Andy Kim Says Drone Scare Fueled By Lack Of Communication, Distrust In Government

WASHINGTON — Sen Andy Kim (D-N.J.) thinks public alarm over drones in the night sky has been fueled by lack of information from the federal government.

Federal officials have insisted there’s no cause for panic and most of the drone sightings are actually just normal planes.

To see for himself, on Thursday evening Kim accompanied local police in northern New Jersey, where he shot video of what officers said were suspicious flying objects. The next day, however, Kim consulted civilian aviators and other experts and reckoned most of the “drones” he’d seen were actually regular manned aircraft.

“The local police were telling me, like, those are drones,” Kim told HuffPost on Monday. “If local police are potentially misidentifying things because it’s just not their area of expertise, then let’s put information out there for them.”

Drone sightings in New Jersey and other East Coast states have been freaking people out since November, with one Republican lawmaker dubiously claiming the drones came from an Iranian “mothership,” others calling for new legislation to curb private drone activity and a military base in Ohio briefly restricting its air space over the weekend.

The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security said in a joint statement last week that there was no evidence that the reported drone sightings were some sort of threat, or even evidence of unusual drone activity.

“We are supporting local law enforcement in New Jersey with numerous detection methods but have not corroborated any of the reported visual sightings with electronic detection,” the FBI and DHS said. “To the contrary, upon review of available imagery, it appears that many of the reported sightings are actually manned aircraft, operating lawfully. There are no reported or confirmed drone sightings in any restricted air space.”

On Saturday, administration officials detailed their investigative work in a background call with reporters, saying they’d set up a tip line, consulted with local police and checked airport traffic patterns to verify that most of the supposed drones were, in fact, planes going to and from airports. There were drones out there, they said, but none that were believed to be suspicious or involved in nefarious activity. They noted it’s legal to fly a drone so long as it stays within 400 feet of the ground. An FBI official said they thought there had been “a slight overreaction” by the public.

The official statements did seemingly little to calm the apparent public concern over the drones. President-elect Donald Trump, who said Friday the government should either explain what’s going on or go ahead and shoot the flying objects down, suggested Monday the government is hiding something.

“The government knows what is happening. Look, our military knows where they took off from. If it’s a garage, they can go right into that garage. They know where it came from and where it went. For some reason they don’t want to comment,” Trump said in Florida.

“Our military knows and our president knows and for some reason they want to keep people in suspense,” Trump said, adding that “something strange is going on.”

On Saturday, when he acknowledged most of the flying objects he’d seen were planes, Kim explained why he thought the government’s statements were not calming people down.

“Press releases from federal agencies that don’t share analysis of evidence and instead just reiterate statements aren’t helpful in this moment. We have a lot of distrust in politics/government right now, and we need federal gov to respect the right for the public to be informed,” Kim said on social media.

Kim told HuffPost Trump’s statement “sounds much more like it’s accusing of intentionally withholding information and misinforming purposefully. I have not seen anything of that nature. I don’t know where he’s coming from in terms of that information.”