Inside the mission to recover a downed American airman

By Kevin Liptak, CNN

(CNN) — Hiding alone in a mountain crevice behind enemy lines, the injured American airman knew exactly what to do: survive and evade.

For more than a day, the weapons systems officer whose F-15E Strike Eagle was shot down inside Iran avoided being captured by encroaching Iranian forces. At one point, he scaled the rugged terrain to a ridgeline 7,000 feet above sea level, equipped with little more than a pistol, a communication device and a tracking beacon.

It was into the high mountains that a team of American commandos, accompanied by US aircraft dropping bombs to clear the area, swarmed to locate the officer, bringing him and themselves to safety.

Two US officials described the details of the risky operation afterward.

It involved hundreds of American military and intelligence personnel, including special operations forces who carried out the successful rescue mission, and CIA operatives who mounted a deception campaign beforehand to throw off potential Iranian captors.

And it came with multiple twists, including a pair of damaged US special operations aircraft that the US had to blow up on the ground in Iran during the operation.

“WE GOT HIM!” President Trump wrote on social media after spending Saturday monitoring the operation from the White House. “Over the past several hours, the United States Military pulled off one of the most daring Search and Rescue Operations in U.S. History.”

The race to find and recover the officer had quickly become an all-consuming endeavor for the administration after the fighter jet was shot down on Friday. The pilot of the plane was found quickly, but the White House and Pentagon refused to confirm the rescue as a second, more prolonged mission to find his crewmate was underway.

Both had ejected from the plane when it was hit, but the weapons systems officer’s whereabouts were unknown. After sustaining injuries during the ejection, he hid in the crevice to avoid detection by Iran, whose leaders had issued a bounty for his capture. He made contact then with the military.

But his communication was sporadic as he worked to avoid being detected by Iranian forces.

In Washington, Trump spent Friday in the West Wing, moving between the Oval Office and its adjacent dining room to receive updates on the mission to find the officer. The downing of the F-15E, along with Iran’s ability to strike another plane — an A-10 Warthog — and a US helicopter assisting in the search-and-rescue mission seemed to undercut his administration’s claims of air dominance over Iran.

Trump skipped the golf course on Saturday, remaining at the White House as the operation to enter Iran to find the downed airmen came together.

At the same time military planners were rushing to piece together the operation, a parallel effort was underway by the CIA. American intelligence operatives worked to circulate information inside Iran that both crew-members had been recovered, looking to confuse Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps members who were urgently searching themselves for the downed officer.

Israel, meanwhile, postponed some planned strikes in Iran to not interfere with the search and rescue efforts, an Israeli official told CNN, and offered intelligence support, according to two Israeli sources.

It was the CIA that ultimately identified the officer’s exact location and shared the information with the military.

“This brave Warrior was behind enemy lines in the treacherous mountains of Iran, being hunted down by our enemies, who were getting closer and closer by the hour, but was never truly alone,” Trump wrote.

As American special operations forces converged on the mountainside where the officer had been hiding, US planes conducted strikes in the area to ensure Iranian forces were not able to get there first. Trump was watching along from the Situation Room.

At a remote airstrip in Iran, two MC-130J special operations transport aircraft had been waiting to take the commandos and the rescued airmen out of the country. But they had become damaged at some point during the operation.

The military decided to send in new planes and blow the damaged ones up rather than take the risk of them falling into Iranian hands.

In a Sunday social media post, Trump said he would speak to reporters about the remarkable operation at a news conference in the Oval Office at 1 p.m. Monday.

He also offered some new details on the crew member, whom he described as “seriously wounded” and “really brave,” and said was rescued from “deep inside the mountains of Iran.”

Trump called the operation “an AMAZING show of bravery and talent by all!”

CNN’s Tal Shalev and Betsy Klein contributed to this report.

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