The president said that the press made it easier to hunt down the American pilot.
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President Donald Trump revealed this Monday at a press conference that a “sick person” leaked information about the American warplane shot down in Iran last weekend to the media and threatened with jail sentences for journalists if they do not reveal the identity of the leaker.
Trump argued that the mission to rescue one of the American pilots in Iran was put at “serious risk” due to a press leak. The Iranian regime echoed this news and offered a reward for the lost pilot, who was forced to hide in a mountain cave for almost two days while the Revolutionary Guard
searched for him.
“We are looking very hard to find that leaker,” the president told reporters in the White House press room. “Whoever it is, we think we can find out because we're going to go to the media company that published it and we're going to say: 'National Security, hand it over or go to jail',” the
president said.
“There are things that can't be done because when they did that, all of a sudden, the whole country of Iran knew that there was a pilot somewhere on their land who was fighting for his life,” Trump said. “And it also made it much more difficult for the drivers and for the people who were going to look for it.”
Trump lashed out at the press for risking the pilot's life in Iran and promised jail time for the leaker
The second pilot was rescued Sunday morning
.
Although Trump did not specify to what media this information was leaked, CBS News, The New York Times and CNN were among the first media to report that one of the two American pilots was rescued while a search and rescue operation was being launched for the second missing aviator
.
Journalists who publish sensitive or even classified information are protected in many states by so-called “shield laws” as long as they have obtained the material without coercion and have not asked anyone to break the law, but such legislation does not extend to federal protections for the publication of classified information.
The second aviator, who was seriously injured, was rescued early Sunday in a heroic mission carried out inside Iran. Trump described it as a “massive operation” involving 155 aircraft, including bombers, warplanes, tankers and rescue units. After confirming the location of the weapons systems officer, U.S. troops engaged enemy forces and extracted
the pilot. Trump lashed out at the press for risking the pilot's life in Iran and promised jail time for the leaker
