https://time.com/5775758/military-crash-cia-disinformation/


The wreckage of a US Bombardier E-11A jet is seen after it crashed in mountainous territory of Ghazni Province, Afghanistan, on January 27, 2020. STR/AFP/Getty

BY KIMBERLY DOZIER UPDATED: FEBRUARY 1, 2020 9:22 AM ET | ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: JANUARY 31, 2020

The wreckage of a U.S. military plane that crashed and burned in a snowy mountainous region in Afghanistan on Monday was still fresh when Iranian state TV ran a story claiming a top CIA officer was among the dead. Like all good propaganda, the story was mostly false, but with a scintilla of truth. Two American service members had been killed when the U.S. Air Force jet slammed into the snowy ground, but U.S. officials insist there was no CIA onboard.

A combination of bad weather and Taliban gunfire kept U.S. and Afghan forces from reaching the site for more than a day. By the time the U.S. military put out a brief statement saying that the downed plane carried two U.S. Air Force pilots, the dubious story had spread around the globe.

After a couple of fringy Iranian and pro-Kremlin news outlets reported that Michael D’Andrea, head of the CIA’s Iran Mission Center, was onboard the E-11A communications jet, the story was picked up in The Daily Mail, a major British tabloid, and a second British newspaper, The Independent, carried the news of D’Andrea’s alleged demise to London, albeit with some skepticism. While the Pentagon confirmed to TIME on Friday that there were only two Air Force officers on the plane, none of the official public statements say they were the only passengers. And the CIA has refused to comment on whether D’Andrea or any other CIA personnel were onboard.

The U.S. military says it could not have gotten the news out sooner. But the Iranian version of events that circulated in the information vacuum had people inside and outside the U.S. wondering who to believe. The Trump Administration’s now-familiar pattern of slow, incomplete and sometimes disingenuous responses to events has ground down public and internal trust of its messaging and created an opportunity for adversaries like Iran and Russia to spread disinformation and sow confusion among allies and U.S. officials. The wrong information can spread about an event whether it happened on a remote Afghan mountainside or a maximum-security American compound. “If false reports are not authoritatively or convincingly disproven, they can take on a life of their own,” James Cunningham, former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan told TIME. “Once that happens, it’s very hard to undo that.”

</snip>