US President Donald Trump has criticized an unnamed whistleblower media outlet for its reporting on the rescue of one of the pilots of a downed F-15 fighter jet in Iran on April 3 before the other crew member was safe.
“We’ll be able to find out because we’ll go to the media company that published it and say: National Security, turn him over or go to prison,” Trump said at a press conference on April 6 (quoted in the New York Times). “The person who wrote that article will go to prison if he doesn’t say that.”
It is not clear which publication and which journalist were threatened by the US president.
Trump believes that the leak of information has further complicated the process of finding the missing soldier. He writes BBC News. He added: “We have to find this informant because he is a sick person; he may not have realized how bad it was… They put this mission at great risk.”
An American F-15 fighter jet was shot down in Iran on April 3. Trump announced on April 5 that the US military had carried out “one of the most daring search and rescue missions in the world” and rescued an American soldier who spent two days inside Iran. Another crew member had been rescued the day before, but this had not been officially announced so as not to jeopardize the second operation.
In the past, Donald Trump has criticized journalists who, in his words, spread “fake news.” But today’s statement appeared harsher, threatening the media with imprisonment, BBC News notes.