Most of the smaller drones that are popping up in New Jersey, New York, and other locations are likely being flown by "hobbyists" who are "trying to cause trouble," but the larger ones are not being flown by ordinary Americans, former National Security Council chief of staff Fred Fleitz told Newsmax on Saturday.
Instead, Fleitz told Newsmax's "The Count" that he thinks the larger drones "are being run by the military or the CIA."
"There's some type of exercise or experiment and whatever is happening, we know very well that the U.S. government is not giving the American people an adequate explanation," he said. "I think they know what's going on here, and when they say nothing to see here, these are just small aircraft, I just don't think that's true."
But Fleitz said he's not "convinced" that the drones that have been sighted are "being flown by China or Iran or other foreign powers."
"This would be uncharacteristic for them and hard for them to do without getting caught," he said. "I need to see the evidence for that."
Fleitz added that the smaller drones are likely being put up by "groups of young people."
"You can buy some pretty sophisticated drones online," said Fleitz. "They can fly an enormous distance. You actually can control them from your smartphone to fly right back to you, put lights on them, and scare the heck out of people."
Walid Phares, a former policy adviser for President-elect Donald Trump, was also on Saturday's show and he said that it is wrong to leave the American public in the dark about the drones.
"You cannot leave the American population like this," he said. "Showing like a circus on TV at the Pentagon or the White House, and saying "'oh don't worry about it … for much lesser than that they would mobilize the Department of Homeland Security, and so on and so forth.'"
The drones, he said, have to be questioned and investigated.
"In terms of spying, obviously, a mass of drones of that size, not just, you know, over one American city, over multiple American cities, the population is going out at night to try to, you know, to find out what's going on," said Phares. "Obviously, the collection ability of these networks is huge, but there are things we don't even see because our government is not telling us."
But he insisted that inside the government agencies, "people know" what is going on.
"The problem is that the political decision by the Biden administration is not to allow the public to learn more about it," said Phares.
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