Ex-CIA chief says agency ran deception op to rescue airman from Iran
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Former CIA station chief Dan Hoffman said on “Sunday Briefing” that the agency’s reported deception campaign could have helped lead Iranian forces away from a missing U.S. airman and offered new insight into the mission that resulted in a daring rescue behind enemy lines.
Hoffman said the CIA reportedly tried to make the Iranians believe that the United States was preparing for a rescue operation at sea, but in reality the airman was kidnapped from the mountains.
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Smoke rises after explosions in the northeast, west and central regions during Israel’s attacks in Tehran, Iran, on April 1, 2026. (Tolga Akbaba/Anadolu)
He also said the CIA helped track down both the missing airman and enemy forces.
“The CIA was there to follow up” [the airman’s] location… And at the same time, the CIA is tracking Iranian security forces, their movements, their efforts to locate and recover our airman. “And at the same time, carrying out this deception operation is an extraordinary operation.”
Inside the daring rescue of an airman from behind enemy lines: How did the CIA HELP THE ‘DEFEAL CAMPAIGN’?
It was reported that a US F-15 warplane was shot down over Iran’s Khuzestan province on April 3, 2026. (EarthStar Geographics)
“I’ve heard it referred to as looking for a needle in a haystack. I think it’s more like looking for a needle in a pile of needles. It’s extraordinarily difficult,” Hoffman said.
His comments followed the rescue of a US Air Force Weapons System Officer (WSO) who jumped from an F-15E fighter jet over Iran early Sunday morning. WSO spent approximately 36 hours in hiding. Hoffman said the military must rely on the skills it learned in Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) school.
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On the intelligence side, Hoffman said the strategy could be much simpler. The CIA needed to drop misinformation that it knew Iran would hear.
“The CIA would try to find communication channels that Iranian security forces were listening to that we knew we could exploit. Iran has a pretty advanced cyber capability. And to establish that the channel we were using was bona fide, it would just be to get some information out there, some of it being true, and then this deception operation would be conducted on that channel,” Hoffman said.
