White House National Security Communications Adviser John Kirby said the White House’s assessment, in coordination with the FBI and state and local officials, is that the mysterious drones flying over the country are in fact "legal" and "lawful."
Kirby told Fox News anchor Bret Baier Monday on "Special Report" they’ve examined roughly 5,000 sightings and to date, their analysis is "lawful, legal, commercial hobbyist and even law enforcement aircraft activity," is responsible for the sightings.
"Some of it's manned, some of it's unmanned. We absolutely acknowledge that a lot of these are probably drones, but they're flying legally. And it is legal to fly drones in non-restricted airspace as long as you're registered with the [Federal Aviation Administration] FAA and there's thousands and thousands of these kinds of flights every single day," he added.
Pentagon Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said in a press conference Monday there are more than 1 million drones registered with the FAA in the United States, and that more than 8,000 drones are lawfully flown every day.
An FBI official said over the weekend their Newark office created a tip line in early December to deal with the number of calls related to reported drone sightings in New Jersey.
Since Dec. 3, they have received 5,000 tips through that national tip line and of those 5,000, "less than 100 leads have been generated and deemed worthy of further investigative activity," according to the official.
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Baier pressed Kirby about the White House’s assessment that the drones don’t have any foreign involvement.
"We've done the detection and the analysis. We've corroborated the sightings. And in every case that we have examined to date, we have seen nothing, nothing that indicates a public safety risk," said Kirby. "We've seen nothing working with the Department of Defense [DOD] as well, that indicates a foreign adversary, actor involved or any kind of pernicious national security threat."
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He acknowledged there have been some cases of drones flying over military bases but the White House and DOD are looking into them.
"This is an ongoing investigation," said Kirby. "We're still working our way through this. Sightings continue to come in. We've taken them all seriously and we'll continue to look at this."
