Special Investigations

Press Freedom Defense Fund

The Media Just Can’t Help Turning Iran Fighter Jet Rescue Into “Black Hawk Down”

Everyone reported the exact same story at the exact same time — and they all relied on the same liars who got us into this mess.

Neither Josh Hartnett nor Ewan McGregor were there, but the way the mainstream media is telling it, they might as well have been. The Sunday morning rescue of a U.S. airman shot down over Iran launched a thousand breathless tick-tock retellings from the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, CBS News, and many, many more — helpful water-carrying for an administration prosecuting a deeply unpopular war without a clear end in sight.

“The rescue had unfolded with near‑perfect precision. Under cover of darkness, U.S. commandos slipped deep into Iran, undetected, scaled a 7,000‑foot ridge and pulled a ​stranded American weapons specialist to safety, moving him toward a secret rendezvous point before dawn on Sunday,” Reuters’ report on the rescue opens. “Then everything stopped.”

The operation was a “harrowing race against time,” according to the Times. As Politico put it, citing an anonymous senior administration official, it was “the ultimate ‘needle in a haystack’” mission, made possible by a CIA “deception campaign” in the country disseminating the misinformation that the airman had already been located and was being extracted by ground to confuse the Iranians’ search.

The White House frequently hosts widely attended “background briefing” calls for large groups of reporters. Maybe that’s how Axios chimed in with the same evocative “needle in a haystack” line, which it also attributed to a senior administration official.

“This was the ultimate needle in a haystack but in this case it was a brave American soul inside a mountain crevice, invisible but for CIA’s capabilities,” the unnamed source told Axios.

Far-Right Religious Leaders Advising Trump See Iran as an End Times Holy War

CBS News called locating and extracting the service member, who was aboard a craft known by the call sign “Dude 44,” “a herculean U.S. government effort.” Even The Associated Press characterized the mission as “a daring rescue,” and multiple publications reported that when the airman was able, they radioed the line “God is good” just ahead of Easter Sunday — a plot point that would make even devotees of the show “24” groan.

As government sources are telling the tale to eager reporters at national publications, the F-15E Strike Eagle was the first jet shot down Friday over enemy territory in this war on Iran. After coming under Iranian fire, the two-man crew ejected themselves, and the aircraft’s weapons systems officer was separated from the pilot, who was “quickly” rescued, according to the Journal.

While the initially missing service member’s identity has not been revealed, Trump said he is a colonel who was injured but managed to hide out in a mountain crevice to await rescue. Two Black Hawk helicopters involved in the search were also hit by incoming fire; in another incident, an A-10 Warthog was hit and crashed in a neighboring allied country, where the pilot was rescued.

“A lot of great things happened.”

“A lot of great things happened.”

“When airmen go down, you can’t get them in very tough countries, like in Vietnam,” Trump told the Journal, in a revealing comparison.

“He was able to climb, climb up as wounded as he was, he was able to climb up into a crevice,” Trump went on. “A lot of great things happened.”

To say it would be naive to take the Trump administration at face value is an understatement. Yet the complete lack of any skepticism of this Hollywood story from mainstream news would make even Breitbart writers blush.

Even the timing of the premiere was perfect for the Trump administration, which is acutely aware of how unpopular this war is at home. Is America winning this war? Don’t worry about that, check out this action sequence.

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One of the ironies of all this is that it exposes exactly why the Trump administration can’t be trusted. Just two days before the fighter jet was shot down, Trump was blustering about how U.S. strikes had left Iran with “no anti-aircraft” capabilities. The daring rescue, however, is predicated on the very clear fact that Iran absolutely still has the ability to shoot down American planes.

The U.S. can certainly bomb Iran “back to the Stone Age” — a line both Trump and Hegseth deployed — but all that hellfire rained down on civilian targets won’t yield the political dividends they so desperately desire.

The Architects of the Iraq War: Where Are They Now?

