Ex-CIA station chief reveals how agency exploited Iranian communication channels during airman rescue

Former CIA station chief Dan Hoffman said on "The Sunday Briefing" that a reported agency deception campaign may have helped draw Iranian forces away from a missing U.S. airman, offering new insight into the mission that culminated in a daring rescue behind enemy lines.

It was reported that the CIA attempted to deceive the Iranians into believing the U.S. was gearing up for a maritime rescue, Hoffman said, when in reality, the airman was exfiltrated from the mountains.

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The CIA also assisted in tracking both the missing airman and enemy forces, he said.

"The CIA was there to track [the airman's] location... And then at the same time, the CIA is tracking Iranian security forces, their movements, their efforts to find and fix the location of our airman. And then, at the same time, running this deception operation, an extraordinary operation."

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"I've heard it referred to as looking for a needle in a haystack. I think it's more like a needle in a stack of needles. Extraordinarily difficult," said Hoffman.

His comments follow the rescue early Sunday morning of a U.S. Air Force Weapons System Officer (WSO) who had ejected from his F-15E fighter jet over Iran. The WSO spent roughly 36 hours in hiding. Hoffman said he would need to rely on the skills he learned at the military's Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) school.

On the intelligence side, Hoffman said the strategy could have been much simpler. The CIA just needed to drop the false information where they knew Iran would hear it.

"The CIA would have looked to find those channels of communication that we know we can exploit that the Iranian security force are listening to. Iran has a... pretty developed cyber capability. And what we would have done is simply supplied some information there, some of it true, to establish the bona fides of the channel that we were using, and then this deception operation would have been run in that channel," Hoffman said.