John Kirby: Clearly Drones Are Being Operated in a Lawful and Legal Way

EXCERPT:

KIRBY: "Well, I would repeat what we‘ve said yesterday and last night in a multiple agency statement. That we have taken a serious look at this. We have gone through 5,000 some odd sightings. We have added detection capabilities to the region. We‘ve even sent up visual observers. And everything we‘re seeing to date, our assessment tells us that these are commercial drones, hobbyist drones or law enforcement drones all operating legally and lawfully. I mean, when people shoot video of that, Kate, I mean, there you‘re seeing the lights on these things, the navigation lights. That‘s what‘s required if you‘re going to be flying in U.S. airspace at night, are navigation lights. So clearly they‘re being operated in a lawful and legal way. And we‘ve seen nothing from their behavior, nothing that tells us there‘s a public safety threat or a national security threat. I do want to add one point, though. We‘ve still got about 100 leads that the FBI is following up on, and if we learn something that contradicts that or something more, something additional, something more specific, my goodness, we‘re going to come public and we‘re going to talk about it. We have been trying to be as transparent with the American people as we can. But I think it‘s also important to remember that there are a million drones registered with the FAA and thousands upon thousands fly in U.S. airspace legally every single day, including in the northeast corridor. In fact, that‘s one of the busiest areas."