‘I’d love to keep that a secret, Mr. President’: Top advisors are baffled by Trump’s boasts about the Iran rescue mission

(SeaPRwire) –   On Monday, President Donald Trump and his top defense advisors laid out details of a high-risk mission: the United States leveraged dozens of aircraft, hundreds of personnel, classified CIA technology and strategic deception to rescue a two-person fighter jet crew that crashed deep inside Iranian territory.

Speaking at a valedictory news conference at the White House, Trump shared an unusually high level of detail about the operation. He stated U.S. forces rescued the pilot within hours of the F-15E Strike Eagle going down late Thursday, moving helicopters, midair refuelers and fighter jets deep into Iran after confirming the pilot’s location.

The second airman on the jet — the weapons systems officer — was rescued almost two days after the first extraction.

Trump touted the massive military resources deployed and cross-U.S. agency coordination that pulled off this daring mission to retrieve troops from enemy territory. He called Iran’s shootdown of the jet “a lucky hit,” a comment that followed his claim in a national address last week that he had “beaten and completely decimated Iran.”

Another aircraft is hit during the F-15 pilot rescue

The search and rescue operation launched over Iran in daylight, with helicopters and other aircraft flying low for seven hours, “at times facing very, very heavy enemy fire,” Trump said.

Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said an A-10 Warthog — the attack aircraft primarily tasked with maintaining contact with the downed F-15 pilot on the ground — was struck by enemy fire while engaging Iranian forces.

The A-10 was “not landable,” Caine told reporters, but its pilot continued combat operations before flying the damaged craft to a friendly country and ejecting. The pilot was rescued quickly and is doing well.

After pulling out the F-15 pilot, HH-60 Jolly Green II helicopters were “engaged by every single person in the area who had a small-arms weapon, and one of the aircraft, the trailing helicopter, took multiple hits,” Caine said. Crew members suffered minor injuries and are expected to be fine, he added.

The rescue of the F-15 pilot, who flew under the call sign Dude-44 Alpha, was completed before Iran could organize a full-scale search of its own. But locating and bringing home the weapons systems officer proved to be an even more complex task.

An anchor on a channel linked to Iranian state television urged residents in the mountainous southwest Iran region where the jet crashed to turn any “enemy pilot” over to police, and promised a reward for anyone who complied.

The weapons systems officer, who occupied the F-15’s backseat under the call sign Dude-44 Bravo, was injured but followed his training to put as much distance as possible between himself and the crash site.

Second airman climbs into mountain terrain to hide

“Bleeding profusely,” according to Trump’s account, the aviator managed to climb up the mountainous terrain and call for help on Saturday using “a very sophisticated beeper-type device.”

When a plane crashes in hostile territory, “all searchers head straight to that crash site, so you want to get as far away as you can,” Trump explained.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe said the spy agency used “exquisite technologies that no other intelligence service” possesses to locate the aviator. At the same time, the CIA ran a deception operation to mislead Iranian forces that were also searching for him.

Ratcliffe compared the search and rescue effort to “hunting for a single grain of sand in the middle of a desert.”

The CIA declined to answer questions on Monday about what type of technology was used to locate the airman, but Trump filled in extra details.

He said intelligence officials spotted something moving in the dead of night in the mountains they were monitoring. Trump said officials kept a camera trained on the moving object for 45 minutes, and when it stopped moving, they thought they might have the wrong target.

But “it was the head of a human being,” the president said. “And then all of a sudden, 45 minutes later, he moved a lot, stood up, and they said, ‘We have him.’”

He added, “And that was really the start of something incredible.”

Protected by an “air armada” of drones, strike aircraft and other assets, rescue teams moved in on Sunday. Cargo planes flew in three small helicopters and assembled them near the stretch of mountains where the missing airman was hiding in a cave or crevice.

But when it was time to depart, the cargo planes were too heavily weighed down by equipment and personnel to take off from the sandy terrain. The downed airman and his rescue team were picked up by three “lighter, faster aircraft,” and all equipment left on the ground was blown up to keep it from falling into Iranian hands, Trump said.

U.S. uses multiple tactics to mislead Iranian forces

Many of the dozens of aircraft that took part in the operation were deployed specifically for deception, Trump said.

“We moved them all across the region, and a lot of it was subterfuge,” Trump said. “We wanted to make them think he was in a different location.”

Back in Washington, national security officials coordinated over a continuous call, keeping the phone line open for nearly two straight days.

“From the moment our pilots went down, our mission was unblinking,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said. “The call never dropped. The meeting never stopped, the planning never ceased.”

As Trump detailed the operation, his tendency to boast and flair for dramatic imagery clashed with his aides’ instinct to protect sensitive military and intelligence secrets. At one point, Trump turned to Caine, his top military advisor, and asked, “How many men did you send altogether, approximately, for the operation?”

Caine avoided giving a direct answer, responding, “Uhhh, I’d love to keep that a secret, Mr. President.”

“OK, well,” Trump continued. “But I will tell you — I’ll keep the number a secret, but it was hundreds.”

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Cooper reported from Phoenix, and Amiri from New York. Associated Press writer Josh Boak contributed reporting to this article.