A new report revealed that the Chinese spy craft that flew over the U.S. at the beginning of this year was communicating with mainland China via an American internet provider.

Two current and one former Biden administration officials told NBC News in a Thursday report that the craft used a U.S. internet provider to receive mainly navigational communications.

NBC News did not name the internet provider in the report. The company denied that the Chinese spy craft used its services and had come to that conclusion via its own investigation as well as talking to U.S. officials.

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One official said the spy craft, which was shot down by the U.S. military off the coast of South Carolina on Feb. 4, used high-bandwidth data collections known as burst transmissions to send information.

The report also said the Biden administration asked the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for a highly secretive order to collect intelligence on the craft as it flew over several states.

The officials said that order would have allowed the government to monitor the spy craft's communications during its journey.

Several officials said in the report that, in the past, China has secretly used commercial internet providers in different nations as backup communications networks. Encrypted networks are often sought out for their security.

Chinese embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu claimed to NBC News that the craft was a weather balloon that had drifted off-course.

"As we had made it clear before, the airship, used for meteorological research, unintentionally drifted into U.S. because of the westerlies and its limited self-steering capability," Liu said. "The facts are clear."

The office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment to Fox News Digital.

Fox News Digital reached out to the White House and Chinese Embassy for comment.

Despite Biden administration officials assuring the American public that the Chinese spy balloon did not collect and transmit data, a previously unreported phone call paints a different picture of top officials hiding information about the balloon.

According to NBC News, a Jan. 27 phone call between President Biden’s top military adviser, Gen. Mark Milley, and NORAD chief Gen. Glen VanHerck sheds new light on China's surveillance balloon. The network also reported that the administration initially hoped to keep the balloon’s existence a secret from Congress and the public, citing multiple former and current administration and congressional officials.

"Before it was spotted publicly, there was the intention to study it and let it pass over and not ever tell anyone about it," one former senior U.S. official told NBC.

A senior Biden administration official denied allegations of an attempt to conceal the incident, saying decisions were made to protect sensitive intelligence capabilities.

Fox News Digital's Sarah Rumpf-Whitten contributed to this report.

An Israeli airstrike on the Damascus airport has reportedly killed nearly a dozen senior Iranian military officials, which one expert told Fox News Digital would prove Israel’s ability to maintain a multi-faceted defense of the region. 

"While there is no independent confirmation of Guard Corps names or ranks, the IRGC has long seen Syria as a critical regional hub to project power into the Eastern Mediterranean and connect its constellation of proxies called the ‘Axis of Resistance,’" Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said. 

"It should come as a shock to no one that Guard Corps elite are operating there, especially amid a regional war, which they are directing far away from their own soil," he added. 

"Similarly, should the strike be independently verified, it would be more proof of Israel being able to hold back and deter elements of the Axis of Resistance in other geographies while fighting to defeat Hamas in Gaza," Taleblu stressed.

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Syrian media claimed that Israel had targeted sites in southern Syria and near Damascus in waves that aimed to disrupt and Iran’s operations in the country. 

A report from The Jerusalem Post claimed the strike killed 11 leaders of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) at the airport on Thursday night. 

The IRGC leadership targeted also reportedly included Nur Rashid, the commander of the Revolutionary Guards in eastern Syria, who only suffered injuries from the attack. The group had supposedly visited the country to meet with high-ranking delegates from Syria. 

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Israel has reportedly launched strikes against IRGC personnel in Damascus across the past week: Iranian leaders claimed that one such strike on Monday killed senior IRGC commander Sayyed Razi Mousavi, who was responsible for coordinating a military alliance between Iran and Syria. 

Iran state media interrupted programming to announce Mousavi’s death and described him as one of the oldest advisers for the IRGC in Syria. 

Israel has not shied away from Iran’s aggressions, which Tehran pushes in the region through its various proxy groups, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen. 

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Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett this week in a Wall Street Journal op-ed said that Israel has even retaliated inside Iran for terrorist attacks committed in 2022, saying that he told his security chiefs during his administration that his goal was "to avoid, if reasonably possible, local clashes" with Iran proxies. 

"As prime minister, I made another decision regarding Iran," Bennett wrote. "I directed Israel's security forces to make Tehran pay for its decision to sponsor terror."

"Enough impunity," he stressed. "After Iran launched two failed UAV attacks on Israel in February 2022, Israel destroyed a UAV base on Iranian soil."

"In March 2022, Iran's terror unit attempted to kill Israeli tourists in Turkey and failed. Shortly thereafter, the commander of that very unit was assassinated in the center of Tehran," he added.

Fox News Digital’s Greg Wehner contributed to this report.