Dan Hoffman, a former station chief with the Central Intelligence Agency, or CIA, said that the agency used masterful deception in its rescue of a downed weapons systems officer from an F-15E Strike Eagle that went down in Iran.

Hoffman said 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.

He also noted that the agency was not only tracking the airman, but also enemy forces on the ground, directing air cover to the downed crewman whenever the Iranians closed in on his location.

“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.”

The airman was able to be rescued from the mountains in Southwestern Iran and used tactics found under the military’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) school.