The rash of reported drone sightings in New Jersey and surrounding states that drew widespread attention late last year were generated by legal drones that were flown with authorization by the Federal Aviation Administration, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said Tuesday.
“This was not the enemy,” Ms. Leavitt said, speaking at her first news conference in her new role, reading a statement she said came from President Trump. In mid-November, residents in northern New Jersey began reporting flashing lights in the night sky that they believed were drones, hovering and zooming over towns and suburbs after sunset.
Soon after, the sightings began to capture the nation’s imagination. Thousands of people took to social media to trade videos of the aircraft and swap theories about what they were.
Some speculated that the aircraft were drones being operated by the U.S. government, while others suggested they could have been coming from other countries, perhaps to surveil infrastructure or military installations. One recent Emerson College poll of New Jersey residents found that 8.3 percent of them thought the airborne lights were actually “nonhuman intelligence.”
A New York Times investigation published last month that analyzed hundreds of videos purporting to show drone activity in New Jersey found none that conclusively showed drones. Most of the videos actually appeared to show commercial or military airplanes or helicopters, though drones in some cases remained a possible explanation.
Ms. Leavitt said Tuesday that “research and study” revealed many of the aircraft that had been spotted were actually drones flown for research purposes and by hobbyists and “private individuals that enjoy flying drones.”
“In time it got worse due to curiosity,” Ms. Leavitt added.
The conclusion she announced Tuesday was at odds with how President Trump described the sightings before he was inaugurated. In social media posts and at a news conference last month, Mr. Trump suggested, without citing evidence, that the federal government was concealing information about where the drones came from and what they were doing.
“They know where it came from and where it went,” he said at the news conference. “And for some reason, they don’t want to comment.”
Now his administration has commented, echoing what White House and Defense Department officials from the Biden administration had said about the sightings. In a Dec. 16 statement, four federal agencies, including the F.A.A. and F.B.I., said that an investigation into the reports had “not identified anything anomalous,” and that the sightings were a mix of legally-flown drones, airplanes, helicopters and stars.
Some of the earliest sightings in Somerset County occurred around a golf club owned and visited often by Mr. Trump. The F.A.A. responded by closing airspace around the property.
At a meeting with Republican governors shortly before his term began, Mr. Trump promised he would provide an update about the drones, according to The Associated Press.
“You have to give me a little time after the inauguration,” he said. “But, shortly thereafter, I will give you a report on it. We’ll tell you exactly what it is.”
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