US intelligence agencies had already done the basic work needed to locate a missing colonel in Iran, Paul Mauro said on Monday, arguing that the operation relied on intelligence gathered long before the mission began.
“You have to collect, you collect, you collect and a lot of it you sometimes never use,” Mauro told “Fox & Friends.”
“The key is that when you need it, it has to be there.”
Mauro pointed to the Maduro case, which unfolded in January at the behest of the Trump administration, and pointed to the ability of the US military to determine where the Venezuelan dictator and his wife might be at the time in order to make an effective arrest.
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Secretary of War Pete Hegseth shakes hands with a U.S. pilot during a secret CENTCOM visit with troops in “theater.” (War Secretary/X)
“They caught him as they ran to a safe room without a scratch. Everyone comes out without a scratch,” he said.
‘They caught them while they were running. The reporting was so detailed and the operation was so synchronized.’
Mauro said the same level of preparation and coordination was seen in the Iran mission, where US forces rescued a missing US weapons systems officer of a crashed F-15E after a multi-day search in enemy territory.
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Artificial intelligence is a big factor in the war against Iran and Iran realizes this. (iStock)
U.S. intelligence was able to act quickly to retrieve the missing colonel once his location was confirmed.
“[This] was one of those situations where the bell rang. ‘Guys, what [have] have you?’ The chairman turns around, [War Secretary] Hegseth turns, [and] they’re all talking to Ratcliffe and they’re like, ‘What [have] Have you, director?’ and luckily it was there.”
Mauro said the operation highlights a broader fact about intelligence work that is obvious to those working within the community: its success comes down to the people who control the sources.
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“At the end of the day… it comes down to people,” he said.
“If you think you can sit in a box somewhere and get everything that needs to be done, that’s not going to happen. You need people in the country, in dangerous areas, Americans working on our behalf that you’ll never hear about… they control the resources so that, again, if you need it, they say, ‘My source is good.’“
