At the first White House press briefing of Trump’s second administration, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt gave an update on the mysterious drones flying over New Jersey since the fall “that was just shared with me in the Oval Office from President Trump directly,” she said. “After research and study, the drones that were flying over New Jersey in large numbers were authorized to be flown by the FAA for research and various other reasons. Many of these drones were also hobbyists. … This was not the enemy.”

While its comforting to know that America’s shores are not so porous to adversarial aircraft, this vague response leaves unanswered questions. First, if the drones “were authorized by the FAA, [and] the federal government knew they were flying, why didn’t they say that?” wondered Family Research Council President Tony Perkins. If the FAA was on top of the situation, why did they — not to mention other governmental agencies — act like they didn’t know what was going on? What else is the government not telling the public?

Culpability

Some officials, like Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.), are willing to credit the official explanation, with a bit of their own reading between-the-lines. “I speculated … that it was likely our drones that were testing new equipment,” he stated on Wednesday’s “Washington Watch.” “That’s why they picked that New Jersey corridor, because, if you’re truly going to test a technology, you need noise in the background to know if it’s actually working. … Now you have Karoline [Leavitt] coming out and saying essentially that, maybe not in quite such detail.”

This explanation is not flattering to the previous administration. “It just speaks, I think, to the ineptitude of the Biden administration. They can’t read the room. They were disconnected from the American people. … They did not have a commander in chief. He was asleep at the wheel — or, quite frankly, asleep upstairs. And we were ungoverned, quite frankly, for four years,” added Ogles. “Again, the mismanagement — you had federal resources that were in play. You had local law enforcement that was spinning up. You had a hysteria sweeping the nation over what this may or may not be. Was it China? Was it otherworldly? What was it?”

Skepticism

Others were less convinced by the brief White House statement. “Frankly, it was disappointing,” said Belleville, N.J. Mayor Michael Melham. “It sounds like it’s a cover story because they had no cover story.” Melham said the drones are still visible at night in his town.

Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) also expressed his dissatisfaction. “I’m glad the White House confirmed today that there is no national security threat related to the recent drone activity over New Jersey,” he said. “However, today’s briefing raised new questions and confusion. I’ve reached out to the FAA and asked them to immediately clarify what they meant by ‘research and various other reasons.’ … Transparency is essential, and the public deserves clear answers.”

(For obvious reasons, Republicans voiced the loudest criticism of the Biden administration, and Democrats voiced the loudest criticism of the Trump administration. But the substance of the criticism has remained the same because the government’s conduct has not substantially changed.)

Reasons for Skepticism

After all, if the Biden administration’s public explanation for the mysterious drone sightings was insufficient and blameworthy, how has the Trump administration distinguished itself? On December 17, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and Department of Defense (DOD) released a joint statement, stating:

“Having closely examined the technical data and tips from concerned citizens, we assess that the sightings to date include a combination of lawful commercial drones, hobbyist drones, and law enforcement drones, as well as manned fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, and stars mistakenly reported as drones. We have not identified anything anomalous and do not assess the activity to date to present a national security or public safety risk over the civilian airspace in New Jersey or other states in the northeast.”

The words are different, but the content is the same: the drones are a combination of authorized and hobbyist aircraft, presenting no national security threat. But neither statement sheds light on the nature of the activity that would cause such an unusual number of drones to fly overhead.

Indeed, the news that the FAA approved most of the drone flights seems bizarrely discordant with the FAA’s actions in December. In the week before Christmas, the FAA placed drone flight restrictions over nearly two dozen towns in New Jersey, and then 30 locations in New York. Just before the New Year, the FAA expanded the flight restrictions in New Jersey.

Those actions came after unannounced drone activity at New York’s Stewart International Airport on December 14 became so intensive that it caused multiple runways to close. “They say there’s nothing going on, but we’re going to shut down the airspace anyway. I don’t get it,” responded New Jersey State Senator Jon Bramnick (R).

The cascading drone flight restrictions suggest an FAA that was not in control of the situation. However, this conclusion conflicts with the statement that the sighted drones were all (or mostly) authorized by the FAA.

One way to resolve this paradox is the possibility that the FAA did have control over the drones, but not some other factor. In mid-December, Asia expert Gordon Chang suggested on “Washington Watch” that the drones were looking for some sort of nuclear device after there were reports of significant radiation spikes in the New York City area. The FAA could have issued flight restrictions on civilian drones to clear the air for a secret military mission.

Yet it remains profoundly odd that other governmental agencies remained in the dark about what, exactly, these drones were doing. “You had local law enforcement asking questions,” said Perkins. “They were allocating resources to do this. They even had contacted the FBI, and the FBI says, ‘We don’t know anything about it.’” Weeks earlier, the FBI had opened an investigation into the drones and asked for the public’s help.

“I’m a little bit disappointed in the fact that the FAA didn’t announce this and caused us to exert a lot of manpower toward vetting suspicious activity reports,” said Monmouth County Sheriff Shaun Golden. “It’s disappointing when they don’t communicate with their own bureau of investigation, the FBI, who spent hundreds and hundreds of manhours vetting through hundreds of phone calls to the tips line.”

“I think in this day and age — particularly in a post-9/11 era, in an era of threats and risk assessments — when we have an agency withholding information like that and not telling their own federal partners that they were involved in this, not telling state and county and local officials what was happening, [that] is really disturbing to me,” Golden added.

Need for Transparency

The remaining unanswered questions have driven calls for greater transparency. “[They] said those drones were literally for research and study and other reasons. I’d like to know what ‘research’ and study, and what ‘other reasons’ we’re talking about,” demanded Gottheimer. “Why are they flying these drones over Jersey?”

Mayor Melham agreed. With drones “flying around in urban areas, in densely populated areas, only 100 feet above our homes, we are concerned. And we deserve to know what they’re doing up there,” he insisted.

“I just want somebody normal to get up in front of us and give us the truth, the straight truth: no canned response, no carefully chosen words, no dancing around it,” mused New Jersey Assemblyman Brian Bergen (R). “If it’s the FAA doing research, what research? If it’s some other entity, whatever other entity it is. We want someone just to be normal for once and give us the truth.”

This return to normality is what Americans voted for, and what Trump has vowed to accomplish. This initial statement seems like the type of comment devised by the government establishment. Let’s hope Trump is able to change that.