It’s all eerily reminiscent of the way the media covered the lead-up to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, when papers of record like the Times and The Atlantic and respected broadcast outlets like “Meet the Press” were more than happy to launder the Bush administration’s quarter-baked intelligence to make the case for war to the American public.

Even voices from the emergent, supposedly left-wing media — like the wonks making their name through a new format called “blogs” — were overjoyed to fall in line with the war effort. After all, the logic seemed to go, how could you be taken seriously if you were reflexively anti-war — the province of far-left nuts who are cast into the political wilderness? It was far safer and, in the long term, professionally beneficial to sell out any principles you had to enlist as junior partners in the pro-war coalition.

Even if, in this moment, the media is vaguely more skeptical of the war with Iran, national reporters simply couldn’t resist retelling the story of a Great American Rescue Mission, consequences, or the broader truth, be damned. Americans’ memories, especially for failing wars, are short.

As the fog clears and a fuller picture emerges, maybe we’ll see whether it shakes out the same way these serial liars sold it to huge swaths of the media.

IT’S EVEN WORSE THAN WE THOUGHT.

What we’re seeing right now from Donald Trump is a full-on authoritarian takeover of the U.S. government. 

This is not hyperbole.

Court orders are being ignored. MAGA loyalists have been put in charge of the military and federal law enforcement agencies. The Department of Government Efficiency has stripped Congress of its power of the purse. News outlets that challenge Trump have been banished or put under investigation.

Yet far too many are still covering Trump’s assault on democracy like politics as usual, with flattering headlines describing Trump as “unconventional,” “testing the boundaries,” and “aggressively flexing power.” 

The Intercept has long covered authoritarian governments, billionaire oligarchs, and backsliding democracies around the world. We understand the challenge we face in Trump and the vital importance of press freedom in defending democracy.

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IT’S BEEN A DEVASTATING year for journalism — the worst in modern U.S. history.

We have a president with utter contempt for truth aggressively using the government’s full powers to dismantle the free press. Corporate news outlets have cowered, becoming accessories in Trump’s project to create a post-truth America. Right-wing billionaires have pounced, buying up media organizations and rebuilding the information environment to their liking.

In this most perilous moment for democracy, The Intercept is fighting back. But to do so effectively, we need to grow.

That’s where you come in. Will you help us expand our reporting capacity in time to hit the ground running in 2026?

We’re independent of corporate interests. Will you help us?

I’M BEN MUESSIG, The Intercept’s editor-in-chief. It’s been a devastating year for journalism — the worst in modern U.S. history.

We have a president with utter contempt for truth aggressively using the government’s full powers to dismantle the free press. Corporate news outlets have cowered, becoming accessories in Trump’s project to create a post-truth America. Right-wing billionaires have pounced, buying up media organizations and rebuilding the information environment to their liking.

In this most perilous moment for democracy, The Intercept is fighting back. But to do so effectively, we need to grow.

That’s where you come in. Will you help us expand our reporting capacity in time to hit the ground running in 2026?

We’re independent of corporate interests. Will you help us?

Trump’s Holy War Abroad and at Home

“Casualty Cover-Up”: The Pentagon Is Hiding U.S. Losses Under Trump in the Middle East

It’s Easy to Write a Memoir About War — but Hard to Write an Anti-War Memoir

“American Sniper” Chris Kyle Distorted His Military Record, Documents Show

An American Company Drilled for Oil in Kenya — and Left Behind Soaring Cancer Rates

Georgia Gee, Nelly Madegwa

Amoco, now part of BP, never cleaned up after its failed oil prospecting mission. Rural Kenyans are suing for a right to a clean environment.

Far-Right Religious Leaders Advising Trump See Iran as an End Times Holy War

By making Iran into a religious crusade, Trump’s spiritual advisers are making the war that much more difficult to end.

DHS Launches Massive “Less Lethal” Chemical Weapons Buying Spree

Federal agents’ indiscriminate use of tear gases and “less-lethal” projectiles has become a mainstay of protest crackdowns.

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