, I would absolutely be happy to absolutely do that.
GLENN: Yeah, that's great.
Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Case, keep up the good work.
CHASE: Thank you, Glenn.
GLENN: You bet. Buh-bye. That's kind of cool. Really cool.
STU: It's really cool. You're looking up at the sky. And I guess eventually, we would have noticed it.
I don't know. I don't check the sky for balloons that often. And they seemingly wanted us not to see this. That was their approach.
GLENN: Yeah. Their plan was, that it would just drift over the country, and nobody would say anything about it.
STU: That's incredible.
GLENN: I mean, that shows you what a dream world, that our president is living in.
STU: Yeah.
GLENN: And, by the way, you know, he gave the order on Wednesday to shoot it down, but they didn't shoot it down until Saturday.
There is a question. Why? Why would they delay on that?
STU: They keep saying, it was going over people. They didn't want it to fall on people. It's kind of a weird explanation.
GLENN: That's really weird.
STU: Even the people in Montana. There's seven people per mile. Per square mile in our state. You can shoot it down, wherever you want.
GLENN: Yeah. Yeah. And usually when the president says, I'll shoot something down, you shoot it down.
But maybe that's just me. Also, that's about a 10,000-dollar balloon. And we used a million dollar rocket.
STU: That's a weird thing too. Why a missile?
Again, I know -- I'm familiar with balloons.
GLENN: Yeah. Are you?
STU: And typically when you put any hole in them, they'll come to the ground. You think really blowing it up to a zillion pieces. It was a cool fireworks show.
GLENN: You could have taken a biplane, and just maybe shot it with a shotgun. I mean, it was an average guy who just was standing outside going, what the hell is that?
STU: I'm kind of surprised there wasn't another average guy with a plane that was just like, eh, screw it. I'm going up there. I mean, it was pretty high for a biplane, I would assume.
GLENN: Yeah. Your head might have popped. Yeah.
STU: I guess one of the big issues was the international waters. They wanted to get it off the water. Or off the land. But they only have 12 miles. So they had to knock it down almost immediately.
And I will say, at least they did it during -- during the day.
I would have been really annoyed if we had this whole balloon thing, and we didn't get to see it explode, and at least we got that out of this.
That's the only thing I can say. At least we got that. They should have filled it with either blue or pink dust, and made it a gender reveal of some sort.
GLENN: That would have been cool. Or a rainbow.